by Julia London
The ring. That’s what felt odd. Finn looked at it—It wasn’t his ring.
She was not wearing the ring he’d sold his pickup truck to buy. This ring was bigger, fancier. He suddenly sat up, jerking her hand closer, staring at that ring. “What is this?” he asked. Macy sat up and tried to take his hand, but he held hers tight, staring at that ring, trying to understand it. “Where is your wedding ring?”
“I…I thought you were dead, and I thought my heart was dead, and I don’t know how I survived it, I really don’t.” She was speaking frantically now. “I hardly remember a thing after those first few days. Time sort of…it slipped away after your funeral. I was in a daze—I just remember trying so hard to think of things, like the way you smile, and the way you’d say my name, and how you cut the arms out of that very nice shirt because it was hot. I tried, Finn, I tried for a really long time to keep you with me, but bit by bit, you began to disappear, and then one day, I couldn’t remember what your feet looked like. And then I couldn’t remember your hands,” she said, grabbing his hand and running her fingers over his knuckles. “And then, I…I woke up one day and realized that life had to go on, that I couldn’t lie around all day trying to remember your hands, could I? I…what I am trying to tell you is that I…shit,” she said helplessly, and lowered her head, choking on a sob. “I got married again.”
Finn yanked his hand free of hers.
Her hands were shaking, and she started twisting that goddam ring, around and around.
“You remarried?” he asked, his voice sounding strange to him.
She responded with a sob.
As the realization slowly sank in, Finn felt something twist painfully very deep within him. This could not be happening. He’d endured three years to come back to her—how in the hell could she not be his? “When?” he managed.
“Seven months ago.”
Seven months ago, when he’d been shivering with cold that had seeped into his marrow, and was fighting the ever-present gnawing hunger, she’d remarried. “Who?” he forced himself to ask.
Macy averted her gaze. “Wyatt Clark,” she muttered.
Wyatt Clark, Wyatt Clark. Finn knew the name, but he couldn’t remember how.
“He’s…he’s the land broker,” Macy said.
It suddenly came back, all in a stomach-churning flood of memories. Wyatt Clark had come around before Finn and Macy had married wanting to know if Finn was interested in selling his ranch. Macy had married that guy? She’d believed Finn was dead and had married that guy?
Finn reeled away from her, almost falling off the bed in his haste to get away. Three years roiled through him in one long, nauseating wave, making his knees dangerously weak.
Macy married. But not to him.
Strangely, of all the things he’d feared he’d find when he came home, that had never been one of them.
“Finn, listen—”
“I have to get out of here,” he said thickly, shoving his shirttails into his pants.
“Finn, I love you—”
“Don’t, Macy,” he said sharply. “Don’t.” He looked at the door and thought, Survive, evade, resist, escape.
He grabbed his coat and walked to the door, throwing open the bolt. Behind him, he heard Macy phoning Brodie.
5
Two days ago, Macy had flown off to Washington, D.C., and Wyatt Clark had come home and found TV crews sitting outside of Arbolago Hills, the gated community where he lived. They were there the next morning, too. So he’d decamped to his folks’ place and hid there while they were off trailering.
The media attention infuriated him—he didn’t like his life being exposed. He didn’t like reporters showing up outside his office or house, shouting at him, asking him how he felt now that his wife’s first husband had shown up alive. How did those vultures think he felt?
This morning, Wyatt was on his way to his house to pick up a few things when he spotted a couple of the rat bastards sitting outside the community gates. He quickly turned onto a side street and headed to his office instead.
Wyatt drove his white Dodge Ram down the two-lane road until he hit the main four-lane into town again. On his way, he drove past the guys who came up from the Valley and sold watermelons and cantaloupe out of the backs of sorry old pickups, and past the Cedar Springs water tower painted with a bucking colt, the high school mascot. He skirted through the alley behind Buck’s Best Bar-b-que and the tractor supply store as a shortcut to Main Street.
When he emerged onto Main Street, he noticed the lumberyard was adding a whole new section, which he thought was good for Cedar Springs. The town had grown up around ranching and farm markets. But Austin was slowly encroaching on them—there was a Wal-Mart out on Highway 281 now, and a couple of old bait-and-tackle places on the Pedernales had been renovated into swanky tourist shops.
Some folks in town didn’t like that Austin was sliding toward them, Wyatt thought as he drove past the Methodist, the Presbyterian, and the Baptist churches. Wyatt wasn’t one of them. With the spread of civilization came new opportunities for development and construction. In fact, he had a couple of projects that depended on it.
At the park, Wyatt turned right. School was out for summer, but there was a line of yellow school buses on the northern end of the park and little kids were out playing soccer. Past the park, he entered the old part of town with the stately brick Victorians. He slowed down a little when he passed the Pinwheel House. The old man who lived there kept a dozen pinwheels in his yard. Every day he’d go out and rearrange them. Wyatt knew this because he and Macy had playfully staked him out a couple of times, determined to discover the reason for the pinwheels.
Just beyond Pinwheel House, Wyatt spied Mary Jo Hinckley puttering around her yard. He ducked his truck onto Eighth Street to avoid her. Seemed like Mary Jo won Yard of the Month every month because of her prized azaleas. But Wyatt knew those azaleas were really a cover for Mary Jo’s nosiness. She spent all her time in the yard keeping an eye on Cedar Springs and its inhabitants and then wagged her tongue to everyone at church on Sunday.
He could just imagine what the scuttlebutt around church was these days. The return of the missing soldier was on every channel and everyone in town knew Wyatt’s business. Wyatt didn’t like that any more than his inability to get hold of Macy, which was making him crazy.
He’d tried four times this morning and all four calls had rolled into voice mail. So he’d called Macy’s friend, Samantha, to see if she could get through.
“Aaah…I really think I need to stay out of it,” Sam had said.
Out of what? Wyatt had wondered. He’d thought of whom else he could call. Macy’s sister Emma had gone with her. There was Chloe, her cousin. He’d called Chloe. He could hear her twin toddlers shrieking in the background. Chloe had seemed a little put out with him, but said she’d try to call Macy.
Wyatt looked at his watch. That had been an hour ago. He picked up his cell phone and punched in her number again. When Chloe answered, he said, “Chloe, did you get through?”
“I just got off the phone this minute, Wyatt,” Chloe said. “Yes, I got her. She said everything is fine and you shouldn’t worry; they will all be home in a couple of days.”
“That’s it?” Wyatt asked, more than a little exasperated. “Everything is fine and they’ll be home in a couple of days? Did she happen to mention why she won’t answer her damn phone?”
“Wyatt, come on,” Chloe said with a sigh. “You know they’re doing all those TV shows. She’s exhausted. She said she doesn’t even have time to find a ladies’ room. Just give her a little space. She said she would call you as soon as she can, but they are all coming home soon. I have to go. Chase and Caden are digging in my flower bed again.”
All of them. That meant the soldier, too. Of course—where else would he go? Hollywood? Maybe someone would want to make a movie of his captivity and have him star in it.
Wyatt gritted his teeth and waved as he passed Dotty Givens out
walking her dogs. He honestly didn’t have anything against Lockhart, but he could not seem to shake the feeling of having been kicked in the teeth. A week ago, on a breezy summer night, he and Macy had made love on board their boat and he’d been the happiest man in all of Texas. Afterward, they’d lain looking up at the stars, her head pillowed on his arm, her leg draped over his, and Wyatt had tried to sing. The stars at night are big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.
Macy had squealed with laughter. “You sound like a coyote howling at the moon!”
“Is that your compassionate social worker training talking?” he’d asked.
“I haven’t been a social worker in a long time. I’m rusty.”
“Well, now you hurt my feelings. You better start working to make it up,” he’d warned her.
She’d laughed. “Or what?”
“Or this,” he’d said, tickling her as he sang.
They’d made love again, and Wyatt remembered thinking he’d never believed he could be so crazy in love as he was with Macy.
The very next day, his world had exploded into tiny little bits and had scattered between Amarillo and Mexico. He couldn’t seem to find his bearings. And it didn’t help that he couldn’t talk to his wife.
Wyatt pulled up to the front of his office. He was glad to see the reporters had finally given up and gone away. He strode to the glass front door with CLARK RANCH PROPERTIES emblazoned across it and shoved it open so hard that it hit the stack of boxes behind it. His one and indispensable employee, Linda Gail Graeber, cried out with surprise, then gave him a withering look. She was on the phone, which was how she spent about ninety-five percent of her day.
“Sorry, Sandi,” she said pertly. “Wyatt just kicked the door down. As I was saying, I said to the guy, it says three nights and the fourth one is free. Nowhere on that sign, or in this store, does it say those nights must be consecutive.”
Wyatt stalked to her desk. “Linda Gail.”
Linda Gail glared at Wyatt. “Sandi, will you hold on a minute? Apparently Wyatt needs to speak to me right this very minute.” She turned the receiver to her ample bosom and pressed it there at the same moment she picked up the mail. “I am on the phone, Wyatt,” she said, thrusting the mail at him. “Here’s what you need. The mail is in the same place I leave it every single day.”
Wyatt glanced at the mail she’d just shoved into his hand. “No personal phone calls,” he warned her, which earned him a dismissive roll of her eyes.
He walked into his office, clutching the mail he would not read, could not read since everything had come undone. He heard a sound and turned his head to the right—the little television he kept in the office to watch an occasional professional golf match was on, even though it was only a little past nine in the morning.
He scowled at the screen.
It was tuned to one of the morning news shows. The journalist—a national face whose name Wyatt could not recall at that moment—was talking to Finn Lockhart, the nation’s newest and brightest hero.
Finn was in uniform, sitting with his big hands on his knees. Frankly, he didn’t look too bad for a guy held by the Taliban for three years. He looked strong. Finn was a couple of inches taller than Wyatt, but those ranch boys were always tall and broad-shouldered. Finn’s hair was more gold than brown. Wyatt’s hair was black. Finn had light brown eyes, while Wyatt’s were blue. There was nothing similar between him and Finn, and Wyatt couldn’t help but wonder what Macy thought when she looked at the two of them. Did she find him as attractive as the farm boy in uniform?
Macy suddenly entered the screen and sat on Finn’s right. She slipped her hand into his. Wyatt grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.
The journalist was asking Finn about his escape. He told her in a flat way, like he’d said it one hundred times already, that after years of being chained, he was allowed an hour for exercise, and a careless mistake had given him the opportunity to escape: they forgot to lock the gate. He’d heard Coalition forces were nearby and had started running in that direction. He said he didn’t expect to make it, that he expected to die.
The journalist then asked if there was a certain food he wanted to eat now that he was home. “Nah, I don’t care,” Finn said in a charming drawl. “Just as long as it’s made in America,” he added, and Macy smiled adoringly at him.
Wyatt felt sick. He held up the remote with the intention of turning it off when the journalist said, “I know that there must be many difficulties in reintegrating with your old life now, but can you tell us what you were feeling when you learned Macy had remarried?”
Wyatt’s heart stopped. Macy’s smile faded, and she looked at Finn. “Shocked,” he said simply, looking at Macy.
“That must have been awful to learn after all that time in captivity. Were you angry?” the journalist asked softly.
“Jackass,” Wyatt muttered.
Finn shrugged a little. “Not angry. Just shocked. A lot can happen in three years.”
“So where do you go from here, Macy?” the journalist asked, shifting his attention.
“She goes back to her husband, you jackass!” Wyatt shouted at the TV.
“Well, we’ll…we’ll just take it a day at a time,” Macy said, looking at Finn. “Right now, we’re all just celebrating the fact that Finn is alive and safe at home, where he belongs.” She smiled. Finn did not.
“She has to say that, you know,” Linda Gail said.
Wyatt jumped—he hadn’t even heard her come in.
“If you think this stuff isn’t scripted, then you don’t know your government,” she added as she tossed a couple of files into his inbox.
Wyatt turned off the TV. “I don’t want to listen to that garbage in here,” he said. “It’s a waste of your valuable time.”
“Oh, I can spare a few minutes to keep up with what’s going on in the world,” Linda Gail drawled, “especially when that world is calling here several times a day.” She put her hands on her wide hips and watched Wyatt take his seat. “How are you holding up?”
“Me?” He did not look at her. “I’m fine. Just fine. Did the environmental report come in on the Bleecher property?”
“Fine.” Linda Gail snorted. “You’re so fine you forgot that you looked at the Bleecher report yesterday. Well the offer still stands, Wyatt. Davis and I would love to have you over for dinner while Macy is away. I can’t stand to think of you in that big house alone watching all this news coverage.”
Wyatt knew all of Cedar Springs was buzzing about this. The local Austin TV stations and several national stations had been out to film their picturesque downtown. Wyatt’s friend Randy Hawkins had told him that the new mayor, Nancy Keller, saw this as an opportunity to spruce the town up. She’d run on a platform of revitalization, and with all the national attention their little town was receiving, she’d managed to convince the city council to do a bit of landscaping around the square.
“That’s the difference between you and me. I don’t watch it,” Wyatt lied. “I’ve got work to do, Linda Gail.”
He opened one of the files she’d left for him.
“God forbid you actually accept a helping hand,” Linda Gail sighed, and went out, shutting the door behind her and leaving him blessedly alone.
Wyatt tossed the file aside and removed his cell phone from his belt and glanced at it, hoping he’d missed a call. Maybe Macy had called before she’d gone on that program, but the truck had been so loud he hadn’t heard it.
No missed calls.
He was trying to stay sane about this, but he was beginning to get a really bad feeling in his gut. He didn’t even know how to think about any of this. He’d tried so hard to think straight that he hadn’t slept at all since Laru had called him that fateful afternoon and told him to get home. He’d raced back from San Antonio to find Macy on the deck of their house, her eyes as wide as moon pies and weird mud splatters on her pink dress. She’d looked like she’d seen a ghost. And then she’d told him.
&n
bsp; How did a man go about handling that sort of news? He was a newlywed; he was building their life. He was embarking on a very large deal to build a destination resort and spa that would make them wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. He didn’t need this. He needed Macy, and now he didn’t even know what to expect when she came back from D.C. He couldn’t talk about it to anyone—he hadn’t even told his folks and hoped to heaven they hadn’t seen it on the news while they were motoring across the country. He gathered they hadn’t, as they hadn’t called him. Wyatt knew he’d have to tell them sooner or later, but right now…right now he had this silly, childish hope that somehow, this would all go away. Macy would come home, and they’d go on just as they’d been before.
The one person he did vent to was his lawyer, Jack Zarkowski. He’d done that the moment he heard Lockhart was alive. When he’d explained the situation, Jack had said he needed to read the law. It had taken a couple of days before Jack got back to him, and when Wyatt asked him if his marriage was valid, Jack said, “Yes and no.” He explained that Wyatt’s marriage was considered void if there was an existing marriage that wasn’t terminated by death or legal action, but that the onus was on Finn or even Macy to file a suit to declare her marriage to Wyatt void.
“She’s not going to do that,” Wyatt said angrily. “So what do we do about him?”
“She needs to file for a divorce from Lockhart. When the divorce is granted, your marriage is automatically made valid. Basically, it’s up to her.”
“What about property?” Wyatt asked.
“If the property belonged to her before your marriage, it’s hers. If the property was Lockhart’s, and she inherited it because of his death, it’s still his. If she sold it, he’s still entitled to the value of it. If I were you, I wouldn’t buy or sell any personal property until this is worked out.”
The news left Wyatt reeling. This was a nightmare—not only was his business buying and selling land, including land he bought and then flipped for a profit, he was counting on the sale of the Lockhart land to help fund his resort. Not to mention a portion of the Lockhart land was to be used in the resort footprint—they were going to put condos up on the southern end of the ranchland.
