by Marin Thomas
“Hello, Ruby.” Leona Carlyle joined her by the tree.
The woman was the same height as Ruby but runway-model slender. Her perfectly styled bob sat on her head like a shiny brunette helmet. Strappy sandals showed off her pedicure—bloodred nails with a white flower on each big toe. Her beige linen slacks and blue sleeveless blouse had been pressed to perfection, and the silver bangles on her wrist jingled when she swatted at a fly buzzing near her head. Not your usual picnic attire.
“Paul said he talked to you.” Leona had whispered even though they stood twenty yards away from the nearest pair of ears.
“He mentioned that you two grew up together,” Ruby said.
“We were in the same grade in school.”
“It’s really none of my business what you and Randall do, but you might want to be a little more discreet about it.”
Leona’s gaze shifted to the sheriff, who joined Randall, Joe, and Mr. Plumber’s throwing circle. She waved at the group, but only her husband acknowledged her with a smile. “I’ve always had a crush on Paul.”
“People have affairs for all kinds of reasons.” Ruby didn’t care why the pair was screwing around.
“I wish we were having an affair.” Leona watched Randall walk to the dugout, where he traded his ball cap for a batting helmet.
“I don’t get it. Your husband is a hell of a lot better-looking than the deputy.” Ruby shrugged. “Looks aside, Randall’s an ass.”
“I wanted to date Paul in high school, but he ran with a wild crowd and my parents would have locked me in my bedroom until I turned eighteen if they’d suspected I was interested in him.” A dreamy, faraway look filled Leona’s eyes. “I went away to college. Dated other guys. After I graduated, I moved back home, hoping Paul and I would get together.” She forced a smile. “He wasn’t interested, and instead he introduced me to Mike. We hit it off well enough and got married.” Leona had settled for the sheriff.
Ruby considered her situation with Joe. He was a complicated man. She was a complicated woman. If they met in the middle, maybe neither of them would have to settle.
“What can I do to convince you to keep what you saw the other day to yourself?”
Ruby had no intention of shouting Leona’s infidelity to the masses, but she’d be stupid not to take the woman up on her offer. “Find out why your husband is turning a blind eye to Roy Sandoval’s shenanigans. Hank’s neighbor is behind the vandalism at the Devil’s Wind.”
“Roy’s a nice man. He wouldn’t harass Hank.”
“There’s bad blood between the men. I’m guessing you’ve heard the stories about my mother having an affair with Roy.”
“I’ll speak to Mike.” Leona motioned to the bleachers. “I’m tired of standing. Let’s sit down.”
The game lasted a little less than two hours. Mia joined Ruby and Leona when Joe’s team was up at bat. Joe acted as if he was having fun, joking with the other men in the dugout and high-fiving the first-base coach when he hit a single to left field. But she imagined everything about tonight—kids chasing one another, the smell of grilled hot dogs, women sitting in groups gossiping—reminded him of the life he’d once lived.
At the end of the game, Leona went off with the sheriff while Randall and Mr. Plumber carried a five-gallon orange Igloo cooler through the crowd, soliciting donations for the Little League program. When they stopped in front of Ruby, she opened her purse and dumped two days’ worth of tips into the cooler. The deputy’s eyes widened, but all he said was “Thanks” before he moved on.
She met Joe by the dugout. “You were awesome.” Not just because he’d caught two fly balls but because he’d been brave enough to come tonight and battle memories of playing catch with Aaron.
Ruby signaled Mia, and she ran over from the playground. “Do we have to go? They’re gonna set off fireworks.”
“We’ve been here almost four hours,” Ruby said.
Mia looked longingly at the kids congregating near a picnic table. “I guess we’d better check on Grandpa.”
Although she appreciated her daughter’s devotion to Hank, Ruby knew when the day came to say goodbye to the old man, Mia would need more than her mother and the horses to lean on—she was going to need friends.
• • •
“Mom?”
“I’m awake.” Ruby tossed back the top sheet, and Mia slid beneath the cover. “Don’t tell me Friend is hogging your pillow again.”
“He’s sleeping on the rug in Grandpa’s bedroom.” She yawned. “Who was the pretty lady you sat with at the baseball game?”
“That was the sheriff’s wife, Leona.”
“Oh. Did Joe have a good time?”
“He did. How about you and April? Was it fun to hang around someone your age for a change?”
“April’s really nice. She asked if I was going to school in Guymon this fall.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That I might.”
“Would you consider living in Guymon instead of at the ranch?” Ruby asked.
“Why would we live there when Grandpa and Joe are here?”
“I’m glad you like Joe, but if we end up together, I want it to be different this time.” She held Mia’s hand. It didn’t seem so long ago when her daughter’s whole fist fit in Ruby’s palm. “I need to be sure about my feelings for Joe.” Her feelings weren’t the issue—her fear was. She didn’t want to panic at the first sign of trouble and send Joe packing. “I want to get it right this time, Mia, because I don’t want you to get hurt again.”
“I won’t get hurt. Grandpa will always be there for me.”
If only that were true.
“Are you reading Grandma Baxter’s diary?”
“Yes.” Hank had twisted Ruby’s arm.
“What does it say?”
“I learned how I came by my name.”
“How?”
Ruby lifted the gemstone resting against her neck. “Your grandparents gave this necklace to me on my thirteenth birthday. I thought it was from them.”
“But it wasn’t?”
“It belonged to Cora. She left it in my hospital bassinet before she ran away. When your grandparents adopted me, the social worker gave them the necklace. It was Grandpa Baxter who said I should be named Ruby so that I’d know my birth mother had loved me.”
“If Cora loved you, she wouldn’t have left you behind.”
Mia’s words jarred Ruby. One day her daughter would have a child and understand that a mother could do horrible things yet still love her offspring. Ruby was a perfect example—she’d made bad decisions that her daughter had unfortunately paid the price for. “No one’s perfect, honey.”
“Does Grandpa know Cora left you the necklace?”
“He recognized it when we first arrived at the ranch.”
“What happened to Cora?”
“No one knows. Hank asked his lawyer to search for her.”
“What are you gonna do if she’s still alive?”
“I’ll cross that bridge if and when we come to it.” Ruby was more worried how Hank would take the news if Cora was alive and hadn’t bothered to contact him all those years.
“If Cora married some other man and had kids with him, you’d have half brothers and sisters and maybe I’d have cousins.”
“We’ll have to wait and see.” Ruby was still getting used to the idea of her, Mia, and Hank becoming a family—and maybe Joe. She didn’t want to invite anyone else into the circle.
“Do you have to work tomorrow?”
“Stony doesn’t return from Dallas until Wednesday.”
Mia hopped off the bed. “If we stay at the ranch, I’m gonna need a computer to do homework when school starts. And Grandpa’s gonna have to get the Internet.”
“I know. ’Night, honey.”
It
was a long time before Ruby fell into a restless sleep. Then she dreamed of a happy-ever-after with Joe and woke feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.
Chapter 30
“Where are Hank and Mia off to?” Joe hovered in the kitchen doorway Sunday afternoon.
“A movie in Guymon.” Ruby had been invited along, but she’d declined, wanting to spend a few hours alone with Joe. Lately it felt like they were under a microscope, Mia and Hank monitoring their every move and gauging their progress.
Ruby shut the fridge door. “Can you take a break from chores?” she asked.
“I’d planned to replace the gearbox on the windmill.” His gaze darted to the porch.
She wasn’t opposed to an afternoon quickie, but if she wanted more from Joe than she’d experienced with other men, she couldn’t let her fear win. She was ready to take a leap of faith and get to know Joe on a deeper level.
“Can the windmill wait?” She gestured to the supplies on the table. “I packed a picnic lunch.”
“You must think I’m an idiot,” he said.
She walked up to him and brushed her mouth against his. “I don’t think you’re an idiot. I think you’re good-looking. Kind. And sexy. But it’s too soon. Rather than mess up the sheets, I thought we could spread a blanket beneath the cottonwood.”
“I’d like that.” He carried the picnic supplies out to the backyard. The afternoon temperature hovered near ninety degrees, but the tree’s thick branches provided plenty of shade. He spread the quilt across the ground, then propped his back against the trunk. Ruby sat next to him and held out a sandwich and a bottle of water.
“Someone wants to join us.” Joe got to his feet and opened the back door for Friend. The mutt trotted over to the blanket, then whined until Ruby tossed him a piece of lunch meat.
“This is good.” Joe had finished half his sandwich in two bites.
“I added dill seasoning to the mayo.”
He grasped her necklace between his fingers. “Is this a gift from one of your past boyfriends?”
“My parents gave it to me.”
“Is it real?” Joe asked.
“Yes.”
He rubbed the gemstone, his calloused knuckles bumping her throat. “I bought Melanie a diamond pendant after Aaron was born, but she lost it.”
“Did the clasp break?”
He released her necklace. “She never said. One day I asked why she didn’t wear it anymore and she claimed she couldn’t remember how she’d lost it.”
“I only take my necklace off to clean it.” The ruby had been a reminder of happier times with her parents, and she refused to allow the memories to become tainted just because the necklace had belonged to Cora.
“Were you close to your mother?” he asked.
“Not real close. I ran with a wild crowd and tested her patience.”
He grinned. “You look like the rebel type.”
She landed a playful punch against his arm. “Go ahead and mock me. I bet you were the perfect son.”
“Not a chance. I got pulled over for drunk driving in high school. The cop didn’t write me up because he knew my father. I left the clunker on the side of the road and got a ride home in the backseat of a patrol car.”
“Did your father have political connections in your town?”
Joe laughed. “Heavenly connections. He was a preacher.”
She would never have guessed Joe had been raised in a religious family.
“You ran with a wild crowd and I drank to rebel,” he said.
“Every kid tests their parents.” Mia knew all of Ruby’s hot buttons.
“My folks were good people,” Joe said. “They didn’t deserve the negative attention my partying brought them.”
“But you straightened out.”
“Only because of Melanie.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was the daughter of one of my father’s minister friends. They set us up on a date, and we hit it off. I quit drinking and focused on my studies. We married a year after we graduated from high school. I was a freshman in college at the time, so we moved into an apartment and Melanie became active in the local church, directing the children’s choir. Once I earned a degree and landed my first job, we bought a small house and then Melanie got pregnant with Aaron.”
“I wanted to go to college once.” Her junior year of high school she’d taken the SATs and had gotten an acceptable score. “But then I got pregnant with Mia and . . .”
“Your parents were killed.”
“After that I was just trying to keep it together. Work every day so I could pay the bills and buy formula and diapers for Mia.”
“If you’d been able to go to college, what would you have studied?” he asked.
“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I figured after I took a few classes I’d find my niche.”
“What’s stopping you from going back to school now?”
“Seriously?”
“You could enroll in online classes.”
“College costs money,” she said.
“Apply for financial aid. I received grants and scholarships because of my father’s occupation. You’re a single mother and”—he raised his hands in the air—“no offense meant, but I’m guessing you don’t make a lot of money.”
“What gave it away? Arriving in town on a Greyhound bus or”—she tugged the hem of her plain tank top—“my stylish wardrobe?”
Joe’s gaze skimmed over her, his eyes warming. “The peach dress and cowboy boots you wore when you first arrived in town looked good on you.”
“You liked that outfit, huh?”
He smiled.
Ruby changed the subject. “Do you keep in touch with Melanie?”
“We communicated off and on to finalize our divorce, but I haven’t seen her since Aaron’s funeral.” He guzzled his water. “If our son hadn’t died, I’d like to believe we’d still be together.”
Ruby couldn’t say that about any of her past boyfriends—not even Sean.
“But now . . .” He shook his head. “Melanie and I aren’t the same people. We’d feel like strangers if we ever met up again.”
Life changed people—for better and for worse. The changing part was an ongoing process. When Ruby thought of the storms she’d weathered in her short life, she’d emerged a different Ruby from each one.
“I had it all.” He snapped his fingers. “And it was gone in the blink of an eye.”
“Joe?”
“What?”
“I wish Aaron hadn’t died. And I wish you could still be with Melanie. Still have your family.” And she meant it.
He threaded his fingers through hers and rested her hand on his thigh. “What went through your mind when you found out you were adopted?”
“After it sank in, I was finally able to make sense out of some things in the past.” She tossed the remainder of her sandwich to Friend. “All these years I’d believed me and my mother had been at odds because of my rowdy behavior, but that wasn’t the reason at all.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was twelve, I found my father’s stash of Hustler magazines. I snuck them into my bedroom to look at the photos. I was fascinated by all the boobs and remembered thinking I never wanted mine to be that big.”
Joe quirked a brow at Ruby’s ample bosom.
“They’re not quite that big.” She laughed. “I bet you wondered how big your . . .” She flicked her wrist toward his crotch.
“My what, Ruby?”
She blushed. “Never mind. When my mother found me looking at the magazines, she muttered something about my bad genes. At the time I thought she was talking about the ripped blue jeans I always wore. Now I know she was referring to my biological mother.”
“What about your birth mother?”
“Cora worked in a brothel.” Because Hank had left Ruby’s adoption open, Cheryl Baxter had dug into Cora’s past and had probably been horrified by what she’d discovered. Ruby didn’t blame her mother for worrying that her daughter might follow in Cora’s footsteps because her worry had been grounded in love. But it was too bad her mother’s fear had prevented them from enjoying a close relationship.
“We’re quite a pair, aren’t we . . . ? The son of a minister father and the daughter of a prostitute mother.”
No kidding. “I almost didn’t answer Hank’s letter.”
Joe’s eyes shone with sympathy. “Why not?”
“I was angry and I wanted to hurt him.”
“What were you afraid of?”
Of course Joe would guess that Ruby had used anger to mask her fear. “I was worried that Hank wouldn’t like me.” Memories of Glen Baxter ignoring her, then Dylan blowing her and Mia off, followed by a history of broken relationships, had made Ruby hypersuspicious. By the time she’d read Sincerely Yours at the bottom of the lawyer’s letter, she’d decided to reject Hank before she gave him the opportunity to break her heart.
Joe held her chin between his fingers, forcing her to look him in the eye. “For both our sakes, I’m glad you’re here.”
• • •
“How was the movie?” Ruby asked when Hank and Mia returned to the ranch an hour after Joe left to fix the windmill.
“Good, but Grandpa slept through it.” Mia patted her leg. “Come on, Friend. Let’s check on Poke.” The old dog got to his feet and followed Mia outside.
Hank took a mug from the cupboard and helped himself to the half inch of brew remaining in the coffeepot from earlier in the morning. “I didn’t sleep through the whole movie.” He carried his mug to the table.
“How much, then?”
