by Addison Fox
“Hoyt Reynolds, tell me you’re not that dense.”
“I’m not dense at all. I’m just trying to figure out what happened between that convincing speech you gave me on the front porch last night and right now.”
“What speech?”
“The we’re adults speech. And it was rather convincing.” Unable to help himself, he reached out and ran the tip of his index finger over her shoulder. Her skin was still warm from sleep and as soft as he remembered from throughout the night.
Something flickered in her gaze, erasing any lingering vestiges of sleep, but that small divide remained between her eyes. “It wasn’t a speech.”
“Monologue, then.”
“I was hardly the host of a late-night comedy show.”
“Soliloquy?”
“You’re being—”
Hoyt struck quick, the move at odds with the contented, lazy feeling that still suffused his limbs. But damn it all, she was cute, with the confuzzled look and the worry about something they could neither change nor take back.
Something he had no interest in taking back.
That thought gripped him as he rolled her onto her back and covered her with his body. His lips found hers—ready, waiting and willing—and everything else seemed to vanish except for the two of them. Hoyt refused to think about the implications of that.
Or why those implications didn’t bother him nearly as much as they should have.
It was a long while later that he lifted his head. They’d eventually hunted up the stash of party condoms in her bathroom and, even now, he couldn’t help but smile to himself at the novelty of wearing neon green.
“That’s a rather smug look?”
Since Reese wore one that matched his, he reached out and traced her full lower lip. “A look I think you’re rather well acquainted with.”
“I’m not smug.”
“Smug and well loved. It’s a good look on you.” He leaned in and gave her one more kiss before she could protest, then pulled back. “My smile was for the vivid memory of a neon-green condom. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of those before.”
“Clearly, you haven’t spent much time around bachelorette parties.”
“Maybe I need to start.”
He got a light swat on his shoulder for the effort and leaned in, nuzzling her neck once more as his hands drifted over her shoulders and on down over her breasts. Damn, when was the last time he’d felt this good? He hadn’t had sex in a while—he’d nearly tossed that condom in his wallet a few weeks ago—and had long stopped even considering a relationship or anything that smacked of permanence.
Or even semi-permanence.
But what had he given up because of it?
His evening with an interesting, engaging, pretty woman had been special. She had thoughts and ideas and hadn’t been afraid to express them. They’d finally wandered into her kitchen around three o’clock, fixing sandwiches, and she’d shared her ideas on teaching and what she hoped for her students and chattered happily about one who’d recently written her after graduating from college.
He’d seen pride shining from her and a happiness for others that was rare. And beautiful. Reese had captivated him, that excitement and enthusiasm still shiny and bright, undimmed by the events with her father a few months back. It was awesome to behold, especially as someone who’d allowed his own parent’s poor behavior to keep a firm grip on his emotions.
Maybe that had been the root of his displeasure of late. Reynolds Station was doing well—beyond his, Ace’s, Tate’s and Arden’s wildest imaginings—yet, he hadn’t found a way to enjoy any of it. He’d hit that very same point in the marines and then, later, in special ops. Years of working toward promotions and the respect that came with growing leadership had fulfilled him, and then one day it simply hadn’t satisfied any longer. The orders and the structure and the reality that he was a chess piece on someone else’s board had finally gotten to him.
In both cases, he’d lost the ability to take those precious moments of joy and pleasure and happiness at what his own hard work had produced.
It was a strange place to be, when all the hard work—work that was supposed to save you and occupy you and lift you up—simply didn’t. Each accomplishment felt hollow, like it should mean more.
So why did he still feel empty?
“Hoyt?”
His name was a soft whisper in the room, but it was enough to pull him from his musings. “Yes?”
“I’m glad you stayed.”
“No regrets?” The question was out before he could stop it and he was surprised to realize just how much he hoped the answer was no. Never.
“Not at all.”
“Me, either.”
“Thank you for being there. I’m glad you pulled the responsible cowboy routine on Tabasco.”
“I’m glad I did, too.”
“Then why don’t you prove it to me before you have to head out for work.”
He hadn’t mentioned leaving or work or a timed departure, so it was with no small measure of surprise that Hoyt realized Reese had been thinking it.
As he lowered his lips to hers, once again wrapping himself up in her body, he knew it was stupid to feel even a shot of sadness. What man didn’t want an easy exit after a night of unexpected sex? But as Reese shifted beneath him, drawing him close and setting the rhythm that had become intimately familiar overnight, Hoyt couldn’t quite shake his disappointment.
She’d been unexpected, yes. But more welcome than he ever could have imagined.
Chapter 3
Two months later
“I’m sorry, Jake. Run that by me again?” She set the stapler down on her desk for fear the heavy object might become a weapon if her vision hazed any redder. Reese had learned a long time ago to never tell herself things couldn’t get worse. It was one of the harshest lessons an addict had taught their family, and she’d had a crash course by the time she was a freshman at Midnight Pass High School.
Jamie had been the best of big brothers, but by the time she’d turned fourteen, their three-year age gap had made all the difference. What had been a bit of bad behavior—smoking marijuana at the end of the day or drinking too much out at the edge of town—had quickly become an addiction when his urges took a hard turn. Cocaine was plentiful in the Pass, brought up from South America by the drug runners who controlled the border, and her brother had been an easy mark.
But it was the heroin a year later that had sealed his fate.
By the time she’d started freshman year, her parents had already placed Jamie into two addiction programs and a solid amount of familial house arrest. Reese hadn’t fully understood it at the time, but she’d done the only thing she had understood: acting the exact opposite of her brother.
Straight A’s. A steady diet of after-school activities. And her role as the good girl of Midnight Pass. She never smoked, drank and hadn’t even kissed a boy. They were traits that formed her and built the foundation of her life, and up until her late night foray with Hoyt Reynolds back in June, she hadn’t deviated from that plan.
Oh, she’d been kissed since high school. And she certainly enjoyed liquor from time to time. Four years at the University of Texas had helped see her through both rites of passage. But the core of who she was—the good daughter of Serena and Russ Grantham—had stuck.
Which made the warning shots fired across her classroom that much harder to accept.
“Aww, come on, Reese. Don’t make me say it again.”
“No.” She shook her head, even as her fingers itched to pick up the stapler once more. “I need to hear you say it. I want to make sure I got it right the first time.”
Jacob Walters was a friend. He was about five years older than her, but they’d both taught in the English department until he was promoted to assistant principal two years before. It
was that steady core of friendship—and the knowledge that Jake was an unfailingly kind human—that kept her in check.
And her hand off the stapler.
“The PTA is concerned,” Jake said.
“Define concerned.”
Jake sighed but kept his gaze level, his words simple and straightforward. “They’re concerned your father’s passing a few months back was too big a trauma not to take some time off.”
“I took time when it happened. Mourned the passing of a parent good and proper, just as dictated in the union bylaws. Two whole weeks,” Reese added for good measure, as if Jake had forgotten.
“They think you may need more.”
“More what? Time to think about something I can’t control or change?” She broke off on a hard exhale when a new thought filled her. “Has someone said something? Is my teaching lacking somehow?”
Reese fought the roiling of her stomach, refusing to let that steady layer of sickness that had accompanied her for six weeks have its way. “And why have they suddenly decided to bring it up now? After I’ve bought supplies for my classroom and set up for the new school year? Why is that, Jake?”
“Come on, Reese. Your father killed himself. After—” Jake hesitated. “Just after.”
“After he killed four people, you mean. Tortured them, too.”
“It’s not a secret.”
“No, it’s not. Nor is the fact that I was teacher of the year two years ago. Or has that conveniently slipped everyone’s mind?”
“No, it hasn’t. Nor have I stopped reminding them every chance I get.”
It was the stalwart support—which she knew she had from Jake—that finally had her standing down. Enough so that she physically sat down, dropping into the rolling chair behind her desk. “You really think they’re going to fire me?”
“Leave of absence. That’s all. They want the fuss to die down a bit more.”
“That’s a load of hogwash and you know it. The fuss has died down.”
“It had until they found that other body.”
The urge to shift her gaze was strong, but Reese kept her focus level with Jake’s. She would not cower. Nor would she slink away in embarrassment. Her father’s crimes were extensive enough—and repetitive enough—to be considered serial in nature. What she hadn’t expected was that his choices in life would leave him a perpetual suspect each and every time a body bearing even the slightest resemblance to his victims was found.
Despite his death the prior spring, Russ Grantham had been considered for murders in El Paso, Houston and as far north as Waco. All crimes in which he was exonerated, but all of which had claimed front-page headlines and the lead focus on the nightly news.
“That wasn’t him.”
“But it made his crimes front and center once more. That scares people. Makes ’em skittish.”
“Their small mindedness means I’m somehow at fault?”
“No, Reese. Not at all.”
Well aware Jake was only doing his job, she opted to play on his softer side. The PTA members had a voice, but they couldn’t simply oust her from her role. Not without garnering a lot more support from a lot more people.
With that in mind, she pressed on.
“I need my job, Jake. My benefits. My salary. What else am I going to do? I have a contract.”
“Which the district knows. You’re locked in for the year. All I’m saying is take some bereavement leave and let this die down. By the time you come back, you’ll have plenty of time to work your magic the next time contracts are being signed.”
The urge to rant and rail at the unfairness of it all was strong, but Reese avoided saying anything further. Jake was just the messenger and he clearly hadn’t taken any joy in delivering his missive. More, he was her friend and he was in her corner, two facts she refused to lose sight of. “Please tell me I don’t need to make a decision today.”
“Of course not. School doesn’t start for nearly a month and the PTA doesn’t have nearly the power it thinks it does. I wouldn’t have taken this job if it did.”
“Alright then.” She nodded at Jake, surprised when he crossed around her desk and pulled her into a close hug.
“Take care of you, okay. As long as I’m here, there will be a job for you.”
“Okay.” She hugged her friend and knew his words for truth. It was only after he’d left her still-unfinished classroom that Reese let her gaze drift to the walls. She’d already begun decorating, her back bulletin board full of pictures of authors who were a mix of the classics, as well as the modern writers her students were reading in droves. She’d worked them all into her curriculum, too, ensuring her students would get as strong a dose of Jane Austen as Suzanne Collins.
Story was story and words were words, no matter where they got their enjoyment. Some of her best students had become that way because she’d encouraged them to read the things they enjoyed—pop fiction, sports almanacs and fashion magazines—well before they dived into the authors who’d been long dead.
That mattered, damn it. It mattered a lot. She was a good teacher. Even if...
Reese tamped down on the direction of her thoughts, resolutely refusing to go there. She was a good teacher—a hardworking, caring teacher—and she’d be damned if she was going to conflate that with her personal life. She wasn’t responsible for her father’s actions. And while she was responsible for her lone night of abandon with Hoyt Reynolds, that wasn’t the town’s business, either.
Even if she had heard the occasional whisper or two.
Jake had been too kind to say it, but she wasn’t stupid. The PTA’s inputs had begun in earnest after word had spread around town that she’d spent an interesting evening at The Border Line with Hoyt Reynolds. She’d ignored the implications—and, best she could tell, he’d done nothing to fuel the flames of innuendo and gossip—but it was out there all the same. She could only thank her lucky stars she lived on a quiet street and Hoyt had left early enough that no one had seemed to notice the large work truck that had taken up space in her driveway one summer evening.
A lone evening that had changed her life.
Reese stood and crossed to the bulletin board, remembering her excitement as she’d tacked up information about the various authors, their bios and covers of some of their most well-known stories. It was only as she reached Nathaniel Hawthorne that she stopped. She’d used the cover of his most renowned novel, The Scarlet Letter, for her board and Hester Prynne stood there in the illustration, back straight, face somber, staring right through Reese in all her puritanical glory.
Reese had never particularly enjoyed the original classic on slut shaming and repressed emotion, but had taught it along with the rest of the American canon of literature through the years. Of late, she’d paired it with Pretty Little Liars to identify the differences in cultural approach and storytelling and found her students to be both receptive and engaged in the discussions that came of both. Their ability to connect the injustice of the time with collective attitudes, regardless of the period, always made for lively discussion and Reese loved seeing their young faces light up when they made a connection or looked at the world in a new way. It was her greatest joy as a teacher.
Only now, someone was trying to take it away. While her choices were neither as dire nor as alienating as Hester’s, Reese couldn’t help it as her gaze flicked back once more to settle on that cover. For the first time in nearly a decade of teaching that book to her students, she’d gained a fresh connection of her own.
Only unlike Hester Prynne’s literary child—a figment of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s imagination and talent—Reese Grantham’s was 100 percent real.
* * *
Hoyt dragged off his heavy work gloves and reached for the towel he’d stuffed in his back pocket earlier, running the thick terry cloth over his face and neck. He hated branding day—knew there was
nothing to be done about that, though—and considered what was still left to do.
They’d branded about half the new calves and would need at least another hour to work through the rest. The work was strenuous and tiring and made for a general sense of unease on the ranch the day they did it. The new calves hated it—and who could blame them?—and their protective mothers fussed over their young’s distress.
“Earning our keep today.” Tate’s voice was husky from shouting orders over the loud sounds from anxious calves, and Hoyt didn’t miss his brother’s stiff shoulders and general unease as he took his place beside him at the corral fence.
“That we are,” Hoyt agreed.
He, Tate, their brother Ace and their sister, Arden, were the fourth generation of ranchers and the current owners of Reynolds Station, a large and once-again prosperous Texas cattle ranch. Mismanagement and poor acts by their father had seen to the sell-off of some property and a decade-long process toward getting back on their feet.
And back they were.
Hoyt knew he should take pride in branding day and all it stood for—his father sure as hell had—but he could never muster up the stomach for it.
“Everything okay?” Tate’s question was casual and his brother was wise enough to ask the question with no one in earshot, but Hoyt bristled all the same.
“I’m fine.”
“You sure about that?”
Hoyt shoved the towel back into his pocket, pushing himself off the thick steel bars of the corral fence. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know.” Tate shrugged, his casual motions at odds with the sharp focus that filled his green eyes. “Seems like you’ve been as skittish as those calves and as upset as their mamas for the past few months now.”
Tate had never been the sibling to poke an emotional hornet’s nest—Arden and Ace were far more adept at the chore—which made the fact his brother was standing there attempting to make inroads that much more of a surprise. “You’re seriously comparing me to a cow?”
“Consider it illustrative.”
