Special Ops Cowboy

by Addison Fox

  “That’d be nice.”

  Reese ducked back into the house, the door closing gently behind her. It gave him a moment to look around, her small backyard spreading out before him through the expansive screens. It was a nice house, he thought. Welcoming. He’d thought so back in June when she brought him here, even though he hadn’t spent much time looking around.

  But now that he had the chance, he looked his fill. The house was small but well appointed, as he remembered, with pretty furnishings and brightly colored rooms. She’d obviously taken great pride in crafting the place just to her own specifications. He turned to watch her through the window that overlooked the porch. She moved easily around the kitchen and he saw once again the updated granite counters and deeply polished cherrywood cabinets he’d observed briefly in June.

  “You have a great house,” he said as she walked back through the door, a beer in hand.

  “Thank you. It’s home.”

  “This used to be the Baxter place, wasn’t it?”

  “This was where Old Mrs. Baxter lived the last ten years of her life.”

  “How did you find out about it?”

  She smiled. “My dad and Bruce Baxter were good friends and hunting buddies. After Bruce’s mom passed away, he told my dad first that they were putting the house on the market. They sold it to me without even listing it.”

  “It’s got great bones, and it’s obvious that you put in the work to update it.” Hoyt took a long swallow of his beer as he looked around the porch. “This screened-in porch space is great.”

  “My dad helped me with it. We renovated it the first spring I was here. Before—” Her voice faded off. “Just before.”

  Before the murders.

  The reminder of Russ Grantham’s crimes seemed to hang there, in the thick air between them, stiff and unmoving despite the overhead fan.

  “It’s okay to talk about him, you know.”

  “Is it?”

  “Of course it is. He’s your father.”

  She laughed, the sound anything but gentle. “Then you are the rare individual in this town. Any mention of Russ Grantham, no matter the reason, is met with frowns and hissed responses.”

  “It hardly seems fair.”

  “Fairness flies out the window when we’re talking about murder. It makes people decidedly uneasy.”

  Even as he wondered at her words, Hoyt knew what she spoke of. While Russ’s crimes were far worse than Hoyt’s own father’s, both men had still committed crimes, made choices that had hurt others and betrayed trust and confidence. He would never suggest to Reese that the situations were identical—not only would it be insensitive, but he would also never compare bad criminal business practices with killing others—but he did understand the disgrace.

  The whispered comments.

  And the shame.

  It was the shame, Hoyt admitted to himself, that was the hardest to explain or get over. Behavior that wasn’t your own yet reflected on you with a bright shiny light.

  How many times had he questioned it? The overwhelming guilt and embarrassment for something he hadn’t done. Shouldn’t he have known, somehow? Shouldn’t he have sensed it?

  Surely that’s what others asked. How could the son, a member of the same family and same family business, not be complicit?

  “Hoyt?”

  Reese’s question pulled him from his thoughts and he lifted his beer, tipping it toward her. “Well, you don’t have to keep quiet around me.”

  “Thanks.” She took a sip of her water, her eyes focused on him. “I’m glad you’re here. I don’t like the way we left things. Before.”

  “Neither do I.”

  She seemed to hesitate before pressing on. Open. Honest. And seeming more than willing to stand her ground. “I know what I had to tell you was a surprise. Maybe with a bit of time, we can talk about it with cooler heads.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  The afternoon, both the talk with Tate and the work with the cattle, had given him some time to process things. His mind had worked as hard as his body, but rather than being mentally exhausted, he found he was almost too keyed up to sit still.

  “Before we get into it, are you hungry?” he asked.

  “You want to go to dinner?”

  He did want to go to dinner. Wanted to spend time with her. That strange craving that had hit him at odd moments over the past two months—the one that made him want to drive over to her place—had finally been given free rein.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Oh, okay. Yes, I’d like that.”

  “You up for Mexican food? Tate and Belle keep raving about this place a few towns away.”

  “I live in Texas.” She smiled broadly. “I’m always up for Mexican food.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  * * *

  Reese buckled herself up in Hoyt’s truck and ignored the images that assailed her of the last time she’d done the same. The heated looks that had passed between them. The increasing awareness of the strong, stoic cowboy with the compelling green eyes. And the increasing reality filling her mind’s eye of exactly what she wanted to have happen between them.

  She’d gotten her wish and then some.

  And now here they were again.

  They made small talk on the drive, focused on any number of topics. All of it was light and easy, none of it fraught with the sexual tension and underlying need that had underpinned their last drive together.

  Reese kept her thoughts to herself, but she had seen the change in him. It was strange, she realized, because discussion of Russ Grantham always made people uncomfortable. Yet with Hoyt, it was different.

  He understood her father’s crimes, probably better than most others, since one of them had been committed on his property. But he didn’t seem to judge her. Nor did she see that cold, fear-based censure deep in his eyes. Instead, he seemed to want her to find the good.

  It was unexpected and, if she was honest with herself, encouraging. Even her mother had tried to avoid any and all talk of her father. It was lonely and alienating and gave all the power to the last year of Russ Grantham’s life instead of the sixty or so that had come before.

  “You’re quiet,” Hoyt said.

  “I was thinking about before.”

  “And?”

  “And it’s nice when I talk to you about my father. That you don’t, in your mind, seem to be jumping to the fact that he was a murderer.”

  “Maybe because I’m not.”

  “It’s rare.”

  He kept his focus on the road but she felt his unyielding attention as keenly as if he were staring right at her. “I suppose it is. I don’t think people do it to be unkind or to make you uncomfortable. I think it’s their discomfort and their lack of knowledge of what to say.”

  “You mean you don’t think it’s because he tortured and killed several people?”

  “Reese—”

  “No, wait.” She held up a hand. “Please hear me out.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ve had a lot of months to get used to this, and even though I know I should understand by now, I don’t. I don’t know how to reconcile the man that I knew with the man who committed those crimes.”

  “How could you? He was your father.”

  “He was a monster.”

  “I think—” He broke off, then started again. His voice was hesitant, before growing stronger. “I think that’s too easy. As humans, we want to paint things in black-and-white and while decisive action can’t be changed, what led to it is often a mystery.”

  “Murder is a rather decisive action.”

  He turned toward her, that gaze that she had imagined staring right through her. “You keep going back to that same place. Part defense, part sharp taunt. It’s like you feel you must keep reminding me
that he killed people.”

  “Because he did.”

  “He was also a father. A lawman. He supported his community. He wasn’t all bad, Reese.”

  “But he became bad. What if that lives inside of me? Inside of my child?”

  The words were out before she could stop them. A great gushing well of sadness that haunted her in the moments that she allowed it to claw and dig too deeply into her mind. A fear so big—so giant—that she feared to even put it into words.

  Only now she had.

  The sign for Manuel’s Kitchen came up on the right-hand side of the road, a beacon beckoning them in, and Hoyt kept his silence until he turned into the parking lot and found a spot. Once he did, he cut the ignition and turned in his seat, reaching for her hand.

  “Listen to me. I can’t change how you feel, nor can I ever fully understand it. But something I know. I know it, Reese. You aren’t your father. Our child isn’t your father. What he did, what he felt compelled to do, isn’t genetic and it isn’t living in your DNA, waiting to come out. It was a terrible product of living with grief.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I know it the same way I understand a Texas sky at dusk, the way it gets all purpley and gold. The same way I know when one of my cattle is going to calve. The same way I know how badly I want to be a father. Russ’s crimes don’t live in you and they don’t live in our child.”

  She wanted to believe him. As she listened to him, she did believe him. She saw her future and she knew, to the depths of her soul, that her child was good. That the baby she carried had a future and a still-to-be-fulfilled life ahead of him or her. That her father’s sins didn’t and couldn’t taint that innocent life.

  So why was she so afraid?

  * * *

  The position in the empty, sparsely wooded lot behind Reese Grantham’s house didn’t provide much cover, but it had been enough. Although she’d rushed back there to get out of sight, the field had ended up providing a perfect view to see the back of the house. And the surprising coming and going that had included Hoyt Reynolds.

  Interesting.

  Where she had expected minimal chance of being caught, her ability to claim PTA business was a ready excuse if she had been found out and around the house.

  Well, gee, I knocked on the door and no one answered, so I went around the back to that pretty screened-in porch to see if I could find Ms. Grantham.

  If only Reynolds hadn’t beat her to it.

  What was he doing suddenly hanging around again? Since one of Russ Grantham’s crimes had been committed on Reynolds land, it was hard to imagine the Reynolds family carried anything but a vendetta because of it. A murder on their property didn’t make folks feel all that safe.

  Yet, somehow the town had rallied, she mused. Likely it had something to do with one of the other Reynolds boys. Tate, she thought—but who could keep their attractive asses straight?—who’d taken up with the cop. Seeing as how that cop had been the one to catch Grantham and end his crime spree, folks had eased up a bit.

  She still figured it didn’t mean the Reynolds family was set to become buddy-buddy with what was left of the Grantham clan. Yet, there he was—another Reynolds brother—looking amazingly attentive as he escorted Reese back into the house from the porch. Whatever they’d been talking about, it had looked serious. More talk of murder?

  Or had the two of them decided to scratch an itch again?

  She made it her business to know what was going on in town and news of something romantic between those two hadn’t reached her at all. And she’d been listening since seeing them back in June. But if there was something romantic, well...that changed things.

  It changed a lot of things.

  She’d finally decided to do something about Reese Grantham, the all-around goody-goody of Midnight Pass. The woman had been a thorn in her side for years, her lack of remorse for her brother’s death like a wound that never healed. The whole damn town loved Reese Grantham, and she was the only one who knew the truth.

  What had started out as a silver thread of anger had grown, expanded, and now colored the way she saw the world.

  The buzz of her phone had her reaching for the front pocket of her shorts. A text from her ex, complaining that he needed to get the kids back early. It figured. Paul was about as reliable as Texas weather in spring, and that gave way too much credit to Mother Nature’s unpredictability.

  On a small sigh, she texted back that she’d meet him at the house in fifteen minutes.

  And she set off to greet her kids.

  * * *

  Reese took one whiff of the beef-and-cheese enchiladas that her waitress sat down in front of her and offered up a silent prayer of thanks that the only thing her stomach did was growl.

  Loudly.

  “You okay?” Hoyt glanced up from his burrito smothered in cheese.

  “I am. Sorry,” she said on a small smile. “Lately, I’m just never quite sure with food.”

  “Was this a bad idea?”

  “No, not at all. It seems to be a game-time decision if the baby is going to welcome dinner or reject it out of hand. I’m hungry, so that seems to help.”

  He smiled in return, the motion lighting up his face. It was funny, Reese realized, but he wasn’t a man who smiled very often. On some level, she knew that. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Hoyt Reynolds had a quiet and stoic demeanor. Even with that knowledge, she realized that she’d never quite associated his personality with smiling.

  But to suddenly be the object of that broad, bold grin...

  It was heady.

  And it shot a load of butterflies to her stomach that had nothing to do with morning sickness and everything to do with attraction.

  Attraction, she quickly reminded herself, that had no place to land.

  “I thought they call that morning sickness because it only happens in the morning?”

  “I think that’s the biggest old wives’ tale of them all.” She took a small bite of her enchilada, savoring the rich flavors. “I’ve been sick at all different times, with no rhyme or reason when it strikes.”

  “Is there anything that particularly bothers you?”

  “Chicken,” she quickly said and barely avoided the shiver that skated down her spine.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah. I didn’t even look at that section of the menu.”

  “But beef’s okay?”

  “I crave it, actually.”

  Something lit deep in his green eyes. Although they’d been placed in a quiet corner of the restaurant, it was hard to miss the sudden spark. “You do realize that’s the highest compliment to a beef producer.”

  “I guess it would be. It’s been particularly strange for me, since I’m actually not a big beef eater normally. I like a burger occasionally, but I usually lean toward the salad or fish options on a menu.”

  “Hmm,” he said. “Reynolds Station might have its new advertising campaign.”

  She did laugh at that. “The number one beef for pregnant women?”

  “Hey,” Hoyt said. “If it’s good enough for my baby, it’s good enough for anybody else’s baby.”

  His baby.

  She knew that. Obviously, she knew the father of her child. But hearing the words come out of his mouth—his baby—made her go completely still.

  “You don’t like my ad campaign?”

  “No. No, I like it just fine. It’s just—”

  What could she say? Things hadn’t changed from the words they’d exchanged earlier in his kitchen. They didn’t have a relationship. They could barely even call themselves lovers, other than that one special night together. Yet, she was having his child.

  His baby.

  “It’s just what?”

  “For the past several weeks I’ve been thinking about it as my ba
by. It’s just different to hear you say it as well.”

  “Because this is my baby. I know I came off heavy-handed before, at my house. I didn’t say it to upset you or to suggest I would do anything against your wishes. But this is my child, too.”

  He was right. She might be carrying this child, and she might’ve had the benefit of a few extra weeks of knowledge, but that didn’t mean she could ignore that he was also going to be a parent. Nor did it deny the fact that he had a right to see his child and be a part of raising the baby.

  “I know that and, to be honest, I’m grateful that you feel that way. Not every woman in my situation is quite that lucky.”

  Her honest assessment seemed to hover over them for a few moments and Hoyt looked about to say something before he closed his mouth.

  “What?” she asked. “You can tell me how you feel.”

  “What do you mean, other women?”

  “Not every couple is happy to have a child. It’s a burden or it’s unexpected or it doesn’t fit into their life plan. Plenty of men have walked away from a child they’ve created.” She stopped, recognizing the reality wasn’t simply from a male point of view. “Plenty of women have done the same.”

  “I realize that we’re not in a relationship.” He said the words slowly, as if he were trying to find the right ones, syllable by syllable. “But that doesn’t change how I feel, or my responsibility to this child.”

  “I know.”

  “More than that, it’s not even about responsibility. I hadn’t planned on becoming a father at this point in my life, but now that it’s a reality, I want it more than I can say.”

  “I do know what you mean.” And she did. After those few preliminary moments of shock when she had stared down at the positive pregnancy test, the reality of becoming a mother had begun to sink in. And in those moments between surprise and reality—when the ground seemed to shift beneath her—Reese had known the exact feeling he spoke of.

  Happiness. Joy. And a sudden realization that regardless of what life had been like, the new direction was tremendously welcome.