“You don’t want to reconsider?”
“No.” Forgiveness wasn’t easy for him. It was something he had to work at, but Vincent Haven Senior was one person who wasn’t worth the hard work he’d have to put into it. “Is that why you called me to come here? I thought you had a proposition for me.”
“I do.” She took a drink and swallowed. “I’m getting old, and I want to retire.” She set the mug on the desk and closed one eye against the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. “I want to travel.”
“Sounds reasonable.” He’d traveled the world. Some places were pure hell. Others so beautiful they stole his breath. He’d been thinking about going back to some of those places as a civilian. Maybe that was exactly what he needed. He had no strings now. He could go wherever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. For however long he wanted to stay. “What can I do to help?”
“You can buy the Gas and Go, is all.”
Chapter Three
He’d turned her down. She’d asked a stranger to take her to her young cousin’s wedding and he’d turned her down flat.
“Don’t own a suit,” was all he’d said before he’d walked away. Even if she hadn’t seen his driver’s license or heard the lack of twang in his voice, she would have known he wasn’t a native Texan because he hadn’t even bothered with a good lie. Something like his dog died and he was grieving or that he was scheduled to donate a kidney tomorrow.
The setting sun bathed the JH in bright orange and gold and filtered through the fine plumes of dust disturbed by the Saab’s tires. He’d made the offer to repay her, but of course he hadn’t meant it. Asking him had been a dumb, impulsive idea. And dumb, impulsive ideas always got her into trouble. So, if she looked at it that way, Vince the stranded guy had done her a favor. After all, what was she supposed to do with a huge, enormously hot stranger all night long once he’d served her purpose? She clearly hadn’t thought it through before she’d asked.
The dirt road to the JH took ten to twenty minutes depending on how recently the road had been graded and the type of vehicle. Any moment, Sadie expected to hear mad barking and see the sudden appearance of half a dozen or so cow dogs. The ranch house and outbuildings sat five miles back from the highway on the ten- thousand-acre ranch. The JH wasn’t the largest spread in Texas, but it was one of the oldest, running several thousand head of cattle a year. The ranch had been settled and the land purchased on the Canadian River in the early twentieth century by Sadie’s great-great-grandfather, Major John Hollowell. Through good times and lean, the Hollowells had alternately both barely survived and thrived, raising purebred Herefords and American paint horses. Yet when it came to securing the future of the family with a male heir, the Hollowells came up short. Except for a few distant cousins whom Sadie had rarely met, she was the last in the Hollowell line. Which was a source of grave disappointment for her father.
It wasn’t quite grazing season and the cattle were closer to the house and outbuildings. As Sadie drove along the fence line, the familiar silhouettes grazed in the fields. Soon it would be branding and castration season, and since moving, Sadie did not miss the sounds and smells of that horrific, yet necessary, event.
She pulled to a stop in front of the four-thousand-square-foot house her grandfather had built in the 1940s. The original homestead was five miles west on Little Tail Creek and was currently occupied by foreman Snooks Perry and his family. The Perrys had worked for the JH for longer than Sadie had been alive.
She grabbed her Gucci bag from the backseat, then shut the car door behind her. Whippoorwills called on a cool breeze that touched her cheeks and stole down the collar of her gray Pink hooded sweatshirt.
The setting sun turned the white stone and clapboard house golden, and she moved to the big double, rough oak doors with the JH brand in the center of each. Coming home was always unsettling. A tangle of emotion tugged at her stomach and heart. Warm feelings stirred with the familiar guilt and apprehension that always pulled at her when she came to Texas.
She opened the unlocked door and stepped into the empty entrance. The smells of home greeted her. She breathed in the scent of lemon, wood and leather polish, years of smoke from the huge stone fireplace in the great room, and decades of home-cooked meals.
No one greeted her and she moved across the knotty pine floors and Navaho rugs toward the kitchen at the back of the house. It took a full-time staff to keep the JH operating on a smooth schedule. Their housekeeper, Clara Anne Parton, kept things neat and tidy in the main house as well as the bunkhouse, while her twin sister, Carolynn, cooked three meals every day but Sunday. Neither had ever married and they lived together in town.
Sadie followed the steady
“You’re working late.”
Clara Anne jumped and spun around, clutching her heart. Her high stack of black hair teetered a bit. “Sadie Jo! You scared me to death, girl.”
Sadie smiled and her heart got all warm as she moved into the room. “Sorry.” The twins had helped raise her and she held out her arms. “It’s good to see you.”
The housekeeper hugged her tight against her huge bosom and kissed her cheek. The warmth around her heart spread across her chest. “It’s been a coon’s age.”
Sadie laughed. The twins were holdouts when it came to high hair and cliched old sayings. And if Sadie were to mention to Clara Anne that some people might consider that old expression a little racist these days, the housekeeper would be shocked because there wasn’t a racist cell in Clara Anne’s body. Once, as a kid, she’d smart-mouthed Clara Anne and asked exactly how long a coon’s age was. The housekeeper had looked her straight in the eye and answered seriously, “Six to eight years. That’s how long a raccoon lives in the wild.” Who knew there’d actually been an answer?
“It hasn’t quite been a raccoon’s age.”
“Close.” She leaned back and looked into Sadie’s face. “Lordy, you look just like your mama.”
Without the poise and charm and everything that made people just naturally love her. “I have Daddy’s eyes.”
“Yep. Blue as Texas bluebells.” She ran her rough hands up Sadie’s arms. “We’ve missed you around here.”
“I missed you, too.” Which was true. She missed Clara Anne and Carolynn. She missed their warm hugs and the touch of their lips on her cheek. Obviously she didn’t miss it enough to move back. She dropped her hands to her sides. “Where’s Daddy?”
“In the cookhouse eating with the boys. Are you hungry?”
“Starving.” Of course he was eating with the ranch hands. That’s where he’d usually eaten because it made sense. “Did he remember that I was coming?”
“Sure he remembered.” The housekeeper reached for a stack of towels. “He wouldn’t forget a thing like you coming home.”
Sadie wasn’t so sure. He’d forgotten her high school graduation. Or rather, he had been too busy vaccinating cattle. The care of animals had always taken precedence over the care of people. Business came first, and Sadie had accepted that long ago. “How’s his mood?”
Clara Anne looked at her over the stack of towels in her arms. They both knew why she asked. “Good, now go find your daddy, and we’ll catch up tomorrow. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doin’ with yourself.”
“Over lunch. Maybe Carolynn will make us her chicken salad on croissants.” It wasn’t something the cook made for the ranch hands. They tended to like more hearty sandwiches for lunch, like thick slices of meat on heavy bread. But Carolynn used to make chicken salad especially for Sadie’s mother and later for Sadie.
“I’ll tell her you mentioned it. Although I think she’s already planned on it.”
“Yum.” Sadie took one last look at Clara Anne, then walked back into the kitchen and outside. She moved down the same concrete path she’d walked along thousands of times. Most meals were eaten in the cookhouse and the closer she got to the long cinder-block and stucco building, the more she smelled barbecue and baked bread. Her
