“Not likely to happen, Hadley.”
He scowled. “How do you know? You spend your life driving from one rodeo to the next, never staying long any one place—”
“You mean the way you used to do?” His brother had been known as a drifter until he married his first wife, Amy, and even when he stayed, she’d probably expected him to leave. Then after she’d died, and he had the twins to care for, Hadley fell for Jenna. He hadn’t said a word now to welcome Dallas back. He had something else on his mind, something that involved Dallas?
He pitched another forkful of hay into the wheelbarrow between them. “You got something to say, Hadley, say it. Unlike Calvin, I didn’t want to leave here, but I had to deal with the emergency at home. You said you understood. What was I supposed to do, keep punching cattle while my mother slipped away in that hospital and my father lost his mind? They’re my responsibility.”
“Oh, yeah? I thought you were theirs.” He paused. “Mine,” he said.
Dallas tensed. They were coming too close to those last days together in foster care. His heart raced. Before he could stop them, the bad memories rushed from the far recesses of his mind. Dallas heard that click of the lock again. Heard himself crying, begging for Hadley on the other side of that bedroom door.
The words were torn from him. “I’m not a kid now. They need me. I already let them down by going on the circuit instead of settling down, giving them the grandkids they want so bad.” Which produced an image of Lizzie, the kisses she and Dallas had shared. His sense at the hospital that he’d somehow forgotten to have his own life, commit to someone, didn’t slow his pulse now. Neither did his realization that, yeah, he was falling in love with her.
“What were you supposed to do?” Hadley repeated Dallas’s question. “Take care of business, that’s what. You and Calvin.”
Dallas blinked. “What does that mean?”
“When Amy and I filed for divorce, I thought that was the end for us. Then, weeks after we’d spent one night together for old times’ sake, she told me she was pregnant. I didn’t leave, Dallas. I stuck by her, put our pending divorce on hold, took care of her until the twins were born. I promised her we could try again after that to make our marriage work, but then she...didn’t make it through delivery and I was suddenly a widower, a single dad with two helpless little beings to raise.”
“You’ve done a great job. I know that was a tough time for you.”
“Yeah, but you know what? That’s life. That was being an adult, little brother. I love being a dad. I love being Jenna’s husband even when we don’t see eye to eye. I have no desire to pack my gear and move on again while you and Calvin—”
“Me and Calvin? Whoa,” Dallas said, dropping the pitchfork into the wheelbarrow. What did all this have to do with him? “Why lump the two of us together? Twice now?”
“You took care of your parents this past week—I admire you for that—but why haven’t you stepped up to the plate with Elizabeth Barnes?”
Dallas’s heart stalled. “Lizzie? What’s happened? Is she still sick?”
Hadley aimed another kick at the empty bucket. “If this thing with Jenna and Becca hadn’t come up, I would never have known.”
“Known what?”
Hadley turned away. “We were arguing last night about Becca and Jenna blurted it out—Elizabeth had told her. I shouldn’t lose my temper like this, but I just can’t believe you didn’t tell me.”
Dallas swung him around with a hard hand on his shoulder. “No, you don’t get to tar and feather me along with Calvin Stern—” He stopped and stared at Hadley, who stared him down. The implication hung in the air. What had Calvin asked him? Is your girlfriend pregnant too? “You mean—Lizzie?” He swallowed, hard.
“She’s not some buckle bunny on the circuit you’ll never see again. Talk about responsibility.” Hadley raised his voice. “What the hell were you thinking? I’m disappointed in you, Dallas.” Hadley had played the big brother card. “What did you do to that woman?”
Dallas’s jaw clenched. As if he’d had the wind knocked out of him, he fell back against the nearest stall door. He’d left town to help his mom, and he’d come back to this crisis Lizzie must have faced alone. Had she known before he left? And that was why she’d looked like she had some secret she never wanted to share? It was like Calvin’s question was a prophecy come true, but Dallas wasn’t about to explain that one afternoon in Lizzie’s house, her tears... His own weakness had gotten them in this fix. Not the best way to think about it but... “Hadley, I swear, I didn’t know. I had a right—and she didn’t tell me.”
THE CHILDREN WERE in bed at last, and Elizabeth collapsed on the sofa just as her cell phone rang in her pocket. She almost didn’t answer. It wasn’t her mother’s name that flashed on the screen, though. Dallas’s voice sounded as tightly strung as the wire on Clara’s fences.
“Are you home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m coming over.” Dallas must
