Christmas at Colts Creek

by Delores Fossen

  They went out through the ER doors and into the chilly November air. The temps had really dropped and were barely above freezing. “The flowers won’t last long in the car,” Brody pointed out.

  “True, but I think Teagan will feel better just knowing that we’re speeding things along. She’s really anxious to leave. At first, I thought that was because she didn’t want to be tempted to see the baby, but I think it has more to do with wanting to start the next stage of her life.” Kyle headed toward an older model red SUV. “She never got over you, you know?”

  Because Kyle hadn’t paused before that question, it took Brody a moment to shift gears. Kyle definitely wasn’t talking about Teagan anymore but rather Janessa. And he was dead wrong.

  “Are you thinking the reason your marriage failed was because she still has feelings for me?” Brody came out and asked.

  “No, the marriage failed because we weren’t in love. Now, that maybe had something to do with you. Hard to fall in love when you’ve got unresolved issues with your ex.”

  Brody frowned at the ex label. Hell, they’d been teenagers. Ex seemed more of an adult deal. “It was years between the time Janessa left Last Ride and when she married you. If she really hadn’t gotten over me, she could have come back.”

  The moment the words left his mouth, Brody got a flash of clarity. Definitely something he wouldn’t have had as a teenager. Janessa couldn’t have come back because of Abe’s threat. Because Abe had hurt her to the core. Her leaving had far more to do with Abe than it ever had to do with him. For some reason that soothed him. A teenage broken heart had a long-assed memory, but it wasn’t any match for hard-earned common sense.

  Kyle popped open the back of the SUV so that Brody could add the suitcase he was carrying to the two others that were already back there. Then the man poured out the water from the vases and began to anchor the flowers in between the suitcases.

  “Is she doing okay?” Kyle asked, and Brody knew they were still talking about Janessa. “I mean, is it getting to her to be here with all the memories of her father?”

  “Janessa’s handling it,” Brody said, but then he thought of the things they’d learned so far about Abe. Some good things, but there were also plenty of bad. Added to that, she now had to deal with the baby and the fact she’d put her life on hold for three months. So he mentally amended his answer to, “I hope she’s handling it.”

  Kyle had just closed the back of the SUV when Brody spotted Janessa and Teagan making their way toward them. Janessa still had the file folder Teagan had given her, and Teagan was clutching some papers. No doubt those release forms. Obviously, freedom pleased her because she gave Brody and Janessa another hug.

  “I’ll text you when we make it to Dallas,” Kyle assured Janessa. “Stay out of trouble,” he added and then flashed a grin at Brody.

  Janessa waved as they drove away, and they stood there until the SUV was out of sight. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  She nodded, and it seemed steady enough. Janessa lifted the file. “Want to sit in my car with the heat on while we look at this?”

  Since there were possibly things in that folder to shake her steadiness, Brody matched her nod, but instead of going to her car, he motioned for her to follow him to his truck because it was closer. He cranked the heat to the max as soon as they got in, and Janessa didn’t waste any time opening the file.

  Brody leaned in to look at the first page. It was a bio of sorts, and Teagan had even cited her resources of internet searches, online newspaper articles and interviews with Alma Parkman and Fannie June Dayton, who had the distinction of being the oldest resident of Last Ride. The woman was 101 years old. Brody had no idea just how good Fannie June’s memory was, but Teagan had spoken with her for over three hours.

  “Abe was born sixty-one years ago at the old Last Ride Hospital,” Janessa summarized as she skimmed through the lines. “His mother, my grandmother, Norma Dayton, ran off with another man when Abe was six.” She paused. “That’s probably the start of Abe’s abandonment issues.”

  “Abandonment issues?” Brody questioned.

  “Oh, he had them in spades. He turned against your mother when she dumped him. He turned against both of his ex-wives. And he turned against me when I was twelve and told the judge I wanted to live with my mother.”

  When put like that, Brody supposed abandonment issues was as good a name for it as any.

  “His mother never came back to see him,” Janessa went on. “She left Abe with his father who was...as tough as a stewed skunk. That’s a quote from Fannie June,” she added, looking up at Brody. “I’m guessing that’s pretty tough?”

  Brody had to shrug on that one, but the snips and snaps he’d heard about Abraham Lincoln Parkman III all centered on him being a hard man.

  “Fannie June calls Abe a poor little rich boy whose stewed skunk father wouldn’t scratch his own mama’s fleas. That’s another quote,” Janessa provided. “I think the translation for that is Abe, the third, was not very generous with his time when it came to his son.”

  Brody made a sound of agreement and did some skimming, too, when Janessa flipped to the next page. Fannie June recalled Abe running away from home many times. The woman also stated he was often seen around town with bruises and once had a black eye.

  He stopped reading and cursed. Even though this had all happened a lifetime ago, it sickened Brody to think of Abe as a kid going through something like that. Worse, most people wouldn’t have stepped up to help because Abe’s father had been one of the richest men in town. Added to that, there might not have even been a system in place sixty years ago to report something like this.

  “His father died when Abe was only sixteen,” Janessa continued to summarize, “leaving him a huge estate to run. According to Fannie June, Abe did a good job building the businesses and the ranch, and he got along with most people until Darcia left him and took up with his best friend.”

  Janessa stopped and looked at him. “This wasn’t your mother’s fault. She’s not responsible in any way for how Abe handled their breakup.”

  No, not her fault, but Brody wasn’t doubting any of what Fannie June had recalled. Maybe it’d felt like another abandonment for Abe to lose Darcia to his best friend. Abandonment layered with betrayal. That might cause a man to snap and start acting like his stewed skunk of a father.

  Janessa groaned, shook her head. “How do I make sense of all of this? Abe was abused and turned bitter. Part of me wants to forgive him for every wrong he’s ever done solely because of that, but I was on the receiving end of some of those wrongs. You were, too.”

  “Some,” he admitted, and he thought about the cut-to-the-bone feeling when he’d heard Abe was having him investigated. “Maybe there’s no way to make sense of it. You and I have both dealt with upheavals in our lives, and it didn’t cause us to become mean and bitter.”

  He wrapped his mind around that for a moment. No bitterness, but like their parents, they hadn’t exactly been lucky in love. Janessa looked up at him again, her eyes skimming over him as if she was trying to figure out what he was thinking. His thoughts shifted from love, luck and old wounds to her face, her mouth. To her. And just like that, his mood shifted.

  Brody leaned in and dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Come to dinner with me tomorrow night.”

  The quick kiss had caused her to smile, but the smile vanished when she pulled back and met his gaze. “Do you usually take your dates to family dinners?” she asked.

  “No.” Never, in fact. And maybe that’s why he wanted to do it now.

  Same ol’, same ol’ just wasn’t working for him anymore. He would have to try to explain that to Janessa while trying to understand it better himself. But he didn’t want this temporary thing with Janessa to be just about sex. Yes, he definitely wanted the sex, but he wanted to make these next eight weeks count. However, before Brody could even at
tempt an explanation, Janessa’s phone rang.

  “It’s the PI agency,” she said when she glanced at the screen. She hit the answer button right away and put the call on Speaker.

  “This is Victor Barton,” the man said, “returning Janessa Parkman’s call.”

  “I’m Janessa. Thank you for getting back to me.”

  “Sorry that it took so long, but I make a habit of not taking my phone on vacation.” His tone was all business. “I understand you have some questions about your father and the investigation he hired me to do.”

  “Exactly what did he hire you to do?” she asked.

  “Plenty. Abe came to me with old photos and emails that seemed to prove his two ex-wives were cheating on him. He wanted me to find out who’d sent them.”

  Janessa paused a moment. “All of that happened years ago. When did my father ask you to look into it?”

  “About four months ago. He said it was just something that had been bugging him, and he wanted to know the truth,” Barton added.

  That would have been three months before Abe’s death. Brody thought back to that time, but he couldn’t recall any kind of trigger that would have caused Abe to do this.

  “I checked, and I found the emails came from an account that closed right after they were sent,” the PI continued. “The postmarks on the envelopes for the pictures didn’t pan out, either. But then I had someone take a harder look. The pictures were all Photoshopped. A good job of it, too.”

  “Photoshopped,” Janessa repeated. “So, neither Margo nor my mother cheated on Abe.”

  “Can’t say that for sure, but I didn’t find any evidence of it. Just the opposite, in fact. Other than those bogus pictures and emails, I couldn’t find a single person who could verify that either woman had ever engaged in any extramarital affairs.”

  Janessa groaned softly. “Yet that’s why he ended his marriages.”

  “He did indeed,” Barton verified. “Needless to say, Abe didn’t take the news well that his ex-wives were innocent of cheating.”

  No, he wouldn’t have. Because it would mean he’d been wrong.

  “Abe told me to keep digging,” the PI continued, “that it didn’t matter how much it cost or how many people I had to hire, he wanted the whole truth. So, I got some computer experts to study the photos themselves, and they tracked them back to a guy named Delbert Bodell. After having a long chat with him and offering him payment, he admitted someone had hired him to alter the photos.”

  “Who?” Janessa pressed when Barton paused.

  “Jimmy Harrell,” the PI said.

  Well, hell. Brody did a whole lot of mental cursing. His father had done this. He’d set this shit in motion, and it’d led to two divorces and a whole bunch of pain.

  Suddenly, things got clearer, too, on why Abe had asked for the PI to investigate Jimmy. And him. Abe would have wanted to make sure Brody had had no part in any of this.

  Brody took a pen from the glove compartment and used the file folder to write out a question he wanted her to ask the PI. He didn’t want to do it himself because Barton might clam up if he realized someone other than Abe’s daughter was listening in on the conversation.

  “Only Jimmy was behind the photos and emails?” Janessa pressed the PI after looking at what Brody had written.

  “The evidence points to it being only Jimmy,” he verified. “Abe had me look into Jimmy’s ex-wife and son, but there was nothing I could find. I did track down Jimmy, but he refused to talk to me. Abe tried to contact him and got the same result. That’s when Abe told me to keep digging, to find out if Jimmy had done anything else to screw him over.”

  Brody suspected there had indeed been other things. Maybe not something that could be traced directly back to Jimmy, but it wasn’t hard to start gossip that could stir up trouble.

  How long had this been going on? At least back to when Sophia and Abe were married, but it was possible his father had done things even before that.

  “There’s another matter that Abe hired me to look into,” the PI said, drawing Brody’s attention back to the phone.

  “What do you mean another matter?” Janessa asked.

  Again, the PI hesitated. “I’m still working on it, and I’m not comfortable getting into that with you because there are other people involved. I need to speak to...someone first and make sure it’s okay to tell you. If it is, I’ll get back to you.”

  “Does this have something to do with my father’s will?” she asked.

  But she was talking to the air because the PI had already ended the call.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JANESSA SAT AT the dining room table and thought of all the things on her to-do list. The baby would be released from the hospital tomorrow, and she should be checking the nursery she’d set up to make sure everything was as it should be. She also had some paperwork to do for Bright Hope along with wanting to talk to Sophia some more about the things Brody and she had learned from the PI.

  But Janessa wasn’t doing any of those things tonight.

  Instead, she was having dinner with Darcia, Brody, Rowan and his date, Aspen Granger. An awkward dinner at that. In fact, it likely broke many records for its level of awkwardness. Darcia was being polite enough, maybe too polite, but Janessa could feel the tension smeared over her with the same thickness that Rowan was slathering butter on a roll.

  Janessa took another bite of the lasagna and met Brody’s gaze from across the table. And suddenly she forgot all about the things she should be doing and remembered why she was here. It was because Brody had wanted her to come, and she’d wanted to be with him. That was worth the meet-the-family kind of pressure. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d be willing to put up with just about anything to be with him.

  Not good.

  Because when she was looking at him like this, she tended to forget that what was going on between them was just a holiday fling. And flings should be about sex and hungry kisses in the moonlight. It shouldn’t include family dinners or an ache inside her that went well beyond the fling stage.

  The sex would happen. She was certain of that. Sooner or later, there’d be no interruptions, and the making out would carry them straight to the bed, floor or whatever nearby surface there happened to be. Every inch of her body was burning for that, but her heart had gotten in on this, too. When she went back to Dallas, she’d end up doodling his name.

  And wondering if she wanted to be without him.

  Of course, any mention of that would likely send him running. Brody had made no comment about anything permanent between them. Still—

  “A lot of people are still talking about it,” Janessa heard Aspen say. The girl’s voice cut through the monologue Janessa had going on in her head. “Mr. Parkman’s will and what’ll happen ’cause of it. But it’s a good sign that you and your mother have stayed here this long.”

  Janessa made a sound of agreement. It wasn’t just a good sign. It was a miracle, one that Janessa could partially thank Curt for since, according to the gossip, he’d been keeping Sophia occupied.

  “I’m optimistic,” Janessa said, though she put a mental asterisk next to her comment. The optimism would stay as long as Abe didn’t throw them any more curveballs.

  “Lots of stuff’s going to change around Last Ride,” Aspen went on, looking at Brody. “I heard about you maybe buying my great-uncle’s ranch.”

  All eyes went to Brody. Well, they did after Janessa gave Darcia a quick glance. Apparently, talk about this particular lots of changes hadn’t made it back to Darcia.

  “Your great-uncle?” Darcia repeated.

  Aspen nodded and didn’t seem to have a clue that she’d just let the cat out of the bag. Well, a potential cat and bag anyway.

  “Elmer Tasker,” Brody provided. “He has the ranch next to Joe’s. He raises Charolais, but it’d be good pasture for ho
rses.”

  “And you’re buying it?” Darcia’s gaze shifted from Brody to Janessa. Great. Darcia clearly thought she was the reason for this.

  “Maybe,” Brody answered. “Elmer and I are trying to work out a fair price.”

  “I see.” Darcia moved around some bits of salad with her fork. Her I see had a definite tinge of disapproval.

  “Janessa offered to give me Colts Creek if her inheritance goes through,” Brody added. “I turned her down.”

  That got Darcia’s attention off poking at the cherry tomatoes in her salad and back on to her son. She opened her mouth, probably to ask if he’d lost his mind or why the heck he would turn down owning the ranch he already ran. But she must have decided that was a mother-to-son chat best left for later because the cherry tomatoes got more pokes.

  “Are you ready for the baby to come home tomorrow?” Rowan asked, turning to Janessa. The boy might only be fifteen, but he knew when to fill in dinner conversation.

  “Hopefully. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve fostered, but I have help. Plenty of help,” she added in a mumble. “My mother’s set up a schedule.” And she left it at that. Sophia was a force to be reckoned with when it came to her temporary grandchild, and spreadsheets.

  “And Teagan’s sister?” Rowan added. “When does she get here?”

  “In about six weeks. She’s coming in from Germany to pick up the baby and take her to a new assignment in Florida.” Janessa sincerely hoped that during those six weeks Sophia and Margo didn’t become too attached to the little girl.

  Darcia cleared her throat, obviously ready to jump back into dinner chatter. “Teagan’s doing well?” she asked.

  “She’s back at Bright Hope and will move to Houston next month to start college,” Rowan said before Janessa could answer. “We keep in touch through texts,” he explained when Darcia, Brody and Janessa looked at him.

  Since Aspen didn’t seem the least bit bothered, or surprised, about that, it meant Rowan had already told her all about Teagan. Darcia probably objected to Rowan’s continued contact with a teenager who’d just had a baby. A teenager who was technically an adult. But judging from the glances Darcia was giving Brody, she was more concerned with him.