West Texas Nights

by Sherryl Woods

  Slade let the deliberate jab pass. “Well, I can’t let her get away with it, of course. I’ve grounded her for a week, but I can’t very well stop working to stay with her and see that she abides by the rules.”

  Val stiffened as if she’d already guessed what was coming next. “No.”

  “I haven’t even asked yet.”

  “I’m not going to stay with her. She’s your daughter, Slade, not mine. Hire a baby-sitter.”

  “She’d run roughshod over a babysitter. She needs someone she respects to keep her in line.”

  “And that’s me?”

  “You know it is. Look, if I could think of some other way, believe me, I’d grab it. I know how you feel about the two of us.”

  She gave him a penetrating look. “Do you really?”

  “Yes. I suppose you like Annie well enough, but you’re fit to be tied with me. Rightfully so, from your perspective.”

  “And from yours?”

  “Okay, I have to admit, I don’t entirely get it,” he said. “I know you have feelings for me and, like I just said, you care about Annie. Was it so wrong to suggest we get married?”

  “Yes,” she said succinctly. “But I am not going to discuss it with a man as dense as you apparently are. It would be a waste of my breath.”

  “Try me.”

  She almost did. He could see that she was tempted to try to spell it all out for him, but at the last second, she apparently changed her mind. “I’ll look out for Annie the next few days, but let’s be clear on one thing. I am doing it for her sake, not yours.”

  Slade concluded now was not the time to press her about the rest. And at the moment, he was willing to accept her help on whatever terms she set. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Spending time with Annie is my pleasure. I wish you felt the same way.”

  Before he could respond to that, she’d whirled away and gone back inside, slamming the door in his face.

  If Laurie and Harlan Patrick hadn’t been right inside, he would have gone after her and kissed her silly, he told himself. As it was, he just sighed and wondered if he could manage to dig the hole he was in any deeper.

  * * *

  “How come things didn’t go so good with you and Daddy the other night?” Annie asked within five minutes of Val’s arrival the next morning.

  Val noticed that Slade had already made himself scarce. She told herself that was for the best, but deep down she knew she’d been hoping to catch at least a glimpse of him. Dumb, dumb, dumb! Hadn’t she learned anything the past few days?

  “So,” Annie persisted. “What happened?”

  “Who says anything happened?” she asked.

  Annie gave her a pitying look. “I can tell. He’s been mean as a snake and you haven’t been around.”

  “Well, it’s between your father and me.”

  Annie shook her head. “No, it’s not. I live here, too, remember? I’m just a kid. Somebody ought to fill me in so I don’t feel left out. Did you know that scars from childhood can last an entire lifetime?”

  Val held back a grin. “Is that so? Where did you hear that?”

  “On Oprah.”

  “I thought you weren’t supposed to be watching TV.”

  “Oh, this was a long time ago,” Annie assured her. “Weeks and weeks ago at least. It was probably while I was still at Grandma’s.”

  Val thought she was protesting a little too vehemently, but let it pass. “Well, right now, you are a kid who’s in very big trouble. Let’s concentrate on that instead of whatever deep psychological scars you think you might get from being left out of the loop.”

  Annie shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Suppose you tell me what possessed you to paint the house.”

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time. Besides, it worked, didn’t it?”

  Val studied Annie intently. “Meaning?”

  Annie suddenly seemed just a little too fascinated with her cereal. Val doubted she was counting the little os still floating in her bowl.

  “Okay, kiddo, what are you up to?”

  “Nothing, I swear it,” Annie said, her expression totally innocent.

  “I don’t believe that for a minute.”

  “It’s true. I just thought the house was a boring color, that’s all.” She wrinkled her nose. “Daddy wants to paint it back to white.”

  “And you don’t?”

  “Nope. I was thinking maybe yellow,” she said, her gaze on Val, her expression serious. “What do you think? It’s your favorite color, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Val agreed. “I do like yellow, not that that should have anything to do with what color you decide to paint your house.”

  “Why not? I mean, if it were yellow, you’d want to be here more, right?”

  Val set her coffee carefully on the table. “Okay, that’s it. We need to talk, young lady.”

  “About what?”

  “Whatever it is that’s going on in your head. You cannot plot and scheme to get your father and me together.” Never mind that she’d done her own share of plotting. It had all been to no avail.

  “Why not?” Annie asked, sounding far more curious than daunted.

  “Because that’s not the way human emotions work. Grown-ups either care about each other or they don’t. You can’t make things happen just because you’d like them to.” Val could have attested to that firsthand.

  “But Daddy really likes you. I know he does. And you like him. So why can’t it work out? Why should we all be miserable, when it would be so easy to be happy?”

  Val had wondered the same thing herself until she’d heard Slade proposing marriage solely for the sake of his daughter. They had made love for most of the night. She had experienced a level of passion she had never even known existed. She had honestly thought Slade had, too. Then she’d discovered that she had only convinced him that they’d be compatible enough if he were to marry her for Annie’s sake. It was a wonder she hadn’t plunged a knife into his heart on the spot.

  “It just can’t work out,” she told Annie very firmly, because it was what she’d finally forced herself to accept. She couldn’t spend her whole life with a man who was so insensitive that he didn’t even see how deeply he’d insulted her.

  “Well, I don’t buy it,” Annie said stubbornly.

  “You don’t have to,” Val told her. “All that matters is that it’s what your father and I both believe.”

  “Then you’re both dumb,” Annie proclaimed. She flounced out of her chair and ran to her room.

  That was the last Val saw of her until lunchtime. She fixed tuna salad sandwiches, put them on the table and then went to call Annie. She got no response.

  Val’s stomach knotted. Surely Annie hadn’t crawled out a window and run away. She knocked and called out again, then opened the door. Annie was curled up in bed, her back to the door.

  Val crossed the room and gazed down at her. She was sound asleep, but her cheeks were still damp with tears.

  “Oh, baby,” Val whispered and sank onto the edge of the bed. She touched a hand to Annie’s cheek.

  “Go away,” Annie muttered, still half-asleep.

  “Lunch is ready.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Tuna salad sandwiches and chips,” Val said, trying to tempt her. “And I baked cookies. Your favorites.” Slade’s, too, though she’d sworn as she emptied the bag of chocolate chips into the dough that she was fixing them only for Annie’s sake.

  “I don’t care.”

  Val bit back a sigh. “Look, sweetie, I know you’re unhappy that things aren’t going the way you’d hoped, but sometimes we all have disappointments in life.”

  “Is that all it is to you?” Annie demanded, suddenly quivering with outrage. “A disappointment? Like not getting ice crea
m for dessert or something? It’s my life! I don’t have anybody who loves me, not really. Daddy tolerates me because he has to. Grandma and Grandpa dumped me. I thought you were my friend, but you don’t care.”

  “I do care,” Val insisted.

  “Like I believe that.”

  “Believe it or not, it’s true. Otherwise why do you think I’d be here today?”

  “Because Daddy asked you to. He probably paid you.”

  “Your father is not paying me,” she assured the child. “And we both know I’m not very happy with him at the moment, so obviously I’m not doing it for him. So why am I here?”

  Annie studied her face. “Because of me,” she whispered hesitantly.

  “Because of you,” Val agreed. “You’re a wonderful girl, Annie. You’re bright and funny and unpredictable. If I had a little girl, I’d want her to be exactly like you.”

  “Really?” she asked, hope shining in her eyes.

  “Absolutely.”

  Annie seemed to consider her response for several minutes before her expression brightened. “Okay, then, here’s what we do.”

  Something in her voice alerted Val that she’d blundered in some way she had yet to understand. “Do?” she repeated cautiously.

  “Yes,” Annie said very firmly. “So you can adopt me and I can be your little girl for real.”

  Eleven

  For days after Annie’s calm declaration that she wanted Val to adopt her, Val couldn’t shake the storm of emotions that roared through her. At the time, she’d tried to explain very carefully to Annie why that was impossible, but the conversation continued to nag at her.

  Annie had been so serious, so terribly vulnerable. And a part of Val had wanted to say yes. She couldn’t deny it. She had come to love Annie already as if she were her own. She blamed Slade’s stubborn streak for making that impossible. If only he could have told her he loved her when he’d asked her to marry him, if only it hadn’t sounded more like he was striking a bargain than proposing marriage, maybe she would have said yes. Then Annie truly would have been her little girl and Slade would have been her husband. Instead, none of them had what they wanted or needed.

  “What do I do?” she asked Laurie. “Do I tell Slade? I mean, this is way beyond her saying she wants to run away from home. She’s actually picked out the home she wants to run to.”

  Laurie regarded her knowingly. “You’re flattered, aren’t you?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “You are. A part of you is glad that Annie chose you over Slade. You see it as proof that he’s a terrible parent and that you’d be a better one.”

  “It’s not a competition, dammit!”

  “No,” Laurie agreed mildly. “It’s not. Or at least it shouldn’t be. You and Slade both want the same thing here. You both want Annie to feel loved and secure.”

  “That’s certainly what I want,” Val said. “That’s why I’ve stepped in—to fill in the gaps in her life.”

  “Oh, really?” Laurie said. “I thought that was more about using Annie to get Slade’s attention.”

  Val stared at her friend. “That’s a rotten thing to say.”

  “Is it?”

  Instead of snapping back an answer, Val considered the accusation. “Okay,” she admitted reluctantly, “at the beginning, I suppose there might have been some truth to that, but no more. I care about Annie.”

  “Good. Now we’re getting somewhere. And the truth is that Slade’s been using you, because he’s at a loss about how to handle his daughter. Correct?”

  “Yes,” Val said, not liking the picture that was emerging of two selfish adults with a ten-year-old caught in the middle.

  “Don’t look so glum. It’s not all bad,” Laurie said. “Annie is getting the attention she needs and you and Slade care more about each other than either of you wants to admit.”

  “Oh, I’ll admit it,” Val said. “He just doesn’t want to hear it.” He just wanted a practical marriage of convenience with no messy emotions involved.

  “Then back off,” Laurie suggested. “Give him time to miss you.”

  “I thought that was what I was doing,” Val said. “Then he came over here and begged me to stay with Annie.”

  “Obviously this arrangement is way too convenient for him and it’s sending very mixed messages to Annie,” Laurie said, her expression thoughtful. “I think maybe I was wrong when I said you shouldn’t go back to Nashville for a while. I think maybe it’s a good idea, after all.”

  A gut-sick feeling washed over Val. “You’re sending me away?”

  “Don’t look so put out. It was your idea, remember? And it’s not Siberia.”

  “But why now? You just finished telling me a few days ago that you couldn’t spare me.”

  “I was wrong,” Laurie said succinctly. “Besides, I think both you and Slade need to remember who you are. You’re a career woman, Val. You’re the best personal assistant I’ve ever run across. I know a dozen people who’d snap you up in a heartbeat if I ever let you get away. The last few weeks haven’t been typical at all. You’ve had time on your hands to cater to Slade’s every whim and to Annie’s.” She nodded decisively. “Yes, I think it’s for the best. I’m putting you back to work.”

  Val opened her mouth to argue, then realized that Laurie was probably right. She needed to gain some perspective on everything that had gone on the past few weeks. She’d settled into some sort of fake domesticity, complete with a ready-made family. She needed to weigh that against the life she’d had before Laurie had married Harlan Patrick and they’d started spending most of their time at White Pines.

  Could she really juggle both a family and a career and be fair to both? She’d always assumed she could. She’d been instrumental in making Laurie see that she could have it all. Val didn’t want to accept it, but maybe the reality was that she would have to choose.

  “I’ll call the airlines and make the arrangements,” she told Laurie. “Then I’ll check in with Nick so he can list everything that needs doing to finalize the recording sessions.”

  “You can take that mountain of fan mail back to Nashville with you, too,” Laurie said. “Have the staff there get busy answering it. You’ve got more important things to do.”

  More important than being used by a man to play surrogate mother to his lonely little girl, Val told herself firmly. But when the time came to get on the plane, she wasn’t nearly as certain that she believed that. Annie had stolen her heart. As for Slade, she was very much afraid that he had captured her soul.

  * * *

  When Annie discovered that Val had gone to Nashville, she was inconsolable. Slade found her huddled in the rocker on the front porch sobbing her eyes out. He guessed she’d already heard the disconcerting news that had reached him just an hour or so earlier. In case he was wrong, he approached the subject cautiously.

  “Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?” he asked, hunkering down in front of her.

  “It’s Val,” she whispered, sniffing loudly. “I did something wrong and now she’s gone away and left me.”

  Slade had heard all about Val’s abrupt departure from Harlan Patrick. His boss seemed to take great pleasure in breaking the news that she’d gone off to Nashville. Nowhere in that discussion had Annie’s name come up. Neither had Slade’s. In fact, it sounded as if she’d left without giving a thought to either of them.

  “Honey, she had work to do. You know she helps Laurie. Sometimes that means she has to go away. It wasn’t about you.”

  “Yes, it was. It’s because of what I said.”

  Slade regarded her with puzzlement. “What did you say that could possibly make Val leave?”

  “I told her I wanted her to adopt me,” she mumbled, so low he could barely hear the words.

  Even so, once they sank in, Slade felt as if the wind had been kno
cked out of him. He pulled the other rocker close and sat down so he and Annie would be at eye level.

  “Tell me exactly what happened.”

  “I told you. It happened when I was grounded. I said I wanted her to be my mom. She’d said she really liked me, so I figured she’d go for it.”

  Slade had been through a similar misjudgment all too recently. Apparently neither he nor Annie was good at gauging Val’s likely reactions. “Where did I fit into this?” he asked, fearing he knew that answer, too.

  Annie gazed down at the floor. “You didn’t.” Her chin jutted up. “You were mad at me, anyway. I figured you wouldn’t care.”

  “Well, I do,” he said forcefully. He reached over and tucked a finger under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “You’re my little girl, okay? I know I’m not the best dad in the whole world. I know I’ve made a lot of mistakes since your mom went away. But I love you, Annie. I wouldn’t let you go for anything. I certainly wouldn’t let somebody else adopt you and take you away from me, not even Val.”

  “But she’d be such a great mom,” Annie said plaintively.

  “I know, baby. I think so, too. But right now it’s just you and me. We’re stuck with each other. Think we can make it work?” He realized as soon as the words were out just how fearful he was that she’d say no.

  “I suppose,” she said finally, the lackluster response accompanied by a heavy sigh of resignation.

  “How about going into town for ice cream to celebrate?”

  “What do we have to celebrate?”

  “The fact that we’re starting over, that we’re a family, just you and me.”

  Her expression brightened ever so slightly. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  “It can wait,” he said, standing up. “This is more important.”

  As if she sensed that she had the upper hand for now, she regarded him slyly. “Hot fudge?”