Back in the kitchen, she was dumping a packet of instant hot chocolate into a mug when the warble of a phone surprised her. She didn't know he'd had a landline installed. She looked at it on the far end of the counter. She almost answered it but at the last minute, thought better of it.
Instead, she poured hot water into the mug and waited for the answering machine to pick up. A woman's voice left a message.
"Brady, honey, it’s me. I woke up wanting to talk to you. I'm so grateful for the time we had Sunday evening. It meant more to me than I can ever tell you. I've made so many mistakes, Brady and I don't want to make another. You were right about Andy loving you and missing you. And he needs you. I know Jarrett isn't your son, but he thinks of you as his father. He loves you and needs you, too. Just want to let you know I'm trying to arrange a trip over there. I'm eager to see your aunt's old house. As smart as you are, I'm sure you'll be able to turn it into a mansion. I don't want to interfere with your job, so just let me know when your days off are so we'll be able to spend some time together and work out some things when I come. I'll call you tonight, honey, and we can talk some more. Or if you want to call me, you have my number."
Click!
Jude set the hot pan back on the stove, her mind a blank.
Honey?...Time we had Sunday evening...Work out some things when I come?
Listening to the message a second time, thought came charging back. This was the voice of Brady's ex-wife. But what did this call mean? Were they in the middle of a reconciliation? It sounded like it.
She could hardly stand to think of him with someone else the way he had been with her last night.
Other than knowing Brady went to Fort Worth to visit his son, Jude knew little else about their relationship or his relationship with his ex-wife. Of course he was devoted to his son. Otherwise he wouldn't drive all the way to Fort Worth so often to see him.
Jude's stomach began to churn. She crossed her arms and gripped her elbows to stop it, but the sick feeling didn't go away.
Hunger? She opened the refrigerator but saw nothing but a package of bologna, a package of sliced cheese, a loaf of bread and a gallon of milk. She slammed the refrigerator door and stared out the kitchen window, trying to put two logical thoughts together.
Brady was a decent man. If he had been trying to put his marriage back together, surely he wouldn't have had sex with her last night. And he had said things—loving things—as if he cared about her. Had he lied to her?
An overwhelming desire to get out of his house overcame her, a desire to go home, to bury herself in familiar and safe surroundings. He had told her to wait for him until he found a chance to come back, but who knew when that would be? All sorts of mishaps and unplanned events could occur at the Circle C. What she had to do was check to see if Spike or Charlie Brown was hurt, then get her pickup and trailer home.
But as she began to get ready to leave, a new dilemma plagued her. If she called on anyone at the ranch to come get her and her pickup, she would have to explain why she was at the new general manager's house in the early morning in filthy, wrinkled clothing. She had vowed to never again get caught up in a web of lies, however petty they originally seemed.
A new Lubbock phone book lay on the counter by the phone. She thumbed to the yellow pages and found the tow-truck listings. The dispatcher at the first number told her he would have a truck on the scene in an hour and a half. It was nice when a company provided real customer service. Throwing out her last name had done no harm, either.
The Circle C owned a virtual fleet of pickups, trucks and trailers and sundry other equipment. Once back at the ranch, she could find some kind of rig and return to pick up the bulls without having to explain a thing. Brady might return before the tow truck arrived; then again, maybe not.
She pulled on her wet boots, donned her wrinkled clothing and tramped through the mud and sunshine to the soggy pasture behind the barn. Unlike most of the Circle C 's bulls, Spike and Charlie Brown were gentle and used to people. They gave her no trouble as she examined their hooves and legs. They had a few scrapes, but nothing that wouldn't heal. Still, she would ask Doc Barrett to look at them.
She went outside to wait for her rescuer. But it wasn't Brady Fallon she waited for. Her knight in shining armor this morning was a tow truck from Lubbock.
Midmorning. To Brady's annoyance, he hadn't been able to get back to his house, nor had he had a chance to arrange to have the bulls hauled. He had gotten tied up in the vet barn behind the clinic, assisting Doc Barrett and Clary Harper. The peak horse-breeding season was coming to an end and they were in the middle of teasing a stallion, set to collect semen.
One thing he had learned quickly was that with having an office so near to the ranch's veterinary operations, he often was called on to help the doc or Clary. He didn't mind. He was learning more about horse breeding and AI than he had ever expected to know, though he was having difficulty concentrating this morning. And because he and Jude had been awake most of the night, he was tired.
The roar of a large truck engine caught the attention of the three of them. Brady left the barn to investigate. Clary followed him. Jude's truck, its right side plastered front to back with red mud, rolled into the gravel parking area around the barn. The passenger door and bed were caved in. A blue-and-white tow truck followed it, pulling a mud-encrusted stock trailer. Brady stopped midstep and stared. Why hadn't she waited for him?
Clary came up beside him. "Is that Judith Ann?"
"Looks like it," Brady answered.
"Where the hell has she been?"
Brady couldn't give the horse wrangler an entirely truthful answer, could he? He was still nervous over the fact that Clary and Jack Durham were friends. "Down by Waco. She went to get bulls."
"She had a wreck?"
"Looks like it."
Clary shook his head and sighed. "Well, let's finish what we're doing."
Following the horse wrangler back into the barn, Brady angled a furtive look back at Jude. She scooted out of her truck and talked to the tow-truck driver. Why the hell hadn't she waited for him?
Jude parked her pickup and dealt with the tow truck driver, arranging for him to send a bill to the ranch. Inside the house, she bounded up the stairs, two steps at a time. She intended to shower Brady Fallon's body wash and scented cream off her body. She could no longer stand even the idea of smelling like him all day. While she showered for the second time and shampooed her hair, she replayed the phone message the woman had left on Brady's voice mail. Did she have a right to demand to know what that phone call meant?
After drying her hair and dressing in clean clothing, she went downstairs to the kitchen. Irene was making tamales for supper. Grandpa loved tamales. Windy said Grandpa wasn't eating dinner, so Jude told him not to bother making the noon meal for just her.
Instead, she made a peanut butter and banana sandwich. From Windy, she learned that she and Grandpa would be the only ones at the supper table. She would make a point to walk with him this evening if he was up to it. She should have already offered to help him as Daddy had suggested, but she hadn't found the right moment. Tonight, she would make the offer.
After finishing her sandwich, she peeked out the back door. She had seen Brady and Clary and Doc doing something in the barn. Probably collecting semen from a stud. As soon as they left the barn, when they wouldn't be able to see every move she made, she would hook a trailer to one of the pickups in the equipment storage lot and return to the 6-0 to get the bulls.
Meanwhile, she went to her new office and pulled up the stats on Spike and Charlie Brown. She had to decide: where to put them.
But she couldn't concentrate. The memory of last night filled every pocket in her brain. Surely, Brady wouldn’t use her and just toss her aside. On the other hand, she could well imagine that in a contest between herself and his son, she would lose, hands down.
She tried to refocus on the two bulls' stats, but all she could think about was Brady reconci
ling with his ex-wife. If he did that, he would bring her here to live. He might even move his family into one of the ranch’s newer houses. How would she endure that?
Don’t jump to conclusions, an inner voice told her. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
Her cell phone blared the Aggie War Hymn, yanking her from her obsessive thoughts. Fred Whitmore showed up on Caller ID. Her stomach lurched. She let the call go to voice mail.
A few minutes later, she keyed into her voice-mail box and listened to his message. "Miz Strayhorn? This is Fred Whitmore. Tried to call you a couple times yesterday. I’m available at your convenience when you want to call me back."
Oh, damn. Yesterday’s call while she had been driving in the storm must have been from him. She dared not think of what he might tell her. If she had talked to him yesterday, would she have done what she did last night? Last night, Brady hadn't mentioned it or even hinted that someone’s offer to buy the 6-0 was in the wind. But considering how closemouthed he was, would he mention it?
On the other hand, perhaps Fred had presented the offer, but Brady had turned it down flat. Or, since Brady didn't know the buyer's name, perhaps he simply hadn't wanted to discuss it with her. That was the m ost likely scenario.
For all her dithering, she came to only one conclusion: If the offer to purchase had been presented and Brady had known she was the anonymous buyer, last night would not have happened.
Her thoughts flew to Brady. If he had decided to sell the 6-0, wouldn’t he have told her last night? They had discussed many things. Why hadn’t he told her he had gotten an offer to buy the 6-0?
All at once, a bone-deep weariness spread to her limbs. The sandwich she had just eaten lay like lead in her stomach. Living the past twenty-four hours on an adrenaline roller coaster and having no sleep had caught up with her. She had no energy for returning Fred Whitmore's call. She had no patience for waiting for the men to leave the barn. And she doubted if she had the strength to hook a trailer to the back of a pickup and handle two headstrong animals by herself.
She was at a crossroads of some kind. Her body was too exhausted and her thoughts were too turbulent for her to decide what to do. Her bed upstairs beckoned. She ignored Fred Whitmore's message, walked out of the office and into the kitchen where Irene and Windy had already started on supper. “I’m going upstairs to rest,” she told them. “Please don’t let anyone disturb me.”
She trudged upstairs, unable to stop thinking about the mess she had made and the woman on Brady's answering machine.
Since his first sister was born thirty-two years ago, and except for the three years he had worked on offshore drilling rigs, Brady Fallon had spent most of his life around women. Yet he didn't claim to be an expert on female behavior. Not even close. But he had taken one look at the tilt of Jude's chin and the resolve in her stride as she stalked across the equipment storage lot and had recognized that something was wrong. He had knocked and asked for her at the house but was told by the housekeeper she was napping and wasn’t to be awakened.
So he had climbed in his truck and headed home, intending to go to bed himself. He had now gotten ten hours of sleep total in three nights. He was running on fumes.
In his kitchen, the red message light on the phone blinked like a beacon. He grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and leaned a hip against the counter edge as he listened.
"Whoa," he said a minute later.
Would Marvalee really let him have Andy? He had proposed it over the weekend after she had cried on his shoulder that she and her husband were having constant arguments over the kids. But he had never dreamed she would actually let their son go or that her father would stand for it. If she really meant what she said, Brady's entire life was headed in a different direction. Again.
He checked the time the message had been recorded. Seven a.m. Uh-oh. Now he figured he knew what had set Jude off. The message had the distinct tone of him and Marvalee kissing and making up. Was Jude pissed off? Probably. Would she listen when he explained what was going on? Maybe.
But his immediate concern was for his son. He rifled through a cabinet drawer, found the address book with Marvalee's unlisted number in it and punched it in. She answered on the first ring, as if she had been sitting by the phone.
"Got your message," he said. "What's up?"
"Brady, Steve and I have separated. He's moved out of the house. We have bigger issues than the kids."
For a moment, her words didn't register in Brady’s brain. After they did, his next thought was of Andy and Jarrett and what the future held for them. He carried the phone to the table and wilted onto a chair. "Yeah?"
"I don't know what's going to happen. Daddy's ready to kill Steve."
Been there, done that, Brady thought. "That’s too bad, Marvalee. Sorry it didn't work out for you."
"The kids aren't all that upset, though, thank God. Steve didn't have the same relationship with them that you did. He barely paid them any attention at all."
No news there. "So why are you calling me, Marvalee? You want me to take Andy off your hands? I already told you I would."
"Brady, have you ever thought about the mistake we made, getting the divorce?"
Brady's gut clenched. He had never been madly in love with Marvalee, wouldn't have married her if she hadn't been pregnant with his child. But he hadn’t hated her and he would have lived with her, wouldn't have cheated on her. He adored the son they had made. He even cared about Jarrett, the son she'd had before they met. She had never married Jarrett's father and the man had no interest in his kid.
"You mean the mistake you made, Marvalee."
"Oh, Brady, don't be callous."
Brady couldn't recall anybody other than Marvalee ever calling him callous.
"I've been thinking about the fun we used to have," she said. "Remember when I was pregnant with Andy and you were so worried about—"
"Marvalee, stop. Don't do this. Let's don't whip a dead horse."
She didn't say anything for so long, Brady began to wonder if they had lost the connection. "I guess I deserve that," she said at last. "Listen, Brady, if I drive out there this weekend and bring the boys, you'd have time to spend with me, wouldn't you? So we could talk?"
"What are we gonna talk about?"
"Things. Andy. Life in general."
An alarm went off in Brady's mind. He knew how manipulative his ex-wife could be. She had grown up the only child of a manipulative father and had learned all the tricks from him. "You already know how I feel about Andy. Jarrett, too. I don't know what else there is to discuss."
"Well, Andy really wants to see you," she said cheerfully, as if he hadn't flat-ass closed the door in her face. "Jarrett wants to see you, too. He went to bed crying last night. It broke my heart. I told them I would take them to see you. Do you have a place for us to stay?"
"I've got one bed and I'm working long hours every day. I don't know yet what the weekend holds. I guess you could stay in Abilene. That’s the closest place to Fort Worth that has a nice hotel. And it’s nearly the half-way point."
She assured him she would show up in Abilene tomorrow and he agreed to meet her, though the trip would be a long drive.
He sat sprawled in the chair, his eyes closed, his memories tangled with his thoughts. Marvalee had been so enamored with Steve Lowery, she had slept with him for at least six months before Brady had learned of it. Then she had married him within days after the divorce was final.
Brady was still in the process of moving out of the five-thousand-square-foot house he had built for himself and his family as Lowery moved in, almost on Brady's heels.
But if Lowery had moved out of the house, Brady doubted he had been nearly as affected by the move as Brady had been. He doubted Lowery had relocated to a single-wide trailer house in a remote location, worried about how he was going to eat.
Because Brady knew his ex-wife well, he knew what was coming when he met her in Abilene. Now that she was going to be single again
, she didn’t want the burden of two kids.
One of his thoughts was of Jude. He had dared to entertain some fantastical ideas about a future for himself and Jude together. Would she take him, his son and stepson as a package deal? Or would she turn tail and run the opposite direction? He couldn’t blame her if that was exactly what she did. It was a lot to ask of any woman.
Chapter 24
At four a.m., Brady awoke with Andy and Jarrett and Jude moving in and out of his thoughts as if his mind were a revolving door. Marvalee had called him back and told him she, Andy and Jarrett would be at the Embassy Suites in Abilene. The boys could swim and play games there while he and she "talked." He wished he had a suit of armor.
But before the meeting occurred, he had to see Jude. He didn't understand it, but he needed to keep seeing her. Last night had only confirmed what had been going on in his head and the evergrowing feelings in his heart since they had gone to Stephenville together.
At first, he had been intimidated by who she was as well as the fact that she had an overly protective father. It was all too reminiscent of Marvalee and her father. But Jude was nothing like Marvalee. Jude was unselfish and caring and didn't flaunt her family's wealth. In fact, the whole Strayhorn family was low-key. If someone met J.D. on the street, he would never guess the man owned more than half a county. Brady no longer cared that Jude was rich and he wasn't. They were alike in the ways that counted.
The importance of his job at the Circle C ranch had faded behind his desire to spend time with Jude. She was the only woman he had been drawn to in any way other than carnal since his divorce. Hell. Since long before his divorce, maybe since before his marriage to Marvalee. He wanted her yakkety mouth telling him stories of Texas history and reminding him to eat his vegetables, wanted her willingness to help him do whatever he thought needed doing. And he wanted her loyalty. He wanted her in his life. But he didn't want to sneak around and spend nights at his house as if they were doing something wrong.
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