Sage Creek

by Jill Gregory

  Travis had been stunned when his ex-wife called him, her voice high-pitched and shaking with tension as she yelled that she and her new husband were at the end of their ropes and couldn’t handle Grady anymore, that they needed a break. She’d said Grady had failed some classes at school and would probably need to repeat fifth grade. He hadn’t bothered doing homework, had skipped classes, mouthed off to teachers. Worse, he’d been getting into fights and had even been suspended for the last two weeks of school before summer vacation started.

  “Drew’s really angry—and I just can’t take it anymore. The two of them . . . they just don’t . . . Travis, you’re his father legally, and I need you to take him for the summer! I really can’t deal with any of this right now. Drew and I—we’re having a big party here in a week—one hundred guests and I’m at my wit’s end. There’s so much to do, and Grady, he’s so difficult . . . I just can’t handle—”

  “I’ll come get him,” Travis had said instantly. Not for Val’s sake, that was for damn sure, but for Grady’s. He’d first met Val’s son when he picked her up for their second date six years ago, when Grady was four years old. Val’s first husband, Kevin, had died of cancer two years before that, when the boy was only a toddler.

  The Grady he’d met that night had been a tiny fastmotion machine, a tousle-haired, pug-nosed imp, precocious, funny as hell, and possessing a sweet smile that had burrowed its way into Travis’s heart. A year after he and Val tied the knot, Travis had legally adopted his stepson and had loved being a father to him, even after things went south between him and Val.

  But lately he hadn’t been able to spend as much time with his son. His latest investigation with the FBI, the death of his former partner, and Val remarrying some corporate bigwig and moving with him and Grady to LA last year had made visits a lot more difficult to come by.

  “I was just leaving for the ranch, Val, but I’ll come to LA first and pick Grady up,” Travis had told her.

  “The ranch? You’re going to the ranch?”

  He hadn’t bothered explaining that he’d taken an extended leave of absence from the FBI two weeks ago, found someone to rent his house outside of Phoenix, and was headed home to Lonesome Way to take some time, figure things out, and make a new start.

  “Yep,” was all Travis had told his ex-wife. “I’ll see to it Grady gets back on track over the summer. In Montana.”

  After that, Val hadn’t asked any questions. She’d been too relieved that Travis was taking the boy off her hands for the entire summer. Before he could say another word, she told him that he didn’t need to drive all the way out to LA—she would put Grady on a plane and get an airline escort for him. It was clear as daylight to Travis that all she really wanted was to ship the kid the hell out as fast as she could.

  Travis’s heart had plummeted when he’d picked Grady up at the airport and had seen how much his son had changed in just the past three months. For one thing, he’d shot up a couple of inches—the very beginnings of a growth spurt. But there was also no trace of the happy kid who’d read all of the Harry Potter books twice and seen all of the movies, and who had joyously biked with Travis up and down Venice Beach last summer.

  The boy who stepped off that plane and was now slouched in the passenger seat of the Explorer was withdrawn, wary, on the verge of being surly.

  And Travis knew he should have been there for him—FBI or no FBI.

  “Things will start looking up tomorrow,” he said conversationally as they swung down the main street of his hometown of Lonesome Way. The sidewalks were deserted at this time of night, though he noted with not the slightest bit of surprise that there were lights blazing and cars crammed in the parking lot of the Double Cross Bar and Grill, the town’s most popular watering hole.

  When Grady didn’t answer, Travis continued easily as he took the turn that would lead to Squirrel Road. “You’ll have a good bed tonight, not like that lumpy one at the motel last night. You had a great time at the ranch when you were there before, remember? And Uncle Rafe’s new wife, Sophie—she owns that little bakery we just passed in town. A Bun in the Oven. She makes cinnamon buns that you won’t believe. Melt-in-your-mouth good. Bet she’ll have some on hand tomorrow for breakfast.”

  “Yeah?”

  For the first time, Travis heard a note of interest in the boy’s tone.

  Food. Food was the way to a growing boy’s heart. He’d have to remember that. Grady had wolfed down two burgers and a greasy bag of fries at the drive-through in Crystal Springs this afternoon.

  “Sophie—she’s your aunt now—usually has a chocolate cake or an apple pie around the house too. At least that’s what my niece Ivy tells me. You won’t go hungry at Sage Ranch, that’s for sure.”

  “I don’t really remember it.” Grady stared out into the darkness, a frown puckering his mouth. “I remember horses, that’s about it. You put me up on a horse called Gum . . . Gumball or something, and I almost slipped off. But you caught me.”

  “Gumption,” Travis corrected with a grin. “You were only seven. You got the hang of it before too long. You actually did great for a tenderfoot. And this summer, you’ll get to do some real riding. And some real work.”

  Grady looked interested and just a tad scared.

  “What kind of work?” he bit out.

  “Taking care of the horses, mucking out stalls, pitching hay. I haven’t checked out my cabin in a while and might need some help making it habitable again. Stuff like that.”

  “And what if I don’t want to muck out stalls and clean up crap?”

  Travis shot him a measuring glance, and Grady glanced away, his hands clenched in his lap.

  “It’s going to be a good summer, Grady,” Travis told his son quietly.

  “Yeah, right. Aren’t you going to yell at me—for flunking English and earth science and getting suspended? Everyone else does. That’s all they do.”

  “We’ll talk about all of that. But not tonight.” Travis kept his tone steady. “You’re beat and so am I. It can wait. Unless there’s something you want to say.”

  Grady shook his head.

  “You sure? I’m listening.”

  “How much longer till we’re there? I just want outta this car.” Grady’s tone was defiant again now. But Travis heard the misery and uncertainty beneath the words as the boy hunched his shoulders and turned away, staring out the window into the black moonless night.

  Travis said nothing, merely drove another mile and then turned into the long, wide drive leading to the ranch. When Grady made out the ranch house just ahead, he stiffened and peered through the darkness at the huge rambling structure looming up in the darkness.

  The porch light was on. And light gleamed in the kitchen window. For a moment Travis could almost imagine it was a dozen years earlier, that his parents were still alive, sipping coffee in the kitchen, waiting up for him and his brothers, Rafe and Jake, to get home from a date or a dance or a movie.

  He shook himself back to the present and wondered how much of the ranch his son remembered. Being back in Lonesome Way was stirring his own memories bigtime.

  All those squabbles and tussles and laughs with Rafe and Jake. Hours spent swimming in the creek with his sister, Lissie, or racing on horseback across the pasture. Midnight poker games with his high-school friends in Mick Peterson’s barn. The exhilaration that had rushed through him every time he threw a winning touchdown pass or charged down the field at a football game.

  And Mia. Mia Quinn.

  Mia had been best friends with his younger sister, Lissie, since as far back as he could recall. She and Lissie—along with Sophie McPhee, who’d married his brother Rafe last year—had been inseparable growing up, and he’d regularly encountered Mia darting around every corner of his house when he was a kid. She’d been a scrappy little tomboy in those days, two years younger than Travis—just his sister’s tiny, fast-talking friend. And Travis had never looked at her twice.

  Until she hit high school. Then he
’d looked all right. Because sometime over the summer between eighth grade and her freshman year, the messy-haired tomboy had transformed into a petite blond bombshell, with pinstraight blond hair that flowed to her slim little waist, a gorgeous face with a mouth so lush he could almost taste its pillowy sweetness before his lips ever actually touched hers, and a body as curvy and distracting as any Victoria’s Secret model.

  Travis had fallen for her. Fallen hard.

  They’d started dating in November of her freshman year, and he’d known he loved her by Christmas. They’d been a couple all through the rest of Travis’s time in high school. And not just any couple. Travis and Mia had been “the” couple—the one everyone was sure would get married and have a ton of kids.

  Pulling up in the dark at the house with his son beside him, Travis flashed back for a dizzying moment on all the dates and dances and picnics he and Mia had shared—afternoons sipping Cokes and eating chocolate cream pie at Roy’s Diner, weekends kissing and laughing on her front porch swing on Larkspur Lane. Or all those evenings in the hay-scented barn at Sage Ranch, making out in the hayloft when no one was around. Stroking her hair, touching her beautiful, trusting face, breathing in the summer-flower scent of her, whispering how much he loved her on those hikes up to Larkspur Point.

  Mia was the girl he’d planned to marry.

  The girl he’d promised undying love.

  And the girl he’d walked away from the day after his prom without a single backward glance.

  When he’d come home a year and a half ago for Rafe and Sophie’s wedding, Mia had been there, looking more gorgeous and sexy than ever in a delicious red dress, but she hadn’t even glanced at him.

  It was as if for her, he might never have existed.

  And every time he’d tried to seek her out that day at the wedding, she’d managed to elude him. She was always busy talking to someone else—her smile breezy, happy. Her attention riveted on Sophie, or on his sister, Lissie, who’d been nine months pregnant and, in fact, had delivered her little girl, Molly, the very next day.

  It had bothered him that he and Mia never spoke that day, but he hadn’t forced the matter. They hadn’t exactly been on good terms for years now, so he knew he had no right to push himself on her, even to say hello. He’d thought he’d forget all about her after he returned to Phoenix following the wedding, but that hadn’t happened.

  Could be a part of him had never forgotten.

  “C’mon, buddy,” he said as the front door opened and light spilled from the living room of the ranch house, as warm and welcoming as a fire in the hearth. Rafe, at six foot three, one inch taller than Travis but not as powerfully built, ambled out onto the lit-up porch, a welcoming grin on his face.

  “There’s your uncle.” Travis put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “We’re home.”

  “It’s your home, not mine.” The sadly muttered words from the boy who unsnapped his seat belt and shoved open the Explorer’s door felt like a baseball bat swung hard against his chest.

  He reminded himself that bringing Grady around would take some time. Loneliness, anger, sadness . . . whatever was eating the boy from the inside out couldn’t be undone in an instant.

  Neither could betrayal. The thought popped into his head. He’d betrayed Mia all those years ago when they were teenagers—when he was a reckless, stupid kid in a panic over the thought of a lifetime commitment.

  That kind of betrayal couldn’t be undone quickly. Who was he kidding? It probably couldn’t be undone at all.

  Besides, the girl he’d hurt was all grown up now—and not his responsibility. Hell, when he’d come back from college a year later and gone to see her, hoping she might give him another chance, she’d frozen him out. Looked at him like he was a chunk of crud on the bottom of her shoe. She was dating Curt Hathaway by then, so she hadn’t exactly been languishing after he left her. She’d gotten married after college, and while from what he’d heard it hadn’t ended well, she’d clearly moved on.

  You can never go back. Only forward. The words that his former partner at the Bureau, Joe Grisham, had told him often enough echoed through his ears. After the turmoil of the last few months, including Joe’s sudden, devastating death, Travis sensed Joe was right.

  He had his son to focus on now. And his future. There was an idea for a new business circling through his head. It was time to get started on building a new life for himself and Grady.

  There’s no going back.

  He swung his long legs out of the car, grabbed Grady’s duffel, and followed his son up the steps of Sage Ranch.