A Light at Winter’s End

by Julia London

  God, the girl was gifted. Wyatt could see that she was, even with his pedestrian ears and his knowledge of music coming from the one radio station he could get on the ranch. But he knew good music when he heard it, and he had a gut feeling that Holly Fisher was going places.

  Quincy Crowe seemed to think so too. “You ever think of going to Nashville?” he asked Holly when they finished work for the day.

  Holly looked surprised by Quincy’s question. “Ah … I don’t know. Maybe someday.”

  Nashville. Wyatt found the notion a little disquieting.

  “Maybe now,” Quincy said. “You could make some big money there, Holly. I can hook you up with my manager. He knows all the top producers.”

  Holly stared at Quincy. “For real?” As if she thought he was playing a joke on her.

  “Yeah, for real,” he said. “Of course for real.”

  “Wow, that would be great. I—” She hesitated and looked over at Wyatt and Mason. “Maybe after we finish this contract we can talk.”

  “Sure,” Quincy said. “Just let me know.”

  Mason ran to the edge of the stage. “Lala,” he said. “Lala.” That was what he was calling Holly these days. Holly scooped him up and kissed his cheek. “Just make these songs a big hit, will you, Quincy?”

  “I’ll do my best,” he said congenially. “So … next Friday?”

  “Next Friday,” Holly promised. “I’ll have the chorus worked out and, hopefully, a draft of the third song.”

  On the way home, they stopped by Holly’s apartment so she could pick up a few things. Wyatt was surprised that she had such a small loft. It was nice enough, he supposed—tile floors, granite countertops, stainless appliances—but very small. Room for only one.

  “So,” he said, examining her beat-up piano. He touched a key. “Nashville, huh?”

  “Oh, that,” Holly said, waving her hand dismissively. “Quincy is a nice guy, but … you know.”

  “No,” Wyatt said. “I don’t know.”

  Holly smiled indulgently. “Nashville is a big deal, Wyatt. I mean, the best songwriters in the world struggle to make it there.”

  “And? What’s your point?”

  “And … and I’m not that.” She seemed ill at ease even mentioning her talent. “I’m not ready for Nashville.”

  Wyatt cocked his head to one side. He thought it odd that she seemed almost ashamed by the mere suggestion. She shifted her gaze away from his and picked up Mason.

  “Holly, you are amazingly talented.” Surely she knew that. Surely she didn’t need him to tell her.

  “Wyatt—”

  “I’m serious. I may be some cowboy from the sticks, but I know a good song when I hear it, and I know you could make it in Nashville. So does Quincy.”

  She looked surprised and hopeful at once, and Wyatt almost felt sorry for her. “Tell me how a woman as bright and talented as you doesn’t know how bright and talented she is?” he asked, touching her cheek.

  Holly glanced down, but Wyatt caught her chin and lifted her face to him. “How is it that you don’t know that?”

  “I … I don’t know.”

  “Didn’t anyone family tell you? Your teachers? Other musicians?”

  “Some,” she said, shrugging a little.

  “Your family?”

  Holly looked at Mason, who was trying to pull the scarf from her neck. “That was a tough sell,” she said. “My father loved my songs, but my mom … She thought I was wasting my time.”

  Wyatt studied her face. There was more there, he could sense it. “No disrespect to your mother, but she was wrong.” He bent down, kissed her lightly.

  Holly smiled sheepishly. “Thanks, Wyatt. I appreciate that. Okay,” she said, and shoved Mason into his arms. “I think I’ve got everything.”

  She did not speak of it again, but on Thanksgiving Day she finally told him a little about her family.

  They’d planned the holiday together, joking about how they had to be the only people in the world without family. That wasn’t entirely true: Wyatt’s parents were in Florida. They were in their eighties and seemed content to trailer around America and settle in Florida during the winter. His conversations with them usually were along the lines of weather and politics.

  Holly’s sister was in a rehab facility, of course, but she had an aunt and uncle who had invited her to accompany them to Houston to share Thanksgiving with their daughter. Holly had declined. Her friend Ossana had also called, trying to entice her to Austin.

  “She wants to do the Turkey Trot,” Holly had said, laughing. “I have run once that I can remember, and that was in middle school. Five times around the track for talking. And Ossana thinks I am going to get out there and run with her on Thanksgiving morning?” She’d laughed. So it was set: they would celebrate Thanksgiving together with their children.

  As luck would have it, Wyatt had Grace for Thanksgiving this year; Macy would have Grace at Christmas. “So,” Macy had said when he’d picked Grace up, “what are your plans?” She had an overeager look on her face.

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Wyatt,” Macy had said. “Are you going to have dinner with your girlfriend?”

  He hadn’t liked the way Macy had said it, as if she were very excited for him to have a girlfriend—as if he were her kid brother instead of the husband she’d once promised to cherish forever, then left. “What’s it to you?” he’d asked sharply.

  Surprised, Macy had blinked her big brown eyes at him. “Wow. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  “What do you want from me, Macy? You act as if we’re old friends.”

  “I just want you to be happy. Is that so bad? And when I hear you’re dating someone, I hope that you are happy. That’s all.”

  “I think you hope that you don’t have to feel guilty anymore,” he’d said. He hadn’t even realized he’d been harboring that thought.

  Macy had gasped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You know exactly what it means. You feel guilty, and you fall all over yourself trying to be nice to me.”

  “That’s not true. I happen to care about you, and last I checked, that is not a crime,” she’d said, then kissed her daughter good-bye and flounced to her car.

  Wyatt hadn’t exactly meant it that way, but he knew he was right. Since he had come back from Arizona, Macy had been tiptoeing around him like a fragile piece of glass. He didn’t owe it to her to live a happy life. In fact, he’d worked pretty hard to make sure he didn’t have one.

  But he had one today. He was looking forward to the day with Holly and the kids. He’d bought the ingredients for the meal, and Holly was going to cook. “If I can make a turkey, I can make anything, right?” she’d reasoned.

  He didn’t know about that, but he was glad she was willing to try.

  She’d found some holiday decorations in a closet. A large paper turkey that was missing one wing graced the center of the table. Wyatt had made little corncob turkeys for the babies to play with. They were a big hit, judging by the squeals of delight from the two rowdies as they beat them on the coffee table.

  “Guess who called me yesterday,” Holly said.

  Wyatt managed to stop Grace from beaning Mason on the head with her turkey as Mason pulled the feathers from his. “Who?”

  “Mason’s dad, Loren. He said he wanted to see Mason today.”

  Wyatt gaped at her. That bastard of a father hadn’t even bothered to check on Mason and now he wanted to see him? “What did you say?”

  “I told him he could kiss my ass,” she said, and laughed at Wyatt’s expression. “Okay, not very ladylike, but really, he thinks Thanksgiving rolls around and suddenly he wants to be surrounded by family?”

  “And?

  “He said he’d been paying my rent and gave me money for Mason, and he had a right to see him. I told him he was a sorry excuse for a father, and if he wanted to see Mason, he could get a lawyer, and he’d have to explain how he’d abandoned his son with me, and th
at I would have a lawyer who would not allow him to come waltzing back into Mason’s life just because it is Thanksgiving.” She paused in lighting candles at the table and looked at Wyatt. “I don’t really have a lawyer. But Loren is a lawyer, and of course he believed it.”

  Wyatt did not smile. He worried that Loren would try to take Mason from Holly. She was completely and utterly attached to the boy. “What did he say to that?”

  “He had a few choice things to say, starting with ‘Wow, Holly, when did you get a backbone?’” She mimicked the way Loren spoke. “‘What happened, did you suddenly grow up?’”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Wyatt was agitated and would have liked nothing better than to personally kick Loren Drake’s ass.

  “What—that?” Holly held up her hand as if she were taking an oath. “Okay, true confession … I have not been known in this family as a high flyer.” Wyatt must have looked puzzled because she said, “You know … an overachiever. A go-getter.” She gave that a fist pump.

  He had quite the opposite impression of Holly. It seemed she was constantly engaged with one thing or another, such as probating her mother’s will, and looking for group play that she could enroll Mason in once a week. Her music for heaven’s sake. “I don’t know why you would say that.”

  “Because it is true,” Holly said cheerfully. “Hannah was always the star, and I was always the slacker.” A bell in the kitchen sounded and Holly jumped. “My first turkey!” she cried.

  Wyatt made sure the kids were occupied and followed her into the kitchen.

  Holly had the turkey on the stove and was poking it with a fork. “How can you tell if these things are done?”

  Wyatt pointed to the thermometer button. It had popped up. “Why would you call yourself a slacker?” he asked again.

  “Because I am. When we were growing up, Hannah was the one with the best grades. She was valedictorian, did I tell you that? And I … I wasn’t so great in school. I am dyslexic, and on top of that, I have the attention span of a gnat. When I think of high school, I think of long-haired boys and guitars.” She looked curiously at him. “What do you think of?”

  “But how does that make you a slacker?” he asked, ignoring her question for the time being.

  “I didn’t mean literally. It’s just that everything I did was compared to Hannah, and I never measured up, and somewhere along the way I started not to care. I dropped out of high school, I went back, then I tried college and I dropped out of that …” Her voice trailed off as she examined her turkey. “But look at me now. I made a turkey. A turkey! My mother is probably rolling over in her grave right now.”

  “Holly … I don’t want to tell you how to manage things, but … don’t you need a strategy for handling things when Loren or your sister want to see Mason?”

  She gave him a halfhearted shrug as she basted the turkey.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” she said. “But I am not going to pretend that everything is okay and they can come walking into his life when they feel like it.” She carefully maneuvered the turkey onto a platter.

  “But they will come back into his life,” he said quietly.

  “Wyatt …” She smiled. “It’s Thanksgiving. Is it okay if we talk about it later?” He looked at the turkey, and she gave him a nudge. “Dad always carved.”

  “So did mine,” he said, and picked up the turkey and took it to the table.

  While Wyatt carved, Holly brought out the rest of the food—green bean casserole, English pea salad, sweet potatoes, and apple pie. She rounded the kids up and put them in the high chairs she’d found at Goodwill, laid out their dinner on their trays, and poured wine for her and Wyatt.

  He let the phone call with Loren slide for the time being, and they spent the meal chatting about their favorite dishes. When Mason and Grace had stopped eating and turned to smashing peas on their high-chair trays and on themselves, Wyatt and Holly put them down to play. Together they cleared the table, put the food away, and washed the dishes. Holly talked about the things she’d noticed that needed to be done to the place. “Mason put his socks down the toilet in my mother’s bathroom and then broke the handle trying to flush them,” she said. “The plumbing must be one hundred years old. And the house needs paint, and new carpet, and dozens of little repairs, like missing door hardware and peeling wallpaper,” she said. “I’ll have to do all that before I sell it, won’t I?”

  Wyatt reached around her to put a dish away, his body grazing her back. “Not if you sell it to me.”

  “What?” She laughed. Wyatt put his hands on the sink on either side of her, hemming her in. Holly twisted around to face him. “Are you serious? You want this old place?”

  “I want the land,” he said, his gaze falling to her mouth.

  “Why?”

  “Because I like a big spread. I can put more cattle out here. And eventually, when Austin moves all the way out, I can develop it.”

  He leaned down to kiss her, but Holly stopped him by pressing her hand to his chest. “So that’s why you came loping over here on Troy the first time I met you,” she said. “And all this time I thought it was me and my cookies.”

  “Those cookies were definitely a lure,” he said, and nipped at her lips. “But I came loping over here because there was a god-awful lot of smoke pouring out of your chimney. I stayed because …” He kissed her again, his arm going around behind her back, pulling her into his chest.

  “Why?” she asked against his mouth.

  “Because you were so damn cute.”

  Holly bit his lip. Wyatt jerked his head back and put his hand to his bottom lip. “Ouch! That hurt!”

  “You’re a liar,” Holly said, and slid her arms around his neck, pulling his head down to hers. “You didn’t think I was cute, you thought I was going to be a needy neighbor. It was written all over your face.” She kissed him again. A much gentler, arousing kiss.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, laughing, when she lifted her head. “I confess, you looked pretty needy.”

  “Why’d you come back the second time?” she asked.

  “Because of you.”

  This time Holly grabbed his ear and squeezed. “Nope. That’s not true, either. You came back because your stupid cows were dropping bombs all over my yard. And you wanted to buy this place.”

  He grinned at her.

  “So if you want to buy this land, cowboy, tell me when you really came back because I was so damn cute.”

  Wyatt cupped her face with both hands. “The third time,” he admitted. “And I kicked myself for taking so long.” He kissed her hard then, before she could ask more questions.

  He was happy, Wyatt thought as their kiss turned more ardent. He was as happy as he thought he could ever be, out here in the middle of the Hill Country in a run-down house.

  A little hand grabbed his jeans; he and Holly looked down at the upturned faces of Grace and Mason. “Who wants to go for a ride on Troy?” he asked.

  “Toy, Toy!” Grace cried.

  “Then saddle up, little dogies,” he said, and reached for both of them at once.

  Yep, he’d found a little tiny patch of heaven, where he existed with Holly and two babies, and he could honestly say he was the happiest he’d been in a long, long time.

  Blissful. Extremely happy; full of joy. As in, the blissful couple watched their two babies brain each other with corncob turkeys.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Wyatt didn’t seem quite as excited about the toddler group Holly found at the newly opened Baby Bowl on the square in Cedar Springs. The indoor gym had a series of classes with programmed activities designed to develop the thinking and physical skills of one- to three-year-olds. The classes were held Thursdays at four. On the other side of the two-foot gate and fence that bounded the indoor gym was a seating area for parents. They could sit on stuffed leather lounge chairs and gaze out the big, plate glass windows at the traffic in the square or tr
ain their eyes on a wall-mounted flat-screen television.

  Because there was free Wi-Fi, Holly convinced Wyatt he could work there.

  “I won’t get any work done,” he argued. “People will stroll by and want to chat. I’ve lived here a long time and I know a lot of gum-bumping goes on in this town.”

  Holly narrowed her gaze. “Wyatt Clark, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you didn’t want to be seen with me.”

  He clenched his jaw and looked down at the palm of his hand a long moment. “You might be right.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Not because of you, baby,” he said, gathering her in his arms. “Never you. I just like to keep my life private.”

  “There is private, and then there is caveman,” she said crossly.

  Holly won the argument. Wyatt announced to her a day or so later that he’d asked Macy if he could enroll Grace, and Macy had agreed.

  They’d been here a few times now, and Holly had come to love Thursday afternoons. Holly would bring coffees from the Saddle-brew—black for Wyatt, a latte for her—and a notebook so she could work on the third and final song for Quincy. Wyatt brought his cell phone. He called clients and contractors, speaking to them in that low, even voice of his. Even when he was discussing problems, Holly had a hard time believing they were very big issues, because he always sounded so calm.

  Holly loved that they were so comfortable together. She’d never really had a relationship like this; she’d never sat in leather chairs and just existed with another person. Wyatt was a great guy, there was no doubt about it. Holly didn’t know Finn Lockhart, but she couldn’t imagine that he was the bigger, better deal compared to Wyatt Clark, no way. But Macy’s loss was her gain.

  Wyatt was a thoughtful man. He did little things for her, such as repairing the door on the shed, which she’d once complained was driving her nuts. He’d shown up one afternoon while she was in town and fixed it. Early one morning she was awakened by the sound of metal on metal. When she looked out the window, she saw Jesse, Wyatt, and the Russell boys working on the windmill.