Long Road Home

by JoAnn Ross

  “He’s so soft.” The girl ran a hand down the side of the foal’s face.

  The foal’s mother’s ears pricked up, and she moved a little closer, but having had both children on her back before, she didn’t appear to take them as an immediate threat. “I like his star.”

  Sophie traced the white marking between the eyes on the horse’s forehead. “Maybe you could call him Stardust,” she suggested.

  “That’s a stupid girl’s name,” Jack hissed in a loud whisper.

  “Why don’t we take some time to get to know him a little better before we decide,” Austin suggested diplomatically. “Meanwhile, you both can make up lists of possible names.”

  “Okay.” Jack’s attempt at whispering appeared as unnatural as it would have been for Desperado to do jetés across the pasture. “I wanna touch his star like Sophie did.”

  “Sure. Just remember to be gentle.”

  His sister hefted him up so he could run his fingers, one of which was sporting a Darth Vader Band-Aid, over the star. The mother horse sidestepped slightly, as if realizing the perils presented by an energetic boy.

  “Why don’t you two go into the house,” Austin suggested when the heels of his cowboy boots reached the ground again. “Winema’s back and I baked some chocolate chip cookies with your name on them.”

  “Yay!” Jack shouted, then immediately put his hands over his mouth. “Sorry,” he mumbled through his fingers.

  “That’s okay.” Austin smiled. “His mother knows you’d never hurt him.”

  She watched him race toward the kitchen door, with his sister following behind.

  “You’re a lucky woman,” she murmured.

  “You always see them on their best behavior,” Heather countered. “You’ve never had to deal with a Lego Transformer clogging up your toilet at midnight on Christmas Eve, or the mood swings of a twelve-year-old girl going on thirty-five.”

  “I remember that age,” Austin said. “Every single thing seemed life-and-death.”

  “And just think, we were ideal adolescents.” Heather’s dry tone made Austin laugh. “Do you remember my mad, crazy crush on Maddox Mann?”

  “Only too well.” The skateboard-riding, leather-jacket-wearing, garage-band-guitar-playing eighth grader had been the bad boy of Mountain View Middle School. “I was amazed when he grew up to become a bazillionaire tech mogul.”

  “He was named the most likely to either become a rock star or end up in prison.”

  “He sort of did both,” Austin pointed out. “Vicariously, anyway.”

  His first game had had players gaining levels from garage band to international rock stardom. His second, and the far more popular with players, if not their parents, had involved planning a prison break with rewards for number of days spent before capture. These days, according to the article the River’s Bend Record had reprinted from the Wall Street Journal, he’d gotten into venture capitalism, of all things.

  “He was so hot,” Heather said with a sigh.

  “Still is, from what I saw on the cover of People in the mercantile.” Unlike most nerd tycoons, he was still wearing the studded black leather, but she guessed the diamond flashing on his earlobe was real these days. “He also just went through a mega War of the Roses divorce with his supermodel wife.”

  “Which makes me glad that he never even knew I was alive,” Heather said.

  “Fortunately, Tom did.”

  “Yes.” Another sigh. This one followed by the slow, satisfied smile of a woman who knew she was well loved. “Sometimes it’s hard to believe that we’ve been together all these years.” High school sweethearts, they’d married their freshman year of college, when Heather had gotten pregnant with Sophie.

  “It isn’t hard for anyone who knows you guys. You’re pretty much the perfect couple. If you weren’t both so nice, the rest of us would have to hate you.”

  Heather laughed. “Maybe I should tell you about the towels Tom leaves on the floor, his inability to return home with everything on the grocery list, and waking up to middle-of-the-night emergency calls because he decided he wanted to be a big-animal vet instead of taking care of dogs and cats. Which don’t require house calls.”

  “If those are your only marital problems, I’m looking forward to dancing at your golden anniversary party.”

  “I’m fully expecting you and Sophie to plan it. And, giving advance warning, I expect it to be a blowout. I also wouldn’t be averse to a destination celebration. Say, on Maui.”

  Which had, Austin knew, been Heather’s dream wedding destination after Marcy Mann, Maddox’s sister, had returned with photos from a family Christmas vacation there when they’d all been in the fourth grade. “You’ve got it.”

  “On another topic, I figured out what to do about you and Sawyer.”

  “Other than me showing up at his door naked and carrying a plate of double fudge sea salt brownies?”

  “While they may admittedly be nearly as good as sex, I seriously doubt you’d need the brownies. But maybe there’s a step in between where you guys are now and that down-the-road scenario. How about the four of us have dinner together Friday night?”

  “That’s your anniversary.”

  “I know. Which is exactly the point. We can reminisce about the wedding and how you were my bridesmaid and Sawyer was Tom’s best man. And then, how, when Sophie was born, you both stood up in church as godparents, and all the other wonderful times we had together over the years. Before Sawyer screwed up by getting scared by that kiss.”

  “You don’t know he was scared.”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” Heather shook her head. “He emailed Tom that he’d had second thoughts about backing away from the situation.”

  Running away had been more like it. “Seriously?”

  “Would I lie to my best friend? He told Tom that the day after he got back to Afghanistan, but then there was a terrorist attack at his base, and unsurprisingly, he kind of freaked out and wrote you that never mind email right after attending a memorial for the fallen. You know, one of those where the rifle, boots, and helmet make a cross with the dog tags hanging on it.”

  “I know them.” Austin didn’t share that she’d had too many nightmares about Sawyer’s name being the one engraved on a set of metal dog tags.

  “I suspect it was the first time the idea of mortality really sunk in. He didn’t want to ask you to wait for him to return, then have him get killed on you.”

  It made sense. Not for every guy. But it perfectly fit the man who, so many years ago, had passed her that note in class, telling her how sorry he was about her mother leaving and he promised to always be her friend. And had gone on to watch out for her.

  “Why did you wait until now to tell me?” Austin wasn’t going to dwell on might-have-beens. But if only she’d known the reasoning behind his backing away from the door they’d opened that day at the hospital, things would have been so different.

  “Because you and your dad were in Vegas. I decided to wait until you got back home so we could talk about it in person. Make plans on how you could nudge things back on track and move forward. Unfortunately, my crystal ball failed to tell me that you were going to get shitfaced and marry some cowboy you’d known all of one night.”

  “Waking up with the only hangover of my life. And a husband whose name I could barely remember.” Austin had never been much of a drinker. An occasional beer or glass of wine, but that night, after reading Sawyer’s email, she’d gone downstairs to the hotel bar and discovered cosmos. Which had been pretty, sweet tasting, and, she’d discovered the hard way, lethal.

  “But that’s in the past.” She shook off regrets she couldn’t do anything about. “My point was that you guys have a romantic weekend planned. You’re going to Ashland to stay in that romantic B&B and see a play—”

  “And don’t forget have lots of hot, swing-from-the-chandelier sex that doesn’t involve worrying a kid’s going to walk in or knock on the bedroom door.”

/>   “That too. Although now that you’ve put that chandelier sex in my head, I really do have to hate you.”

  “You can have that,” Heather said, turning serious after a rippling laugh. “You and Sawyer. You’re both way overdue.”

  Austin couldn’t deny that. When they’d been checking out the inside of the cabin together, she’d felt as if she’d stumbled into a pinball machine and was being bombarded with pheromones.

  “Why am I feeling like high school?” she asked. “This reminds me uncomfortably of when Tom had Sawyer ask me if I thought you’d be willing to go steady with him.”

  “Right after I asked you to ask Sawyer to ask Tom if he was going to ask me to the Moonlight and Mistletoe Dance,” Heather agreed. “And yes, it does seem freakily familiar, though may I point out that if you two had figured out your feelings back then, we wouldn’t be having to go through this Kabuki theater routine now . . .

  “As for our anniversary, we can leave after dinner. It’s only an hour, maybe an hour and a half out of our weekend, and if it gets you two past this stupid emotional roadblock, it’ll be the best present yet. Of course, I expect to be in the wedding.”

  “Of course.” Austin waved away the idea of Heather not being her attendant. “If we do end up at the altar.”

  “You will.”

  “I can’t imagine Tom would be very happy with this idea.”

  “He’s all in. Rachel has already agreed to create a fancy dinner at the café for the four of us, after which Tom and I will drive to Ashland and be tangling the sheets by nine. Ten, at the latest. We’ll still have our fantasy anniversary, and then Monday, when we drive up to Portland with Mitzi to get our dresses for Rachel and Cooper’s upcoming wedding, you can tell us all about your hot weekend.”

  The thought was too, too tempting. But Austin still wasn’t sure. Although her marriage had never been a true one, at least as far as her lying, cheating, stealing ex had been concerned, once she’d awakened that morning and found the cheap gold ring on her left hand, she’d decided that she’d try her best to live up to her vows. Even as she’d had increasing indications that Jace wasn’t living up to that “forsaking all others” clause, she’d wanted to make things work.

  At least that’s what she’d tried telling herself.

  As it turned out, he hadn’t been the only liar in her marriage. Because from the flood of relief she’d experienced when she received that text saying her husband had found someone else, she realized that she’d been lying to herself.

  The national finals were the last rodeo she and her dad had worked before she’d finally gotten him to go to Ryan about his symptoms. While Ryan had suspected PPS, he’d sent them to Portland for extensive tests. From the moment of the diagnosis, everyone and everything else had fallen off her priority list. Which had been easy enough to do with Jace out of the country in Australia.

  While her marriage might have been a farce from the beginning, Austin’s divorce was still fresh. She’d already learned what could happen when you impulsively leaped into a relationship.

  As happy as she was about Sawyer’s return home, the timing was all wrong. It was too soon. She could be jumping from the proverbial frying pan straight into the fire.

  Yet, thinking of fires, her mind reeled backwards to that flaming kiss. Of her arms wrapped around Sawyer’s neck while she strained against him, wanting, needing more as their bodies melded hotly. Sawyer’s mouth had claimed hers while his strong hands had streaked down her back, pulling her tight against his aroused body.

  “Well?” Heather asked, breaking into the fevered memory.

  “Okay,” she said on a rush of breath before she could change her mind. “Let’s go for it.”

  6

  “I’M GOING INTO town to do some shopping,” Winema Clinton said. “Want to come along?”

  Buck Merrill dragged his gaze from a rerun of the 2011 NFR bull riding championships. “Why in the blue blazes would I want to go shopping for female doodads?”

  “I’m getting groceries. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re getting low.”

  Buck made a sound somewhere between a curse and a grunt. Call him sexist, but unless you were talking a chuck wagon out working a roundup, as far as he was concerned, cooking was woman’s work. A thought he’d started keeping to himself after Austin had surprised him by letting him know, in no uncertain terms, that for his information, most of the great chefs of the world were men.

  She’d stood there, her hands fisted on her hips, practically throwing the words at him like stones. She’d been mad a lot lately. Which wasn’t anything like her, but Buck had decided that it beat the way she’d been last year. When her mood had dived lower than a diamondback in a rut.

  At least mad showed a spark.

  “I wasn’t going to drag you through the mercantile.”

  Being that River’s Bend was a small town, he’d known Winema all of his life. They’d gone to school together. After her husband’s lumber mill had burned down, Warren had to switch gears and take up teaching machine shop at the high school. Needing the extra income, Winema had started coming in once a week to clean for Buck’s wife.

  It was a few months later when Britta had taken off to Sweden, leaving him with a seven-year-old daughter to tend to. Since what Buck knew about little girls could fit on the head of a pin and still have room for a thousand dancing angels, he’d been grateful when Winema had suggested that so long as her kids could stay with her when they weren’t in school, she’d be willing to come help out with Austin for a spell.

  More than two decades later, she was still here. Though Warren, unfortunately, was not, having keeled over from a heart attack in Young’s Hardware while picking up a gallon of apple-green paint for their kitchen six years ago.

  “I thought you might want to stop by Harry’s, get your hair trimmed and a shave, and maybe play a game or two of checkers while you’re there,” she said.

  “No point in spending good money when you can cut my hair.” Buck rubbed his chin, feeling the scruff of bristles he’d ignored for the past week. “And there’s nothing wrong with my hands. I can damn well still shave myself.”

  “Then why don’t you?” she challenged.

  Bossy woman. He was about to ask her if she’d henpecked Warren to death, but was able to stop the words, which had shot from his brain to the tip of his tongue, just in time.

  “No reason to shave to watch TV,” he mumbled.

  “My point exactly. You spend too much time in front of that boob tube,” she countered. “When was the last time you got out and mixed with folks?”

  They both knew that had been six weeks ago, when he’d stumbled over the curb outside Ryan Murphy’s office. He’d gone sprawling, ending up on the ground, splay-legged like a helpless newborn foal.

  “Going to the doctor doesn’t count,” she said when, instead of answering, he turned his attention to the TV, watching as Desperado sent Joaquin Sanchez—who’d been ranked second rider in the world on that day—flying off his back into the dirt.

  “And another one bites the dust,” he said with a spark of pride.

  The animal athlete he’d bred and raised from a calf was in the pantheon of rodeo bulls, right up there alongside Bushwacker, Asteroid, and Little Yellow Jacket. Go into any cowboy bar in the country, and before caps were popped off bottles of Bud Light, you could get an argument going about which of the four deserved the pinnacle. Not that Buck had any doubt. The others were good and had their special moves, but to his mind, Desperado was the best-all-around bull ever.

  Winema blew out a long, frustrated breath. “Speaking of bovine, you did know that Sawyer Murphy brought his stock over today?”

  “Yeah.” Buck still wasn’t sure how he felt about that development. Sure, they could use the money. If he’d been willing to sell Desperado back when offers rose as high as a cool million, they wouldn’t be in the straits they were. But though he didn’t want anyone to think him soft or sentimental, the bull was fam
ily. And you don’t sell off family.

  “Maybe you might want to go look at them.”

  “I can see the pasture from the window.” He couldn’t fault the Murphys for their stock. They’d always bred for ease of birthing and quality of beef, rather than falling prey to any popular beauty contest standards many other ranchers had gone for.

  “You could go welcome him home,” she pressed on. Stubborn. She just never let up once something got buzzing in her bonnet. “Given that the boy’s been fighting for his county and even the president called him a hero. You missed his party,” she reminded him.

  Since he and Dan Murphy had been best friends all their lives, Buck felt a bit guilty about that. “Couldn’t help it. In case you forgot, I tripped over that damn rug.”

  “I’ve watched you take a lot harder falls. Like back in high school when you were riding that bronc at the Basin Junior Rodeo and got throwed.”

  “You remember that?” It had been the summer after their junior year of high school.

  “Sure do. I was in the grandstands with my girlfriends. I remember thinkin’ that you might need some cheering up, and Anna, who’d been there to cheer on Dan in the bull riding, dared me to go talk to you. Of course the others took up the idea.”

  Her dark eyes took on a momentary mist of memory. “I’d just gotten up the nerve when you up and hightailed it out of there without looking back.” As that confession hit like a bullet to the brain, she shrugged. “Just as well. If you’d had an opportunity to fall for my considerable female charms, we might have ended up being the ones going steady, and Warren wouldn’t have asked me to the Fall Fantasy.”

  Buck remembered that day all too clearly. He’d landed on his back and had lain there, helpless as a pup, unable to move with the air knocked out of him. The rodeo clowns—bull fighters, they called them these days—had gotten the bucking horse out of the arena while he’d struggled to catch enough breath to stagger to his feet.

  Which was exactly how he felt right now. That revelation that might have changed both their lives had knocked the air right out of him.