Long Road Home

by JoAnn Ross

  “Busted.” Austin had realized she and Sawyer wouldn’t be able to keep their relationship a secret for long, but this had to be an all-time record. Even for River’s Bend.

  “Don’t worry.” Layla shoved a wild mass of auburn hair back from her face. Ryan’s nurse practitioner partner was, hands down, the most beautiful woman in River’s Bend. Probably in Oregon. She was also one of the nicest. “I didn’t tell anyone about that hospital kiss. We nurses know how to keep secrets. All I’ll say is that I’m really happy you guys finally got together, and I fully intend to grill you for details later because the only sex I’m getting these days is through those books I keep buying from Jenna and living vicariously through my friends. Who are mostly engaged or married. Like Rachel and—” She rubbed her temples. “Damn.”

  “I know,” Austin said. “I spent all day yesterday taking care of funeral stuff and it still hasn’t entirely sunk in. The first thing I wanted to do this morning was text Heather and tell her that we’d finally done it.”

  Layla lifted a tawny, perfectly arched brow. “And? Was the long wait worth it?”

  “Way worth it.”

  “Well, then, there you go. I brought your dad something.” A wheelchair had been hitched to the back of the truck bed.

  “Ryan and I have tried that idea. And he refuses.”

  “That’s because you weren’t me. I’m a nurse. We have superpowers that get people to do whatever we want.”

  Austin suspected a male would have to have flat lined to be immune to this woman. But Buck Merrill was old-school western cowboy to the bone. As he’d proven, to her distress, he’d rather stay in his self-imposed house arrest than let anyone see him as less than the strong man he’d been only a short time ago.

  “You have no idea how much I’m hoping you’re right,” she said. “Let me help.”

  “No, that’s the cool thing,” Layla said. “Not only is it foldable, it’s really light. But extremely durable. And it can take a man even heavier than Buck, which not all lightweight ones do.” She set it up with a few quick movements and wheeled it up to the front door.

  Buck was in the kitchen, leaning on a cane, pouring coffee into the travel mug Austin had bought him after balance problems had caused him to drop regular mugs. This one was specially made not to spill even if it was turned upside down.

  “Hey, handsome,” Layla greeted him with her Julia Roberts wide smile. “I brought you a present.”

  He glowered down at the wheelchair. “Not interested.”

  “You haven’t even let me show off the features,” she said. “Look, a rechargeable battery that’ll go fifteen miles. Double that if you want to get a second battery. Which I got you because they can be charged off board.”

  “I’m fine right here. I don’t need to go traipsing all over the countryside.”

  “Yeah. Why go anywhere when you can sit in that ratty old La-Z-Boy all day and watch bull riding and fishing?” Layla agreed. “Sounds like a damn near perfect life to me.”

  He thrust out his gray-stubbled chin. “I get out. I was just out at the corral with Dan helping Jack Campbell learn how to rope that dummy steer the Murphy boy made back in high school.”

  “Well, good for you.” Another smile, even brighter and more enthusiastic than the first. Most men, Austin thought, would have little hearts circling around their heads by now. But her father wasn’t most men. “I had the joystick put on the left, because you’re left-handed. But it’ll go both ways. And look, the armrests can be raised so you can just slide onto it by the side. Easy peasy.” She demonstrated. “And did I mention the back rest reclines in five positions? Just in case you decide you’d like to take a little nap while you’re out sitting under a tree checking out your stock.”

  “I don’t take naps.” It was a bald-faced lie, and everyone in the room, including Winema, who’d shown up during the demonstration, knew it. “And what part of I do not need a damn cripple’s wheelchair do you not understand?”

  “Okay.” Layla stood up, squared her shoulders, and pushed her hair back with both hands, which anyone who knew her recognized as a sign that she was majorly ticked off and about to get serious. “Here’s the deal, Buck. First of all, it’s not a ‘damn cripple’s wheelchair.’ It’s a personal mobility aid.

  “Second, Tuesday, we’re all going to be doing the saddest thing anyone can do. We’re going to be burying friends. A good man and woman who were part of this community and had never done anything wrong to have a goddamn boulder come crashing down on their minivan. In Our Lady of the Lake Church will be two young children you know well. And undoubtedly like.”

  “Of course I do.” His tone was strong, but Austin could sense that he was getting the idea that Layla, who was standing there, hands on her hips, looking like Wonder Woman, might just be a force to be reckoned with.

  “Of course you do.” She smiled as if awarding him a gold star for the right answer. “Which is why I know you wouldn’t want to do anything to make their already terrible, horrible day any worse.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You wouldn’t mean to.” Austin had always thought Layla Longstreet was beautiful enough to have become a movie star if she’d decided to take off to California instead of remaining in River’s Bend, where she’d grown up best friends with Ellen Buchanan, Cooper’s first wife. Now she realized that if Layla had become an actress, she would’ve probably won every award out there because the way she could switch moods was amazing.

  She’d started out unrelentingly cheerful, then, without batting one of those long and impossibly thick lashes, turned into a force of nature. Then, she’d pulled out a more neutral tone, describing the upcoming day none of them wanted to have happen. Now, she was Buck’s warm and empathetic best friend. Appealing to his best angels, assuring him that she knew he’d never do anything to hurt two innocent orphans.

  “But here’s the deal, Buck.” She folded her arms. “You crashing onto the caskets while trying to make your way down the aisle, or worse yet, falling into a grave at the cemetery, is going to make that a day everyone, including those two darling children, remembers. And not in a good way.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.” He’d folded his arms in a gesture Austin knew well. This was usually his final word stance.

  Not this time.

  “Like you wouldn’t fall outside Ryan’s and my office?”

  Thunderclouds moved across his face, which had reddened to the hue of a roasted beet. “That was a damn accident. There was a crack in the curb.”

  “Of course it was an accident,” she said, swinging back to the good nurse/best friend. She did not, Austin noted, state that everyone knew that there wasn’t a crack in the curb. “But, as Heather’s and Tom’s deaths proves so tragically, accidents do happen.

  “You’ve had a raw deal. It’s not fair, and I’m sorry as hell about it. But you’re no longer stable on those canes.” She told him what Austin suspected he knew himself but hadn’t yet accepted. “This chair will not only be more comfortable for you, it’ll prevent you from creating a spectacle.”

  Austin could see that sinking in.

  “There’s another thing,” Layla said, jumping in with yet another argument while the wheels in the stubborn rancher’s head were turning. “It’ll get you out and about meeting with folks again instead of acting like a hermit.”

  “I’ll look like a damn cripple,” he muttered.

  “Buck Merrill.” Layla’s hands were back on her hips. “I am not going to let you wallow in some self-indulgent pity party. You know Dalton Osborne, don’t you?”

  “Sure. He worked some roundups for me during high school. Before he went off to West Point. He was a good kid. Even lasted seven seconds on Desperado, which is more than most guys ever did.”

  “Well, he’s not a kid anymore. He’s a grown man who returned from Iraq with two legs and half an arm blown off from an IED.”

  “I know that.” The chin jutted out again. “I used to see him d
own at the VFW all the time.”

  “He’s still there. You’re the one who quit dropping in. And for your information, Dalton has a chair just like this one. Do you think when he drops in for a beer the guys think of him as a cripple? For that matter, is that how you’d define him?”

  “Hell, no. He’s a hometown hero.”

  “Who went back to Modoc Community College for a degree in computer programing, got married, has a couple of kids, one whom I just happen to have delivered myself at their home six months ago. Thanks to the G.I. bill paying for his education, he’s making a nice living creating websites for businesses all around Oregon. He’s even branched out into Northern California and Idaho. And if you ask him, he’d be the first to tell you that he doesn’t think of himself as a hero. Just a regular guy.

  “But although life gave him a hell of a blow, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, same as he did when he’d fall off those bulls he was crazy enough to ride when he was young and foolish, and has moved on with his life.”

  “He’s young. He’s got a lot more life to get on with.”

  “Like you’re so old.” Austin checked her watch and decided she had five more minutes, tops, before she had to leave for Medford. “You’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you, Dad. Years filled with things like walking me down the aisle—”

  “Wheeling you down the damn aisle, you mean.”

  “Better than not being there at all because you can’t safely make it on your own two legs,” she shot back. “And then hopefully there will be grandchildren. Do you want to be stuck in here while they’re out learning to ride and rope? When you could be teaching them the way you did me?”

  “That Murphy boy going to be their daddy?”

  “I don’t know,” Austin said. Then decided that not being honest with her feelings had gotten her into fixes in the past, so went for the truth. “I hope so,” she said. “I want that, and I think he does, too. But right now we have to concentrate on being there for Jack and Sophie. And since I don’t have a clue how to be a parent, I really, really need you to help me.”

  She didn’t know if it was Layla’s very sound arguments and persuasion, the idea of future Merrills growing up on this ranch, or the tears she felt over-brimming her eyes, but Buck suddenly folded like a cheap tent.

  “I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try it out,” he mumbled.

  Layla had already locked the wheels, but as soon as he’d sat down, she unlocked them, put his hand on the joystick, and said, “Go for it.”

  Austin and Layla exchanged a look as he took a spin around the room. “It’s not bad,” he said when he came to a stop again.

  “It’s the Cadillac of personal mobility cruisers,” Layla said.

  “Which brings up another thing.” He might be down, but he wasn’t out. “What does it cost and how am I going to pay for it? In case you haven’t heard, we had to let the stock business go.”

  “Don’t you worry that handsome head about a thing. It’s all taken care of.”

  “I’m not taking charity.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to. Haven’t you seen all those commercials on cable TV for various stuff Medicare pays for? It’s like that.”

  “I think it’s wonderful,” Winema entered the conversation. “And now, when you go out, you’ll be able to be sociable again because people will be able to talk to you.”

  “They haven’t talked to me because they feel sorry for me and don’t know what to say.”

  “Wrong. They haven’t talked with you because you’re so busy looking down at the ground, trying not to trip, they don’t want to come up and distract you.” She waved a hand toward the chair. “Now no one will have to worry about that. And with that basket on the back, you can even come grocery shopping with me.”

  “Or I could just be drug behind a wild horse.”

  “Think of it as hunting. You go out into the wilds of the mercantile, bag your meal, and bring it back here, where, may I point out, you don’t even have to cook it.”

  “Well, this has been exciting,” Austin said as the two began arguing about male and female roles. “I’ve got to run upstairs for a sec before I head off to the airport. Layla, can you come up for a minute? I have something to ask you. About the kids.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay,” Austin said, as soon as she was in her room, grabbing a shirt off a hanger. “No way is that covered by Medicare.”

  “I didn’t say it was. I said it was ‘like that.’ Don’t worry, Ryan and I had a good winter, what with the sudden population explosion. We decided we’d rather spend a little bit of the profits to help a patient than buy new couches for the waiting room. Especially since, I swear, every kid who comes into the place has sticky hands. The vinyl we’ve got now is more practical, anyway.”

  Damn. As she pulled on the shirt, her fingers fumbling as she buttoned it, Austin could feel the tears welling up again. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to cry during all this, but what with the accident and the deaths and the kids and that incredible night with Sawyer and now this, her emotions felt as if they were on a Tilt-a-Whirl.

  “Thank you.” She hugged the woman who’d once been Ellen’s bestie and had become a close friend to her.

  “Just go pick up Lexi,” Layla said. “I’m dying to see what color hair she has these days.”

  26

  BEFORE GOING TO Cooper and Rachel’s, Sawyer dropped by the Campbells’ house, where he found Brody installing a quartz countertop.

  “Looks great,” he said.

  “Thanks.” Brody took off his hat. “I’m feeling guilty about it, though.”

  “Why? It’s perfect.”

  “Yeah. It is. And carefree. Because it’s a composite, it doesn’t need to be sealed like granite or marble. But here’s the thing . . . Heather didn’t pick it out. She wanted butcher block. But to keep to the sub schedule, I decided to go with this, because I called a real estate agent I know, who agreed that because quartz is tougher than wood, and everyone’s asking for it these days, it’d be better for resale.”

  “Then you made the right decision. Because Heather would want her kids to get top dollar.”

  “Yeah.” Brody picked up a rag and ran it over the top of the hunter-green countertop. “She was going to buy a new dining set on craigslist and paint it this color. So, I figured she wouldn’t mind it for the countertop. She was going for country cozy, and the realtor said this would be a good fit.”

  “It works for me.”

  Brody shook his head and dragged a hand down his face. “This is turning out to be harder than I’d thought.”

  “Yeah.” And didn’t Sawyer know that all too well?

  “But hell, here I am complaining about remodeling a house, and you’re about to be a surrogate dad. How does that feel?”

  “Terrifying. But Austin’s got more of the responsibility, and being a woman, she probably knows more about kids.”

  “Maybe.” Brody looked doubtful.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I haven’t a clue about kids, either. But I do remember stuff my dad did. The same way you remember yours growing up. But Austin’s mom took off when she was pretty young. And Buck, as great a guy as he is, in his own way, isn’t exactly the nurturing type.”

  And wasn’t that the overstatement of the decade?

  “Coincidentally, Buck is who I came by to talk about.”

  “Is something wrong with him?”

  “He seems the same. But I was talking with Ryan, who said that exercise is tough for his muscles.”

  “Yeah. It wears them out.”

  “But he also said swimming is good because there isn’t any pressure.”

  “Makes sense. My grandmother takes pool aerobics at her seniors’ community.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Brody looked at him as if he’d suggested they both take Desperado out for a Sunday ride. “You’re going to suggest Buck Merrill, River’s Bend’s own John Wayne,
move into senior housing?”

  “No. I’m thinking he take up swimming.”

  “We’re at nearly a mile high here. The lake’s cold enough to send a guy’s balls up into his throat in July.”

  “I was thinking of having you build an indoor pool.”

  “Ah.” Brody took off the cap again, scratched his head. “That could work. There’s room to extend the family room into the backyard. You’d lose some of the porch, but it could be done.”

  “Good.” That settled, Sawyer decided he’d better pick up the kids. “Work up a price, let me know, and we’ll get started.”

  “Sure. Uh, did you happen to talk with either Buck or Austin about this?”

  “Nope.”

  “O-kay. I’m not going to get shot, am I?”

  “Nah. I’m going to use the kids as an excuse. They’ll need a diversion their first summer without their folks.”

  “That could work,” Brody decided. “The average size of an indoor pool is about eight by fifteen. I built one a while back for some Hollywood director that topped a hundred thou, but if you’re looking utilitarian—”

  “I am.” Since he wasn’t married and the military had taken care of most of his expenses over the years, he’d saved up a pretty hefty nest egg.

  “If I were doing it for a client, it’d probably come in around twenty. But I’ll do it for cost, which should cut it significantly. Your major expense is going to be expanding the room, but I figure we can round up a lot of volunteers to do framing and other stuff.”

  “Like Coop said everyone did for Rachel after the New Chance had to be gutted because of the fire.”

  “Exactly like that. Buck’s an institution around here, and there’s not a family in the basin the Merrills haven’t helped out at one time or another. That’s not going to be a problem.”

  “Great. Gotta go pick up the kids.”

  “Good luck with that,” Brody said. He did not sound encouraging.

  “Thanks.” As he left the house only to see Sophie walking up the sidewalk, Sawyer figured he was going to need all the help he could get.

  “Hey, Sophie,” he said with what he hoped would sound like a casual tone. “What are you doing here?” And what the hell had happened to her hair?