It had taken all of ten minutes to pack: three pairs of ragged jeans, a couple of sets of thermal underwear, a handful of socks and briefs, and his motley collection of secondhand T-shirts and sweatshirts. His entire wardrobe didn’t fill one of the two duffels he’d had with him when he arrived.
The other had never been unpacked.
It held a boatload of painful memories along with the body armor, knee and ankle braces, athletic shoes, and soccer cleats that had been tools of his trade as a bullfighter. He’d had no use for any of it since the day Bing had hauled him out of that hospital with a plate and pins holding together the worst of his physical injuries. No surgeon could fix what was broken in his head.
He should’ve hawked the gear months ago, but like too many other things from his past, he couldn’t quite seem to let go, especially of the parts that hurt the most.
He grabbed both bags from the bare, stained mattress and dragged in one last lungful of mold and mouse shit that no amount of cleaning could banish. Then he let it out in a whoosh.
He tossed the bags in the back of the pickup and climbed into the cab. “Let’s go.”
“How long are you staying at Bing’s place?” Gil asked.
“Until I see what I can find for a job.”
He wasn’t optimistic. Like Norma, his intense desire to avoid humanity had taken priority over comfort, so he’d scraped by on the meat she’d shared in exchange for tending to her cows, doing minor repairs on old beater cars for the locals, and this past summer, breaking colts for a couple of nearby ranches. All together it kept him fed and not frozen. It would not put a roof over his head.
In the summer, when tourists flooded Glacier National Park, work was easier to come by. With the historic hotels and all the surrounding restaurants, gas stations, and motels shuttered for the winter, unemployment on the reservation climbed to epidemic levels. He might be able to pick up a few hours as a convenience store clerk down the road in Cut Bank or Shelby, but it would be a stretch to put together enough money to cover rent and food.
“You could jump in with me,” Gil said.
Hank twisted around in his seat. “To Texas?”
“To work. Your commercial driver’s license is still valid, and I happen to run a trucking company.”
“You want to hire me?”
Gil shot him an impatient glare. “Didn’t I just say so?”
“But…” Geezus. Working for Gil?
He might have put up with Hank as a restoration project, but when it came to Sanchez Trucking, his lack of tolerance was legendary. Gil ran the dispatcher’s office the same way he’d ridden bucking horses—balls to the wall, no excuses, and nothing less than maximum effort from everyone around him. Toe the line, bust your hump, and there was no one who’d do better by you, the drivers said.
But if you failed to measure up, there were a dozen other operators standing in line to take your place—all of them with more experience than Hank.
“I’ve never done any real trucking,” he said.
Gil dismissed that with a flick of his fingers. “Cole Jacobs trusted you to haul his stock. That’s all the résumé I need. And the apartment above the shop is vacant, so I’ll even toss in housing.”
Hank cast a pleading look in Bing’s direction. She didn’t look surprised. Obviously, Gil had already run this by her, but how could he leave her alone only ten days before Thanksgiving? “Let me look around here first. There might be something…”
“Nothing that will compare salary-wise. Or with benefits.” Bing closed a warm hand over his chilled one, her jaw set. “It’s time, Hank.”
A lousy time. The worst part of the year for Bing. “You’ll be alone for the holidays.”
Her face tightened, but she didn’t relent. “I’ll manage. And who knows. Maybe I’ll take some of that vacation time they’re threatening to steal from me at the end of the year and come ride along with you. I can be your truckin’ mama.”
If only she’d been his actual mother. “Bing…”
She shook her head. “You’ve gotta move on, Hank.”
“Fine! But I don’t have to start by going backward.” To face his mistakes, lovingly preserved in the minds and hearts of Earnest, Texas, as permanent as the initials five-year-old Hank had scrawled in the wet concrete in front of the Kwicky Mart.
“Yeah, you do.” Bing cast him a sly smile. “And people are always in a more forgiving mood with Christmas coming on.”
Hank gazed at her striking face, the expressive dark eyes that so often sparkled with laughter despite the grief lingering underneath. He had begun as one of an endless parade of lost souls, but they were infinitely more to each other now. Bing loved him by choice, not obligation, even though she’d seen the worst he had to offer.
He loved her back with a ferocity that stunned him…and now he was paying the price.
She believed in him, and Hank couldn’t bear to let her down. For Bing, he was compelled to salvage something from the wreck he’d made of his life—even if it meant having to pick through Texas rubble.
And wouldn’t you know, he’d land in good old Earnest three years to the day from the last time he’d tried to go home. He hadn’t even made it to the ranch. One quick and dirty shouting match with his dad in the middle of the Corral Café and Hank had stormed right back out of town.
It had been the blackest of Black Fridays, licking his wounds in Korby’s college apartment, beating himself in game after game of pool at the pizza joint down the street—until Grace walked in.
Even as he’d trailed along to her dorm room, Hank had cursed himself for taking advantage of her. Sweet, innocent Grace, who had never even been to a homecoming dance.
Then his little red-haired girl had proceeded to rock his world.
And in typical immature asshole style, he’d repaid the favor by running for the hills.
“Well?” Gil demanded. “I can’t dither all day. I’m scheduled to drop my load in Sheridan at eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
Hank looked at Bing. She nodded. He closed his eyes. Shit. This was really happening.
Bing let go of his hand and put the pickup in gear. They rattled back to the main gravel road and over the ever-present washboards. A left turn at the stop sign, a few short miles down Highway 89 to Babb, and all too soon, they were standing in the parking lot of a log-framed restaurant closed for the season.
Gil grabbed Hank’s luggage and hauled it over to the waiting eighteen-wheeler—his transportation of choice, arranging loads that made his trips to Montana a paying proposition. Bing watched, arms folded tight around her body as the wind plucked at the glossy black spikes of her short-cropped hair.
He didn’t bother to hide the tears that welled in his eyes as he gave her a hug. “I will be back.”
“To visit. This isn’t where you belong.”
What is?
For twenty-two years he could have answered without hesitation, but he’d shredded the umbilical cord that had tethered him to the Panhandle. Cut loose, he’d rampaged, then scrabbled, and finally drifted aimlessly, leaving a trail of smoking bridges behind him. Even if he wanted to, was there anything left worth rebuilding, or anyone willing to let him try?
He thought of Grace…and nearly laughed. It was too bad she hadn’t stayed in Oregon, where she’d run after Hank had humiliated her in front of the entire town on that shitty New Year’s Eve, thirty-seven days after the weekend that had turned him upside-down and inside-out. But last year she’d come back to the Panhandle, for a job as a teacher and athletic trainer just down the road in Bluegrass. Hopefully being on the sidelines for every game of every sport would keep her too busy for their paths to cross—for her sake and his.
Hank gave Bing another squeeze. “I’ll call you.”
“I’ll drive down there and kick your rear if you don’t.” She pushed him away and made a shooing moti
on. “Like the song says, I can’t miss you if you’re not gone.”
“Thank you,” Gil said. And to Hank’s shock—and Bing’s, judging by her expression—he kissed her on the cheek. Then he turned and tossed Hank a set of keys. “You are now officially on the clock. Start earning your keep.”
As he opened the truck door, sunlight glinted off the gold lettering. Sanchez Trucking, Earnest, Texas. At least he would roll back into town in style. And as usual, he had to admit that Bing was right, on one point anyway. What better time than the holidays to face down everyone he had wronged? At least they would all be conveniently gathered in one place.
Hank climbed behind the wheel, fired up the big engine, and pointed the rig south.
Ready or not, here I come.
Chapter 2
Grace prided herself on her ability to keep her cool—a vital skill in a profession where, at any moment, she could be asked to deal with anything from a ripped fingernail to cardiac arrest. But all the athletic tape in the world couldn’t fix stupid.
“Everybody gets shin splints,” the junior varsity basketball coach raged. “You are letting Andie milk this to get out of conditioning.”
And you need to be smacked upside the head with your own clipboard. Bad enough that they’d called a Saturday morning practice, thereby screwing up Grace’s plans to laze in bed. Now she had to deal with an idiot who wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw the damage on a bone scan.
It was Grace’s job to be sure Andie’s very real condition didn’t progress to that point, and with the power vested in her by the school district, the athletic trainer’s word was final.
But no matter how much she wanted to throttle someone, she was expected to be the voice of reason. “Andie has a history of stress fractures caused by the worst pair of feet I’ve ever seen. I am going to continue to restrict her activity until she has been fitted for orthotics, and even then it will take some time for her body to adjust to the new alignment.”
“How long is all of that going to take?”
“Her appointment at Panhandle Orthopedics is a week from Monday.” And only that soon because Tori Sanchez’s staff had explicit orders to give Grace’s athletes priority, even if it meant Tori had to skip lunch or stay late.
But of course the coach had no clue what strings had been pulled to get her player in to see the most sought after therapist in the Panhandle. “You’re talking weeks! The basketball season will practically be over.”
Grace made a suitably grave face. “It’s unfortunate, but you’re right. I can’t guarantee that she’ll be able to make a significant contribution to the team this year.”
“If she’s this much of a weenie, she’s not much use to us anyway,” the coach muttered.
Grace refrained from pointing out that the weenie had placed in the top ten at the previous spring’s state track meet in the eight hundred meters and anchored a bronze-medal-winning two-mile relay team.
“What am I supposed to do?” The coach slapped her clipboard down on the nearest padded treatment table, temptingly close to Grace’s reach. “I don’t need any deadweight taking up space on the bench, but her parents will raise hell if I cut her.”
No doubt. Her darling mother had been an all-conference forward at West Texas A & M and she was convinced that her baby was going to follow in her hoop-shooting footsteps despite the fact that Andie had barely made the junior varsity squad.
Grace sighed, packing it full of reluctance. “I suppose I could try to talk to her…”
“Would you?” The coach leapt at the bait like a nylon-clad sucker. “And her parents? They’ll take it a lot better coming from you. I would owe you big-time.”
And that was never a bad thing, in Grace’s experience. She made a show of sighing again, then nodding. “Andie’s supposed to stop by and see me before she leaves. I’ll do what I can.”
“Thank you!” The coach snatched up the clipboard and charged out before Grace changed her mind.
The door had barely swung shut when it was pushed open again and a head poked inside. “Is everyone gone?” Andie whispered.
Grace had to smile despite a low buzz of aggravation—a common side effect of attempting to reason with the unreasonable. “The coast is clear.”
“Did it work?”
“Like a charm.”
“Thank God!” Andie hobbled across the room and threw herself onto a treatment table with a level of drama only a seventeen-year-old could muster. “And thank you, Miz Mac. I know I’m being a total wuss, but I just can’t look Coach in the eye and tell her I don’t want to take any chance that playing basketball will mess up my track season.”
Ditto for her parents, or Grace wouldn’t have to run interference. But growing up as the middle child of seven with a father who took every letter of the Bible literally and to the extreme, Grace had played the fall guy for her younger brothers often enough that she had it down to an art.
“Tell your parents to call me this evening.” She waved a shooing hand. “And get out of here so I can too.”
She paused to swap her nylon sweats, polo, and running shoes for jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, sweatshirt, and boots, checking the time as she hustled across the empty gym and out the back door to the teachers’ parking lot. Only nine fifteen. Early practices sucked, but she’d trade the extra sleep for most of a day to do as she pleased, and it pleased her to know that she would spend a good part of it roping.
She headed toward Earnest, the southeast point of a nearly equilateral triangle, around twenty miles on each side, with Bluegrass at the apex and her apartment in Dumas on the southwest corner. Mornings like this might have been easier if she lived in the town where she worked, but Tori’s indoor arena was in Dumas, along with the barn and pasture where she allowed Grace to board her horse.
Given the choice between living close to her job or near her horse, it was no contest, but her current destination was the Jacobs ranch, ten miles on south of Earnest. She just hoped she could sneak through town without any of her family catching a glimpse of her teal-blue short-box pickup.
Next time she’d consider stealth when choosing a paint color.
The day was flat-out dreary, but what downtown Earnest lacked in size, it was determined to make up for in holiday cheer. A few years back, in celebration of Delon Sanchez’s second world championship and acknowledgment of Jacobs Livestock’s growing notoriety, the Chamber of Commerce had designated their little town the Cowboy Capital of the Panhandle, then set about proving it.
As a result, every doorway, storefront, and street corner was occupied by grinning scarecrow cowboys who twirled ropes, hefted branding irons, and galloped straw horses through clusters of pumpkins and cornstalks. Overhead, multiple strands of Christmas lights already crisscrossed Main Street, with a big, twinkling sheriff’s star at the center of each swag and four-foot-tall elves brandishing six-shooters and tipping cowboy hats at the top of every streetlight.
But instead of admiring the decor, Grace caught herself watching for a battered maroon-and-white Chevy pickup slouching in front of the Smoke Shack, or pulled up to the pump at the Kwicky Mart. Silly, to get more apprehensive as Thanksgiving crept closer. Hank was far, far away, in some frozen Montana backwater, and given the current state of affairs in the Brookman family, he wouldn’t come waltzing home expecting turkey with all the fixin’s.
And even if he did, he’d set off Grace’s early detection system before he got past the relatively new billboard at the edge of town. She glanced in her rearview mirror as she passed it, though she knew the lettering by heart. Beneath a garland of fake pine boughs the sign read:
WELCOME TO EARNEST
Home of
Delon Sanchez, 2x World Champion Bareback Rider
Gil Sanchez, Pro Rodeo Rookie of the Year
Melanie Brookman, National Intercollegiate Champion Breakaway Roper
<
br /> Jacobs Livestock, Texas Circuit Stock Contractor of the Year
If Hank had continued as he’d started, Grace had no doubt his name would be next on the list. Hank Brookman, National Finals Bullfighter. Or the ultimate honor—Pro Rodeo Bullfighter of the Year.
But Hank hadn’t possessed the discipline to match his talent. In retrospect, she supposed his meltdown had been inevitable. She’d just never imagined she’d get caught in the fallout…or that it would be both the worst and the best thing that had ever happened to her.
When Grace had scuttled out of Texas, there hadn’t been a single person outside her family who’d noticed her absence, let alone missed her. She could blame it on her upbringing, but even within their church she hadn’t had any real friends, and her lunches with Hank were the only contact she’d had with the cowboys and cowgirls she’d admired from afar. Now she not only knew everyone on that billboard personally, she could hop in her pickup and show up at their houses unannounced.
Wasn’t that just a kick in the ass?
Raindrops spattered her windshield as she accelerated onto the rural road. Normally she would have been cursing the lousy weather for ruining her plans, but now that she got to practice with Shawnee in an indoor arena, it was nothing more than an annoyance. And if Grace guessed right, thanks to that damn basketball practice, she would arrive at the Jacobs ranch just as they finished working the bulls and headed in for coffee.
She was humming along with the radio and congratulating herself for dodging that wet, cold bullet, when her phone chirped. Damn. She hoped it wasn’t Andie’s parents, demanding to talk to her immediately. Then again, she might as well bundle all of her annoyances into the first half of the day. The driveway to Cole and Shawnee’s place was only a quarter of a mile down the road, so she waited until she’d turned off the highway to stop and check the message.
As soon as she saw the sender’s name, alarm zinged up her spine. The entire text was composed of two words.
He’s ba-ack.
Grace closed her eyes and swore. So much for early warnings—and assumptions. It seemed Hank had decided to come home and spread some holiday cheer after all.
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