“I don’t really know the man,” Dusty said, “but I don’t get an abusive vibe off him, but I do understand how Jenny feels.”
Kate frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Honey,” Dusty said, “she left because she’s afraid no one will believe her. She’s scared you all will take sides with Josh because he’s such a nice guy and he’s got himself established here on the ranch.”
“None of that is even a remote possibility,” Kate said. “There’s just one story to be told, right or wrong. Hers.”
“Then you go up to Colorado and you tell her that,” Dusty said. “But be prepared for what she’s going to ask you to do.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll lay you money she’s going to say she wants Josh off this place.”
Kate sighed. “Then he’s going to have to go.”
Dusty regarded her curiously. “You’re willing to throw him off the ranch, but you wouldn’t even consider asking me to go?”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Kate said with good-natured irritation. “Sometimes you really can be an idiot, Dusty. First off, I don’t give in to blackmail. And second, family comes first. Jenny’s blood family and you’re heart family. Nobody is putting either one of you off this ranch as long as I’ve got breath in my body.”
Dusty smiled at her. “You really don’t have a clue how special you are, do you, Katie?”
Kate’s scowl deepened. “Lord. What are you talking about now?”
“You’re the most loyal person I’ve ever known in my life,” Dusty said. “If you do Jenny half as much good just being yourself as you’ve done me in the last hour, she’ll come back home with you, no questions asked.”
“That’s all well and good,” Kate said, “but it doesn’t change the fact that your brother now thinks he has something on us and he’ll be watching all of us like a hawk from now on. Just because this little scheme of his isn’t going to play out, doesn’t mean he won’t try something else.”
“Let him,” Dusty said, fire coming back in her eyes. “What the hell do I have to lose in this town? They all think I’m a slut anyway. How’s Rafe going to like it when I let it be known that the president of the bank and the chairman of the church board raped his little sister 2 and 3 times a week for five years?”
“You’d do that?” Kate asked. “You’d tell your story?”
“Damn right I would,” Dusty said.
“What’s changed? An hour ago you couldn’t even tell me.”
“Just what you said,” Dusty said, the tears returning to her eyes. “I’m not alone anymore. I have family.”
102
Jenny wasn’t thinking about the size of any of the cabins she’d tried to rent, so it hadn’t dawned on her she would be staying at a place roughly twice the square footage of both her own home and studio combined. The night she arrived, she wandered through the place counting beds. There was room for at least a dozen people.
She chose one of the downstairs bedrooms for herself because the bath was nice. And if she cracked the window, she could, indeed, hear the soft bubbling of the trout stream that ran behind the house.
The cabin was situated at the edge of a large meadow. The stream ran just beyond the edge of the woods, and in the distance she could look at the mountains, snow already frosting the peaks. In the morning, she’d take her coffee on the covered front porch and watch the sun come up over those heights. This was what she needed. Clean, still, fresh solitude.
In the gathering dusk, Jenny carried in several loads of firewood and was soon settled in an overstuffed leather chair by the hearth. In Denver, she’d stopped to buy herself a couple of shirt jackets for the cool evenings and to pick up a bottle of whiskey.
Now, drink in hand, she sat wrapped in new plaid wool staring into the flames of a crackling fire. There was a television set just a few feet away, but she doubted she’d ever turn it on. Every fiber of her being craved silence, even as her heart longed for conversation.
She’d been driving since dawn and, as promised, the owner of the cabin stocked the refrigerator, but Jenny wasn’t interested in food. When she awakened that morning in Roswell, she had breakfast at the hotel before she checked out, reading the news of the day on her iPad beside her plate, but studiously avoiding her email.
Now the device sat on the end table beside her, silent and accusatory. The cabin had wifi and there were five bars on her cell phone. Connectivity wasn’t the issue. If she opened her email, there would be messages from Josh she didn’t want to read, but there would also be something from Kate. That contact she did want.
Sighing, Jenny took another sip of her whiskey and reached for the tablet. As she suspected, there were multiple emails from Josh. She quickly created a folder and dragged them all out of her InBox unopened, careful not to even look at the previews. Everything else was work-related or junk, but there was a single message from Kate dated earlier in the day. Jenny opened the email and started to read.
“I know what you saw in the barn. I know why you left. I’m not angry or disappointed. I understand why you were too upset to talk to me when you came to the study that night. What happens with Josh is your call, Jenny. You’re the only one who gets a say. Whatever you decide, I support you 100 percent, no questions asked. The days when you have to run to be safe are over. Come home, honey, or tell me where you are and I’ll come to you. You are not alone, Jenny. Ever. I love you. - Kate.”
Tears fell on the screen as Jenny turned off the iPad and set it aside. Whatever Jenny decided, Kate would support. The problem lay in actually making a decision. In all the hours since she’d stood hidden in shadow and watched Josh venting a temper she didn’t even know he had, Jenny had searched her memory for any indication that he had been lying to her all these months.
She’d forced herself to regain control last night in the hotel room, but now exhaustion and Kentucky bourbon melted the edges of her resolve. Raw pain bled into her consciousness. She wanted Kate here with her, and as much as she hated to admit it, she wanted Josh. And that scared her more than anything.
Jenny hated the part of herself that needed so desperately to be loved, because that was the place from which all her bad choices originated. Underneath her cynical, sometimes waspish exterior, lay the heart of a woman whose nature it was to trust. But where the hell had that ever gotten her?
With the innocence of a child she had tried to trust her father, but Langston’s temper and his cruelties only grew worse with each passing year. When Irene Lockwood died, she took so much of the light of the world with her. Langston didn’t allow his daughters to cry. He wouldn’t permit them to speak of their mother in his presence. It was only at night, curled against her sister, that Jenny could silently feel the grief tearing her apart.
Now, years later, after she and Kate had come back together as grown women, Jenny finally understood just how much Kate had shielded her from the worst of Langston’s wrath, and the price Kate paid for that unswerving loyalty.
Through the years, Jenny’s mind had returned so many times to the night of the broken mirror. She remembered how she’d braced herself for the blow when Langston drew back his hand, and the sick fear she’d felt for her sister when Kate stepped between them.
Kate was almost tall enough to look Langston in the eye, but he outweighed her by a hundred pounds or more. Even now, Jenny’s gut twisted at the thought of what could have happened if Kate’s bluff had failed. But that was the hell of it; Kate hadn’t been bluffing.
Shame colored Jenny’s cheeks. Kate’s intervention had blunted the consequences of all of Jenny’s own bad choices in those long-ago years. Jenny repaid her sister for those sacrifices by running off to play out a thin impersonation of life as a bohemian artist.
The charade was never more than a superficial mask disguising how much Jenny was simply looking for a safe place to stop and breathe. She tried to find that sanctuary in a man, but cast most of them aside long before commitment reared its ugly head.
Jenny could count on one hand the ones she’d actually taken to her bed. The first was a gentle sculptor who touched her body with the same reverence he brought to his work. They enjoyed a sweet, idyllic summer of nights lying in tangled sheets watching the stars through the skylight in his shabby artist’s loft.
She left him because he was too weak for her, and she knew it, but his tenderness had been a temporary refuge from the turbulence of her mind. At the time, Jenny suspected he was more interested in his male models, and it did not surprise her later when she learned he’d come out of the closet.
In New York, there had been a few casual dinner dates that all ended at her front door to the consternation and sometimes ire of the more sophisticated men involved. Jenny had been called a tease and worse on more than one occasion by would-be suitors who thought a nice dinner or a show would get them laid. They were mistaken.
Then there had been Robert. Smooth, urbane, intuitive, but seemingly strong, steady, and reliable. She didn’t like to think about their nights together because to do so would be to remember how completely she had fallen under his spell. She had never stopped thinking, however, about the crushing, icy wave that brought her gasping back to the surface of reality the night she realized he was as bad as her father. Or worse.
Now there was Josh. A man who made her laugh. Pursued her with courtly good manners. Helped without being asked when her family was in trouble. Waited for their relationship to progress on her terms. A man who made no unwelcome advances and who came to her bed as if being there was a privilege.
Worst of all, though, Josh Baxter was the man who had given her renewed hope. He was the man who had made her reconsider her decision to live her life alone and to be content. What had she really seen that night in the barn? A man venting his frustration or a man showing his true nature?
Jenny started to pour herself another drink, but stopped with the bottle poised over the glass. She had the famous Lockwood head for whiskey. It would take far more than a second drink to have any effect on her, but she hadn’t eaten in hours. Besides, she didn’t leave the Rocking L to sit alone drinking herself into a stupor over Josh Baxter. She’d never done that for any man and she wasn’t going to start now.
Putting the bottle back down on the table, Jenny got up and went to the kitchen to make herself a sandwich. The moment of startling clarity came all on its own as Jenny spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on a slice of rye bread.
Spread too thin.
For however much of a temper Josh did or did not have, Jenny herself was the one who was spread too thin in this relationship. She was the problem, not Josh.
Her mind slowed down to that single thought as she methodically placed lettuce leaves atop roast beef and sliced a juicy, ripe tomato. Josh could be a saint. Any man with whom she ever became involved could love her and be a good person. But she would still be herself.
She would still be Langston Lockwood’s daughter. She would still be the woman with the jaw that hurt in cold weather because Robert Marino broke it with a single back-handed blow. She would still be the woman with one foot out the door.
The question wasn’t should she stay with Josh, it was could she. Or, more to the point, could she ask him to stay with her knowing that in any half-aware, reactionary moment he might do something to touch off the very reflexes that sent her scurrying out of that barn.
Jenny carried her sandwich in by the fire and sat down again. She ate automatically as her mind replayed their recent conversations. Josh wanted to set a wedding date. She hedged. Josh wanted to talk about children. She said nothing. Those were the undeniable signs she’d been ignoring. Not something hidden in him.
What was happening to them would hurt Josh — had hurt him already — but trying to lead a life with someone like her would hurt him more. The thought of being alone no longer frightened Jenny the way it had on those solitary nights shut away in her New York apartment. That path was now a viable, conscious option, and one she needed to seriously consider.
She had her sisters, the ranch, and work she loved. Jenny saw all too plainly that she let things with Josh happen too fast. My God, she hadn’t been back in Texas a day when she met him. She let his cowboy good manners and willing disposition win her over before she thought about what she was doing. The only real mistake had been letting everything get this far.
A melancholy sort of peace settled over her. She was tired. Not from the drive. Not from too many hours awake. But from months of trying so hard to be someone she wasn’t. To morph herself into the woman Josh Baxter imagined her to be.
Jenny looked down at the simple diamond engagement ring on her finger. She slowly slid it up and over her knuckle, and gently put it down on the table. She had to go back to Texas and return that ring to Josh with the explanation he deserved. She couldn’t send him away thinking that she couldn’t marry him because she’d witnessed him give in to one moment of bad temper.
But Texas would still be there in a week. Jenny needed to rest. She needed to sit by this fire at night and out on that porch in the morning. She needed to walk in the meadow and fall asleep at night to the gentle lullaby of the flowing trout stream. She needed to simply be until she was strong enough to go back to the Rocking L and undo what she never should have done in the first place.
103
Phil Baxter sat cross-legged next to the waterfall by the pool lost in deep meditation. Mandy carried a breakfast tray out to the table in the cabana, careful not to disturb her father, and began to read her iPad while she waited for him to finish.
When Phil finally opened his eyes, he greeted her with a happy smile. "Hi, sweetheart," he said. "I didn't hear you come out."
She smiled back. "Come have breakfast, Daddy," she said. "I made that tofu scramble thing you like. Did you enjoy your meditation?"
Phil unfolded effortlessly from his seated position and came over to join her. "I did," he said. "There are so many different birds here than out in Marfa. I'm going to have to start learning all their calls."
"Do you enjoy birdwatching?" she asked as he sat down with her.
"I think of it as getting to know the neighbors," he said, lifting the silver cover off his plate. He whistled admiringly. "It's beautiful! I'm starved. Thank you, honey!"
Mandy laughed. "You may be the only man in Texas who has ever referred to tofu as beautiful."
"Naw," Phil said, taking a bite and chewing enthusiastically. "There are lots of closet vegans in the land of carnivores." He reached for the coffee carafe and poured himself a steaming cup. "Are the girls off to school?"
"Yes," Mandy said. "They're riding in with Joe this first week, but then they'll start taking the bus every day."
"Are they okay about being away from you?" he asked, spreading jam on a piece of whole-wheat toast.
"I think so," Mandy said, thumbing up a picture on her phone and handing it to him. "Don't they look cute in their new outfits?"
Phil fished his reading glasses out of his shirt pocket and peered at the photo. "Aw," he said. "They look adorable."
"I drove into town and had a talk with their teacher yesterday," Mandy said. "Mrs. Lewis was my third grade teacher, too. She's a sweet woman. She'll look out for them. They're in a classroom with a lot of their friends. I think that's good, don't you?"
"I do," Phil said. "They told me how much they're looking forward to having kids out here."
Mandy studied him over the table. "Did you have a lot of friends when you were growing up?" she asked curiously.
"Not really," Phil said, unruffled by the question. "I had my brothers. Josh's Dad, Jimmy, and I were close. Eddie was always getting into trouble and blaming us, but we had a lot of fun when we were the girls' age. There was just a year or so between each of us, so it worked out pretty well."
"And you were the middle child?" she asked.
"Can't you tell?" he said, grinning. "Not much of an achiever. Loner. Open-minded."
"Reasonable. A good listener. No
t afraid to be your own person. Fair," she said.
Phil raised an eyebrow. "It sounds like you've been reading up on middle children."
"I have," Mandy admitted, "but not on account of you. I'm trying to understand Jenny better."
Phil wiped his mouth with his napkin. "You're worried about her, aren't you?"
"Very," Mandy said. "The last time she left the ranch . . . well, she was gone for years. I don't want that to happen again."
Phil sipped his coffee before he answered her. He seemed to be couching his words in careful phrasing. “I don't think the things that make life hard for Jenny have anything to do with being a middle child, honey,” he said. "Her troubles stem from . . . other sources."
Mandy smiled. "You don't have to be nice about . . . Langston," she said.
His answering smile was slightly rueful. “The name thing is confusing, isn’t it?” he asked. "You think of him as your daddy, but you're starting to think of me the same way. You know, Mandy, you can just call me Phil. I'm perfectly fine with that."
She reached over the table and covered his hand with her own. "I want to call you Daddy, I just don't know what to call him anymore, and I think I'm finally getting really mad at him for the way he treated Katie and Jenny."
Phil patted her hand. "Thank you, honey," he said, "you being so open and accepting like this means the world to me. I just wish I had known about you sooner."
“Me, too," she said. "I'm so happy you're going to be here on the ranch with us. One of these days, things may actually settle down around here and we can just be a family.”
The wistfulness in her tone went straight to his heart. “Honey, I don’t need things to be settled down,” he assured her. “I’m just glad to be welcomed into the family. I know you’re worried about Jenny, but this will all work out. Things have a funny way of doing that.”
The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories Page 67