Texas Redeemed

by Isla Bennet

  “Lucy!” she shrieked, as a spot of hot liquid splashed her shirtfront. “You’re not allowed in here!” Valerie grabbed a wad of napkins and her purse and ushered Lucy into the hallway. “Have you been running?”

  “Oh, Mom …” Lucy flung herself into Valerie’s arms. The impact made Valerie hope that her glasses were still intact. The girl fisted her hands in the back of her mother’s blouse and hid her tear-stained face against her shoulder.

  A pair of nurses stopped to help, seeing the girl crumpled against her mother.

  Strands of Lucy’s hair clung to Valerie’s chin and tears had begun to wet the front of her top, but none of that mattered. “Start talking, Luce. What happened?” Icy panic coiled around her heart. Lucy didn’t cry—hadn’t since her sister’s funeral.

  “It’s private.” That was Lucy’s way of dismissing the other nurses who stifled their curiosity and continued on their way. No question that the scene would fuel the hospital’s rumor mill by morning. Then the hall was void of an audience and filled with the faraway noise of sirens and intercom pages. “Mom, he’s here. I don’t want to see him. Ever.”

  “Who’s here …?”

  And the words fragmented on Valerie’s tongue.

  The man she’d spent years searching for stood at the end of the hall. She clutched her daughter tighter, her eyes drinking in the sight of Peyton Turner.

  He seemed rougher, almost dangerous, and impossibly sexy. Jaw tight, lips set in a grim line, he stared hard into her eyes in silent interrogation.

  Sensing that the ambiance had shifted, Lucy scooted to Valerie’s side and frowned at Peyton as he approached. “Go away.”

  “Valerie.” His voice was an intimate touch, sliding beneath her clothes, claiming her body, seducing her soul. His very presence stripped away anger and fear, baring her to him and making her want to know if she had the same devastating effect on him.

  She needed to know. Drawn into the inferno she found in his gaze, she reached out a hand to him.

  “No!” Lucy protested, jerking her back. “D-don’t go to him.” Then, hiccupping, she said to Peyton, “You don’t g-get to talk to her. Or me. You were never h-here for us before, and we don’t w-want you here now.” She turned teary eyes to Valerie, her body shuddering with hiccups and sobs. “He w-was in the library asking a-about Anna’s foundation.”

  “Tell me, Valerie.” His words were laced with desperation. “I need to hear it from you.”

  Over the years she’d fantasized about what she would say to him if this moment ever came. But those thoughts danced away like ghosts in the night, and there was only the raw truth. “Anna’s your daughter, Peyton. Yours and mine. And so is Lucy.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE REALITY OF it all sank deep into Peyton like a hot, sharp blade—painless for that first nanosecond, then excruciating, shocking. It floored him, and how could he have thought that it wouldn’t? He’d demanded the truth from Valerie and there it was. There she was. His daughter.

  “My daughter,” he said, then regretted it once Lucy’s eyes narrowed. Yeah, I get it, he wanted to respond. You don’t want me to stake a claim on you.

  He flicked his gaze about the hallway—from the polished toes of his Italian shoes to the pendant lights affixed to the ceiling to the janitor emerging from the public restroom with a cleaning cart in tow. Anything to avoid staring at Valerie. He’d gotten one full look at her when he’d found her holding Lucy and had hoarded in his memory every detail of her appearance—lithe-as-a-cat body, tousled dark hair, olive complexion with freckles dusted across her nose, serious brown eyes holding panic and surprise, and a scar halfway between her temple and left eye. Now he wanted answers, and looking at her would only take him in a direction he didn’t want to go.

  “The plaque in the children’s library … the foundation … Anna.” He stumbled over the words, suddenly inarticulate, confused and so damn frustrated with his inability to bounce back from a punch to the gut like this. “Please. Tell me about—”

  “No.”

  The single word had Peyton snapping his head up and pinning Valerie with a glare.

  “No, we can’t talk here,” she said evenly, her solid push-me-and-I’ll-push-you-back tone a contrast to the uncertainty in her expression. “I was in the middle of a board meeting in there.” She indicated the mahogany double doors a few feet down the hall. “Give me a minute to say my goodbyes.”

  He watched her turn and stride to the boardroom with Lucy not far behind. The girl waited outside the door with her back to him, a deliberate message to back off. He could respect her space and could even understand her distrust of a man who was practically a stranger, but it left him feeling cold to be shooed away from the family he didn’t know he had. And it cut to the bone that he would never get even this close to Anna.

  “I didn’t know about you.” He’d almost spoken her name. Still, it was apparent from the slight turn of her head and the abrupt way she crossed her arms that she’d heard him. He could figure that to a teenage girl who’d been reduced to crying on her mother’s shoulder, his not knowing about her didn’t matter one damn iota.

  The double doors opened and Valerie joined Lucy. She whispered something that the girl instantly protested, then laid a firm hand on her shoulder and continued whispering. The second she tugged a keychain from her purse and handed it to Lucy, the girl whirled and stomped down the hallway without a backward glance.

  Valerie moved toward Peyton. “We can talk at my place—on one condition.”

  A man who’s just meeting his daughter shouldn’t have to bow to anyone’s “conditions,” he wanted to bark back. Instead, he said, “Name it. Doesn’t mean I’ll agree.”

  “Stay away from Lucy. She doesn’t want to see you. And—and I don’t think you should see her, either. Not today, Peyton, okay?” She lifted a hand toward his, then snatched it back. Twice already she’d made a move to touch him. What would happen if she did? “Give her time.”

  “You mean settle for a glimpse of my daughter?” His voice felt thick, rough. “No—”

  “Peyton,” she said tightly, “you don’t have a choice.” The savagely determined glint in her eyes was something different, something formidable he just couldn’t associate with the Valerie he remembered as an eighteen-year-old who craved ranching and music and star-gazing as much as a starving man craved his next meal. There was a disturbed look about her that he could feel rather than see; he’d lived with it every day, had since his first mission.

  Had Anna’s death or the fact that he’d cut himself out of her life put that look there?

  Prepared to ask outright, he opened his mouth but clamped it shut when a pale, blue-eyed brunette with a pixie-cut finger wave emerged from the boardroom. In a camel-colored tweed dress with a thin black belt that matched her ice-pick stilettos, she could have passed for a European fashion model.

  But only at first glance. There was an uninhibited flare in her stride and a Texas flavor in her voice as she hurried to them, calling out to Valerie, “Great, you’re still here!”

  Valerie tensed visibly at the interruption. “Yes?”

  The woman’s eyes narrowed with interest, emphasizing her winged eyeliner. “Left this on the conference table.” She surrendered a spiral-bound notebook, then pointed a French-manicured finger at Peyton. “You look familiar.”

  “Meet Peyton Turner—somebody I knew once upon a time,” Valerie said with a frown. “Peyton, this is Felicity Moss.”

  “Moss,” he repeated, recalling the surname of the physician-in-chief emeritus who’d been on staff before Peyton had left Night Sky. “What’s your relation to Chief Moss?”

  “Daughter, though I’m a little put off that you remember my father but not me.” Felicity smiled charmingly as if to say all was forgiven. “Sophomore biology. Junior chemistry—we were lab partners that year.”

  In the recesses of his mind he remembered the girl who’d been sentenced to detention for calling him a dick in clas
s after finding out that he’d split her football jock boyfriend’s lip. There had been so many scuffles and brawls during high school that he’d easily—and gladly—forgotten half the people who’d been involved.

  “Do you work here?” he asked her. “Take after your father?”

  “No, no. You likely don’t remember, but I absolutely sucked in science.” The admission had even Valerie cracking a smile. “I’m the concierge at Peridot. And you’re Lucy’s—” The slip had Felicity blushing fiercely. “Um … small world, small town.”

  That was for damn sure the truth. A beat of silence passed before Felicity touched Valerie’s shoulder. “I’d better get back before all the pastries are gone. Call me later.”

  Valerie nodded, her eyes on Peyton as Felicity trotted back to the boardroom. “Junie Peera at the diner’s going to be serving up gossip about you and me by tonight’s dinner rush.”

  Peyton didn’t even blink, because as absurd as it sounded, people in Night Sky had always talked too much for their own good, and the only thing more interesting than a newcomer was someone who’d disappeared from town—under questionable circumstances—and come back.

  “What happens tomorrow? Or the next day, Valerie?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting you to—to just materialize out of nowhere.”

  “And I wasn’t expecting to come here and find out that I’m a father … and that one of my daughters is dead.” His emphasis on the last word sent a shadow of hurt fluttering over her face.

  Then it was gone, replaced with cool resolve. “Should I feel sorry for you? I raised them—and lost Anna—without you here. Don’t expect an open door to Lucy’s life. Or mine.”

  “Don’t expect me to back down. I won’t.”

  “Really?” she said with a glance at his suit. “So you’ll sample the family man lifestyle until it bores you. Lucy’s not a designer jacket you can try on and then chuck aside once you’re bored. That’s your M.O., right? Get sick of something—or someone—and leave without a backward glance?”

  It didn’t catch him off guard in the least that she thought she had him pegged with one look at his clothes. She probably figured he’d dusted the residue of Texas off his soles to taste the luxury of every corner of this world. Once he’d been certain he wanted that. He’d been wrong—so damn wrong.

  And so was she.

  “About eight-thirty or nine’s good for us,” Valerie went on as she pivoted on her heel to leave. “Lucy should be settling down for the night by then, and we can talk.”

  “Hey. Hey!” he said sharply. She paused. “Where do you live?”

  “Prosper Boulevard. The Battle Creek Ranch.” She continued on toward a row of elevators, but he unmistakably heard her say, “All this time I’ve never been hard to find.”

  VALERIE’S BRAVADO FLED like the air out of a balloon the moment the elevator doors slid shut, enclosing her in the silver car with the sounds of a saxophone’s sultry jazz and her own heartbeat pulsing in her ears. Her fingers fumbled over the touch screen of her cell phone as she speed-dialed the ranch’s business line.

  “Battle Creek,” a distinctly hoarse female voice answered.

  “I need a favor, Cordelia.” She forewent phone etiquette altogether, which was something her cousin didn’t care for anyway. “Take Lucy tonight. Let her stay at the carriage house with you and Jack. I’ll pick her up in the morning for school. Can you do that?” A pregnant pause followed and she checked her phone to see if it had dropped the call. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you, and yes, Luce can spend the night with us. But why?”

  The elevator dinged and the doors slid open. “Can’t explain now,” Valerie said, rushing out to the hospital lobby.

  “Fine,” Cordelia relented with a throaty chuckle. “Be ready to ‘explain’ when you get back to the ranch. In the meanwhile I’ll be under the impression that you’re finally plannin’ on pulling an all-nighter with some hot cowboy.”

  A visceral image surfaced of Peyton standing combatively as he confronted her outside the boardroom. He was no cowboy. And the thought of him being alone with her in the main house all night was downright dangerous. “Not quite the case.”

  “If you say so.” Then, with a decisive click, Cordelia disconnected the call.

  Valerie hardly noticed the heavy rain as she dashed to her car. All she could concentrate on was getting her daughter settled at the carriage house before Peyton arrived. Up until six years ago she’d searched doggedly for him, but now that he’d appeared in front of her almost like an apparition, she had no maneuvers and no plan.

  Protect yourself, an internal voice warned as screenshots of all that she’d built for herself and her children flitted through her mind. At eighteen the lies had been hell to carry and she’d stood to lose Peyton’s friendship. Now her entire world was balanced on everything she had to hide. The game had changed. And losing—her business, her home, her daughter—was not an option. Protect yourself so you can protect Lucy—and Anna’s memory.

  With fresh resolve, Valerie threw open the driver’s door and found Lucy hunched in the passenger seat scrolling through her iPod with one ear bud in place.

  “Mom.” Lucy half turned toward her, but didn’t stop fiddling with the device. “Promise I won’t have to see him.”

  “You won’t.” Not tonight, at least, but Valerie figured this could be hashed out once they returned to the ranch.

  “Good.” She flashed her teeth in a pseudo-smile that was contradicted by her white-knuckled grip on the player.

  Knowing where Lucy’s loyalties lay was a hollow reassurance. “Peyton never knew I was pregnant. You need to remember that, Lucy. He didn’t run out on you and your sister. It just wasn’t like that.”

  “But he ran out on you!” Lucy cried, tugging out the ear bud and tossing the player into her hobo. “He was supposed to be your best friend, right? What kind of guy hooks up with a girl and then just leaves? Forever?”

  “He’s here now.” Except he wasn’t. Not like he’d been before—as her friend, her rock … a man who said he needed her as desperately as she needed him. Even as she said the words Valerie wasn’t foolish enough to think Peyton had returned to Night Sky for her. In fact, he’d seemed sucker-punched to see her. “Thirteen years is a long time, but it’s not forever.”

  “Whatevs. It was forever for Anna.” Lucy twisted around and began doodling with her finger on the foggy car window. “I want to go home.”

  Even with the radio up and 1970s chart-toppers reverberating throughout the car, the drive to the ranch seemed uncomfortably quiet. Having brought her daughter up on a healthy diet of music from Tchaikovsky to Sinatra to Usher, Valerie tried to coax her into a guess-the-song-title game. Tried, and failed. The girl was more interested in watching the cobblestone Square and main road that were the heartbeat of town, the grungy warehouse district and the smattering of tree-lined residential streets fading into the wide-openness of hilly terrain and luscious green forests near their cattle ranch on the outskirts.

  This three-thousand-acre chunk of Hill Country was what Valerie had fallen in love with as an orphan living under her uncle’s watchful eye and iron fist. The grasslands, the clusters of pecan and oak trees, the shadows of whitetail deer and quail moving through the trees and in the sky fit together to create the brightest spot of her life growing up.

  And Uncle Rhys had known it—known that she’d endure anything to stay on this land even when he’d talked about selling it or letting it fold in on itself. To him, a man who’d driven away his own wife and children before she’d been sent to live with him, Battle Creek Ranch had been a means to control someone who had nowhere else to go. To Valerie, this place and all it could be had been her salvation.

  Automatically, her stomach clenched at the possibility of her livelihood slipping through her fingers because of a past mistake … because she’d done the wrong thing for the right reasons.

  No question about it. She needed
to handle Peyton with caution, which meant staying midway between befriending him and keeping some distance between them. And it all started with getting him on her territory, her safety zone.

  “Do you think he is at Gramps’s place now? Think Gramps will freak?” Lucy asked as they neared their completely remodeled brick-and-stone house.

  “Probably, to the first question. Probably not, to the second.” Nathaniel Turner, a self-made fashion mogul who’d gotten so rich that he could maintain his California company from the comfort of his Texas mansion, was famous around the county as a man of few words and mighty intimidation, and as someone who could look cool as a cucumber in a full suit, fedora and signet ring even on the hottest of days.

  Some said money gave him power; others said vice versa. Valerie figured it was just another chicken-and-egg thing to ponder.

  “Not that I care,” the girl quickly tacked on, “because I don’t. Just wondering.”

  Valerie maneuvered the Chrysler into the wide brick driveway beside her quad-cab truck and hadn’t even braked to a complete stop before Lucy swept up her belongings and shot out of the car toward the mudroom entrance at the side of the house.

  “The only way we can get through this mess is together,” she whispered as she exited the car, but Lucy was already gone.

  She paused to deeply inhale the smell of flowers and rain and hay. A horn beeped and she waved as Cordelia’s Audi V8 pulled up on the other side of the truck. Cordelia called the silver sedan her first impulse buy since the Chinese yin-yang tattoo she’d gotten in college, but Valerie knew her cousin and her husband had spent years saving up for a set of luxury wheels.

  “Are you trying to get soaked to the bones out here?” Cordelia dared a glance at the thick overcast as she linked arms with Valerie and started jogging in the direction Lucy had gone.

  “Just needed a moment, you know?”

  “Understood.” In the mudroom Cordelia made quick work of shedding her wide-brimmed hat and knee-high leather boots. “So …” she craned her neck as if checking for eavesdroppers, which could have been only Lucy since Cordelia’s mother, Dinah, was visiting friends in Montana and wouldn’t be back until the following morning “… why the cloak-and-dagger? Usually getting you to let Luce spend the night away even for a soccer tournament takes a lot of arm-twisting.”