Texas Redeemed

by Isla Bennet

  Peyton waited, prepared to see his daughter slip into the house and hear Valerie politely thank him for bringing her home before shutting the door firmly in his face.

  This was his family being dangled in front of him like a treat he’d never earn. Lucy, his flesh and blood. Valerie, who’d once been closer to him than even his own grandfather. She was considered his family, too, though she didn’t know it and probably wouldn’t appreciate it.

  Valerie hauled open the door, the house’s warmth and the foyer’s golden light spilling out onto the porch. “C’mon in, Luce. How’s Sarah feeling?”

  Lucy got by with a lackluster “Okay” and scooted inside.

  Wearing reading glasses, a too-large sweatshirt and holey jeans, Valerie leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed over her chest. One of her hands was covered with an oven mitt. “Thanks for bringing her home. I think the Carews will have their hands full as it is tonight."

  “It wasn’t a favor. Getting to spend time with her doesn’t come easy.” He considered leaving on that note but opted against it. “We didn’t have a chance to talk earlier at Peridot—about Lucy. What about visitation? Real visitation.”

  “Peyton …”

  “Don’t. Do not renege on me.” He found himself moving forward, closing the distance. “Things changed the day we visited Anna together. You know they did.” That day they’d cried in each other’s arms, bonded in a way that neither of them had addressed or tried to describe. But for two weeks Valerie had been careful to maintain her distance—and to keep their surviving daughter just out of reach.

  “Look, Valerie, we’ve hashed this out already. I’m not backing down.”

  She gazed at him with uncertainty, then stepped outside in her bare feet and shut the door. “Is visitation going to be enough? How long will it be before you ask for joint custody? Or full? How am I expected to deal with first your grandfather, and now you, working overtime to take her away from me?”

  Peyton held up his palms. “How’d we go from a few visits to me snatching her?”

  “You’re getting close. Too close. And it’s happening fast.”

  “Not close enough, Valerie.” A second passed before he stepped into her space and she automatically placed her oven-mitted hand against his abdomen. Always boundaries getting in the way. “I can’t be in this town and not see you.”

  “See Lucy,” she corrected.

  “Both of you.” It was gutting him not to take hold of all that thick dark hair and have Valerie’s mouth open under his. He wanted to act, to react—but not think or feel. “I can’t stand here like this and not—”

  “Now you stop,” she warned, pushing with that damn oven mitt.

  In a fast, hard movement he reached down and wrenched the mitt off, sending it flying off the porch into the darkness.

  Her hand remained right where it had been, as if he’d removed the mitt magically. The heat from her palm seeped right through his shirt to his flesh.

  “I won’t touch you.” Still, lust flexed inside him, reared up to battle his self-control.

  “I don’t want you to.” But her eyes were locked on his, her fingers twisting his shirttails and—oh, hell—scraping his abdomen. She stroked his skin, causing his muscles to bunch, his blood to rush … and his body to react.

  She’d sat on a picnic table at the mercy of his hands. Was it now her turn to explore?

  Before he could question her, or even string together two coherent thoughts, she backed him into the shelter of shadows on the porch. Watching his face, she wiggled her lithe body up tight against him. Arousal, hungry and insistent, thickened in his veins, and he felt himself harden against her belly. She didn’t back away, but dropped her forehead to his chest with a moan.

  “What do you want, Valerie?” When she shrugged, he said, “Here’s what I want, right now. I want to taste your mouth … take your bottom lip between my teeth and find out for myself how soft it is.”

  It wasn’t too late to turn back. In fact, common sense told him that turning back was their only option, with their daughter inside the house and nothing but complication standing between them despite their physical closeness. “But I’m not going to do that.” Not now.

  Valerie withdrew, looking bewildered and heated. “I didn’t plan this.”

  “Every time we get together, with nobody else around, we end up like this, Valerie.”

  “I heard somewhere that the worst mistakes are the hardest ones to learn from. Guess there’s some truth to that.”

  Not one thing had been resolved. Visitation was still up in the air. He’d let her effect on him steer him away from his purpose. Bad idea.

  Peyton edged back, watched Valerie stuff her hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt with a nervous fidget. “Was this a trick or a treat?”

  “Neither.” She opened the door and stepped inside. “Our cattle drive’s coming up in two weeks. Dinah’ll have the run of the house and will be keeping Lucy in line, but it’d be a good time for you to stop by.”

  “Where’ll you be?”

  “Up in the mountains with all my tricks and treats.” Then the door closed and the pinecones on the wreath shook harder than they should have.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SO THERE WAS such a thing as too many cookies. An assortment of aluminum foil trays stuffed to the brim cluttered Valerie’s kitchen to the point where one might think the countertops and island weren’t made of granite and marble, but instead chocolate chip goodness. The bear cookie jar was filled to the top and seemed to boast a satisfied smirk, as if to say, “Bet you wish you’d stopped here.”

  And she would’ve. Only, baking had that incredible way of cutting through all the tension and troubles, and with each fresh batch of gooey sugary sweetness she felt a little less wound up. The surplus of cookies had already reached an out-of-hand quantity when Peyton had dropped off their daughter last night. Then he’d pushed her buttons … and she’d gotten much too familiar with his body. After that incident she’d gone inside, all hot and coiled up again, and put the oven to work.

  Valerie began stacking the trays, intent on unloading the loot at the diner. The French doors opened and she heard Cordelia say behind her, “Wow, a visit from the Keebler elves?”

  “No.”

  “Did you go a little crazy imagining what the inside of Toll House looks like?”

  “Again, no.” Valerie finished arranging the trays in stacks of four. “These are going to the diner.”

  Cordelia reached for a stack to cart to the pickup. “Bud and Junie asked to you bake? As if everyone didn’t get their fill of sugar at the orchard.”

  Valerie hadn’t considered that, but hoped for the best anyway as she took her share and followed Cordelia to the driveway. “It wasn’t their idea.”

  Her cousin halted, one arm gripping the trays precariously and her free hand on the handle of the rear passenger-side door. “Now I get it. On her way out to Emilia Webber’s place, Mama told me that Peyton dropped Lucy off here last night.”

  “Afraid I don’t follow.” Valerie arranged her trays on the back bench then took the stack from Cordelia. “How’s Miz Webber anyway?” The former schoolteacher’s memory was slipping away and she needed someone to look in on her. A while back Dinah and several others had banded together and convinced Emilia’s son Axle to let them take turns seeing after her while he worked his shifts at the fire department.

  “Alzheimer’s is Alzheimer’s, but the condition’s not worsening, so that’s a blessing.” Cordelia frowned, then returned her full attention to Valerie. “But back to you. Cookies will never compare to sex.”

  “Really, Cordelia? Really?”

  Without another peep, her cousin turned and trotted into the house.

  Of course Valerie knew that baked goods couldn’t substitute for sex. Last night’s baking frenzy had been only about distraction. And satisfaction. And … release. “Ugh,” she said, embarrassed about what had been transparent to Cordelia and proba
bly Dinah, too, though her aunt had had enough mercy to not call Valerie on it.

  At the diner she transferred the first armload of trays to the counter, and Bud, who was on a smoke break, helped her bring in the rest. Though he greeted her in that clipped, but not unfriendly, way that was so uniquely Bud, he avoided looking at her the entire time, and once he’d plopped the last of the trays onto the counter, he was out the door again to light up another cigarette.

  “Free cookies!” said Junie, uncovering the trays to reveal the offerings. Some were plain chocolate chip; others were spruced up with walnuts and others macadamia nuts. “These’ll bring in a nice after-school crowd. I owe you, Valerie.”

  She hustled toward the back to find enough containers to store the treats, and Valerie was on her way out the door when a waitress in a Fork Diner apron sauntered up to the opposite side of the counter. “Oh, stay a while. Business is slow and I could use the tips.”

  Valerie felt her temperature drop several degrees as the waitress’s dark eyes pinned her the way a spider would a fly. “You didn’t waste a minute coming back for Peyton, did you, Marin?”

  “Let’s put it this way. My son’s here. So I should be here,” Marin Beck said, as if it all made perfect sense. Though of average height, and leaning on the too-thin side, with brown hair and eyes, she wasn’t nondescript to Valerie. The last time she’d seen her was the night Marin rode out of town and set loose the firestorm Peyton still hadn’t extinguished, even though she knew that he’d tried his damnedest.

  “Don’t hurt him. Not again.” Valerie didn’t care that her quietly spoken words were on the borderline between a warning and a plea.

  “What about the way you hurt him, Valerie? Does he—or anyone else—know about that?”

  Valerie had to be stronger than this, stronger than that desperate eighteen-year-old on the verge of a mistake. But the validity behind the woman’s words was sapping her strength. “I wish I hadn’t—”

  Marin snorted softly. “Wishes don’t get you shit.” Rag in hand, she feigned wiping down the counter, the movement bringing her face closer to Valerie’s. “Just try to edge me out of Peyton’s life. It won’t happen. Know why? Because he’ll let me in. Always has, always will. I’m his mother.”

  “But I’m his—” What? His friend? No. His lover? No.

  “You’re the woman he got pregnant—unintentionally.” The woman’s mouth curved into a smile so heartbreakingly similar to Lucy’s. “I can’t wait to get to know my granddaughter.”

  “Your granddaughter?” Valerie’s voice sharpened, and she didn’t care that several patrons whipped their heads around in her direction. “Stay away from Lucy.”

  Junie hurried to the counter. “Bud won’t have any catfights in here.”

  Valerie whirled on the head waitress. “Is this—” she pointed to Marin, whose face had taken on an innocent, almost angelic look “—why you ‘owe’ me, Junie? And why Bud can’t look me in the eye? You called her back to Night Sky, didn’t you?”

  The waitress ducked her coppery red head. “America’s a free country. That’s what you told me. That lowdown ex of mine got my boy, and I’m just not for keeping a mother from her kid. Nathaniel Turner’s been treating Marin like a second-class citizen, and that’s just not fair. What she needs is a second chance.”

  “All I want is to show my son that I’ve changed,” Marin insisted gently. “I’m in A.A. now. And, thanks to Junie and Bud, I have a job. Everything I’m doing is to be in Peyton’s life, right where I belong.”

  If she belonged in his life, how could Valerie let him belong in hers? Or their daughter’s? Allowing Marin to feast on Lucy’s vulnerabilities would cross a line that was never to be crossed.

  Problem was, Peyton’s effect on Valerie had already begun to scratch the surface of something that went deeper than attraction. And if he took another chance on Marin, he’d need to let Valerie and their daughter go—which was a painful possibility since his love for his mother was unconditional … even though he’d swear otherwise.

  That was how Valerie knew he’d never fully loved her. If he had, he wouldn’t have stopped loving her and wouldn’t have given up on their friendship.

  “Stay away from my daughter,” Valerie said again to Marin. Then she turned to Junie. “As long as Marin’s on Bud’s payroll Lucy won’t be coming here.”

  Junie tossed up her hands and walked off to tend to a customer. As Valerie marched to the diner’s exit, she glanced at the counter to see Marin uncover one of the trays and say, “Mmm. Walnut chocolate chip,” and snap into the cookie with a hard glare that was meant for Valerie’s eyes only.

  “MIERDA!”

  Peyton held the patient’s arm still as the on-call nurse injected a dose of morphine while she stifled a giggle at the man’s choice of Spanish obscenities. “The next painkiller you get will be in pill form, Mister Aturro.”

  “Good.” Diego Aturro, who’d come to Memorial with a dislocated wrist and boxing gloves still on both hands, had let himself get distracted—breaking what he called a cardinal rule of boxing—and had missed the heavy bag. The encounter with a concrete wall could’ve been worse, but Peyton was able to realign the bones without surgical intervention. The boxer-turned-restaurateur could take a hit, but not the pinprick of an injection. “Not all right with the needles, eh, you know.”

  “Now I know.” Peyton figured the nanosecond-long pinch of a needle would be nothing compared to how agitated the man would be about the limitations of an immobilized hand. Well into his fifties with strands of silver threaded through his shoe-polish-black hair, Diego was active and still as devoted to boxing as he’d probably been during his days as a prizefighter in Mexico. “Ice and rest will be your best friends.”

  “And tequila,” Diego added. “Don’t forget tequila.”

  Peyton grinned. “Got someone to take you home?”

  “Mi hijo, William. Ah … I can hear Fatima saying it now. ‘I told you, silly man. One day you’ll knock your own block off!’” The man waited as the nurse wrapped his hand securely. “Wives,” he said to Peyton, but there had been plain fondness in his voice when he’d said Fatima’s name. “They always tell you so.”

  Treatment finished, the nurse left to find Will. Diego hopped off the gurney with the bounce of a twenty-year-old in his step. “Medicine. God’s gift. But it can’t heal everything.” He studied Peyton critically. “People in town talk to my wife. My wife talks to me. Training might get your mind right. Give it a try, sí?”

  “You want me to box.” He held up his hands. “Sparring would be the fastest way to find myself out of a job. And baseball’s my sport of choice.”

  “Listen, I want to help. You’ll jog, jump rope, use the speed bag, shadowbox. I can’t fight—not like this—but I can train.” He pulled a business card from his wallet with admirable one-handed dexterity. The front advertised Bueno Eats, and printed on the back was the contact information for Diego’s gym. “So come to the gym, and visit the restaurant once in a while, eh? While it’s still there anyway.”

  Peyton had absorbed snatches of conversation about Memorial’s plans to develop a neuroscience center in town despite Meridien’s offer of a partnership that would require the facility to be built in the city. Expanding Night Sky’s hospital would mean expanding right onto the land of local business owners.

  It was a bad spot to be in for a man like Diego, but what could Peyton say that wouldn’t sound empty and inane? What voice had he in a town where he wasn’t planning to stay more than temporarily?

  After Will had collected his father, and thanked Peyton with a respectful touch to his cowboy hat, Peyton stayed behind to prep the treatment cubicle for the next patient. He heard the curtain’s rings slide across the metal bar and turned, expecting to see the ER nurse claim the supplies cart.

  But Marin stood there instead, looking uncertain, and only slightly resembling the mother he remembered.

  Hard liquor and hard living had stripped her bea
uty, leaving her with a bony frame, pale skin and sunken-in eyes. “Yell at me later. First let me talk.”

  Where was it? The fury, the hurt, the cruel words he’d sworn he’d have ready for her if she ever tracked him down again? Instead of resilient and unshakable, he felt stunned and drained. “Talk, Marin.”

  “I can’t stay long. Got to finish my hours.” She opened her long jacket to reveal a Fork Diner apron over her tee shirt. “I’m working. In Night Sky. Did anyone tell you?”

  “No.” In bits and pieces, his memories of trusting this woman and letting her shred his spirit and sanity were refueling his will to be in control—to win—this time. “Just because someone gave you a job doesn’t mean you’re different. It doesn’t mean I shouldn’t hate you.”

  I don’t think you can change.

  Those had been Valerie’s words, aimed at him. Now he could see his own wounded pride reflected in the drop of Marin’s shoulders.

  “If saying that makes you feel better, then okay, Peyton. But I love you. Can’t help it. I’m so proud of the man you’ve become.” With purpose, Marin stepped forward until he could see into her clear, hopeful eyes. “See it? The sobriety?”

  All of her booze-free fresh starts had ended with her falling back to her old ways, leaving his heart shattered like a busted liquor bottle. “It never lasts.”

  “Watch me prove you wrong. I’m going to A.A. at the church. The pastor’s wife signed me up.” She hugged him, not giving him the choice to accept it or not, and apparently not caring that he didn’t reciprocate the embrace. “I only want to be your mother again.”

  “Mom, you need to leave.”

  Marin finally released him, nodding and blinking away unshed tears. She smiled that same magnetic smile, the one that swayed people to have faith in her when they knew they shouldn’t. “You said ‘Mom.’ No booze, no money—none of what I thought was important before—can compare to that.”

  That was a first, Marin admitting what she valued over her son. Was that A.A. talking? The “’fess up to your screw-ups” step? Or was this heartfelt regret?