by Liz Isaacson
“Did you not want to be a father?”
“No, I did. It was the greatest thing that ever happened.” He pictured the downy soft hair on his son’s head. More pain than he knew he could handle ripped through him. “I loved that baby.” His voice broke, and Heather gathered him fully into her comforting embrace. “But I lost him, and I lost my wife too, and that’s all I can see associated with having kids.”
“Sh.” She stroked his hair, his shoulder. She held him tight the way he wished Johanna would’ve after they’d buried Montgomery.
“I can never go back to Kentucky,” he said, his voice much too high. “But I want to go every day. Let my son know I love him and haven’t forgotten about him.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He shook his head and stepped back, swiping at his eyes. Thankfully no tears were there. He couldn’t look at her, and the thought of drinking hot chocolate made his stomach revolt, but he picked up a spoon and opened the can of powder anyway.
“I can’t have kids,” he said again.
“Levi—”
“No, Heather. It’s a non-negotiable issue. It’ll die, and you’ll leave me, and I’m not going through that again.” He meant to simply set the spoon down and walk out, but he tossed it. It clattered around on the stovetop, making Heather flinch. He looked fully at her then, and their eyes locked in an emotional battle. “I’m sorry.”
He wasn’t sure if he was sorry about throwing the spoon or that he simply couldn’t give her what she wanted. Probably both. He spun and marched into the mudroom, blindly grabbed a set of keys, and headed for the door even though he wasn’t wearing shoes.
“Levi, don’t go,” she said, her voice on the edge of tears now.
He paused, his indecision raging through him. He was so tired. So tired of being alone. So tired of this big, empty house and the expansive, empty farm. So tired of keeping everything bottled up inside. It actually felt good to release it to someone else. Let them carry the burden for a while.
“I love you, too,” Heather said, pulling him back into the house. He turned and caught the glint of tears streaming down her face. “Please don’t go.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Heather stared numbly at the door leading to the garage. Her fingers drifted toward her lips the same way they had after the first time Levi had kissed her.
Had he just kissed her for the last time?
He’d returned to her, gazed down at her with warring things in his eyes. Love and resentment. Hope and fear. He’d said, “I love you, but this house is massive right now.” He’d kissed her and walked out.
She spun away from the door and left the half-finished hot chocolate in the kitchen. She couldn’t stay in this house for another minute either, and she called the one person who’d come, no questions asked.
Okay, so there’d probably be a lot of questions. She called Dwayne anyway. He answered on the third ring, his voice alert as if he’d been awake and expecting her call at one o’clock in the morning.
“I need you to come pick me up at Levi’s,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” Heather’s voice broke and those blasted tears made a reappearance. “I can’t drive, and I can’t stay here. Please come as fast as you can.”
“I’m on my way.”
Twenty-five minutes passed before his headlights cut a path down Levi’s lane. Heather stood from where she’d been sitting on Levi’s front steps, her bag packed and her mind churning through everything he’d told her.
I love you.
I can’t have kids.
You’ll leave me.
I love you, I love you, I love you.
Dwayne met her at the bottom of the steps, his eyes sweeping her from head to toe as if Levi had physically hurt her.
“I’m going to kill him,” he growled, picking up her bag and setting it in the back of the truck.
“He has enough problems,” Heather said. Once they were securely shut in the truck she added, “It’s not his fault.”
“No? You just called me in the middle of the night.” He backed up and turned around. “Whose fault is it?”
“Mine.” She sighed as she looked into the darkness. “I thought I could fix him.” Her hands felt limp on the ends of her arms. “Me and my stupid fantasies. I should know by now that I can’t fix men.”
“What happened?”
Heather shook her head. “I want to tell you, Dwayne. I do. But he told me a lot of things in confidence, and I’m not going to break that.”
“So you know he’s loaded.”
“Yes.”
“You know how he got the money?”
“Yes.”
“And there’s more than that.”
A lot more. “Yes.”
Her brother sighed and raked one hand over his face. “I warned him not to hurt you. I’m still going to kill him.”’
Heather scooted across the bench and put her head on her brother’s shoulder. “No, you’re not. You’re not even going to talk to him about this.”
“Heather, come on.”
“I love him, Dwayne. Please, just give me some time to work things out.”
Dwayne heaved a giant sigh, like she’d just asked him to achieve world peace singlehandedly. But he acquiesced, helped her get her bag inside and settled into her old bedroom, and held her in a tight hug.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said, his voice thick. “But I sure hope you can work things out with him. He seems to really like you too.”
Heather flashed the best smile she could muster. “Thank you.” She turned away, closed the door, listened to his footsteps retreat, and then collapsed onto her bed.
Levi didn’t just like her. Levi had said he loved her.
With tears streaming down her face, she lifted her eyes to the ceiling. “Is that true?” she asked heaven. “Does he really love me?”
No beam of light shone down from the sky. No voice was heard. No earth-shattering revelations were given.
But a feeling of love filled her, and Heather knew God loved her—and that Levi Rhodes did too.
So she pulled out her phone and composed a message. I’m at my brother’s place. Thanks for all your help the last few days.
She thumbed on I love you and took it off again three times, sending the text without those three little words that had just changed her life.
She expected Levi to text or call in the morning, and he did.
I’m sorry about last night. I hope you can forgive me one day. I’ve hired Paulina Smithson to help you until your arm heals.
Heather stared at the screen in disgust. Paulina Smithson? She didn’t want the home hospice nurse’s help. And when had he talked to her? It was barely seven AM.
She wanted Levi to drive her to lunch or to work. She wanted Levi to curl up beside her on the couch while they wasted an afternoon watching TV or napping.
But did she want Levi if she couldn’t have children?
“Can you take me into Mom’s?” Heather asked Dwayne when she found him in the kitchen.
“Are you sure you want to do that?” He gave her the side-eye as he stirred cream into his coffee.
She sighed. She didn’t know what she wanted. “If I go into town, I can at least walk over to the grocery store or something. Darcy will come get me after school.”
“Heather, maybe you just need to give him some time. He’s a really private guy.”
“He came to get me in the middle of the night to talk,” she said. “I didn’t pressure him.”
Dwayne lifted his coffee to his lips, never taking his eyes from her. “I’m going with him to the horse auction next weekend. Or I was supposed to. Do you want me to cancel?”
Heather did, and she didn’t. “You love the horse auction.”
“So does Levi.”
“You guys go. But you can’t say anything to him. Nothing. You don’t get to lecture him. You don’t get to threaten him. You don’t get to tell him an
ything I say or don’t say.”
He lifted his free hand in surrender. “I will say nothing.” His phone rang, and he plucked it from the island countertop, his face darkening, and answered it. “Hey, Levi.” He met Heather’s eye and set his coffee down. “Yeah, she’s here.”
Heather edged closer, almost wanting Dwayne to tip the phone so she could hear the electronic version of Levi’s voice.
“She didn’t tell me anything. Something about not breaking confidence.” He rolled his eyes. “Of course she was upset. She called me in the middle of the night to come get her. You think she’d do that if she wasn’t upset?” He turned away from Heather. “You told me you wouldn’t hurt her.”
Heather made a grab for the phone, but her brother was twice as big as her and at least four times as strong. “Dwayne,” she said, rounding the island and facing him, her chest heaving. “Stop it. I told you it was my fault.”
He pressed his lips into a line. Said, “I have to go. I’ll call you later.” And hung up. Heather glared at him, half humiliated and half furious. “I don’t trust you not to say anything to him when you go to the horse auction.”
“I don’t need to say anything else,” he said. “He’s heartbroken, which means he really cares about you.” He put a triumphant smile on his face that Heather didn’t understand.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Because you’ll get back together.”
Heather snorted and folded her good arm over her casted one. “Yeah, I don’t think so.” Levi dictated when and how much he’d say, and Heather didn’t like that. She didn’t like that he walked out when he didn’t want to talk. That he had money to throw around to make things better. Cash wouldn’t always make things better, and she knew that.
But she also knew she couldn’t control him. Someone as free and wild as Levi simply wouldn’t be able to survive under her thumb. And she couldn’t fix his emotional wounds. Couldn’t change his past. Or his mind.
“I don’t want to go to Mom’s,” she said. “I’m going back to bed.” She padded away from Dwayne, glad when he let her go with a simple, “I’ll come check on you at lunch.”
She waved her hand to indicate she’d heard, and then she slipped quietly down the hall and into her bedroom. She pressed her back into the door and tipped her face toward heaven again. No prayers came. No words. Only exhaustion.
She managed to swallow a painkiller dry, and she texted Levi—I don’t need Paulina’s help. I’m fine—and indeed crawled back into bed.
Heather ignored her phone when it rang at eleven-forty-five. She knew who it was without even answering. After all, the third grade teachers had lunch together. She sat up in bed and raked her hands through her hair. She should shower. Get up. Go on a walk. Something but lay here and feel sorry for herself.
Fifteen minutes later, she’d washed her face and pulled her hair into a ponytail. Wearing comfortable pants she gardened in and a sweatshirt from her high school days, she almost collided with Dwayne when she entered the hall.
“Whoa.” He stumbled backward. “Darcy’s on the phone.” He thrust his device toward her.
“I don’t want to talk to her.”
“She threatened my life if I didn’t go get you right now. I came from lunch at Kurt’s.” He shook the phone. Translation, Take it now.
As Kurt was by far the best cook on the ranch and Heather knew how much her brother hated missing good food, she took the phone.
“Bring it back to me.” He turned and left the house. Why was it so easy for men to do that? She scowled at the door he’d exited through and lifted the phone to her ear.
“Hey, Darce.”
“Sotheby’s tonight after work.”
“Uh….” Heather didn’t have a reason she couldn’t go. She wasn’t even working tomorrow. She could stuff herself with tiramisu and tuxedo cheesecake and spend the day in bed if she wanted to.
“All right,” she said. “So I guess you heard about Levi.”
“He showed up at the school.” Her voice dropped a few decibels.
Heather’s heart rocketed toward the stars. “What? Why?”
“He said he wanted to make sure your sub had everything she needed. He dropped off lunch!”
“For my sub?”
“For the whole faculty.”
Horror struck Heather right behind her lungs. “You’re kidding.”
“Not even a little bit. And you know how much I love that cilantro lime rice from Alberto’s.”
Heather didn’t know what to say. Why was he bringing lunch for the teachers? He’d never done that while she worked there. He knew she wasn’t there, right? What was he trying to prove?
“Will you come pick me up after school?” Heather asked, a definite bite in her voice. “I can’t drive.”
“Be there about five, okay?” Scuffling sounded on Darcy’s end of the line. “Oh my gosh. They just brought in flan. Gotta go.” The call ended, and Heather stared at Dwayne’s phone with disbelief coursing through her with the strength of torrential winds.
She gripped the phone, the edges giving a little bit. Maybe Levi was trying to make her mad. Maybe he was trying to show her how good he was.
Her stomach rumbled, and she wished she had pulled pork and cilantro lime rice tucked into a freshly made tortilla from Alberto’s too. Or some of Juan Carlos’s chicken cordon bleu rollups. Or his potato salad.
But she could have something better. Kurt had cooked, which meant the cowboys would be eating like kings out in the cabin community where they all lived.
Heather tucked her phone into her back pocket and kept Dwayne’s in her hand as she walked down the long road that went back to the town. She turned left and continued on solid ground, not trusting the fields that sat between the homestead and the cabin community. She arrived several minutes later to the scent of something savory and sweet at the same time.
The door to Kurt’s cabin stood open, and chatter and laughter filtered out to her. “Knock, knock,” she said as she entered the cabin.
The conversation seemed to still as if someone had pushed mute on every vocal chord in the place. She glanced to the familiar faces that had been working Grape Seed Ranch for years now.
Kurt, the foreman, and by far the oldest. Chadwell, who’d adopted Felicity’s horse as his own. Her brother, who alone continued eating his bowl of chili by dunking his cornbread in it and taking a bite. Austin, Dylan, and Shane, the Royal brothers who’d come to them a few years ago.
“Can I eat with you guys?” She toed the rug Kurt had laid just inside the door, more self-conscious than she’d been in a long time.
“’Course,” Kurt said, striding forward. He enveloped her in a hug and whispered, “You doin’ okay?”
She tried not to take a drag of his cowboy scent, finding so much of Levi in the musky hints and tanned leather smell of him. She cleared her throat as Kurt stepped back and looked at her. “I’m okay.”
“We’ve all been there,” he said.
“In fact, Kurt was just tellin’ us about his last break-up.” Dwayne waved her forward and handed her an oversized bowl that a giant might use.
“That story’s over,” Kurt said. “I heard Shane has a good one about a farrier.”
“No, sir,” the blond cowboy said, shaking his head. “You were going to tell us how you’re going to meet your next girlfriend.”
Kurt glanced at Heather, who smiled. “I won’t tell,” she said. “Or is this privileged cowboy talk? You guys know I know a lot of single women in town, right?”
“Teachers,” Austin said as if they didn’t count. “And there are only three of you that are single.”
Heather almost slopped hot chili on herself. “So you’re not interested in Darcy or Kimmi?” None of them were interested in her, that was for sure. She had plenty of opportunities to date her father’s cowboys. It had never turned out well for anyone. Again, Gene’s face appeared in her mind’s eye, and she hated that he was always there, like he wa
s permanent part of her life now.
“Kimmi’s datin’ Flynn,” Austin said.
“Darcy’s single,” Heather said. “And she’ll be picking me up tonight at five if any of you want to meet her.”
“She…no, thanks,” Shane said.
Feeling off-balance and out of place, Heather sat against the wall with Dwayne between her and the rest of the cowboys. “So tell us where you’re going to meet your next girlfriend, Kurt.” She spooned some chili in her mouth and stifled a groan. “And holy cow, this is amazing.”
“He’s putting it in the church’s cooking competition,” Dwayne said. “And his pork chops and onions, and a pumpkin cake roll.”
“Oh, when’s that?” she asked. Heather never threw her hat into the ring for the church’s cooking competition. They competed for charity against the other churches in the area during the annual Spring Jubilee. Kurt should represent them, because he was seriously skilled with beans, spices, and ground beef.
“Coming up.” Dwayne slapped the table. “Anyway, tell us how you’re gonna meet your next girlfriend, Kurt.”
Kurt’s piercing blue eyes darted around the crowd gathered in his cabin, and he stroked one hand over his graying beard. Under the white cowboy hat he always wore, he had dark hair salted with more gray. Heather had always found him attractive, and he dated quite a lot. But no one had ever stuck with him.
“Online,” he finally said.
“You’ll have to relocate with that,” Shane said, reaching for another square of cornbread.
“There’s a new site,” he said. “TexasFaithful-dot-com. Only for Texans.” The news rendered the men in the cabin silent, and Heather marveled that Kurt had been able to do such a thing. She was also calculating how hard it would be to put a profile up on the new site. Probably only a few minutes, and she had nothing to do the rest of the afternoon….
She shook away the thoughts. Even though she and Levi had only been together for a few days, her feelings for him had grown and developed at an astronomical rate.
You’ll get back together. Dwayne’s words from earlier that morning sounded in her ears, and she seized onto them, hoping he was right.