A Hero's Homecoming

by Laurie Paige

  “I suspect Jessica will go into isolation with Jenny when the time comes.”

  The nurse said goodbye and joined her party.

  Carey pushed her plate aside and sipped her milk. She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Now I know what the sighs are about,” J.D. murmured.

  His expression, she noticed, was different from any he’d ever bestowed on her, although she couldn’t say how it differed.

  “And no doubt you’re going to tell me,” she quipped dryly. She thought of life, of death, of how short one could be and how prolonged the other.

  “You’re worried about Jennifer McCallum.”

  “She’s only three.” The awful sting of tears surprised her again. What was wrong with her nowadays?

  He nodded. “I’d take her place if I could. Do you believe me?”

  Oddly, she did. She didn’t know why. “Yes.”

  He reached for her hand and squeezed it in his. She looked at his long, aristocratic fingers. Her own hands, with their short, blunt nails, appeared plebeian next to his. She touched the calluses on his palm. “You have surgeon’s hands.”

  “I’d once thought of going into medicine.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  He released her. “I went to war, instead.”

  If he felt regret over that decision, it didn’t show in his voice or face. It was just a statement of fact, nothing more, nothing less.

  She nodded, knowing he’d left his home for reasons he’d buried long ago. Pity stirred. She shook her head, aware how foolish that was.

  “I don’t want or need your pity,” he said softly, reading her mind.

  “Consider it a gift.” She laid a ten on the table, pulled on her cardigan and left.

  Three

  Wayne Kincaid, alias J. D. Cade, pulled on the string of barbed wire, cleated it to the post, then checked the tautness by giving it a twang. It felt about right.

  He strung the other four wires of the stock fence, then took off his hat and blotted the sweat from his forehead with a swipe of his sleeve. The temperature wasn’t quite forty degrees Fahrenheit, but the air was still and the sun was out.

  The warm rays had felt good earlier, but now he was hot. He dropped his tools in the back of the truck and sat on the tailgate. He pulled out his lunch but didn’t open the bag. Instead, he grabbed a beer from the cooler and settled back against the truck, then gazed at the mountains. This was about the prettiest spot in all creation.

  A ridge of cap rock formed the boundary between the old Baxter place and the Kincaid spread. It brought back memories—riding and hiking parties with friends, hunting with his dad…back when he’d still thought his father was the perfect man, when he’d thought he had to live up to that perfect image and be the hero his dad demanded of his sons.

  If he hadn’t caught his father in the act with another woman, he wondered how long he would have continued thinking the old man was right up there next to God in wisdom.

  That day in the stable had opened his eyes.

  “How could you, Dad? How could you do that?” he’d demanded, righteous as only a fifteen-year-old can be. “Mom saw you. She was crying.”

  His father had gotten furious at being questioned, then he’d laughed at his son’s anguish. “Grow up,” he’d ordered in a bellow. “Jesus, I run this whole f-ing outfit. A man needs to relax once in a while, to have some fun without his own family coming down on him. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  The cowboy’s wife who had been in the hay with his dad had clutched her chest as if she’d been stabbed with a knife. It had meant something to her.

  And to him. That day had marked the end of unquestioning love and respect. It had marked the end of living up to the demands his old man made on him. It had marked the beginning of his observing life and thinking about things in his own way.

  Then, at eighteen, just out of high school and planning on going to college to study medicine, which his father had sneered at, there had been a final quarrel when his father had been out of town at a time his mom took sick.

  A strange woman had answered the phone when he’d called the hotel where the Cattlemen’s Association convention was taking place. His father’s voice had been slurred when he came on the line.

  Drunk and whoring again. Wayne had hung up in disgust and stayed with his mother at the hospital. He’d signed papers and authorized treatment as if he were the responsible adult.

  He’d also made a vow—he was going to kill his father when he showed up.

  His mother had come through the minor heart attack and, seeing what was in his eyes, had begged him not to quarrel with his father. “Then I’ll have to leave,” he’d replied.

  “Where would you go?”

  “Anywhere. I don’t care.” He looked out the hospital window and saw two guys in uniforms. “The army. Will you sign for me?”

  “Your father—”

  “To hell with him! I’ll take to the road. I’m heading for any state that doesn’t have him in it.”

  She’d been silent, her eyes filled with anguish. “I’ll sign for you to join the army if you promise to write every week. Every week, Wayne.”

  “I will. You should leave, too, Mom. You have friends back in Virginia. You could go back home.”

  She shook her head. “No, not yet. Later, maybe.”

  But she’d known her heart was weak. She’d lasted another few years, then died as quietly as she’d lived, a gentle, refined woman who had loved the mountains. And Jeremiah Kincaid, although the bastard hadn’t deserved it.

  A noise in the underbrush drew him out of the bitter past and into the present. Freeway came limping across the dirt track that formed the road. He sat down and held up his paw with an expectant look.

  “So you need some medical attention, huh? What did you pick up this time—another thorn?”

  Wayne examined the huge paw of the mongrel that had adopted him years ago. Freeway’s brows quirked in that worried manner dogs adopt when they’re unsure about letting their human work on them.

  “Whoa, that’s a granddaddy of a thorn, buddy.”

  Freeway thumped his tail once.

  “Hell, it’s all the way through the pad. Okay, hold still. I’ll try to pull it out.”

  He grasped the end of the thorn and tried to ease it out the way it went in. The end snapped off.

  “Damn.” There was nothing he could get ahold of now. The sharp end of the thorn barely protruded through the skin. He got out his knife.

  Freeway took one look and hobbled off. The dog remembered the last time Wayne had used a knife to cut a porcupine quill out of his lip.

  “Come back here, you chicken. It won’t hurt much.”

  The dog sat down a good ten feet away—too far for Wayne to make a grab for him—and licked at his injured paw. He gave a surprised yelp when he hit the thorn.

  “Don’t say I didn’t tell you. That has to come out.” Wayne patted the tailgate. “Come on, I’ll take you in to the vet. He’ll fix you right up. Come on,” he coaxed.

  After a lot of damn fool cajoling on his part, Freeway finally limped over and let Wayne lift his ornery carcass into the truck.

  Wayne was just about to close the back end, when he heard singing in the distance. Two people, a female and a child, he guessed, were coming down the mountain trail. He waited for them to come into sight.

  “Will miracles never end?” he muttered when he saw Carey and her daughter stride around the boulder at the bend in the trail. “Hello,” he called.

  They both stopped. The child grinned and came bouncing on down the slope. The mother hesitated, then followed. If Carey could have grabbed her daughter and beat it back up the trail without looking ridiculous, he was pretty sure she would have. He grinned and let the pleasure roll over him.

  That was a worrisome thing, too. He liked it more and more every time he saw her.

  He wanted to touch her hair, which always had a tousled appearance, the short
curls wafting enticingly around her temples, calling for a man’s hands to smooth them into order…or more disorder. He wanted to touch her all over.

  A coil of heat began unwinding inside him.

  Her checks were pink from the hike, and her lips had a subtle shine. Maybe lip gloss. He couldn’t recall ever seeing lipstick on her full, generous lips.

  For a second, he recalled how they’d felt under his mouth last week, supple and soft and warm, moving with his movements, hungry the way he was hungry…

  He stopped that line of thought as he felt a strain against his jeans. This wasn’t the time.

  Watch it, he ordered. A man could get in too deep before he knew it. However, he’d never met a woman he couldn’t walk away from. For a painful moment, he recalled Kate Randall and his youthful love for her. He’d made promises back then, but fate—and his father—had forced him to break them up. He shook his head slightly, pushing the memory aside. Since leaving home, he’d wanted no ties. He’d always made that clear. He tried to play fair.

  But she sure was a pretty woman. Proud and independent as hell, too. And scared of letting her feelings loose.

  He could identify with that. He didn’t want any emotional entanglements, either. Briefly he wondered if that made him just like his father.

  The kid stopped in front of him. She was also cute. Cheeks pink as the first blush on an apple, a pug nose with a few freckles, brown eyes, long hair the same brown-blond shade as Carey’s. The pair were obviously mother and daughter.

  “What are you doing here?” Carey asked suspiciously.

  “Mending fences.” He pointed to the new strands of wire on the posts. “I was just going to pack it in, though. Freeway here has picked up a nasty thorn.”

  “My mom can fix it,” the kid spoke up. “She can fix anything. Is your dog’s name really Freeway?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s where we teamed up, oh, six or seven years ago. We were heading in the same direction on the interstate…out in California, I think it was. We just sort of hung out together after that.”

  “I’m going to get a dog when I grow up. I’m going to name him Buzz. If I had two dogs, I could name the other one Woody.” She gave her mother a significant glance.

  “Disney characters,” Carey explained to him. “You already have Pickles and Dudley. We’re not home enough to take care of dogs,” she told her daughter, her chin set in the same stubborn mode as the kid’s. Like mother, like daughter, for sure.

  He hid a grin.

  “Lorrie is home all the time. Besides, I’d take care of them after school, Mom. I promise.”

  “Two cats are enough,” Carey said.

  “I had a dog when I grew up—” He stopped before he gestured toward the vast, lush valley that constituted the Kincaid land.

  Close call, he warned himself. It was probably only a matter of time before everyone knew who he was, what with Sam Brightwater already figuring it out. And Kate, too. Others would probably catch on soon.

  He looked at Carey, with her direct gaze and down-to-earth nature. She wasn’t a woman to put up with subterfuge in a man, no matter how good the reason. For a second he tried to think of his excellent reasons for not telling anyone who he was, the foremost being that he didn’t want the baggage that went with the Kincaid name. He’d been free of it for twenty-five years. There was no going back now.

  “Come on, Sophie, we should let Mr. Cade get back to his work.” Carey shifted restlessly like a runner toeing the mark, ready to be off at the sound of the gun.

  Her attitude roused his own bullheadedness. He didn’t like being silently declared unfit company. “I’m just having lunch. Care to join me?” He smiled in a real friendly fashion.

  Carey’s eyes narrowed.

  “We have some, too,” the kid piped up. “Let’s eat here, Mom, okay? This is nice. I can play with Freeway.”

  The daughter gave her mom a look that would have melted Scrooge’s heart without the ghostly visits.

  “I don’t think—”

  “Good idea,” he agreed. “Thinking is too much trouble on a day as beautiful as this.” He moved aside. “Sit right here, ladies. I have soda in the cooler. Want one?”

  “Please,” Sophie said. She held up her arms.

  He realized the kid expected him to pick her up and set her on the tailgate. He did. She was as light as a piece of thistledown. Her eyes conveyed the most complete trust in her world, and therefore in him, of anyone he’d ever seen. It brought an odd tightness to his chest.

  “Hi, Freeway.” Sophie patted his head and scratched around his ears.

  “Careful,” Wayne cautioned. “He might not be feeling friendly with that thorn in his paw.” He fished a couple of cans of soda out of the cooler and handed them to the girls.

  “Mom, can you fix Freeway now?” the kid asked with another of her soulful, pleading looks.

  “I’ll check it out. If that’s okay with you?” Carey cast a questioning glance his way.

  “Sure, but I don’t have a needle or anything.”

  She smiled in the maddeningly practical manner of the trained professional. “I do.” She swung a backpack off and pulled a well-equipped first-aid kit out.

  “You could do surgery on the trail,” he commented.

  “If I had to,” she said coolly. “Would you tie your handkerchief around his muzzle, please?”

  “He won’t bite.”

  “Maybe not voluntarily, but I’m a stranger and I’m going to hurt him. He might react instinctively. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

  He saw her point. “Easy, boy,” he murmured, yanking his handkerchief from around his neck. He looped it around Freeway’s muzzle and behind his ears so it wouldn’t come off easily. The dog appeared rather surprised at this strange treatment, but he didn’t fight it.

  Carey looked at the injured paw, pressed on it a couple of times, then selected supplies from her kit. She cleaned the area with an antiseptic towelette, then sprayed the pad. “That’s an antibiotic, but it will also take some of the pain away.”

  After removing a needle from a pack that contained the most varied types of needles he’d ever seen, she tried to hook the thorn and pull it through, but it wouldn’t budge.

  Freeway gave a whimper, the first Wayne had ever heard from the big mongrel. Sophie looped her arms around the animal’s neck and crooned to him. “Mom’s real careful,” she assured the dog. “She won’t hurt you if she can help it.”

  The dog pressed his face into Sophie’s shoulder and gave another soulful whimper.

  “You big put-on,” Wayne muttered, knowing he’d do the same thing with the mother given half a chance. Hell, she could operate on him without anesthesia if he could bury his face against her breasts while she did.

  The heat swept through him at an alarming rate. Enough of those thoughts.

  Carey studied the thorn a bit more, shook her head, then got out a scalpel. Wayne wrapped an arm around the dog’s neck and held the paw in place for Carey. Lord, she really was equipped for surgery.

  She sprayed the pad again, waited a few seconds while she pressed the sore place with her thumb, then quickly made a tiny incision in the pad. Freeway didn’t move a muscle.

  She soaked the drop of blood away with a gauze square, then plucked the thorn out with a pair of tweezers, pulling it all the way through the pad. Freeway gave a surprised yelp as the black bramble jerked free of the flesh. Carey sprayed the area again.

  “I’m going to use a product that takes the place of skin for a while, since most animals chew any bandage off quicker than it took to put it on. This will resist saliva for a few hours, then you’ll need to renew it. I’ll give you the bottle.”

  She painted a liquid on the pad that hardened like fingernail polish, leaving a clear, shiny coat. “Okay, he’s done. You can free him.”

  Freeway smelled his paw and gave an experimental lick or two at it. He sat up on his haunches and gave the pa
w a shake, then tried licking it again.

  Sophie giggled. “It won’t come off, silly.”

  “Here,” Wayne said to the dog, “you deserve a treat after that ordeal.” He poured the rest of his beer into a saucer he kept in the truck for the dog. Freeway lapped it up, while the kid laughed in delight and Carey tried to look disapproving, except for the laughter that kept leaping into her eyes.

  “Can we eat now? I’m starved.” Sophie turned to him. “Mom brought the best cake. We made it together and took it to Lorrie’s house and had a big dinner Friday night. There were twenty-two people there, and a lot of them were kids like me. We played games after dark.”

  “That must have been fun,” he commented, retrieving his lunch bag and thinking of the rather lonely bachelor gathering at the bunkhouse kitchen over the weekend. “I have a couple of sandwiches I can share.”

  “We have plenty,” Carey said with her usual I-don’t-take-a-thing-from-anyone attitude. She cleaned up her equipment, stored it neatly, gave him the bottle of stuff for Freeway’s paw, then put the kit away.

  She removed a bag of food from the backpack. His mouth watered when he spied fried chicken breasts, crisped potato skins, celery hearts stuffed with something that looked good, a plastic bowl of avocado dip and two big pieces of cake. Freeway went on the alert as soon as he got a whiff of the chicken.

  “Down, boy,” Wayne ordered.

  “I’m Sophie,” the kid announced. “What’s your name?” She settled a napkin on her lap and took a loaded plastic plate from her mom.

  “I’m called ‘J.D.’”

  Not exactly a lie, but not the whole truth. He found he didn’t like lying to Carey, but it was hard to correct now that he’d lived with the name for so many months. Besides, he’d be on his way soon. As soon as he knew how little Jennifer McCallum was.

  His half sister. And Clint Calloway, his half brother. And there were probably others, knowing his father as he had. Still, it was hard to think of leaving without telling them there were blood ties between them. It was true. Blood was thicker—