by Nikki Logan
‘Sounds good,’ Ellie lied, clambering out of the car. ‘Will you be there?’
Sarah smiled and climbed out after her. ‘You betcha.’ But not for Jed and not for Holt Calhoun. So maybe it was for the line dancing? ‘It starts at sunset with a side of beef on a spit.’
A sea of brown, grousing cattle filled her mind. Back on her first day in Larkville she’d have happily consigned any one of them to a rotisserie, but with the benefit of distance and a few personal introductions she felt a whole lot more warm and fuzzy towards the poor dopey creatures. ‘A whole side?’
Sarah threw her a curious look.
Ellie pulled herself together. ‘I think I just smacked headlong into a big-city double standard. I guess I can’t complain about someone throwing half a cow on the barbecue when I happily ate Jed’s marinated ribs three nights ago.’
Sarah laughed. ‘Get used to it, honey. Out this way they call it “bustin’ a beast.” Enough for half the town and one of Jess Calhoun’s fresh-baked biscuits each.’
Right. Yet another reminder about why she was really here. ‘Calhouns again. Seems like they’re everywhere I turn.’
‘The Calhouns founded Larkville and they practically own it still. You can’t move without running into one of their businesses or their animals. Or one of them.’
What would she say if she knew she was walking with one?
‘By the way…’ Sarah murmured, following Ellie down the laneway to her door. ‘Ribs? Seems like you’re doing just fine with that inoculation, huh?’
* * *
‘Ellie…’
Amazing how a single male utterance could whisper so many things. Relief. Confusion. Foreboding. And only the last one made a bit of sense given what had passed between them last.
Caution wasn’t the reaction she’d hoped for when she lifted her knuckles to his door, but she had a theory to test. And, given she was already so far out of her comfort zone by being here at all, she had nothing to lose by proceeding.
She stood taller in his doorway. ‘I came to take you up on your offer to show me Larkville’s highlights.’
His eyebrow twitched but he didn’t let it go any further. The effort of keeping his expression neutral showed in the sudden line of his mouth. ‘Sarah’s offer?’
His words could not have been a clearer reminder that it was their friend and not he that had committed him. She figured she was supposed to be feeling some level of shame right now for making him go through with it. Possibly even graciously relenting and scurrying back to her front door.
Screw that. She had a point to prove to herself.
She was still a tiny bit tetchy after checking her email this morning and realising there was still nothing from Jessica. And she was a lot tetchy that Jed hadn’t so much as said hello since that steamy moment at her door four nights ago. A lifetime!
‘Wrong side of bed this morning, Ellie?’ She turned her distraction up to him. ‘You’re forming your own Grand Canyon between your eyebrows there. Something on your mind?’
You.
‘No. I’m fine.’ Habit got the better of her. ‘Is now a bad time?’
His mind was busy behind his careful eyes. But when it finished flicking indecisively between yes and no, it settled on no. ‘Happy to be out on a beautiful Sunday showing off my district. Besides, I owe Sarah. She was really welcoming when I arrived.’
In her head she reached out and shoved him in the chest just to jolt that careful beige mask from his face. Wednesday night he looked like he wanted to eat her whole, now he was only doing this for a friend? ‘You know I’d help her anyway.’
That earned her the first hint of the Jed from the top of the Calhoun ridge. His eyes landed on her softly. ‘Yeah, I know you would.’
‘Okay. What time should I come back?’
He reached inside and grabbed his jacket from its peg and whistled for Deputy. ‘Now’s as good a time as any.’
Don’t do me any favors. She followed him out into the street where his chariot awaited. His lips shifted slightly as he walked alongside her and she wondered—again—if she’d muttered aloud.
They rode in silence and Ellie busied herself looking at the architecture in the streets they passed. It was easy to see where ‘old Larkville’ began and ended in the switch from earthy colours and stone construction to brighter timbers and cladding on the more modern buildings.
Twin bells clanged as Jed pulled the SUV under a sign that said Gus’s Fillin’ Station. ‘Just need gas,’ he said unnecessarily, and then didn’t move.
Over to her right a weathered man sauntered towards them. ‘Fill her up, Sheriff?’
‘Thanks, Gus.’
‘Wow,’ Ellie said, watching the man go about his business. ‘An honest-to-goodness service station. I thought these were legend.’
Jed laughed. ‘You really need to get out of New York more.’
For a man well past fifty, Gus certainly had superhero hearing. ‘Pfff…New York,’ he grunted as he passed back along the vehicle to slop a window-washer in its bucket.
Jed half winced, as though this was an argument he should have predicted.
Ellie leaned out her window just a bit. She’d always believed in calling someone’s bluff. ‘Something wrong with New York?’
‘Don’t go there, Ellie…’ Jed murmured through the wince. ‘I was hoping to show off the good things about Larkville.’
Gus shuffled around the front of the SUV and took his time slopping the windshield with soapy water. ‘What’s right with it? Noisy. Smelly. Dirty.’ Every word accompanied a strong swipe of the rubber blade across Jed’s side of the glass.
Ellie smiled. It was hard to take such blatant prejudice to heart. ‘When was the last time you were there?’ she asked brightly.
Steely eyes peered up from under his battered old stetson. ‘Back in eighty-one. Gave someone a ride.’
‘Eighteen eighty-one?’ she said under her breath, and then, much louder, ‘A lot has changed in three decades.’
‘Would want to,’ Gus muttered.
He crossed to her side of the SUV and sudsed up her side a little too zealously. But, as he drew long streaks of clean across the soap, his eyes found hers.
His motion faltered. His black pinpoint pupils doubled in size.
Some kind of prescience nibbled low in Ellie’s gut.
He finished what he was doing, then crossed around to her side again, replaced the gas spout in the bowser and appeared at her window. The smell of old-school tobacco wafted with him. ‘How old are you?’
‘Gus—’ Jed sounded literally pained as he passed a bill via Ellie and into Gus’s wrinkled, sun-spotted hand.
‘Just a question, Sheriff.’
Ellie hurried to head off the inevitable condescension. ‘I’m thirty years old. So, yes, I do remember New York from when I was a child. I know for a fact it’s changed.’
But Gus wasn’t even thinking about New York City any more. His head tipped. ‘You look mighty like her.’
Ellie’s gut clamped. The oxygen in her lungs sucked into a void.
‘Who?’ Jed stepped in smoothly when it was obvious she wasn’t going to.
‘The woman I gave a ride to the Big Apple.’
Her mother mentioned she’d lived briefly on the Calhoun ranch. Stood to reason she would have been into town. Met Gus, maybe.
Ellie forced what little air she had left in her lungs up and past her voice box. She tried to pick a fight to distract him. ‘Are you suggesting all women from New York look the same?’
Gus frowned. ‘I’m sayin’ that you look just like her.’
‘Come on… You remember some woman you gave a ride to thirty years ago, Gus?’ Jed tried to be the voice of reason. But he glanced at Ellie, too.
She didn’t take her eyes off Gus. Exposure suddenly blazed bright, possible and totally unexpected. ‘Hard to forget this one. She wasn’t here for long but she had a big impact on the town.’
Desperate to end the c
onversation before it went any further, Ellie turned to Jed. ‘Shouldn’t we get going?’
‘Keep the change, Gus.’ Jed put the car straight into gear.
Gus stood back and Ellie wasted no time in smiling briefly and then raising her tinted window pretty much in his face.
He could add rudeness to New York’s list of failings.
‘I’m so sorry about that, Ellie.’ Jed’s apology was immediate; they hadn’t even bumped out of the gas station yet. ‘He’s obviously confused.’
Ellie grunted. ‘He seemed pretty sharp. Was the New York thing a dig at you or at me?’
‘Not me. No one knows my background and that’s how I like it.’
‘I can see why.’
He rubbed both his temples with one hand, then refocused on the road. ‘Would it help if I said ninety-eight per cent of Larkville isn’t like that?’
‘Would it be true?’
He chuckled. ‘There’s a reason stereotypes get started. You just met one.’
She was relaxing more and more every meter she got from Gus’s Fillin’ Station. ‘It’s fine, Jed. I shouldn’t have taken the bait.’
‘He’s grown too accustomed to speaking his mind. Not many people stand up to him. Certainly not on first acquaintance.’
‘Go me, then.’ She glanced at him, looking for signs he was patronising her, but his expression was totally open for the first time today. It was the only reason she risked a personal question. ‘So…seriously? No one knows your past?’
Trees whizzed by. ‘A trusted two. The rest haven’t asked, though I’m sure there’s been indiscriminate internet searching.’
She stared at him. ‘Yet you told me.’
‘I did.’ Silence. ‘Figured you shouldn’t be hanging out there all alone on the revelations front the other night.’
So he did at least remember the other night. ‘Well, thank you. You can be assured of my confidence.’
His eyes darkened. ‘If that’s a very formal way of saying I can trust you, I already know that.’
Would he, if he knew how many secrets she was keeping? Not exactly relevant to national security—lies by omission. As he’d almost found out just now.
She shook the trepidation free. ‘So, what’s on the agenda today? More bats?’
‘I thought you might like to see the aquifer where it bubbles to the surface.’
Chuckling let off a tiny bit of the tension she’d been carrying since opening the door to his textbook indifference. She let it come. ‘Another highlight on Larkville’s social calendar?’
He shrugged and glanced at her. ‘Since when were you all that social?’
‘Point.’ Besides, he’d be there. And that had taken a dangerously short time to being all she really cared about. She held his eyes longer than was sensible, or safe while he was behind the wheel. At the very last moment, something changed right at the back of them. Something realised. Something…decided. Then he turned back to the road.
‘Tell me about your family,’ he said after a moment of silent driving. ‘Something I couldn’t guess.’
The words Which family? hovered on the tip of her tongue. He’d never guess that. ‘I’m a twin,’ she offered optimistically.
His head snapped around. ‘There’s another woman like you in the world?’
The genuine appreciation in his eyes flattered her stupidly even as he tried to wipe the evidence of it from his expression. ‘Boston, actually. And, no, a brother. Matthew.’
‘Twins…’ He spent a moment getting his head around that. ‘You must be close.’
Ellie frowned. ‘I… We used to be. When we were younger. But Matt changed right about the same time I quit dancing. Kind of went underground. Lost his joy. I’m closer to my baby sister, Alex.’
She sighed, thinking about how much easier all of this would be with Alex here. Jed glanced sideways at her, drawn by her sorrow.
‘I miss her,’ she explained.
‘She’s back in New York?’
Ellie shook her head. ‘Australia. But might as well be the moon for how far she seems.’
‘That’s tough.’
She smiled at his transparent attempts to identify. ‘Says the only child.’
He chuckled. ‘I can empathise. Gram’s too old to travel much now. I miss her.’ His lips tightened briefly. ‘So there’s just the three of you and your folks?’
‘Four.’ If you didn’t count the Calhouns of which there were also four. ‘Charlotte’s in the middle.’
‘And what’s she like?’
Ellie glanced at him again. ‘Are you really interested or are you just being polite?’
‘I never had—’ He frowned. ‘Families interest me.’
Ellie’s heart squeezed. No siblings, no mother, virtually no father. Family dynamics would be a curiosity.
‘Charlotte marches to her own beat. Never tethered by convention. We’re very different.’ And not always that close because of it. But Charlotte and Matt… Charlotte’s lightning-streak intelligence fitted perfectly with Matt’s dark thundercloud.
‘You walked away from dance. You fought your way back to health in secret and alone from what I can gather. You don’t think that was sufficiently outside the square?’
She stared at his profile. ‘Do two acts even count in a lifetime of conforming?’
‘They do if they’re significant enough.’
Maybe she and Charlotte had more in common than she’d thought. ‘That’s high praise from the man who gave the establishment the finger.’
He thought about that as he took the SUV out onto the highway. ‘Don’t canonise me just yet, Ellie. It took me a long time to be brave enough to leave New York. I might never have if—’
If…?
‘Why did you finally do it?’
His gaze shadowed immediately and his eyes unconsciously went to the rear vision mirror. They drove on in silence.
The incident where Deputy got hurt?
Eventually Jed pulled the SUV back off the highway onto a road that had seen better days. A road with a big Authorised Personnel Only sign on it.
‘Do you know where you’re going?’ she asked.
‘I’m authorised. And I’m authorising you.’
They fell back to silence. Blessed silence. Something she’d come to really appreciate about Larkville. And about Jed. Here, no one needed you to fill every waking moment with contribution. Saying nothing was okay. Being in your headspace was okay.
‘Wow. The rain’s really brought her up.’
Jed craned his neck to see the wetland they were approaching. It sparkled and glittered under the midmorning sun and small white and black birds flitted across its surface. ‘Texas has been in drought for so long, but Hayes County practically sits on top of a deep aquifer and this is one of only a few places it comes to the surface. This soak’s usually more marsh than wetland, though.’
She’d seen evidence of the drought as she’d driven south across the state. Crunchy fields, brown stretches, stock clustered around trucked-in water.
Deputy woke from his back-seat snooze and pressed his nose to the glass. Moments later Jed was hauling his door wide and the dog was out and off, sniffing around the edge of the water.
‘It’s so pretty,’ she breathed.
‘Seemed appropriate,’ he said. Ellie glanced at him to see if he was making a joke but his eyes weren’t on her, they were lost out on the water. As though he didn’t even realise he’d spoken.
After a few moments he turned back to her. ‘So, two younger sisters and a twin brother. Where does Ellie Patterson fit?’
She took a breath. ‘I’m not sure she does.’ Or ever did. Accepting that was the key to her eventual recovery. Just as not fitting had been the cause. Only now she had a much better idea of why that was.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
He turned.
‘Your gram… Have you never thought of bringing her to Larkville?’ He glanced at his feet. ‘If she’s your
only family I imagine you’re hers, too?’
His sunglasses shifted slightly as his focus moved up to her eyes. ‘All her friends are in the Valley. I wouldn’t move her unless I had something for her to come to. Grandkids. More family.’
‘You don’t consider you’re enough?’
His shrug looked uncomfortably tight. ‘I work all the time. Why would she want to be here?’
‘Because she loves you? She could make friends here, too. Maybe hook up with Gus.’
Jed’s laugh startled some nearby birds out onto the water. ‘Lord, that’s an awful image. The damage that the pair of them could do over a few beers…’
He glanced after Deputy to make sure he was behaving himself in this wild place. Ellie stepped closer to the water. Closer to him.
You shouldn’t be alone.
That’s what she was trying to get at. Trying hard not to say. Because it was ludicrous she would want to. ‘Then maybe you should get onto finding a wife and having some kids. Then you can bring her down. Have all your family together. You’re not getting any younger.’
Huh. When had she grown so fond of families?
His eyebrows both rose. ‘Uh…’
‘I’m not… That’s not an offer or anything.’ Her laugh was critically tight as heat rushed in. Although suddenly it didn’t seem quite so ridiculous. But something in his suddenly wary stance told her it was. Very much so.
Old self-doubt rushed back.
The permanent few lines in his brow doubled and his hat tipped forward slightly. ‘I try not to mix business with pleasure.’
Curiosity beat embarrassment. ‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning I prefer not to date where I work.’
‘Never?’
He shook his head.
Wow. That took some discipline. But how amazingly liberating. To be able to not date if you didn’t want to. ‘I wish my mother subscribed to that theory. She’s so busy trying to marry me off—’
His face snapped around to hers. ‘To who?’
‘To anyone,’ she laughed. ‘The highest bidder. Apparently my true worth lies in my Patterson genes.’ Except—it suddenly hit her—Fenella Patterson had to know that her oldest daughter didn’t carry one single Patterson gene. Maybe that didn’t matter when it came to high finance. ‘When I quit dance she decided that my only course left in life was to become someone’s trophy wife.’