by Laura Drake
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Laura Drake
Excerpt from Laura Drake Western #2 © 2018 by Laura Drake
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Cover photograph by Rob Lang
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: December 2018
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ISBN 978-1-5387-4643-1 (mass market)
ISBN 978-1-5387-4641-7 (ebook)
E3-20180516-DANF
E3-20181030-DA-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
An Excerpt from HOME AT CHESTNUT CREEK
About the Author
Also by Laura Drake
Praise for Laura Drake and Her Novels
Looking for more cowboys? Forever brings the heat with these sexy studs.
Newsletters
To the sisters of my heart:
All the lost young girls like me,
who found themselves in a library.
Chapter 1
Carly
Addiction sucks. I should know. Papaw has his White Lightning. Nana has her Bingo-jones. My addiction has sad green eyes and my name tattooed across his left pec.
But my wedding-dress dreams always come in second to his rodeo. There’s even a term for it: Rodeo Widow. Except to earn that title, I’d have to be married.
Squinting through the windshield glare, I shift the knob on the steering column to third and press on the gas, but the speedometer doesn’t budge. Dang it, at this rate I’m going to be late for the breakfast shift. Papaw bought the truck new about the time I was born, and Nana named it “Nellybelle.” Said she stole the name from a car on some TV show—Roy Somebody. All I know is, I’m stuck driving the beater, so Nana can drive the Camry to Bingo.
I’m less than a mile from the paved road when clanking starts under the hood. It sounds like the hammers of hell in there. I take it out of gear and lurch to the side of the washboard road and watch the dust billow up in the rearview mirror. “Now that’s just craptastic.” I’m no mechanic, but I’ve been driving since before I could reach the pedals. I know what a thrown rod sounds like. Nana would say, “Nellybelle’s sleeping with Jesus.” My luck she’ll want to have a funeral.
I grab a rubber band from the glovebox and lasso my hair into a thick ponytail. My hair is more strawberry than strawberry blonde, meaning if it takes longer than ten minutes to catch a ride, I’ll look like Elmo. With freckles. Luckily, Papaw left a gimmie cap behind the seat. I slap it on, throw my purse strap over my shoulder, open the door, and slide into the hot morning.
Once I hit the blacktop, odds are somebody will stop. One good thing about living outside of Unforgiven, New Mexico, all your life is that sooner or later someone you know is bound to come by.
I hear it before I see it. Quad Reynolds’s truck materializes through the heat-haze off the blacktop. It’s almost as ancient at Nellybelle (may she rust in peace).
He pulls alongside me and yells out the window, “Where’s your car?”
Now the Reynoldses aren’t among Unforgiven’s best and brightest, and given a population of 1,500, that’s not a high bar. Quad was the first of his clan to get a high school diploma, mostly thanks to kind and long-suffering teachers passing him along year to year like a white elephant gift. People can’t help what they’re born with (or without), but Quad has had a thing for me since third grade. He’s also got body odor and dandruff so bad his eyebrows flake. I stuff my hands in my back pockets and walk up to the window. “I broke down. Can you give me a lift to town?”
“Heck yeah. Climb in.” He unhooks the bungee cord that holds the passenger door shut. “Wait.” He holds the door closed with a hand on the window frame. “You’re not gonna make me eat those foldy-overy things again, are you?”
Exasperation puffs from my lips. “They’re crepes, and no one made you eat them the first time. Besides, I took them off the menu.” Mostly because no one ate them. I keep trying changes to the menu to improve business, but so far, the only thing that’s gone over is Ratatouille. And only because I told them the name is French for “hash.”
“Oh good.” The door moans when he pushes it open.
I climb into the cab, right into his yearning look. “When’re you going to throw over that no-account cowboy and fall for me, Carly Sue?”
“Believe me, I’m considering giving him up.”
“Well, I’m available, but you better hurry ’afore some woman snatches me away.”
Not going there. I’m no mean girl. “I’ll take it under advisement, thanks.” I turn so the springs quit pushing on my butt bone and so the bungee doesn’t scrape my shins.
He drapes an arm over the steering wheel, and the breeze washes me in the smell of day-old sweat. “Where is Austin now, anyway?”
“Let’s see. What day is it?”
“Thursday. No. Wait. Friday.”
“He’s in Las Cruces. Three-day rodeo at the county fair this weekend.”
He shakes his head. “That boy can ride. I’ll give him that.”
Yeah. That’s the problem.
Austin and I fell in love in first grade. I looked across the craft table and recognized a piece of me, staring back. Something about him just clicked with me. It was the same for him, and like two jigsaw pieces, we snapped together. We never have come undone. Until now.
This time, I mean it.
Quad’s truck rolls into the sleepy-with-morning town. The street curves around Soldier Park, with its peeling bandstand and obligatory Civil War cannon. The Civic Theater is finally playing last month’s blockbuster for anyone who hasn’t made the fifty-mile trek to Albuquerque. Austin took me to The Civi
c on our first real date, in junior high. I don’t remember what movie, because we ended up making out in the balcony the whole time.
A few pickups are parked in front of the Lunch Box Café, owned by our main competitor and archnemesis, Dusty Banks. He puts the grease in “greasy spoon,” but I guess some people enjoy that. We cruise past too many windows blotted out by paint or covered in butcher paper.
Unforgiven has faltered for years, tripping and stumbling to the edge of default. Doubly unlucky, we’re not only at the end of a defunct railway spur, but we’re on Route 66—the abandoned part.
Quad pulls up in the last angled parking space outside Chestnut Creek Café. It’s the end of the road, literally. The converted railway station has been my second home for every one of my twenty-nine years. Papaw bought it back in the ’50s, when the spur shut down, and named it after the place where he asked Nana to marry him (he hides his romantic streak well). He cooked, and Nana worked the cash register. Nowadays, Papaw works more at his side business (the still) and Nana keeps the local Bingo parlor in business. But hey, they earned a rest. They’d planned to turn it over to my mom and dad, but a drunk driver on Interstate 40 crashed that dream when I was just a baby.
“Thanks for the ride, Quad.” I reach for the bungee cord but he’s quicker, leaning over my lap, giving me a close-up of his “ambiance” and his bald spot. I hold my breath until he’s on his own side again.
“You bet. Now, get out in that kitchen and rattle those pots and pans.” He chuckles and slaps his thigh, raising a cloud of red New Mexico dust.
I don’t bother to remind him that I’m not the cook. I just slide out and hold the door shut so he can re-hook the bungee.
The gingham curtains and the old-fashioned gold lettering on the glass door raise a faint haze of pride in my chest. The bells on the door jingle as I step inside and the café wraps itself around my heart, welcoming me with breakfast babble and the smell of bacon. I inhale a deep breath of home.
“Hey, Carly.” Moss Jones raises his coffee cup in a salute, his grizzly-brown beard full of crumbs.
“Mornin’, Moss.”
Lorelei, my friend and our longtime waitress, swishes by, balancing four plates and three orders of toast. “You’re late, Carly Beauchamp.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” I push through the swinging door to the kitchen and head for my office. “Hey, Fish.”
The name on our cook’s driver’s license is Joseph King, but he’d rather be called by his Navajo name—Fishing Eagle. He’s got a dozen eggs, a rasher of bacon, and a boatload of hash browns crowded on the grill and a spatula in each hand. “Carly, can you grab me more bacon?”
“Sure.” I pull open the door to the walk-in refrigerator.
“And some more eggs?” His voice is muffled by the heavy door.
I’ve just finished that when Lorelei sticks her head through the serving window. “Fish, you got those grits for table five?” She sorts tickets on the order wheel. “Hey, Carly, would you mind setting me up for coffee?”
“Sure.” I push back through the swinging door to the dining area. I’m the manager and heir-apparent, but most days that washes out to being the gofer. After grabbing a cup for myself, I pull coffee and filters from under the counter and start scooping and stacking enough set-ups to last through lunch.
Conversation flows past me like a river.
“We even went down to the courthouse in Albuquerque, but they didn’t know, either. I’m gonna—”
“So, I tell him, if you think you’re going to the bar tonight, you’ve got—”
“Last week’s rain washed out the road. I can’t even get to my field, much less—”
My phone blats the opening notes to Blake Shelton’s “Austin” and my hand jerks, slinging coffee across the counter. “Crap on a cracker.” I’d let it go to voice mail but I’ve been dodging his calls for two days and if I don’t answer soon, he’ll sic Nana on me.
Nana loves Austin. And she’s not alone. Every girl in Cibola County adores him. Every mom wants to adopt him. And no dad wants him anywhere near his daughter.
Acid scalds my stomach lining. I pull my phone from the pocket of my jeans, mash the button, and prop it between my cheek and shoulder. “Hey.”
“Hey, Tigger.”
In two words, I’m opening to him like a morning glory to the sun. I’ve read that twins have a special language that only they understand. Austin and I are like that. We’re hard-wired into each other’s feelings like a Vulcan mind-meld, without the weird face-touching thing.
In those same two words, I know he’s hungover. I can see him partying with his buds at some trashy bar the night before. I should—I’ve been there for enough of them. But that was in the glory days, when Austin was winning buckles and I was Cibola County Rodeo Queen. We lived for the road, sex, fair food, sex, and the dream we could make a living on barrels and rough stock.
That bubble burst when I had to come home and help Nana and Papaw with the diner. Yeah, I miss it, but you’ve got to grow up sometime. But Austin still hasn’t. To be fair, he is making a living at it, if you consider having just enough money for rodeo dogs, gas, and his next entry fee “living.”
Which reminds me. “Don’t you ‘Tigger’ me. We need to talk, Austin Davis.”
“Aw, come on, darlin’. Don’t be mad. You know I can’t stand it when you’re upset.”
His drawl flows over me with the sweetness of Sunday morning sex. He knows I love his voice. It eases through my cracks, loosening my muscles and my resolve.
“I’ll be home for Sadie Hawkins on Friday. We’ll talk then.”
The litany he’s recited too many times burns the sweetness to ash. “I’m serious. I can’t go on like this.” I drop the coffee scoop to hold the phone in both hands, as if he could feel the painful squeeze. “The girl gets to ask for Sadie Hawkins. I’m not asking you.” I click the end button, wishing for the old days, when you could end a call with a satisfying slam.
In high school, the Student Council thought it’d be fun to include the whole town for Sadie Hawkins Day. Every year since, it’s a blowout party in the town’s square. Austin and I have been to every one of the past fourteen of them.
Streaks are overrated.
My ears prickle as I realize the diner is filled with an unnatural silence. I turn. Every eye in the place is lasered on me like I’m some rare zoo animal. My face blazes, which only makes me madder. I hate to blush. Redheads don’t do it well.
“Aw, come on, Carly,” Moss says, too loud in the quiet room. “You say that ever’ time.”
I slap a hand on my hip. “Really?” God, the nerve.
“Really,” June Stevens says from booth number three.
Several heads nod.
Dropping the phone in my shirt pocket, I stomp for the kitchen. “This place has the privacy of a glass outhouse.” My palms hit the door with a hollow boom and I stride for my office. At least that door has a satisfying slam.
* * *
An hour and a half later, morning work done, I’m sitting, drinking coffee and cataloging my troubles…the biggest of which has a bad-boy grin and one really fine butt. If I sit here any longer, I’m going to tip into sulkiness. And I’m not a sulker. It’s time to tackle the trouble I can do something about. Wheels.
The café is hopping with the early lunch crowd, and Lorelei has a reinforcement. Sassy Medina, a new-to-town girl with a pretty smile and good references.
Lorelei spies me and hustles over. “Would you hold the fort for a few, Carly? I’ve got to run down to O’Grady’s for tomatoes and we’re almost out of Spam.”
“Sure. Just be sure Jerry gives us the discount.”
She rolls her eyes. “Thanks. I’ve only worked here seven years, so I’m likely to forget that.”
“Yeah, yeah, just go.” Grabbing a half apron from under the counter, I tie it on and drop a book of order tickets in the pocket. Coffee pot in one hand, sweet tea pitcher in the other, I go on refill patrol.
At the first table, my second-grade teacher, Ms. Simons, says, “You stand your ground, Carly. Austin will wise up and marry you. You just wait and see if he doesn’t.”
The high-schoolers in the booth at the window titter and ask if Austin is officially available for the dance. As far as I’m concerned, he is.
At the counter, the town drunk, Manny Stipple, explains with beery sincerity why Austin deserves another chance.
At twenty-nine, my biological clock has stopped ticking—it’s tap dancing on my ovaries. Every girl from my high school class is married and having babies, except me. Well, me and Rose Hart, but she wears men’s clothes and is taking hormones to grow a beard. She goes by Roy now.
I’m just about to lose it when my posse spills through the door, trailing strollers, diaper bags, and toddlers. Julie, Jess, and I ruled the homecoming court, and we’ve managed to stay close through marriages (theirs), kids (theirs), and break-ups (mine). We were all great friends, but Jess and I—we had a special bond. Back in junior high, she decided it wasn’t fair that I didn’t have a sister, so she stepped up for the job. We’ve been tight ever since. I love me that Jess.
They take booth number one and settle, passing out crayons and goldfish. I drop menus on the table and we chat while they decide. Jess rubs her stomach as she studies the daily specials on the board above the order window.
“Jess, are you preggers again?”
“Can you believe it?” She smiles at me with a glow reserved for pubescence and motherhood.
My biological clock bongs a funeral dirge.
She eases her toddler over, scoots down, and pats the bench next her.
Lorelei walks in the front door, her arms full of bags.
“I want to hear all the nasty details, I promise. But right now, I’ve got to fix a problem. Can I borrow someone’s car?”
Jess’s perfectly plucked brows draw together. Even in motherhood, she keeps herself up—if you ignore the spit-up stain on her silk shirt. “Take mine.” She reaches in her diaper bag, pulls out her keys, and tosses them to me.
“Thanks, hon. I’ll be back before you’re done with lunch.”
Her son wails, and she waves me off.