What She'd Do for Love

by Cindi Myers

  A pink blush stained her cheeks. “I wasn’t talking about you!”

  “It’s okay. I know Christa and I are pretty much opposites in our approaches to life.”

  “You know what they say—opposites attract.”

  “Why are you so set on setting me up with Christa?”

  She made a face. “Well, you obviously aren’t interested in me, and if I can’t have the most eligible guy to hit town in a while, why not root for my best friend? Also, if the two of you got together, she might decide to stick around, instead of running off to Houston again. I’d like that.”

  “Better not pin your hopes on me,” he said. “I really think Christa isn’t interested.”

  “But you didn’t say you weren’t interested in her.”

  “I don’t see any long-term relationship in my immediate future.” The words hurt to say, the tight pain in his chest a reminder that what he wanted and what he knew would happen didn’t always mesh perfectly. “The timing just isn’t right.”

  “Oh please! As if love answers to a time-table. There’s such a thing as being too practical, you know.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? I’m a practical guy—cold and logical.”

  Kelly wrinkled her nose. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. And she didn’t mean it, anyway.”

  “But I am practical. And I am leaving town in a year or two, so I’m not the right guy for someone who wants a life built around routine and constants.”

  “You say it, but I don’t believe it. Anyway, good luck with your apartment and your mom. You never know—if you make the place comfortable enough, you might decide to stick around longer.” She slid the strap of her purse onto her shoulder. “I have to run now. I just stopped to see if they’d gotten in the shelf brackets Mom ordered, but they aren’t here yet. See you around.”

  “See you.”

  He paid for his purchases, and carried them to his truck. He had his doubts that a few towels and pillows would make much of an impression on his mom, but it was worth a try. And if he ever did bring Christa to his place, maybe she wouldn’t think he was quite so cold.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AFTER RYDER LEFT, Christa returned to the house and showered. She told herself she should pull out her laptop and start working on her résumé, but the thought of putting a positive spin on the fact that she’d lost her job made her want to crawl back into bed and stay there. She’d start the job hunt in earnest soon, but she needed more time to process what had happened. The job counselors had even said that getting laid off was like any other loss—she needed time to grieve.

  Instead, she decided to make a special dinner for her parents. She couldn’t compete with her mother’s pot roast and peach pie, but she could grill steak and make baked potatoes and a salad. Mom and Dad would appreciate the meal after their long day in the city.

  Jet alerted her to her folks’ return, barking excitedly and standing at the front window, tail wagging. Christa stayed in the kitchen, slicing tomatoes, ears straining for the sound of the door opening. “I’m in the kitchen,” she called.

  No one answered. She moved to the door in time to see her mother hurry down the hallway. Her father removed his hat and turned toward her.

  He had aged ten years in the few hours they’d been gone. Deep lines etched his face and his eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been crying. But her father didn’t cry—at least she’d never seen him do so, not even at his parents’ funerals.

  “Dad, what’s wrong?”

  “We’ll talk about it later, pumpkin.”

  His use of his pet name for her only made her hurt more. “Dad, you look terrible. Something must have happened in Dallas. Are you hurt? Is Mom hurt?”

  “Your mother is going to be fine.” He spoke the words, not as reassurance, but as declaration, his voice almost angry.

  “Do you need help unloading the truck?” she asked.

  “There’s nothing to unload.”

  So they hadn’t gone shopping. “I made dinner, when you’re ready.”

  “I don’t think either one of us could eat. Thank you anyway. I’m just going to see to your mom.”

  He moved down the hall toward their bedroom, shoulders slumped, shuffling like an old man.

  While her parents stayed behind the closed bedroom door, Christa sat in the kitchen with the untouched food. She’d never seen her father look so devastated. He must have gotten terrible news in Dallas. Had they gone to see their banker? Had the ranch been foreclosed on?

  She’d been so focused on her own problems that she hadn’t paid enough attention to all the signs that were right in front of her nose: he hadn’t hired anyone to replace Duncan. He had sold off a lot of the stock. Even the orange survey flags she’d seen on her drive into the ranch were a clue. Maybe Dad planned to sell off part of the land. The last thing he needed was another mouth to feed. She couldn’t have come home at a worse time.

  She’d have to move back to Houston right away. She’d take any job she could find, whether it was in her field or not. And she’d get a roommate. She wouldn’t burden her parents with her problems when they were dealing with so many of their own.

  Well after dark, Mom and Dad emerged from their room. They came into the kitchen holding hands. Her mother had obviously been crying, and she looked shrunken, folded in on herself. Dad held out a chair and she sank into it. “Christa, we need to talk to you about something,” she said.

  Christa’s chest hurt. “What is it?” she asked, in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

  “I saw a doctor today in Dallas.” Mom’s voice sounded strange too—thin and whispery. “An oncologist.”

  Christa stopped breathing at the word. “A cancer specialist?”

  “I have breast cancer.” Mom drew in a shaky breath. “I’m going to have a mastectomy.”

  “When?” But the real question she wanted to ask was How? How could her strong, vibrant, healthy mother have cancer?

  “Soon. Friday, if the surgeon can arrange it. We’re waiting for a call.”

  “It’s going to be fine.” Dad rested his hand on Mom’s shoulder.

  “How long have you known?” Christa asked.

  “We got the confirmation from the biopsy today, but the doctors have suspected something since I had my mammogram a couple of weeks ago.”

  “No wonder you seemed so distracted.”

  “The day you came home I had just had the biopsy. I was still a little out of it from the surgery.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me? I could have come home sooner. Or I would have stayed in Houston, if that would be better.” She would do anything for her Mom and Dad, if only they would let her.

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” Mom said.

  “I was already worried that you were acting so differently toward me—as if you didn’t want me here.”

  “Oh, honey, that wasn’t it at all. Of course I want you here.”

  “You’ll be a big help in your mom’s recovery,” Dad said.

  “Of course. I’ll do whatever you need. All those times you nursed me when I was a kid, I can at least pay some of that back now.”

  Mom sat up straighter. “I don’t need a nurse. And I don’t want anyone hovering over me. The doctor said I can be back on my feet a few days after surgery, and they have all kinds of new medicines to help cope with the treatments afterward.”

  Treatments. She must mean chemo and radiation—her mother couldn’t even say the words. “What do the doctors say? I mean, how bad is it?” Christa tried to brace herself for whatever would come next.

  “Stage two,” her father said. “They caught it early.”

  “They won’t know for sure until after the surgery,” Mom said. “But they’re cautiously optimistic.”

  “She’ll be
fine.” She noticed her dad’s fingers tighten on her mom’s shoulders.

  Christa’s eyes stung, but she refused to let tears fall. Her parents were being brave about this; so would she. One thing was for certain, though. She wouldn’t be going back to Houston any time soon.

  * * *

  “TWO BARN BURNER SPECIALS, coming up.” Paul Raybourn dropped a white paper sack that smelled of beef and onions in front of Ryder and took a seat across from him at the picnic table. He opened a similar sack and pulled out a thick hamburger. “This is probably guaranteed to clog our arteries, but at least we’ll die happy men.”

  “I plan on sticking around at least a little while longer.” Ryder unwrapped his own burger. The two friends had run into each other outside the bank and decided to have lunch together. The Burger Barn, a local favorite, was a small stand near the school whose dining area consisted of three large picnic tables in the shade of ancient live oaks. The tables were splintered and uneven. Ryder thought of Christa’s suggestion of a rest area along the new highway. Too bad that wasn’t already a lunch option for them.

  “You seem to be settling in here in Cedar Grove,” Paul said. “That was quite a performance you gave at the public forum the other night. You won the men’s respect and had the women all swooning.”

  “Swooning?” He choked back a laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  “Don’t play dumb. Most of the single women in town, and some of the married ones, are making eyes at you.”

  “New guys in small towns always attract attention.” When he was first traveling on his own, Ryder had been flattered, until he’d figured out the women who went after him were more interested in the novelty of someone new than in getting to know him.

  “Maybe so,” Paul said. “Handsome guys with good jobs attract more. Or so my wife tells me. If I wasn’t happily married, I’d probably hate you.”

  “How is Didi?” Ryder asked. “And the baby?”

  “They’re fine.” Paul pointed a French fry at him. “Don’t change the subject. Is it true you and Christa Montgomery are dating?”

  “No!” He froze, burger halfway to his lips. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Traci Schaeffer, who works at the bank, saw you two getting cozy over coffee in the Blue Bell after the forum, and Al Nelson, the mail carrier, noticed your truck out at the Rocking M yesterday afternoon.”

  Ryder’s shock must have shown on his face. Paul laughed. “You can’t keep secrets in a town this small.”

  “I don’t have any secrets to keep. Christa and I are not dating. She barely tolerates me.” For a while at the ranch yesterday, when she’d been telling him about her home, he thought they’d made a real connection. Then she’d made a point of warning him off. Message received and understood.

  “That must mean she really likes you,” Paul said.

  “You’re crazy.”

  “What does she have against you?” Paul asked. “Is it because of the highway?”

  “She doesn’t like change. She thinks the new highway will kill the town.”

  “It’s going to change the town. The main business area will probably shift. The bank is talking about moving out closer to the highway. And the town council is looking into annexing the land where the new shopping center will be, but it’s going to require jumping through a lot of hoops. Christa will come around. Most people will.”

  “The town isn’t the biggest problem,” he said.

  “Oh? Does she have a boyfriend back in Houston?”

  Ryder’s burger felt like a lump of lead in his stomach. He hadn’t even thought of the boyfriend angle. But Christa had lived in Houston for years—maybe she’d left someone behind there. Maybe one of those co-workers she thought of as family. Still, wouldn’t she have said so?

  Then again, there were a lot of things between them that hadn’t been said. “I don’t know if there’s a boyfriend or not. I don’t think so. But when she finds out the deal I’ve made with her father she’s going to hate me. And there’s nothing I can do to stop that.”

  “You haven’t told her?”

  “There’s nothing for me to tell. The decision is up to Bud. I told her she needs to talk to him about it, but apparently that hasn’t happened yet.”

  “I don’t pity you when she finds out.”

  “I went out there yesterday to talk to Bud, to tell him to discuss this with Christa. The ranch is her home, so she deserves to know. But he wasn’t there. Christa said she’s hardly seen him since she got home.”

  “Maybe he’s avoiding her. He doesn’t want to talk.”

  “Maybe you’re right, but until she knows what he’s going to do about the ranch, there’s no sense in my trying to get too close to her.”

  “So, what is he going to do with the ranch?”

  Ryder shook his head. “He hasn’t said. And I’m not going to push him. My plan is to stay out of this as much as I can. And that means keeping my distance from Christa.” Not that she’d given any indication that she wanted him closer—the opposite, really.

  “Good luck with that.” Paul picked up his burger again. “In my experience, women are more unpredictable than the weather.”

  Right. His best hope was that, when Christa did speak to her dad, Ryder managed to avoid the storm that was sure to follow.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Friday arrived, Christa was a nervous wreck, though her parents had regained their equilibrium. They were a solid unit, supporting each other. That was the way a loving married couple should act, Christa told herself. Maybe one day she’d be lucky enough to experience that kind of support from her husband. In the meantime, she couldn’t help feeling excluded from their intimate circle, struggling to deal with her worry and fears for her mother on her own.

  On the long drive to Dallas for her mother’s surgery, her thoughts drifted to Ryder. He probably would have pointed out how much shorter and more convenient the new route would make the trip. Shorter would be better today—though that didn’t mean she agreed that the new highway was the best thing for the town.

  The hospital was a modern, gleaming high-rise, as different from the little county hospital where Christa had had her tonsils out when she was six as a grand tabernacle was from a country chapel. After a flurry of paperwork and preparations, a nurse in pink scrubs whisked her mother off to surgery. Christa and her dad sat side-by-side in uncomfortable orange chairs in a waiting room, the sudden silence and stillness between them like the starkness after a tornado or other disaster. The world couldn’t possibly be normal after this, yet it was.

  A cooking show played on the television, the cheery hostess enthusing about the marvels of baked tomatoes or something like that. Christa had brought a book, but she was too keyed up to focus on it. Dad sat bolt upright in his chair, hands gripping his knees. He looked as if he might shatter if she touched him.

  He must have felt her eyes on him. Suddenly, he turned and said. “What have you done about finding a new job?”

  She’d been waiting all week for Dad to ask about her job. When she’d first delivered the news about her reasons for moving home, she’d expected him to question her like a prosecuting attorney, wanting every detail of the layoff—the reasons given for letting her go, who else was laid off with her, what positions her co-workers had held, what kind of severance she’d been offered. Avoiding the grilling had been a relief at first, but had also made her feel that maybe he didn’t care.

  She appreciated his interest, but a hospital waiting room was the last place she’d expected to have this conversation. “Well, I attended the seminar my employer—ex-employer—offered to all the laid off workers,” she said. “And I filed for unemployment, of course.”

  “Have you talked to anyone, put in any applications, let people know you’re available?”

  “No.” She forced he
rself not to squirm in her chair like a little girl caught stealing cookies from the pantry. “I thought I should wait until I was settled here. And I need to update my résumé.”

  “You can’t waste time. The longer you wait the worse it looks.”

  Said the man who had never worked for anyone but himself. “Dad, I—”

  “I know you think I don’t know anything about these things, but I read the paper. I’ve seen all the stories about the high unemployment rate. The people who land new positions are the ones who work all the angles. You did a good job for your old firm, didn’t you?”

  “Of course. The layoff was based purely on seniority, not performance.”

  “You’d be a real asset to someone else—just remember that.” That was easy for her father to say—he’d have loved her if she’d been completely incompetent.

  “Unfortunately, there are a lot of other capable people out there looking for jobs.” Many of them her former co-workers, with more experience than she had.

  “But they aren’t you. Self-confidence. That’s what these companies want to see.”

  Dad certainly sounded confident that he was right. But he had always been a man who could solve any problem, for himself, but also for his wife and daughter. Looking back, she could see how much she’d depended on him to do just that. But he couldn’t solve her job dilemma for her, no matter how much he might want to. “I’m not feeling very self-confident right now,” she confessed. “I mean, I loved my old job. I was good at it. I never saw the lay-off coming. I’m still trying to deal with that.”

  “You know the saying about if a horse bucks you off you have to get right back on, don’t you?”

  “I do, Dad.” She refrained from rolling her eyes like an exasperated teenager.

  “I know you think it’s a cliché, but there’s a lot of truth there. Do you remember when you were little and you got your first real horse—not the pony you rode at first, but a full-grown gelding?”

  “Paco.” She smiled, remembering the brown-and-white paint that had been her companion and friend well into high school, when he was finally retired from the saddle string and put out to pasture.