Adam’s mother, the sweet Gracie, was Nana. Kasey’s mama, Valerie, was Grandma, and Hope, the kids’ great-grandmother, was Granny.
“Thank you.” Kasey hugged Hope tightly and then kissed her on the cheek. “I love you, too, Granny.”
Hope pulled a tissue from the pocket of her fancy dress and dabbed at her eyes. “Guess I’ve got allergies, too. Before we destroy each other’s makeup, I’m going to go get myself a stiff drink. Want one?”
“You bet.” Kasey nodded. She had never lacked for family support, no matter what the situation, and for that she couldn’t be more grateful.
* * *
Nash could see the lights and hear music floating across the barbed-wire fence separating the Texas Star from Hope Springs. The Dawsons were having a party of some kind over there for sure, and Rustin’s black Lab pup, Hero, evidently didn’t care much for it. The critter had been sprawled out on his porch when he went back to the house after checking on his new baby lambs in the corral behind the barn.
Nash pulled his denim jacket tighter and hunched his shoulders against the north wind. The little guy was so excited that he jumped around his legs, whining and wiggling, just begging to be petted. Even though the temperature had dropped drastically in the past hour and it was bitter cold, he sat down on the porch and scratched the dog’s ears.
The pup rolled his eyes up at Nash when he stopped and whimpered.
“I’m not feeding you. You belong to that little boy and he’d be heartbroken if you decided you liked it better here.”
Hero looked up at him with such begging eyes that Nash had no choice but to either feed him or take him home, so he scooped him up in his arms and headed for his truck.
“I’ll take you home, boy, but you need to stop coming over here,” he told the dog as he put him into the front seat of his truck and slammed the door.
When Nash got buckled into the seat, Hero had his head down and a paw over his nose. “You need to stay home. Do you hear me?”
He could see a pasture full of cars and trucks when he parked in front of the house at Hope Springs. There were no lights on in the house, so he set the pup inside the rail fence surrounding the yard and drove away. About halfway down the lane he saw a movement in his rearview and hit the brakes. That blasted pup was following him home. If it got out on the main road, it would be killed for sure when all those folks started to leave. He pulled over, and by the time he opened the door, Hero was doing a happy dance around his legs. He picked Hero up and carried him all the way back to the Dawsons’ house. Maybe if he sat on the porch with him until the dog went to sleep, he could sneak off.
“Shut your eyes. If these people come home and find me with you, they might shoot first and ask questions later. They’ll think I’m tryin’ to steal a little boy’s dog for sure,” he whispered.
“Hello. The reception is down at the barn.” A gray-haired lady appeared from around the end of the house. “Don’t think I know you. Are you a friend of Lila’s?”
Nash quickly put the dog down and jumped to his feet. “Sorry, ma’am. I’m Nash Lamont from the ranch next door. Rustin’s puppy showed up at my place and I brought him home, but he got out again and started following my truck, so I thought it safest to stay with him. Poor little fellow seemed lonely.”
The lady stuck out a hand. “I’m Hope Dalley, Rustin’s great-grandmother. Welcome to Happy.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Nash said.
“Well, I was just making a quick stop to change my shoes. My grandson Brody Dawson got married today.”
“Congratulations, ma’am.”
“You know, why don’t you come back with me to the reception? I believe you’ve already met Brody’s sister, Kasey.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to intrude. If you could take this pup inside, I’ll be on my way,” Nash said.
“Nonsense. There’s no better place to meet most of the folks who live in Happy than at this reception.” Hope waved that idea away with a flick of her wrist. “I’ll put this critter in the utility room.” She reached down and picked up the half-grown dog. “You wait right here and I’ll be back in a split second.”
“But I’m not dressed for a wedding, ma’am.” Nash looked down at his faded jeans, work boots, and jean jacket.
“Oh, no one cares about that. We’re not all that formal. I won’t take no for an answer,” she said.
Nash felt as if he should snap to attention and salute, but he only nodded. He’d walk her back to the reception, stick around long enough for her to disappear in the crowd, and then sneak out a back door. With a crowd like that, someone would be willing to drive her back to the house when the party was over.
“I’ll be glad to escort you back, ma’am, but then I’d really best get on back to my place,” he said when she returned.
“Young man.” She pointed her finger at him. “Do not argue with me.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He came to attention and just barely stopped his hand before he saluted.
She smiled and patted his shoulder. “We’re going to get along just fine, like neighbors should.”
He held out his arm for her, and she looped hers into it.
“So how are you settling in over on the Texas Star? Rustin tells me you have sheep.”
“That’s right. Ten and two lambs right now. So you knew my great-grandparents?”
“Yes, I did. They were good neighbors. Adelaide was older than me and Henry by ten years. I was just a little girl when she left town but I remember her singing in church. She had a lovely voice,” Hope said.
“Still does,” Nash said. “So you and Uncle Henry were about the same age?”
“That’s right,” Hope said.
They were silent for a few moments and then Hope said, “Have you heard anything from him lately?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Did your uncle Henry come to visit y’all very often after he moved away from Happy?” Her voice softened to a whisper.
“Last time I saw Uncle Henry, I must’ve been about sixteen or so. He just stayed a day and a night if I remember right. That would have been a few months before he left Happy.”
Nash stopped at the barn door and held it open for her. “So you’ve lived on this ranch your whole life?”
“I have. When my folks died, I inherited the place. My husband, Wes, and I ran it together until he passed on and then I managed it with the help of my grandsons until last spring.”
Nash didn’t want a history lesson. He wanted to ask when Kasey had moved back, but that would simply cause more conversation, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Now, let’s go inside. I’ll have to sit at the head table, but you can go on and get some food and find a place to get acquainted with the folks. For the most part we’re a likable bunch.”
Checking out the whole barn with one glance, he noticed an exit at the back and a doorway leading up to a loft in addition to the wide doorway where he and Hope had entered. Delicious aromas from food tables on the right and an open bar just beyond that called to him. It had been more than a week since he’d had something that didn’t come out of a can or go into the microwave. Hope said something and he nodded, hoping that he wasn’t agreeing to something he couldn’t deliver, because he hadn’t understood much over the sound of the band firing up with an old Travis Tritt song.
His stomach growled and the food looked good, so he filled a plate and escaped up to the loft where he could watch the festivities without actually having to talk to anyone. He sat down on the bottom of three risers, and balancing the plate on his knees, he gazed down at the crowd. A tall guy sitting beside the groom stood up, tapped his glass with a spoon, and then picked up a microphone.
“A toast to the couple. I’m Jace Dawson, Brody’s brother. All I can say is bless Lila’s heart. It’ll take a saint to live with Brody, so she’s got her work cut out for her.”
A round of laughter and applause and then Jace went on. “Here’s to Brody and to Lila. Welcome to
the family, Lila. We’re glad you’re one of us.”
He’d barely taken his seat when Kasey popped up. “Y’all all know me. I’m the kid sister that no one talks about.”
Another round of laughter. “I want to make a toast to the couple but mine is mainly to Lila. I love you, Brody, but you’ve got to take a backseat for a little while. Lila, I’ve always wanted a sister just like you. I admired you before you ever moved away and I’m glad that now I can claim you for my own. If Brody isn’t nice, I’ve got two shovels out in the barn. They’ll never find his body.”
“Hey, now!” Brody said.
“Sisters stick together.” Kasey raised her glass. “I love you both and have no doubts that you’ll be together for the long haul. Here’s to all of us raising another glass when we celebrate your fiftieth anniversary.”
Nash had thought Kasey was downright cute with dust all over her, her voice all loud and demanding and in her mama bear mode protecting her son. But with the candlelight reflecting in her gorgeous red hair and a voice that sounded like whiskey laced with a drop or two of honey, the whole scene took his breath away. He leaned forward to get a better look and to hear every word and had to scramble when his plate began to slide right off his lap.
“Whoa, cowboy!” he muttered.
* * *
A prickly feeling on the back of her neck told Kasey that someone was staring right at her. She scanned the room, but she couldn’t see a single set of eyes trained her way. Lila and Brody were on the dance floor for their first dance as a married couple. Gracie had rustled up a high chair for Silas, and she kept wiping barbecue sauce from his hands and mouth. The dance ended and the lead singer for the band invited everyone out onto the dance floor. Emma wasted no time dragging her uncle Jace out there so she could stand on his feet for the next country waltz. Rustin and his grandpa, Paul, were in a serious conversation, most likely about dogs or maybe about how he’d been grounded to his room and barely got to come to the wedding.
Kasey couldn’t shake that antsy feeling, so she pushed back her chair and stood up. That gave her a new perspective, but she still couldn’t meet anyone’s gaze. She meandered through the barn toward the buffet table and got a small bowl of blackberry cobbler.
“Ice cream on top?” a server asked.
“Yes, please,” she said.
No one seemed to even miss her as she circled around the outside of the barn and tiptoed up to the stairs to the loft for a few moments away from the crowd. Move on, everyone said, but that was a hell of a lot easier said than done, especially when that would mean forgetting, and Adam had been so wonderful as a husband and father. It wasn’t like she was going to throw those memories into a big bag to take to the Goodwill store. She treasured each and every one of them entirely too much.
Kasey took off her high heels on the bottom step and padded barefoot up the stairs. Seeing Nash Lamont sitting on the bottom bleacher brought her up short in her tracks. She blinked half a dozen times, but he was still sitting there with an empty plate sitting beside him.
She stared at his scuffed cowboy boots and let her gaze travel upward to the jeans that hugged his thighs, to his silver belt buckle with a longhorn bull engraved on it. From there up to his neck all she could see was a camo flak jacket.
“Why are you hidin’ out up here?” she asked.
He looked up slowly, his eyes meeting hers. “I don’t belong down there. I wasn’t dressed for a fancy party. I brought Hero home, and your grandma insisted that…” He let the sentence hang in the air.
“She gets her way almost every time.” Kasey sat down a couple of feet down the wooden bench from him.
“The food was good.” He nodded toward the empty plate. “I should be going.”
“Why?”
“I’m intruding.”
“Nonsense. Stay and talk to me. I’m a third wheel no matter which way I turn.”
“Okay,” he answered. “It looks like a nice reception.”
“It’s the way Lila wanted it,” she said. “When I married my husband, Adam, we had a reception here, too. It was a lot like this one, just a country wedding.”
“And then?”
“Then we moved to Lawton, Oklahoma, where he was stationed in the army. We thought we’d see the world, but he never got orders to go anywhere else, at least not where I could go,” Kasey said.
“Oh?” Nash asked.
“Classified missions popped up a few times a year, and he’d be gone a week or two. Once he was deployed for six months. He was killed two years ago while on one of those secret missions.” She had no idea why she was telling a complete stranger about her life.
“I was in the army,” he said.
“I gathered that you’d been in the service when you introduced yourself as Captain Nash Lamont. How long have you been out?” She dug into the cobbler and was on the third bite before he answered.
“Two years.”
“So what took you so long to get to Happy? I’m naturally nosy. You can tell me that you don’t want to answer my questions and I won’t be offended.”
A smile almost turned his mouth upward but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I was in therapy, and my doctor didn’t think I should leave the area. But Addy, my grandmother, who was raised up on the Texas Star, thought that…”
“Grandmothers can be pushy like that, but they’re usually pretty wise about things. Did you have PTSD?” Kasey asked when he left the sentence hanging.
His head bobbed once, but he kept his eyes on the dance floor rather than looking at her. Was he the one who’d been staring at her earlier?
She laid a hand on his shoulder. “I understand. I was married to an army guy and—well, I know. He couldn’t tell me a lot, but a wife knows.”
“At the time things happened, it was horrible. But I thought I was strong enough to come home and forget it all, but it didn’t happen that way,” he said hoarsely.
She removed her hand and held it tightly in her lap. The touch was supposed to bring comfort to him, not create a soft flutter in her heart. “The mind doesn’t work like that, though. It remembers the horrors as well as the good times and usually at the craziest times. I can be walkin’ across the kitchen floor and a memory pops into my head that makes me want to sit down and cry. Or I can remember something during a prayer at church and almost burst out laughing.”
He nodded. “When I’m in the pasture or the barn is about the only time I can find real peace. Taking care of my sheep puts quiet into my soul. I don’t usually talk so much. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I totally understand.”
Another nod. “I was in the Future Farmers of America when I was in school and showed both steers and sheep. If I had my way, I’d be an old-time shepherd and live back in the hills with a whole flock.”
“I know cows but not sheep. Don’t know many folks around here—other than a few kids in FFA at school who have them—no one raises them for market,” Kasey said.
“Your kids goin’ to be in FFA?” Nash asked.
“Probably,” Kasey said. “Rustin already wants to grow up and be a cowboy just like his uncle Brody. I expect he’ll start showing steers in 4-H and then move to FFA when he’s old enough, like we all did.”
Another nod. Evidently Nash Lamont was a man of few words, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Kasey folded her hands in her lap and watched Lila and Brody dancing together again. He gazed down into her eyes and said something that made her roll up on her toes and kiss him.
“Ever been married?” she finally asked.
“No, ma’am.”
Kasey leaned up for a better look at the dance floor when Rustin tapped Brody on the arm and asked to cut in for a dance with the bride. Brody stepped back and held out his hand to three-year-old Emma, who reached up to him. He took her up in his arms and moved around the floor to a fast swing dance. Rustin did a good job of holding Lila’s hand and dancing with her for the last minute of the song.
“They’re cu
te,” Nash said. “You said earlier that you’ve got three, right?”
She nodded. “Thank you and yes. Rustin, Emma, and Silas.”
“Nice family.”
“They keep me on my toes.”
He stood up. “I really should go now.”
“Hey, the party isn’t nearly over. Come on downstairs and meet the town folks,” Kasey said.
“Thank you but…” He hesitated and his eyes darted around the place, as if trying to avoid even looking down at all the people.
“Don’t do crowds too well?” she asked.
A slight shake of the head. “Not so much.”
“Well, you could ease into Happy by coming to Sunday dinner over here on Hope Springs after church tomorrow morning,” she said.
He reached for the dirty plate. “Thanks, but I’ve got other plans.”
She laid a hand on his. “I’ll take it when I go. Go right when you reach the end of the steps and there’s a little side door if you want to sneak out. It’s right across from the restrooms.”
She hadn’t felt even a tiny spark in two years, and two in one night shocked her. It had to be the setting. A wedding nearly always made single folks think about white dresses and three-tiered cakes.
He quickly pulled away his hand. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, Adam,” she whispered as she picked up Nash’s plate.
That irritating voice in her head immediately started an argument. Why should you be sorry? Adam told you more than a dozen times if he ever did not return from a mission that you were to move on and not be lonely.
She set her jaw in a firm line. It’s the wedding that caused me to react to Nash Lamont. That’s all. I’ll prove it the next time I’m around him. I’ll deliberately touch his arm or his hand. It won’t happen again.
Chapter Three
Wearing a plaid pearl snap shirt, creased jeans, and polished cowboy boots, Nash timed it so that services had already started when he pulled into the church parking lot. After all, he’d promised his grandmother that he’d show up, not necessarily that he’d be on time. His plan was to sneak in, sit in the back pew, and get out in a hurry the minute the last amen was said. He shook the legs of his jeans down over his boot tops and made it to the church foyer.
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