Luckiest Cowboy of All--Two full books for the price of one

by Carolyn Brown

  “Wellllll…” She drew out the word dramatically. “I’d like to have her straight blond hair, but she says that mine probably won’t never change unless it gets gray when I’m old.”

  “Well, I think your red hair is beautiful and someday you’ll love bein’ tall,” Jace said. “Where are you goin’ this mornin’, Carlene?”

  “To Amarillo to buy groceries,” she answered.

  “And to take all them boxes to the animal shelter. We got all our stuff unpacked and we put Aunt Rosie’s stuff in the empty boxes and my room has a pink bedspread and that’s my favorite color,” Tilly said. “Mama said that you went to school with her right here in Happy and that y’all went on dates. Do you have kids? I’m lookin’ for some friends.”

  “I did go to school with your mama and…”

  Carlene touched him on the knee. The heat from her fingertips burned through his jeans and he forgot what he was about to say.

  “And?” Tilly asked.

  It took a moment but then he remembered what she’d asked. “And I don’t have any children, but I’m sure that you’ll make lots of friends tomorrow at school,” Jace said quickly.

  “How about you come by the house tonight and we’ll catch up? Tilly and I will make some brownies. I remember that you really like them.”

  Carlene moved her hand but his leg still felt as if she’d branded him and he lost his train of thought again.

  “Well?” she asked. “Do you have other plans?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ll be there. What time?”

  A man should feel an instant, overwhelming rush of warmth when he looked at his child for the first time. When Rustin was born, Kasey said that tears had dripped from Adam’s chin and that no one could drag him away from the nursery window. But Jace felt as if he were simply looking at his sister when she was a young girl.

  “Say seven?” Carlene said.

  “Seven what?” Jace asked, completely lost.

  “O’clock this evening when you are coming to our house. Are you okay?” Carlene asked.

  “I’m fine. Just woolgathering. Sounds good. I’ll be there.” He stood up and smiled down at Tilly. “You going to adopt a cat or puppy while you’re at the shelter?”

  Tilly’s head bobbed up and down. “Mama said I could have a kitten if we ever got out of the apartment where we lived but I won’t get it today. I have to think about it for a whole week and then I’ll know what color cat I really want.”

  “Well, my sister has a new litter out in her barn. I’m sure she’d love for you to come out to the ranch and pick out one.”

  “Is there a black-and-white one? I kinda like that kind,” Tilly asked.

  “There might be. Want me to check it out for you?”

  Tilly clapped her hands. “Yes. And if there’s one with white feet, can you let me look at it?”

  “I’ll tell her not to give away any with white feet before you see it. See you this evening then, Carlene.”

  She gave a brief nod and then turned to stare out the window.

  “And here’s your breakfast.” Lila stepped around him and set plates of food on the table. “Need anything else?”

  “Hey, Jace.” Paul winked. “I thought the disappearance of Henry Thomas was Happy’s biggest secret. Guess I was wrong.”

  “Wouldn’t know what you’re talkin’ about.” Jace quickly escaped out to his car and looked at the two pictures of Tilly he’d managed to take—one through the window from a distance and one in the restaurant when he was fiddling around with his phone. They weren’t very good, but he wanted Brody and the rest of his family to see her.

  He stared at the pictures without blinking until his eyes were dry. Nothing. Nada. Not a single tear or a feeling of instant love for the child. Maybe he wasn’t cut out to be a father. Maybe there was something genetically wrong with him.

  He drove straight to the ranch house and found his mother in the kitchen, loading a box with some of her favorite pans. “You won’t be using this big stock pot or this one that I like to make chicken and dumplin’s in, so I’m takin’ them to my new house.”

  Jace removed his coat and hung it on the back of a kitchen chair and tossed his black cowboy hat onto the other end of the table as he eased down into a chair. “Mama, come over here and sit with me a minute.”

  “I’m busy. Talk to me while I see if there’s any more pans I want,” she said.

  “Mama, we need to talk.” Jace’s tone held an edge of desperation.

  Valerie straightened up and pulled her phone from her hip pocket when it rang.

  “Don’t answer that, Mama. Let me talk to you first,” Jace said.

  Tall and slim built, Valerie could cut steel with her light gray eyes, and no one doubted that if she was angry, she would shoot first and ask questions later. Her hair had been as dark as her two sons’ when she was young, but now it was sprinkled with silver and the crow’s-feet around her eyes had deepened. Without a smile, she turned the phone off and laid it on the table.

  She pulled out a chair and sat down. “Is your granny all right?”

  “Granny Hope is fine.”

  “I can tell by your face this is bad news. Who’s died?” Valerie asked.

  “No one that I’m aware of.” Folks said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so he slid his phone across the table with Tilly’s picture right there.

  Valerie held it up to see the picture better and frowned. “What does an old picture of Kasey have to do with the weird way you’re acting this mornin’?”

  “Look at her eyes.”

  “Why, that’s not Kasey at all and this girl is too old to be Emma. Who is this child?”

  “That would be Carlene’s daughter, Tilly. She’ll be nine next month.”

  Valerie studied it a few moments and slowly the confused expression on her face changed to disbelief. She dropped the phone as if it were a hot potato. “Holy mother of God.”

  “They had breakfast at the café this mornin’ and you probably already have a dozen phone calls. I wanted to tell you first,” Jace said.

  “Did you know? For God’s sake, tell me that you haven’t kept this a secret for all these years and if you did that you did the right thing and have supported this child.”

  He shook his head. “No, ma’am, I did not know until I saw her yesterday. I’ve been trying to sort through my own feelings.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Have no idea right now. Proceed with caution, I guess. Carlene thought she’d inherited Rosalie’s house and they moved into it,” Jace said. “I told her she could stay until the wrecking crew arrives. But I hope that she moves soon. Rosalie’s house isn’t fit for her to live in.”

  Valerie picked up his phone and stared, unblinking, at the picture. “I may not turn on my phone for a month. Not until this blows over. Does your grandmother know?”

  “Yes, I do.” Hope breezed into the house through the kitchen door. “I suppose that you’re talkin’ about Carlene’s daughter, right? Gracie called me and that’s why I’m here. What are we going to do about this, Jace? Everyone in town will know by sundown and we have to figure out how we as a family will handle this. It’s not like Lila coming home. She didn’t bring a child with her.”

  She removed the bright red scarf from around her neck, tossed it onto a chair along with her coat, and headed straight for the refrigerator. She pulled out a pitcher of sweet tea and carried it to the table with a couple of glasses.

  “I’m going over to her place tonight to talk things over. Granny, I promise you I did not know about her being pregnant or…”

  Hope hugged him and then sat down. “I know that. I trust you.”

  Valerie couldn’t take her eyes off the picture. “It’s uncanny how much she looks like Kasey and those eyes—oh my sweet Lord—those are yours for sure, Jace. How did this happen?”

  “I expect it happened the same way all babies are made,” Hope said bluntly, and rolled her eyes.

  �
�What are we going to do about this child?” Valerie slid the phone over to Hope.

  “Not ‘this child.’ That sounds like an orphan. She’s your granddaughter and my great-granddaughter. She’s family and Dawsons take care of their own. Holy smoke! She’s the image of Kasey at that age,” Hope said.

  Valerie took the phone back and looked at the picture again. “Are you sure you didn’t have any clue about this little girl? You and Rosalie were good friends. She went to visit her relatives once a year, so she had to know.”

  Hope threw up her hands. “Hey, she kept her secrets and I kept a few of my own. If you’ll remember, none of us knew that she’d decided on not having a funeral or a memorial. Looks like she could have told us lots of things, don’t it?”

  “Lila and Carlene are planning a little get-together with a few friends on Sunday,” Valerie said. “Tell me again that you didn’t have any clue at all that Carlene was pregnant when she left town, Jace.”

  Jace toyed with his coffee mug, turning it around several times. “I had no idea and that’s the truth. All I ever got from her was a postcard with no return address and she changed her phone number. When I asked Rosalie about it, she was all evasive.”

  “Rosalie told me once that she was going to college out on the West Coast and living with her sister, who’s in the military,” Hope said.

  Jace raked his hand across his square chin. “I didn’t even know that much.”

  Valerie laid her hand on his arm. “We are all in shock but we’ll get through it, and it’s never too late to step up.”

  “And that means?”

  “Well, it don’t mean proposing to the girl,” Hope answered. “But you should probably see a lawyer about child support and visitation if we all want to have a relationship with this child. And speaking of relationships…” Valerie handed the phone back to Jace and glared at her mother.

  Hope pointed a finger right at Valerie. “Hey, it’s not my doin’ that Henry showed up at Christmas and decided to stick around at Nash and Kasey’s a couple of weeks. He’s loving getting to know those kids and Nash can use the help.”

  Jace could still see the shock on his grandmother’s face when she opened the door and there was Henry Thomas. He and Hope had dated when they were teenagers and had lived on adjoining ranches. But he’d gone into the military and she’d married someone else. Then his father had gotten ill about the same time he’d retired, so Henry came home to help out. After both his parents died, he’d simply disappeared.

  It had been the great mystery of Happy, Texas—something that folks still gossiped about—until a few weeks ago when he simply showed up again. Now he and Hope were…Jace frowned. Were they dating? Flirting? Whatever it was it sure put a new spring in his grandmother’s step and he was happy for her.

  “They say trouble comes in threes. I’m thinkin’ it comes in fours,” Valerie said.

  “Four? Do you have a child we don’t know about?” Jace asked.

  “No, but sometimes raisin’ a mother is as tough as a child. The way she and Henry are acting like a couple of teenagers, good Lord,” Valerie sighed.

  “Hey, now. I passed the legal age to be a consenting adult many years ago.”

  Valerie blushed. “Mama!”

  “Well, I damn sure did, so don’t lecture me. Besides, you should be careful—your turn could be next,” Hope said.

  “It’s already my turn. I’ve got a granddaughter that I don’t even know,” Valerie said.

  Hope snatched the phone from Jace’s hand for another look. “No wonder Gracie called and said there was no doubt she was kin to us.”

  “There’s certainly no reason to run a DNA test,” Jace said. “And that child has no idea she’s even kin to us. That’s what Carlene and I will be talkin’ about tonight.”

  Carlene and Tilly started at the bank in Happy that Tuesday morning. The teller behind the counter sent them to a small office down a short hallway to talk to someone who took care of new accounts.

  A dark-haired lady with a wide smile and an expression that said she knew Carlene looked up from her desk. “Well, hello. I thought I might see you today.”

  “You did?” Carlene asked.

  Who was this woman? Had she gone to school with Carlene or maybe spent a few Saturday nights out at the old barn with the group?

  “Of course. You start teaching tomorrow morning so you need to get your business taken care of today. To start with, you were on all of Rosalie’s accounts. You will remember signing papers to that effect, right?”

  “Yes.” Carlene nodded.

  The woman’s voice sounded so familiar, but she couldn’t place it.

  “I got a friend named Natalie in Florida.” Tilly pointed at the nameplate at the edge of the desk.

  “Natalie!” Carlene said out loud. “You were a blonde in high school and you wore glasses.” She glanced down at the nameplate right in front of her. “Natalie O’Dell. You aren’t married?”

  “Found out that blondes don’t have more fun and I was married but that’s been over for a couple of years now. Kind of had a thing for Jace that I couldn’t get over but I can see why he couldn’t be roped.” Her eyes shifted toward Tilly for a second or two. “He’s sure kept that secret well. Now what can we do for you today?”

  “It’s easy to keep a secret when no one knows about it. And I need to open a checking account,” Carlene said quickly.

  “Well, how about that? Bet that rocked his little boat.” Natalie chuckled.

  “Little bit. Did you ever move away from here?” Carlene tried to change the subject.

  “Went to Tulia for a couple of years, but”—she shrugged—“my roots are here.”

  “Seems like Happy affects folks that way,” Carlene said. “I’d like to know what’s in all the accounts with my name on them.”

  Natalie hit a few keys, then rolled her chair back a couple of feet and retrieved a paper from the printer. “Here you go. That’ll be her savings.”

  “Thanks.” Carlene folded the paper and stuck it in her purse without even looking at the figures.

  “Now on to the new checking account.” Natalie turned her attention away from Carlene as she brought up another screen on her computer. “Do you think you’ll like it here, Miss Tilly?”

  “Well, I don’t like the house so much, but Mama says we’re goin’ to find another one,” Tilly answered honestly.

  “What’s wrong with the house?” Natalie asked.

  “It smells funny and there’s this dead tree in the corner and”—she lowered her voice—“I think I saw a mouse yesterday. But I didn’t cuss—even though I wanted to—because that gets me into trouble.”

  Natalie giggled. “Outspoken just like another redhead I know real well.”

  “What other red-haired girl do I remind you of?” Tilly asked.

  “A friend of mine. You’ll probably meet her sometime before long.” Natalie winked at Carlene. “Did you know that Kasey’s livin’ with Henry’s nephew on Texas Star these days? Henry showed up at Christmas and is stayin’ at the old place with them. I hear that it’s only for another week or so but it’s hard to believe he’s back after all this time. Remember those stories the boys used to scare us with about him being killed in the barn and his ghost was still there? Scared me right out of…” She blushed and laughed. “Kids these days can’t even go out there to party and have fun at the old barn anymore.”

  They finished their business and went outside to a beautiful sunny day. A brisk January wind blew out of the north. They passed a house on the west side of the street for sale and Carlene pointed at it. “What do you think? Buy a house or rent one?”

  Tilly shrugged. “We never lived in a house till now. Just apartments in the same place as Aunt Bee. Can we get a swing set for the backyard?”

  “Definitely.” Carlene was glad that the comment Natalie had made about secrets had gone over the top of Tilly’s head.

  Tilly’s eyes lit up. “And a trampoline?”

>   “No, ma’am. You know how I feel about those things.”

  “Well, shhh…crap!” Tilly muttered.

  “Tilly Rose Varner!” Carlene scolded.

  “I didn’t cuss and Aunt Bee says that word all the time.”

  “That don’t mean you can say it or any other bad word. Now let’s talk about something else,” Carlene said. “How about kittens?”

  “Jace says he’ll see about us gettin’ one from his sister. Does she have kids? Will they be in school with me? You think I’ll make friends with them?”

  “Slow down. I hear that Kasey has three children. Two boys and a girl, but I would think they’re all quite a bit younger than you are. However, you’ll probably be seeing them in church and in other places, so maybe you’ll be friends with them,” Carlene answered.

  How was Tilly going to feel about having cousins and all that family around her? It had always been just Carlene and her sister, Belinda, for the most part. Belinda’s military posts changed every couple of years and she’d insisted that Carlene and Tilly move with her. Up until last summer, Carlene had had no trouble finding and keeping a teaching job wherever they went.

  Tilly threw her hand over her forehead dramatically and said, “I bet them three kids will want all the kittens.”

  “We’ll see.” Carlene was just glad not to have to answer another question or make a promise. “Now off to buy food.”

  “And stuff to make brownies for Jace. Do you think he’s pretty?”

  Carlene laughed. “Do you?”

  “I think he’s sexy as…a word that Aunt Bee says but that I can’t because you say it’s a dirty word.”

  “Good grief. What do you know about sexy as…”

  Tilly huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m almost nine and me and Natalie talk about sexy guys all the time.”

  “Like who?”

  “Blake Shelton and Josh Turner and Dustin Bennett,” she said.

  “Who’s Dustin Bennett?” Carlene frowned and fought the urge to flip off a man who cut in front of her and grabbed a prime parking space at Walmart.

  “He’s Natalie’s new crush. He’s in the fourth grade and he’s got blue eyes and blond hair and he chases her at recess. He’s real sexy,” Tilly said wistfully.