“As soon as my daughter comes home, I will have her drop me off there. She promised not to be late,” Rosalita said. “But she isn’t always on time.”
Trace disconnected the call feeling both relieved and anxious. He glanced at Eli and Hannah. If Luke wasn’t home when he got to Three Oaks, he was going to end up doing some baby-sitting himself. He called Callie and advised her about the possible delay. She told him she thought she might spend some time sitting with Sam, and that he should look for her there, if she wasn’t still with her mother.
“Do you have any idea how we can get hold of your uncle Luke?” he asked Eli.
“He’s probably home by now,” Eli said.
Using his cell phone, Trace called the number for Three Oaks that Eli gave him, but there was no answer. Trace figured he’d better give Luke some warning of the situation he’d find when he did get home, so he wasn’t scared out of his wits.
“Any other suggestions where I might find him?”
Eli was silent for a moment before he said, “He stayed with a friend last night.”
“What’s his friend’s name?”
A hesitation, then, “Jeff.”
This was harder than pulling nails from oak. “Jeff who?” Trace asked, working hard to keep the irritation out of his voice.
“I don’t know his last name,” Eli said.
Trace gave up. If Luke didn’t arrive home before Rosalita showed up, Trace would leave instructions with Rosalita to have the boy call his grandmother.
Callie had left the house unlocked, a remnant of range hospitality from the days when no stranger was turned away without a cup of coffee and the offer of a night’s lodging. Eli let himself in and headed straight upstairs to his room. Trace let him go.
“I’m hungry,” Hannah said.
Trace looked at his watch. It was long past suppertime. He set Hannah down in the kitchen and said, “What should we fix for supper?”
“Blueberry pancakes,” Hannah said without hesitation.
He didn’t argue, because it sounded simple—except for the blueberry part—unless Callie was the sort who made pancakes from scratch. “Where does your mom keep the pancake mix?” he asked.
Hannah pointed to a cupboard next to the refrigerator.
Trace opened the cupboard and couldn’t believe his luck. On the shelf stood a box of Krusteaz blueberry pancake mix that said on the front, “Complete. Just Add Water.”
“Thank the Lord for small favors,” he murmured.
“I can help,” Hannah said, crossing to a drawer to take out a set of aluminum measuring cups. “I can measure the water.”
“You bet. Uh. Where’s a bowl?”
Hannah pointed him to the correct cupboard. While he was retrieving a bowl, she pulled a kitchen chair over to the counter next to the sink and climbed up on it.
“Let’s see,” Trace said, looking at the directions on the back. “How many pancakes should we make?”
“The most,” Hannah said with a grin. “I like pancakes.”
Trace found himself grinning back at her. “So do I.” He found the recipe for twenty-one to twenty-three four-inch pancakes, quickly measured out three cups of pancake mix, then said to Hannah, “We need two and one-quarter cups of water.”
He turned on the faucet, then helped keep Hannah from losing her balance as she held the measuring cup under the water long enough to fill it. She spilled a bit of it before it got into the mix and looked up at him to see his reaction.
“No problem,” he said. “We’ll just add a little more at the end.”
“Hmmm,” he said after they’d added the water. “It says to use a wire whisk. Wonder where we might find one of those.”
“I know!” Hannah said. She clambered down from the chair and crossed to a drawer beside the refrigerator, then pulled it open and rummaged through until she found a wire whisk. She held it up to him, beaming. “Here it is!”
Once the batter was whipped, Trace realized he hadn’t heated up a skillet. “How are we going to cook these pancakes?” he asked Hannah.
She pointed to the top of the refrigerator, where he saw an electric skillet.
“Aha!” he said, retrieving it. “How about something to keep the pancakes from sticking to the pan?”
“Mommy uses the stuff with 433 servings per can,” Hannah said.
“Wow! That many.” Trace couldn’t imagine a can that contained 433 servings of anything that would fit in one of the small wooden cupboards. “All right. I give up. What stuff?”
Hannah giggled. “PAM!”
Trace thought she was kidding. When he found the PAM in the cupboard where Hannah told him to look, it did, indeed, contain 433 servings—of a one-third-second spray. He generously sprayed the electric skillet with fifteen servings of PAM.
Trace was just dripping batter into the skillet from a large spoon, when Luke stepped into the kitchen. He automatically stuck his hat on a horseshoe hat rack inside the door, then stopped dead and stared. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.
Trace turned to face him, batter still dripping off the spoon, and said, “Your brother Sam’s in the hospital with alcohol poisoning. Your sister’s there with him and your mother. I’m baby-sitting.”
“Is Sam going to be all right?” Luke asked.
“The doctor won’t know for sure until tomorrow morning.”
“You spilled some!” Hannah announced, pointing to the pool of blueberry pancake batter on the hardwood floor.
Trace set the spoon down, tore a paper towel off the roll attached under the cupboard, and handed it to Hannah. “Would you clean it up for me?”
“Okay,” Hannah said, sitting down and sliding off the chair. She swiped at the batter, but her efforts merely spread it into a wider mess on the floor.
Luke crossed and bent down on one knee to help her. He stood with the paper towel in his hand and confronted Trace. “You can leave now. I can handle things from here.”
“There’s a woman named Rosalita coming over to take care of the kids. She shouldn’t be too late,” Trace said.
“Tell her not to come,” Luke said. “I can take care of things around here.”
“What about tomorrow?”
Luke stared at him, uncomprehending.
“When you go to school,” Trace said. “Who’s going to take care of Hannah?”
“Callie should be home by then.”
“Callie’s taking a break for a couple of days to get some rest. Your mom insisted on it,” he said when Luke opened his mouth to argue. “She won’t be back until day after tomorrow.”
“I can stay home from school tomorrow,” Luke said stubbornly.
Hannah was back on her chair and announced, “The pancakes are burning.”
“We forgot the spatula,” Trace said to Hannah.
Luke grabbed a spatula from the drawer next to the sink, then stepped up to the skillet and flipped the pancakes. When he was done, he turned, holding the spatula as though it were a knife, to keep Trace at bay. “I said leave, and I mean it.”
When Trace looked at the teenage boy, he didn’t see the fisted hands posed aggressively or the narrow shoulders squared for action. He saw the freckles on his nose and the fear in his eyes.
Before he could insist on staying till Rosalita showed up, Eli stepped into the kitchen from the hallway.
“I thought I heard your voice,” Eli said to Luke. “I’m glad you’re home. I was afraid this guy was going to hang around all night.”
“I’m staying till Rosalita shows up,” Trace said quietly. “To make sure she’s welcomed when she gets here.”
“I can take care of things around here all by myself,” Luke insisted.
“The pancakes are burning!” Hannah said agitatedly.
As Luke stacked the pancakes one on top of the other, he said to Eli, “Get me a plate, will you? These things are going to be black on both sides.”
Eli edged past Trace to retrieve a pretty flowered plate from th
e cupboard and handed it to Luke. Luke stacked the pancakes on it and said, “You and Hannah can start on these.”
“Those are burned,” Eli complained.
Luke glanced sideways at Trace, then back at Eli and hissed, “Just sit down and eat!”
“There’s no silverware on the table,” Eli pointed out.
“Then get some!” Luke said as he dipped batter for four more pancakes onto the smoking skillet.
“I can get it,” Hannah offered. She leaned over and yanked open the silverware drawer, but pulled it out too far. When it came free, silverware clattered to the floor, followed by the drawer itself, which landed with a loud thump.
“Uh-oh.” Hannah quickly climbed down from the chair to gather up the conglomeration of spoons and forks and knives, then glanced at Luke to see his reaction.
“Dammit, Hannah! You know better than that!” Luke yelled.
Hannah let out a wail and burst into tears. She looked around for a friendly face, but neither her brother nor her uncle offered her any comfort.
Trace held out his arms, and the little girl came running to him. He gathered her up and felt her soft breath against his throat as he patted her on the back. “Don’t worry, Hannah. Eli and Luke will take care of cleaning up everything.”
Luke stared at him, furious and helpless.
Trace gestured Eli toward the silverware on the floor and said, “Help yourself.”
“I don’t need you to tell me what to do!” Eli said.
“Those pancakes might taste better with a little butter and syrup,” Trace suggested.
He could see the two boys were torn. They didn’t want to follow his suggestion, but they certainly didn’t want to eat their pancakes dry, either. Luke decided the matter by crossing to the refrigerator and hauling out some butter on a chipped plate and a plastic container of Aunt Jemima syrup.
“Here,” Luke said to Eli, as he dropped them both on the table.
“Luke,” Trace said.
“What?” Luke retorted.
“Your pancakes are burning.”
Chapter 12
“I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY YOU GANGED UP with Trace Blackthorne against your own daughter,” Callie said to her mother, feeling confused and surprisingly antagonistic.
“You need the rest,” her mother said reasonably. “And it will give Trace a chance to spend time with his son.”
Callie stared at her mother, her breath caught in her chest. “What makes you think—”
“I can count, Callie.”
“You’re mistaken. I—”
“Nolan told me the truth,” her mother said. “Don’t blame him for giving away your secret, Callie. He had no choice. I thought it was odd that if you got pregnant during the Christmas holiday, your baby should weigh barely six pounds, when it was supposedly three weeks overdue. I speculated that your calculations must have been off, or that there might be something wrong with Eli. Nolan was afraid I would say something to your father, and he knew that would be disastrous.”
Callie sank into the molded plastic chair beside her mother’s bed. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“I always hoped you’d tell me the truth yourself.”
“Trace and I … I loved him, Mom.” She looked up and was surprised to find tears in her mother’s eyes.
“I thought maybe he didn’t love you enough to marry you when he found out you were pregnant,” her mother said. “But when I see how he looks at you now … What happened, Callie?”
“You’re mistaken about Trace’s feelings for me, Mom. And you know why I couldn’t marry him. Daddy would have disowned me.”
“True. But he couldn’t have stopped you. Not if you really wanted to marry Trace.”
“With Sam stuck in a wheelchair, you needed me at home.”
“Also true. We might very well have lost Three Oaks without your help.” Her mother’s eyes focused on her hands, which were knotted in her lap. She glanced up at Callie and asked, “Do you regret the choice you made?”
Callie was startled by the question. “You’re the one who taught me about sacrifice. I learned it at your knee. How could I not stay and help?”
“You haven’t answered my question. Do you regret the choice you made?”
Callie’s throat had swollen until it hurt to swallow. “Yes.”
She hadn’t realized she was going to admit such a thing until the word was spoken. She saw the pain in her mother’s eyes.
“I know how that feels,” her mother said quietly.
Callie went perfectly still. She was afraid to ask what her mother meant. She was afraid she already knew.
“Your father was right to be jealous.”
“I don’t want to hear this,” Callie said, rising in agitation. “Don’t tell me you didn’t love Daddy. I won’t believe you!”
“I loved him,” her mother said. “I was never ‘in love’ with him. I didn’t know what it meant to be ‘in love’ until it was too late.”
“I told you I don’t want to hear this!” Callie said, heading for the door.
“I was already pregnant with you when I realized I was in love with Jackson Blackthorne.”
Callie stopped, the doorknob in her hand. She leaned her forehead against the cool wood. “Oh, Mom.”
“I had to decide whether to take you away from your father, and let a man he hated raise his child. Or stay with your father, and give up the man I had come to love more than life itself. I made the sacrifice, Callie. I did the right thing. As you did, when the time came for you to make a choice. You chose to help your family, because we needed you, rather than steal away with the man you loved.”
Callie whirled and confronted her mother. “Are you telling me I made the wrong choice?”
Her mother stared back at her soberly. “What do you think?”
“You and Daddy had a good life together. Nolan and I had a wonderful marriage.”
“But something was always missing between you and Nolan, wasn’t it?”
Callie didn’t know how her mother could be so perceptive. Unless she had experienced the same yearning for what had been lost. It hurt to think of her parents’ marriage as anything less than perfect, even though she’d known for a long time that things weren’t right between them.
“At least Trace came back for you,” her mother said.
“He came back because his father had a heart attack and needed him to manage the ranch.”
Her mother shook her head. “Trace could have left weeks ago. Why do you think he’s still here, Callie?”
“How should I know?”
“What if you had a second chance? Would you make the same choice?” her mother asked.
“Are you telling me you don’t need me anymore? Are you telling me you can manage Three Oaks without me, if I were to leave?”
“I don’t know,” her mother said. “We’d certainly struggle without you. We might even lose Three Oaks. But things have changed. The ranch doesn’t mean as much to me as it did to your father.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying these things! Three Oaks has been paid for with the blood and bone of Creeds for generations. We’d be losing a piece of ourselves if we gave it up!”
“Then I guess you have your answer,” her mother said. “You would still make the sacrifice.”
Callie frowned. “There’s no sacrifice to be made. Trace doesn’t love me anymore.”
“Do you love him?” her mother asked.
Callie avoided the question. “What difference does it make how I feel?”
“What about Eli?” her mother asked. “Are you going to tell Trace he has a son.”
“I can’t. He might try to get custody of Eli, if he knew the truth.”
“That’s too bad,” her mother said. “A boy needs his father.”
“Eli had a father!” Callie snapped. “His father died.”
“Trace and Eli are the same blood and bone. If you love Trace, you’d be a fool to give him up again. Talk
to him. Maybe you two can work things out.”
“You’re being ridiculous, Mom. I can’t go back.”
“No, but you can move forward.”
Callie stared at her mother, her heart pounding, her hands knotted. “I need to go check on Sam,” she said abruptly.
Callie pulled open the door and headed down the hall toward the elevator.
She was having trouble digesting everything her mother had said. How could she even talk about moving forward, when the cost of doing so might be the loss of Three Oaks? It was frightening to think her mother didn’t feel as strongly about keeping the ranch as Callie did. What if her mother sold Three Oaks to Blackjack? She wouldn’t dare! Not after the fight her father had waged against his mortal enemy. Callie would never allow that to happen. Three Oaks belonged to the Creeds. She would never give it up.
She checked with the reception desk on the main floor to find out which room was Sam’s, then headed toward the elevator.
“Visiting hours—”
That was all Callie heard before the elevator doors closed behind her. She had to stop herself from running down the fourth floor hall, and she anxiously shoved open the door to Sam’s room, wishing she could talk to her brother about the things her mother had said. But the days when she and Sam had been confidantes were long past.
Her brother was hooked up to a monitor that beeped slowly and steadily. Callie had never heard a more beautiful sound. She crossed to the bed and looked down at Sam. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark against his pale cheeks. She hadn’t been there a full minute before the door opened and a doctor came in. He didn’t seem at all surprised to find her there, and she realized the nurse downstairs must have paged him.
“I’m Callie Creed Monroe. How is my brother?”
“He had a narrow escape,” the doctor said. “If you hadn’t found him when you did, he wouldn’t have made it.”
Callie swallowed hard. She grabbed the bedrail to steady herself.
“Are you all right?” the doctor asked.
“I’m fine. How soon before Sam can come home?”
“I’d like to do a few tests to see what shape his liver and kidneys are in.”
“Is there something wrong with them?”
Rather than answer, the doctor asked, “How much alcohol would you say your brother consumes in a twenty-four-hour period?”
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