A Home in Hill Country (Harlequin Heartwarming)

by Rustand, Roxanne

  His eyes veered away from the horses and met Kristin’s for just an instant. “Sorta.”

  Kristin, her head reeling, gathered her thoughts. “I think there’s been a mistake. We’re not really ready for this, and I’m not sure I can afford—”

  “Pshaw!” Nora snorted. “What would your daddy say, you coming back here with your boy and not putting some horses in your barn? You were on Teacup before you could walk.”

  Remembering her first ancient, arthritic pony, Kristin couldn’t help but smile. “True. But right now, money’s tight, and I haven’t checked the fencing, and I just don’t think—”

  “Mo-om!” Cody cried, looking between her and Nora. “She’s gonna let us have ’em. Pleeeaasse?”

  Nora leveled a long look at Kristin, then slowly shook her head in disgust. “RaeJean didn’t tell you. I swear she doesn’t have the sense of a cactus. I figured she’d see you around town, and she was supposed to tell you I was coming over one of these first days.” RaeJean was a little absentminded, but at the thought of causing additional friction between her late father’s sisters—who tended to bicker anyway— Kristin scrambled for the right thing to say. “I went to see her yesterday, but she was busy, then we left and I just forgot to call her later. My fault, really. Totally mine.”

  Nora harrumphed and exchanged glances with Luis. “I suppose…we could take these two horses home.”

  “Mom, please!” Cody jumped off the fence and ran to grab Kristin’s hand. “I’ll do the chores. I’ll do everything, honest. They won’t cost much— there’s nice pasture, and we already have the barn.”

  Kristin held back a sigh. “What’s the story on these geldings?”

  Luis chuckled. “Your aunt, she did a favor for these fine boys. They belong to this place, but couldn’t stay without someone here.”

  “They belong here?” Mystified, Kristin studied the horses through the rails of the fence. If not registered quarter horses they were certainly the type, with broad, muscular hindquarters and powerful chests.

  “Foaled on this very property, ten years ago,” Nora said briskly. “This piece once belonged to an old cowboy who’d saved up enough to retire on a little place of his own.” The note of affection in her voice suggested that they might have been friends. “Jim broke these boys out nice and gentle, rode most every day. Two years ago his heart gave out. Had no relatives, so the sheriff asked if I’d take the horses and his dog. The land was bought out by the K-Bar-C investors.”

  “There’s a dog?” Cody scanned the yard. “Did you bring him, too?”

  “Ole Scout is probably asleep under the tractor back home. I don’t know that he’s up to any more changes.” Nora pursed her lips, considering. “But if you’re looking for a dog, too—”

  “Yes!”

  “No,” Kristin said quickly. “Not right now, anyway. And about the horses—I just don’t have the money right now to buy them, much less for the shoer and vet and feed.”

  Crossing her arms, Nora looked exasperated. “Missy, you’re getting them for free. You got twenty acres here, with some good grassy bottom ground. They’re both easy keepers, and they’ve been barefoot from day one. You know as well as I do that you can do your own paste worming and vaccinations.”

  “I don’t have any friends here. Just think how cool it would be for you and me to go riding, Mom,” Cody pleaded. “Please? I’ll… I’ll do dishes forever. I’ll…I’ll do anything you say.”

  A smile played at the corners of Luis’s mouth. “Sounds like your young caballero is in great need of a good horse,” he mused. “Maybe you could just give this a try. If it don’t work out, we come get the horses. Eh, Nora?”

  Nora nodded decisively. “Done.”

  “I got my fence pliers in the truck,” Luis added, giving Cody a wink. “You and me can ride the property line right now, make sure the fence is tight.”

  “Yes!” Cody pumped his fist and tackled Kristin around the waist. “Thanks, Mom!”

  Dazed, she returned his hug, then spread her hands palms up as she met Nora’s amused gaze. “But the tack—I don’t have anything.”

  Nora hiked a thumb toward the back of the pickup. “Figured as much. We tossed in a coupla old roping saddles, bridles and some other equipment. It all came from Jim’s barn anyway, so it’s only right it comes back here. I’ve got no need for it.”

  Within minutes, the horses were saddled and Cody, trembling with excitement, was aboard Rebel. Tipping his hat, Luis started into the pasture with Cody close behind.

  Kristin watched them disappear over the hill, then turned to Nora and gave her a hug. “Thank you. It was really sweet of you to do this.”

  Flustered, Nora took an awkward step back. “Needed to do this for my friend Jim,” she said, her voice rough. “Nothing more than that.”

  The unexpected hint at a softer side touched Kristin. Nora had always been the loner of the two aunts—a proud, independent woman who’d managed a ranch on her own since her early twenties. Kristin chose her words carefully. “Of course. I know he’d be thankful for everything you’ve done. I promise I’ll take good care of this place, and his horses, too.”

  Nora turned away and busied herself with gathering the halters, lead ropes and hoof picks that Luis and Cody had left on the fenders of the trailer. “You be careful, hear? Young woman and a child out here, all alone…”

  “I’m not some city slicker afraid of the dark, Aunt Nora. Remember, I spent part of my childhood here. I won’t miss the streetlights and traffic.”

  “It’s not just that.” Nora inclined her head toward the barn, so Kristin fell in step with her as she headed that way.

  Once the tack was stowed, Nora leaned against a stall door with one booted foot cocked back to rest on the rough timber. “I don’t know how much you know about your dad.” She laughed dryly. “Kids usually aren’t aware of everything that’s going on, and I expect your momma didn’t feel too inclined to share a lot of good memories, eh?”

  “True,” Kristin admitted. “Though she didn’t run him down in front of me. I know they fought a lot more after the foreclosure of our ranch. And after the divorce, I didn’t get to see him much.” She forced a smile. “I missed him.”

  “My brother was a good man. A hard worker, and I believe he was as honest as they come. Things never did go right for him, though. Drought and cattle prices foreclosed his ranch. He scraped and saved, and rallied a lot of friends to join him in a partnership to buy thousands of acres of good Texas Hill Country, back before the prices hiked up so high. People…” Nora paused. “Well, when the consortium went under, there were a lot of people around here who were hurt bad. Some lost their life savings, some lost the family ranches they’d mortgaged to join in. A lot of them blamed your dad, saying he’d talked them into a foolish scheme.”

  “But it wasn’t his fault, right?”

  “No. It wasn’t the fault of the man who over-saw the day-to-day operation of the place, either. Zeb Ritter worked hard as any man could, and your dad was out there, too, working twelve-to eighteen-hour days for him. The economy and the drought were at fault, but it’s easier to take failure when you can pin it on someone.”

  Maybe that’s why her dad hadn’t had much time for a young daughter who’d lived so far away. “That’s not fair.”

  “Yeah, well, Zeb committed suicide almost eighteen months ago, and your dad died the month before. Neither one is left to blame, now.” Nora’s lips thinned. “I wanted you to understand, because there are still some locals with hard feelings.”

  “I’ve already run into a few of them.”

  “There’s something else.” Nora paced to the side door of the barn and stared out over the dry, rolling landscape with her thumbs hooked in the back pockets of her worn Levi’s. “Everyone in these parts knows how that sorry excuse-of-a-man Gallagher wanted the K-Bar-C land. Power and control is everything to him, and it sticks in his craw that the Home Free committee nabbed it.”

  Kristi
n joined her at the doorway. “But what can he do about it?”

  “Nothing legal,” Nora scoffed. “I just want you to understand what’s going on around here, and I want you to be careful.”

  “I hardly think the man can kick me off my land.”

  Nora rested a calloused hand on Kristin’s arm. “Your dad worked for Clint up until a few weeks before he died. They must’ve had a big argument, because Nate either quit or was fired. I’ll go to my grave thinking there was something fishy about my brother’s death so soon after that.”

  Startled, Kristin drew in a sharp breath. “But it was ruled an accident.”

  “I have no proof. But your dad drove that road most every day of his life. He knew every curve, every bump. The weather was dry. The sun had just set, so the light was still good. The sheriff doesn’t agree with me, but I believe someone forced your dad’s truck off the road. And I think I know who it was.”

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, Kristin’s stomach tightened when she checked the time. Eight o’clock. By eight-thirty she felt as if tumbleweed had lodged in her throat.

  She nearly jumped out of her skin when the clinic phone rang. It was a wrong number, though in small-town fashion, the caller managed to stretch that inadvertent call into a good ten minutes about local gossip and the weather.

  By a quarter of ten, the waiting room was still empty and Kristin breathed a sigh of relief…until a moment later, when she heard heavy footsteps tromping up the steps and the front door of the clinic squealed open.

  Ryan walked in, his face a grim mask. “Sorry we’re late.”

  Senator Gallagher followed him, leveled a cold look at Kristin, and folded his arms. “I have a cardiologist in Austin.”

  “But you haven’t seen him in almost two years, and he’s over an hour away,” Ryan said evenly. The set of his jaw suggested that the trip into town hadn’t been easy. “You need a local doctor, too.”

  “Come on back, Senator. This won’t take long.” Facing the man who’d nearly destroyed her years ago, Kristin dredged up a weak smile. I believe someone forced your dad’s truck off the road—and I think I know who it was. Though Nora had refused to elaborate, it didn’t take much imagination to guess who that someone was she referred to.

  When she was younger, Kristin had discovered just how cruel and domineering Clint could be…yet it hardly seemed plausible that an influential senator would jeopardize his privileged status with murder.

  “We have some old records from the Dr. Grady days, but I’m sure we’ll need to update your history, sir. We’ll also need a release so we can get copies of your current records in Austin.”

  Ryan turned to look out the window of the clinic as Kristin led his father down the hall to an exam room. Clint took a chair in the corner instead of the edge of the exam table, his face impassive.

  His responses to her questions were cursory at best—and likely not entirely accurate, given the stubborn jut of his jaw. Fortunately, he signed a release for the transfer of his medical records in Austin. While he was disrobing, she sent it to the cardiology clinic and then called them to ask if she could get the records ASAP.

  Back in the exam room, she found Clint sitting on the exam table, his shirt off. He sat in silence as she took his blood pressure both sitting and standing, then listened to his heart and lungs. “You said you weren’t on any medications. Is that correct?”

  His mouth tightened. “Nothing I need to take.”

  “I’m hearing some PVCs—an irregular beat. I’d like to do an EKG while you’re here.” When he bristled, she added, “It’s apparently been a while since you’ve been to a doctor, so it’s good to have a baseline.”

  “Who reads it, you?”

  His derisive tone rankled. “Yes, and then I’ll send it on to Dr. Hernandez and the cardiologist in San Antonio.”

  She rolled the EKG machine from its place in the corner and attached the leads, then ran a tape on him, watching the needle trace a telltale pattern that confirmed her initial diagnosis.

  He apparently noticed something in her expression, because his eyebrows drew together. “Normal, I suppose.”

  “Not entirely,” she hedged. “Though in a man your age we can hardly expect a twenty-year-old heart, right? We’ll have a report back from the cardiologist by tomorrow, and we should have your old records by then, too.”

  He looked wary as she prepared to draw blood samples. “Are you okay with this? Do you want to lie down?”

  “No,” he growled. “Let’s just get this farce over with.”

  She bit back the impulse to defend her training and experience as she applied the tourniquet, swiftly found a good vein and drew two test tubes. He turned slightly ashen, and his skin felt damp by the time she finished.

  When he started to climb off the table, she held him gently back. “Do needles bother you? Maybe you’d better sit for just a minute. You’re a little pale.”

  He jerked his arm away. “I don’t need your advice, missy. Now leave me be so I can dress.”

  She lingered close by, anyway, as he stood, wavered a little, then seemed to regain his color. “I’ll go on out to the front desk and see if your records have come yet.”

  She’d gathered her lab tray and was almost to the door when he barked her name. “Yes?”

  He’d shrugged into his shirt and was starting to do up the first button, but his gaze was pinned on her face with an intensity that made her shiver.

  “I don’t know why you’re back in town, and I don’t much care. But you keep away from my son, you hear?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  DR. HERNANDEZ HAD PROMISED that a nurse would arrive the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend. She hadn’t mentioned that he’d be balding and burly, with a massive tattoo of an 18-wheeler on his left upper arm and a gold-capped front tooth.

  “I’m Max Zimmerman.” He shook Kristin’s hand with enough force to make her wince, his eyes sparkling behind trendy wire rims at odds with the rest of his well-aged biker image. “Boy, howdy. Thought I’d never get here today. Dr. Lou did my health exam, blood work and TB-tine at the main clinic this morning, and then I must’ve watched six orientation videos. I’m still on a caffeine high from trying to stay awake.”

  Kristin had been in a dark mood since Clint and Ryan left a few hours earlier, but now she grinned at Max. “It’s great having you aboard.”

  He followed her second glance to his truck tattoo and smiled ruefully. “My clinic jacket will cover it. I got a little wild in my days after the service, and unfortunately wasn’t content with a simple ‘Mom.’”

  Though he had that, too, along with a heart and the name Rosalie on his other muscular forearm.

  She gave him a tour of the building, ending up at the front desk where she offered him a seat and pulled up an extra chair for herself. “You and I will be on our own for a while, until things pick up. I understand that, for now, you’ll handle the phone. We’ll make sure the insurance and billing forms are complete, but they’re computerized and bookkeepers at the main clinic will handle them.”

  “Good deal.” He opened the appointment book with obvious relish and flipped through some of the pages. His face fell. “There’s hardly anyone in here.”

  “Today is our first day. Doc Grady died a few years back, so it might take a while. There’ll be notices in the Homestead Herald and some of the papers in the surrounding towns.”

  “And the town should grow, with the Home Free homesteading program. I understand you and I are both part of it…though I didn’t fit the preferred family profile.” His smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Still, I had nursing skills to offer, and I’ll have a small-engine repair business on the side. They gave me a house at the end of Pecan Street, with a shop building in back.”

  “How long have you been in nursing?”

  “I was a medic in the service for a few years. I wanted to go to college afterward, but just couldn’t hack it given some of the stuff I was still dealing with. Nightmares, flashbacks—
you know the drill. I ended up driving a truck for a while.”

  Kristin tipped her head in silent acknowledgment of all he’d gone through. “What made you change jobs?”

  “After my wife died, I went back to school. Seeing what those nurses did for her made me want to give back something, you know? They made all the difference.”

  The pain in his voice sounded so fresh that she wanted to give him a hug. “I’m sorry about your loss.”

  “I miss her every day.” He flipped back to the current date in the appointment book. “I see you had a patient this morning. How’d that go?”

  “Not the best start.”

  He gave the name a second glance, then looked up at her in surprise. “Clint Gallagher. The state senator?”

  “One and the same. His son made him come, but he wasn’t happy about it. He seems to be in denial regarding his health and hasn’t been compliant with medical advice.” She nudged Clint’s patient file with a forefinger. “His old medical records just came from Austin. Hyperlipidemia, with a cholesterol of 325 and elevated triglycerides of 550. A history of angina, with a few E.R. visits. He was started on a beta blocker, Lipitor and aspirin therapy two years ago, but he’s never followed through. Today’s EKG showed occasional PVCs.”

  Max whistled under his breath. “A walking heart attack.”

  “And he’s not going to listen to me, either. He made that clear enough today. His family and mine have some…history, so Dr. Lou will probably have to talk to him.”

  “He’d better get over it. She isn’t here that often, and in an emergency he’ll have to see you anyway, the fool.”

  Max’s disgust made Kristin laugh. “I think he’d have to be unconscious.”