by Tina Leonard
In the kitchen, Gabriel settled into a chair. “Are you starting your year of duty early?”
“Figured I might as well get it over with.” Dane stuck his head inside the refrigerator door, ending the conversation for the moment. “Fried chicken! Watermelon!”
Gabriel shook his head and began to read the travel guide to the South Seas, which was starting to sound appealing.
“You get your letter from Pop?” Dane asked while he emptied the contents of the fridge on to the kitchen counter.
“What letter?”
“The one with the sob story about watching over this woman and her twins who have no man in the house.”
“Twins?” Gabriel sat up. Laura only had a toddler and a baby—didn’t she?
“I despise kids almost as much as I hate Texas,” Dane said.
Gabriel couldn’t think for the shock of adding more kids to Laura’s equation. “You’re a Texas Ranger. Get over it.”
“I’m done. I retired from active duty.”
“Congratulations. So back to the family of four—”
“Yeah. I’m supposed to look out for this little mom because of some mess Pop made.”
Gabriel frowned. He was supposed to be the reluctant knight in shining armor. Possessive emotions and a sense of I saw her first crowded his skull.
Dane shuddered. “Her name is Suzy something.”
“Suzy? Not Laura?”
Dane sat down across from him with a beer and a plate of fried chicken. “How do you get Laura from Suzy?”
Gabriel shook his head. “This doesn’t sound good.”
“Tell me about it. I nearly took off for New York, never to be seen or heard from again. But in the end, I knew I had to do this, or I’d really never be free of Pop. He’ll try to rule us from the grave if we don’t prove to him that nothing he does can screw up our lives anymore.”
“And then there’s the million bucks.”
“A small price for putting up with Pop,” Dane said glumly. “You know it’s going to get ugly. Suzy.” He shuddered.
At least it wasn’t Laura Pop had sent Dane to rescue. It didn’t really matter, Gabriel reminded himself. One year and he was gone. Outta here.
But now apparently there was a family of four in the mix, and an additional problem to be solved. Gabriel stared out the window at the pelting rain.
It was indeed beginning to get ugly.
Chapter Four
“So who’s Laura, anyway? Girlfriend?”
Gabriel stared at his elder brother, elder being twenty-eight to his own twenty-six. “Hell, no. I just met her. Pop left her children a trust. It’s complicated.”
“Isn’t everything Pop touches complicated?”
Gabriel nodded. “This as much as anything. So what’s the deal with Suzy?”
“Don’t really know. The letter just said that he owed her something and he’d like me to see to it.”
“Pop’s matchmaking by making disasters for us to fix.”
Dane quit chewing. “You think?”
“Sure. He wants grandkids. He’s been busy finding himself some ready-made families.”
“Man,” Dane said, “that’s not fair. I’m glad you figured that out because I might’ve stepped right into the snare.”
Gabriel nodded. “Pop never does anything without a reason.”
“But still…family-making?” Dane shook his head. “That’s so underhanded.”
Gabriel returned to staring out the window.
“So is Laura at least somewhat easy on the eyes?”
Gabriel shrugged. “She is. But she’s not my type.”
“That would be pretty hard to identify.”
He frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dane looked at him. “Pop’s not a sphinx. He can choose all he wants for us, but he can’t figure out who’d be that special girl, which personally, I believe is a fairy tale spun to young boys by parents who want grandkids. So we’re safe.”
“Oh.” Gabriel relaxed a little now that he understood his brother wasn’t saying he was tough to please. Then he tensed all over again. Pop had selected someone Gabriel was attracted to, in a breath-stealing, jaw-tightening way he hadn’t anticipated. “I’d still be careful,” he warned. “Suzy might be just your thing.”
“Nah.” Dane shuddered. “I could never hear myself saying ‘Suzy, make me breakfast, baby.’”
Gabriel stared at his brother. “You wouldn’t say that to a woman without getting a frying pan upside the head.”
Dane sipped his beer. “I like girls who can cook.”
Gabriel considered that. If the chicken and rice and peas were any forewarning, Laura could definitely cook.
“Great cooking, great sex. Very important qualities in a woman, if I was looking for one. I’d say Pop’s run into a brick wall with me. Now, you might not be as safe.”
Gabriel stood. “I’m going to bed. Make yourself at home, such as it is.” He wasn’t going to think about sex and Laura; he wasn’t going to even kiss her. Or imagine what she tasted like.
“You realize if Pop cooked up a mess for me and one for you, the other two probably have assigned families as well,” Dane pointed out.
“Yeah, well, good luck with Jack. We haven’t seen him in ten years. And Pete, almost as long.” He shrugged. “What’s a secret agent going to do with a family?”
“I see Jack’s scores every once in a while. He posts a few wins, breaks a few bones. Got stomped in Amarillo.”
Gabriel looked at his brother. “Stomped?”
“Not bad. Slight concussion.”
He sat again in spite of himself. “You’ve seen Jack.”
“I was a Ranger. I have connections. People tell me things, let me know what’s happening on the rodeo circuit.” Dane finished the chicken and started on some watermelon. “Sure. When he got stomped, I checked in on him at the hospital. Don’t think he knew I was there. He was out of it for a while, but I did see him pat the nurse’s ass. And he didn’t get his hand slapped.”
“I didn’t know about Jack being in the hospital.”
“You weren’t stateside much.”
That was true. But even if he had been home, he wouldn’t have known much anyway. “So since you hear things, fill me in on Pete.”
“He slipped into my house in Watauga about a year ago. I thought I was going to have cardiac arrest when he sat down at my breakfast table with me. I hate that spy crap secret agent voodoo thing he’s got going on.”
Gabriel grunted. “Thought Rangers had sonar hearing and X-ray vision.”
Dane laughed. “We’re not quite superhuman, jarhead.”
He wasn’t a jarhead anymore. Since he’d gotten his discharge, his dark hair had grown out some. He’d expected a bit of gray, and saw a few strands mixed in. No bald spot or thinning hair, though, which made him think he might just keep growing the stuff. It felt strange long. Old habits died hard. “So what did Pete have on his mind?”
“Just checking in. He was on his way somewhere. Didn’t say. Said he was getting tired.”
They were all getting older. Even Gabriel felt the gradual march of time slowing his body down, his need for action yet speeding up. Not military action. Something else he hadn’t quite put his finger on.
“I don’t know if I can live out here for a year,” Dane said. “Watauga seemed like hell to me, but this would be worse.”
Gabriel took Dane’s plate to the sink. “Do any of us really have a choice?” He walked back to the fridge and tossed Dane a beer. “Look. We have to do this. For the sake of our own futures. Pop’s crazy, no doubt, but crazy like a fox. Remember? He was always working a deal.”
Dane cracked his beer and focused on the label. “I know you’re right but it still stinks. I resent Pop for controlling our lives with a snap of his thin fingers.”
“Look,” Gabriel said, “what if the old man died?” He looked at Dane with a serious expression. “He’d get the last laugh, man. We’d
be holding the whole damn bag of emotional dirt.”
Dane shook his head. “That’s too ‘tortured soul’ for me.”
“Well, think it over, because it’s true.” He sighed and leaned back in his chair, not wanting the conversation, not really wanting the beer, not wanting anything but a flight to Tokyo, maybe. Away from here. “So we’re going to do this. And what about Suzy?”
“Now, that isn’t anything I have to deal with. Whatever mess Pop made, I just have to make certain some money changes hands, some responsibilities are seen to and that’s it. I live here for a year, a paltry three hundred and sixty-five days, and then my time is done.”
He thought about Laura. “So cut-and-dried.”
“So cut-and-dried.” Dane nodded. “You got that right.”
“Good game plan. I’m turning in.”
Gabriel rose, poured the beer into the sink and headed upstairs, mulling over Dane’s game plan. It was fairly detached, and Gabriel liked detached and unemotional.
It just might work for him.
* * *
LAURA FROWNED AT THE NOTE that had been stuck to the front door of her small house. Hey, baby, be by to see you later.
Chills ran through her. Nobody baby’d her—no one except her father. She didn’t want to see him. Didn’t want him near her children. The fact that he’d found out where she lived made her want to move far away, as fast as she could.
He was her father by blood, but Mr. Morgan had acted more fatherly toward her. There was something wrong with the man whose genes she bore—Ben had problems with thinking the world owed him something. A chip on his shoulder kept him from being the responsible human he might have been.
Laura wanted no part of him.
She took her children inside and locked the door. Penny went straight to her stuffed animals, so Laura put Perrin in his playpen before she sank into a chair at the kitchen table to think.
There was a reason Ben had chosen this moment to filter back into her life. Months ago, Ben had claimed Mr. Morgan had done him a disservice, which the old man had denied. Ben had told her that Mr. Morgan had cheated him out of money. She didn’t think Mr. Morgan was the cheating type but after Dave died, he had put that money into trust for her kids. Was it guilt money? At the time, tired and grief-stricken, she’d assumed it was exactly what he’d said it was, a gift of college education for kids whose company he’d enjoyed. As a teacher, she’d certainly appreciated the gesture. A lot of people had been very generous after the funeral. In fact, the Jeffersons had helped pay down the mortgage on this house so that Laura wouldn’t have to struggle so much. It was just the type of caring thing Laura had seen done many times over in this town.
She hadn’t thought about guilt money. And Ben had always been the kind of man who whined. It was part of the reason she was determined to shoulder her burdens without complaining, without relying on other people. She wanted independence and that didn’t come by whining and blaming.
She thought about Gabriel. He seemed very independent, too. He wouldn’t blame other people for any misery he incurred. She’d heard from Mr. Morgan that none of their family was close, a fact that disheartened him. In his twilight years—he’d started to say he was feeling his age—he had hoped to knit his family back together.
He’d never said exactly what the problem had been.
Laura wanted a family for her children, though. If she ever remarried, she would want a man who was close to his kin. Penny and Perrin deserved a father who didn’t have skeletons rattling in his closet; they had enough bones with Ben. Although they’d never met him, it was only a matter of time before that family skeleton made a nuisance of itself with some whiny rattling.
She tore up the note and threw it into the trash, pushing it down deep before closing the shutters and checking the locks on the doors.
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER, LAURA had the kids in bed. She’d been spending some time making plans for the upcoming school year; it would be her second year teaching seventh-grade science. Laura had plans for setting up some conservation composts and doing a rocket launch. If the students were ready, she planned to jump right into some in-class science projects so that they could record data over the course of the whole year.
She’d completely put Ben out of her mind.
Someone knocked at the door, and the dreaded prickles ran up her back. She closed her eyes, reminding herself that Ben was her father, that he had never been violent. He just hadn’t liked Dave and had been disagreeable and opinionated about him.
It was Mr. Morgan he’d really been at odds with. Maybe she’d been influenced by those stories.
Yet there was the money. Funny that Ben would be showing up in her life when he knew that her children had been the recipients of various gifts of goodwill from the town. Ben wasn’t a coincidental kind of man; he planned everything almost down to an obsession. Then again, she’d heard through the grapevine that Ben had picked up heavy drinking in the town that bordered Union Junction.
The knock sounded again. Now was as good a time as any to face her father. Then again, it could be Mimi.
Mimi would call first.
“Who is it?”
“Gabriel Morgan.”
She put a hand to her chest to still her thundering heart, then realized he made her just as nervous—in an unexpected, different way.
She turned on the porch light and opened the door. “Hello.”
There he was, wearing a Western hat and jeans. He wasn’t smiling, but he hadn’t smiled the other times she’d met him, either. He had bought out her kissing booth—and then disappeared. She’d expected to hear something from him…she hadn’t been sure what.
“I would have called, but I didn’t have your number. Guess it’s unlisted.”
She nodded. “It is.”
“Would have called Mason for it, but…hope you don’t mind me stopping by.”
He seemed uncomfortable and Laura didn’t blame him. Apparently he was only in the area because of his duty to his father. She held the door open so Gabriel could come inside. “If you’d called Mason, he would have asked why you needed to see me. I can ask you myself.” Laura pointed to a sofa so he could sit down. He did, gingerly hovering on the flowered sofa.
“Just seems we got off on the wrong foot.”
She nodded. “Maybe. What other foot is there, though?”
He hesitated. “I think I was surprised my father left me instructions about you.”
“He did?” That wasn’t welcome news. She didn’t want Gabriel to feel obligated to her in any way.
“Yeah. Apparently you have some issues with your father, who may or may not have your best interests at heart.”
She thought about the note on the door. “It’s not something I really want to talk about.”
“I fully understand. I don’t want to talk about my dad, either.”
“So don’t.” She felt more awkward by the second. “Look, Gabriel, despite whatever your father told you, I can take care of myself. I have lots of friends. I have a great job. I love my kids. I don’t need a protector or anything like that.”
He glanced down at his hands for a moment before looking back at her. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Of course I am! Your father was ultraprotective of me because of my children. But you don’t have to take on a parenting role, Gabriel. I wouldn’t want you to. They had a father.” She took a deep breath. “He was a wonderful man, and…I’m not looking to fill his role in our lives.”
He appeared to consider her words. “You’d let me know if you need something?”
“Honestly, no.” She shook her head. “I wouldn’t. I’d call Mimi or some of my girlfriends. But I can tell you I would if that’s the closure you need. It just won’t be true. You’re completely off the hook.”
A knock at the door startled both of them. A shaky premonition snapped into Laura.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were expecting company.” G
abriel got to his feet.
“Laura! Baby! Let me in!”
Gabriel frowned. Laura glanced at the door, making certain it was securely locked after she’d let Gabriel in. To her relief, it was.
“Laura! It’s your father. Don’t keep me out here!”
“I didn’t realize you were still on speaking terms with Ben.” Gabriel’s eyes searched hers. “Thought I’d heard the opposite.”
It was her family’s private business. “I don’t want to discuss this with you.” If she did, he would feel responsible for her.
The glass pane smashed, and Laura screamed in spite of herself. She flung open the door. “Ben, what the hell? You could have hurt one of the children!”
“Hi, baby.” Her father tipped unsteadily to one side, listing, before righting himself. “I know I taught you better manners than to leave your old dad standing outside.”
She felt Gabriel move behind her. She pushed him back with one hand. This was her problem. “Ben, take your drunk and sorry self off my property and don’t come back. We said all we had to say years ago. If you ever come around here again, or if I catch you near my children, I’m going to have you put in jail.”
He squinted at her. “Who’s that in there with you?”
“Ben, pay attention to what I’m saying to you—” Laura began, but her father shoved the door back so fast she couldn’t stop him.
“Morgan,” her father said, his tone a curse. “I should have known Morgan’s pups wouldn’t be far away from the prize.”
Gabriel literally moved her from the door, filling the opening with his large frame. “Ben, whatever happened between you and my dad is old news. It has no part with me, and it has no part with Laura. You need to let it go.”
“The money your father gets from the oil rights on that property should be mine.”
“So take it to court,” Gabriel said calmly. “You can’t get any money that Laura has because it’s all tied up in trust for her children.”
“That’s why you’re hanging around. The children.” Ben’s face grew surly. “Like little pieces of gold.”
“I’d be a fairly useless human if I had to wait around for fifteen years to get some little kid’s trust. Move along, Ben. It’s all over. Laura said she didn’t want you here, and you need to respect that.”