Just Down the Road

by Jodi Thomas

  It took him a few seconds, but he finally looked up. He didn’t look like he’d shaved in days. He shoved his Stetson back and smiled just like he always did as if playing to a crowd. “Hi, Rea. I came as soon as I heard.”

  “Noah?” She hadn’t called him last night. For once, she hadn’t even sent him a text.

  “Yep, it’s me.” He started up the stairs. “Dear God, I’ve missed you, Rea.” A smile dimpled his cheek. “I’ve even missed that wild hair of yours. Don’t tell me you always wake up with it looking like that … a red ball of fuzzy fire.”

  Reagan brushed the side of her hair, knowing that it was hopeless. It had gotten damp during her walk and had probably curled into the tumbleweed style she faced every morning.

  Before he reached her, Reagan heard heavy footsteps behind her.

  Noah looked up and frowned. “What are you doing here, Biggs?”

  “Sleeping,” Big answered simply.

  Reagan saw in Noah’s face what he thought and knew she’d better act fast or both men would be tumbling down the stairs fighting.

  “Uncle Jeremiah’s dead,” she said, half crying and half screaming.

  Both men started patting her, trying to comfort her. Noah never could stand to see her cry, and Big was more worried about her than Noah. If a fight broke out, Noah would go all out, and Big, for her sake, would probably try not to hurt the bull rider. Of course, if Noah got a good punch in, Big would probably fall on the cowboy and crush him. She figured as long as she was crying, they wouldn’t think to start swinging.

  Amid all the comforting and crying, the doorbell rang. For a moment, Reagan couldn’t figure out what it was. Everyone who came to the place always went to the back door, or knew they’d be welcome to come on in so they didn’t bother with the bell.

  She looked down and around Noah to see Sheriff Alexandra Matheson standing as if waiting for someone to open the door, which was lying in several pieces on the floor.

  “Is something wrong here?” Alex had her hand on the butt of her gun and she was staring at her brother Noah as if she didn’t recognize him. “Was there a break-in?”

  Noah straightened. “No, it was me, Sis. I thought something must have happened to Reagan, and when I noticed the door was locked, I knew something was wrong and I was right. The house has been invaded by Biggs here. You need to do your duty as sheriff and arrest him.”

  Big looked confused, then angry. “I didn’t invade. I walked in carrying Reagan after I found her outside cold and crying.” He glared at Noah. “And I locked the door. You’re the one who broke it down, not me.”

  The sheriff looked like she’d already had a long morning. “Reagan, you got any coffee? I could use a cup before I arrest both of these guys. Brother or no brother, Noah, knocking down the door just doesn’t seem right.”

  Reagan led the sheriff to the kitchen while Big and Noah continued to yell at each other as they picked up the pieces of the door and tried to put it back together.

  Once in the kitchen, Alex removed her hat and watched Reagan make coffee, “You okay, Reagan? I’m real sorry about your uncle.”

  “I will be. He lived a long life. I guess I should be thankful for that and not so selfish to wish him here. His sister, Beverly, said to me once that to wish for someone not to die is to wish them one less day in heaven.”

  “I remember your grandmother,” Alex said. “She was a nice lady, as friendly as Jeremiah was cold.”

  Reagan concentrated on the coffee, not wanting to let Alex see her eyes and guess the truth. Beverly had just been an old lady at a nursing home Reagan became friends with as she cleaned her room. She’d told Reagan about Harmony, Texas, and when Reagan decided to run, she took Miss Beverly’s last name. That was how she ended up at the Truman place five years ago.

  Alex continued, “He and Beverly never got along, you know.” Alex glanced back toward the front door. “I know how he felt. I love my little brother Noah, but most of the time he’s home I’m frustrated with him.”

  “I guess brothers and sisters don’t always become best friends. Uncle Jeremiah never talked about Beverly, but I found a box of birthday cards she’d sent him all her life. The fact that he kept the cards says something. They might have not been close, but they were still family.”

  “Nobody got along with your uncle Jeremiah, but he will be missed. I’ve been sheriff for almost eight years, and he still treated me like I was a kid trying to steal his apples. I think he was a good man who loved his privacy, and,” she added, “he loved you.”

  Reagan smiled. “I know. I’m not sure why. Maybe because he saw that I just needed someone to care about me, but I never doubted his love.”

  The two men in the foyer finally smelled the coffee and wandered into the kitchen. Whatever they’d said to one another, or threatened, they didn’t seem willing to share.

  Alex fell into her big-sister mode. “I don’t care why you broke that door, Noah, you’re not leaving here until it’s fixed.”

  She looked at Biggs. “You were right to lock the door, Big. I can’t go into details, but for the next few days everyone should be on alert.”

  “What happened?” Noah asked. “You can trust us.”

  “If I tell you three, at least one of you will tell someone else, that you trust of course, and they’ll tell someone and by nightfall it will be the main topic of discussion from the diner to the bar.”

  “You’re right, Sheriff, Noah’s got loose lips,” Biggs said. “It goes with his shifty eyes.”

  “Me!”

  Alex held her hand up. “Don’t start or I swear I’ll take you both in, brother or not, and put you in the same cell until you fight it out once and for all.” She waited until they both looked calm. “Just be aware that there is a possible danger in town. A real danger.”

  Noah nodded as if he’d been talking to himself. “Then it’s final, I’ll stay out here with Reagan to keep her safe.”

  “You? What makes you think you’d be any help?” Big shouted. “Being able to stay on a bull for eight seconds doesn’t make you a guard. Hell, you’re the one who knocked down her door. And I can’t help noticing that this danger hanging around town seems to have come in about the same time you did.”

  “I’m staying to protect her,” Noah said.

  “Fine. I’m staying to protect her from you.”

  “Me?” Noah looked hurt. “You’re the one who was sleeping with her when I got here.” He glanced at Reagan. “Which, by the way, I want to talk to you about as soon as we’re alone.”

  “You’re not going to be alone.” Big grinned. “Because I’m going to be right next to her day and night until this trouble leaves.”

  Noah took the challenge. “Then there will be three of us in the bed.”

  Alex looked at Reagan. “You sure you don’t want me to lock them up?”

  “No, they’re just like pit bull puppies. They’re just playing around.” She handed them each a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll, loving their arguing, knowing that they both loved her and were hoping they’d keep her mind off all she had to live through today.

  Her life was starting to sound like a soap opera with the volume turned up too loud. She could almost hear Uncle Jeremiah laughing all the way from heaven. He liked both “the boys,” as he called them. He’d complain that Noah probably had brain damage from falling off too many bulls, and Biggs was so big he’d eat them out of house and home.

  “Pick one,” he used to say, “and I’ll run the other one off with the shotgun.”

  “I can’t,” she’d always answer. “I love them both in different ways.”

  He’d always walk off down the hall, mumbling that he maybe should shoot himself so he wouldn’t have to listen to them boys fight over his niece.

  Chapter 18

  WHEN ADDISON AWOKE, THE LITTLE BOY, JAMIE, WAS CUDDLED against her warm and still sound asleep. The cowboy uncle was nowhere in sight, which worried her full awake.

  Carefully, she sli
pped from the bed and pulled on a clean pair of scrubs. Tying her hair back, she walked toward the kitchen.

  “Morning, beautiful,” Tinch said from where he sat making notes on what looked like a corner of a paper towel. The kitchen table was small and paint chipped, but the picture window beside it faced the sunrise, making the area shine golden.

  “Coffee,” she whispered, following the smell.

  He grinned as he watched her. “It was nice sleeping with you last night, Doc. I’ll never forget it.”

  Addison frowned at him. “I bet you say that to every girl you sleep with.”

  “I can’t lie. I probably have.”

  “Hundreds of them, I’m guessing.” She straightened her back as she spooned sugar into her cup. “Men like you are all alike.” She’d heard her friends talk about them in college. Good-looking, wild cowboy types who hang out in bars like fishermen looking for their next catch, and if they didn’t get in a fight by last call, a different girl got reeled in every night.

  “Men like me?” he said, leaning forward to lower the front two legs of his chair to the linoleum floor as he stuffed the paper towel scrap in his pocket.

  She poured her coffee. “Men like you, reckless and free. Wild with no strings.” The night’s stubble on his chin and his wrinkled unbuttoned shirt did nothing to take away from his solid good looks.

  “So, let me get this straight, Doc. You think I’m wild?”

  She couldn’t believe he managed to pull off a surprised look even though she caught the hint of a grin.

  “I met you while I was patching you up, remember. Must have been a slow night, cowboy. You didn’t go home with a bar butterfly.”

  “They’re called barflies, not butterflies, and if I remember that night, I went home with you.”

  “You were too drunk to drive.” She swallowed her first coffee of the day and frowned at how strong he’d made it. “Just a regular Saturday night for a man like you, I’m guessing.”

  “Oh, right.” He raised his eyebrow. “Not to mention bleeding and passing out from loss of blood.”

  “Must have been a real hit to your ego that I didn’t stay to tuck you in.”

  Tinch frowned. “Wait a minute, Doc. How did we get off on the wrong foot this morning? Do you always wake up in rattlesnake mood? If so, I swear I’m never speaking to you again until after noon.”

  “Forget it,” she snapped, more angry at herself than at him. As she passed him, she patted his arm, wishing she could erase away her words. She had no business running down his lifestyle. He hadn’t broken any rules last night. “We’ve got more important things to worry about than your conquests and fights at the bar.”

  She stared out the window, refusing to look at him three feet away. After a long silence, she whispered, “I’m not a morning person, I guess.” He was right; all he’d said was good morning and she’d jumped on him. She barely knew the man. He had a right to live his life any way he wanted. It was nothing to her if nightly orgies went on at the farm next door. “I’ve had a long week.” It wasn’t an apology, just a statement.

  “And you didn’t sleep worrying about the boy,” Tinch said as he stood and moved just behind her.

  “How do you know?” She crossed her arms over her breasts, suddenly feeling the cold as she leaned against the window frame.

  “Because,” he whispered, now even closer. “I was awake watching you try to sleep. Every time you relaxed and almost drifted off, you’d jerk awake as if some internal alarm went off.”

  “I wanted to make sure the boy was safe.” She didn’t add that she knew, with all the excitement, if she’d allowed herself to sleep, she’d be letting her guard down.

  “I was right there. You were both safe.” He stood so near she could feel his words against her ear.

  Closing her eyes, she leaned back into his warmth. Just for a moment she wanted to believe she could lean on a man without him trying to take control.

  He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her back against his warm chest. For a while he just rocked her gently in his solid arms.

  “We’ll figure it out, Doc. We’ll protect the boy until the sheriff knows no one is looking for him. You don’t have to do it alone. I don’t have to do it alone.”

  “Can we protect him?” She wasn’t sure, and the boy’s life might depend on her. “My almost-fiancé back home said I didn’t have a mothering bone in my body, so children wouldn’t be part of our bargain. He …”

  Tinch whispered in her ear. “He was an idiot.”

  “What makes you say that?” She tugged a few inches away and faced him. Everyone she’d ever known had always bragged about what a wonderful man Glen Davidson was. Top of his class. The best in his field. Destined for greatness in research. No one had ever called him an idiot.

  “Because,” Tinch whispered. “He let you go.”

  “No,” Addison shook her head. “He’s waiting for me to answer his proposal.”

  “You don’t love him.” Tinch brushed a strand of loose hair back behind her ear.

  “What makes you say that?” Logic told her she should put more distance between them, but she didn’t step back.

  “Because, Doc, if you loved the guy, you’d answer him and he wouldn’t be an almost-fiancé.”

  Then, as if he’d done it many times, he raised his hand and moved his fingers into her hair. When she didn’t protest, he closed the distance between them and kissed her lightly on the mouth. The shock of it rattled her all the way to her toes.

  She’d wondered once if she stood on a train track and saw a train barreling toward her, would she jump or freeze? This morning, Addison learned the answer. She’d be flatter than a pancake on the tracks.

  Addison just stood there as his hand gently curled into her hair. He tugged her to him and kissed her again with the same tenderness of a first kiss. When she swayed toward him, his arm moved around her and held her solid against him.

  Closing her eyes, she went with the perfection of the kiss. She drifted in pure pleasure as his heartbeat pounded against hers. Never had a kiss affected her so. She’d been kissed with purpose, with passion, as foreplay and as routine, but never like this. Tinch kissed her as if there were no world other than right here, right now. He wasn’t saying hello or good-bye. He wasn’t starting something or ending something. He was simply and completely kissing her as no one from her first kiss in fourth grade to Glen’s good-bye ever had.

  Tinch pulled away so suddenly, she almost fell. Before she could get her bearings on what had happened, he was half a room away.

  “I’m sorry.” He grabbed his hat. “You’re right. I am wild. Not even housebroke, apparently. You’d be wise to stay as far away from me as possible, Doc.”

  Like a man on fire, he shot out of the house, yelling that he’d be back in an hour with clothes for the boy.

  Addison walked to the porch and watched his pickup flying down the dirt road. Apparently Tinch Turner hadn’t planned on kissing her and was more upset about it than she was.

  Until this assignment, she’d followed every detail of a life her parents organized for her after she’d come home from her train wreck of a marriage at nineteen. She’d sworn she’d listen to her father from then on. The right schools, the safe vacations, the sensible friends. One heartbreaking six months was enough pain to last her a lifetime she’d convinced herself.

  When she’d signed on for Harmony, Texas, for a year and packed her bags, she’d known this would be her last escape before forever settling for what was expected of her.

  She was eating breakfast with Jamie and the kittens a little over an hour later when Tinch’s pickup flew back up the drive.

  He hauled in two huge bags. He smiled at Jamie but didn’t even look at Addison.

  “I got you some clothes, buddy,” he said as if the kid were alone at the table. “If you’re going to help me with the horses, you got to be dressed for it.”

  “Aren’t you afraid someone in Harmony will notice you s
uddenly buying little-boy clothes?” Addison had worried about that last night. Harmony was too small; anyone buying clothes might be noticed, and that would somehow spread to the wrong people.

  “They probably would have, only I drove over to Bailee. The guy who checked me out at the Walmart was still half asleep. He wouldn’t have noticed if I’d bought a tank and a dozen grenades.” Tinch still didn’t meet her eyes as he set the one bag in the center of the living room and the other on the kitchen counter.

  “You don’t have to keep replacing the food you eat,” she said, guessing what was in the kitchen bag.

  He didn’t answer as he pulled clothes out of the second bag. “Underwear, socks, jeans. I got two sizes, hoping one will fit, and a belt if neither does.”

  Jamie looked at the new clothes carefully, as if he’d rarely seen anything with a tag still on.

  “This stuff is for me?” he asked.

  “If you want it,” Tinch said. “I’m new at this uncle thing, but I think uncles are supposed to buy clothes. I read that rule somewhere.”

  “Oh.” Jamie nodded slowly.

  “I bought several shirts. You pick the one you want to wear today.” He spread them out on the coffee table. “I forgot pajamas. Men don’t sleep in them, but I thought boys might.”

  Jamie shook his head. “I can sleep in my football shirt.”

  “That sounds good.” Tinch propped a baseball cap on the boy’s head, then took it off to adjust it.

  He took his time letting the boy pick out what he wanted to wear, then handed him a new toothbrush and comb. “Can you take care of this?”

  Jamie nodded. “I’m four years old.”

  “I thought so.”

  When the boy left the room to brush his teeth, Addison asked Tinch, “How’d you guess his shoe size?”

  “I measured it against my hand while he was asleep.” Tinch didn’t look at her. “They didn’t have boots, but I’ll get him a pair as soon as we know it’s safe for him to go to town.”

  Addison moved into his line of vision. “Look, Tinch, about what happened before you left. It was just a kiss. I’m sure you’ve kissed a hundred women. It just happened, that’s all. I’m not mad about it as long as you understand I have no interest in a repeat performance. I know we’ve kind of been tossed together, but there’s no reason we—”