by Liz Talley
“I know many of you came because you believed I was going to announce my bid to run for the next governor of Louisiana, and I’m not saying that’s off the table. But today’s not about my future in politics. It’s about the past.”
Everett turned and looked at Leif, a glimmer of tenderness in his eyes. “When I was young, I fell in love. As a college junior, I wanted a great many things, but I’d never wanted anything as much as the beautiful artist I met one summer. She made me see the world in a whole new way. Things happened, as they are wont to do when you’re young and stupid, and I lost contact with this woman. I mourned her loss, but moved on in life, finding a wonderful wife and making a good life here in Magnolia Bend.”
His father then glanced toward his wife of twenty-eight years, a woman who, despite Leif’s fears, accepted what had happened between Calliope and Everett and had treated Leif with great kindness.
“We were never blessed with children, though we enjoyed watching our nieces and nephews grow and blossom. Several months ago, I discovered life is still full of surprises. A most unusual gift was laid at my feet.”
A rumble in the crowd started as many began to whisper.
Everett ignored the buzz and continued. “I learned my first true love, who had left Magnolia Bend under misconstrued circumstances, had taken with her a child in her womb, a child who was my son.”
One woman gasped and the hum of conversation amplified. A few cameras snapped photos.
Leif thought he might vomit, and if it weren’t for the steady pressure of Abigail’s hand, he might have bolted off the platform. As it was, he tried not to look like a hunted animal. His smile felt stupid and he kept licking his lips.
“For thirty-four years, my son and I did not know each other, but a final gesture from a dying woman put my son on the road to Magnolia Bend, to the place where his mother and I fell in love. Many of you might think it sinful or shameful I conceived a child out of wedlock, and I can’t change your opinion. I can only tell you my life has been blessed by this incredible gift. I was given a son, and I want the world to know him as part of me. He’s incredibly talented, generous and conscious of others’ feelings. His kindness is the measure of a true man.”
Leif felt a ball of emotion well inside his chest at his father’s words. The past few months had been difficult, but through much patience—and a blood test—Everett had finally embraced the idea that Leif was his son and had spent several days a week with Leif, getting to know him, sharing their pasts, edging around an official commitment of being father and son.
Everett had asked Leif to attend a small press conference several days ago. He’d said it was to announce his intention to run for state office.
The man had lied.
“So today I want to introduce you to my son,” Everett said, motioning to Leif.
Abigail gave him a nudge, smiling at him with eyes that sparkled as much as the diamond engagement ring he’d given her on her birthday last month. “Go.”
Leif stood and moved toward his father. Everett placed an arm around Leif, squeezing him tight. Leif blinked away the sheen of tears in his eyes.
Everett wrapped him in an embrace as a smattering of applause broke out. Releasing him, Everett turned to the crowd. “I’m so proud to be this man’s father. Some people hide the mistakes of their past, and I won’t lie, at first I wanted to sweep this all under the rug. But then I saw the goodness in my son. I saw Leif was meant to be in my life. He was a second chance for me to do the right thing.”
Leif swallowed hard and looked out at the people of Magnolia Bend. Many smiled, a few ladies swiped their eyes with wadded-up tissues. Birdie looked bored.
“All I have left to say is welcome home, son.”
Leif swallowed the emotion threatening to sweep him away and managed to say, “Thank you…”
He wasn’t sure what to call the senator.
Everett leaned forward and said clearly into the microphone, “Dad.”
“Dad,” Leif said, catching Everett’s gaze. Smiling he looked at Abigail, who wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
And just like that, Leif Lively found something worth holding on to. He’d found who he was meant to be.
He’d come home to Abigail…and Magnolia Bend.
*
Keep reading for an excerpt from TEMPTED BY THE SOLDIER by Patricia Potter.
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CHAPTER ONE
Pueblo, Colorado
FASTER. FASTER. HE ran the gears, his foot heavy as he edged up to ninety miles an hour. The road ahead was straight and empty. Plains stretched in every direction. He relished the power of the used Corvette that had cost him nearly every penny he had and hundreds of hours of work.
The road was perfect for his purpose. Rarely, if ever used, it connected one Texas ghost town to another. A fellow chopper pilot, who was also a car enthusiast, had told him about it. A forty-mile strip of pavement from nowhere to nowhere.
He had finished restoring the car two weeks earlier. In ten days, he would be back in Afghanistan. This was his last chance to put the Corvette through its paces.
The sun danced and shimmered on the pavement ahead. His foot lightened on the gas pedal as the road took a turn and mounted an incline. An old battered truck appeared from nowhere, turning into… He slammed on the brakes…
Clint Morgan, former army warrant officer and military helicopter pilot, jerked awake as the bus stopped. It took him several seconds to realize where he was. Some place going to no place.
“Hey, mister,” the bus driver said. “Your stop.”
Clint reluctantly stepped through the open doors into the first day of the rest of his life.
He was the last passenger to leave the bus, an indication of his total lack of enthusiasm for his new reality. He glanced around. He had been told someone named Josh Manning, also a vet, would meet him at the bus in Pueblo. But Clint saw no former-military-looking guy.
Damn but he hated being dependent on a stranger, even a fellow vet. It was bad enough that occasional blackouts and blinding headaches kept him from driving, but the helplessness he felt now was searing. What in the hell was he doing standing here in the middle of nowhere on a blistering September day?
The other bus passengers quickly dispersed. He was alone with a large duffel at his side. As he contemplated his alternatives, which were few, a van roared onto the street and squeezed into a parking spot. A woman emerged and strode quickly toward him.
“Clinton Morgan?” she asked.
“Clint,” he corrected. This woman did not look like a Josh.
“Sorry to be late,” she said. “I hope you haven’t been here long.” She thrust out her hand. “I’m Stephanie.”
He took her hand, and her grip was as strong as his. She was nearly as tall as his own six feet. No makeup, but then she didn’t seem to need any. Her eyes were a dark blue, and her skin was tanned, the kind that came from working outdoors. Her hair was a mass of unruly rich copper curls, some of which escaped the braid that reached below her shoulders. Clad in jeans and a checkered cotton shirt splotched with dirt, her body was more lean than curved. Athletic.
“I volunteered to pick you up since I was inoculating some cattle not far away,” she continued. “I had a bit of a problem and ran late. Thus, my less-than-suitable chauffeur attir
e. I had planned to change and wash. I’m afraid I smell like cow and sweat.”
She said it all in a hurry and without apology, although her tone was friendly. Husky. Sexy as hell.
Things were looking up, even if the odor of cow was strong. He was intrigued. She was good-looking now, but add a bit of lipstick and a dress, and she would be striking.
“But a very pretty chauffeur,” he said with a grin that usually had a positive effect on the opposite sex.
The friendliness seeped from her eyes, replaced with something like wariness.
“Is the duffel all your luggage?” she asked, ignoring the compliment. Her question had a definite edge to it.
He felt duly kicked in the rear. “That and my laptop,” he said. “You learn to travel light in the army.”
She started for the duffel, but he beat her to it and hefted it over his shoulder.
Without another word, she led the way to the dusty red van with the words “Langford Animal Practice” on the door. “I hope you don’t mind dog hair,” she said in a businesslike tone. “My dog, Sherry, usually rides with me.”
“Fine with me. It’s not as if I’m going to the opera,” he quipped. “And I like dogs.” He went to the passenger’s side. The door was unlocked and he climbed inside.
“Darn good thing,” he heard her mutter in a barely audible voice.
Before he could respond, she started the van and roared out of the parking lot, obviously ignoring the thirty-miles-per-hour speed-limit sign. He glanced at her, but she concentrated on the road ahead. He admired a good driver, and she was that. He looked at the speedometer. The van had a hundred and fifty thousand plus miles on it, and she was going over the speed limit. Both said something about her.
He felt an immediate kinship. Interest sparked in him, the first since the accident that doomed his military career. He definitely wanted to know more about her. Particularly whether she was already taken. Not that he was interested in any long-term involvement. He sure as hell didn’t have anything to offer a woman. Struggling for conversation—strange as it usually came easier—he asked, “Are you the Langford in Langford Animal Practice?”
She shrugged. “I’m not Langford, but I do own the vet practice or at least the small part that’s paid off. I bought it from Tom Langford and never changed the name on the van. Never really saw a good reason to do it. I’m Stephanie Phillips.”
“Dr. Phillips?”
“No one calls me that. It’s just Stephanie.” Her tone seemed to cut off any other questions.
He took a deep breath and shifted restlessly. He ached to take her place at the wheel. Just as everything in him ached to reach for the controls of a chopper. Ached to be in the house he shared with other chopper pilots on the base or even a tent in Afghanistan. Sitting in a passenger seat, dependent on a driver—even an interesting woman—was his idea of hell.
He stared out at the plains spread out in front of him. Arid desert.
The blurb he had read online called this area of Colorado high desert. To him, it resembled parts of Iraq and Afghanistan. So did the heat.
“Is it always this warm?” he asked.
“This is a bit unusual. It’s usually in the low nineties in July and then starts going down. This year, it’s hanging around. It’s a bit cooler in Covenant Falls. We’re higher, altitudewise, from here, and the town is nestled next to the mountains.” Her tone was cool. It had lost something since he’d said she was pretty.
He shifted uncomfortably in the seat and stared ahead. He had been doing that a lot since leaving the hospital. The journey to Pueblo from Denver had been agonizingly long, or maybe it had just seemed that way. He had been a passenger on a plane, in a car and on a long-distance bus. Brutal. He yearned for his seat in a chopper, in controlling a complex machine that both protected and destroyed. He had been doing both for most of his adult life. Flying was his life. His identity. At gut level, being a pilot was who he was. Who he had been since he was seventeen.
Now he might never fly again. Or even drive a car. Worse, he didn’t have a goal for the first time in his life. A driving force. A purpose.
Stop it!
He was a fighter. Always had been. Since he was eight years old and his stepmother decided she didn’t want him in her house any longer, he’d looked ahead, determined to plot his own path.
“You’ll like the cabin,” Stephanie said, interrupting his thoughts. “Josh did a great job in rehabbing it.”
“I’m not sure how long I’m staying.”
She turned to him and gave him a wry smile. “Neither did Josh when he came. Covenant Falls can get to you.”
“Have you lived there long?”
“Five years, but even if I’d lived there twenty years, I would still be a newcomer. You should know that everyone is rather curious about new residents, and gossip spreads faster than a sky full of locusts.”
Her cell phone rang. The thunderous tone was the theme music from the movie The Magnificent Seven.
She glanced down at it, then steered to the side of the road and stopped the car. Quick questions. Something to do with a cow. When she hung up, she turned to him. “A short detour,” she said.
“Something wrong?”
“An ailing heifer. She’s not far from here. Shouldn’t take more than an hour. Okay?”
“Fine,” he said. He didn’t really have much choice. He was hitching a ride, after all. He was at the driver’s mercy. But he had to ask: “The Magnificent Seven? That’s an interesting ringtone.”
She shrugged.
“Dr. Phillips to the rescue?”
“Stephanie,” she reminded him.
“I beg your pardon,” he replied with a quick grin.
She frowned. “That’s not why I have it. I just like the tune. It’s hard to ignore. Very effective in cutting off conversations.”
Wry humor. It intrigued him. “You like cutting off conversations?”
“Inane ones, yes.”
Well, she had put him in his place. Neatly. Maybe Covenant Falls wouldn’t be as dull as he’d thought it would be. That prick of interest was expanding.
He tried another tactic. “What’s wrong with the cow?” he asked.
She shrugged. “A rancher says one of his heifers isn’t eating, which could mean a number of troubles. All bad. Like I said, the ranch isn’t far from here.”
It was an obvious though unspoken question.
Clint settled back. “I have nothing pressing in mind.”
“Good.” She turned back to the road. “I’ll call Josh and tell him we’ll be late. He’s going to meet us at the cabin to give you the keys and probably tell you the best way to piss off the town. He did a great job when he first came to Covenant Falls.”
Clint grinned. “Are you saying diplomacy is not one of his virtues?”
“You could say that, but he’s learning. Too bad.” There was amusement in her voice again. He was discovering she didn’t go out of her way to be diplomatic, either. He liked that. No bullshit. No false sympathy or concern.
He tried to remember exactly what Dr. Payne had said about the cabin and its owner.
The psychologist hadn’t been very forthcoming about the cabin or his new landlord, although he’d been good at prying into Clint’s life. Dr. Payne’s first visit had been to introduce himself and say he was available. The second had been two weeks before Clint’s discharge. He’d asked about his future plans, and the fact was, Clint had none.
He closed his eyes and thought of their meeting.
“No family?” the shrink had asked, and Clint suspected the man knew he’d had no visitors.
“No,” he said, but his records proved otherwise.
“No support system?”
“I don’t need one. It’s just a headache now and then.”
Dr. Payne stared at him. Waited. “Well, maybe you can do a favor for me, then. A friend of mine, a former patient here, is looking for someone to look after his cabin. He just married and moved i
n with his wife. He rehabbed the cabin after it was vandalized, and he doesn’t want it to happen again. It’s in a small town with a lot of veterans. You can walk to nearly every business in town, and there’s both a lake and mountains.”
“What’s the rent?”
“Just the utilities. And keeping it in good shape.”
“Where is it?”
“A little town named Covenant Falls in Colorado. It’ll give you time to decide what you want to do…”
Clint suspected there was more to it than that, but hell, he had nowhere else to go and Payne knew it. He couldn’t pilot or drive because of recurring blackouts. His career was over, even if the injury to his brain healed. There were too many young guys coming up behind him. And family? That was opening another can of worms. Despite some doubts, he’d accepted…
“We’re here.” Stephanie turned into a long driveway, drove past a sprawling ranch house and parked in front of the barn. She made a quick phone call, apparently to Josh, explaining there would be a slight delay in reaching the cabin. Then she turned to him. “You can stay inside the van if you want.”
No way. He was damned tired of being passive. He shook his head.
She eyed him speculatively. “Your clothes are a little fancy for a ranch.”
He looked at his chinos and dark blue polo shirt. They were new because he’d lost weight in the hospital. He kind of liked them. He also liked the comfortable loafers. A welcome relief from heavy combat boots. But fancy? Not in his wildest imagination.
Clint stepped out of the van and waited as Stephanie grabbed a medical bag, then they both strode over to a weathered-looking man who walked up to meet them.
“You got new help, Stephanie?” The rancher’s gaze measured Clint.
“Nope,” Stephanie said. “A passenger headed for Covenant Falls. Clint Morgan. A friend of Josh.” She turned to Clint. “This is Hardy Pearson. He breeds the best cattle in this part of Colorado.”