Which was why he’d driven to Texas. She’d called him a few weeks ago when he’d been in New Orleans, helping a buddy re-side his house. She hadn’t told him anything else, just that she had a proposition for him and that he wouldn’t be sorry. He figured he knew what the proposition was, though. For the past five years, he’d worked a regular job in security, and on the side, he’d bought a run-down Laundromat. He’d fixed it up and turned it into a real cash-rich business. No matter the dip in the economy, people washed their clothes. With the money he’d made, he’d invested in a recession-proof pharmaceutical company. While others saw their stocks wiped out, his were up twenty-seven percent from when he’d bought in. And six months ago, he’d sold the Laundromat for a nice profit. Now he was taking his time, looking at other recession-proof stocks and cash-rich businesses in which to invest.
Before joining the Navy, he’d taken a few business classes in college, which came in handy. A few classes weren’t a business degree, but he didn’t need a degree to look at a situation, run a cost-benefit analysis in his head, and see how to make money.
Since Luraleen didn’t seem to need highly trained security, he figured she had some sort of fixing-up job for him.
Vince took a bite and washed it down. He glanced about the office, at the old microwave and refrigerator and the boxes of cleaning products and Solo cups. The old olive-colored counters and ancient cabinets. The place was run-down, that was for sure. It could use a coat of paint and new ceramic floor tiles. The counters here and in the store needed a sledgehammer.
He polished off a Wound Hound and balled the foil hot dog wrapper in his hand. At the moment, he had the time to help out his aunt. Since leaving his security job in Seattle a few months ago, he had some time on his hands. Since leaving the teams a little over five years ago, his future was pretty much wide open. A little too wide open.
A few months after he’d been medically retired from the SEALs, his sister gave birth to his nephew. She’d been alone and scared, and she’d needed him. He’d owed her for taking care of their terminally ill mother while he’d been gone, down range in Iraq. So he’d been living and working in Washington State, looking after his little sister and helping her raise her son, Conner. There were only a few things in Vince’s life that caused him guilt; his baby sister taking care of their mother, who could be difficult at the best of times, was one of them.
That first year out had been a tough one, for him and Conner. Conner screaming from bellyaches, and Vince wanting to scream from the damn ringing in his head. He could have stayed in the teams. He’d always planned to do his full twenty. Could have waited it out until things got better, but his hearing would never be what it had been before the accident. A SEAL with hearing loss was a liability. No matter his expertise in armed and unarmed combat, his mastery of everything from his Sig to a machine gun. No matter his underwater demolitions skills nor that he was the best insertions guy in the teams, he was a liability to himself and the rest of the guys.
He’d missed that adrenaline-fueled, testosterone-driven life. Still did. But when he’d left, he took on a new mission. He’d been away for ten years. His sister, Autumn, had dealt with their mother all alone, and it had been his turn to take care of her and his nephew. But neither of them needed him now, and after a particularly bad bar brawl at the beginning of the year that had left Vince bruised and bloody and in lock-up, he had needed a change of scenery. He hadn’t felt that kind of rage in a long time. The pent-up kind just beneath the surface of his flesh, like a pressure cooker. The kind that blew him apart if he let it, which he never did. Or at least hadn’t for a very long time.
He tossed the foil into the garbage can and started on the second hot dog. For the past three months, he’d been traveling a lot, but even after months of reflection, he still wasn’t real clear on why he’d taken on a bar filled with bikers. He wasn’t real clear on who had started it, but he was clear about waking up in jail with a sore face and ribs, and a couple of battery charges. The charges had all been dropped, thanks to a good lawyer and his sparkling military record, but he’d been guilty. As sin. He knew he hadn’t picked the fight, never did. He never went looking for a fight, either, but he always knew where to find one.
He reached for the beer and raised it to his mouth. His sister liked to tell him that he had anger problems, but she was wrong. He swallowed and set the beer on the desk. He had no problem with his anger. Even when it crawled across his skin and threatened to blow, he could control it. Even in the midst of a firefight or a barroom brawl.
No, his problem wasn’t anger. It was boredom. He tended to get into trouble if he didn’t have a goal or mission. Something to do with his head and hands, and even though he’d had his day job and the Laundromat to fill up his time, he’d felt at loose ends since his sister had decided to remarry the son of a bitch ex of hers. Now that the SOB was back in the picture, Vince was out of one of his jobs.
He took a bite and chewed. Deep down, he knew that it was best for the SOB to step up to the plate and be a good father, and he’d never seen his sister happier than the last time he’d been at her house. He’d never heard her happier than the last time he’d talked to her on the phone, but her happiness had created a big vacuum in Vince’s life. A vacuum he hadn’t felt since he’d left the teams. A vacuum that he’d filled at the time with family and work. A vacuum he’d been trying to fill this time with driving across the country visiting buddies who understood.
The squeak of Luraleen’s shoes and her smoker’s hack announced her entry into the office. “That was Bessie Cooper, Tally Lynn’s mama. The weddin’s got her nervous as a cat with a long tail.” She moved around the side of the desk and lowered herself into the rolling chair. “I told her Sadie made it to town.” She lit the snubbed-out smoke and grabbed her Tweety mug. As a kid, Luraleen had always brought him candy cigarettes when she’d visited. His mother had thrown a fit, which Vince suspected was why his aunt had done it, but he’d always loved his pack of wintergreen Kings. “She’d wanted to know if Sadie had packed on the pounds, like the women on her daddy’s side tend to do.”
“She hadn’t looked fat to me. Of course I didn’t get a real good look at her.” The most memorable thing about Sadie had been the way her blue eyes had gotten all wide and dreamy when she’d talked about zapping his ass with her imaginary stun gun.
Luraleen took a drag and blew it toward the ceiling. “Bessie says Sadie still isn’t married.”
Vince shrugged and took a bite. “Why did you call me a month ago?” he asked, changing the subject. Talk of marriage usually led to talk of when he was getting married, and that just wasn’t in his foreseeable future. Not that he hadn’t thought about it, but being in the military, where the divorce rate was high, not to mention his own parents’ divorce, he’d just never met a woman who made him want to risk it. Of course, that could have something to do with his preference for women with low expectations. “What’s on your mind?”
“Your daddy told me he called you.” Luraleen set the cigarette in the ashtray and a curl of smoke trailed upward.
“Yeah. He did. About four months ago.” After twenty-six years the old man had called and evidently wanted to be a dad. “I’m surprised he called you, though.”
“I was surprised, too. Shoot, I haven’t talked to Big Vin since he left your mama.” She took a drag off her cig and blew it out in a thick stream. “He called ’cause he thought I could talk sense into you. He said you wouldn’t hear him out.”
Vince had heard him out. He’d sat in the old man’s living room and listened for an hour before he’d heard enough and left. “He shouldn’t have bothered you.” Vince took a long drink from the bottle and sat back in the chair. “Did you tell him to fuck himself?”
“Pert near.” She grabbed her mug. “Is that about what you told him?”
“Not about. That’s exactly what I told him.”
“You don’t want to reconsider?”
“No.” Forgivenes
s wasn’t easy for him. It was something he had to work at, but Vincent Haven Senior was one person who wasn’t worth the hard work he’d have to put into it. “Is that why you called me to come here? I thought you had a proposition for me.”
“I do.” She took a drink and swallowed. “I’m getting old, and I want to retire.” She set the mug on the desk and closed one eye against the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. “I want to travel.”
“Sounds reasonable.” He’d traveled the world. Some places were pure hell. Others so beautiful they stole his breath. He’d been thinking about going back to some of those places as a civilian. Maybe that was exactly what he needed. He had no strings now. He could go wherever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. For however long he wanted to stay. “What can I do to help?”
“You can buy the Gas and Go, is all.”
Chapter Three
He’d turned her down. She’d asked a stranger to take her to her young cousin’s wedding and he’d turned her down flat.
“Don’t own a suit,” was all he’d said before he’d walked away. Even if she hadn’t seen his driver’s license or heard the lack of twang in his voice, she would have known he wasn’t a native Texan because he hadn’t even bothered with a good lie. Something like his dog died and he was grieving or that he was scheduled to donate a kidney tomorrow.
The setting sun bathed the JH in bright orange and gold and filtered through the fine plumes of dust disturbed by the Saab’s tires. He’d made the offer to repay her, but of course he hadn’t meant it. Asking him had been a dumb, impulsive idea. And dumb, impulsive ideas always got her into trouble. So, if she looked at it that way, Vince the stranded guy had done her a favor. After all, what was she supposed to do with a huge, enormously hot stranger all night long once he’d served her purpose? She clearly hadn’t thought it through before she’d asked.
The dirt road to the JH took ten to twenty minutes depending on how recently the road had been graded and the type of vehicle. Any moment, Sadie expected to hear mad barking and see the sudden appearance of half a dozen or so cow dogs. The ranch house and outbuildings sat five miles back from the highway on the ten-thousand-acre ranch. The JH wasn’t the largest spread in Texas, but it was one of the oldest, running several thousand head of cattle a year. The ranch had been settled and the land purchased on the Canadian River in the early twentieth century by Sadie’s great-great-grandfather, Major John Hollowell. Through good times and lean, the Hollowells had alternately both barely survived and thrived, raising purebred Herefords and American paint horses. Yet when it came to securing the future of the family with a male heir, the Hollowells came up short. Except for a few distant cousins whom Sadie had rarely met, she was the last in the Hollowell line. Which was a source of grave disappointment for her father.
It wasn’t quite grazing season and the cattle were closer to the house and outbuildings. As Sadie drove along the fence line, the familiar silhouettes grazed in the fields. Soon it would be branding and castration season, and since moving, Sadie did not miss the sounds and smells of that horrific, yet necessary, event.
She pulled to a stop in front of the four-thousand-square-foot house her grandfather had built in the 1940s. The original homestead was five miles west on Little Tail Creek and was currently occupied by foreman Snooks Perry and his family. The Perrys had worked for the JH for longer than Sadie had been alive.
She grabbed her Gucci bag from the backseat, then shut the car door behind her. Whippoorwills called on a cool breeze that touched her cheeks and stole down the collar of her gray Pink hooded sweatshirt.
The setting sun turned the white stone and clapboard house golden, and she moved to the big double, rough oak doors with the JH brand in the center of each. Coming home was always unsettling. A tangle of emotion tugged at her stomach and heart. Warm feelings stirred with the familiar guilt and apprehension that always pulled at her when she came to Texas.
She opened the unlocked door and stepped into the empty entrance. The smells of home greeted her. She breathed in the scent of lemon, wood and leather polish, years of smoke from the huge stone fireplace in the great room, and decades of home-cooked meals.
No one greeted her and she moved across the knotty pine floors and Navaho rugs toward the kitchen at the back of the house. It took a full-time staff to keep the JH operating on a smooth schedule. Their housekeeper, Clara Anne Parton, kept things neat and tidy in the main house as well as the bunkhouse, while her twin sister, Carolynn, cooked three meals every day but Sunday. Neither had ever married and they lived together in town.
Sadie followed the steady thump-thump of something heavy being tossed about in a dryer. She moved through the empty kitchen, past the pantry, to the laundry room beyond. She stopped in the doorway and smiled. Clara Anne’s considerable bottom greeted her as the housekeeper bent to pick up towels from the floor. Both twins had considerable curves and tiny waists that they liked to show off by cinching in their pants and wearing buckles the size of dessert plates.
“You’re working late.”
Clara Anne jumped and spun around, clutching her heart. Her high stack of black hair teetered a bit. “Sadie Jo! You scared me to death, girl.”
Sadie smiled and her heart got all warm as she moved into the room. “Sorry.” The twins had helped raise her and she held out her arms. “It’s good to see you.”
The housekeeper hugged her tight against her huge bosom and kissed her cheek. The warmth around her heart spread across her chest. “It’s been a coon’s age.”
Sadie laughed. The twins were holdouts when it came to high hair and clichéd old sayings. And if Sadie were to mention to Clara Anne that some people might consider that old expression a little racist these days, the housekeeper would be shocked because there wasn’t a racist cell in Clara Anne’s body. Once, as a kid, she’d smart-mouthed Clara Anne and asked exactly how long a coon’s age was. The housekeeper had looked her straight in the eye and answered seriously, “Six to eight years. That’s how long a raccoon lives in the wild.” Who knew there’d actually been an answer?
“It hasn’t quite been a raccoon’s age.”
“Close.” She leaned back and looked into Sadie’s face. “Lordy, you look just like your mama.”
Without the poise and charm and everything that made people just naturally love her. “I have Daddy’s eyes.”
“Yep. Blue as Texas bluebells.” She ran her rough hands up Sadie’s arms. “We’ve missed you around here.”
“I missed you, too.” Which was true. She missed Clara Anne and Carolynn. She missed their warm hugs and the touch of their lips on her cheek. Obviously she didn’t miss it enough to move back. She dropped her hands to her sides. “Where’s Daddy?”
“In the cookhouse eating with the boys. Are you hungry?”
“Starving.” Of course he was eating with the ranch hands. That’s where he’d usually eaten because it made sense. “Did he remember that I was coming?”
“Sure he remembered.” The housekeeper reached for a stack of towels. “He wouldn’t forget a thing like you coming home.”
Sadie wasn’t so sure. He’d forgotten her high school graduation. Or rather, he had been too busy vaccinating cattle. The care of animals had always taken precedence over the care of people. Business came first, and Sadie had accepted that long ago. “How’s his mood?”
Clara Anne looked at her over the stack of towels in her arms. They both knew why she asked. “Good, now go find your daddy, and we’ll catch up tomorrow. I want to hear all about what you’ve been doin’ with yourself.”
“Over lunch. Maybe Carolynn will make us her chicken salad on croissants.” It wasn’t something the cook made for the ranch hands. They tended to like more hearty sandwiches for lunch, like thick slices of meat on heavy bread. But Carolynn used to make chicken salad especially for Sadie’s mother and later for Sadie.
“I’ll tell her you mentioned it. Although I think she’s already planned on it.”
“Yu
m.” Sadie took one last look at Clara Anne, then walked back into the kitchen and outside. She moved down the same concrete path she’d walked along thousands of times. Most meals were eaten in the cookhouse and the closer she got to the long cinder-block and stucco building, the more she smelled barbecue and baked bread. Her stomach growled as she stepped onto the long wooden porch. The hinges on the screen door announced her arrival, and a few of the ranch hands looked up from their plates. Roughly eight cowboy hats hung on hooks by the front door. The room looked exactly as it had the last time she’d stepped inside. Pine floor, whitewashed walls, red and white gingham curtains, and the same duo of Frigidaire refrigerators. The only thing different was the shiny new stove and oven.
She recognized a few of the men’s faces as they rose to their feet. She motioned for them to remain seated and then her gaze found her father, his head bent over his plate, wearing the same classic Western work shirts he always wore. Today it was beige with white pearl snaps. Her stomach got tight and she held her breath a little. She didn’t know quite what to expect. She was thirty-three and still so unsure around her father. Would he be warm or unavailable?
“Hi, Daddy.”
He looked up and gave her a tired smile that didn’t quite work its way to the wrinkles at the corners of his blue eyes. “There you are, Sadie Jo.” He placed his hands on the table and rose, and it seemed to take him longer than normal. Her heart fell to her tight stomach as she moved toward him. Her father had always been a thin man. Tall. Long-limbed and high-waisted, but he’d never been gaunt. His cheeks were sunken and he looked like he’d aged about ten years since she’d seen him in Denver three years ago. “I expected you about an hour ago.”
“I gave someone a ride into town,” she said as she wrapped her arms around his waist. He smelled the same. Like Lifebuoy and dust and the clean Texas air. He lifted one gnarled hand and patted her back. Twice. It was always twice, except on special occasions when she’d done something to garner three pats.
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