Lone Star Hero

by Jennie Jones

  She turned when she received no response.

  Winnie came running through the corridor from the takeout, a pinched expression on her face. She rotated her wrist, blinking fast.

  “Developers,” she managed. “Got your momma in a tizzy.”

  Molly heard her mother’s heels, not so much tapping on the tiles, as possibly cracking them.

  Momma came to a standstill when she entered the salon, her brow drawn and her green eyes like minted ice. “Baby, what do you see?” She lifted her arms wide, presenting herself for inspection.

  A pale-pink pencil skirt, a strawberry-colored silk blouse, and fury pouring from every beautifully made-up section of her mother’s face.

  “I see trouble.”

  “Good. Because that’s what they’re getting.”

  “What have they done?”

  “D’Pee organized a survey and Ty ‘Slick’ Wilson delivered it around the valley. They’re calculating how much money they’ll need to spend if they offer a fat sweetener to those who sell out.”

  “They’re already offering below price for the land,” Molly said. “Are they upping the payout?”

  “No. But they’re thinking of including an imported SUV, and Bob Smith—whoever he is—came up with the idea of adding a set of mediocre white goods. That’s not all!” Momma added. “Thirty percent of the valley have filled in the survey.”

  Molly gasped. This wasn’t supposed to happen. “Once they sell their land at below-cost price, they’ll have to move out of the county altogether in order to buy another property.” It had been their home all their lives—those who were left. Ninety-seven of them.

  Molly sank to the hair-chair. Up until today, they’d only been working on deterrents for the developers. Now they were faced with deterring valley residents from looking at the survey, let alone signing a deal.

  “D’Pee and Slick know what they’re doing,” Winnie said in her anxious soft voice. “The people in the valley are either older, or adopted into the community—like I was. They don’t understand how bad this could get if they’re kicked out.”

  It was the longest speech Molly had heard her aunt make in forever.

  “Oh, away with you, Winnie,” Momma interrupted. “You’re as much a part of the valley as I am.”

  “But what are we going to do if they get a whole town to sign up?” Winnie said. “Or half a town.”

  “She’s right,” Molly agreed. “All they need to kick-start their venture is one town—and, bingo, they’ve got us.”

  “We need money,” Winnie said, “to fight them.”

  Molly had a fleeting thought about calling her cousins, then dismissed it. Lauren ran a successful pre-loved clothing boutique in California, but currently had some issues with her business partner. Although she didn’t talk about him, something wasn’t right and Molly wasn’t going to be the one to tear Lauren away from this man, in case it was the man. Although Molly had a niggly feeling, like a prickle-jab, that he was the wrong man.

  Pepper might come home. She didn’t have a man in her life. Didn’t want one, she said. Nobody mentioned the fact she’d been unlucky in love a few times before making that pronouncement. Anyway, Molly couldn’t drag Pepper away from Arizona and her upcoming online gourmet food and herbs business.

  Her cousins had done much better than Molly had. They had jobs they loved and were making their way in the normal world. She couldn’t ask them to come home to face a curse they didn’t believe in.w What if Molly discovered it was real?

  That would mean none of the cousins were likely to find a good, decent man to fall in love with. One who’d stick around...

  “Oh, and by the way,” Momma said. “About your stranger—”

  “He’s not mine.”

  “You’re to be sweet as honeysuckle, but don’t let people see you together too much. Keep him out of sight.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s a good-looking man. People might think you’re using him.”

  “For what?”

  Momma shared a glance with Winnie, then turned back to Molly. “If they discover he’s here, there could be trouble. The developers are already saying your intentions for renovating the hacienda are based on greed, and that you intend to make money off the backs of the valley residents.”

  Molly’s jaw dropped. “That’s ridiculous! And what’s it got to do with my employee?”

  “He’s helping you for next to nothing. It makes you look greedy.”

  “Greedy? The valley people know I’m starting the photography business for the good of the towns. I’ve got some of them lined up for jobs.” With hopes for more business propositions, too. Businesses the valley people could start, and run.

  “It only takes one bad rumor,” Winnie said.

  “Well let’s hope there isn’t a second!” How could a woman who’d worked hard for herself, and paid bills for her ex-fiancé, be considered greedy?

  “You need to sweeten up that big gorgeous man working on your roof,” Momma said. “We need to get Through the Lens up and running before he leaves.”

  “You sweeten him up,” Molly said.

  “We need him,” Momma said. “And I trust him.”

  “I trust him, too,” Winnie said.

  “I don’t.” Something bit into Molly’s gut for saying that out loud.

  Maybe she was doing him a bit of an injustice. Things didn’t wash and dry dishes. The thing Molly had left didn’t even stack dishwashers. The thing couldn’t even hammer a nail, let alone build a roof.

  “Now,” Momma said, “you need to play this carefully. Don’t let on to Saul about our town troubles. Nothing puts a man off more than a female looking for help.”

  “Did Alice say I had to be sweet to him?”

  “She said you weren’t right for him, Molly,” Winnie said, and that bitter pill hit Molly’s female essence. Hearing it spoken aloud so often didn’t do much for a woman’s pride.

  “I thought I’d clarify,” Winnie said, blushing. “In case you thought your momma was asking you to you-know-what with him.”

  No, Molly didn’t know. Oh, hang on—yes, she did. “Thanks, Winnie, but that won’t be happening.” Because she wasn’t right for him.

  She wasn’t his type, whatever his type was. Fast and easy, probably. Well, he wouldn’t be getting a quick bedroom grope from Molly.

  But she needed that roof. “All right,” she said to her mother. “Bake him a chocolate cake.”

  “Did that first thing this morning, then I got sidetracked by what Davie told me about the survey, and your greedy nature. But we’re going to turn this whole greediness thing around.”

  “How?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  Molly glanced around the empty salon. “Where are your customers?”

  “I cancelled them,” Momma said at the same time Winnie said, “They cancelled.”

  “Oh, Momma—it’s Saturday. Your busiest day. People cancelled because of the rumor about me making money on the backs of my own people?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I needed the break.”

  Molly blinked hard. She’d be no use to anyone if she allowed all the worry to boil over. Alice had said last night that she had trouble coming. But that had been about Jason and the money he owed her. Not about her reputation. Or had Alice meant she might be seen as too greedy by demanding her money back? It was so difficult to understand Alice when she spoke in riddles. Honestly, for a soothsayer, she ought to ensure her clients at least understood her.

  “Don’t worry, baby, I won’t let anyone harm you or your reputation.”

  Molly looked up, but before she had the chance to ask how Momma had known what she was thinking, Winnie spoke.

  “Unless they come up with a second rumor that’s worse than this one,” she said, wringing her hands.

  What could be worse?

  “At least my greed problem has gotten the great-grandfathers’ curse off our minds,” Molly said, with a forced laugh.


  Momma and Winnie gave her a look of astonishment.

  Molly shivered. “Just saying.” The Mackillops arrived in Texas in 1850, but the stories about the battles between the Mackillop women who started turning prosperity around in the valley before the second world war, lingered uppermost in everybody’s minds. 1939—the curse of the great grandfathers.

  “Let’s not go there,” Momma said. “We’ve got enough to deal with, with the people who are living.”

  “I don’t believe in the curse,” Molly said in a challenging manner, while half expecting the roof to cave in.

  “I don’t give it much thought,” Momma said, then glanced at the ceiling.

  “I do,” Winnie said.

  Molly shivered a second time. “So what do we do first?” she said, getting the subject back to the one with priority. She’d have to rely on Momma coming up with some brilliant hair-brained idea to turn the greed rumor around while she concentrated on her business—and the roof.

  Maybe all this was her punishment for having kept her family and all her spooky connections a secret from the thing and then having to admit to her family that she had an ex-fiancé.

  “We need money,” Momma said.

  Molly sighed. She had some—but it was in Colorado.

  Saul ran the back of his hand over his mouth, and reviewed his efforts of the last couple of hours.

  He lifted the hem of his T-shirt and wiped his face. He’d gotten all the rafters he needed outside and had made a start on the rubble in the fountain.

  He pulled the large wheelbarrow to his side and began to fill it for the third time.

  He’d been thinking a lot about leaving in the past few hours. He’d been thinking about staying, too. Molly needed help around here, but he couldn’t stay and see it through, so why was the decision to leave so hard to make?

  Some might say he’d left home six years ago without finalizing the whole sorry issue. Saul would say he’d left because there wasn’t anything to finalize. He’d been dumped. Not by a girl, but by his family. Or those he’d thought had been his family.

  But maybe he was overthinking. He’d been doing that a lot these last few days and could anybody blame him? He was supposed to be getting out of Texas and now he had a job, and an ex-girlfriend who had never been his girlfriend who was saying he was about to become a father.

  As soon as he got his sat phone—he was pretty sure he’d dropped it at the salon yesterday—he’d consider what to do about Sally-Opal. Maybe he could persuade her he was a lost cause—or that she was downright loopy. In which case, it wasn’t her fault. Most likely she was simply looking for someone to care about her, or maybe just notice her. Not like the case of Belle Solomon six years ago.

  He didn’t want to dwell on that issue, but it was stuck in his head. His mother had lied to him, which hurt enough without going into the details of the family derailment that followed. Love. What a waste of emotion. He’d never given it to a girl or a woman in all his thirty years. Not in the romantic sense. But he’d given it unconditionally to his family, not knowing there was any other way to think about them or feel about them. Twenty-four years of his life and his feelings had gone to the people who’d turned out not to be his blood kin after all. Except for his mother, Belle, and her father, Saul’s grandpa.

  Best thing he could do now, since he was stuck with the Sally-Opal problem, plus a false claim that he intended to build Molly’s roof, was approach all issues calmly. He’d fix things with Sally, he’d stay long enough to find another builder for Molly, and get himself out of this mess without hurting anyone—especially himself.

  Maybe while he was fixing all these issues, he’d find out exactly what it was these engaging Mackillop women were after. He was being drawn into whatever their problems were, and he felt a need to help if he could, although any assistance he gave would be on his terms, and in his time.

  He’d play it cool and calm for the next few days. But like his commander had reminded the rangers each and every morning, “Stay safe out there and keep your head on a swivel.” He’d be doing just that. Because something about this place was giving him the heebie-jeebies.

  Chapter Eight

  Molly fidgeted in the driver’s seat as she drove back to the hacienda.

  Would people believe the developer’s lie that she was just being greedy by opening her business, and start calling her belligerent if she kept working toward the end result—her own photography business?

  Women who made a stand didn’t care what others thought, so long as the intent of what they were standing up for was right and honest. And looking after the valley was a decent thing to be belligerent about.

  What if people knew about the money she was trying to wrestle back from Jason? Would they see her as grasping and manipulative?

  That was what Jason had called her, after she’d hurled the engagement ring at him and demanded her money back.

  She’d left the valley—as had Lauren and Pepper—for a number of reasons. To find a vocation. To find happiness. But normalcy and getting away from the curse had been the number one reason for leaving, for each of the cousins. Oh, to be normal.

  After more than a month at home and coming to love the old hacienda with all her heart, she might—just might—be coming to terms with this curse. In which case, she’d face it, head on. If it was real. No more running. She was home and her heart was here, and here she was staying. No matter what D’Pee and Slick came up with next.

  So how to play Jason and get her money back? Plus her ring!

  She’d been reeling in shock when she’d discovered him with the new girl and thrown it at him, so she hadn’t been thinking straight. She’d given him the money to buy that ring. It was legally hers. Damn right she was going to get it back.

  And he’d called Molly manipulative!

  Jason had captured her attention because of his supposed generosity. He was paying for his two younger sisters to go through college—how decent was that? Except that he hadn’t told her about his assistance to his sisters until well and truly after Molly started backing him up financially.

  She’d worked for him full-time, helping in the office, doing his books, taking photographs of the three motels and creating his brochures that made the motels look a lot more delightful than they were. But she’d also been doing her own work, where and when she could, and earning from it. Earning enough for Molly to call it “a lot.” She’d sold her nature photographs to a number of tourist magazines and online advertisers. That was why she’d been run ragged—doing so much for Jason, while also sustaining both her love of photography and her career.

  So she hadn’t been all stupid. She’d shown wherewithal and she’d proven she was capable of running a business. Not that Jason had cared, so long as the bills were paid, food was on the table, and the new sports car full of gas.

  If Jason was still using her money to finance his sisters’ education, how could she take that away without harming someone else’s future? She’d gotten on well with the girls the few times she’d met them. She’d grown fond of Jason’s parents, too. Hard-working down-to-earth people, just like Molly and her family. Although they had no spooky genes. And neither had they been able to afford to pay for their daughters’ education.

  It was all so difficult to judge, but a bad case of the blues wasn’t going to help anything or anyone. Time to make that stand, Molly Mackillop. You’re done with being hopeless.

  When she reached the hacienda, Saul was nowhere to be seen but the fountain was cleared of all the rubble. She looked around as she got her bags out of the pickup, and then the boxed Hopeless sponge—the sweetener for Saul-the-hot-contractor. There was no hammering or lumber-lifting noises. Perhaps he’d gone for a walk. Hopefully not out of the county.

  In the hacienda kitchen, she dumped the bags on the counter along with the boxed chocolate cake for her nowhere-to-be-seen roof builder. She got her cell out of her bag, as well as Saul’s sat phone. Leaving the sat on the co
untertop, she wandered outside to the old hand-carved wooden bench and walked past it. There was no way she could sit while talking to Jason.

  She inhaled the freshness of the day. An ordinary day. An everyday modern day where curses were only read about in books, hot hunky guys like Saul were a figment of a woman’s wishful thinking, and men like Jason Birling found an honorable side.

  She walked across to the newly cleared space to the side of the hacienda, brushing a hand through a slender leafstalk of yellow leaves on a plains cottonwood tree, until she reached the edge of the cleared site and was looking out over her fine Calamity land.

  She punched in the speed dial number and as she waited, glanced around the courtyard and at the plant pots Momma had given her. She frowned again. The small rainwater tank she used to water the pot plants was no longer dripping. The seal had bust the morning Saul arrived. She’d forgotten about fixing it after visiting Alice and discovering that a stranger was on his way. Molly’s bad. Not wasting water was ingrained in her—unless she took an extra couple of minutes in a hot shower.

  Why would Saul have done these jobs for her? Jason had never helped her. He’d said she was capable and that impressed him so much he’d back off and not offer his manly assistance, because he didn’t want to undermine her as a woman.

  The phone was still ringing in her ear but she was used to this. Jason put it on fifteen rings before it hit his answer service. He said it gave him time to get his act together before he picked up—in case he needed to fend off answers to business questions he didn’t yet have.

  “Hi, this is Jason Birling—”

  Molly jolted out of her reverie. “Jason!”

  “I’m not here right now. I’m probably out finalizing a deal.”

  To think she’d once thought that blocked nasal cavity nothing more than an interesting characteristic of an otherwise amazing guy.

  “But business is my game, so leave a number and I’ll call you right back.”

  Some hope. Beeeeeeeep.