by Jennie Jones
If he could sort things out with her, he wouldn’t have to leave Texas because of a news-worthy paternity suit between a ranger and a deranged woman, and maybe he’d open up Wilderness Hiking in Texas after all. He’d just have to find the right location, which meant he’d keep walking until he found it. Not a bad idea, all that walking.
He picked up the sat phone and pressed Sally’s number.
The only other place he’d open the business was Colorado but that was too close to what had once been home. Which made him wonder if Sally had called his sister after all. He’d hadn’t received a call from Karlie so hopefully not, because if his sister got hold of him, his mother would want to talk to him, too.
Sally-Opal answered within two rings and before he even spoke, he heard her breathlessness.
“You called me! Oh, Saul...”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I’m so happy.”
“Listen, please.” He wasn’t going to get angry, he was going to stay calm but he needed her in the same frame of mind. “We need to sort this out, Sally. Now look, I know you think I’m the father of your child, but I know I’m not.”
“How could you not be?”
Well, for one thing, he hadn’t slept with her and that was a pretty big clue. “Have you done a pregnancy test?”
“There’s no need.”
“There’s every need.” Fifty grand’s worth.
He considered Sally’s predicament. Maybe some guy had knocked her up and run off. With the already damaged brain cells, she might have forgotten about the guy she’d slept with and focused on the delusion that it had been Saul.
“If you’re not coming back to us,” she said, sounding teary, “I need the money. I need help, Saul.”
But how did a guy help a woman like Sally? And no way was his fifty grand going to pay for some other guy’s child.
His breath hitched so hard in his chest it felt like a stab to his heart. He hadn’t thought about this for six years. He’d buried the thought because it had been damned painful. But hadn’t that been exactly what the man he’d thought was his father had done? Paid for Saul, while all the time...
“Saul...”
He breathed deeply, the biting pain in his chest still present, but he could control that.
“Sally-Opal, take a minute and think. Who did you go out with before I helped you out of the car wreck?”
She snuffled. “Only one guy. But that was ages ago and he didn’t mean anything to me. Not like you do.”
“But it was recent? This guy before me.”
“The week before you—but I promise it was a mistake! It’s you I love. I don’t want my child fatherless.”
Saul swallowed, trying to rid himself of the picture of his mother. She hadn’t been a Sally-Opal, but she’d done the same thing, hadn’t she? Pulled the wool over her children’s eyes by bringing Saul up with his—with his what? What was the man who’d brought him up? A foster dad? A step-something-or-other, like his sister and his brothers were? One step removed. That was what Saul had been.
“I think you need to do that pregnancy test.” Chances were she wasn’t pregnant, but if she was he’d try to help her.
He didn’t want to think of any kid being fatherless. No matter how bad his own situation had become, he’d had twenty-four years believing he was part of a big family. His childhood had been out-of-this-world wonderful. What any kid deserved. Until it all broke apart when the man who’d brought him up died and his pretty little sister discovered the truth.
“I don’t want to do some dumb test. I just want you,” Sally-Opal said.
“Whoever did this, needs to made aware of the facts.”
“But you are aware of the facts.”
Saul let out a sigh. What was wrong her? “Sally, please—”
“I want you to come home.”
“I’m not coming back. You can’t put this on me. If you are pregnant, it’s not mine.” So much for keeping his frustration under control. He eased back a little. “It’s not mine,” he told her again in a gentler tone.
“I hate you!” she said on a yelp, and cut him off.
Saul dropped his arm to his side. What the hell did he do next? Go back and help her? Would she listen and would he get out of this with his fifty grand still in his back pocket? And he hadn’t had the chance to ask if she’d called his sister.
He turned, and looked right into Molly’s eyes. He stared for a second, openmouthed, then held up the sat. “This is not what you think.”
“None of my business.” She turned, but not quickly enough for Saul to miss the surprise and maybe hurt on her face.
Chapter Eleven
Saul had never been nervous before. Maybe when he was really young and had gotten a fright from one of the horses, or a bull. Fright he understood. Nerves, he’d had no experience of before now.
But when he arrived in the kitchen, having had his quick shower and changed, the ambience immediately lessened his concern.
The light wasn’t harsh and interrogating. Molly had lit a pile of fat candles and placed them around the kitchen, on shelves and workbenches. It all looked cozy. Sweet.
“Hi,” Molly said cheerfully, turning from the counter, and throwing him a quick smile. “Dinner won’t be long.”
He was grateful to her for behaving as though nothing had happened earlier. For not questioning what she’d overheard and for not berating him for whatever bad she thought he’d done. Yet he still felt a longing to explain. “Molly, about what you heard earlier.”
“None of my business.”
“It’s not what you think. This woman says she’s pregnant, which she probably isn’t, and she says its mine, which I know for a damned fact it isn’t.”
“It’s really none of my business.”
“We didn’t sleep together.”
She put her hands over her ears. “Not listening.” She started humming.
“She wasn’t even my date, let alone my girlfriend. She’s a pain in my backside.” And possibly his back pocket.
“La-la-la-la-la...”
“So I’m thinking of going back and slitting her throat.”
That got her attention.
He smiled. “Thank you for not questioning me. Thank you for not demanding details and answers. I appreciate it. Tonight, you can be boss. What can I do to help?”
She threw him a wooden spoon which he caught against his chest. “You can stir the chili.”
The meal was heating on the stove, the places set at the counter they dined at. She had dinner under control. Not that he’d have minded doing the cooking—or reheating in this case—since he was used to doing it. He’d done it as a kid. Middle children always took that helpful course.
But he wasn’t a real middle kid, was he? He’d lived his life thinking he was, then his mother had killed every memory he’d cherished. Every picture of a family bond he’d held dear had disintegrated when she’d told him, a day after his supposed father had died and his sister, Karlie, had stopped talking to him for some then unknown reason, that his whole life was a lie.
“Smells good,” he said as he walked up to the stove and the Texas chili, but all he could smell was Molly as he stood next to her.
Her perfume. Her natural, desert-in-bloom aroma. She didn’t even have to try. She just was lovely to look at and lovely to inhale. Smart-ass spark though she was, it was the kind of spark he liked most. She stood up for herself through thick or thin, even when it hurt her and even when she was unsure about what she was doing. Had he done that?
He stepped away from all that goodness of Molly’s, and away from another soul-searching question he wasn’t sure he could answer yet. Could he have handled the family fallout differently?
“Want me to slice the bread?” he asked.
“Butter’s in that dish over there.” She indicated a china bowl piled high with swirls of butter.
She’d taken the time to skim pats off the block and create fancy little curls
in a bowl. He moved to the breadboard and the crusty loaf that sat on it, appreciating the effort she’d put into tonight’s dinner. She must really want that roof. And he really wanted to get something clear.
“Molly,” he said in a tone that made her look at him. “I don’t mess around with more than one woman at a time, so I don’t want you to think that because I kissed you the other day that I’m some two-timing cheat. Because I’m not.”
He saw something flicker across her eyes but didn’t know if it was regret that he’d brought the subject up again, or relief at what he’d said.
“Okay,” she said at last. “I mean okay about—you know, when we—”
Kissed. “Thanks,” he said, and nodded.
He didn’t want her thinking bad of him, and he didn’t want to hurt her, since he got the impression she was easily hurt, regardless of all her gutsy determination. And, yeah, he still thought he would probably make a play for her. At least go for another kiss. Maybe a longer, deeper kiss.
Saul took the loaf and sliced through it. “I took another look around the hacienda this afternoon,” he said, changing the subject. “It’s an impressive house.”
“Isn’t it?” she said behind him.
She picked up the dinner plates and gathered knives and forks. He put slices of thickly cut bread onto a plate that sat next to the china bowl of butter swirls, picked both up, and turned to the candlelit kitchen and the island counter where Molly was folding paper napkins and arranging their cutlery.
The tone of the temporary plastic ceiling, the table setting, the meal, the fat candles she’d lit, all looked cute, and a little romantic.
Appreciation wasn’t an attribute he’d had much chance of feeling in the past six years. But Molly had done her best to make this evening a good one for her contractor, and Saul couldn’t say he was sorry about it because it was a warm, reciprocal appreciation that was swirling inside him. Like butter pats melting beneath the rays of a hot sun. Given the day he’d had and all the ridiculous discoveries he’d made about Sally and the hit his back pocket might take, it would be pleasant to sit with Molly tonight and forget about it all.
They’d eaten in silence, more or less. Molly was fine with it. She’d concentrated on her meal, making sure she ate it even though she’d lost her appetite after overhearing Saul on the phone to the woman she’d thought must be a girlfriend he’d walked out on, but whom he’d said wasn’t a girlfriend. He hadn’t said if he’d walked out on her or not, so Molly didn’t know and shouldn’t care. Except that the woman was pregnant! Although he said it wasn’t his.
“So what brought you home to Hopeless?” he asked as he stood. He gathered their plates and headed to the sink.
Better not tell him it was because she’d dumped her fiancé due to him cheating on her. It might remind him of the girlfriend he didn’t have. “I was all adventured out,” she told him, standing and collecting the butter bowl and bread plates. “I felt the time was right to start the business I’d always wanted.” Funny how she’d never thought of opening that business in the valley before. Yet now she was doing so, and even though she’d been forced into opening it here, she was grateful. “Some things are meant to be.”
He turned from the sink and the running water. “Well, it’ll be the right environment.”
“I hope so.”
“There are distinct styles in the place,” he said, jutting his chin at the blue canvas, but Molly knew he meant the whole hacienda.
“The harmony of house and nature,” she told him when he went back to his washing up. “It’s an all-styles type of house.”
“Why has no one lived in it?”
Maybe he ought to know about the great-grandfathers—after that chill he’d had in the salon. There might be more chills coming his way.
“Around 1850,” she began, “the Mackillop men were part of the exploration of the Fort Smith-Santa Fe Trail. Their women followed, and they settled in the Panhandle—we don’t know why, but think their sons might have joined the buffalo hunters who came from western Kansas. After 1875, the area was kind of lost, or empty.”
“But they came through?” Saul asked.
Molly shrugged. “Perhaps they had protection—of some sort.” She moved on quickly. “They started a cattle ranch, but I don’t think they were very good at it. That’s when they claimed, or were given, Calamity Valley—or so we think. Nobody kept any records.”
“Did they turn to farming?”
“Tried. But it was pretty harsh in the 1880s. Anyway, they made a stack of money when the railway came through Amarillo. Life picked up for them then. They became businessmen—although undoubtedly a bit nefarious here and there. Things plodded on but by 1912 when our great-grandmothers were born, the valley was no longer thriving. Until they met the great-grandfathers, who were really keen to prosper.”
“Young men, battling the economy.”
“Young when they arrived and just as young when they left.” Molly picked up a bowl of cut melon she’d prepared for dessert.
“What do you mean?”
“Remember I said about the superstition going on. And that funny chill you felt in the salon? It’s all to do with the GGs.”
He turned at the sink and paused in his task of washing up. “The what?”
How to put it?
She gave a reluctant half-smile. “I told you we’re a bit of an oddball family. We’ve got great-grandfathers. We call them the GGs. They arrived in the valley in 1938, met the great-grandmothers, and left in 1939.”
“Why?”
“Two reasons. A few years earlier, the Palo Duro Canyon became a state park, but the great-grandmothers kept refusing to sell Calamity Valley, which infuriated the great-grandfathers who wanted the money.”
“And the second reason?”
“The great-grandmothers were pregnant.”
“They left all three wives?”
“I’m afraid it was worse. They left all three unmarried women. Hence, we’re all Miss Mackillops because the grandmothers don’t have husbands, either, and neither did their daughters.”
Molly ignored the look of surprise on Saul’s face. “The place was a dustbowl back then. The depression just about wiped us all out. But the great-grandmothers—brave, courageous and daring—began to regenerate the three towns, growing them and producing an income. The GGs heard about it and got mad.”
“Would serve them right, wouldn’t it?”
“You’d have thought so, but not our GGs—selfish, uncaring, and nasty.”
“What did they do?”
“Cursed us.”
She waited while he pondered this. It took him a while. Surprise, humor, then a deeper consideration showed in the rapid changing of his features. Although consideration sat on his face longer than surprise and humor. “You’re looking skeptical,” she said.
“Do you blame me?”
Molly shrugged a shoulder. “We’re doomed. All Mackillop women. But don’t worry about it. I won’t let the GGs haunt you while you’re here. Want to eat dessert outside?” she asked, hoping she’d gotten him off the subject now she’d given him a taste of it.
“Sure.” He dried his hands on a towel.
Molly picked up a plate of sliced melon and moved outside. With any luck, she wouldn’t have to tell him more about the crazy Mackillop history and the curse she really didn’t want to believe in.
She looked around. Where should they sit? When it was only her, she sat on the small hand-carved wooden bench but that would be a tight squeeze for two.
“Want a beer, Molly?” he called from inside.
“Please.” This was not going to be the cozy evening under the stars that part of her might like it to be, but she didn’t want to ruin this unexpected camaraderie. And this is what she needed to do—keep him sweet. Roof. Needed.
She pulled out two folded metal and canvas deckchairs from behind the wooden bench and opened them as she shook away the notion that this casual and friendly atmosphere
wasn’t to do with her need to keep him sweet so that he built her roof, but more because it warmed her soul. As though he might turn out to be a friend after all. Except he’d leave in couple of weeks’ time.
The candlelight from the kitchen created a tender glow on the outside area and Molly relaxed a little as she read the sign she’d hung on a wall, the evening shadows lighting up each of the rules she’d written so far.
Porch Rules
Kick back.
Take a nap.
Enjoy the view.
A sign she could contemplate each evening as she sipped her after-dinner beer, all on her own. A sign she’d add to as the necessary rules of relaxation came to her—dependent on what happened next in her life.
Kiss Saul.
She closed her eyes and turned her head from the porch rules.
He came out of the kitchen, an opened bottle of beer in each hand. Molly stood, brought out of her thoughts by his arrival.
“Here’s your beer, Miss Doomed Mackillop.” He said it with such soft amusement that it made her smile.
Saul stilled. Then the air between them stilled. Then Molly’s heartbeat thumped.
He’d shaved tonight. Smooth-jawed yet still dirty-sexy. She ran her gaze over his features. His not-quite square face. His high forehead. His blue eyes and dark blond eyebrows. His nose, which was just the right length to enhance his cheekbones, and the firm mouth that hovered in preparation for a slow smile—or a kiss.
“Are we going to go through this again?” he asked gently.
She took her focus from his mouth to his eyes. So dusty-blue in the evening light.
“I don’t think we should.” He didn’t have to explain what he meant. If he hadn’t spoken she’d have angled her chin and he’d have lowered his head, and they’d have kissed.
He tilted his head slightly, still holding her gaze. “I’m not usually the type to say no to someone I’m attracted to, but I’m not staying, remember. If I were to take things some place with you now, I don’t think I’d be able to handle the arguments that’d undoubtedly come into my head, about going to that good place with you and then leaving. I blame my grandpa. He filled me with manners.”