Lone Star Hero

by Jennie Jones

  “I know you know,” she said, sounding pissed. “Momma told you all about my sorry history, didn’t she?”

  “I don’t think you’re a sexual deviant, Molly,” he said, trying to calm her.

  She gasped and shot back, pushing from his arms. “She told you that, too?”

  Shit. “No. Davie told me.”

  “Davie? What’s wrong with everyone around here? Why can’t they all mind their own business?”

  “Molly—”

  “I can’t believe Davie told you! I’m never going to speak to him again. I’m never going to talk to anybody again.”

  “Molly!” he repeated, louder and sterner.

  She stilled and blinked up at him, her long eyelashes wet with tears.

  He got another spear through the heart. It was hard keeping up a front when she was all but wiped out with misery, her eyes full of tears—which were about to roll over and down her cheeks again any second.

  He took her face in his hands and wiped them away with his fingers, and since his hands were now on her face, he left them there. “I thought you were a Don’t-Mess-With-Me Mackillop.”

  “I am,” she said, still sounding deflated.

  “So tell me what he’s done and get it off your chest.”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  Spot on. But he’d never expected to see her crying. Or to see her undone in the misery of her woes. It did all these strange things to his chest, knowing she was hurt and that some jerk of a man had done the damage.

  He dropped his hands from her face and stuffed them in his jeans pockets. “Of course I want to know.” It wouldn’t help if he got all sentimental. “I’m working alongside you. If I’m going to get the bad mood vibes all day long tomorrow, it’s going to piss me off. What has he done?”

  She drew a breath and blew it out, attempting to calm herself, and seeing her relax a little helped calm Saul too. He dug his hands further into his pockets.

  “He owes me money and he won’t give it back. Now he’s cheated on me again, only this time it’s not with another woman, it’s with the debt collectors.”

  “It’s your money? Only yours?”

  “Every dollar. Twenty thousand. Ten of it I gave him for the fit-out of his new office.”

  “Gave him? So how come the debt collectors are on your back?”

  “Because I took the lease on his sports car. I put ten thousand down and the other ten thousand was a loan. That lease and loan are in my name.”

  Where had her head been? “Molly—”

  “I told him to sell the car and he said he would. But he hasn’t, and now I owe back repayments and I haven’t got the money.”

  What sort of a jerk had she hooked up with? “You need to talk to him.”

  “He won’t answer my calls! He’s a jerk. Where the hell had my head been? I’m an—”

  “No, you’re not an idiot. Not even close.”

  She’d been used. The jerk had taken her good-heartedness and abused it.

  “I’m so angry,” she said, clenching her fist and scrunching up the letter. “And I’m not crying!”

  “Of course you’re not. Women who are making a stand as courageously as you don’t cry.”

  “That’s right,” she said, her voice less trembly. “I don’t cry.”

  “Not you.” His hands leapt from his pockets, all by themselves, and suddenly they’d taken hold of her and pulled her against him, her head on his shoulder. Then one of his hands had the temerity to stroke the back of her head. “You can sort it out, Molly. You can fix it.”

  “I’ll fix him!”

  Not if Saul saw him first. “Hey,” he said, “you’ve got all your big candles lit again. It looks great. And what’s that amazing aroma in this kitchen? It smells like ribs and peanut butter in here.” So close to her like this all he could smell was her fresh, desert-bloom perfume. Her hair was so soft beneath his jaw. Soft beneath the hand he had on her back, her hair trailing down to below her waist.

  She sniffed. “I cooked and baked. From scratch.”

  “You did? Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said, misery still present in her voice.

  “Hey,” he said again, taking advantage of her calmer frame of mind. “That guy I told you about who owes me a favor. He’s sending a crane over day after tomorrow.”

  “Really?” She lifted her face to look at him, and his heart took a plug again. He really ought to let her go now.

  “It must have been a big favor.”

  “It was nothing.” He didn’t know a guy who owned a crane. He never bothered about having favors returned. He’d ordered the crane and paid for it himself because he wanted to do something for Molly. “So let’s have dinner and forget about our problems.”

  “They’re my problems. Not yours. And I’m not a sexual deviant.” She sniffled again. “Just in case you needed clarification on that.”

  He smiled. “That’s a shame,” he said softly. “Especially as you’ve made the kitchen look so romantic. We could have had dinner, then got it on in your den of sexual pleasure. Do you have toys?” he added, when a reluctant smile crept on her face. “You could show me yours and I’ll get my tool out.”

  She spluttered a laugh and punched him in the chest.

  “Come on, boss. Let’s eat. Then you can go to bed all by yourself and I’ll clean up the kitchen.” After which, he was going to take a midnight walk to visit Alice.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Alice didn’t turn from her fire, and Saul didn’t bother calling out. She’d know he was here. He suspected she also knew what he wanted to chat about. He pushed through the last branch of willow and strode to the pit fire.

  Without preamble, he sat, legs bent, forearms rested on his knees. “What is it you want from me, Alice?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to want anything from you. But you might find you have a need to address your wrongs.”

  Straight in. No messing about. “I haven’t done anything to hurt Molly.”

  “Of course you haven’t, and neither will you.” She glanced at him. “Not the way you think.”

  “Did you have something to do with my coming here? And, if so, what is it I’m supposed to do before I leave?” He’d do it, then get out.

  “Perhaps you’re here to reflect on your past.”

  Regardless of the strange situation, he felt surrounded by some sort of hungry warmth. Not from the flames in the pit fire. Something intangible, eager to embrace him, or maybe have him acknowledge a presence deep in the back of his mind, or even in his soul. “What are you doing to me, Alice?”

  “Nothing. You’re just feeling what’s already in you.”

  “How can you know I have a past? How do you know anything? Do you see the future as well as the past?”

  “I just guide.”

  He was sitting by her fire, fired up and ready to argue, but all he felt was the strength of companionship—and that strange kind of comfort. “I guide myself.”

  “Sometimes in the wrong direction. Not that it’s a fault. It’s normal. Your mother knows that, too.”

  “How the hell do you know anything about my mother?”

  “You need to settle all that now, or you’ll never be over it.”

  “She lied to me. All my life.”

  Another glance from keen green eyes. “Did you ever ask her why?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Did you listen to her answer?”

  He’d heard, he’d taken it in, but the pain of not belonging to the family he’d thought he’d always belonged to had dampened the sound of reason. She’d told him she’d lost her way all those years ago. That she’d gotten tired—and who could have blamed her with a bunch of kids, a workaholic husband and a ranch to run. So she’d run off for a week and she’d had a one-night stand with some man—who’d left her the next morning, never to be seen again. She’d come home, and discovered she was pregnant.

  “Your mother won’t push yo
u anymore, she thinks she’s lost you.”

  That hurt. He didn’t want Belle Solomon to feel pain for the rest of her life. “I can’t get out of it all now. What’s done is done.” He didn’t have a true family, except for his grandpa and his mother, and he wasn’t able to face either of them without feeling like a loser.

  “What’s done was done thirty years ago,” Alice said. “It had nothing to do with you.”

  “She has her other sons and her daughter.” They were looking after her.

  “You’re fighting yourself, not them,” Alice said, pushing a stick into the fire and poking at the flames.

  “So what are you telling me? That I need to go back again?” It hadn’t worked out well two years ago.

  Alice threw the stick onto the ground. “Your brothers will fight if you fight. That’s always been your way of handling things. But they also want to accept you. They miss you, although they don’t show it in a manner you might expect. Everyone misses you. It’s up to you to finish it, and finish it well.”

  “I’m not going back.” What happened two years ago was enough of a finale. He didn’t want an encore.

  “Your father knew.”

  Saul bit down on his back teeth and contemplated the fire. He’d always lived in the moment. He never gave himself self-inflicted boundaries, even as a kid. He moved from one event or situation to the next, not giving whatever issue that required growing or learning much thought, except to get on with whatever was needed. But that lie had been harder to accept. It had changed everything. It had given him a world without boundaries, without discipline, because he’d lost all that. “He wasn’t my father.”

  “He was there when you were born. He celebrated your birth the same way he did his other children’s births. You were no different to him. Not for a second. Because you were part of your mother and he loved her.”

  It was what his grandpa had told him. It was what his mother had told him. Saul hadn’t believed a word. Or maybe he hadn’t listened, not wanting to understand while he was neck-deep in sorting out his emotions and trying not to break down in front of everyone.

  “You ought to tell Molly about all of this. She’ll help you through it.”

  “I don’t need help. I’m through it.”

  “I don’t mean she’ll lend you a caring ear. I mean Molly’s style of getting through tough times is not a bad way of dealing with a crisis. You could do with some of that toughness yourself, Saul Solomon.”

  She was telling him he wasn’t tough enough?

  “Oh, you can use your fists when you need to,” Alice said, “and perhaps Molly might be in need of that type of strength from you too. But while you’re together, you should take a deeper look at the other and learn something.”

  “You mean while I’m here building the roof? Or do you mean while we’re together when I decide it’s the right time to make a move on her—in the romantic sense.” He didn’t feel a need to beat around any longer. Alice could read his damned thoughts. Same way Marie had earlier this morning. Only Molly didn’t reach into his mind. Thank you for that. He sent Molly his silent appreciation.

  Alice chuckled. “You’re not right for her, Saul. You’re not right for each other.”

  “So you’re telling me to leave her alone, romantically?”

  “I wouldn’t presume to tell you anything.”

  Yet he had a feeling she was doing just that. Except he couldn’t make sense of what it was she wanted him to do. What did she mean, they weren’t right for each other?

  “Marie wants me to look out for her,” he said.

  Marie probably wanted him to stay and fall in love with Molly and get down on bended knee in the Texas dirt and offer her marriage, leaving all his own plans on the shelf. Not that he had plans at the moment, except to get out of the mess he was in and regroup for a while.

  “You’ll do what you have to do,” Alice said.

  Did that mean she was giving him the go-ahead to get romantically involved with her granddaughter? Because romantic involvement wasn’t the only type of involvement on Saul’s mind. There was also a hot, tangled, sweaty kind, and he didn’t mean overexertion from building the roof.

  He stood, and brushed the dirt off his backside.

  “Deep within you know what you want, Saul.” Alice looked up at him. “You just refuse to acknowledge it. That’s why I see it.”

  He paused, then looked out at the darkened valley over the rim of the pit and the crackle and hiss of the fire, not wanting to look into her eyes, not wanting her to peer into his. “How can you know all this stuff?” He looked down at her. He wasn’t a coward. Whatever she could see from his eyes, let her see it. “Are you reading my thoughts?”

  “It’s nothing more than a mirror. I see the happenings and the reflections. That’s all.”

  “Can Molly do this?”

  “She doesn’t recognize it.”

  “And Marie?”

  “Marie has the gift. She uses it differently.”

  “You haven’t pushed your daughter or your granddaughter into accepting their gifts?”

  “Nobody pushes Marie. I don’t push Molly. I guide. Just not in the way most people would.”

  Six years ago and two years ago, he’d reacted with emotion, not with rational thought. He’d known it but hadn’t acknowledged it. Or had he just been feeling sorry for himself? “Are you projecting something onto me?”

  “No. You know yourself what you need. Maybe you just haven’t dug deep enough to find it yet.”

  “Are you prophesising?”

  “I just see it how I see it.”

  Saul looked away in exasperation. “That doesn’t help. And I don’t need changing.”

  “Good. I’d hate to see you change.”

  “So how come I find myself believing you, and yet I’m one hundred per cent certain I’m not going to let you guide me?” Still, that wrapped in a blanket of warmth sensation surrounded him so much that he wanted to shrug it off the way he kicked at the sheets on a hot night.

  “Because you’re man enough to discover what you have to do all by yourself.”

  Pictures of his grandpa formed in his mind. The patient smile as he taught Saul how to ride, how to be a dust-kicking cowpoke and not a dude. How herding sustained the land. How to sit a horse all day and into the night, and how to get used to it. How to fix the trucks, how to mend a broken fence or put a roof on a barn. He’d loved his life, but he’d wanted out long before his discovery that he didn’t belong to the Solomon clan. He’d thrived on adventure from the moment his grandpa had lifted him into the saddle on his first pony.

  Another picture took over. His grandpa teaching him tolerance when Saul had done something childish or stupid in his youth. He’d first walked off when he was seven years old. That had caused a fuss. It hadn’t stopped him walking off again at other times though, always looking for an adventure.

  Then he heard his grandpa’s words. “Wherever you go, Saul, good manners is all about being tolerant. Always use your manners, but don’t forget tolerance. It’ll see you through just about anything.”

  He’d thought walking away six years ago a means to rid himself of sudden intolerance with everything that had happened to him. Maybe he was still using that as some form of payback. Like giving the world the finger. In which case, none of this was Alice’s fault. There was no way she could shape him or his future. It was already spread before him, whether he could see it or not. Whether he liked it or not.

  He shifted as he came out of the contemplation. “I’ll let you be. Goodnight, Alice. I apologize if I was rude.”

  “I like a man who asks for what he wants. So long as he doesn’t always expect to get it.”

  “I’m staying to build the roof. Then I’m gone.”

  Alice nodded, but didn’t look at him. She was staring into the flames.

  Saul left her to it and made his way back through the willows, pushing at branches and kicking up leaf debris with his boots as a mantle of d
iscomfort took over from the peculiar security of being next to Alice. He hadn’t known his maternal grandmother. He wished now that she was still alive. Maybe she’d have been able to deal him the kind of feminine hand he needed, like Alice was obviously trying to do. There was nothing bad about Alice, but she was scaring the life out of him.

  He’d promised he’d stay and get the roof on the hacienda. He wasn’t going to stick around much longer than that though. Molly would be all right. She had Alice to guide her, however it was Alice managed to do that with Molly. He had no doubt Molly would cope, but regardless of all the enthusiasm she had, it wouldn’t be enough to keep her business going once she got it up and running. The town needed more than one photographic studio.

  Had they thought all this through or were they simply charging at the gate, locking horns with the enemy without reading the bull or knowing what their best defenses were? It was all well to get something started, but they needed to think before they leapt into the next idea. Saul’s first three actions when he’d been making plans for his own business, Wilderness Hiking, had been calm down on the enthusiasm, get his facts, then think it through all over again.

  Hopeless had economic problems to fix and that wasn’t a short-range project. Not that Molly was thinking of her business as a quick fix. He’d taken a look at some of the notes she’d left around the kitchen and the lodge house. Notes she was obviously going to use on her brochures and maybe on a website.

  Picture this. Untouched, natural wonder. Flora and fauna in the wild, plus the odd friendly local.

  She’d gotten that right.

  Need a wide-angled lens on life? Need to refocus? Zoom in on Calamity Valley, a photographer’s dream.

  He didn’t need a wide angle on life. He’d had one, when he’d still had a family; when he’d still belonged, and losing all that had gotten his life out of focus for a long time. Maybe there was still some graininess in his life picture, but it was his picture. His life. His decision. He was zooming in on what he knew he needed, and what he knew he’d get. He’d never bothered chasing something he wanted but probably wouldn’t get.