Lone Star Hero

by Jennie Jones

  She took his hands in hers. “You have to walk off Molly Mackillop.”

  He was sure he flushed. Heat certainly rose up his neck. “I can’t stay here.”

  “I know that’s how you feel. Marie and I talked about it while Sally-Opal was under the dryer.”

  “The what?”

  His mom smiled. “Marie put her hair in rollers then shoved the stupid girl under the hot hairdryer so we could talk and she wouldn’t hear.”

  “All that bullsh—nonsense with Sally-Opal, it’s not true.”

  “Oh, good heavens, son, I knew that the moment she telephoned Karlie and your sister put her on the phone to me. I’m thankful we stopped off at the salon first, before coming here.”

  “So you and Marie talked about me and Molly?”

  She nodded. “But it’s nothing you need worry about. We’re mothers, and we both understand you have your paths to walk. We’re not going to interfere.”

  So why did he get the impression that both mothers had already done that?

  “Will you say goodbye and thank you to Molly for me?” she asked.

  Saul nodded.

  “Tell her I’ll see...” She faltered, and closed her mouth before continuing. “Tell her I’ll see her around.”

  “You will?” Saul asked. “When?” It wasn’t likely his mom would visit Texas again. She’d never been out of Colorado before this. Too busy with the ranch and her family.

  His family. The same family. Relief overcame him again. “How about if I visit in around, say...” How long would it take him to walk off the Molly spell? A lifetime, and that was too long for his family to wait to hear his apology in person. “Say in a month?”

  “I’m guessing it’ll be more likely we’ll all come to visit you.”

  “How come?” he asked. “I don’t know where I’m going yet.”

  “No,” she said softly. “But I do.”

  He threw her a frown. “What exactly did you and Marie talk about?”

  “Our love for our children. Now, one more hug, and I’m driving out of here and getting on a plane that’ll take me home.” She hugged him hard, then pulled from him, her smile sweet and her whole demeanor relaxed and joyous. “Just like you’re going home.”

  “Mom,” he said cautiously. “I don’t know where my home will be.”

  “No,” she said again. “But I do.” She stepped back and looked over at the lodge house. “Now go get Molly, tell her I said goodbye, and get yourself gone Saul.” She looked up at him. “You can’t go back until you move away.”

  “Gone?” Molly asked, looking down the driveway and feeling like she’d been left out of the loop. “Just gone?”

  “I’m sorry, Molly,” Saul said, pulling her attention back his way. He shrugged. “I don’t know why, but Mom wanted to go quickly and quietly. She said to say goodbye and thank you.”

  Worry knotted Molly’s stomach. “But you did sort it all out between you, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said, looking nonplussed. “Somehow, yes we did. I’ll probably go visit—”

  “No!” Molly halted him with a raised hand. “We made a pact not to talk about when and where, remember?”

  “So we did.” Then he smiled, which turned into a laugh. “I feel sorry for that guy with the jet.”

  “Just be grateful it’s not you.” She moved to the pickup. “So let’s get you gone.” She got in the driver seat, not giving him a chance to complain about the decision she’d made. She was driving him into town, come hell or high water. “I think my favorite moment was Sally’s face when I said I’d turn her into a rattler.” Molly banged the door closed and threw him a raised eyebrow out of the opened window. “Coming?”

  He studied her for ages, then inhaled, picked up his backpack, and slung it in the tray of the pickup.

  “My favorite moment,” he said as he got into the passenger seat, “was the look on her face when Marie said the magic words, ‘helicopter or private jet’.”

  Molly agreed it was a good moment. “She’d never have gotten such luxuries from you.”

  “Too true,” he said and the look of relief on his face made her want to smile—if this wasn’t about to be the saddest moment of her life.

  She put the pickup into gear and burnt some rubber as she swung the vehicle down the curve of the driveway, ignoring Saul’s body wince.

  He ducked when she drove beneath the arch.

  “Really must remember to get someone to fix this arch,” she said, turning the pickup toward Hopeless.

  “You really must,” Saul agreed. “And don’t go forgetting or putting it on one of your possible lists.”

  “I’ll remember. Hey, what about that part when Sally-Opal...”

  They were still chuckling and mimicking Sally when Molly drove onto Hopeless Main Street, and it was only then that the reality of what she was doing hit her in the chest, like a blow from a jackhammer.

  Keep your cool. This is only going to take one-hundred-and-twenty seconds.

  Saul quietened, too—as soon as she pulled up.

  “Third time lucky,” Molly said in a sing-song voice, forcing bravado.

  “A bit easier this time, eh?” he asked with a slow smile. “Now we’ve had some practice.”

  Molly returned his smile. “A lot easier.” What a liar.

  “Good,” he said, and got out of the pickup.

  Molly squeezed her eyes shut for a few moments. Only a minute longer.

  He hauled his backpack off the bed and slung a strap over his shoulder, the weight of it settling on his broad back and toughened shoulders, then he stepped back from the pickup. “Are you going to be okay driving home?”

  Home? Why had he chosen that description? But it was her home and it was going to be her saving grace and perhaps he knew that. She nodded. He didn’t need to know that all she had to do was drive out of town the way she’d driven in, get home fast, and cry her crazy heart out for the rest of her life.

  “I’ll see you, Molly.”

  “Probably not,” she said, producing another smile. She’d lost him three times already. She couldn’t go through a fourth goodbye.

  He stared at her, unmoving, unsmiling.

  She dragged her eyes off him, shifted the pickup into drive and pressed her foot on the accelerator.

  Saul watched the pickup until it disappeared, his heart heavy. Was he being a jerk? Hell, yes. Was he going to do anything about it? Hell, of course not. But that goodbye had been harder than the first two.

  He forced himself to walk away. His legs felt leaden but he pushed on, making his stride long and deliberate.

  There wasn’t a soul in town. As though they’d all been warned to stay clear. He glanced at the salon but the door was closed. The bunting Mr. Jack had made fluttered overhead. The co-op market garden was deserted, which surprised him as he’d heard there had been a work team delegated the task of renovating it and making it bigger. The fruit and vegetable table was no longer there and the honesty jar was gone. It had likely been filled for the first time, since there’d been so many visitors in the last few days, and Mrs. Wynkoop would be tucked up in her house, counting the coins and planning a celebratory barbeque for the townspeople.

  He slowed as he glanced at the map he’d drawn, stuck to a temporary noticeboard on Winnie’s tourist booth.

  Everything in Hopeless was different to the way it had been when he’d first walked into town. But this new growth still had a temporary feel to it. They’ll get there. He took his eyes off the booth. They’re already getting there.

  He had a vision of how the town might look in a year, in a couple of years, in a decade.

  He stopped walking when the pain in his chest got so bad he couldn’t draw breath.

  He studied the ground, focusing on it until the pain got a little easier.

  Some form of awareness appeared to have a grip on him. Maybe it wasn’t a heart attack, this pain in his chest.

  He looked up at the You Are Now Leaving the Ha
ppy Hamlet of Hopeless sign.

  Were his thoughts all relative or were they absolute truths? His experiences had made him, hadn’t they? Or was he bigger than his experiences?

  Mind-numbing. Why was he thinking like this? He never delved into psychology, so where had these thoughts come from and why had they arrived now, here, at the end of Hopeless Main Street?

  He’d admit he felt troubled and confused but he’d felt like this before. Six years ago. He’d agree he was hopeful he’d be able to let go emotionally one day, and clear his head. Open his mind, and all that other psychobabble, so he was free to do whatever he damned well pleased. Free to move on. Free to dream. Free to explore and dig deeper for a reason to get up each morning. Free to live as he chose.

  Free to lose. Lose because of the choices the very freedom he respected had created.

  Go back by the way you have come. His grandpa’s favourite saying, although Saul had never understood what it meant.

  A mind-blowing attentiveness sat inside him like a heavy brick someone had shoved down his throat and he hadn’t been able to swallow.

  His mother’s words came to him. You can’t go back until you move away.

  It didn’t mean he had to return to Colorado. It was nothing to do with going anywhere in a physical sense, but in a mental one.

  He took another look at Hopeless, scanning the pretty pale blue and green buildings. The market co-op plot sheltered by the Spanish style terracotta and whitewash meeting hall. The new dog run area opposite. The temporary tourist booth outside the art and craft shop, and the flamboyant multi-colored bunting strung from building to building. Then he looked toward the far end of the main street, where Molly had driven away just minutes ago. The mirroring sign You Are Now Leaving the Happy Hamlet of Hopeless stared him down, the words branded in his head.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The day shouldn’t be so warm. The day ought not to be tormenting Molly with its brilliance. But it wasn’t the day that worried her—it was the nighttime yet to come. The first of many nights she’d be alone. Not physically, because in a few weeks she’d have her business up and running and the hacienda might be overflowing with clients and maybe with tourists—but she’d be alone in her head and her heart.

  She shifted on the top step of the exterior staircase to the hacienda. Her bottom had gotten a bit numb, since she’d been sitting on it for over an hour since she returned from Hopeless.

  She was surprised that no one had come to visit her to check up on her. Not her mother, not Winnie, nor Davie. Perhaps they knew she wanted to be alone with her aloneness.

  Had any of them stopped Saul on his walk down Hopeless Main Street to say goodbye to him? Or had he walked on, head down, just wanting to get out as fast as he could?

  Her eyes watered then.

  Misery. There was nothing positive to say about it.

  She scanned the vista before her. Fine Calamity land.

  A bird call in the distance, or maybe a coyote yip, brought her out of her drifting thoughts. She listened a while longer. There it was again—not a bird and not a coyote. It wasn’t even a real sound, not one she could determine.

  She lifted her chin, trying with all her might to push down the expectancy that sizzled inside her.

  Something was happening. Or about to happen.

  The air hushed, except for the hum of a few insects and the sound of the fountain in the courtyard which she’d switched on just for the pleasure of hearing the running water. It was supposed to be calming, the sound of water.

  She glanced at the driveway, looking for any disturbance, but there was nothing. She moved her focus a fraction and studied the curve in the driveway that dipped beyond to the hillside and the crumbling archway, which she couldn’t see from here.

  She saw the top of his head first and had to blink a number of times in case this was some nightmarish vision. Then his torso came into view as he climbed her driveway, the top of his heavy backpack visible above his wide shoulders.

  He wasn’t walking, he was hiking. His stride long and slightly too wide, which is the way she’d seen many hikers walk. They paced the ground evenly, bearing the weight they carried on their backs.

  She stilled, holding her breath. If she stayed like this and didn’t breathe, perhaps he wouldn’t see her and go on and retrieve whatever it was he’d left behind in his bedroom over at the lodge house.

  But he didn’t head for the lodge house, he headed straight for the hacienda and the steps Molly sat on.

  He came to a stop at the base of the staircase and hauled his pack off his shoulders, setting it down on the ground before turning to look up at her.

  “I didn’t even get as far as the You Are Now Leaving the Happy Hamlet of Hopeless sign,” he said. “Not the sign at the far end, anyway.”

  She’d better stand now, because sitting here, holding her breath, didn’t feel right.

  She needed to be armed and ready. “How come?” she asked, rising from the stone step.

  “Because I love you.”

  Her mouth dried out and her heart thumped in her chest. This was wonderful and terrible all at once. He loved her but it didn’t mean he’d stay here for her.

  “Did you come back just to tell me that?” Because she couldn’t leave Hopeless.

  She never wanted to leave. Was that selfish? Probably, but whatever they both needed was here. She felt that in a way that once might have frightened the living daylights out of her. But not anymore.

  “I came back to tell you,” he confirmed.

  “There’s more,” she said, making what might be her last stand.

  There was more to be said on her side, anyway. A lot more to be determined before she threw herself at him, most likely breaking a leg in her rush to get to him.

  “I love you, Molly. That’s the whole and only reason I came back.”

  “Yes, but—” She pushed the wonder of him telling her he loved her aside. “I want to know what happens now.’

  He didn’t lose eye contact. “I love you, Molly Mackillop. I love your mom and your grandmother. I love Winnie and I have one hundred percent respect for Davie. I love how you make a stand—” He smiled then. “Like I think you’re doing now.”

  Damn right she was. She wasn’t here to be his short-time girlfriend.

  “If you’ll let me,” he continued. “I’d like to stand at your side and help you make all the future stands you plan on making.”

  “To stay?” she fired back. “Or just for a month or two.”

  “For always.”

  She had to swallow hard at that. “But what will you do?” she asked, not willing to believe this until she knew all the facts.

  “I’ll take over your washhouse and start my hiking business.”

  “Lodge house.”

  A trace of a smile. “That one, too.”

  “So you’ll just walk in here, and demand my lodge house.”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  She felt the trace of a smile of her own.

  “I’ve got fifty grand to put into these businesses of ours,” he said. “What have you got?”

  “Twenty—once it’s returned to me. Plus my dedication and resolve, and that amounts to around another, say ten?”

  He nodded. “I’d say that was fair.”

  “And I’m likely to sell my work to magazines and tourist boards and such,” she said. “So I reckon I’d easily come up with another ten to twenty grand in next to no time.”

  “In which case, some of my fifty grand could go into the remaining renovations on the hacienda. Like the archway, for a start. And of course, I’d be offering my skills as a roof tiler free of charge because I’d be getting room and board, wouldn’t I?” His smile veered toward a grin.

  “Where will we live?” she asked. And will we live together, or will we have a partnership with benefits?

  “We’ll live in the two-story part of the hacienda. Together,” he added.

  “How together?”


  “For better or worse together.” He took a step up the staircase. “I made a mistake, Molly. I listened to my gut instinct.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You’re supposed to listen to your instinct.”

  He shook his head. “I forgot that I’d changed. I was stuck in the old mindset, not the new. Hell, I didn’t even realize there was a new way to think. Until I realized I was free. Free to stay.”

  “I don’t understand.” But she stepped down a step, wanting to get closer in order to gauge his expression more deeply.

  Saul stepped up another step. “It’s like the hurt was driving me. Being shunned—or feeling like I’d been shunned. I let that hurt tell me what to do. Like listening to the devil when an angel is smiling at you and telling you which road you should really be on.”

  It pained her to think that anything she might have done unintentionally had created this crossroad for him. “Are you referring to me?”

  “No, Molly. Not you. Not Alice. Not even fate. Just my bad that I didn’t listen to what sense was telling me. Do you know what they say in Colorado? If you climb onto the saddle, you’d better be ready for the ride. Well, I climbed on and got thrown. Worst of all, I didn’t get back on the horse.”

  No way was he the coward he was depicting himself as. “There isn’t any part of you—inside or out—that isn’t daring and brave, and more than that, there isn’t any part of you that doesn’t care.”

  He nodded slowly, but it wasn’t in agreement necessarily, more like he was thinking a lot deeper. “You get me. You got me from the start. I’m just catching up, here.” Another whisper of a smile flew over his face. “Will you give me a chance to show you how much I care? To show you how brave and daring I can be, by asking you to marry me when I’m not sure yet that you’ll say yes.”

  “Marry you?” That would mean he’d have to stay.

  “I don’t ask lightly, Molly. No messing around. We get married and we stay married. Long-term. No matter what.”

  “I can probably do that.” Just watch me.