Secret Nights with a Cowboy

by Caitlin Crews

  “Who knew you two made such a great team?” she asked on round fifty or so of the interrogation.

  “What matters is the Trujillo family name,” Inez said severely.

  “Or that’s what ought to matter, Rae,” Kathy said, still frowning. “I would have thought you knew that, as the primary contact point for the family in the Flower Pot. I hope we don’t have to revisit our roles.”

  “Like how?” Matias asked. He’d spent the bulk of the interrogation talking quietly with their father, the two of them pretending not to notice what was happening.

  Too little, too late, jerk, Rae thought, glaring at him.

  He ignored her glare. “I don’t think we want me making flower arrangements. That won’t end well. And we all know Grandma’s arthritis means she can’t keep up with demand the way she used to.”

  “That’s not the point,” Kathy argued.

  “I get it. You want to make Rae feel bad.” Matias’s mouth curved a little as he gazed back at their mother and grandmother. “Mission accomplished.”

  Neither Inez nor Kathy liked to admit they could ever be in the wrong. Instead, they simply slid into one of their other long-standing sniping matches, this one concerning the long-disputed Blue Chair Incident. Who had torn the upholstery of the blue chair in the living room? Who had replaced it the first time? The second? And most crucially, which one of them had better taste in decorating?

  None of these questions were ever answered to anyone’s satisfaction.

  Rae made her escape as soon as she could, following Matias out into the sharp punch of the cold, sharp enough to take her breath away for a moment.

  “Are you going to the gala?” she asked her brother as they walked toward the same old trucks they’d both been driving forever, parked out by the fence. Matias’s looked sleek and well cared for, and purred when it moved. Rae’s looked like the vintage vehicle it was, and purred about as much as she did.

  Meaning it did not.

  “Trujillos always contribute to the gala, Rae,” Matias replied, grinning at her. “You know that. Or did you not hear it mentioned nine hundred times tonight?”

  “Never fear. I’ll do my best to uphold the family honor through flowers.”

  Matias stopped before he rounded the back of his truck, looking at her a little more closely. “You need me to go beat someone up?”

  It was such an offhanded offer. So matter-of-fact that she actually believed that if she told him she needed him to do just that, he would execute said older-brother beatdown in the same almost detached manner. Just a service he offered, like the morning deliveries from the greenhouses.

  Absurdly, it made her want to giggle. “Do I look like I need someone beaten up?”

  Matias shrugged. “You look like something.”

  Rae meant to smile, but she couldn’t quite get her mouth to work. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  Because she couldn’t say, My ex-husband is bringing a date to the gala, he told me to bring a date, and I want to die. Just like she couldn’t say, Said ex-husband’s younger sister is running the gala, and she refuses to return my phone calls about the centerpieces.

  Matias might condemn Rae in this scenario, the way so many others did. He had never said he was on Team Riley. But he also hadn’t signed up for her team, either. And there was always a lot of glowering …

  She really wasn’t sure she could handle it if she pushed him and he revealed that he didn’t support her at all. She would rather hold on to this moment instead, where he was just her big brother. Without opinions about her life.

  “That doesn’t sound convincing,” he said, studying her face.

  “Thank you for offering to have my back, Matias. I would hug you, but I figure that would break your Marine code.”

  “No, but it would be gross.” Matias grinned. “Cooties, you know. But, Rae.”

  She had been turning to open her door, but stopped.

  “If you need reinforcements, you know where to find me,” Matias said gruffly. Then slammed into his truck before she could do anything crazy, like force that hug on him. Something he only tolerated in small doses.

  The next morning, when one of the hourly employees appeared for her shift, Rae told her to take over. She marched out, got into her truck, and drove herself to the Lavender Llama before she could talk herself out of it.

  She parked out in front of the renovated barn and took her time getting out of her truck. And she wasn’t actually dragging her feet, but she felt as if she were filled with lead as she walked across the little parking area and let herself in.

  It was adorable, just as she’d heard. From literally everyone. More than adorable, it was the perfect mix of all the things that made Cold River the perfect mountain town, in Rae’s opinion. Every surface in the barn was piled high with beautiful things that people Rae knew had created, grown, crafted, or prepared. Artisan jams. Local honey and cheeses. Freezers of Everett beef. Yarn and sculptures and pottery. It was a permanent local craft and growers’ market.

  A love letter to this valley and all the people in it. She sighed a little, taking it in while her heart grew a few sizes.

  When she heard movement behind her, she turned. And found Amanda standing there in the door to what she assumed was an office.

  “This place is absolutely magical,” Rae told her. She meant it. “It’s like you made the entire Longhorn Valley come alive in one big room. I love it.”

  The Amanda that Rae had known when they were both younger could never have stared back with a face like stone, but this Amanda did it with seeming ease. It seemed like an uptick in hostility from their last run in. It made Rae’s stomach hurt.

  “I’m glad you like it,” Amanda said evenly. “What are you doing here?”

  Not unkindly. But not all that friendly, either.

  Okay, then. Rae told herself to get right to it.

  “The Trujillo family has provided centerpieces for the Harvest Gala since its inception,” Rae said, choosing not to focus on the stone face before her. Or all the things she’d lost that always seemed to outweigh whatever new thing she was trying to do. This wasn’t the place to dwell on … any of that. “I’m sure you know that.”

  “I’m aware of your family’s contributions in past years, yes.”

  Rae smiled the way she did in the shop. At her most difficult customers. “It’s hard not to take the new chairperson’s disinterest in continuing that tradition personally. If I’m honest, it feels a lot like a vendetta.”

  “We’re talking about flowers, Rae. Not pistols at dawn.”

  “No, we’re talking about you deliberately messing with a beloved tradition because you’re mad at me.” Rae waved a hand at all the Longhorn Valley’s finest goods, arrayed behind her. “Kind of like you’ve managed to track down every artist in the entire Longhorn Valley, but somehow never stopped by to ask if the Flower Pot, a Cold River institution, would like to be involved.”

  “I’m not required to include you in anything,” Amanda said softly, though her gaze flickered. “Just like you’re not required to stay married to my brother. These things happen, and we make the best of them.”

  And all the times in the past that Rae had run into Amanda, she’d been too busy drowning in her own guilt and loss and confusion to do more than shuffle off, miserably, and poke at her own wounds. The sharpest one first.

  She’d never given an explanation. She’d waited for Amanda—and everyone else—to do what they would and had reacted accordingly. Rae had told herself it was a noble thing to refuse to defend herself, and maybe that was true when it came to gossipy old dragons like Lucinda Early.

  But Amanda had once looked up to her. Rae had loved that.

  Rae had loved her.

  “Riley doesn’t hate me, Amanda,” she said softly. “Why do you?”

  “He loves you,” Amanda threw at her. “But I love him. I don’t think you ever did.”

  That tore through Rae, and it shouldn’t have. She blew ou
t a breath, not entirely sure she was going to be able to remain on her own two feet. She felt dizzy and sick, and incandescent with the need to defend herself. To explain.

  Just this once.

  Instead, all she did was gaze back at this girl she still considered a younger sister. All the years and fighting and benefits in the world couldn’t change that. She accepted that Amanda no longer felt that bond, truly she did. She even supported it, because she’d likely feel the same way if Matias were ever messed up about a woman.

  But that didn’t make Rae ache any less.

  “I understand what you’re doing,” she said when she was sure she could speak without showing any of her inner turmoil. It was hers. She held it tightly, blade always facing her, and she felt it cut at her now. “But this is a small town, Amanda. You know that as well as anyone.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rae shrugged. “I don’t think you’re going to find you can throw a stone without hitting someone who has hurt feelings about some or other member of your family. All your brothers have exes right here in town. Are you going to bar them all from the Harvest Gala? It would be empty.”

  Amanda shifted where she stood. Rae took that as a minor triumph.

  But her chin lifted, because she was as stubborn as any of her brothers. “I’m surprised you’re even aware of the Harvest Gala this year. What do you care about a stuffy event from your old life when there’s the Cold River social scene to throw yourself into?”

  That was obviously intended to sting.

  Rae decided she would die before showing that it did.

  “My grandmother cares. A lot.” She smiled at Amanda even though she didn’t feel much like smiling. “Do you think maybe I should go talk to your grandmother? If memory serves, there’s not a whole lot Janet Kittredge likes more than a Longhorn Valley tradition.”

  Amanda sighed. Then inclined her head slightly. “You make an excellent point.”

  Rae pushed her advantage. “I’m glad that we get to live in a place where our grandmothers’ feelings matter. It would be great if this were also a place we didn’t have to hate each other because of a relationship that started when your brother and I were practically babies.”

  “I’m practically a baby,” Amanda replied lightly, though her gaze was dark. “Ask anyone. They’ll line up to tell you all about how I’m practically still in diapers. And yet I’ve managed not to treat anyone in my life the way you’ve treated Riley.”

  “I’m not going to debate you.”

  “Maybe you should!” Amanda threw at her, emotion all over her face. “Maybe you should feel something, Rae!”

  Rae remembered this Amanda. The cute little girl with four overbearing older brothers, who had clung to Rae as if Rae were the only thing that might save her. When Rae’s actual younger sister, Tory, had spent half her time annoying Rae and the other half acting like she wished Rae didn’t exist.

  Amanda had been intense and offbeat and invested.

  She still was, clearly. “Maybe you should stop walking around letting everybody think the worst of you. It’s like you want all the judgment and commentary and gossip. Is that it? Do you?”

  Rae laughed, though it came out a little rough when her heart was kicking at her and her throat felt tight. “But everyone takes such pleasure in thinking the worst of me. I’d hate to deprive them.”

  Amanda didn’t look made of stone now. She looked as if she ached as much as Rae did—and that made Rae shake deep inside.

  “I don’t understand how you could be so happy,” Amanda said, her voice rougher. Quieter. “And then so miserable. I don’t understand how it’s possible.”

  “Not everything works out,” Rae managed to say, her eyes wet. “I know you’re still a newlywed, but you know that. More marriages don’t work out than do.”

  “But not yours,” Amanda whispered. She lifted her hands, but then dropped them again as if she didn’t know what to hold on to. Or how. “You two were supposed to last forever.”

  Rae understood that this was why she’d been avoiding Amanda all this time. Guilt and shame and hurt feelings were ways to hide. She could wallow in them, then quickly turn to self-righteousness. How dare people blame her, she had to leave, and so on. It fired her up and made her feel better about her choices.

  Strip all that away and there was only this.

  There was only grief.

  Love turned upside down and emptied out.

  “It’s like flowers,” Rae managed to get out, wishing she hadn’t come here. Wishing she’d never started this conversation, no matter what her grandmother thought about the Harvest Gala. No matter what dinner table attacks she had to withstand. “They’re beautiful. They make people happy. A little water and they can brighten up whole rooms. But they don’t last, Amanda.” Her voice was tellingly, horrifyingly thick. “They were never, ever supposed to last.”

  And she didn’t wait for Amanda to reply to that. She couldn’t. She wheeled around and bolted, pushing her way out into the glare of the too-cold morning, telling herself that the water on her face was from the frigid slap of the wind.

  She wiped at her cheeks when she got in her truck, but her heart was pounding in a sickening sort of way that meant she could do nothing but sit there and let it. That Riley-shaped headache at her temples was blooming, punching in deep, and she could barely manage to get a breath in.

  And all the while, deep inside, that sharp blade cut and cut and cut and warned her to keep her secrets to herself.

  Sometimes she thought secrets were all she had.

  “You’re doing the right thing,” she muttered at herself. Over and over again. “You are.”

  But instead of pointing her truck toward the Flower Pot and getting back to work the way she knew she should, she went to find Abby instead. Her friend wasn’t working at Cold River Coffee today, a bored teenager with confusing hair informed her.

  “She has reduced hours,” the teenager said. Then, as if she expected this to be news to Rae, “She has a little kid. So.”

  Somehow, Rae did not take the teenager’s head off. Or shout that she had held tiny little Bart Everett within a day of his birth, thank you very much.

  Rae drove out of town, heading out into the sweeping, spectacular part of the valley that waited on the other side of the hill. She tried Cold River Ranch first, driving up the long dirt road to the sprawling Everett family ranch house that was a happier place these days entirely because of Abby.

  And, okay, the other Everett additions too, she amended when Ty’s wife, Hannah, appeared at the ranch house’s kitchen door in all her rodeo queen glory, her mascara perfect and her blond hair missing only a tiara.

  But then, with Hannah Everett, the tiara was always implied. Even when Abby could hear the overly eager sounds of a children’s program playing from somewhere behind her, and excited cries from her little boy, Jack.

  “Abby’s next door, sugar,” Hannah told her. “She and her grandma are getting ahead of the Thanksgiving baking, bless them.”

  And that was how Rae found herself five miles back in the other direction, pulling up outside the old Douglas farmhouse the way she had so many times before she could almost let the truck coast her into her usual parking spot on autopilot.

  She shivered when she got out, sinking deeper into her coat. She hurried across the yard toward the farmhouse’s kitchen door. Out back, the orchards where she and Abby and Hope had played as girls stood there, gnarled and empty this time of year and ominous against the cold gray sky.

  They’re not ominous, she corrected herself. They’re apples. Get a grip.

  Her heart had stopped beating quite so hard and heavy. Her throat wasn’t quite so tight. But that grief was still there, wrapped around her, a grip she couldn’t shake.

  Still cutting at her way down deep.

  Rae didn’t knock on the farmhouse door. She threw it open and let herself in, almost tripping her way inside in her haste.

  And instantly
found herself wrapped up tightly in nostalgia and pie.

  Abby and her grandmother were sitting at the sturdy kitchen table dusted with flour, cutting up fruit, making fillings in old glass bowls, and rolling out dough. Behind them, arrayed along the counter, the pies they’d already baked sat cooling.

  Rae felt her eyes prickling with tears.

  “I thought you were working today,” Abby said mildly.

  Martha Douglas eyed Rae over the heap of fruit before her, her hands almost as gnarled as the orchard’s bare branches outside. But there was nothing ominous about the way she wielded her paring knife. Her hands were nimble and quick and infinitely comforting.

  “I’ve never turned down an extra pair of hands,” she said in her usual matter-of-fact way.

  Rae felt as if something inside her was quivering. Like someone had hit a tuning fork and it was vibrating so loudly that it should have been shaking the walls of the house. The whole way out here, she’d been desperate to get to Abby, sure that her friend was the only one who could settle her. Make sense of her. Make this mess she’d been in for years seem reasonable and rational, because that was what Abby did.

  Because try as she might, Rae couldn’t seem to dislodge the conversation she’d had with Amanda. It was pressing down on her like stone. Every now and again, it took her breath.

  I don’t think you ever loved him, Amanda had said.

  But here in this kitchen, she couldn’t muster up the argument she’d used at the Lavender Llama. Because the Douglas farmhouse was the opposite of temporary. It was exactly the same as Rae remembered it, always, stretching back all the way to her earliest memories. And Martha Douglas was the same. Quietly competent, profoundly no-nonsense, and as likely to dispense a brisk attitude readjustment as she was a piece of pie in place of a hug.

  No pointless, perishable flowers here. The Douglas family had always been about the land. Seasons came and went, but the land remained.

  Rae wanted to spill it all out. Everything inside her. Throw it on the table with all the baking supplies, rolling pins and sugar and baking soda. Because between them, Abby and her grandmother could solve any problem, surely. Even hers.