The Heart of Hill Country

by Sherryl Woods

  The narrow escape had made her jittery for days. She hadn’t felt secure until she’d managed to trade her beloved blue convertible in for cash and a sensible beige sedan so old she hadn’t even been born the year it was made. No car that old should have been expected to survive the kind of journey she’d taken it on.

  She had moved quickly on to Colorado, then doubled back north to Cheyenne, looped up to South Dakota, then headed west to Seattle, enchanted by the idea of living by the water.

  In Seattle she’d found a one-room apartment in an area called Pill Hill for all the hospitals clustered together. For the first time she had searched until she landed a halfway decent job as a receptionist. She’d found a kindly obstetrician to make sure she was doing all the right things for the baby she’d already learned to cherish. She’d vowed that the baby would never have to pay for the mistakes she’d made. Oddly enough, though being Angela Adams had daunted her, being a single mom did not.

  In Seattle she’d even made a few friends, older, married women who invited her over often for home-cooked meals and the kind of nurturing concern she’d missed since leaving home. She took endless walks along Elliott Bay, bought fresh produce and fish at Pike’s Place Market, sipped decaf cappuccino in every Starbucks she passed.

  Clint seemed to have lost her trail or else he’d just given up and gone home, satisfied that he’d made a noble attempt to find her. No doubt that enabled him to sleep well enough. By then, he was probably sharing his bed with some other woman. At any rate, she’d felt it was safe to linger in Seattle. Contentment seemed almost within her grasp. She couldn’t bring herself to admit that she was disappointed that he had given up.

  Maybe, if it hadn’t been for the Seattle weather, she could have made it work. But as summer gave way to fall and then to a premature winter, all that rain and gloom had finally gotten to her. She began to miss clear blue skies and the kind of heat that baked the earth.

  When she packed up and moved on, she told herself her goal was merely sunshine. The undeniable truth was, she was heading straight for Texas, toward home.

  For better or worse, she was going back to become Angela Adams again. The spirited Hattie Jones had died in Montana. Like it or not, Angela Adams was a Texan through and through. Her baby would be, too. The heritage she had abandoned for herself, she had no right to dismiss for the baby. It should be up to her child to decide someday if being an Adams was too much of a burden.

  Not that she ever sat down and listed all the pros and cons for going home. The choice was instinctive. She’d hardly even needed a map to guide her south along the Pacific Coast and then east. If she’d stopped to reason it out, she probably would have found a hundred excuses for staying as far away from Texas as she could.

  She’d developed a bad case of jitters near the end and wound up in Dallas, bypassing the turn to the south that would have taken her home much sooner. For days she’d lingered, wandering around the stores that had been decorated for the holidays, pretending that maybe this would be the final destination. It was close enough to home for an occasional visit, but far enough away to maintain her independence.

  This afternoon, though, she had gotten into her car and impulsively started driving, taking familiar turns onto back roads and straight highways that were unmistakably leading her back to Los Pinos. Her static-filled radio had crackled with constant threats of an impending blizzard, but she hadn’t once been tempted to turn back or to stop. Not even the first flurries of snow or the blinding curtain of white that had followed daunted her. Home beckoned by then with an inevitability she couldn’t resist.

  It was ironic, of course, that it had been on a night very much like this that her mother had gone into labor practically on Luke Adams’s doorstep, had delivered Angela in his bed, with his help.

  That had worked out well enough, she reminded herself as she tried to work up the courage to leave the safety and comfort of the car for the bitter cold walk home. Their marriage was as solid and secure as a bank vault.

  Maybe that was why Angela had run from Clint Brady, had kept on running even when she knew he was chasing after her, even when she realized that it was possible that he wanted her back. She had seen what it could be like for two people who were head over heels in love, who faced problems squarely and grew strong because of them. She wanted nothing less for her child. If she couldn’t offer the baby that, then she could at least make sure there was a wide circle of family around to shower her son or daughter with love.

  As if in agreement, her baby kicked ferociously. Boy or girl, she thought defiantly, the kid was definitely destined to be a place kicker in the NFL. She rubbed her stomach and murmured soothing words, then drew in a deep breath.

  Exiting the car to face an icy blast of air, she shivered and drew her coat more snugly around her.

  “OK, little one,” she whispered as excitement stirred deep inside her, overcoming dread or at least tempering it. “This is it. Let’s go home.”

  2

  Clint Brady had always possessed the kind of charm that could get him out of jams and, just as easily, into trouble. It was a blessing and a curse. Recently, he’d spent a lot of time regretting that he’d wasted a single ounce of it on Miss Hattie Jones. She’d been nothing but trouble.

  Drawn to her blue eyes and dark auburn hair, enchanted by her from-the-gut laughter, seduced by a body that curved and dipped like a Rocky Mountain road, he’d tossed aside common sense and set out to get her into his bed. There’d been half a dozen years age difference between them, but he’d dismissed that as if it had been no more than a minute.

  Even when half of what she’d said hadn’t added up any better than his books at the end of the month, he’d dismissed reason and run with his hormones. He should have been old enough and smart enough to know better, which just proved how wrong things could go when a man started thinking with something other than his brain.

  Even so, for the better part of a year, he hadn’t regretted his decision. That choice had set them off on one heckuva steamy ride. Hattie had been like no woman he had ever known before—sweetly vulnerable one minute, a wickedly sensuous vixen the next. His life had been filled with an incomparable mix of unexpected laughter and impromptu sex. They hadn’t been able to get enough of each other. They’d learned to strip faster than a cook could shuck an ear of corn.

  Yet for all of Hattie’s spontaneity in the bedroom, she’d had a head filled with commonsense advice and straight thinking. He’d admired that almost as much as he had her generosity in bed.

  For a man who’d never known the meaning of permanence, not when it came to relationships, anyway, he had actually started to think about forever. The prospect had scared him worse than the first time he’d crossed paths with a bear and twice as badly as dancing away from a rattler.

  Right square in the middle of his panic, she’d dropped the news that she was pregnant. She’d stared at him over a candlelit dinner and said the words straight out, as blunt as a dare and twice as challenging. He figured there wasn’t a man on God’s earth that would blame him for being temporarily stunned into silence.

  Women, on the contrary, obviously expected a more immediate and more joyous response. Before he’d been able to gather his wits, before they could have anything resembling a rational discussion of their options, Hattie had come completely unglued. She’d hurled a bunch of accusations in his direction, then added that she was no more interested in commitment than he was. She’d verbally blasted the hard life she’d had living with him and had followed that almost immediately with the intentionally cruel announcement that she’d be giving the baby up for adoption and that he’d be the last man on earth she’d allow to claim any child of hers.

  Shaken by her venom, Clint had shouted good riddance as she’d flown out the door. The echo of car doors slamming had been as sweet a sound as he had ever heard.

  Naturally as soon as she was gone, t
hough, he’d calmed down and changed his mind. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about a little blue-eyed, red-haired girl or boy who’d grow up to take over the small ranch he owned in Montana. He’d finally have the family he’d always secretly longed for, but had convinced himself was out of reach as long as he was living such a hand-to-mouth existence. With a few hours of peace and quiet to soothe his frayed temper, the sound of wedding bells hadn’t seemed nearly so discordant.

  Unfortunately, Hattie was long gone by the time he came to his senses. He had been fool enough to figure that she would come back when she calmed down, that they would work it out. In all the months they’d been together, he’d somehow missed the fact that Hattie had a temper to match that red hair of hers.

  By dawn he’d begun to realize that he’d misjudged the depth of her fury. By noontime, he was calling himself every kind of fool for letting her get away. By four he was on the road, chasing down a trail that was already growing cold. No one in town had seen her go. She hadn’t even stopped for gas.

  He spent two blasted weeks he couldn’t spare playing cat and mouse with a woman who clearly didn’t want to be caught. When she ducked out the back door of a diner in Wyoming just as he came in the front, he blistered the air with a string of curses that could have been heard clear back in Montana. It was pure luck he’d been able to get a grip on himself before the sheriff had shown up to check out the lunatic on the premises.

  He told himself he’d had it, that she didn’t matter, that the world would keep on turning if he never set eyes on her again. He no longer allowed himself to picture his baby at all. It hurt too much to think that he’d never even know if he had a son or daughter.

  Back home with spring just around the corner, he worked the ranch every day until his back ached and sweat poured off his brow. He collapsed into bed each night, exhausted, but with his mind still alive with images of Hattie and his body aching for her touch.

  Then, despite his best efforts to keep them at bay, the images of their baby flooded in, the child he would never know if he left things as they were. He’d grown up fatherless, the youngest in a long line of kids and apparently the straw that broke his father’s back. His dad had left the day he was born. His own brothers and sisters had resented him from the beginning, had blamed him for their dad’s leaving. Only his mother had cared that he was alive. She was the only one with whom he’d kept in touch. It was easier on all of them if he kept his distance.

  No one on earth knew better than he what it was like to wonder, what it was like to yearn for a father’s smile, for a sense of identity that only a father could give. No kid of his should have to go through that. No kid of his would ever have a minute’s worry that he was unlovable, that it was his fault that his dad wasn’t around.

  And so he’d started the search all over again, picking up a clue here, another there, using a private detective when he could afford one, his own instincts when he couldn’t. At least once a month he was on the road, following a lead, showing a snapshot of a smiling Hattie, sitting on a low-hanging branch of a tree, skirt hitched up to her thighs. That picture had grown faded and blurred from handling, but her smile was still enough to make his heart ache.

  He was way past desperation now. By his calculations the baby was due any minute and there were times it seemed he was no closer to finding Hattie than he had been seven months ago. The trail of slim leads from the last detective had ended in Dallas where she’d been spotted at a cafe. It was a huge city with lots of nooks and crannies a woman could hide in, if she was of a mind to, which Hattie certainly was.

  Depressed by the needle-in-a-haystack enormity of the task facing him, Clint took refuge in a diner, the sort of cheap, inconspicuous place he’d discovered Hattie was drawn to. The too-bright lights glared off yellowing Formica and scarred chrome that had been polished until it managed a faint sparkle.

  The tired colored lights on a tiny artificial Christmas tree winked on and off erratically, reminding him that it was a season of joy and wonder. The place smelled of stale grease and fresh coffee. The jukebox mourned lost love. If crying had been in his nature, Clint would have wept.

  “Hey, sugar, you look like a man who needs a drink worse than he needs the kind of grub you’ll get in this place.”

  Clint looked up from the laminated menu and found himself staring into sparkling brown eyes. Unruly blond hair had been partially tamed into a luxuriant ponytail. Lush, upturned lips, which would have made his pulse race a year ago, did little more than draw a returning smile now. The tag on her pocket said her name was Betsy.

  “Betsy, are the burgers juicy and big?” he asked.

  “Big enough to shut down half a dozen arteries before you can say bypass surgery,” she responded.

  “Is the coffee hot and strong?”

  “Sugar, it’ll make the hair on your chest curl,” she said, her gaze pinned on that particular part of his anatomy as if she could see straight through his shirt.

  Clint nodded. “Then I’m in the right place, after all. Two burgers and keep the coffee coming.” He glanced around, assured himself that he was the only customer, then added, “And I’ll double your tip if you pull the plug on that jukebox.”

  “What’s the matter?” she inquired with a touch of feigned indignation. “You don’t like country?”

  “Under the right circumstances, I love country music.”

  Her expression radiated understanding. “It’s just that you’re so low-down, you don’t want to be reminded of it.”

  “Exactly.”

  She silenced the jukebox and left him alone after that, except to bring his food and refill his coffee cup half a dozen times. The last time, as the clock ticked on toward midnight, she lingered.

  “Sure you don’t want to talk about it? I’ve got nothing to do tonight but listen.”

  Clint couldn’t see the point in talking, but he couldn’t much see the point to keeping silent, either. He poured out the whole sad tale, while Betsy clucked and sympathized.

  “So, let’s see this woman who has you all tied up in knots,” she said eventually. “You have a picture of her?”

  He dragged out the snapshot and pushed it across the counter. Expecting no more than a glib comment about Hattie’s beauty, he wasn’t prepared for the quick, indrawn breath or the suddenly cautious expression.

  “What did you say her name was again?”

  “Hattie,” he told her. “Hattie Jones.”

  “No way,” Betsy said, then clamped her lips together as if she’d already said too much.

  “You recognize her, don’t you?” Clint demanded, his hopes soaring for the first time in months. “Has she been in here? Did she work here?”

  “Heck, no,” she said as if the idea were totally preposterous.

  The reaction startled him. He’d always thought Hattie was a high-class woman, but she surely wasn’t above an honest day’s hard work in a diner.

  “What, then? How do you know her? What name’s she going by now?” he asked. It would be no surprise to discover she’d taken an assumed name. Nothing about Hattie surprised him anymore, including the fact that she was quicksilver fast at slipping away from him.

  “Her own, I imagine.”

  “And that would be?”

  Betsy stared hard, straight into his eyes. “What’d you say you wanted with her? Give me the bottom line.”

  “I told you before, we have some unfinished business. That baby of ours needs a daddy and I intend to be one.”

  “You aiming to marry her?” Betsy prodded.

  “That’s one possibility,” he conceded, though he wondered if that particular answer wasn’t out of the question. Hattie had made her opinion of him plain as day by running from him time and again.

  “And the others?” Betsy asked.

  “We’ll work something out about the baby.” Clint offered up a fu
ll-wattage smile, the kind he’d been told was irresistible to women. “Come on, Betsy. I saw that book you were reading. You’re a sucker for a happy ending, aren’t you? Help me out here.”

  Betsy appeared to weigh his response before saying, “I hope to hell I’m not making a mistake.”

  “You’re not,” Clint reassured her, then held his breath and waited. He thought he’d won Betsy’s trust, but he was equally certain that something about Hattie was making her hesitate. Did she have a new boyfriend the size of a Dallas Cowboys linebacker? Or had she simply sworn Betsy to secrecy? Whatever the explanation, he saw the wariness in Betsy’s eyes give way to determination.

  “Her name’s Angie,” she said evenly. “Angela Adams.”

  She said it without the slightest hint of uncertainty that would come with recent acquaintance. In fact, she said it with the confidence of someone who’d known her long and well. Better than he had, maybe.

  “Angie Adams,” he repeated, testing the name on his tongue. “You’re sure?”

  “Sugar, she and I went all through school together, first grade right on through graduation. Of course, that’s when I quit, but last I heard Angie was going off to some fancy college in California.” Her brow creased. “Stanford, maybe. That was five, no, almost six years back. She’d be out by now.”

  If Hattie had been to Stanford, then Clint had a degree in nuclear physics. She’d been looking for a job in a low-class bar the night they’d met. He doubted Stanford gave out degrees in waitressing.

  “It can’t be the same person,” he insisted.

  “Then Angie has a twin,” she replied just as adamantly.

  “You haven’t seen her recently, have you?”

  “Not since graduation. Seemed like she couldn’t put enough distance between herself and home.”

  “What about her family? Are they here in Dallas?”

  “Heck, no. They’re over in Los Pinos. They practically own the whole town and most of the land surrounding it. Her granddaddy was the biggest rancher in the state till he turned the family spread over to her Uncle Cody. Her daddy’s the second biggest. Her Uncle Jordan owns an oil company.”