by Jodi Thomas
Piper gazed out over the crowd. She could call almost every person by name. This was her town. She belonged here. The memory of one night with a loving man would have to be enough to last her for years to come. After all, neither of them had talked about tomorrow. She knew she belonged here, and he had his goals that no doubt pulled him elsewhere.
But he’d always be the face in her dreams.
The governor greeted the crowd. Her father thanked the heroes. Her two brothers in their white Stetsons stood beside him.
Sam wore his fireman’s suit, and Colby wore the state trooper uniform. She was very proud of them both. They’d saved her and Anna’s life. They’d also saved Boone’s life, not that he deserved it.
Pecos brought Mr. Winston and Kerrie to stand as his family. He did not invite his parents. Winston couldn’t have looked prouder if he’d raised Pecos himself.
Anna had the same look. Pride. She’d asked Piper to be her maid of honor tonight at a private wedding. “We don’t know what the future holds, but we want to step into it together. It’ll take some work, but we’ll fit each other in our lives.”
Finally, the speeches were over. People circled around talking and shaking hands. It seemed Piper blinked and Colby was gone. Maybe it was for the best. Neither had the nerve to start the conversation they needed to have.
She searched the crowd and finally spotted him talking to a family near the back almost against the trees. Piper touched Sam’s arm and whispered, “Who is that Colby’s talking to?”
“That’s Daily Watts. Anna was telling me about him. It seems Monday he did pass out on his way home and those three kids took him to their house. That’s why he was late Tuesday and got fired. Their mother had known him years ago when he ran the garage. He was always fair and nice to her, so she let him sleep it off on her couch. The next afternoon when the kids got home he’d cleaned up her house. So, she let him stay for supper since he’d cooked it. When he started to leave the kids started crying and begged for her to let him stay.
“We found him. We get to keep him,” one said.
After a million tears she agreed they could keep him if he was willing to stay until he got on his feet.
He said he had nowhere to go, so he’d stay but only if he could help out around the place. Her car needed work. Plumbing needed fixing. The roof could use some patching.
Piper shook her head in disbelief. “Things like that don’t happen anywhere but here.”
“That’s not the best part. Anna checked. Daily owns his house outright and he also owns the garage. Their father had not left it to both boys, only to Daily.”
“Does the brother know?”
Sam grinned. “I’m sure he knew, but now the whole town will know.”
Piper smiled as she was pulled away to talk to people. Half an hour later she entered the firehouse bay area to join a party thrown for the heroes.
Sam was there standing behind Anna while she told the governor what needed to be done at the state level.
Piper had a feeling the governor would be leaving soon.
She saw Colby standing over by a group of troopers and Rangers. She made up her mind that she didn’t want to spend her life remembering him. Wishing she’d said one thing to let him know how she felt. Wishing he’d said one word that she needed to hear.
She’d always done the right thing for the town. Always been honest. Always been proper. This time she had to take a risk. Even if she lost, Colby was worth a try.
Fighting back tears, she knew that she’d found the one thing she couldn’t give up for her career. The one thing she couldn’t live without.
The men parted as she slowly walked right up to Colby, pulled off his hat, and kissed him. Not a polite kiss, but a take-me-home-cowboy kind of kiss.
Colby’s arms circled her as if they were the only two in the room. Her heels dropped off as he lifted her off the ground.
The troopers were laughing and yelling before she finally pulled away.
Colby looked only at her. As he always had, he saw deep inside her. “Mayor, you’re starting something that will be hard to stop.”
“I don’t want to stop. Not ever.” There was so much more she wanted to say. She didn’t want to stop seeing him or loving him or sleeping with him. “Are you okay with that plan, Trooper?”
He pulled her against his chest and whispered, “I’m in. I’ll be your bodyguard for as long as you’ll have me.”
He slid his hand down her arm and laced their fingers together. “Boys,” he shouted loud enough for her brothers to hear. “I think it is about time you met my lady, Piper Jane Mackenzie.”
Everyone in the firehouse except her two brothers began hooting and cheering, and eventually even Max and Alex couldn’t hold back a smile.
Watch for the next Honey Creek novel
from the New York Times bestselling Jodi Thomas,
on sale in Spring 2021.
Read on for a sneak preview . . .
Chapter 1
October in Someday Valley, Texas
Marcie Latimer sat on a tall wobbly stool in the corner of Bandit’s Bar. Her right leg, wrapped in leather, was anchored on the stage. Her left heel hooked on the first rung of the stool so her knee could brace her guitar. With her prairie skirt and her low-cut lacy blouse, she was the picture of a country singer. Long black hair and sad hazel eyes completed the look.
She played to an almost empty room, but it didn’t matter. She sang every word as if it had to pass through her soul first. All her heartbreak seemed to drift over the smoky room, whispering of a sorrow so deep it would never heal.
When she finished her last song, her fingers still strummed out the beat slowly as if dying.
One couple, over by the pool table, clapped. The bartender, Wayne, brought Marcie water and said the same thing he said every night. “Great show, kid.”
She wasn’t a kid. She was almost thirty, feeling like she was running toward fifty. Five months ago her future was looking up. She had a rich boyfriend. A maybe future. A way out of this dirt road town.
Then, the boyfriend tried to burn down the city hall in the town thirty miles away and toast the mayor of Honey Creek, who he claimed was his ex-girlfriend. But that turned out to be a lie too. It seemed her smart, good-looking someday husband was playing Russian roulette and the gun went off not only on his life but hers as well.
He’d written her twice from prison. She hadn’t answered.
She’d tossed the letters away without opening them. Because of him she couldn’t find any job but this one, and no man would get near enough to ask her out. She was poison, a curiosity.
Marcie hadn’t known anything about his plot to make the front page of every paper in the state, but most folks still looked at her as if she should have been locked away with Boone Buchanan. She was living with the guy; he must have known what he was planning.
She shook off hopelessness like dust and walked across the empty dance floor. A cowboy sat near the door in the shadows. He wore his hat low. She couldn’t see his eyes, but she knew who he was. Long lean legs, wide shoulders, hands rough and scarred from working hard. At six-feet-six, he was one of the few people in town she had to look up to.
“Evening, Brand.”
“Evening, Marcie,” he said, so low it seemed more a thought than a greeting.
She usually didn’t talk to him, but tonight she thought she’d be civil. “Did you come to see me play?”
“Nope. I’m here for the beer. It’s Wednesday.”
She laughed. One beer wasn’t worth the twenty-mile drive to Someday Valley. He’d had to pass two other bars to get to this rundown place.
“You ever think of buying a six pack and staying home for a month?”
“Nope.”
Marcie couldn’t decide if she disliked Brandon Rodgers or just found him dead boring. If they spoke they seemed to have pretty much the same conversation every week. He was a Clydesdale of a man, bigger than most, but easy moving.
<
br /> It wasn’t like she didn’t know him. He was about three years older than her, farmed a place north of here. Ran cattle she’d heard. Folks always commented that the Rodgers clan kept to themselves, but lately he was the only Rodgers around. His mother died and his sister married and moved off. He’d never dated anyone that she knew about, but he had gone off to the Marines for six years in his twenties.
“You want to sit down?” He dipped his worn Stetson toward the chair to his left.
She thought about yelling her surprise. He’d never asked her to join him. But, Marcie didn’t want to make a scene. He never talked to anyone and no one talked to her, so they could sit at the same table in silence together.
In a strange way they were made for each other, she decided. “Sure.”
“You want a drink?” His words were so low they seemed faded by the time they reached her.
“No.” Marcie folded her arms and stared at him. They’d run out of conversation and with his hat on, she couldn’t see anything but the bottom half of his face. Strong jaw. A one-inch scar on the left of his chin was almost camouflaged by his week-old beard. He wasn’t handsome or homely.
She decided to wait him out. She guessed he wasn’t a man to enjoy chatter.
“I’m not trying to pick you up, Marcie,” he finally said with the same emotion he’d read a fortune cookie.
“I know. ‘You want to sit down’ is the worst pickup line ever.” She raised her voice slightly as a half dozen good ol’ boys who’d been fishing stumbled in. They all lived in Someday Valley, most with their folks, and even though they were almost her age not one had a full time job.
Joey, the shortest of the pack, bumped into Marcie’s chair. He must have heard her because he grinned.
“I got a line that never fails.” The stinking guy pushed his chest out as if performing to a crowd.
Marcie smelled cheap liquor on his breath and fish bait on his clothes. She moved an inch closer to Brand. She wasn’t afraid of Joey, but she didn’t want her sins listed again. Some of the bar regulars liked to remind her that she was a jail bird’s girlfriend.
Luckily, Joey was more interested in talking about himself tonight. “I can pick up any gal with just a few words. I walk up to a table of pretty girls and say, ‘Evening ladies. This is your lucky night. I’m single and here to dance. I’ve got a college education and I know my ABDs.’ ”
He held up a finger to silence everyone before adding, “Wanta C what I can do?”
The fishing buddies laughed. One slapped Joey on the back. “Don’t waste your lines on Marcie, she’s not interested. She’s sworn off all men since she slept with the bottom of the barrel.”
She didn’t much like Brand but right now he was the safest bet in the room. A pack of drunks was never good, and they all appeared to have a few bottles of courage in them.
Another fisherman mumbled, “Yeah, she was shacking up with a killer. They say a man who thinks about burning folks alive is sick in the head. If you ask me, she knew what he was planning. She don’t deserve to just walk away free when that fire Boone set almost killed four people. Least we should do is give her a spanking.”
The oldest of the group added as he scratched his bald head, “Maybe we should strip her and paint an A on her like they did in that old book Mrs. Warren made us read.”
“They stripped a woman in The Scarlet Letter?” Joey’s squeaky voice chimed in. “Maybe I should have read that.”
His buddy added, “There were no pictures, Joey.”
The sound of the bartender racking a shotgun silenced the room. “Closing time. One more drink and I’m turning off the lights.”
The gang turned their attention to the bar. Marcie had never seen the bartender fire the shotgun, but he’d slapped a few drunks senseless with the barrel.
Brand slid his half-empty beer across the table and stood. “Get your guitar. I’m taking you home.”
Marcie managed to force a smile proving she wasn’t afraid. “Brandon, that won’t be necessary. I live across the street in the trailer park. I can walk home.”
“It’s not a suggestion, it’s a favor and I told you, I’m not picking you up. That trailer park isn’t safe to walk through in daylight much less after midnight.”
She looked up and for once she could see his eyes. He looked worried, almost as if he cared. “I’m not your problem.” Marcie laced her fingers without making any move to follow his orders. “I’m no one’s problem. I don’t think you even like me, so why act like you care now?”
She’d slept with some truck driver a few months after Boone went to jail. He had bragged that she told him all kinds of things about what wild Boone did and how she claimed the driver was better in bed than crazy Boone. He must have known she wouldn’t say anything. If she had, no one would believe her.
She looked up at Brand Rodgers. He seemed to have turned into a six foot six tree wearing a Stetson. Silent. Waiting beside the table.
“Oh, all right,” she said as if they’d been arguing. “I’ll let you take me home.”
A few minutes later as they walked past his pickup, Brand placed her guitar in his truck bed and opened her door. The black case vanished in the black of the night.
She thought of telling him they could easily walk, but somehow after her day, riding home seemed a treat.
Brand was safe. She’d never heard a bad word about him. Marcie swore under her breath. Thinking Brand was better than most wasn’t saying much.
She gave him directions to her place back in the tree line near the end of the trailer park. She’d grown up here. Living with her folks until her mom left when she was seven. Then her dad ran the bar for a while until he got sick. Marcie took over running the place before she was out of high school. Ordering supplies. Cleaning the bar after closing time. Hiring the help.
At twenty, when her brother was old enough to take over, she’d left to make it in the music business. Three years later she was back. Her dad was dying, her brother had disappeared, and the bar was in debt. The only good news, she guessed, was the new owner let her work for him.
Wayne wasn’t a bad boss. He paid fair and she did most of the work while he drank away most of the profits, but he did pay her extra for singing. Twenty an hour and tips. Which tonight had been seven dollars and a quarter.
The lone light bulb blinked through the trees as Brand drove down toward her ten-by-thirty home. The place didn’t seem so bad when she walked through the trees in the dark and slipped inside. But now, with the headlights blinking on the rusty sides and the broken window glass that had been boarded with cardboard, the small trailer looked like something abandoned to decay.
“This is far enough,” she whispered. “You might get stuck in the mud if you go much farther.”
He stopped and got out.
She did the same. “I can make it from here.”
He started walking beside her. “I’ll walk you to your door, Marcie.”
Brand didn’t seem to notice the mud or the slow drizzle of rain. He was a man who worked outside. He was used to the weather.
She had a feeling she’d be wasting her breath if she argued about him coming to the door. She didn’t want to tell him that no man had ever walked her to her door. Boone used to call and wait at the park entrance until she came out. He’d said he didn’t want to get his car dirty on the bad roads, but Marcie always thought it was more that he didn’t want anyone to see him picking her up.
Marcie stepped on the first concrete block that served as a step. She turned back to Brand. “Thanks. I’m home safe now.”
He touched the brim of his hat and stepped away without a word. It was so dark in the trees that she wondered if he’d find his way back to his truck.
Marcie slipped inside and locked the door. Loneliness closed in around her like a heavy fog making the air so thick she had to work to breathe. All her life she’d felt alone. Even when her mother was alive and never had time for her. Or, when her father was ill and never
left the trailer. And now, people only talked to her when they had to.
She curled up on her couch and just sat in the dark. There had been a time when she’d had dreams. This place seemed a pod where she could imagine a future, as a singer in Nashville or a rich man’s wife. She could mold herself into anyone. All she had to do was break free of this place and bloom.
She was almost asleep when she heard movement in the brush outside. A stray dog. Maybe a coyote looking for a late night snack.
Then mumbling loud enough to pass through the cardboard that blocked her view. What good did it do to lock the door if anyone could come through the broken window?
“You in there, Marcie?” A voice sounding very much like Joey yelled, then giggled. “Me and the boys thought we’d come by and talk. We brought beer.”
“Go away,” she said too low for them to hear.
Someone knocked on the door. Tried the knob.
Joey’s voice came again. “Now come on, Marcie. You don’t want us to have to break the lock. We just thought we’d pay you a visit. Just to be friendly, you know.”
Laughter came from the shadows.
“Go away,” she whispered again. Tears slipped down her face. She was all alone. There was no one to help her. No one.
The knob rattled again then someone pounded on the door as if she might not know they were there.
The man on the other side of the door cussed and his buddies laughed.
Marcie moved to the window slit in the thin door and peeked out. Four, maybe five shadows, moving around in the moonlight. More creatures than human if only in her mind.
“Kick the door in,” the bald shadow in the back growled then threw his empty beer can against the trailer. “We ain’t got all night.”
Joey’s voice sounded again. “Marcie. Come out. We ain’t going to hurt you. We just want to have a little fun.”
She heard the roar of an engine before she saw the black truck that seemed to fly from the trees. Branches broke and mud sprayed as tires hit the dirt.
Brand!
When he was five feet away he hit the brakes, cut the engine, and jumped out with both boots hitting the ground in a thud.