Lone Star Rising

He sent up a silent prayer to just keep it coming, keep it coming.

Then things seemed to go into slow motion.

The next pain gripped Robbie even more intensely than the others. To Zack she seemed like an angel under his hands, spreading her wings in silent, intent submission, as a tiny dark head steadily slid out against his cupped palm. With his free hand he grabbed a corner of the receiving blanket to steady the slippery baby. The head rotated, revealing a darling pinched little face, then easily, slowly, powerfully, the shoulders, one then the other, followed. The rest of the tiny body appeared as if materializing from heaven.

Perfect! She was perfect!

Dear Reader,

At the start of THE BABY DIARIES series, I observed that babies seldom arrive when it is convenient. To prove my point, I decided to have the baby in this story arrive on Zack Trueblood and Robbie Tellchick’s first date!

This couple seems to have everything kind of backward. People usually fall in love, get married and then experience labor and delivery together. But Zack and Robbie are the kind of people who forge ahead with courage and do whatever they have to do, even if that means facing down a murderer.

By the time the two of them finally admit they can’t live without each other, they’ve caught the murderer, and eventually they get the marrying part done, too.

So here we are again, traveling the remote winding roads of the beautiful Texas Hill Country to the historic town I’ve named Five Points.

And while I’m sure there are real arsonists and thugs and corrupt politicians in this world, this small town and these quirky characters are pure fiction.

As always, my best to you,

Darlene Graham

P.S. I love to hear from my readers! Drop me a line at P.O. Box 72024, Norman, OK 73070 or visit www.darlenegraham. com and send an e-mail. While you’re there take a peek at the third book in THE BABY DIARIES trilogy, Lone Star Diary, coming July 2006 from Signature Select Saga.

Lone Star Rising

Darlene Graham

This book is for Ray, the whistling carpenter, the original “man from Texas” in my life.

No daughter could ask for a better father!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

DEAR DIARY,

I feel like a fool for even writing the words Dear Diary—a woman my age (37!), a pregnant mother of three who definitely has better things to do with her time than scribbling in a diary like some teenager.

But I promised my sister Markie that I would start a diary again, just like the three of us did when we were young. Markie said to call it a journal if it made me feel better. Whatever I call it, she claims writing out my feelings will help me, heal me, give me focus, put me in touch with my deepest desires and blah, blah, blah. I don’t know about all that, but God knows I could use a little diversion.

So here goes.

Dear journal, or diary or whatever, allow me to introduce myself. Roberta McBride Tellchick. Bankrupt widow. Mother of three boys with yet another on the way. Freckle-faced, redheaded middle sister. The one sandwiched in between two smart, vivid brunettes like a piece of pale cheese.

What can I possibly have to write about here? My sister has no concept of what it is like to walk in my low-heeled shoes. She’s caught up in an exciting, glamorous life in Austin and has recently gotten herself blissfully married to the gorgeous man of her dreams.

Okay. That’s not fair. Markie’s had some serious pain to deal with in her life, and I have to say, I’m very proud of the way she handled herself. I mean, giving a baby up for adoption when she was only seventeen! And then seeing him again out of the blue when he’s all grown up. Markie claims writing in her baby diary kept her sane while she endured all that pain so long ago. She says it’s in our blood, this urge to write everything down. She says I’m not supposed to censor my feelings on these pages or worry about what anybody else thinks.

Okay. I have just had the day from hell.

I look like I’ve got a beach ball stuck under my shirt and I didn’t have time to wash my hair before I went to work. I’m exhausted because I have to go to work at dark-thirty, which is the way of it when you’re a lowly waitress in a diner that specializes in the monster Texas breakfast. We have to get in there and help Parson—that’s been old Virgil’s “real” name ever since he was in the Navy—roll out the biscuits and chop up the home fries.

Nattie Rose, the other waitress at the Hungry Aggie, told me I don’t have to come in early if I don’t want to. She is too kind, that Nattie Rose. Has a real heart of gold, even if she does cake on the eye makeup worse than Tammy Faye Bakker. I told her that I am grateful for the job, and I am not going to start slacking off my very first week. Especially since I’ll be taking off to have the baby in only five short weeks. It’s ridiculous for me to be working at all in my condition. I know that. But Danny left me and the boys with nothing, and I do mean not a thing. It looks like the farm is gone for good now, not that I’m sorry to be away from that place, away from the terrible memories.

I try my best not to relive the fire, but sometimes your mind just insists on rolling the video anyway, you know? It’s been almost four months now and I still don’t have the report from the local fire marshal. What’s the holdup?

At least I finally started getting the social security checks, thank the Lord, but that money barely covers groceries and rent. It’s not enough for those new Nike tennis shoes my oldest is suddenly needing. Not enough for the extras I’ll be needing for this baby. I’m still holding out hope for the insurance money on the barn.

I don’t want to waste paper and ink on my problems. I find it’s actually easier to focus on something trivial like my hair. When I woke up and looked at the clock this morning, I had no choice but to twist the mess up on top of my head and clip it up into a treetop. But since my hair’s the kind that has a mind of its own, by noon I’d developed a frizzy little orange halo around my face. Very, very cute.

But what does it matter how I look when—now who on earth could be ringing my doorbell? The boys know it’s too late to be having any kids over.

WHEN ROBBIE opened the door, the first thing that registered were Zack Trueblood’s dark eyes, traveling over her face, then widening with what she imagined to be involuntary shock—or was it disgust?—when he came to her hair. But he rearranged his expression quickly enough. “Hello, Mrs. Tellchick.”

“Hello, Zack.”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?” Again his gaze slid to her hair, then slammed back down to the porch boards, then flicked up to her face, once again composed and polite. Robbie thought it was decent of him to skip her pumpkin-shaped midsection.

But when he looked once more at her hideous hair, she gave him a level gaze and patted it. “It’s easy, you know. I just stick a fork in the toaster and I’m done.”

The corner of his mouth lifted a little then, but he didn’t actually smile. His expression said he was here on serious business. Oh, Lord help me, Robbie thought. She was in no mood for this. But a bad feeling in her gut told her this was some kind of follow-up visit about the fire.

“May I come in?” The way he said it was almost apologetic. Zack, she remembered from high school, had always been famously polite.

“Sure.” The door of the old house Robbie had recently moved into creaked like something out of a horror movie as she opened it wider for him.

Robbie imagined a grossly pregnant widow was so not supposed to think thoughts like, Damn, that man is hot. But boy, was he ever. Deep-set black eyes, bronze complexion, heavy black hair. As he ambled past she couldn’t help a quick glance at his muscular backside, and she caught a whiff of the most delicious aftershave she’d ever smelled.

As for herself, Robbie imagined the oniony odor of the home fries over at the Hungry Aggie mixed with the lingering aroma of the spaghetti sauce she’d made for the boys was enough to make any man retch.

She had seen Zack at the diner several times this past week with a couple of his firefighter buddies. Booth six. She suspected those big tips under the saltshaker were from him. Was that out of guilt? Pity? Robbie figured she was the one who should be feeling the guilt. It was her pleas, her screams that drove this man into that burning barn. Her hysteria could have cost him his life, and it had certainly done nothing to save Danny’s.

These were her jumbled thoughts as Zack walked past her. That she was a mess, and that his shoulders were to die for. That his whole physique, in fact, was most impressive. He positively dwarfed her, even now, when she was fatter than a cow. Her guess was he spent a lot of time pumping iron over at that fire station.

No sooner had he stepped foot in her house than there came a scary crash from the kitchen. It sounded like glass breaking, followed by a stunningly abnormal silence, followed by the dogs’ wild barking, followed by the high-pitched changeling voice of Robbie’s twelve-year-old. “Now look what you’ve done!” he screamed. “Mom’s gonna kill you!”

“Shut the hell up!” That clever retort came from Robbie’s eight-year-old, who recently acquired that delightful word, along with some others she didn’t want to hear in her house. If Danny were alive he’d box his son’s ears for talking that way.

The pandemonium that followed—three boys yelling and two dogs barking—made Robbie wince.

“Would you excuse me?” she said sweetly to Zack. “Oh—” She turned back to him. “Please. Come on in. That is, if you think you can stand it.”

This time the corners of Zack’s mouth tipped up into a full-fledged grin.

ZACK TRUEBLOOD followed Robbie Tellchick down a narrow corridor that ran parallel to the stairway and ended at a high-ceilinged kitchen at the back of the house. He watched her tangled thatch of hair bounce around on the crown of her head, and wondered if this was the new style or something. Curls upon curls upon curls, and his guess was that none of it had seen a comb today.

She had always been a true redhead, he recalled. He remembered how pretty her hair was in high school, strands of spun copper mixed with streaks of blond. The rest of her looked equally disheveled. What was with the perpetual overalls? She even wore them at the diner, as if she didn’t care what anybody thought of her.

The last time he’d been to her home she’d looked even frumpier, if that were possible, standing in the shadows behind the screened door of her mudporch out on the farm, cinched up in a faded pink bathrobe that looked to have seen better days. She’d grown even rounder, too. Was the poor woman having twins? He dared not let his eyes travel down to her gently swishing backside. Wouldn’t that be some kind of sin against nature, to check out a pregnant woman’s behind? He guessed it was those deviling memories of how cute her bottom had been in high school that made his eyes flick down there anyway.

He immediately wished they hadn’t.

Despite the deterioration of her looks, he had found himself as drawn to Robbie Tellchick as ever. What was it about her? Her cheery determination to please even the grumpiest customer? Her laugh? Surely that. He could pick up the sound of it from all the way across the diner. Was it the way she’d taken hold with her boys, valiantly trying to be both mother and father? He’d seen her at a T-ball game last summer, pregnant and hot, but cheering on her youngest with all her might. And now here Zack was, about to add to her problems.

Whatever his fascination with the woman, he didn’t have long to dwell on it, or his guilt, because two mutts came hurtling out of the kitchen and bumped into Robbie’s legs, knocking her off balance and backward into Zack.

“Whoa!” Zack said as the dogs shot out the open front door while Zack grabbed for Robbie in several awkward places as she stumbled against him. He’d never felt anything so soft! All women were soft and, yes, he delighted in that softness, but this was a kind of softness that was unearthly, so buoyant as to be angelic, almost as if she herself were the baby. She pushed off of him like he was a brick wall and yelled, “Those dang dogs!”

Then she barreled onward into the kitchen.

The three Tellchick boys froze like little statues when they saw Zack coming up behind her. He hoped it wasn’t because their young minds were flashing back to the one and only time they’d seen him before. But Zack had been in full firefighting regalia that night—turnouts, helmet, asbestos mask. Covered in black soot. Eyebrows and hair singed to brittle little filaments of scorched beige. Surely they didn’t recognize him, standing here in a clean and pressed day uniform. He hoped they didn’t connect him with his failure in the event that had shattered their young lives. He wondered if their mother had told them who Zack Trueblood was—the man who hadn’t saved their father.

“Get away from that glass!” the mother shrieked.

And who could blame her? The kitchen was dim—illuminated only by a single bulb over the sink—but Zack could see shards of glass spread in a glittering array on the windowsill. In the sink, on the counter, the floor. Zack was already looking for a light switch…and for blood. “Everybody okay, fellas?” He found the switch and flipped it. No result.

They nodded mutely, these three cute kids, all obviously stamped from the same mold. Wiry and muscular the way their dad had once been, handsome and even-featured like their mother, but each distinct in coloring. Two redheads and a lone brunette. The big one looked like one giant freckle. His hands dripped suds, and he clutched a dish rag as if he were strangling it. The middle one, nearly as dark-haired as Zack, had turned white as a sheet. The younger one had the kind of red hair that was so pale as to be almost blond. He stood hunch-shouldered like a scared little squirrel. For one second, Zack tried to remember what it felt like to be a boy, to find yourself in trouble with a stressed-out single mother. Didn’t he have plenty of experience in this situation?

“What happened?” Robbie demanded as she charged forward.

“He did it!” the two younger ones said simultaneously, pointing at each other.

The older boy stepped up, careful of the glass. “Mom, these two hawnyawks were playing baseball instead of drying the dishes.”

Zack had to smile. He hadn’t heard anyone use the word hawnyawk since his grandfather died.

“Baseball?” Robbie’s reddish mop of hair bobbled as her raised palms indicated the smallish room. “In the kitchen?”

“Not real baseball,” the littlest one protested. “Mark had a golf ball and I was hittin’ at it with the broomstick.”

“We wasn’t hurtin’ anything, Mom,” the middle one said. His little face was painfully sincere. “Until stupid here forgot how to bunt.”

“I’m only five years old!” his little brother yelled. “I don’t even get to punt yet. I just barely started T-ball!”

“It’s bunt, twerp, not punt,” the middle one yelled back. “And ya don’t swing like you’re hittin’ a homer in the house!”

“Do not call your brother a twerp.” Robbie shot Zack an embarrassed glance. He shrugged. “Or stupid for that matter.” She shoved the child’s dark bangs up and zeroed in on a tiny nick above his brow. “This could have been your eye, young man. Is everything else okay?” she demanded.

The kids nodded solemnly.

“Mom, I’m sorry about the window.” The older one moved to stand beside his brother. “But honest, I was just doing the dishes, and next thing I know a golf ball comes flying right past my head.”

Robbie shoved at the boys’ shoulders. “You two could have hurt your brother. Now get over by the door. Go on.” Robbie’s voice echoed sharply in the bare-walled kitchen. When the boys moved, she snapped open a paper bag she had snatched from under the sink and started flicking glass off the edge of the counter into it. Not carefully enough, Zack thought.

There was a right way and a wrong way to do most things. The right way being, take all necessary safety precautions.

“I’ll take care of that,” he said, reaching for the sack. “I have some leather work gloves out in my truck. You tend to your boys.” The kids had clotted up over by the door, holding themselves in the defensive poses of boys in trouble.

She whirled on him. “Tend to them? Tend to them?” Her voice rose. “I ought to tend to their backsides. These little incidents,” she said as she plucked up some larger pieces of glass and sent them crashing into the sack with too much force, “are happening with alarming regularity around this house. A broken window, a burning dish towel.” She stopped tossing glass and gave her sons a withering look. “A flooded bathroom. This nonsense has got to stop!” Her voice rose, threatening hysteria and tears. “Because in case nobody’s noticed I’ve got a baby on the way in exactly five weeks!”

The younger boys cringed in guilt. The older one was blushing clear to the roots of his red hair.

“Yes, ma’am,” Zack agreed quietly. Which sounded totally lame, but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d given up on getting the sack out of her hands. He turned his attention to the boys. “Guys. Why don’t you, uh, go in the living room while I help your mother clean this up?” He was thinking maybe it’d be better if they didn’t see their mother cry.

The two younger kids seized the opportunity and shot off faster than the dogs. But the oldest one hung back. “Who are you anyway?” He was eyeing Zack’s new Gall’s jacket—black leather with the department shield stitched over the breast pocket.

Zack figured the kid had maybe put two and two together by now.

“I’m a, uh, a friend of your mother’s. I came to talk to her about…business.” Not business. Bad news.

“Were you one of the firemen that put out the fire that killed my dad?” Hearing a twelve-year-old talk about the tragedy so matter of factly nearly broke Zack’s heart. No kid should be saying words like the fire that killed my dad.

Robbie Tellchick’s eyes widened, moist with tears. Zack had already decided that maybe this was not the night to share his news. He did not want to do anything to bring this family one more iota of pain. In fact, he had vowed to do anything in his power to help them. But in this case he didn’t know how to spare them the hurt. The truth was going to come out, eventually. The fire had been determined to be arson, and the arsonist, it turned out, was the boys’ father.

“Yes, I was there,” he said calmly, “but that’s nothing for you to worry about.” He took two steps across the gritty wood floorboards, his boots clumping too loudly in the cramped space. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and was glad that the kid didn’t immediately shrug him off. “I’ll help your mother clean up this mess. Why don’t you go on in there with your brothers.”

But the boy stood his ground, squinting at Zack with alert brown eyes. Zack dropped his hand and tried not to look guilty, though the discomfort he felt was acute.

“I’m going to learn CPR,” the boy stated with conviction.

“That’s good. Everybody should.” Zack said it neutrally, not sure where the kid was going with this, still not sure if the kid recognized him. It occurred to Zack that he must get his grit from his mother, because he certainly hadn’t gotten it from that worthless drip of a father. Zack knew he shouldn’t think about a dead man with such contempt, but as far as he was concerned, Danny Tellchick had always been a goombah of the first stripe, a guy who never appreciated or deserved a woman like Robbie McBride.

All three of the McBride sisters had been smart as whips, and beautiful to boot. Robbie’s intelligence was only one of many things Zack had admired about her back when he was four grades behind her in high school.

“I expect you know CPR and all that stuff.” The kid was still looking Zack up and down, his head tilting now, his gaze growing more wary.

“Yeah. I’m a firefighter.” Zack stood violently still, hardly breathing, because out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Robbie’s lips were pressing together, tighter and tighter.

“You’re the one. Aren’t you?” The kid sounded almost angry. “The one who went in and pulled my dad out of the fire and did CPR on him?”

“Yes.” Zack Trueblood was indeed the one. The one who had performed pointless CPR on their father’s scorched lifeless body right before these children’s eyes. The one who had intensified their horror a hundred fold.

The one who had loved their mother from afar for nearly eighteen years.

CHAPTER TWO

ZACH LOOKED AT the wiry kid standing before him and felt unsure of himself for the first time in a very long time. Unsure of what the boy must be thinking. Unsure of what to say. He looked at Robbie Tellchick. Her arms were folded above her bulging tummy in a stance as closed and tight as a straight jacket. Her compressed lips indicated that she had no intention of breaking the uneasy silence.

“What’s your name, son?” Zack asked the boy.

“Mark.”

“Mark, would it be okay if we talked about this later? For now, why don’t you go on in there with your brothers?”

The boy left quietly and Robbie proceeded to attack her task with angry purpose.

“Ma’am.” Zack had to grab her arms to make her let up with the glass. “Let me do that. Really. Let me get those heavy-duty gloves from my truck. And a hammer. It would be best to break these larger pieces out.” With a nod of his head he indicated the ridges of glass sticking out of the windowpane like a silhouette of the Swiss Alps. He felt her muscles tense with resistance for one second, then her arms went limp in his grip.

“I still can’t talk about that night,” she whispered.

“I understand. I really do,” Zack assured her quietly. He still had trouble with it himself. And now he’d come with news that would only complicate the healing even further. But right now they couldn’t afford to wallow in the past. There was glass to clean up and three hurting and confused children in the next room.

“Why don’t you go see about your boys,” he urged her again as he released her wrists.

Robbie blew out a frustrated breath and brushed back her frizzy hair. For a second, it looked like she might cry again. “Okay,” she finally said. “But be careful with that glass.”

“I always am,” Zack said flatly. He always was. But sometimes being careful wasn’t enough. Sometimes, like the night Danny Tellchick died, it was simply too late.

She turned and slowly went through a swinging door at the side of the room where he caught a glimpse of a small, dim dining room beyond.

He went back out the main doorway of the kitchen to the narrow corridor that led to the front door, which still stood open, swaying on creaky hinges in the October wind. The thing was nice and heavy, he noticed now. Solid oak. Beveled glass oval window. Probably dated back to the nineteenth century and some prosperous German immigrant who had settled in this part of Texas. He noted, too, the scarred hardwood flooring in the entry hall, the finely detailed newel post at the foot of the stairs, the weakly lit miniature chandelier overhead.