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Mug in hand, Starr turned from the coffeemaker and leaned against the counter. “Who’s going to take all this stuff over there?”
Tess carefully guided the flattened dough over a waiting pie. “Well, we thought we’d do it together, Edna and me.”
Casually, Starr blew across the top of the steaming mug. “Why don’t you let me?” She dared a hot sip as a thoroughly annoying glance passed between Edna and Tess.
Starr knew they were both thinking about all that mess with Beau in the past. But come on, she was a grown woman now and had a right to make to her own decisions when it came to men—not that there was any decision to be made about Beau. There was nothing between them anymore.
Yeah, she’d danced with him on the Fourth. One dance. And she felt really good inside about that dance. They’d talked like two old friends, and laughed together. When she thought of Beau now, there was no bitterness. All that old garbage was over for good. That dance, to Starr, had signaled true peace between them. She felt really good about that.
But peace between her and Beau didn’t mean she meant to run over there and jump the man’s bones or anything. Taking the food was a neighborly gesture, and she wanted to do it—and who could say if Beau would even be at the house when she got there?
“Don’t you have to work?” asked Edna.
Starr took a sip of coffee. “I don’t need to go in today.” Like her employer, she did any and everything over at the Clarion—including a little reporting on local goings-on. “I’ve got a piece for the Ranching Life section to finish up and I have to put together an article on what’s going on with the plans for the county fair. I’ll do those on my computer and send them over by e-mail. And I can take the opportunity while I’m at the Hart place to do a follow-up on how Mr. Hart’s feeling.” Jerry had done the original piece, but he’d be pleased if Starr handed in an update. “And besides,” she added, “you two have been baking pies and making beans. I’d like to do a little something to help out, too.”
“Well,” said Edna, still at the table beside the jars of preserves. That was all. Just, well, and nothing else.
Tess pinched the edges of her pie and sent Starr a soft smile. “Why not, if you’d like to? That’d be real nice.”
Edna’s baked beans were the slow-cooking kind. They didn’t come out of the oven until four. By then the pies had cooled and the bread was all wrapped and ready to go. They loaded everything into the old Suburban that Zach had bought Tess when they first got married. Starr had inherited the vehicle last year, when Zach bought his wife a new one.
As she was heading off down the long, dusty driveway, one of the ranch pickups came in. Her dad was driving, Jobeth at his side. Starr pulled to the bumpy shoulder so the pickup could get by. Her dad honked and Jobeth waved as they went past. The pickup was covered in mud and so were the two in cab. Starr grinned as she watched the filthy tailgate recede in her rearview mirror. They’d probably been out pulling something large and obstinate from a muddy pond.
It took about twenty-five minutes to get to the Hart place. Starr used a series of back roads made mostly by oil companies drilling test holes, seeking oil-bearing strata. Through the ride, she was aware of a rising feeling of anticipation.
Okay, it was silly. It didn’t mean anything, but she was really hoping that Beau would be at the house. Maybe they’d talk a little.
The Suburban lurched over a bump in the dirt road and Starr licked her lips and swallowed. She was kind of thirsty. She’d ask for a tall glass of iced tea. If Beau was there, he could keep her company out on Mr. Hart’s big front porch while she drank it. Just being neighborly, of course.
And professional. She’d interview Beau on Mr. Hart’s convalescence while she sipped that cool, refreshing tea.
Beau was standing on the porch, staring off into nowhere, trying pretty much unsuccessfully to get his mind around the enormity of what Daniel had just told him, when he spotted Tess’s old Suburban coming up the drive.
For a moment or two, he just stared, his mind still back there in the bedroom, hearing, but hardly daring to believe, the things Daniel was saying to him. And then, as the vehicle drew closer, he frowned. He hadn’t seen Tess driving it since Zach bought her the new one….
In fact, hadn’t Zach said they’d passed the old one to Starr for her use whenever she was home?
Beau straightened from the post he’d been leaning against. With the wild mustangs on the loose in his chest again, he stuck his hands in his side pockets and waited for the Suburban to pull to a stop about ten feet from the base of the porch steps.
Starr beamed him a smile through her side window. The mustangs bucked high and his breath snagged hard in his throat. The window slid down and she stuck her head out. That midnight hair, loose around her angel face, caught the sun and gave off a blue-black shine.
“Hey, Beau.”
Dazzled, he gulped to make his throat relax. “Hey.”
“How’s Mr. Hart?”
“Doing well. Real well. Chomping at the bit to get out of bed and back to work.”
“I heard you hired him a nurse.”
“Yeah. He’s already making the poor woman crazy with his demands to be up and about.”
“Hope she’s strong enough to make him stay in that bed until he’s well enough to get out of it.”
“You know Althea Hecht?” The nurse, a local woman, stood about five-eleven and weighed a hundred and eighty or so pounds, very little of it fat.
Starr was nodding. “Althea can keep him in line if anyone can—and I’ve got a Suburban full of food. Pies and Edna’s baked beans, fresh-baked bread and half a pantry’s worth of preserves.”
He came down the steps, his boots seeming to him like they barely skimmed the old boards. “My stomach is already growling.”
“Come on, then.” She leaned on her door. It swung open and she jumped lightly to the ground. “Help me get it all inside.”
He followed her around to the hatch in back, noticing the little spiral-top notebook and the pen she had stuck in a back pocket, but more interested in the way her womanly hips swayed as she walked, in that gleaming waterfall of shining raven hair.
Today was stacking up to be pretty nigh on perfect. Daniel Hart had called him the son he’d never had.
And Starr Bravo was right there in front of him, close enough to reach out and touch.
Beau led Starr into the house and signaled the way back to the kitchen. He fell in step behind her, where he could admire the sway of her hips a little more. Coming or going, Starr Bravo was a pleasure to look at.
They found Althea in the kitchen. She was brewing decaf for Daniel. The nurse and Starr greeted each other. Althea sighed over the scent of Tess’s pies and groused in a good-natured way over her patient’s orneriness.
“‘Real coffee, damn it,’ he growls at me. ‘Real coffee, strong and black.’ Well, I didn’t even bother to inform him that decaf is the closest he’s getting to real coffee while he’s in my care….”
Starr laughed, the sound making the dim old kitchen seem sunny and bright, as if someone had knocked out a wall and the warm daylight outside had come streaming in to push back every shadow, to fill every corner with golden light. “Althea, we know you can handle him.”
Althea grunted. “You got that right. I give my patients the best care there is, no matter how hard some of them try to keep me from doing it.”
Starr asked, “I wonder if could step in and say hello.”
Althea poured the coffee. “Don’t see why not.”
Daniel was propped up on his pillows, looking grouchy, when they entered. He’d let Whirlyboy in to lie on a rag rug in the corner. At the sight of Starr, the dog thumped his tail. The old man’s scowl lightened to a grin. “Well, if it isn’t Starr Bravo. How you been, girl?”
“I’ve been just fine.” She went over and gave Whirlyboy a scratch behind the ear. “Home for my last summer and enjoying every minute of it. But what about you, Mr. Hart?”
Daniel made a low noise in his throat and his scowl returned—directed at Althea, who was easing the bed tray across his lap. “Better than some people would have you believe.” The nurse got the coffee from where she’d set it on the bed stand and handed it over. He sniffed it suspiciously. “Not strong enough. I can tell by the smell of it, by the watery way it sloshes in the mug.”
“It’s all you’re getting,” Althea informed him with exaggerated sweetness. “I suggest you enjoy it.”
Daniel slurped and grumbled some more. “It’s not bad enough I’m a prisoner in my own bed. I can’t even get a decent cup of coffee anymore.” He set the cup down and winked at Beau. Beau gave him a nod in return and Daniel smiled at Starr. “But even if the coffee’s bad, a pretty girl is always welcome. Brightens my day and that is a certainty.”
Starr gave him a modest smile and told him her family had sent pies and some other things.
“I thank you,” Daniel replied with a regal nod of his big, nearly bald head. “I always did appreciate Edna’s slow-cooked beans. And there are no words to describe those pies of Tess’s. Pass my thanks to both of them, will you please?”
“I’ll do that. And the word is you’ll be on your feet again real soon.”
“That’s right.” He sent Althea another look. “Real soon.”
They spoke for a few minutes more—of the weather, which was mild, of the alfalfa crop, which looked like a good one this year. And, as always, about beef prices, which had been better, but could be worse.
As Beau led her from the room, Daniel urged her to come back and visit anytime. Starr paused in the doorway to promise she’d be around to check on him again soon. Beau felt his ears prick up when she said that. With a little luck, he might be there at the house the next time she came by.
“You’d better do what Althea tells you,” she warned in a teasing way.
Daniel snorted. “Can’t see as how I have any choice.”
She turned to Beau and he led her through the hall and around through the front room, on the way to the door. She spoke before they reached the entry hall. “Beau?” He stopped and turned, pleasure running in a warm current all through him, that she was here in the place where he lived, saying his name in a friendly, hopeful tone. “I went off without the cooler. I’m a little thirsty. A cold drink would be so nice….”
Damn. He’d never even thought to offer her something. “I’m sorry.”
She was looking right at him. And that warm current inside him was going molten hot. “Nothing to be sorry about. Iced tea, maybe?”
He led her back to the kitchen and poured her the cold tea.
“Thanks. Maybe you’ll sit out on the porch with me while I drink this?”
“Be glad to.”
As soon as they got out there, before they even had a chance to sit down, she was pointing to the stand of cottonwoods and willows fifty yards or so away on the north side of the house. “Is that a creek over there?”
He had his hat, collected from the rack by the door on the way out. He beat it lightly against his thigh and slid it onto his head. “More like a big ditch. Feeds into the pond in the back pasture.”
She sipped from the tall, already sweat-frosted glass. “Umm. This is just what I needed. Thank you.”
“Welcome.” He looked at her soft red mouth. He could still recall, like it was yesterday, the tender, hungry feel of that mouth under his. She had the longest, blackest eyelashes of any woman he’d ever seen. He watched as they swept down and then up again.
“It’s a nice day,” she remarked. “A little hot.” Oh, yeah, he thought. Hot. That’s the right word. “We could just stroll on over there—to that ditch, I mean. I’ll bet it’s cool under the trees.”
“Sure.”
She wore Wranglers and good, serviceable boots and a plain white shirt with short sleeves, tucked in. No slice of bare belly to tempt him today. Once, in one of their brief stolen times together, she’d confessed she had one of those navel rings—and a tattoo in a place where only the right man was ever going to see it.
The other night, he hadn’t noticed any navel ring. Maybe she didn’t wear it anymore.
Then again, he hadn’t caught a glimpse of her navel, now had he? That red, one-shoulder shirt had stayed low enough to safely shield it from his hungry eyes.
She was halfway down the steps. He needed no encouragement to follow.
In the trees, it was cool, just as she’d predicted. They sat on the grassy slope that led down to the cheerfully bubbling stream and she sipped her tea. “Nice,” she said with happy sigh.
He leaned back on an elbow, picked a small blue flower that grew in the grass, and twirled it by the stem for a second or two before tossing it out into the rushing water. It bobbed away, a spot of blue, until the current sucked it under.
She said, “Oh, I almost forgot…” The ice cubes clinked in her half-empty glass as she found a level place to set it. She reached into her back pocket and came out with that notebook and pen he’d seen earlier. “I was hoping to get a few quotes from you about how Mr. Hart’s recovery is progressing.”
“For the Clarion?”
“Uh-huh.” She flipped open the notebook, held her pen poised.
He grinned. “Quotes from the foreman?”
She was close enough to reach out and give his arm a tap with that pen. “Well, you are Mr. Hart’s top hand, aren’t you?”
“Considering I’m his only full-time, year-round hand, I guess saying I’m top hand wouldn’t be that far wrong.” He watched her silky black lashes sweep down and up again. Then he challenged, “It was you, wasn’t it—you told Jerry Esponda to put me down as Daniel’s foreman?”
She stuck out her chin at him. “So what if I did? Are you demanding a retraction?”
He leaned just a fraction closer to her and got an intoxicating whiff of jasmine for his pains. “I’m demanding nothing. You can relax.”
She leaned closer still. “That is such a relief….”
He looked from her eyes to her mouth and back again. She was doing it, too—that violet gaze tracking: Eyes. Lips. Eyes. Lips…
He wanted to kiss her so bad that his need had a taste—like honey, but with a bitter edge.
There had been other women in his life. Not that many. A few. He was a man, after all. But no matter how many other women he flirted with or kissed or took to bed, there would always be this woman, somewhere back in a yearning, hopeful corner of his heart.
Beau knew what he was, and what he would never be. Yet somehow, inevitably, in the last moments of loving, when need swallowed him whole, he would close his eyes and see Starr’s face.
Carefully, he canted back away from her. With mingled regret and relief, he watched her do the same.
She sat up straight and made a few scratches at the pad with her pen. “So. He’s recovering quickly…”
Beau found another flower, picked it, twirled it, tossed it away. “Yeah. He’d be out stringing fence right now if Althea wasn’t holding him down.”
“Hmm. May I quote you on that?”
He gave a snort of laughter. “‘Recovering quickly’ sounds better, I think—and you know, you surprised the heck outta me when you came rolling up in that old Suburban.”
She granted him a pert glance. “I happen to love that SUV.”
“What about that little sports car you used to drive way back when?”
Something changed in her face. Maybe she was remembering the bold-seeming, unhappy girl she’d been once. “Sold it. It wasn’t much use in a Wyoming winter—let alone against all the ruts in the dirt roads on the Rising Sun.” Her expression went teasing again. “And is that all you have to tell me about Mr. Hart’s improving health?”
“That is the sum total of what I have to report. ‘Mr. Hart is recovering quickly,’ ranch foreman Beau Tisdale said. Put that in the paper—and you can add that bit about prayers and good wishes. Those never hurt.”
“Hah. So you did like being called the foreman.”
What he liked was the sound of her voice, the jasmine scent of her, the way the dapples of sun made blue lights in her hair. “Yeah,” he said, his voice a little huskier than he should have allowed it to be. “I liked it fine. And it didn’t seem to bother Daniel any when he saw it in the paper.” He’d been a little nervous that Daniel would assume he’d told Jerry he was ranch foreman, that Daniel might think he’d over-stepped himself. But that was yesterday, when the Clarion came out. Yesterday he hadn’t understood the extent of Daniel’s regard for him.
Hell. He still wasn’t sure he could believe what Daniel had said an hour ago….
“First of all, I need to tell you now, so the chance doesn’t slip away from me, that you are the son I never had….”
“Beau?” Starr was looking at him sideways, a soft smile on that unforgettable mouth. He cocked an eyebrow at her. Her smile widened. “What’s on your mind? You got the funniest look just now.”
Damned if he didn’t want to tell her. Strange. He wasn’t a man who shared his triumphs—or his hurts. But it was all so new. It almost didn’t seem real.
And he found that he wanted to talk about it, to say right out how his life was so suddenly and unbelievably changed. It would make it more real, to tell someone.
Not just anyone, though.
He wanted to tell Starr and only Starr. In a way, it was like some dream, that she was here now, at this moment, so soon after Daniel had told him.
It was also like a dream that all the old bad feelings between them seemed gone at last, that he was talking to her so casually, like they were good friends. Six years ago, it had amazed him how easy she was to talk to. And here she was after all this time and that ease between them was back, like it had always been there, waiting for her to understand and forgive him for what he’d done that day in the yard at the Rising Sun….
“Beau?” She was looking at him so hopefully. She wanted to hear whatever he had on his mind.
He kind of edged into it, giving her a grin. “You got to promise you won’t go putting it in the paper….”
She blinked. “Well, yeah. Sure.” She kind of frowned and smiled at the same time. “What? Beau, what is it?”
“Just, you know, between you and me…”
“Of course, if you want it that way.”
“Yeah. I do. It’s not something the whole county needs to know.” There would be talk, when it came out. He was not blood kin to Daniel. He’d been in prison. And his name was Tisdale. In Medicine Creek, most anyone could tell you that the Tisdales were no good. A lot of folks would disbelieve—and disapprove—when they heard. But that wouldn’t be for years yet. Daniel was going to pull through just fine. And Beau planned to see that the older man took care of himself, just like a real son would.
“I will not tell a soul,” she vowed.
So he said it. “Today Daniel told me that he’s leaving the ranch to me.” He sat up, hooked an elbow on either knee and looked at the clear, sparkling stream for a moment. Then he slanted a glance at Starr. “I gotta tell you, I’m having some trouble believing it’s true.”
“Oh, Beau…” Her voice trailed off. Her face seemed to glow. She looked so happy. Happy for him.
He grunted. “Pretty hard to believe, huh?”
She gave him a firm shake of her head. “No. No, it isn’t. Not hard to believe at all. But very good news. And, well, kind of right, you know?”
“You think so?” His own voice surprised him. He sounded just like he felt—young. Hopeful as a kid at Christmas. He’d learned early in his life that it didn’t pay to let anyone know how you felt.
But this was Starr he was telling. From the first, he’d found it way too easy to show her what was going on inside him.
Now she was nodding. “Oh, yeah. I do think so. My dad’s always saying how hard you work for Mr. Hart. And how great it’s turned out, him taking you on.”
“Zach’s been real good to me, too. I’m grateful.”
“So is Mr. Hart, don’t you think? I mean, that you came along. After all, he’s got no blood family left. And now, it’s kind of like you’re his family, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he said, still marveling at the way it all worked out. “That’s how I feel about it. It truly is….”
She reached across the small distance between them and laid her soft hand on his arm. A warm glow seemed to radiate from the place where she touched him. The wind whispered through the trees and the cottonwood fluff blew around in the air and the warm sun glinted off the rushing stream.
Eventually, she let go, but it seemed to Beau that he could still feel the warm clasp of her hand. With a small, contented sigh, she stretched out on the grass and laced her fingers behind her head. She stared up at the fluttering leaves of the cottonwood that sheltered them—and beyond, to the wide, blue sky overhead.
Beau set his hat aside and stretched out beside her. For a while, they just lay there, watching the leaves above move in the wind, listening to the happy, bubbly sound of the stream at their feet and the occasional soft coo of a mourning dove somewhere nearby.
“Beau?” He turned from the view of the trees and the sky to meet her waiting eyes. She looked thoughtful and maybe a little bit anxious. “There’s been something I’ve been wishing I could ask you for a few years now.”
He had a pretty good idea where she was headed. “So ask.”
He watched her smooth throat move as she swallowed. “That day Tess caught us in the barn together, those horrible things you said to me out in the yard…”
“Yeah?”
“Did you mean them?”
Beau lay still, one hand on his stomach, the other cradling his head. She shifted, turning toward him on her side, propping her head on her hand. All that black hair spilled over her palm and fell along her arm to kiss the green, green grass.
“Well…” Her mouth trembled a little. “Did you?”
“No,” he said softly. “I didn’t mean those things I said. Those things were lies, pure and simple.” He felt the pained smile as it twisted his mouth. “And I put a lot of effort into being a convincing enough rat-bastard that you would think they were true.”
She let out a long sigh, as if she’d been holding her breath and just remembered to let it out. “I knew it. But I did want to hear you say it—just like I want to hear you tell me why you said those things…”
“Hell,” he replied, as if that was any kind of answer. All these years he’d nursed a hopeless yearning that someday they’d talk about this. Someday when she was a grown woman and he’d come through the bad things he’d done, come through to make himself another, better kind of life. And today, here they were, and it was happening just the way he’d always dreamed it might….
One hell of a day, this one. The day Daniel said he considered Beau as his son. The day Starr showed up with offerings of food from her family—and now seemed reluctant to leave.
He said, “I only knew then that I was headed for a bad place and I had to make sure you didn’t try to follow me there.”
“Oh,” she said so softly, the way a woman might exclaim upon unwrapping some beautiful and priceless gift. And then she called it exactly that—a gift. “Life is so strange, isn’t it?” she whispered, a certain reverence in her low voice. “I mean, what you did was so brave, really. It turned out to be like a…gift. It hurt so damn much when you did it, but my life turned out different—so much better than the direction I was headed in then, because you said those awful things to me, because they made me think, and think hard, about my life. Made me reach out to my family. Made me see I had to make some changes, or I could end up…” She didn’t seem to know how to finish.
So he did it for her. “…following the wrong guy down the road to nowhere and never finding your way back?”
Tears welled in her eyes, making them shine all the brighter. She didn’t let him see them fall, but sat up, quickly, turning away. Touched in the deepest part of himself, he left her alone until she could get it together.
Finally, she turned to him again, her eyes still suspiciously shiny-looking, but her soft cheeks dry. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s it. But look.” She raised her hands, palms up, as if to include everything—the rushing water, the summer sky, the trees whispering in the warm wind—even the faint cooing of that lone mourning dove. “I didn’t go down that road. And you…well, Beau. You have done it. You’ve found your way back.”