Heart of Texas Vol. 3

  Cal had begun to wonder if someone had spiked the water supply last summer. In less than a year most of his friends had married. First, Savannah Weston had met a stranger to Promise named Laredo Smith and subsequently married him. Cal’s own brother had married Ellie Frasier, owner of the local feed store, last September. No sooner had that wedding taken place when Grady Weston asked the postmistress, Caroline Daniels, to marry him—all within the space of a few short weeks. Even Sheriff Hennessey had married his longtime sweetheart, Dovie Boyd.

  It hadn’t been long before Cal fell in love himself.

  At one time Cal, Glen and Grady had been confirmed bachelors. With Cal, it had been a form of self-protection, he realized now. He’d been jilted by a former fiancée and the experience had left him bitter, determined never to fall for a woman again.

  But that was before he’d met Jane. Their first date was arranged by Ellie. At the time Cal had been annoyed and frustrated that his brand-new sister-in-law was matchmaking. By the end of the evening, however, Jane had managed to pique his interest. To his surprise he discovered he was looking for ward to seeing her again. Before he could help himself, he was deeply in love with her.

  A city girl. Worse, one from California. If anyone had told him six months ago that he’d marry a woman like Jane, he would have run screaming into the night. Now he couldn’t imagine living two minutes without her.

  With the phone against her ear, Jane caught her husband’s eyes and blew him a kiss. He grinned, content to wait. Relaxing on the rug, he listened to one-half of the conversation.

  “Don’t worry,” Jane was telling Laredo, “you didn’t interrupt anything important.”

  Cal sat upright at that, raising his eyebrows. Didn’t interrupt anything important? He saw that his wife could barely hold in her laughter at his expression.

  But her smile faded as she continued to listen to Laredo. “No…no you were right to phone. How long ago did you say her water broke?”

  The smile left Cal’s face, too. This was more serious than either of them had anticipated.

  “How far apart are the contractions?” Jane reached for a pad and pencil and noted the information.

  Cal had delivered enough calves to know the signs of imminent birth. Savannah and Laredo were about to have their baby during the worst storm of the year.

  “I’ll be there within the hour,” Jane promised and replaced the receiver. “Savannah’s in labor,” she told Cal.

  “So I heard.” He stood and she walked over to him and caressed the side of his face. “Looks like we’ll have to put our romantic interlude on hold.”

  “I’m a patient man,” he reminded her. He caught her fingers and pressed a kiss into her palm. “What time are we leaving?” he asked, snapping his shirt closed as he spoke.

  “We?” Jane asked, arching her brows expressively. “I’m perfectly capable of delivering this baby.”

  “I never doubted it for an instant.” He opened her bathrobe, kissed the valley between her breasts and refastened it.

  “I can drive in a storm, too.”

  “I realize that,” he said, “but how good are you at keeping two strong-willed ranchers out of your hair?”

  “Two?”

  “Laredo and Grady.” Cal knew his best friend, and Grady would be as nervous as Laredo at the birth of his first niece or nephew. Jane was going to have her hands full, and it wasn’t with Savannah or the baby, either. It wouldn’t surprise him if father and uncle made damned nuisances of themselves. “Trust me, darlin’, you’ll thank me later.”

  “Oh, all right, Cal Patterson, you can tag along, too. Now I’d better go change.”

  He grinned, pleased he’d been able to convince her she was going to need him. Truth be known, he wouldn’t miss this birth for anything. It was about time something good happened in that family, especially after Richard Weston’s trial and sentencing.

  A baby was just what the Westons needed to put their troubles behind them. Cal was determined to celebrate the blessed event with his friends.

  TRAVIS GRANT ROLLED INTO Promise at precisely the moment the storm struck. He drove down Main Street, peering out between the constantly beating windshield wipers, but he couldn’t locate a single hotel. Seeing as his last meal had been aboard a plane and hadn’t amounted to much, he decided to stop for dinner and inquire about a place to stay. By the time he found a parking space and raced to the restaurant through the pounding rain, he was soaked to the skin.

  He gulped down a glass of water and started on a bowl of tortilla chips with salsa before he even looked at the menu. His stomach growled and he ordered arroz con pollo, his favorite Mexican dish.

  Gazing out the window, he decided the town was just the way Richard Weston had described it. This was something of a pleasant surprise. Men like Weston weren’t exactly known for their truthfulness. Travis had interviewed him shortly after he was sentenced to twenty-five years in a New York prison. No possibility of parole, either. He wouldn’t have talked to him at all if it hadn’t been for his ex-wife, who’d been Weston’s state-appointed attorney. As far as Travis was concerned, Weston was the ultimate sleaze—an opinion that the interview only reinforced.

  Knowing his interest in Western ghost towns, Valerie had told him about Weston, a man who’d hidden from the law in an abandoned town buried deep in the Texas hill country. Weston had agreed to an interview—in exchange for certain concessions. The warden of the prison, however, hadn’t approved of the idea that Weston should have a TV and sound system in his cell. Weston had consented to the interview, anyway—because it was another opportunity to be the center of attention, Travis figured. Their meeting continued to leave a bad taste in his mouth. If it hadn’t been for Valerie, Travis would have abandoned the entire project, but his ex-wife seemed to have a way with the man.

  Valerie. Travis frowned as he thought about her. She’d dumped him and their marriage for another man five years earlier. His lack of malice seemed to disappoint his friends. Frankly, he considered life too short to waste on ill will. He’d loved her, still did, but as she’d so eloquently put it, she’d fallen out of love with him.

  She’d remarried as soon as the ink was dry on their divorce papers and seemed content. For that matter, he was, too, although it had taken him longer to achieve peace and he hadn’t become involved in another serious relationship. Also, to his friends’ surprise, he and Valerie had stayed in touch.

  The waiter, a kid of maybe eighteen, delivered a plate heaped with rice and chicken and covered with a thin tomato sauce and melted cheese. “Could you give me directions to the closest motel?” Travis asked him.

  “Brewster’s got a motel.”

  “Great.” Travis reached for his fork. “How far away is that?”

  “About a hundred miles.”

  He laid his fork back down. “You mean to say a town the size of Promise doesn’t have a motel?”

  “We’ve got a bed-and-breakfast.”

  “Fine.” A bed was a bed, and at this point he wasn’t picky.

  The waiter lingered. “You might have trouble getting a room, ’cause of the big festivities this weekend.”

  “Festivities?”

  “The rodeo’s coming, and then there’s the big chili cook-off. I thought that was why you were here.”

  Apparently the town was small enough to recognize him as a stranger. “Where do the rodeo cowboys stay while they’re in town?”

  The youth stared at him as if the answer should be obvious. “Motor homes.”

  “All of them?”

  “Unless they got family close by.”

  “I see,” Travis murmured. He hadn’t considered that there wouldn’t be a motel—but then that was one of his problems, according to Valerie. He didn’t think ahead.

  “If you’d like, I could write you out directions to the Pattersons’ B and B.”

  “Please.” Famished, Travis dug into his meal, devouring it in minutes. He’d no sooner finished when the waiter re
turned with a hand-drawn map listing streets and landmarks. Apparently the one and only bed-and-breakfast was off the beaten path.

  Thunder cracked in the sky, followed by flashes of lightning. No one seemed to pay much heed to the storm until the lights flickered. Everyone in the restaurant paused and waited, then sighed with relief when the lights stayed on.

  The storm was bad, but he’d seen worse off the New England coastline five years before. Holed up in a rented cottage in order to meet a deadline, Travis had watched storms rage as he fought his own battles. It’d been shortly after the divorce.

  He thought of that sassy ranch woman who’d spoken to him today and wondered what she’d say if she knew he’d stood on a rocky bluff overlooking the sea, with the wind and rain pounding against him, and openly defied nature.

  Remembering the way she’d leaped out of her truck, eyes flashing with outrage, brought a rare smile to his lips.

  She’d been an attractive woman. Practically as tall as he was and full-sized, not some pencil-thin model. A spitfire, too. Definitely one of a kind. Briefly he wondered if he’d get a chance to see her again and rather hoped he would, just so he could tell her he’d managed to survive the storm.

  Following the directions given him by the waiter at the Mexican Lindo, Travis drove to Pattersons’ Bed-and-Breakfast, which turned out to be a large older home. He rang the doorbell.

  Almost immediately a tall, gray-haired, lanky man opened the door and invited him inside. “Welcome to Promise.” The man extended his hand and introduced himself as Phil Patterson.

  “Travis Grant. Do you have a room for a few nights?” he asked, getting directly to the point.

  “Sorry,” Phil told him. “We’re booked solid.”

  Travis had left New York early that morning and didn’t relish the thought of traveling another hundred miles through a storm to find a bed for the night. “I’m tired and not difficult to please. Isn’t there any place that could put me up for a few nights?”

  Phil frowned. “The rodeo’s coming to town.”

  “So I understand.”

  “I doubt there’s a room available in Brewster, either.”

  Travis muttered a curse under his breath.

  “Phil.” A woman’s voice called out from the kitchen. “You might try Nell.”

  “Nell?”

  “Nell Bishop.”

  Phil sighed. “I know who Nell is.”

  “She’s opening her dude ranch in a couple of months, so she’s probably got rooms to rent.”

  Phil’s face relaxed. “Of course, that’s a great idea.”

  Travis’s spirits lifted.

  “I’ll give her a call.” Phil reached for the phone, punched in the number and waited. After a minute or two he covered the receiver. “Nell’s busy, but her mother-in-law’s there and she said you’d be welcome to drive out, but she feels obliged to warn you there’s no electricity at the moment.”

  “They have a bed and clean sheets?”

  “Sure thing, and Ruth—that’s her name—said she’d throw in breakfast, as well.”

  He named a price that sounded more than reasonable to Travis. “Sold.”

  Phil relayed the information, drew him a map, and soon Travis was back on the road.

  Patterson had told him that the ranch was a fair distance out of town; still, by the time Travis pulled off the highway and onto the gravel drive that led to Twin Canyons Ranch, he suspected he was closer to Brewster than Promise. Approaching the front door, he felt as though his butt was dragging as low to the ground as his suitcase.

  A kid who looked to be about twelve answered his knock and stared blankly at him while Travis stood in the rain.

  “Hello,” Travis finally said.

  “Hello,” the boy answered. A girl two or three years younger joined him. Good-looking children, but apparently not all that bright.

  “Most people come to the back door unless they’re selling something, and if you are, we’re not buying.”

  Despite feeling tired and cranky, Travis grinned. “I’m here about a room.”

  The two kids exchanged glances.

  “Who is it?” He heard an older woman’s voice in the background; a moment later, she appeared at the door. “For the love of heaven, young man, come out of the rain.” She nudged the children aside and held open the door.

  He stood in the hallway, which was all gloom and shadows except for the light flickering from a cluster of candles. Travis glanced around, but it was impossible to see much.

  “Mom’s in the barn,” the boy said.

  “I know that,” the older woman told him. She put the candle close to Travis’s face. “You look decent enough.”

  “I haven’t eaten any children in at least a week,” he teased, eyeing the two kids. The little girl moved a step closer to her brother.

  “I’m Travis Grant,” he said, turning his attention to the woman.

  “Ruth Bishop, and these two youngsters are my grandchildren, Jeremy and Emma.”

  “Pleased to meet you.” He shifted the suitcase in his hand, hoping Ruth would take the hint and escort him to his room. She didn’t. “About the room…” he said pointedly.

  “You’ll need to meet Nell first.”

  “All right.” He was eager to get the introductions over with so he could fall into bed and sleep for the next twelve hours straight.

  “This way.” She led him through the house to the back porch, where she pulled on a hooded jacket. Then she walked down the back steps and into the rain, holding her hand over the candle to shield the small flame.

  Travis wasn’t enthusiastic about clumping through the storm yet again, but didn’t have much choice.

  “Ruth?” a new voice called into the night. A low pleasant voice.

  “Coming,” the grandmother answered.

  They met halfway across the yard in the pouring rain. “I got us our first paying guest,” Ruth announced, beaming proudly. “Travis Grant, meet my daughter-in-law, Nell Bishop.”

  It took Travis no more than a second to recognize Nell as the woman who’d called him an idiot.

  He liked her already.

  CHAPTER 2

  NELL LOCATED AN OLD-FASHIONED lantern for Travis Grant. It had probably been in the family for fifty years and was nothing if not authentic. Next she gathered together fresh sun-dried sheets, a couple of blankets and a pillow. She tucked everything inside a plastic bag and raced through the storm, holding the lit lantern with one hand. When she arrived at the bunkhouse, Nell discovered Travis sitting on the end of a bed, looking tired and out of sorts.

  The initial group of tourists was scheduled to show up the first week of May, and almost everything in the bunkhouse had been readied. It was primitive, but then this was the real thing. A genuine ranch, complete with enough cattle to give would-be cowboys the experience of dealing with a herd, horses for them to ride and plenty of land. Nell was as determined as Curly in the movie City Slickers to make real wranglers out of her guests. It was what they were paying her big bucks to do, and she firmly believed in giving them their money’s worth.

  “Thanks,” Travis said when he saw her. He stood up to remove the bag from her arms, and she placed the lantern on a small wooden dresser opposite the bed.

  “I realize this isn’t the Ritz,” she said as she spread the crisp sheet across the thin mattress.

  “Hey, beggars can’t be choosers,” her guest reminded her. “I’m grateful you’re willing to take me in at all.”

  Actually no one had thought to ask her. It was her mother-in-law who’d agreed to put him up for the night when Phil Patterson phoned. But to be fair, Nell suspected she would have agreed herself.

  “With the rodeo coming, the Pattersons didn’t have any vacancies,” he explained unnecessarily, leaning over to help her with the top sheet and blanket.

  The lantern actually gave a fair amount of light, much to Nell’s chagrin. She chose to pretend she didn’t recognize him. And either he was too tired to
remember the way she’d harangued him at the side of the road or he’d decided to forget. Whatever the case, she was grateful.

  “Does the Texas hill country generally get storms like this?”

  “This one’s worse than some,” she told him, lifting the edge of the mattress to tuck in the covers. Given his size, she wondered if the bunk would be big enough for him. Well, there was no help for it, since this bed—or another exactly like it—was the only one available.

  “What about losing your electricity?”

  “Happens now and then,” she said, not looking at him. She reached for the pillow and stuffed it inside the case, then plumping it up, set it at the head of the bed. “Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, ready to return to her family.

  “Nothing. I appreciate your putting me up,” he said again.

  “No problem.”

  “Mom.” Breathless, Jeremy burst into the bunkhouse, his face bright. He carried a blue-speckled tin coffeepot in one hand and a matching cup in the other. Emma followed with a covered plate.

  “Grandma sent us over with hot chocolate and—”

  “—one of Mom’s cinnamon rolls,” Emma finished for her brother. Travis could see a black-and-white dog waiting patiently at the door.

  He took the pot and cup from Jeremy and set them on the nightstand. “Hey, no one said anything about room service. How’d I get so lucky?”

  Emma handed him the plate. “My mom’s the best cook in the world.”

  Nell grinned and put an arm around each of her children. “Now probably isn’t the time to mention we roasted hot dogs in the fireplace for dinner.”

  “Are you staying for the chili cook-off?” Emma asked their guest.

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.” Travis sat on the side of the bed and poured himself a mug of steaming cocoa.

  Nell wasn’t sure how Ruth had managed to heat the cocoa—the fireplace, she supposed—but was pleased her mother-in-law had made the effort.

  “Mom’s going to win. Her chili’s the best.”