Allie Pleiter - Coming Home To Texas

Now Gunner would have no reason to refuse. He’d never put up any resistance to helping church kids, and she wouldn’t be taking any time from the ranch’s working hands to collect the fibers. It all fit together. The welcome buzzing in the pit of her stomach dispelled the fear that had hung over her the past few days—a fear she wouldn’t feel excited about anything again. That was silly, of course—she was only twenty-five and life was far from over—but the bombed-out feeling she’d carried around since finding Derek with Katie was finally starting to disappear.

“Well, then, this is starting to feel like a win-win for everybody.” Pastor Theo looked up to see the ATV carrying Gunner and Nash pull up next to the barn. “Now we just have to ask God to work on Nash so that he’ll do the boys’ car class. I feel like God is pulling a plan together.”

Was that what God was doing? It was a welcome thought for someone whose life felt as though it had been blown apart. Ellie wasn’t ready to embrace her broken engagement as part of God’s perfect plan—everything hurt too much for that just yet—but Pastor Theo was right. She’d see the whole of things someday, even if she couldn’t see it yet. Her life was just like Katie’s shawl—taken apart to become something new—and like Katie’s shawl yarn, it had to lie in wait for whatever it was going to be next.

“So did she say yes?” Nash asked Pastor Theo as he walked up to the porch. He caught Ellie’s eye. “She’s perfect for the job.”

Theo looked between Nash and Ellie. “I’d say the same of you. How do you two know each other exactly?”

Ellie gulped, not eager to recount her close call with a speeding ticket to the local pastor.

“With all due respect, Pastor, we’ll have to agree to disagree about that job. As for Ellie, we met on the ranch the other day,” Nash said, flashing her a quick look. Ellie made a mental note to figure out what was behind Nash’s bristling refusal to help Pastor Theo. Right after she whipped the deputy up some more biscotti—or maybe a nice warm scarf—to thank him for covering for her yet again.

Pastor Theo rose. “I’m excited. And once you give in, Nash, I think you two will make a perfect team for the after-school program.”

Gunner had come up onto the porch. “Nash is teaching at church? Really?”

“No, not really,” Nash replied with growing exasperation. “But Ellie is.”

“What are you teaching?” Gunner asked with a disbelieving look that irked Ellie to no end. She was perfectly capable of mentoring girls. She had the same skills and intellect she’d had before she’d yanked Derek’s ring off her finger. She smiled, now more than ready to prove it. “Knitting, of course.”

“Well, that’s nice.” Gunner’s lack of interest stuck in her craw. Time to up the stakes.

“With Blue Thorn bison yarn that the girls are going to help make.” She watched her brother’s eyebrow rise. “Crafts and community awareness all in one. I know how you’re all about community awareness, Gunner.”

Gunner narrowed his eyes. “So they keep telling me.” He turned toward the barn. “Nash, you’ve got all you need? I’ve got some things to check on in the barn.” He threw Ellie one last dark look. “We’ll talk more about this later, Els.”

Ellie couldn’t stifle a victorious grin. “I’m sure we will, brother dear. I’ve got all kinds of plans.”

“You always do,” Gunner called, not looking back.

Pastor Theo said his goodbyes, but Nash stared at the barn. “Why do I get the feeling I just saw the opening salvo in a sibling war?”

Ellie laughed. “Oh, not open combat. More like high-level negotiations. Gunner thinks my idea to have Blue Thorn produce bison yarn is silly. You and Pastor Theo just handed me the perfect way to convince him otherwise.”

Nash looked bemused. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Only, you might have to duck now and then to stay out of the line of fire.” She’d thought it a witty remark, but Nash’s face changed completely—and not in a good way. “Bad joke to make to a deputy?”

“Just this deputy.” The tone of his voice tightened up.

Ellie came up to stand beside him. She wanted to smooth over whatever had just happened, but wasn’t exactly sure how. “Have you...have you been shot? Is that it? Is that why you won’t teach the boys?” It seemed a prying question, but by the way his shoulders tensed, the answer seemed obvious. She moved in front of him, wanting to see his face. “You have, haven’t you? Whoa. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s okay,” Nash replied, although it was clear it wasn’t.

“It doesn’t look okay. Really, it’s none of my business. I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut sometimes.”

“It’s why I’m here.” His words were quick and quiet, like ripping off a bandage. If a flinch had a sound, it was his tone. “Well, part of why I’m here. And, yes, it’s why I won’t teach the class.”

“I’m so sorry. What happened?”

He turned to look at her, pain and memory and a bit of bewilderment in his eyes. There was something different about Nash’s eyes, some subtle distinction she couldn’t quite name but saw all the same. “The short version is that I used to work with teens. One of them, someone I had come to trust, turned on me. With a gun. I was shot once in the shoulder and once in the thigh. So you can see why I’m in no hurry to hang out with teenage boys right now.”

“I didn’t know. And here I’ve been egging you on like an idiot. I’m sorry.”

“It could have been a lot worse. I try to thank God every day I’m still here. But the truth was, after that I couldn’t stay in LA.” He leaned against the porch railing as if the mere mention of the wound made his leg hurt. “I used to be able to see the good in some of the worst kids. I thought of it as my gift—cutting past all the trash talk and tough-guy tattoos to connect with guys before they went all the way bad.”

“That does sound like a gift,” Ellie said, meaning it.

“Yeah, well, two weeks in a hospital can knock the gift right out of a guy, I suppose.”

For all her betrayed feelings, Ellie couldn’t say Derek had actually set out to hurt her. To have someone seek to harm you, hunt you down at gunpoint? To fire at you with a mind to end your life? If she’d wanted to run from Atlanta, who wouldn’t want to run all the way from California to get away from something like that?

Teens had hurt him. Of course he’d say no to working with them again. “I can see why you won’t help Pastor Theo with those boys.”

Nash shook his head. “‘Why I won’t help.’ Why do those words bug me so much, making me feel petty for refusing to step up and lend a hand when I have every good reason to say no?”

Maybe Theo was right and God really was putting a plan together. “Are you sure you need to say no? Maybe you’re just scared to say yes. Gran always says scared isn’t a good enough reason to say no to something that might be good.”

“Then your grandmother is a stronger person than I am.”

What Nash did, helping those kids in LA, must have taken so much courage and compassion. It couldn’t all be gone just because one kid betrayed him. Then again, wasn’t she hiding here in Martins Gap because of betrayal, too? “What if what you really need is to prove to yourself you still can see the good in kids like that? What’s the worst that could happen?”

He shook his head and gave a dark, low laugh. “I could get shot again. And this time the kid may not miss.”

“Cowboys and Indians,” she said, remembering his earlier comment that now had such a different edge to it.