Jolene Navarro - Lone Star Christmas

In the past when these thoughts started crowding in, he’d have leaped on a bull or driven until he found a crowd that would help him drown the feelings he didn’t want to deal with.

But that was getting old. A few months ago, he’d tried something new. He’d sought out Pastor Wayne, the cowboy preacher who followed the rodeo circuit. So now he prayed. He prayed for wisdom and patience.

“I’m hungry.” One of his new responsibilities interrupted the prayer.

“Me, too, and I’m cold. Can we go inside?”

Even though Tomas and Isaac were a year apart at six and five, he wasn’t sure who was who. What he did know was that his half brothers had started grumbling about an hour ago. All three of them. He shot a glance at the teen. Ethan had asked to come along on the road trip. Ethan’s mother, the second wife, had headed back to Chicago and didn’t seem to care that her son wanted to spend the holidays with three brothers he had just met at his father’s funeral. Right now, the only thing that made them family was a last name. On impulse Max had thought this trip would give them a chance to connect before the little ones went to live with their aunt and Ethan returned to school.

“Max!” they cried out at the same time.

With a heavy sigh, he made sure to smile at them. It wasn’t their fault, and it wouldn’t be right to get mad at them. He’d seen the boys once, when they were too small to remember him. Now they had lost both parents and were stuck with brothers they didn’t know, other than what they had been told.

He rubbed one of them on the head. “There are some protein bars in the truck.”

“We ate them.”

He glanced over his shoulder. “The whole box?”

His littlest brothers nodded in unison. That couldn’t be good for their stomachs.

“Um...then get the chips. There’s beef jerky, too.”

“Ethan ate all those.” They stood, arms crossed, mirror images of each other. The sixteen-year-old was leaning against the barn, still staring at his phone. The kid hadn’t looked up once all day. Actually, Max couldn’t remember seeing his eyes. Even during the funeral, he’d had his gaze glued to the small screen in his hand.

Max pinched the bridge of his nose. So far, nothing had gone right on this trip. The temperature had to have dropped twenty degrees since they left Dallas this morning.

Standing, he arched his back until he heard the popping. He winced at the pain in his shoulder. Who was he kidding? Nothing had been right for the last two months since he was stomped on by Texas Fire. He’d wanted to be the cowboy who finally stayed on that bull for a full eight seconds. He’d done it, too, but at the cost of a healthy body. One broken collarbone and one fractured eye socket were added to his already long list of wrecked body parts.

“My phone’s about to die.” Ethan looked up for the first time. “I need to charge it. It’s like we dropped off the earth.”

Max wasn’t sure why the teen had even asked to join them, or why he’d agreed to it. He sighed. The kid’s mother was back in Chicago. Unfortunately, Max had plenty of memories of her. She had been his first stepmother, not that she had been any kind of mother. She had sent him away to live with his mother’s father. Apparently, she had no problem sending her own son away, either.

They might all have the same father, but in no way had they been part of the same household.

He hoped to not only be a better big brother but to give them a sense of family. He wanted to be a brother they could count on, even when they didn’t live in the same house.

Injecting positive energy into his voice, Max smiled. “We have a couple of weeks to spend together and get some brotherly bonding. But if you want to go home, Ethan, I’m sure we can find a way to get you to the airport.”

“Nah. I’m good.”

Max stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked down at the two little ones. He could do this until their aunt was able to get them. He had only met Vanessa once, at the rehearsal party for his father’s third marriage. She had been yelling at her sister, his father’s latest bride-to-be. Wanting to stop the fiasco, she had refused to go to the wedding. Yeah, that had been a lovely moment.

She would be taking the boys as soon as she wrapped up her end-of-year work schedule. The will had listed them both as guardians. The boys were stuck with two people who were strangers to them.

He looked at Ethan again. In the new semester, the coltish kid would return to his boarding school.

In less than a month he’d be on his own again, healed up and ready to ride in the finals. He could do this. “What about the cooler? Anything left in there?”

They shook their heads again. The matching pairs of big brown eyes just about did him in. He wanted to get these pens fixed, but he didn’t have the supplies he needed anyway.

“Come on, boys. We’ll turn the stock out in the larger pasture, then explore the living quarters. The main brick house was built by my...our grandfather in the ’70s, you know.” After unloading the bulls from the trailer, they climbed back into his truck. “Our great-great-grandfather built the old ranch house over a hundred years ago. We’ve owned the land for almost two hundred years. When Texas was still part of Mexico.”

Ethan didn’t look impressed. Time and years didn’t have much meaning to Isaac and Tomas. But for him? He hadn’t expected this stirring of coming home.

The old path to the main house was hard to find. There wasn’t any evidence that the place had had a caretaker. The weeds on the road looked as if they had grown unchecked for well over a year.

He pulled up to the house and started unloading.

“Max! Look! Someone’s coming,” one of the boys hollered.

Sure enough, a cloud of dust was heading their way. Maybe if they pretended they weren’t here, whoever it was would leave. There wasn’t a single person in Clear Water Max wanted to see.

“Who do you think it is? Uncle Rigo said this is where our family comes from.”

The other boy nodded. “He said there were lots of stupid people, too.”

Great. No telling what his uncle had said to them. “That’s not a nice word, guys. And Uncle Rigo is a bit grumpy, so I wouldn’t listen too much to what he says.”

Ethan leaned against one of the house’s columns. He slipped his phone into his loose jeans, his dark hair falling over his face. “Maybe they brought food.”

Max checked his watch. It was after two o’clock. Less than one day and he was already starving them. “Once this person leaves, we’ll drive to Uvalde and find something to eat and get supplies.”

A silver Tahoe pulled up to the front porch.

He glanced inside the vehicle. That couldn’t be right. His pulse did an uptick. The one person he wanted to avoid the most had just arrived at his door. What was she doing here? He narrowed his eyes. Maybe it was her twin, Danica, and not Jackie Bergmann.

Why was she just sitting there? He tilted his head. It looked like she was talking to someone. With a nod, she got out and stood next to the SUV, a huge smile on her face...a very forced smile.

One thing was certain. It was Jackie.

The summer they had met on the rodeo circuit she had been a pretty girl, and now she was a gorgeous woman. He had hoped his teenage memories had inflated her beauty, but they hadn’t. He had been Romeo to her Juliet. His stupid self had written endless poems and songs for her. Yeah, he’d been a major loser.

From that summer on, Jackie had become the standard to which he’d compared all the other women in his life. Her laugh, her quick wit, her gentleness—even her faith. To his irritation, the others had always come up short. He hated how much he had loved her. Not fun when it hadn’t been returned. He seemed destined to chase after people who didn’t want him.