Bethany Campbell - Home To Texas

“I told you,” Cal said. “I got people there. My daddy’s just retired and is off gallivantin’ for a while. But his cousin Bret’s managing the ranch. Big Bret. He’ll be right next door. My sister and brother-in-law are there. You’ll love my sister—she’s horse-crazy as you. Serena and I have friends there, too, and they’ll help you out. You got my word on it.”

Tara was still uncertain. “No. It doesn’t feel right. I’m not the little match girl. I don’t want to take charity. I don’t want to go imposing on people I’ve never met. I—I—”

“You’re scared,” Gavin said. “Once you would have jumped to go. But Sid and Burleigh have knocked the starch out of you. You’re afraid to take chances.”

Confusion disappeared in a flash of indignation. “I am not afraid. Our parents raised us to take chances.”

“Then what’s the matter? You don’t think you’re up to it? Loss of confidence?”

“Certainly not!” she retorted. “Restore a house? A lodge? Get a stable put up? Damned straight I could do it.”

“You really think so?” he asked.

“Yes, I do. Yes, I could,” she said before she knew the words were out of her mouth.

“Well, then,” Gavin said, as if in philosophic resignation, “That’s that. Cal, how fast you think we could get her set up there?”

“Under ordinary circumstances, two or three months. But put my sister on the job—four weeks, easy.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “And Sid won’t try to stop you. You know that.”

To her sorrow, she knew.

With a certain slyness, Cal said. “Texas law’s different from California law. It’ll put another obstacle in what’s-his-name’s path.”

Burleigh, she thought. And any move that slowed down Burleigh was a good one.

“It won’t be easy,” Gavin warned. “There was a flood that did considerable damage downstream. Most construction workers are tied up there. Labor’ll be hard to find.”

“Lynn’ll help her.” Cal shrugged as if the matter were already resolved. He glanced at his plate, sitting empty on the desk, then at Gavin’s. “Gavin, if you don’t want the rest of that sandwich, can I have it? Tara, what about that salad?”

Did I just agree to go to Texas? She asked herself, dazed. Yes. I think I did.

Numbly she passed her salad bowl to Cal. “How can I settle in Texas in only a month? Things would have to be done at warp speed.”

Cal picked up a fork and speared a cherry tomato. “Just leave it to the McKinneys, darlin’.”

Gavin gave him a sardonic glance. “Texans. Always bragging.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Cal answered. “If it’s true, it ain’t braggin’.”

CAL HADN’T BEEN BRAGGING.

Exactly one month later, Tara was in Crystal Creek, Texas.

She sat, temporarily alone, in the kitchen of a kindly, cheerful stranger who was not quite a stranger—Lynn McKinney Russell.

Today Tara and Lynn had met face-to-face for the first time after a frantic month of e-mails and phone calls. Tara had smiled and chatted, asked and answered questions over coffee.

The whole time she’d pretended that all of this was normal. She’d pretended that she was the most confident woman in the world. Inwardly she still wondered how in hell she suddenly found herself halfway across the continent, a California girl in the heart of cowboy country.

She stole another glance out Lynn’s kitchen window to check on Del. He was playing lustily on a backyard jungle gym, almost wildly. After all, he’d been cooped up in the truck so long. His black-and-white terrier, Lono, released from his cage, happily chased about the yard.

This morning had seen the last leg of the journey. Tara had driven from Dallas through Austin, then to this little town and to Lynn’s house. Lynn had already done a hundred kindesses for her and Del, and she had welcomed them like family.

Del was clearly happy and excited because he had, for a while at least, what all only children most desire, a playmate.

A little black-haired boy, Jamie, also about four, clambered and swung on the bars with him. The other boy’s mother, ripely pregnant, watched them. Her name was Camilla, and she was Lynn’s next-door neighbor. She stood with her arms crossed over her round belly, smiling at the children’s antics.

Tara sat in Lynn’s cozy breakfast nook, a mug of coffee warm between her hands. From the oven wafted the spicy scent of a casserole. Lynn had insisted that Tara and Del lunch with her, and afterward Lynn would lead them to the house Tara had seen only in photographs and old blueprints.

We’re almost there, Tara thought, watching Del hang by his knees. We’re almost home.

Except it’s not home. It’s not remotely like home, taunted an inner gremlin of uneasiness.

Near Los Angeles, the hills glowed with such a vibrant, vital green that they seemed to shimmer like emeralds. Palm trees nodded and swayed, their fronds sensitive to the sea breeze.

The hills here are stony, arid. The trees are bare. They’re twisted into strange, low shapes.

Shut up, she fiercely told that treacherous voice. Hills were hills, dammit, and trees were trees. Home was where you made it, and by all that was holy, she vowed she would make a home here.

What she needed to worry about wasn’t the scenery, but if the Texas move could really slow down Burleigh’s plan to be the dominant force in Del’s life. She had sent him a letter on the day she left. She hoped it would take a while to reach him. When he read it, he would not take it kindly.

She took a sip of coffee and straightened her spine defiantly. If he wanted to fight, she’d fight. If he wanted to maneuver, she’d outmaneuver.

“Found it,” Lynn said, bustling back into the kitchen with a fat, leather-covered photo album.

Lynn was petite, and she moved with an efficient briskness and an athlete’s grace. Her hair was swept up into two pert ponytails that made her look like a teenager, not a woman with two grown stepdaughters and a ten-year-old son.

She sat down on the banquette beside Tara and began flipping through the album’s pages. Lynn giggled. “Cal would kill me if he knew I showed you this. Ha! Just let me find it…”

Lynn paused, pointing with amusement at a snapshot. “This isn’t it, but look. The gang of usual suspects.”

Tara looked and smiled. After her long journey, it was good to see familiar faces.

There, with their arms around each other’s shoulders, stood a trio of tall men, mugging and grinning for the camera. One was her brother, Gavin, another was Cal, and the third was Spencer Malone. The Three Amigos, Inc.

Lynn gave Tara a wry look. “But the real hoot is a shot I took last month. The last time they were all down here together.”

She turned the page. The same three men stood on a nearly barren lawn. They wore ludicrously large, sequined sombreros, and they held up margarita glasses in an exaggerated toast.

“Idiots,” Lynn said, but she said it fondly. “That’s the day they signed themselves into debt up to their necks. Recognize where they are?”

In the background only a portion of a house showed. Built of native stone, even that small section managed to look both elegant and on the edge of ruin. Boards barred the door and the windows gaped blankly.

Tara swallowed. She knew the place from other pictures. This was the house she had been sent to save. It was where she and Del would live, perhaps for a long time.

Again she peeped at Del, dangling by his arms from one of the jungle-gym bars. She’d known for his sake and her own, that they needed to be far from Los Angeles. But this far?

Lynn turned pages, paused and tapped another photo. “This is me and both my brothers.”