Linda Warren - The Texan's Secret

“Nothing much ever happens in High Cotton. It would take a real crazy person to come onto a ranch that size with armed cowboys everywhere.”

She held up a hand. “That would be me.”

Her green eyes sparkled and he had to resist that lure. “Why didn’t Blanche ask for the rings after Jack’s death?”

“She would never belittle herself to Renee.”

“But she’d ask her daughter to steal?”

Shay stepped back, her hand on the door. “You got what you wanted, now, please leave.”

Silence stretched as they stared at one another. He had so many things to say, questions to ask, but all he could do was stare into her eyes and wish there was such a thing as a happy ending instead of pain and heartache.

“I’m sorry if my coming here has hurt you and—”

“Just keep your promise,” she replied, and closed the door.

CHANCE’S STEP WAS a little slower as he walked to his truck. Blanche Dumont. He didn’t know that much about her, and what he’d heard wasn’t good. Rumor was that Blanche had enticed Jack away from Renee with lies. The two women used to be friends, waitresses together, but that all ended when Jack walked into their lives. They then became enemies fighting for the man’s attention. It was a weird love triangle, and now there was Shay. Blanche’s child—a daughter no one knew about.

As Chance reached his truck, he saw two kids inside—Darcy and Petey. Darcy was in the driver’s seat, pretending to turn the wheel.

Chance opened the door. “What are you two doing?”

His voice must have come out rough, because Darcy seemed to shrink away from him. But her stubborn chin told him she wasn’t afraid. “Driving your truck to see if it’s a piece of junk,” she retorted.

“You should have asked permission first.”

“Uh-oh, there’s Mom. We gotta go.” The girl crawled out of the truck, followed by her friend, and ran to Shay, who was standing at the backyard gate.

Chance and Shay’s eyes met for a brief second as he slid into his truck. He remembered a line from a movie: “You can’t handle the truth.” Maybe it was best if he forgot the whole thing for his friends’, the Calhouns’, sake. The truth would be a blow to all of them.

But what about Shay?

THE TRIO WALKED INTO THE house in silence. Darcy and Petey hurriedly sat at the kitchen table and buried their heads in their homework. Shay glanced at her watch.

“Petey, it’s time for you to go home. Your mom should be off by now. She only works until noon on Saturday. I’ll phone to make sure.”

Petey gathered his books and Shay placed the call. Sally was divorced, working two jobs to make a living. Petey was usually at their house unless his teenage sister or brother watched him. It was a sad situation, but Shay’s was no better. She sighed. Between Darcy and her mother she had no life. But she never regretted for a minute honoring Beth’s wishes concerning Darcy. Shay just wished she knew how to handle her and how to handle her mother. She wished for a lot of things, and at the top of the list was a dark-eyed cowboy who took her breath away. A cowboy she would never see again.

“Shay?”

“She’s calling again,” Darcy remarked, writing in a workbook.

“I can hear,” Shay replied. “Stay put and finish your homework.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the girl muttered.

“Shay!”

She ran to her mother’s room. Blanche sat up in bed, propped on pillows, with tubing in her nose hooked to an oxygen machine on the floor. Her blond hair was now white. Nettie used to bleach it, but Blanche couldn’t stand the fumes anymore. She’d been a beautiful woman with blond hair, green eyes and a svelte figure. A lot of people said Shay looked like her. Shay hoped that was all she’d inherited from her mother.

As hard as she had tried, she couldn’t get the cigarette smell out of the room. Her mother had been a chronic smoker.

“What took so long?” Blanche asked, through another fit of coughing.

“It wasn’t that long.” Shay fluffed up her pillows.

“You were busy with that kid. How…many…times…do I—”

“And how many times do I have to tell you Darcy is here for good? She’s been with me for four years and is legally my daughter. Why can’t you understand that?” Shay didn’t know why she even asked the question. Her mother was very jealous and resented the time Shay spent with Darcy.

“Who was at the front door earlier?”

“Just someone wanting directions,” Shay said, hoping to keep the Calhouns out of the conversation.

“Don’t lie to me,” Blanche snapped.

Shay resisted the urge to bite her nails. “Okay. It was Chance Hardin.”

Her mother sat up. “From the Southern Cross?”

“The one and only.”

“Why didn’t you invite him in?”

“He was here to have me arrested if I didn’t tell him why I was looking through the safe. That’s not someone I want to invite in.”

“But don’t you see he could be our way to get my rings?”

Our way? “Excuse me?”

“If you fixed yourself up, you could look halfway decent.”

“Thank you,” Shay said through clenched teeth, while straightening the bed, that was littered with glamour magazines.

“Don’t you see a woman can make a man do anything she wants?”

“I must have missed that class in school.” But she’d certainly learned it from her mother. Maybe that’s why Shay was still single.

Blanche leaned back, her eyes narrowed. “You’re a pitiful excuse for a daughter and for a woman.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that before.”

“If I had been like you, I would never have gotten Jack. But I went after him with every trick in a woman’s arsenal and I got him…until he met that bitch again.”

Shay held up a hand. “I’m not listening to the Jack, Renee and Blanche story again. I’ve heard it a thousand times. And for the record, I’m not ever going back to Southern Cross. The past is the past and we both have to accept that.”

“Get out of my room, you no-good daughter!” Blanche screeched, and dissolved into a bout of coughing.

Shay waited until she stopped, and then walked out. This type of environment wasn’t good for Darcy, but they had few options.

What a life.

“Shay,” her mother called, before she could make it to the kitchen. Shay sucked in a patient breath and went back.

“What?”

“Did you tell Mr. Hardin why you were there and who you are?”

Oh, God, her mom never listened or let up. “Yes.”

Blanche rubbed her hands in glee. “We should be hearing from the mighty Calhouns then.”

“If we hear from them, it will be to have me arrested.”

“Oh, silly, don’t you see we have them over a barrel? You’re Jack Calhoun’s daughter and we’re going to get what’s coming to us.”

“I didn’t tell him I was Jack’s daughter. Only that you were my mother.”

“Well, that was stupid.”

“Don’t you understand I broke into their safe? They could have me arrested.”

“You were so close. I don’t know why you didn’t just grab them. You’ve let me down once again.”

Shay shook her head and walked out again before she screamed. There was no talking to Blanche in this mood. There was no talking to her in any mood. When Blanche became so verbally abusive, Nettie had suggested that Shay put her in a nursing home. But there was a bond between mothers and daughters, and no matter how bruised, battered or bent, the tie was still there. Shay couldn’t do it in the last stages of her mother’s life. That would be cruel.

Even though Blanche had been embittered by the divorce and Jack’s rejection, she’d lived life to the fullest. In her later years that bitterness had turned to hatred—not at Jack, but Renee. Blanche held Jack on a pedestal, and Shay didn’t understand that. She didn’t understand a lot of the past, because she looked at it through her mother’s rearview mirror. Most of it had been glossed over to Blanche’s benefit.