Caro Carson - A Texas Rescue Christmas

Too late, Becky surmised that this was not a housekeeper. She’d probably just given orders to a relative of the groom. The woman did not introduce herself, however. She just launched right into a conversation as if they were acquainted.

“If you’re here for the wedding, I’ve got some bad news. It’s been cancelled. Didn’t you get a message from your sister? I swear, she called a hundred people yesterday herself.

“The pastor was afraid to drive, and the caterers were in a tizzy. Luke and Patricia, they decided they didn’t want to miss their honeymoon, what with the airports closing and all. They’re taking some gigantic sailboat from Galveston all the way around Florida to the Bahamas. Anyway, they took their license to a justice of the peace first thing this morning and got married. Now Luke’s parents are driving them all the way to the port to make their boat on time. But we’re supposed to cut into their cake and send them a video of us doing it, so stick around, honey.”

Patricia was gone.

Becky’s cell phone rang, shrill.

“May I use your powder room?” Becky asked, smiling sweetly, although her pink lip gloss had faded away hours ago.

She locked herself in the bathroom, and she cried.

* * *

“Why, it’s James Waterson the third, as I live and breathe! Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? I swear, you are even taller than your brother. What are you now? Six-three? Six-four?”

Trey steeled himself against the onslaught. He hadn’t had a chance to scrutinize the woman’s face, yet she was hugging him and patting him on the cheek, treating him like he was a growing boy when he’d just passed his thirty-first birthday. Clearly, she knew him, but he did not know her. If she’d just hold still and let him look at her face for a moment—but she chatted away, turned and dragged him from the door.

He hadn’t had a chance to look about as he’d come in. He preferred to pause and get his bearings when he entered a new building, but this stranger gave him no chance. Trey looked around, consciously choosing to focus on what his eyes could see and deliberately ignoring the sounds hitting his ear. He was tired from the strain of travel, and he could only take in so much.

The woman pulled him into the high-raftered great room, and Trey, still concentrating on visual information, immediately focused on the fireplace. It was decorated for a wedding with a swag of fluffy white material and silver Texas stars, but he knew what it would look like without all that. He knew that fireplace.

Massive, its limestone edifice rose from floor to ceiling in a severe rectangle that would have been boring if the limestone variations hadn’t been unique from stone to stone. Trey had lain before roaring fires, staring up at the limestone, idly noting which were white and beige and yellow, which were solid, which were veined. From infancy, he’d done so, he supposed. He last remembered doing it with a girl while in high school, drinking his mother’s hot chocolate before sneaking his sweetheart out to the barn for some unchaperoned time.

Yes, he knew that fireplace.

Suddenly, the whole room fell into place. Hell, the whole house made sense. Trey knew where he was. It was effortless. The kitchen was through there. The mudroom beyond that. His bedroom was down the hall. The dogs needed to be fed outside that door, every morning, before school.

There was nothing confusing about it.

God, he knew where he was. Not just how to navigate from here to there. Not just enough to keep from looking like a fool. He really and truly knew where in the world he was.

“Can you believe they ran off like that? I mean, you can’t blame them with the storm coming and everything, but...” The woman squeezed his arm conspiratorially. “Okay, I blame them a little. I think most women would want the wedding. You could always take a trip some other time. I mean, it’s the bride’s big show with the white gown, being the center of attention, the flowers, the cake, you know? But Patricia, she’s some kind of sailboat nut. I don’t even know what you call those people. Instead of horse crazy, are they boat crazy? Anyhow, you would have thought your brother had never wanted anything more in his entire life than to get on a sailboat and go visitin’ islands.”

With a woman? Someone he loved enough to pledge his life to? Trey didn’t find that so hard to understand. It sounded as if Luke had made the choice between wearing a tux for one day or spending a month on tropical seas with the woman he wanted the most. His little brother had never been stupid.

Then again, once upon a time, Trey hadn’t been stupid, either. Now, he didn’t recognize the person he was talking to. He tried to place the woman’s face as she chattered on.

“Luke’s always been a cattle rancher, not a sailor. I guess people do crazy things when they’re in love. I hope it lasts. Lord knows, none of my marriages have. I don’t blame you for not coming to any of them.”

Trey had been invited to her weddings? That sick, sweaty feeling started between his shoulder blades.

The sound of the mudroom door slamming centered him once more. It was a sound Trey hadn’t heard in ten years, yet it sounded utterly familiar, instantly recognizable without any effort.

The man’s voice that followed was new to him. “No luck, sugar,” it boomed.

“Oh, dear. Trey, come meet your new uncle.”

Uncle. That meant this woman was his aunt. Trey looked at her, and suddenly it was so incredibly obvious. She was his mother’s sister, his aunt June. How could he have forgotten that he had an aunt June?

He felt stupid.

The kitchen, however, he remembered. He hadn’t stepped fully into the room, hadn’t put both boots on the black-and-white-checkered floor, when he felt that utterly certain feeling once more. His brain worked for once. He didn’t just recognize the kitchen, he knew every inch. This drawer held the silverware, that cupboard held the big pots, and the cold cereal was on the bottom shelf of the pantry. He knew all that without trying, and it made him realize how little he usually knew about other rooms. He’d been adrift in every room he’d been in for the past ten years.

His new uncle shook hands, then shook his head at Aunt June. “No sign of her, sugar.”

Another woman, younger than Aunt June, came in from outside. He could see her through the doorway to the mudroom, stamping her boots and smacking icy droplets off her jacket sleeves. “It’s turning into sleet out there, bad.”

He didn’t know her.

She knew him. “Ohmigod, Trey! I haven’t seen you in ages.” She dumped her coat on the mudroom floor and came rushing at him, arms open. They closed about him in a hug, unfamiliar in every way.

Don’t panic. Think. Aunt June has daughters. Think of their names .

Aunt June patted his arm and started laughing. “I don’t think he recognizes you, Emily. It’s been ten years, at least. You were in pigtails and braces last time he saw you.”

He had a cousin named Emily, of course.

Stupid, stupid, stupid .

Just to prove that he knew something , he opened the correct cabinet to pull out coffee mugs. His brother hadn’t moved their mother’s traditional coffee machine. It sat on the same counter it had always sat on. Trey knew the filters would be in the cupboard above it.

“Can I make y’all some coffee?” he said, his voice sounding gruff to his own ears. He owned a third of the house, and he had company. He ought to make some attempt to be a host.

“That’s a good idea,” Emily said. “I need to warm up before I keep looking.”

And...he was lost again. The emotions of these three people were hard for him to keep track of. Everyone was happy one moment, worried the next.