Lynnette Kent - The Prodigal Texan

Kristin looked him over with an appraising eye. “I also manage the health clinic here in Homestead. If you need some help while you’re here, please come by.”

“I’m okay,” Jud said with a shrug. “Just an accident at work.”

His wary gaze traveled to Miranda’s face. “I understand you won your election and rescued the town from disaster. Very impressive.” His flat tone drained the compliment of any meaning. He didn’t offer a handshake.

She dropped her own half-raised hand to her side. “I—”

“Ethan!” Kayla Ritter stood on the edge of the party nearest the street. “Ethan, they’re getting ready to cut the cake. Are you finished?”

“You bet.” Ethan started toward the park without so much as a nod to his brother, followed by Wade and the Gallaghers. Miranda lingered to gather the remnants of Project Newlywed. When she straightened up, she found Jud had collected a couple of shoe polish bottles and a length of ribbon.

“These were in the street.” He eased the trash into the bag she held in her arms, which brought his hands close to her chest. “What’s the fine for littering?”

“Life behind bars with no possibility of parole,” she said without thinking, desperate to put some distance between them.

Jud snorted. “I believe that. This always was a straitlaced town.”

Was he talking about her? “Having standards doesn’t make us straitlaced.” With her heart pounding, Miranda turned on her heel and headed toward the park and the wedding party. After all, he was the one who’d stopped, that night. She would have let him go all the way….

To her dismay, Jud fell in beside her. “There’s a fine line between having standards and being narrow-minded.”

She stopped in her tracks to confront him. “Only to someone who’s determined to defy good sense and decency.”

He stared down at her, his dark eyes narrowed under lowered brows. “I wondered how long I’d be here before somebody threw my past in my face.”

“Did you think I—we’d all forgotten?”

“I guess I hoped that just maybe, after fifteen years, people could let go of the past.” Shaking his head, he gave a weary sigh. “Dumb, Ritter, real dumb.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Miranda turned toward the party again. After only a few steps, though, she realized Jud wasn’t coming along. Despite herself, she glanced over her shoulder to see if he’d gone back the way he came.

Instead, he was staring up at the oversized statue of Hilde Schnorrberger guarding the entrance to Homestead Town Park. Hilde had followed her land-hungry husband to Texas, but when she reached the bank of Pecan Creek, she’d tied her bonnet to a tree and refused to take another step.

“Things have come full circle, haven’t they?” Jud looked from Hilde’s face to Miranda’s and back again. “A woman founded the town and now a woman’s running it.”

Miranda set her jaw. “You object to the idea of a woman in authority?”

“Not at all.” He gave her a wink and a half smile. “I’m fine with having a woman on top.”

Heat flared over her throat and across her face, but Miranda refused to be baited. “Then you’ll feel right at home in Homestead, won’t you?”

“That,” Jud said quietly as she walked away, “is what I’m here to find out.”

NAN WRIGHT stationed herself at one end of the long table borrowed from the Methodist church to hold the potluck dishes folks had brought to Greer’s wedding reception. Her other option for passing the time was to go sit with the older ladies—mothers and grandmothers—as they gossiped about the latest love affairs, the newest pregnancies, the possible divorces. Nan kept telling herself she would never get that old.

Just as she wedged a spoon into the creamy goodness of macaroni and cheese, a jolt in the food line brought someone new to her end of the table.

“Delicious,” Cruz Martinez said. When she looked into his face, he winked at her. “The food, too.”

He reached for the spoon she’d just added to the dish and Nan watched in fascination as his fingers closed on the metal handle, still warm from her touch.

Cruz grinned as he moved to the next dish, green bean casserole. “Are you having fun over here?”

She glanced around to be sure nobody was listening. “Not exactly.”

“Me, neither.” He spooned a helping of creamed corn onto his plate. “Why don’t you come out from behind there and dance with me?”

“I—”

“Pardon me.” Clarice Enfield reached across the table to serve herself a helping of scalloped tomatoes. “What are you doing standing in line over here, Cruz? You should be out on the dance floor with one of these cute young girls. Nan, where’s Miranda? She’d be perfect for Cruz, don’t you think?” She elbowed him in the side. “You two love-birds could live in the cabin and Nan could live in the farmhouse like she does now. How perfect would that be?”

Once Clarice had moved on to the salads, Cruz leaned over the table. “How about you and me in the cabin and Miranda in the farmhouse?” he murmured.

Nan couldn’t help smiling. “Hush! Next thing I know, all these motormouths will be talking about me. Go sit down and eat.”

“Dance, later?”

“Shoo,” she said, without committing herself.

As she looked along the length of the table, she caught Rae Jean Barker’s eye. Rae Jean operated the beauty shop in downtown Homestead and considered herself the source for local news. As Nan watched, she turned and whispered something to Millicent Niebauer, who had stepped up to take her turn in the food line. Millie ran the local newspaper, the Homestead Herald, with her husband Hiram.

“I do like that young man you have working for you,” Millie commented as she moved in front of Nan. “He’s trustworthy and competent. And so attractive.” She sighed. “I bet girls all over the county are dreaming about him.”

“I expect so,” Nan said warily.

“I imagine he’ll set his sights on one of them soon, decide it’s time for him to get married, have some kids, find his own land to manage.”

“No doubt.”

“And all those females who thought he was so handsome will be left sad and lonely. Maybe feeling a little foolish, even.”

Nan met Millie’s gaze. “Maybe.”

The reporter shrugged. “That’s the way life works.” She moved on, no doubt fully aware of the knife she’d stuck between her victim’s ribs.

When Cruz came back, Nan was prepared. “No, I can’t dance.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve got to get the table cleaned up.”

“Later?”

“I don’t think so. Why don’t you dance with…” She saw the warning flares in his eyes. “Why don’t you go talk to Wade? Callie’s busy, and he’s all by himself.”

Cruz started to say something, then shut his mouth, turned on his heel and walked away.

Nan spent the rest of the reception hanging around the mothers and grandmothers. Maybe, without realizing it, she’d already gotten that old.

SINCE HE HADN’T BEEN invited to the reception, Jud decided to keep a low profile. He headed for the traditional party post for unattached males—the precinct around the keg.

With a tall plastic cup full of ice-cold beer in his hand, he leaned back against a tree, grateful for the chance to ease his barely healed leg and get his bearings before he actually tried to mingle.

Closest to him were the young studs, as he was sure they thought of themselves—he certainly had at nineteen and twenty. Like many of their kind, they spent the evening chugging their beer and making lewd comments about the girls preening for them on the other side of the dance floor. Jud didn’t know most of the boys’ names, but two of them he could identify by the fact that they were identical twins. Allen and Abel Enfield had the misfortune to take after their mother, with her frizzy red hair, freckled complexion and tendency to put on weight. The boys were big, beefy, and more than a little drunk.