Texas-Sized Secrets

“Give him a chance. It’s not all his fault the way he acted when you were young. If it’s anyone’s fault, blame me.”

He leaned across and kissed her wrinkled forehead. “I couldn’t fault you for anything. You were always there for me.”

Her grip tightened on his hand and she held him close. “I made mistakes, Reed. Unfortunately, you paid for them.”

“I don’t understand.”

She closed her eyes. “Talk to William. He promised to explain for me.” Her grip loosened until her hand dropped from his onto the arm of the lounge chair.

For a long moment, Reed listened for the sound of her breathing. Until he heard her long shallow breaths he didn’t breathe himself. Grace Bryson was asleep.

After covering her with a light blanket and tipping the chair to a full recline, he let himself out of the house, locking the door behind him.

He felt strange leaving her alone, but she’d insisted she would be all right. Six months into his mother’s recovery, Reed still worried about her. What if she had another stroke?

Darkness had settled in over the town of Prairie Rock. From a distance, he could hear loud country-western music booming into the star-filled night sky. That would be his next stop for the evening. Leon’s Bar.

Fernando had insisted he should go to town and play babysitter to the two young hotheads who’d been ready to tear each other’s throats out all day. Once off the ranch, with no one to hold them back, they’d probably succeed. Part of Reed was ready to let them go at it. The other part knew Jesse was no match for the much larger and meaner Dusty, and having two of them out of commission would only add more stress. Mona needed ranch hands who could work long, hard days, not men with broken bones, laid up for the next six to eight weeks.

Reed ran a hand down his face. Being up all night had left him tired and cranky. He was used to pulling all-nighters, but they got harder the older he got.

With a sigh, he climbed into his truck and turned toward the bar. He had another reason to come to Leon’s Bar—to track a rustler.

When he pulled in front of the ramshackle building made of heavy timbers and corrugated-tin siding, he noted the dozen trucks and cars lining the parking lot. With the band playing a lively tune, the night was just getting started.

Careful not to appear too obvious, he walked in front of the heavy-duty trucks looking for signs of damage from pushing through wooden fence posts. The trucks sporting heavy front grilles all looked as if they’d been driven hard over rough terrain. Any one of them could have done the damage.

At the door, Reed paid the cover charge to a burly man wearing a black cowboy hat and stepped into the smoky tavern. Scantily clad waitresses, wearing shorts no mother should let her daughter out of the house in, sashayed between the tables and bar, filling orders and swatting straying hands.

He spotted Catalina at the bar talking to one of the local ranchers, a tray balanced on one pretty, rounded hip. He could see why Jesse and Dusty were fighting over her.

Her long, blond hair reached down to the middle of her back and her smile and laugh had every red-blooded man in the room turning her way.

Dusty sat at the bar, dressed in clean, pressed jeans and a fancy western shirt with shiny pearl buttons, a sure sign he was on the prowl for a little female company. He shouted for another round of whiskey, his voice loud enough to be heard all the way to the courthouse on Main Street. Definitely loud enough to be heard over the band.

So far, Jesse hadn’t made an appearance. Maybe Reed was in luck and he wouldn’t have to break up another fight today. One had been enough and he wanted to take the time to people watch. If their black-haired rustler showed up with a cut on his head, he was going to nail him to the nearest post.

Choosing a table as far away from the speakers as possible, Reed sank into a seat in a dark corner, the bass woofer pounding against the inside of his head, even from this distance.

Thankfully, after five more minutes of eardrum-splitting tunes, the band took its first break and the jukebox took over in much lower decibels.

More people drifted in as the hour neared ten. So far Reed hadn’t found a dark-haired man with a cut on his head. Then again, most men wore cowboy hats. At least half a dozen had black hair, some long, some short. Reed ruled out the short hair. The length he’d seen on the barb had been at least two inches and straight. Which ruled out the buzz-cut young cowboys two-stepping around the wooden dance floor.

Several Hispanic men crowded around a table at the opposite end of the bar from Reed, all guzzling beer and watching the dancers and other bar patrons.

At least three of the five had longish straight black hair. One had gray hair and the other had his hair cut in a short buzz. Of the three with long hair, two wore cowboy hats.

How to get them out of their hats. Reed bided his time.

“Can I get you another beer?” Catalina Garcia leaned over the empty table next to him and lifted empty bottles onto her tray, a healthy amount of cleavage on display.

“No, thanks.” He’d been nursing the same beer since he arrived. It had gone flat and warm, but he wasn’t there to drink.

“Mona tells me she hired you out at her place.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Mona’s a really nice girl,” she said as if commenting on the weather, while she wiped the table with a wet washrag. When she was done, she turned to him. “Don’t do anything to hurt her, will you? She’s got enough going on in her life.”

“She hired me to help her, not hurt her.” Reed’s brows drew together. “What exactly do you mean?”

The serious look she’d just given him changed into a twisted smile. “You’re not exactly hard to look at, you know.” With that she flounced away, her bottom twitching back and forth like an open invitation.

An invitation Reed wasn’t accepting. Nor was he interested in Mona as anything other than his boss. The end.

“Mind if I join you?”

Reed stiffened. He knew that voice and he’d never welcomed the sound. “As a matter of fact, I do.” He didn’t turn to look at his father, but a chair scraped and the older man sat next to him anyway.

“I’ve been trying to talk to you for the past six months, but there never seems to be the right time or place.”

“So why bother?” Reed lifted the warm beer and downed the last drops. A long silence stretched between them as the jukebox switched from a lively tune to a cry-in-my-beer song. All the old anger and hurt of his teen years had mellowed into an even stronger indifference for the man who’d never treated him like a son. Now he looked across the table at the weathered, retired rancher, who’d almost lost his wife and immediately afterward sold his ranch. Property that had been in his family for a century. William Bryson wasn’t as intimidating as he’d been twenty years ago. He just looked old and tired.

The graying man rested his elbows on the table and laced his fingers. “I’m a stubborn man.”

Agreed.

“A stubborn fool,” the man continued without looking up. “But one thing is for certain, I’ve always loved your mother more than anything. It took her almost dying to realize how unfair I’ve been to you all your life and how hard it was on her.”

A lone fiddle picked up the tune on the Jukebox song and played a plaintive melody, accentuating the anguish in his father’s voice.

Reed shifted uncomfortably and leaned forward to stand.

“Don’t go. I have to get this out. I have a confession to make.”

“It’s a little late for confessions.” Reed continued his upward movement, but his father’s hand gripped his forearm and held him.

“It’s not just my confession. It’s something your mother wanted me to tell you as well. She just doesn’t have the strength to right now.”

Had it only been his father, Reed would have left. Instead he sat back in his seat. “Go ahead.”

“Your mother and I dated for two years before we were married.”

“And I was born nine months later. I’ve heard this story.”

“Not quite nine months,” he said in a whisper. “What you don’t know is that she was pregnant when we got married.” His father looked up, his gaze colliding with Reed’s. “With another man’s baby.”

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