The Maverick's Return

And then, of course, there had been the guilt. That had all but paralyzed him. It had definitely kept him from returning.

Jamie took pity on him. “Water under the bridge,” he told Dan. “Just water under the bridge. What really matters is that you’re here now,” he said, sounding genuinely happy. “Makes my suffering through the taping of that program worth all the agony,” he added with a warm laugh. “Oh damn, where are my manners? Can I offer you something to eat or drink?”

“No, I’m fine,” Dan told him. “Just seeing you again after all this time is all I need.”

“Speaking of need,” Jamie said, “I need you to fill me in.”

“On what?”

“On what you’ve been doing these last twelve years,” Jamie said.

Dan blew out a long breath. He knew he owed Jamie that much. Still, going over that ground would bring up memories he wanted left buried and undisturbed.

He looked at Jamie, wondering where to start. “That, my brother, is a tall order.”

Chapter Two

“Well,” Jamie said in response to the unreadable expression on his brother’s face, “think of it as the price you have to pay if you want to get to meet your nephews and niece.”

The triplets, Dan thought. He’d almost forgotten about them.

“Okay,” he replied gamely, “if you’re really serious.”

Jamie managed to keep a straight face for approximately fifteen seconds, and then he finally broke down and laughed.

“I’m just curious about what you’ve been doing, but if you don’t want to talk about it,” he said more soberly, “that’s okay.”

Dan appreciated that his brother wasn’t pressuring him for information. The very fact that Jamie wasn’t encouraged him to share.

“It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it, Jamie. I just don’t want to put you to sleep.” The smile on his face was a tad sheepish. “The last twelve years have been pretty boring.”

The sadness Jamie saw in his brother’s eyes told him that those years weren’t boring so much as they might have left a scar on Dan’s soul. Jamie found himself aching for his brother.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” Jamie said. “No pressure.”

Dan was about to say something in response, but just then, a slender, willowy redhead with lively blue eyes and an infectious smile walked into the room, coming from the back of the house. She looked straight at him.

“I thought I heard you talking to someone,” she said to Jamie.

Both Jamie and his brother rose to their feet in unison.

“Danny,” Jamie said, putting his hand out to the woman who had just crossed over to them, “I’d like you to meet the light of my life, my wife, Fallon.” Affectionately wrapping his arm around her waist, Jamie continued the introduction. “Fallon, this is my older brother Danny.”

Jamie expected a nod of acknowledgment from the pretty young woman. A smile at best. But he quickly discovered that Fallon was just like her husband. Rather than greeting him with a few pleasantries, she left the shelter of her husband’s arm and went straight to him.

The young woman embraced him, giving him a warm hug that swirled straight into his heart.

“Danny! It’s so wonderful to finally meet you,” she cried enthusiastically. “Jamie’s told me so much about you!”

Stunned, still caught up in Fallon’s embrace, Dan looked over her shoulder at his brother. He’d thought that by now, Jamie would have thought of him as a distant memory—if that.

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes,” Fallon replied. Releasing her brother-in-law, she stepped back next to her husband. “Can’t get to know the man without getting to know his family. Though I must admit it took a bit of work at first. Jamie wasn’t much of a talker in the beginning,” she confided. “I think he kind of felt overwhelmed, and under the circumstances, who could blame him?” she said, looking at Jamie fondly. “But once I got him going, he told me all about you and Luke and Bailey, as well as your sisters. Bella and Dana, of course, I got to know myself. You’ve all had a rough life,” she readily acknowledged, “but it can only get better from here on in.”

Before Dan could ask about either Bella or Dana, Jamie told him, “Bella’s still in Rust Creek Falls. She’s married now. And Dana came for a while late last year. Turns out she’s living in Portland, Oregon with a nice family who had adopted her. No word on Liza yet, but we’re still looking.” He smiled broadly at Danny. “Bella and Dana will both be thrilled to know that you’re actually alive.”

The revelation stunned Dan. He stared at his brother. “You didn’t think I was alive?” he asked Jamie incredulously.

“Well, I didn’t hear from you for twelve years. The thought had crossed my mind,” Jamie said. “Anyway, it was Fallon who encouraged me to start looking, not just for you but for all the lost sheep of our family,” he said. He paused to press a kiss to his wife’s temple. “I don’t mind telling you that this woman saved my life.”

Fallon put her hand on her husband’s chest. “Now, don’t get all melodramatic on your brother, Jamie,” Fallon chided.

“No melodrama,” Jamie responded. “Just the plain truth. I was in a really bad way after Paula died,” he told Dan.

“Paula?” Dan asked. It occurred to him that he knew next to nothing about what Jamie had gone through in the last twelve years, just what he had gotten from the TV program.

A pang twisted his gut. He should have been here. Somehow, even though his grandparents had all but thrown him and his older brothers out, he should have found a way to be there for Jamie and his sisters. A way to get over his all-but-soul-crushing guilt, a way to keep them all together as a family.

“His first wife,” Fallon interjected.

The fact that Jamie had been married to someone else first didn’t seem to bother her, Dan observed. She seemed to take it all in stride. Jamie had really lucked out with Fallon, Dan thought. He was genuinely happy for his brother. At least one of them had found happiness, despite the fact that the odds had felt as if they were against all of them.

“The triplets were born prematurely,” Jamie explained, continuing to fill his brother in. “Paula died shortly after that from complications caused by the C-section. For a long while, I felt it was all my fault.”

Confused, Dan wondered how that could possibly be his brother’s fault.

“Paula didn’t want kids. I did.” A semi-sad smile played on his lips. “I guess I missed the sounds of a big family.”

Fallon took over her husband’s narrative. It was clear that she didn’t want him to dwell on what she felt were his unfounded feelings of guilt.

“The whole town pitched in to help Jamie out when Paula passed on. A bunch of us took turns volunteering to take care of the triplets so that he could regain his foothold.”

“I wouldn’t have made it without you,” Jamie told her.

“Without us,” Fallon corrected. “Like I said,” she told Dan, “the whole town pitched in.”

Deftly, Fallon changed the subject, asking Dan, “So, have you come back to Rust Creek Falls to stay?”

“Not to sound as pushy as this redhead,” Jamie interjected, “but have you?”

Dan was still trying to make his mind up about that. “I’m not sure yet.”

Fallon didn’t hesitate. “Well, you’re staying with us while Jamie helps you to make up your mind,” she told Dan. Her tone, warm and friendly, left no room for argument.

Still, Dan felt he had to at least offer a protest. “I can’t impose.”

“Family never imposes,” Jamie insisted. “End of discussion. You’re staying,” he said with finality. Then he got back to his initial question. “So where have you been all this time?”

That was simple enough to answer. “The last ten years I’ve been in Colorado.”

“Colorado?” Jamie repeated. “I can’t picture you in Colorado.”

Dan understood where Jamie was coming from on that. Colorado brought up images of big cities and he was a country boy at heart.

“I’ve been booking dude ranch vacations for city dwellers who fancy themselves cowboys,” Dan told his brother and Fallon. “It’s not a bad living,” he was quick to add. “And I get to spend most of my time on horseback.”

“Now, that I can picture,” Jamie told him. “You said you’ve been in Colorado for the last ten years, but you’ve been gone from Rust Creek Falls for twelve. Where did you go before then?”

“Cheyenne,” Dan answered. “I worked as a ranch hand there—along with Luke and Bailey. But they didn’t much care for it,” he confessed with a sad smile. “They got restless and then, one night, they just took off.” He paused, trying to deal with an unexpected wave of sadness that washed over him. Suppressing a sigh, he told Jamie, “I haven’t seen them since.”

Fallon leaned forward and put her hand up on her brother-in-law’s shoulder. “We’ll find them,” she promised.

“Isn’t she amazing?” Jamie asked him. There was pride in his eyes. “She just keeps spreading optimism wherever she goes, no matter what.”

A light pink hue rose to Fallon’s cheeks as she pointedly ignored her husband’s compliment. Rerouting the conversation again, she asked Dan, “Would you like to meet our kids?”

He could think of nothing that he would like better. “I’d love to,” Dan responded.

“Then come this way. You can come too, Jamie,” she added playfully, as if it was an afterthought. “Now, brace yourself,” she told Dan. “These are not your typical year-and-a-half-old babies. They could use Jared, Henry and Kate in caffeine commercials,” she confided.

“By the way, Kate’s the one with a bow on her head,” Jamie told him as they walked to the bedroom that the triplets occupied when they were downstairs.

He explained that the official nursery was upstairs, but because they wanted the triplets near them as much as possible, they’d created a second room for the babies downstairs where they could take their naps.

“She had such short hair,” Jamie explained, “everyone thought I had three sons. After a while, I got tired of telling them that Kate was a girl, so I put a bow on her to set them straight.”

“Now her hair is finally growing in,” Fallon told him as she led the way into the back room. “Which is a good thing, because she keeps pulling that bow off.”

Dan couldn’t hold back the smile when he stepped into the room and saw the triplets. The two boys were both on their feet, their chubby little fingers grabbing the side of their playpen and shaking it. Dan had a feeling that the playpen’s life expectancy was in serious jeopardy of being severely shortened.

The third triplet was seated on her well-padded bottom, serenely playing with a floppy-eared stuffed bunny, seemingly totally oblivious to the commotion her brothers were creating.

Beaming with unabashed pride, Jamie introduced his triplets.

“Dan, I’d like you to meet Henry and Jared,” he said, indicating the two standing boys. “And this little sweetheart is Kate. Kids,” Jamie said to his triplets, “this is your uncle Danny. Can you say ‘Hi’ to him?” he prompted.

An uneven chorus of something that could be thought to pass for “Hi!” rose up following Jamie’s request.

“They talk?” Dan asked, his voice a mixture of surprise and envy. He knew next to nothing when it came to children and even less than that when it came to babies.

“Talk?” Jamie echoed, then said with a laugh, “They don’t stop talking. Not even in their sleep. Of course, most of the time it sounds like gibberish and I can’t understand what they’re saying, but they seem to be able to communicate with each other just fine.”

“That’s because twins and triplets have a language all their own,” Fallon told her husband.

Dan dropped to his knees beside the playpen to get closer to the three little people who had been instrumental in getting him to finally come home. Something stirred within him as he watched them for a moment.

“Hi, kids.”

Again he received an uneven chorus echoing the greeting. Kate pulled herself up to her feet and made her way over to him. She offered him a sunny smile and just like that, she took him prisoner.

Dan ran his hand along her silky hair. “She’s going to be a charmer,” he told Jamie.

“What do you mean ‘going to be’?” Jamie asked. “She already is one.”

“You’re right,” Dan laughed, unable to take his eyes off the little girl. “My mistake.”

* * *

Dan spent the next hour getting to know his brother’s children as well as his brother’s wife. It was the best hour he could remember spending in the last twelve years.

But then it was time to put the triplets down for a nap.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to leave the room now,” Fallon told him, apologizing. “I’ll never get them down for their naps if you’re in eyesight.”

“I understand,” Dan said. He was already at the bedroom door, although he did pause for one last backward glance.

“They’re something else, aren’t they?” Jamie said with pride.

“They’re beautiful kids,” Dan agreed. And then he thought of the circumstances that Jamie had been forced to go through shortly after the triplets’ birth. “You must have had a really hard time coping right after Paula’s death,” Dan said with immense sympathy. Again, he fervently wished he could have been there for Jamie.

“It was hard,” Jamie admitted. “But Fallon wasn’t kidding. It felt like the whole town pitched in to help. Otherwise, quite honestly, I don’t know what would have happened or what I would have done. When you have just two hands and three kids, the numbers aren’t exactly in your favor,” he told his brother, his words underscored with a good-natured laugh.

Dan had been under the impression that Fallon had really meant a few people at best. But there was no reason for Jamie to exaggerate. That hadn’t been in the nature of the boy he’d known.

“The whole town?” Dan asked in amazement, just to be sure.

“Yeah, the whole town.” Jamie paused for a moment before adding, “Anne helped, too.”

The mere mention of her name was like a fissure in the dam. The crack split open, spewing forth a deluge of memories upon Daniel.

“Have you been by to see Anne since you got back?” Jamie asked, breaking into his thoughts.

Not a day had gone by in the last twelve years that Dan hadn’t wanted to see Anne Lattimore. That he hadn’t wanted to pack up his meager belongings and find Annie. But he had staunchly never given in to that desire.

Mainly because he was convinced that she was far better off without him.

And even now, as he stood in his brother’s house, battling the urge to ride up and see the woman he had loved practically from the first moment he’d drawn breath, a part of him still felt that she would be better off if he just left well enough alone.

“No,” Dan answered quietly, “I haven’t. When I came into town, I didn’t stop anywhere else. I came straight to your place.”

“I appreciate that, I really do,” Jamie told him. “But if you ask me, I think that you really should go see her.”

Jamie was tempted to say more, but he stopped himself. He pressed his lips together, as if physically blocking the words that had risen to his tongue.

“Maybe later,” Dan demurred.

“There’s already been too much ‘later,’ Danny. Twelve years of ‘later.’ You need to go see her. Now. Before any more time is lost. You can’t get that time back. And the more you drag your feet, the more time you lose,” Jamie insisted.

“When did you get this philosophical bent?” Dan asked, amused.

“Right about the time that I realized that I’d been in love with Fallon for a long time and needed to make her aware of it. Now, no more talk. It’s still early. Go!” He opened the front door and all but pushed his brother out. “And when you’ve seen Anne and talked to her,” he told Dan, “you can come back here—to your home.”

Chapter Three

She missed him.

After all this time, she still missed him. Not every minute of every day the way she once had. Sometimes, Anne Lattimore could go a whole week without feeling that awful, painful hollowness boring a gaping hole into the pit of her stomach and working its way out to her soul. And then, suddenly, without giving her any warning, the feeling would be back, descending on her with its full weight, making her ache.

Making her remember.

And then she would have to struggle to fight her way back out of the oppressive pit. Back into the light of day. Back into her life as a single mother and a full-time receptionist at Dr. Brooks Smith’s Veterinary Clinic.

Heaven knew there was enough in her life to keep her busy and most of the time, she was. Very busy. It was only during those evenings when Hank, her ex, would pick up Janie to have her stay overnight with him and the house was extra quiet that her mind would unearth images of Danny Stockton. That was when she would feel tormented.

Tormented, because even now she couldn’t make peace with the fact that he had left town without saying anything.

Left her without saying anything.

After everything they had meant to one another...

No, Anne upbraided herself, she had only thought that they had meant so much to one another. Obviously, she hadn’t meant to Danny nearly as much as he had meant to her.

She knew all the facts by now, having ferreted them out over the years. She knew that Danny’s grandparents had refused to be responsible for him and his older brothers. Knew that they had all but told him and his brothers to leave. But if she had meant something to him, if Danny had loved her the way she loved him, he would have found a way to stay.

And if he couldn’t abide staying in Rust Creek Falls, if he wanted to go somewhere else, she would have gone anywhere in the world with him. All he would have had to do was say that he wanted her to come with him and she would have left in a heartbeat. Left town, left her family, left her dreams of going to college. Left it all for Danny.

All he would have had to do was ask.

But he didn’t ask.

Instead, he just disappeared without a trace, like some magician’s big trick.

Even so, her pride badly wounded, she’d still tried to find him. But no one knew where Danny and his two brothers had gone. It was like they had vanished into thin air. Eventually, she gave up trying to find him, decided to go on with her life and went off to college.

And then Hank Harlow had happened in her life. It wasn’t long after they met that Hank, clearly smitten, asked her to marry him. Ten years her senior, Hank wouldn’t allow the age difference to get in the way. He told her that all he wanted to do was to make her happy.

Anne turned him down as gently as possible.

But Hank wouldn’t be deterred. He kept after her, always the well-mannered gentleman, but at the same time, completely determined.

Eventually, he wore her down.

Or more to the point, Anne’s circumstances had worn her down. She found out that she was pregnant.

Alarmed and yet thrilled about the baby, she tried to find Dan again. She wasn’t any more successful this time around than she had been with her first attempt.

Growing progressively more afraid and feeling completely alone, despite the fact that she did have family back in Rust Creek Falls, she’d accepted Hank’s proposal.

But she couldn’t marry him until she had told him everything. Summoning all her courage, she’d confessed to Hank that she thought he was a very good man, but that she couldn’t love him the way that he loved her. She’d also told him that she was pregnant.

Hank had listened to her very quietly. When she was finished, he told Anne that none of it made any difference to him. He’d still wanted to marry her. Very much.

Moreover, because it was important to her, he’d wanted her to finish college and get her degree. He’d told her that he was financially comfortable, which meant they could hire someone to look after the baby once he or she was born and she could attend her classes.

They were married shortly after that and Hank was true to his word, hiring a nanny when Janie was born. He wouldn’t let anything interfere with Anne finishing college. When she graduated, they came back to Rust Creek Falls. Hank bought a ranch and she found a job as a receptionist at the vet clinic.

For five years, everything seemed to be going well. Hank was good to her and he doted on Janie. He was definitely a good husband and a wonderful father, no one could dispute that, least of all her.

But eventually, Hank came to terms that he was never going to win her over, never get her to love him the way that he had hoped. Because she was in love and would always be in love with Daniel Stockton.

Their divorce was amicable and while Hank agreed to give her custody of Janie, he reserved the right to see the little girl and to have her over at his ranch whenever he wanted.

His only stipulation for the divorce was that their secret would remain a secret. As far as Janie and everyone else in Rust Creek Falls knew, he was Janie’s father. Anne agreed and Hank continued to cherish the role of father.

As for the divorce, though it was sudden, no one really questioned it. Their friends and family all just assumed that she had been too young to get married and that, most important of all, she had married Hank while still on the rebound from Danny.

Anne never told anyone otherwise, thinking it was best for Janie if everyone just went on believing that. That way, they wouldn’t go digging any further.

And her secret would remain just that, a secret. There was no reason for it to be otherwise.

Anne sighed as she pushed the memories aside. Instead, she rummaged through her pantry for dinner ingredients, not really sure what it was that she was looking for.

“What’s the matter, Mom?” Janie asked.

Anne blinked, realizing that she’d allowed herself to really drift off. She hadn’t even heard her daughter come into the kitchen. Facing her now, she quickly offered Janie a smile.

“What makes you ask that? There’s nothing the matter, honey,” she told her daughter a bit too quickly.

“Yes, there is,” Janie insisted. “You’ve got that funny look on your face, that look you get when something’s wrong.”

At eleven, Janie looked younger because of her size. She was a shade under four foot ten and weighed seventy-five pounds, making the blue-eyed blonde smaller than average. Despite that, Janie acted older. Sometimes, Anne had the feeling that her daughter was the adult and she was still that young girl who had fallen head over heels for Danny Stockton.

But this was not the time to indulge herself or wallow in old memories that belonged locked away in the past.

She knew that Janie was waiting for her to say something. She said the first thing that came to her mind. “I’m just trying to figure out what to make for dinner,” she told her daughter. It wasn’t exactly the most creative excuse, but for now, it was all she had. “Any suggestions?”

“How about hamburgers?” Janie asked brightly.

Anne shook her head. “Hamburgers are for when I don’t really have time to make dinner. The whole point of my coming home early is that I could make you something special.”

Far more intuitive than most girls her age, Janie was immediately alert. She looked at her mother suspiciously. “Are you going away, Mom?”

Caught completely off guard, her daughter’s question surprised her. Why would Janie think something like that? “No—”

“Am I going away?” Janie wanted to know.

Not for the first time, she couldn’t help thinking that her daughter was exceptionally bright. Janie could always pick up on her moods and seemed to instinctively know if something was bothering her—sometimes even before she knew it.

“No, of course not,” Anne denied, making certain that she sounded calm. “Can’t a mom come home early and make something special for her best daughter?”

Janie gave her a look as she said, “I’m your only daughter.”

“There’s that, too,” Anne said with a fond laugh as she gave her daughter a one-armed hug. “My best and only daughter.”