Texas Wedding

Long ago, when they were kids, Peggy’s son Paul had been part of the inseparable quartet, the Fugitive Four. Trent, Chase and Susannah had all been Peggy’s surrogate children, eating her corn dogs and hot chili every summer afternoon at the Bull’s Eye ranch, the ten-thousand-acre Archer homestead.

But then, eleven years ago, a quarrel between Trent and Susannah had escalated into tragedy, and Peggy’s son, Paul, had ended up dead. It had been about ninety-nine percent Trent’s fault, and it had taken him years to find the courage to come back to Texas and face what he’d done.

Facing Peggy had been the toughest. But little by little, she had forgiven him and let him slip into the role of surrogate son once more. Oddly, as the years had gone on, she had ended up blaming Susannah the most.

When Trent had told her about the one-year marriage, the news had seemed to distress her out of all proportion. Trent had assumed it had been because of Paul, but he wondered now if Peggy had simply feared she’d lose Trent’s weekly visit.

Darn it. Foolishly, he’d taken for granted that she would understand. He’d never stop coming to see her, not as long as she needed him.

His debt to her was eternal. It would never be paid.

He tightened his grip on her hand. “Hey. Don’t I get invited in?”

“Of course, but—” She glanced over her shoulder as she backed away from the door. “I thought you weren’t coming, so—”

Just at that moment, her ex-husband, Harrison Archer, ambled in from the kitchen, muttering under his breath and studying the bracket that ordinarily held the satellite dish up on the roof.

Harrison was a balding, Texas-sized good old boy with a chest as round and barrel-shaped as any of his steers. At his heels trailed his son Sean, who at eight years old already looked shockingly like Paul. Both sons from Harrison’s second marriage did. It was the red hair, mostly. Harrison’s new wife, Nora, was half Peggy’s age, but otherwise could have been her clone—same fiery hair, petite body and smart hazel eyes.

Everyone knew what Harrison was doing when he married Nora, only two years after Paul’s death. He was doubling back to square one and starting over. Or trying to. But in spite of the healthy new sons and the pretty wife, there was still something dead in his eyes that made Trent uncomfortable whenever their gazes met.

“Trent. Thank God you’re here.” Harrison held up the bracket. “I can’t figure this blame thing out to save my life. And Sean has a game tonight. All right if I let you take over?”

“Sure.” Trent smiled at Harrison and then at Sean, who was a cute kid, gangly in his miniature polyester Red Sox uniform. “Hi, kiddo.”

“Sean is pitching today,” Harrison said in his deepest proud-father voice, his chest expanding subtly, stretching the buttons of his five-hundred-dollar denim shirt.

Trent wasn’t sure how to respond. For starters, he couldn’t believe the man had brought Sean here suited up like this, like the ghost of Paul. Mentioning the pitching was almost unbelievably insensitive.

But the kid looked excited, so Trent couldn’t just ignore it. “Oh, yeah? Cool.”

Sean grinned. “I’m working on my knuckleball. Dad says I’m getting pretty good.”

Instinctively, Trent shot a glance at Peggy. Once, Paul had pitched for the high school team. He’d been good—almost great. A&M had offered him a full scholarship. But at the very moment when he should have been reporting for practice, he’d been lying in a hospital bed.

Burned over seventy percent of his body.

Dying.

And now Harrison was teaching the famous Archer knuckleball to this freckle-faced replacement son. Peggy stared at the wall, apparently determined not to look at Sean. Her cheeks were pale, her hazel eyes ominously glassy. Trent’s shoulders tightened. It was like torture, rubbing salt in a wound that already refused to heal.

“I need to sit down.” Peggy let go of Trent’s hand and led the way into the small blue-and-white living room.

Her limp was worse this week, Trent noticed. She must be in a lot of pain. Though only in her early fifties, she moved like a woman of ninety. Her hip replacement surgery was scheduled for July, a long six weeks from now. She was dreading it, but Trent privately hoped it would give her a sort of fresh start, too.

Harrison set the bracket down on the coffee table, not bothering to hide his eagerness to escape. “So, you can handle this alone, right? It’s not that big a job, and we probably should hit the road. Nora gets out of Pilates at four, and she needs to shower before the game.”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Trent repressed the urge to shake the older man. Was he doing this deliberately? Why would he mention Nora’s daily exercise class, when his ex-wife could barely walk?

As if Peggy didn’t already know that a heartbroken, postmenopausal arthritic could never hold a candle to the buoyant young wife who waited for Harrison at home.

“Good. Well, then, we’ll be going.” Harrison looked over at Peggy, who had lowered herself into a white rocker and picked up her knitting, as if to say, Yes, I’m a middle-aged woman, and I don’t care. “Goodbye, then, Peg.”

“Bye, Peggy,” Sean echoed politely. “Thanks for having me.”

She didn’t look up from her yarn. “Goodbye.”

The word was so cold it sent a small gust of frigid air out into the room. Bristling, Harrison drew his eyebrows together. He handed his son the car keys and whispered something. Sean nodded and headed toward the front stairs.

As soon as the door shut behind the boy, Harrison turned and glared at his ex-wife. “None of this is Sean’s fault, you know,” he said gruffly.

She kept knitting. Her fingers looked almost as white as the yarn.

“Damn it, Peggy. You could be a little nicer to him.”

She finally looked up. “No. As a matter of fact, Harry, I couldn’t. Don’t ever bring that boy into my house again.”

Harrison made a sharp move forward, but Trent threw out his arm. He’d seen the Archer temper all too often in the old days. Back then, he’d been too young, too intimidated by the Archer acres, to know what he should do about it.

But he knew now.

“Hey,” he said. “Easy.”

The older man’s chest pushed against Trent’s forearm, as if he might put up a fight. His breath came harsh and heavy. They stood that way about ten seconds, with Harrison clearly struggling for composure.

Finally he eased back an inch or two. He transferred his glare to Trent. “I need to talk to you, son,” he said. “Outside.”

Trent didn’t much like the autocratic tone, but he very much liked the idea of getting the agitated man away from Peggy. He nodded and followed Harrison through the door and onto the front porch.

“Bitch,” Harrison muttered as the door shut behind him. Trent ignored it, but he placed himself between the older man and the entry, just in case.

“You said you wanted to talk to me?”

Harrison took one last deep breath, and ran his hands through his thinning brown hair. “Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper. It’s just that even after all these years, she can still get my goat. She’s stuck in the past, Trent. Damn it, I loved Paul, too, but I have to get on with my life, don’t I? And she hates me for it.”

“Maybe she just hates having your new life thrown in her face.”

Harrison’s fleshy cheeks reddened. “Thrown in her face? Look, I didn’t choose to come here. She called me. She said she needed help. And look what it turned out to be! The damn television set!”

Trent didn’t bother to try to make Harrison understand how important television could be to someone as lonely as Peggy. Empathy wasn’t the man’s strong suit.

“Well, I’m here now, so you’re off the hook. Take Sean to the game and forget about it.”

“It’s ridiculous, anyhow.” Harrison glanced toward the house with distaste. “Why the hell didn’t she just hire someone to fix it? God knows the allowance I give her is big enough.”

Trent’s jaw was so tight he could hardly get words out. “I think she likes the company. Half the time when I come over, she tells me to forget the repairs. She just wants to sit and talk.”

Harrison laughed. “What? You think she just likes to hang out with you? Don’t kid yourself, son. She’s using you. She knows you’ve got a guilty conscience, so she plays on it.”

Trent had heard enough. “You know, I think it’s time for you to go.”

To his surprise, the edict didn’t seem to inflame the older man’s tinderbox temper. Instead, Harrison’s face softened, as if swept by a sudden and rare compassion. “You really care about her, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Poor kid.” Harrison rested his meaty hand gently on Trent’s shoulder. “I know you think you can make it up to her. But you can’t. It’s too big, what happened.”

Trent shrugged. “Maybe. I come because I like to. That’s all.”

“Okay.” Harrison nodded, but he chewed on the inside of his cheek as if something troubled him. “Still…you need to watch your step, son. Because I promise you this. Deep down inside where nobody sees, that woman hates you.”

THOUGH MONDAY was only Eli Breslin’s first day, by midafternoon Susannah was guardedly pleased with his performance. During the lunch break, when Zander and Susannah had gone over business in the foreman’s office, even the older man had grudgingly admitted that, so far, the boy took instruction meekly and worked hard.

Maybe too hard. Mid-May in Central Texas could be cool, but summer was sneaking in early this year, and temperatures were already hitting eighty.

When Susannah drove the flatbed out to see how the tree thinning was coming along, she caught a glimpse of Eli, leaning against the bright yellow shaking machine, dirty and sweaty and shirtless. He held a plastic water bottle above his head and was letting its contents pour over his upturned face and run glistening down his sunburned chest.

For the first time, Susannah could sort of see why Nikki had fallen for him. He did have that hunky blond surfer boy thing going on big-time.

And that had always been Nikki’s type.

Susannah, on the other hand, had always been fatally drawn to the black-haired, blue-eyed dangerous devil thing. So when this sweaty young sexpot smiled wetly over at her, the only thing she felt was mild anxiety. He was so fair-skinned…would that mean he was susceptible to heatstroke?

A sudden pang pierced just under her ribs. She wished that things could have been different. If only she and Nikki could have been normal sisters. If only they could have laughed about boys, shared secrets, conspired to hide mischief from their parents. Instead, because their mother and father had died when Susannah was fifteen, and Nikki only a toddler, Susannah had been forced into the role of surrogate mother.

How Nikki had hated it, all these years. She had no idea that Susannah had hated it, too. But she did—she hated the injustice of it. They’d both been cheated of their parents. But they’d also been cheated of each other. Even after Nikki passed through adolescence, they would probably never have the tight friendship that real sisters should have.

Susannah squeezed her eyes, as if she could squeeze away the self-pity. She didn’t have time to lament tragedies that had happened so long ago. She couldn’t change the past. All she could hope was that maybe she could keep the present and future from capsizing, too.

Suddenly, Zander was at Susannah’s elbow, wiping a dirty rag across his own sweaty face. “Little brat broke the shaking machine.”

“What?”

Susannah looked again toward Eli and realized belatedly that the machine should not have been silent and still. It should have been roaring and grumbling away, moving among the trees, grabbing trunks with its tail-like pincers, and jostling dime-sized peaches from branches like a blush-colored rain.

She sniffed, and finally she smelled it—the stench of steam and burning rubber wafting through the orchard, a dark undercurrent below the sweetness of the fruit-littered ground.

Eli seemed to think she was staring at him, because he smiled again, carving dimples into his cheeks. He pointed the empty water bottle toward the shaking machine, then used it to draw an imaginary line across his throat.

The message was clear. The machine was dead. And Eli thought it was mildly amusing.

Well, he could afford to consider this a little gift from the go-home-early gods, but Susannah wanted to cuss. It could take days to get it repaired. And now that every fruit grower in central Texas was in the throes of thinning season, where would she be able to borrow another one in the meantime?

“I knew it was too good to be true,” Zander muttered. “I knew all this perfect employee crap was just an act.”

“It’s not Eli’s fault.” Somehow Susannah kept her voice cool. “It broke on you last year, too, Zander. It’s just old. We need a new one.”

“We can’t afford a new one.”

She slapped her work gloves into the palm of her hand, trying to hold back the retort that sprang to her lips. Of course she knew they couldn’t afford one. If they hadn’t been in dire straits, did Zander think she would have sold herself into a year of matrimonial bondage?

“Maybe,” she said, “Chase will loan us his.”

“Yes. You should ask Trent about it ASAP.” Zander frowned. “Where is he, anyhow? Haven’t seen him around all weekend.”

That was, of course, the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. Where was her brand-new husband? He had slept at Everly every night, she knew that. That first night he’d used the sofa, but after that he’d confiscated her grandfather’s bedroom. He came in late, then left again early in the morning.

Which was fine with her, of course. The less she saw of him, the better. Still, she couldn’t help wondering where he went. To Chase’s ranch? Maybe. Running a ranch that large could easily eat up your weekends, too.

But she couldn’t help wondering whether he might be going somewhere…softer.

To someone softer.

After all, he’d done it before.

She forced the image out of her mind. As long as he satisfied the will’s requirements by spending the nights under her roof, she didn’t give a damn about his days. And if she kept letting him disrupt her concentration, she was going to be in even bigger trouble than she was already.

Her gaze drifted to the other workers, who were still moving toward them, following the machine’s path, hand-thinning the small branches that hadn’t let go of their bounty.

So much to do…so many people to pay.

Her mind began performing calculations at warp speed. If this was a big repair, and it sure smelled that way, it would eat into the payroll, and then she’d be behind on the—

“Die, you bastard! Die!”

Her heart pounding, she wheeled quickly, just in time to see that Eli had grabbed a shovel and was violently slashing at the ground, just a couple of yards away from the shaker’s cab.

For a split second, as he jumped and hollered, she wondered whether Zander and Trent been right about Eli all along. Had she hired a madman?

But then she saw the rubbery-looking, writhing coils at Eli’s feet. A shiver sped down her spine.

He was killing a very large rattlesnake.

Though it seemed to be happening in slow motion, it probably was over in less than ten seconds, and the poor creature lay mangled in the dirt, thoroughly destroyed. Several other workers, including Zander, gathered to get a better look.

Eli’s cocky smile was gone, and his cheeks were pale beneath the sunburn. He stared down at his palms, bloodied by the pitted metal on the old shovel’s handle.

Then he raised a stricken face and glanced over at Susannah, as if he feared he might have done the wrong thing.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice that belonged to a much younger boy. “I just saw him there, and I panicked.”

If she hadn’t been his employer, she would have put her arm around his shoulder, the same way she might have comforted Nikki after a bad day at school. She settled for offering a reassuring smile.

“You did great. Come on, let’s go back and get that blood cleaned up. Zander will take care of all this.”

She ignored the older man’s look of irritation. The boy’s hands needed tending. Besides, it was her fault he was hurt. That shovel should have been replaced years ago, like so many other things on this spread.

She sighed as she started the truck, hearing the hesitation of a battery about to go dead.

How many problems could she handle at once?

FIVE YEARS AGO, when Trent had accepted Chase’s offer to be the ranch manager at the Double C, he had worked twenty-hour days for more than a year, sleeping on a cot in the office, determined not to let Chase down.

He’d had so much to prove. He knew what everyone had thought when he’d left town six years earlier, after the fire, while Paul still lay dying in that hospital bed.

They’d thought he was a bad-tempered son of a bitch, who had been playing out of his league for years and finally got exposed as the loser he really was. He knew that’s what they’d thought, because that was what he’d thought, too.

So he’d run. He hadn’t known what else to do. The whole tragedy had been too much to stand. He was only nineteen, and he’d messed up everything he cared about in the whole stinking world. He’d cheated on Susannah, and then, in a fit of pique, he’d punched his best friend, and somehow rained disaster down on them all.

Sometimes, now, he could hardly remember how it happened. But sometimes it played over in his head, as if it were a videotape caught in a slow-motion loop.

He had been in a rotten mood that night, furious with himself for succumbing to Missy Snowdon’s cheap charms, and praying Susannah would never find out. They’d all gone to a bar for dinner, and he had unwisely let himself drink too much. Susannah and Paul had been flirting, and by the third beer, courtesy of friends older than the legal limit, Trent hadn’t been able to pretend he didn’t care.

He’d said some things, and Paul had said some things, and before he knew what was happening, his fist had been flying. That was when the nightmare took over. He’d expected Paul to punch him back. He even wanted him to. Somehow he felt that a little pain might make him feel less guilty for what he’d done with Missy.

Instead, Paul tilted back, his jaw hanging open. He waved his arms, trying to catch his balance, but he was already falling, falling, slamming into the bar’s picnic table seats, his arms still windmilling like a cartoon.

When he hit the ground, so did the kerosene lantern that had looked so kitschy and cute on the table.

The hay on the floor went up like a magician’s trick. Paul caught fire, too, rolling at first, trying to get to his feet, then toppling over like a fireplace log. Trent still heard him scream sometimes, and not just in his dreams. The echo of Paul’s pain could come out of nowhere, using the voice of everyday things. The cry of owls, the squeal of children playing. A rusty hinge on an old screen door, or the screech of tires on a dangerous road.

The doctors had tried. Paul clung to life for months, mostly because his parents wouldn’t disconnect the machines that kept him breathing. But everyone knew he was gone.

And everyone knew who had killed him. Trent might as well have put a gun to Paul’s head and pulled the trigger. In fact, it would have been a more merciful death.

So, as soon as he realized it was hopeless, he’d run as far and as long as his college savings would take him. He’d run until he’d hit the Pacific Ocean, chased by the memories of Paul’s mutilated body and the curse in Susannah’s cold eyes.

He’d run into another woman’s arms, and then another’s, and then another’s. He’d even married one of them, though thank God she was a smart, cheerful woman, who came to her senses before too long.

When Ginny realized her new husband was little more than a cardboard cutout, a shell of a man, she divorced him as cheerfully as she’d married him.

On his twenty-fifth birthday, he had decided to come home. To face all the ghosts, both the living and the dead. To make amends and, maybe, finally, make something of himself.

But that was five years ago, and he was through proving things. Maybe he could never completely silence Paul’s screams, but he had finally learned his own worth. Anyone else who was still unconvinced could just remain that way.

Which was why, when he found himself yawning at work and realized he’d put in about forty hours at this desk in the past two days, he decided that enough was enough.

He was going home. He didn’t care whether Susannah was hanging around or not. He was too damn tired to get all hot and bothered, not even if she was dancing on the kitchen table wearing a whipped-cream G-string.

He almost made it back to Everly without getting snagged by work—it was the next spread over, no more than fifteen minutes away—but at the last minute his phone buzzed with a text message from Zander, something about a broken shaker. He was tempted to ignore it, but the old guy sounded stressed, so he made some calls.

By the time he rolled into the Everly drive, he had Chase’s extra machine lined up for the next two weeks. Still yawning, he walked to the stables, one end of which had been converted into the foreman’s office, to tell Zander the good news.

But Zander wasn’t there. Instead, Trent opened the door onto a cozy domestic scene, with Susannah and Eli Breslin sitting knee to knee on Zander’s guest chairs. The kid was half-naked and sweaty. Susannah was holding his hand.

Trent frowned, but then it made sense. The moron had managed to get hurt on his very first day.

Susannah was bent over Eli’s outstretched fingers, utterly focused on wrapping a bandage around his palm, and her braid fell over her shoulder. She had no idea that Trent had arrived.

But Eli did.

He gave Trent a small smile, which spread across his dirty face until it was a downright nasty grin. Everything Eli had probably heard from gossips about Susannah’s new marriage was written in that leer. Trent might have been able to fire Eli from the Double C, but Eli clearly knew that the “husband of convenience” had no power at Everly. He knew that Trent was as much a temporary employee here as Eli himself.

And he wanted Trent to know that he knew.

“Ouch,” Eli moaned softly as Susannah worked on the bandage. She murmured an apology for hurting him. The boy smirked down at her, then turned to Trent and slowly winked.

Obnoxious little bastard…

“There. That should hold.” Susannah held Eli’s hand up for him to inspect. “It looked worse than it was.”

Eli bent in close, so that his face was only inches from Susannah’s. “Thank you, Ms. Everly. You have mighty gentle hands.”

Clearing his throat, Trent moved into the small office, dodging a trophy that teetered on a bookcase, proclaiming Alexander Hobbin to be the 1978 Men’s Bowling Champ. If it had fallen over and beaned Eli on the head, that would have been fine with Trent.

“So,” he said. “You think your new hire will live to work another day?”

Susannah looked up. If she felt any embarrassment at being caught holding hands with a bare-chested teenage peach picker, she covered it well.

“Yes,” she said as she began to store her first aid supplies neatly away. “It was just a little mishap. Minor abrasions.”

“I killed a rattler,” Eli put in, stretching out his legs and leaning back in his chair nonchalantly, as if he performed such feats every day. “Nasty, big one. Five feet, at least.”

“Taller than you are, then?” Trent smiled. “Impressive.”

“No.” Eli flushed angrily. “I’m five ten and a half.”

“And a half!” Trent raised his eyebrow. “Also impressive. I wouldn’t have guessed.”

The boy’s face was a thundercloud. “Yeah, well, I hear that you—”

“Trent.” Susannah snapped the first aid kit shut and gave Trent a look that said enough already.