A Holiday to Remember

“Our dispatcher, Barbara Jayne Dodd,” Alana told Mack with a wave. To Bunny, she continued, “We’re going to take care of some paperwork. Then I’m taking him up to the ranch. Now you can call Ed. Tell him that I expect to be back in about a half hour. Only Ed,” Alana added. “Let’s assure Mr. Graves at least one night of peace before the press and the gossip hounds start salivating.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fluorescent lighting wasn’t complimentary to anyone, but when Alana led Mack to her desk at the far corner of the room and finally faced him, she saw how gaunt he looked, and wondered if he wasn’t dehydrated, as well as in need of food. “Can I offer you a soda? Water? Coffee? When did you last eat?”

“I’m fine.”

“I appreciate that you’d like to get out of here, pronto, and be alone again, but while the refrigerator at your house is running, the contents are wanting—unless you’re into condiments. I should add that the supermarket doesn’t reopen until six o’clock. We can stop at the twenty-four-hour convenience store, even if the selection is iffy and ridiculously expensive, or we can stop at our place, which is actually next door to Last Call. If you like, I can fix you up with a few essentials to get you through the next day or two.”

“I take it that’s where your uncle—the chief—is?” At her nod, Mack shook his head. “Far be it from me to disrupt his sleep.”

“Smart decision,” she replied with a cheeky grin. “But that means you’re getting either a cola with all the sugar, or coffee with creamer and sweetener. Pick your poison.”

“Coffee.”

“Good choice. It’s my machine and great stuff. No blending nonsense, powdered milk or artificial sweeteners. Sit tight.” With a smart turn on her heel that sent her ponytail swinging, she went to get it. She was acutely aware of his narrow-eyed stare all the while she worked, and when she returned, she set the big mug before him, then took a power bar from her center desk drawer, and slid it at him. “Here, that will help, too.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get under this skin, gyrene,” she countered, all pleasantness. “The truth is that I’m nowhere near the sweetheart Bunny is, but kids and stray animals do tend to cling to me like Velcro. Go figure.”

Mack Graves glanced up from stirring his coffee to eye her from beneath dense lashes a shade darker than his hair. In the bright light, Alana finally saw that his eyes were an odd green-gray, the shade of Southern moss. She’d never seen anyone with that coloring before and quickly reached for the rubber-banded bulky envelope in the bottom drawer of her desk.

“Here we are,” she said, setting it on her blotter. “I have a number of keys, copies of his death certificate, and his will. As I said, you’re his sole beneficiary. One thing l need to remind you of—in case you’re not aware of it—is that in Texas there’s a ninety-day survivorship clause before you can probate his estate, so I hope you’re planning to stick around.”

“I wasn’t.”

His answer didn’t surprise Alana. Fred had spoken of his son enough to worry about ever finding him, let alone passing on all this responsibility. But she’d made promises. Slipping out a single sheet that declared he was accepting possession of the package, she marked an X where she wanted Mack to sign, then slid it over to him.

She placed the pen on top as a precursor to what she was about to say.

“I hope you’ll rethink that. Oak Grove may be a small town in the middle of dozens of small, even dying, towns, but Last Call is a wonderful place. On the other hand, if you want to sell it, I’m sure there are several people who would make you an offer soon enough. The property continues to be on a paved farm-to-market road. Fred was a fine fence builder, and the pastures are some of the best in the county. Our two properties share a creek, but more importantly, the darned place sits on an aquifer and there are three deep wells to keep ponds full regardless of the weather trends. Fred wasn’t as particular about the house, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for in sturdiness. As for the barn, it’s big enough to protect the machinery from the elements and to store feed. Behind it are the horse stables. There are only two horses these days—Fred’s mount, Rooster, who’s pretty old and is kept as a pet, and Eberardo’s horse, Blanco. The rest of the pens are used to tend to injured or orphaned stock.”

“Do you sell real estate during the day?”

Understanding what he was insinuating, Alana shrugged. “Yeah, I’m kind of attached to the place, as I am to my own home.” Remembering something, Alana glanced at her watch, which read nearly two in the morning—winced—and reached for her phone. “Eberardo Chavez is the hand who still lives on the property. You’ll see his trailer on the side of the barn and sheds. I’m going to call him to let him know not to worry if he sees me pull in and the house light up. More likely, Two Dog would announce our arrival as soon as the front gate opens.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Eberardo’s dog. His second dog since working at Last Call. He’s a good man and hard worker, but he’s no cowboy poet.”

Moments later, she heard Eberardo’s groggy voice.

“Sí, Señorita Ally. ¿Es todo lo correcto?”

Aware that he had caller ID, Alana replied, “Lo siento. Sorry to disturb you, Eberardo. Everything is fine. I just wanted you to know that Two Dog may start barking shortly, and you might see lights at the house. I’m letting Mr. Fred’s son, Mack, in.”

“Ah, he has come. Mr. Fred would be much happy.”

“Pienso tan, también,” Ally replied, telling him that she thought so, too. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

“To happy dreams. We wait for this day, eh? Gracias, Señorita Ally.”

As Alana disconnected, hoping he was right, she saw Mack pick up the pen and scrawl his signature across the bottom of the paper. When finished, he pushed it and the pen back toward her. Finally, he took a tentative sip of coffee, followed by a more appreciative gulp.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“You can admit it’s good coffee,” she said, amusement and challenge in her gaze.

“Why waste my breath telling you what you already know?”

He was Fred’s son all right, Alana thought. Mule-headed, confident and all man with those penetrating eyes letting a woman know that no matter what, sex was always in the mindset. She shoved the paper into the top drawer of her desk and handed over the banded bundle. “You can take the coffee and protein bar with you. Consider the mug a housewarming gift.”

* * *

Minutes later, back at the patrol car, Mack gingerly took his seat. As he fastened his seat belt, he tried to ignore Alana’s open stare.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re moving like someone ten or fifteen years older than you are.”

“Hitching and hiking can do that to you.”

Alana seemed to accept that and exited the parking lot. She turned onto Main Street for the turn north that would take them to the farm-to-market road and Last Call Ranch. In all honesty, that’s all Mack remembered of the directions to the place. But his back hurt so much from carrying the duffel bag—even though he changed shoulders frequently—that he mentally kissed her for insisting on driving him. At least none of his wounds had busted open. He’d fingered the spots when she’d gone to get him coffee.

The town was literally ghostlike with not another vehicle in sight, until he caught a glimpse of lights and spotted a patrol car in his side-view mirror as it left the convenience store and turned toward the station. No doubt the other night-shift cop, Ed, coming to catch up on the excitement with dispatcher Bunny.

Buns, he thought with a silent snort, remembering Alana’s personal nickname for her. The woman had certainly earned that one, too, although she seemed pretty harmless and sweet—and again, all wrong for a police station. And how the devil did females sit for hours in clothes that tight without losing consciousness? But at least she wasn’t in a uniform.

Mack had never cared for the idea of women in uniform, although he’d had his butt saved twice by female chopper pilots and had since adjusted his opinion to a degree. However, he wasn’t changing his mind about Alana Anders. Maybe she seemed to know what she was doing, but she was too feminine, too much woman for what she did for a living. That annoyed him as much as it did to realize that his gaze was drawn to her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Face it, you don’t care if she’s noticing or not.

Fine, he amended, if things were different, he would be coming after her, staking his claim like the red-blooded male he was. He may have been shot twice, but as far as he could tell, all of his equipment still worked, and he was going to prove that as soon as he regained a little more strength. In the meantime, he was going to dream about Officer Anders’s long legs out of those uniform blues. He would bet a month’s pay that she had the legs of a swimsuit model and that her breasts weren’t filled with silicone. That face could be on a magazine cover, too, but the fools would want to airbrush away the small scar above her left eyebrow, and put too much greasy stuff on those succulent lips. He would like to taste them wet from a bite of strawberry or a lush peach, as he lost himself in those deceptively soft brown eyes.

Nuts, he thought.

Deceptive was the key word. There was a lot going on inside her and he wasn’t sure of a fraction of it. One minute she was all business, the next she was giving him a look so honest and bold, he felt as though he’d taken an electric shock to his groin, and the next he could swear her heart was fracturing. What the hell was going on with her?

At least it seemed that she’d been decent to the old man. Mack thought his father had been a lucky stiff if he’d checked out while gazing at Alana’s high-cheekboned face, especially if that luscious hair wasn’t tied back as it was now.

“How long have you been at this?” They were at least a mile outside town, and security lights were growing fewer and farther between, and Mack figured her mind was cranking away questions, too. He’d rather have her answering than asking them.

“You mean law enforcement? I went into the academy straight from college.”

“So you’re a rookie?” He suspected she was slightly older than that, but not by much.

“Hilarious. This is my seventh year. I just turned thirty.”

Mentally, he gave her another point for being honest. At thirty, some women started counting backward. “So this is really what you always wanted to do?”

“You didn’t hear me say that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I caught the flying bug from my older brother. He would be your age now.”

“Would be?”

“He was flying my parents to the Gulf to catch a cruise for their twentieth wedding anniversary, but there was mechanical trouble. They didn’t make it.”

“That’s rough.” She’d managed to keep her voice steady, but Mack didn’t miss how her hands worked the steering wheel and how tight her grip got.

“It was. Is. But coming back to the world, as you service people tend to say, has to be a challenge, too.” Alana’s voice grew huskier. “And then to have this news that you weren’t expecting...”

She didn’t really want to talk about the past any more than he did. That was another thing he couldn’t help but find appealing about her. He’d OD’d on drama queens years before finally freeing himself of his mother. “I am curious as to why my father didn’t hire an attorney to handle this,” he said, shifting the envelope between his hands.

“His longtime lawyer passed away last year and he didn’t like the other two in town. I tried to help him find someone else, but he kept putting it off until it was too late.”

“So his death wasn’t sudden?”

“No, there’s nothing fast about lung cancer.” Alana shook her head as though trying to shake off something. “He never could quit smoking. Heaven knows, we all tried to help.”

“He’d known you all of your life?”

“Fred and Duke went to school together. After Fred’s divorce and losing you, he became part of our family. I don’t remember a holiday get-together when he wasn’t there. Or funeral. After—after the accident, you could say he and Uncle Duke finished raising me. Fred taught me everything I know about horses and cattle, and the chief added most of what they didn’t teach me in the police academy.”

“Did Fred like anyone besides you and your uncle?” Mack asked the question for an excuse to continue studying her profile and admire the perfection of her skin in the surreal light. The answer was almost irrelevant.

“Of course. But he didn’t trust easily. That’s probably something you two would have found you had in common.” As they passed the entryway of a ranch with an electronic gate and pole fencing freshly painted green, she nodded. “That’s us. Pretty Pines.”

The visuals failed to trigger even the slightest memory in Mack. “Did we ever meet? I have to admit I remember less than I thought I did.”

“I’m guessing you and your mother left about the time that I was born. I may have been all of six when you last visited as a teenager. That would have made me invisible to you. And the pole fence wouldn’t have been there yet. We still used barbed and ranch wire back then. Here we are,” she added, turning into the next driveway.

As she parked before the simple gate with the metal letters Last Call Ranch bolted to it, Mack remembered his father’s irreverent humor in naming the place and his mother’s chastising him for making them the town trash. Her protests had seemed hypocritical even to a kid of eight who’d witnessed how much both of his parents drank—and the fights that followed. Now they struck him as doubly so, considering the line of work she’d ended up in.

“You have the keys.”

Pulled back to the present, Mack dug out two sets from the envelope. There were about a dozen keys on each ring. Alana pointed to the correct set and, once he handed it to her, deftly flipped to the sturdy stainless key.

“All of the house keys and the front-gate key are on this one. You’ll soon memorize them because I color coded them. The other ring is for the barn, truck and equipment.”

Accepting the handful, Mack went to open the gate, attempting to move as normally as possible. He would definitely look into getting an electronic gate system like the Anderses had, and not just because of the convenience. He had to shift to use the patrol car’s headlights to get the lock released, which would be more of a pain in bad weather than it already was. Besides, the fancier gizmo might help sell the place faster—not that he was planning to do that.

Oh, yes, you are.

Back in the car, he saw a front-door light and a security light by the barn. When they came to the ranch house, he saw it would take more than a fancy front gate to entice a buyer. The house was white brick with plain windows adorned with cheap miniblinds and a white metal roof. There were no shrubs around the place, and maybe the pastures were well tended, but the yard looked like it was nothing but weeds. He’d seen military barracks that looked more inviting.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered with a sinking feeling.

“It could be. It just needs a little TLC. Eberardo has had his hands full with the animals.” Alana put the vehicle in Park. “Do you want me to show you where the important things are?”

“I shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

As he began to reach for the door handle again, Alana touched his arm. “Wait.”

Mack turned back in surprise. When he saw her pensive look, curiosity got the best of him.

“You need to know something, and I’d like you to hear it from me rather than just reading it cold and misunderstanding. In the will,” she said, nodding to the envelope in his grasp, “Fred was concerned that something might have happened to you before he actually passed—or that somehow the place would end up on the auction block, or worse.”

Mack raised an eyebrow. “What would he have considered worse?”

“Your mother sweeping in and taking possession.”

Mack grunted. That would have done it, he thought wryly. “So what did he do? Just spit it out,” he ordered, as she continued to hesitate.

“He adjusted his will so that if you died, or if you relinquish claim on the estate, it falls to me.”

Chapter Two

So that’s what it took to break the iron man’s enigmatic stare and impressive control, Alana thought, as the news registered in Mack’s expression. But she couldn’t blame him for being slow to reply. She’d been bowled over herself when Fred announced his decision some six months ago.

“Congratulations,” Mack finally said.

His tone left little to imagine about his mindset. “Don’t make it sound like that. I tried to talk him out of it.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Yes. I did.”

“But the fact that you didn’t convince him tells me that he hoped in the end that you would get the place. He really didn’t want me to have it.”

“That’s not true. He was sorry about your broken relationship, but so much time had passed, he didn’t know where to begin trying to mend things.”

“I could have my own family, who might need a decent home, or help that this could provide,” Mack said, nodding in the direction of the house.

“Do you?”

“No.”

She’d gathered as much already, by the way he was traveling and from what he’d said earlier, but she couldn’t help but feel an odd relief at hearing him confirm it. “Well, I’m sorry if his decision offends, but the fact remains that he was determined to keep your mother off the ranch.” What he’d actually said was that he would “volunteer for hell first,” and had insisted to Alana that she was more family to him than his own flesh and blood was.

“That much I understand,” Mack said in reference to his mother. “I remember some whopper yelling matches between those two.”

“Uncle Duke pretty much said the same thing.” Alana slid him a sidelong look. “Do you know where she is these days?”

“The last contact I had with her, she was wanting to borrow an additional twenty thousand to add to the percentage she owned in a strip joint she managed in California.”

“You’re serious?”

“That was pretty much my reaction to her. Needless to say, she hasn’t been in touch since.”

That was some story not to pass on to his children—if he ever had any. “So you’re okay now?”

“With her choices?” Mack’s lips twisted with distaste. “Who can ever be okay with that? But it’s her business.”

“I meant with my news.”

“Well, it could be worse,” he drawled. “If my father was anything like my mother, I could be stuck with having to call you ‘Mom.’”

Alana pursed her lips, thinking he didn’t realize how close he came to the truth. “At one point, that was his plan.”

Mack’s eyes narrowed. “That son of a—”

“Calm down. I pretended that he was joking.” He didn’t need to know that she’d left in complete emotional turmoil and had immediately saddled her horse and had ridden for hours to deal with her feelings. “At any rate, it didn’t happen.”

“Probably not for lack of trying.” Mack’s gaze swept over her. “Were you ever lovers?”

Alana matched him stare for stare. “I told you that he and Uncle Duke finished raising me. What do you think?”

“I think that it sounded like a win-win situation for you.”

To some, Alana thought. The most mercenary. But Fred’s thinking had been all pragmatism just as his instincts were that of a caretaker, even then. He’d reasoned that, since she didn’t seem in any hurry to let any “young rooster” sweep her off her feet, they could marry and merge Last Call and Pretty Pines. That would give them twice the clout in the community and keep it out of the hands of developers and a certain bottled-water company that wanted the aquifer water the ranch sat on. Alana also knew Fred’s other motivation—that he had shared Uncle Duke’s worry that the loss of her brother and parents had changed her forever, that maybe with more responsibility or his—what? Attention? Influence? That she would quit risking her neck on overspirited horses and handling the night shift that no one else wanted for exactly those reasons.

“I loved Fred,” she reiterated. “But I wasn’t about to expose either of us to the gossip and taunts that were likely to follow from agreeing to marry him. And I never could have taken him as a lover.” She gestured again to the keys he held. “But all that is immaterial now. You’re here and I’m out of the picture.”

“Are you? Let’s see,” Mack replied.

Too late, Alana realized what he was up to. Before she could stop him, he reached over to cup the back of her head, and pressed his lips to hers.

At first, she just tried to push him away. It wasn’t her intent to injure—she understood the rush of emotions that he was experiencing. She could feel his anger at Fred, even his hurt, and she was the closest thing to being able to strike out at him. But she also had to make Mack realize how wrong and off base he was in pulling this stunt. Then, before she could do more than grip his wrists, he softened the kiss.

The change had her momentarily hesitating, and that was a mistake. It lowered her guard enough for her to realize how wonderful his lips felt against hers, caressing and coaxing, even yearning. She hadn’t been kissed in a while—her choice—and never with this kind of wistful persuasion. It undermined her ability to keep her heart steeled against feelings, and crept under her defenses to remind her that she was all too human, and the world was fast becoming a lonelier place.

Just when she began to reach for his face to trace the sharp contours, she found herself released. When she opened her eyes, Mack was opening the door.

“That’s what I thought,” he muttered, before slamming the door shut behind him.

* * *

That had been a damned foolish thing to do, Mack thought as Alana spun the patrol car into a sharp U-turn the second he had his duffel bag, and sped down the driveway. She also pulled out into the street and burned rubber as she drove away, leaving the front gate open. It could have been worse. She could have taken off with his bag. Bottom line, he didn’t regret it. Another couple hundred feet of walking in pain to lock up would be a small price to pay for getting under Alana Anders’s skin the way she had his.

He’d wanted to kiss her at first sight. Okay, soon after he first looked over and realized the smoky-voiced female asking about his welfare wasn’t a figment of his imagination. So things hadn’t gone as he would have liked thereafter, but then he always expected to be let down by people. It was a lesson learned in the volatile company of his parents. In this case, the price had been worth it. He’d wanted to find out what Alana’s game was. But soon his focus had been sheer lust and, in hindsight, he wasn’t one bit sorry—even if she came back in an hour with a warrant for assault of an officer.

After returning from locking the gate, he used the front-door light to locate the correct key to the house. Once inside, he flipped on inside switches and set his duffel bag against an old buffet. He was in a breakfast nook that opened to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he murmured, remembering. “But somebody washed the cherry pie and beer off the walls.”

It was also warmer than he preferred. Not summer in Iraq or Afghanistan warm, but the outdoors at this hour was almost more pleasant. No doubt Alana kept the air conditioner set higher to save on utility bills. He went in search of the thermostat, found it and dropped the gauge ten degrees.

Cripes, the place looked dated, he thought. Mack actually started to remember the layout of the furniture—the mud-brown recliner in front of the TV—although it was a flat-screen now, not the monster casing that looked like it would need the “jaws of life” to crack it open. However, the striped red-and-blue couch, the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table, the gaudy lamps that looked like they’d been picked up at somebody’s idea of a flea market, were all unpleasantly familiar. Oddly enough, he doubted his mother couldn’t do worse even after all these years. At least there weren’t any bead curtains in doorways. He did, however, catch a lingering hint of cigar smoke.