A Holiday to Remember

A bonfire seemed to be in order. No doubt Alana would suggest a garage sale or donation to some charity. The thought came as soon as he caught sight of a photo of her on the side table beside the recliner...and another by one of the lamps.

“Whatever happens first,” he muttered to himself. “It’ll sell faster empty.”

Having ventured this far, he wandered from the living room down a hall, to an office-den where he noticed there were numerous photographs on display. Once again most were of Alana, or included her. Alana with both his father and what he suspected was her uncle. Alana and her horse, her dog, her first car...everything but brushing her teeth, Mack thought with mild sarcasm. There was no denying she was a heartbreaker—had been even as a baby—but by the time she was a teenager, she’d looked like a ghost of herself. He suspected they must have been taken soon after her brother and parents died. The more recent ones—photos of being awarded ribbons and trophies at rodeo and equestrian events—showed a perfected smile. Mack narrowed his eyes as he studied them more closely. No, he wasn’t wrong. None of the smiles quite reached her haunted brown eyes. Nevertheless, Mack thought as he felt a twist in his belly and tightening in his loins, she was something.

“Damn it,” he muttered, setting down the last photo.

A quick check of the rest of the house had him deciding to put his duffel bag in the second bedroom that he thought he remembered was his. At least he remembered the queen-size bed when he’d last been here. The thing was barely large enough to handle his growing body then. It wouldn’t provide a great sleep tonight, but he couldn’t think of sleeping in his father’s bed. Not tonight after what Alana had confessed. Maybe never.

All he wanted was a shower, a drink and a few hours’ escape from any more thinking, even though that’s what he’d also come here to do. But the future suddenly seemed as unpleasant as the past.

“You better not have drunk all the bourbon, you old buzzard,” he muttered, stripping off his T-shirt.

* * *

“On to the next chapter,” Alana murmured, as she turned her silver pickup into Pretty Pines Ranch the next morning. Not even her late aunt’s sweet coining of the property’s name could bring a smile to her lips as it usually did. She was running late and knew that Duke would be making breakfast, with one ear tuned to the police-scanner radio, an eye on the TV on the kitchen counter catching up on the morning news, and everything else directed at the driveway, waiting for her arrival. Nothing had changed since the accident—she could barely think the word crash, let alone say it—and that was mostly her fault. She’d given her uncle no reason to stop worrying about her. From the time she arrived for work at the station every afternoon, until she returned home in the morning—in fact, any minute that she wasn’t asleep in her own bed—he stressed. Countless sessions with doctors, psychiatrists...even lectures and threats from Duke hadn’t achieved much. She still lived with her torment and pain. But she did her best to make sure he knew that she did adore him.

The widower cop had been the center of her universe—more like her anchor—since their world turned inside out. That was saying something considering that he looked like your stereotypical drill instructor and had a personality to match, particularly when someone crossed him, or one of his officers caused him trouble or embarrassment. But even when she was the one on the receiving end of his wrath, Alana loved no one more; however, she still hoped that with Mack’s arrival, Duke would now take a little of that intensive watchfulness off her.

“Morning, handsome,” she called with determined brightness, upon entering the sun-filled white-on-white kitchen. Immediately, unfastening her paraphernalia-heavy belt, she beamed at him as she set it on the breakfast-table chair to the left of the one she would be using. Duke stood by the stove dressed in his summer blues with one of her aunt Sarah’s aprons over it. She could already smell his Brut cologne before she reached him to rise on tiptoe and kiss him just beside his ear. “You smell better than the bacon.”

Duke Anders pretended to swat at her as she stole a piece. “Don’t play me, young lady. You’re late. Imagine what I thought when I called the station to see what was keeping you, since there was nothing of importance happening on the radio. Then to learn that Eisley had taken his patrol car—on time and properly clean, lucky for you—and that you weren’t at your desk completing reports.”

Alana made a face at the mention of her day-shift counterpart and ripped a piece of bacon off the strip to pop it into her mouth. “Phil was born with the wrong chromosomes. He’s as finicky as some prissy Southern belle. Plus he won’t ever stop believing day-shift personnel have seniority over us night crawlers. Is he still whining about the bag with the bottle of water and empty bag of chips that I accidentally left in the car the other day?”

“Procedure is set for a purpose,” Duke recited in a tone that exposed he’d done it numerous times. “You leave the vehicle as clean and full of fuel as you found it.”

“It was water and a wrapper, not a box of tampons.”

He grimaced as though she’d uttered a vulgarity. “Do you mind? I’m cooking here.”

Alana popped the rest of the bacon into her mouth on her way to the coffeemaker where her red mug was set, waiting for her. She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few things that she planned to carry next door as soon as he left for the station.

“I went to the cemetery.”

“Oh.”

It wasn’t a fib—she had gone, only not after her shift change. She’d done so under cover of darkness, which she often did because she didn’t like or need people spying on her and the gossips saying, “Did you hear? Ally was back at the cemetery. As much time as she spends there, you’d think she can’t wait to join her family.” She had touched her mom’s and dad’s and Chase’s gravestones, which were in the same row, but she’d gone to tell Fred what she hoped he already knew—that his son had returned.

“Are you okay?”

Filling her mug halfway from the machine that was the same as the one she’d put at the station, Alana returned to watch Duke work. “Sure. But I guess this is where you tell me that you already know something you think I’d hide from you?”

He flipped their hash browns a last time and then cracked one egg for her sunny-side-up preference and two for his over-easy choice. “Yeah, I’ll admit I thought you were going to try to sneak the news about the Graves boy by me. I should have known you felt Fred should hear the news first.”

And he did, Alana thought, smiling into her mug. “Mack is hardly a boy anymore. He’s thirty-eight and barely shorter than you, but he looks like he could bench press your weight with no problem.” At her uncle’s scowl, she added, “No, Bunny didn’t exaggerate this time. What she doesn’t know is that he’s retired from the marine corps and came by on his way to nowhere to see if he could make peace with his father.”

“That was decent of him.” Duke sounded approving, despite his downturned mouth. “How did he take the news?”

“Exactly as you would expect of a soldier.” In her mind, Alana relived the scene. “Don’t forget, they were strangers and hadn’t parted on the best terms. But I felt he was truly sorry.”

“Not so sorry that he wanted to try again over the twenty years.”

“Well, maybe Fred took the answer to that to his grave with him, but that communication thing works both ways. Besides, he’s done tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows where else before that. Cut him some slack.”

Duke nodded as he digested that. “God bless him, then. And I wasn’t being judgmental, I was just curious.”

Alana leaned her head against his shoulder and rubbed his broad back. “I know.”

“I take it that you brought him next door?”

“It was foolish for him to insist he could walk when he was obviously sore. It seems he’s been hitching and hiking his way here all the way from the East Coast. So, after having him sign the appropriate paperwork, I called Eberardo to give him a heads-up, and drove Mack, yes.”

As her uncle put her egg on her platter, along with a portion of the hash browns and bacon, he handed it over, asking, “So? What do you think of him? He sounds like a fine specimen of manhood. If he didn’t inherit Fred’s ugly mug.”

“OMG,” Alana groaned. “You’re worse than Bunny. When I called in that I was checking out someone along the creek, she went into some nonsense about blue moons.”

Duke frowned as he plated his breakfast. “Was there a toxic spill in the area that I missed on the radio?”

“My thought exactly.” Leading the way to the table, she saw a way to get him away from his rabid matchmaking focus. “I told him about the will.” She’d never disclosed anything about Fred’s proposal to her uncle, afraid that it would upset Duke and forever alter the two friends’ relationship—if not destroy it. But she had shared the rest.

Sighing as he relieved his legs of some weight, Duke opined, “Bet he loved that.”

“You can say that again.” Remembering that kiss forced Alana to take her time with her napkin and taking a slice of toast from the plate on the center of the table. Her lips all but tingled as though she was reliving the experience again. “Why do you always make the toast first? It’s practically as hard as Sheetrock.”

“Don’t exaggerate. You can inhale your weight in those stale croutons they put on your Caesar salad at Doc’s, but you’re faulting my toast?”

“Now you sound like an indignant wife, all puffed up,” she teased.

“And you sound like an ungrateful husband,” Duke muttered. “Get back on topic.”

Instead, Alana took a big bite of toast with jam and chewed. The later it grew, the more compelled her uncle would be to get to the station. He was determined to retire with the pride of knowing that he’d probably had the best attendance record of most police chiefs in Texas, and a more impressive tardiness record.

“Ally, how did he take the news about the will?”

“He now thinks I’m a Jezebel. The kids today would just say ‘ho,’ but it all amounts to the same thing. He’s concluded I used my feminine charms to con Fred into making me the alternate heir.”

Duke’s eyes bulged. He stopped in midchew.

“Swallow, please,” Alana directed. “It’s a completely rational reaction if you consider what his opinion of women must be after what he learned about them through experiencing his mother’s behavior.”

“I can worry about you,” Duke said, poking his chest with his thumb. “People can gossip because you drive like you’re auditioning for a NASCAR sponsorship—”

“I was very respectful of the speed limit driving Mack to Last Call.”

“—but nobody calls you...that!”

As Duke’s fist struck the table, the reverberations had Alana lifting her mug to keep coffee from splashing into her plate. “One bright spot.” Alana continued to soothe him. “Fred can rest in peace knowing Mack doesn’t seem to have a cozy relationship with Dina.”

Duke’s coloring slowly eased to a mild pink. “Is that so?”

“He didn’t sound like he would be heading there anytime soon, even if things hadn’t worked out for him here.”

“You covered a lot of ground.”

“It’s a long shift.”

Looking as though he had a few choice things to remind her about that, Duke managed to settle down and instead ask, “Where is she these days?”

“Managing a strip club in California.”

Her uncle slumped back in his chair and looked toward the ceiling. “You called it, Fred.” To Alana, he explained, “He said she would squander the money he gave her in the divorce settlement, and take the boy to ruination, too.”

“Uncle Duke, you’re sounding a bit like an offended mother-in-law. From the rest of what I learned so far, Mack didn’t have much of a childhood once they left here, but he’s made a life for himself that he can be proud of.”

“Let’s hope you’re right about that.” Duke returned to his meal and took another bite. “Did you tell me if he’s married? I forget.”

The wily fox never forgot anything, but Alana let that slide. “Not married. No children.”

“At thirty-eight?”

Of course, people of her uncle’s generation would think there was something wrong with that. “If he’s gay, my antenna is way, way off,” Alana replied, again thinking of the kiss. “But I meant what I said—don’t even think of matchmaking.”

“Fine. Send me to my grave without a great-niece or -nephew to spoil.”

“If that’s the way it works out, you have my apologies. You can apologize for throwing every male at me that passes through the city limits.”

“I do skip bona fide transients and felons. One of us has to pay attention to your biological clock.”

Alana’s mirthless laugh had an edge. There was no denying he did that. “Hasn’t it crossed your mind that he could be a post-traumatic-stress candidate, a walking powder keg waiting to go off? Leave him alone and give him a chance to come to terms with this loss. He’s already a tired soldier.”

With that, she attacked her food in all seriousness and ate in record speed. Inevitably, her uncle noticed.

“In a hurry to meet the sandman?” he drawled. “You never do sleep well, and never at all on a full stomach.”

“Don’t plan to sleep. I plan to change and get to the barn and work on Tanker. If the abscess in that tooth is completely gone, he needs to start being worked again.”

“Does that include a ride to Last Call? I’ve yet to meet the man who can resist the picture you make when you’re on a horse. Not that you seem to notice.”

“If I head that way, it’ll be because I jumped every other fence and tree and creek on this place,” she said, although she knew what that would do to him.

Duke turned pale. “Try to remember people count on you to show up for your shift this afternoon.”

“I never forget,” she said softly. That was the problem.

* * *

After Duke left and once Alana changed into jeans along with one of Chase’s big football jerseys from UT—just in case Mack Graves got the wrong idea and thought she was intent on seducing him—she locked up the house and headed for her truck. She did intend to check Tanker, but first she wanted to deliver a plate of breakfast to go with the supplies she’d bought for next door. She’d done much the same thing for months when Fred got increasingly weaker. It was what neighbors should do, she assured herself, and Mack was Fred’s son, so it was, in a way, like helping Fred. But no matter how hard she tried to justify her actions, she knew she was at least partly kidding herself.

The man had triggered something inside her that was as powerful as an adrenaline rush. She’d often felt a similar thrill riding and sometimes driving, and occasionally when there was an arrest to be made on the job, but she’d never felt the same curiosity, let alone interest, in a man. That was saying something, when she’d been courted, and been the object of many a matchmaking scheme, and had even tried an affair or two. Mack’s kiss made all of that pale in comparison. She wanted to discover if it had been a fluke. Of course it was, she assured herself quickly. But she doubted a fling with Mack was going to raise her uncle’s blood pressure the way some of her other behavior did.

As she closed the gate between their properties, she spotted Eberardo emerging from the barn, Two Dog, the cow-dog-mix canine, only steps behind him. Eberardo waved and met her at the house.

A few inches shorter than her and perhaps five years older, he was a nice-looking man with a quick smile and a gentle hand with livestock. Fred had hired him over a dozen years ago on a temporary basis, but soon moved the trailer in to make the job permanent.

“Buenos días!” she said, as she emerged from the truck with the covered plate and the two bags of groceries. The dog jumped high to sniff at the plate. “Nothing for you this trip,” she told him. “I promise, next time.”

Eberardo sharply ordered Two Dog to sit and the dog immediately dropped to the ground, all obedience.

“I don’t think Mr. Graves is up yet,” Alana told Eberardo. “I was going to put this in his refrigerator.”

The ranch hand tipped his straw Western hat in greeting. “Then I come back. I just wanted to check in case he don’t want I stay.” He wiped his hands with a red kerchief that he pushed back into his jeans pocket. “I don’t want no trouble.”

Alana hadn’t seen him so nervous since he’d come to Last Call looking for work. “Eberardo, this is your home, and Mr. Mack doesn’t know much about ranching. He’ll need your knowledge and advice.”

“Gracias, Señorita Ally. I hope you are right. I would like to stay.”

Alana knew that was partly because he was in a relationship with a nurse at the local hospital. “Then we’ll work toward that goal. Mack Graves seems a decent man.”

* * *

That’s what Mack heard as he opened the side door. At the sound of the approaching vehicle—and knowing he’d locked the gate last night—he’d managed to drag on jeans and had hoped to pull on the T-shirt he’d grabbed, but he had to settle for holding it between his hands. Most of what he wanted to cover was on his back, anyway.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, allowing himself a swift head-to-toe review of the woman who’d even intruded into his dreams. His first thought was that if she had put on that big jersey hoping to make herself less appealing, she’d failed. His second was an unexpected twist of jealousy as he wondered who it had belonged to.

Although Alana merely lifted her left eyebrow at his perusal, she turned to the man beside her. “Mack, this is Eberardo Chavez, whom I told you about. Eberardo, this is Mack Graves, Mr. Fred’s son. Anything you need or don’t understand,” she added to Mack, “he’s your walking resource center. He’s also a darned good mechanic, and helped teach me a lot of what I know about horses.”

Eberardo grinned, his white teeth brilliant in his bronzed face and his eyes twinkling with pride. “Nobody as good with the critters like you, Señorita Ally.”

While Mack knew he still looked bleary-eyed despite having showered, he shook Eberardo’s hand firmly. “Good to meet you. Would you and Ally like to come in for some—I was about to look if there was any coffee in the pantry.”

“Is okay, señor. I must get back to work. Please, if you need Eberardo, you yell or honk the truck or tractor horns, or Señorita Ally give you my cell phone number.” He pulled it out of his pocket to confirm that it was charged and ready. “I come quick from any place.”

“That sounds like a deal.” Mack watched as the man and the white-and-black canine took off before returning his gaze to Alana. He caught that while he’d been focusing on Fred’s hand, she was paying him back for his inspection. “Like what you see?”

“You live up to marine standards.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?”

“If I get three or four hours, I’m good.” She nodded at her bounty. “I stopped at the market on the way home to pick up some essentials to buy you a little time before you make your presence known in town. Plus Uncle Duke tends to cook enough for four. Are you going to invite me in or was last night a hint that I should be intimidated by you?”

“I believe hints are a waste of time with you.” But Mack allowed the smile tugging at his lips and stepped back to let her pass.

Alana carried everything to the kitchen table and, once he shut the door, Mack used the chance to tug on the white T-shirt, but he tried to move too fast and messed up the bandages on his back. He tried to untangle the tape from the shirt, and swore softly at the sting that told him that he failed. That’s when he heard a gasp.

“Mack!”

So much for trying to keep the wounds private. He knew she was seeing the effects of the two bullets he’d taken during his final deployment. He had returned to wearing the bandages because of the chafing caused by his clothing, as well as the occasional bump of the duffel bag during countless miles of hiking.

“That’ll teach me to finish dressing before answering the door,” he said as she came to offer assistance. “I can get this.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re doing such an outstanding job. Hold still.”

In short order, she removed the mangled mess and dabbed the antibiotic ointment from his T-shirt with the clean side of the gauze. “Take off this thing before you really start bleeding again.” Without waiting for him to comply, she started tugging it over his head.

Mack helped finish, but gave her a warning look. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” she replied, her tone mocking. “Sit. I’ll start a pot of coffee and get you patched up. I take it there’s more of that stuff in the bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

Alana went to the refrigerator and took out a can of coffee. “Store the stuff in there,” she said as though confident he was watching her. “It stays fresh longer.”

“Far too complicated. That’s why I’ve stuck with instant for years,” Mack said—but he was glad to take a seat and watch her. She was all efficiency and grace, no wasted movements.

“This is the same unit that’s at the station,” she said, filling the carafe from the refrigerator water dispenser. Then she counted three of the measuring scoops of grains into the filter. “Don’t even attempt to tell me—this is a waste of your precious time.”

Mack had to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from laughing. The woman was as much a pain in his backside as she was irresistible.

Once she turned on the machine, she vanished around the corner and down the hall in search of the first-aid supplies. Mack used the break to peel apart the aluminum foil around the platter to get a slice of the bacon. Its scent was making him salivate.

“That needs to go into the microwave,” Alana said upon her return. “It’ll taste better warm.”

“Tastes fine to me,” he said, knowing his stubbornness would irk.

Instead of replying, she simply plucked the plate out of his reach, tore off the rest of the foil and placed his meal in the microwave. In about half a minute, she took it out, pulled a fork from the silverware drawer and set everything in front of him.

“My, you do know your way around here,” Mack drawled.

“I told you, this was my second home, and when Fred wouldn’t let the nurses come any longer, I took care of him.” With Mack focused on the food, Alana set to work on his back. “Dear God, how did those bullets miss vital organs? It looks as though you were almost killed.”

“Almost doesn’t count.”

She used peroxide to clean the areas again. “The wounds don’t look very old.”

“July Fourth.”

“Should you even be out of the hospital yet? Your cross-country trek doesn’t seem to have been the wisest idea.”

“Tell the chief that he makes a mean breakfast.”

Taking the strong hint, Alana stopped asking questions. Mack could tell she had performed first aid before and had a gentle touch. No doubt she’d made his father’s last days more bearable; he certainly enjoyed her ministrations. He let himself imagine her fingers moving elsewhere, until his body told him that he was asking for trouble.

“I didn’t mean that you had to go mute on me.”

“You grouse just like Uncle Duke. Your wish is my command, master,” she added, bending to coo near his ear.

Mack decided she could probably do good-cop-bad-cop all by her lonesome and make it sexy. “Everything all right at the station?”

“Yep,” she replied, once again the girl next door. “You were the highlight of our shift. Well, Ed thought he could catch a suspicious vehicle probably transporting drugs through town, but he had to pass the call to the state police once they left our jurisdiction.”

That tidbit of information had Mack’s fantasy of kissing her again go up in smoke. “Do you get a lot of that?”

“Worried for me, gyrene? Or are you just trying to keep me from asking why your seven-week-old wounds are reopening?”