A Love to Call Her Own (29 page)

More emotion in his eyes. “Are they still here? Still…”

“Alive? Yes. Here, no. They live in South Texas. Noah's in school at OSU. Dalton owns the ranch and works it. And you—what have you been doing?”

He shook his head slowly. “Nothing that matters.” Then regret pinched his face. She would bet a month's worth of doggy treats that there had been someone in those thirteen years who did matter, who mattered a lot.

Time hadn't been kind to him. She'd imagined a reckless, charmingly disreputable version of Dalton, not this weary, burdened man.

“You know I have to call him.”

“No, you don't. No offense, Jessy Lawrence, but it's none of your business.”

She smiled stubbornly. “Being with Dalton makes it my business.”

“What exactly does that mean—being with? Just dating? Engaged? Friends with benefits? Knocking boots?”

“There's no way I can
not
tell him I saw you. It would be wrong.”

He lowered the tailgate with a protesting shriek of metal, sat down, and patted the gate. Oliver leaped up and lay down next to him. “More wrong than if you tell him I was in town but I didn't go to see him? 'Cause I told you, this isn't the first time I got this far before taking off again.”

“How about I call him right now? He could be here in fifteen minutes. I can wait with you to make sure you don't go anywhere.”

He gave her another all-over look. “You're not much of a deterrent, li'l bit. Hell, you can't even climb up on this tailgate by yourself. Even this guy could do that.”

Jessy didn't dignify that with a response or a try. She'd been short all her life. She knew her limits. Instead, she leaned one shoulder against the heated metal. “Why come here if you didn't want to carry through?”

His smile was cynical. “I've learned a lot about myself since I left this place. I'm irresponsible, careless, and selfish, and I'm not interested in changing that. I don't want the responsibilities that come with being like Dalton. I don't want a steady job. I don't want to stay in one place too long. I don't want to get bored or boring. I like having fun. And—” The smile faded, and his face turned deep red. “I'm your basic coward. I'd rather come back here, wonder, and leave again than face bad news.”

He had no idea how much she could relate to that. She'd been wondering about things forever, but just last night she'd taken the chance, and it had been worth it. Not just good news but incredible news—sympathy and understanding all the way.

“What if you go to see him and he says, ‘Welcome home, Dillon'?”

His laughter was rusty. “You
do
know Dalton, don't you? He holds a grudge better than anyone I know. Hell, he'd probably shoot first and ask questions later.”

Yeah, she'd been one of his grudges for a while. And it wasn't easy telling the guy,
Go home, see your brother
, when it was a sure bet that Dalton wasn't ready to see him. Finding out Dillon was alive—sure, Dalton could handle that. Actually looking into his face…he'd probably want to punch it.

“I have to tell—” Her cell phone interrupted her, and she pulled it from her pocket. Though she didn't recognize the number, she answered anyway.

“Jessy, this is Ramona Smith.”

A chill passed over her, accompanied by the helpless feeling from Saturday night that she'd disappointed Dalton's mother by merely existing. She wished she hadn't answered, wished she wasn't above pretending to have a bad connection and ending the call. Then she would throw her phone in front of the next big rig to come flying into town.

Of course she had answered, and disconnecting now would only delay the inevitable, and she wasn't about to toss her phone beneath eighty thousand pounds of steel since reprogramming all those numbers and ringtones would be a bitch.

Besides, she was Dalton's mother. Jessy had to make nice with her.
Wanted
to make nice with her.

“Um, hey. Hello.”

“David and I are in town—well, we're at the ranch. I talked to Dalton last night, and I'd like to talk to you today. He tells me you work at the animal shelter, and I was wondering if I could come by there in a little bit and get a few minutes of your time.”

Jessy swallowed hard. She wasn't crazy about meeting Dalton's mom on her own, but if he trusted letting that happen, he must be sure Ramona would be on her best behavior.

Then she looked at Dillon, scratching and rubbing Oliver as if he'd done it a million times, and a voice in her head began whispering,
If you present Ramona with her long-lost son, she'll have to accept you, right? Out of sheer gratitude?

“Okay, sure. I'm walking one of the dogs, but we'll be back in fifteen minutes.”

“That would be great.”

After saying their good-byes, Jessy put the phone away, then rested her hands on her hips. “I have to get Oliver back to the shelter. You should come by and talk to our director about adoption. She's tall, blond, and gorgeous—just your type.” She left out the fact that Angela was in a committed relationship with another woman.

“How do you know my type?”

“Tall, blond, and gorgeous is every man's type.”

Dillon seemed reluctant to move away from Oliver. He eased one foot to the ground but kept scratching the puppy's ear. Put the other foot on the ground and kept scratching. “Nah, I don't need a dog.”

“Everyone needs a dog,” Jessy pointed out. And if she was going to face Ramona Smith in fifteen minutes, she wasn't doing it alone. “Besides, the point is, this dog needs you. You're the first person he's approached, the first one he's shown any interest in. The way he dragged me over here, I'm pretty sure he's picked you out as his human. You don't want to break his heart, now do you?”

Dillon studied her a long time, then smiled ruefully. “I've been blackmailed before, but never with a dog.”

She waited, knowing to keep her mouth shut when he was looking a whole lot like he was talking himself into it.

After a moment, he said, “Okay. No promises, but I'll talk to her. You want a ride?”

Jessy smiled. She'd been truly surprised to discover that she liked walking, but with the temperature hovering in the high nineties, sweat soaking from every pore of her body, her hair plastered to her head underneath the cap, and the prospect of meeting Ramona again, cutting one walk in half wouldn't matter.

“You bet we would.”

Besides, this way she could make sure Dillon didn't flee the county.

W
ith his dad there to help out with the chores, Dalton decided at the last minute to go into town with his mom. It wasn't that he thought she might get overemotional and make things worse with Jessy, though that was her suspicion. Truth was, he wanted to see Jessy. Tuesday morning seemed a long time ago, tonight too far off.

They were halfway into town when she asked, “Are you going to marry this girl?”

In the bitterness over Sandra's suicide, he'd thought he would never get married again. How could he trust a woman that much again? How could he risk that kind of pure hell again?

But as Ramona had pointed out, Jessy wasn't Sandra. Jessy was a survivor. She might not understand just how important she was to the people around her, but she wouldn't take the easy way out. She never took the easy way out of anything.

“We haven't discussed it.”

“But you want to.”

Yeah, he wanted to. There were things to figure out—number one being whether
she
was willing to get married again. Would she mind giving up her apartment and moving to the country? Would she get along with his folks or have a problem with Noah living at the ranch when he wasn't in school? Did she want kids?

“It's something we'll have to talk about.” He gave her a teasing grin. “
We
being me and Jessy.”

“That's fine. Just don't leave us out of the wedding this time, if possible. I've already bought a mother-of-the-groom dress—hope springs eternal, you know—and I'd like a chance to wear it while it still fits.”

“I'll do my best.” Slowing, he made the first left turn inside the town limits onto the first street that ran through the north side of Tallgrass. It was less than a mile to the shelter. Dogs occupied the yards on both sides, a couple of them wrestling, a few more baking in the sun, the rest seeking out shade.

The only vehicle in the parking lot was parked to one side, an old Chevy truck, the kind he'd learned to drive in. That one had belonged to his grandfather, who'd sold it to Dillon when he graduated from high school.

“Where's her car?” Mom asked. “Surely that little girl doesn't drive that truck. I can't imagine her having the strength to wrestle that old gearshift out of neutral.”

“She usually walks to work.”

“I walk every day, too, but it still doesn't make up for all those hours sitting in the RV and snacking while your father drives.” With a sigh, she patted her stomach. “Oh, well, your dad loves me just like I am, and Nita's grandkids—she's our neighbor—think I'm all soft and squishy just like a grandmother should be.”

“You'll get grandkids someday, Mom. Definitely from Noah.”

She laughed. “Noah's just a big ol' kid himself. I have trouble imagining him growing up and settling down enough to be a father.”

Dalton parked in front of the fence on the right side and shut off the engine. “You ready?”

With a deep breath, Ramona opened the door. “I hate making apologies. Of course, I don't get much practice because I'm so rarely wrong. Are you coming in?”

“Nah. I'm going to look at the dogs. They might have some frou-frou little yipper who'd like nothing more than to sit in your lap in the RV all day.”

She frowned at him. “I don't want a dog.”

“Yeah, that's what we all say, but in the end, it doesn't seem to matter.”

She
hmph
ed as she crossed the parking lot and went inside the shelter. Chuckling, Dalton walked over to the fence, crouched, and looked over the dogs in that yard, but Oliver wasn't among them. If the mutt had been adopted, Jessy would have told him, so maybe he was inside cooling off or being tended to.

There were plenty of others wanting attention. They crowded each other at the fence, shouldering one another aside for a chance at the pitiful scratch that was all he could manage through the chain link. Their eagerness for attention made his gut clench. So many animals abandoned or tossed away by their irresponsible owners. It was no surprise Jessy wanted him to adopt her favorite. In fact, the only surprise was that she hadn't asked him to take a dozen others for good measure.

Voices floated on the still air from the back of the enclosure, one of them husky, Southern, the voice that mattered most in his life. Seeing a gate nearby, its padlock and chain dangling unfastened, Dalton let himself into the yard, then headed for the back, the dogs following him like a pack with their alpha.

When he circled the corner, the first thing he saw was Oliver with a leash hooked to his collar. The second stopped him in his tracks: Jessy, her back to him, standing on her tiptoes, her arms wrapped around a man's neck.

I don't share,
he'd told her, and for a moment, that thought flared hot and sharp. It was just a hug, and there had to be a valid explanation for it. Maybe the guy was an old friend of Aaron's, though he wasn't a soldier, judging by the shaggy hair.

Hair the same dark shade as Dalton's. Height was a match for Dalton, too, and the width of the shoulders. In fact, except for the thinner frame, a person could mistake the guy for Dalton from behind, with the worn, washed-out jeans, work shirt, and scuffed, beaten work boots.

She ended the embrace, and Dalton found himself staring at an all too damn familiar face.

Oh, God, Dillon was home, and Jessy was hugging him like a long-lost lover.

Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and spread down his spine. That damned pickup truck. He should have recognized it the instant he'd seen it. He'd parked beside it, behind it, and in front of it a million times in the year and a half before Dillon took off. But old blue-and-white Chevy trucks weren't an unusual sight in Oklahoma, and most of them looked pretty much the same.

For a moment, crazy thoughts ran through Dalton's head: that Jessy had picked up Dillon somehow, somewhere, the same way she had Dalton nearly three months ago. That she'd been with his brother. That she'd said the same things, done the same things, with him that she did with Dalton.

The
cold
part of the sweat was gone. Heat pumped through his veins, his head throbbing with it, his vision hazy. He took a step forward, intending to jerk Jessy away from his brother, to beat the shit out of him, to pound him until every bit of anger and betrayal was finally gone. But something stopped him.

Jessy stopped him.

She wasn't Sandra, and she wasn't Alice, either. Jessy wasn't involved with the bastard. She hadn't hooked up with him, didn't have any kind of relationship with him or any other man. She wouldn't do that to Dalton, wouldn't do it to herself. Hell, this was the woman who was ashamed to admit she'd gotten fired from the bank, who'd been merciless with herself for the failure of losing a job.

This was the woman who'd spent three of the last four nights in his bed. The woman who loved him. The woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

Dillon glanced up, and over her shoulder, his gaze connected with Dalton's. The color drained from his face, and his body went stiff. He'd always been able to sense when Dalton was about to punch him and get ready for it, while he'd never had any tell of his own. He'd sucker-punched Dalton too many times to count.

Slowly Jessy turned. Heat flushed her face, and alarm flashed in her eyes as she put space between herself and Dillon. Her mouth moved a few times before she managed his name. “D-Dalton. I—I—I wasn't expecting you. I, um, I didn't think…I was just, um, finishing up…” She sucked in a quick breath, then blurted out, “We just finished Oliver's adoption papers. He has a new home.”

The dog moved behind Dillon, his head thrust forward between his owner's knees. The way he stood, it was hard to tell if he was taking cover or making a stand. He didn't trust anyone yet, Jessy had told Dalton, so of course the first person he responded to was Dillon. The bastard had always had a way with women and animals.

Dalton shifted his attention back to his brother. “You're taking responsibility for a dog?” The words came out dry, the tone disbelieving.

Dillon swallowed a couple times. “I didn't really want a dog—”

Damn.

“But he made his choice.”

Jessy's smile quavered. “Kind of like you and Oz.” Her green eyes were huge, the way they'd been Saturday night when she'd started downstairs to meet his parents, but instead of simple anxiety, now there was pleading and fear, too. She expected him to be angry with her, to think the worst of her because thinking the worst of herself was one of the things she was really good at.

Before he could reassure her, offer his hand, or anything else, the rear door into the shelter swung out. It hid the newcomer, but the sudden tightening in his chest warned him who it was an instant before she spoke.

“Jessy? Your boss said I could interrupt you—” Ramona saw them and stopped abruptly. Her grip on the door went slack, it slowly swung shut, and like Dillon, she went pale and stiff. “Oh, dear Lord,” she whispered. “Dillon. You've come home.”

Ramona swayed as if she might fall, then immediately straightened her spine. “Come over here,” she said, her voice sounding of impending tears. “Give your mother a hug, and be quick about it.”

As Dillon obeyed, Jessy turned back to Dalton. The acid in her stomach was enough to make her a little unsteady, too, so she stayed close to the building in case her legs gave way. “I was going to call you.” She managed little more than a whisper.

His expression was impossible to read.

“I—I took Oliver for a walk, and he saw Dillon in this motel parking lot, and it was like he'd seen his daddy. He was so excited, and Dillon responded to him, too, and they were really good together, so I suggested…” She had to stop to fill her lungs, to clear the lump from her throat. “I was going to call you.”

Dalton just stared at her a long time, and pain pierced her chest. When her heart broke the first time, it had been an explosion of grief, set off by the five worst words in the world:
We regret to inform you.
This time it was just one single ache, but she was pretty sure it was going to spread, getting sharper and rawer, until it destroyed her. She'd known getting involved with Dalton was a risk. She'd known the odds were great that she would screw it up just like she'd screwed up everything else in her life, but idiot that she was, she'd done it anyway, and—

Wait just a damned minute.

She took a deep breath that smelled of heat and sweat and dog waste, then another. Folding her arms across her chest, she scowled hard at Dalton, the way he used to look at her every time they met. “You know what? I didn't do anything wrong. I was walking Oliver, I ran into your brother, and you showed up before I had a chance to tell you. That's all. I would have told you, even though he said it was none of my business, but he doesn't get to decide what I do because my loyalty is to you. I don't even know him, and I certainly don't owe anything to anyone who calls me ‘li'l bit,' but
you
owe me the courtesy of having faith—”

“Will you marry me?”

“In me after all…we've…done…” Jessy broke off, pulled off her cap, and ran her fingers through her hair before reseating it and narrowing her gaze. “What did you say?”

Slowly Dalton grinned, and the tiny cracks still spreading in her heart suddenly stopped. “I asked you to marry me.”

Marry me.
Oh, dear God. Grateful for the solid support of the building, she leaned against it. Her heart pounded in her chest, its thud so loud that it overwhelmed all the other noises—Ramona's weeping, Dillon's consoling words, the dogs snuffling and playing, the twelve forty-five train passing a half mile away.

Slowly she slid to the ground, taking off her hat again to bat away the ever-present flies. Dalton crouched in front of her, his dark eyes dancing with amusement, one brow raised in question.

“I look a mess.” Stupid, but yeah, that was the first thought that came to her mind after a marriage proposal.
Way to go, Jess.

“But you clean up good.”

She'd thought she would never marry again—thought that was the kindest thing to do for anyone foolish enough to ask. Hell, she was such a disaster that she'd never intended to let anyone get close enough even to think of asking her.

Marriage. A pastor, her friends, his family, vows. A husband. In-laws, a family of her own. A place to belong forever.

She deserved that, didn't she? She wasn't a disaster anymore. She wasn't perfect, but she wasn't a total failure, either. So her marriage to Aaron probably would have ended if he'd lived to come home. Divorce happened. It didn't make her unlovable, unworthy, or unfit to try again.

“If you need that long to think about it…”

Instead of stiff, the way it had been that night over coffee in the gazebo, his voice was warm, teasing. The man she'd met three months ago who'd had little to say, no softness, no happiness, nothing but hard sorrow, had learned to smile and laugh and tease again, in part because of her. Was that incredible or what?

She blew out her breath. “I was so concerned about you finding out Dillon was back, I never considered…never expected…”

“We'll worry about Dillon later.” He didn't even spare a glance for his brother. “Right now, it's just you and me.” He took her hand, his fingers warm, strong, callused, and so gentle with her. “Should I do this again tonight? Someplace more appropriate? Dinner at Luca's, with candles and flowers and wine?”

“I don't drink anymore. I can't handle it,” she said, still full of wonder inside. Then she realized what she'd blurted out, and her gaze jerked up to his. He didn't seem shocked or surprised or disgusted or anything else bad. He'd started this conversation looking at her as if she were the most important person in his world, and he was still looking at her that way.