Coming Home to Texas (13 page)

While Ellie knew she'd left at an inopportune time, she also knew it had been the right choice to leave. “Not stepping up to the plate? She struck me as the ambitious type. I thought she'd dive right in.”

“Oh, she has. But she doesn't have your knack. The media kits for the GoodArt gala are boring. You're going to need to do some first-class schmoozing when you get back.”

She noticed he said “when,” not “if,” and her stomach tumbled in indecision about how to take that. The GoodEats GoodArt Fine Arts Gala was one of the special projects that Pete had brought her into as his direct assistant. It was a wildly successful fund-raiser for school visual arts, supporting a collection of programming that had fallen prey to the city's public school system budget crunch. Shortchanging the gala's advance publicity had been the hardest part about leaving Atlanta. Part of her hoped it would be the one thing that ensured her return—she just wasn't sure how large a part. “You managed before I came on board, you'll be okay without me.” The words tasted dry and dismissive on her tongue.

“Yeah, we'll get by. But how are you? I mean, really, how are you?”

Somehow the question dug so much deeper when Pete asked it. Ellie scrambled for the right response. “I'm a carefully controlled mess. Okay, maybe not so carefully controlled. I'm glad I'm here, and my family's being great, but it's like my brain forgot how to work.”

“You're grieving.”

She'd not thought of it that way, but Pete was right. A huge part of her life had just died. Had been put to death, actually, just like that bison out behind the barn. A whole slew of hopes and dreams snuffed out in the space of one heart-wrenching discovery. “I guess I am.”

“Look, I know we talked about you coming back mid-May, and we'll get by if that's what you need, but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't love you to come back sooner.”

Ellie was one of dozens of smart people at GoodEats. Pete's plea hit some long-sore spot in her that had always wondered if anyone would really notice when she left. How sad that such an affirmation came in the midst of too much heartache to make it useful. “I don't know, Pete. I'd be of no use to you right now. Believe me.” If half a dozen teenagers could practically reduce her to tears by not being thrilled with her class, how on earth would she meet Pete's high expectations for handling reporters and charity committees in this condition?

“Just think about it. Come back when you're ready, but get ready as fast as you can. We need you.”

In her senior-year internship and her full-time job at GoodEats since graduating, Pete had never said anything so gratifying as those three words. Derek didn't need her love. Katie clearly didn't need her friendship. Gran and Gunner loved her, but they had their own lives and didn't need her. It felt deeply satisfying to be needed, even if it was only professionally. “Thanks for saying that, Pete. It helps a lot to hear it.”

Pete laughed softly. “It would have helped you to hear what Miguel said to Derek when he heard what had happened.”

Miguel was the head of housekeeping for the restaurants—a paunchy, pushy old man with a thick Mexican accent and a great big heart. Ellie had won his loyalty by getting a magazine to run a piece on the stellar health and safety record GoodEats enjoyed. She could just imagine the slew of chastisements Miguel sent Derek's way. “Really?”

“He went on for ten minutes. And while it was all in Spanish, believe me, no one needed a translation.” After a pause he added, “We need you back, Ellie. I get that you're hurting, but I don't want to do the June gala without you on board. You love your work. Maybe getting busy again would be the best thing. I don't see you puttering around on the family ranch forever—you need to be busier than that.”

“I'll think about it. I promise.” If Pete saw what time Gunner rose in the morning and how tired he looked when he came in for dinner, he wouldn't use a word like
puttering
for ranch work. The Blue Thorn was a lot of work and if she chose to get busy, there'd be no end of tasks awaiting her here. It was just that she couldn't seem to get in gear. Pete's declaration of how important she was to the company was a balm to her soul. What she did at GoodEats mattered, and she'd needed to hear it.

So why did it have to take a disaster and a departure before she heard it?

Chapter Thirteen

T
his is not a date. This is friends going out for dinner.

It bothered Nash how often he'd had to repeat it to himself as he drove to the ranch house Tuesday night. He wasn't used to picking up women with their whole family watching—it felt like high school prom. For one moment, when Ellie's little niece, Audie, skipped out of the house to make a big
ooh
face at his sports car, Nash considered asking her to come along. A nine-year-old chaperone? Was he that desperate for accountability? Had he completely forgotten the Z had only two seats?

“I like your car.” Audie peered into his driver's side window with wide eyes as he shut off the engine. “It looks like a race car.”

“It's not,” he said as he stood up out of the low seat. “But it's close enough.” He surprised himself by saying, “Would you like me to take you for a ride someday?”

“Sure!”

“Well, since you'd have to sit in the front seat and all, it'll take a little doing, and we'd definitely need your mom's okay. But maybe someday soon we can make that happen.”

Ellie walked up looking...well...absolutely perfect. Not full-on date fancy, but clearly a step up from her normal everyday wardrobe. She wore a casual floaty yellow dress that made her eyes stand out even more than usual, and he smiled at the neon-green toenails that peeked out from flat sandals rather than dressy heels.

She noticed him looking—something that made Nash's stomach wiggle. “Audie did my pedicure yesterday. It's a bold color choice, don't you think?”

“Couldn't say. Definitely not my area of expertise.”

Ellie leaned down to Audie. “Deputy Larson's area of expertise, the one he's going to show to me today, is sushi—that's raw fish.”

“And some other things,” Nash added.

“Gunnerdad said sushi's made with things like octopus. Those aren't fish. Those are cephalopods.”

Nash felt his smile broaden at the little girl. “I didn't know that. You're very smart.”

“Or at least very curious. And very talkative.” Audie's pregnant mother, Brooke, waddled up behind her daughter. “Why don't we let Aunt Ellie and Mr. Nash get on their way.”

“When you take me on my ride, can we go to eat octopus?”

Curious indeed. Even most teenagers would turn up their noses at the thought of eating octopus. “You're not scared to eat it?”

Audie's tiny chin went up. “I'm not scared to taste it. I'll only
eat
it if I like it.”

“Well,” said Nash as he opened the car door for Ellie. “I can't argue with that strategy.”

Audie started to say something else, but Brooke tugged her away—but not before giving Ellie a look that was either “enjoy yourself” or “watch yourself,” Nash couldn't say which.

“Gran says Audie's a hoot wrapped around a firecracker.” Ellie laughed as the car turned out of the elaborate stone-and-iron Blue Thorn gate.

“Pretty fair description,” Nash agreed. “Your family is nice.”

“My family is nosy,” Ellie corrected. “They all lined up on the porch as if this was prom.”

Nash burst out laughing. “You know, I had the exact same thought.” And then, because it needed saying, he added, “But it's not. This is just a fun dinner between friends. I'm not looking for anything else, Ellie, and I know you aren't, either.” Sure, it was awkward, but it was best to keep that line clear and out in the open.

“Thanks. I love my family, but it sure feels good to have a night away from them. Everyone is always asking me how I'm feeling, have I decided what I'm doing next and quoting that ‘all things work together for good' Bible verse.” She let her head fall back against the seat as the wind played with her hair—a sight that tightened Nash's gut and made him glad he'd declared the platonic nature of the evening just now. Did this Derek idiot have any sense of what he'd thrown away?

“I know they mean well,” Ellie went on. “But I'm feeling different every hour, I don't know what I'm going to do next and while I get that God hasn't played some horrible trick on me, some days I'm just plain hurt and angry. They probably think I hide on the porch and knit because I'm sad, but mostly I just hide on the porch and knit because I'm tired of talking about it.”

That gave Nash an out, at least. “So, rule number one for tonight is I don't bring up your recent—” he searched for a kinder phrase than
getting dumped
“—social hurdles. But if you find you want to talk about it, bring it up. I can handle a mild round of ex-trashing.” It would probably do him good to hear how Ellie was still broken up over Derek. A reminder that she was in the throes of romance rebound and off-limits.

“I decided to ban myself from Derek-bashing. I took a morning earlier this week and wrote a long, scathing letter to him, getting it all out of my system. I wrote one to Katie, too. Then I put the letters in the fire and declared that the end of it. Or at least to try to make that the end of it.”

“I tried that tactic once. The police-force therapist had me write a long letter to Hector Forrio. I didn't burn it. I actually gave it to the therapist. She said she would give it to him in prison.”

“Wow,” Ellie said, turning to look at him. “Did it help?”

Nash was glad he was driving and didn't have to return her gaze. “Nope. Well, maybe for a week or so while I waited for a response from him. Of course, none came. I can't be even sure he ever read it. But did it take away the anger and all that? Not really. I think only time—and lots of it—can do that.”
You remember that, Larsen. She needs time, and neither of you have got that before she
'
ll be leaving again.

“It's funny, you know?” Ellie stuck her hand out the window. Out of the corner of his eye, Nash could watch her play with the rushing wind the way a child would, hand floating up and down. It struck him as exquisitely pure, having the same simple and untarnished nature that the rolling pasturelands gave off. The exact opposite of LA's loud sheen.

“What?”

“Well, I was thinking about it. That kid was aiming for your heart and missed. Derek wasn't even paying attention to my heart and shot it right through. It's funny.”

“So we
are
going to talk about Derek?” He had been sure her ban wouldn't last the night. Women as a whole weren't able to compartmentalize this kind of stuff the way men did. It was what made Ellie such a minefield at the moment.

“That wasn't really about Derek. It was about why you and I are friends. We're the odd opposite of each other. Get it?”

“Sort of.”
I get that it hurts
, he wanted to say.
But I don
'
t put someone trying to snuff you out in the same column as getting cheated on. Even by a fianc
é. One was a crime, the other a sad outcome. Still, she was in the throes of it, and he nearly a year's healing under his belt. “We both ran.”

Her hand kept skimming and diving through the darkening night air. “A pair of runaways.” She shifted to face him and the breeze sent cascades of tawny hair across her cheeks. She didn't mind how the T-top messed with her hair—she seemed to enjoy the way it tumbled over her face. He liked that. “What's your favorite color?”

Nash had to think a moment—it had been years since anyone asked him a question like that. “Green.”

“Why isn't your car green, then?”

“This car came in two color combinations, black and gold or black and red.”

Ellie ran her hands over the gold of the door panel as though assessing whether he'd chosen the correct combination. “You couldn't just have painted it the green you liked?”

“No. That would devalue the car. The whole point of a classic car is to have it as close to the factory issue as possible. It's not like knitting a scarf—you don't just pick your favorite color.” His words gave a sudden sense to her question. “Is that why you were asking? Were you going to knit me a scarf?”

Her face went the most disarming shade of pink. “Maybe,” she admitted, and Nash's stomach did another somersault. “I knitted things for all my friends. You should have seen the shawl I was knitting for Katie to wear in the wedding. A work of art—that is before I ripped it all out with Gran on the porch the day after I came back. A very satisfying purge, if I do say so myself.”

He shouldn't ask, but he couldn't stop himself. “What did you knit Derek?”

“Well, you'd have thought I'd knitted him a sweater the way things turned out.”

“Meaning?”

“It's an old superstition knitters have. Knitting anything—but most especially a sweater—for a boyfriend dooms the relationship. Can't be too true if I never knitted a sweater for Derek and the whole thing blew up on me anyway, can it?”

Drawing the connections in his head, Nash concluded that if Ellie was considering knitting him a scarf, that meant she placed him squarely in the friend column of relationships. That ought to be good news, but it irritated him anyway.

They drove on in comfortable silence until Nash took the Austin exit and pointed at a row of buildings just down the street. “We're here.”

* * *

“You know,” said Ellie as she considered the peculiar texture of raw octopus, “it's not bad. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it's actually tasty. Weird, but satisfying.”

Nash poured more soy sauce in the little china bowl beside his plate. “I think that's why I crave it. Nothing else tastes like it. I put soy sauce on lots of things, but sushi is a particular taste.”

Ellie picked up some rice with her chopsticks—she'd eaten enough Chinese takeout in Atlanta to know how to use the utensils well. “Here in Texas we put hot sauce on everything. Still, I don't think it's the same. You'd never put this on breakfast eggs, but Gunner loads his with hot sauce.”

“I've seen how you all douse your breakfast eggs with hot sauce,” Nash offered. “I mean, I like the stuff, but only on certain things.” He pointed to another piece of sushi on the large platter between them. “That one has tuna in it—a bit milder in taste than octopus. It goes together really well with that one over there.” It was fun to see the mentor side of him, encouraging and directing her as they explored all the different items on the huge platter he'd ordered for them to share.

Ellie picked up a piece of each and put them on her plate. “Speaking of things that go together, did
you
know Mick and Marny are a thing?”

Nash laughed.

“What?”

He shook his head, still chuckling. “The way you say
thing
.”

She gave him a mock scowl, unable to be truly mean because of the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed. “Are you making fun of my accent?”

“No, no,” he said, reaching for his water glass. “Well, okay, maybe a little. There are just some words that...well, they sound so
Texan
.”

“Oh, and that's such a source of laughs given that we are, in fact, in the Texas state capital.”

“I shouldn't tease, I know.”

Ellie pointed at him with the end of her chopsticks. “No, you should not. Besides, I have two brothers. I have a black belt in teasing, so you'd lose.”

“Okay, yes, I did know Mick and Marny are—” he gave the word a very neutral pronunciation “—a thing. Mick told me the other day.”

“And yet you still put them together when we cleaned the bison brushes.” She gave him a look. “You're a softie.”

“You can't tell me you don't have a soft spot for Marny. I've seen the way you work with her. She was all attitude and apathy that first week, but I feel like she's coming around.”

Marny had been the hardest sell of all the girls, but Ellie dug her stubborn Buckton heels in and kept trying to connect with the girl. She was making progress—just not nearly as much as she'd hoped. “She's still got a monster chip on her shoulder. At first, I was pretty sure she had something against me—though I had no idea what. So I just did what Gran told me.”

“What was that?”

“I loved on her harder. Gran says the only way to fight hate is with love. I may not be there when it comes to Derek, but I have really tried to meet Marny's every dark look or snide remark with nothing but faith and love.” She selected another piece of sushi and rolled her eyes. “But I tell you, it's been hard. She's tested me. She's tested my faith. But I just kept pushing closer, asking questions, paying attention.”

Nash looked at her with admiration. There was something else in his eyes, too, but she chose to pretend she did not see it. “Then she finally talked about her home life, and my heart broke open. It sounds terrible, Nash. She's practically ignored. Here I've got more family attention than I could ever want, and she tells me stories about her dad staying out drinking all night and then coming home mean and demanding she make him breakfast before she leaves for school.”

“It's not hard to see why they connect with each other. Mick's story doesn't sound much better.” Nash dug into his bowl of rice. “They get to you after a while. You tell yourself not to get all caught up in their lives, but you do.”

And then they turn around and shoot you.
He didn't say it, but the sentiment was there, broadcast in the pain and regret that tightened his features.
Hearts can be broken in more than one way
, she thought as she allowed herself a long gaze into his eyes. “Do you think it will work?” she asked, because someone needed to say something to break the all-too-potent silence.

“Will what work?”

“Theo's program. Do you think it will turn some of these kids around like he wants? I mean, you've been involved in programs like this before. You ought to know.”