Goodnight Kisses (4 page)

Wade leaded forward in a commanding manner only he
could accomplish to rest his arms on the desk. “Tell me again why
do you want the land?”

“We’ve talked about this. It’s the
perfect spot
─
”

“For that damn game ranch,” Wade finished.

His granddad had never been sold on the idea of
cultivating wildlife for hunting, but McCrea knew it could be a
profitable business. “We’ve had this discussion before.”

“There’s a nice piece of land on
the north side
─.”

“No,” he was quick to disagree.
“Give it to Jess or Lou or Dean. It’s twice the
size,
and it’s
perfect for raising cattle.”

Wade’s eyes fell to the desk. “I always thought you
would be the one to take over the ranch, but,” he swiveled his
chair around so he faced the window.

“Damn it, Granddad,” McCrea choked back a groan with
the slumping of Wade’s shoulders. “I have my own dreams and
ranching isn’t one of them. Why can’t you accept that?”

Wade’s return was interrupted by the familiar rattle
of Rose Mackenna’s old Chevy barreling up the drive. Their neighbor
from down the road.

Hardin raised his head to watch the truck roll to a
stop. “We’ve got company.”

“It’s just Eleanor,” McCrea
dismissed his sister’s friend, but couldn’t help watch the blonde’s
breasts bounce from side to side as she sprinted up the sidewalk.
After she
disappeared
up the front steps, he
listened for the slamming of the front door, and the trail of boots
across the tile in the foyer and up the stairs. “Jesus, what’s she
doing here?”

“I hear the taxes are due again,” Hardin said under
his breath. “And we both know Rose is too proud for a handout.”

“I’ll try to convince her to let us help,” Wade
seemed a little brighter at the thought of his old friend.

“Good luck. My guess is she’ll be selling off more
livestock and letting some of the hired help go.” Hardin knew how
Rose managed to get by. “Jimmy Ross told me he’s thinking about
leaving. Says he can’t make it on what Rose pays him.” He pointed
towards the stairs. “If he does, there’ll be more work than that
girl can handle.”

“There’s already more work than she
can
handle,
” McCrea said, knowing when
Eleanor left for college in a few days, Redemption would lose its
best
workhand
. “Why won’t she
sell?”

“Rose will never sell,” Wade answered. “Redemption
is her home. Charlie is buried there.” He pushed himself back and
panned his head towards the Mackenna home. “I’ll go see Rose today.
I need to hear her laughter and see her smile. She makes me feel as
though I’m not alone in the world.”

The soft
pat
of Eleanor’s
footsteps down the stairs made McCrea grimace. “Alone? There’s
never a moment’s peace in this place, especially with Lou and
Eleanor always running in and out.”

“Lighten up, son,” Hardin said.
“They’re leaving for college in a few
days,
and this place will be
as quiet as a tomb.”

He would miss Lou, but not the noise. Jesus, if he
heard one more giggle …!

“It’s not the same,” Wade
answered,
his mind
barely
in the conversation. It was
getting harder and harder to keep his granddad on target. “Rose and
I go way back and have a lot in common. We’ve borne the same grief,
and loved the same people. Charlie was one of my closest
friends.”

McCrea knew the friendship between the Coldiron’s
and Mackenna’s went back for generations.

“Charlie shared your dream of
finding the
Wayfires
Gold. We spent a lot of days in
the hot sun, digging through the rubble of Vera la Luz, but always
came up
empty-handed
.” Wade let out a hearty
laugh which brought a healthy glow to his face. “Mom blistered our
backsides when she caught us in the old home place searching for
clues. Everything was an adventure then.”

“There’s nothing but junk up there now,” McCrea
said.

Wade made a measurement with his
hands. “There was a trunk with old letters in it
. As I recall, they were correspondence
between your great-grandmother, Callie and her sister in
Virginia.

While McCrea pursued the mystery behind the legend,
he held no dreams of gold being uncovered anytime soon. His
interest was in learning the story of his ancestors and the history
of Santa Camino.

He knew the family lineage and his
grandmother’s name. He also knew she came to Texas in search of his
Granddad Lucas around the end of the Civil War. Some years before
that, the Legend of the
Wayfires
Gold started. “Where are the
letters now?”

Wade’s eyes narrowed with thought. “Not sure. I
haven’t seen them since.”

“Maybe Charlie took them. They’re
not in the cabin. That much I know. I’ve been through it with
a
fine-tooth
comb.”

“Aren’t you a little old to be chasing those legends
of gold?” Hardin teased.

“Chasing whores is more like it.” Without notice,
Wade was his old self. Direct and to the point.

“Whores?” McCrea’s eyes darted to his dad. “How did
the conversation go from gold to whores?”

Hardin raised an eyebrow. “Mildred Satterfield
cornered him on the street yesterday.”

His granddad’s gray eyes pinned him down. “She said
you started a fight over some floozy.”

Mildred Satterfield was leader of
the Garden Club, the Women’s Book Club, and a board member of the
town’s historical society. She was also leader of the town’s gossip
committee. “Why do you listen to her? She doesn’t know her ass
from
a−”

“It’s not just Mildred,” Hardin returned. “The whole
town’s talking about how you beat the hell out of the Moore boy
over some woman.”

McCrea felt his temper rising. It wasn’t the first
time Mildred had caused him trouble by spread rumors about him, but
this time it was different. This time she had thrown Eleanor into
her gossip.

“The woman wasn’t a whore,” he said through gritted
teeth.

“So you say.”

Wade’s reproach needled him.
“Forgive
me
if my moral compass isn’t what you want it to be.
I’m sure you two were saints at my age.”

“The hell we were,” Hardin laughed.

“I remember what it was like to be
a young man and what I’d give to be that age again. Riding
through
backcountry
, drinking and brawling with
my buddies.” Wade threw in his memories. “It was a hell of a
life
.”

McCrea had heard those stories before. “And you
turned out just fine.”

“Thanks to your grandmother, and that is my
point.”

Wade always traveled around the mountain when
telling a story, but eventually he got to the point. Lately, that
wasn’t the case. “I’m not following you, Granddad.”

“Life is a never ending circle of birth and death,
and in between are the memories you hold on to, the things that
make it worth living.”

McCrea stared at him with a blank expression. “I
don’t understand what any of this has to do with me getting the
land.”

“Your grandmother settled me down and taught me how
to love. She was my anchor. You need an anchor, McCrea.”

He didn’t like where the
conversation was going. “By anchor, you
mean a woman?”

“I mourn for your grandmother every
day. The softness of her hands against my face, the gentleness in
her voice as she sang our children to sleep and the way she
laughed. God, I miss her laughter.” Wade paused to swallow back his
loss. “The love of a good woman is
priceless
son, and I’d give
everything I own to have one more day with her.”

Sensing his father’s grief, Hardin cut in. “The
point is, we grew up, son. Took wives and started families.”

“Oh, hell no!” McCrea argued. “That’s not going to
happen anytime soon. I don’t want either.”

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” Hardin said. “You
have no direction. No drive. No plan for the future.”

“I have a plan! Haven’t you two been listening?” Lou
didn’t have a plan. She couldn’t decide on a major much less choose
a career path, and Jess’ nearly cost him his life. And while Lou
was too young to be showing any real interest in finding the right
guy to settle down with, Jess had been a diehard connoisseur of
rodeo buckle bunnies before his accident. But did they care? Hell
no! He was always the one under scrutiny! “I have a plan! Haven’t
you two been listening?”

“Finding a wife should be part of your plan,” Wade
informed him.

“The hell it should,” he mumbled.

“I thought going off to college would straighten you
out. Give you time to sow your oats, but it hasn’t,” Wade
explained.

“The way I live my life shouldn’t
be an issue. We made a deal. The land was mine when I finished
college. I
finished,
and you’re trying to back out
because you think I need a wife. I’m not you, Granddad. I don’t
need or want a wife.”

“That shows me how little you know about this
place!” Wade shouted, unable to control his temper. “We are tied to
the land. We’ve worked hard to be strong leaders and good standing
members of this community!”

“And I need a wife for that?” McCrea questioned.

Three taps on the study door interrupted, causing
heads to turn and paused the heated conversation.

“It’s open,” Hardin answered.

When the driver of the Chevy eased her head in,
McCrea stopped her at the door. “What do you want, Eleanor?”

The sharpness of his tone caused her to snap back.
“Excuse me, grouch. I’m looking for Louisa. Have you seen her?”

“I’m not my sister’s keeper,” he grumbled, not
knowing why he was directing his anger at her. “I have no idea
where Lou is.”

“Belle took her into town,” Hardin answered with the
same patient tone he used for his daughter.

She huffed out, “Darn” before shoving her hands into
her back pockets.

“Something we can help you with?” Hardin ask, and
checked his watch.

“No, I’ll come back.”

“Hang around. They should be back soon.”

McCrea held the door open for her. “Could you hang
around in the hall? We’re in the middle of something.” Even as he
tried to usher her out of the room, he couldn’t help but notice how
well her newly acquired curves filled every inch of her faded hip
huggers.

Eleanor Mackenna wasn’t strikingly
beautiful. Her creamy skin wasn’t covered by layers of
makeup,
and her hair wasn’t curled into the latest fashion. In fact,
she was pretty plain and seldom made an effort to make herself
anything other than that. But damn, if it didn’t work for
her.

“Oh, sorry.” A dusting of red
colored her cheeks as she backed out the door. “I didn’t mean to
interrupt. Mr. C, do you care if I get something from Louisa’s
room? I left one of my dresses up
there,
and I have a date
tonight.”

McCrea had known Eleanor most of her life, and at
first, she had been the shy little neighbor who blushed when he
spoke to her. But she was too energetic for shyness, and it hadn’t
taken her long to become a member of his family. There wasn’t a
single activity, celebration or holiday she wasn’t involved in. She
was a sweet girl with a magnetic appeal which made her approachable
and attractive in an indescribable way. She was kind, funny, and
quirky, and McCrea felt his agitation start to soften. “Is it with
the tuba player who took you to the prom?”

The blush on her cheeks darkened.
“Conner didn’t play the tuba. He played the
saxophone
and no. He’s
not my date.” She stuck her tongue out and crossed her arms over
her chest like a pouting child.

He wasn’t a dumbass. He knew
Eleanor had been hot on his heels for years, but he always ignored
her, something easy to do until a few months ago. Up until then,
she was just a chatty, somewhat annoying little girl with the
coordination of a
newborn
colt and the elegance of an
ostrich.

That wasn’t the case anymore. Now
she was a full-fledged, curvy, blonde who turned heads and
extracted whistles and cat-calls. In the past, he had been guilty
of tempting her, but now the
knobby-kneed
little girl he’d
left in the fall was the one tempting him.

“Get what you need,” Hardin said, ignoring their
bickering.

She began backing out of the door. “Thanks.”

“How’s Rose doing?” Wade asked, purposefully keeping
her in the room.

Holy hell, McCrea swore silently. Would they ever
get back to the land? With a heavy breath, he sat down in the chair
across from the desk. His impatience earned him a searing glance
from Eleanor. She was adorable when she was angry. In an angry pup
kind of way.

“A little sad I’m leaving, but other than that,
she’s fine.”

“Her sadness is understandable. You’re a real
comfort to her. Lou mentioned you earned a scholarship.”

Her head bobbed up and down. “That’s right. I worked
my butt off for it.”

“What are you studying?”

“Business.”

“Can’t go wrong there.”

“Maybe you should help Lou decide on a major,”
Hardin suggested.

She lifted a shoulder. “Louisa is smart, Mr. C.
She’ll figure it out.”