Texas Redeemed (18 page)

“Well, it’s true. The only reason she’s letting you visit
this week is because she won’t be here. Plus she told Dinah to supervise.”
Satisfied with her outburst, she raced up the kitchen stairs two at a time. A
moment later came the unmistakable sound of a slamming door.

Dinah covered his hand with hers. “I need to be firmer
with her.”

“She needs a lesson in respect.” Where had he heard that
before? Right, it was what people in Night Sky had said about him throughout
his childhood that was colored with his own form of rebellion and badness.
They’d called him wild, uncontrollable, a first-class asshole.

But there was a difference between carelessness and
deceit—between being desperate for freedom and driven to puppeteer someone else
to get your way.

“About what she said …” Dinah went on with a pained
expression as she selected a banana and began to peel. “Valerie’s just being
careful. It’s her way.”

Without offering or being asked, Peyton washed his hands
at the sink and started placing strips of maple bacon into a frying pan.

Dinah smiled. “D’you mean to
tell me somewhere along the way in between bouncing from city to city, country
to country, you learned how to cook?”

“I get by. Surviving comes easier if you know a few
necessary skills. Cooking’s one of them.” He adjusted the range’s heat setting
and in seconds the delicious aroma rose from the pan. It felt good finding his
way around the kitchen with Dinah at his side. It brought him back to his
boyhood, to that first year after Marin had given him to his father and he’d
followed his grandmother around scared that he’d wind up lost in the enormous house
without her. He wished Dinah reminded him of his grandmother, but Estella had
been unique with short, wavy blond hair and cornflower-blue eyes and a spirit
that magnetized people. And he was hell-bent on remembering her that way, not
as a pale, cold shell lying in a casket fit for a queen.

“By the way,” he said, “what Lucy said wasn’t anything I
didn’t already know.”

“It wasn’t?”

Peyton grabbed a pair of tongs and turned a strip of
bacon. “Valerie and I had a—” A moment? An encounter? A brush with something too hot and dangerous to take lightly?
“—a conversation on Halloween. She suggested I visit
Lucy this week, making it perfectly clear that she wouldn’t be around. And it
wasn’t hard to guess that she’d cover all her bases, namely having you stand guard.”
He attempted a contrite smile. “A mother should keep her kid safe, I get it.”

“That she does.” Dinah worked the batter in a mixing bowl
with a whisk. “Lucy, Battle Creek and that children’s foundation are her life.
Hovering over all three is what keeps the girl going. And I love her for it.
Love that determination, that mama bear instinct.”

“There’s a
but
coming.”

“But she might have it in her head that Lucy, the ranch
and the foundation are
all
there is
to her. That’s what I don’t love.”

Peyton considered this as he transferred the cooked
strips to a plate covered with a paper towel. “Maybe that’s all she wants there
to be. If it makes her happy, who am I to knock it?”

“One problem. She’s not happy.”

I was happy when we
were friends.
Sitting in the darkness with her practically in his arms,
she’d made a confession—given him a clue that he’d set aside.

“Doesn’t she have friends? I mean, what about Cordelia and Felicity—”

Dinah cut him off with a sigh as she poured the first
batch of pancakes onto the griddle. “She’s got friends in all corners of town. Good, down-to-earth folks who understand her.”

“Does she have—” he averted his gaze, pretended it was
necessary to push up his sleeves at that exact moment “—a man?”

“If she did, I’d be shocked.”

“Don’t do that, Dinah. You want me to believe she’s been
alone all these years?” He wouldn’t believe it, not when busybodies at the gas
station and general store and hospital were maniacally eager to taunt him with
the names of men—and not all of them single—who were eyeing her. “What’s
shocking is that she’s got any privacy at all in this town.”

“She’s never brought a man home since I’ve known her.
Home means something to her that I don’t think any of us can understand—and
that’s fine. So if she had a relationship of substance, she would’ve let the
man into her home.” Dinah turned slightly. “And here you are cooking in her
kitchen.”

“Look—”

“Friendship is underestimated, you know.” She flipped the
pancakes one by one. “It got her through life with Rhys. Lord knows that’s
saying a lot.”

Valerie’s uncle had been a stranger to Peyton, and the
man had worked hard to keep it that way. But Valerie and all the laughter and
fun and sweetness about her had kept him coming back to the dilapidated,
depressing ranch and the moody iron-fisted cowboy who’d seemed to be all the
family she had.

“She told me he kicked her out when she got pregnant.”

“I wasn’t in Rhys’s life then, didn’t know Valerie. What
I gleaned about the whole thing was that he raised her to be who he wanted her
to be.” She began cracking eggs. “Well, he’d tried to anyway. Strict rules,
harsh punishments—you get the picture. As long as she conformed, she was a good
girl. Pregnancy out of wedlock? Oh, definitely not a
part of Rhys’s ‘good girl’ definition. I’m thinking he realized that he’d lost
the one person he thought he could completely control.”

“Was he like that with you? With Cordelia?”

Dinah rubbed her cheek absently, as if it was an old
habit that refused to die. “He hurt us, told Cordelia
and her brother, Chase, that they were weak and didn’t
have what it takes to survive on a ranch. He wouldn’t let Cordelia
date—she’d be ‘easily turned out.’ He said she’d be like me, and never make a
real man happy. That girl only worked herself to the bone to make him proud.
Sometimes I think he got to her more than she’s ever let on. But Chase … he
took the brunt of it. Rhys wanted to ‘toughen him up.’ Called him a mama’s boy
and … a pussy.” She uttered the word on a broken whisper. “He was just a boy and
his father wanted him to be a man. Or what he thought a man should be—brutal. I
finally took my children to Montana and never looked back. Until
he was gone.”

“Where’s Chase now?”

She pressed her lips together, as if steeling her
emotions. “He
was
in the army, on his
third tour. But now? Well, that’s anybody’s guess. Last I heard, he left Afghanistan. Left the service
altogether, I believe, but who knows why? I think Rhys killed something inside
him. God forgive me, but I hate him for it.”

“As long as I’ve known Val, she’s been attached to this
ranch.”

“Likely why she never put up a fuss to
live elsewhere.”

“Or she didn’t know whether or not ‘elsewhere’ would be
worse than life with Rhys.” Peyton wanted to reach inside his chest and remove
the palpable tug of painful guilt, the sickening feeling that he’d ignored an
obligation to Valerie. “Dinah, before I left town I asked her to travel with
me. No, I
demanded.
” But only for
his
sake,
because she had made his life good back then. He hadn’t thought about
her needs. “She turned me down, and I thought she was dropping me … cutting me
loose. I’d known that would pull us apart—her need to stay and my need to
leave. We fought.”

The old woman’s eyebrows pulled together, causing a
crease to form between them. “Nobody’s blaming you.”

“I am.” His
friendship with Valerie had been her lifeline and he’d let some pointless
argument sever it, leaving her to fend for herself and do God-knew-what to get
through it all.

Dinah moved to the range, scrambling the eggs with
careful precision. “And what about you, hon?
Got any friends yourself?”

Over the years he’d met interesting people, formed some
relationships. A few had tapered off, but he was still tight with several of
the people he’d worked with during his most recent missions. Malcolm Pettis was
the first friend he’d found in Baltimore, and had been there for Peyton after
the stabbing and throughout the painful-as-hell recovery. But even Malcolm
didn’t know that he had a life in Texas, was the heir to a menswear company he
didn’t want a part of and had left behind a woman he’d never forgotten. Dinah
didn’t need all the details though. “Yes, ma’am, I have friends.”

“Got a woman?”

There had been women, and sex that hadn’t been about more
than just sex. He didn’t have a woman to trust, to want on a level that shot
deeper than physical thirst. “No, I don’t. Doesn’t mean I’m
in the market right now.”

Dinah said nothing to this, only finished scrambling the
eggs and observed their handiwork. Nothing too fancy, but still a
delicious-looking spread. “I’ll get Lucy.”

It took all of two minutes for his daughter to bolt to
the counter, fill her plate and dive in without first waiting for Peyton and
Dinah to serve themselves.

Peyton didn’t want his first real visit with her to
unfold this way. He didn’t regret calling her out—it needed to be done—but he
wasn’t here as a fill-in disciplinarian for Valerie. But what the hell should a
new father say to his child, especially when she was a few years shy of being
able to vote and drive a car? “Uh … Music.”

“What about it?”

“Like it?”

That warranted a narrowed-eyed glance. “What next? You’ll
ask what my favorite color is? Or if I could be any
animal, what would I be?”

“Answer him,” Dinah encouraged.

“Dinah, you know I like music. I asked for iTunes gift
cards for Christmas last year.”

“What do you like?” he pressed. “Rock?”

Lucy chewed
thoughtfully on a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Mom
loves
rock.”

“I know.”

“I know you know.” She cut into a pancake. “Rock’s cool,
but I’m really into hip hop and pop now. Oldies, too. Nineteen
seventies funk, definitely. Indie, underground stuff.
My taste’s—what’d you call it, Dinah?”

“Eclectic.”

“Yeah. Mom says it’s well rounded.”

“Here’s a question,” Dinah offered. “What’s the most
played song on your iPod, Luce?”

“‘Tears in Heaven.’”

Peyton was surprised. Valerie had accused him of not
letting music affect him, but the Eric Clapton song made him feel uneasy …
haunted.

“I’m done. Want me to load the washer, Dinah?” Lucy
asked, and once her great-aunt had waved her off, she tossed her napkin onto
the counter and flounced into the family room.

After Peyton helped Dinah clean up, she excused herself
to make a phone call, leaving him alone with Lucy. Except she
was bullheaded about tuning him out as she stared at the television.

“Can I sit?” He indicated the two-cushion-wide space on
the sofa beside her.

“If you want.”

That was better than a no. He could be grateful for small
victories. “This is
Shrek?
”

She nodded, and when she shifted on the sofa he could
swear she was an inch closer to him than she’d been before. Or maybe he was
just hoping too hard for progress.

“What music do you like?” she suddenly inquired, eyes
still on the television.

“Classical,” he replied without having to think about it.
“My grandmother was big on classical music.”

“Estella was the reason you and my mom met.”

“Yes.”

“Mom really loved her. D’you know she taught her about the constellations and stuff? Mom
even made this star map up on the Crest.” Lucy folded her legs underneath her.
“Wish I’d known her.”

“Me, too.”

“So what do you do, besides work all the time?”

Since he’d returned to Night Sky there wasn’t much he did
outside of work, other than swinging a bat for exercise and driving just to
think. “I’ll show you. Next visit we’re taking a trip to my world.” He glanced
at the green ogre and talking donkey on the screen. “One more question. If you
could be any animal …?”

Lucy twisted her mouth in a this-is-pathetic expression. “A bird. Birds can go anywhere they want. As long as they
can fly, they can find someplace to fit in.”

Peyton recalled the drawing he’d found in his
grandfather’s study. Did Lucy think life on a cattle ranch didn’t suit her, that fashion did? He knew better than anyone what it
was like to be expected to slide into the wrong lifestyle.

“Hey, Lu—”

“Shh! Lord Farquaad’s
coming up. This is hilarious.”

He settled against the sofa, wanting to store in his
memory bank this moment of sitting with his daughter and watching a movie at
home.

Only this wasn’t his home. It was Valerie’s. And if not
for Lucy and the loss of Anna, would their lives intersect at all now?

Peyton directed his attention to the television, caught
some sly joke and chuckled. Beside him, Lucy whipped her head around, laughing,
too. “See? Told you it was funny.”

He laughed a moment longer, and pretended not to notice
when Dinah peeked into the family room to check on them.

D
INAH
SAID A
man who was punctual was a man you
could count on. It made Lucy stop and think when her father’s Lincoln arrived
at five o’clock on the dot, and she was still sorting it out in the back of her
mind on the way to the destination he’d kept secret from even Dinah.

From what she’d heard growing up, Peyton Turner was
not
a man to count on. At least, he
hadn’t used to be. Patients at Memorial sure counted on him now—especially
after he’d saved the life of man who’d fallen off a roof in the warehouse
district the other day and a reporter had come to the hospital to take his
picture for the
Gazette.
And he was
annoyingly good about making certain that her homework and chores were not just
done, but done
well.
Now Dinah and
even her teachers counted on him to keep her on her toes.

A billboard for Big Bros’ Cages stole her attention, and
she leaned forward in the backseat to grasp her father’s headrest. “A batting cage? This is where you hang out?”

Peyton hopped out of the driver’s seat and opened the
rear door for her. “Decent exercise. Solitude on most days. It’s a special place.” Something she
couldn’t figure out touched his eyes. “Ever been here?”

“No. What about you, Dinah?” Lucy hoped her great-aunt
wasn’t still royally pissed off over Lucy’s spur-of-the-moment choice to show
Owen McNamara the windmill when he and his dad had made a feed delivery
earlier. Dinah hadn’t been steamed about Lucy running off with Owen, but about
the fact that the horse Lucy had ridden out to the windmill was Brute.

Okay, so she’d lied when she told Owen that her mom let
her take Brute out whenever the mood struck. Fine, she’d been showing off to
impress a boy whose uncle was in the rodeo circuit. So what? Brute had been faster
and more powerful than she’d expected, and he’d almost flung her to the ground
like a wild bull. She hadn’t gotten hurt, and at the windmill Owen had given
her his necklace—a cool, ancient-looking talisman pierced with a thin leather
strap. It was supposed to ward off evil spirits and bring good luck.

Lucy could certainly use good luck. Last night she’d had
a nightmare, and Dinah had found her sleeping in the bathtub. In the dream, she
was standing at the cemetery, in front of Anna’s grave—except
her
name was on the marker, not Anna’s.

She touched the talisman now, as she waited for Dinah’s
response. The dreams were always worse when her mother was away. They screwed
with her head, taunted her about stuff she already knew. The wrong twin—the
good twin—was gone.

“Oh, yes, I’m ready for the major league,” Dinah said
sarcastically. “Honey, of
course
not.”

Honey.
Lucy tucked the talisman beneath the collar of her Beatles tee shirt, glad that
her great-aunt wasn’t mad anymore.

Peyton came around the vehicle to help Dinah out. “Today
you’ll learn the ropes.”

“Before I switched to soccer, I played T-ball,” Lucy told
him as they approached the cages.

“Should I watch out for the competition?”

He was teasing her, she could tell. Doctor Peyton Turner,
emergency surgeon, aid worker, ex-badass, knew how to kid around?

At the cage, Peyton offered her a helmet and bat.
Cautious now, she said, “What if I’m no good at this? I don’t want to look
stupid.”

“You sound like I did when I tried out my buddy’s
motorcycle,” he said with a headshake. “Motorcycles are important to me now.”

“Gramps said you got one when you were in high school. Do
you still ride?”

“Yeah.”

As he helped her put on the helmet, careful not to pull
her hair, she tried to picture him on a bike. The image fit. People said he was
a “bad boy,” and what bad boy didn’t ride around in a leather jacket on a
motorcycle?

“Who goes first?” Peyton asked, moving his gaze from her
to Dinah. Silence. “Dinah, you blinked first, so
c’mon. You’re up.”

The old woman fussed and blushed as she took a bent-kneed
stance at the end of the cage across from the pitching machine, and Lucy took a
few pictures with her phone’s camera before Dinah could catch her. The first
ball whizzed by her at a speed she didn’t expect, despite Peyton’s warning that
it would be fast. Then the second one surprised her, zooming straight at her,
and she yelped, dropped her bat and scurried off, telling him she’d have his
hide for putting her up to the fiasco.

“You go,” Lucy told him when he came over and said it was
her turn. If she freaked out like Dinah, or missed all the pitches, her dad
would probably be embarrassed, disappointed, or both. She didn’t know if she
could do this, didn’t know if she could deal with failing someone else … letting
down another parent.

Dinah stood outside of the cage, designating herself
cheerleader, and when the first pitch sent the ball sailing Peyton’s way, he
swung the bat hard and sent the ball in the opposite direction with a
bone-chilling
Thwack!

“Goodness gracious!” Dinah marveled, and she continued to
watch as he hit the next three baseballs with equal force.

No way could Lucy mimic that. She prepared to set her bat
aside, but noticed the light towers flash on at the exact moment that her dad
swung his bat a second too late—and the ball flew past him.

He missed!

Peyton stepped away and hitched his chin at her. “How’s
the competition feeling?”

Like
going home.
“Okay.” Lucy let him help her get set up and position
the bat properly. The pop of the pitching machine made her jump, and she
squeezed her eyes shut as the ball passed.

“Open your eyes.”

At the sound of her dad’s voice, Lucy did open her
eyes—to glare at him. Dinah was right. This was a fiasco. “I—I can’t hit the
ball. It’s too fast—”

Another pop. Another
ball zooming by. Then another.

Lucy sighed with frustration, deciding to swing this
time. No luck. The ball hit the cage, making the chain-link fencing rattle.
Last pitch,
she thought, feeling her
sweaty hands slip on the bat.

“You got this, Lucy,” her father said, without any
sugarcoating, as if it was a fact.

She inhaled sharply, heard the pop of the machine and
swung the bat with as much force as she could gather.
Thwack!

The impact of the bat meeting the baseball stunned her,
and she stumbled and landed on one knee. Her eyes followed the ball’s trip to
the other side of the cage.

Whoa.

“I hit the ball!” Fueled by euphoria, she got to her feet
and broke into a run. The soles of her sneakers slapped against the pavement. “D’you see? I hit one!”

You got this.

Lucy kept running, her excited shrieks and Dinah’s cheers
echoing in her ears. Then there was Peyton, his expression cool but his eyes
lit with … what?

He reached out one arm, maybe to give another fist bump,
yet somehow she slammed right into him, and he grunted but caught her in a hug
that lifted her off her feet. And he spun with her laughing in his arms. One revolution, two revolutions.

“I’m proud of you, Lucy.”

That was what lit his eyes: pride.

E
VERYONE
HAD AGREED
to have their tents pitched
and sleeping bags unrolled by ten p.m. in order to get in enough shut-eye
before leaving the campsite at sunrise. But at two in the morning, Valerie sat
wide awake, in the driver’s seat of one of the ATVs. She’d grabbed her sleeping
bag and offered Cordelia their tent after her cousin
had trudged into the woods three times to relieve herself following their
campfire supper. It wasn’t that she was uncomfortable in the sleeping bag—she’d
bunked in worse conditions.

She just couldn’t rest. Her brain wouldn’t slow down,
wouldn’t let the vast, powerful landscape and star-filled sky lull her to
sleep. At midnight she’d returned to the doused campfire with a penlight and
Lady Chatterley’s Lover,
intending to
use her downtime during the cattle drive to read because she hadn’t much chance
to put a dent in the book since rediscovering it in the ranch office. She’d
gotten through four chapters when Steven emerged from his tent jonesing for a cigarette. Smoking wasn’t permitted on the
ranch as a precaution, so he was used to coping. Apparently tonight was a
struggle so, armed with a slim flashlight, he’d taken
off for a run, hoping the exercise would ease the craving.

Following his lead, Valerie had returned to the ATV and done
some crunches on the ground. Now, more wound up than drowsy, she grabbed her
cell phone and was stunned to have reception in this location. Missing her
daughter wasn’t technically an emergency, so she wouldn’t have resorted to
awakening Cordelia to ask for the satellite phone.

Leaning against the ATV’s hood, she inhaled sharply and
dialed Peyton’s cell phone.

One
ring.
Two rings. Three. Four.

“Hey, Valerie.” His voice was
low and strong and oddly comforting. “How’s the middle of nowhere?”

“Calm. Beautiful.” She faltered.
“Uh … I just wanted to see how things’re going with
Lucy.”

“At two-twenty in the morning?”

“I miss her. And I can’t sleep.”

“Then let’s talk. Just let me close up shop. Research.” There was the rustling sound of paper on the
other end of the line.

“On what?”

“Robotic-assisted surgery.”

Valerie pictured him rumpled, nursing a cup of coffee the
way he had when studying on weekends away from college. She felt herself smile
into the darkness. “Sounds complicated.”

“Complicated, and interesting as
hell. To me, anyway.” More rustling, then the sound of
books being slapped shut. “Now I’m all yours.”

You’re not. You
never were.
Valerie dashed the pessimistic thought. He felt near, even
though they were miles apart. She held on to that security like a young child
to a blanket. “Did you visit Luce today?”

“I had a double shift at Memorial, so we left the house
early, had breakfast out—at Peridot, not the
diner—and then I dropped her off at school. Dinah came along.”

Valerie tried not to feel guilty about persuading Dinah
to oversee his visits with Lucy. No doubt he felt like her aunt was horning in
on his time with their daughter. But she couldn’t let herself care about his
bruised feelings when keeping Lucy away from his mother took precedence.

“Are you and Lucy getting along?”

“She hasn’t asked me to go away … and I don’t want to go
away. I appreciate you giving me the chance to be with her. But I want to know
if all bets are going to be off when you come home.”

“No.”

“And when I see her, will I see you, too?”

Like it or not, he was a part of Lucy’s life—and
therefore, a part of hers. “Yes,” she said on a sigh, and wondered whether it
sounded like static on his end. “You’ll see me.”

“Good.” Another pause. “How
bright are the stars where you’re at?”

“Very.” She tipped her face up at the endless, pure
darkness that was pierced with silver-white shimmering fragments and a glowing
full moon.

“Lucy told me you mapped a star chart on the Crest.”

The Crest was a mountain peak that boasted the highest
altitude in their immediate area. As the story went, in 1851 banker Theo Jedidiah had lost his fortune and, close to ending his
life, had traveled south to explore. He’d unearthed uncultivated, rugged hills
and soaring mountains, and had been convinced that the sight of the night sky
from a particular mountaintop would give any man reason to live. Eventually
he’d made the land his home, and named the town after what had been his
deliverance.

In the spring and summer, the Crest reached its popularity
peak. People were more hesitant to take on the difficult trek in unpredictable
autumn and winter. Over time a narrow road had been carved into part of the
mountain to aid visitors, but to reach the point that had saved Theo Jedidiah’s life, you had to go on foot.

Valerie made the climb every season. The reward—the raw
beauty that had brought tears the first time she’d seen it—always made the
journey worthwhile.

“I mapped the chart the summer before last.” It had been
grueling to carry the bulky charting tools, especially a telescope
and
a tube of grid paper, to the
mountain peak. But it had been peaceful and even a little thrilling to spend
the night hours recording her coordinates, relying on a plastic planisphere and cardinal directions to identify stars from
the lookout on the precipice of the mountain.

“Adventurous.”

Once Valerie had invited him to the Crest, but he’d
declined, saying he’d rather not die from a five-thousand-foot fall. “Some
people would call forging into disaster zones adventurous.”

“What people?”

“Me.”

Peyton didn’t immediately respond. Finally he said, “Is
your phone good on battery?”