A Man to Call My Own

Chapter 3

AFTER DINNER THAT EVENING, Red joined Chad on her front porch to enjoy the setting sun for a while. It was a long, wide porch, but then it was a nice-sized house that stretched behind it. Red's husband hadn't stinted when building their home. Having both come from the East, they were used to fine accommodations.

A second story had been added to the house a few years after they'd arrived in Texas, to accommodate the children they were hopeful of having. Red couldn't say why they'd never been blessed in that regard. It wasn't for lack of trying. It just wasn't meant to be, she supposed.

The soft strains of a guitar drifted around the corner from the bunkhouse. Rufus was right handy with the instrument, and it had become almost a ritual that he'd play a few songs in the evening as the boys wound down from a hard day's work. Red always heard it from a distance. The one place she restricted herself from on the ranch was the bunkhouse.

Chad bunked down with the rest of the men, but being the son of the richest rancher in the area, no one thought it odd that Red insisted he dine with her in the main house. It was also usually just the two of them who occupied the porch each evening. They didn't always talk. The ranch was running so smoothly that, most evenings, anything that needed to be said got said over dinner, leaving the porch time just for quiet introspection.

Red was going to keep it that way tonight, except Chad's distant look, and the direction in which he was gazing, made her guess he was thinking of his father. She often thought of Stuart, too, but along different lines.

She was amazed that Stuart hadn't found out yet that Chad was staying on the Twisting Barb. Her hands had been warned never to mention Chad's name when they went into town, but with liquor flowing freely on those town visits, there was no guarantee that one of them wouldn't slip and mention it. And they did know that Stuart had hired some of the best trackers around to find Chad.

They had nothing to trace, though, because the storm that had brought him to her had washed away his trail. And no one suspected that he'd gone to roost so close to home, only a few miles away, especially not Stuart. But if Chad was getting homesick, she wouldn't try to stop him from patching things up with his father. The two had always been close, even if they didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things.

"Miss him?" she asked quietly.

"Hell no," he said in a grumbling tone that had her smiling to herself.

"So you're still not ready to go home?"

"What home?" Chad replied with some heavy sarcasm. "It was turned into a circus with Luella and her mama there. Pa arranged that match without even discussing it with me, and just moved them in until the wedding. I still can't believe he did that."

"She's a nice gal though," Red replied in Stuart's defense. "I met her a few years back at one of your pa's barbecues. Pretty, too, as I recall."

"She could be the best-looking thing this side of the Rio Grande, and I'd still run the other way."

"Because Stuart handpicked her for you?"

"That mainly," Chad allowed. "But if that girl has one whit of intelligence in her head, it's there because it got lost."

Red tried to hold back a chuckle, but couldn't manage it. "Guess I didn't talk to her long enough to figure that out," she replied.

"Count yourself fortunate."

Red said no more. She was grateful he wasn't hankering to go home, but sorry, too, because this rift with his father had to be tearing them both up. The truth was, she'd miss him. She might not have loved her husband, but at least he'd been good company, and since his passing, she'd been lonely.

The sky was still blood red when the rider came galloping toward the house at a breakneck speed. "Best step inside, Chad. Looks like the mail runner, and he'd recognize you if he got a good look."

Chad nodded and moved into the house. Red got up to greet the rider. "Evening, Will. Bit late for you to be delivering, ain't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Dang horse threw a shoe, set me back a few hours today. But figured this might be important, so didn't want to wait till morning." He handed her the letter he'd gone out of his way to deliver, then tipped his hat. "Late for dinner. Have a good evening, now."

Red waved him off, then limped back into the house, stopping next to the nearest hall lamp to read the letter. Chad had retrieved his hat and was about to head to bed.

Her exclamation, "Son'bitch!" stopped him at the front door.

"What?"

"My brother's gone and died."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a brother."

"Wish I never did, so don't be sorry. We never got along. In fact, it'd be pretty accurate to say we hated each other's guts. Which is why this letter doesn't make a lick of sense."

"That you'd be notified?"

"That he left his girls to me. What the hell did he expect me to do with children at my age?"

"Did he have a choice?"

She frowned. "I suppose not. Guess I am their only living relative now that Mortimer's gone. We had another sister, my twin actually, but she died long ago."

"No relatives on their mother's side?"

"No, she was the last of her line aside from her children." Red continued reading, then said, "Well, hell ... looks like I need to ask yet another favor of you, Chad."

He looked horrified for a moment. "Don't even think it. I'm not even married yet. I ain't raising no—"

"Hold on, now," she interrupted, and chuckled over his mistake. "I just need someone to meet the girls in Galveston and escort them here, not adopt them. Apparently, they started on the journey the same time this letter did, different routes, but the mail isn't always faster. They could have arrived already. I'd go, but I'm afraid this sprained foot of mine will hold me up too much."

"That's a long distance to travel, could take up to a week there and back."

"Yes, but at least a good portion of it can be covered by train, and most of the rest by stage. It's just the last leg of the way that you'd have to rough it. But I'll ask someone else. I keep forgetting that you're lying low."

"No, I'll go," Chad said, slapping his hat against his leg. "Pa's finding me at this late date won't matter much. I'll leave first thing in the morning."