Rescue Me

Chapter Seventeen

The cool, humid wind brushed Vince’s knuckles and cheeks and ears. The bad dog pipes of his Harley rumbled the air on Morning Glory Drive in Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. The back of Conner’s helmet hit Vince’s chin for about the tenth time as the two of them slowly rode up and down the street in front of Conner’s house. They wore matching leather bomber jackets, but Conner’s was tighter on him than the last time the two had driven up and down the street.

It had been five months since he’d left Washington. Five months that somehow seemed like years.

The bike slowed as they rolled toward the split-level house with the rental truck in the driveway.

“One more time, Uncle Vince!” Conner hollered over the reverberations.

“You got it.” He flipped a U and headed back down the tree-lined street. Vince lost count of how many times they rode up and down the street. When he did finally pull into the drive behind the truck, Conner protested.

“I don’t wanna stop.”

He shut off the bike and helped his nephew to the ground. “Next time I’m in town, we’ll have to get you a new jacket.” He hooked the kickstand with the heel of his boot and lowered it. “Maybe your mom will let us ride to the park.” Autumn hated the Harley, but Conner loved it so much she’d always let them ride in front of the house. No faster than fifteen miles an hour.

Conner reached for the strap beneath his chin. “Maybe I can drive.”

“When your feet touch the ground, we’ll talk about it.” He rose off the seat of the bike and swung his leg over. “Don’t tell your mom.”

“Or Dad.”

“What? Your dad doesn’t like bikes?” Figured.

Conner shrugged and handed Vince the helmet. “I don’t know. He doesn’t got one.”

That’s because the guy was a pussy. “Go tell your mom I’m leaving.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

Vince set the helmet on the seat. “I don’t want to go.” He knelt on one knee. “I’ll miss you.” The seams of his jacket popped as he hugged Conner. God, he smelled the same. Like the laundry detergent his mom used and like little kid.

“When are you coming home?”

Good question. He wasn’t quite sure. “When I sell the Gas and Go and make a ton of money.” Only this didn’t feel much like home these days. He didn’t know what felt like home anymore.

“Can I have tons of money?”

“Sure.” Who was he going to give it to?

“And the Harley?”

He rose and hefted Conner over one shoulder. “Unless I find another little boy to give it to one day.” His nephew screeched as Vince swatted him twice on the behind. Then he set him back on his feet. “Now run and get your mom.”

“Okay.” Conner turned on the heels of his Spider-Man sneakers and headed toward the front door. “Mom!” he hollered as he ran up the steps.

Vince opened the back of the moving van and pulled out a ramp. He wheeled the Harley inside between an outer wall and a leather sofa and tied it down. He’d been in Washington for three days. Drinking beer with old friends, hanging out with his sister and Conner, and packing up the truck with essentials like his bed, leather couch, and sixty-four-inch HDTV.

“Conner says you want a little boy? I know that I am not one to talk, but you really should have a wife before you have the kid.”

Vince looked behind him at the open door of the big truck. The misty morning sun caught in his sister’s red hair. “Wife?”

“You need someone in your life.”

“You’re forgetting Luraleen,” he joked.

She made a face. “Someone without a smoker’s hack and pickled liver. I just hate to think of you lonely and living with Luraleen.”

“I moved out of her house.” He thought of Sadie. He hadn’t been lonely since the day his truck broke down on the side of the highway. “I was never lonely.”

“Never?” Lord, he’d forgotten that he had to watch what he said around her. She knew him so well and pounced on every word. “Did you meet someone?”

“Of course.” He rose and moved to the open door. “I always meet someone.”

Autumn crossed her arms over her chest, unamused, and stared him down—even when he towered over her—the way she’d always stared him down. Even as kids. “Have you been seeing someone for more than just a night or two?”

He jumped down, grabbed the overhead door, and pulled it closed. He locked the door and shrugged. Autumn knew him better than anyone on the planet, but there were things even she didn’t know. Things no one knew.

Except Sadie. She knew. She’d seen him at his absolute lowest. Helpless and locked in his nightmares. God, he hated that she’d seen him that way.

“Vinny!” She grabbed his arm.

She’d taken his silence as some sort of admission. “It’s over,” he said, hoping she’d drop it even as he knew she wouldn’t.

“How long did you date her?”

He didn’t bother to explain that he and Sadie never really dated. “I met her the night I arrived in Lovett.” He looked down into her green eyes. “It ended a few nights ago.” When she’d seen him naked and pathetic. She said she loved him. He didn’t know how that was even possible.

She gasped. “Two months. That’s long for you. Really long. Like fourteen months in dog years.”

Vince couldn’t even get mad because she was serious and it was more or less true. It hadn’t seemed like two months though. It seemed like he’d known her forever, yet not nearly long enough. He turned and sat on the edge of the truck.

“Why did you break up with her?” Autumn sat next to him, and he should have known she wouldn’t let it go.

She knew him too well. Knew that he was the one who usually broke things off. “She said she loved me.” That wasn’t the real reason, but his sister didn’t know about the nightmares and he wasn’t about to tell her now.

A grin pressed across her lips. “What did you say?”

“Thank you.”

Autumn gasped.

“What?” Thank you wasn’t bad. It wasn’t good, but it was better than not saying anything.

“Then what?”

“Then I took her home.”

“You said thank you and took her home? Do you hate her or something?”

Hate Sadie? He didn’t hate Sadie. He wasn’t real sure what he felt, other than some strange sort of confusion. Both gut-level panic and bone-deep relief churned and burned in his head and chest at the same time. How could he feel both panic and relief that it had ended? It didn’t make sense. “I don’t hate her.”

“Did she yell it out during”—Autumn looked around for prying ears—“sex? ’Cause it probably doesn’t count if someone yells it during sex.”

He almost laughed. “She didn’t say it during sex.”

“Is she really ugly?”

“No.” He thought of her blond hair and big smile. Her clear blue eyes and pink mouth. “She’s beautiful.”

“Stupid?”

He shook his head. “Smart and funny, and you’ll be happy to know, I didn’t pick her up in a bar. She wasn’t a one-night stand.” Although she’d started out that way.

“That’s progress, I guess, but it’s sad.” Genuine sorrow turned down the corner of Autumn’s mouth. “When you lock everything down tight so that the pain can’t get out, you also keep good stuff from getting in.”

He looked down into her eyes, a few shades darker than his, and a bemused smile lifted his lips. “What? Are you the new white Oprah?”

“Don’t make fun, Vin. You’re so good at taking care of everyone else. So good at fighting for everyone else, but not yourself.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“I’m not talking about bar fights. They don’t count.”

He chuckled and stood. “Depends on if you’re on the losing end.”

She stood, and he wrapped his arms around her. “Now when is this wedding you’re hell bent on having?”

“You know it’s in July so Sam’s face isn’t all messed up for the wedding pictures. All you have to do is show up and walk me down the aisle. I’ve taken care of everything.” She hugged him. “Will you still be in Texas?”

“Yeah. I think for at least the next year.” He dropped his hands and thought of Sadie. He wondered if she was going to be sticking around Lovett or if she’d already left town.

A red truck rolled up the street and pulled into the driveway. Autumn looked up at Vince and warned, “Be nice, and I mean it.”

Vince smiled as Sam Leclaire, hotshot hockey player, Conner’s father, Autumn’s fiancé, his future brother-in-law, and all-around son of a bitch, got out of the Chevy and moved toward him. Sam was a few inches taller than Vince and as tough as a bare-knuckled street fighter. Vince would have dearly loved to beat his ass, but he knew Sam would never go down easy. At the moment, the guy had a purple bruised cheek. It was April. Still early in the playoffs. Another game or two, the guy would have an eye to match.

“You look better than the last time I saw you.” Sam offered his hand, and Vince reluctantly shook it.

The last time Vince had seen Sam, they’d both been beat up. Sam from his job and Vince from a bar fight. “You look worse.”

Sam laughed. A satisfied man living a good life. Vince couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt like that. Before he’d left the teams, for sure. Maybe a few glimmers of it in Texas.

Sam wrapped his arm around Autumn’s shoulders. “I need to talk to your brother.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.”

She looked from one to the other. “Behave,” she ordered. Then she gave Vince one last hug good-bye. “Call me when you get to Texas so I don’t worry.”

He kissed the top of her head. “You got it.”

Both men watched Autumn move up the steps to the house, then go inside.

“I love her,” Sam said. “You don’t ever have to worry about her and Conner.”

“She’s my sister and Conner is my nephew.” Vince crossed his arms over his chest and stared into the hockey player’s blue eyes.

Sam nodded. “I never did thank you.”

“For what?”

“Taking care of my family when I ran from the responsibility. When I didn’t know that everything I wanted, everything that mattered, was here in this forty-year-old house in Kirkland. Not a high-rise condo downtown.”

A high-rise condo that had been filled with supermodels and Playboy playmates until last fall.

“It’s not where you live,” Sam added. “It’s who you live with. I’ll live anywhere your sister and Conner want to live.” He grinned. “I admit though, I’d rather have a bigger spa tub.”

Even though it killed him, Vince said, “You’re welcome.” And even though it killed him, he reminded himself that this was why he’d left Seattle five months ago. “But this doesn’t mean I like you.”

Sam laughed. “Of course not.” He slapped Vince’s shoulder. “You’re an asshole frog squat.”

Vince tried not to smile but lost the battle. “Good to know we’re on the same page, dickless.” He moved to the driver’s side door of the rental truck. He waved good-bye to his sister and nephew watching him from the window, then he headed the U-Haul toward Texas. Home. Toward gossipy little Lovett and the Gas and Go.

Home. When had that happened? When had Lovett, Texas, started to feel like home? And would it still feel like home now? Now that Sadie wasn’t a part of his life? He thought of never seeing her again, never seeing her walk into the Gas and Go, never seeing her face looking back at him or her body pressed into his, never feeling her hand on his face or her soft voice in his ear or on the side of his neck, and he got that panicky relieved feeling in his gut again.

His sister had asked about a breakup. There had been no breakup. What had happened in that dark corner of his apartment had been more like a destruction. He’d awakened from a nightmare, disoriented and confused and scared shitless.

And humiliated. Sadie was the last person on the planet he’d ever want to see him in that state. He’d looked into her worried blue eyes and felt like he’d landed ass-deep in the unknown unknowns and he’d done what he’d been trained to do. Blow shit up and kill everything in sight.

He thought of her face. The way she’d looked at him as they’d hurriedly dressed. Waiting for him to say something he hadn’t been able to say. Something he’d never told anyone outside his family.

She’d said she loved him, and he’d hurt her. He hadn’t even had to look into her eyes as he’d dropped her off at the JH to know how deeply he’d hurt her, and hurting Sadie was the last thing he wanted. For the first time in his dealings with women, he did give a shit about what that said about him. He just didn’t know what he was going to do about it. If anything. It was probably best if he did nothing at all.

Sadie hit the button on the door panel of her Saab and the window slid down an inch. Cool air whistled through the crack and across her cheek. The breeze caught several strands of her straight blond hair, blowing them about her face as she headed toward Lovett and home.

Home. Unlike that day several months ago when she’d driven toward Lovett, she didn’t feel anxious and antsy to leave again. She felt at peace with her past. She didn’t feel trapped or tied down. Okay, maybe a little, but her future was wide open and that allowed her to breathe when her chest got tight.

For the past week, she’d been in Arizona throwing away dead plants and packing up. She’d tied up a few loose ends, put her little house on the market, and hired a moving company.

The Monday after her father’s funeral, she’d met with Dickie and the rest of the managers and foremen as well as various lawyers in Amarillo. She’d had meetings with them in the following days before her trip to Arizona, and she’d learned a lot about the business of running the ranch. She knew she had a ton more to learn, but she had to admit, she liked the business end. All those years of never earning a degree in anything was kind of paying off. Well, except for that Zombies in Popular Media class. She didn’t know how the study of zombie movies and their impact on society would be helpful, but who knew what apocalyptic event might happen in the future? She’d never thought there’d be a day when she’d actually want to live at the JH. Never saw that one coming, but she was looking forward to schmoozing lenders as she had as a real estate agent. Working with hard and soft deadlines, and keeping everything organized. She could be involved in as much or as little of the day-to-day running of the JH as she chose. She hadn’t really decided how much she would take on yet, but she had come to the conclusion that she was a lot like her daddy. She loved the JH, but hated cattle. Stupid, smelly animals only good for T-bones, shoes, and really good handbags.

She turned off the highway through the gates of the JH. Unlike the last time two months ago, there was no black truck broken down on the side of the road. No big, strong man who needed a ride into town.

She couldn’t help but wonder if Vince had returned from Seattle. Not that it mattered. Their friends-with-benefits relationship was over. Done. Dead. Buried. He hadn’t tried to call or even text her since that night in his apartment, and she wished she could take back the words she’d said that night. She wished she hadn’t blurted that she loved him. Mostly, she wished it wasn’t true.

Still.

The late afternoon sun blazed through the front windshield, and she lowered the visor against the piercing rays. She’d fallen in love with an emotionally unavailable man. A man who couldn’t love her back. A man who’d pulled her in, only to push her away. After she said she loved him. On the worst day of her life. Which pretty much made him the biggest jerk on the planet.

Other than her daddy, she’d shed more tears for him than any man on the planet, too. Certainly more than he deserved. She was heartbroken and sick and she didn’t have anyone to blame but herself. He’d told her up front he wasn’t a relationship kind of guy. He’d told her he got bored and moved on. She wished she could hate Vince, but she couldn’t. Each time she worked up to a full head of anger at him, and it wasn’t hard for her to do, the image of him naked, pulling air into his lungs, and staring at things only he could see, entered her head, and her heart broke all over again. For her and for him.

Once again she’d fallen for an emotionally stunted man. This time she’d fallen harder and deeper, but as with all the other stunted men who had ever taken up space in her life, she’d get over him.

She pulled the Saab to a stop in front of the main house and grabbed her overnight bag and purse from the backseat. The Parton sisters were still around someplace, but the house was silent when she entered. A copy of her daddy’s will sat on top of a stack of mail and other documents on the table in the entry. She dropped her bags and carried the stack into the kitchen. She grabbed a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and moved to the breakfast nook where Vince had once sat, chowing down on Carolynn’s ranch hand special.

She flipped through the will that included the letter her daddy had written to her and smiled. Unlike the Hollowells of the past, she would be modernizing the house. She would have all her father’s bedroom furniture stored and her own things moved in. The cowhide couch and all the portraits of her father’s horses were going into storage also. If she was going to live at the JH, she wanted to make it her own. She was also giving serious thought to taking down the numerous portraits in the hall upstairs. If and when she ever did have children, she didn’t want all those ancestors scaring the crap out of her kid as they had her.

She flipped to the part of her daddy’s will that had provided for any unnamed beneficiary, which she’d assumed meant any child or children she might have. She raised the bottle of Coke to her lips and frowned. She didn’t know if she’d misheard the clause or if it hadn’t been read right, but the clause talked about a trust fund set up for an unnamed beneficiary. An unnamed beneficiary born June tenth of 1985 in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

June tenth of 1985? What the hell did that mean? Las Cruces, New Mexico? The trust fund couldn’t be about her. She’d been born in Amarillo. And it couldn’t have anything to do with any future children she might have. What did this mean?

The back door screen slammed shut and Sadie jumped.

“I saw you drive up,” Clara Anne said as she entered the kitchen. “If you’re hungry, I can get you something from the cookhouse.”

She shook her head. “Clara Anne, you were there when my daddy’s will was read.”

“Sure was. Such a sad day.”

“Do you remember this?”

“What, honey?” Clara Anne bent over the document and her hair dipped a little to one side. She shook her head. “What is that?”

“I’m not sure, but why would my daddy set up a trust fund for an unnamed beneficiary born in New Mexico, June tenth of 1985?”

She scrunched up her nose and brow. “Is that what that says?”

“I think so. Did you hear this read in the lawyer’s office that day?”

“No, but you can’t go by me. I fell apart like a flour-sack dress that day.” She straightened. “June tenth of 1985,” she pondered, and clicked her teeth with her tongue. “I wonder if this has to do with Marisol? She left in such a hurry.”

Sadie lowered the Coke to the table. “Who?”

“Ask Mr. Koonz,” Clara Anne suggested, then bit her lips together.

“I will. Who’s Marisol?”

“It’s not my place to say.”

“You already did. Who’s Marisol?”

“The nanny your daddy hired right after your mama died.”

“I had a nanny?”

“For a few months and then she left. She was here one day and gone the next.” Clara Anne folded her arms beneath her breasts. “She came back about a year later with a baby. We never believed that baby was your daddy’s.”

“What?” Sadie stood before she realized she’d jumped to her feet. “What baby?”

“A girl. At least the blanket was pink. If I remember right.”

“I have a sister?” This was crazy. “And I’m just now hearing about it?”

“If you had a sister your daddy would have told you.”

She scrubbed her face with her hands. Maybe. Maybe not.

“And don’t you think everyone in town would have talked about it?” Clara Anne shook her head and dropped her arms. “They’d still be dinin’ out on it at the Wild Coyote Diner.”

Now that was true enough. If Clive Hollowell had an illegitimate child, it would be the topic of the century at every dinner table in town. She would have certainly heard something by now.

“Then again, me and Carolynn were the only two here when Marisol showed up that day. And we never spoke about it.”