A Hero to Come Home To (4 page)

It was a stark photo of a good face: not overly handsome, with a strong jaw and straight nose, intense eyes and a mouth that was almost too sensitive for the rest of his features. He looked capable, a command-and-control kind of guy, except for his eyes. They were tough to read, even when she magnified the photo until the upper half of his face filled the screen, but there was definitely something haunted—or haunting?—about them.

He had a story to tell, and probably a sad one. It wasn’t likely she would see him again to hear it. Tallgrass wasn’t a large town, but it was easy enough for people to live their lives without ever running into a specific individual. Unless Dane had a child at the elementary school or happened to crave Mexican food on a Tuesday night, they would probably never see each other again.

Whatever his story, she wished him well with it.

L
ast one out of the truck before Marti headed toward her own home, Therese stared at the house from the driveway. It was two stories, white siding with red brick, a narrow porch lined by flower beds and a patch of neatly manicured lawn waiting for spring to turn it green and lush.

They had been married six years before Paul got orders to Fort Murphy, and ordinarily they would have rented an apartment in the beginning, but he’d just found out that his ex-wife was sending the kids to live with them. Up to that point, Therese’s exposure to Abby and Jacob had been limited to a few rushed days twice a year. She’d been excited about the move, actually buying a house and forming a real family with his children.

Lord, had she really thought it would be that easy?

It hadn’t been, not from the start. Her presence in Paul’s life had put a serious roadblock in the kids’ hopes that their parents would get back together, one they hadn’t recovered from when Catherine packed them off to live with their dad. Finding herself? Needing
me
time?

Therese had wanted to smack the woman. The time to find herself was before she had children or after she’d raised them to be responsible, self-sufficient adults. At eight and ten, Jacob and Abby had been neither self-suf
fici
ent nor adults. Just deeply wounded children longing for the stability they’d lost.

Things had never been smooth, then Paul had died and Catherine had declined to let the kids return home to California, claiming she just couldn’t handle the burden in her grief.

They were her
children
, not a burden, Therese had pointed out when Catherine delivered the message in a phone call. And just how much grief could the woman have?
She
was the one who’d had an affair, who’d left the marriage, who’d filed for divorce.
She
was the one who’d broken Paul’s and the kids’ hearts. But Catherine hadn’t budged.

Paul’s children. Not a burden.
Even if Abby still resented her, still expected maid, chauffeur, and restaurant service, still thought the world revolved around her and Therese was the drudge whose sole reason for existence was greasing the axle. Even if Jacob was still sullen, rarely looking at or speaking to his stepmother—though, for the record, he paid Abby no notice, either. In his opinion, they were both just nuisances put there to test him.

Paul’s children.

Giving herself a mental shake, she walked past the car and took the steps to the porch. Hitting the autodial button for their neighbors, she braced her cell between her shoulder and ear while she unlocked the door, then stepped inside. Even empty, the house wasn’t peaceful. The air was filled with tension, as if it couldn’t escape the four walls or the doors that were constantly being slammed.
Lord, how much longer?
Would things ever get better for them?

“Hi, Marsha,” she said when her friend answered. “I’m home so you can send the kids over any time. Did they behave?”

Marsha laughed. “Don’t you know kids always behave better for other people than they do for their parents? They were fine. Abby and Nicole went to a movie, and Jacob and Liam played video games all day. I’m sure their eyes are still crossed. Did you have a good time?”

“I did. The park was beautiful, and the exercise did me good. I appreciate you keeping them. Let me know next time you and Will want a date night. I’d be happy to return the favor.” She wasn’t lying. Having company didn’t change Jacob’s behavior—Liam was sullen just like him—but Nicole’s presence always made Abby straighten up at least a bit.

“I’ll take you up on that. I’ll pry the boys loose from their games and point them your way.”

“Thanks.” Therese headed straight to the kitchen, leaving her purse and phone on the counter, hanging her keys on a cat sculpture nearby. As she placed a frozen pizza in the oven, she mused about Marsha’s choice of words. Pointing the kids her way…sounded like aiming a weapon.

“Oh, Paul, the things I do for love,” she whispered.

It was less than fifteen minutes before the front door slammed. The pizza was cooling on the counter, and Therese was tossing together a salad—literally: bagged lettuce, cherry tomatoes, and a container of diced cucumbers. Wearing a scowl, Jacob gave his hands a poor excuse for a wash, grabbed a bottle of pop from the refrigerator, and headed for his usual seat at the table.

“Jacob, get the plates and silverware.” Therese’s voice sounded fairly neutral, considering it was about the thousandth time she’d made the same request. For about the thousandth time, he grunted—why did males think that was an appropriate response to
anything
?—and obeyed.

Abby, on her cell with Nicole, was taking her turn at the sink. First she’d demanded, then wheedled her way into getting the phone by pointing out she could use it to stay in touch with Therese. Not once in the six months since had she ever called Therese, and Therese was pretty sure that, if
she
called Abby, the girl wouldn’t answer. But it had made her happy…for a while.

“Three glasses of ice,” she reminded Abby when she dried her hands.

“I don’t want ice.”

“I do.” It was one of her few requirements for living in her house. They ate like civilized people, with dishes, drinks in glasses and everything. “And tell Nicole good-bye.” No phone calls during dinner, either.

“I gotta go. It’s dinnertime. Talk to you later.”

Therese could actually hear the eye-roll in Abby’s tone.

Once they were seated at the table, she held out her hands. Nearly three years, and the kids were still reluctant to take her hands, bow their heads or even say
Amen
to the blessing. Their
mother
never made them wait when they were starving just to say a prayer.
She
never made them sit at the dinner table and answer questions about their stupid day, or ordered them to set the table or expected them to clean up afterward or forced them to eat food they didn’t like.

“This isn’t your mother’s house,”
Paul had firmly reminded them.
“When you live in our house, you follow our rules.”
Even though saying the blessing wasn’t something he’d done, either, before meeting Therese.

“Amen,” she finished, but kept her eyes closed just a moment longer, silently adding a
PS
to the prayer.
Lord, we’re drowning here. Please throw us a lifeline, at least for the kids. I’m a pretty strong swimmer, but help them, please.

A little bit of hope wouldn’t go unappreciated, either. Because sometimes it seems mine is running out, and I can’t let that happen. No matter how much they hate it, I’m all they have.

The somber thought stiffened her resolve as she said another soundless
Amen.

But it also sent a tiny shiver down her spine.

The Bible might have intended Sunday as a day of rest, but that was rarely the case on the Double D Ranch outside Tallgrass. It wasn’t even noon yet, and so far Dalton Smith had barely slowed down since sunrise. After feeding the cows in the east pasture and the mares with foals in the back field, making sure the new babies were nursing and checking that none of the pregnant cows had wandered off to give birth away from the others, as they tended to do, he’d gone in for breakfast with his brother Noah.

Right after the meal, the kid had left for Stillwater, where he was a sophomore at Oklahoma State, trying to decide whether a plain old ag degree was good enough for him or if he’d rather be a vet. Raising palominos and Belted Galloway cattle, Dalton figured a vet in the family would be a good thing, but that would mean another four years for vet med school after Noah got his bachelor’s. Seeing that he was paying the tuition, Dalton also figured the sooner he got out and started working, the better. He could use some help on the Double D.

Thoughts of his other brother, Dillon, stirred in the back of his mind—a place he definitely didn’t want to go. Swallowing the last of the water, he crushed the plastic bottle and tossed it into the recycling bin next to the door and started for the house. He was halfway there when he saw the pickup parked at the side of the road next to the horse pasture. A few feet away, a man rested his arms on the top rail of the wooden fence.

Though Dalton wasn’t much for socializing, he knew all his neighbors. Hell, he’d lived on the ranch his entire life. This man was a stranger. Probably just admiring the animals. Most people did.

He had a headache and was ready for lunch, and after that, there was still a dozen things he needed to do before bedtime, including the book work he put off every week until Sunday. He didn’t want to visit with anyone.

But he also didn’t trust strangers. The man could be just admiring the horses, or he could be up to no good. A rancher in the next county had just lost six head of cattle in a pasture that ran alongside the road to some nut job with a bow and a dozen arrows.

Dalton changed directions, heading down the yellow grass butting up to the gravel driveway. As he got closer, he saw the truck was so new he could practically smell it. There was an Airborne sticker in the back window and a red Fort Murphy sticker under the Department of Defense decal on the windshield. That fit with the guy’s haircut and the way he stood, relaxed but with the feeling that he could snap to attention in a heartbeat.

Dalton really didn’t want to visit with a soldier. As much as possible, he avoided everyone and everything having to do with the Army. Not easy when you lived in a military community, but he’d done his best since Sandra…

Thinking of Sandra was another place he definitely didn’t want to go—worse, even, than thinking about Dillon. At least his brother was alive, as far as they knew. Someday he might even come home.

Sandra was never coming back.

“Can I help you?” he asked when he was a few yards away. His voice was gruffer than he’d intended, and he was scowling. Noah had told him just this weekend that he was turning into a scary-looking person, what with not cutting his hair or shaving and always glaring like he hated the world.

Only fair, since he did hate it. At least, parts of it.

The man hadn’t given any indication that he was aware of Dalton approaching, but he wasn’t surprised, either. He straightened but didn’t move away from the fence and didn’t startle guiltily. “The horses are beautiful. When I was a kid in Texas, my grandparents had a little place out in the country. Most of their horses weren’t anything special, just for working, but they had one palomino I used to ride.” He got a distant look, as if he were somewhere down south in a good memory.

Sometimes Dalton forgot he had good memories, too—a lot of them. It was just that the last few years had been so damn hard that he didn’t know whether it would be good or bad to remember better times. On the one hand, it might give him hope that things would improve again, but on the other, the way his luck was running, it would be false hope.

The man focused on him again. “Name’s Dane Clark. I’m assigned to Fort Murphy.”

“I figured.” Dalton leaned against a weathered section of fence, almost directly under the arch that identified the Double D. “I’m Dalton Smith. This is my place.”

Clark’s gaze lifted to the sign. “And here I had visions of pretty female ranchers…”

Everyone Dalton knew, knew the story of the ranch’s name. He didn’t owe a stranger an explanation and usually didn’t give one when asked. But Clark hadn’t asked and didn’t seem inclined to go beyond the one comment he’d already made.

With a shrug, he said, “My family settled here before statehood back in 1907—two brothers named Donald and Dooley. They thought ‘Smith Ranch’ was too plain, so they chose to use their initials. Little did they know that someday that would be used to refer to women’s breasts, though, from what I hear, they wouldn’t have minded the association. Every generation since then that’s had sons has named at least two of them to fit.”

“There’s worse ways to get a name.” Clark’s gaze shifted back to the horses.

They weren’t doing anything—just grazing, a few of the younger ones occasionally kicking up their heels—but watching them was one of Dalton’s favorite ways to pass the time. “Do you still ride?”

If he hadn’t been looking, he would have missed the stiffness that spread through Clark, the way he shifted his weight and leaned on the fence for support. He freed his left hand and swiped it down the leg of his jeans—new, creased, ending in a crumple above a pair of running shoes so new the white hadn’t been scuffed yet. “Nah. Not in a long time.”

“I don’t think you forget.”

“I don’t know about that. It was another lifetime.” An abrupt change of subject. “You run this place alone?”

Dalton might not know much about human behavior, but if Clark were a horse, he’d say he’d caught a whiff of something fearful. Though he was standing motionless, there was a sense that he’d bolt at the first chance.

But it wasn’t Dalton’s business why and, more, he didn’t care. “My younger brother’s in school at OSU. He comes home on weekends to help out, but I do most of the work.”

“Is he the other
D
?”

No. That would be my twin brother, who abandoned the ranch and the family because he’s a self-centered, irresponsible sonova—
Breaking off before he could insult his mother, he smiled tightly. “No.”

This time he was the one who changed the subject quickly. “What do you do at the post?”

Clark’s smile, if that was what it was, was strained. “Train. Prepare.”

“Are you deploying?” There had been a time when Dalton’s knowledge of things military was limited to what he’d read in books and papers and seen in movies. Marrying a soldier had changed that.
It’s like we’re both learning a new language
, Sandra had joked.
Ranch speak and Army speak.

That was before she’d gotten orders to Afghanistan.

“No,” Clark said. “I’ve done four tours in the desert. I can’t go back.”