A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) (13 page)

Keegan kept one eye on the game, one on the group of women on the patio. It didn’t take both eyes to see that they were having a good time. Two more women had joined the original eight, one about his mother’s age, the other so young he hoped she was the first woman’s daughter. She couldn’t be more than eighteen, too damn young to be a widow.

But so was the one his mother’s age. So were they all.

He’d thought he was being pretty covert about watching Therese and her friends, but during a break in the baseball game, Jefferson said, “If you’re looking for a pretty woman, our waitress tonight is single and available. Better than hooking up with any of them.”

When caught, play dumb
. That was Keegan’s old man’s motto. “Any of who?”

“The widows, man.” Then he added, with a gesture toward Clark, “Well, one of ’em’s about to be a bride again. But the rest of ’em…This is, like, their support group. Their grief management group.”

At that moment a burst of laughter came from the patio, loud enough to be heard across the small dining room that separated the bar and patio. Clark lifted his beer with a grin. “Laughter’s good medicine, right?”

“Which one’s yours?” Keegan asked.

“Carly. The side closest to us, this end on the right. Burnt orange sweater.”

Keegan glanced at her—light brown hair, average size, sitting next to Therese—then back at Clark. “You a Texas fan?” According to the older of his sisters, men only grasped the nuances of colors when they matched a sports teams’ colors. A regular guy might not know the difference between UT’s burnt orange and the Halloween shade of Oklahoma State’s orange, but football fans did.

“Born and bred,” Clark replied.

“I’m partial to LSU myself. When’s the wedding?”

“First weekend of June.”

“Congratulations.” Since Jefferson, Clark, and Smith were all still watching the women, Keegan looked back, too. Therese was leaning close to the pregnant blonde, listening intently to whatever she had to say. Had the blonde’s husband known he was going to be a father? Had he suspected he might not live long enough to hold his baby? Would his kid grow up calling someone else Daddy, feeling no connection at all to the father who’d died before his birth?

If he were the blonde’s husband, dead or not, he’d resent the hell out of someone replacing him in his child’s life. But wasn’t Mariah in the same position? She was never going to know her father, and the only resentment Keegan felt was that Sabrina had dragged him into her mess.

Besides, there was a difference: presumably the blonde’s husband had every intention of coming back to her and raising his child. Therese’s husband’s only intent with Sabrina had been to break his marriage vows, have a little fun for the weekend, and never confess his infidelity to his wife.

They watched the women a moment longer—Clark’s gaze fixed on his fiancée, Smith locked in on someone at the other end of the table, Keegan looking at Therese—then the game came on again, and gradually each of them turned their attention back to the big screen.

It was around nine when the widows’ club—damn if that name didn’t suck—when the margarita club started the standing/shuffling/getting ready that signaled an end to the evening. Dalton Smith drained the last of his beer, muttered something like
nice meeting you
, clamped the cowboy hat on his head, and stalked out of the bar.

Clark finished his beer, too, and eased to his feet. “See you around, Zeke. Logan, if you’re here next Tuesday, drop in.”

“Wonder if he’s ever been married before,” Jefferson said as Clark headed toward the patio. “I’d say no. He’s too eager to tie himself down to have been through it before.”

Keegan’s only response was a grunt. Marriage had problems; his parents were proof of that. Marriage to a woman who would likely still be married to someone else if he hadn’t died must have problems of its own. But if the benefits outweighed the risks…

Jefferson yawned, then dropped his feet to the floor. “I’d better head home myself. I’ve got stuff to do before work in the morning. Give me a call before you leave town, man. We’ll do this again.”

“Yeah, see you.” Keegan waited until he’d walked away a few yards before looking out again. Therese hugged the blonde, then a black woman from the other end of the table, then clasped the hand of the youngest girl in both of hers while they talked. She looked so calm, serene, the mother hen doling out affection and reassurance to her chicks.

But a good deal of the serenity was an act. Did her friends know that?

So what was he going to do? Sit here and see if she came inside? And what if she didn’t? What if she just went on home?

He left the table, circling out of the bar and into the dining room, losing sight of her for a couple moments—big burly guys standing up from their table and talking instead of moving on. By the time he cleared them, the place where she’d stood was empty. He stepped out the door, scanning the parking lot where her friends were leaving in groups of two and three, but he didn’t see—

“Hi.”

She was standing to the left of the door, apparently waiting her turn to go inside. He would have blindly walked right past her if she hadn’t spoken.

Shoving his hands in his pockets, he grinned. “Hey.”

“Are you in a hurry to get back to the motel?”

I was in a hurry to catch you before you left.
“Nope. You want to get a drink?” When she shook her head, he asked, “Dessert?”

Again she shook her head. “It’s a nice night. You want a tour of Tallgrass’s murals?”

“Sure.” He recalled seeing some paintings on building walls downtown, some old and peeling, some recently touched up. He could honestly say he’d never spent time looking at old murals…but then, no one like Therese had ever asked him to.

They walked through the gate that led into the parking lot and turned right toward the street. The strip mall behind the restaurant was nothing special—the usual collection of shops, salons, and offices—but they soon left it behind.

“How was your dinner?” she asked.

“Good. How was the Tuesday Night Margarita Club?”

“Always good.”

“Are any of them actually from around here?”

She thought a moment before shaking her head. “Not one of us. This was where we were when our husbands died, and this is where we’ve stayed.”

“I just kind of figured the families would go back to wherever they were from. Home.” Not exactly true. He’d never given it any thought since he’d never had a wife to widow. But he’d always figured he would go home to Natchitoches when he got out of the Army, so it made sense for a widow.

“Some do. Carly went back to Utah, but she only stayed a few months.” She shrugged, looking delicate but also strong. “We’re military wives. This isn’t just a lifestyle for you guys. It’s ours, too. We understand each other. We go through the same things. We learn to be a part of this community, and under the circumstances, sometimes it’s easier to stay a part of this community.”

After a moment, she softly added, “And some people don’t have anything to go back to. Fia’s family is a disaster. She’d be going back to nothing but trouble. Marti’s parents are divorced, and they and her brothers are scattered all over the country. Jessy’s family…well, I don’t really know anything about them. But the fact that she’s never mentioned them once in all the time I’ve known her says a lot.”

Her steps slowed as they came to a crafts/art gallery. The emphasis seemed to be on American Indian art—paintings, metalwork, sculptures, pottery, weavings. He’d never had much interest in any kind of art for his home. All Ercella needed on her walls and tables were photographs of the family and treasures made in school by her kids and grandkids. He didn’t even bother with many photographs since he had a digital collection on his computer that could cover every inch of space in his apartment twenty times over.

“I love that beaver.” Therese pointed to a three-foot-tall buck-toothed piece that appeared to be carved from a single tree trunk. “Every time my dad sent my brother and me out to cut down trees for firewood, I wanted to see what kind of talent I might have with a chainsaw. So one day we left a good chunk of trunk standing, and I spent three or four hours carving and shaping that sucker. I found out that the answer to how much talent I had was none whatsoever. I’d carved it down so that it didn’t look any different from the other stumps.”

She gave him a sidelong look when he laughed. “Are you thinking you can’t imagine me with a chainsaw?”

He tilted his head to study her. “No. I have no trouble imagining you doing whatever you want.”

Her smile was small but satisfied. As she started walking again, she asked, “What about the Logan family back in Louisiana? Are you close?”

“Very.” When she raised one brow in question, he went on. “There’s my mom, a bunch of aunts and uncles and cousins. I have two brothers and two sisters, and the sisters have two kids each.”

“Do they have interesting names like Keegan?”

“Hm. I’ve never thought of it as interesting. More like better than the alternative.”

“What’s the alternative?”

There was a new/used bookstore next to the art gallery. According to his younger sister, bookstores were the most wonderful places on earth, but he didn’t read paper books if he could avoid them. Out in the field, an e-book reader was so much easier.

“My name is actually Keifer Remington Logan,” he said as they moved on to an abstract and title office. “I think it was too much for my father to remember, even though he gave it to me, so he shortened it to the first syllable and the last.”

“Keifer Remington. Wow. Are those family names?”

“Keifer’s not. Remington might as well be. It’s the name of his favorite rifle.” He shoved his hands into his pockets again. “And yeah, my brothers and sisters were just as lucky. There’s Ford—named after his favorite vehicle. Martha—named after his favorite cornbread mix. And the twins, Daisy and Duke.”

“Named after the characters on
The Dukes of Hazzard
?”

“They wish. Nope, Daisy and Duke were his favorite huntin’ dogs growing up.”

For a moment she was silent, then a soft sound escaped, a breath that turned into a snort that turned into a giggle. “Why did your mother keep letting him name her babies?”

“Better question was why she kept letting him father them.” Then he chuckled, too. “We’ve all asked her that, and she just sighs and says he was a sweet-talker and a charmer.”

“Aw, that’s romantic. About the most complimentary thing my mom says about my dad is he’s a good provider. Though they’ve been married nearly forty years and still hold hands and cuddle like teenagers.”

“Yeah, well, my parents have been married about thirty-five years, and my dad’s actually lived with us maybe ten of those years. In addition to sweet-talking and charming, he likes to wander. He hasn’t provided much of anything, and most of the cuddling he’s done is with other women.”

At the intersection she stopped and gestured across the street. “That’s the oldest mural in Tallgrass. It’s for a tobacco distributing company that used to be in that building.”

He studied the painting of cowboys and Indians, sitting cross-legged on the prairie in chaps and blankets, sharing fat hand-rolled smokes. A few anorexic-looking buffalo grazed in the background underneath the block letters of the name of the company.

As she stepped off the curb, she remarked, “You don’t sound hostile toward your father.”

“There’s no love lost, but hostile?” Keegan shrugged. “Nah. Mom says he is what he is. We can either accept it or not.”

“Healthy attitude.”

“It came after a lot of years of getting her heart broken.”

Music drifted from a bar in the middle of the next block. Country. He’d rather have no music at all than country. What about Therese? Growing up in Montana, cattle and horse country, chopping ice, wielding a chainsaw…Crying-in-your-beer songs and two-stepping probably came naturally to her.

“Did you get your heart broken?”

Her question startled him into jerking his gaze back to her. “By my dad?”

Though she kept her gaze on the sidewalk ahead of them, she smiled. “Of course that’s possible, but I was actually thinking about Mariah’s mother. Was she the one you considered marrying?”

Keegan blew out his breath. “Yeah, we talked about getting married. No, she didn’t break my heart.” She’d cheated on him, ticked him off, saddled him with another man’s daughter, and damn well infuriated him, but the sad fact was he hadn’t loved her enough for his heart to break.

And that
was
sad. A man should care more about a woman he lived with. He should care more about a woman he could have kids with.

As they walked, she pointed out more murals—for a general store long since out of business, a funeral home that had moved to a new location, an oil company that had been swallowed by a bigger company, a bank that was one of the first businesses in Tallgrass. There were others that didn’t serve as advertisements for anything other than a long-gone way of life: wild prairies filled with oil rigs, buffalo and mustangs, Indians and cowboys. Though there were still producing wells, she told him, as well as small herds of buffalo and wild horses, and lots of Native Americans and cowboys in the area.

They were at the intersection of Main and First when she stopped, checked the time on the illuminated bank sign, and sighed. “I should get home.”

Forget about home a little while longer. The kids have been okay for three hours. They can do without you another hour. Or two. Or ten.
No way he was going to say any of that, though. He wasn’t even going to think it. Instead of saying anything at all, he turned, gestured back the way they’d come, and they started walking again.

A little slower this time.

T
herese awoke Wednesday morning, rolled over, and stretched, then opened her eyes for her first view—Paul’s photograph on the nightstand. Of all the hundreds of pictures she had, it was her favorite: just Paul being Paul. That meant a devilish gleam in his eyes, a smile that stretched practically from ear to ear, and an air of anticipation that even the flat dimensions of a photo couldn’t diminish.

They’d met by chance, under less-than-ideal conditions: a long, tough day at school, rush-hour traffic, her car dying in the middle of an intersection, people angrily honking. One good thing about an Army town: a person never needed help for long before it materialized in the form of young soldiers eager to lend a hand. Paul and his friends had pushed the car into a parking lot, then he’d taken the time to fix it right there, and she’d fallen in love.

If she’d known then that their time together would be so limited, if she’d had a clue how much heartache and anguish marriage to him would bring, would she still have asked him out or called a tow truck instead?

Slowly she smiled. She would have asked him out. Six years of
special
was worth all the heartache in the world.

Could she have
special
again?

An image of Keegan formed in her mind, and she hastily pushed it away. She liked him. A lot. She felt things when she was with him. But he was a soldier, a single father, and he lived elsewhere. Attraction was great, but there was zero potential between them. She wanted a man whose job description didn’t include
danger
. She had a hard enough time dealing with her own stepkids; she didn’t want to add anyone else’s to the bunch; and when she did start looking, she would look for long-term, not long-distance.

If Keegan was anything, he was practice to get her ready for the real deal.

By the time she’d showered, dressed, and made it to the kitchen, coffee was brewing, and the air smelled of pizza. When the children had first come to live with them, she’d been determined to give them a good breakfast each day: eggs cooked to order, bacon or sausage, pancakes or French toast, even homemade hash browns. Turned out, the kids preferred cereal—milk optional—or protein bars or leftovers. Catherine hadn’t been much of a cook.

Jacob was at the island with a textbook open in front of him, a pizza box beside it. With a piece of supreme pizza in his left hand and a pencil in his right, he sat hunched, scribbling the last of his homework in his notebook. He didn’t look up when she came in, but he did mutter, “I made coffee.”

“Suck-up.” That came from Abby at the dining table, a half-eaten protein bar sharing space with her backpack and a can of pop, no glass, no ice. Therese relaxed her mealtime rules in the morning.

“Thank you, Jacob.” She went to the coffeemaker, poured herself a cup, and wondered why he’d bothered. He’d never shown the slightest interest before. Some newly discovered fascination with the machine? Men were like that, wanting to play with a gadget until it lost its newness.

“I’m going over to Ryan’s after school.” Belatedly he added, “If that’s okay.”

“Ryan…which one is he?”

Abby snorted as her cell vibrated with an incoming text. “Ryan’s a girl. We’re not sure anyone ever told her, though. She looks like a boy, walks like a boy, talks like a boy.”

Jacob hunched a little more, annoyance flushing his face as he scowled at his sister. “Shut up.”

“Ooh, scathing comeback.”

Therese bit the inside of her lip for thinking he could have done better herself. “Where does Ryan live?”

“A block over on the other side of the park,” he mumbled.

“In that stupid purple house,” Abby added. “The one that everyone looks at and says”—she did her best imitation of Catherine—“
‘What
were they
thinking
?’”

This time Therese winced inside. She knew the house. In a neighborhood of houses painted white with the occasional cream or beige tossed in, the putridly violet house certainly stood out. Nothing larger than a picture frame should be painted that color.

“Maybe Ryan should come here. I haven’t met her or her parents.”

“Grandmother,” Jacob corrected. “Her mom and dad are deployed, so she lives with her grandmother. And she hasn’t met you, either.”

Good point. “I’ll take you over when I get home so I can talk to her grandmother.”

“Whatever.” He shoved the last bit of pizza in his mouth, swiped his hand on his jeans, then stuffed his book and notebook into his backpack. “Gotta go.”

She watched him charge down the hall, his hearing no doubt sharper than hers in picking out the vibrations of the approaching school bus. She sipped her coffee, which was very good, then picked up the pizza box, crumpling it until a lonely slice caught her attention. Plucking it out, she took a bite, savoring the cold meat and cheese. It had been Paul’s favorite breakfast before he married her. He’d lived on delivery at night and cold leftovers in the morning.

“I have a dentist appointment at four,” Abby announced. “Payton’s sister is taking me.”

Payton was a name Therese knew: a taller, not-quite-so-pretty clone of Abby. She was one of the few transplants to Tallgrass who had no affiliation with the Army. Her father was a surgeon who’d taken the chief of surgery position at the local hospital and brought his family along from St. Louis. Payton made it clear she would never forgive him for the upheaval in their lives and had, for a time, at least, kept a running countdown on her computer of how many days until she could leave again.

“How old is Payton’s sister?”

“She just turned sixteen.”

“So she got her license recently.”

Abby swung her pack over one shoulder, then cocked out one hip. “Yeah, so?”

“You know the rules. No riding with new drivers.” She glanced at the calendar on the refrigerator to make sure there were no other forgotten obligations. “I’ll pick you up here at three forty-five.”

“But Payton’s sister takes her to school every day. She picks her up after tennis, too. She takes her everywhere.”

“Sorry. Your father and I both agreed on your riding with new drivers long before it became an issue.” Therese shoved the bent pizza box into the trash, then carefully said, “Payton…That’s traditionally a boy’s name, too, isn’t it?”

Naturally Abby didn’t miss her point. “I promise you, no one mistakes Payton for a boy. Ryan, on the other hand…” There was nothing delicate about her shudder, or her disdain for the other girl.

“You don’t like Ryan because she’s not as pretty as you?”

For just an instant, pink tinted Abby’s cheeks, and a rare flare of pleasure lit her brown eyes. Both softer responses disappeared in an instant, though. “Nicole says she’s a geek and Payton says worse than that, she’s dumb. She was in our class last fall and they had to move her back a grade because she was so dumb. I mean, like, who can’t handle seventh grade?”

Therese’s lips tightened. All her life she’d had a problem with anyone calling anyone else dumb. Her uncle Buddy was one of the sweetest guys a person could ever want to meet, but because he was mentally challenged,
dumb
was about all anyone ever called him. But before she could say anything to Abby, her stepdaughter gulped the last few ounces of pop, dropped the can so fast that it spun before falling onto its side, and rushed down the hall, leaving Therese to clean up the leaking liquid.

She soaked up the mess with a paper towel, then wiped it down with a bleach cloth, troubled by the last few minutes of conversation. Abby’s antagonism toward her was understandable. She’d wanted her mother and father to get back together. She loved Catherine. She wanted to live with Catherine, and she blamed Therese because Catherine didn’t want her.

But what about her behavior toward other kids? Speaking so scornfully about Ryan, parodying her friends’ insults, possibly instigating some of her own. Had Abby surpassed Princess of Whine and gone straight to Mean Girl?

If she had, she would make the quickest U-turn on record, if Therese had anything to say about it.

She poured her coffee into a travel mug, topped it off, and grabbed a package of peanut butter and crackers from the pantry. Juggling the items with her bags, jacket, cell, and keys, she let herself out, locked up, and walked to the van.

Though a late spring snowstorm wouldn’t be unheard of, she preferred to think as she breathed fresh, sweet air that spring was truly here. Bits of color showed here and there as bulbs forced their way above the mulch, and the fruit trees next door were covered with beautiful blossoms. It was time to start thinking about the yard, whether to stay safe and boring with grass and a few beds, or go all out with a brilliant display that would make their house stand out as much as Ryan’s violet one did.

She drove to the end of the block, then detoured around the park that filled four square blocks. Moments later, she parked in the driveway of the violet house and climbed out, wishing she’d asked for Ryan’s last name. Too late, so she climbed the steps to the porch hung with Victorian frills painted shades of red and royal purple, where the wicker chairs that flanked the door were pink and green. Whoever had chosen the colors hadn’t been shy about expressing their tastes.

She rang the doorbell and listened to funereal chimes for a moment before the door swung open. She was expecting a grandmother, someone along the lines of her own mother or Paul’s, but she got a surprise. Even accounting for good skin and great genes, Ryan’s grandmother was much closer to Therese’s age than her mom’s. She was slim, wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a top that barely covered enough to be decent. A tattoo wound out from beneath the crop and stretched sinuously from one side of her rib cage to the other, wrapping around her bejeweled belly button before disappearing beneath her jeans, and her shiny black hair stood in spikes.

“Can I help you?”

Therese slammed her gaping mental mouth shut and smiled. “Hi, I’m Therese Matheson. My son goes to school with your granddaughter, Ryan.” In spite of her good intentions, she asked, “Granddaughter? Really?”

“Really.”

Wow. “Anyway, they’d made plans to hang out this afternoon, and I like to meet Jacob’s friends’ parents—or grandparents.”

The woman’s face wrinkled. “Aw, you’ve heard the rumors that people who come in this place don’t come out again.” Then she smiled, a white, even smile, and offered her hand for a strong shake. “I’m Prudence Nguyen.”

“Nice to meet you, Prudence. We live on the far side of the park—”

Prudence waved one hand. “Redbrick with white board. Ryan has shown it to me several times when she starts her discussion on proper colors for residences. She’s mentioned Jacob a time or two, which is saying a lot for her. She’s usually too involved in her schoolwork or on her computer to bother with chitchat.”

“Jacob, too. Sometimes it seems his entire vocabulary consists of grunts and
whatever
.”

“Makes you want to smack him, doesn’t it? I keep telling Ryan, God invented words for a reason, but she’s not convinced.” Prudence rubbed one bare foot with the other. “Would you like to come in? I’ve got a fresh pot of tea.”

“Thanks, but I’m on my way to work.”

“You’re a teacher, right? Braver than me.” She gestured toward an iron sculpture standing beside the door. “I only have to face torches and burning metal.”

“You’re an artist?”

“Depends on who you ask, though I’ve got a bit of a following through The Gallery on Main.”

“I was admiring the work in their windows last night.” She liked this woman, Therese decided. “You’re okay with Jacob coming over?”

“Sure. I’ll keep an eye on them with my plasma cutter in hand.”

“Okay.” She glanced at her watch. “Oops, I’d better get moving. It’s nice to meet you, Prudence.”
Okay,
she thought as she walked back to the van. Jacob now had another friend close enough to visit.

See, Paul? I haven’t given up yet. I’m trying.

One of his favorite movie quotes sounded softly in her head. Yoda.
Star Wars.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

It didn’t brighten her day.

The ringing of the phone yanked Keegan from sleep at the ungodly hour of…Oh. Nine thirty. Eyes squinted, he felt around the bedside table for his cell, locating it on the fourth ring. He brought it close to his ear, grunted, and wondered if he could go back to sleep if he kept the call short.

His mother’s voice destroyed all chance of that. “I realize you’re on vacation and for some people that means sleeping in, but, really—” She broke off. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter. That foolish brother of yours fell off a roof this morning and managed to bust himself up pretty good so I’m headed out to see him.”

“Duke?” he asked groggily. Duke was always busting himself up pretty good. He was the youngest, the wildest, had the ridiculous name of Duke with a more ridiculously named twin sister, and had inherited their father’s recklessness. Keegan was surprised they kept letting him set foot back on the drilling platform considering how accident prone he was.

“Not Duke, Ford. What would Duke be doing on a roof? Anyways, I’m going out to Phoenix to help out with him. That wife of his can’t handle a crisis to save her life. She can’t even deal with the surprise of a birthday party. She schedules everything to the minute. Probably won’t even have sex with the boy unless it’s written on her calendar.”

Keegan pushed himself up to sit with the headboard at his back. “I get it, Mom. Denise isn’t your favorite daughter-in-law.”

“No, and bless her heart, she’s my only one. Poor thing. So I’m leaving in about thirty minutes and—”

A cold knot settled in his chest. “What about Mariah?”

Utter silence on the line, followed at last by a long breath. “That’s why I’m calling you. I can’t take her with me. Ford’s in the hospital right now—intensive care, Denise said”—her voice wobbled on the words—“and that’s no place for a little girl. And I can’t ask Denise to take care of her. After all, he’s her husband. Martha and Daisy can’t take her, not with their work schedules, and Duke— Well, of course, that’s out of the question, even if he wasn’t out on the platform. He’d set her down somewhere and forget her. So I’m bringing her to you.”