Texas Redeemed (19 page)

She checked the screen. “Yeah.”

“Get comfortable and listen.”

Curious, she returned to her sleeping bag and snuggled
her worn Southwestern-style wool blanket.

Then came the faraway stuttering
sound of an orchestral performance. Estella’s classical
records.

Valerie remembered being ten years old and fascinated by
the blonde woman in the red trench coat who’d sat with her in the library for
an entire afternoon, browsing Newberry winners. She’d been like a Texan Jackie
O—charming and charismatic.

She’d once overheard Estella and Nathaniel bickering in
heated whispers—overheard Nathaniel growl, “Can’t she be
somebody else’s
charity case?”

Whether Estella had considered her a “charity case” was
immaterial. The woman had left an imprint on Valerie’s soul.

The music drifted over her. After a while, heavy-lidded
and languid, she heard Peyton say softly, “Sleepy now?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“’Night, Valerie.”

“’Night.” She ended the call and
fell asleep with his voice still in her mind.

“Y
OU’RE
HOME
.” Dinah, who’d been engrossed in a
game of Solitaire, set the playing cards on the coffee table and met Valerie in
the family-room entryway. “How’d the drive go?”

Aching all over and exhausted to her bone marrow, Valerie
still accepted her aunt’s bear hug. “As good as expected, but
a couple of the bulls didn’t make it to the valley. Even at the slow
pace they lost too much weight.” She shook her head, trying to stifle the
disappointment. It wasn’t easy with Coop’s criticism still reverberating. He
often chastised her for holding on to too many cattle—urged her to sell a few
hundred head before the majority died off.

Not that the survival numbers were out of the ordinary.
It was another issue to dispute, just like calving season and horse training.

Valerie
removed the long-sleeved thermal overshirt that had
come in handy overnight or when the winds picked up. Most of the days were spent
riding in the sun, and she’d sweated clear through her tee shirts. “Where’s
Lucy?”

“With Peyton in the barn.
They’ve been out there a while.”

Bunking at campsites over the past week had been
difficult to start with, but almost every night she’d spent hours awake,
sitting on one of the ATVs, staring out at the stars and wondering—no,
worrying—about Peyton frequenting her ranch.

He’d been unexpectedly kind on the phone the other
night—not indulging, but understanding and … compassionate.

Yet the idea of him in her home without her there—and his
mother roaming the town—made her feel exposed. And she hated it.

Had Marin put a bug in his ear, toying with him by
providing tidbits of information that would make him curious enough to ask
questions? Had he grilled their daughter for information about the ranch, about
the twins’ early years when there hadn’t been much money and Valerie had tasted
real desperation? Had he already begun to systematically unravel her secrets?

There were chapters of her life—things she’d done—that
she didn’t want to share with anyone. Not friends. Not family. Especially not Peyton.

“How often has he been here? In the
house?” Valerie inquired, folding the thermal even though it was far
beyond dirty and needed to be washed with the rest of her cattle drive laundry.
Anything to distract herself from letting fear slip into her
voice.

“A few times throughout the week.”
The older woman motioned for Valerie to join her in the kitchen that smelled of
cornbread and spices. A large covered pot sat on one of the range’s burners.
“Tonight he cooked dinner and there’s plenty for you. Firehouse chili, he calls
it. Let me fix you a plate.”

“No thanks, Di,” she said, although the idea of chili and
cornbread made her stomach contract with longing. “I’d like to hug my
daughter.”

Her aunt smiled. “Then go on to the barn.”

Valerie bit her lip, debating her next move. Fresh off of
a horse, with no makeup and probably not nearly enough deodorant, she was a
mess. But why should she delay seeing Lucy by primping for a man she was trying
not to want to impress?

Decision made, she hurried out to the barn, and nearly
ran into Lucy.

“Mom!”

Valerie took her daughter’s face in her hands and issued
a smattering of kisses, feeling a tinge wistful that
in a few short months Lucy would be thirteen and think herself
too old for this. “Now I’m happy,” she whispered, recalling their exchange when
Valerie left the previous Sunday.

“Pisces is in labor!” Lucy broke into a run. “I’ve gotta find towels. And dental floss.”

Valerie crouched beside Peyton and looked down at Lucy’s
fur baby, who purred and breathed heavily as she lay on a nest of hay. Two
beige-white kittens mewled nearby, smeared with fluid and remnants of placenta.

A third kitten remained connected to Pisces through its umbilical
cord.

“The cat couldn’t chew through the cord. You’re just in
time to see the cut.” Peyton glanced across at her before returning his
furrowed-browed attention to Pisces.

The attached kitten squirmed as Lucy returned to the barn
joined by Dinah, who was loaded down with towels. Dinah handed the floss to
Peyton.

“Mom, he freed one of the babies from the sac with a
towel. It was like jelly.”

“Want to do the honors?” he asked Valerie, holding out
the floss and a pair of scissors.

Valerie quickly scrubbed her hands, pulled on gloves and
tied off the umbilical cord with the floss before accepting the scissors and
severing the cord.

The other two kittens wormed their way to Pisces’s belly
and began suckling.

“Oh, would you look at that,” Dinah murmured in awe,
hovering behind Valerie. “You did just fine.”

Valerie’s gaze found Peyton’s. “So did you,” she
whispered, close enough to feel his warmth. She blinked, regaining control when
it was suddenly so easy to lean on him. “And you, too, Lucy.”

“I see lots of soap and bleach in my future.” Dinah
gathered the soiled towels and scurried out of the barn.

“Do you need help getting to your mommy?” Lucy cooed to
the pale gray kitten, scooping it up with both hands.

“Lucy—” Valerie watched her daughter settle the kitten
beside Pisces—and the cat’s ears pinned back “—you shouldn’t have picked that
kitten up with your bare hands.”

“How come?”

The three of them watched Pisces continue to attempt to
distance herself from the kitten, even detaching herself from the other two and
uttering a low hiss.

“She’s rejecting it,” Peyton said.

“Isn’t it still too early to tell?” Valerie objected,
even though she knew he was right.

“Why? What’d I do?” Lucy asked. “I just gave it to her,
so it can eat.”

“I … well … I think you gave it your human scent.”

“But if it can’t eat or be nurtured, it’ll die!”

Valerie swallowed, hating for it to come to that. “Not if
we nurture it. We should get Vet Boone on the phone.”

Wallace “Vet” Boone had been a practicing veterinarian in
town since Valerie could remember. His wife, Marcella, ran the consignment shop
in town, though her true claim to local fame was her blue-ribbon-winning
homemade jams. Having just seen his last patient of the day at his basement clinic,
he offered to make a house call. In his typical flannel shirt and corduroy
trousers, with his thick gray hair pulled into a ponytail, Vet came lumbering
into the barn loaded down with formula for the newborn that would be missing
the necessary enzymes and colostrum it would’ve gotten from Pisces’s nipples
and milk.

“Pay attention to nutrition and temperature,” Vet
cautioned. He went to Peyton, who held the rejected newborn in a fluffy towel.
“A heating lamp can be useful. Just set it up near the carrier.”

Valerie approached, unable to resist a closer look at the
animal’s tiny scrunched face. “Anything else, Vet?”

“Congratulations,” he said, patting her and Peyton on the
shoulders. “It’s a boy.”

Valerie smiled politely but couldn’t help imagining what
it would’ve been like to have Peyton at her side during the birth of their twin
daughters. She also wondered whether constantly helping to bring new life into
the world weighed down on Vet, who’d tragically lost his youngest daughter
decades ago. The death of a young child was something that bonded Valerie and
the Boones.

After Valerie had escorted Vet Boone to his truck, she
returned to the barn to hear Lucy ask, “Are you sure he’s getting enough
formula, Peyton?”

“Positive. Look at his belly. Adjust your hand—here, like
this.”

Lucy had a thick towel draped across her lap and fitted
snugly into one of her hands was the newborn. In the other was the dropper.

The kitten, with its eyes and ears shut, appeared to be
unaware of anything else but the feeling of being fed.

“Do you think Mom will let me keep him in the house—just
for a few weeks? Pisces is keeping the others warm, but he looks really cold
and the warm-water gloves might not keep his temperature up.”

“Not sure about that, Lucy.” At her deflated sigh, he
went on. “How about I take the kitten with me?”

Valerie’s mouth opened in awe. He would do that? Peyton
No-Attachments Turner was willing to take in a rejected kitten? Rattled to be
bumped off guard at his suggestion, she spoke up. “Jasper might not appreciate
having a cat to clean up after.”

“What do you suggest?” Peyton volleyed back.

“That Lucy and I adopt him.”

“You mean he
can stay in the house? Really?” As if the devil were
on her heels, Lucy gathered the kitten and rushed off. On her way out the barn
she called over her shoulder, “I still want Sarah’s llama. You and her parents
promised we could talk about it when you got back from the cattle drive.”

Valerie chuckled as she and Peyton followed at a slower
pace. “She’s persistent. Once she gets a goal stuck in her head she won’t let
it go.”

“Reminds me of you, Val.” He
stopped walking, touched her arm, and she stopped,
too. “I don’t know how to ask this without sounding like an idiot, but … Uh,
when did you decide you could do this? Be a parent, I mean.”

He didn’t sound like an idiot. He sounded uncertain and a
bit afraid. “I worked in a library through the pregnancy, and I read every book
my branch had on the subject. But all that knowledge still didn’t make those
babies real to me until the minute they were born,” she said. “Even when I felt
them kick, and when my water broke at a convenience store, they just weren’t
real. Not until I saw and smelled and heard them. Then it kicked in, that I was
a mother, ready or not, and I was in love in a way that I’d never been before.
It terrified me.”

Peyton’s jaw worked, and he inclined his head. “So it’s
normal to be this scared.”

“There’s a difference between being scared but certain,
and being scared because you’re walking into a mistake.”

He shrugged, releasing her arm, looking both tough and
vulnerable. “Lucy’s in-your-face and confusing, and I’d do anything for her.
Anna’s somebody I’ll never even know, but I miss her anyway, every day.”

She gasped so softly she doubted he heard it. He’d
mastered the art of turning love away at the door, so well that he hadn’t
recognized that he cared about his own children. She felt sorry for him because
he didn’t know the unbeatable wonder of what she’d felt when their daughters
were born: love at first sight. “What are you saying?”

“I love them. It’s as simple and complicated as that.” He
frowned, deep in thought. “I
want
to
be in Lucy’s life, Valerie. It’s not about obligation anymore.”

“I believe that.” This time Valerie touched him, just a
brush of her fingers on the edge of his shoulder. “Would you have kept the
kitten?”

“Everyone deserves someone who cares. Even that kitten.”

He cared. He genuinely cared about an abandoned newborn
cat, and about their daughter.

“Well, on behalf of Lucy and the kitten, thank you.”

“I didn’t do what I did for thanks, Valerie.”

Then what are you
doing? You’re turning into this man who has an amazing heart and is perfectly
fine sharing it with a cat.
She didn’t know how to protect herself against
this side of Peyton, against the compassionate, selfless side she didn’t know
was still there.

One thing she couldn’t do was let him get to her. It had
taken too many years for her to stand on her own feet, and she wouldn’t risk
being lost without this man again. The last time it had happened, she’d been
eighteen and pregnant—young and disillusioned. At thirty-one, with a teenager
and a ranch to handle, it would be pathetic for her to slip into the same trap.

Because in the end, he would want to go and she’d want to
stay.

Or he would find out everything she had done, and he
would lose himself first and then go, taking everything she’d fought for with
him.

“Peyton, there’s a life for you on the other side of town
that’s got nothing to do with animals and filth.”

“You’re right,” he said, and her stomach involuntarily
contracted. “My grandfather’s place is immaculate, and the closest thing to an
animal over there is the landscaper—according to Jasper, who calls her a
Tasmanian devil.”

They quit walking a short distance from the main house.
He added, with a meaningful look directly into her dirt-smeared face, “Maybe
that’s why I like coming here so much.”

“Visiting Lucy’s one thing. But
you can’t escape to me whenever you get bored with your own life.”

He nodded slowly, but she doubted it was because he
agreed with her point. “Then it’s okay for me to come to you just because I
want to be with you.”

“Peyton—”

“As a friend.”

The last time couple of times they’d been alone like
this, they hadn’t behaved like
friends.
More than once she’d recognized the look he gave her as pure, savage lust. “You
didn’t exactly want to settle for being friends that night at Big Bros’ Cages,”
she reminded him. “But now that’s all you want? Guess the stench of sweat and
horse took care of that.”

“Valerie, when we were together on Halloween … I wanted
more. I still do.”

Her breathing quickened.

“Friendship is what you need though. It’s what
I
need. But I won’t beg you for it.”

The finality in his tone told her that was true.

Abruptly, he turned and started toward the path around
the side of the house toward the driveway. “Try the chili.”

Valerie slipped into the house, unable to shake his
offer. Friends. Being friends with him after all that
had happened—after all the terrible choices she’d made—seemed out of the
question. Being his friend meant letting him one step closer to her heart,
right where she didn’t want him to be.

Even after she had turned down his invitation to travel
and they’d fought, she’d still considered their friendship to be solid. When he
had wrecked his already spotty reputation in town, she’d become afraid for him
and even a tad afraid
of
him. Then
he’d left and stayed gone, and after Anna’s death she had trained herself to
stop caring about him. She’d needed someone other than herself to hate, and the
absentee father had fit the bill. Hating him hadn’t lasted though. How could
she hate the man who’d been her friend, who’d given her two precious daughters?