Texas Redeemed (20 page)

But she
could
resist loving him … as a friend and on an even deeper level than that.

“Cuz, hope you don’t mind, but
this chili is exactly what I need right now.”

Valerie found Cordelia parked
at the counter with a slab of cornbread and a bowl of chili. “Help yourself.
Where’s Jack?”

“Home. I stopped by to prove to
my mother that I survived the drive, then took a
detour to this food. Oh, just the
thought
of sleeping in a warm bed tonight … Jack’s probably already there.” She laughed
and took a bite of cornbread.

A warm bed was an inviting thought—but having a warm body
waiting under the covers was even better. Upstairs, Valerie would find her bed
nice and neat, and cold and empty. “Are you sure you feel all right, Cordelia?”

“Very sure. Valerie, did people
fuss over you like this when you were pregnant?”

“No.” Her uncle hadn’t cared
to find her after he’d kicked her out. She’d ended up working as a library page
in San Antonio, where no one knew her or cared enough to try. The only other
person in town who’d known about her pregnancy had been Jasper, who’d found out
when she’d come to the Turners’ mansion to find Peyton gone and had gotten sick
right on the pristine foyer floor. Jasper hadn’t fussed but had done what she’d
asked of him: he’d kept quiet.

Without Peyton around, she had wanted to raise her
daughters alone—without the Turner name and expectations … without being under
Nathaniel’s disappointed and disapproving eye.

“Well, let me tell you this,” Cordelia
said. “The fussing thing is aggravating. So, I take it Mister Mom has left.”

Valerie lifted a brow. “I don’t think Peyton would
appreciate that endearment.”

“Probably not. But my mother
filled me in on everything, and I have to say, I hope Jack’ll
step up for this baby the way Peyton’s doing for Luce. Cooking, picking her up
from school, homework duty, the works. He even handled a load of laundry.”

“Whose laundry?” Valerie had an
unpleasant image of Peyton sorting through her undies and encountering one of
her thongs.

“His,” Dinah answered, joining Cordelia
at the counter. Concern touched her face as she gave her daughter a swift
once-over. “The other day he pitched in mucking out stalls and had an
unfortunate tumble.”

Cordelia froze with chunk of
cornbread halfway to her mouth. “You mean he fell in a pile of horse shit.”

“I think that’s what she means,” Valerie interrupted, but
a laugh was working its way to the surface.

“The boy said he’d had worse experiences, but he didn’t
object to borrowing Jack’s clothes—even though he was swimming in them.”

Peyton and Jack were about the same height, but Jack had
a sturdy bulk to him.

“Wow.” Cordelia lifted her
water glass in a mock toast. “Here’s to life on a ranch.”

Valerie remembered a time when Peyton would come over to
help her finish chores so she’d have time to hang out in town, or just because
he didn’t find it fair that she had to spend sunup to sundown working to please
her uncle. Peyton mucking out horse stalls was a taste of the old him.

Dinah
excused herself for the evening, leaving Valerie and Cordelia
to divvy up the chili. Valerie wanted only one serving and put the rest in
containers for her cousin to take home. At the counter, they ate in silence,
trying to ignore that they both looked like hot messes and smelled even worse.

“So Peyton’s decided he wants to be my
friend.”

Cordelia licked her spoon and
slyly replied, “Friend, huh.”

“Not
that
kind
of friend. Not the let’s-get-naked-together kind of friend.”

“Have you ever had one of those?”

Valerie almost choked on her chili. She took a gulp of
water. “Um, no.”

“I have. It’s a lot of fun.” She grinned. “Ask Jack
yourself.”

“You mean Jack was your sex buddy? Doesn’t marrying the
guy defeat the purpose of having a sex buddy, Cordelia?”

“Guess so. Jack and I figured out we had as much fun
together fully clothed as we did naked. And here we are.” She turned on her
stool to face Valerie. “Level with me. Are you worried about this
friendship
ending up in sex and
complicating everything?”

“It’s the friendship that’s complicated. Sex alone would
be easier to handle.” It was true. Giving him just her body with no strings
attached meant that she could keep her heart out of it.

“So you think he says he wants to be friends, but what he
really wants is sex.”

“Less is at stake if that’s the case.”

“What the hell does that mean? Sorry, Val, but you keep
acting like the man’s enemy territory, and I don’t get it. All I know is his
mother did a number on him, he didn’t take it well, you guys had it out, he
later got himself put in jail and then left town. Am I missing anything?”

Oh, yeah. The story
behind the story,
Valerie wanted to say. She couldn’t expect her cousin to
understand that making the wrong choice where Peyton was concerned could devastate
her. She couldn’t let herself love—or fall in love—with him. And for his own
sake, she couldn’t let him love her. He didn’t even know her … didn’t know what
she was capable of. “That’s the gist of it.”

“It’s ancient history.”

“What’s the point in building something with a man who’ll
probably just pick up and leave again? He just now, tonight, said that he wants
to be a father to Lucy. What if he sleeps on it and changes his mind come
morning?”

“You have abandonment issues.”

“What?”

“Abandonment issues. You have ’em.” Cordelia stood and started
collecting the leftovers Valerie had packed up in plastic containers. “But
we’ll talk about all that another time. I’ve gotta
pee and wash the stink of animal off me.” And in less than a minute she was out
the door.

Count on Cordelia to diagnose
someone with screwy emotional wiring and then take off. Valerie didn’t mind.
The conversation was veering in a direction she didn’t want to go anyway. But
since when did being cautious and wanting stability point to “abandonment
issues”?

After turning off the lights downstairs, she drew a bath
and got so comfortable in the hot water and bubbles that she almost fell asleep
in the tub. When she finally dragged herself out of the water, she took a
moment to moisturize her face—a necessity after being out in the elements for a
week—and pulled on a pair of lounge pants and an oversized shirt.

She stepped into the bedroom expecting to find it quiet
and empty. Instead she found Lucy on the bed clad in pajamas, whispering to the
contents of a crate.

“Is the kitten in there?”

“Yes. I named him Bowie.”

“After David?”

“Uh-huh.”

Lucy set the crate in the middle of the bed and scooted
beneath the quilt and down comforter. “Is it fine if we sleep in here with you?
Vet Boone said the kitten needs to be extra warm. Humans are warm, so if Bowie
sleeps in here, he’ll be okay. So can we stay?”

Lucy could throw tantrums and
break rules, but her loving nature shined. “You can stay. But tomorrow I’ll set
up a place for him in your room.”

“Thanks. Mom, I don’t get why Pisces rejected Bowie. She
just kicked him out of her family, like he’s not her baby.”

Pisces had abandoned her kitten. Valerie wondered what
psychobabble her cousin would say lurked beneath the cat’s surface. “It
happens. Sometimes being left behind helps someone find
better circumstances.” When her parents had died, she’d ended up with an uncle who’d
emotionally rejected her—but then she’d found Peyton. “I’m glad Bowie found
you.”

“Me, too, Mom.”

Valerie slipped under the covers into the sliver of space
Lucy and Bowie’s crate left for her. Tonight the bed was crowded and warm. For
that, she was grateful.

T
HE
WAREHOUSE DISTRICT
was deserted this time
of night—just the atmosphere Peyton was looking for as he pushed through the
heavy grimy-glassed door of the Bull’s-Eye Tavern. Country music and the stench
of cigarette smoke, sweat and liquor assaulted him. The place, dominated by a
well-used pool table, had a concrete floor and was full of dark corners. A
couple occupied one of those cobwebbed corners, the woman holding the man’s
cowboy hat as they kissed.

He hadn’t been ready to return to his grandfather’s house
after leaving the ranch. The mansion that he’d once called home was starting to
feel as unfamiliar as every foreign country he’d set foot in. He felt more at
home at Battle Creek than at the place where he’d grown up.

Pulling his gaze from the couple that was giving the
other scatter of patrons a free show, Peyton went to the bar and ordered a
beer. The bartender, who said he heard too much gossip on a nightly basis to
bother taking any of it to heart, welcomed him back to town with a free Coors
lager. Peyton slapped a twenty-dollar tip onto the peanut-shell-littered
counter and turned the bottle up without preamble, wanting the drink to kill
the intensifying urge to get back in his SUV and return to Battle Creek … to Valerie.

Did she actually think he didn’t want her? Was he that
good at controlling what he felt?

They’d stood there outside, alone, and he’d been slammed
with the desire to cover her mouth with his. But he couldn’t force himself to
isolate sex from everything else he’d begun to want from her. Friendship. Trust.

“Gonna need another?” Two-Bit
Tony asked, tugging a rag from his shoulder and wiping down the bar.

Eyeing the bottle that was now three-quarters empty,
Peyton shook his head.

“What ’bout you?” The bartender hitched his chin at a man
at the end of the bar, who hovered over a shot of bourbon.

“Absolutely.” The man downed the
contents of the glass, then slid it across the bar.
The fresh-looking scars on his knuckles and the scratch beside his pointed nose
indicated he’d been in a recent fight. He pulled a wallet from his leather
jacket and flicked a few bills onto the counter.

With his black tee shirt and frayed jeans, and even with the
barbed-wire tattoo banded around the biceps of one arm, he was easy to
overlook. The collar-length dark brown hair and beard could’ve hidden his
facial features—which he was clearly trying to accomplish, with his shoulders
hunched and his chin lowered. But his olive-green eyes were familiar even
though Peyton knew in his gut their paths had never crossed.

He looked too much like Cordelia
to not be Chase Jordan.

“And keep ’em coming.” The man
lifted the fresh glass in a mock salute. “Not nearly drunk
enough.”

Peyton considered his options. It was apparent that
neither Dinah nor Cordelia were aware that Chase
wasn’t MIA after all—he was right under their noses, drinking himself into
oblivion in a hole-in-the-wall bar. But if the man whose last known location
was Afghanistan had found his way to Texas, it wasn’t likely that he hadn’t
come for a reason.

It also wasn’t likely that the reason was to drain
Two-Bit Tony’s entire stock of hard liquor—which he appeared to be on his way
toward accomplishing.

A trio of perfumed young women sashayed to the bar, and
Peyton relinquished his stool, beer still in hand, and approached Chase—who’d
been too focused on the women to notice right away.

“How many of those have you knocked back?” Peyton set his
beer on the counter beside Chase’s now-empty shot glass.

Fatigue ghosted Chase’s face, but he automatically sprang,
as agile as a lynx, from his stool, ready for—if not craving—another fight. A
silver ID tag swung on a chain around his neck. “Who the fuck
are you?”

“Hey, hey!” Tony hollered,
drawing interested glances from several patrons.

Tamping down the instinct to give Chase the fight he was
asking for, Peyton lifted his palms. “I’m a friend of your family, Jordan.”

Chase’s eyes, no longer so similar to Cordelia’s
when lit with alcohol-induced aggression, narrowed. “Name.
Quick.”

“Peyton Turner. I was … uh … close to Valerie when she
was coming up.”

“Yeah. Close enough to plant a
couple of babies in her belly. Delia told me about you.”

A muscle twitched in Peyton’s jaw, which he ignored. “And
Dinah told me about you. Except she left out the small detail
that you’re a dick-head.”

Chase grunted a humorless laugh. “You don’t know me—and I
want to keep it that way.” He brushed past him and headed to the dartboard with
what Peyton knew from experience was a drunken swagger—barely able to stand on
his own but too proud even through the haze of booze to lean on anything or
anyone for support. A man in a hunting vest just finishing his game plucked the
darts from the beaten board, gave Chase a doubtful once-over and surrendered the
darts with a sarcastic, “Good luck with that, sir.”

“Dinah misses you,” Peyton told Chase. And there it was, just the slightest trace of hurt and regret on the
man’s face. “How long have you been in town?”