Texas Redeemed (31 page)

E
VEN
BY NIGHT
Sky standards, Sully Joe Keate did everything slowly—on account of he’d seen
everything he’d wanted to see in his ninety-odd years and wasn’t in a rush to
retire with the Good Lord. After a day in the Texas heat wading through dirt,
grime and cow waste, Valerie wasn’t up to shooting the breeze with him and the
barbers from the unisex salon up the road when she pulled up and found them
sitting out front. The quicker she filled the tank and zipped off, the less
likely she’d be to run into Marin who every so often put in hours stocking
cigarettes and magazines and Night Sky tourist brochures.

But Sully Joe waylaid her, offering a gumdrop and
reminiscing about when she’d first come into the store, no bigger than a
grasshopper and begging her uncle to buy her some Bazooka. Then he insisted on
filling her pickup with regular, and whistled “Danny Boy” while shuffling his
matchstick-thin frame to the pumps.

“Ain’t that interestin’,”
Sully Joe said, nodding at something beyond Valerie’s shoulder. “There’s hope
for humanity yet, if rich folks’ll bring their own
cars to the fillin’ station.”

Valerie turned, met Nathaniel’s storm-waters-gray eyes as
he exited a Rolls-Royce and approached her truck with a swagger that was wealth
and cockiness swirled together. Sully Joe tactfully stepped away, and Nathaniel
said without prelude, “About my plans for Lucy. We each want our next
generation to have something to cultivate and keep. It took a long time for me
to accept Peyton’s choices. Don’t make the same mistake with your girl.”

“Sage advice from the winner,” she said quietly, more out
of hurt than anger as she swept up a squeegee and went to work on her
windshield. “My daughter’ll carry on your business,
and I’ll have no one.”

“What about Rhys Jordan’s children?”

“He left the ranch to me.”

“Still—they’re his offspring, and the daughter’s
pregnant. Little Valerie, you could have more children. Peyton’s invested
completely in you.”

Peyton was “invested completely” in her? It was what
she’d wanted, but didn’t think she could have. “Is his choice to be with me
what you’ve accepted, Nathaniel?”

“Consider what I’ve proposed.”
With that, he nodded decisively and returned to his car.

A fraction of a moment later Marin Beck emerged from the
store and sprinted to the truck before Valerie could hop in and leave. She wore
that sweet “Who, me?” expression for the audience in front of the gas station,
but up close her eyes reflected pure, concentrated venom. “Bud’s barbecue’s
coming up. Peyton wants to bring you and Lucy, so he told me not to show.”

Peyton’s invested
completely in you.
“I don’t care where you go, Marin, so long as it’s not
Battle Creek.”

“I didn’t knock on your door the last time I was in
town.”

“Because the ranch was turned on its
ear.”

A frown only flickered on her mouth. “Superiority?” she
whispered. “From you? Know what? I’m done being your
secret-keeper. The second Peyton finds out what you did he’ll drop you—for
good.”

“Marin—”

“Got to get back to work.”

Valerie didn’t remember even driving off, navigating the
roads that were so familiar she could find her way blindfolded. Only thoughts
of guilt and fear and finality floated through her, until she arrived at
Memorial desperate for the truth.

P
EYTON
SENSED
V
ALERIE
minutes before he found
her in the rush of people in the trauma wing. One glimpse into those
whiskey-brown eyes that he knew so well had him bracing for a hit. “Val—”

He was interrupted by the chief of staff, who had a foam
cup of coffee and a mad-as-hell expression. “Reed’s gone AWOL again. Can I put
you down? Ten to eight—night shift.”

“Can’t do it, Chief.”

Chief Lindsey sized up Valerie, noting her disconcertion.
“Ah. Then I don’t have to guess what the final word is on the Africa
assignment, Doctor Turner.”

Shit. Peyton felt the surge of instant shock rise from
Valerie’s skin like invisible lava. “If we could get into
this another time, Chief?”

Chief Lindsey was already walking away, but called over
his shoulder, “Be sure to give ample notice. Don’t leave Memorial in the
lurch.”

Valerie shoved her way outside through the heavy glass
revolving doors, but Peyton caught up to her in the lot behind two EMS rigs.

“Nathaniel was wrong,” she blurted over the sirens and
commotion as beams of red and blue crisscrossed over her face. “You’re not
completely invested in me. You’re planning to go to Africa instead!”

“Field workers don’t choose when assignments become
available. But we
do
decide whether
or not we want to go when Doctors Without Borders matches
us. I haven’t had a sit-down with Chief yet, but I’ve already passed on this
mission—just like the one in Bangladesh.”

“Bangladesh? Something else I didn’t know about.” She
shot him a confused glare. “I came here to give you complete honesty. But
where’s
your
complete honesty?”

The doors swooshed open behind them and two nurses
sauntered out with a lighter and one cigarette to share, and he sardonically
thought about his colleague Sawyer, whose pack-a-day habit evidently wasn’t enough
to chase the demons away after all.

Peyton snared Valerie’s wrist, brought her to sit on the
bumper of the rig farthest from the hospital. “What have you been holding
back?”

“This is all you need to ride out of town again,
guilt-free.” Her hand slipped from his grasp. “Marin stepping
out, and you destroying Estella’s gravestone? It’s on me.”

“How?”

“She wasn’t sober then. I’d caught her drinking liquor,
and … I knew she wanted a payoff. So I gave her the idea to get a few thousand
from you so she’d leave town.”

“It’s a one-bedroom
place with a lovely view, but I haven’t saved up a big enough deposit,” Marin
said to Peyton as she and Valerie waited on the outside of the batting cage.

“A
deposit?” He was skeptical on the spot, having heard similar stories
from her all throughout his twenty-one years. But he swung his bat, hit the
ball with precision and said, “Will you be signing a lease?”

“Yes,
certainly. I-I’m here to stay this time, Peyton. Ask Valerie about the
apartment. She’ll back me up.”

Valerie cleared her
throat, then said brightly, “It’s a nice place. I’ve
seen it myself. Give her the money.”

“There wasn’t an apartment,” he said now, abandoning the
bumper.

“It was a lie. She wouldn’t leave town without the money.
You were supposed to be better off without her.” She stood, touched his hand,
but her fingertips now felt unfamiliar … cold.

Valerie, the one woman he thought was honest and had his
best interests at heart, had conned him. “You had me pay my own mother to run
out?”

“I did it to help my friend. It was
killing
you, what she was doing to you.”

“Conning me was, what, a favor?”
At the sight of her tears, he almost relented. Almost.
“Or was it part of an agenda?”

“An agenda?”

“My grandfather found out about the twins around the time
this ranch took off. Dinah and Cordelia and Jack
didn’t give you that kind of money—you pay
their
salaries. Tell me it’s a coincidence. Tell me this whole thing is a
misunderstanding.”

She was shaking now. “Nathaniel offered me money to turn
Battle Creek around because I couldn’t support myself or the girls. I didn’t
want a handout—he certainly didn’t want to give me one—but it made sense. As a
mother how could I let my daughters suffer?”

 
How could you destroy the man you call a
friend?
“Were you ever going to tell me?”

“No. I was afraid to. I—I couldn’t trust how you’d react.
I thought you’d turn on me, ask Nathaniel to come after me … that you’d take
away everything.”

“
You
couldn’t
trust? I can’t trust
you,
Valerie.
You expected me to completely give up Doctors Without
Borders—to give up who I am—to prove myself. I might’ve done it, too, because I
love you.” His gaze moved over her dispassionately. “No, I
did
love you.”

“Real love can’t be turned on and off, just like that.”

“The truth’s got a way of changing how a man feels.
You’re a liar who found an opportunity to get some fast cash from a rich
bastard.”

“You don’t know how wrong you are.”

“One of us needs to be honest. How can I believe anything
you say?”

“Believe that I’m your friend. Believe that I care about
you. And believe that there’s only so far you can push me.”

“How far is that? How far will you go to get your way,
Valerie?” The dark thoughts, the bitter words, swirled together to create a
dangerous, destructive funnel cloud. “The night my mother left with the money
you came to me at the batting cage and we had sex. And you wound up pregnant.”

“‘Wound up’? As if you didn’t have a little bit to do
with that?”

“Did I? Really?”

“You were the only guy I was with then.”

“Good old Sam Burgess might not agree with that.” Even as
the words tumbled from him he wanted to pull them back but couldn’t.

Valerie flew at him, hitting his chest with her fist
twice before crumpling against him. He didn’t feel the impact, as if he was
covered in steel. “Get a paternity test, Valerie. I don’t want Lucy to live a
lie.”

He turned and went back into the hospital, hating himself
more with each step.

V
ALERIE WENT TO
the ranch but lingered outside on the porch with her head rested on her knees, sobbing quietly. She wanted to leave the tears, heartbreak and vulnerability out here, and go into the house with some plan of how to deal with whatever would come next.

The front door opened and there was Dinah’s soft, concerned voice. “Valerie, oh, you poor girl.” She sat beside Valerie and circled her in her plump arms and fresh-baked-pastries scent. “Oh, now, come here.”

Valerie buried her face into her aunt’s shoulder, teary eyes, runny nose and all. “It’s falling apart. Peyton’s done with me.”

“Done? Why?”

“I did something terrible a long time ago, and the truth finally …” Valerie sniffled and let Dinah lift her chin. “He’s furious.”

“But he loves his family. Crystal’s not even as clear as that. Love’ll bring him back. He’ll forgive you.”

“No, Di. I’m not putting stock into that.”

Her aunt frowned. “Sure about that? Seems to me you and Peyton deserve love and forgiveness. There’re bad men on this earth.” She lightly tapped Valerie’s silver crescent-shaped scar, and Valerie instantly thought of the only time her uncle had physically harmed her. “But there are some good men, too. Don’t give up on a good man. Neither should Peyton give up on a good woman. Y’all ought to have faith in each other.”

The cold corner of her heart didn’t want to depend on Dinah’s talk of love and faith. She had done the very thing she’d tried to avoid: let Peyton get too close. Now he was under her skin, in her heart, a part of her soul … and somehow she would have to get over him.

Fear of how he—and no doubt Nathaniel—would retaliate scorched her blood. The fact that he’d demanded a paternity test when Lucy was all but a female carbon copy of him cut like a blade. But what hurt worse than even that was the fear of losing him.

N
ATHANIEL WAS SITTING
on the caramel-brown brocade sofa in the parlor with a snifter of brandy when Peyton finally dragged himself to the mansion at an ungodly hour. “Valerie called. She didn’t sound well.”

Pacing restlessly, he thought about his motorcycle, but knew even it wasn’t fast enough to whisk him away from hell. He went to the solarium, all the wonderful memories of being in here with Valerie growing up now coated with acid.

“All of it … the friendship … the love … was one incredible lie.” He moved out of the entryway to let his grandfather past, then recounted Valerie’s confession. “Did she ask you for the money to rehabilitate Battle Creek?”

“That’s the beauty of a con well done. She didn’t have to ask. I
gave
it to her.” The old man’s frosty glare landed on his wife’s telescope. “I thought she was a captain willing to go down with her ship when it came to that damn ranch, and for those girls’ sake I begged her to take the money.”

He lifted the cane, as if to swing it at the telescope and send it careening through the window, but Peyton advanced on him. “Don’t, Grandpa. I know what you’ll do, because I’ve been there. You’ll blame Grandma for not being here to fix this, or for bringing Valerie into our home. But it won’t help.”

“I warned Estella not to trust her, but she fought me …” His grandfather swore. “My lawyers can get you justice, my boy. Valerie manipulated you into sleeping with her. Lo and behold, she ended up pregnant. Your life didn’t have to turn out the way it did.”

Nathaniel wanted to blame Valerie for ruining the plans he’d carefully made for his grandson. Peyton’s feelings, his emotional well-being, hadn’t been a factor to Nathaniel—but it had mattered to Valerie. “So we come after her not because she and my mother conned me, but because my life
turned out
a certain way. A way other than what you wanted, right?”

“There were opportunities you lost because of her lies.”

“Meaning that New Zealand mentorship and the job in Los Angeles? That was all bought and paid for by you, Grandpa. I didn’t earn it. Even if Mom hadn’t taken my money and run, even if I hadn’t slept with Valerie and then figured she’d be better off without me, who’s to say I wouldn’t have gotten the hell out of this town anyway?” He rested his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder. “I make my own choices. I’m leaving.”

“The woman’s got you running again!”

“Maybe Valerie had it right all along when she said I’d only end up leaving again. Maybe I didn’t change after all … and what good would it have done?” Peyton looked Nathaniel square in the face. “If you want to start a war with her, you’ll do it alone.”

“L
OOKS LIKE YOU
could use a steak.”

Felicity waved her blueberry mojito in the air as Valerie made her way through the crush of boot-wearing couples shuffling about the dance floor in a two-step to a country-western classic.

When her friend had invited her to The Tapping Spider Barroom and Steakhouse, locally referred to as “The Spider,” Valerie hadn’t anticipated that the squat Meridien bar would be this crowded.

Visiting the city was supposed to lighten her mood, but by the time she had made it to the bar in the rear of the restaurant, she was weighed down with memories of being at the Bronco with Peyton.

“Saved you a stool.” Felicity motioned for the bartender and lightly drew her fingernails over his hand. “Tyson, this is my friend Val. What’s a good getting-over-a-breakup drink?”

Valerie was too emotionally drained to react right away. “Using my life as a conversation-starter to hook up with a hot bartender, Felicity?” she whispered after Tyson had recommended a raspberry kamikaze and sent her order of medium-rare steak and potatoes to a waitress.

“Ty invited me to his place but I passed because I’m doing the friend thing tonight. You really could use a friend—and, of course, a steak.”

Valerie smiled and hugged Felicity. “Thanks.”

“Oh, it’s all part of the code.”

Tyson returned with Valerie’s kamikaze—and a shot of tequila on the house for Felicity—then swaggered down the bar to tend to another patron.

“What code?” Valerie asked.

“Chicks before dicks.” Felicity clinked her glass to Valerie’s. “Cheers.”

After Valerie finished her drink and chased it down with iced water, she said, “You told the bartender I’m getting over a break-up. The truth is, I’m
so
not. Getting over it, I mean.”

“Nobody expects you to bounce back right away. Losing someone you love isn’t quick and painless.”

“Peyton said he doesn’t love me anymore. Is it crazy that my gut’s saying he still does?”

“The man checked into Peridot last week. There’s a reason he and Nathaniel can’t see eye-to-eye, and I bet that reason’s you. From what I hear, Nathaniel takes money and loyalty very seriously, but blaming you for this whole thing with Marin Beck would be irrational even for him. It was a few thousand dollars, which is nothing—”

“Not to some people.”

“It happened forever ago and Peyton’s mother left with the money.” Felicity downed the shot and shook her head at a man in the crowd who signaled her over for a slow dance. “If Nathaniel tries to blow this out of proportion and hold you accountable, he’ll just be wasting his time.”

Valerie had already had a discussion with Jack and her lawyer, and had decided to return the money Nathaniel had given her to restore Battle Creek. Finances would be very tight for a while, but at least she’d feel better about not having his gift—which she’d always viewed as a debt—hanging over her head.

The waitress arrived and Valerie accepted the steaming plate of steak and potatoes with lackluster enthusiasm because she didn’t have the appetite for it now. As she poured ketchup over the meat, Felicity made a face.

“Go dance,” Valerie said, shaking the glass bottle with gusto. “Let me eat my ketchup-covered steak in peace.”

Felicity headed off into the crowd, and Valerie sighed over her plate. She had just taken a bite when someone tweaked her hair and said, “Hi.”

She spun on the stool, fork still in hand. “Oh.”

Peyton paused with uncertainty, glanced at the fork which she quickly dropped onto her plate. “How’ve you been, Valerie?”

You mean besides missing you like crazy?
“Good,” she said slowly, then shook her head. “No, not good, actually.”

He sank onto the stool beside her. “Felicity told me you’d be here tonight. I thought you should know that my grandfather’s not going to make life hard for you. What happened with you and me and my mother—that has nothing to do with him. And he doesn’t want to cause trouble for Lucy. Neither do I.”

“Good to know.” And it was. A family war was the last thing their daughter needed; she hadn’t taken news of their split well.

“If there’s anything you need me to do …”

Take back all the anger. Understand why I did what I did. Be here for Lucy and me.

“We haven’t heard from you in a week, Peyton,” she said brusquely, banishing those whispering thoughts. “There’s gossip about you leaving again.”

He swore softly. “What would Night Sky be without gossip?”

“Did you find me here just to say goodbye?”

His eyes were dark, conflicted. “Lucy’s still in trouble. I want to see her—”

“We should have that paternity test done in San Antonio,” she cut in, and she could practically see remorse sink into him.

But he didn’t protest or apologize, or even protest that he
wasn’t
leaving town—and that hurt. “Fine.”

After he walked away, Valerie turned to her plate with a sigh. “I guess I’m ready for you now, steak.”

C
ROUCHED IN THE
bed of her pickup truck, Valerie waited in the feed store parking lot for Doug McNamara and his son to transfer another forty-pound sack of horse feed from their flatbed. The three of them had already stacked four bags, and she was confident her vehicle could handle another six.

“I reckon you bought our entire inventory of this stuff,” Doug said with an easy grin, then grunted as he hauled another sack into her truck.

She crawled over and yanked it on top of the short stack. Clearly showing off his youth and strength, Owen brought over two more sacks—without the telltale grunt of a man whose years of hard labor had put wear and tear on his back.

“Be careful,” she told the teen, adding a smile to avoid bruising his ego.

“Don’t wanna have to tell folks you got a hernia carting around organic whole grain,” his father chimed in, and Owen frowned as if to say, “Jeez, Dad.”

They finished loading the truck and Owen said, “Almost forgot—” and raced inside the store to return with a paper bag. “Could you give this to Lucy? It’s a dream-catcher. I was gonna give it to her at Bud Frowler’s barbecue, but since she didn’t show up—”

“She did,” Valerie countered. She hadn’t been in the mood to go, but Lucy had pleaded to hitch a ride with Sarah Carew and Valerie had been so grateful for that nugget of normalcy that she’d allowed it. “With Sarah.”

“But, um …” the boy looked perplexed “… the Carews were out of town, ma’am.”

Doug clamped a hand on his son’s shoulder. “That they were. We rescheduled our delivery to their farm because of it.”

“My mistake,” she said in a controlled voice, taking the dream-catcher and driving off. That her daughter could lie so effectively, so expertly, was a stab. That she’d been off doing something that she was ashamed to admit to Valerie was a twist of the knife.