Texas Redeemed (4 page)

And Uncle Rhys had known it—known that she’d endure
anything to stay on this land even when he’d talked about selling it or letting
it fold in on itself. To him, a man who’d driven away his own wife and children
before she’d been sent to live with him, Battle Creek Ranch had been a means to
control someone who had nowhere else to go. To Valerie, this place and all it
could be had been her salvation.

Automatically, her stomach clenched at the possibility of
her livelihood slipping through her fingers because of a past mistake … because
she’d done the wrong thing for the right reasons.

No question about it. She needed to handle Peyton with
caution, which meant staying midway between befriending him and keeping some
distance between them. And it all started with getting him on her territory,
her safety zone.

“Do you think
he
is
at Gramps’s place now? Think Gramps will freak?” Lucy asked as they neared
their completely remodeled brick-and-stone house.

“Probably, to the first question. Probably not, to the
second.” Nathaniel Turner, a self-made fashion mogul who’d gotten so rich that
he could maintain his California company from the comfort of his Texas mansion,
was famous around the county as a man of few words and mighty intimidation, and
as someone who could look cool as a cucumber in a full suit, fedora and signet
ring even on the hottest of days.

Some said money gave him power; others said vice versa.
Valerie figured it was just another chicken-and-egg thing to ponder.

“Not that I care,” the girl quickly tacked on, “because I
don’t. Just wondering.”

Valerie maneuvered the Chrysler into the wide brick
driveway beside her quad-cab truck and hadn’t even braked to a complete stop
before Lucy swept up her belongings and shot out of the car toward the mudroom
entrance at the side of the house.

“The only way we can get through this mess is together,”
she whispered as she exited the car, but Lucy was already gone.

She paused to deeply inhale the smell of flowers and rain
and hay. A horn beeped and she waved as Cordelia’s Audi V8 pulled up on the
other side of the truck. Cordelia called the silver sedan her first impulse buy
since the Chinese yin-yang tattoo she’d gotten in college, but Valerie knew her
cousin and her husband had spent years saving up for a set of luxury wheels.

“Are you
trying
to
get soaked to the bones out here?” Cordelia dared a glance at the thick
overcast as she linked arms with Valerie and started jogging in the direction
Lucy had gone.

“Just needed a moment, you know?”

“Understood.” In the mudroom Cordelia made quick work of
shedding her wide-brimmed hat and knee-high leather boots. “So …” she craned
her neck as if checking for eavesdroppers, which could have been only Lucy
since Cordelia’s mother, Dinah, was visiting friends in Montana and wouldn’t be
back until the following morning “… why the cloak-and-dagger? Usually getting
you to let Luce spend the night away even for a soccer tournament takes a lot
of arm-twisting.”

Valerie crouched to organize the rain-dampened boots,
scarf and umbrella her daughter had left in a heap near the door. Then she
picked up a throw pillow from the wooden bench just to have something warm, dry
and comforting to hold. “Lucy’s father is here.”

“Are—are you kidding me?”

She wished she
could
kid about something like this. “He’s coming to the ranch in a couple of
hours. Lucy doesn’t want to see him, but he and I obviously need to talk, so ….”

“No, I get it.” Cordelia studied her closely, concern
swimming in her green eyes. They’d first met during the reading of Uncle Rhys’s
will ten years ago, when Valerie had learned he’d left his entire ranch to
her—no doubt out of spite toward his estranged wife and children. How they’d
wound up becoming Valerie’s friends when they had an arsenal of reasons to
resent her still baffled her from time to time. “Val, are you holding up okay?”

“I have to,” was the most honest answer. She set the
pillow down and led the way to the kitchen. While Valerie rubbed her hair with
a dish towel, Cordelia hunted up a wineglass and selected a bottle of wine from
the built-in cabinet in the marble-topped island. “Aren’t you more of an
ice-cold beer person, Cordelia?”

“Yes. This is for you.”

“No, thanks. I should probably keep a clear head
tonight.” She eased onto a stool and gazed at the bowl of cherry tomatoes in
front of her while her cousin put away the glass and wine. “He’s Peyton, but
he’s
different.
”

“Older, you mean.” Cordelia hopped onto the island and
crossed one leg over the other. In skinny jeans, a white tank and a
hunter-green sweater with too-long sleeves, and with her dark hair hanging
loose, she seemed more like a teenager than a ranch hand with her fortieth
birthday creeping around the corner. Time often changed a person’s looks—and
Peyton was no different, with harder lines to his face and more muscle to his
body—but there was something unfamiliar and altered about him that probably had
nothing to do with aging.

“Of course older. But something else, too.” She shrugged
and was grateful for the distraction of Lucy loping into the kitchen with her
laptop.

“Hi, Delia!” This ball of energy and noise was the polar
opposite of the brooding girl who’d sat slumped over stiff as a brick the
entire drive home. She’d combed her hair and traded the borrowed scrubs for a
velour sweatshirt and black cropped pants with
sport
stitched across the seat. She set the computer down, grabbed
a handful of cherry tomatoes and launched herself at Cordelia. “How come you’re
hanging out here? The other day Mom said you were stoked about going on a date
with Jack. But I still don’t get why married people go on dates.”

Valerie’s eyes widened. What Lucy didn’t know was that
Cordelia and Jack’s “dates” were scheduled on nights during which Cordelia, who
was having trouble conceiving, would be ovulating. “Your date! Cordelia, I’m
sorry. I forgot all about it. I shouldn’t have asked you to take Lucy tonight.”

“No worries, Valerie. Jack and I decided to order a
pizza, and, of course, Luce’s favorite cinnamon bread.”

Lucy’s brows drew together in confusion. “Mom, why do I
have to leave?”

“Your father’s coming here tonight. We have things to
discuss privately, okay? So you’re going to the carriage house, and I’ll pick
you up for school in the morning and you’ll take the bus home since I’ll be
tied up with work all day.”

“Oh, super. It’s too huge of a situation for me to sleep
in my own house but I still have to go to school tomorrow and take that lame
test.” Lucy sauntered to the laptop where Valerie could see an open instant
messaging program on the screen.

“Pretty much.” Valerie ignored the eye roll that earned
her. “So type goodbye to your friends and pack an overnight bag—quickly. And
don’t forget your history book.”

Mouth full of tomato, Lucy protested, “Why’s he coming
here anyway? To be some father figure? I don’t need him, ’cause I’ve got Jack
and Gramps and Uncle Jasper and all my friends’ dads. And even without all
those guys, I’ve got you, Mom.”

All the budding frustration about Lucy’s flaring temper
seemed to evaporate.
I’ve got you, Mom.
Valerie slid off the stool, wrapped her arms around her daughter and kissed her
cheek whether she liked it or not.

Cordelia hid a smile as Lucy squirmed away, complaining,
“Your hair’s wet.”

“How about you pack and go with Cordelia, and I get
cleaned up?”

“Who’s gonna feed the cat if I’m gone?”

“You know I will, Lucy.”

“What about Titania and Mimas?”

“Cozy in the kennel. I took care of them before picking
you up from school. All bases are covered.”

“Fine,” the girl said reluctantly, shutting the laptop.
“C’mon, Delia. I want to show you the brochures for the country club Gramps
wants to rent for my insanely cool party—if Mom says it’s okay.”

Valerie sighed, watching the two hurry up the kitchen
stairs. Not only was her daughter stubbornly hung up on the idea of Nathaniel
throwing her an “insanely cool”—and unimaginably expensive—party, she didn’t
realize that Peyton’s return was going to change her relationship with
Nathaniel. Peyton would likely be staying in his childhood home, and it would
be impossible for Lucy to frequent the place without running into her father.
Unless Peyton didn’t plan to stick around longer than a day or two.

There was no way to assume what he would do. Their
exchange at the hospital earlier had shown her that he was capable of catching
her off guard. He was determined, unpredictable. A stranger.

Across the room on the counter the double frame
displaying Lucy and Anna’s kindergarten photos took her attention.

He wasn’t to be underestimated. Neither was she.

A
FTER
RESCHEDULING THE
meeting he’d missed with
Chief Lindsey, Peyton tipped the parking valet and hauled ass to his
grandfather’s house. Nathaniel had known—there was no doubt about it. When
they’d briefly spoken while he was in Côte d’Ivoire, his grandfather had been
cryptic, accusing him of being “nowhere near close” to realizing what he’d left
behind in this town.

Now he knew. Two daughters—twins. And one was gone. He
didn’t know when or how or why Anna had died, but he would soon.

A security gate had been installed around the perimeter
of the meticulously groomed Turner estate—made of wrought iron and hidden by
rose bushes and climbing ivy, but a gate nevertheless. In a neighborhood with
Wellesley Lake and steep-shouldered hills in the distance, composed of a
handful of jaw-dropping homes and a touristy luxury ranch that appeared to have
expanded in the years he’d been gone, security was always a staple. He didn’t
think his grandfather needed the extra boundary, but maybe something had
happened to make the standoffish high-reaching gate and high-tech panel more of
a necessity than added peace of mind.

At the edge of the driveway that circled a stone
three-tiered fountain, he lowered the window to identify himself through the
intercom. On the outside his grandfather’s estate looked updated, evolved, but
structurally it was the same Georgian mansion that had felt like a fancy prison
after the death of his grandmother Estella. Back then he’d wanted to break
away, to carve out a life that wasn’t under his grandfather’s tyranny. When
he’d slunk out of town to join that first mission, he’d found it freeing to be
an anonymous hero. It had cost him material possessions—all but his father’s
pocket watch had been sold for cash that would help him survive untraceable—and
it had cost him, for a while, a sense of his own identity. He’d been stripped
of everything but a bone-deep need to be a part of something bigger than the
Turner name and all the trappings that came with it.

This house was not his home. At his core he was a nomad,
with no permanent place to go and no one to belong to. Nathaniel had been his
guardian out of obligation; his mother hadn’t seen him as anything more than a
meal ticket. He and Valerie weren’t friends anymore, but were connected through
a girl who wanted nothing to do with him.

Little pitchers had big ears, all right, and if Lucy was
the type to tune in to gossip, then she knew he’d been a hellion lucky enough
to dodge juvie or worse and, yes, having nothing to do with him probably was in
her best interest.

He was sure he’d handled things with Valerie poorly at
the hospital. Maybe he’d even scared her, which he hadn’t wanted
to do. But this morning he was free in
every sense of the word, and now he wasn’t. Having that freedom taken away, and
replaced with something as unfamiliar and daunting as fatherhood, hurt.

So did the idea of losing the daughter he’d just met—and
the reality that he’d already lost another.

“Maybe things could be more screwed up than they are,” he
mumbled, leaving his luggage in the back of the SUV and walking to the two-storey
portico. But at the moment he couldn’t conjure any scenario that would actually
surpass this situation in the “screwed up” category.

The butler, Jasper Thaxton, swung the heavy double doors
open before Peyton reached the bell. “I have one question for you.”

Peyton’s shoulders stiffened. Jasper had always been one
for formalities and diplomacy, and his closed-off expression and clipped tone
displayed neither. “Yeah?”

“Did you do what you had to do?”

Peyton relaxed into a grin. “Yeah.” He offered his hand
for a shake and was surprised when the man hauled him into a back-clapping hug.

“All right, old man,” Jasper said, taking his jacket and
leading him through the vaulted-ceilinged foyer to the parlor that was still
filled with the rich-colored Victorian sofas and armchairs and period tables
Estella had collected during her lifetime. “Should I address you as Doctor
Turner now?”

“Hell, no. And who’re you calling ‘old man’? For God’s
sake, Jasper, is that gray hair at your temples?” After a moment their laughter
faded and Peyton hitched his chin upward. “Grandpa in the study?”

Jasper nodded.

“Then give me a bottle of brandy. I’m going up.”

Peyton went to the grand staircase, intentionally
avoiding even a glance in the direction of the solarium where he and Valerie
used to hang out and watch the sky through his grandmother’s telescope.

He found Nathaniel in the parlor that had been converted
into a study long before Peyton’s birth. His grandfather sat in a burgundy club
chair with a sketch pad and charcoal in his hands. The room, with its oak
walls, heavy draperies and towering bookcases, smelled of leather and wood
polish and Nathaniel’s imported cologne. On the nearby table the crystal
lily-shaped ashtray that had once been constantly filled with cigarette ashes
and cigar stubs was now filled with coins.

“I come bearing liquor,” Peyton said, surprised at the
sudden thickness in his voice. Hell, had he missed his grandfather this much?
He offered the bottle.

With the aid of a cane, Nathaniel rose from the chair,
propped the pad and charcoal on an easel and took the brandy. He glanced at the
label, nodded with approval. “Damn good stuff. Too good to be wasted on a man who’s
in town on a pit stop.” His voice was rough and as dry as the brandy he held.
He looked directly into Peyton’s face with a pair of steel-gray eyes set into a
stony, weathered face that drooped slightly on the right. “Are we drinking, or
not?”

Translation: Are
you staying, or not?

“Where do you keep the glasses?” Peyton replied. He’d
returned to see for himself how a stroke had affected his grandfather, and to
heed the old man’s cryptic warning regarding his will. But there was no way he
would ride out of Night Sky without getting to know his daughter … and Valerie.
Long ago he’d known everything about her, but she’d changed and he wanted to
find out exactly how much.

Nathaniel pursed his lips, indicated the modest bar
across the room and let Peyton pour. Brandy in hand, he returned to his seat
and offered Peyton the chair behind the massive black-trimmed cherry desk.

“Can we talk, Grandpa?”

Nathaniel settled comfortably in the chair, inspecting an
invisible flaw on the sleeve of his starched white shirt. “Go.”

“Tell me about the stroke.” Had Nathaniel, who in his
prime had been larger than life, been trapped in pain so intense that it had stolen
his consciousness? Thinking of his grandfather in that situation brought him
back to when he was seventeen and had come home from baseball practice to find
out that his grandmother had collapsed during her garden club social at
Wynthorpe Place. The row house that had once been remembered as a well-preserved
tearoom was now more colorfully remembered as the place where Junior League
humanitarian Estella Lee Turner had fallen on a tray of
quiches du jour
and suffered the heart attack that killed her.

“I’d just come home from a business trip to L.A., got hit
with a headache straight from hell. I reached out for the aspirin, then my face
started to twist and I pissed my pants.” Nathaniel touched his affected right
jaw. “Rose found me.”

“Rose?”

“Assistant. Michael passed a few years back.”

Peyton nodded, recalling a pencil-thin man who’d helped
keep his grandfather’s business affairs in order. “How’re you now?”

“I’m alive.” The finality in his tone suggested he’d
delved as far into this strand of conversation as he would go. “The company’s
well. Nora’s executive chairman.”

A mixture of regret and admiration coated the words. Nora
Tolliver was a California-bred cousin with barely enough Turner blood but more
than enough determination in her system to let her be groomed for the company
role Peyton had never wanted. He could only figure she’d spend the rest of her career
proving herself indispensible. “I wish her well, Grandpa.”

“Mean that, don’t you?”

“I do.”

“Well.” Nathaniel examined his brandy. “For a while now,
a girl in town’s been asking about you.”

Peyton took a measured swallow, then set his brandy down
on the desk. “Which girl?” He picked up a drawing from the desk and leaned back
in the chair. “Valerie Jordan or her daughter?” He turned the drawing around to
reveal a colored pencil fashion sketch signed L. Jordan.

His grandfather stared at him, unblinking. The man had a
mind for business, an eye for fashion and a hand for drawing. And right now
Peyton could almost see him creatively calculating his response.

“
My
daughter,”
Peyton went on, setting the drawing aside. “I saw Lucy and Valerie at Memorial today.
I also know about the children’s foundation, in Anna’s name. Why didn’t you
tell me about them when I called you from Côte d’Ivoire? Or—or when you found
me in Baltimore?”

Nathaniel drained his glass. “Let’s take a walk.”

Peyton capped his temper and followed his grandfather to
the garage that housed three new-model sedans, a Hummer, a Rolls-Royce and a
tarp-covered motorcycle.

Peyton knew without uncovering it that the motorcycle was
his escape bike, the MV Agusta he’d driven throughout Hill Country and beyond
when he thought he’d die if he didn’t just get on and ride away.

He watched his grandfather peel back the tarp, revealing
the bike he’d given up when he’d left Night Sky. Just one look at the
black-and-silver steel made Peyton think of speed, of being twenty-one
again—frustrated and simmering with wanderlust. He’d left the bike in the lot
at Big Bros’ Cages to follow Valerie to her beater of a car during a rainstorm.
The Agusta, the scuffed-up Grand Prix and the damn batting cage were all reminders
of the balmy spring night he’d slept with his best friend.

“Remember this, don’t you, son?”

He didn’t answer and fought the urge to go to it.

“When you left …” Nathaniel cleared his throat “… I
figured if there was one thing in this world you’d come back for, it was this.
This was your freedom. You cared about your freedom more than you did anything
else, including Valerie.”

Each word was a sharp needle of truth. The motorcycle
helped take him away from his grandfather’s expectations and his mother’s
clutches. He’d had friends at UT Dallas, but no one had known him the way
Valerie did. But she was rooted to her bastard of an uncle’s ranch and couldn’t
be extracted from this town.

“So now you’re, what, protecting Valerie from me,
Grandpa? Because it seems to me that all the years she and I were friends you
were just tolerating her while you paraded me in front of trust-fund society whores.”

An immediate burst of anger turned Nathaniel’s complexion
ruddy. “Estella loved her, and she’s the mother of my great-granddaughters.
She’s my responsibility now.”

“No, liability.” Peyton hesitated but asked the question
to which he already knew the answer. “A Pittsburgh orphan with no breeding and
money wasn’t good enough for a Turner, right?”

“Evidently you didn’t think so, not after you went off
the deep end.” Nathaniel straightened the tarp over the motorcycle, having
expertly deflected the question and thrust an arrow of poison into Peyton’s
gut. “I didn’t tell you about those little girls because I didn’t think you’d
come back even for them. And I didn’t want them or Valerie to know you were
that kind of man.”

“So that was your call to make?”

“Damn right. What—you going to stand there in your
wrinkled suit and tell me I should’ve known better? That I should’ve known what
kind of man you are? Tell me who you are, then, because I don’t know the boy
who made a fool of himself and then let go of his family and friends.”

Peyton stood stoically, but his grandfather’s words
stung. He’d made a mess of his life here, and dredging up the memories now was
like looking down at a dangerous stranger who looked a lot like him. But he’d
had his reasons for staying gone the way he had, and he wasn’t going to
apologize for becoming an aid worker and letting that work be the rescue he’d
needed then and still needed now. Just like his grandfather wasn’t going to
apologize for keeping him in the dark about his children. He’d had his reasons,
too.

“I practically gift-wrapped that damn surgical mentorship
in New Zealand for you. Not to mention med school and that staff position in
L.A.” Nathaniel shook his head, genuinely bewildered. “Where’d you end up?”

Peyton crossed his arms, sure that his grandfather had
unearthed this information—and probably more—by now. “After I came back to the
U.S. I went to UC Pritzker in Illinois for med, then enlisted in Doctors
Without Borders and eventually was put on staff at Johns Hopkins.”

Nathaniel stepped away from the covered motorcycle and
approached Peyton, studying him critically. “You got that badass look about
you, like your daddy. He wasn’t much older than you are now when he—” The old
man stopped himself, swerved away from that thought. “Where’d they stab you?”

Peyton gestured to the front of his thigh. “I told you on
the phone that I’m fine.”

“You’re not.” Nathaniel gave a chuckle that was void of
humor. “But you will be. Where’s your luggage?”

“In the car. I’ll swing by the motel—”

“No. This is your home.”

Peyton paused, not in the mood for a power struggle, but
also not willing to fall in line like a tin soldier.

“Grandpa, listen—”

“I want my grandson under this roof.” Left unspoken,
hanging in the air, was a plea that Peyton couldn’t discount. At his short nod,
Nathaniel went on. “Changes are coming to the company.”

“I’m not involved with the company.”

“But you
are
involved
when it comes to my will.” Nathaniel shifted to his full height, and his cane
wobbled with the effort. “I’m revising it. Lucy was given consideration when I
made adjustments some years back. But I didn’t know then that she’d take to
fashion. I want her to be provided for.”