At Bluebonnet Lake (Texas Crossroads Book #1): A Novel (9 page)

“You couldn’t.” The sincerity in those two words told Kate that Greg understood, and that warmed her heart. When she’d told her boss, Heather had said she understood, but Kate still wasn’t convinced of that. She had no doubts about Greg.

“I can’t imagine life without Sally.” There had been a time when Kate had thought that anyone over seventy was ancient, but that had been before her grandmother reached the milestone. Now, though she was realistic enough to know that Sally would not live forever and indeed did not want to, Kate was not ready to lose her.

“That’s where we differ,” Greg said, his voice a bit too hearty. Had she sounded so upset that he’d felt the need to comfort her? Before Kate could tell him that she was fine, he continued. “I’d like nothing more than to imagine life without my sisters.”

“You’re joking.” His tone sounded ironic, but she wanted to be certain.

“Would I joke about four girls who’ve spent their entire lives expecting me to help them? I’m a year-round Santa Claus.”

Kate smiled, her pensive mood chased away by Greg’s lighthearted words. “I gather that they’re younger.”

“The oldest of them—that’s Ashley—is ten years younger than me. Taylor’s the youngest. She’s thirteen years younger.”

Kate did some quick math. “They must be close in age.”

A chuckle was her answer. “My mom calls them the clockwork quartet. Just like clockwork, one arrived each September for four years. She won’t admit it, but I suspect she and my father were hoping for another boy.”

It was only the slightest change of tone. Kate might not have noticed it, but she’d been listening carefully, hoping to learn more about Greg and his relationship with his family. She kept remembering his comment about his father lamenting Greg’s missing sports gene and wondered how that had affected him. The fact that his smile had disappeared when he’d pronounced the words “my father” told more than Greg probably realized he’d revealed.

“But you love your sisters dearly,” Kate said, infusing her words with a smile.

Greg shrugged as a fish emerged, then plopped back into the water. “I’d love them more if they called me for things other than money. It seems one of them always needs something. A man can’t think when his cell’s ringing.”

Kate looked out at the lake, once again silent except for the gentle lapping of water against the dock. “Then you came to the right place. Your cell will never ring here.” That had to be a relief for a man who was unemployed. Kate was certain it was difficult for Greg to refuse his sisters’ requests.

“You don’t hear me complaining about the lack of cell service,” Greg said, “but I didn’t realize that was one of Rainbow’s End’s attractions until I arrived. By then, I’d already taken other precautions.”

Kate was intrigued. “Like what?”

“I told them I was going trekking in a South American jungle and would have only sporadic connectivity.”

The idea was so preposterous that Kate laughed. “You’re kidding, aren’t you?”

“Absolutely not. I wanted some time to think.”

And Rainbow’s End was the perfect location for thinking, which brought Kate back to the dinnertime discussion. Rainbow’s End was an anachronism, a place that offered solitude and serenity to a world that sought stimulation. It offered exactly what Greg needed right now, but it clearly did not meet either the newlyweds’ or the Schwartzes’ needs.

If there were more people like Greg, the resort might have a future, but Greg was one of a kind.

Rainbow’s End was doomed.

T
he nightmare came again.

As he bolted upright, his body shaking in its aftermath, Greg switched on the light and tried to ease the pounding of his heart. It was always the same, coming without warning. He’d dream of something perfectly innocuous, and then all of a sudden he was standing on the edge of a precipice. In the throes of the dream, that seemed logical, although when he woke, Greg couldn’t understand how a man so afraid of heights that he wouldn’t visit observation decks had gotten to the top of that mountain crag. All he knew was that if he moved a foot in any direction, he’d plummet to his death.

And so he stood there, scarcely daring to breathe. He remained motionless, his heart throbbing as adrenaline coursed through his veins. One step. That’s all it would take, but Greg wouldn’t take that step. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t, for he wasn’t ready to die.

And then, a second, a minute, an hour later—he had no sense of time, only that he stood on the edge for what seemed like an eternity—he would hear the voice. A man’s voice. A familiar voice. One that he could never quite identify. Though he struggled
to recall it when he wakened, Greg was unable to determine who had been calling him. He simply knew he’d heard the voice many times before.

“Jump! Jump!” the voice called to him.

Never.
Though he made no sound for fear that even pronouncing a single word would send him over the cliff, the response echoed silently through his mind. He knew what awaited him if he jumped, if he so much as twitched. And then a large hand pressed the small of his back. It was always the same. Before he could stop himself, he was tumbling, a scream frozen in his throat.

Greg pushed himself to his feet and searched for a towel to wipe the sweat from his face. The dream always ended before he hit the ground, but that didn’t stop him from remembering the sheer terror of falling into the unknown, all the while realizing that someone—probably someone he knew—had pushed him.

His logical mind told him that if the voice was familiar, it must belong to whoever had pushed him. But who hated him enough to send him to his death? It was true that Greg had rivals. No one reached the position he had without them. But enemies who wanted him dead? That seemed far-fetched. Surely no one hated him that much.

It was only a dream, Greg reminded himself each time he woke in its clutches. Only a dream. A horrible dream.

It frightened him. It made sleep impossible. And yet it had positive effects. The days after the nightmares were different from all the others. Those days Greg worked feverishly, as if focusing every bit of his attention on the project at hand would keep the memories of the precipice and the terrifying fall at bay. It usually worked, but that was in California when he had mind-challenging projects. What could he do here to push from his brain the thoughts of that free fall into oblivion?

Greg blinked as the image of Kate’s face appeared before him. It made no sense. She wasn’t a project, wasn’t even part of any project he’d ever worked on. She didn’t need help. There was no reason he should be thinking of her. But he was, and that puzzled him.

Over the years that the nightmares had plagued him, Greg had determined the pattern. Always before, when the nightmares had come, he’d been worried about some aspect of a project. He would feel as if he were deadlocked, faced with an insurmountable problem. He’d feared failure, and so he would gnaw on the problem like a terrier with a bone, approaching it from every possible angle. Nothing would help. At last, exhausted, he would fall asleep, and then the nightmare would come.

When he would waken, his only thought was to put the memories behind him, and so Greg would turn to the one thing that was virtually guaranteed to occupy every corner of his brain: his work. And, though he could not explain how or why it happened, somehow the terror of falling would become the catalyst he needed to turn his thoughts in a new direction. Those days when he would work maniacally in the aftermath of the nightmare, desperately trying to keep his fears at bay, he invariably found the breakthrough he needed.

Tonight was different. There was no reason for the nightmare. Greg no longer had a company to worry him. He had no thorny problem to solve. He should have slept dreamlessly. But he had not, and that made no sense. He’d slept well ever since he’d arrived at Rainbow’s End. Fresh air, a bit of honest labor, and the absence of any serious worries had him sleeping like the proverbial baby. Until tonight.

Greg couldn’t explain the nightmare any more than he could explain why he’d wakened thinking of Kate Sherwood. All he knew was that sleep was gone.

“Here we are.” Kate smiled as she pulled the car into the diagonal spot in front of Sam’s Bootery. She’d seen pictures of streets like these, but this was the first time she’d realized how much easier this was than parallel parking. It was too bad that the streets at home in New Jersey weren’t wide enough to accommodate angled parking. There, rather than jockey her car into place, holding up traffic while she tried to fit it into a tight spot, Kate normally chose a parking lot, even though it meant walking several blocks. Dupree was different. Not only were the streets virtually devoid of traffic, but Kate hadn’t seen a public parking lot anywhere.

Unfortunately, there was no need for one, with at least a third of the stores vacant. Even during the worst of the last recession, most of the shops near her apartment had remained open, the owners somehow managing to make it through the tough times. That obviously was not the case in Dupree. The Sip ‘n’ Sip appeared to be the only establishment still open in its block, and the store next to the bootery had a large closed sign in its front window. It was no wonder the Schwartzes had been disappointed. Dupree was not a thriving metropolis. Still, the bootery looked promising.

“You can’t miss it,” Roy had declared when he’d repeated the directions to reach the boot maker. He was right. Kate had turned from Lone Star Trail onto Pecan Street and two blocks later, there was Sam’s Bootery, exactly where Roy had said it would be. If she’d had any doubts, the large fiberglass boot on the sidewalk in front of the plate glass window would have erased them.

“This is just what I was hoping for,” Sally said, gesturing toward the huge boot.

“It’s a little too big, don’t you think?” Kate grabbed her bag and hurried around the car, planning to help Sally, but her grandmother had already swung her legs out of the car and shook her head when Kate offered her arm for support.

“I’m fine,” Sally insisted. That seemed to be the case. Kate had noticed no shortness of breath when they’d walked to breakfast this morning, and Sally’s cheeks had more color each day. Even if the changes were only temporary, it appeared that Rainbow’s End was good for her. Kate offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

“The boot is wonderful.” Sally stood next to it, chuckling at the fact that it was taller than she. “I need a picture to show the girls back home.”

Kate nodded and pulled out her cell phone. “I’ll mail them to you, so they’ll be waiting when you return,” she said when she’d taken several shots. Unlike Kate, Sally had not brought her phone, insisting that phones and vacations did not mix. Greg, it seemed, agreed with her.

Kate had spent hours last night thinking about Greg and his family. While there were two sides to every story, she couldn’t help wondering about sisters whose primary interest in their brother was the gifts he could provide. Surely she had never treated Sally and Grandpa Larry that way.

“Let’s go in,” Sally said, her excitement visible in her heightened color. “I don’t want to wait another minute.” She might be in her seventies, but Sally was acting like a child at the first sight of snow. Kate smiled. It was wonderful to see her grandmother so enthusiastic.

As they opened the door to Sam’s Bootery, a bell tinkled and a woman called out, “I’ll be with you in a minute. I just need to finish this seam.”

The shop was smaller than Kate had realized. Instead of the showroom she’d expected, the front of the store consisted of a five- or six-foot-deep waiting area with two wooden captain’s chairs flanking a small coffee table. No pictures decorated the walls, and the room’s sole ornament was an old-fashioned soft drink bottle with a purple hyacinth stuck into it. The makeshift vase stood on one end of the counter that served as a room di
vider and kept customers from approaching the door to the back room. It was what Kate would have called a distinctly masculine room, all except for the flower whose fragrance competed with the smells of leather and polish.

There was nothing else for them to look at, and so while they waited for the woman to emerge from the back room, Kate and Sally admired the half-dozen pairs of boots in the front window. Some were small enough to fit toddlers, while others would accommodate very large adult feet. Each was different in both color and design. What they had in common were intricate patterns and meticulous stitching. Kate might not know a lot about cowboy boot design, but she did know that these were as well constructed as her expensive Italian stilettos.

“Sorry for the delay.”

Kate turned toward the woman’s voice, blinking in astonishment at the sight of one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen. Some might call her hair light brown, but Kate would have used the term caramel, with highlights that ranged from honey to molasses. Her blue eyes were as deep as the Texas sky, her nose and lips perfectly shaped, her cheekbones exquisitely chiseled. With her heart-shaped face and that glorious hair, the woman ought to be gracing a magazine cover, not working in a boot maker’s shop in Dupree, Texas.

“How can I help you?” the woman asked.

“We’re looking for Sam,” Sally explained. “Roy Gordon sent us.”

The woman’s lips curved into a smile as she walked around the counter toward them. Though her jeans and shirt were ordinary, her boots stole the show. Bright red and intricately patterned, they were clearly meant to demonstrate Sam’s expertise.

“I’m Sam,” the woman said. “Samantha, actually. My father is the original Sam Dexter. When he retired and I took over the shop, some folks started calling me Sam.”

Kate remained speechless, studying Samantha Dexter. Not only was her face drop-dead gorgeous, but her voice was melodic and her expression so engaging that Kate revised her first assessment. Why limit her to magazine ads? Samantha would be a natural for television. An instant later, Kate chided herself. Greg was right. It was difficult to stop thinking about work.

Extending her hand, Kate introduced herself and Sally, ending with, “We’re hoping you can fit us in boots.”

Samantha gave their feet an appraising look. “Six D and 7½ AA.”

“You’re right.” Sally’s voice held more than a note of curiosity. “How’d you know that?”

“It’s my business to know.” A slight frown crossed Samantha’s face. “I’m afraid I don’t have any ready-mades in your sizes, but I can certainly create bespoke boots for you.”

Kate smiled at the British term. She would have said custom, but perhaps boot makers had their own vernacular. “How long will that take?” She’d heard that people frequently waited months if not years for custom boots. Sally couldn’t wait that long.

Samantha’s blue eyes were serious as she said, “It takes me two days for each pair, but you’re in luck. My mom is in Austin visiting her sister, and my dad is bored at home. I wouldn’t have to twist his arm too hard to convince him to help me. That way we could have both pairs ready by close of business tomorrow. You’ll be able to enjoy them over the weekend.”

Kate was virtually speechless over the time frame. Either boots were easier to make than she thought or Samantha and her father did not need much sleep.

But while Kate said nothing, Sally was not tongue-tied. “That would be wonderful,” she said, her enthusiasm confirming that the boots were another part of her dream that was coming true.

The timing was perfect. Kate had only one other concern.
“What price range are we looking at?” she asked. While Sally might tell her not to worry about money, there was no reason to spend a fortune on boots she’d wear for less than a month.

“That depends on the kind of leather you choose and how elaborate a design you want.” Samantha pulled the largest boot from the window display. “This is ostrich. It’s considerably more expensive than calf or shark.”

“Shark?” Though Kate had a pair of snakeskin shoes, she had never worn shark.

“It’s my favorite,” Samantha told her. “It’s virtually indestructible and will last a lifetime.”

Sally laid her hand on Kate’s arm. “That’s what you should get. You’ll be wearing these boots for a long time.”

Though Kate doubted she’d wear the boots once she returned home, she wouldn’t argue. The price Samantha quoted was reasonable, and the quality appeared exceptional. Even if they remained in her closet once April ended, they’d be a souvenir of this time with Sally.

“I’m guessing these are your first boots, so let me show you what to look for in your next pair.” Samantha pointed out the single-needle stitching and the wooden pegs that attached the sole, explaining that those were considered hallmarks of fine custom-made boots. “Doing it this way takes longer, but I think it’s worth it. Now, let’s pick a style.” She reached below the counter and pulled out a photo album to show Kate and Sally some of the designs she’d made for other customers.