Authors: Kristine Rolofson
“Beer,” she repeated, looking exasperated. “My grandmother seems to have a craving and asked me to ask you if you had any she could borrow.”
He laughed, and the horse raised his head and took a few steps backward. “Whoa there,” he told him, but he looked over Kate’s shoulder to make sure Danny was there. The boy never seemed to tire of pushing metal trucks around a hole he’d dug near the old water trough, and sure enough, he was still hunched over a yellow bulldozer. “I have a few bottles in the fridge. Do you know where I—we live?”
“No.” And he could tell she didn’t want to.
“Danny and I are in the largest bunkhouse.”
“Not the foreman’s house?”
“Too far away.” Her eyes were still that odd shade of blue, with dark fringed lashes and eyebrows tilted like bird wings. “Gert needs someone to live close to the house.”
“I see.”
Dustin pointed to the bunkhouse, the one with the blue curtains in the windows that faced a front porch. “You can help yourself to the beer. I’m not quite done here.”
“Thanks.” She started to turn away, then stopped and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, I almost forgot. Gram wanted to know if you and…your son would like to join us for pizza. And beer.” She smiled, just a little.
“Not tonight,” he said. “But tell her thanks anyway.”
“I will.” She strode away from him, toward
the bunkhouse, and Dustin watched her step onto the front porch and open the door. Dustin wanted nothing more than to remind her that they’d made love. More than once. He wasn’t a stranger she could walk away from as if they’d never spoken more than a few words.
He should have known he’d run into her. Obviously. Dustin fiddled with the horse’s halter and pretended not to watch Kate leave the bunkhouse, two bottles of beer in her hand, and those long legs hurrying down the porch steps. He watched her round the corner of the bunkhouse and head toward her grandmother’s.
“What did the lady want?” Dustin looked over the fence into his son’s dark eyes.
“To borrow something.”
“What?”
“Something to drink for Grandma Gert.”
The boy smiled up at him. “She’s pretty.”
“Yes.” The horse bumped him with its head. “I’ll finish up here and then we’ll go find us something to eat, okay?”
“Okay.” Danny climbed on the fence and hung his thin arms over the top rail. “I forgot about supper.”
“Me, too.”
“What about Grandma Gert?”
He backed up the horse a few feet and began to let out the rope. “What about her?”
“Is she having supper?”
“Yep. With her family.”
“
We’re
her family, too,” the boy insisted. “She told me.”
“There’s a lot of different kinds of family,” Dustin said, but couldn’t think of anything else to add to that. So he led the horse into the middle of the corral and urged him into a trot as he let out the rope.
Yeah, lots of different kinds of family, all right. The kind that beat the crap out of you for nothing and the other kind, the birthday party kind.
We’re making our own kind of family
was what he should have told the boy, but truth was he wasn’t sure he believed that himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
O
NLY FOR HER
grandmother would Kate have confronted the cowboy and asked for a favor. Tomorrow she would buy plenty of beer, replace Dustin’s, and make sure her unpredictable grandmother would have all the drinks she wanted. For the rest of her time home, she should certainly be able to avoid the man, or at least act as if the sight of him didn’t affect her.
And why should it? She was a different person, a woman with a life far from Beauville, Texas, and cheating cowboys.
“I don’t know why you hired that particular young man,” Martha said, when Kate returned to the kitchen with the bottles of beer.
“Why did you, Gran?” Kate flipped the cap from the bottle and tossed it into the garbage can by the ancient refrigerator. “I thought you were looking for another married couple.”
“Or thinking again about a move into town,” Martha said. “Which makes a heck of a lot more sense than living way out—”
“I’ll move when I’m good and ready, Martha,” Gert interrupted. “And it’s not that easy to find help. Dustin’s only been here a few weeks, but we’re getting along just fine.” She turned to Kate. “Honey, I don’t need a glass. I’ll drink it right from the bottle. It’s more fun that way.”
“You should have a cleaning woman, someone to help you here in the house all the time,” Kate said, looking around the cluttered kitchen. She would clean while she was here, give the place a good scrubbing, wash the checked curtains, clean the windows. “I’m sure Dustin does his job outside, but you shouldn’t be alone in here all day.”
“The boy visits.”
Martha rolled her eyes. “A little boy isn’t the same as a housekeeper, Mother. You know that. And those Jones boys aren’t trustworthy. Isn’t the older brother in jail?”
“Jail?” Kate almost dropped her pizza in her lap. Gert ignored both questions and continued on as if it wasn’t important or newsworthy.
“Dustin worked for Jake at the Dead Horse before he came here and Jake had nothing but good things to say about him.”
“Why did he leave?” She plopped a piece of pizza on her grandmother’s plate, then lifted a piece toward her mother.
“Thank you, dear,” Martha said, reaching for her glass of iced tea. “That sure smells good.”
Gert pulled her plate closer. “Mmm, thanks. He needed a place for the boy, he said. With Jake running his own spread and Bobby Calhoun on his own, the Dead Horse has gotten kinda wild.”
“Bobby was always a character. He’s still on the ranch, then?”
“Oh, my goodness, yes,” Gert agreed. “Martha, do you remember when he was a little guy?”
“I sure do. Wildest kid in first grade.”
Kate figured she’d earned a little prying. “What about Dustin’s wife? Where is she?”
“I have no idea,” Gram said. “I don’t ask him much about his personal life, but he tries real hard with that boy of his. I don’t think they’ve lived together very long.”
“Why?”
She shrugged. “He’s not real comfortable being a father, I guess. Sometimes the man looks like he doesn’t know what to do or say to the boy. And little Danny seems in awe of his father, like he’s on his best behavior all the time.”
“Maybe he just got custody of the boy,” Martha said, finishing the slice of pizza with one last bite. “I wonder who his mother is.”
Kate knew. Lisa Gallagher. Lisa had been everything Kate had not been, including free to spend as much time as she wanted with Dustin and the rest of the wild Jones family. A year older than Kate, she’d been a waitress at a bar outside of town
that summer. Which was why she’d calculated that Danny would be at least eight.
“Dustin’s son is very small for his age,” she said, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until her grandmother answered.
“He’s a little thin, I guess.”
He looks more like seven, she thought, thinking of the child actors she’d seen on the set of
Loves of Our Lives.
“He’s a nice boy,” Gert declared, but Kate didn’t know if she meant Dustin or his son, and decided not to ask. She’d had enough of Dustin Jones for one lifetime.
“Have you opened all your cards?” she asked, hoping to change the subject of the conversation. Her mother reached down and lifted a large wicker basket filled with pastel envelopes.
“Looks like you have your work cut out for you, Mother,” she said.
“My, my, this will be fun,” Gert said, taking another sip of beer. “Reading all of those might take me a week or two.”
“And there are presents to open,” Kate said. “They’re in the trunk of the car. I’ll bring them in as soon as we’re done eating.”
“My, what a day.” Gert beamed at her granddaughter. “Having you home is the best present of all.”
Kate blinked back sudden tears and leaned over to hug her grandmother. “I’m glad to be here.”
“And we’re glad to have you back,” her mother added. “There isn’t anything we’ve looked forward to more than that.”
“Me, too,” Kate managed to answer. “I’m always glad to be home.” She left the older women and went out to the Lincoln under the guise of getting the birthday gifts. She really needed to breathe the thick, heated air and look up at the sky for a few moments of peace. New York seemed very far away.
“I
WANT TO GIVE IT
to her
now,
” the boy insisted, “cuz today’s her birthday.”
“It can wait ’til tomorrow,” Dustin said. “She’s got company.”
“So?”
“So…” Dustin repeated, wondering how to explain without hurting the boy’s feelings. Gert was with her family now. “It’s not polite to interrupt when Gert has company, that’s why.”
“She won’t mind,” Danny said, pulling his sneakers on over his clean feet. He’d just gotten out of the tub and, instead of putting pajamas on, he’d dressed in clean clothes and figured he was going visiting. “Maybe they’re gone and she’s all alone.”
No such luck, Dustin knew. He was able to see
the driveway of the main house from his second-story bedroom window. Kate’s Lincoln was still parked there. How long was she going to stay in town? Long enough to talk Gert into a retirement home? Long enough to sell the ranch and kick him and the boy out? He’d tried this afternoon to ask Jake if he knew anything about his grandmother’s future plans, but they’d been interrupted before he could get to it. Still, Gert had told him to buy more breeding stock, had given the green light to his ideas for improving the range lands, had agreed to tearing down some of the buildings that would blow down in the next storm. Gert had even hinted that she’d be willing to sell some shares of the Lazy K to the right man.
“Dad,” the boy said, tugging on his sleeve as if to remind him that he was standing there. “She’s gonna like it, right?”
“Sure she is, but—”
“Good.” Danny, dressed in clean clothes that were too small for him, picked up the tissue-wrapped gift and gave his father one of his rare smiles. “This is the best part, you know.”
“Best part of what?” They wouldn’t stay long, wouldn’t even move from inside the back door. They could be in and out in five minutes and then Danny would go to bed happy.
“Birthdays.”
“And the best part is what, the presents?”
“Yep,” the boy said, pushing the screen door open. “Can I have a party when I’m nine?”
“Sure.”
Danny turned back toward his father. “Really? You mean it?”
“I’ll do my best,” Dustin promised, though he didn’t know where the boy would be come fall. And he wasn’t even sure when his birthday was, exactly. He’d have to find out without Danny catching on that he didn’t know when the boy was born. Damn Lisa for this whole mess, he thought for the hundredth time. She’d no right to mess up the boy the way she had and leave other people to pick up the pieces, but that was Lisa. A more selfish, self-centered woman hadn’t been born.
“Are you coming with me?”
Dustin hesitated. “You want me to?”
“Yes,” the boy answered, his eyes big. “It’s getting dark.”
“Well, then I’m coming with you,” he said, following the boy out the door and into the dusk. It was his favorite time of day, when chores were done and the wind had died down and everything seemed to be settled into place for the night. Kate and Martha should have gone by now, leaving Gert to go to bed. The old woman’s lights were off before nine most nights and here it was almost that time now.
“I’m not really scared,” Danny whispered,
waiting for Dustin on the porch. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He hid a smile. “I know that. Sometimes a guy just likes a little company at night.”
“Yeah,” the boy echoed. “Sometimes a guy does.” They walked together in silence. “You think she’ll like it, right?”
“Right.”
“It smells.”
“It’s supposed to.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot.” He sniffed the package. “Flowers, huh?”
“Roses.”
“Okay. Roses, roses,” he whispered to himself, trying to memorize the name of the scent, Dustin supposed. He escorted the boy to the back door of the sprawling ranch house and knocked against the peeling frame of the door. The whole place needed work. From sanding and painting the house and outbuildings, to repairing the cracked windows on the second story, to putting a new roof on the barn, the Lazy K needed a lot of work to lose its neglected appearance. If it were his…
It wasn’t the first time Dustin had caught himself thinking that way, knowing that the amount of money he’d managed to save over the past few years while working at the Dead Horse wouldn’t be enough for a down payment on the outbuildings, never mind the house and land. Still, if Gert
was willing to sell shares, then maybe anything was possible.
“Come on in,” he heard Gert call, and Danny was three steps ahead of him into the kitchen, the present clutched in his small hand and the birthday card scrunched into his jeans pocket, no doubt.
“Pizza,” Danny declared, sniffing the air before hurrying over to where Gert sat at the table. “Happy Birthday,” he said, and handed her the gift.
“My, my,” the old woman murmured, reaching out to envelop the child against her. “This is too pretty to open.”
“I wrapped it myself,” he told her, with a shy look at Dustin. “My daddy helped a little.”
“Not much,” Dustin confessed, staying by the door. Kate wasn’t there, but her mother was eyeing him as if he’d come to steal the silver. “I’m not very good at wrapping.”
“Come sit down,” Gert said. “Pull out a chair. Are you hungry?”
“No, ma’am, we ate already.”
Martha rose and began to clear the table of the dirty dishes. “We have plenty of pizza left. And there’s lots of cake, too.” She surprised him by smiling at the boy. “I’ll bet I could interest you in a piece of cake.” Danny looked toward him for permission.
“Sure, go ahead,” Dustin said, relaxing now that there was no sign of Kate.
“Coffee?” Martha McIntosh asked. “I was just going to make a pot. Decaf, though,” she added.
“Thank you, but don’t go to any—”
Gert waved her hand at him. “No one’s going to any trouble, Dustin. My daughter’s afraid I drank too much beer, so she’s bound and determined to pour coffee in me.” She winked at Dustin. “Isn’t that right, Martha?”