Authors: Kristen Ashley
“You’re a master,” I told him.
He looked at me and smiled his huge, wild-ass smile.
“Fifty-seven years on this earth, I learn my calling is cookie making.”
“Worse callings to have,” I told him.
“That’s the damn truth,” he told me then went back to pressing out Christmas trees.
Hoot Booker stayed in Mustang and worked the late shift at The Rambler so Janie could give that up after doing it for years. He lived in the room over the bar where I used to live. He didn’t make a mint, he didn’t live in a palace and he didn’t care.
He didn’t need much seeing as he was right where he wanted to be.
See? Totally my Dad.
He was just like me.
He’d shared his story with Gray and me and there were no protestations of the wronged man. He had lived hard, played rough, did what he could to earn a living, not all of that legal and eventually found himself in a blood feud. A blood feud he ended.
But he did his time, a lot of it, and took that time to reflect.
And those reflections led to some decisions.
When he got out, he’d spent half his life in prison.
He wasn’t going to waste another second on stupidity.
Lucky me.
“Right,” I heard Gray say and I looked over my shoulder to see him on his cell walking into the kitchen eyes to his boots. “Right,” he repeated, stopping on the other side of the table and lifting a hand to wrap it around the back of his bent neck and taking in his posture made something stutter uncomfortably in me. “Right,” he whispered. “Yeah, thanks, man. Later.”
He studiously stared at his phone as he flipped it shut, kept his eyes downcast as he shoved it in his back pocket and then, slowly, he lifted his head and his eyes came to me.
One look at his face, that something in me stuttered to a halt, stalling all my systems.
“Wash your hands, Ivey,” Gray ordered gently.
Oh God.
Oh
God.
Not today, not three days from Christmas.
“Mrs. Cody?” I whispered and Gray shook his head.
“No, baby. Now wash your hands, yeah?”
When I didn’t move, stood frozen to the spot, Hoot’s hand wrapped around my forearm and he murmured, “Wash your hands, beautiful.”
I looked to him then to the dough. Then I rubbed my hands clean of lumps, walked to the sink and washed them.
I was drying them, turning and nearly bumped into Gray when I did. I had barely got my body to facing him fully when both his hands settled on either side of his neck, he bowed his back and his face was in mine.
“Fast, right? I tell you fast.”
Oh God.
“Gray –” I whispered.
“That was Lash. He got word. Casey’s body was found a week ago in Oakland. He’d been shot in the head. Cops don’t know why. They’re investigating.”
I stared at him.
“Ivey.”
I kept staring at him.
“Baby,” he whispered, his hands giving me a squeeze.
Casey.
I closed my eyes, twisted my head and shoved my face in neck as the sob tore through me.
His hands left my neck and his arms wrapped around me tight.
My arms did the same.
My brother.
My Casey.
Now really dead to me.
My body bucked with another sob and I felt my hair shifted to the side then I felt my father’s big, warm hand curl around the back of my neck.
And I stood in a warm kitchen with Christmas music playing, bay and rosemary scent all around me, safe in the attentions of two men who loved me as I cried for another one who used to love me, who used to be everything to me.
Until he wasn’t.
* * * * *
Eleven months later…
The noise came on the monitor, my eyes opened to darkness and Gray’s arm tightened around me.
“Your turn,” I muttered into the dark.
“Yeah,” Gray muttered back, shifted, kissed my shoulder and exited the bed.
I pretended to fall back asleep.
But I didn’t.
I did what I did every time it was his turn.
I gave it time then slid out of bed silently, tiptoed out of the room and went one room over, a room that became Gray’s office when the den was taken up by Grandma Miriam.
Now it was a nursery.
The light glowed through the opened door and I approached it, with practice, without a sound.
Then I peered around to see my man in his light blue, drawstring pajama bottoms, his glorious chest bare, sitting and rocking in the rocking chair with our baby son, Holt cradled in his arm, Gray holding the bottle to his little baby lips.
Holt was my idea. Holt Cody was the only name I could come up with that was more cowboy than Grayson Cody.
I loved it.
Gray thought I was crazy but he didn’t fight me.
I watched for awhile thinking pretty much everything Gray did, walking, talking, working, sleeping, breathing, was hot.
But nothing was hotter than watching him feeding our baby.
Once I got my fill, I tiptoed back to our bed.
And, as usual, I was dead asleep when my husband came back to me.
* * * * *
Four months later…
A buzz of low noise filled the house as I walked down the hall in my tight, black skirt, my exquisite little blouse doing so on my fabulous, high-heeled designer pumps.
I moved to the sink and dealt with the dishes I carried, dumping the remains of food, rinsing them and shoving them into the dishwasher.
I noted it was full.
This was because there were a lot of people there.
I put in a tablet, shut it, locked it and turned it on.
Listening to the motor start, the water gushing, I stood with my hands light on the edge of the sink and my eyes slid out the window to the barn.
It was March. Next month, I’d need to plant my impatiens.
“Ivey, honey?”
I turned my head, surprised to see Macy standing right beside me.
“Hey, sorry, I was…” I trailed off then finished, “Sorry.”
She smiled and it didn’t reach her eyes.
Then she moved and I looked down to see she had an envelope in her hand.
I looked back at her.
“What –?” I started.
“She wanted you to have this,” she whispered and tears stung my nose but I held them back, lifted my hand and took the envelope.
She wrapped an arm around me sideways, gave me a brief hug, kissed the side of my head then moved out of the kitchen.
My head dropped and I turned the note over.
My name was written in slightly wobbly, cursive writing.
I closed my eyes.
Then I opened them, used my finger to slit the envelope open then I pulled out the papers inside.
There were three sheets covered front-to-back in that same wobbly, cursive writing.
At the top of the first sheet, it read,
Ivey, child,
Gray told me you liked my preserves. I never got the chance to teach you how to make them and since Gray’s great-grandma taught me and his great-great-grandma taught her, I best get on with teaching you…
Then for the next six pages she gave me step by step by step
by step
instructions on how to make strawberry jam.
All of them bossy.
My eyes went back to the barn as I clutched the papers to my chest but I didn’t see it, it was way too blurry.
We’d put Grandma Miriam in the ground that day and I thought I’d lost her forever.
Now, I realized, standing in her kitchen, wearing her ring, married to her grandson, planning to plant her impatiens and holding her bossy letter to me, I’d never lose her.
Not ever.
“Dollface?” I heard and I turned my blurry eyes to the door, blinking and (kind of) seeing Gray carrying Holt and coming at me.
Then they got to me.
“Baby,” Gray whispered and I kept hold of my piece of Grandma Miriam as I took hold of another piece of her by taking my son from his Daddy. “You okay?” Gray asked gently.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumbled instead of lied, curling Holt close to me.
My beautiful baby with his deep blue eyes with their dark, russet tipped lashes grabbed my hair and yanked.
I smiled a shaky smile at him.
Gray’s arm curved around my waist.
“What’s the letter?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head to get control of myself and lifted my eyes to him.
“Nothing, just Mrs. Cody being bossy.”
His brows drew slightly together then his deep blue eyes with their dark, russet tipped lashes moved over my face. Then his brows relaxed and he gave me his tender look.
Then he leaned in, pulling me and his son closer with his arm going tight around me and he kissed my forehead.
Then he kissed Holt’s.
Then his eyes caught mine and he whispered, “Say you love me, Ivey.”
I leaned into him.
Then, through my sadness, I happily did as ordered and whispered back, “I love you, Gray.”
And then I turned my neck, leaned deeper and rested my head on my husband’s shoulder. Gray pulled us both closer and I aimed my eyes out the window where I could see our barn, part of our orchard and, in the distance, the purple ridge of Colorado mountains.
Holt fidgeted and gurgled in my arms.
My husband stayed silent with his arm wrapped around his family.
I sighed.
* * * * *
Four months later…
My preserves turned out
great.
* * * * *
Two years, one month later…
I sat on the porch swing and watched.
Gray was standing with Norrie beside her SUV. He’d dipped his head as she lifted up to her toes in her cowboy boots and kissed his cheek. His hand was at her waist and from my place I couldn’t see but I knew in my heart it gave her a squeeze.
They moved away from each other and she turned and waved at me.
I waved back.
She moved to the driver’s side door and Gray bent to look into her backseat where I could see the thick, burnished blond-haired head of Holt who was strapped in a child’s seat and I could also see Abel’s near-identical hair where he was secured in his baby seat.
Norrie started up the truck and waved again as Gray backed away, not waving but jerking up his chin.
Then she reversed out as he turned and made his way to me.
He had to go to the stairs because there was a lush, thick, wide border of white, pink and red impatiens all around the house including the porch. He could leap it, I had no doubt, but he never did.
Norrie drove down the lane as I watched my husband move. And as he made his way to me, he lifted his hand, doing what men do for whatever reason they did it. He grabbed the bill of his baseball cap, pulled it off, flipped it back on, pulled it off again then settled it back on his head.
I didn’t know why men did that and I didn’t ask because I didn’t care. Like everything Gray, when he did it, I thought it was hot. I didn’t want to bring his attention to it because if I did, he might stop.
He walked up the steps and came right to me, bending low to grab his beer bottle that he left on the porch floor when Norrie came to get the kids.
She did this often and she did it to give Gray and me a break. But she mostly did it because she was a grandma who loved her grandkids and she was a mother who missed her son growing up. Therefore, if she could help it, she was not going to miss any more of her family.
This sentiment was shared by Hoot who came regularly, stayed long and, not as often, but it happened, took the boys off on some adventure with their Granddaddy.
I grew up with very little.
Therefore I loved it that my boys had everything.
Gray settled on the swing at my side, immediately hooked an arm around my chest and pulled me into him, forcing my hips to twist in the seat as he pulled my back to the side of his front.
With ease borne of practice since we sat here often just like that, I lifted my bare feet and tanned legs, cocked my knees, set my feet in the seat and I settled my weight into Gray.
When I settled, my eyes aimed themselves toward the paddock where the horses were standing or wandering lazily. The sky was blue. It was late afternoon but the sun was still bright and warm. There was no sound except the whispered rush of a breeze in the leaves of the trees.
I sighed.
Then I smoothed my hand over the stylish (I thought) but still countrified, cowgirl sundress I was wearing, my hand moving over the growing baby bump that was my belly.
For awhile, Gray and I sat in silence as we often did.
Then I broke the silence.
“What do you think about the name Booker?”
I named our first boy Holt Grayson Cody. Gray named our second boy Abel Lash Cody.
Yes, Lash.
Seriously, I loved Grayson Cody.
Now, we’d found out the baby growing in my belly was another boy.
I didn’t mind another boy. The two I had were awesome.
But it was my turn to name our child.
“Booker?” Gray asked.
“Booker Frederick,” I answered.
I felt him take a sip of beer.
Then he muttered, “Works for me.”
Easy as that.
Works for me.
I grinned at the horses.
We fell silent again and the swing swayed gently.
Then it hit me I was in a swing when I first met Gray.
And now we were in a swing together on the porch on his house on his land.
Him and me.
“Baby?” I called.
“Yeah, dollface,” he answered.
“Paid in full,” I whispered and his arm gave me a squeeze.
“Say again?” he asked.
“You promised me by the time I left this earth, you’d pay me back. You should know, you paid that debt early,” I answered softly then slid my hand again over my belly and finished quietly, “
Way
early and
way
paid in full.”
Gray was silent and still a moment then he shifted and I felt his lips on my hair.
He shifted back and muttered, “Good.”
I grinned again.
Then we fell silent again and swayed.
We did this awhile.
Then Gray asked, “Feel like headin’ into town for a pulled pork sandwich and a coupla games of pool at The Rambler?”