Kitabı oku: «Her Oklahoma Rancher»

Chapter One

Four years ago Hope, Oklahoma, had been a forgotten lake town, and Eve Vincent had been a patient in a VA hospital coming to terms with her new reality. As she transferred from her car to the wheelchair next to it, she realized that they’d both changed. The town was booming again. The resorts and hotels were up and running, and stores were reopened with new businesses. And Eve, like the little town of Hope, had reinvented herself. She’d survived the changes that had happened after an IED exploded, leaving her paralyzed from the waist down.

Eve hadn’t grown up in Hope but she now considered the little town her home. She had moved here to live on Mercy Ranch, owned by Jack West, the same man who had infused money and time into the local economy, essentially reviving the town. What Jack had done for Hope, he’d also done for the wounded warriors he’d brought to his ranch. He’d given them all a second chance and a way to start over.

Sometimes she thought about going back home to Texas. But home was too complicated. Her aging parents would want to coddle her even as they reminded her they had begged her not to join the army. Going back to Texas would mean facing the past, facing memories and people. The past was best left in the past. She had a new life, a new reality. Tough as it had been, she’d found happiness here. Contentment even.

As she headed for the ramp at the side of Mattie’s Café, she raised her face to the warm, late April sunshine. A perfect day. She glanced around, searching for Kylie West’s car. They met every Monday for lunch. It had been their routine since Kylie married Jack West’s son, Carson.

Kylie met her at the top of the ramp, holding the door open for Eve to enter the café. Eve smiled up at her friend. Kylie held her two-month-old foster daughter in her arms and she looked every bit the happy wife and mother she should be.

“You beat me here. Even with a baby and two kids, you’re early,” Eve teased her friend. Kylie was always early.

“It’s a hard habit to break,” Kylie said as she followed Eve into the diner. “I have a table in the corner.”

“Perfect.”

Holly, the owner of Mattie’s, approached with water and menus. She looked frazzled, her dark hair in a messy bun and circles under her eyes that suggested she hadn’t been sleeping.

“You okay, Holly?” Eve asked as the other woman set glasses of water on the table.

“It’s been a busy morning. Hectic. And, you know, life.”

“Anything we can do?” Kylie asked.

Holly shook her head but Eve thought she saw moisture gather in her eyes. “Nope. I’ve got this. I’ll be right back to get your orders.”

“I wish she understood that she has friends who are willing to help her.” Kylie situated her infant daughter in Eve’s arms. “I’m guessing that, even though you don’t like kids, babies or kittens, you want to hold this little darling?”

“I’m not that horrible.” Eve gladly took the tiny little girl. “I like kittens.”

“You’re absolutely not horrible,” Kylie assured her.

“And I think Holly is just holding everything together and afraid if she cracks, even a little, the dam will burst.”

“Agreed.”

Eve’s phone rang. Kylie reached for her purse but Eve stopped her. “No. It’s probably my parents. And I don’t want to talk to them.”

“You’re not talking to them?”

“Today you’re my friend, not my therapist.” Eve kissed the downy head of the infant in her arms. “I love this precious nugget.”

“Do not call her a nugget.”

“She’s bite-sized.” She kissed Cara’s cheeks and was rewarded with the sweetest baby smile. Brown eyes focused on Eve’s face and another grin followed.

“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Kylie asked with a dreamy voice.

“Are you seriously asking that question? Of course she’s beautiful.” Eve sighed as she held the baby close, sniffing hair that smelled of lavender.

She wanted one. She wouldn’t admit it, even to her best friend. Half the time she couldn’t even admit it to herself. She wanted what she couldn’t have. A husband, a family, a home of her own. Instead of admitting to those secret things, she smiled.

She shook her head slightly, dislodging the hint of melancholy. She was happy. She loved her life at Mercy Ranch. She loved her life. Period. She had a job translating documents and manuals to English. Four years ago she hadn’t dreamed she would be able to resume her life to this degree, so of course she was happy. The military had sent her to language school and she could still use those hard earned skills to support herself.

Her phone rang again. She held Cara in her right arm and reached for the phone with her left. The caller seemed to be getting smarter in their attempts to reach her. This time the number was blocked. She thought of friends she’d ultimately blocked from her life, lost contact with, pushed aside. All because she hadn’t wanted to face them from this chair. She hadn’t wanted to face their pity.

When she looked up, Kylie was watching, compassion in her eyes.

“Your parents again?” Kylie asked.

“No caller ID so I doubt it. Our last phone call didn’t end well and I told them I needed space but they’ve never blocked their number before.”

“Friend or therapist, I’m going to give you some advice.” Kylie moved her chair close. “You have to deal with your parents. They love you and you love them. Tell them what you need from them.”

“I know I’m going to have to talk to them, face-to-face. But somehow I have to make them see that I can’t come home. Mercy Ranch is my home now.” She focused on the baby in her arms. “They would chip away at my faith, my independence. I just can’t.”

The bell over the front door clanged. Eve glanced that way. Nothing unusual, a stranger walking through the doors of the café. It happened more frequently these days. Jack’s plan to bring tourists back to Hope had been successful. She started to glance away but the man walking through the door with a baby in his arms wasn’t a stranger. Suddenly she felt her skin go cold and her ears buzzed.

“Eve, are you okay?” Kylie swooped in to take her baby. “Breathe.”

“I can’t... I can’t breathe. I have to leave. I need to get out of here.”

Kylie followed her gaze toward the front of the café and the man standing just inside the door. He zeroed in on Eve with lightning precision. Eve reached for her glass of water, hands trembling as she lifted it to her lips.

“Who is he?” Kylie asked.

“Her worst nightmare,” he said as he approached their table.

Holly chose that moment to appear.

“Do I need to bring another menu?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. At the same time Eve shook her head and said, “No.”

Holly looked to Eve. She didn’t know how to get the words out. She didn’t know what to say. Her past, present and future had just collided in one big messy pileup and her heart still couldn’t catch up.

Six years since they’d seen each other. Six years and he still had the ability to undo everything inside her. She couldn’t let him do that to her. She drew in a deep breath, ignored his dark auburn hair, the strength of his chin, the deep brown of his eyes. Okay, she didn’t really ignore anything about him. How could she when he was looming over her?

With a baby.

“Ethan, what are you doing here?” Her voice came out in a squeak.

“Obviously I’m finding out some things I didn’t know.” His voice changed from harsh to questioning, hurt maybe?

“Why don’t you have a seat?” Kylie offered, pulling up another chair. “Your baby is beautiful.”

He looked down at the bundle in his arms, as if he’d forgotten about the baby in the pink dress, all soft blond hair and big eyes.

Kylie looked from the baby to Eve. A baby. Eve shouldn’t be surprised. Four years of silence meant that any number of things could have happened in Ethan’s life. Including a wife and children. But what was he doing here? Why now?

She waited, knowing that whatever Ethan had to say, it would hurt. And it would change her life. She felt the devastation coming and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. Without thinking she grabbed Kylie’s hand, needing strength from her best friend as the man sitting at their table stared her down, accusations and pain shining in his dark eyes.

* * *

For several years Ethan Forester had run the scenarios through his mind, trying to decide which one best fit Eve’s defection from his life, from the life they’d planned together. In his mind the phone call ending their engagement had been made because she’d found someone else or possibly decided she wanted a military career over a marriage to a rancher from Texas. Her parents had never been in favor of their relationship so maybe she’d come around to their way of thinking. That’s what he’d told himself. It hadn’t made him feel any better but it had helped him to deal with the loss.

Even with the possible explanations, he’d struggled with how they’d gone from in love and engaged to separated and never seeing one another again. Over the phone they’d been planning the wedding because she would have been leaving the army and coming home. They’d picked the venue, the caterer, had even discussed bridesmaids and groomsmen. And then silence for several months.

Their next phone call had been her telling him their engagement was over and that she never wanted to see him again. Her parents had refused to tell him anything. No surprises there.

Now, face-to-face with her, he got it. And he was angry and hurt all over again. After years of being best friends, in love, engaged, she had kept this from him.

“You could have told me about...” The words came out, torn from somewhere deep inside. “You could have trusted me enough to tell me.”

“Not here,” she said. She turned away from him, not before he saw the flash of pain that flickered in her brown eyes.

He didn’t want to feel her pain. The moment sympathy tried to surface, he shoved it back down. Tori shifted in his arms and hugged his neck, a reminder that this wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about Eve. The six-month-old in his arms came first. This was about her life, her future.

He’d had the most difficult two weeks of his life. Tori had shared in the devastation. She was just too young to really understand how her life had changed on a rainy night two weeks ago.

The devastation he’d felt was about to be visited on the woman sitting in front of him, dark eyes warily studying the child in his arms.

“You’re right. Not here.” He didn’t know how to proceed. “Where can we talk?”

She backed away from the table, her gaze flicking briefly to the woman sitting across from her. She noticed his attention on that woman and she sighed.

“Ethan Forester, this is my friend Kylie West and her daughter Cara.” Her gaze shot to the child in his arms.

A child she might have known had she kept in contact with friends. He should give her a definition of the word, so she would understand what it meant to her family, to her friends, that she’d disappeared from their lives.

Kylie gave him an easy smile. “There’s a small, private room through the door at the back of the restaurant. I’ll let Holly know where you’ve gone. And if you want lunch, I’ll have her deliver it to you there.”

Eve shook her head. “I’ve lost my appetite.”

Rather than respond, he followed Eve as she led the way through the now crowded diner. People spoke to her but gave him suspicious looks. He knew those looks. He’d grown up in a small town. The same small town as Eve, just a short distance from Austin.

The “private room” at the back of the restaurant appeared to be an afterthought. It was a small room with three tables joined together and a painted plywood wall separating it from the rest of the café. He pulled a chair away from the table and Eve gave him a look. Thanking him. Or possibly telling him she didn’t appreciate his help. He didn’t know the protocol for helping someone in a wheelchair.

He didn’t know this woman. Six years ago he would have said he knew her better than he knew himself. He had been wrong. The woman who had shared everything with him had been someone else. Maybe they hadn’t known each other at all.

The girl from his childhood would have turned to him, not away from him.

“I didn’t know you had a child,” she said.

He sat down across from her, Tori picking at his ear. He held her tight and tried to find the right words. As angry as he might be, he still had to tell her news that would devastate her. News she should have heard two weeks ago.

“She isn’t mine. If you weren’t hiding, you’d know that. If you’d let your parents tell me how to contact you, you’d know.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, glancing away as she made the apology.

Anger simmered, with her, with himself for caring.

“I found you because my sister saw your name mentioned in an article about Mercy Ranch. I’ve known you almost my entire life and I’ve spent four years not knowing where you were or what had happened to you. So, yeah, you’re sorry, but I’m afraid sorry doesn’t fix this.”

“This?” Her expression was calm. Her dark eyes had settled on Tori, revealing she was anything but calm. A storm brewed in those eyes.

“Tori is James and Hanna’s daughter.”

She sat perfectly still but her expression clouded at the mention of their friends. He thought she held her breath, waiting.

He had to say the words. He knew it would devastate her. But from her changing expression, she knew what was coming. “They were killed in a car accident.”

She shook her head. “No.”

He didn’t respond. There was nothing he could say that would make this any easier, so he gave her a few minutes to process. In the past he would have held her, comforted her. Now he sat there with his arms around Tori and he wished he knew what to do.

“I...” Her words broke off on a sob. He pulled napkins from the metal holder in the center of the table. She took them and wiped at the steady stream of tears trickling down her cheeks.

In his arms, Tori shifted to look at her, watching intently. Her big blue eyes watered and her lips puckered.

“And Tori?” she asked after a moment.

“Yours and mine.” He said it softly, then waited, watching as the news sank in.

Eve rolled back a bit from the table, shaking her head. “What does that mean?”

“It means I got a call from an attorney, informing me that James and Hanna had a will, probably written up before...” He let the sentence trail off. They both knew what before meant. “They must not have had it changed because they asked us to raise any child, male or female born to them, should something make it impossible for them to raise that child.”

“That can’t be. They wouldn’t have done that, considering the circumstances.”

“I’m sure if they’d thought something like this would happen, they would have changed their will. But the will was written when they thought we would get married. They thought you would come to your senses and...” He sighed.

“They would want her with a couple, with two people, a family.” The words ended on a sob. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. I had no way.”

“No, you didn’t have a way of knowing.” He left it at that.

“What were they thinking?” she repeated.

“It doesn’t matter what they were thinking, this is the way it is. James was a planner and they made us the guardians of their child. I am assuming he thought you would surface and things would work out. He only failed to plan one thing, an alternate plan. And there’s no one else. Hanna was raised by grandparents who are now too feeble to care for an infant. And James had only his father and he’s still in the military. Single and stationed in Italy. He wants to know his granddaughter but he obviously can’t raise her.”

Eve’s eyes closed. When she opened them, he had to turn away from her grief, her pain. He couldn’t deal with that, not at the moment.

At the moment he was busy reminding himself of how she’d hurt him. He reminded himself that she’d cut him out of her life.

The door to the meeting room opened. The waitress, or perhaps owner of the establishment, entered. Her concerned gaze focused in on Eve, on her tears. She shot him a look that told him he was to blame. And boy, was she was going to blame him.

She set the tray she carried on the table and gave Eve a quick hug.

“Eve, honey, is there anything I can get you?”

Eve smiled up at the other woman. “I’m good, Holly, but thank you.”

“Okay, but if there’s anything I can do.” She picked up a bowl of mashed potatoes. “I brought this for the little one. And a bowl of green beans.”

“Thank you,” Ethan told her.

She gave him a frosty look but she put a plate in front of him, another in front of Eve. “Kylie ordered for the two of you.”

“Thank her for me.” Eve smiled up at the woman.

“You got it.” And then she was gone, the door shutting firmly behind her.

“You seem to have settled here,” Ethan observed. He picked up a spoon and gave the child in his arms a small bite after making sure it was cool.

“I have. Ethan, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” He watched as Tori reached for a green bean.

“Yes, I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry about James and Hanna. I’m so sorry.”

“You should have trusted me enough to at least tell me. You should have included me in the decision to end our relationship.”

“You would have tried to convince me that we would be fine. That you would have taken on anything, even though it wasn’t what you’d signed on for. And then you would have resented me. Or I would have felt guilty. Either way it was a recipe for disaster.”

“I guess I can understand how you would have allowed yourself to believe that. But it wasn’t fair, not to me or to friends who loved and missed you and didn’t understand why you walked out of our lives.”

“I hope someday you can forgive me.”

“I hope so, too, because it appears we are tied to one another for the next eighteen years.”

“Eighteen years?” She shook her head, not getting his meaning.

“We’re raising a child together, Eve. We are her legal guardians, you and I. The state of Texas would like for us to have a plan for her future. James and Hanna were counting on us providing a home for her.”

“How are we supposed to do that? As you can see, I’m not exactly in a position to be a parent. We aren’t married. So exactly how is this supposed to work?”

“Why aren’t you in a position to be a parent?”

She gave him a puzzled look and then pointed down. “Hello? Surely you have eyes.”

He did have eyes. And he wished he wasn’t seeing the woman he’d planned to marry. He wished his heart wasn’t seeing her in a way that almost hurt. The pain was too much. He preferred anger. Anger reminded him how it had felt to receive a Dear John phone call from her.

“I have eyes. I see a woman who is obviously very capable.”

“Yes, capable of caring for herself. There’s the other little issue you haven’t thought about. I live in Oklahoma, not Texas.”

“That’s definitely an issue but one we can work out. I don’t have a lot of time to discuss this. I have a meeting in Tulsa. Forester Farm Sales is opening a new dealership up here.”

“I can make this quick and easy. I think the best way to work this out is for me to give you full custody of Tori.” Something about the look in her eyes shifted his opinions, made him reconsider his plan of action.

“The truth is, I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. It’s been two weeks, and in that time we’ve been working through paperwork, coming to terms with what has happened and just getting by. My mom helps when she can but she’s busy running the ranch alongside my dad. My sister, Bethany, has helped from time to time but she’s in her last year of nursing school.”

“Ethan, I can’t do this.”

He pushed aside compassion and stood. “I need to run out to the car. Can you hold her?”

She sighed but gave a slight nod. Knowing her the way he did, he recognized the look of longing as she focused on the baby in his arms.

“I can hold her.”

He pushed the bowl of mashed potatoes across the table, then he circled around to her side and placed the groggy little girl in her arms. Tori immediately nestled in. It had been a long day. And Eve’s arms went around her, holding her close.

It was a dirty move on his part. He hadn’t really planned it but he didn’t know what else to do. Eve had been his friend for longer than she’d been the woman he loved. He had thought to find a stranger. Instead he found the girl he used to know. And he could see that she’d lost more than the use of her legs. She’d lost her way.

He didn’t want to care but he had to. For her sake. For Tori’s. So as he walked away from the diner, he told himself he didn’t feel guilty for what he was about to do. He would come back. He wasn’t the one who disappeared without a word to the people in his life.

But today, Eve deserved a lesson.