Coming Home to You (5 page)

Pain flashed across his face. “Yes,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “In the six years since he died, I’ve wished a thousand times I could change places with him.”

T
HE RAIN STOPPED
and the dark clouds that obscured the moon thinned until only a few raced across its silver surface. The neon sign above the motel office buzzed like a giant insect, its bright colors reflecting on the wet pavement, creating a surreal atmosphere.

The parking lot was empty but for a single car.
Raucous laughter and music coming from the tavern across the road explained why the rooms were all dark and the motel seemed deserted.

Hayes had been silent since his revelation, afraid perhaps of having said too much. And his words
had
been revealing, telling Kate two things she hadn’t known before: He’d loved his brother. And he still suffered from his death.

She took out her room key and opened the door. When she turned to look up at him, she felt uncharacteristically tongue-tied and strangely sad. She wished she could think of something profound to say, but the only thing that came out was, “Well…thanks for the ride.”

He nodded.

She started to offer him her hand, decided it was a foolish gesture and withdrew it. “See you around, Hayes.”

“Not if I can help it, Morgan,” he countered, making her chuckle.

He crossed the parking lot, hands pushed deep in the front pockets of his jeans. Kate watched him go with an unexplainable sense of loss. When he had almost reached the corner of the building, she called out, “I met Jamie once, you know.”

He stopped and turned. “What?”

She walked from under the shadow of the overhanging metal canopy out into the moonlight where he could see her and she wouldn’t have to shout.

“I said, I met your brother once. It was years ago, and although I only got to spend a few hours with him, I’ve never forgotten it. I was a scared kid trying to survive in a tough college program with people
who were a lot older than me and resented my being there. Jamie was kind to me. He made me feel good about myself.”

Hayes didn’t say anything.

“I wanted you to know that,” she added, “so you’d understand why it’s important to me to write a truthful account of his life. This book finally gives me the chance to pay him back for his kindness that day.”

Hayes stood quietly, motionless for a long time, then nodded slowly and raised his hand in farewell. She raised hers. He turned and walked away.

Kate went into her room and closed the door. A hot bath would feel good. So would going home. Until that moment she hadn’t known she
was
going home. But without hope of an interview, she really had no reason to stick around. Hayes wasn’t willing to cooperate. He’d made that perfectly clear.

Taking off her dirty clothes, she wrapped herself in a red silk robe. She was about to check her messages when a hard knock sounded at the door. She looked through the peephole and her stomach turned a somersault. Despite her disheveled appearance, she unlocked the door and jerked it open.

“Can you ride a horse?” Hayes asked.

“Of course.”

“Be ready at one o’clock tomorrow and wear something practical.” He wheeled abruptly, walked out to his idling truck and drove away.

Kate closed the door and leaned against it. “Well, I’ll be…” She squealed with glee. Then a thought suddenly struck her and her glee changed to horror. Oh, no! Where, between now and one o’clock tomorrow, was she going to learn to ride a horse?

“Y
OU LIED
to me, Morgan,” Bret said, hands on his hips. The blasted woman couldn’t even
sit
on the horse without looking like she was about to fall off. “You don’t know the front end of a horse from the back.”

“I most certainly do. The front end is the one that bites, and the back end is the one that…doesn’t.”

The children sitting atop the fence at Pine Acres giggled. They watched as the woman attempted to ride around the large corral without mishap. Every time the horse trotted, she shrieked, Bret lost his temper and the children got more amused. Twice she’d almost taken a tumble.

“Hang in there, Miss Kate. You’re gettin’ it,” shouted twelve-year-old Kevin.

Bret shook his head, not believing what he’d just heard. The boy hadn’t said that many words in the six months since he’d arrived at the ranch.

Surprisingly, all the kids were animated today. Morgan’s antics were the cause, and that made Bret feel a little better about his insane decision to bring her. None here could claim a happy childhood, but this bunch from Dorm K, they’d had it rougher than most. Tom, seventeen, had lost his family in a freak accident. Melissa, thirteen, and LaKeisha, nine, had
been abandoned by teenage mothers. Shondra, seven, had been abused from the time she was born, as had Kevin. The twins, Adam and Keith, also seven, had seen their father kill their mother, and little Henry, who’d recently turned two, had almost been a murder victim himself.

Bret constantly reminded himself not too get too attached to any of these children, but he’d fallen hard for all eight of them.

“Hey, Mr. Bret,” Melissa called out. She pointed at Morgan, hanging precariously off the saddle, even though the horse wasn’t moving. “Maybe you should tie her on. Or at least put her on old Slowpoke.”

“Or Patch,” volunteered LaKeisha, setting off a round of giggling among the other children.

Bret looked over at Patch, the Shetland pony he’d bought for the smallest children at the ranch. The tiny animal barely came to his waist. If he sat on it, he could probably touch the ground flat-footed.

“What about it, Morgan? Am I gonna have to stick you on Patch?”

“I refuse to ride anything shorter than I am,” she said, her voice indignant.

“Ride? You’re not riding. You’ve been on that horse forty-five minutes and you haven’t gone three feet without dropping the reins and grabbing the saddle horn. You have to be in control of an animal to ride.”

“If you could shorten the stirrups a bit more, I think I could do it.”

He sighed loudly and shook his head, then walked over and began shortening the stirrups for the fifth
time. He helped her right herself in the saddle. “Your dang legs are too short,” he grumbled.

“They are not. I have great legs.” She stuck one out. It was bare between her white shorts and tennis shoes. Tan and sleek, it was also very nicely curved.

He looked away swiftly, unintentionally making a noise deep in his throat he prayed she couldn’t interpret. Turning his attention back to the stirrup, he took out his knife and began twisting another hole in the leather strap with the point of the blade.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me,” he muttered.

“Hayes, if you’d asked me at that moment if I knew how to wrestle an alligator, I would have said yes.”

He snorted. “Pity the poor alligator.”

She took off the cap he’d given her to keep the sun off her face and used it to slap him playfully on the head. “Be nice,” she warned, putting the cap back on, “or I might have to wrestle
you
.”

Bret went deathly still at the thought of that, her on top of him, pinning him to the ground, doing more than wrestling.
Hell!

Shaking off the image before his body embarrassed him in front of the kids, he hurriedly completed the hole and adjusted both stirrups.

“Okay, this time if she trots and you don’t want her to, pull back on the reins—but gently. Make her obey you. And don’t yell like that again. You nearly busted my eardrum.”

The onlookers tittered.

“Sorry,” she said, exchanging a funny,
Well, excuse me
face with the children.

He walked out to the center of the corral. “All
right, this is your last chance. Ride her this far so I’ll know you won’t kill yourself when we go out to the pasture.”

Whispering loudly, the children took bets on whether she’d make it.

“I say she drops the reins,” Tom predicted.

“Nah, she’ll fall off,” Adam said.

“Betcha she drops the reins
and
falls off,” Keith said.

The toddler, Henry, who thought she was purposely putting on a show, clapped his hands excitedly in anticipation of the next trick. “Faw,” he begged.

Morgan rolled her eyes. “Don’t you little maggots have homework or something?”

“It’s summer vacation,” Melissa said. “School won’t start till next week.”

“Chores?” Morgan asked.

“We did them when we got out of church,” LaKeisha told her.

“If I give you money, will you go away?”

They giggled. “No, ma’am,” answered Shondra. “We wanna stay here and watch you fall off.”

“Faw,” Henry squealed, clapping his hands more rapidly.

Bret interrupted by calling out, “Come on, Morgan, we don’t have all day to watch you make a fool of yourself.”

“Don’t rush me!”

“I should’ve known you couldn’t do it,” he said with a smirk. “You’re all bluff and no guts.”

“I might have to make you eat those words, Hayes.”

“Yeah? Well, you have to ride over here first,” he pointed out.

“Come on, Miss Kate,” Shondra yelled. “You can do it.” She started clapping and chanting, “Go…go…go…” The others quickly joined in.

She touched her heels to the horse’s sides and loosened the tension on the reins. The horse began to move. When it tried to break into a trot, she pulled back gently and it slowed to a walk. When she reached Bret, still mounted and still holding the reins, the children whooped their delight. Even those who’d bet against her clapped.

“Well, it’s about time,” he said. “At least you didn’t fall on your—” he remembered the kids were listening “—backside.”

“Gee, Hayes, watch out. All that lavish praise might go to my head.”

“You did okay.”

“Okay? Is that the best compliment you can come up with?” She looked to the children for help. “Was it just
okay
?” she asked them.

“You were super-endous,” one child yelled.

“Outta sight,” said another.

“See,” Morgan told him smugly. “I was superendous.”

Bret smiled. He couldn’t help himself. She was so damn outrageous at times.

She gasped. “Well, I’ll be… You actually have teeth!”

His brow wrinkled in confusion. “Wh-what?”

“You hardly ever smile. You always look like you’ve gotten a whiff of something foul. I was beginning to think your teeth were bad, or maybe you’d
irritated the wrong person and he—or she—knocked them out.”

“I’ve occasionally had people threaten to knock them out, but I assure you they’re intact.” He gave her his best fake smile.

“Oh, very nice. Perfect, as a matter of fact.”

“Thanks. My stepfather would be overjoyed to hear you say that, considering how much work he did on them.”

“Oh, that’s right, he’s a dentist, isn’t he?”

“Uh, yeah. Retired now.” He cleared his throat with nervousness. That was a stupid mistake. “You have a nice smile, too.”

She cocked her head and grinned. “Why, thank you.”

The children giggled and made smooching sounds.

“All right, cut it out,” he warned them good-naturedly. He steered the conversation toward a more comfortable topic, patting the horse and telling Kate they’d ride out so he could show her the rest of the ranch.

“Am I ready for that?” she asked.

“Yeah, but listen to what I tell you and do exactly as I say.
Exactly
. No goofing off for the kids.”

“Okay. You’re the boss.”

He lifted a dark eyebrow at the comment.

“A mere slip of the tongue,” she said quickly.

T
OM OPENED
the gate and the “wagon train,” as one of the kids called it, began its journey. Hayes went out first, with Henry sitting on the horse in front of him. Kate moved to his left side, wanting him close in case her horse decided to act up.

“Don’t go too fast,” he warned as the other children passed them and took off at breakneck speed.

The road wound through pastures where round bales of freshly cut hay dotted the ground, and more hay, waiting to be cut, rippled in the wind. Henry, Kate quickly discovered, could be counted on to fill the brief moments of silence. His fascination with the scenery exceeded his vocabulary. He entertained them by periodically calling out the names of things he saw.

“Burrrd,” he said when a colorful bird flew past and landed on the barbed-wire fence.

“Eastern bluebird,” Hayes said. “And what sound does a bird make?”

“Tweee,”
Henry answered.

Farther down the road Hayes motioned to the right. “We lease the hay fields to a cattle farm nearby, and, over that rise, is a pecan orchard that produces a good crop and income for the ranch each year.”

“I’m impressed,” she told him, a major understatement. From everything she’d seen, the ranch ran efficiently and utilized its natural resources. The administrator, Jane Logan, had given Kate a tour, and she appeared competent and genuinely enthusiastic about her job. The children seemed well cared for. “Do you spend much time out here? The children all seem to know you.”

“I’m out a couple of times a week, sometimes more.”

“Why kids?”

“Why kids what?”

“Why did you choose to support a charity for kids? A guy like you. Seems out of character.”

“Maybe you don’t know my character as well as you think.”

“I admit I find it hard to believe that you’re the same surly guy who yelled at me last night.”

“I apologize for that. I was out of line for losing my temper.”

“And I apologize for following you. I was wrong to take it to such lengths. Do you think we might call a truce? I really don’t want to fight with you, and despite the crack I made about your character, you don’t seem like a bad guy.”

“If we call a truce, does that mean you’ll leave me alone?”

“Yes, if I can solicit two promises from you.”

“Which are?”

“First, that you’ll reconsider my request for help with my book.”

“Don’t—”

“Wait a minute, now. Let me finish. If you’ll
seriously
think about my request for…oh…three days, I’ll stay at the motel and won’t bother you. But you have to put aside your dislike for me and not make a decision based on that.”

“And if I still say no at the end of three days?”

“I’ll go away.”

“Forever?”

“Forever.”

He thought about it for all of two seconds. “That’s too good to pass up. What’s the second promise?”

“That sometime today you give me ten minutes to at least try to convince you to cooperate on the book,
without
your getting all surly and wanting to strangle me.”

He flashed a quick grin, gone as quickly as it came. “How did you know I wanted to strangle you?”

“Believe me, I’ve seen that look before on the faces of at least a hundred different men, my father and brothers included.”

“Morgan, sometimes you’re too much.” This time he didn’t bother to hide his smile. “Okay, you’ve got a deal. Ten minutes, and I’ll try my best to stay calm.”

“How about now?”

“Not while we’re with the kids.”

“Okay, I can wait. Where are we headed, by the way?”

“The pond first and then the orchard. I want to show you the different ways we’re making money and moving toward being self-sufficient. We keep bees and sell the honey. We grow muscadines and scuppernongs and we sell them to a small outfit locally that makes jelly. The pond is stocked with catfish and we open it for public fishing every Saturday during the warm months.”

“For a fee?”

“No, not for fishing, but we charge per pound for the fish caught.”

“Pish,” Henry said.

“Catfish,” Hayes corrected. “And what sound does a catfish make?”

“Gur-ak,”
Henry said proudly.

Kate decided, after hearing Henry imitate various animals at Hayes’s prompting, that this had to be a game they’d played many times before.

As they continued to the pond, the child ran through the rest of his imitations—sheep, cows,
horses, bees and something called a ruby-throated brew guzzler that Hayes swore was a real bird native to the South, but whose call sounded suspiciously like a belch to Kate.

“Oh, let me guess,” she said, laughing despite her efforts not to. “It guzzles beer and is identified by its
red neck
.”

Hayes grinned impishly.

She groaned. “You should be ashamed of yourself for trying to corrupt this child.”

“Wasn’t me,” he said innocently.

“I believe that about as much as I believe…ruby-throated brew guzzlers really fly.”

He had anticipated her answer. With a mischievous gleam in his eye he bent his head and said, “Henry, let a brew guzzler fly.”

Henry swallowed air.
“Bu-rp,”
he said, belching loudly.

B
RET LIKED
her laugh. He found it soothing. He knew in the last several years he hadn’t been the kind of man who inspired women to laughter. He was too somber.
Depressing,
was the word one woman had used. But today he seemed to amuse this woman a great deal, even when he wasn’t trying.

She laughed often. Loudly. Wonderfully. She made
him
laugh, something he hadn’t felt like doing in a long time.

He was having trouble remembering she was the enemy. And even more disturbing, he was having
no
trouble remembering she was a woman.

They sat on the pond’s wooden pier, Bret with his back against a piling, Morgan uncomfortably close,
so close he could smell the light flowery fragrance that seemed to be a natural part of her. Unable to resist the lure of the water, she had slipped off her shoes and now dangled her feet in it.