Cowboy Sing Me Home (40 page)

            He finally made his way to
the back of the choir and looked around for Dusty.

            She was gone.  He knew it as
soon as he saw her empty stool, but he looked around, telling himself she was
mingling with the crowd, must be talking to someone, maybe went to her pickup
for an extra set of strings or something.  As the crowd milled around him, he
stood with his hands in his pockets, staring at the place where her guitar had
been, where she had been, and tried to convince himself that she hadn’t really
left.

But in the back of his mind
– and making its way steadily to the front with all the force of an 18 wheeler
– was the certainty that she wasn’t just gone from the Jubilee.

            She was gone.

            “Damn it.”  Dusty tossed her
phone into the passenger seat.  She sighed and cussed again.  Then again, just
to make sure everyone – meaning her – heard how unhappy she was.

            But the truth was, her heart
wasn’t in it.

            The White Elephant truck
stop loomed ahead, and she pulled off the highway.  She had a lot to do.  She
might as well get started.

            First things first.  She
picked up her cell phone and began punching in Alfie’s number, then
reconsidered and turned the phone off.  Talking meant answering questions and
she wasn’t ready for questions yet.  She wasn’t even sure exactly what she had
planned.  She didn’t know how she was going to go about this.  She only knew
she wasn’t going to run anymore.

            She climbed into the trailer
and paced. She punched a few words into the phone, then deleted them. Tried
again. After discarding several possibilities that seemed either melodramatic
or just plain silly, she finally dashed off a few terse sentences.  Alfie could
read between the lines.

            I’m in love.  Cancel all
future engagements.  I’m done.

            She caught herself smiling
as she hit send, even laughing lightly.  Smiling, laughing, and holding her
stomach against the nerves that jumped there.

            She found paper and a pen,
then pulled the lighter she used to start her grill from the drawer beside the
stove.  She rooted around until she found the giant, iridescent ashtray she’d
been given five years ago by a fan in Monroe, Louisiana.

            She laid the things on the
table and sat staring at them for a while, undecided about how, exactly, she
was going to do this.  She had thought this was a silly, nonsense exercise when
Brother Mark proposed it at the first Jubilee, but she took it a lot more
seriously, now.

            Luke was right.  She had no
hope of going forward, until she forgave the past.  She had been in limbo for
the past ten years, waiting for her life to be over.   

            She took a deep breath and
picked up the pen.  Put it down.  Flicked the lighter a few times.  She thought
again of Anne-Marie, but this time she thought of herself, as she had been
then.  She’d thought she was so tough, thought her unusual life had prepared
her for anything.  But nothing could prepare her for that.  For the first time,
Dusty turned the camera in her mind around, and saw the young, lonely,
heartbroken girl she had been, and her heart was filled with sympathy.

            Tears welled anew as she
realized the pain she’d put herself through over the past ten years, unable to
forgive herself.  But seeing that young girl, thin shoulders shaking with sobs,
prostrate with grief, it was easy, so easy to see there wasn’t anything that
needed forgiveness.  That girl needed love and comfort and understanding. 

            Tears dripped on the paper
as, in her mind, Dusty held that girl and stroked her head, consoled her in all
the ways she had not been consoled at the time.  She picked up the pen and
wrote, fragments and phrases, flashes of images and feelings long denied. 

            Finally, when she’d cried so
much she felt completely drained, she put the pen down.  In her mind, she saw
that young girl again, holding her baby and smiling.  That Dusty was gone, just
as Anne-Marie was gone, but Dusty’s heart filled with joy at the knowledge
that, in her exorcising of the old ghosts, she could reunite them finally. 

            She wasn’t the same person
she’d been, then.  She wasn’t the same person she’d been even two weeks ago. 
For the first time in a decade, she was ready to go forward, as the person she
was now.

            She held the paper over the
ashtray and flicked the lighter, seeing this as the last step to make it real,
make it final.  But she no longer held the illusion that she could put
everything behind her.  Anne-Marie was a part of who she was, and in finally
bringing her out, Dusty could be all that she was, too.  She watched through
gritty eyes as the flames caught the paper, and

            Dusty yawned hugely.  She’d
been up all night, and she needed coffee.  Maybe even a nap before she turned
back.

            From the truck stop
restaurant she got a large coffee and a piece of pie to go.  She was as
ravenous as she was nervous, excited and exhausted.  Being emotional apparently
required a lot of calories.

            She opened the door to her
trailer with one hand and brought the warm pie up to her face with the other. 
She was inhaling a deep breath of warm peach when she looked up to see Luke
Tanner sitting on her couch.
            She jumped and almost dumped her pie and coffee on the floor. 
“What?” was all she could manage.

            “Okay, here’s the thing.” 
Luke stood.  “I know you’re afraid.  So am I.  I’m not even going to pretend
that I know what you’ve been through, but I know you’re focusing on all that
could go wrong.  I’ve been thinking about that, too.  A lot.  I could tell you
that nothing is ever going to happen to us.  I could promise you that you could
come home with me, and we’ll live out the rest of our lives blissfully happy
every day, and everything would go just as we wanted it to.  I would lie to
you, if that’s what it took.”

            He sighed and cocked his
head, looking so desperate and forlorn that her heart turned over.

            “But it
would
be a
lie, and we both know it.  But I can make you one guarantee, Dusty, that I know
to be the truth. I am not letting you run away from me.  You’ve been through a
lot.  Your heart was broken, and you ran.  And your husband let you.  That was
his mistake.  I’m not going to make the same one.”

            Dusty couldn’t breathe.  She
backed against the counter with her pie in one hand and her coffee in the
other, breathing in peach fumes and staring at Luke.

            He took another step toward
her and reached to take the coffee and pie from her.  “You’re shaking.  You’re
going to drop this.”

            “I’m not shaking,” she said
breathlessly.  She looked down at the coffee, which danced in its cup.  She set
it and the pie on the counter and stuffed her shaking hands in her pockets.
“What are you doing here?”  She’d planned a speech, a monologue, really, to let
him know how she felt, to let him – and herself – know that this was her
choice, still.  Her decision.  He’d come after her, and it was all wrong.  How
would he ever know, now, that it was her choice?

            “I told you, I’m not going
to let you go.  What we have is too special to write off as a fling.  This is
real and you know it. That’s why you ran.  Fine.  I’ll come with you.  I’ve got
some vacation time coming.  And if you still want to run, I’ll quit my job, and
run with you.”

            He reached out a hand and
took her by the elbow.  She jumped again at the contact, but he held her there,
large and warm and solid against her skin that felt like ice.

            “It’s too late,” she said
numbly.

            “No, it’s not too late. 
It’s not.  There’s still a lifetime for us.”  He framed her face with his
hands.  “Dusty, it’s not too late.  I love you.”

            She felt her face grow hot,
her heart pound, and she wanted to throw himself into his arms but couldn’t
move.  She finally let herself hear the words, let them sink slowly and
permanently into her.  He loved her.

            “Don’t say it’s too late,
Dusty,” he whispered, and with his thumb gently wiped a tear from her cheek. 
“I love you.  Say it’s not too late.”

            She opened her mouth to
speak, but the words wouldn’t come.  They were stuck there, anchored in her
throat by the commingling terror and joy.  He loved her.

            She took a deep breath and
was about to speak when the phone beeped on the counter beside her.  They both
looked at it.

            “I’m in love. Cancel all
future engagements. I’m done.”

In the next bubble, Alfie
had texted back, “Thank the Lord.  I’ve wanted to retire for three years.”

Then, under that, “Go have
some grandbabies for me to visit.”

            As Dusty read the words, the
pent-up emotion burst out in a mixed laugh and cry.  She was shaking, tears
running down her face, and she watched Luke through tears as he picked up the
phone and stared at it, transfixed.

            “I meant it was too late to
run,” she said, putting her forehead to his.  “It was too late to keep from
losing my heart.  Because I already loved you.”

            Slowly, slowly, his gaze
turned from the phone and met hers.

            “Say it again.”

            “I love you.  I knew it the
moment I heard you’d been shot, but –”

            She was going to say more,
but his mouth covered hers and made speech impossible.  His arms held her so
tightly she couldn’t have moved if she wanted to.  Which she didn’t.  She
wanted to cling to him, to stay in this position forever, to burrow herself
into him so deeply he’d never be able to shake her.

            His arms tight around her,
his lips on hers, he groaned and lifted her, swinging her around until she was
dizzy and laughing against his mouth.

            “Are you sure, Dusty?”  He
leaned back, and the fear and hope in his eyes had tears springing to hers.

            She nodded.  “I’m sure.  I
must be.  I’ve spent the past hundred miles trying to talk myself out of it.”

            “There’s no going back now,
you know.  I don’t want to just date you.”

            “I know,” she whispered.

            “Dusty, will you marry me?” 
He studied her, his face sober, and it was more of a question than a proposal.

            She nodded and whispered
again.  “Yes.”

            “I want kids.”

            That one had her heart
hitching.  “I know.”

            “Are you ready for that?”

            The old fears sprang up, and
she clutched his shirt in her hands, anchored herself with his eyes.  “No.  I’m
not.  Not yet.  But I will be.  I promise.”

            “It’s going to be okay, you
know.”

            “No, I don’t know that.  And
neither do you.  If I knew it, I wouldn’t be so scared right now.”

            “But you’re coming back with
me, anyway?”

            She nodded.

            “Say it again.”

            “You first.”

            “I love you.”

            “I love you.”

            He pressed his forehead to
hers and grinned.  “Now, was that so hard?”

            She laughed.  “I’ve never
been so happy and so afraid at the same time.”

            “Just keep saying it. 
Whenever you get scared.  If something goes wrong.  Just keep saying it.  Keep
hearing
me
say it.  And we’ll make it through.  I won’t ever let you
forget it, Dusty, or doubt it.  Not for a second.  And I won’t ever let you
go.”

The End

Thanks so much for reading
Cowboy,
Sing Me Home
! This is the completion of a special journey for me, because
Luke and Dusty’s story was the third in a series set in the fictional west
Texas town of Aloma.
A True-Blue Texas Twosome
(Toby and Corinne’s
story) and
That Kind of Girl
(about Colt and Becca) were both published
under my pseudonym, Kim McKade, under the Silhouette Intimate Moments label. It
is a dream come true for me to finally have the whole gang out there for everyone
to meet. I love these characters and I hope you did, too. This story was an
especially emotional one, but so satisfying.

Did you know that I’d do
just about anything to get you to review this book on Amazon? Seriously. I
would wash your car, bake you a nice lemon pound cake, or even paint your
toenails. Okay, I won’t actually do any of those things, but I
would
be
so appreciative! Feedback is so important. Please take a moment to click on the
link below, log in to Amazon.com, and leave a review. I appreciate it more than
I can say!

Kim Hunt Harris