Читать книгу Special Ops Cowboy - Addison Fox - Страница 15

“I’m sorry, Jake. Run that by me again?” She set the stapler down on her desk for fear the heavy object might become a weapon if her vision hazed any redder. Reese had learned a long time ago to never tell herself things couldn’t get worse. It was one of the harshest lessons an addict had taught their family, and she’d had a crash course by the time she was a freshman at Midnight Pass High School.

Jamie had been the best of big brothers, but by the time she’d turned fourteen, their three-year age gap had made all the difference. What had been a bit of bad behavior—smoking marijuana at the end of the day or drinking too much out at the edge of town—had quickly become an addiction when his urges took a hard turn. Cocaine was plentiful in the Pass, brought up from South America by the drug runners who controlled the border, and her brother had been an easy mark.

But it was the heroin a year later that had sealed his fate.

By the time she’d started freshman year, her parents had already placed Jamie into two addiction programs and a solid amount of familial house arrest. Reese hadn’t fully understood it at the time, but she’d done the only thing she had understood: acting the exact opposite of her brother.

Straight A’s. A steady diet of after-school activities. And her role as the good girl of Midnight Pass. She never smoked, drank and hadn’t even kissed a boy. They were traits that formed her and built the foundation of her life, and up until her late night foray with Hoyt Reynolds back in June, she hadn’t deviated from that plan.

Oh, she’d been kissed since high school. And she certainly enjoyed liquor from time to time. Four years at the University of Texas had helped see her through both rites of passage. But the core of who she was—the good daughter of Serena and Russ Grantham—had stuck.

Which made the warning shots fired across her classroom that much harder to accept.

“Aww, come on, Reese. Don’t make me say it again.”

“No.” She shook her head, even as her fingers itched to pick up the stapler once more. “I need to hear you say it. I want to make sure I got it right the first time.”

Jacob Walters was a friend. He was about five years older than her, but they’d both taught in the English department until he was promoted to assistant principal two years before. It was that steady core of friendship—and the knowledge that Jake was an unfailingly kind human—that kept her in check.

And her hand off the stapler.

“The PTA is concerned,” Jake said.

“Define concerned.”

Jake sighed but kept his gaze level, his words simple and straightforward. “They’re concerned your father’s passing a few months back was too big a trauma not to take some time off.”

“I took time when it happened. Mourned the passing of a parent good and proper, just as dictated in the union bylaws. Two whole weeks,” Reese added for good measure, as if Jake had forgotten.

“They think you may need more.”

“More what? Time to think about something I can’t control or change?” She broke off on a hard exhale when a new thought filled her. “Has someone said something? Is my teaching lacking somehow?”

Reese fought the roiling of her stomach, refusing to let that steady layer of sickness that had accompanied her for six weeks have its way. “And why have they suddenly decided to bring it up now? After I’ve bought supplies for my classroom and set up for the new school year? Why is that, Jake?”

“Come on, Reese. Your father killed himself. After—” Jake hesitated. “Just after.”

“After he killed four people, you mean. Tortured them, too.”

“It’s not a secret.”

“No, it’s not. Nor is the fact that I was teacher of the year two years ago. Or has that conveniently slipped everyone’s mind?”

“No, it hasn’t. Nor have I stopped reminding them every chance I get.”

It was the stalwart support—which she knew she had from Jake—that finally had her standing down. Enough so that she physically sat down, dropping into the rolling chair behind her desk. “You really think they’re going to fire me?”

“Leave of absence. That’s all. They want the fuss to die down a bit more.”

“That’s a load of hogwash and you know it. The fuss has died down.”

“It had until they found that other body.”

The urge to shift her gaze was strong, but Reese kept her focus level with Jake’s. She would not cower. Nor would she slink away in embarrassment. Her father’s crimes were extensive enough—and repetitive enough—to be considered serial in nature. What she hadn’t expected was that his choices in life would leave him a perpetual suspect each and every time a body bearing even the slightest resemblance to his victims was found.

Despite his death the prior spring, Russ Grantham had been considered for murders in El Paso, Houston and as far north as Waco. All crimes in which he was exonerated, but all of which had claimed front-page headlines and the lead focus on the nightly news.

“That wasn’t him.”

“But it made his crimes front and center once more. That scares people. Makes ’em skittish.”

“Their small mindedness means I’m somehow at fault?”

“No, Reese. Not at all.”

Well aware Jake was only doing his job, she opted to play on his softer side. The PTA members had a voice, but they couldn’t simply oust her from her role. Not without garnering a lot more support from a lot more people.

With that in mind, she pressed on.

“I need my job, Jake. My benefits. My salary. What else am I going to do? I have a contract.”

“Which the district knows. You’re locked in for the year. All I’m saying is take some bereavement leave and let this die down. By the time you come back, you’ll have plenty of time to work your magic the next time contracts are being signed.”

The urge to rant and rail at the unfairness of it all was strong, but Reese avoided saying anything further. Jake was just the messenger and he clearly hadn’t taken any joy in delivering his missive. More, he was her friend and he was in her corner, two facts she refused to lose sight of. “Please tell me I don’t need to make a decision today.”

“Of course not. School doesn’t start for nearly a month and the PTA doesn’t have nearly the power it thinks it does. I wouldn’t have taken this job if it did.”

“Alright then.” She nodded at Jake, surprised when he crossed around her desk and pulled her into a close hug.

“Take care of you, okay. As long as I’m here, there will be a job for you.”

“Okay.” She hugged her friend and knew his words for truth. It was only after he’d left her still-unfinished classroom that Reese let her gaze drift to the walls. She’d already begun decorating, her back bulletin board full of pictures of authors who were a mix of the classics, as well as the modern writers her students were reading in droves. She’d worked them all into her curriculum, too, ensuring her students would get as strong a dose of Jane Austen as Suzanne Collins.

Story was story and words were words, no matter where they got their enjoyment. Some of her best students had become that way because she’d encouraged them to read the things they enjoyed—pop fiction, sports almanacs and fashion magazines—well before they dived into the authors who’d been long dead.

That mattered, damn it. It mattered a lot. She was a good teacher. Even if...

Reese tamped down on the direction of her thoughts, resolutely refusing to go there. She was a good teacher—a hardworking, caring teacher—and she’d be damned if she was going to conflate that with her personal life. She wasn’t responsible for her father’s actions. And while she was responsible for her lone night of abandon with Hoyt Reynolds, that wasn’t the town’s business, either.

Even if she had heard the occasional whisper or two.

Jake had been too kind to say it, but she wasn’t stupid. The PTA’s inputs had begun in earnest after word had spread around town that she’d spent an interesting evening at The Border Line with Hoyt Reynolds. She’d ignored the implications—and, best she could tell, he’d done nothing to fuel the flames of innuendo and gossip—but it was out there all the same. She could only thank her lucky stars she lived on a quiet street and Hoyt had left early enough that no one had seemed to notice the large work truck that had taken up space in her driveway one summer evening.

A lone evening that had changed her life.

Reese stood and crossed to the bulletin board, remembering her excitement as she’d tacked up information about the various authors, their bios and covers of some of their most well-known stories. It was only as she reached Nathaniel Hawthorne that she stopped. She’d used the cover of his most renowned novel, The Scarlet Letter, for her board and Hester Prynne stood there in the illustration, back straight, face somber, staring right through Reese in all her puritanical glory.

Reese had never particularly enjoyed the original classic on slut shaming and repressed emotion, but had taught it along with the rest of the American canon of literature through the years. Of late, she’d paired it with Pretty Little Liars to identify the differences in cultural approach and storytelling and found her students to be both receptive and engaged in the discussions that came of both. Their ability to connect the injustice of the time with collective attitudes, regardless of the period, always made for lively discussion and Reese loved seeing their young faces light up when they made a connection or looked at the world in a new way. It was her greatest joy as a teacher.

Only now, someone was trying to take it away. While her choices were neither as dire nor as alienating as Hester’s, Reese couldn’t help it as her gaze flicked back once more to settle on that cover. For the first time in nearly a decade of teaching that book to her students, she’d gained a fresh connection of her own.

Only unlike Hester Prynne’s literary child—a figment of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s imagination and talent—Reese Grantham’s was 100 percent real.

* * *

Hoyt dragged off his heavy work gloves and reached for the towel he’d stuffed in his back pocket earlier, running the thick terry cloth over his face and neck. He hated branding day—knew there was nothing to be done about that, though—and considered what was still left to do.

They’d branded about half the new calves and would need at least another hour to work through the rest. The work was strenuous and tiring and made for a general sense of unease on the ranch the day they did it. The new calves hated it—and who could blame them?—and their protective mothers fussed over their young’s distress.

“Earning our keep today.” Tate’s voice was husky from shouting orders over the loud sounds from anxious calves, and Hoyt didn’t miss his brother’s stiff shoulders and general unease as he took his place beside him at the corral fence.

“That we are,” Hoyt agreed.

He, Tate, their brother Ace and their sister, Arden, were the fourth generation of ranchers and the current owners of Reynolds Station, a large and once-again prosperous Texas cattle ranch. Mismanagement and poor acts by their father had seen to the sell-off of some property and a decade-long process toward getting back on their feet.

And back they were.

Hoyt knew he should take pride in branding day and all it stood for—his father sure as hell had—but he could never muster up the stomach for it.

“Everything okay?” Tate’s question was casual and his brother was wise enough to ask the question with no one in earshot, but Hoyt bristled all the same.

“I’m fine.”

“You sure about that?”

Hoyt shoved the towel back into his pocket, pushing himself off the thick steel bars of the corral fence. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I don’t know.” Tate shrugged, his casual motions at odds with the sharp focus that filled his green eyes. “Seems like you’ve been as skittish as those calves and as upset as their mamas for the past few months now.”

Tate had never been the sibling to poke an emotional hornet’s nest—Arden and Ace were far more adept at the chore—which made the fact his brother was standing there attempting to make inroads that much more of a surprise. “You’re seriously comparing me to a cow?”

“Consider it illustrative.”

“Or annoying.”

“The fact you’re evading the question only adds to my curiosity.”

Hoyt ignored the unsettled feeling that scored his skin like barbed wire. His family usually gave him a wide berth emotionally and accepted his surly personality at face value, but even he knew he’d been worse than usual lately. Not that he was even remotely interested in mentioning that. Or the pretty, sweet woman who’d put him in that unbearably surly mood, with lingering memories of the softest skin and the sexiest kisses that refused to leave his thoughts for more than thirty seconds at a stretch.

He’d wanted to call her, and nearly had numerous times. But then he’d consider it and all he could conclude was that things would eventually grow messy. Something about Reese Grantham made him think about a commitment and a future and that scared the hell out of him.

So what else was a man supposed to do when his brother dug into choppy emotional waters?

Fight back for all he was worth.

“I know Belle Granger and I find it hard to believe she’s down with all these feelings. What happened? She get sick of you so you’re trying them out on me?” Hoyt said.

Tate’s voice stayed level but the easy-going smile he’d worn faded. “Belle’s got nothing to do with this.”

“You sure? Because four months dating the woman and you’re so wrapped around her little finger I’m surprised she even lets you out of the house. What’s the matter? Leash getting tight?”

The remark was nasty—even for him—but Hoyt saw it the moment he met his mark. Tate was a big man, his large frame made even larger by ranch work, and all that muscle bunched up as he stepped back from the fence. Hoyt and his brothers had stopped pummeling each other into oblivion around the age of fourteen, but he had the immediate thought that perhaps old habits died hard.

“Belle has nothing to do with this. But I’m not sure you can say the same.”

“Oh?” Hoyt asked, deliberate and slow. “Why’s that?”

“I think you’re the one walking a short leash. One held firmly in hand by Reese Grantham.”

Whatever casual calm Hoyt had attempted as he stepped back from the fence faded as Tate’s words hit a mark of their own.

* * *

Reese had imagined quite a lot as she drove over to Reynolds Station after leaving the high school. The secret that had gnawed steadily at her for over a month—the one that grew harder and harder to ignore as she spent a solid hour each morning desperately trying to keep down her bland breakfasts—needed air. It needed room to breathe.

And it needed its father to know of its existence.

After the initial shock had worn off, she’d been unable to suppress the sheer joy and happiness that filled her. She was pregnant.

Oh, the timing was off and the situation was far from ideal. The grief over her father was still fresh and the unsettling nature of his crimes had given her a few sleepless nights about what might be lurking in the DNA she was passing on to her child. She’d given the thoughts room to breathe, aware that addressing them was better than burying them, but in the end recognized the gift of life was just that. A gift. She’d be doing herself and her child a disservice if she let fear choke away her happiness.

Add on that she had no relationship to speak of with her child’s father and the Midnight Pass PTA would go ballistic at the news, and she really shouldn’t be this happy. Yet, even with that steady reality, she couldn’t hide her contentment or the overwhelming sense of gratitude that had filled her the moment her gynecologist had confirmed the news. She hadn’t once wavered since.

It was that surety—that absolute rightness—that had kept her focus steady and sure on the fact that she needed to tell Hoyt. She wouldn’t hide this from him or try to keep him from knowing his child. If he chose not to embrace fatherhood that would be his call, but it wouldn’t be from her lack of honesty.

She knew this. Felt it to her very core.

Yet, for the past month, the reality of getting in her car and driving to Reynolds Station had seemed like a chore she could put off another day. Oh, she’d plotted and planned what she’d say, worked through the words and how she was going to say them. But she hadn’t done it.

Jake’s news about the PTA had only solidified the fact that she couldn’t wait any longer.

Nor would the thickening of her stomach that was going to spill her secret unless she did the job first.

Truth and conviction pushed her on, through the large gates and enormous wrought-iron arch that announced the entrance to Reynolds Station. She drove down the immaculate concrete drive that seemed to stretch on for a mile, the ranch house rising up in the distance. That conviction never even wavered as she got out of the car and marched toward the side door that was the entrance to the kitchen and, as Arden had invited her in before, she knew was the preferred spot for family and friends to enter.

Ignoring the steady flutter in her stomach that was entirely different from morning sickness, yet nearly as harsh on the few contents still in there, she knocked on the door. A loud, masculine “Come in!” greeted her and she laid a hand on her stomach, willing what little was left to stay put.

And walked straight into chaos.

Ace Reynolds, the oldest brother and resident patriarch, stood in the middle of the kitchen like a football referee. Only instead of his arms extended in demonstrating football plays, each of his large hands was firmly planted on a shoulder. One belonging to Tate and the other to Hoyt.

Both men were filthy, layers of dust covering their shirts and faces, blood dripping from various cuts. Arden flitted around Hoyt with a first aid kit in hand and Belle Granger, Tate’s fiancée, hovered around his head with an ice pack she kept trying to press to his eye. A mix of low growls and muttered curses continued between the two patients which, best she could tell, seemed to be the cause of Ace’s firm and unwavering hold.

“Reese!” Arden’s voice broke through the noise and the greeting was enough to have Hoyt glancing sideways at her from beneath the steady pressure of a bloodied bandage. “Welcome to the O.K. Corral.”

“There wasn’t a gunfight,” Hoyt muttered.

“And thank God for that,” Arden said before lightly smacking him on the back of the head.

Although it had been a long time since she’d swatted at a man, Reese remembered the urge and couldn’t smother the smile. “It looks like I picked a bad time to visit. I can come back later.”

“Stay.”

That lone word—firm and unyielding and without even the hint of a grunt—left Hoyt’s lips. The order seemed to have an effect on everyone in the kitchen, with puzzled looks coming from everyone except Tate.

Instead of uncertainty, a bright wide, triumphant smile spread across Tate’s face. That same sense of triumph filled his words when he spoke. “Why don’t we give them a few minutes.”

“But you’re still—”

Tate cut off Belle with a squeeze of her hand over the ice pack. “I’m fine. Or I will be, once Ace gets his damn hands off me.”

Reese knew it wasn’t polite to laugh, but the harried exit of four adults, all of whom looked as if they’d rather stay and watch, fell firmly into sitcom territory. She wouldn’t be half surprised if the four of them had considered taking up posts on the other side of the kitchen door to listen with empty glasses through the walls. In the end, though, it was Belle’s firmly worded instructions to head outside that had everyone moving, the kitchen door slamming in their wake.

And then she was alone with Hoyt.

He had tossed the bandage Arden had held against his head, his wound obviously tender but no longer bleeding, in a garbage can by the edge of the counter before turning to look at her. “Sorry about that.”

“About what?”

“The middle of our kitchen doesn’t usually look like a MASH unit.”

“Really?” Reese fought the butterflies that had suddenly taken flight in her stomach by picking up a box of bandages on the table and refitting them in the first aid kit. “With a working ranch full of cowboys, I figured this was par for the course.”

“Maybe.” He shrugged before a small grimace marred his firm, full lips. “But usually that’s due to an accident and not a fight between brothers.”

Although the tableau she’d walked in on—complete with Ace holding each man at bay—had suggested as much, it was curious that Hoyt would readily admit it. “What happened?”

“Nothing.”

“That was some heavy duty first aid for nothing.”

His grimace grew wider and for a moment, Reese was half convinced Hoyt wasn’t going to say anything. “He suggested I’ve been in a mood,” Hoyt said.

“At the risk of sounding indelicate, aren’t you always in a mood?”

The surly look on his face broke wide open with a smile so dazzling Reese had to take a moment and simply stare. Good Lord, why hadn’t she remembered just how attractive he was? Her fevered dreams each night had convinced her of just how handsome and good-looking he was, but nothing in those heated imaginings came close to the real thing. She’d thought more than once about calling him, but each time chalked it up to the whole one-night thing and left the situation alone. But now? With that broad smile? Oh, the man was lethal.

And she couldn’t help wondering why she’d stayed away so long.

When he finally stopped laughing, his face settled into easier lines than when she’d first walked in. “Right you are. A point my brother was attempting to point out. I think.”

“Why the fight?”

“Because he brought you up.”

“Me? What’s that supposed to mean? And why is it worthy of a brawl?”

“He had the nerve to suggest I’ve been a raging bastard for the past few months over you.”

“Oh.” She hesitated before pressing on. “Was he right?”

Hoyt seemed to consider the question before that gorgeous green gaze settled directly on hers. “Yeah. I think he is.”

“What would I have to do with anything?”

“Reese.” His voice stopped her, any hints of teasing gone. “You know what happened between us.”

Knew?

Goodness, she’d lived with that knowledge each and every day since. She knew the moments they’d spent together—had watched them on the backs of her eyelids like a vivid film—and hadn’t spent a single day since not thinking about him. While it hadn’t been the only cause of her delayed visit, those vivid reimaginings were one of the reasons she’d stayed away. What had been intended as a casual evening, assuaging an adult need in a very adult fashion, had grown out of proportion in her mind.

Hoyt Reynolds wasn’t her knight-errant come to save her from all the problems in her life. In fact, truth be told, he’d added a complication to her life that—while welcome—was absolutely an obstacle to getting her world back to normal.

Normal had vanished. It had begun back in the spring with her father’s deeds and had only gotten more and more pronounced with her own choices. She was pregnant. And this time next year she’d have a small child utterly dependent on her. Life had changed and it wasn’t ever going to return to where it had been.

“While I’m sorry you’re injured and that I might have had any cause in that, I do need to talk to you.”

“Sure.” Hoyt nodded, pulling out a chair. “Sit down. What is it? Something with your father?”

His concern touched her, as did his immediate willingness to speak to the elephant in the room that most everyone else went out of their way to ignore.

“No, not my father. Although the PTA isn’t crazy that the child of a killer is teaching their children.”

The words popped out before she could stop them, her discussion with Jake still bearing more residual anger than she’d realized.

Hoyt laid a hand over hers, folded on top of the kitchen table. “Reese. They don’t matter. You can’t believe they do. You’re a great teacher. Surely they understand that.”

That overwhelming support struck her hard and deep, like a punch to the chest. Only instead of pain, there was a strange warmth, filling her up even as she struggled to catch her breath at the kindness and ready support. “You going to go over and swing at them, too?”

“Will it work?”

“I doubt it. Although I’d pay big money to see Amanda Carneros take a punch to the nose.”

“She still kicking around?”

“She’s a fixture on the PTA. Eight kids have a way of doing that to a person.”

Hoyt gave a mock shudder. “My condolences.”

“Much as I appreciate the support and the diverting imagery, there’s actually another reason I’m here.”

“Sure.” A soft smile had settled over his features, which nothing—even a split lower lip—could mar. “What is it?”

The stomach jitters ramped up as she accepted the fact that she bore life-altering news. News, she knew, that wouldn’t change or grow any easier to hear by waiting another moment longer.

“I’m pregnant.”