Texas Hope: Sweetgrass Springs Stories (Texas Heroes Book 16) Read online

  “’Course I am,” Ruby Gallagher Howard muttered. “Except for having married a blasted fool.”

  Henry’s eyes popped, and she didn’t miss the glance exchanged between her two waitresses, Jeanette Carson and Brenda Jones. “And I blame you, Harley Sykes,” she called out over the pass-through above the grill.

  “What’s got stuck in your craw?” Harley asked, looking innocent as a newborn lamb.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. Radio station, my precious patootie. What on earth does Sweetgrass need with a radio station?”

  “This town is big enough for a trading post program, and you know it. Why, with Jackson bringing all kinds of folks to town with his video game company and your granddaughter Scarlett planning to draw in new visitors with a restaurant in the courthouse, we’re gonna be popping at the seams any day.”

  “Already are,” she grumbled. Never mind that she’d spent years struggling to keep the town alive in hopes of exactly that.

  “My point exactly.” Harley rose from the corner booth where he’d been dawdling. “Folks can’t hear everything they need to know by coming in here now. Time was, all a body needed was to hit Ruby’s and find out everything worth knowing.”

  Had she thought, years ago when she’d bought the decommissioned courthouse, that the boarded-up downtown would wind up practically exploding with activity? Her long-lost great-nephew Jackson Gallagher had come home, wound up marrying his teenage sweetheart and had decided to relocate his thriving video game empire. Now he was buying up and rehabbing buildings all over the small downtown for both housing and workspace for any employees he could convince to relocate from Seattle.

  In addition, the Paris-trained chef granddaughter she hadn’t known existed had shown up over a year ago and set her sights on revitalizing Sweetgrass with a destination restaurant that would someday also be an events center right in the courthouse, newly remodeled and brought back to sparkling life. In the process, she’d met and married rancher Ian McLaren, the town’s unofficial mayor and as dear to Ruby’s heart as if he’d been born her own.

  Now there was an actual bed and breakfast being operated by Nita Benefield and her husband Raymond—though if you asked Ruby, Nita would do a better business keeping that old curmudgeon under wraps.

  “So you aim to replace my cafe as the jungle drums of the town?”

  Harley snorted. “That ain’t never gonna happen. But folks need a place to list what they got to sell or want to buy and such. These young folks got things so busy, a fellow don’t have time to come sit and learn everything they need to know. Radio trading posts used to exist in every small town that had a station.”

  “What happens the other twenty-three and a half hours out of the day?” Ruby grinned as Henry snickered. “Do you expect me to believe you and that husband of mine are gonna abandon your coffee group? You all sit here half the morning.”

  Harley scratched his chin. “These young folks talk about multi-tasking. We were thinking we could do both.”

  Ruby narrowed her eyes. “Sit here all morning drinking coffee and…?”

  “Run our trading post program. Broadcast live. One of Jackson’s staff, that Big D fella, says that now that Jackson built a cell tower, we could do some sort of internet radio thing, and all we’d need is a computer and microphones.”

  She jammed her fists on her hips. “Lord love a duck.” She huffed out a breath and closed her eyes. “You aim to turn my cafe into a radio station broadcast all over that world wide web?”

  “It’d be good for business,” Harley interjected. “You know it would.”

  “I know no such thing, and the first second Scarlett arrives, I am going after that man who spent eighteen years trying to get me to marry him, though at this moment I cannot begin to think why I said yes.”

  “You didn’t say yes,” Harley reminded her. “You had to be tricked to the altar, if you’ll recall.”

  “Don’t press your luck, Harley Sykes,” she said darkly. “You might just find yourself out on the street and banned from my biscuits for life.”

  “Oh, now, Ruby, you wouldn’t—”

  “Excuse me?” A stranger had entered and was glancing around. Tall and broad-shouldered, he scanned the room as if looking for someone.

  “Can I help you? Sit wherever you like. You caught us in one of our few quiet moments before the supper rush. You hungry?” She turned and pointed a finger. “Harley, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stop thinking about this radio notion. Nothing good happens when you start thinking.”

  “Aw, now, Ruby, you don’t mean that.”

  The visitor’s head swiveled to see who she was talking to.

  “Anyway, I can’t go home,” Harley grumbled. “House is too blasted full of women.”

  “That’s right. Thursday afternoon is quilting.”

  “A bunch of damned hens gabbing and squawking, is more like it.”

  “I don’t think you want me discussing you with Melba right now. She know the mischief you’re up to?”

  “Now there’s no call to get mean, Ruby.”

  The stranger grinned and a dimple popped into his left cheek. He had tousled brown hair with a hint of bronze in it.

  Ruby cocked her head. The only person she’d ever seen with only one dimple was Ian, but Ian didn’t have any siblings. She shook her head and addressed her guest. “Welcome to Sweetgrass. I’m Ruby.”

  “This is your place?” he asked.

  “It is. Though my granddaughter works with me now.” She never got tired of saying that. Scarlett’s arrival just over a year ago had changed everything, not only for Ruby but for Sweetgrass.

  And for Ian.

  “Michael,” he said, extending a hand. “Michael Cavanaugh.”

  “Pleased to meet you. Just traveling through?”

  “Is this place actually on the way to anywhere?” he asked with a grin.

  That dimple again.

  “Well…not to some folks. But to those of us around here, when you get to Sweetgrass, you don’t need to go anywhere else, anyway. It’s a good, solid place but nothing fancy.”

  “A lot different from where I grew up. Everyone in my neighborhood was obsessed with fancy.”

  She glanced out at the dual-cab pickup he’d parked. Lots of wear on that, so maybe the fancy life hadn’t worked out for him.

  Then a head popped up in the back seat window. “That your dog?”

  “Yeah. Monroe. I had to amputate one leg, and the owner didn’t want him anymore, so we sort of adopted each other.”

  “You cut off his leg?”

  A rich, deep laugh, one he seemed to grant easily. “I’m a vet.”

  “From around here?”

  “Only lately. I was filling in for a friend in Austin while he took care of his dad in his final months.”

  “No practice of your own?”

  “I’ve done a lot of different gigs since I graduated—wildlife conservation, large animals and small. Did some time in Kentucky with racehorses.”

  “We could use a vet here in town. Closest one is in Fredericksburg. Folks have to tend their own animals, mostly, if it’s not life-threatening. My grandson Ian raises horses—cattle, too, but horses are his passion.”

  She could swear she saw a spark in his eye when she mentioned Ian.

  She didn’t have to wait long. “Ian? McLaren? He’s your grandson? Is Gordon your son?”

  She cocked her head. “Ian married my granddaughter Scarlett, but he was already like family to me and everyone else in Sweetgrass. This town wouldn’t know what to do without him. You a friend of his?”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve never met him. But I sure would like to, except…” He exhaled. “It’s complicated.”

  “Why is that?” But she was almost sure now that she knew. The resemblance was there if you’d known all the parties involved, as she had.

  “Well, first of all, it took me a while to find him.”

  “He’s never lived any
where else. How hard could it be?”

  A smile, rueful now, but still with the dimple. “See, that’s the thing. I didn’t know he existed until my father died not long ago, but—” His brown eyes, so much like Ian’s, bored into hers. “Turns out Ian is my brother, but I’m doubtful that he knows about me either, and best I can tell, he has reason not to want to. He has every right to hate my very existence.”

  “You’re Sophia’s child.”

  She felt as much as heard Harley rise from his chair and turned on him. “Not one word, Harley Sykes. For Ian’s sake, you don’t breathe a word of this until we get things sorted out. I have never been more serious.”

  “You know her?” Michael asked.

  Ruby shook her head. “No one knew her well. She kept to herself.” Ian’s heart had been broken as a little boy when his mother had abandoned him. He was fiercely devoted to the father who’d never really looked at another woman since Sophia had abandoned them both.

  Ian was a good man, the best, but he had deep wounds, and there was no telling how he’d react when a brother popped up from the blue.

  “Worse than that,” Harley spat. “She had no use for any of us. Thought Gordon should leave this land his forebears bled for. Died for.”

  The man before them looked miserable.

  “That’s enough, Harley. This boy wasn’t even born then.” Harley might top her by a foot, but she pinned him with a fierce glare. “I mean it. You don’t even tell Melba. This is going to be hard enough on Ian, dredging all that up.”

  “I would never hurt Ian.” He turned to the man who bore such a resemblance to his brother. “And you’d better not either. Folks would stand in line to defend Ian McLaren. Better man was never born.”

  Michael Cavanaugh only nodded soberly. “I mean him no harm. I’m furious with my mother myself—I can only imagine how he must feel. I don’t know how a mother could do such a thing.”

  “Sit down in that booth next to the kitchen,” she ordered him, then glanced at Harley.

  Harley settled back into his booth across the room and took up the paperback he’d been reading.

  “Let’s have us some coffee and pie while you start telling me everything.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, you got manners. That’s something.” She turned toward the kitchen with a quick glance at the clock.

  Scarlett would be back within an hour after taking the afternoon nap both Ruby and Ian had insisted upon once she’d entered her last trimester. The girl was wearing herself to a nub, and they were worried about her.

  Thing is, Ian would most likely come with her when she returned, protective to the last.

  My, my, my.

  “Sweetheart,” said the deep, sexy voice that never failed to make Scarlett shiver.

  She sighed at the vividness of the dream. They were in the clearing, Ian and she, their first time together in Ian’s special place.

  She smiled. Oh, the dance was such fun, thrilling and frightening and sweetly aching. Somehow she knew he was important in a way no other man ever had been.

  Then he kissed her, and the dream felt so real, so…

  A nip to her earlobe, a sweet sting…she sighed again. “Ian….” Her voice gave her away, how much she wanted him. She didn’t care.

  She sighed again, an undertow of moan as his lips traveled down her throat and his hand cupped her breast. When his long, strong fingers gently squeezed, her hips rocked in automatic response—

  A sharp kick to her middle popped open her eyes. Shot her straight into reality. “We’re not in the clearing.”

  The face she loved beyond any in the world smiled, brandy-brown eyes twinkling. “We could be.” His grin widened. “There are still a few bluebonnets.”

  “Really?” She jackknifed up in their bed. Gasped. “Ow.”

  “What is it? What hurts? Is she all right?” His big hand cradled her belly while his eyes scanned her face.

  Scarlett smiled and stretched. “I just forgot about the basketball in my middle.” She glanced down. “And you don’t know it’s a she.”

  The worry hadn’t left his eyes yet, so she stroked his brown hair shot full of red in the afternoon’s light shining through their bedroom window. “I’m fine. We’re fine. Don’t you have work to do?”

  “I worked while you were sleeping.”

  She stuck out her lower lip. “I’m not a child, you know. I don’t need a nap.”

  He bent and kissed her belly. “But you’re growing ours, and you’re so damn little.”

  He did top her by a full head, that much was true. “I’m getting huge. You won’t be bigger much longer.”

  His one dimple popped out. “Yeah, you’re a horse all right. Cleopatra has nothing on you.” He spoke of his prime mare, the one he’d pinned his hopes on for the horse breeding operation that was his dream, though cattle were his current reality and the ranch’s lifeblood.

  “I love you,” she said, cupping his jaw.

  His entire face suffused with emotion. “And I will never take that miracle for granted, not for one second.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers. “Take the night off,” he urged.

  “You know I can’t. Nana’s not getting any younger.”

  “You’re not getting any less pregnant. Let Henry cook. He’s pretty good now.”

  “He is, but he’s not ready yet.”

  “He will be by the time she’s born. And you have Spike now.”

  She nodded at the mention of her new studded and generously-tattooed pastry chef. “She’s great, and Henry’s coming along very well. But we’re working up the menu for Ruby’s Dream and we’ve added on stocking Jackson’s commissary. He has more of his people moving here by the day. I can’t slow down now.”

  “You have to.”

  Nothing got her back up more than being told what to do. In her entire wandering childhood with her single mother, she’d been the adult, even when she was still a little girl. She’d been a rising star chef in New York, had run her kitchens with flawless efficiency, and she didn’t need anyone ordering her around.

  Ian’s eyes sparked with the need to overrule her, and it didn’t help that she knew he simply wanted to protect her and their child from anything that could possibly go wrong. His only family had fractured when he was small and his mother had walked away from him and his father. He was the most responsible person she knew, taking the welfare of an entire town on his shoulders for far too long. Even now that his childhood friends Randall Mackey and Jackson Gallagher had made Sweetgrass home and accepted their own share of the load, still Ian didn’t relinquish his role.

  He was an excellent protector, and sometimes there was nothing better than feeling, for the first time in her life, that she wasn’t alone, that everything didn’t come down to her.

  But being pregnant with a child she both wanted and was terrified of failing, in equal measure, wasn’t the sum total of Scarlett Ross McLaren. She had her own reasons for wanting to help out the town that had taken her in and the grandmother she’d lived far too long without.

  With the innate kindness and self-control that were Ian’s hallmarks, he exhaled and began to smile. “I’ll stop barking if you will.”

  “I wasn’t—”

  “You were fixing to.” He grinned and drew her onto his lap, then proceeded to kiss the socks off her.

  She murmured an initial protest at being robbed of the battle—

  Then she happily surrendered. He knew her too well. He loved her even better.

  He’d push, and she’d push back, but in the end, they’d meet somewhere near the middle.

  And seal the treaty with a kiss.

  Or several.

  “I can drive myself into town, you know. You’re shorthanded, too.”

  Ian cast her a glance. “Maybe not. Billy’s brother is moving home. He needs work.” The Double Bar M foreman’s brother had been gone from Sweetgrass since high school. Cal Ritter was a couple of years younger tha
n Ian, and he’d been a badass back then, but Billy swore the military had gotten that out of Cal’s system. There was more to the story, Ian was pretty sure, but he trusted Billy implicitly, so he’d extend that faith until he could make his own decision.

  “You could use the help, couldn’t you? Your organic beef operation is growing.”

  “Yeah. He could free me up some to work with the horses.” He parked the truck beside Ruby’s Cafe and shut it off, then stepped out and rounded the cab. “Wonder who that rig belongs to?”

  A puppy leaped up and yipped happily from the back seat of the unfamiliar dual cab truck. The day was cool, but still the windows were down just enough for the puppy to try to stick his nose through.

  “Oh, isn’t he precious?” She blew the dog a kiss. Beside him, an older dog watched them warily.

  “Blue will be jealous.” His Australian shepherd normally went everywhere with Ian, but he was with Ian’s dad this afternoon.

  “Blue knows he’s my guy.”

  “I thought I was your guy.” Ian lifted her from the cab and set her on her feet.

  “I’m not helpless, you know.” She placed one small hand on the center of his chest, and just like always, his heart did a slow roll. “And you’re my man. That’s different.”

  He smiled and covered her hand with his as he bent to kiss her. “You get so damn much done with these tiny hands.”

  She rose to her toes and kissed him back. “We’re making chicken-fried steak tonight. In case you’re interested.”

  “Always. I’ll bring Dad.” He sighed. “I’m not ready to let you go.”

  “Yeah, I might vanish in the couple of hours before I see you again.” Her blue eyes sparkled. “But ditto. I love you so much.”

  He bent his head again, but just then Ruby poked her head out the side door. “Ian, could you come in here, please?”

  “Sure.” He completed the kiss and escorted the love of his life to the side door of the cafe. “I’m bringing back your sidekick.”

  Ruby smiled, but it wasn’t with her usual ease.

  “What’s wrong?”