Long, Hot Texas Summer Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2014 Carolyn Brown

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477823897

  ISBN-10: 1477823891

  Cover design: Mumtaz Mustafa

  Interior design and composition: Greg Johnson/Textbook Perfect

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014901935

  To Jerry and Marian Goshorn

  With much love.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  LIVING IN THE SAME HOUSE with her ex-husband would be pure, unadulterated hell. But Loretta would face off with the devil on his worst day if it made her daughter decide to go back to Oklahoma with her at the end of the long, hot Texas summer. That was the endgame; hopefully it wouldn’t take all summer to convince Nona.

  The way the light of the big lovers’ moon practically made the silver van glow under the twinkling stars, no one would ever guess that anger, determination, and anxiety filled the interior. The air conditioner put out all the cold air it could, but Loretta was still sweating. It had been four years since she’d laid eyes on Jackson Bailey, her ex-husband, and she had no doubt that he hadn’t changed a bit.

  “We have a request for Randy Travis’s ‘Deeper Than the Holler.’ It dates back more than twenty years, folks. I remember listening to this when I was in high school,” the DJ said.

  “Oh, honey, I remember that song probably better than anyone in this whole part of Texas,” Loretta whispered.

  It was the very song that had been playing when she got pregnant with Nona. She and Jackson had gone parking out by the creek and Jackson had spread their old quilt under the big oak tree like they’d done dozens of other times. He’d held her afterward and sang that part of the song to her that said that his love was deeper than the holler and stronger than the river.

  The sun had long since slipped over the western edge of the canyon, its last red rays sliding down to the bottom of the big hole called Palo Duro Canyon. The land was flatter than the old proverbial pancake in the Texas Panhandle. But story had it that God needed dirt to make the mountains in the eastern part of the state, so he scooped out a hole to get it. But he saved the most beautiful sunsets in the whole world for that desolate place of crazy formations and red dirt roads.

  She made a hard right, leaving the paved road and turning onto one of those very red dirt roads that would have her van looking like shit by the time she reached Lonesome Canyon Ranch. The last time she’d seen a cloud of red dust boiling up behind her had been when she was leaving Lonesome Canyon, not going toward it. Nona had just turned four years old that week and had had no idea her whole world was about to change. She had played with her favorite stuffed Black Angus toy, Bossy, while Loretta alternately cussed and cried.

  The old feelings from that night came flooding back and Loretta braked hard right there in the middle of the road, a cloud of red dust enveloping her van. She inhaled deeply, tears running down her cheeks, as the gut-wrenching pain she’d known seventeen years ago returned to tie her insides into knots. She leaned her head on the steering wheel, a broken woman for the second time in her life. She had no choice but to go on, so she took her foot off the brake and put it on the gas pedal.

  The windows were up, but she could almost hear the squeak of the Lonesome Canyon Ranch sign as it swung back and forth on rusty chains. There was a time when Loretta had called this place home, when she’d thought she and Jackson were meant to be together, but that all changed in the blink of an eye one Sunday afternoon when Nona lost that damned Black Angus stuffed animal and refused to go to sleep without it.

  The moon lit up the two-story white house with six columns holding up the second-floor porch. She and Jackson had had sex out on that porch the night before she left. Everything had been wonderful in their life. They had been young. They had a beautiful daughter they both doted on. They had finally gotten the debts all paid and Lonesome Canyon was showing a sizable profit on the books.

  “And now from your all-country, all-night radio station, here’s Brooks and Dunn with ‘Red Dirt Road,’” the DJ said.

  Even after she parked the van in the empty bay, she sat still until the song ended, the lead singer talking about being raised out past where the blacktop ended. She nodded when the lyrics said that’s where she drank her first beer, where she found Jesus and wrecked her first car, because it was the story of her life up until she was twenty-two years old. She’d been raised in Claude, up at the top of the canyon, but they’d lived at the end of the blacktop and she’d found Jesus in the old church down in the canyon. She’d wrecked her first car coming up the incline out of the canyon into Claude when she was seventeen and she’d drunk her first beer sitting on a quilt out beside the creek with Jackson right beside her.

  She shook her head from side to side when they sang that when they were back on dirt roads it felt as if they had come home. “I’m not home. I’m here to kick some sense into my daughter. And then I’ll go back to Oklahoma and Jackson can have this canyon,” she said as the song ended.

  She hadn’t seen Jackson since Nona had turned sixteen and been allowed to drive alone to visit Jackson every other weekend and for at least a month in the summer. But it would take a hell of a lot more than five years, or even one lifetime, for Jackson Bailey to lose his appeal or his power. The appeal she could skirt around; the power, well, she’d meet it head-on.

  Their meeting would be like two bull elephants coming at each other from opposite ends of the ranch, and the old house might not even be standing at the end of the long, hot summer with the pressure of Loretta and Jackson across the hall from each other for weeks on end. She would be ecstatic if Nona listened to her arguments and decided to go home in a few days, but Loretta didn’t fool herself into believing that could really happen.

  Did the idea cross your mind that he might throw you out or tell you to go to a hotel in Amarillo? the voice in her head yelled as she turned off the radio.

  “He won’t, because that would mean I’ve got the ability to get under his skin. He’ll let me stay to try to prove me wrong. I know him,” she argued aloud.

  Rosie, the housekeeper/cook/woman who ran the household, opened the door and stepped out into the garage when Loretta set her feet on the concrete floor. “Well, mercy sakes, is that you, Loretta? What are you doing here
this time of night? Did Nona forget something?”

  “Hello, Rosie. How are you? You haven’t changed a bit.” Loretta stiffened her backbone and straightened up to her full five feet ten inches in her bare feet. God, she hated being so tall that she dwarfed everyone around her.

  Loretta’s prayers had been answered when Nona showed signs at an early age of looking like her maternal grandmother—blonde haired, blue eyed, and small of build. She had almost danced with glee when Nona brought home her kindergarten picture with her in the front row. Loretta had always stood with the boys on the back row and the other girls had never let her forget how tall, gangly, and ugly she was with her red hair and long legs.

  “Well?” Rosie crossed her arms over her chest. “You going to answer me or not?”

  Loretta had always suspected that Rosie had already been there when the first strand of barbed wire went up around Lonesome Canyon Ranch, and no one had had balls big enough to run her off. As housekeeper, cook, and the only really stable person Jackson had ever known, Rosie ran the place with a steel hand and a soft heart. She’d tried her damnedest to talk Loretta out of leaving, but nothing, not even Rosie, could stop her.

  Dark brown eyebrows drew down over eyes that were almost black and set into a bed of wrinkles. A sprinkling of gray frosted her dark hair.

  “I’m still waiting on answers to my questions. Are you stayin’ here and what’s going on?” Rosie asked. “I’m gettin’ older and bitchier every day. And my patience ain’t what it used to be, especially since you left and Sam died and I had to keep Jackson from . . . Hell, you don’t need a history lesson. You know that Jackson’s daddy died the year after you left and that I never did have any patience,” Rosie said.

  “I’m here to stay a few days, Rosie. Where is everyone?” Loretta picked up the first of two suitcases, set it on the ground, and reached for the next one.

  Rosie stood to one side and held the door for Loretta. “Nona is out on a date with Travis and Jackson is out to dinner with . . . hell, I can’t remember her name. You’re really plannin’ on stayin’ here?”

  “I am.” Loretta popped up the handles on the suitcases and rolled them toward the door. “Is there a problem with that?”

  Rosie shook her head. “Not from me there ain’t. I don’t even like this woman he’s out with tonight. She’s wishy-washy and too damn quiet for Jackson. Does he know you’re coming?”

  “No, and I’m glad he’s out to dinner with whoever it is. I can get settled in before he even knows I’m here,” Loretta said.

  “Need some help?” Rosie asked.

  “No, but thank you. Is he still in our old bedroom?” Loretta asked.

  “You can have that one. It’s still like it was when you left it. He never slept in that room again after you run off instead of stickin’ around and fightin’ it out. Why in the hell haven’t you called me all these years? If you was still a kid, I’d take a switch to your backside.” Rosie talked all the way through the kitchen, the dining room, the foyer, and to the bottom of the curved staircase. “I expect you are here because Nona has decided to stay on at the ranch and not go back to school, right? Well, there will be fireworks. They should have happened back when Nona was a baby, but later is better than never. I’m not carryin’ no luggage up there so you’ll have to make two trips and if you bump the walls, you’ll be cleanin’ the marks off before you even look cross-eyed at that bathtub.”

  Loretta carefully maneuvered one suitcase upstairs. “You remembered.”

  “Of course I remembered. I was surprised you left it behind when you ran off like a crazy mule with a burr under its saddle.”

  “I still love that old tub and that’s where I’m headed soon as I get unpacked,” Loretta said.

  “I reckon you’ve got two hours until they both get home. I don’t even want to be here when that happens. So why now, Loretta?” Rosie asked.

  Loretta stopped on the third step. “I’m not sure, but my heart said I had to try to change her mind about school, so here I am.”

  “It’s good to have you back home. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  “Rosie, I’m not home. I’m here for one reason and that’s to take my daughter back where she belongs. I hope it only takes a few days,” Loretta said with as serious a tone as she could muster.

  Rosie had hit the nail on the head when she’d asked if Loretta had thought about what she was doing, because she hadn’t, not for a minute. Loretta had done two impulsive things in her life. One was leaving the ranch without giving Jackson a chance to explain jack shit before she filed for divorce; the other was coming back to stay at least a month without asking or telling Jackson jack shit.

  She opened her first suitcase and her cell phone rang before she could remove a single item. Hoping that it was Nona, she flipped it open and answered without even looking at the caller ID.

  “What in the hell are you doing? I swear to God, you never learn. Mama gave you a job when you came home with a baby and needin’ a place to live, so why the devil would you ever go back there with Nona grown? Haven’t you caused enough trouble and heartache for the family?” Emmy Lou, the oldest of her younger sisters, ranted.

  “Well, thank you so much for the vote of confidence.”

  “You never did have a lick of common sense.” Emmy Lou always was the bossiest of the four sisters.

  “Tell you what, I’ll lay the phone down and you go on and tell me how I ruined your life because I got pregnant and Mama couldn’t bear the shame so she moved y’all to Oklahoma. I reckon by the time you get through with your bitchfest I should have my suitcase unpacked.”

  “Don’t you dare!” she yelled. “I was just a kid when I said that.”

  “You might have been a kid the first time you said it but not the last time you brought it up, right?” Loretta reminded her.

  Emmy Lou changed the subject: “Daddy is disappointed in you.”

  “That won’t work either. I’m here on a mission. When it’s completed, I’ll go home. I suppose I can expect calls from Dolly and Tammy tonight too? I’m going to put you on hold. Mama is beeping in,” Loretta said.

  “Don’t bother. I’ll hang up. This is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. Good-bye!”

  Loretta punched a button and said, “Hello, Mama. I’m here and the trip went just fine. I’m unpacking now and Emmy Lou just called. I’m still happy to be the black sheep, so don’t give Dolly or Tammy my dunce hat.”

  “You have six weeks of vacation time built up. I don’t have to like the way that you choose to use it, but you remember things can change in six weeks,” her mother, Katy, said coldly.

  “Is that an ultimatum?” Loretta asked.

  “I don’t issue threats or ultimatums. I state facts. We’ll all talk again in a few days when the tempers have cooled down. Give Nona a hug from me,” Katy said.

  The line went dead.

  Loretta threw herself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She was forty years old, not eighteen and pregnant. The past should be dead and buried, but leave it to family to keep digging up the dry old bones time and time again.

  She needed a drink or a maybe a long talk with Heather and Maria. She picked up her phone and punched in the number for Heather, but all she got was a computerized message saying that the number had been disconnected.

  “Well, dammit,” she mumbled. “I just talked to them a few months ago.”

  Hell, no! that niggling voice inside her head said. The last time you talked to your two old friends was Christmas before last and that was eighteen months ago.

  Nona snuggled down into the crook of Travis Calhoun’s arm and tried to catch her breath as the warmth of afterglow settled around them. He traced her full lips with a fingertip before he brushed a sweet kiss across them.

  “We have a request for ‘Deeper Than the Holler,’ by Randy Travis. It dates back
more than twenty years, folks. I remember listening to this when I was in high school,” the DJ on the radio said.

  “Listen to the words of this song, Nona. This is our song from now on. This is how deep my love is for you. We’ll be dancing to this when we have grandchildren,” he whispered.

  “Honey, I hope when we are old we are listening to this song after a hot bout of sex, not dancing to it,” she said.

  Travis hugged her closer to his side and wrapped his fingers up in her long blonde tresses. “Do you realize this is our last night in the bunkhouse? The full summer crew is arriving by sundown tomorrow.”

  She snuggled up closer to him. “We’ll find another place. Daddy goes out on Saturday night pretty often and we could go to my bedroom. Or there’s always under that old oak tree by the creek. I’ll put a quilt behind the seat of my truck.”

  “Not on your life. Jackson Bailey would shoot me if he caught me near your bedroom. It wouldn’t be a question of firing me.” He pushed her hair back and kissed the soft part of her neck. “He would tack my hide to the smokehouse door as an example. And that creek is too public, darlin’. I was thinkin’ more of a hotel room in Amarillo.”

  Nona pulled his face toward hers for series of hot, steamy kisses that left them both panting. “He’d have to shoot me first, darlin’. I’ll protect my big, handsome cowboy from now on. I’m never leaving again.”

  “Your mama isn’t going to like that decision.”

  “No, she isn’t, but at least she’s in Oklahoma. I don’t have to see her face-to-face every day.”

  With his black hair; deep, dark eyes; and hunky, sexy body, Travis had set Nona’s heart into double time from the first time she’d met him. She hadn’t looked at another man the same since that day last summer. She’d spent two miserable semesters in college, making good grades, but her heart was at Lonesome Canyon with Travis every day of that year. Even with the texting and daily phone calls, the only place she’d wanted to be was at the ranch. Now that she was here and in his arms, she’d be damned if she left him again. She was a rancher by birth, by heart, and by choice and there was nothing her mother could do about it. And by staying in Lonesome Canyon, she was doubly blessed. She got to do the job she loved right beside the man she loved.