Coming Home To Texas

“Nash Larson,” Don introduced. “Brought him on all the way from California last month.”

She walked over, extending a friendly hand. “Nice to finally meet you, Nash. Welcome to Martins Gap. How are you liking it so far?”

The screen door opened behind Miss Adele and out walked Ellen Buckton, eyes startled wide and mouth open. “It’s you.”

She was much prettier in the daylight—in fact, she looked almost nothing like the tearful mess of a woman who’d offered him biscotti last night. “Good afternoon, Miss Buckton. Glad to see you made it safe and sound.”

Don looked at Nash while Miss Adele looked at her granddaughter. Nash kept silent—the explanation ought to be Ellen’s territory, given the circumstances.

“Ellie?” Miss Adele clearly wasn’t going to wait.

Ellie. That suited her much more than Ellen, Nash thought. Her tawny blond hair—pulled up into a mess on the top of her head last night—hung in loose curves over her shoulders. The eyes—remarkably blue last night—were breathtaking in the full light of day.

Only right now they looked mortified. “Um...well...” She thrust her hands into the back pockets of her jeans and shifted her weight. “I got pulled over for speeding last night, Gran. I guess I was in too much of a hurry to get here.”

Don shot Nash a surprised look. Nash hadn’t entered the stop in his official records. He just shrugged, unsure what he was supposed to do or say.

Miss Adele moved over to wrap an arm around Ellie. “Of course you were, sweetheart, but a speeding ticket? Really?”

“No ticket, ma’am,” Nash offered. “I could see how upset she was, so I just let her off with a warning and her promise to take it slower the rest of the way here.”

“Thanks for that again, really,” Ellie offered with a small smile. “You were the only good spot in a horrible day.”

That set a small glow in Nash’s stomach. Law enforcement didn’t offer a man a lot of reasons to be the good part of someone’s day—more often just the opposite. A large part of him hoped that balance would change out here. “Glad to help.”

“Well—” Don pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket “—now that we’re all friendly like, how about you tell me what’s been going on?”

“Here comes my brother now,” Ellie said, nodding at a tall man with the same tawny hair walking toward them, wiping his hands on a bright blue bandanna. “He can fill you in better than Gran or I.”

Nash and Don spent the next half hour listening to Gunner Buckton’s account of finding fences messed with, hearing rifle fire near the animals and the general edginess of the herd.

“Any idea why someone would want to scare or harm your herd?” Nash asked as Gunner showed photographs he’d printed from his smartphone of clipped fence wires.

“That’s what has me stumped, frankly.” Gunner pushed his hat back on his head, revealing the brilliant blue eyes Nash had now realized were a family trait. “Bison aren’t people-friendly. And an agitated cow or bull can be downright dangerous. Whoever’s doing this is really brave, really quick or just too stupid to recognize the danger.”

“Kids,” Don pronounced. Nash had to admit, it made the most sense. Anyone wanting to truly hurt the Bucktons could pick a dozen safer ways to do damage. Still, bragging rights for trying to nick or free a bison sounded like a pretty far-fetched stunt, even for kids.

“They’ll be hurt or worse if this keeps up. It’s making the herd anxious. We’re just coming into calving season. I’ve got my hands full as it is.”

“We’ll do our best to find the ones responsible, Gunner.” Don clasped the rancher on the shoulder. “I’ll have a chat with a few of the likely suspects and see if I can dig anything up. Hopefully, this’ll all die down on its own soon enough. Now how ’bout that pie your gran was offering? I want to show Nash here what down-home cooking really tastes like.”

* * *

“Thanks again. For last night, I mean,” Ellie offered as she refilled Nash Larson’s coffee cup. They were standing by the coffeemaker while Sheriff Don, Gunner and Gran sat around the kitchen table. “I meant what I said about you being the only nice thing that happened that day.” Not to mention the nicest thing she’d had to look at in nearly a thousand miles. He had brownish-red hair with a ruddy coloring that would have made him look boyish were it not for the severe features that made up his face. She got the impression he was a tough guy squelching a soft edge—or a caring man who’d had the tough shell forced upon him. Given his profession, it could easily be either.

“You really drove all the way here from Atlanta in one day?”

“Yeah, well, that’s how badly I wanted to get out of town. After my little...discovery...I stumbled around for the rest of the week claiming ‘sick days,’ but by Friday I knew I didn’t want to spend another hour listening to my friends whisper about how my fiancé had gotten caught snuggled up against the croutons with someone I thought was my best friend.” Ellie shrugged off the lingering sting of that statement. “Two emails, three suitcases and a triple-shot latte later, I was on the road.”

Nash raised an eyebrow. “Croutons?”

“Derek is a chef. Katie works for the same restaurant chain I do—did. I’m not entirely sure I’ll want the job waiting for me when I go back. The big breakup was alarmingly...public at a St. Patrick’s Day event involving the whole company.”

“Ouch. And no one could muster up an ‘I’m sorry’?”

He’d remembered what she’d said last night. That stuck somewhere deep—she’d felt so dismissed and invisible since that whole drama. How she could feel so overlooked after such a public scene still stumped her.

“The St. Patrick’s Day Fest is a big event involving all our restaurants, so there were rushing people and chaos and even cameras everywhere—Derek is a bit of a celebrity. Thankfully, there weren’t any cameras nearby at that particular moment. I would have thought he was swamped with work—he certainly didn’t seem to have time for me that day—but clearly he had time for...other people. When I confronted him, he just sort of shut down into chef mode, shouting about food details and telling me there just wasn’t time for personal drama.”

Nash’s jaw worked. It was gratifying to see a perfect stranger horrified by Derek’s behavior—proof she wasn’t some oversensitive victim. “No time? Really? I hope you gave it to him anyway.”

Ellie swallowed the lump in her throat, remembering the “it couldn’t be helped” shrug Derek had given her as he wiped the last of Katie’s lipstick from his chin. The lack of shock or even regret stung worst of all. How could she have so blind to the growing indifference Derek had been showing her? She’d put his distance down to stress, but his cooling toward her had been only because Derek was heating it up with her so-called best friend. Who knew “lukewarm” could burn so much?

“I told him—” she didn’t bite back the bitter edge she gave the words “—that if he had time to cheat on me with my best friend, he could make the time to man up and apologize for it.”

Nash took a swallow of coffee and nodded. “I wouldn’t have been half that kind.”

“Thanks.” She meant it. Ellie needed people to take her side. The number of people at GoodEats who had looked at her with a sad sort of “didn’t you see this coming?” expression was one of the reasons she’d packed her car and fled to the ranch.

“What are you going to do now?”

She didn’t have a real answer. “Eat. Bake. Knit. Restore my faith in human nature. Maybe make yarn.”

“Knit?”

“It’s what I do to calm down or feel...” She reached for a way to explain what the steady click of the needles over the yarn did for her soul. “Oh, I don’t know, comfort, I suppose? I don’t cook—not well, not like Derek or Katie—so I express my creativity with yarn.” She looked out the window over the kitchen sink. “You can make really good yarn from bison hair, you know. We’ve never done it here, but I’ve always wanted to try it.”

Nash seemed to have caught her hesitant tone. “But?”

“But I’m pretty sure Gunner finds the idea far-fetched. Not the artistic type, my brother. But he has a good head for business, so if I make a practical case for it...” She ran her hands through her hair, wondering if she was boring the guy with her oddball ideas. “It’s just a dumb idea I had. I don’t know if it will go anywhere, but it will give me something to do until I figure out what’s next.”

“How long are you staying?”

“Gran said I could stay as long as I wanted, though I’ll have to go back eventually. I’ve got an apartment and supposedly still a job in Atlanta. If I’m smart, I’ll be back before the wedding and gala season, but those months can be brutal in the restaurant business. I’m not sure I’ve got the strength for brutal left in me, if you know what I mean.”

Nash frowned at her strangely, as if the choice of words had touched a raw nerve. “Yeah, believe it or not, I do know.”

She wasn’t sure it was safe to ask. “How?”

A flash shot through his moss-green eyes. “Let’s just say LA specializes in brutal, and I was done with it, too.”

“Are you hoping here will be less brutal? I’m pretty sure you’ll get your wish as long as you stay outside of Austin. Martins Gap can come close to boring.”

He managed a slip of a smile. “Nobody calls the sheriff out because they’re bored.”

She felt a smile—the first in what felt like ages—turn up the corners of her lips as she sipped her coffee. “Oh, I guess that’s true. Bison Crimes Unit, huh?”

Now he genuinely laughed. “It’s a far cry from vice and vandalism, I’ll give you that. Gang members can be big, but they don’t come in thousand-pound hairy versions with big horns. At least not yet.”