Carbon Copy Cowboy

For some reason, he swiped his thumb across the bottom of the screen on his phone and watched as the blonde’s photo popped up again. He stopped in the dining room, aware that his sisters—he still couldn’t get over the fact that there were two of them and how alike they looked now that Maddie had taken to jeans and boots—busily laid the table for the evening meal.

“Oh, good, you’re home,” Violet said, smiling as she placed a napkin beside a plate.

“Uh-huh.” Disturbed by his compulsion to stare at the picture on his phone, he tossed the small device down at his regular place. “Y’all ought to know that we could be having company soon.”

“Oh?” Maddie said, closing a drawer in the breakfront. “Who? Have you heard from Grayson?”

Jack made a face at the mention of his brother. “No, I haven’t heard from Grayson, and I don’t expect to. Why would I?”

“He is your twin,” Violet pointed out.

“So? I’m not talking about him. This is someone different.... A person was in a car wreck today.”

“Oh, wow!” Violet exclaimed. “Anyone we know?”

“Some woman who didn’t make the curve at the bottom of Blackberry Hill,” Jack answered carelessly. “She’s going to need a place to stay when Doc says she can leave the hospital.”

“When will that be?” Maddie asked.

He shrugged. “Soon, I expect.”

“Will she need nursing?” Violet queried apprehensively.

“No, nothing like that,” he assured them, more gruffly than he’d intended. “I’ll explain later. If it comes to it, I mean. She might stay somewhere else. Now, I better wash up.”

He walked off toward the back staircase. The very moment that he rounded the corner, he heard Violet say, “I might have known.”

Drawing to a halt at the note of concern in her voice, he retraced his steps to the doorway and saw that she’d picked up his phone and unlocked the screen. She and Maddie stood huddled together beside the dining table, as alike as two peas in a pod, staring down at the photo of the blonde woman now at the clinic.

“She’s probably tall and leggy,” Violet muttered, putting down the phone.

As a matter of fact, she is.

“What makes you say that?” Maddie asked, and Jack mentally echoed the question. Yeah, what makes you say that?

“Because,” Violet answered, “that’s the type Jack goes for.”

Jack darted up his forehead as Maddie surmised, “You’re describing the girl that broke his heart last year, aren’t you?”

Violet nodded. “Long legs, long blond hair, blue eyes.”

Hazel, Jack corrected silently, then he remembered that Violet was describing Tammy, not his car-wreck victim in the wedding veil.

“What happened there, anyway?” Maddie asked.

Jack leaned a shoulder against the door frame and prepared to listen to Violet’s thoughts on the subject, intrigued primarily because they’d never discussed the issue.

“Jack and Tammy dated all throughout high school,” Violet reported. “Then when Jack went off to college, she broke up with him.”

Not exactly. It had been a mutual decision at that point. Jack had wanted the freedom to enjoy his college experience, and Tammy hadn’t wanted to sit home waiting for him to graduate. It had seemed sensible at the time to give each other some freedom. They’d dated off and on over the next four years, then Tammy had gotten involved with someone else. They had broken up when he was transferred. Jack had assumed that she’d objected to moving away from Grasslands, but it had turned out that she’d been unwilling to trade one “nothing town” for another, as she’d put it.

“For a long time, everyone thought Tammy would marry the manager at the ranch supply store,” Violet went on, “but after he left town, she and Jack started dating again. When Jack started fixing up the old Lindley house, everyone thought for sure that they would get married.”

From the moment he’d seen that place as a teenager, Jack had thought he’d like to live there when he grew up and got married, and he’d said as much when his mother had bought the acreage after old man Lindley had died. He hadn’t realized how seriously his family had taken his plans to heart until now.

“That’s the one he’s been working on since I came here, isn’t it?” Maddie asked sadly, and Violet nodded.

Jack had taken refuge at the old house off Franken Road. Gutting the kitchen, replacing floorboards and squaring up the doorways had taken his mind off the turmoil that Maddie’s arrival in their lives had engendered, but he hadn’t meant to make her feel bad by disappearing. It was just his way. He wasn’t used to having two sisters, let alone his mom in a coma and all these questions about a family he hadn’t even known he had. Staying to himself and working hard kept his mind off those problems. He’d rebuilt the staircase after Tammy had left town, but that’s where he’d left it until his mother’s accident. Once it had become obvious that Belle would remain in a coma, Jack had torn out and replaced the bath fixtures at the old house.

“Yes, Jack’s always intended to live there,” Violet went on, “but apparently Tammy didn’t get that. Her parents, Gabe and Gwen Simmons, down at the coffee shop, say that Tammy had been telling them that she was getting out of Grasslands, either with Jack or someone else. Apparently, when Jack asked her to marry him, she told him that she’d marry him only if he took her away from Grasslands. He wasn’t about to leave here, so they broke up.” She sighed. “Not long after, she left town with a trucker who was passing through. We’ve heard that she’s in Houston now.”

It wasn’t quite that simple, Jack mused. He’d been fixing up the house as a surprise for Tammy. He’d bought a diamond ring and staged his proposal in front of the newly rebuilt rock fireplace in the front room, but when Tammy had realized that he’d meant for them to live there, she’d laughed at him.

“I’m not going to stay around here any longer than I have to,” she’d said. “Just tell your mother that you want your inheritance now, and let’s go someplace fun.”

Shocked, he’d informed her that he would never leave the ranch, at which point Tammy had declared that he could keep his ring. She’d been seeing the trucker all along, it seemed, and the guy had promised to take her somewhere exciting, someplace where “cowboys and cows were not the be all and end all.” She’d left him that day saying that she’d wasted enough time on him.

“No wonder Jack wants no part of love,” Maddie observed.

“I don’t know,” Violet said, staring down at his phone. “Maybe he’s ready to move on, after all.”

A picture of the girl in the hospital bed suddenly shimmered through Jack’s mind. He saw her beautiful eyes open, her gaze flicking around the room and coming to rest on him. She had smiled slightly, as if she’d recognized him. He’d had to restrain himself from stepping forward to touch her. Every protective instinct he possessed had risen to the fore, and he couldn’t have stopped himself from trying to reassure her.

He recalled the moment when she’d realized that she’d lost her memory. The panic and horror in her eyes had pierced him. He’d wanted to wrap her in his arms and promise her that all would be well. He’d never felt that way toward Tammy or any other woman outside of his mom and Violet.

Chills ran down Jack’s spine. He shifted away from the door frame and stepped back. What was he thinking? What was Violet thinking? Just because he felt a little protective toward an injured woman and had taken a picture of her for the local police, that didn’t mean he was interested in her personally. No way. Even if the woman hadn’t been in dire straits, the timing couldn’t have been worse. With his mom in a coma and all this upheaval in the family, romance was simply out of the question.

“We don’t know anything about this woman,” he heard Maddie caution. Jack snorted. No one knew anything about this woman. She didn’t even know anything about herself! “We need to pray about this,” Maddie added.

Sounded like good advice to Jack, very good advice. He’d pray for the mysterious young woman in the wedding veil and blue jeans and ask the Lord to meet her needs before the Colbys had to step in. That would be one problem solved, at least. The rest would resolve in time. Or not. He truly wasn’t sure that he even cared anymore.

Did it really matter why Belle and Brian had split up the family, including two sets of twins? His mother had been determined to keep the secret, and he should have let her. He shouldn’t have insisted that she tell him why they had no contact with any extended family. If he’d let it alone then, his mom might not be lying in that hospital bed now. As far as he was concerned, the whole matter should just be dropped.

Turning, he went to clean up before Lupita could catch him eavesdropping.

* * *

Sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, she curled one leg beneath her and smiled at the fashion dolls “walking” across the coverlet in the hands of little Emily Wilmon, the only other patient in the dormitory.

“I think you look like a Julia,” the child said, as if amnesia was some sort of game.

“Julia?” She laughed, shaking her blond head. “Why do you think that’s my name?”

Emily looked at the male doll in her left hand and changed her mind. “Kenna!” she decided. “I want your name to be Kenna!”

Struck by how right that sounded, she sucked in a deep breath, murmuring, “Kendra, maybe?”

“Yeah, Kendra.” Emily beamed.