Home To Texas

“I used to bring those home myself. Mighty sparkly.”

“Mom says they’re not diamonds.” Del sighed. “They’re quart crystals.”

“Quartz,” Grady told him. “That’s right. That’s why they call it Crystal Creek.”

“Not diamonds?” Del sounded disappointed.

“Quartz is good, too,” Grady reassured him.

Del sighed more deeply in resignation. Then to Tara’s surprise he laid his head on Grady’s shoulder. The gesture touched her, yet it also sent a ripple of wariness through her. Del seldom trusted people this fast, and she wasn’t sure why he’d taken to this man so quickly.

But she said nothing. She shifted the scarf filled with pebbles to her other hand. The wind had loosened her hair, and she felt it blowing, untamed, around her face. Her cheeks tingled from the cool, fresh air.

Del’s eyes fluttered shut, and he fell silent, breathing deeply. She said nothing for fear of rousing him. Grady, his hair ruffled by the breeze, also stayed silent. He walked beside her as if she wasn’t there, keeping his eyes on the house.

He held Del as if he had often carried a sleeping child. They mounted the steps and she held the door open for him.

They communicated by glances, not words. She darted a look toward the hall. He nodded. She led him to her room and again met his eyes. She looked at her empty bed. So did he, and then at her again.

Too conscious that they were together in her bedroom, she nipped at her lower lip and shook her head yes. He lowered the boy to the faded bedspread. Del sighed, stirred, then sprawled, limp with sleep. His grasp on the antler weakened. It fell silently to rest beside him on the mattress. So did the two feathers, the blue and the black.

Tara picked them all up and set them on her dresser with the wrapped pebbles. She did not want to look at Grady again. She stepped out into the hall, and he followed wordlessly. She could feel him watching her.

She didn’t let herself meet his gaze. “Thanks. He was getting heavy.”

“I could tell.” His voice was low.

“I should get back to work.” She’d tried to sound brisk. Instead she sounded breathless.

“You don’t want to take off his jacket or shoes?”

“I’ll wait till he’s sound asleep.”

His hand was on the doorknob to her room. “You want this shut?”

“No.” She could hear Lono lapping thirstily from his water dish in the kitchen. “The dog will want to go in and out of the room. And I need to hear Del. Sometimes he has—bad dreams.”

“Oh.” He left the door ajar. “I’m almost finished with his bedroom. What do you want me to do now?”

I want for you and me to get out of this narrow hallway, she thought. It’s too close for comfort. She could still feel the chill from outside radiating from his body.

Uneasily she moved to the living room. “I ordered a temporary paddock and stalls.” She pointed out the window. “The hardware store delivered them, up in that meadow. Can you set things up?”

“Sure. It’s only a two-wrench job. Where do you want it?”

She moved to the table and pointed at a map. It showed the original layout of Hole in the Wall. Grady stood right behind her and looked over her shoulder. “The dude ranch had the paddocks here.” She pointed out the spot on the map. “When you walk out there, you’ll see the outline of the foundation of the stables.”

“Yes.” His breath tingled her ear, and the back of her neck prickled. The vibrations from his body no longer seemed cold, but warm.

She tried to ignore it and pointed to a second map. “This is the way the property is now. I’ve thought and thought about it. They had it right. The stable should go there.”

“Why’s it gone?” he asked, still just as close, just as disturbing.

“It didn’t suit the man who bought the place. That Fabian person. He had almost everything torn down.”

“And it’s your job to put things back together?”

Yes. She thought of her life and Del’s shaken into pieces. It’s my job to put things back together.

She put her finger on a dotted line. “The fencing goes here for the time being. The stalls here. I have our horses coming in a few weeks. I want Del to know we’re ready for his pony.”

She moved sideways, out of the almost electric aura he radiated. “So the sooner it’s done the better,” she said with more authority than she felt.

“You want to step outside and show me, just to make sure?”

She welcomed the chance to shake off the closeness of the house. His presence was too powerful; the enclosed space seemed to sing with it.

“Yes. But we’ll have to be quick. I don’t like leaving Del alone.”

“I understand.”

They both looked out the window, saw the golden leaves falling swiftly from the oaks, the elms. The sky had turned gray. He turned to her, eyed her thin jacket. “Wind’s coming up. Will you be warm enough?”

She crossed her arms, a defensive gesture. Against the growing cold? Or against him? She didn’t know. “I’ll be fine.”

“Let me get my shirt.”

She didn’t want to wait. “I’ll meet you outside,” she said.

GRADY SHRUGGED INTO HIS SHIRT and buttoned it, standing again by the same big window. He watched her striding gracefully down the slope toward the site of the old stable.

He put on his hat and went after her, leaving the dog in the house to guard the sleeping boy.

He heaved the toolbox up from the ground near the faucet, grabbed the post-hole digger out of the truck and followed her to the big plateau where she waited. The wind had grown stiffer, and although it didn’t bother him, she huddled deeper in her denim jacket.

Her hair, so severely controlled, so perfectly in place before her hike, was growing still more tousled. More strands had slipped from the silver barrette and danced, multicolored, in the breeze.

Her oval face, left so carefully uncolored by any artifice, was burnished by the cold. Her cheeks were pink, making her unusual eyes seem more vivid. Her full mouth looked riper.

He thought, I wish I had a picture of you like that. Hair like autumn, eyes gray as the clouds. Like you came right out of the clouds, part of the sky itself…

His own fancy shook him. He was not given to poeticizing. Still he looked at her and thought, Some man left you? He was a fool.

He said, “Some guy pulled down a perfectly good stable? He was a fool.”

“He wanted something else,” she said, and he wondered if the words applied to her ex-husband as well.

“I hate to see good things abused,” he said. “I hate to see them wasted.”