Texas On My Mind

“No. One of the ranch hands heard you when you were sleeping on the back porch, but if Claire knows, at least you’re talking to someone about it.”

“I’m not talking to her about it. Not talking to you about it, either.”

Logan decided it was a good time to listen. Besides, it was easier to deal with the spots if he didn’t have the sound of his own voice echoing in his head.

“I can’t get kicked out of the Air Force,” Riley snarled. He motioned toward his uniform. “This isn’t just what I do. It’s who I am. I help people. I rescue them. I save them from dying. Most of the time,” he added.

Logan nodded. This wasn’t anything new. “Man-rule number two—don’t be ordinary.”

“It’s man-rule number one,” Riley snapped.

Right. The headache must have fuzzed his memory up a little. As often as Logan had heard those rules, he should have remembered. “I don’t need to know the number of the rule to know what it means, Riley. You left home because you wanted something more than this place could offer.”

Logan’s strong suit wasn’t being warm and fuzzy, and clearly he missed the boat this time, too.

“You stayed because you chose to stay,” Riley reminded him.

Ah, hell. That was not the thing to say right now. It wasn’t the first time it’d come up, and sometimes Logan just walked away from it.

Not today, though.

“I stayed to make sure the business that Dad started didn’t go under,” he reminded Riley. “I’m the one who made it what it is today. The one who went to parent–teacher meetings for Anna—”

“You stepped up to do that.”

“Yeah. But Lucky and you could have stepped up, too. You didn’t, and neither did he. When you say you don’t want to be here because it’s ordinary, just remember you’re calling my life and everything that I’ve worked for ordinary, too.”

Logan stood and said the rest of what he wanted to say while he was walking away. “I need that nap now.”

The migraine, and this conversation, had caught up with him and was already kicking him in the nuts.

* * *

CLAIRE OPENED HER back door to take out the trash, and that’s when she saw it. A creature was just sitting there on the steps. It was in the shape of a ball, with gray fur sticking out in every direction.

And it had one eye.

She shrieked, scrambled away from it, banging her hip against the kitchen counter, but all the commotion didn’t stop it from coming closer. It just ambled in the house as if she’d given it an invitation.

“Whoa,” Ethan said. He scooted down from his booster seat where he was eating his lunch. “Cat.” Or rather “tat.”

Claire had already picked up the broom to try to shoo it out, but she gave it another look. Maybe it was a cat. It squalled, a sound that a cat might make, so maybe Ethan was right.

“Don’t get too close, Ethan,” she warned her son. If she could catch it, she’d take it into the vet to make sure he or she was okay and wasn’t the survivor of some radiation experiments.

But Ethan didn’t listen. He immediately offered the critter a bite of his PB&J sandwich. There was some sniffing involved on both the cat’s and Ethan’s parts before the animal took a bite. Clearly, it was starving if it would go after that.

With the broom still in her hand and while keeping an eye on their visitor, Claire poured some milk in a saucer, sloshing it all over her and the floor before she managed to put it in front of the animal. It took a lap but went back for another taste of the PB&J.

“Whoa,” Ethan said again, giggling.

Well, Whoa was certainly a good name for it, but she hoped this wasn’t an omen. A bad one. Of course, she’d been looking for omens and signs all day since the deadline for Daniel’s marriage proposal was only hours away.

“Don’t get too attached,” she told Ethan. “We can’t keep it.”

Claire used the PB&J and the saucer of milk to lure the cat back out onto the porch, and shut the screen door before it could get back in. Ethan sat down on the floor to watch, and she saw something in his eyes that she instantly recognized.

Love.

Apparently, pet fever ran in the family, and while this was no cute fur ball, Ethan didn’t seem to mind. Too bad she couldn’t explain that it was a stray and this might be the one and only time they saw him.

She gathered up the stuff to make Ethan another sandwich, but she heard the *NSYNC ringtone, and it sent her heart banging against her chest. Sheez. She braced herself for the conversation she was going to need to have with Daniel, but she saw a name on the screen that she hadn’t expected to see.

Logan.

She tried to hit the button so fast that she nearly dropped her phone. “Is everything okay?” she asked.

What she really wanted to know—was Riley okay? Logan must not have picked up on that subtext, but judging from the sound he made, he was a little taken aback by her frantic tone.

“I’ve got a big favor to ask you,” he said. “I have to take another business trip, and I need you to check on Riley for me.”