Logan's Child

“Tricia Maria.” He lifted away from the barn to stalk toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. When he’d gotten to within two feet of her, he stopped and hooked his thumbs in the stretched, frayed belt loops of his jeans. “Sorry about your daddy.”

“Yeah, me, too.” She looked away, out over the hills. “He wanted to be buried here, so…”

“So you had no choice but to come back.”

“Yes, I had to—for him, for his sake.”

Not for me. Not for my sake, Logan thought. Because she’d written him off a long time ago. And they both knew why. Yet he longed to ask her.

The questions buzzed around them like hungry bees. Logan wanted to lash out at her, to ask her why, why she’d left him so long ago. But he didn’t. Because he knew the answer, knew probably even better than she did why she’d deserted him and left him, and lied to him. Instead he said, “C’mon. We’ll get your stuff up to the lodge. When’s this thing taking place?”

“Three o’clock,” she said, understanding he meant the graveside service for her father. “Didn’t anybody call you about it?”

He didn’t look at her as he moved around her to get into the driver’s side of the car. “Yeah, some fellow named Ralph, Raymond—”

“Rad. Radford Randolph. He’s…we’re engaged. I asked him to call ahead and let you know when we’d get here. Granddaddy’s coming later.”

Logan slid into the car, then patted the passenger’s seat, his dark gaze on her face. “Get in. I’ll drive you up to the lodge.”

Trixie had no choice but to do as he asked. She remembered that about Logan. Quiet, alert, a man of few words. Dark and brooding. A rebel. A troublemaker who’d been turned over to her father for a job over ten years before by a judge who’d agreed with Brant, and Logan’s mother, Gayle, not to send him to a juvenile home. He’d come to work off a truancy sentence, and he’d never left.

In spite of everything, Logan had not deserted her father the way she had, the way Pamela had. Somehow, that had comforted her and made her resent him at the same time. Logan had known Brant Dunaway better than Brant’s own flesh and blood. She could tell he was taking this hard, too. Maybe that was why he had a scowl on his scarred, harsh face. Out of respect, Trixie didn’t speak again. Besides, she didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. She’d prayed long and hard to find some sort of comfort for herself, but it hadn’t come yet.

Logan pulled the car up to the long, square lodge that Brant had built with his own hands, then turned in the seat to stare over at Trixie. “Yeah, this Rad fellow was more than happy to talk with me a spell. Asked a lot of questions, too.”

Frowning, Trixie said, “What kind of questions?”

Logan tipped his battered hat back on his head and wrapped one hair-dusted arm across the steering wheel, his eyes full of accusation. “Oh, about profit and loss, how much income we’ve been generating, how much I think the land is worth.”

Trixie moaned and closed her eyes. How could Rad be so presumptuous? This wasn’t his land, after all. It was hers.

When she felt Logan’s hand on her chin, she opened her eyes to find him close, too close. His touch, so long remembered, so long denied, brought a great tearing pain throughout her system. To protect her frayed nerve endings, and the small amount of pride she had left, she tried to pull away.

He forced her head around so she had to look at him. “You’re gonna sell out, aren’t you?”

She did manage to push his hand away then, but the current of awareness remained as an imprint on her skin. “I…I haven’t decided.”

Logan jerked open the door and hauled his big body out of the car, then turned to bend down and glare at her again. “I can’t believe you’d even think of selling this place, but then again, maybe I should have seen it coming.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, her hand flying to the door handle. When he didn’t answer her, she rounded the car to meet him at the trunk. “Logan, explain that last remark, please?”

Logan opened the trunk, then snorted at the many travel bags she’d brought along. “Still so cool, calm and collected, still the fashionable big-city girl, aren’t you, Trixie?”

In defense of herself she said, “I wasn’t sure how long I’d need to stay.”

He lifted her suitcases out of the trunk, then slammed the lid shut. “Oh, I think I can clarify that for you, darlin’. Just long enough to shed yourself of this place, I imagine.” When she looked away, he grabbed her arm to spin her around. “Am I right, Trixie? Is that it? Were you planning on pulling another vanishing act, like you did all those years ago?”

“No,” she said, humiliation and rage causing her to grit her teeth. “No.”

He pressed her close to the car’s back. “Yes. I say yes. As soon as you can sell this place to the highest bidder, you’ll tuck tail and head back to Dallas.” Hefting her suitcases up with a grunt, he added, “After all, some things never change, do they, sweetheart?”

She was surprised to find that some changes had been made to the ranch, after all, such as the tiny white chapel Brant had built by the great oak where he wanted to be buried, and she was even more surprised by the large turnout for her father’s graveside service. Trixie knew her father had a lot of friends back in Dallas, but here? She’d always imagined him alone and reclusive, once he’d lost touch with his family, but then again Brant Dunaway hadn’t been the kind of man to be satisfied with his own company for too long. Brant had loved life; had loved moving and roaming and watching and experiencing. What was it Granddaddy used to say? He was a good ol’ boy with a big ol’ heart.

Only, Pamela had never seen that. She only saw what she termed Brant’s weaknesses; his flaws and failings far outweighed his goodness in Pamela’s eyes. Once the novelty of being married to the renegade rodeo hero son of an oil man had worn off, she’d judged him with a very harsh measure; he’d never stood a chance of living up to Pamela’s standards.

Trixie had always been confused by her mother’s double standards. Pamela professed to being a Christian, attended church each Sunday, did all the right things, yet she never seemed to possess the one basic trait that made anyone a true Christian. Pamela had never learned tolerance or acceptance. She’d tried to change Brant, and it had backfired on her. And she was now working hard on her daughter.

Right up till this morning, when, in a nervous tizzy she’d tried her level best to talk Trixie out of coming. “Trixie, I just don’t think it’s wise for you to go back to that place. Harlan can take care of the burial. Stay here with me, sugar, and help me plan your engagement party.”

“I’m going, Mother, and that’s final. I want to be there to see Daddy buried. And I have to decide about what to do.”

“Get rid of that land as fast as you can. You and Rad don’t need the bother, darling. You’re going to be busy, too busy to have to deal with that old headache of a ranch.”

Pamela would never come out and say it, but she didn’t want her daughter anywhere near Logan Maxwell again. Pamela had erased the whole episode from her mind like a bad movie.

Now, as Trixie watched the long line of people marching across the hillside toward the spot where Brant would be buried, she was glad her mother would not be among the crowd. She needed this time alone with her father, one last time. Her granddaddy was here, though, right by her side as he’d always been, his old eyes watering up as he looked at the shiny new walnut-grained casket, encased with a set of brass bull horns, where his son now rested.

“Are you all right?” Trixie asked Harlan, worried about him. Her grandfather had started out as a wildcatter and had gone on to build an oil empire. He’d paid his dues; done his time. He was getting old. And his only son’s death had aged him both physically and emotionally.

“I’m fine, honey. Just missing your father.”

“Me, too.” She looked down at the sunflower wreath lying across the closed casket. “I should have visited him more—stayed in touch. I should have let him know I cared.”

“He knew you loved him.”

“Did he? Did he really know that?” she asked.

“Yes, he surely did. I kept in touch with him, you know. After all, he was my son. And, thank the Lord, we made our peace with each other long before he died.”

“Did…did he ever talk about me?”

Harlan lifted his gaze to her face, his blue eyes, so like his son’s, full of love and compassion. “All the time, honey. All the time.”

Trixie saw the hesitation in her grandfather’s expression. He seemed to want to say more, but instead he just looked away, down at the ground. At least he’d told her that her father still thought about her and acknowledged her existence. Trixie found some comfort in that.

After she’d had the baby—they’d never allowed her to know whether it had been a boy or a girl—Brant had drifted further and further out of her life. Still numb, still grieving over the twist her life had taken, she went on to college, a year late. Determined to get her life back on track, she’d soon became immersed in her studies and her somewhat vague social life. She’d gone through all the motions—the sororities, the campus parties, the whirl of college life, but her heart, her center always came back here to her father…and to Logan. Ashamed, she’d felt as though neither wanted anything to do with her, so she hadn’t made any effort to mend the shattered relationships with the two men she loved and respected most in all the world.

Logan stood now, apart from all the others, with a group of about eight children of various ages. Watching him, Trixie wondered again how this was affecting him. Brant had been like a father to him. Logan’s mother, Gayle, had come to the ranch years ago, divorced and struggling with a rebellious teenage son. Brant had given her a job as cook and housekeeper, and promptly had put her son to work on the ranch.

The arrangement had worked, since Brant hadn’t spent too much time at the ranch back then. He’d depended on Gayle and Logan to watch over things, along with some locals he hired to tend the animals and crops. By the time Trixie arrived that summer so long ago, however, Brant was a permanent resident here, and he and Logan had formed a grudging respect for each other. That mutual respect had seen them through the worst of times. The very worst of times.

Not wanting to delve too deeply into those particular memories, Trixie turned her attention to the haphazard group of children around Logan. “Granddaddy, who are all those youngsters?”

Harlan cleared his throat and glanced in the direction of the silent, solemn group. “They’re living on the ranch, Tricia Maria. They’ve been here for most of the summer.”

Shocked, Trixie stared hard at her grandfather. “Why? I mean, are they helping out with the crops as a project? Did Logan give them jobs?”

Harlan started to speak again when the preacher lifted his hands to gather the group around Brant’s casket. Harlan leaned close and whispered, “I’ll explain it all later.”