Lone Star Dad

“So? I was bored.”

“You got a smart mouth, you know that?”

“I hate this place. She never should have brought me here.”

“Why did she?”

The kid went silent, his mouth broody.

Trouble. Derrick must have been in trouble. “Where did you live before?”

“Houston. It’s way better than this...” pale blue eyes gazed around at the vast woods and emptiness “...this squirrel-infested backwoods dump.”

Quinn arched an eyebrow, shooting back as much venom as Derrick had aimed at him. “Afraid of the woods? Scared of the dark? Nervous when a coyote howls?”

“I’m not afraid of anything.”

No, he was terrified. Of life, of the new, unfamiliar environment, of looking soft. So many fears swam around in the kid’s head it was a wonder his ears didn’t flood. Quinn suffered an unwanted twinge of compassion. “We’re all scared of something.”

Derrick huddled deeper inside his hoodie. His ears and nose were red, his breath gray.

“Does she know you’re over here?”

“What do you think?”

“I think you should go home. Get off my land and quit giving her such a hard time.”

From inside the shed came a chorus of plaintive mews. Derrick straightened, his attention riveted on the dim interior. “She had another one.”

“You like cats?”

“Not much.”

“Me, either.”

“Look at ’em.” Derrick leaned inside. “They’re so little.”

Quinn sighed. “Yeah.”

“It’s cold out here.”

He wasn’t asking the kid inside. No way. He didn’t want people here. No one. Certainly not seventy-five pounds of trouble. “Get in the truck. I’ll drive you home.”

“Nah. I can walk. Nothing else to do out here.” But he made no motion to leave. With his eyes still on the kittens, he kicked his toe against the side of the shed. Ice chipped off. “Were you as good as they say you were?”

Quinn snorted and avoided the kid’s probing gaze. “Too long ago to remember.”

“A guy doesn’t forget stuff like that.”

He was right about that. Some things hurt forever. “Doesn’t matter now. I got work to do. Go home.”

Quinn spun away from the shed, the cats, the kid and the memories and stomped back to the house, ice cracking underfoot. His boots sounded like thunder on the hollow porch.

To his relief, Derrick didn’t follow. He didn’t even turn around. Instead he stepped inside the shed and shut the door.

Quinn blew out a hard sigh. The kid needed to learn two things: obedience and respect.

He went inside the house, warm now that the logs had caught and burned brightly, and tried to remember where he’d put his phone. After a five-minute search, he found it, battery dead, under a stack of blueprints. Most of the time, he left it turned off. Service was spotty anyway. If he wanted to speak to someone, he’d call them—a rare event.

The practice drove his family crazy.

He plugged in the charger and called Information for Gena Satterfield’s number and wasn’t surprised to discover she had a landline. Cell phones worked when they wanted to and in her profession, effective communication was probably requisite.

He punched in the number, and when she answered in her smooth-as-silk, professional voice, he ignored the quiver in his belly to say, “Derrick’s at my house again. Come get him before I call the sheriff.”

* * *

Gena fumed all the way down the twisty, bumpy trail that passed for sections of road between her house and the old hunting cabin on the river. She couldn’t decide who irritated her most, Derrick or Quinn.

Derrick had been curled up under his covers when she’d looked in earlier. At least, she’d thought he had been. She’d let him sleep late this Sunday morning, not in the mood to fight with him about going to church. She didn’t like to miss services but she had paperwork and dictation to catch up on anyway. The Lord knew and understood her schedule. She couldn’t always attend services, but she never forgot her faith.

At the corner, she slowed the red SUV and tried to remember exactly how to access the cabin. She hadn’t been there since the last time she and Renae had spent the summer with Nana and Papa. She and her sister had been into photography that summer. Somewhere she still had the pictures they’d taken, including shots of the abandoned hunter’s cabin. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in the ramshackle structure, but Quinn came from a construction family. He could fix whatever was broken.

This morning was a photographer’s dream, and a desire to revisit the old hobby curled upward in her thoughts. Though the roads were mostly clear and the puddles of ice easily cracked beneath her wheels, the grass and trees sparkled in the sun like diamonds. By midmorning, the beauty would be melted away.

She drove toward the river, invisible from here because of the thick trees, and spotted chimney smoke. In minutes, she funneled through a tunnel of trees that parted like the Red Sea in front of the cabin. The house didn’t look much better than it had when she was a teenager.

She slammed out of the now-dirty red Xterra and, careful on the ice-encrusted grass, made her way to Quinn’s door. He opened it before she could pound her fist on the wall in frustration.

Her breath caught. He looked tired or maybe ill, his hazel-green eyes circled with fatigue and his mouth pinched with lines of something that to her expert observation appeared to be pain. But he still took a woman’s breath. A foolish woman.

“Are you all right?” Her profession kicked in even when she didn’t want it to.

He blinked, clearly surprised at the question. “Why?”

This wasn’t her business. “Never mind. Where’s Derrick?”

Quinn motioned toward a small unpainted building to the left of the house.

“You locked him in a shed?” she asked, horrified.

Quinn snorted. His eyes, so tired before, lit with wry amusement. “I didn’t think of that or I would have. Maybe you should try it.”

He was joking. He had to be. “What’s he doing out there?”

“Go see for yourself.” He slammed the door in her face.

Gena stared at the peeling front door. The friendly, smiling young Quinn who could charm the spots off a leopard was now a snarly, moody recluse.