Back In Texas

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER ONE

THE ONLY WAY Ryan Gallagher had figured he’d ever come back to Four Aces Ranch was if he arrived in a government-issue casket.

Returning home on his own power had never been part of his plans.

Now, standing at the entryway of the main house, he glanced over his shoulder at the deeply rolling land stretching to the horizon. Every gnarled cedar, every rocky outcropping stirred a flood of memories he couldn’t hold at bay.

He’d been gone fifteen years, barring two brief trips home to see his brother married and his grandfather buried. It hadn’t been long enough.

Ryan shook off his reservations. Just a few months, maybe less. How could this be any harder than Ward 57 back at Walter Reed?

Turning back to the ornately carved oak door with Four Aces Ranch written in sweeping script between images of champion quarter horses and prize cattle, Ryan knocked before letting himself in.

Nothing but the best, his father had always said. From the livestock and land acquisitions, to every ostentatious detail of his massive brick house, Clint Gallagher still wasn’t finished trying to impress the world.

His decades as a Texas State Senator had never been enough for him.

“I don’t believe it.” Adelfa stood transfixed in the middle of the foyer on her way to answer his knock. The elderly housekeeper’s dark eyes filled with tears as she drank in the sight of him from head to toe. “Madre de dios! I never thought I’d find you at this door!”

Steeling himself against the pain radiating through his shoulder, Ryan enveloped the stocky Hispanic woman in a hug. “And nothing could be better than finding you’re still here.”

He released her, surprised by his reluctance to step away from Adelfa’s familiar scent—cinnamon and the Chanel he always sent her for Christmas and birthdays. “You still make this place home,” he added, brushing a kiss on her wrinkled brow. “Only you.”

“Your father could not always be here when you boys were young.” She frowned, as quick to defend her employer of forty-some years as she’d always been to stand up to him. “He is a busy man…an importante senador.”

And to her, that made everything right. She was, Ryan realized with chagrin, every bit as loyal as his fellow Rangers, even if her loyalty was misplaced. “So, is Clint here?”

“Si.” Adelfa cast a glance over her shoulder, her brow furrowed. “But…he is not such a happy man tonight.”

Ryan threw his head back and laughed for the first time in months. “Tell me when that wasn’t true.”

She clucked at him, her mouth a stern line. “He has many responsibilities. Phone calls. Visitors. The newspapers—aye, they still send their reporters out here, looking for a good story.”

“Clint always knew how to use the press,” Ryan retorted dryly. “The reporters were either in his pocket or wanted to be.”

Adelfa rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms over her ample chest, muttering rapid-fire Spanish phrases under her breath.

He caught every word and grinned at her. “I agree. He won’t listen to anything I say, and this visit will be a big mistake if I just upset him.”

A deep blush worked its way into her plump cheeks. “Some things, they just don’t got a fix to ’em,” she murmured.

“For Garrett and Trevor’s sake, I’m staying for a couple months. By then, we’ll either have this ranch straightened out, or Dad and I will have dueled out in the desert.”

Her harrumph spoke louder than words. “So you have talked to your brothers?”

“Not yet, I understand they ran out of options, and figured I was their best bet. They asked Leland to track me down.” The certified letter from the Four Ace’s lawyer had caught up with Ryan in Georgia several weeks ago. “Maybe they think I’m less likely to walk out than someone hired off the street.”

“You and your father are both stubborn and strong as two bulls.” There was a note of pride in Adelfa’s voice as she sized him up. “For nothing more than that, you would stay now to prove him wrong.”

“I don’t much care what he thinks about me, and I’m not intimidated by what he says. You know how well we get along.” Ryan gave her a quick wink. “For that reason alone I’m probably the best person for the job. I hear the ranch is in financial trouble.”

At the faint jingle of spurs, Ryan turned and found his middle brother, Trevor, grinning at him from the doorway, dressed in his usual faded Levi’s with a plaid Western shirt stretched across his burly chest. He held a dusty Stetson.

Ryan extended his hand, but Trevor ignored it and gave him a bear hug before stepping back for a thorough appraisal.

“Long time,” he drawled. “You looked a mite peaked the last time I saw you. Musta been that fancy gown…or maybe it was because those nurses moved a lot faster’n you could.”

“I barely remember those first days at Reed.” Ryan closed his eyes against the flashes of fuzzy images…the beep of his morphine drip…the glare of fluorescent lights, day and night. Somewhere, in that fractured catalog of memories, he had a vague picture of Trevor’s worried face as he bent over the bed. “You were there, right?”

Trevor snorted. “Not for long. You ordered us to go home and leave you in peace. You were so surly about it, day after day, that the nurses finally encouraged us to keep in touch by phone.”

Ryan winced. “Must’ve been the medication.”

Trevor shot him a wicked smile. “Bein’ unwanted and all, we finally had to turn tail and go home in disgrace.”

“I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry.”

Adelfa searched Ryan’s face. “They took good care of you, I hope. Good food? A good bed? We worried about you, every day.”

“Well…not a whole heck of a lot,” Trevor added. “Me and Garrett figured you were just too mean to die.”

Adelfa gripped Ryan’s forearm for a minute, as if for reassurance, then lumbered back to the kitchen, muttering in Spanish.

“She lit candles for you at the church,” Trevor said in a low voice. “She had a little shrine here, on the sideboard in the dining room, and had candles going there, too, and she never said grace at a meal without adding prayers for your healing.” His voice broke. “Damn, it’s good to see you again.”

Ryan swallowed the unfamiliar lump in his throat. “Same here.”

“And Dad—” Trevor looked away. “Well, he was in the middle of trying to get some bill passed. He couldn’t make it out to Washington, D.C. with us, but I know he was concerned, and he did make some phone calls.”

Concerned? Ryan laughed. “I hope that didn’t interfere with his schedule.”