A SCANT FEW HOURS LATER, Jo stood with Trace on the front porch of the main house, watching as Eric saw the sheriff off. Thankfully, Trace hadn’t given in to his desire to impose personal justice against Vern, and the older man had been airlifted to a San Antonio hospital with a deputy, under arrest for a list of crimes that boggled the mind.
“I still can’t believe Vern was behind all this,” Trace said, shaking his head. “I’ve known the guy my entire life. If I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes, I would never have believed it.”
Jo wrapped her arms around herself even though the day was warm. In the house behind her, she smelled something roasting, probably for dinner. But all she could think about was how much she didn’t want to leave Wildewood…and why she had to.
“And Carter?” she asked.
Trace grimaced. “Poor sap. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Trace ran his hand through his hair. “To think I was a blink away from emptying my shotgun into his gut. Punishment for a crime he didn’t commit.”
“Do you think they’ll just spring him now that Vern’s been arrested on the same charges?”
“No,” Trace said reluctantly. “The sheriff explained that the law isn’t all that neat.” He sighed. “But don’t worry. I have a cousin up in Dallas who’s a lawyer. She’s already taking the necessary steps to get Carter released and his record expunged of all charges.”
Jo smiled. “Thanks.”
“Hey, it’s the least I can do, seeing as I’m to blame for his being arrested in the first place.”
“And shot.”
“Yeah, that, too.”
They both chuckled, standing side by side, but not looking at each other.
Trace’s brother climbed the steps as the sheriff drove off. “Well, that’s done then.”
Neither Jo nor Trace said anything as he went into the house, the screen door slapping behind him.
Jo felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket. Frowning, she pulled it out, staring at the screen: her father.
“Something important?” Trace asked.
“Huh? Oh. Um, no.” She slid the cell back into her pocket, watching as Scout lumbered up to the steps, tongue lolling out of his mouth, and plopped down right where he was.
“Can you stay for dinner?” Trace asked hopefully.
Jo looked over her shoulder, spotting Eric and Sara just inside the house. He had his arms curved around his pregnant fiancée and was holding her close.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.” Jo faced forward again and both of them fell silent.
She should be trying to work out events in her mind, she decided. Everything that had happened over the past few hours. Everything that had happened over the past week. But her brain was unusually inactive. All she was aware of was a dull ache that in a short time she would be walking away from Trace, a man who had made her feel more in a few days than she had in years.
“I have to go,” she said in a low voice.
Curiously, she wasn’t sure who she was telling: Trace or herself.
“I know.”
She looked at him, but he still faced forward.
Damn, but he was handsome. There was a strength, a steel in Trace Armstrong that made her want to reach out and touch him even now.
He turned his head and met her gaze. Jo suddenly couldn’t swallow.
If she was looking for him to give her a reason to stay, he didn’t appear about to do that. Instead, he turned away again.
“Have a safe journey,” he said.
Jo slowly descended the steps. “I will.”
And she ordered her boots to keep walking when they wanted nothing more than to head back and park themselves next to Trace’s for the next fifty years or so…
“YOU LET HER GO?”
Trace couldn’t be sure how long he’d stood on the front porch after the dust from Jo’s truck had settled back on the Texas ground. He blinked at his brother.
“Yeah. I let her go.” There was a note of surprise in his response that left him curious. He’d meant it to sound like a statement of fact.
He leaned against the porch column and crossed his right boot over his left. “What’s it to you?”
Eric leaned against the opposite column and sighed. “So we’re back to that again.”
Trace shrugged. “You were the one who objected to our pairing. Said I should be courting Ashleigh.”
“I never said any such thing.”
“That’s exactly what you said last night before I knocked your lights out.”
Eric chuckled. “No, what I said, or what I meant to say, was that you shouldn’t be messing around with the help…unless you’re serious about it. And that I didn’t think it was a good idea to have a woman crying in the middle of what was meant to be a celebration.” He gave Trace a sidelong glance. “And, as I recall, I knocked your lights out.”
Trace eyed the land. Not a sign remained that there had been a party the night before. Not a banner, an empty beer bottle or a piece of napkin.
What did remain, however, was the water fountain their father had built for their mother on the occasion of their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. The same fountain Eric had pushed him into.
“I stand corrected,” he said.
Eric paced the length of the porch and then came back to sit on the railing connected to the column Trace still leaned against.
“Look, Trace, I…”
Trace squinted at him.
“I don’t know. I’m thinking that I wish we could backtrack—forget this whole thing and start again.”
“If you could, where would you begin?”
Eric didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then he muttered, “I’d say about six years ago.”
Trace tucked his chin against his chest, staring at his boots. “I hear you.”
“It’s just…I don’t know. After Mom and Dad died, I always felt this pressure to perform. To take care of you.”
Trace frowned.
“Trust me, it’s not the role I wanted or treasured. Hell, the last thing I wanted to do was worry about my snot-nosed younger brother.”
Trace laughed.
“But when it was just the two of us…I suppose I was thrust into a role I wasn’t ready for.”
“Did you ever think we could have worked things out as equals?”
Eric shook his head. “Never even entered my mind.” He met his gaze. “Until now.”
Trace found it odd that it had taken being held at gunpoint to bring them to this important juncture. Nonetheless, he was glad that he and his brother were working their way back to a place of peace. Of connection. Of family.
“Guys?” Sara called from inside. “Dinner’s on.”
Eric told her they’d be inside in a minute, making no move to end their conversation.
“So what do you propose we do now?” he finally asked.
Trace looked off into the distance again, in the direction Jo’s truck had gone.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was so fixated on fighting you that I never considered how we might work this out.”
Eric chuckled. “Me, too.”
“So what say we play it by ear for now? See what happens?”
His brother pushed away from the railing and patted him on the back. “I think that’s the best idea I heard all day. Let’s go eat…”