Ann had known difficult days but nothing like those immediately following the construction of the mixing station. That very evening after Dean left, Wes ate something that didn’t agree with him, and within the hour an unrelenting nausea set in. Several times Ann picked up the phone to call Dean, but in truth he could do nothing that Meredith wasn’t already doing. Just because having Dean there would make her feel better was no reason for Ann to call him over to the house, especially as she had no right to the comfort and support he offered.
In fact, having Dean around was dangerous. She’d come to realize that he was dangerous to her heart, as well as her peace of mind. That didn’t keep her from hoping that he’d stop by to check on Wes.
In a very real way, she missed Dean. She’d sort of gotten used to seeing him on a daily basis. Yet, her father was so ill that Ann didn’t feel comfortable leaving Meredith alone with him and going to church on Sunday.
By Sunday evening both sisters were worn to frazzles, and Wes seemed no better. Meredith had already consulted Dr. Alice Shorter by telephone, and she called the doctor again, as instructed, very early on Monday morning. Dr. Shorter drove out to the ranch straightaway, bringing intravenous medications with her.
On the plump side and fiftyish, with long, straight, thick blond hair, Dr. Shorter had a dry, ready wit, remarking to Wes, “If you wanted to see me, Billings, you didn’t have to go to such extremes. You could’ve just invited me to dinner.”
Wes chuckled then clutched his loudly rumbling belly with one hand. “Don’t even...mention...food.”
“Sorry. Let’s get you comfortable.”
While Meredith set up the IV, Dr. Shorter conducted a routine examination before announcing, “Well, you’re dehydrated. No surprise there. We’ll get some fluids and medication in you and calm this down.” She nodded at Meredith, adding, “At least your nurse knows her stuff.”
“She’s good,” Wes managed with a smile. Meredith didn’t even look up from securing the IV in her father’s arm.
Watching from the foot of the bed, Ann said, “We’re lucky to have her.”
“Blessed,” Wes corrected. “I’m blessed...with both...my daughters.”
Ann smiled at that, glad she could at least be here to help run the ranch while Rex was gone. She couldn’t care for their dad the way Meri did, but at least she could contribute in some ways. And to think that in the beginning she had secretly resented having to put her life on hold to come here and do this. The selfishness of that shamed her, and she was deeply, deeply grateful for this time with her father and sister.
“What set you off?” the doctor asked.
Wes made his face, flattening his lips in a stubborn expression that she knew all too well, so Ann answered for him.
“Catfish. He had an intense craving for it. We thought it would be mild enough for him, so we brought it in from the diner.”
“The fish, maybe,” the doctor said. “The grease it’s fried in, probably not.”
“I should have thought of that,” Meredith said guiltily. “Callie would have.”
“Callie had training, if I’m not mistaken,” Dr. Shorter pointed out. She poked Wes in the chest with a gloved forefinger then, adding, “And so did you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Sounded...so good.”
The doctor turned to her kit and found a syringe. “Doesn’t feel so good now, does it?”
“Nope.”
His poor stomach rumbled so loudly that the doctor handed him the basin sitting on the bedside table. “Need to puke?”
Wes gritted his teeth, swallowed and closed his eyes. “No.”
Alice Shorter shook her head and injected medication into his IV tube, muttering, “Men and their pride.”
“Not pride,” Wes ground out. “Self-respect.”
She patted his shoulder. “I forgot. Christians are forbidden pride. Have it your way.”
“You know... I will,” Wes said, one corner of his mouth hitching up in a smile.
Ann could tell that he was already beginning to relax. To her surprise, the doctor reached down and squeezed his hand. Even more surprising, he grasped her hand and held it for several long seconds. The three women—Ann, her sister and Dr. Alice Shorter—stood quietly around his bed until he began to breathe easily and slipped into peaceful sleep. Meredith’s hands trembled as she smoothed her light golden brown hair back from her face and twisted it into a long rope.
“It’s different when it’s family, isn’t it?” Dr. Shorter said softly, and Ann recognized the sound of experience in her voice. Meredith nodded.
Abruptly, the doctor began packing up her bag. A few seconds later she stripped off her gloves and dropped them in the trash can. Then she was heading for the door.
“He’ll sleep for a while. Call me if you need me.”
“Thank you, Dr. Shorter,” Meredith murmured, following the older woman from the room, Ann on her heels.
They picked up the pace in the hallway, but the doctor was out the door before they could catch up to her. Wandering back into the kitchen, where her sister went to the refrigerator for the tea pitcher, Ann brought her hands to her hips and thought over all that had just happened.
“Do you know,” she said after a moment, “I think Dr. Shorter might have a crush on Dad.”
Meredith looked around, taking an ice tray from the freezer, and she raised her eyebrows. “Don’t be silly. I’ve heard that she’s an atheist, and you know Dad’s a very outspoken Christian.”
“He’s also a very attractive man, even ill.”
Meredith shook her head, cracking the ice tray over the sink. “Doesn’t mean anything. He would never be interested in her.”
“No? Meri, Mom’s been gone since 2012. What would be wrong with Dad finding someone else?”
“Nothing.” Meredith dropped ice cubes into glasses. “I hope he does. Once he’s well again.”
And what if he’s never well? Ann wondered. Doesn’t he deserve every moment of happiness he can find, well or not?
The house phone rang, and Meredith reached out to answer it.
After greeting whoever was on the other end and a moment of chatter, she said, “Ann’s right here. Want her to take this in the office?” She held the telephone receiver away from her ear and said to Ann, “It’s Rex. I’ll bring your tea to you.”
“Thanks, sis.”
Ann hurried to the office and picked up the cordless receiver there. She listened while Meredith filled in Rex on their dad’s most recent health issues. Then Meri hung up on her end, and Ann and Rex got down to business. Rex had been going over the books online and had some questions. Ann had paid a couple of bills he hadn’t expected to come in for several weeks yet, and he wanted to see the statements. Meredith brought her iced tea while Ann was scanning up and emailing the billing statements. As soon as her sister left the room, Ann took the opportunity to ask Rex about Dean, shading her question in tones of concern.
“Just how much do you know about Dean Paul Pryor? I have a few concerns.”
“Problems with his work?” Rex queried, sounding surprised.
“His work is fine, but he doesn’t really seem very fiscally sound. I can’t help wondering just how much you really know about him.”
“I know everything I need to know,” Rex insisted. “Dean’s as honest as the day is long and the hardest working young man you’ll find anywhere.”
“I know he works hard,” Ann ventured carefully. “He just seems...well, he’s awfully young to be a single father.”
“That’s true, but he didn’t have to take responsibility for the boy at all,” Rex pointed out. “The mother was a college student, same as Dean. When Dean proved to be the biological father, he took custody of the child, and that was that.
“He might have been a little wild at one point,” Rex conceded, “but everyone agrees he’s been an excellent father, especially since he became a Christian not long after his boy was born.”
“I certainly can’t argue that point,” Ann said, trying not to let her smile sneak through into her tone.
“Dean may not be the best businessman, but he’s young, and he’ll learn,” Rex insisted.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Ann agreed. In fact, she meant to make certain of it by helping Dean learn what he needed to know to solidify and grow his business, starting with a business plan. Business, after all, was what she did best, and a hardworking, loving, responsible father deserved all the expertise and help he could get.
Now she just had to figure out how to protect her silly heart while she helped this handsome single dad make the most of what he did best.
* * *
When Dean arrived at the sorghum field at dawn on Wednesday morning, Ann already stood beside her dad’s old truck, dressed in running shorts and a tank top, her hair in a ponytail. Waving, she jogged around to the passenger side of the truck and hauled out a square pan covered in a dish towel. Parking the thing on the front fender of the truck, she smiled cheerfully and pointed to it. Dean brought the dually and the combine that it was hauling to a slow, shuddering halt in the center of the narrow, rutted, red dirt road.
She looked better than she had as an eighteen-year-old, all long, slender muscles and womanly curves.
A sleepy Donovan craned his neck to see what had caught his father’s attention. His gaze went to the pan on the fender of the Straight Arrow pickup truck, and he happily exclaimed, “She brought food!”
Digger, in the front passenger seat, perked up at that. Dean had to laugh, not just because of his son’s and his dog’s interest in the food but because he hadn’t given that cloth-covered pan a second thought.
“Looks like it.”
Leaving the rig where it sat, he killed the engine and got out. By the time he unbuckled Donovan and crossed the ditch to Ann’s truck, she had folded back the cloth and the sheet of waxed paper beneath it and helped herself to the biggest sticky bun he’d ever seen.
“Meredith put these up last night,” she said around a big bite. She chewed and swallowed before adding, “Since I wasn’t about to miss these bad boys, I figured I’d better bring enough for everyone.”
Dean figured that he was grinning as broadly as Donovan, who practically soared with glee.
“Can I, Dad?”
“Sure. It’d be rude not to eat these after Miss Meredith baked them and Miss Ann brought them all the way out here.”
“There’s no clean way to do it,” Ann warned, “so I brought packets of wipes. Dig in.”
Dean used his hands to peel off a bun for Donovan then took one for himself. Tasting of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans, the things practically melted in the mouth—and all over the face and hands. Ann had brought coffee and milk, too. Dean was not a big coffee drinker, but it had never tasted so good as it did that morning.
They ate leaning against the truck, watching the sun play peekaboo over the horizon.
“I meant what I said about the business plan,” Ann told him between bites. “If you’d let me look over your books, I think I could help you formulate a good plan and set up a line of credit.”
“I told you I’d do it,” he reminded her lightly.
“I know. I just thought we could get started sooner rather than later. Like tonight maybe?”
He wondered if she was rushing to get out of town, but then he thought of her dad and discarded the notion. She wouldn’t leave until Wes was better and Rex returned, which could be sooner than anyone realized.
“I’ll bring the books over tonight,” he decided.
She smiled and bit into her sticky bun. He ate three big buns and drank two tall cups of coffee before Donovan, Digger and Ann could finish off their own. To say that Donovan needed a wipe after he was done was akin to calling the Red River a stream.
Ann seemed a little horrified by what she had wrought with her sticky buns. She broke out the wipes and went to work. By the time she was satisfied that the entire Straight Arrow Ranch wouldn’t stick to Donovan, her wipes had been all used up. Dean poured the last of the coffee on a ragged bandanna and cleaned himself well enough to proceed with his day. He was going to be dusty and sweaty in an hour’s time, anyway. Ann, however, was another story, and her attempts to take care of herself with the used wipes only made matters worse.
She was a good sport about it, and cute as a button in the bargain. Dean could’ve stood there and watched her wipe and rewipe all day, but they both had work to do. He allowed himself just so much fun before he took her by the arm and walked her to his truck.
“Come with me. I keep a container of baby wipes under the backseat.”
“Okay, so I grossly underestimated the number of wipes needed,” she admitted, skipping along beside him to the truck.
“Baby wipes are one of mankind’s greatest inventions,” Dean told her, opening the back door of the dually and reaching inside. He felt around under the seat until he found the cylindrical container and hauled it out. “One of the first things you learn when you have a kid is that you can never have too many baby wipes.”
“Got it.”
Popping the top, he pulled out two and handed them to her so she could clean her hands. When she had that job whipped, he gave her another wipe for her face, though he really hated to see the sticky, brownish circle around her lips go. He wished he’d taken a picture with his phone. She seemed so far removed from the polished, big-city hotelier who had greeted him that first day, more like his Jolly—if such a person actually existed. She was certainly making a hash of cleaning her face.
“Hold on. Hold on,” he said, chuckling. “First of all, fold that thing so the clean side is up.”
She looked down at the wipe and folded it. “Okay.”
“Now, start here.” He touched his own face.
She wiped the wrong cheek.
“No, no. The other cheek.”
She moved her hand. “Like this?”
“Almost. To your right. Got it. Now move in. And turn your wipe over.”
Exactly as instructed, she turned the wipe over. Then her gaze came back to his, and he pointed to a spot on his own cheek. She lifted her hand to her face once more. He realized only as she slowly swept the wipe over her lips that they were still looking into each other’s eyes, and abruptly his breath seized.
Suddenly, as the sun shot golden rays across the fields, igniting tiny fires in the red-orange dirt of the road, they somehow stood apart from the rest of the world, wrapped in an intimate, electric awareness. As if in a trance, Dean lifted his hand and brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek. Then he turned his hand and lightly cupped the curve of her jaw. She tilted her head ever so slightly, leaning into his palm, her eyelids growing slumberous, lips parting. Emboldened, he slid his hand to the back of her neck and felt her lean toward him.
Then Donovan slammed into his side.
“Dad, Dad! Can I go under the wire with Digger? He’s got some armerdiller or ground squirrel over yonder.”
The dog’s barking finally penetrated Dean’s consciousness. “Uh...” Blinking, he stared down at his son and found a reasonable answer. “No. Might be a skunk he’s found. Better hang with me until we get the combine into the field.”
Donovan dug a toe into the dirt. “Aw.”
Ann was already halfway across the road when Dean looked up again. “Rex tied a red flag on the section of fence that can come down,” she called. “He’s had pipe laid over the ditch so you can drive right over.” Of course, Dean could see the movable cattle guards temporarily bridging the ditch.
“Great!” Dean shouted after her, fully aware that she was running away from what had almost happened between them. He didn’t blame her. She was engaged to be married, after all. To an older, established, successful man. But Dean couldn’t escape the certainty that, given just a moment longer, she would have allowed the kiss that hadn’t happened.
In light of that, Dean had to wonder if working on a business plan with her was such a good idea, but even as he wondered, he knew he was going to do it. Somehow, with her, he couldn’t seem to help himself. So, that evening after supper, he left Donovan with his grandmother and drove back to the Straight Arrow with his account books.
Meredith answered the door. “Come on in. Annie’s on the phone, but Dad would love to see you.”
“I’ll be happy to visit with him for a few minutes. I promise I won’t tire him.”
“He’s feeling better,” Meredith told him. “It’ll be fine.”
“Thanks for the sticky buns this morning, by the way. They were great, really good.”
Meredith shot him a smile over her shoulder as he hung his hat on the wall peg and followed her into the living room. “Callie put them in the freezer before she left. All I had to do was thaw them overnight and shove them in the oven this morning.”
“Well, you did a good job of it,” Dean insisted politely.
“What you really mean is that sister-in-law of mine can sure cook.”
“That, too,” Dean admitted with a chuckle.
“Meredith has her own talents,” Wes said from his recliner. “She’s a top-notch nurse, my Meri.”
“Oh, Dad.” Meredith patted the top of his bald head affectionately on her way to the kitchen, saying, “Call if you need anything.”
Dean couldn’t say that Wes looked much improved, but his color wasn’t so gray, and something about his smile seemed brighter, healthier. Easing into the room, Dean nodded at his host, who waved him toward the comfortably worn leather sofa. Wes immediately clicked off the television with a remote controller.
Dean sat and stacked his ledgers atop his knees. Wes glanced at them but remarked only, “Ann says the sorghum looks good.”
“It does. Rex’s timing has been perfect with the harvest.”
“Boy’s a natural,” Wes proclaimed proudly. “Always suspected it, but it took him a while to figure it out. Well, everyone has to take their own path.”
“I hear he’s a really good lawyer, too.”
“Oh, yeah, he is,” Wes stated without hesitation.
Dean had to grin. He knew just how Wes felt about his son, and he was glad that the feeling didn’t necessarily fade with time.
“Ann’s done a good job for us, too,” Wes added, and Dean quickly agreed.
“She has.”
“Between you and me, I’m seeing some changes I like in her lately. Not sure that big-city fiancé of hers would approve, but she seems more her true self to me now than she has in a long time.”
Dean said nothing, but privately he thought Ann’s fiancé a hopeless fool if he didn’t completely and wholeheartedly approve of Ann and all she was.
Maybe she wasn’t perfect, but no simple human being could be. She was, however, and had been for as long as Dean had known her, all things lovely and fine.
What man in his right mind would not approve of—and appreciate—that?
Conversation had moved to that morning’s breakfast of sticky buns, with Wes joking that he’d needed a sponge bath after finishing his, by the time Ann swept into the room. She smiled distractedly at her father and twisted the heavy diamond on her finger in a way Dean had never seen before this. He knew at once that something troubled her.
“You okay?”
She flashed a smile and waved a hand in a gesture that didn’t quite appear as careless as it might have. “It’s...” She shook her head. “A work thing.”
He didn’t like to even think about the job waiting for her back in Texas, but he could see that something weighed heavily on her mind just now.
Lifting the slender books in his hands, he suggested, “Maybe I should just leave these with you for now. You can look them over at your convenience and get back to me later.”
To his disappointment, she pressed trembling fingertips to her temple and nodded. “Maybe that would be best.”
His spirits plummeting, he got to his feet. “I’ll let y’all enjoy your evening. It was good to see you, Mr. Wes. Take care now.”
Uncertain what to do with the books, he placed them on the coffee table and moved toward the door, sliding sideways past Ann. He’d nearly reached the foyer when she suddenly announced, “I’ll walk you out.”
Surprised, he stopped then almost wrapped an arm around her waist as she came up next to him; Wes called out a farewell just in time to remind Dean that would not be a good idea. Stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans, he tucked his elbows in tight as he stepped into the entry hall with Ann right at his side.
They skirted the stairs in silence. When they reached the foyer, he took his hat from the peg but kept it in one hand, opening the front door with the other, holding it wide until Ann pushed through the screen. She crossed the porch and stepped down onto the well-beaten pathway, but then she paused and waited for him to pull the door closed, sidestep the screen and catch up to her.
Half a dozen innocuous topics of conversation slipped through his mind, but something sat so heavily on hers that he couldn’t bring himself to start a conversation. Finally, just as they approached the edge of the trees, she spoke.
“Can I ask you something and get an honest answer?”
Even though little, if any, traffic could be expected along this private road at this time of evening, Dean had pulled his truck to the side of the road nearest the house, parking practically in the shallow bar ditch. He stepped across that narrow ditch, reached in through the open window and laid his hat on the seat of the truck. Turning, he put his back to the passenger’s door and leaned against it, folding his arms.
“Sure.”
She shook her head with obvious agitation, her eyes gleaming in the dusky light. Darkness often didn’t fall until nine o’clock at this time of year, and they had no moon this early in August, only the light of the stars and the ambient illumination from the vapor lights near the barn and the rear of the house. He wondered if the sheen of her eyes could be from tears.
“An honest answer,” she repeated sternly. “Don’t spare my feelings.”
He stilled, everything in him focused on this woman before him, this woman he had wanted for so long. His heart pounded as he imagined the questions he hoped she would ask.
“I’ve always been honest with you, Jolly. I always will be. You have my word on that.”
He’d never meant any words more than those.