Caleb stretched his bad leg sideways on the porch swing and looked over at Nate, who’d already settled into roughly the same position on the top porch step.
Another week had passed. Phone calls from Montana made him feel pressured to get back home. Still, he stayed. He had important business here, too.
He’d tried to prepare Nate for his leaving, but she hadn’t taken it well. He couldn’t walk out on her right away.
Just yesterday, he and Tess had taken care of the paperwork for the property he’d agreed to buy. Knowing how much she and Dana needed the income, he couldn’t resent the purchase. And he would find some way of making the investment pay off.
A good part of his time, he’d helped out with repairs around the inn and painting that room Roselynn needed done.
As the week had gone by, he’d continued to stop in often at the Double S to visit with Dori and Manny. He’d kept in touch with Sam and Ben and with others in town, too. It felt good to know he could talk to them all without that chip on his shoulder.
Resentment weighed him down only when he talked to Tess.
Along with their business discussions, they’d managed to have a few amicable conversations. Somehow, he’d handled the constant temptation to touch her without giving in. But he’d started getting cramps in his fingers from clenching them into fists when she came anywhere close to him.
Better to keep from spending time alone with her, to have Roselynn and Nate around—and Ellamae, when she dropped in. Safety in numbers.
He wouldn’t have to worry about that tonight. Tess had just gone upstairs to get ready for another date with good old Joe. The best thing, all around.
He looked over at Nate again. They’d made peace on Signal Street during the Fourth of July parade. For the price of a double-dip ice-cream cone.
Well, a sort of peace, and probably as close as they could have come then. But he continued to work at it and had felt gratified to see he’d made real progress.
Every day, he managed some time alone with her. Nothing special, just having her help while he made his repairs. Playing cards and checkers after supper. Relaxing with her outside, where he took his usual seat here on the swing and she settled onto her favorite spot on the step.
“You want grape or lime?” she asked, holding up a couple of wrapped candies.
“Lime.” He pretended not to notice her relief. He’d already figured out she liked the grape-flavored best.
She got up to give him his candy, then returned to her seat. “Gram sure has lots of stuff for you to do around here.”
He nodded. “She sure does. Good thing I have a great assistant.”
She gave him a smile. She hadn’t warmed up to him enough to reach her previous level yet. Maybe she never would. Fine by him—he didn’t want the hero worship, the adoration, the crush. What he did want...he had no right to expect.
Plenty of times, he’d found her eyeing him as if she’d been trying to figure out what made him tick. She sat watching him that way now. He waited, knowing that sooner or later she’d come out with whatever she had on her mind.
This porch was the place they did most of their talking.
And the place he did a lot of his thinking whenever he found time hanging heavy. He tried not to let that happen often. Didn’t want to risk getting too deep into his troubled thoughts.
“Before,” Nate said suddenly, “did you ever wish you had kids?”
He froze in the act of rubbing his knee. She hadn’t called him by name since the day he’d told her he was her daddy. But she’d asked a slew of intense questions about his relationship with her mama, his life on the circuit, and what he’d done since he couldn’t ride.
With all those questions this week, she’d never brought up anything like this. He knew where she had to be headed.
“You know,” he said, “I never did wish for kids, Nate. Never thought I’d have a family.” Never wanted one. But he couldn’t be that blunt.
That night around the fire ring at Sam’s place, when she had asked him why he looked so sad, he hadn’t known what to say. So he’d come up with something else. In all the time he’d thought about it since, he still didn’t know how he’d find the right words.
He couldn’t tell a nine-year-old anything he’d thought about while sitting in front of that fire. How his own mama had told him straight out he was nothing but a burden to her. Nothing but deadweight dragging her down.
That’s the kind of family he knew about.
He couldn’t give her an honest answer about that. He didn’t want to talk about his past at all with Nate. With anyone. Yet with the truth he’d revealed to her just a week or so ago, how could he not tell her something about his life, too?
“Growing up,” he began slowly, “I didn’t have much of a family.”
“You didn’t?”
“No. No brothers or sisters. No cousins.”
“Like me.”
He nodded. He’d had no father, either. Like her, too.
Tess had shown him a photo album filled with pictures. Of herself and Roselynn and Ellamae. Of Sam and Paul and Dana and of other folks from town.
And of Nate. Lots of pictures of Nate, showing how she’d grown and changed through the years.
He clenched his jaw so hard, the candy split in two. He should’ve been here for her. He should’ve been her daddy all along.
A movement through the screened door caught his eye. Tess stood in the entrance hall, looking down at Nate’s bent head.
Unaware of her mama’s presence, she tugged at the lace on her sneaker. “I guess I’ll never have brothers and sisters.” Before he could think of what to say, she took a deep breath and added, “Why can’t you stay here?”
His turn for a deep breath, one he let out by degrees. “I told you the other day, Nate,” he said softly. “I have a ranch to run—in Montana. I’ll have to go back there sometime soon. But you’ll get to visit. I promised you that, remember?”
“Uh-huh.”
She kept fiddling with her sneaker, refusing to meet his eyes. He could feel Tess’s gaze on him now. He kept his focus on Nate.
“So,” she continued, “when you go there, are you ever coming here again?”
“Of course I am.” But no matter how many times he returned, he would never get back all he’d missed.
He couldn’t escape the irony of the situation. Or the parallel between this conversation and those he’d had in past weeks with Tess.
“It’s just a quick plane ride,” he told Nate. “Montana’s not that far away.”
“It’s far. I looked it up on the computer.” She shot to her feet.
He glanced toward the door. Tess no longer stood in the entry.
Nate bolted into the house and yanked the door so roughly, it bounced before slamming shut. The quick slap of her sneakers told him she was running.
“Nate, stop,” Tess said from inside the house.
The sound of running steps continued.
As he reached the door, she spoke again. “Anastasia Lynn La—”
“Don’t call me that!” Nate shrieked. “My name shoulda been Cantrell!”
Her cheeks flushed beet-red, she stood near the stairs and stared back in their direction. Tess had frozen just beside the doorway, her face drained of any color at all.
He stepped into the house, closed the door gently and looked from one to the other of them.
“Nate,” he said, “don’t be in such a hurry to take on my name. Your own’s got a lot more going for it.”
She looked down at the toes of her sneakers.
“And,” he added, “don’t be so quick to sass your mama. She doesn’t deserve that kind of talk from you.”
There was a lot more Tess didn’t deserve.
Roselynn entered the hall from the doorway into the dining room. Her eyes widened when she saw the three of them standing motionless. “What’s all this? Tess, did you let Caleb and Nate know supper’s waiting? Isn’t anyone planning to come eat?”
“I told them,” Tess said. “I’m leaving now. Joe just pulled up.” She slipped past him and through the doorway without a backward glance. In a hurry to go meet the man. Well, she’d be better off with Harley.
Roselynn turned and went into the dining room again.
Caleb hesitated, then looked toward the stairs.
Nate had disappeared from sight.
He swallowed a taste of guilt more bitter than that lime candy he’d crunched to shards.
Nothing but a burden to me. Nothing but deadweight dragging me down.
His own mama had said that about him, and he hadn’t wanted to hear the words. Hadn’t wanted to believe them. But he couldn’t deny how well they now applied to his relationship with Tess.
Showing up here had done nothing but cause more trouble for her with Nate.
They’d both be better off with him gone.
* * *
“Joe,” Tess said quietly. She sat in the passenger seat of his car as he drove her home from their date. Early. “I hope you can understand.”
“Of course I can, Tess. Come on, now. It’s not like I’m just some stranger walking in on this.”
“I know. You’ve always been there for me.”
“And your heart’s always been with Caleb.” He shrugged, his eyes on the road. “Even before you told me tonight, I knew I’d lost my chance.”
“I’m sorry.”
And she was. Yet her thoughts had already made the leap across town to the Whistlestop.
It had been a crazy week.
Caleb had received what he’d asked for, the chance to get to know Nate better. With her explosion tonight, he might have gotten more than he’d expected.
She would have to talk to Nate in the morning. Not to scold her. How could she scold her daughter, when she felt the same way?
Her name should have been Cantrell, too.
She’d gotten what she’d hoped for, also, the chance to get closer to Caleb. The purchase of the property had given them a lot to discuss, but they’d found other things to talk about, as well.
In silence, Joe turned the corner onto Signal Street.
She couldn’t drag her thoughts from Caleb.
Seeing his concern over Nate, watching how much time they’d spent together, she had to believe her hopes would come true. That the temporary agreement she and Caleb had come to for their daughter’s sake would lead to a permanent reunion for them.
She and Joe rode the final blocks in silence. When he pulled over to the curb, she could see Caleb in the swing on the front porch. He sat staring out at Signal Street, his expression brooding.
She fumbled for the door handle. “I’ll see you at the store, Joe.”
“Tess.” When she turned to look at him, he reached over and took her hand. “Just so you know, those times I asked you to marry me, that was me talking, nobody else. I asked because I wanted to.”
Emotion clogged her throat. She simply nodded and squeezed his fingers. On the sidewalk, she waited until he’d driven away before turning to walk up the path.
After taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, she climbed the steps and took the empty half of the swing. Caleb said nothing. After a while, she asked, “How was Nate at suppertime?”
“She didn’t show.”
She sighed. “I’ll speak to her. She needs to apologize. And I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yes, I do. For why I never contacted you later, to tell you about Nate.”
He didn’t respond.
She licked her suddenly dry lips, then went on, “I told you about my grandfather, how he felt about my going to school. He was strict and hard and unyielding about everything, and I knew if he found out about us, he’d take that away. I made you keep our relationship a secret because I was afraid of that. Afraid of him.”
He continued to stare out at the street.
She sagged back against the swing, knowing she faced the most difficult part of her story now. “After Nate came, I didn’t try to contact you, either. Granddad wasn’t happy about my having a baby, but he knew I was dependent on him.” He didn’t like that, either, but that wasn’t something Caleb ever needed to know. “To give him credit, he took care of me and Nate when she came along. And I was afraid of doing anything to upset that. Anything that would get me into trouble.”
He rose from his seat and moved to lean up against the post near the stairs where Nate always sat. “You’d already wound up ‘in trouble.’”
The words hung between them for a long moment.
Finally, she nodded, knowing what he meant by the emphasis. “When I first found out I was pregnant, I didn’t dare tell anyone. My mother’s never been good about keeping things from me...most of the time. She tells Aunt El everything, too. And,” she said grimly, “Aunt El’s so blunt, she would have told Granddad he drove me to it—and then expect him to accept the news calmly because she was the one who delivered it.”
“So you came looking for me.”
She nodded again, knowing there was nothing else she could add. He knew the rest.
“I didn’t do right by you, Tess. I am sorry about that. There’s not much I can do about what happened back then. No way we can go back in time.”
She held her breath. This was nothing like that throwaway apology he had made the first night they’d seen each other again. The crack in his voice, the shadows in his eyes told her he meant what he’d said. He regretted what happened between them. Maybe even wished, as she did, that they’d always been together.
“I’ll do something now,” he said.
His determination brought tears to her eyes. Her heart raced, making her pulse flutter. She rose from the swing, began to reach out, but he looked away.
She stood frozen. Then she let her hands fall to her sides.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “I’ll head back home.”
She managed to choke off the cry that rose to her throat. In that one flat statement, he’d shattered all her hopes. Again.
The screened door creaked open, breaking the silence.
Nate stepped out onto the porch. Her eyes were huge and shining and her lips trembled, and Tess longed to reach out to hug her the way she’d wanted to do with Caleb.
But he had already moved across the porch and put his hand on Nate’s shoulder.
Nate blinked rapidly and bent her head.
“I’m sorry I was never a part of your life,” he said softly, then glanced at Tess. “And I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“Me, too,” Nate said, staring at her sneakers. “And I’m sorry I listened again. It was just for a minute. I had to.”
Shaking his head, he looked down at her. He smiled with such tenderness, Tess now could not hold back a small sob.
Nate lifted her jaw to that rebellious angle Tess knew so well. “I heard what you told Mom,” she said, her words tumbling together, “and I know you’re gonna leave. I want to go, too. I want to live in Montana with you.”