Rachel Gibson - Rescue Me

He tossed the foil into the garbage can and started on the second hot dog. For the past three months, he’d been traveling a lot, but even after months of reflection, he still wasn’t real clear on why he’d taken on a bar filled with bikers. He wasn’t real clear on who had started it, but he was clear about waking up in jail with a sore face and ribs, and a couple of battery charges. The charges had all been dropped, thanks to a good lawyer and his sparkling military record, but he’d been guilty. As sin. He knew he hadn’t picked the fight, never did. He never went looking for a fight, either, but he always knew where to find one.

He reached for the beer and raised it to his mouth. His sister liked to tell him that he had anger problems, but she was wrong. He swallowed and set the beer on the desk. He had no problem with his anger. Even when it crawled across his skin and threatened to blow, he could control it. Even in the midst of a firefight or a barroom brawl.

No, his problem wasn’t anger. It was boredom. He tended to get into trouble if he didn’t have a goal or mission. Something to do with his head and hands, and even though he’d had his day job and the Laundromat to fill up his time, he’d felt at loose ends since his sister had decided to remarry the son of a bitch ex of hers. Now that the SOB was back in the picture, Vince was out of one of his jobs.

He took a bite and chewed. Deep down, he knew that it was best for the SOB to step up to the plate and be a good father, and he’d never seen his sister happier than the last time he’d been at her house. He’d never heard her happier than the last time he’d talked to her on the phone, but her happiness had created a big vacuum in Vince’s life. A vacuum he hadn’t felt since he’d left the teams. A vacuum that he’d filled at the time with family and work. A vacuum he’d been trying to fill this time with driving across the country visiting buddies who understood.

The squeak of Luraleen’s shoes and her smoker’s hack announced her entry into the office. “That was Bessie Cooper, Tally Lynn’s mama. The weddin’s got her nervous as a cat with a long tail.” She moved around the side of the desk and lowered herself into the rolling chair. “I told her Sadie made it to town.” She lit the snubbed-out smoke and grabbed her Tweety mug. As a kid, Luraleen had always brought him candy cigarettes when she’d visited. His mother had thrown a fit, which Vince suspected was why his aunt had done it, but he’d always loved his pack of wintergreen Kings. “She’d wanted to know if Sadie had packed on the pounds, like the women on her daddy’s side tend to do.”

“She hadn’t looked fat to me. Of course I didn’t get a real good look at her.” The most memorable thing about Sadie had been the way her blue eyes had gotten all wide and dreamy when she’d talked about zapping his ass with her imaginary stun gun.

Luraleen took a drag and blew it toward the ceiling. “Bessie says Sadie still isn’t married.”

Vince shrugged and took a bite. “Why did you call me a month ago?” he asked, changing the subject. Talk of marriage usually led to talk of when he was getting married, and that just wasn’t in his foreseeable future. Not that he hadn’t thought about it, but being in the military, where the divorce rate was high, not to mention his own parents’ divorce, he’d just never met a woman who made him want to risk it. Of course, that could have something to do with his preference for women with low expectations. “What’s on your mind?”

“Your daddy told me he called you.” Luraleen set the cigarette in the ashtray and a curl of smoke trailed upward.

“Yeah. He did. About four months ago.” After twenty-six years the old man had called and evidently wanted to be a dad. “I’m surprised he called you, though.”

“I was surprised, too. Shoot, I haven’t talked to Big Vin since he left your mama.” She took a drag off her cig and blew it out in a thick stream. “He called ’cause he thought I could talk sense into you. He said you wouldn’t hear him out.”

Vince had heard him out. He’d sat in the old man’s living room and listened for an hour before he’d heard enough and left. “He shouldn’t have bothered you.” Vince took a long drink from the bottle and sat back in the chair. “Did you tell him to fuck himself?”

“Pert near.” She grabbed her mug. “Is that about what you told him?”

“Not about. That’s exactly what I told him.”

“You don’t want to reconsider?”

“No.” Forgiveness wasn’t easy for him. It was something he had to work at, but Vincent Haven Senior was one person who wasn’t worth the hard work he’d have to put into it. “Is that why you called me to come here? I thought you had a proposition for me.”

“I do.” She took a drink and swallowed. “I’m getting old, and I want to retire.” She set the mug on the desk and closed one eye against the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. “I want to travel.”

“Sounds reasonable.” He’d traveled the world. Some places were pure hell. Others so beautiful they stole his breath. He’d been thinking about going back to some of those places as a civilian. Maybe that was exactly what he needed. He had no strings now. He could go wherever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. For however long he wanted to stay. “What can I do to help?”

“You can buy the Gas and Go, is all.”

He’d turned her down. She’d asked a stranger to take her to her young cousin’s wedding and he’d turned her down flat.

“Don’t own a suit,” was all he’d said before he’d walked away. Even if she hadn’t seen his driver’s license or heard the lack of twang in his voice, she would have known he wasn’t a native Texan because he hadn’t even bothered with a good lie. Something like his dog died and he was grieving or that he was scheduled to donate a kidney tomorrow.

The setting sun bathed the JH in bright orange and gold and filtered through the fine plumes of dust disturbed by the Saab’s tires. He’d made the offer to repay her, but of course he hadn’t meant it. Asking him had been a dumb, impulsive idea. And dumb, impulsive ideas always got her into trouble. So, if she looked at it that way, Vince the stranded guy had done her a favor. After all, what was she supposed to do with a huge, enormously hot stranger all night long once he’d served her purpose? She clearly hadn’t thought it through before she’d asked.

The dirt road to the JH took ten to twenty minutes depending on how recently the road had been graded and the type of vehicle. Any moment, Sadie expected to hear mad barking and see the sudden appearance of half a dozen or so cow dogs. The ranch house and outbuildings sat five miles back from the highway on the ten-thousand-acre ranch. The JH wasn’t the largest spread in Texas, but it was one of the oldest, running several thousand head of cattle a year. The ranch had been settled and the land purchased on the Canadian River in the early twentieth century by Sadie’s great-great-grandfather, Major John Hollowell. Through good times and lean, the Hollowells had alternately both barely survived and thrived, raising purebred Herefords and American paint horses. Yet when it came to securing the future of the family with a male heir, the Hollowells came up short. Except for a few distant cousins whom Sadie had rarely met, she was the last in the Hollowell line. Which was a source of grave disappointment for her father.

It wasn’t quite grazing season and the cattle were closer to the house and outbuildings. As Sadie drove along the fence line, the familiar silhouettes grazed in the fields. Soon it would be branding and castration season, and since moving, Sadie did not miss the sounds and smells of that horrific, yet necessary, event.

She pulled to a stop in front of the four-thousand-square-foot house her grandfather had built in the 1940s. The original homestead was five miles west on Little Tail Creek and was currently occupied by foreman Snooks Perry and his family. The Perrys had worked for the JH for longer than Sadie had been alive.

She grabbed her Gucci bag from the backseat, then shut the car door behind her. Whippoorwills called on a cool breeze that touched her cheeks and stole down the collar of her gray Pink hooded sweatshirt.

The setting sun turned the white stone and clapboard house golden, and she moved to the big double, rough oak doors with the JH brand in the center of each. Coming home was always unsettling. A tangle of emotion tugged at her stomach and heart. Warm feelings stirred with the familiar guilt and apprehension that always pulled at her when she came to Texas.

She opened the unlocked door and stepped into the empty entrance. The smells of home greeted her. She breathed in the scent of lemon, wood and leather polish, years of smoke from the huge stone fireplace in the great room, and decades of home-cooked meals.

No one greeted her and she moved across the knotty pine floors and Navaho rugs toward the kitchen at the back of the house. It took a full-time staff to keep the JH operating on a smooth schedule. Their housekeeper, Clara Anne Parton, kept things neat and tidy in the main house as well as the bunkhouse, while her twin sister, Carolynn, cooked three meals every day but Sunday. Neither had ever married and they lived together in town.

Sadie followed the steady thump-thump of something heavy being tossed about in a dryer. She moved through the empty kitchen, past the pantry, to the laundry room beyond. She stopped in the doorway and smiled. Clara Anne’s considerable bottom greeted her as the housekeeper bent to pick up towels from the floor. Both twins had considerable curves and tiny waists that they liked to show off by cinching in their pants and wearing buckles the size of dessert plates.

“You’re working late.”