Free Texas Homecoming by MAGGIE SHAYNE

pet my pony?"
    "Could I?"
    "I don't think..." Jasmine began.
    The woman spoke then. "The pony's gentle as a kitten," she said. "I wouldn't let Bubba anywhere near it if it were dangerous at all."
    Bubba looked sturdy and strong compared to Baxter, though, Jasmine thought. He must be at least a couple of years older. And what might not be dangerous at all to him might very well be a threat to her own delicate little boy.
    "Please, Mom?" Baxter asked.
    "Oh, all right. But no riding on that thing."
    "Okay!" Baxter and Bubba headed over to the pony. Meanwhile Garrett was tying the other two horses up to a rail that seemed to have been made for that very purpose.
    "Shall we go inside to talk?" Garrett asked.
    Talk...about what?
Jasmine wondered.
    "Oh, let's sit on the porch, so we can keep an eye on the boys, hmm?" Chelsea said with a glance at Jasmine.
    "You probably think I'm an overprotective lunatic."
    Chelsea shook her head. "Why should I think that? Luke says you're from Chicago. I'm from New York. I know full well that in cities like those, letting your child out of your sight is practically courting disaster."
    Oddly enough, it seemed the woman understood.
    "It's different out here, but it takes time for a mom to get comfortable with that. So it's perfectly natural for you to want to keep a close watch on little Baxter. Heck, I'd be worried if you didn't!"
    She
seemed very
kind...and genuine. That didn't mean she was. In Jasmine's experience, most people were not what they seemed. Still, she walked up onto the porch and sat in one of the white wicker chairs. Luke took the other one, while Chelsea and Garrett settled into the matching love seat. "So, um, I guess Luke has already told you about me."
    "I called them this morning," Luke explained. "I thought they could help us get this mess straightened out."
    She lifted her brows. "I don't understand how."
    "Well, for one thing," Garrett said, "I knew your mother."
    Jasmine's throat went dry as she stared at him. For just an instant she thought of her own drunken tramp of a mother who'd died young and left Jasmine on her own at fifteen. But then she realized these people all thought she was Rosebud. Jenny Lee Walker. So the mother he was referring to was Rosebud's mother—the woman who'd left her this house.
    "Oh," she said finally. "How well did you know her?"
    "Almost as well as I knew my own," Garrett said with a friendly smile, leaning back in his chair.
    Jasmine braced herself. This was not a good sign.

Chapter 6
    ----
     
    LUKE SAW JASMINE'S REACTION TO Garrett's revelation that he'd known her mother. Fear. It was plain and easily read, even though she covered it fast. There had been a slight widening of those already huge dark eyes and the tiniest flare of her nostrils.
    Why?
    "It was before you were born, of course," Garrett said, comfortable in the chair, one arm slung casually around his wife's shoulders. "Helena's husband had died young, left her widowed and alone, with this big house to care for and two hundred acres to farm. Of course, that's not a lot of land by Texas standards, but it's a lot to expect one woman to handle alone. She was lonely, I think."
    "Well, sure she was," Chelsea put in. "Gosh, what did she do to make ends meet?"
    "I was getting to that." Garrett smiled indulgently at his wife, tapped her nose with his forefinger.
    The woman was way too relaxed, Jasmine thought vaguely. She sat there all calm and content watching the boys pet the pony, while Jasmine was nearly jumping out of her seat every time the beast moved. And the conversation had her nearly as jittery as the big hooves did.
    "Helena needed some income to help keep the wolves at bay. Meanwhile, my own mother was struggling through with five young'uns and no help other than a husband who was raised to believe caring for the kids was women's work." He shrugged. "So it was a match made in heaven. Helena came by almost every day and helped out around the house, for, oh, about a year.