Free A Little Texas by Liz Talley Page A

certain of two things. Something big loomed ahead of her, and her toes were sweating in her designer half boots.

    “D O YOU THINK THIS IS WISE ?” Rick asked as Justus maneuvered his wheelchair behind the colossal antique desk. “What about Vera?”
    He shrugged, although it was a rather distorted shrug. “What about her? This doesn’t concern her.”
    “The hell it doesn’t.” Rick walked to the window. Vera stood among the dead plantings, staring at the marble angel in the center of the circular garden. He could see her lips moving in silent prayer. “She’s still hurting over Ryan. And bringing Kate—”
    “Why do you care?” Justus’s words were tinged with anger. “Vera’s not your concern. She’s mine. It’s been three years. It’s time she stopped wandering around this ranch like some shadow of a woman. She’s like a Dickens character. All she needs is a moldering bridal gown and an old wedding cake. It’s absurd.”
    Rick didn’t know Dickens. He’d dropped out of school before the tenth grade, but he knew what Justus meant. Vera had spent long enough mourning, but Rick couldn’t abandon the woman who’d first accepted him as something other than a thug. Besides he owed it to Ryan to look out for Vera.
    “You’re throwing Kate in her face.”
    “The hell I am.” Justus used his good hand to slam a thick book of Irish folklore upon the desk. It caused the picture of a smiling Ryan clad in his graduation gown to fall forward. “I didn’t go looking for Kate. She found me. For reprehensible purposes, true, but I’ve prayed for months for God to send me something, some answer, some way to bring us all back among the living. I think He sent me Kate.”
    Rick grew still. He’d never thought about the feisty Kate being someone destined to come to Cottonwood. And he certainly hadn’t seen her as someone who could breathe life into a house that had folded into itself with grief. But maybe Justus was right.
    Maybe Kate had a bigger purpose.
    “Okay, I get what you’re saying, but you have to promise to tread lightly.” He walked toward the door.
    “I don’t have to promise you a thing,” Justus said, staring at the fallen picture frame.
    Rick paused with his hand on the knob. “That may be, but this time, I’m not going to allow you to pull all the strings. There are too many people with a stake in this for you to bulldoze over as if they were small saplings.”
    Justus’s laugh was sharp. Biting. “Do you honestly think I’d let you scare me away from a girl who is my own flesh and blood?”
    Rick knew Kate was Justus’s daughter, but he used the old man’s argument against him. “You said you didn’t know if she were really your daughter.”
    “The girl’s mine. I’ve known it for thirty years.”
    Rick flinched. The admission made his stomach turn. “Then why the hell didn’t you acknowledge her?”
    Justus’s eyes met his. They were as frigid as an Alaskan lake. The way they’d been before Ryan died, before the stroke. The old Justus lurked inside the shell somewhere. “I’ve never had cause to.”
    “But now you do?”
    “I do.”
    Anger welled in Rick. This man did what he did for his own selfish purposes. He did not have Kate’s best interests in mind. But Rick would look out for her. Justus Mitchell mowed over many people, but Enrique Mendez was no damned sapling.
    He masked his annoyance, nodded and left the room. There was nothing more to say.
    He found Kate standing outside the office door, staring at an original Remington bronze of a Cherokee warrior. The piece was poised between two of the artist’s original sketches. Justus loved the art of the Old West.
    “Is that a real Remington?” Kate asked.
    “I think so.”
    “My friend Billie would love to see it. She’s a glass artist, but has a thing for cowboys and Indians.” Kate’s words sounded detached. She was trying to distance herself from her emotions. He understood.
    “You ready to