the cloud of dust trailing the Ford pickup that barreled toward the barn. After checking on the cattle this morning, he’d called the fire inspector and received permission to have the damaged trailer hauled to the dump. The inspector had officially closed the case, declaring Melvin Henderson’s death accidental. Royce had hoped he’d get out of here before his nosy foreman returned from an overnight visit with his ailing sister. No such luck.
Guilt nagged him at the uncharitable thought. Luke was like family. The foreman had hired on at the ranch ten years ago when Royce’s uncle had been diagnosed with cancer and been given only a few months to live. At the time Luke was fifty-five. Royce’s uncle had died in August, and the following winter his aunt had succumbed to pneumonia. After Royce had buried his aunt, he’d insisted Luke move out of the small room at the back of the barn and into the main house.
The truck came to a stop next to the corral. As soon as Luke opened the door, his old hound dog, Bandit, hopped down from the front seat. Tail wagging, the animal hurried toward Royce as fast as his arthritic legs would carry him.
Royce scratched Bandit’s ear. “How’s Martha feeling?”
“Spry as a spring chick.” Luke grumbled a four-letter word. “There wasn’t nothin’ wrong with the woman in the first place. Just lonely is all. No wonder she ain’t never married all these years. Can’t keep her trap shut for nothin’. Yakkin’ about this, yakkin’ about that. I had to get out of there before my ears shriveled up and fell off my head.”
Luke and Martha were twins, and Martha took great pleasure in bossing her brother around. Royce swallowed a laugh at the disgruntled expression on his foreman’s face, then suggested, “Why don’t you invite her to stay at the ranch for the summer. We’ve got plenty of room.”
“Hell, no! You think I want that old biddy askin’ me if I got fresh drawers on every mornin’?” Luke pulled a pouch of Skoal from the front pocket of his overalls. “How’d Heather take the news?”
“Better than I’d hoped.” He hadn’t expected her to feel much of anything at learning of her father’s death. Then he’d caught the glimmer of tears in her baby blues. The lost expression on her face had convinced him that she’d been deeply affected. He supposed no matter what kind of relationship Heather and her father had had over the years, a part of her had always yearned for his love.
“She comin’ home after graduatin’?”
“She won’t be graduating next week.” Royce slammed the tailgate shut and wiped his sweaty palms down the front of his threadbare jeans. He wasn’t in the mood to discuss Heather Henderson with anybody—not even Luke.
Last night had been hell. He’d returned from College Station right around midnight and had fallen into bed exhausted and agitated. He’d lain awake for hours, tossing and turning, his insides and outsides tied in knots.
After his accident three years ago, he’d have sworn he had put Heather behind him. Heck, he’d even had a couple of affairs. A summer fling with a tourist and an off-and-on thing with a local divorcée, whom he’d probably still be seeing if she hadn’t taken a job in Arizona.
But one glimpse at Heather—just one glimpse—and all the feelings for her that he’d thought long dead and buried had rushed to the surface, stunning him with their intensity.
After shoving a wad of chewing tobacco in his mouth, Luke offered Bandit a small pinch and the dog ran off and buried it beneath the sugar maple tree by the front porch. “How come she ain’t gettin’ her degree?”
“She still has a couple of classes to finish, first.”
“After that, is she comin’ home?”
“Nope.” Not if he had his way. Royce marched toward the barn and the old fart followed him like a pesky fly.
“Full of ‘nopes’ lately, ain’t you.”
“Yep.”
Luke stopped inside the barn doors. “You ain’t said how she was?”
“She’s fine.” Royce searched through the junk in the corner for a bushel basket. Fine didn’t come close to describing Heather. She was more than fine. She was beautiful, full of energy and life, and she possessed a new self-confidence that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen her.
“Just fine, huh?”
“Yep.” He knew he was being an ass. But he couldn’t seem to find the words to tell Luke about Heather’s desire to work with children. About how right she’d looked sprawled on the floor buried under a pile of preschoolers. He couldn’t tell Luke that it had almost physically hurt to watch her wrestle with the kids.
Luke had been the one to find Royce lying unconscious alongside the road. Royce had awakened from surgery and the doctor had given him the bad news. In his own way, Luke had grieved along with Royce. And when the time had come to stop grieving and move on, Luke had been the one to plant his boot heel in Royce’s backside and force him out of his depression, and back into the world of the living.
Compelled to say more, Royce added, “Heather seemed excited about getting her degree at the end of the summer.”
“What kind of degree?”
“In counseling, psychology to be exact. She plans to work with disadvantaged kids.”
Bandit barked somewhere outside the barn and Luke hollered at him to hush. “What about the funeral?”
“There isn’t going to be a funeral.”
“Why not?”
“Heather doesn’t want one.”
“Can’t blame the poor gal.”
“I spoke with Pastor Gates, and he’s agreed to say a few words about Henderson during the service on Sunday.”
“Don’t deserve much more.”
No argument there. Melvin Henderson had been a first-class loser. He hadn’t had a nice word for anyone the whole time he’d been alive.
A stream of tobacco juice sailed past Royce’s face.
“How long ago did that gal start college?” asked Luke.
“Seven years.”
The geezer made a whistling sound as he sucked in air through the gap between his front teeth. “Least she didn’t up and quit on you.”
Pride surged through Royce. When Heather had chosen college over juvenile detention, he’d never expected her to last more than a semester or two. “You’re right. She might have taken her sweet time, but she didn’t quit.” He shoved aside several wooden crates, until he found a dented basket; then he carried it to the other side of the barn, where the freshly picked garden vegetables were stored.
Switching the ball of chew to his other cheek, Luke motioned to the loaded pickup. “I thought you was ridin’ fence today.”
“Change of plans. I’m meeting with a Realtor to put the feed store on the market.”
“Ain’t that Heather’s business?”
Should be. Heather might have done some growing up since going away to college, but she still ran the opposite direction when faced with the big R—responsibility. “She doesn’t want anything to do with the store.”
“Don’t seem right.”
Where Heather was concerned, nothing was ever as it seemed. If Royce were honest with himself—something he tried to avoid at all costs in order to keep his sanity—he’d admit Heather had left a void in his life when she’d gone off to college. Prior to that, his weeks had been filled with chasing after her, righting her wrongs, fixing her mistakes. When she’d graduated high school and moved to College Station his life had become…well, dull.
“It’s her decision, Luke.”
“Since