the cowboy asked, carefully checking both of his sideview mirrors as he clicked on the rig’s right signal.
They had driven in silence for the better part of the trip, though he had stopped when she’d asked him to, without complaint. The silence had been protracted during this last leg of the journey, however, so much so that Bethany had closed her eyes and pretended to sleep for part of the time. Now, she waited to reply until the truck and trailer had exited the highway.
She gave him the address. He gaped at her, his reddish-brown eyes popping wide.
“That’s Chatam House!”
“Yes, do you know it?”
He studied her as if trying to decide whether she was serious. “How do you know it?”
“Oh, I grew up around here,” she answered airily, not about to tell him the whole of that story.
He gave her an odd look. “That makes two of us. Actually, I still live here, and I almost always have, except for when I was away at college. I have a little ranch out west of town now.”
“I left Buffalo Creek as soon as I graduated high school,” she said. She had literally walked out of the graduation ceremony, gotten into Jay Carter’s car and driven straight to the airport, where they’d hopped on a plane to Vegas. Two days later, he’d carried her over the threshold of the house in Humble and left her there while he raced off on business.
“That’s probably part of it,” the cowboy mused. “What year was that?”
She told him, and he nodded. “I graduated from college that same year. That would make you about twenty-four. Right?”
“Exactly twenty-four.”
“I’m twenty-nine. Guess we just moved in different circles back then. My sister Kaylie’s about your age, though.”
Bethany shook her head, trying to remember any Chandlers she might have known. “I don’t recall her.” That wasn’t surprising. She hadn’t had many friends. Her stepfather hadn’t liked anyone coming around the house to witness his abusive behavior.
“I guess Buffalo Creek’s not as small as it feels sometimes,” Chandler murmured.
“What is it, about thirty thousand people now?”
“Something like that,” he said, nodding. He made a careful left turn and eased over a pair of railroad tracks.
Those old tracks, leftover from the days when Buffalo Creek had been a major transportation center for the cotton growers in the area, crisscrossed the town. The cotton was long gone now, but the trains still rattled through town several times a day. Oddly enough, Bethany had missed them when she’d first moved to Humble. The trains were all she had missed, though. Garrett had already been sent to prison, and their mother had been a different person by then. After their mother’s death, Bethany would never have considered coming back if Garrett had not returned here. She still didn’t understand why he had, really. Maybe the parole board had dictated where he had to go.
As the city rolled past, one graceful street after another, excitement built in Bethany. Her hands skimmed over her belly. Her pregnancy was going to be a shock to Garrett. She probably should have told him, but they’d been out of touch when she’d first realized that she was pregnant. He’d just gotten out of prison, and she’d had no idea where he was headed or how to reach him. Then her world had begun to dissolve, and she’d judged it wiser, all things considered, not to tell her brother about it.
She’d never dreamed how it would all turn out. How could she?
Obviously, Chandler mused, he needed a refresher course in the basics of introductions. Somehow, he hadn’t managed to get his last name out there at the diner, and Bethany had apparently assumed that his given name was his surname. Or had she? He tried to remember if she had glanced at his driver’s license as it had lain there on the counter, but he just didn’t know.
Thinking of that bare ring finger on her left hand, Chandler took his eyes off the road long enough to glance at her pretty face, and a shiver of something crawled right up his spine to the top of his head.
What, he had to ask himself, were the odds that he’d just accidentally run into a pregnant stranger on the side of the road who was headed not only for his hometown of Buffalo Creek, Texas, but right to his family home? The aunties, no doubt, had something to do with this.
His aunts, maiden triplets in their seventies, might be a tad on the eccentric side, but they were good women. Even more than his retired minister father, they epitomized Christianity for Chandler. They lived to serve a greater cause, dedicating their time, talent, money and even their home, the antebellum mansion known as Chatam House, to the needs of others. They weren’t perfect, of course.
Hypatia, the undisputed head of the household, could be a bit prim. She wore her dignity, along with her pearls, like a protective cloak. Magnolia, or Mags, on the other hand, couldn’t have been any more down-to-earth if she was covered in it, which she often was, being a master gardener much more concerned with the appearance of her roses than herself. It wasn’t unusual, in fact, to find Aunt Mags in a dress and rubber boots decorated with mud. Odelia, bless her, was sweetness personified, sweetness with a heavy dose of silliness. He, along with his cousins, secretly but fondly referred to her as Auntie Od and chuckled about the weird clothing and oversize jewelry that she wore. She especially had a thing for earrings and lace hankies, so much so that the rest of the family routinely speculated about how many of each she might actually possess.
Chandler smiled. No, not perfect but very dear, and as generous and loving as it was possible for three human beings to be. Why, last winter they’d opened their home to his cousin Reeves and Reeves’s little girl, Gillian, and just recently, they’d taken in an injured professional hockey player, who just happened to be Chandler’s new brother-in-law. Yes, whatever had brought pretty, pregnant Bethany Willows here to Chatam House, the aunties almost surely had a hand in it. He supposed he’d find out what that was soon, as they had just passed the brick column at the eastern edge of the fifteen-acre estate.
He slowed the rig, braking carefully so as not to stress the quartet of horses riding in the trailer. Those animals, each one trained to a specific task, were essential to his livelihood and constituted a significant financial investment, besides being as dear to him as any pet. As the rig slowed, Bethany sat up very straight, her hands clasping her belly, her gaze trained out the window at the shoulder-high yew hedge that flanked the wrought-iron fence.
They came to the gate, which stood open, as usual, its elaborate scrolls and bars culminating in a large, brass-plated C, and there, on a slight rise, stood the grand old house. Two stories of whitewashed, hand-hewn stone blocks, it featured half a dozen Doric columns across the veranda and a substantial porte cochere on the west end. The black trim around the windows and doors echoed the color of the black slate roof, just as the redbrick walkways and steps, flanked by a colorful profusion of flowers, reflected that of the tall chimneys. Dead center of the veranda stood a bright yellow door framed by narrow, leaded-glass windows on the sides and an elaborate fan-shaped one on top.
Chandler eased the rig between the brick gate columns and aimed it up the deeply graveled drive that swept over the easy, green-blanketed hill and circled back onto itself, branching off at the top to pass beneath the porte cochere and on past the carriage house, erected at right angles behind the mansion. The staff, Chester and Hilda Worth and Hilda’s sister Carol Petty, lived in rooms above the carriage house bays, as did Magnolia’s mysterious new gardener, Garrett somebody.
Garrett, a tall, dark-haired man in jeans and a snugly fitted T-shirt, strode across the lawn at that very moment, apparently heading toward the enormous old magnolia tree on the west lawn. Bethany swiftly released her safety belt with one hand and slapped the button to roll down the window with the other.
“Garrett! Garrett!”
Her hands fumbled for the door handle and the lock. Alarmed, Chandler braked to a stop. She grabbed her handbag and literally baled out, sobbing and laughing.
“Garrett!”