a stylish city flair, but what a difference a few months had made.
“Pining women, huh?” He stood, tucked the Bible under his slinged arm and quietly moved to join her in the hallway. “You know something I don’t know?”
“Hey, I have more than a few girlfriends at Texas Today who still talk about the time you escorted me to that company cookout. Believe me, they’d sell their BMWs for a chance to get their hands on you.”
“Would hate for them to make that kind of sacrifice for a sorry specimen like me.”
“Yeah, right.” Maddie grinned, then motioned to the doorway behind him. “So how’s...Belle today? Seems strange to call her Mom, doesn’t it?”
“Can’t do it myself.”
Maddie rested a hand on his arm and they moved a short distance down the hall, out of Belle’s earshot—if she could hear them at all.
“But she is our mother, Gray. You and Jack might have doubts about your male parentage, but you only have to take one look at her and know we’re hers.”
His spine stiffened. “I don’t have any doubts about my male parentage. I’m not buying into that Fort Worth woman’s tales. She sounds like a troublemaker to me. Dad’s my dad and that’s all there is to it.”
No way would he even speculate he was Joe Earl’s offspring—a guy that on the best of days you wouldn’t brag about being related to. He didn’t care that his siblings had talked to a neighbor where their parents originally lived in Fort Worth. Patty Earl, the deceased Joe Earl’s wife, seemed to know all about them. Even claimed her man had gotten a sixteen-year-old Belle pregnant with twin boys twenty-eight years ago. She said Belle had tricked Brian into marrying her, claiming they were his and all but implying that’s why Belle and Brian divorced shortly after the birth of a second set of twins.
He wasn’t buying it. Brian Wallace was his father. Period. He believed that. He had to believe it. It’s all he had to hang on to now. The one thing that kept the fragile balance of his world upright in the midst of the onslaught of family revelations.
His brother wasn’t quite as sure. He’d never had a father in his life. Didn’t understand why his abandoned him. It probably made more sense that if Brian Wallace wasn’t his biological father, that could account for his being willing to walk away from him, to let part of the family go.
Maddie’s brow crinkled. “So you don’t think—?”
“No.”
She studied him with concern and he realized his expression was likely as fierce as his thoughts.
“I didn’t mean to upset you, Gray.”
“You didn’t. I’ve got a lot on my mind after what we all talked about at breakfast.” His siblings’ hopes of finding their dad—who held the answers their mother was incapable of providing—focused more and more on him.
“His being out of touch isn’t unheard of.” Maddie accurately tracked his thoughts. “But why’d Dad have to do a disappearing act in the middle of this family mess? From what you and Jack found out, he may be terribly ill. We’ve got to find him. You know, before...”
His jaw tightened as her words drifted off, but he knew where she’d been headed. They needed to find him—alive and well.
“I’m doing my best.”
She lifted her chin as if challenging her fears and gave him a resolute smile. “Then he’s as good as found.”
He wished he could reassure his sister. Tell her there was nothing to worry about. But the situation wasn’t promising at this point. He’d like to think people didn’t disappear into thin air, but from his cop standpoint he knew it happened. He didn’t want his dad becoming one of those disheartening statistics.
Maddie gazed at him thoughtfully, her voice low. “Between the two of us, how are you feeling about the rest of this? The twin thing, I mean. Finding out that Mom isn’t our birth mom. I know you dragged your feet, found every excuse under the sun not to see...Belle. Or face your brother.”
He scoffed. “Excuses? That’s what you call my job and physical therapy? My trying to find Dad?”
“You could have found a way to get here sooner than last weekend and we both know it. But I didn’t push you because I remember how it felt the first time I encountered Violet.”
So he hadn’t concealed his mixed-up feelings about the situation as well as he thought he had. He’d essentially talked himself into thinking he could only adequately conduct an investigation into his father’s status from Fort Worth. That he didn’t need to beat a path to Grasslands the moment he’d heard from Maddie. Had he thought if he delayed coming out here it might all go away? That he’d wake up one morning and none of this would have happened? It would again be just him, Maddie and Carter. Their dad and the memories of their mother.
His sister squeezed his arm. “At breakfast this morning, you still seemed a little freaked out with Jack sitting across from you wearing your face.”
Gray scowled. “Wearing my face? Not hardly. I see a family resemblance, sure, like we’re brothers. Or cousins. But I don’t get everyone thinking we’re matching bookends.”
Maddie yelped a laugh as he’d hoped she would. Get her mind off the seriousness of their family situation.
“Look at you,” a gravelly male voice intruded. “Finally got yourself a haircut, did you, boy? About time.”
Puzzled, Gray turned toward a stout, forty-something man sauntering down the tiled floor toward them. Dressed in jeans and a tan uniform shirt, a Western felt hat in hand, a smile spread across the balding man’s face. He stopped beside Gray, giving him a thorough inspection.
“Have to admit you clean up good.” He chuckled, smacking the side of his leg with the hat. “But I never figured you to be one to let that fiancée of yours dress you up like a Ken doll.”
“Pardon?” Gray glanced at Maddie, whose eyes danced with mischief.
“George, this isn’t Jack Colby. This is his twin brother, Grayson Wallace. He’s visiting from Fort Worth.”
The man drew back, squinting to give Gray a more thorough scrutiny—from the collar of his navy knit polo shirt, past neatly pressed gray trousers and down to the tips of polished leather shoes.
“I’ll be swallowed by a horned toad. Shoulda known Jack wouldn’t let a pretty little lady pry those Tony Lamas offa his feet.” Shaking his head with a lopsided smile, he thrust out a hand to grasp Grayson’s. “Good to meet you, son. Heard about the goings-on at the Colby Ranch. Two sets of twins who didn’t know the others were alive. Don’t that beat all.”
“Mighty wild,” Gray acknowledged, amazed at how well-informed a small-town grapevine could be. Must be a piece of cake being a lawman around here. No need for undercover assignments—you camped out at the local diner and kept your ears open.
“Gray,” Maddie chimed in as she looked from one man to the other, “this is George Cole, our sheriff. George, Grayson’s a police officer in Fort Worth. He’s building a respectable reputation for himself back there and his superiors have their eye on him for a move up in the ranks.”
He never should have confided in her. Put like that, it sounded like bragging, even if he wasn’t the one doing it.
“You don’t say.” George squinted again, as if sizing up Gray anew. “Don’t suppose, then, that you’ll be movin’ out this way with the rest of your kin like your sister here did?”
“No plans to, sir.”
“Think about it, young’un. Serious like. Opportunity is knockin’ at your door. We’ve got ourselves a deputy retiring come the end of the year. Lookin’ for a replacement.”
Grayson managed not to laugh. What did they