Coming Home To Texas. Allie Pleiter

for her yet again.

      Pastor Theo rose. “I’m excited. And once you give in, Nash, I think you two will make a perfect team for the after-school program.”

      Gunner had come up onto the porch. “Nash is teaching at church? Really?”

      “No, not really,” Nash replied with growing exasperation. “But Ellie is.”

      “What are you teaching?” Gunner asked with a disbelieving look that irked Ellie to no end. She was perfectly capable of mentoring girls. She had the same skills and intellect she’d had before she’d yanked Derek’s ring off her finger. She smiled, now more than ready to prove it. “Knitting, of course.”

      “Well, that’s nice.” Gunner’s lack of interest stuck in her craw. Time to up the stakes.

      “With Blue Thorn bison yarn that the girls are going to help make.” She watched her brother’s eyebrow rise. “Crafts and community awareness all in one. I know how you’re all about community awareness, Gunner.”

      Gunner narrowed his eyes. “So they keep telling me.” He turned toward the barn. “Nash, you’ve got all you need? I’ve got some things to check on in the barn.” He threw Ellie one last dark look. “We’ll talk more about this later, Els.”

      Ellie couldn’t stifle a victorious grin. “I’m sure we will, brother dear. I’ve got all kinds of plans.”

      “You always do,” Gunner called, not looking back.

      Pastor Theo said his goodbyes, but Nash stared at the barn. “Why do I get the feeling I just saw the opening salvo in a sibling war?”

      Ellie laughed. “Oh, not open combat. More like high-level negotiations. Gunner thinks my idea to have Blue Thorn produce bison yarn is silly. You and Pastor Theo just handed me the perfect way to convince him otherwise.”

      Nash looked bemused. “I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?”

      “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Only, you might have to duck now and then to stay out of the line of fire.” She’d thought it a witty remark, but Nash’s face changed completely—and not in a good way. “Bad joke to make to a deputy?”

      “Just this deputy.” The tone of his voice tightened up.

      Ellie came up to stand beside him. She wanted to smooth over whatever had just happened, but wasn’t exactly sure how. “Have you...have you been shot? Is that it? Is that why you won’t teach the boys?” It seemed a prying question, but by the way his shoulders tensed, the answer seemed obvious. She moved in front of him, wanting to see his face. “You have, haven’t you? Whoa. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

      “No, it’s okay,” Nash replied, although it was clear it wasn’t.

      “It doesn’t look okay. Really, it’s none of my business. I don’t know when to keep my mouth shut sometimes.”

      “It’s why I’m here.” His words were quick and quiet, like ripping off a bandage. If a flinch had a sound, it was his tone. “Well, part of why I’m here. And, yes, it’s why I won’t teach the class.”

      “I’m so sorry. What happened?”

      He turned to look at her, pain and memory and a bit of bewilderment in his eyes. There was something different about Nash’s eyes, some subtle distinction she couldn’t quite name but saw all the same. “The short version is that I used to work with teens. One of them, someone I had come to trust, turned on me. With a gun. I was shot once in the shoulder and once in the thigh. So you can see why I’m in no hurry to hang out with teenage boys right now.”

      “I didn’t know. And here I’ve been egging you on like an idiot. I’m sorry.”

      “It could have been a lot worse. I try to thank God every day I’m still here. But the truth was, after that I couldn’t stay in LA.” He leaned against the porch railing as if the mere mention of the wound made his leg hurt. “I used to be able to see the good in some of the worst kids. I thought of it as my gift—cutting past all the trash talk and tough-guy tattoos to connect with guys before they went all the way bad.”

      “That does sound like a gift,” Ellie said, meaning it.

      “Yeah, well, two weeks in a hospital can knock the gift right out of a guy, I suppose.”

      For all her betrayed feelings, Ellie couldn’t say Derek had actually set out to hurt her. To have someone seek to harm you, hunt you down at gunpoint? To fire at you with a mind to end your life? If she’d wanted to run from Atlanta, who wouldn’t want to run all the way from California to get away from something like that?

      Teens had hurt him. Of course he’d say no to working with them again. “I can see why you won’t help Pastor Theo with those boys.”

      Nash shook his head. “‘Why I won’t help.’ Why do those words bug me so much, making me feel petty for refusing to step up and lend a hand when I have every good reason to say no?”

      Maybe Theo was right and God really was putting a plan together. “Are you sure you need to say no? Maybe you’re just scared to say yes. Gran always says scared isn’t a good enough reason to say no to something that might be good.”

      “Then your grandmother is a stronger person than I am.”

      What Nash did, helping those kids in LA, must have taken so much courage and compassion. It couldn’t all be gone just because one kid betrayed him. Then again, wasn’t she hiding here in Martins Gap because of betrayal, too? “What if what you really need is to prove to yourself you still can see the good in kids like that? What’s the worst that could happen?”

      He shook his head and gave a dark, low laugh. “I could get shot again. And this time the kid may not miss.”

      “Cowboys and Indians,” she said, remembering his earlier comment that now had such a different edge to it.

      “Cops and robbers,” he said, his features showing a hint of humor.

      “Cars and knitting.” A plate of biscotti was on the porch table from her meeting with Pastor Theo. Ellie took one and held it in front of her like a mustache, doing a pathetic Groucho Marx impersonation. “It’s an idea so crazy it just might work.”

      “It probably won’t work.” Nash took the cookie from her hands and took a big bite out of it. “But maybe I ought to try anyway.”