HOME? FOR THE HOLIDAYS?

Alana Anders had lost enough in life to recognize a kindred soul. So when fate led her to a lonely cowboy—with a battle-scarred heart to match her own—she should have given him a nod and moved on. Because the holidays were upon her...and the last thing she needed was someone else’s problems....

But what she wanted was another story. And she wanted Mack Graves, reluctant war hero and heir to the Last Call Ranch—badly. She knew that Nowheresville, Texas, was the last place he longed to be—at Christmas, no less!—but Alana just knew that she and Mack were meant to be together. And that in each other’s arms they could forge a new kind of home....

“How on earth did that compel you to come here and try to talk me into starting this fling we’re supposed to have?”

Slipping his hand to her nape, Mack drew her toward him. “I admit it defies logic. But while it would probably be smarter for me to leave you alone, that is one empty and ugly house without you in it.”

With that he closed his lips over hers. There wasn’t any anger or frustration this time. He simply wanted to make sure that she thought of him after he left. He sure as hell would be thinking of her.

He liked how she let him direct the kiss, liked realizing that her lips felt even better than he remembered, and how her tongue accepted then flirted with his. He groaned, wanting to unbutton her uniform and begin to learn what else she liked.

When he finally, reluctantly, eased his lips from hers, he found her slow to open her eyes. Feeling a tug somewhere deep inside, he kissed one eyelid, then the other.

“How sweet,” she murmured, sounding touched. “Didn’t know you had that in you.”

“Don’t let it get around.”

Dear Reader,

Although scientists like to debunk the idea that blue moons are anything other than a mathematical phenomenon, they remain rare enough to be special and romantic to some of us. It proves life-changing to Alana Anders and Mack Graves one night in August while under a bright, full, blue moon in Oak Grove, Texas. On the surface, Officer Anders seems to bear an old family tragedy well enough, and Mack—just retired from the Marine Corps—hopes to mend fences with his long-estranged father as he recovers from wounds suffered in Afghanistan. But as is often the case, there’s a great deal more going on beneath the surface with these two. I hope you will enjoy their journey of the heart.

While there was a community called Oak Grove in Wood County, Texas (established in the 1850s, with businesses active through the 1930s), all the stores are long gone and only a few houses remain. My Oak Grove is fictitious.

I do hope you’ll enjoy Alana and Mack’s time in Memphis, where they stay at the famous Peabody Hotel. I was a few days premature with Chez Philippe’s autumn menu, but the dinner described was reflective of what is served.

Thanks, always, for being a reader, and please check out my website at HelenRMyers.com, or look for me on Facebook under Helen Myers.

With warm regards,

Helen

A Holiday to Remember

Helen R. Myers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

HELEN R. MYERS

is a collector of two- and four-legged strays, and lives deep in the Piney Woods of East Texas. She cites cello music and bonsai gardening as favorite relaxation pastimes, and still edits in her sleep—an accident, learned while writing her first book. A bestselling author of diverse themes and focus, she is a three-time RITA® Award nominee, winning for Navarrone in 1993.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Epilogue

Excerpt

Chapter One

“Do you think he’s a jumper?”

The excited voice on the other end of her police radio had Officer Alana Anders groaning inwardly. All she’d reported was that she’d spotted someone loitering along Oak Grove, Texas’s, flooding Miller Creek. How that constituted a 911 crisis was all in dispatcher Barbara Jayne “Bunny” Dodd’s vivid imagination.

“Bunny, he’s sitting on a tree stump that’s no higher than a park bench would be if this town wasn’t too cheap to put any in,” Alana told the information-addicted woman. “Unless he has a rocket strapped to a part of his anatomy that I can’t see, he’d need to be an Olympic long jumper, not a diver, to make the fifteen-to-twenty feet it is to the edge of the water.”

It was unusual to see the creek in this condition—especially since there was no hurricane blowing up from the Gulf of Mexico. But there was a change in weather patterns going on. It was flooding in Oklahoma and Arkansas; as a result, while East Texas was seeing little in the way of precipitation, the northern counties’ tributaries were inheriting a splendid overflow.

“But it’s a blue moon,” her coworker declared, the announcement coming out of nowhere.

An aspiring writer in her free time, the divorcée was chock-full of trivia that most people forgot minutes after hearing it. While Alana sometimes found her prattling a help to stay awake during many an uneventful shift, others avoided the woman exactly because of her wandering focuses of interest as much as her relentless chattiness. She’d certainly knocked one out of the park this time with that blue-moon reference.

“Excuse me?” Alana peered out of her windshield to check the sky in case she was really missing something of astronomical significance.

“They’re rare because it takes two to three years to build up on the yearly extra days to have a second full moon in a month. It’s said that this August one is among the rarest. That has to mean something.”

“Not according to CNN this morning,” Alana replied. “They said the scientific world has taken all the mystery out of the event. Supposedly a volcano eruption caused the appearance of a blue moon—and some green sunsets. Krakatoa back in...1883, I think they said. So the other references that go back another couple of hundred years could well have been due to equally logical coincidences. But, hey, if it will make you happy, I’ll gladly ask our fellow insomniac if he’s a galactic visitor here to correct the last half-dozen mathematical errors in calculating the end of the world. That’s our job, right? Leave no question unanswered.”

Bunny sighed. “Oh, Ally, you don’t usually make fun of me the way the others do. And where’s your sense of romance? You like music. You know musicians were referencing the blue moon in song forever.”

“And you know that I don’t listen to Elvis,” Alana replied, feeling the pinch of a tension headache coming on. “Who, by the way, also offered his services to Nixon—or was it J. Edgar—to be an agent for the U.S. Give me a break, Bunny.”

“Not just Elvis,” Bunny replied in her most little-girl voice. “Mr. Richard Rogers. You like Broadway.”

“I like beer and bourbon, too. Unfortunately, I’m on duty.” At Bunny’s prolonged silence—obviously due to wounded feelings—Alana lifted her gaze to the heavens again. “Okay, okay, I’m going to make an effort...after all, it has been a while since I’ve had the cheap thrill of frisking a total stranger.”

“Now, you stop,” the dispatcher demanded. “For all you know, he could be suffering from a broken heart. Maybe he’s been somehow led here to be your guy.”

Alana had heard enough. “Listen, Sherlock—”

“What does he look like?”

“Bunny,” Alana said, tone pleading, “I’m too far away from him to tell, and you know the lighting isn’t great over here.”

“Well, go find out before he goes and does something you might both regret for the rest of your lives.”

Alana decided the only thing that she was regretting at the moment was reporting the situation when she did. To heck with procedure, she should have just gone and checked things out, then radioed her findings afterward. “Consider me gone. You hold off drafting an engagement announcement for the newspaper until I at least introduce myself, okay?”

“What I am going to do is notify Ed for backup. It’s been a while since we’ve had a stranger come through town.”

Now she remembered why they cut her a check every two weeks? “Barbara Jayne Dodd—cease and desist.” The woman’s mindset could go from softhearted romance writer to police-procedural novelist faster than a career perp could blame someone else for his problems. No wonder she wasn’t published yet; she was all over the map with her feelings and focus. A person would have to be schizophrenic to keep up with her.

But Alana did sympathize to a degree. Oak Grove, population 3,900, was a challenge to her, too. The town hierarchy claimed it could barely justify the police force they had—especially around raise time—and yet protected the top tier that officiated over criminal behavior, so that things like drug trafficking and subsequent related crimes couldn’t be crushed, only minimally controlled. As a result, Alana was often accused of being an adrenaline junkie herself and just “looking for trouble.” That said, she wasn’t about to let what was probably a simple 11-94, Pedestrian Stop, get turned into something that could cost the chief another prescription for his ulcer.

“Will you please let Ed have his donut break?” she told Bunny. “With Sue Ann out of town visiting their daughter and new grandbaby, this is the only time he doesn’t get his clothes checked for sugar-glaze crumbs. If I think there’s a need to bring him in on this, you’ll be the first to know.”

Signing off, she exited her white patrol car with the bold red-and-blue writing on the side, and angled south beyond the vehicle a few yards in order not to approach the man from the rear and startle him. As much as she wanted to rein in their dispatcher’s imagination, she wasn’t about to drop her guard. Aided by the very moon that had Bunny sounding as though a serial Lothario might be on the loose, Alana saw that the man continued to sit quietly, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees, staring unblinkingly at the fast-flowing creek. Unless he was deaf, drugged or otherwise hearing impaired, he had to have heard her pull up behind him, and could still hear the patrol car’s engine continue to idle.

Usually no more than a dozen feet wide, the creek was now at least twice that. Nevertheless, as she’d attested to Bunny, the stranger was not in harm’s way yet; Alana could confirm that from her new vantage point. Also, so far, she didn’t think she knew him. He was wearing a dark-colored T-shirt—she was now guessing it was olive-green due to the duffel bag between his feet—jeans and athletic shoes. If he was a drifter, there was nothing shabby about him, and given his buzzed haircut and lean but toned build, her first guess was that he was military, or at least recently discharged. A veteran on his way home? He sure didn’t seem in any hurry. With that in mind, she also had to consider the spike in suicide rates due to veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress. Then there was the AWOL possibility, another reason for sticking to back roads and night travel to keep out of sight.

In the mysterious blue-white light of Bunny’s moon, his hair color was difficult to define, and the close haircut didn’t help. It looked at once ashy, then brown, but not as dark as her own. One thing was for certain: with each step, the closer view of his profile discounted Latino, Native American or Middle Eastern ethnicity. In fact, he could be Kevin Bacon’s kid brother.

“Sir? Everything okay here?”

At first the man acted as though he hadn’t heard her, but after another few seconds, he rolled his head, chin leading, to inspect the intrusion on his privacy. Was that sweeping glance and subtle shake of his head for a woman being in uniform, for the fact that she’d had the audacity to approach him by herself, or what? Whatever his thinking, he returned his attention to the water.

“Am I breaking some ordinance, Officer?”

“Technically, not at all,” Alana replied, allowing a touch of humor to enter her voice. “But at this hour, our four-legged scavengers tend to assume that this trail is their territory. If one happens to confront you, I’d strongly advise you to voluntarily surrender any food you’re in possession of—especially if it’s pizza or hot dogs from the convenience store down the block.”

She followed that comment by a nod toward the brightest lights in town. It earned her an “are you for real?” look.

“Here’s the thing,” Alana said in response to that. She was now confident that she had his full attention and that he wasn’t high on something. “It’s after one in the morning and it’s obvious that you’re not here to fish, or throw change into the creek and make a wish. If by chance you have another plan less pleasant, it’s my responsibility to convince you to reconsider.”

That won her another disbelieving glance.

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m serious,” she said, although her tone remained amiable. “And look at that current, the dirty foam against the bank, and the litter accumulating in the tall weeds. No telling what else is in that water. Do you really want to deal with an angry woman having to face an admittedly overdue tetanus shot, not to mention getting her hair messed up?”

While his expression said, You and what crane? he replied, “I’m not planning anything. I was just taking a break. Thinking. Have politicians figured out a way to put restrictions on that, too?”

“Rumor has it something is tucked away in an upcoming city council bill.” But Alana was relieved that the man could form such a coherent sentence. “I don’t recognize you as a local.”

“I’m not. Well, once. Not anymore.”

“So you’re passing through to touch bases with someone before heading elsewhere?”

“Probably.”

Alana could visualize Bunny scribbling down this dialogue for some work in progress, but she was finding it as enjoyable as scraping lint out of a dryer vent. “What might change your mind?” When he didn’t seem to want to answer, Alana tried a different angle. “My institutionally disrespected female intuition is telling me that you’re military. Reassure me that you’re not AWOL.”

“Officer,” he enunciated, “I’m retired and the least of anyone’s worries.”

Ordinarily, that would suffice for her—except for the defeated and world-weary tone in his voice. “I appreciate that, sir. I’m Officer Alana Anders, Oak Grove P.D. And you are?”

It took him a good while, but finally he offered, “Mack.”

Alana could start to feel the roots of her hair follicles aching as she mentally visualized pulling them out of her head. “You’ll have to do a little better than that.”

“Graves.”

She had to lock her knees to keep from taking a step back. “Mack Graves.” Her heart went into such chaos, she couldn’t help but take several deep breaths for the skidding and colliding going on behind her ribs. Especially when she started to see something familiar about his face. “Fred’s Mackenzie?”

“Just Mack. Mackenzie is my mother’s maiden name and it was hell getting through school with it, let alone dealing with the ridicule in boot camp.” The look he added suggested that if she remembered nothing else, she shouldn’t forget to avoid calling him that again. “But, yeah, Fred is my father. I angled down this way to see if he wanted to try again in the relationship department. I suspect if you know Fred, you know warm and fuzzy aren’t the first descriptions that come to mind.”

Despite her training, Alana momentarily struggled with deeper emotions, and not only because Mack Graves had used the wrong tense. To her, Fred had been those things—although, she would allow, not to everyone.

“You have been away for some time.” She wished she could delay telling him the bad news, but she couldn’t. “We were trying to find you. I’m sorry to say—so sorry to tell you—that your father passed away last month.”

After another long look, the unusually self-contained man nodded once, twice, then simply hung his head and stared at the duffel bag between his feet.

Alana had no problem picking up on the shock and turmoil going on inside him. She knew all about such emotions...and much more.

So the prodigal son had returned. Fred’s ex-wife, Dina, had left him years ago—and had taken their eight-year-old boy with her. She had hated small-town living and Fred’s iron grip on their finances. Word had it that the boy had returned once, as a teenager during a summer break, but had left soon afterward, never to return. The gossip mill concluded that Fred had been abusive at the worst, and a cold miser at best. At the time, Alana had only started grade school and was preoccupied with horses and flying, the latter a passion her older brother had infected her with, so she had remained blissfully oblivious to all of that. It was only later that she’d come to learn how inaccurate the gossips were. That wasn’t to say that Fred hadn’t been a disciplinarian, and frugal, but what had he been dealing with in a boy who no longer remembered, let alone respected, him?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, hoping he didn’t catch the hitch in her voice that had gone husky. He didn’t need to know that the loss of Fred was hard on her, too. “Although I can see the resemblance to your father, I’d appreciate seeing some ID. Then you can come with me to the station. There are papers you need to sign before we hand things over to you.”

“He was cremated?”

“Yes, but...” Alana hesitated in telling him everything yet, so she pointed across the street to the city cemetery. “We ended up placing the urn over there. Under the big oak at the northwest corner between his parents, your grandparents. I was talking about the keys to the ranch—house, truck, barn, things like that. You’re his sole beneficiary. That’s the other reason that we’ve been trying to locate you.”

“I see.”

After the slow, enigmatic response, Mack pulled out his billfold and took out his driver’s license. Despite her certainty that he was who he claimed to be, Alana still accepted it with her usual caution when dealing with strangers, then used her LED penlight to see that it was a current one from Virginia. The address was an apartment and she would bet anything he no longer considered it home. She also noted that he was born in mid-February, thirty-eight years ago. The photo was clearly the man before her, maybe ten pounds heavier, with fewer signs of life and its stresses. Returning the flashlight to her pocket, she tucked away the ID, as well.

“Okay, I’ll hang on to this to make a copy at the station. Grab your bag and let’s go. Afterward, I’ll drive you out to the ranch.”

“You don’t have to do that. I guess I remember enough to find it myself.”

While he hadn’t been out of the service long enough to go soft, on foot a relatively healthy person might make Fred’s ranch by the first hint of daylight. Such a trek was neither safe at this hour, nor would it be considerate. “Fred was more than a neighbor and friend,” she said, by way of explanation. “He was like family to me. It’s the least I can do.”

As Mack Graves put his duffel bag in the backseat of the patrol car and eased into the passenger side, Alana settled in the driver’s seat. “Which branch were you in?”

“Marines.”

Then he could definitely make the hike faster than most people, but she still wasn’t going to allow that. “Were you in Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“Both.”

Whoa, Alana thought. “Glad you made it back—and in one piece.”

He turned away to look out the passenger window, but she took no offense; after all, she had just given him some life-altering news. What’s more, not everyone appreciated the “thank you for your service” attitude. She’d concluded more that some just wanted to fulfill their obligation and get on with their lives. On the other hand, a simple “Thanks” in return wouldn’t rupture his spleen.

“I’m not trying to be chatty.”

“I’m glad to hear that.”

Lifting her eyebrows at the borderline-rude response, Alana knew there was no way she was going to be quiet and circumspect now. “Ah. You’re the strong, silent type. Then you’d better prepare yourself for Bunny. She’s our night-shift dispatcher. I’m quite shy, in comparison. In fact, I became a cop to force myself to be more outgoing.”

She felt his sidelong look, but kept her eyes on the road. None of what she’d said was accurate, but she didn’t care. He’d made up his mind about her from the moment she approached him, and it irked that the news about Fred hadn’t softened his edges one bit.

“Doesn’t your family worry when you go out playing commando after dark?”

There it was, Alana thought with a wry twist of her lips. The derision she’d felt from him at first glance. But if he thought he was going to make her cower, he’d misjudged her more than he could imagine.

“I don’t see any part of being a cop as playing,” she replied, maintaining her pleasant tone. “Security checks on strangers in the park included. And as far as family is concerned, Uncle Duke is it, all two-hundred-fifty pounds, six feet four of him. Since he’s the chief of police, and before that was a state trooper, and before that a marine himself, if he didn’t feel that I’d been fully trained to do my job, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking to you right now.”

Mack’s soft groan and the way he dropped his head against the headrest had her lips curling into a satisfied smile.

What she failed to add to all that was that Duke hated that she’d become a police officer and had been doing his best to marry her off or otherwise get her off the force from her first day on the job. The only thing that helped keep him semiquiet about it was the knowledge that if he didn’t allow her to be a member of their hometown department, she would go elsewhere...or take on a career that was even more demanding and dangerous.

“Don’t worry, gyrene,” she drawled, using the marines’ favorite expression for themselves. Uncle Duke had told her about how it had evolved back in World War II. The hard-fighting U.S. soldiers had been dubbed GIs, but marines considered themselves tougher yet, and wanted to be called marines. So the term GI and marine became gyrene. “You’re not in trouble with him...or me, for that matter. Attitudes like yours are as common as scales on a fish.”

She pulled into the station located on the other side of the cemetery—barely a half mile from the park. Parking by the front sidewalk in the otherwise-empty lot, she invited Mack to keep his duffel bag where it was, then she escorted him inside.

“Ally—darn it!” Bunny declared the second they came through the door. “You turned off your radio, didn’t you? And you didn’t radio back. I was about to call Ed even though you said not to.”

The strawberry-blonde with the corkscrew curls and baby voice leaped to her feet exposing more of a zaftig body stuffed in a half-size-too-small blue shirt and jeans. It was a good try at claiming indignation, but Alana knew the divorcée, who served as a civilian clerk and dispatcher, had already spotted Mack and was really showing off her five-foot-two frame in case he wasn’t into “brunette amazons,” as she’d dubbed her.

“Buns, the door was unlocked” was all Alana said to the woman who was six years her senior. But the look she sent her reminded her of department policy when no “badges” were on the premises.

“Ally.” Bunny shot her a look that went from withering to pleading before offering Mack a dimpled smile. “Is everything okay?”

“Everything is fine,” Alana intoned. Then she added evenly, “This is Mack Graves, Fred’s son.”

“Oh! Aw.” Bunny’s big, brown calf eyes went soft with sympathy. “Condolences for your loss.”

“Our dispatcher, Barbara Jayne Dodd,” Alana told Mack with a wave. To Bunny, she continued, “We’re going to take care of some paperwork. Then I’m taking him up to the ranch. Now you can call Ed. Tell him that I expect to be back in about a half hour. Only Ed,” Alana added. “Let’s assure Mr. Graves at least one night of peace before the press and the gossip hounds start salivating.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fluorescent lighting wasn’t complimentary to anyone, but when Alana led Mack to her desk at the far corner of the room and finally faced him, she saw how gaunt he looked, and wondered if he wasn’t dehydrated, as well as in need of food. “Can I offer you a soda? Water? Coffee? When did you last eat?”

“I’m fine.”

“I appreciate that you’d like to get out of here, pronto, and be alone again, but while the refrigerator at your house is running, the contents are wanting—unless you’re into condiments. I should add that the supermarket doesn’t reopen until six o’clock. We can stop at the twenty-four-hour convenience store, even if the selection is iffy and ridiculously expensive, or we can stop at our place, which is actually next door to Last Call. If you like, I can fix you up with a few essentials to get you through the next day or two.”

“I take it that’s where your uncle—the chief—is?” At her nod, Mack shook his head. “Far be it from me to disrupt his sleep.”

“Smart decision,” she replied with a cheeky grin. “But that means you’re getting either a cola with all the sugar, or coffee with creamer and sweetener. Pick your poison.”

“Coffee.”

“Good choice. It’s my machine and great stuff. No blending nonsense, powdered milk or artificial sweeteners. Sit tight.” With a smart turn on her heel that sent her ponytail swinging, she went to get it. She was acutely aware of his narrow-eyed stare all the while she worked, and when she returned, she set the big mug before him, then took a power bar from her center desk drawer, and slid it at him. “Here, that will help, too.”

“Are you always this bossy?”

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get under this skin, gyrene,” she countered, all pleasantness. “The truth is that I’m nowhere near the sweetheart Bunny is, but kids and stray animals do tend to cling to me like Velcro. Go figure.”

Mack Graves glanced up from stirring his coffee to eye her from beneath dense lashes a shade darker than his hair. In the bright light, Alana finally saw that his eyes were an odd green-gray, the shade of Southern moss. She’d never seen anyone with that coloring before and quickly reached for the rubber-banded bulky envelope in the bottom drawer of her desk.

“Here we are,” she said, setting it on her blotter. “I have a number of keys, copies of his death certificate, and his will. As I said, you’re his sole beneficiary. One thing l need to remind you of—in case you’re not aware of it—is that in Texas there’s a ninety-day survivorship clause before you can probate his estate, so I hope you’re planning to stick around.”

“I wasn’t.”

His answer didn’t surprise Alana. Fred had spoken of his son enough to worry about ever finding him, let alone passing on all this responsibility. But she’d made promises. Slipping out a single sheet that declared he was accepting possession of the package, she marked an X where she wanted Mack to sign, then slid it over to him.

She placed the pen on top as a precursor to what she was about to say.

“I hope you’ll rethink that. Oak Grove may be a small town in the middle of dozens of small, even dying, towns, but Last Call is a wonderful place. On the other hand, if you want to sell it, I’m sure there are several people who would make you an offer soon enough. The property continues to be on a paved farm-to-market road. Fred was a fine fence builder, and the pastures are some of the best in the county. Our two properties share a creek, but more importantly, the darned place sits on an aquifer and there are three deep wells to keep ponds full regardless of the weather trends. Fred wasn’t as particular about the house, but what it lacks in style, it makes up for in sturdiness. As for the barn, it’s big enough to protect the machinery from the elements and to store feed. Behind it are the horse stables. There are only two horses these days—Fred’s mount, Rooster, who’s pretty old and is kept as a pet, and Eberardo’s horse, Blanco. The rest of the pens are used to tend to injured or orphaned stock.”

“Do you sell real estate during the day?”

Understanding what he was insinuating, Alana shrugged. “Yeah, I’m kind of attached to the place, as I am to my own home.” Remembering something, Alana glanced at her watch, which read nearly two in the morning—winced—and reached for her phone. “Eberardo Chavez is the hand who still lives on the property. You’ll see his trailer on the side of the barn and sheds. I’m going to call him to let him know not to worry if he sees me pull in and the house light up. More likely, Two Dog would announce our arrival as soon as the front gate opens.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“Eberardo’s dog. His second dog since working at Last Call. He’s a good man and hard worker, but he’s no cowboy poet.”

Moments later, she heard Eberardo’s groggy voice.

“Sí, Señorita Ally. ¿Es todo lo correcto?”

Aware that he had caller ID, Alana replied, “Lo siento. Sorry to disturb you, Eberardo. Everything is fine. I just wanted you to know that Two Dog may start barking shortly, and you might see lights at the house. I’m letting Mr. Fred’s son, Mack, in.”

“Ah, he has come. Mr. Fred would be much happy.”

“Pienso tan, también,” Ally replied, telling him that she thought so, too. “We’ll talk more tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

“To happy dreams. We wait for this day, eh? Gracias, Señorita Ally.”

As Alana disconnected, hoping he was right, she saw Mack pick up the pen and scrawl his signature across the bottom of the paper. When finished, he pushed it and the pen back toward her. Finally, he took a tentative sip of coffee, followed by a more appreciative gulp.

“Anything else?” he asked.

“You can admit it’s good coffee,” she said, amusement and challenge in her gaze.

“Why waste my breath telling you what you already know?”

He was Fred’s son all right, Alana thought. Mule-headed, confident and all man with those penetrating eyes letting a woman know that no matter what, sex was always in the mindset. She shoved the paper into the top drawer of her desk and handed over the banded bundle. “You can take the coffee and protein bar with you. Consider the mug a housewarming gift.”

* * *

Minutes later, back at the patrol car, Mack gingerly took his seat. As he fastened his seat belt, he tried to ignore Alana’s open stare.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You’re moving like someone ten or fifteen years older than you are.”

“Hitching and hiking can do that to you.”

Alana seemed to accept that and exited the parking lot. She turned onto Main Street for the turn north that would take them to the farm-to-market road and Last Call Ranch. In all honesty, that’s all Mack remembered of the directions to the place. But his back hurt so much from carrying the duffel bag—even though he changed shoulders frequently—that he mentally kissed her for insisting on driving him. At least none of his wounds had busted open. He’d fingered the spots when she’d gone to get him coffee.

The town was literally ghostlike with not another vehicle in sight, until he caught a glimpse of lights and spotted a patrol car in his side-view mirror as it left the convenience store and turned toward the station. No doubt the other night-shift cop, Ed, coming to catch up on the excitement with dispatcher Bunny.

Buns, he thought with a silent snort, remembering Alana’s personal nickname for her. The woman had certainly earned that one, too, although she seemed pretty harmless and sweet—and again, all wrong for a police station. And how the devil did females sit for hours in clothes that tight without losing consciousness? But at least she wasn’t in a uniform.

Mack had never cared for the idea of women in uniform, although he’d had his butt saved twice by female chopper pilots and had since adjusted his opinion to a degree. However, he wasn’t changing his mind about Alana Anders. Maybe she seemed to know what she was doing, but she was too feminine, too much woman for what she did for a living. That annoyed him as much as it did to realize that his gaze was drawn to her whenever he thought she wasn’t looking.

Face it, you don’t care if she’s noticing or not.

Fine, he amended, if things were different, he would be coming after her, staking his claim like the red-blooded male he was. He may have been shot twice, but as far as he could tell, all of his equipment still worked, and he was going to prove that as soon as he regained a little more strength. In the meantime, he was going to dream about Officer Anders’s long legs out of those uniform blues. He would bet a month’s pay that she had the legs of a swimsuit model and that her breasts weren’t filled with silicone. That face could be on a magazine cover, too, but the fools would want to airbrush away the small scar above her left eyebrow, and put too much greasy stuff on those succulent lips. He would like to taste them wet from a bite of strawberry or a lush peach, as he lost himself in those deceptively soft brown eyes.

Nuts, he thought.

Deceptive was the key word. There was a lot going on inside her and he wasn’t sure of a fraction of it. One minute she was all business, the next she was giving him a look so honest and bold, he felt as though he’d taken an electric shock to his groin, and the next he could swear her heart was fracturing. What the hell was going on with her?

At least it seemed that she’d been decent to the old man. Mack thought his father had been a lucky stiff if he’d checked out while gazing at Alana’s high-cheekboned face, especially if that luscious hair wasn’t tied back as it was now.

“How long have you been at this?” They were at least a mile outside town, and security lights were growing fewer and farther between, and Mack figured her mind was cranking away questions, too. He’d rather have her answering than asking them.

“You mean law enforcement? I went into the academy straight from college.”

“So you’re a rookie?” He suspected she was slightly older than that, but not by much.

“Hilarious. This is my seventh year. I just turned thirty.”

Mentally, he gave her another point for being honest. At thirty, some women started counting backward. “So this is really what you always wanted to do?”

“You didn’t hear me say that. I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I caught the flying bug from my older brother. He would be your age now.”

“Would be?”

“He was flying my parents to the Gulf to catch a cruise for their twentieth wedding anniversary, but there was mechanical trouble. They didn’t make it.”

“That’s rough.” She’d managed to keep her voice steady, but Mack didn’t miss how her hands worked the steering wheel and how tight her grip got.

“It was. Is. But coming back to the world, as you service people tend to say, has to be a challenge, too.” Alana’s voice grew huskier. “And then to have this news that you weren’t expecting...”

She didn’t really want to talk about the past any more than he did. That was another thing he couldn’t help but find appealing about her. He’d OD’d on drama queens years before finally freeing himself of his mother. “I am curious as to why my father didn’t hire an attorney to handle this,” he said, shifting the envelope between his hands.

“His longtime lawyer passed away last year and he didn’t like the other two in town. I tried to help him find someone else, but he kept putting it off until it was too late.”

“So his death wasn’t sudden?”

“No, there’s nothing fast about lung cancer.” Alana shook her head as though trying to shake off something. “He never could quit smoking. Heaven knows, we all tried to help.”

“He’d known you all of your life?”

“Fred and Duke went to school together. After Fred’s divorce and losing you, he became part of our family. I don’t remember a holiday get-together when he wasn’t there. Or funeral. After—after the accident, you could say he and Uncle Duke finished raising me. Fred taught me everything I know about horses and cattle, and the chief added most of what they didn’t teach me in the police academy.”

“Did Fred like anyone besides you and your uncle?” Mack asked the question for an excuse to continue studying her profile and admire the perfection of her skin in the surreal light. The answer was almost irrelevant.

“Of course. But he didn’t trust easily. That’s probably something you two would have found you had in common.” As they passed the entryway of a ranch with an electronic gate and pole fencing freshly painted green, she nodded. “That’s us. Pretty Pines.”

The visuals failed to trigger even the slightest memory in Mack. “Did we ever meet? I have to admit I remember less than I thought I did.”

“I’m guessing you and your mother left about the time that I was born. I may have been all of six when you last visited as a teenager. That would have made me invisible to you. And the pole fence wouldn’t have been there yet. We still used barbed and ranch wire back then. Here we are,” she added, turning into the next driveway.

As she parked before the simple gate with the metal letters Last Call Ranch bolted to it, Mack remembered his father’s irreverent humor in naming the place and his mother’s chastising him for making them the town trash. Her protests had seemed hypocritical even to a kid of eight who’d witnessed how much both of his parents drank—and the fights that followed. Now they struck him as doubly so, considering the line of work she’d ended up in.

“You have the keys.”

Pulled back to the present, Mack dug out two sets from the envelope. There were about a dozen keys on each ring. Alana pointed to the correct set and, once he handed it to her, deftly flipped to the sturdy stainless key.

“All of the house keys and the front-gate key are on this one. You’ll soon memorize them because I color coded them. The other ring is for the barn, truck and equipment.”

Accepting the handful, Mack went to open the gate, attempting to move as normally as possible. He would definitely look into getting an electronic gate system like the Anderses had, and not just because of the convenience. He had to shift to use the patrol car’s headlights to get the lock released, which would be more of a pain in bad weather than it already was. Besides, the fancier gizmo might help sell the place faster—not that he was planning to do that.

Oh, yes, you are.

Back in the car, he saw a front-door light and a security light by the barn. When they came to the ranch house, he saw it would take more than a fancy front gate to entice a buyer. The house was white brick with plain windows adorned with cheap miniblinds and a white metal roof. There were no shrubs around the place, and maybe the pastures were well tended, but the yard looked like it was nothing but weeds. He’d seen military barracks that looked more inviting.

“Home sweet home,” he muttered with a sinking feeling.

“It could be. It just needs a little TLC. Eberardo has had his hands full with the animals.” Alana put the vehicle in Park. “Do you want me to show you where the important things are?”

“I shouldn’t take up any more of your time.”

As he began to reach for the door handle again, Alana touched his arm. “Wait.”

Mack turned back in surprise. When he saw her pensive look, curiosity got the best of him.

“You need to know something, and I’d like you to hear it from me rather than just reading it cold and misunderstanding. In the will,” she said, nodding to the envelope in his grasp, “Fred was concerned that something might have happened to you before he actually passed—or that somehow the place would end up on the auction block, or worse.”

Mack raised an eyebrow. “What would he have considered worse?”

“Your mother sweeping in and taking possession.”

Mack grunted. That would have done it, he thought wryly. “So what did he do? Just spit it out,” he ordered, as she continued to hesitate.

“He adjusted his will so that if you died, or if you relinquish claim on the estate, it falls to me.”

Chapter Two

So that’s what it took to break the iron man’s enigmatic stare and impressive control, Alana thought, as the news registered in Mack’s expression. But she couldn’t blame him for being slow to reply. She’d been bowled over herself when Fred announced his decision some six months ago.

“Congratulations,” Mack finally said.

His tone left little to imagine about his mindset. “Don’t make it sound like that. I tried to talk him out of it.”

“I’m sure you did.”

“Yes. I did.”

“But the fact that you didn’t convince him tells me that he hoped in the end that you would get the place. He really didn’t want me to have it.”

“That’s not true. He was sorry about your broken relationship, but so much time had passed, he didn’t know where to begin trying to mend things.”

“I could have my own family, who might need a decent home, or help that this could provide,” Mack said, nodding in the direction of the house.

“Do you?”

“No.”

She’d gathered as much already, by the way he was traveling and from what he’d said earlier, but she couldn’t help but feel an odd relief at hearing him confirm it. “Well, I’m sorry if his decision offends, but the fact remains that he was determined to keep your mother off the ranch.” What he’d actually said was that he would “volunteer for hell first,” and had insisted to Alana that she was more family to him than his own flesh and blood was.

“That much I understand,” Mack said in reference to his mother. “I remember some whopper yelling matches between those two.”

“Uncle Duke pretty much said the same thing.” Alana slid him a sidelong look. “Do you know where she is these days?”

“The last contact I had with her, she was wanting to borrow an additional twenty thousand to add to the percentage she owned in a strip joint she managed in California.”

“You’re serious?”

“That was pretty much my reaction to her. Needless to say, she hasn’t been in touch since.”

That was some story not to pass on to his children—if he ever had any. “So you’re okay now?”

“With her choices?” Mack’s lips twisted with distaste. “Who can ever be okay with that? But it’s her business.”

“I meant with my news.”

“Well, it could be worse,” he drawled. “If my father was anything like my mother, I could be stuck with having to call you ‘Mom.’”

Alana pursed her lips, thinking he didn’t realize how close he came to the truth. “At one point, that was his plan.”

Mack’s eyes narrowed. “That son of a—”

“Calm down. I pretended that he was joking.” He didn’t need to know that she’d left in complete emotional turmoil and had immediately saddled her horse and had ridden for hours to deal with her feelings. “At any rate, it didn’t happen.”

“Probably not for lack of trying.” Mack’s gaze swept over her. “Were you ever lovers?”

Alana matched him stare for stare. “I told you that he and Uncle Duke finished raising me. What do you think?”

“I think that it sounded like a win-win situation for you.”

To some, Alana thought. The most mercenary. But Fred’s thinking had been all pragmatism just as his instincts were that of a caretaker, even then. He’d reasoned that, since she didn’t seem in any hurry to let any “young rooster” sweep her off her feet, they could marry and merge Last Call and Pretty Pines. That would give them twice the clout in the community and keep it out of the hands of developers and a certain bottled-water company that wanted the aquifer water the ranch sat on. Alana also knew Fred’s other motivation—that he had shared Uncle Duke’s worry that the loss of her brother and parents had changed her forever, that maybe with more responsibility or his—what? Attention? Influence? That she would quit risking her neck on overspirited horses and handling the night shift that no one else wanted for exactly those reasons.

“I loved Fred,” she reiterated. “But I wasn’t about to expose either of us to the gossip and taunts that were likely to follow from agreeing to marry him. And I never could have taken him as a lover.” She gestured again to the keys he held. “But all that is immaterial now. You’re here and I’m out of the picture.”

“Are you? Let’s see,” Mack replied.

Too late, Alana realized what he was up to. Before she could stop him, he reached over to cup the back of her head, and pressed his lips to hers.

At first, she just tried to push him away. It wasn’t her intent to injure—she understood the rush of emotions that he was experiencing. She could feel his anger at Fred, even his hurt, and she was the closest thing to being able to strike out at him. But she also had to make Mack realize how wrong and off base he was in pulling this stunt. Then, before she could do more than grip his wrists, he softened the kiss.

The change had her momentarily hesitating, and that was a mistake. It lowered her guard enough for her to realize how wonderful his lips felt against hers, caressing and coaxing, even yearning. She hadn’t been kissed in a while—her choice—and never with this kind of wistful persuasion. It undermined her ability to keep her heart steeled against feelings, and crept under her defenses to remind her that she was all too human, and the world was fast becoming a lonelier place.

Just when she began to reach for his face to trace the sharp contours, she found herself released. When she opened her eyes, Mack was opening the door.

“That’s what I thought,” he muttered, before slamming the door shut behind him.

* * *

That had been a damned foolish thing to do, Mack thought as Alana spun the patrol car into a sharp U-turn the second he had his duffel bag, and sped down the driveway. She also pulled out into the street and burned rubber as she drove away, leaving the front gate open. It could have been worse. She could have taken off with his bag. Bottom line, he didn’t regret it. Another couple hundred feet of walking in pain to lock up would be a small price to pay for getting under Alana Anders’s skin the way she had his.

He’d wanted to kiss her at first sight. Okay, soon after he first looked over and realized the smoky-voiced female asking about his welfare wasn’t a figment of his imagination. So things hadn’t gone as he would have liked thereafter, but then he always expected to be let down by people. It was a lesson learned in the volatile company of his parents. In this case, the price had been worth it. He’d wanted to find out what Alana’s game was. But soon his focus had been sheer lust and, in hindsight, he wasn’t one bit sorry—even if she came back in an hour with a warrant for assault of an officer.

After returning from locking the gate, he used the front-door light to locate the correct key to the house. Once inside, he flipped on inside switches and set his duffel bag against an old buffet. He was in a breakfast nook that opened to the kitchen.

“Yeah,” he murmured, remembering. “But somebody washed the cherry pie and beer off the walls.”

It was also warmer than he preferred. Not summer in Iraq or Afghanistan warm, but the outdoors at this hour was almost more pleasant. No doubt Alana kept the air conditioner set higher to save on utility bills. He went in search of the thermostat, found it and dropped the gauge ten degrees.

Cripes, the place looked dated, he thought. Mack actually started to remember the layout of the furniture—the mud-brown recliner in front of the TV—although it was a flat-screen now, not the monster casing that looked like it would need the “jaws of life” to crack it open. However, the striped red-and-blue couch, the wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table, the gaudy lamps that looked like they’d been picked up at somebody’s idea of a flea market, were all unpleasantly familiar. Oddly enough, he doubted his mother couldn’t do worse even after all these years. At least there weren’t any bead curtains in doorways. He did, however, catch a lingering hint of cigar smoke.

A bonfire seemed to be in order. No doubt Alana would suggest a garage sale or donation to some charity. The thought came as soon as he caught sight of a photo of her on the side table beside the recliner...and another by one of the lamps.

“Whatever happens first,” he muttered to himself. “It’ll sell faster empty.”

Having ventured this far, he wandered from the living room down a hall, to an office-den where he noticed there were numerous photographs on display. Once again most were of Alana, or included her. Alana with both his father and what he suspected was her uncle. Alana and her horse, her dog, her first car...everything but brushing her teeth, Mack thought with mild sarcasm. There was no denying she was a heartbreaker—had been even as a baby—but by the time she was a teenager, she’d looked like a ghost of herself. He suspected they must have been taken soon after her brother and parents died. The more recent ones—photos of being awarded ribbons and trophies at rodeo and equestrian events—showed a perfected smile. Mack narrowed his eyes as he studied them more closely. No, he wasn’t wrong. None of the smiles quite reached her haunted brown eyes. Nevertheless, Mack thought as he felt a twist in his belly and tightening in his loins, she was something.

“Damn it,” he muttered, setting down the last photo.

A quick check of the rest of the house had him deciding to put his duffel bag in the second bedroom that he thought he remembered was his. At least he remembered the queen-size bed when he’d last been here. The thing was barely large enough to handle his growing body then. It wouldn’t provide a great sleep tonight, but he couldn’t think of sleeping in his father’s bed. Not tonight after what Alana had confessed. Maybe never.

All he wanted was a shower, a drink and a few hours’ escape from any more thinking, even though that’s what he’d also come here to do. But the future suddenly seemed as unpleasant as the past.

“You better not have drunk all the bourbon, you old buzzard,” he muttered, stripping off his T-shirt.

* * *

“On to the next chapter,” Alana murmured, as she turned her silver pickup into Pretty Pines Ranch the next morning. Not even her late aunt’s sweet coining of the property’s name could bring a smile to her lips as it usually did. She was running late and knew that Duke would be making breakfast, with one ear tuned to the police-scanner radio, an eye on the TV on the kitchen counter catching up on the morning news, and everything else directed at the driveway, waiting for her arrival. Nothing had changed since the accident—she could barely think the word crash, let alone say it—and that was mostly her fault. She’d given her uncle no reason to stop worrying about her. From the time she arrived for work at the station every afternoon, until she returned home in the morning—in fact, any minute that she wasn’t asleep in her own bed—he stressed. Countless sessions with doctors, psychiatrists...even lectures and threats from Duke hadn’t achieved much. She still lived with her torment and pain. But she did her best to make sure he knew that she did adore him.

The widower cop had been the center of her universe—more like her anchor—since their world turned inside out. That was saying something considering that he looked like your stereotypical drill instructor and had a personality to match, particularly when someone crossed him, or one of his officers caused him trouble or embarrassment. But even when she was the one on the receiving end of his wrath, Alana loved no one more; however, she still hoped that with Mack’s arrival, Duke would now take a little of that intensive watchfulness off her.

“Morning, handsome,” she called with determined brightness, upon entering the sun-filled white-on-white kitchen. Immediately, unfastening her paraphernalia-heavy belt, she beamed at him as she set it on the breakfast-table chair to the left of the one she would be using. Duke stood by the stove dressed in his summer blues with one of her aunt Sarah’s aprons over it. She could already smell his Brut cologne before she reached him to rise on tiptoe and kiss him just beside his ear. “You smell better than the bacon.”

Duke Anders pretended to swat at her as she stole a piece. “Don’t play me, young lady. You’re late. Imagine what I thought when I called the station to see what was keeping you, since there was nothing of importance happening on the radio. Then to learn that Eisley had taken his patrol car—on time and properly clean, lucky for you—and that you weren’t at your desk completing reports.”

Alana made a face at the mention of her day-shift counterpart and ripped a piece of bacon off the strip to pop it into her mouth. “Phil was born with the wrong chromosomes. He’s as finicky as some prissy Southern belle. Plus he won’t ever stop believing day-shift personnel have seniority over us night crawlers. Is he still whining about the bag with the bottle of water and empty bag of chips that I accidentally left in the car the other day?”

“Procedure is set for a purpose,” Duke recited in a tone that exposed he’d done it numerous times. “You leave the vehicle as clean and full of fuel as you found it.”

“It was water and a wrapper, not a box of tampons.”

He grimaced as though she’d uttered a vulgarity. “Do you mind? I’m cooking here.”

Alana popped the rest of the bacon into her mouth on her way to the coffeemaker where her red mug was set, waiting for her. She wasn’t about to tell him that she’d stopped at the grocery store and picked up a few things that she planned to carry next door as soon as he left for the station.

“I went to the cemetery.”

“Oh.”

It wasn’t a fib—she had gone, only not after her shift change. She’d done so under cover of darkness, which she often did because she didn’t like or need people spying on her and the gossips saying, “Did you hear? Ally was back at the cemetery. As much time as she spends there, you’d think she can’t wait to join her family.” She had touched her mom’s and dad’s and Chase’s gravestones, which were in the same row, but she’d gone to tell Fred what she hoped he already knew—that his son had returned.

“Are you okay?”

Filling her mug halfway from the machine that was the same as the one she’d put at the station, Alana returned to watch Duke work. “Sure. But I guess this is where you tell me that you already know something you think I’d hide from you?”

He flipped their hash browns a last time and then cracked one egg for her sunny-side-up preference and two for his over-easy choice. “Yeah, I’ll admit I thought you were going to try to sneak the news about the Graves boy by me. I should have known you felt Fred should hear the news first.”

And he did, Alana thought, smiling into her mug. “Mack is hardly a boy anymore. He’s thirty-eight and barely shorter than you, but he looks like he could bench press your weight with no problem.” At her uncle’s scowl, she added, “No, Bunny didn’t exaggerate this time. What she doesn’t know is that he’s retired from the marine corps and came by on his way to nowhere to see if he could make peace with his father.”

“That was decent of him.” Duke sounded approving, despite his downturned mouth. “How did he take the news?”

“Exactly as you would expect of a soldier.” In her mind, Alana relived the scene. “Don’t forget, they were strangers and hadn’t parted on the best terms. But I felt he was truly sorry.”

“Not so sorry that he wanted to try again over the twenty years.”

“Well, maybe Fred took the answer to that to his grave with him, but that communication thing works both ways. Besides, he’s done tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows where else before that. Cut him some slack.”

Duke nodded as he digested that. “God bless him, then. And I wasn’t being judgmental, I was just curious.”

Alana leaned her head against his shoulder and rubbed his broad back. “I know.”

“I take it that you brought him next door?”

“It was foolish for him to insist he could walk when he was obviously sore. It seems he’s been hitching and hiking his way here all the way from the East Coast. So, after having him sign the appropriate paperwork, I called Eberardo to give him a heads-up, and drove Mack, yes.”

As her uncle put her egg on her platter, along with a portion of the hash browns and bacon, he handed it over, asking, “So? What do you think of him? He sounds like a fine specimen of manhood. If he didn’t inherit Fred’s ugly mug.”

“OMG,” Alana groaned. “You’re worse than Bunny. When I called in that I was checking out someone along the creek, she went into some nonsense about blue moons.”

Duke frowned as he plated his breakfast. “Was there a toxic spill in the area that I missed on the radio?”

“My thought exactly.” Leading the way to the table, she saw a way to get him away from his rabid matchmaking focus. “I told him about the will.” She’d never disclosed anything about Fred’s proposal to her uncle, afraid that it would upset Duke and forever alter the two friends’ relationship—if not destroy it. But she had shared the rest.

Sighing as he relieved his legs of some weight, Duke opined, “Bet he loved that.”

“You can say that again.” Remembering that kiss forced Alana to take her time with her napkin and taking a slice of toast from the plate on the center of the table. Her lips all but tingled as though she was reliving the experience again. “Why do you always make the toast first? It’s practically as hard as Sheetrock.”

“Don’t exaggerate. You can inhale your weight in those stale croutons they put on your Caesar salad at Doc’s, but you’re faulting my toast?”

“Now you sound like an indignant wife, all puffed up,” she teased.

“And you sound like an ungrateful husband,” Duke muttered. “Get back on topic.”

Instead, Alana took a big bite of toast with jam and chewed. The later it grew, the more compelled her uncle would be to get to the station. He was determined to retire with the pride of knowing that he’d probably had the best attendance record of most police chiefs in Texas, and a more impressive tardiness record.

“Ally, how did he take the news about the will?”

“He now thinks I’m a Jezebel. The kids today would just say ‘ho,’ but it all amounts to the same thing. He’s concluded I used my feminine charms to con Fred into making me the alternate heir.”

Duke’s eyes bulged. He stopped in midchew.

“Swallow, please,” Alana directed. “It’s a completely rational reaction if you consider what his opinion of women must be after what he learned about them through experiencing his mother’s behavior.”

“I can worry about you,” Duke said, poking his chest with his thumb. “People can gossip because you drive like you’re auditioning for a NASCAR sponsorship—”

“I was very respectful of the speed limit driving Mack to Last Call.”

“—but nobody calls you...that!”

As Duke’s fist struck the table, the reverberations had Alana lifting her mug to keep coffee from splashing into her plate. “One bright spot.” Alana continued to soothe him. “Fred can rest in peace knowing Mack doesn’t seem to have a cozy relationship with Dina.”

Duke’s coloring slowly eased to a mild pink. “Is that so?”

“He didn’t sound like he would be heading there anytime soon, even if things hadn’t worked out for him here.”

“You covered a lot of ground.”

“It’s a long shift.”

Looking as though he had a few choice things to remind her about that, Duke managed to settle down and instead ask, “Where is she these days?”

“Managing a strip club in California.”

Her uncle slumped back in his chair and looked toward the ceiling. “You called it, Fred.” To Alana, he explained, “He said she would squander the money he gave her in the divorce settlement, and take the boy to ruination, too.”

“Uncle Duke, you’re sounding a bit like an offended mother-in-law. From the rest of what I learned so far, Mack didn’t have much of a childhood once they left here, but he’s made a life for himself that he can be proud of.”

“Let’s hope you’re right about that.” Duke returned to his meal and took another bite. “Did you tell me if he’s married? I forget.”

The wily fox never forgot anything, but Alana let that slide. “Not married. No children.”

“At thirty-eight?”

Of course, people of her uncle’s generation would think there was something wrong with that. “If he’s gay, my antenna is way, way off,” Alana replied, again thinking of the kiss. “But I meant what I said—don’t even think of matchmaking.”

“Fine. Send me to my grave without a great-niece or -nephew to spoil.”

“If that’s the way it works out, you have my apologies. You can apologize for throwing every male at me that passes through the city limits.”

“I do skip bona fide transients and felons. One of us has to pay attention to your biological clock.”

Alana’s mirthless laugh had an edge. There was no denying he did that. “Hasn’t it crossed your mind that he could be a post-traumatic-stress candidate, a walking powder keg waiting to go off? Leave him alone and give him a chance to come to terms with this loss. He’s already a tired soldier.”

With that, she attacked her food in all seriousness and ate in record speed. Inevitably, her uncle noticed.

“In a hurry to meet the sandman?” he drawled. “You never do sleep well, and never at all on a full stomach.”

“Don’t plan to sleep. I plan to change and get to the barn and work on Tanker. If the abscess in that tooth is completely gone, he needs to start being worked again.”

“Does that include a ride to Last Call? I’ve yet to meet the man who can resist the picture you make when you’re on a horse. Not that you seem to notice.”

“If I head that way, it’ll be because I jumped every other fence and tree and creek on this place,” she said, although she knew what that would do to him.

Duke turned pale. “Try to remember people count on you to show up for your shift this afternoon.”

“I never forget,” she said softly. That was the problem.

* * *

After Duke left and once Alana changed into jeans along with one of Chase’s big football jerseys from UT—just in case Mack Graves got the wrong idea and thought she was intent on seducing him—she locked up the house and headed for her truck. She did intend to check Tanker, but first she wanted to deliver a plate of breakfast to go with the supplies she’d bought for next door. She’d done much the same thing for months when Fred got increasingly weaker. It was what neighbors should do, she assured herself, and Mack was Fred’s son, so it was, in a way, like helping Fred. But no matter how hard she tried to justify her actions, she knew she was at least partly kidding herself.

The man had triggered something inside her that was as powerful as an adrenaline rush. She’d often felt a similar thrill riding and sometimes driving, and occasionally when there was an arrest to be made on the job, but she’d never felt the same curiosity, let alone interest, in a man. That was saying something, when she’d been courted, and been the object of many a matchmaking scheme, and had even tried an affair or two. Mack’s kiss made all of that pale in comparison. She wanted to discover if it had been a fluke. Of course it was, she assured herself quickly. But she doubted a fling with Mack was going to raise her uncle’s blood pressure the way some of her other behavior did.

As she closed the gate between their properties, she spotted Eberardo emerging from the barn, Two Dog, the cow-dog-mix canine, only steps behind him. Eberardo waved and met her at the house.

A few inches shorter than her and perhaps five years older, he was a nice-looking man with a quick smile and a gentle hand with livestock. Fred had hired him over a dozen years ago on a temporary basis, but soon moved the trailer in to make the job permanent.

“Buenos días!” she said, as she emerged from the truck with the covered plate and the two bags of groceries. The dog jumped high to sniff at the plate. “Nothing for you this trip,” she told him. “I promise, next time.”

Eberardo sharply ordered Two Dog to sit and the dog immediately dropped to the ground, all obedience.

“I don’t think Mr. Graves is up yet,” Alana told Eberardo. “I was going to put this in his refrigerator.”

The ranch hand tipped his straw Western hat in greeting. “Then I come back. I just wanted to check in case he don’t want I stay.” He wiped his hands with a red kerchief that he pushed back into his jeans pocket. “I don’t want no trouble.”

Alana hadn’t seen him so nervous since he’d come to Last Call looking for work. “Eberardo, this is your home, and Mr. Mack doesn’t know much about ranching. He’ll need your knowledge and advice.”

“Gracias, Señorita Ally. I hope you are right. I would like to stay.”

Alana knew that was partly because he was in a relationship with a nurse at the local hospital. “Then we’ll work toward that goal. Mack Graves seems a decent man.”

* * *

That’s what Mack heard as he opened the side door. At the sound of the approaching vehicle—and knowing he’d locked the gate last night—he’d managed to drag on jeans and had hoped to pull on the T-shirt he’d grabbed, but he had to settle for holding it between his hands. Most of what he wanted to cover was on his back, anyway.

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” he said, allowing himself a swift head-to-toe review of the woman who’d even intruded into his dreams. His first thought was that if she had put on that big jersey hoping to make herself less appealing, she’d failed. His second was an unexpected twist of jealousy as he wondered who it had belonged to.

Although Alana merely lifted her left eyebrow at his perusal, she turned to the man beside her. “Mack, this is Eberardo Chavez, whom I told you about. Eberardo, this is Mack Graves, Mr. Fred’s son. Anything you need or don’t understand,” she added to Mack, “he’s your walking resource center. He’s also a darned good mechanic, and helped teach me a lot of what I know about horses.”

Eberardo grinned, his white teeth brilliant in his bronzed face and his eyes twinkling with pride. “Nobody as good with the critters like you, Señorita Ally.”

While Mack knew he still looked bleary-eyed despite having showered, he shook Eberardo’s hand firmly. “Good to meet you. Would you and Ally like to come in for some—I was about to look if there was any coffee in the pantry.”

“Is okay, señor. I must get back to work. Please, if you need Eberardo, you yell or honk the truck or tractor horns, or Señorita Ally give you my cell phone number.” He pulled it out of his pocket to confirm that it was charged and ready. “I come quick from any place.”

“That sounds like a deal.” Mack watched as the man and the white-and-black canine took off before returning his gaze to Alana. He caught that while he’d been focusing on Fred’s hand, she was paying him back for his inspection. “Like what you see?”

“You live up to marine standards.”

“Shouldn’t you be getting your beauty sleep?”

“If I get three or four hours, I’m good.” She nodded at her bounty. “I stopped at the market on the way home to pick up some essentials to buy you a little time before you make your presence known in town. Plus Uncle Duke tends to cook enough for four. Are you going to invite me in or was last night a hint that I should be intimidated by you?”

“I believe hints are a waste of time with you.” But Mack allowed the smile tugging at his lips and stepped back to let her pass.

Alana carried everything to the kitchen table and, once he shut the door, Mack used the chance to tug on the white T-shirt, but he tried to move too fast and messed up the bandages on his back. He tried to untangle the tape from the shirt, and swore softly at the sting that told him that he failed. That’s when he heard a gasp.

“Mack!”

So much for trying to keep the wounds private. He knew she was seeing the effects of the two bullets he’d taken during his final deployment. He had returned to wearing the bandages because of the chafing caused by his clothing, as well as the occasional bump of the duffel bag during countless miles of hiking.

“That’ll teach me to finish dressing before answering the door,” he said as she came to offer assistance. “I can get this.”

“Oh, yeah, you’re doing such an outstanding job. Hold still.”

In short order, she removed the mangled mess and dabbed the antibiotic ointment from his T-shirt with the clean side of the gauze. “Take off this thing before you really start bleeding again.” Without waiting for him to comply, she started tugging it over his head.

Mack helped finish, but gave her a warning look. “I’m fine.”

“Of course you are,” she replied, her tone mocking. “Sit. I’ll start a pot of coffee and get you patched up. I take it there’s more of that stuff in the bathroom?”

“Yeah.”

Alana went to the refrigerator and took out a can of coffee. “Store the stuff in there,” she said as though confident he was watching her. “It stays fresh longer.”

“Far too complicated. That’s why I’ve stuck with instant for years,” Mack said—but he was glad to take a seat and watch her. She was all efficiency and grace, no wasted movements.

“This is the same unit that’s at the station,” she said, filling the carafe from the refrigerator water dispenser. Then she counted three of the measuring scoops of grains into the filter. “Don’t even attempt to tell me—this is a waste of your precious time.”

Mack had to pinch the bridge of his nose to keep from laughing. The woman was as much a pain in his backside as she was irresistible.

Once she turned on the machine, she vanished around the corner and down the hall in search of the first-aid supplies. Mack used the break to peel apart the aluminum foil around the platter to get a slice of the bacon. Its scent was making him salivate.

“That needs to go into the microwave,” Alana said upon her return. “It’ll taste better warm.”

“Tastes fine to me,” he said, knowing his stubbornness would irk.

Instead of replying, she simply plucked the plate out of his reach, tore off the rest of the foil and placed his meal in the microwave. In about half a minute, she took it out, pulled a fork from the silverware drawer and set everything in front of him.

“My, you do know your way around here,” Mack drawled.

“I told you, this was my second home, and when Fred wouldn’t let the nurses come any longer, I took care of him.” With Mack focused on the food, Alana set to work on his back. “Dear God, how did those bullets miss vital organs? It looks as though you were almost killed.”

“Almost doesn’t count.”

She used peroxide to clean the areas again. “The wounds don’t look very old.”

“July Fourth.”

“Should you even be out of the hospital yet? Your cross-country trek doesn’t seem to have been the wisest idea.”

“Tell the chief that he makes a mean breakfast.”

Taking the strong hint, Alana stopped asking questions. Mack could tell she had performed first aid before and had a gentle touch. No doubt she’d made his father’s last days more bearable; he certainly enjoyed her ministrations. He let himself imagine her fingers moving elsewhere, until his body told him that he was asking for trouble.

“I didn’t mean that you had to go mute on me.”

“You grouse just like Uncle Duke. Your wish is my command, master,” she added, bending to coo near his ear.

Mack decided she could probably do good-cop-bad-cop all by her lonesome and make it sexy. “Everything all right at the station?”

“Yep,” she replied, once again the girl next door. “You were the highlight of our shift. Well, Ed thought he could catch a suspicious vehicle probably transporting drugs through town, but he had to pass the call to the state police once they left our jurisdiction.”

That tidbit of information had Mack’s fantasy of kissing her again go up in smoke. “Do you get a lot of that?”

“Worried for me, gyrene? Or are you just trying to keep me from asking why your seven-week-old wounds are reopening?”

“Why don’t you sit on my lap and we’ll discuss it?”

“I may be tempted, but I’m not easy.” Finished with her task, she threw the mangled bandages into the trash canister near the back door. Then she went to wash her hands at the sink. When she was done, she poured Mack a mug of coffee and brought it to the table, then sat down beside him. “I’m going to do something I rarely do and that’s ask a favor. Please let Eberardo know soon that he can stay on.”

Mack planned to anyway, not just because things looked well tended, but because he suspected he wouldn’t be here to see to things himself. But Alana’s request brought out the devil’s advocate in him. “Because?”

“These are challenging times. He was born in the U.S., but not everyone treats him as though he was—especially now that Fred is gone. They wouldn’t dare do it before. Add to that, he hasn’t been lucky in love. His fiancée left him for his best friend. He’s finally in a relationship with a nurse at the hospital, who seems to have her head straight on her shoulders. It would be great if he could stay close to her in order to see if things work out between them.”

“I’ll bow to your experienced judgment, how’s that? After all, you are the heir-in-waiting.”

Alana cast him a droll look, then carried his empty plate to the sink. When she returned with the coffeepot, Mack lifted his mug for a refill.

“What does your uncle say about you coming over here?”

“He thinks I’m working on Tanker.”

“I thought in the pictures I’ve seen that he turned gray prematurely,” Mack mused.

With a sigh, Alana admitted, “Yeah, that and the perpetual frown between his eyebrows is mostly me.”

“Knowing that, I’d think you’d have pity on the poor guy.”

“I would if I could shut off my mind.” She shrugged. “Doctors wrote prescriptions, but their ideas about solutions just turned me into a zombie.”

Mack would have liked to hear more, but she rose, signaling that she was ready to leave. “If Tanker is a dog,” he said to delay her, “your grocery bill must be something else.”

“It’s worse than that, he’s my horse. Seventeen hands of black Westphalian beauty.” At Mack’s confused expression, she explained, “That’s how horses are measured. You take its height from hooves to withers and divide those inches by four, which is the size of a palm. In other words, he’s five-six. He eats like a pregnant sow, too, but he’s family. Fortunately for him—and us—our second business is cattle. So I help out Eberardo when he needs a hand with your stock and he helps with ours. I hope you won’t mind it staying that way. Well, at least until you get competent with the cattle yourself.”

“I may not be around long enough to achieve that.” He nodded to the groceries. “What do I owe you for those?”

“Your presence,” she replied. “Stay, Mack. Last Call is your birthright. Fred spent his life turning it into what it is and ached for you to do more than accept it. He hoped that someday you would embrace it.”

She sounded so earnest. Hell, Mack thought, she looked close to crying. He had to do something before he took her into his arms and made promises he shouldn’t. “I told you, I don’t know anything about ranching. And the truth is, I’m not sure that I want to learn. All I know is soldiering.”

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