ho buttered your muffin?”

Sadie turned and looked at her father, an oxygen cannula in his nose, glasses on the top of his head, and a new pair of nonskid purple socks on his feet. Had he found out about Vince? Had someone seen his truck leave at about three A.M. and ratted her out? “What?”

“You’re humming.”

She turned back to the sink filled with yellow daisies. “A person can’t hum?”

“Not unless there’s somethin’ to hum about.”

She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. She felt more relaxed than she had since the morning she’d headed her Saab toward Texas. For the first time since she’d arrived at the JH, she’d spent the night thinking of... well, thinking of nothing. Just feeling pleasure. Of doing something other than watching television, worrying about her daddy and her career and her future. And that was something to hum about.

She cut an inch off the stems and arranged them in a vase. “Is there anything I can do for you, Daddy?”

“Not a thing.”

“I can take over some of the responsibilities at the ranch.” For a while. Until he could go home. “You could show me your accounting software and I can do your payroll.” Once she was shown what to do, it couldn’t be that hard.

“Wanda does all that. If you take Wanda’s job, she can’t feed her kids.”

Oh. She didn’t know Wanda. “You’ll be vaccinating and tagging the new calves soon. I could help out with that.” One of her least favorite jobs, but it would give her something to do besides hang out in a rehab hospital with her grumpy daddy.

“You’d be in the way.”

True, but he could have lied and spared her feelings. Wait. He was Clive Hollowell, no he couldn’t. “I thought these flowers might cheer you up,” she said and gave up trying. Daisies had been her mother’s favorite flower.

“Going home will cheer me up.” He coughed and grabbed his side. “Goddamn it!”

She glanced over her shoulder at him but knew there was nothing she could do. Her father’s ribs were healing, but slowly. He was still in pain but refused to take pain medication.

“Why don’t you take something,” she said as she filled the vase with water.

His painful fit went on for several more moments. “I don’t want to be a damn doper,” he croaked between coughs.

He was seventy-eight, it wasn’t like he was going to get addicted, and if on the off chance he did, so what? He’d live out the rest of his life pain-free and happy. It might be a nice change. “Daddy, you shouldn’t have to live in pain,” she reminded him, and turned off the water. She moved across the room and set the vase on his bedside table. “Mama’s favorite flowers. I thought they’d add a little color to your room.”

“Your mama loved white daisies.”

She looked down at the yellow flowers. “Oh.”

“White daisies and blue sky. I never saw her when she wasn’t pretty as a silver dollar. Not even in the morning.”

Sadie thought of her darker roots she was having retouched the next day. She’d pulled her hair into a ponytail and given her lashes a few swipes with mascara. That was it.

“Sweet as sugar and kind to everyone.”

“I guess I’m not like her.”

“No. You’re not like her.” Her father looked at Sadie. “You were never like her. She knew it when you were a baby and stubborn about everything.”

No, her father would never lie to spare her feelings. “I tried, Daddy.”

“I know, but it’s not in you.” He picked up the newspaper on the side of his bed and pushed his glasses from the top of his head to the bridge of his nose.

So maybe she didn’t volunteer at hospitals or animal shelters. Maybe she didn’t cook soup for sick old ladies, but she worked hard and supported herself. “You know, Daddy, the only time I feel like I’m never good enough is when I’m here. I know it might shock you, but there are people who think I’m a smart, capable woman.”

“No one ever said you weren’t smart and capable.” He opened his paper. “Don’t throw a wide hoop with a short rope. If you feel better about yourself someplace else, then go live your life, Sadie Jo.”

She was tempted. Tempted to do just that. To just jump in her car and leave Lovett and Texas and her father and the memories and the disappointments.

Of course she didn’t. She stayed for another hour before she left the hospital and headed home. To the empty house.

She’d had a good time the night before. There was freedom in a one-night stand. Freedom to be greedy and not worry about feelings or if he’d call again or any of the other things that went with building a relationship. Freedom to wake relaxed, with a smile on her face, and not wait around for a phone call.

Sadie drove through Lovett on her way home and was tempted to stop by the Gas and Go. She could always use a Diet Coke and a bag of Chee-tos. She wasn’t doing anything that night. Maybe he wasn’t, either, but she’d rather watch prank videos on TV or on YouTube until her eyes bled than stop by the Gas and Go on the pretext of a munchies run.

When Vince had kissed her good-bye and said thank you one last time, she knew he wasn’t coming back for more. Oh, she knew he’d had a good time, but he hadn’t asked to see her again, or even asked her for her number. She wasn’t mad about it. She wasn’t sad, okay maybe a little sad because she’d prefer to spend the night getting naked than bored out of her head, but she couldn’t be upset. He’d told her it was just about sex. He was free to do other things, as was she, but she didn’t have anything to do. Being back home made it woefully clear that she hadn’t developed any deep friendships in the town where she’d been born and raised. There wasn’t anyone she felt she could just call up for lunch, even if she knew their numbers. The person she’d talked to the most since she’d been back was Vince, and it wasn’t his job to entertain her. Although that would be nice. She was just going to have to figure out something to do with her time before she went insane.

The next day, after her morning visit to the hospital in Amarillo, she drove three blocks south to the Lily Belle Salon and Spa. She sat in the chair of the owner of the salon and spa herself, Lily Darlington, and relaxed. It had been a while since she’d been in a salon, a black nylon cape covering her from throat to knees. The smell of shampoo and herbal-scented candles, punctuated with perming solution, made her forget her life for a while.

Sadie had chosen Lily because the woman had really good hair. Thick and healthy and with several different shades of natural-looking blond highlights. Like Sadie, Lily was blond-haired and blue-eyed, and once she started putting foils in Sadie’s hair, they discovered they had something in common beyond butterscotch hair and sky-blue eyes. Lily had been raised in Lovett. She’d graduated from Lovett High five years before Sadie, and they knew some of the same people. And of course Lily knew of the JH and the Hollowells.

“My mama worked at the Wild Coyote Diner until she retired last year,” Lily said as she painted thin strands of Sadie’s hair. “And my brother-in-law owns Parrish American Classics.”

Sadie had certainly heard of the Parrish brothers and knew of their business. “I used to eat at the Wild Coyote all the time. Open-face sandwiches and pecan pie.” Through the salon mirror in front of her, she watched Lily wrap a foil. “What’s your mama’s name?”

“Louella Brooks.”

“Of course I remember her.” Louella was as big an institution as the Wild Coyote. “She always had tons of stories about everyone.” Just like everyone else in Lovett, but what made Louella a standout was her ability to stop in the middle of a story, take an order at a different table, and then return without missing a syllable.

“Yep. That’s Mama.” The bell above the door rang and through the mirror, Lily looked up from Sadie’s hair. “Oh no.” A huge bouquet of red roses entered the business, hiding the person carrying them. “Not again.” The delivery boy set the flowers on the counter and had one of the girls at the desk sign for them.

“Are those for you?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Someone had dropped several hundred dollars on those roses. “That’s sweet.”

“No, it’s not. He’s too young for me,” she said as a blush crept up her neck.

It was rude. She’d been raised better, but Sadie had to pry. “How old is he?”

She sectioned off a slice of hair. “He’s thirty.”

“That’s only eight years. Right?”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be a cougar.”

“You don’t look like a cougar.”

“Thanks.” She shoved a foil beneath the hair she’d sectioned and added, “He looks about twenty-five.”

“I think he has to be young enough to be your son before it’s considered a cougar and cub relationship.”

“Well, I don’t want to date a man eight years younger.” She swiped color out of one of the bowls. “But Lordy he’s hot.”

Sadie smiled. “Just use him for his body.”

“I tried that. He wants more.” Lily sighed. “I have a ten-year-old son, and I’m trying to run my own business. I just want a peaceful, calm life and Tucker is complicated.”

“How?”

“He was in the Army and he saw a lot. He says he used to be closed off but isn’t anymore.” She painted strands of Sadie’s hair. “But for a man who says he isn’t closed off anymore, he doesn’t share much about himself.”

She thought of Vince. “And that scares you?”

Lily shrugged. “That and his age and the drama with my ex. I don’t think I can take on more.”

“Is your ex a real jerk?”

Lily glanced at Sadie through the mirror. “My ex is a rat bastard.”

Which was considerably worse than a jerk.

After another hour of weaving color, Lily put a clear cap on Sadie’s hair and sat her under the hair dryer. Sadie checked her cell phone for texts and e-mails, but there was nothing but junk. She used to get fifty or so business-related messages mixed with a few from friends throughout the day. It was like she’d fallen off the grid. Off the planet.

When she was done, her hair looked good. As good as in any of the salons she’d gone to in Denver or Phoenix or L.A. But Sadie was in Texas, and while Lily had managed just a slight trim to Sadie’s straight, shoulder-length hair, she hadn’t been able to control herself during the blow-out and Sadie had left with a slight pouf.

The thought of going home with her fabulous-looking hair was depressing so she stopped by Deeann’s Duds to look at some sundresses she’d seen in the window. A bell above the door rang as she stepped inside, and she had the immediate impression of pink and gold and cowhides.

“Look at you!” Deeann came around the counter and gave Sadie a hug. “Just as cute as a bug’s ear.”

Sadie had never understood that expression. Since neither bugs nor ears were cute. “Thank you. I just had my roots touched up at Lily Belle Salon and Spa.”

“Crazy Lily Darlington did it?”

She pulled back and looked into Deeann’s brown eyes. “Lily’s crazy?” She hadn’t struck Sadie as off.

“Oh.” Deeann waved a hand. “No. That’s just what everyone used to call her. Especially when she was divorcing that skirt-chasing Ronnie Darlington. She’s a few years older than me, but I always thought she was real sweet.”

“And you were always the nicest girl at charm school. And pretty, too.”

“Aren’t you sweet.”

Her daddy didn’t think so. “Show me something cute. Most of my clothes are in my closet in Phoenix, and I’m getting tired of the same sundresses and jogging suits.”

Deeann clapped her hands together. “Are you a size four?”

Who was she to argue? “Sure.” The store was more narrow than wide, with racks and shelves stuffed with everything from skirts and shorts and T-shirts to sundresses and prom dresses. There were a few cute things, but mostly Deeann’s Duds weren’t really Sadie’s style. Too much “embellishment.” Which meant beads and silver conchas and lace.

“I love your jewelry.” Which she did.

“It helps pay the bills.” Deeann looked at her watch she’d made from a spoon. “I have a few of the local girls coming in to look at prom dresses. I hope they find something and don’t go to Amarillo.” She shook her head, and her long red hair brushed her back. “My ex hasn’t paid child support in a year, and I need the money.”

Sadie set three T-shirts, two pairs of shorts, and five pairs of earrings on the counter. “My senior dress was a Jessica McClintock. Blue with rhinestones on the bodice.” She sighed. “I looked fabulous. Too bad my date, Rowdy Dell, got hit in the head with a flying tequila bottle and bled all over me.”

“Goodness. Did he have to have stitches?” Deeann rang up the clothes.

“Yeah. A few.” She chuckled. “I guess it was horrible of me to be more worried about my dress than his head.”

Deeann bit her lip to keep from smiling. “Not at all, honey. A dented head will heal. You can’t repair a bloody rhinestone-studded Jessica McClintock. Did Rowdy apologize for ruining your dress?”

“He obviously wasn’t raised right.” Sadie chuckled. “It was the prom night from hell.”

“Bet it wasn’t as bad as mine.” Deeann handed her the bag of clothes. “I got knocked up on prom night and made matters worse by getting married three months later. Now I run this shop, sell jewelry and real estate on the side just to support my boys and me. All because I crawled into the back of Ricky Gunderson’s truck.”

Deeann was certainly a hard worker. Sadie liked that about her. “Can I help?” She wasn’t licensed to sell real estate in Texas, but she could certainly show a home with Deeann. Give her some tips to close the deal. She was often the top-selling agent at her brokerage in Phoenix.

“You can sell prom dresses with me.”

“What?” She’d been thinking real estate. Showing houses and talking up amenities.

“It’s easy. Those girls are gonna want to try on every dress in the store. I sure could use another pair of hands.”

It had been a long time since she’d bought a prom dress or been around teenagers. The twenty-year-olds at her cousin’s wedding had been annoying enough. “I don’t know...”

“It shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours.”

“Hours?”

Vince raised the sledgehammer over his head and brought it down on the counter. The sounds of splintering wood and whine of wrenching nails filled the air, and it felt good to go at something with all his force. His motto had always been, “Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledgehammer.” The man credited with the saying was a Marine, Major Holdridge. Vince loved the jarheads. Loved the wild grit and spit of the corps.

Of course, SEALs were trained a bit differently. Trained that it was easy to kill an enemy, but much more difficult to get intel from a corpse. Vince understood and walked the line between knowing that it was often vital to the mission to take enemy combatants alive, and loving a big explosion. And sometimes there was nothing quite like a sledgehammer to deliver a message and bring the point home.

A bead of sweat slid down his temple and he wiped it away with the shoulder of his T-shirt. He hit an overhead cabinet and knocked it off the wall. He’d dreamed of Wilson again last night. This time the dream began before the firefight that took his buddy’s life. He’d dreamed he was back in the rugged mountains and limestone caves. Of him and Wilson standing next to stockpiles of RPG launchers, AK–47 magazines, Russian-made grenades, Stinger missiles, and what someone claimed to be Osama bin Laden’s very own personal copy of the Koran. Vince had always had a doubt or two about that, but it made for a good story.

The operation orders had called for the insertions of four SEALs and a seven-mile hump to the caves. Marine security covered their right and left flanks, watching for enemy snipers hiding in the cracks and crevasses. The assault took longer than expected because of the rough terrain and heat. They’d paused halfway to strip off the jackets they’d worn for the flight in, but that still left him packing water, MREs, H-gear, assorted weaponry, body armor, and ballistics helmet.

The first thing they’d noticed as they’d neared the objective was that the bombs the flyboys had dropped earlier to soften the area missed about eighty percent of their targets. The platoon patrolled up to the entrance and entered the caves like they would a house or ship. The lights on their weapons faded in the deep caverns.

“ ‘Little surprises around every corner,’ ” Wilson said as they rounded the mouth of one cave. Before anyone asked, he added, “Willy Wonka. The original movie. Not the fucked-up Johnny Depp remake.”

“Shit on rye. That’s an ass-load of Gobstoppers.” Vince shone the light from his weapon on boxes of Stingers. “Looks like someone planned on playing war with us.”

Wilson laughed. That deep staccato ha ha ha that always brought a smile to Vince’s face. The laugh he missed when he thought of his friend.

Vince set the sledgehammer on Luraleen’s old desk, which he decided to keep for old times’ sake, and grabbed pieces of busted-up wood and counter. Thinking about Wilson usually made him smile. Dreaming about him made him shake like a baby and run into walls.

He walked out of the office and through the back door he’d left wedged open with a brick earlier. He moved a few feet to a Dumpster and tossed the debris inside. He figured it would take a week or two to finish demolition and another three or four to renovate.

The fading evening sun lowered in the cloudless Texas sky as a red Volkswagen pulled to a stop in the back. A trickle of sweat slid down his temple and he lifted his arm and wiped at it with his shoulder. Becca cut the engine of the Bug and waved through the windshield at Vince.

“Sweet baby Jesus save me.” For some inexplicable reason, she still stopped by on her way home a few times a week. He’d never done anything to encourage the “friendship.”

“Hi, Vince,” she called out as she walked toward him.

“Hey, Becca.” He turned toward the building, then stopped and looked back. “You cut your hair.”

“One of the girls did it at school.”

He pointed to the left side. “It looks longer on one side.”

“It’s supposed to.” She ran her fingers through it. “Do you like it?”

He supposed he could lie, but that just might encourage her to stick around. “No.”

Instead of getting all upset and leaving, she smiled. “That’s what I like about you, Vince. You don’t sugarcoat things.”

There was a reason. Sugarcoating encouraged relationships he didn’t want. “You’re not pissed about that hair?” The women he’d known would have freaked.

“No. I’ll get it fixed tomorrow. Do you need your hair cut? I’m getting pretty good with the clippers.”

Pretty good? “That’s okay. I don’t want my head lopsided.”

Again she laughed. “I’d use a number two on you ’cause you look like you like it high and tight.”

He thought of Sadie, and not for the first time since he’d left her house. He’d thought of her several times a day since then. If there’d been anything going on beyond mindless demo work, he might be worried about how much he thought about her.

“I need your advice on something.”

“Me? Why?” He’d given his sister advice but she’d never listened to him. Becca wasn’t even related, so why should he suffer?

She put her hand on his forearm. “Because I care about you, and I think you care about me. I trust you.”

Oh no. A bad feeling pinched the back of his neck. This was one of those times that called for finesse and a precision extraction. “Becca, I’m thirty-six.” Much too old for her.

“Oh, I thought you were older.”

Older? What? He didn’t look old.

“And if my dad was still alive, I think he’d listen to me like you do. I think he’d give me good advice like you do.”

“You think of me like your... dad?” What the hell?

She looked at him and her eyes rounded. “No. No, Vince. More like an older brother. Yeah, an older brother.”

Sure. The only time he felt old was when the cold settled in his bones and cramped his hands. There’d been a time when the cold hadn’t bothered him much, but he certainly wasn’t old.

Behind Becca’s Bug, Sadie’s Saab rolled to a stop, and he forgot about being Becca’s dad. Her running lights shut off and the door swung open. The orange sun shot golden sparks off her sunglasses and hair. She was all golden and shiny and beautiful.

“I stopped to get some super unleaded. What’s up?” she asked.

“I’m closed for a while.”

She shut the car door and moved toward him, the smooth walk she’d learned in charm school with a slight bounce to her step and breasts. A smile tilting the corners of her mouth. The mouth she’d used on him a few nights ago. A hot, wet mouth he wouldn’t mind her using again. She wore a white dress he’d seen on her before. One he wouldn’t mind taking off her.

“Hi, Becca.”

“Hey, Sadie Jo.”

The two gave each other hugs like the true Texans that they were. “Your hair looks good,” Becca said as she pulled back.

“Thanks. I just got the roots touched up today.” Sadie ran her gaze over Becca’s hair. “Your hair is... darling.” She glanced at Vince. “Short and long at the same time. Very clever.”

“Thanks. I’m in beauty school and we practice on each other. When I get better, you should let me color your hair.”

Since Sadie wouldn’t be around when that happened she said, “Fabulous.”

Becca dug her keys out of her pocket and looked at Vince. “I’ll stop by tomorrow and say hey.”

“Fabulous.”

Sadie turned and watched Becca scoot into her Volkswagen and drive away. “How often does she stop by to say ‘hey’?”

“A couple times a week on her way home from school.”

“Well, that haircut is just tragic.” She looked up at Vince through her sunglasses. “I think Becca has a crush on you.”

“No. She doesn’t.”

“Yes. She does.”

“No, really. Just take it from me.”

“As we say in Texas, ‘She’s sweet on you.’ ”

He shook his head. “She looks at me like I’m her...” He paused as if he couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“Brother?”

“Dad.”

“Seriously?” For several stunned seconds she simply stared at him, then her laughter started as a low chuckle. “That is hysterical.” As if to prove the point, her chuckle turned into a full-blown laugh fest.

“It’s not that funny.” He shoved his hands into the pockets of his cargo pants. “I’m only thirty-six. Hardly old enough to have a twenty-one-year-old daughter.”

She clapped a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. “Technically it’s possible, old man,” she managed before she burst out all over again.

“You about done?”

She shook her head.

He frowned to keep from smiling and gave her his dagger stare. The one used to incite fear in the hearts and heads of hardened jihadists. It didn’t work so he kissed her to shut her up. A press of his smiling lips to quiet her laughter.

“Come in and have a beer with me,” he said against her mouth.

“You bored?”

“Not now.”