he tap-tap of Sadie’s heels echoed in the old ranch house as she followed the light toward the kitchen. She didn’t even want to think about what she’d just done in the bride’s room at Tally Lynn’s wedding. She hadn’t meant for anything to happen. She hadn’t meant to embarrass herself more than she’d ever been embarrassed in her life, but it all had happened so fast. He’d kissed her and touched her and wham bam. It was over almost before it began.

The only bright spot, the only thing that gave her a modicum of relief, was that no one besides her and Vince knew what she’d done. After she’d run from the room, she’d said a quick good-bye to Aunt Bess and Uncle Jim, and she was sure that if anyone had seen her and Vince, it would have spread faster than a Texas wildfire. Faster than her feet could run from it.

She hadn’t stuck around to say good-bye to her other relatives. She hadn’t wanted to risk running into Vince. She’d send Tally Lynn and the others a nice note once she got home, excusing her rude exodus on a headache or broken ankle or heart failure. The last wasn’t far from the truth. Just the thought of Vince’s big, hot hands all over her made the blood rush from her head and made her feel faint out of sheer humiliation. Although if she was a man, she probably wouldn’t be beating herself up about it. She’d probably consider herself “lucky” and forget it.

The quicker she got out of Texas, the better. Obviously, Texas made her lose her mind, and it just went without saying that never seeing Vincent Haven again was a big, fat bonus.

She moved past the formal dining room and into the brightly lit kitchen, with its stone floor and yellow daisy wallpaper her mother had hung in the sixties. She expected to see her father sitting at the breakfast nook, nursing a glass of sweet tea. It wasn’t real late and he had probably just returned from Laredo, but instead of her father, the Parton twins sat at the nook, chipped mugs sitting on the table in front of them.

“You two are staying late tonight.” Sadie slipped off her shoes, and the tails of her coat brushed the floor as she bent to pick them up. With the straps of her heels hooked in her fingers, she moved to the refrigerator. She’d said her good-byes to both of them earlier. They really shouldn’t have waited for her. Nice, but unnecessary.

“Oh Sadie, I’m so glad you’re finally home.”

With her free hand on the refrigerator handle, she looked at the two women over her shoulder. “Why?” She glanced from one worried face to the other, and the events of the past hour melted away.

Clara Anne, the more emotional twin, burst into noisy tears.

“What?” Sadie turned toward them. “Is Daddy home yet?”

Carolynn shook her head. “No, honey. He’s in the hospital in Laredo.”

“Is he okay?”

Again she shook her head. “That stallion kicked him and broke some of his ribs and punctured his left lung.” Her lips drew together. “He’s too old to be messing with those stallions.”

Sadie’s shoes fell to the floor with a thump-thump. There had to be a mistake. Her father was always very careful around high-strung stallions because they were so unpredictable. He was as tough as an old saddle, but he was almost eighty. She shook off her coat and moved to the nook. “He’s been around those horses all his life.” Breeding American paint horses had always been more than just a hobby to Clive. He loved it more than raising cattle, but cattle ranching paid better. She hung the coat on the back of a chair and sat next to Carolynn. “He’s always so careful.” He’d been kicked and stepped on and thrown many times but never seriously hurt. Never anything that required more than a few hours in the hospital getting stitched back up. “How could something like this happen?”

“I don’t know. Tyrus called a couple of hours ago with a few of the details. He said something happened with the lead rope. Your daddy was fixing it and somehow got in between Maribell and Diamond Dan.”

Tyrus Pratt was a foreman in charge of the JH remuda. Which not only included the paints, but a fair number of cattle horses, too. “Why didn’t anyone call me?”

“Don’t have your number.” Clara Anne blew her nose, then added, “We’ve just been sittin’ here, waitin’ for you to come home.”

And while they’d been waiting, she’d been getting felt up by a guy she hardly knew. “What’s Tyrus’s number?”

Clara Anne pushed a piece of paper toward Sadie and pointed to the top. “Here’s the number of the hospital in Laredo, too. Tyrus’s number is below. He’s staying the night at a hotel.”

Sadie stood and picked up the landline hooked to the wall. She dialed the hospital, identified herself, and was connected with the emergency room doctor who initially treated her father. The doctor used a lot of big words like “traumatic pneumothorax” and “thoracic cavity,” which translated meant Clive had a collapsed lung due to blunt force trauma and had a chest tube. He had four fractured ribs, two displaced, two nondisplaced, and he also had damage to his spleen. The doctors were guardedly hopeful that he wouldn’t require surgery for either injury. He was currently in ICU on a ventilator, and they were keeping him deeply sedated until he could breathe on his own. The doctor’s biggest concern was Clive’s age and the risk of pneumonia.

Sadie was given the name and number of the pulmonologist treating her father, as well as the geriatric physician overseeing his care.

Geriatric physician. Sadie waited on hold while being transferred to the nursing station in ICU. A doctor specializing in the care of the elderly. She’d always thought of her dad as old. He’d always been older than the daddies of other girls her age. He’d always been old-fashioned. Always old and set in his ways. Always old and grouchy, but she’d never considered him elderly. For some reason the word “elderly” had never seemed to apply to Clive Hollowell. She didn’t like to think of her father as elderly.

Her father’s nurse answered questions and asked if Clive was on any medication other than the blood pressure medicine they’d found in his overnight bag.

Sadie hadn’t even known he had high blood pressure. “Is Daddy on any medication other than for his blood pressure?” she asked the twins.

They shrugged and shook their heads. Sadie wasn’t surprised that the women who’d known Clive Holloway for over thirty years didn’t know of possible health issues. That just wasn’t something her father would have talked about.

The nurse assured Sadie that he was stable and resting comfortably. She’d call if there was any change. Sadie left messages with his doctor’s answering service, and made airline reservations on the first flight to Laredo, via Houston. Then she sent the Parton sisters home with the promise that she would call before her nine A.M. flight.

With adrenaline pumping in her veins and exhaustion pulling at her limbs, she moved up the back stairs to her bedroom at the end of the hall. She moved past generations of stern Hollowell portraits. As a child, she’d taken the somber faces for scowling disapproval. She felt like they all knew when she ran in the house, didn’t eat her dinner, or shoved her clothes under her bed instead of putting them away. As a teen, she’d felt their disapproval when she and some of her friends played the music too loud, or when she’d crawled home after a party, or when she’d made out with some boy.

Now as an adult, even though she knew that the somber faces were more a reflection of the times, missing teeth, and bad oral hygiene, she felt the same disapproval for crawling home from her cousin’s wedding. For leaving Texas and staying gone. For not knowing that her elderly father had high blood pressure and what medications he took. She had a lot of guilt about leaving and staying gone, but she felt the most guilt for not loving the ten-thousand-acre ranch that she would someday own. At least not like she should. Not like all the Hollowells staring down at her from the gallery hall.

She moved into her room and flipped on the light. The room was just as she’d left it the day she’d moved away fifteen years ago. The same antique iron bed that had belonged to her grandmother. The same yellow and white bedding and the same antique oak furniture.

She unzipped her dress and tossed it on a wingback chair. Wearing just her bra and panties, she moved down the hall to the bathroom. She flipped on the light and turned on the faucet to the claw-foot bathtub.

She caught a glimpse of her face as she opened the medicine cabinet and looked inside. The only items there were an old bottle of aspirin and a box of Band-Aids. No prescription bottles.

Her panties and bra hit the white tile floor and she stepped into the tub. She shut the curtain around her and turned on the shower.

The warm water hit her face, and she closed her eyes. This whole night had gone from bad to worse to horrendous. Her daddy was in a hospital in Laredo, her hair was as stiff as a helmet, and she’d let a man stick his hand up her dress and down her panties. Out of the three, her hair was the only thing she could deal with tonight. She didn’t want to think about Vince, which wasn’t a problem because she was consumed with worry for her father.

He had to be okay, she told herself as she shampooed her hair. She told herself he would be okay when she wrapped a towel around her body and went through the medicine cabinet in his bathroom. All she found was a half tube of toothpaste and a pack of Rolaids. She told herself he’d be fine when she went to bed. She woke a few hours later and grabbed the small bag she’d packed before leaving Arizona. She told herself he was strong for his age. She called Renee on the drive to the airport and filled her in. She estimated that she’d be gone a week and instructed her assistant on what to do while she was away.

As she boarded the flight from Amarillo to Houston, she thought about all the times her father had been thrown from horses, or knocked around by twelve-hundred-pound steers. He might have walked a bit stiff afterward, but he’d always survived.

She told herself that her daddy was a survivor as she waited three hours in the Houston airport for the hour flight to Laredo. She kept telling herself that as she rented a car, plugged the coordinates into the GPS and drove to Doctor’s Hospital. As she took the elevator to the ICU, she’d half convinced herself that the doctors had overestimated her father’s condition. She’d half convinced herself that she’d be taking her father home that day, but when she walked into the room and saw her daddy, gray and drawn, with tubes coming out of his mouth, she couldn’t lie to herself anymore.

“Daddy?” She moved toward him, to the side of his bed. He had a bruise on his cheek and dried blood at the corner of his mouth. Machines dripped and beeped, and the ventilator made unnatural sucking sounds. Her heart squeezed and she pulled a ragged breath into her lungs. Tears pinched the backs of her eyes, but her eyes remained dry. If there was one thing her father had taught her, it was that big girls didn’t cry.

“Suck it up,” he’d say as she lay on the ground, her bottom sore from getting bucked off one of his paint horses. And she had. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d cried.

She stuffed everything way down and moved to the side of his bed. She took her father’s cool, dry hand in hers. He had a pulse oximeter clipped to his index finger, turning the tip a glowing red. Had his hand looked so old just yesterday? The bones so prominent, the knuckles big? His cheeks and eyes looked more sunken, his nostrils pinched. She leaned closer. “Daddy?”

The machines beeped, the ventilator moved his chest up and down. He didn’t open his eyes.

“Hi there,” a nurse said as she breezed into the room. “I’m Yolanda.” Happy rainbows and smiley suns decorated her scrubs; the cheery fabric was in direct opposition to the dire cast of the room. “You must be Sadie. The nurse you talked to last night told us you’d be here this afternoon.” She looked at all the mechanical readouts, then checked the IV tube.

Sadie placed her father’s hand on the sheet and slid out of the way. “How’s he doing?”

Yolanda glanced up and read a tag on the IV bag. “Have you talked to his doctors?”

Sadie shook her head and moved to the foot of the bed. “They returned my calls while I was on the plane.”

“He’s doing as well as can be expected for a gentleman his age.” She moved to the other side of the bed and checked his catheter bag. “We interrupted his sedation this morning. He was fairly combative.”

Of course he was.

“But that’s normal.”

“If it’s normal, why interrupt the sedation?” she asked. It just seemed unnecessary to her.

“Sedation vacations help orient him to his surroundings and situation, and it helps with his weaning process.”

“When will he be weaned?”

“Hard to say. It’ll depend on when he can support his own breathing, and when he’s getting enough oxygenation.” Yolanda raised the head of his bed and checked a few more lines and dials. “I’ll let his doctors know you’re here. If there is anything you need, let me know.”

Sadie took a chair next to his bed and waited. She waited until after five when the pulmonologist showed up to tell her exactly what she pretty much already knew. Clive had broken ribs and a punctured lung and a damaged spleen, and they had to wait and see how he responded to treatment. The geriatrician was more informative, although he said things that were hard to hear. Elderly patients presented a whole different spectrum of concerns, and the doctor talked to Sadie about the increased risk of acute atelectasis and pneumonia and thrombosis. People over the age of sixty were twice as likely to die from their injuries as younger patients.

Sadie scrubbed her face with her hands. She wasn’t going to think about acute atelectasis and pneumonia and thrombosis. “Presuming he doesn’t present those risks, how long will he have to stay in the hospital?”

The doctor looked at her and she knew she wasn’t going to like the answer. “Barring a miracle, your father has a long recovery ahead of him.”

Her father was old but he was very strong, and if anyone could have a miraculous recovery, it was Clive Hollowell.

That night after she left the hospital, she found a local mall. She bought underwear at Victoria’s Secret and some comfy sundresses and yoga gear at Macy’s and the Gap. She’d booked a room at a Residence Inn close to the hospital and sent her new clothes to the hotel’s laundry service. She checked her e-mail and read carefully through a buyer’s offer on a multimillion-dollar property in Fountain Hills. She called her client with the offer, made a counter, and tightened up some of the language. She eFaxed the revised changes to the buyer’s agent. She might be stuck in Laredo, but she was on top of things. She waited to hear back from the agent, then called her clients back and they accepted the deal. Renee could handle the rest of the closing, and Sadie went to bed and slept solid until eight the next morning.

Her new clothes were clean and waiting for her outside her hotel room door. She showered, did a bit of work on her computer, and was at the hospital when the doctors made their first rounds of the day. She was there when they suctioned out his breathing tube and when they restrained his hands and feet and brought him out of sedation for a brief time. They told him where he was and what had happened to him. They told him that Sadie was there.

“I’m here, Daddy,” she said as he pulled at the restraints holding his wrists. His blue eyes, wild and confused, rolled toward the sound of her voice. A distressed moan rumbled his throat as the ventilator forced air into his lungs. Suck it up, Sadie. “It’s okay. Everything is going to be okay,” she lied. As they put him back under, she leaned close to his ear and said, “I’ll be here tomorrow, too.” Then she wrapped her arms around herself and walked from the room. She held herself tight, just like when she’d been a kid and there’d been no one there to hold on to. When there’d been no one there to hold her whenever her life felt like it was coming apart. She moved toward a set of windows at the end of the corridor, and she looked out at a parking lot and some palm trees without seeing a thing. Her body shook and she squeezed herself tighter. Suck it up, Sadie. Big girls didn’t cry, not even when it would have been so easy. So easy just to let it out rather than push it down deep.

She took a deep breath and let it out, and when she entered her father’s room again, he was resting quietly.

The next day was much like the day before. She spoke with the doctors about his progress and care, and like the day before, she forced herself to stand by his bed as they brought him out of sedation. She was her father’s daughter. She was tough, even when she was falling apart inside.

A week after the accident, Sadie had to adjust her work schedule. She talked to the broker and had all her clients moved to other agents. She had to face the fact that there would be no miracle recovery for her father. He was in for a long recovery, and she was in for a long absence from her real life.

Each day, he spent a bit more time off sedation, and they started the process of weaning him off the ventilator. When she entered the room a week and a half after the accident, the ventilator was gone, replaced by a nasal cannula. Her father lay in bed, asleep. A little touch of relief lifted her heart as she moved to the side of his bed.

“Daddy?” She leaned over him. He was still hooked to monitors and bags of saline and medication. His skin was still pale and drawn. “Daddy, I’m here.”

Clive’s eyelids fluttered open. “Sadie?” His voice was a painful rasp.

She smiled. “Yes.”

“Why...” He coughed, then grabbed his side with shaky hands. “Son of a bitch!” his croaky voice swore. “Jesus, Joseph, and Mary! My goddamn side is on fire.”

Yolanda, of the smiley rainbow scrubs, was back on duty. “Mr. Hollowell, do you need some water?”

“I don’t need”—he broke into another coughing fit, and Sadie cringed—“any goddamn water. Goddamn it!”

Yolanda turned to Sadie as she poured the water anyway. “Some patients wake up cranky,” she warned. “It’s just stress and confusion.”

No. It was just Clive Hollowell’s natural disposition.

The Monday after the ridiculous fuckery at the wedding palace from hell, Vince called a bank in Amarillo and made an appointment to talk to a business loan officer in two weeks’ time. Years ago, he’d borrowed money to buy a Laundromat, and he knew the drill. This time, though, he wouldn’t be using the VA loan program. This time he’d need more cash than the half-million-dollar cap.

In anticipation of the meeting, he got the names of a commercial inspector and appraiser and set up appointments with both. He wrote out a business plan and got his financial documents in order. Everything from his banking history, retirement savings, and stock accounts. He got the financial records for the Gas and Go for the past five years, and he had his sister go to his storage shed in Seattle and send him his tax records for the past two years. For some reason, she’d also sent a few boxes of personal stuff. Loose photos and medals and patches and commendations. The Trident Wilson’s mother had given him on the day he’d buried his friend.

By the time he walked into the bank with the appraisal and inspection in hand, he was prepared. Just as he liked to live his life. Prepared. Not like a Boy Scout. Like a SEAL. If anything was going to hold back the sale, it was Aunt Luraleen’s loosey-goosey way of keeping records. Her assets and liabilities sheets were a mess, but the Gas and Go had passed inspection with flying colors. Luraleen’s financials might be lax, but she was in complete compliance when it came to environmental infractions. The building itself might need some attention, but the fuel tanks were solid. And the fact that Luraleen was offering the business several hundred thousand dollars below appraisal made Vince fairly confident that the loan would be approved. Of course, there were always unknowables that could stall the process.

Vince hated unknowables even more than he hated owing anyone anything.

While he waited to hear from the bank, he learned as much as he could about running a convenience store. He met the store’s suppliers and Luraleen’s two employees, Patty Schulz and George “Bug” Larson. Both seemed capable enough, but nether struck him as particularly having a fire in their bellies for anything. Except maybe jalapeño cheese dogs. If and when he took over the Gas and Go, Patty and Bug were going to do more for their ten bucks an hour than sit on stools and ring up cigarettes and beer. He was going to make other changes, too. First, he would take a sledgehammer to the place. As a member of the SEAL teams he’d been an insertion specialist, but he did love to demo. Second, when he reopened, the Gas and Go would close at twenty-four hundred hours. Not twenty-two-hundred or whenever the mood struck Luraleen.

His second week in Lovett, he took over his aunt’s night shifts and the responsibility of closing the place. And over the next few nights he discovered that the people of Lovett gossiped like it was a natural reflex. Like breathing and saying y’all.

One night over a Snickers and a cup of decaf, Deeann Gunderson told him that Jerome Leon was “skirtin’ around” behind his wife’s back with Tamara Perdue. Deeann owned Deeann’s Duds and was a pretty thirtysomething divorced mother of two. She let him know she was interested in more than a candy bar and gossip and that she was free every other weekend. As long as she wasn’t looking for a daddy for her kids, he might take her up on it. He didn’t have anything against kids. Just mamas who wanted a new husband.

He heard that someone ran over Velma Patterson’s little dog, and that Daisy and Jack Parrish were expecting a baby girl. He learned that Sadie Hollowell was in Laredo with her sick father. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about the Hollowells in general and Sadie in particular. Some, like Aunt Luraleen, thought she was an ungrateful daughter. Others that her father was neglectful, more concerned with his cattle and horses than his own child. Whatever the opinion, they all loved to talk.

Like Vince gave a shit.

Besides the average customers who just stopped when they needed a fill-up, the Gas and Go had regulars. People who stopped in every day or so at the same time for a fountain Coke or gas or beer.

One of those regular customers who stopped by for a nightly fountain Coke turned out to be Becca Ramsey. Which he did mind.

“Vince!” she’d shrieked as if they were old friends the first time she’d seen him in the Gas and Go. “Are you stayin’ in Lovett?”

He wondered if he could get away with lying to her. “For a while yet.” After that, she came in for a pack of gum, a candy bar, and a Rockstar on her way home from the Milan Institute in Amarillo. Apparently young Becca was going to beauty school, and for some reason thought Vince gave a flying fuck.

“If I have to give one more old lady a perm,” she said, her words drawn out, “I swear I’m goin’ to flip the freak out!”

“Uh-huh.” He rang up her energy drink.

“I saw Slade drivin’ around in that slut Lexa Jane’s truck. He’s so broke down he can’t even afford his own vehicle.”

He felt a sudden stabbing pain in his left eye. Like a nail driven into his iris. The next day, she stopped in to tell him she’d cut her first wedge. Apparently it was a type of woman’s hairstyle, and for the first time in six years, he could imagine an upside to his hearing loss. Maybe if he turned his bad ear toward her, he could block out her voice. Or maybe she’d run out of words and shut the hell up.

“And she didn’t look like she had dog ears when I was done.” She laughed. “You just can’t believe the number of girls who can’t cut a wedge.”

No such luck. Vince had been trained by the finest military in the world on how to escape and evade. He could get out of tight spots, but there was no way to E and E Becca without putting her in a sleeper hold.

“Next week I’m having a birthday party.”

“How old are you going to be?” he asked as he rang up her Big Hunk. Vince would guess, barely legal. Some men might find a young, attractive girl fair game. Vince wasn’t one of those guys. He liked mature women who didn’t weep all over him.

“Twenty-one.”

When he’d been twenty-one, he’d just finished SQT and was headed to the teams. He’d been full of himself and riding high on testosterone and invincibility. He’d been arrogant and tenacious with a full bag of skills to back it all up.

“You should come and take shots with me.” She dug in her wallet and handed him a five.

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not? We’re friends now.”

He made change, then looked at the silly girl in front of him. She actually thought they were friends. “Since when?”

“Since we talked at Tally Lynn’s wedding. You were there for me, Vince.”

Jesus, she thought he’d sat in that bride’s room because of her. He’d been there because he’d had a hard-on for Sadie Hollowell and he’d had to wait it out.

“You helped me see that Slade is shallow and that I’m better off without him.”

“I did?” He didn’t remember saying that.

She smiled. “I want more. I deserve more, and I’ve moved on.”

Suddenly he had a very uncomfortable feeling. Like someone had a bead between his eyes and he was caught completely unarmed.

The chime above the door rang and he looked from the big brown eyes in front of him to the woman strolling into the Gas and Go. Into the face of the woman who’d made his life uncomfortable in more ways than one. Her blond hair was pulled back into a loose, messy ponytail. She wore a rumpled dress and zip-up hoodie. She looked like shit, but for some reason, his body responded like he was in junior high and the prettiest girl in school just walked into sex ed class.