Heartland (6 page)

“Yeah… See you around.” He tipped his hat and turned on his heel to amble toward his extended cab Silverado.

From inside the screen door, she watched the way he filled out the backside of his Wrangler’s and muttered, “Hell yeah, I hope so.”

Chapter 5

What the hell happened?

EJ hadn’t acted that damned tongue tied around a girl since he asked Raquel to the eighth grade dance. The screen door slapped closed after Emily entered the kitchen. With the vision of her long bare legs replaying in his mind, he turned on his heel and headed for his truck. He’d always thought she had a great pair of legs when he’d seen her splashed across the magazines or on TV, but seeing them up close and personal was enough to remind him how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.

When Raquel and he were married for a month, he’d been called up for a special mission with his Army Ranger unit. She was three months pregnant. By the time he’d come back from the mission that ended his military career two months later, she refused to sleep with him, claiming she was too uncomfortable from the pregnancy and he was too moody all the time to have sex. After the birth, they barely looked at each other and he suffered from horrible nightmares. He remained sleeping on the futon in the living room of their two-bedroom apartment.

Closing his eyes, he waited for the pain to hit over losing Raquel, but nothing filled his heart but anger. After his run-in with his brother-in-law, he couldn’t stop thinking about his relationship with his wife. They started dating their freshman year of high school, then continued while they went to college at Texas A & M. She’d studied art, while he double majored in ranch management and criminal justice. He’d joined the ROTC to help pay for school and decided to make a career out of the military. Raquel hated his decision, especially when graduation came around and he sat at the top of his class in both majors. He could have had his choice of civilian jobs, but chose to join Military Intelligence with the rank of second lieutenant. After two years, he joined the Army Rangers with the hope of someday qualifying for Special Forces.

Raquel and he had broken up for about four years after graduation. He went off to the Middle East at the height of the ISIS Crisis while she dated every available bachelor in McAllister County. After his second deployment four years ago, he’d come home for Christmas, and before he knew what happened, they were engaged. They’d married a month after she announced she was pregnant, then a month later he was called into service to help rescue two American dignitaries who’d been kidnapped by terrorists.

With a punch at the steering wheel, he stopped the memories. If any of his past caused pain, it was the memory of the mission that had gone south and his bad decisions that had led to the deaths of most of his team and the two civilians he’d been sent to protect.

He pulled into the driveway of his brother’s home, the same house he grew up in. The Kendalls had deeded the manager’s house and three-hundred acres to Vince not long after Abby and Seth married. They also gave his oldest brother the neighboring three-hundred-acre ranch and house Abby had brought into the marriage. He glanced back at the large white Victorian in the distance. A half mile separated the main ranch house and Vince’s home, but the distance may have been from him to the moon, regardless of whether the Kendalls treated the Cowleys like family or not.

Sniffing after a woman like Emily Ritter or Kendall or whatever the hell she called herself would prove his idiocy. She was out of his league, and too much like Raquel. Emily would be the same kind of woman who loved excess and easily depressed when she didn’t get her way.

Why was he attracted to her if he truly believed this? How could he forget his own principles and destroy a speeding ticket for nothing more than a chance to see her again?

Was he that hard up for a tumble between the sheets?

If anyone ever found out what he’d done with the ticket, it would add fuel to the fire of mistrust he already lived with. Mike Ritter’s misuse of the office of sheriff had tarnished it in the minds of the county’s people. He’d not been the first sheriff elected after Ritter’s arrest and imprisonment, but he had a long way before he gained the people’s trust.

As he crossed the wide front porch, he shook the unpleasant thoughts from his mind and opened the screen door into his childhood home. The scent of tomato sauce and garlic bread enticed his nose and the high-pitched sounds of kids playing in the room to the right assaulted his hearing when he stepped into the small entry.

“We need to move the herd out of the east pasture,” his oldest brother, Tucker, was saying to Vince as EJ removed his hat and hung it onto the hook by the door. “The grass in there is getting too thin to support that many head.”

From the living room, Vince noticed EJ at the doorway over their brother’s shoulder and nodded toward him, then said in response to Tucker, “Fine by me. Have you asked the boss about it?”

Tucker tipped his bottle of Coors and took a long drink. “We have a meeting with her in the morning to talk about it.” He turned toward EJ and held up his bottle as a wide grin spread across his sunburned face. Of the five Cowley kids, Tucker looked the most like their dad with his dark hair and eyes. “Hey, little brother, where the heck did you go?”

Tucker had been following EJ onto the ranch, but he’d stopped when he noticed Emily in the corral with the horses. Damn, Tucker would never let his need to see Emily go.

Despite Tucker and Vince being twelve and ten years his senior respectively, they were as close as any three brothers could be, and always had been. They also had two sisters. Lori taught seventh grade and lived over the state line in Oklahoma, and Becky worked as an accountant over in Amarillo. Both of them were closer to EJ in age, but they may have been strangers, and at times like this, he wished his older brothers didn’t know him so well. They would never let him live down his stupid schoolboy fascination with McAllister’s pop star princess.

“Sheriff’s business, that’s all.” EJ shrugged and pointed to Vince’s beer bottle. “You have another one of those, or has he”--he jerked his thumb toward Tucker--“drunk it all?”

“Sheriff’s business, eh?” Tucker crinkled his brow and lifted his beer to his lips, but before taking a sip, he asked, “With who?” Before EJ could answer, Tucker lowered the bottle and lost the puzzled pucker, then laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. “Holy hell, you aren’t sniffing after Emily Kendall, are you? I saw her in the pasture with her horse.”

“No, of course not.” EJ snatched the opened beer from Vince the moment he reentered the living room from the kitchen, and took a long pull on the bottle. He couldn’t confess his reason for stopping at the big house.

“What’d I miss?” Vince looked from Tucker to EJ.

With a smirk, Tucker pointed his bottle at EJ. “I think our little brother hasn’t gotten over his crush on Emily.”

EJ choked as he swallowed the cold beer. “What the fuck?” He swiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “She’s like eight years younger than me. I never had a crush on her. God, she was a little girl when I went to college and joined the Army. What do you think I am? A pedophile? She was like ten, and I was eighteen!”

But she’s all woman now.
The memory of her long lean body, which had enough curves all in the right places to be sexy, flashed through his mind. His face flushed hot, and he knew he’d played right into Tucker’s hands.

His brothers laughed, and Tucker patted him on the back. “Yeah, well, she sure isn’t a kid anymore.”

Vince sobered and sat on the recliner facing a flat screen TV. “That’s true. We know you never had sexual feelings toward her as a girl, but you can’t deny you’ve always been taken with her. I remember when she played in Dallas the Christmas before you married Raquel. I had to practically hogtie you to keep you from making a jackass of yourself when those two security guards wouldn’t let you backstage.”

“I wanted to say howdy.” He would never admit how enthralled he’d been by the eighteen-year-old woman as she belted out her hit-making country pop songs to a stadium full of screaming fans. She still ensnared him in her beauty. Frustrated at himself for letting his brothers’ teasing bother him and for his foolish behavior, he headed toward the kitchen.

He could never admit he destroyed her speeding ticket. Hadn’t he done it to be able to see her again? “That’s all I was doing tonight. Being neighborly. I’ve had about enough of you two hayseeds. I’m collecting my son and going home.”

Their snickers followed him into his sister-in-law’s domain. EJ and Vince’s wife, Clare, had gone to school together, and she and Raquel had been best friends. The petite blonde turned away from the stove after setting a large pan of lasagna on the burner. Before she had a chance to greet him with more than a bright smile, his other sister-in-law, Judy, grinned at him from the counter where she tossed a huge bowl of salad.

“Hope those meatheads haven’t been tormenting you too much.” Judy wiped her hands on her apron and stepped over to him. The curvy brunette hugged him. “You doin’ okay?”

Judy and Tucker had finally gotten married three years ago after more than fifteen years of an on-again/off-again relationship. When she was younger, she had a reputation of being easy, which working at the local honky-tonk hadn’t helped. Having three kids with Tucker before he’d actually put a ring on her finger hadn’t improved her standing among the more snobbish folks in town either. Despite her own wild ways, she was good for his beer-drinking, rowdy brother, even if Tucker didn’t always agree.

EJ knew she was asking about his mental state and returned her embrace. “I’m good.”

Clare stood beside him with her hand on his arm, offering her own quiet support. “Glenda called me today.”

He moved away from the women and narrowed his eyes on Clare. “What did she want?”

If his mother-in-law harassed Raquel’s friends, he would have a nice long chat with her. Enough was enough. His wife was dead and this constant reminding everyone who had known her of the fact wasn’t healthy.

Clare frowned and folded her arms over her rounded belly. She was about eight months pregnant with her and Vince’s second child. Their son was the same age as Austin. “Glenda wanted me to convince you to go to dinner at the Marshalls’ place.”

EJ fisted his hands at his sides and gritted his teeth. “I already told Trevor I wasn’t coming to dinner. Where’s Austin? I’m going home.”

Clare took a step toward him. “Why not stay here for dinner? You and Austin are always welcome.”

He glanced from the women’s hopeful expressions to the massive pan of lasagna. His brothers stood in the doorway between the big country kitchen and the living room. From the TV room their kids were laughing and making a general ruckus. Did he want to go home to an empty house and be alone?

He let out a breath as he met Clare’s compassionate blue eyes, then nodded. “Okay.” With a smile, he looked around the room again, taken aback by the relief radiating from his family. “Let’s eat. I’m starved.”

Vince and Tucker cuffed him on the shoulders as they passed him to the large trestle table set with an army of plates.

“Because sitting in that big office of yours is hard work,” Tucker winked at him as he sat in the same place where he’d sat since they were kids.

“Daddy!” Austin ran into the kitchen with the other kids and bounded up into his lap.

“Hey, buddy.” Hugging his son close, EJ kissed his forehead and ruffled his white-blond hair. He turned back to his smirking brother. As he considered his comeback to the familiar barb, the memory of stopping Emily in her fancy sports car and the confusion thinking about her had caused him all day flooded his mind. “Trust me I’d love to see you dealing with a speeder with a chip on his or her shoulder any day.”
Not to mention the county’s distrust.
Judy dragged over a highchair and set it beside him. As he sat Austin in the chair, he thanked her, then changed the subject. “I think we should eat. That lasagna smells delicious.”

Chapter 6

The next morning, Emily sat at the kitchen table and ate eggs, bacon, and wholegrain toast her mother prepared.

Momma sipped her coffee. “I can’t believe you never have any morning sickness. When I was pregnant with you, I was sick nearly the whole time. Her pregnancy with Johny was a little easier, but not by much.”

Setting her fork on her empty plate, she shrugged. “I never thought about it. I’m glad I don’t, though.” She picked up her cup of English breakfast tea and stared into the dark brew. “Going through withdrawal was bad enough. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be puking all the time, too.”

Her mother fiddled with the end of her braid lying over her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

Emily took a long sip of the honey-sweetened tea, then set down her mug. “Momma, you shouldn’t have to filter your conversation with me. Besides, I don’t want you to. I’m a recovering addict. I’ve made progress to getting back to my old self, but I can never forget where I was a few short months ago. I need to remember the pain of withdrawal and the clarity that came to me after it.”

With a wide smile, Momma reached over the table and took Emily’s hand into hers. “I love you. We’ll get through this.”