Stuck Together (Trouble in Texas Book #3) (24 page)

BOOK: Stuck Together (Trouble in Texas Book #3)

4.63Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

ads

Vince kissed her fingertips, gently lifted her hand away and kept talking. “Mother does. Father, well, my choices were to obey him and be a weakling, or defy him and be a failure.”

“That’s a fight you were never going to win.”

“So I quit fighting and left that life behind as soon as I was able. What’s left now is making sure Mother has as happy a life as I can arrange.”

Tina ran one hand up and down Vince’s arm, thinking to comfort him.

“I don’t want to talk about my parents anymore.” He lowered his head and kissed her.

When finally he broke the kiss, she asked in a rather breathless voice, “What do you want to talk about?”

“It’s our wedding night. I want to talk about that.” He dragged her into his arms, and there was very little talking between them for a long time.

Epilogue

Vince held his little blond daughter in his arms as he watched Sal Stone toddle unsteadily across the soft rug covering the wood floor of Luke’s living room. Ruthy had made a neglected house into a home.

Baby Sal, named after Luke’s pa, had his father’s dark hair and eyes. The boy was a year and a half now and would be a big brother before too long.

Dare and Glynna’s son, Michael, with his wispy white-blond hair, squealed and chased after his slightly older friend.

“Stay with him, Paul.” Dare sounded exhausted, and in truth the whole family felt that way. The boy was getting to be as active as Dare, which was keeping his family tired to the bone. Even Dare had calmed down a bit. He had no choice. He was kept running so much to prevent the boy from toddling into disaster that Dare never passed up one of his rare chances to sit down and rest for a minute.

As for Lana Bullard, she and Porter were never seen again, which saved everyone a lot of fuss.

Jonas and Missy had a little one on the way, and Vince had never seen a couple so excited. And considering the Broken Wheel baby boom of the last year, that was saying something.

Though she was nearing her delivery time, Missy, like all of the women, was in the kitchen and cooking. Well, maybe not Glynna. They might have Glynna busy setting the table.

So, while the men looked after the little ones, Vince knew the women, including Mother, were working hard at getting the meal on. He glanced around the room, watching his friends. He loved seeing these tough Regulators become good husbands and fathers.

Vince let out a sigh. “When we were all fighting to survive in Andersonville, did you ever think we’d see the day when there was so much happiness in our lives?” He cradled his daughter’s head in one big tanned hand. She gave him a toothy, drooling smile. Even though she was held high in his arms, she dove for the rampaging boys and would have thrown herself onto the floor if Vince wasn’t used to her tricks.

“I carried that place around with me for years,” Luke replied. “For a long time I thought it had swept away all that was decent in my life. I never hoped to find home and family again.”

Michael shrieked, grabbed Sal’s black curls and yanked. Dare rushed in while Sal bellowed. Paul pried his little brother’s fingers loose one at a time. The ruckus was normal when the Regulators got together.

Luke lifted Sal, sobbing, and held his son against his chest. Michael was fighting Dare’s restraining hands, so Dare dangled him upside down for a while until the boy was giggling. Noticing their fun, Sal began demanding his father toss him around, too.

Peace reigned—not counting the squealing—as Dare said, “And I was mighty mixed up about wanting to be a doctor and not believing I should be one with only the training I got in Andersonville.” Dare shook his head, chuckled. “When I think of how fired up I was to quit caring for patients . . . Now I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

Dare hefted his son toward Paul, who settled on the floor with both children. He was used to being a baby wrangler.

Vince’s little daughter was, of course, the cutest of them all. She was the spitting image of her mother. When Vince thought about how beautiful she was going to be, and how watchful he’d need to be with all the roughneck men running wild in Texas, he broke out into a cold sweat.

They’d named her Bella after Vince’s ma, who’d taken to the child when she’d been born six months ago. Mother still couldn’t be trusted on her own for even a minute, but they simply took turns staying with her and mostly things were good.

Vince’s father had died a few months after Bella’s birth. Vince had written and told him about a grandchild being born. Father had made no effort to see his wife or son or granddaughter.

He’d left everything to Vince, even with the estrangement between them. And he didn’t bother to acknowledge Missy’s existence or leave provision for his wife. Vince
corrected the injustice to Missy generously and continued to care for Mother. Beyond that, he used the new wealth like all the other money he’d been handed. He did his best to make his loved ones’ lives a little more comfortable and left the rest in a bank to collect interest.

Vince’s lawyering business was a small concern, though it didn’t matter much because he was mighty busy taking care of his wife and daughter and mother, which didn’t leave him much time for practicing law. He’d had a conflict of interest in being sheriff when he arrested Tug and Wilcox, and then being the lawyer who prosecuted them. But Texas was an easygoing state about such things, and there was no trouble getting the coyotes convicted.

“And I was so sure it was right to cut myself off from my father and mother. Now I can’t imagine life without Mother, especially as she’s like a grandma to all the young’uns. And with all of you getting hitched, I can’t believe the time I wasted trying not to end up stuck together with the only single woman left in town.”

Dare laughed, then Luke and Paul joined in. Jonas was slowest, but loudest. Even Vince had to laugh. The day Vince had claimed that spitfire of a woman was the luckiest day of his life.

She hadn’t changed a bit, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. She didn’t have much to reform these days. Duffy and Griss Schuster had finally tired of having a mission field that covered their front door, and they’d left the territory. Broken Wheel was now a dry town.

“So have you decided which of our sons you want Bella to marry, Vince?” Luke asked.

Because Vince was laughing, he inhaled when he gasped
and almost choked to death. His friends delighted in asking that blamed fool question now and then just to watch the color drain out of Vince’s face. He’d almost stopped getting light-headed when he heard it, but he suspected he’d gone a bit pale because Luke, Dare, and Jonas all laughed like loons.

Tina came into the living room, and Vince thought back to the first time he’d laid eyes on her. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And after nearly two years of marriage, he felt exactly the same now as then, except even better because now he looked at her with love.

“Dinner’s ready.” She spoke to the room, but she had eyes only for Vince and little Bella. She came over and made simple, unnecessary adjustments to the collar of their little girl’s dress, then looked up into Vince’s eyes and smiled in a private way she saved just for him. She hadn’t come over to make sure he was taking care of their baby to suit her. She just liked being close to him.

Just as he loved being close to her.

They’d filled the empty, lonely places in each other’s lives. And they were both smart enough to cherish that.

The rest of his Regulator friends headed for the dinner table, leaving Vince alone with Tina for just a moment.

He’d said it before, yet Vince didn’t think he could ever say it enough. “You know when all my friends were getting married and you were the only single woman in town, even though I thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen, I was scared because I didn’t want to . . . to burden a woman with all my problems. And it looked like the world was conspiring so we’d end up stuck together.”

Some women might have found that a bit rude, but not
Tina. She smiled at him and kissed him lightly while she rested a hand on Bella.

“‘The world was conspiring’?” Tina giggled at the idea. “I think maybe
God
was
guiding
us toward each other.”

“I guess that’s another way to put it.” Vince drew her closer, enjoying her warmth and strength and good sense. “But there’s even another way to think of being stuck together.”

Wrinkling her nose, Tina said, “You make it sound like we had honey spilled over our heads.”

“What I’m thinking of is my friends, and now our wives and all our children, and how we’ve made a home in the wilderness, a decent home where our children can grow up strong. It’s because we never quit on each other. None of us. Each of us ran into trouble, and through it all, right up to today, we all stuck together.”

Tina took up baby Bella and then placed her hand on Vince’s arm. “And we always will, because we have a bond that is closer than a brother.”

Jonas’s favorite verse from the Bible. That earned her another kiss.

They heard screaming coming from the other room, the little ones squabbling again.

Tina said, “Let’s go eat.”

“You didn’t let Glynna help with the meal, did you?”

Tina laughed and shook her head as they went to join their friends.

Mary Connealy
writes romantic comedy with cowboys. She’s the author of the acclaimed K
INCAID
B
RIDES
, L
ASSOED
IN
T
EXAS
, M
ONTANA
M
ARRIAGES
, and S
OPHIE
’
S
D
AUGHTERS
series. Mary has been nominated for a Christy Award, was a finalist for a RITA Award, and is a two-time winner of the Carol Award. She lives on a ranch in eastern Nebraska with her very own romantic cowboy hero. They have four grown daughters—Joslyn, married to Matt; Wendy; Shelly, married to Aaron; and Katy—two spectacular grandchildren, Elle and Isaac, and one more on the way. Learn more about Mary and her books at: