Nash brushed at the sand stinging his face. He could feel it finding a way past his flak jacket and to his skin, could taste it in his mouth. Thank God tomorrow he would be back in Texas for thirty days. Green trees, fishing in the Big Cypress Bayou, and Grandma’s cooking, but today a little boy had gone outside the borders to get a ball he’d been kicking around all day. And there was no one to save him but Captain Nash Lamont.
The whirr of helicopter blades above the base meant that it was time to leave. Three of his six-man team would be going home in flag-draped coffins—two of them had been married and had children. One of those two had saved Nash’s life at the expense of his own, but the captain couldn’t think about that now. There was a child in danger out there beyond the base perimeter. His mother was weeping and the soldier with the bomb-sniffing dog was out on a mission. That left Nash.
Nash rubbed the sand from his eyes and focused on the child outside the command center. He yelled at the kid but instead of paying attention, the little boy looked over his shoulder in the opposite direction. He kicked the ball, but the wind picked it up and twirled it back at him like a boomerang. Nash couldn’t take a chance on the boy running through that minefield, so he took off in long strides and threw himself on top of the little boy. Then he picked him up, kicking and screaming, and prayed that he’d make it back to the command center without stepping on an IED.
When they were inside the gates, he set the boy down and let his breath out in a long whoosh. He’d saved him—this time Nash had saved the kid. The boy might be upset but at least he was in one piece. His mother was running toward them, not lying on the ground with her horrible screams filling the air. Everything was going to be all right. He had failed in his mission and half his team was going home to their funerals but at least he’d been able to save this boy.
Kasey covered her mouth and nose with a red bandana and bent against the wind bringing half of the dirt in New Mexico across the border into the Texas panhandle. When the storm hit, she’d yelled at her six-year-old son, Rustin, to get inside the house but he was nowhere in sight. He’d been kicking a ball around inside the yard fence the last time she checked on him. She checked the barn first but no one was there. Then she remembered the last time he’d slipped off that she’d found him over at his grandpa’s barn on the adjoining ranch.
A quarter of a mile to the barbed-wire fence didn’t seem like far unless there was a fierce wind blowing dirt everywhere. When she reached the fence separating Hope Springs from the Texas Star Ranch, she found a piece of Rustin’s jacket stuck in the wire and flapping in the wind. She was on the right track. Hopefully he was holed up in the barn and out of the driving sandstorm.
She crawled through two strands of wire and then called Hope, her grandmother, to tell her that she’d be back to the ranch house soon with the runaway. Shielding her eyes, she could see the barn through the sand. Who was that in the doorway? He was too tall to be Paul, her children’s grandfather.
It had to be Nash Lamont, the guy who’d moved onto the ranch a few days ago. No one knew much about the man except that he was Henry Thomas’s great-nephew and he’d been in the army. She could see Rustin not far from the barn, so she jerked the bandana down and yelled at him. He glanced over his shoulder but before he could take a step toward her, the man from the barn raced outside and threw himself on Rustin. Then he threw him over his shoulder and jogged back to the barn. Adrenaline rushed through Kasey’s body like fiery hot whiskey and fueled her race to the barn.
She slid through the half open barn door to find a cowboy with Rustin still thrown over his shoulders like a sack of chicken feed. Her son was kicking, screaming for her, and swinging both fists at the man’s back.
“Why are you fighting me, Ahmid? I saved you. You aren’t dead.” The man’s eyes were unfocused as if he were sleepwalking.
“My name is Rustin and a sandstorm don’t kill people.” Rustin’s yells echoed off the old barn walls.
“What the hell is going on in here?” Kasey dashed across the floor and took Rustin from the guy and set him behind her. He quickly wrapped his arms around her waist and peeked around her side.
The cowboy’s brow furrowed in a frown. “You aren’t Farah. You have red hair.”
She jerked off the bandana, letting it hang around her neck. “I’m Kasey McKay and this is my son, Rustin.” She looked into his dark brown eyes. “What are you doing in this barn?”
He looked around as if seeing the place for the first time, then shook his head slowly. “I’m sorry. I fell asleep out here and when I woke up, the sand—I thought I was back,” he stammered. “That’s classified. I am Captain Nash Lamont. That’s who I am and I just saved this boy from—Oh no!”
He shook his head and his broad shoulders sagged slightly. So this was Nash. Everyone in Happy had been talking about how he’d taken over Henry’s old ranch. He’d bought twenty head of cattle from Paul McKay and moved into the old house last week but no one had seen him. Not at the café or at church the previous Sunday. Folks wondered if he might be like his great-uncle—slightly strange but harmless.
At well over six feet tall, Kasey had to tilt her chin to look into his face. Black hair brushed the collar of his denim work jacket and those dark brown eyes looked around the barn as if he wasn’t sure where he was. His broad chest narrowed down past a silver belt buckle with the state of Texas engraved on it. Faded jeans, cowboy boots, a felt hat thrown over there on a hay bale said he was proud to be a cowboy but that title said that he was military.
“You deserve an explanation.” His accent was a blend of Texas drawl and something even farther south, maybe Louisiana or Mississippi. “I was in the army, did some work in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq. There was an incident involving a young boy. I didn’t get there to save him. I fell asleep in the barn—” He shrugged.
“You thought you were back over there, right? The sandstorm and the kid out there in it gave you a flashback?” Kasey said.
He nodded.
She’d lost her husband, Adam, in a mission in what the guys called the sandbox. Before that, she’d held him many nights through the nightmares that his job caused, so she understood. But it didn’t take away the fear that had tightened her chest so that she couldn’t breathe when she thought he was abducting her son.
“Mama, I’m okay,” Rustin said in a steady voice. “Cowboys don’t hurt little kids.”
“I would never harm a child or a lady.” Nash drew up his shoulders in a way that she recognized. Ramrod-straight soldier. Filled with respect. Ready to do battle. No one stood like a military man, especially one who’d been a cowboy before he enlisted.
“Well, then, we’ll be going home. Welcome to Happy, Nash.” Kasey should invite him to Hope Springs for coffee or supper but she wasn’t feeling too hospitable, not with all those memories of Adam flashing through her mind. Not to mention dealing with a son who was in big trouble for wandering off when he was explicitly told not to leave the yard.
She pulled the bandana over her nose again and stooped down to zip Rustin’s jacket.
“I’ll drive you home. My truck is sitting right there.” He motioned toward a new Chevrolet Silverado parked to one side of the barn. “It’s still blowing like crazy out there. It’s the least I can do for scaring you.”
Kasey’s first thought was to refuse but it was at least a quarter of a mile between the Texas Star barn and the ranch house on Hope Springs and there was a barbed-wire fence separating them. He was messed up for sure from whatever had happened over there involving a little boy but he wasn’t dangerous. She could read people well enough to tell that much.
“Thank you. We’d love a ride home,” she said.
He hurried around the end of the truck and swung open the doors. Rustin climbed into the backseat without hesitation. Kasey kept telling herself to trust her son’s instincts. Children and dogs knew who to trust and who to back away from—everything would be just fine. She hiked a hip onto the seat and pulled the seat belt across her chest.
He slung open the double barn doors and then hopped into the truck, slammed the door shut, and fastened his seat belt. “Hope Springs? I drive to the end of my lane and turn right?”
Kasey bobbed her head twice.
Nash even sat rigid straight in the truck seat, reminding her again of Adam’s actions even if they didn’t share a single physical attribute. Adam had topped out at five feet nine inches, and that was with his cowboy boots on. He’d had clear blue eyes and blond hair. He’d always looked so young that he was carded anytime he ordered a drink and he had a smile that would light up the whole universe.
The man sitting beside her with a death grip on the steering wheel was a silent, brooding type who had a lot of darkness inside him. He might be late twenties or maybe early thirties but no one would ever mistake him as being underage.
He drove slowly to the end of the lane, made a right, and then another one a quarter of a mile down the road. It started to rain, water mixing with the dust to create mud that fell in splats on the truck. The wipers couldn’t work fast enough to keep the smears from the windows, so Nash backed off the gas and took them the rest of the way at five miles an hour.
“Rustin, you go straight to the bathroom and shuck out of those clothes. And you.” Kasey turned toward Nash. “You do not have to be a gentleman and open doors. Thanks for the ride.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. “And thank you, Kasey, for not shooting me. I apologize once again.”
“Didn’t have my pistol,” she answered as she bailed out of the truck and ran through the nasty rain toward the house. Dripping mud, she stopped inside the front door and kicked off her boots.
Wiping her hands on an apron tied around her waist, Hope came out of the kitchen with Silas, Kasey’s youngest son, and Emma, the middle child, right behind her. “You look like you’ve been mud wrestling and lost the match. I was about to call to see if you wanted me to drive over and get you and Rustin when he came through here like a shot and headed toward the bathroom.”
“At least he listened to me on that issue. I hear water running, so I guess he’s in the shower, which is where he needs to be. I met the neighbor, Nash Lamont.” Kasey ran her fingers through her hair and gathered gobs of wet mud into her hands.
“Did he mention his uncle Henry?” Hope sat down in a ladder-back chair beside the foyer table.
“No, but he was nice enough to bring me and Rustin home. Speaking of my son, I think he’s going to be on house arrest with no television for the rest of this week. This is the second time he’s wandered off. Last time he was restricted to the yard but he’s got to learn to pay attention. Tell him to go to his room when he comes out of the bathroom. I’m going to borrow Jace’s bathroom and wash this mud out of my hair.”
Her grandmother looked a little disappointed that Nash hadn’t mentioned Henry but then she would be crowned the gossip queen of the town if she could find out the history on Nash Lamont.
“Why did you ask?” Kasey asked.
“Just wonderin’. What’s he look like?”
“Tall as Brody. Dark eyes, dark hair. Military for sure. Reminds me of Adam in his actions but not his looks.” Kasey started down the hall.
“Was he talking to Rustin when you got there?”
Kasey stopped and turned around to give her grandmother all the details of what had happened. “Scared the devil out of me. I could just see a big man through the dust storm and he had my child over his shoulder like a sack of chicken feed.”
Hope clucked like an old hen as she brushed her short, silver hair back with her hand. She wasn’t much taller than her granddaughter, and her green eyes were set in a round face that belied her seventy-two years. “I got to go call Molly and tell her that you almost killed the new man in town.”
“Granny!” Kasey’s green eyes widened. “I did not. He was having a flashback to the war stuff. Adam did that more than once. I felt sorry for him.”
“Might be wise to stay away from a man who’s got problems like that.” Hope headed for the kitchen.
After that comment, Kasey wasn’t going to say a word about the dark secrets she could see in Nash’s eyes.
She lathered her hair three times before the water ran clear. She wrapped a towel around her body and peeked out the door before she darted down the hall. She almost made it to her side of the house when the front door opened.
“Hey!” Her sister-in-law, Lila, grinned as she removed a mud-splashed yellow slicker and laid it across the chair where Hope had been sitting. Not a single bit of dirt stuck to her jet-black ponytail and her brown eyes glimmered. “I heard that you had a confrontation with the new neighbor. I also heard that he’s quite a hunk.”
“Granny didn’t waste a bit of time, did she?” Kasey wiped a hand across her brow.
“I was out helping Brody when the storm hit. Thought I’d come get the whole story from you.” Lila followed her back to the bedroom.
Kasey told it again as she got dressed.
“So the part about him being downright sexy is true?” Lila asked.
Kasey shook out her curly red hair. “You ever read Wuthering Heights?”
“Of course. I used to be an English teacher, remember?” Lila nodded. “Is Nash Heathcliff?”
“Oh, yeah, exactly.”
Nash opened the garage door with an opener and drove his truck inside. When he got out, he was clean and dry but his poor vehicle looked like he’d been mudding down on the bayou. He left his boots at the back door and padded through the kitchen into the living room in his socks.
His great-grandmother’s influence still marked the place with its lace curtains and those crocheted doily things on every table, along with stuff everywhere. He shut his mind against the clutter and headed straight for his bedroom—the only room in the entire house that was free of junk. Bed made tightly. Table with only a lamp and the book he was reading beside a recliner. His footlocker at the end of the bed and a go-bag still packed and waiting in the closet with half a dozen shirts and a few pairs of jeans hung with exactly the same distance between the wire hangers.
He’d taken down the pink lace curtains and the window shades had been raised to let in as much light as possible—at least on days when the wind wasn’t slinging mud balls against the windows.
Sinking down in the recliner and popping the footrest up, he gazed at the ceiling. His grandma had decided that a nice quiet little ranch in the panhandle of Texas would be a good place to get his head on straight. She’d bought a dozen cows and a fairly decent bull from the guy who’d been leasing the place and sent him to Happy, Texas, to the old family place.
He’d thought that Happy would be the size of New Iberia, Louisiana, where he’d grown up, or maybe like Jefferson, Texas, where his grandmother lived. Talk about culture shock—he’d had a major dose of it when he’d found out that it was practically a ghost town.
One café, a school, two churches, grain silos, and lots of ranches. That was Happy, Texas, and he’d agreed to live there for a year. He was a man of his word but this dot on the map had nothing to hold him. As soon as he could pass the psych evaluation, he was going right back in the army. As much as he loved ranching, that was going to be his retirement job. Men like Nash belonged in the military.
One year wouldn’t be easy—not with Kasey McKay living next door—but keeping secrets was part of his job description. He’d known that she’d grown up in Happy, but if his grandmother had told him that she still had moved back to the area, wild horses couldn’t have dragged him to that part of the world.