Chapter 2

Grace prided herself on her ability to keep her cool—a vital skill in a profession where, at any moment, she could be asked to deal with anything from a ripped fingernail to cardiac arrest. But all the athletic tape in the world couldn’t fix stupid.

“Everybody gets shin splints,” the junior varsity basketball coach raged. “You are letting Andie milk this to get out of conditioning.”

And you need to be smacked upside the head with your own clipboard. Bad enough that they’d called a Saturday morning practice, thereby screwing up Grace’s plans to laze in bed. Now she had to deal with an idiot who wouldn’t be satisfied until she saw the damage on a bone scan.

It was Grace’s job to be sure Andie’s very real condition didn’t progress to that point, and with the power vested in her by the school district, the athletic trainer’s word was final.

But no matter how much she wanted to throttle someone, she was expected to be the voice of reason. “Andie has a history of stress fractures caused by the worst pair of feet I’ve ever seen. I am going to continue to restrict her activity until she has been fitted for orthotics, and even then it will take some time for her body to adjust to the new alignment.”

“How long is all of that going to take?”

“Her appointment at Panhandle Orthopedics is a week from Monday.” And only that soon because Tori Sanchez’s staff had explicit orders to give Grace’s athletes priority, even if it meant Tori had to skip lunch or stay late.

But of course the coach had no clue what strings had been pulled to get her player in to see the most sought after therapist in the Panhandle. “You’re talking weeks! The basketball season will practically be over.”

Grace made a suitably grave face. “It’s unfortunate, but you’re right. I can’t guarantee that she’ll be able to make a significant contribution to the team this year.”

“If she’s this much of a weenie, she’s not much use to us anyway,” the coach muttered.

Grace refrained from pointing out that the weenie had placed in the top ten at the previous spring’s state track meet in the eight hundred meters and anchored a bronze-medal-winning two-mile relay team.

“What am I supposed to do?” The coach slapped her clipboard down on the nearest padded treatment table, temptingly close to Grace’s reach. “I don’t need any deadweight taking up space on the bench, but her parents will raise hell if I cut her.”

No doubt. Her darling mother had been an all-conference forward at West Texas A & M and she was convinced that her baby was going to follow in her hoop-shooting footsteps despite the fact that Andie had barely made the junior varsity squad.

Grace sighed, packing it full of reluctance. “I suppose I could try to talk to her…”

“Would you?” The coach leapt at the bait like a nylon-clad sucker. “And her parents? They’ll take it a lot better coming from you. I would owe you big-time.”

And that was never a bad thing, in Grace’s experience. She made a show of sighing again, then nodding. “Andie’s supposed to stop by and see me before she leaves. I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you!” The coach snatched up the clipboard and charged out before Grace changed her mind.

The door had barely swung shut when it was pushed open again and a head poked inside. “Is everyone gone?” Andie whispered.

Grace had to smile despite a low buzz of aggravation—a common side effect of attempting to reason with the unreasonable. “The coast is clear.”

“Did it work?”

“Like a charm.”

“Thank God!” Andie hobbled across the room and threw herself onto a treatment table with a level of drama only a seventeen-year-old could muster. “And thank you, Miz Mac. I know I’m being a total wuss, but I just can’t look Coach in the eye and tell her I don’t want to take any chance that playing basketball will mess up my track season.”

Ditto for her parents, or Grace wouldn’t have to run interference. But growing up as the middle child of seven with a father who took every letter of the Bible literally and to the extreme, Grace had played the fall guy for her younger brothers often enough that she had it down to an art.

“Tell your parents to call me this evening.” She waved a shooing hand. “And get out of here so I can too.”

She paused to swap her nylon sweats, polo, and running shoes for jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt, sweatshirt, and boots, checking the time as she hustled across the empty gym and out the back door to the teachers’ parking lot. Only nine fifteen. Early practices sucked, but she’d trade the extra sleep for most of a day to do as she pleased, and it pleased her to know that she would spend a good part of it roping.

She headed toward Earnest, the southeast point of a nearly equilateral triangle, around twenty miles on each side, with Bluegrass at the apex and her apartment in Dumas on the southwest corner. Mornings like this might have been easier if she lived in the town where she worked, but Tori’s indoor arena was in Dumas, along with the barn and pasture where she allowed Grace to board her horse.

Given the choice between living close to her job or near her horse, it was no contest, but her current destination was the Jacobs ranch, ten miles on south of Earnest. She just hoped she could sneak through town without any of her family catching a glimpse of her teal-blue short-box pickup.

Next time she’d consider stealth when choosing a paint color.

The day was flat-out dreary, but what downtown Earnest lacked in size, it was determined to make up for in holiday cheer. A few years back, in celebration of Delon Sanchez’s second world championship and acknowledgment of Jacobs Livestock’s growing notoriety, the Chamber of Commerce had designated their little town the Cowboy Capital of the Panhandle, then set about proving it.

As a result, every doorway, storefront, and street corner was occupied by grinning scarecrow cowboys who twirled ropes, hefted branding irons, and galloped straw horses through clusters of pumpkins and cornstalks. Overhead, multiple strands of Christmas lights already crisscrossed Main Street, with a big, twinkling sheriff’s star at the center of each swag and four-foot-tall elves brandishing six-shooters and tipping cowboy hats at the top of every streetlight.

But instead of admiring the decor, Grace caught herself watching for a battered maroon-and-white Chevy pickup slouching in front of the Smoke Shack, or pulled up to the pump at the Kwicky Mart. Silly, to get more apprehensive as Thanksgiving crept closer. Hank was far, far away, in some frozen Montana backwater, and given the current state of affairs in the Brookman family, he wouldn’t come waltzing home expecting turkey with all the fixin’s.

And even if he did, he’d set off Grace’s early detection system before he got past the relatively new billboard at the edge of town. She glanced in her rearview mirror as she passed it, though she knew the lettering by heart. Beneath a garland of fake pine boughs the sign read:

WELCOME TO EARNEST

Home of

Delon Sanchez, 2x World Champion Bareback Rider

Gil Sanchez, Pro Rodeo Rookie of the Year

Melanie Brookman, National Intercollegiate Champion Breakaway Roper

Jacobs Livestock, Texas Circuit Stock Contractor of the Year

If Hank had continued as he’d started, Grace had no doubt his name would be next on the list. Hank Brookman, National Finals Bullfighter. Or the ultimate honor—Pro Rodeo Bullfighter of the Year.

But Hank hadn’t possessed the discipline to match his talent. In retrospect, she supposed his meltdown had been inevitable. She’d just never imagined she’d get caught in the fallout…or that it would be both the worst and the best thing that had ever happened to her.

When Grace had scuttled out of Texas, there hadn’t been a single person outside her family who’d noticed her absence, let alone missed her. She could blame it on her upbringing, but even within their church she hadn’t had any real friends, and her lunches with Hank were the only contact she’d had with the cowboys and cowgirls she’d admired from afar. Now she not only knew everyone on that billboard personally, she could hop in her pickup and show up at their houses unannounced.

Wasn’t that just a kick in the ass?

Raindrops spattered her windshield as she accelerated onto the rural road. Normally she would have been cursing the lousy weather for ruining her plans, but now that she got to practice with Shawnee in an indoor arena, it was nothing more than an annoyance. And if Grace guessed right, thanks to that damn basketball practice, she would arrive at the Jacobs ranch just as they finished working the bulls and headed in for coffee.

She was humming along with the radio and congratulating herself for dodging that wet, cold bullet, when her phone chirped. Damn. She hoped it wasn’t Andie’s parents, demanding to talk to her immediately. Then again, she might as well bundle all of her annoyances into the first half of the day. The driveway to Cole and Shawnee’s place was only a quarter of a mile down the road, so she waited until she’d turned off the highway to stop and check the message.

As soon as she saw the sender’s name, alarm zinged up her spine. The entire text was composed of two words.

He’s ba-ack.

Grace closed her eyes and swore. So much for early warnings—and assumptions. It seemed Hank had decided to come home and spread some holiday cheer after all.