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An hour later, Sofia sat across from James at the eat-in kitchen’s table. She felt his dark eyes on her and her cheeks grew warm. He shouldn’t stare. Was he staring? She glanced up and caught his gaze. Great. Now she was staring.
She poured Javi another glass of milk, then passed the cold glass pitcher to Justin. His resemblance to Jesse unnerved her, despite the beard, mustache, cuts, bruises and scars transecting his face. It raised the specter of Jesse and her past. Why, oh, why, had she volunteered to stay at Cade Ranch?
“This is good.” Jewel dipped her spoon in the gazpacho. “I like it. Spicy.” The light cast from an old-time wagon wheel fixture gleamed on her French braids and glinted on the arrowhead pendant tied around her throat.
“It’s different.” James held his spoon aloft, eyeing the dripping red concoction.
“And we know how much you love different,” drawled Jared, the good-looking one, James had said. She eyed Jared’s sculpted features. His fine-boned nose and high cheekbones. She guessed he looked like Orlando Bloom, though it did nothing for her.
Now, James, on the other hand... Her eyes drifted to the rugged cowboy, met his gaze and dropped again. He was a dramatically attractive man. Lean strength and work-rumpled sexiness. He was getting under her skin in the worst way.
And what was so “different” about gazpacho?!
“Weren’t we supposed to have stew tonight?” he asked in his low baritone; his direct way of looking at her, his squint, jumbling her thoughts.
Jared coughed, “Schedule,” behind his fist, and Jewel chucked a bread roll at James. He snatched it easily out of the air, split it and began buttering, the nonchalant move comical. At her quick snort of laughter, he smiled at her, lines deepening on either side of his brown eyes with their ridiculous eyelashes. She felt an urge to run her fingers over his thick brush of hair.
“Joy dropped it. Blam!” Javi jumped in his chair. “Can I call you Grandma?”
“Javi. Eat please.” Sofia eyed her son’s untouched bowl, the dark circles beneath his eyes, the hollows of his cheeks.
“You can call me anything you like, honey.” Joy reached out and guided Javi back down into his seat.
James’s smile faded. “Was it your wrist again? You’ve put off your surgery too long and—”
“I’m scheduling it for next week,” Joy cut in, a tad breathless.
The Cade siblings slowly put down their spoons and glasses.
“It’s about time.” Jared reached across the table and patted his mother’s hand.
“That’s wonderful, Mama!” cried Jewel. “And I’ll help with the housework like I promised,” she added slowly, dragging the words from her throat. “Maybe I can finally learn how to cook. I could make those Christmas cookies. The ones with the frosting. You haven’t made those since...since...”
“Noooooooo,” groaned Jared and Justin.
Joy shook her head. “You stay in the saddle where you’re needed, honey. Sofia kindly offered to stay on and help us out.”
Amid the exclamations of gratitude, Sofia noticed one very silent and very disapproving Cade.
James. His opinion shouldn’t matter, but for some insane reason she wanted him to be just the tiniest bit happy that she would be sticking around.
* * *
SOFIA AND JAVI...staying another month...
James let out a held breath, rinsed off the last plate and stowed it in the dishwasher, his thoughts in an unpleasant tangle.
Were his suspicions that she’d lost a drug stash and wouldn’t leave Carbondale without it correct? She’d refused to report her missing wallet to the police. Why? And if she deceived him regarding that, what else might she be lying about? Jesse being Javi’s father? He looked nothing like Jesse, save for the left-sided dimple, which, admittedly, was a Cade trademark.
He wiped his hands on a dish towel, then carefully hung it on the oven door handle beside its matching counterpart. He straightened it, squared the edges and eyed the conformation until satisfied that all was back in its rightful place.
Confusion.
The enemy of an orderly, safe life.
Everything Sofia represented. His brother had taught him not to trust addicts. The temptation to use was too strong, and someone with years of sobriety could still relapse. Even if Sofia was clean, she might resume old habits, do anything for a fix, including breaking his mother’s heart.
Across the room, he spied Sofia coaxing an uninterested Javi to finish a bowl of grapes. All evening, she’d waged an unflagging war to get him to eat fruit and vegetables. Despite his misgivings about her, he admired her determination. Her devotion, too. Yet her opaqueness discomfited him.
Making matters worse, she’d pledged to help on the ranch as his mother recuperated from the surgery. He couldn’t refuse the offer, especially since his ma had begun smiling again and seemed, for the first time in a long time, to be a tiny bit happy.
Yet the unsettled feeling of being outmaneuvered churned in his gut. This time of year turned his mother inside out. They got through the holiday season by ignoring Christmas while the rest of the world erupted in celebration of hearth, home and family, something they’d never fully get back.
“How about you eat a grape for each one that I catch in my mouth, little man?” he heard Jared say as he joined the group in their two-story living room.
A floor-to-ceiling stone hearth dominated one end and he pictured it bedecked in Christmas stockings and lit boughs the way it had once been. They used to hang red and green ornaments from the massive set of mounted elk antlers above it. A warm, crackling fire spewed hickory-scented puffs of heat. How long since they’d burned a yule log? He dropped into a high-backed blue armchair and eyed his family. Too long.
“Okay, deal!” Javi laughed. He leaped up on one of the tan couches grouped around a crosscut tree-trunk coffee table. When Sofia didn’t correct him, James shook his head at the child. Javi’s knees buckled, and he perched on his heels instead.
“You don’t know what you’re in for,” Joy warned, seating herself on Javi’s other side. She plumped a blue-and-tan-checkered pillow and placed it behind her back. “Jared doesn’t miss often.”
“I bet I can catch more.” Jewel leaned over the living room’s loft railing, ready as ever to compete with one of her brothers.
“Ladies first, then,” Jared said easily, looking characteristically unperturbed when it came to competition. He won so many, he had every reason to back up that confidence.
“Watch and learn.” Jewel jogged down the open spiral staircase and grabbed the bowl. “Whoever gets the most out of ten wins.”
Javi bounced on the couch, then stilled at James’s small, corrective frown. Admiration sparked inside for the child. He was boisterous, like all kids, but he wanted to do right. If only James could be equally sure about Sofia.
Jewel caught the first four, missed the next three, caught another two, and the last bounced off her nose. “I meant to do that.” She chuckled and passed the bowl to Jared. “Good luck.”
“It’s all skill, sis,” he said with a wink, then caught ten in rapid succession. No surprise there.
“You su—” Jewel cut off at Joy’s swat. “I mean, you duck,” she amended, glaring at Jared. “You really, really duck.”
“Quack you very much,” Jared rejoined and the brothers guffawed, the family rhythms returning, temporarily loosening the pressure valve that’d been present since Jesse’s death.
James had given up hoping things would ever return to the way they’d been. A time when his mother hadn’t cried at odd times of the day, Jewel hadn’t retreated into her saddle, Jared hadn’t spent all his free time away from the ranch, Justin hadn’t risked his life with his reckless antics and Jackson had been home...
No. This was their new normal. Though it didn’t stop James from missing the old days—especially during the holidays. He wished December would disappear right off his calendar to end another painful year.
Javi climbed on Jared’s lap and patted his cheeks. “Can you teach me?”
“Sure.”
“After you eat your ten grapes,” James said, feeling a growing sense of duty to this child who might be a Cade.
“Ugh. Always the lecturer,” Jewel groaned.
“A man honors his word,” James insisted.
“As does a woman,” Sofia added. They exchanged a quick searching glance and the morning’s easy rapport returned to him, followed by her inconsistencies about her wallet.
A car revved outside and backfired. The sound cracked through the air like a gunshot. Javi jumped, spilling the bowl of grapes. He bolted around the back of the couch and started crying.
The family swapped concerned glances as Sofia crouched by the small space. “It’s just a car, honey.”
“Justin’s hunk-a-junk,” Jewel said over Sofia’s shoulder. “He’ll show it to you before he goes to the demolition derby.”
“No,” Javi sobbed. “Shooting.”
“Honey. You’re safe,” soothed Sofia.
“No,” he choked out, hyperventilating, by the sound of it.
It amazed James how quickly Javi had gone from rambunctious to fearful. Spirited to terrified. What had happened in his life to make him react this way? No one should ever feel afraid on Cade Ranch, especially not a child.
He leaned over and spoke firmly, steadily. “Javi. I want you to take a deep breath in through your nose, then push it out through your mouth. Can you do that ten times, bud?”
“Yes.”
Sofia gripped the back of the sofa and the sides of their hands touched. The urge to thread his fingers in hers, to reassure her, seized him.
Javi’s breathing slowed.
“Okay. Now. When I say a body part, I want you to squeeze it hard, then relax it.”
“With my hands?”
“No. Just use your muscles.”
He guided Javi through the relaxation technique he’d learned while on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan. It’d helped him get through those dangerous months, and sometimes, it even helped him sleep...or doze...at least.
“Your head...” he concluded, after having Javi work his way up from his toes, tensing, then releasing the muscle groups. He felt rather than saw Sofia’s eyes on him.
“I can’t squeeze my head,” Javi said with a giggle. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Sofia’s relieved smile and returned it.
“That must mean you’re a knucklehead,” he joked, and to his relief, Javi emerged from behind the couch.
He shook his finger at James. “I heard that.”
“Well. At least that means you don’t have cotton between your ears.”
Javi giggled again and wriggled free of his mother’s embrace.
“Do you want to check out Justin’s hunk-a-junk with me?” he asked, an urge to connect with Javi taking hold.
“Okay.”
A small hand slipped into his and a feeling of protectiveness surged. Such a trusting gesture. Tender. Vulnerable. A child’s faith could slay the most stalwart dragon, he marveled, and he felt the walls he’d built up about the boy begin to crumble.
He led Javi out on the porch and Sofia followed.
“Thank you,” she said to him softly, a heartbreaking smile on her face. A sliver of pink gum showed above her top teeth.
Justin leaned out of the driver’s-side window of a rust-brown, banged-up Chevy Impala, the number 212 spray painted on its side. The engine rumbled in the night air. James’s nostrils stung from the spewing exhaust.
“Ma! You coming? I need to get moving if I’m going to take out Daryl Loveland in the first round.”
Joy’s hand fluttered to her hair, her necklace. “Actually, I don’t think I’ll go out after all.”
James exchanged concerned glances with his siblings behind his mother’s back. She’d seemed so animated before.
“Suit yourself. Hey, kid.” Justin beckoned Javi. “Want a ride before I head to the demolition derby?”
His teeth flashed stark white against his dark beard, his grin more pirate than rancher. Justin’s many speeding tickets, accident reports and wrecks came to mind.
“No,” James insisted. He met his family’s surprised stares, chin raised. Heedless Justin was the last person he trusted to drive Javi. “I’ll take him.”
“Do you want to go, honey? You don’t have to.” Sofia brushed back Javi’s hair. James’s heart somersaulted at the tender gesture.
Javi nodded, his eyes on the muscle car.
“Want me to go with you?”
Javi peered down at his hand clasped in James’s and shook his head. “Can I ride up front?”
“Yes. But only because I’m going to go very slow, and you’re wearing a seat belt.” He met Sofia’s eye. “Okay, Mom?”
She smiled tightly. “Just don’t go far.”
“We won’t. Let’s go, Javi.”
And a moment later, he guided the Impala down one of the dirt roads that separated pastures. The sports coupe growled and whined, bouncing over potholes, kicking up clouds of white snow, dust and pebbles. His thoughts and feelings swirled around his head like quicksilver, unpredictable and reluctant to coalesce. As he drove alongside barbed wire fences and stared at the white-crusted land illuminated by his headlights, he allowed himself to think about Jesse. Was Javi really Jesse’s son? And if so, had he disavowed the child? Why?
Although he didn’t imagine he’d ever have children, he knew he’d never turn his back on his own. He’d always take responsibility and protect what was his.
He shut down the traitorous thought of his brother. Believing Javi was Jesse’s son meant accepting his sibling had acted worse than he’d imagined, hurting not just his family, but inflicting pain on an innocent child. On Sofia.
He cast a sideways glance down at the wide-eyed boy beside him. Javi huddled in the passenger seat, fidgeting with the large seat belt that crossed his lap. Cool air streamed in through the open window and he breathed in the bovine scent that mingled with the hay they’d tossed out to the livestock earlier.
Javi was quiet. Too quiet. Concern rose. “Want me to turn around?”
“No.”
“Where do you want to go?”
Another moment of silence. Then, “Home.”
