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“Except the truth,” Trixie retorted. “We’re living a facade, a lie, Mother. And I for one, won’t continue it.” Slamming her linen dinner napkin down, she headed for the foyer, then turned to face her stunned mother and disapproving grandfather. “And I won’t be going to Europe with you. I’m going to Arkansas, to see my father, and I intend to stay there until this fall. But don’t worry, I’ll be home in time for college. So you just keep on bragging to all of your friends. And while I’m gone, you can continue to keep up appearances to save face, Mother, since that seems to be so much more important to you than trying to save your marriage.”
In the end, however, even Pamela’s manipulations and sugar-coated half truths couldn’t save face. When the Dallas press got wind of the impending divorce, things turned nasty, and Pamela turned vindictive. After demanding a multimillion-dollar settlement from Brant, Pamela went to Europe alone and made headlines by being seen with some very eligible men. Of course, Pamela managed to keep things highly proper and above reproach, stating that she loved her daughter and only wanted to protect Tricia Maria from all of this hurt and pain.
She never stopped to think how much she’d hurt both Trixie and her father. No, Pamela always managed to put a spin on the truth, to twist it to her advantage and to come out, as Harlan put it, “smelling like a rose.”
So that summer Trixie went to Arkansas to find her own peace of mind, to regroup and reassess her life, to get back at her domineering, self-righteous mother, and to get reacquainted with the father she loved and adored.
And…wound up meeting a man who changed her life.
That summer Tricia Maria Dunaway fell in love with Logan Maxwell.
That fall Tricia Maria Dunaway did not enroll in college at Southern Methodist University, because she was expecting Logan Maxwell’s child.
As the sleek limousine pulled into the long drive leading up to the mansion, Trixie glanced up to the sign over the white fretwork gate, proclaiming the surrounding thousand acres of prime Texas real estate to be Dunaway’s Hideaway.
But Trixie knew in her heart, this was no hideaway. She knew she’d never be able to hide from the truth, no matter how secluded and protected her grandfather’s estate might be, no matter how much power the Dunaway name carried in Texas, no matter how hard her mother had managed to put a pretty face on the worst of situations by guarding Trixie’s great sin with all the alert attention and precise organization of a qualified damage control expert.
Even though no one, absolutely no one in Dallas, knew about the baby, especially not Rad’s blue-blooded family, Trixie knew in her heart, knew in her soul, that somewhere out there she had a child. Once, she’d accused her mother of living a lie; now she had to live one each and every day of her life. Unlike Pamela and Harlan, and even her father, she couldn’t forever stay in a state of determined denial. It was her great secret, her great burden to bear. She had yet to forgive herself for her one youthful indiscretion, or for allowing those around her to force her to let her child be sent away like a parcel of dirty laundry. Sometimes, she lay awake at night, asking God to show her the way, to give her comfort, to help her bear the sorrow of her secret. And she wondered, did God ever hear her pleas? Or like her misguided mother, was she praying for all the wrong things?
But tomorrow, tomorrow when she at last faced Logan again, as much as she now believed in the absolute truth, she hoped the truth wouldn’t be plastered there on her own face. Because he could never know the truth.
Logan could never, ever know that she’d been forced to give his child up for adoption. Only she and her immediate family could ever know that great shame. Because of the Dunaway power, Logan hadn’t had a say in the matter, at all. He had no idea that a baby had even been conceived.
Again, Reverend Henry’s words came back to haunt her.
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.”
Dear God, she silently prayed now, hidden behind her dark glasses, shielded by the touch of Rad’s hand on her own, Will I ever be forgiven? How can I face Logan, knowing what I did? How can I enter into marriage with Rad, with a such a devastating secret between us? How can I ever be whole again?
Tomorrow she would take Brant Dunaway’s remains back to the place he loved most. Tomorrow, she would come face-to-face with her past and the man she had once loved so fiercely.
As Rad helped Trixie out of the car, the unmerciful Texas wind whipped her hair and sang mournfully in her ear, holding her, pulling her close. But Trixie fought at the wind, her thoughts turning to the rolling green hills of Arkansas. And she desperately wished she could turn back time.
Chapter Two (#ulink_a8c5e86a-87a0-550f-a628-59d23220726e)
Time might have changed Trixie, but time had not changed the ranch. The red-stained, open barn still stood at a slanted angle beside the dirt lane, looking as if the next strong wind might just knock it over. But Trixie knew this old barn had weathered everything, from gentle rains to fierce, whirling tornadoes. And yet it stood.
Off to the right were the big rectangular stables, their planked walls painted the same aged red shade as the barn. As the wind rushed through the long, cool stable corridors, the smell of fresh hay and pungent manure assaulted her senses and touched her with such a sensory remembrance, she had to close her eyes to keep the tears from falling. She could almost hear her father’s deep-throated laughter floating along on that wind. She could see herself and Logan, young and carefree, walking the horses, cleaning the stalls, stealing a kiss in a dark, cool alcove.
Out beyond the barn and stables, out beyond the screened-in cookhouse and the narrow barracks that served as the bunkhouse, the pine-covered hills that formed the beginnings of the Ouachita Mountains lifted and flowed like a green velvet blanket tossed across a rumpled bed.
Everything about the place that Brant had simply called The Ranch, was rumpled and slightly off center. It was as run-down and down home as they came. Nothing fancy, no frills—just a good, solid working ranch that included cattle, sheep and pigs, along with corn, cotton, produce and hay. Certainly nothing to be ashamed of, but nothing to shout about, either, as her father used to say.
Pamela had always hated this place.
Trixie had always loved it.
And missed it.
Now she stepped out of the rental car she’d picked up at the Little Rock airport, to look toward the west where the small lodge stood on a pine-shaded hillside. Brant had built his modest house there, so he could wake up each morning with a perfect view of the surrounding peaks and valleys. Off in the distance the mountains presented a muted, watercolor vista of rock and trees. Brant had loved his view of this part of the Ozark Plateau. He had liked seeing his little domain as he stood on the wide, posted porch with his first cup of coffee.
Now, the A-frame, log-cabin-style house looked forlorn and lonesome, a bittersweet reminder to Trixie of all that she had lost. Her father had built the house as a retreat for Pamela, hoping to mend the great tear in their doomed marriage. But Pamela had shunned his gift and him. Trixie wondered if her mother felt any guilt or remorse over that now. She knew she certainly did.
In a few hours the meager staff would gather together not far from the brown-logged lodge, underneath a great live oak that stood alone like a sentinel on one of those rolling hills, to watch Branton Nelson Dunaway be put to rest in the earth he loved. Trixie had arrived early to make sure everything had been arranged. The funeral home in Little Rock would bring her father’s remains in a few hours.
Right now she needed this time to readjust to being here, to steel herself against seeing Logan again. She just wanted to stand here in the sandy driveway and look out over what now belonged to her.
Rad wanted her to sell it, take the money and run.
“We won’t have time to fool with some run-down ranch in Arkansas, darling. We’ll be so busy with my law practice and your consulting work I don’t see how you can be in two places at once.”
“I won’t have to be there, Rad. The Ranch has a very capable foreman.”
“That Maxwell fellow? You don’t even know him that well. For all we know he might decide to take you for a ride now that Brant’s gone. From everything Harlan’s told me, the place barely breaks even as it is. No, I think it’d be best to get rid of it. We’ll invest the money. I’ll call my broker first thing once you’ve taken care of the sale.”
Trixie closed her eyes and leaned back against the rented Nissan, images of the past she’d tried to bury springing up like wildflowers in her mind. Was that why she’d considered selling the ranch—to get rid of any traces of her great shame? Now she had to wonder why she’d even agreed to sell it at all. How in the world could she tell Logan that she wanted to sell the land he loved so much, the only home he’d known since he was a teenager?
Logan Maxwell heard the slam of a car door on the other side of the barn. Dropping his paintbrush, he found a rag on a nearby shelf and tried unsuccessfully to clean the white paint off his hands. Then he headed toward the front of the building, his heart pumping, his nerve endings on full alert, his whole body coiled tightly against seeing the woman he knew would be waiting on the other side.
Trixie.
Then he saw her standing there with her eyes closed and her head thrown back as she invited the wind to kiss her face. She wore designer jeans and a pair of hand-tooled buttery tan boots—he would bet she’d had them specially made in Austin, and a bright pink-and-green-colored Western-style shirt—probably a Panhandle Slim—and she looked about as out of place as a Barbie doll at a G.I. Joe convention.
She also looked beautiful. Her hair was still that same honeyed hue of blond, although she’d cut it—no, she’d paid an overpriced hairdresser to cut it—to a becoming, layered bob that framed her face with sleek flips and. soft swirls. Still tall and cool, still the darling of Dallas, still the belle of the ball. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he knew the color was a deep, pure blue, same as the Arkansas sky over his head. He couldn’t take his own eyes away from her, though, so he leaned there against the support of the rickety barn and allowed himself this one concession while he compared the real-life woman to the girl he’d watched walk away so long ago.
He’d had an image of this woman in his mind for the past eight years, an image that had warred within his subconscious, an image that at times had haunted him, at other times had comforted him. He’d tried so very hard to put Tricia Maria out of his mind. But she wouldn’t disappear. It had taken her father’s death to bring her back to him in the flesh.
Now he used bitterness as his only weapon against the surge of emotions threatening to erupt throughout his system.
He had so many questions; he needed so many answers.
So he remained silent and just stared at her.
Trixie opened her eyes, feeling the heat from the sun on her tear-streaked face at about the same time she felt someone watching her. It didn’t take her long to figure out who that someone was.
Logan.
She stared across the expanse of the dirt driveway, to the spot where he leaned with his arms crossed over his chest, just inside the open barn doors. In her mind she held the memory of a young man in his early twenties, muscled and tanned, with thick wisps of brown hair falling across his impish, little-boy face. This Logan was the same as the one in her memories, yet different. He still wore his standard uniform of faded Levi’s and chewed up Ropers she remembered in her dreams. A battered Stetson, once tan, now a mellow brown, sat on his head. The torn T-shirt, smeared with grease and dirt, told her he still worked as hard as anybody around there, and…he obviously still wore the attitude, the whole-world’s-out-to-dome-in attitude, that had attracted her to him in the first place.
Only now, a new layer had been added to his essence, along with the crow’s feet and the glint in his brown-black eyes. He’d matured into a full-grown man, his muscles heavier, more controlled, broader, his expression hardened, more intense, deeper.
He looked bitter and angry and hurt.
He looked delicious and vulnerable and lost.
And he looked as if he’d rather be any place on earth except standing there with her.
“Hello, Logan,” she said, her voice sounding lost and unsure to her own ears as it drifted up through the live oaks.
“Tricia Maria.” He lifted away from the barn to stalk toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. When he’d gotten to within two feet of her, he stopped and hooked his thumbs in the stretched, frayed belt loops of his jeans. “Sorry about your daddy.”
“Yeah, me, too.” She looked away, out over the hills. “He wanted to be buried here, so…”
“So you had no choice but to come back.”
“Yes, I had to—for him, for his sake.”
Not for me. Not for my sake, Logan thought. Because she’d written him off a long time ago. And they both knew why. Yet he longed to ask her.
The questions buzzed around them like hungry bees. Logan wanted to lash out at her, to ask her why, why she’d left him so long ago. But he didn’t. Because he knew the answer, knew probably even better than she did why she’d deserted him and left him, and lied to him. Instead he said, “C’mon. We’ll get your stuff up to the lodge. When’s this thing taking place?”
“Three o’clock,” she said, understanding he meant the graveside service for her father. “Didn’t anybody call you about it?”
He didn’t look at her as he moved around her to get into the driver’s side of the car. “Yeah, some fellow named Ralph, Raymond—”
“Rad. Radford Randolph. He’s…we’re engaged. I asked him to call ahead and let you know when we’d get here. Granddaddy’s coming later.”
Logan slid into the car, then patted the passenger’s seat, his dark gaze on her face. “Get in. I’ll drive you up to the lodge.”
Trixie had no choice but to do as he asked. She remembered that about Logan. Quiet, alert, a man of few words. Dark and brooding. A rebel. A troublemaker who’d been turned over to her father for a job over ten years before by a judge who’d agreed with Brant, and Logan’s mother, Gayle, not to send him to a juvenile home. He’d come to work off a truancy sentence, and he’d never left.
In spite of everything, Logan had not deserted her father the way she had, the way Pamela had. Somehow, that had comforted her and made her resent him at the same time. Logan had known Brant Dunaway better than Brant’s own flesh and blood. She could tell he was taking this hard, too. Maybe that was why he had a scowl on his scarred, harsh face. Out of respect, Trixie didn’t speak again. Besides, she didn’t know what to say, how to comfort him. She’d prayed long and hard to find some sort of comfort for herself, but it hadn’t come yet.
Logan pulled the car up to the long, square lodge that Brant had built with his own hands, then turned in the seat to stare over at Trixie. “Yeah, this Rad fellow was more than happy to talk with me a spell. Asked a lot of questions, too.”
Frowning, Trixie said, “What kind of questions?”
Logan tipped his battered hat back on his head and wrapped one hair-dusted arm across the steering wheel, his eyes full of accusation. “Oh, about profit and loss, how much income we’ve been generating, how much I think the land is worth.”
Trixie moaned and closed her eyes. How could Rad be so presumptuous? This wasn’t his land, after all. It was hers.
When she felt Logan’s hand on her chin, she opened her eyes to find him close, too close. His touch, so long remembered, so long denied, brought a great tearing pain throughout her system. To protect her frayed nerve endings, and the small amount of pride she had left, she tried to pull away.
He forced her head around so she had to look at him. “You’re gonna sell out, aren’t you?”
She did manage to push his hand away then, but the current of awareness remained as an imprint on her skin. “I…I haven’t decided.”
Logan jerked open the door and hauled his big body out of the car, then turned to bend down and glare at her again. “I can’t believe you’d even think of selling this place, but then again, maybe I should have seen it coming.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, her hand flying to the door handle. When he didn’t answer her, she rounded the car to meet him at the trunk. “Logan, explain that last remark, please?”
Logan opened the trunk, then snorted at the many travel bags she’d brought along. “Still so cool, calm and collected, still the fashionable big-city girl, aren’t you, Trixie?”
In defense of herself she said, “I wasn’t sure how long I’d need to stay.”
He lifted her suitcases out of the trunk, then slammed the lid shut. “Oh, I think I can clarify that for you, darlin’. Just long enough to shed yourself of this place, I imagine.” When she looked away, he grabbed her arm to spin her around. “Am I right, Trixie? Is that it? Were you planning on pulling another vanishing act, like you did all those years ago?”
“No,” she said, humiliation and rage causing her to grit her teeth. “No.”
He pressed her close to the car’s back. “Yes. I say yes. As soon as you can sell this place to the highest bidder, you’ll tuck tail and head back to Dallas.” Hefting her suitcases up with a grunt, he added, “After all, some things never change, do they, sweetheart?”
She was surprised to find that some changes had been made to the ranch, after all, such as the tiny white chapel Brant had built by the great oak where he wanted to be buried, and she was even more surprised by the large turnout for her father’s graveside service. Trixie knew her father had a lot of friends back in Dallas, but here? She’d always imagined him alone and reclusive, once he’d lost touch with his family, but then again Brant Dunaway hadn’t been the kind of man to be satisfied with his own company for too long. Brant had loved life; had loved moving and roaming and watching and experiencing. What was it Granddaddy used to say? He was a good ol’ boy with a big ol’ heart.
Only, Pamela had never seen that. She only saw what she termed Brant’s weaknesses; his flaws and failings far outweighed his goodness in Pamela’s eyes. Once the novelty of being married to the renegade rodeo hero son of an oil man had worn off, she’d judged him with a very harsh measure; he’d never stood a chance of living up to Pamela’s standards.
Trixie had always been confused by her mother’s double standards. Pamela professed to being a Christian, attended church each Sunday, did all the right things, yet she never seemed to possess the one basic trait that made anyone a true Christian. Pamela had never learned tolerance or acceptance. She’d tried to change Brant, and it had backfired on her. And she was now working hard on her daughter.
Right up till this morning, when, in a nervous tizzy she’d tried her level best to talk Trixie out of coming. “Trixie, I just don’t think it’s wise for you to go back to that place. Harlan can take care of the burial. Stay here with me, sugar, and help me plan your engagement party.”
“I’m going, Mother, and that’s final. I want to be there to see Daddy buried. And I have to decide about what to do.”
“Get rid of that land as fast as you can. You and Rad don’t need the bother, darling. You’re going to be busy, too busy to have to deal with that old headache of a ranch.”
Pamela would never come out and say it, but she didn’t want her daughter anywhere near Logan Maxwell again. Pamela had erased the whole episode from her mind like a bad movie.
Now, as Trixie watched the long line of people marching across the hillside toward the spot where Brant would be buried, she was glad her mother would not be among the crowd. She needed this time alone with her father, one last time. Her granddaddy was here, though, right by her side as he’d always been, his old eyes watering up as he looked at the shiny new walnut-grained casket, encased with a set of brass bull horns, where his son now rested.
“Are you all right?” Trixie asked Harlan, worried about him. Her grandfather had started out as a wildcatter and had gone on to build an oil empire. He’d paid his dues; done his time. He was getting old. And his only son’s death had aged him both physically and emotionally.
“I’m fine, honey. Just missing your father.”
“Me, too.” She looked down at the sunflower wreath lying across the closed casket. “I should have visited him more—stayed in touch. I should have let him know I cared.”
“He knew you loved him.”
“Did he? Did he really know that?” she asked.
“Yes, he surely did. I kept in touch with him, you know. After all, he was my son. And, thank the Lord, we made our peace with each other long before he died.”
“Did…did he ever talk about me?”
Harlan lifted his gaze to her face, his blue eyes, so like his son’s, full of love and compassion. “All the time, honey. All the time.”
Trixie saw the hesitation in her grandfather’s expression. He seemed to want to say more, but instead he just looked away, down at the ground. At least he’d told her that her father still thought about her and acknowledged her existence. Trixie found some comfort in that.
After she’d had the baby—they’d never allowed her to know whether it had been a boy or a girl—Brant had drifted further and further out of her life. Still numb, still grieving over the twist her life had taken, she went on to college, a year late. Determined to get her life back on track, she’d soon became immersed in her studies and her somewhat vague social life. She’d gone through all the motions—the sororities, the campus parties, the whirl of college life, but her heart, her center always came back here to her father…and to Logan. Ashamed, she’d felt as though neither wanted anything to do with her, so she hadn’t made any effort to mend the shattered relationships with the two men she loved and respected most in all the world.
Logan stood now, apart from all the others, with a group of about eight children of various ages. Watching him, Trixie wondered again how this was affecting him. Brant had been like a father to him. Logan’s mother, Gayle, had come to the ranch years ago, divorced and struggling with a rebellious teenage son. Brant had given her a job as cook and housekeeper, and promptly had put her son to work on the ranch.
The arrangement had worked, since Brant hadn’t spent too much time at the ranch back then. He’d depended on Gayle and Logan to watch over things, along with some locals he hired to tend the animals and crops. By the time Trixie arrived that summer so long ago, however, Brant was a permanent resident here, and he and Logan had formed a grudging respect for each other. That mutual respect had seen them through the worst of times. The very worst of times.
Not wanting to delve too deeply into those particular memories, Trixie turned her attention to the haphazard group of children around Logan. “Granddaddy, who are all those youngsters?”
Harlan cleared his throat and glanced in the direction of the silent, solemn group. “They’re living on the ranch, Tricia Maria. They’ve been here for most of the summer.”
Shocked, Trixie stared hard at her grandfather. “Why? I mean, are they helping out with the crops as a project? Did Logan give them jobs?”
Harlan started to speak again when the preacher lifted his hands to gather the group around Brant’s casket. Harlan leaned close and whispered, “I’ll explain it all later.”
