Texas Redeemed (5 page)

“What makes you think Valerie and I can’t give her
everything she needs?” It went without dispute that he’d financially support
his child, and surely as a hospital board member Valerie now had some level of
status and wealth.

Nathaniel grunted. “It’s about more than money. What
it’ll be invested in is what’ll count. That little girl’s talent? It should be
harvested. And it will be.”

Peyton felt himself on the fringes of déjà vu. “You’ve a
plan for her, don’t you, Grandpa? How does Valerie feel about that?”

“Change, my boy,” he said proudly, eluding the questions.
“It’s here. And you need to be here.” He eyed Peyton’s suit. “Bring enough
clothes with you? All right if you didn’t, ’cause you came to the right place
for menswear.”

A glimpse at his watch told him he should be heading to
Valerie’s place soon. “Actually, all I need are a hot shower, jeans and a
comfortable shirt for where I’m going.”

“Out to the ranch? Figured as much.” Nathaniel tapped him
on the arm with his cane and left him standing alone in the garage.

By the time Peyton had carted his luggage to his old
bedroom—he’d given Jasper an empty threat of a right hook to keep him from
waiting on him—the shock had begun to ebb.

He roamed the mansion, not fully seeing anything until he
stepped into the solarium with its flourishing foliage and garden view. Then
all he saw were memories of whispers and laughter and remnants of a bond that
went deeper than friendship but had never been defined.

As a thirteen-year-old freshman who’d skipped a grade and
had a devil of a time fitting into high school, especially after having been
discreetly “encouraged” to leave a private academy in Meridien, he’d
eavesdropped on his grandparents’ conversation one afternoon and heard the
words
unfortunate,
lonely
and
trouble.
He’d thought they’d been discussing him and he’d felt bad
about the black eyes, bloody lips, suspensions and whatever else he’d done to
worry his grandmother. Then Estella had brought home a girl she’d met while
volunteering at the library and the girl’s uncle who was a cowboy and refused
to take off his ten-gallon hat in the house. Peyton had wanted to punch the
cowboy even then, but he’d thought the kid was okay—even if she was a Steelers
fan. She’d known how to swing a bat, and she was kind of funny with messy
pigtails and a goofy smile that made him smile even when he hadn’t wanted to.

After that first day Estella had started bringing her
over nearly every weekend, and when she and his grandmother weren’t jabbering
about astronomy or books or girly stuff, Valerie Jordan was shadowing him like
the annoying kid sister he’d never had.

Over the years, the girl his grandmother had befriended
out of charity had become less like a kid sister and more like a woman. Just
like that, Peyton had wanted her beyond the boundaries of friendship.

But he’d never acted on it … not until that night his
mother skipped out on him for the last time—taking with her a cool three grand
in cash—and he’d found his way into Valerie’s car and into her arms, where he
could forget everything but the thrill-ride passion she’d triggered inside him.

Peyton peered through the telescope’s lens, seeing
nothing but murky darkness in the stormy sky. Somehow he, Valerie and their
daughter would have to move forward, and that wasn’t likely to happen if
Valerie kept Lucy out of his reach.

That’s why he had shown up at Battle Creek Ranch an hour
earlier than she had suggested. He couldn’t make out much of the premises
beyond the main house and miles of split rail fence, but if memory served him
right there was a helluva lot of land, livestock and potential—but virtually no
know-how or give-a-damn.

He recalled Valerie describing it as some sort of
paradise as a kid, and when he’d visited for the first time and said the ranch
looked like shit, she’d punched his shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise.

“You always did fight for this place, didn’t you, Val?”
he muttered, pulling into the driveway.

Pagoda lights on either side of the driveway led to a
brick-façade house on a landscaped slope. Even in the pitch of a rainy night,
he could appreciate the nice design as he got out of the SUV. A two-story
stone arch framed the walnut front door, and white pillars outlined the covered
porch. The numerous multi-panel windows were framed by black shutters, and he
could guess that Valerie wanted as much natural light—and access to the
stars—as possible.

On the porch beneath an oiled bronze fan was a bench with
a hardcover lying on it. A glance at the cover told him the book, about teen
celebrities, belonged to Lucy.

He gave the doorbell two jabs and waited, almost smiling
at the crookedly carved jack-o’-lanterns arranged in groups of three on either
side of the door.

“You’re early,” Valerie said without preamble, tugging
the door open. She turned and strode into the foyer in an invitation for him to
either follow or leave.

“Didn’t want to risk not seeing Lucy tonight. No
twelve-year-old goes to bed at seven-thirty.” The place was evidently newly
built, but it had a lived-in aura to it. He took in the new-house smell of
fresh hardwood and paint, and the crown moulding, noted the soaring foyer and
curved staircase that straddled classic and contemporary. They passed a
warm-toned formal living area and the kitchen before ending up in a two-storey
family room with a coffered ceiling, tall stone fireplace and a wall of
bookshelves.

Every shelf was crammed with books.

“Lucy and I like to read,” she said, and he realized he’d
been staring a nanosecond too long. “Anna did, too, though she was just
learning wh-when she died.”

It was a detail he’d remember forever about the girl he’d
never meet. “Where’s Lucy?”

“We agreed you wouldn’t see her tonight, but here you are
asking for her. Thought you might.” Valerie edged a step closer to him and he
caught a faint whiff of coconuts. Coconuts in October. Intrigued, he found
himself shuffling forward as she asked, “Is this how it’s going to be? You
undermining me where my daughter is concerned?”

“
Our
daughter.”

Valerie crossed her arms. Instead of the black blouse
he’d seen her in at the hospital, she wore a gray hooded V-neck sweater that
fell past her jean-clad hips. The form-fitting clothes outlined the subtle
lushness of her body. He’d missed out on years of watching her bony-limbed,
girlish form soften into one that was all woman.

His attention drawn to the supple swells of flesh
revealed by the V of her sweater, he recalled her scent and taste as if his
mouth was on her all over again. He tugged his gaze up to her face … her eyes.
She’d caught him.

But all she said was, “Why are you in Night Sky?”

“It was time to come home,” he answered frankly,
carefully, fully aware of how she’d deflected the conversation. “Is Lucy in her
room or …?”

“Not here, actually. She’s spending the night at a
friend’s house.”

Peyton noted the subtle way she sank her front teeth into
her plump bottom lip. Nervousness. “Well played, Valerie. But is
this
how it’s going to be? Game-playing?
You plan to send her away every time I want to visit her?”

“Okay, being an ass won’t make this easier. I’m
protecting Lucy. Seeing you at the hospital made her cry.”

“One of the things teenage girls do best is cry,” he
countered, not in the least swayed.

“Not Lucy. Trust me on that.” Valerie plopped onto the
oversized sofa and left him with a dainty wicker chair stacked high with
unshelved books that he had to set aside in order to sit. Her brows inched up
at the distressed moan the chair gave under his weight. “She has a test at
school tomorrow and doesn’t need a distraction.”

“I’m her father, Valerie, not a ‘distraction.’” The words
rang out louder and more forceful than he’d intended. His voice seemed to echo
throughout the quiet house.

Valerie abandoned the sofa and sat on the square ottoman
in front of him. “Answer this truthfully, okay?” Those sexy whiskey-colored
eyes found his, riveted him in the uncomfortable wicker chair. “Do you care
about her this much, or do you feel deprived of a possession?”

They were back to that again, her believing that
everything boiled down to dollars and cents—
possessions—
to
him.

“Sounds like you think you already know the answer to
that question. Why ask it?”

Something unreadable passed over her face. “I thought I
could count on you for anything and you changed.”

“Changed?”

“Yes! Right after your mother hit the road, right after
you and I were together, you snapped. A bet was made at the tavern about how
long it’d be before you turned into the lowlife thug you were destined to be.
If Chief Hyatt hadn’t saved your ass …”

He’d been fresh out of second chances with the law even
then, but he’d been crazy with single-minded determination to destroy himself.
Only a miracle, in the form of a retiring police chief who’d said he wouldn’t
let Peyton become a through-and-through thug, had protected him from himself.

“The Bishops are the law around here now, and Chief
would’ve loved to make an example of you,” Valerie continued. “Peyton, you
turned cruel, shut everyone out. For the first time you frightened me, damn it.
Then you disappeared.”

“Weren’t you relieved to have me gone, then? Aren’t you
glad I didn’t drag you down with me?”

“Not knowing where you were or what had happened to you
wasn’t anything to be relieved about.” She looked downward and he could see the
shadows of her dark lashes against her smooth skin. The crescent moon scar had
that faded, softened look to it, like it’d been there for years and probably
always would be. “The point is, trusting someone like you can be a one-way ticket
to hurt. If I can save Lucy from that, then I will.”

“Do you think you know what I’m all about, Valerie?”

He could’ve told her about his work, from his first
mission to the last. But helping people who’d lost their entire worlds wasn’t
something he’d done to earn Good Samaritan points with anyone.

He noticed her breath had quickened by the rapid rise and
fall of her chest. She replied, “No, I really don’t know what you’re all about.
And I don’t think I want to know.”

“This doesn’t have to be about you and me.” But somehow
it was.

“You were asking about the children’s foundation
earlier,” Valerie said brusquely.

The corner of his mouth tipped up. “Anna Christine
Jordan.”

She nodded, smiling genuinely for Anna, not him. “Two of
my favorite books around the time the twins were born were
Anna Karenina
and
Dracula.
”
She shrugged, then frowned and said, “The girls contracted meningitis when they
were six. In fact, Lucy has permanent hearing loss in one ear, but the aid
helps with that. A-Anna’s …”

Instinctively Peyton leaned toward her, offering a
comforting hand. But Valerie flinched and shook her head. She didn’t want his
touch.

“Anna’s kidneys failed. Some years later your grandfather
got Memorial to okay the children’s foundation. It’s helped so many families.”
There was a slow sigh. “And that was it.”

But it wasn’t anywhere near the end of the story for
Peyton. He wanted to know things he never would know about Anna: how her laugh
sounded, how it felt to hug her, what she wished for when blowing out the tiny
flames on her birthday candles.

Dragging
himself out of his thoughts, he found Valerie watching him.

“This might help … maybe …” she said uncertainly, leading
him to the kitchen. She picked up a double picture frame and handed it to him.

He stared at the images of two grinning little girls—one
with wheat-blond hair and brown eyes, the other with darker hair and
grayish-blue eyes.

“These are their kindergarten pictures. I have copies so
you can hold on to these—and the frame, of course,” she added helpfully. “They
were supposed to have first grade pictures the next year, but I couldn’t afford
them. I’d gone back to school and …”

Peyton glanced around the chef-style kitchen. “School
paid off, I take it?”

“Here and there I made the right choices,” she said. “The
ranch was almost in foreclosure when I inherited it.”

“Your uncle …?”

“Uncle Rhys passed away ten years ago. But I wasn’t
living here at the time.”

That surprised him. Before he’d decided to scrap the New
Zealand internship altogether and take off on his own, he’d on impulse
invited—no, begged—Valerie to travel with him. When she’d flat-out rejected
him, choosing life on this land over life with him, he’d cut his losses.
Keeping his expression neutral, he said, “Can’t imagine what would’ve kept you
away from this place.”

“My uncle did. When he found out I was pregnant he sent
me packing.”

“What else did he do?” Peyton asked, touching her scar
with his gaze. That silvery slash hadn’t been there before he’d left Night Sky.

“Whipped me with a belt. He said he didn’t mean to strike
me on the face with the buckle, but he still wanted me out.” She sighed. “Uncle
Rhys thought Samuel Burgess—how’d he put it?—knocked me up. Logical, I guess,
since Sam was my boyfriend and you … you weren’t.”

Coldness seeped into Peyton. He’d left town with the
certainty that Burgess, an artsy kid in Valerie’s class who’d come from a
two-parent Protestant home, would give her the life she wanted. “What’d Rhys do
to Burgess?”

“He didn’t go after him, thank God. I made it clear Sam
wasn’t the father and it took, oh, all of two seconds for him to realize that
I’d had sex with a man who’d never even asked me on a date.”

Peyton’s eyes slid closed for a moment, but regret still sank
into him. “Valerie.”

“So Uncle Rhys declared me a slut and threw me out. And
when Sam found out I was pregnant, common sense told him he was off the hook
since we’d only kissed, and he dumped me.” She let her head loll to the side.
“My uncle wasn’t angry enough to write me out of his will, though. And he
didn’t tell anyone you were the father. The girls’ paternity was my best-kept
secret until they became sick. By then Lucy was really starting to look like
you, anyway, so …”