three brothers had purchased the place after she’d moved to New York. Except for infrequent calls, she and Violet had lost touch during those years when each was getting established in her chosen career. Then Violet had returned to the city, and they had picked up their old friendship. But Jessica had never called any of the Fortunes in Texas when she returned to visit her folks.
“Oh,” she said when the house came into view.
It was large and typical of the very popular Texas ranch style with a beige-painted wooden frame and shiny metal roof, a second story with a balcony over the front porch that went all the way across the front of the house and lots of shrubs and flowers in borders along the curving front walk and the dark brick foundation.
There was a four-car garage attached to the side of the house. Clyde hit the opener, then drove inside and closed the door behind them, shutting out the blowing rain.
A station wagon was the only other vehicle in the large space. There were no tools or lawn mowers. It was the neatest garage she’d ever seen.
“At our house, the one where I grew up,” she clarified, “the garage was always a disaster area. My mom threatened to throw everything out on a regular basis, including the three lawn mowers. One worked. The other two didn’t.”
Clyde retrieved her bags and motioned toward the door into the house. She went inside.
“We use a tractor to mow the grass when we cut the hay,” he said.
She followed him into a room that held a comfortable sofa and two leather recliners. A huge television was built into a bookcase-entertainment center beside a fireplace. The room led into a wide foyer that ran the length of the house.
On the other side of the foyer, she could see another room, a formal living room, although sparsely furnished.
The foyer had a graceful staircase of open oak steps and black wrought-iron railings. She could see a large dining table with six chairs beyond the steps and French doors opening onto a patio. The rain was too heavy to see what the view would be out the back of the house.
Clyde headed up the steps when she paused, not sure where to go. “This way,” he said.
The foyer was repeated upstairs in a gallery-type library with bookcases and twin groupings of two chairs, a table and a reading lamp to either side. Here, too, the view through wide windows would be to the backside of the house.
“These are your quarters,” he said, going into the first room on the right and flicking a light switch. A lamp on a table softly lit the room.
She glimpsed beige walls and dark furniture that was Spanish in style, plus some light oak pieces that were called Texas frontier by the local decorators.
“You have your own bath through there.” He nodded toward the side of the room. “That’s the closet next to it.”
She also had her own private sitting space beside tall windows on the north side of the house. A large bed occupied the opposite wall.
“It looks very comfortable,” she said politely.
He set her luggage on a chest at the end of the bed, then looked at her, his hands in his back pockets, his manner withdrawn. Against the dim light, his silhouette was framed against the backdrop of the bed.
A shiver ran over her while her mouth went dry. She’d learned early in New York not to mind dating men who were shorter than she was, but it was nice to go with someone she could dance with without looming over him.
Clyde Fortune fit the bill perfectly.
She saw his chest expand as he inhaled deeply. She was too tall for her head to rest against that broad expanse, but they could dance cheek to cheek.
If they ever danced.
Which she frankly doubted.
“The kitchen is downstairs,” he said, striding toward the door as if he suddenly remembered an extremely important appointment that he was about to miss because of having to take care of her. “You’ll find soup in the pantry, sandwich stuff in the fridge. Help yourself.”
With that, he was gone.
Jessica yawned, then swung out of bed. She loved the view from the windows of her room—rolling green pastures, a thick copse of trees outlining the meandering path of a creek and then, clear skies all the way to eternity. Opening a window, she breathed deeply of the clean morning air and caught the scent of new-mown hay on the breeze.
Oh, it had been so long since she’d experienced a Texas morning! Although the humidity was high, it wasn’t any worse than in the city, so that didn’t bother her. Being cooped up inside did.
She hurriedly dressed in blue shorts and a matching knit top. With sneakers on her feet, she went down the steps and into the kitchen, being quiet, although she could tell by the absolute silence that she had the house to herself.
After sipping a glass of orange juice and eating one slice of unbuttered toast, she headed outside. Through an open door off the kitchen, she spotted a big pantry, plus several wall hooks. On one was a straw hat that would provide shade from the sun.
She put it on and slid the fastener up the strings and under her chin to keep the hat from blowing away in the wind. Then she headed outside to explore.
In the back, she discovered a lovely swimming pool. A small pool house, in the same style as the main one, contained a kitchen with Coke and beer in the refrigerator and microwave popcorn in the cabinet.
Okay, so she was nosy, she admitted when her conscience prodded her for snooping.
A hot tub held pride of place in the large room and an etched-glass door opened into a cedar-lined sauna with benches on three sides. There was also a full-size bathroom and next to that, surprisingly, another bedroom, making the pool house into a guesthouse, too.
“Charming,” she remarked to herself, then closed the door and continued her journey of exploration.
Beyond the homestead were some barns, stables and sheds. From a velvety green field came the drone of a tractor. She spotted the huge machine but couldn’t discern who was in the enclosed cab. Clyde or whoever was operating the equipment was cutting alfalfa.
Again she inhaled deeply, letting the wonderful scent flow down inside her, all the way to her roots, which sprang from the rocky Texas soil. She couldn’t believe how nostalgic she’d been for home without even knowing it.
She exhaled loudly, enjoying the ambiance of the ranch. In New York, life could be so hectic…and usually was.
Here, ah, here, there was a sense of peace—
“Oof,” she said, pitching forward against a fence post, then the ground, as something hit her on the back.
Startled, the ever-present fear of the past few months raising its ugly head, she rolled over and got a good licking in the face. Fright dissolved into laughter.
“Who are you?” she asked, sitting up while a black-and-white dog, mostly border collie, frolicked all around her.
“Smoky,” a familiar voice
