Coming Home to Texas--A Clean Romance Read online

  “Well, what did Poppy and Nana say about you going to the Mastersons’?”

  “Nothing, because I didn’t tell them. They never would have let me go out with Carlos Reyes. So I said I was going out with my friend Gretchen—you remember her, she used to have a booth at the Persimmon Festival. Sold those little persimmon jack-o’-lantern-looking things.”

  “You lied to Nana and Poppy?”

  “Well, not exactly. Gretchen and I did go to the party together. I’d just arranged to meet Carlos there. I told Nana and Poppy I was going to spend the night at Gretchen’s house after.”

  “Whoa! Whoa!”

  “I remember I wore my fringed miniskirt, a cowl-necked sweater and shiny cuffed ankle boots with gold buckles and stacked heels.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking Carlos was really hot!”

  Dalia covered her ears. “Mom! Stop!”

  “Calm down. The story ends happily. Well, so we got there. And Carlos looked amazing. He was a sharp dresser by late-seventies standards. But he’d already been drinking for a while, and doing some of the harder stuff, and he was a little worse for wear. Long story short, I realized I’d made a huge mistake. But by then, Gretchen had already taken off with a senior boy from Schraeder Lake, leaving me to fend for myself, with no way to get home except with a compromised driver—unless I walked to the nearest farmhouse to call my parents, which would have meant admitting I’d been doing something underhanded.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Only thing I could do. I hoofed it.”

  “To the nearest farmhouse to make that phone call, I hope?”

  “No, to Gretchen’s house. It was only about five miles—all country roads, no highways.”

  “How did your shiny ankle boots with the stacked heels hold up?”

  “Not great. I could feel the blisters forming on my toes. But I didn’t have a lot of options, so I sucked it up and kept going. And just when I had myself convinced that things were going to be okay after all, a truck passed me and then pulled over. It was a pretty lonely road and I didn’t have so much as a good-sized rock to defend myself with. But then the driver got out, and it was Martin Ramirez with his gorgeous boots with the Cuban heels and his felt hat and his perfect crisp shirt. And he said, ‘Renée Casillas. What are you doing walking this road at this time of night?’ Well, I didn’t even know he knew my name. I was awestruck, I guess. With anyone else I would have tried to bluff my way through, but there was always something about Martin that made you stand up straight and tell the truth. So I did. And he didn’t say anything about what an idiot I was to agree to meet up with Carlos at the party in the first place. He just said, ‘Get in. I’ll take you home.’”

  “Oh, my gosh. What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘No, thank you. I’ve already been too quick to get into vehicles and situations with the wrong people tonight.’ And he said, ‘Yes, you have. But I’m the right people.’ But I just shook my head. So he said, ‘All right, walk if you want. I’ll follow you and make sure you get there safe.’”

  “Did he?”

  “For about a quarter mile. That’s as long as I lasted before I gave in and got into his truck. It was so clean. I’d never seen such a clean truck. I sat there, and Martin drove, and we didn’t say another word to each other until he pulled up at the curb of my house. I didn’t know if he just thought I was silly, or resented me for inconveniencing him, or maybe was just thinking about ranch chores he was going to do in the morning. But then he turned to me and said, ‘Don’t go out with that guy again. Go out with me instead.’”

  Dalia could just hear him saying it, in that matter-of-fact but authoritative way of his. “And what did you say?”

  “I said, ‘Okay, but you’d better come in and meet my parents.’ He looked mildly surprised, which for Martin was a huge emotional display. But he did it. He came inside, met my parents and actually made pleasant small talk with them. It was the most I’d ever seen him speak at one time. It was a revelation. I think I fell in love with him that night, listening to him talk about truck engines with my dad.”

  “What’d they say about you being home early?”

  “Oh, they didn’t mind. I just said Gretchen had taken off and left me stranded, which was true as far as it went. They never liked Gretchen, anyway. So then I had Martin’s parents to meet, which I did the next day at church. He exerted himself again, and found me after the service and introduced me. And there was no looking back.”

  “I never heard any of this. I thought you two met at church.”

  “Well, we did. We just never got acquainted until the night of the party.”

  “But why am I just now hearing this story for the very first time?”

  “I thought it best to stick with the official version while you kids were growing up. Your dad was always touchy where Carlos was concerned. They’d had other dealings, and he could never hear Carlos’s name without making that face where his eyes narrowed and his lips got all thin.”

  “Yeah, I know that face,” Dalia said. She didn’t blame her mother for wanting to avoid provoking it—or her father for holding a grudge against Carlos and mistrusting his son the way he did. Dalia’s mom wasn’t a suspicious person by nature, and for her to have realized she needed to get away from Carlos that night, his behavior must have been pretty bad. She suspected her mother was glossing over a lot in her retelling.

  Beyond that, she felt a grim pride in Tony, for wanting to get her home safe last night. Tony never would have treated her the way his father treated her mother.

  “Well, you got Dad out of the deal, anyway,” she said.

  “Yes, I did. Marrying him was like marrying a prince. We were so happy in our little house in town, and then on the ranch once your grandparents retired. Your dad just stepped right into being a full-time rancher—he’d been preparing for it all his life—but I had so much to learn! Your grandmother helped me a lot. And you kids were so small and loving every minute of it, running all over the property from dawn ’til dusk. Every day was an adventure.”

  “Maybe it’s time you started a new adventure,” Dalia said.

  Her mom’s eyes lost that far-off look and focused on Dalia. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, this might seem kind of random, but what if you got some Angora goats and built up a herd? That couple I met, Ray and Syndra, they could help. You’d love them, Mom. You’re already set up well out here for goats. You’d have to add some fencing and a pen and some new outbuildings, but there’s plenty of space for all that, and the goats wouldn’t compete with the cattle for food since they don’t eat the same things. You could set up a rotation system with the pastures to keep parasites in check. These goats are so beautiful, Mom. Smaller than Boers, and so fluffy, and with such sweet dispositions. I know you’d love being around them, and having shearers out twice a year, and learning about the fiber and how to mill it and where to market it. You’re so crazy about fiber arts already, and so knowledgeable about yarns. You could bring a real passion to the work.”

  Her mom smiled. “Oh, honey. That’s sweet of you. But I think I’m done with agricultural adventures. The truth is, I’m tired of ranching. Tired of living out in the middle of nowhere by myself. It was different when your father was alive and when you kids were still at home. It really was an adventure then. But now...now it’s just work. And I’m lonely.”

  It wasn’t much of a revelation. It was more or less what Dalia had been suspecting for a while. Her sociable, fun-loving mother—of course she was lonely. She’d been cheerful enough since Dalia had been home, but that was because she was enjoying having company for a change. Not that Dalia was the best company, but she was better than nothing, and the builders had been around most days, as well, bringing noise and activity and plenty of things to think about and decisions to make.

 
“What if you weren’t alone?” Dalia asked. “What if...what if I moved home?”

  Her mom reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s good of you to offer. But I couldn’t let you give up your life in the city like that. And honestly, at this point I’d prefer to live in town. I’ve been holding off for years now, because I’d have to rent out the property, and you know how that goes. Renters never take care of land the way owners do. I know, it’s not like I’ve been doing such a great job maintaining the fencing and pastures myself, but I’ve done okay, and I haven’t overgrazed. Once I’m gone, I shudder to think what’ll become of the place. But I think this business with my foot has decided the matter. I can’t go on doing this.”

  “But what about your beautiful new kitchen and reconfigured dining room? And that fancy recessed entry to the master bedroom?”

  “All the better to rent the place out. The rebuild had to be done one way or another—I couldn’t rent out a house with no kitchen and a big hole in the side, could I? I’ve enjoyed doing the rebuild, but it’s also given me some ideas for how to update the little house in town for me to move into.”

  “That’s where you want to live?”

  “Oh, yes. I know it’s not very big—it just about burst at the seams once you and Marcos came along—but it’s exactly the right size for me. The lot is small, but I like that. Less lawn for me to take care of. It’s got that big post oak tree in the backyard, and there’s room to keep a few chickens. I’d be able to walk to church once my foot is all healed.”

  “It sounds like you’ve really thought this through.”

  “I have. I’m sorry about the ranch, but I do think it’s time to let go. Maybe I should just sell the place.”

  “Sell La Escarpa? Mom, no!”

  “I don’t like the idea, but I’ve got to be practical. You have a life in the city. We all know your brother doesn’t want to be a rancher, and your sister, well...”

  Dalia couldn’t argue with that. But the thought of someone else, some other family running La Escarpa, living in the house where only Ramirezes had ever lived—or maybe not even a family but some giant agribusiness taking over, or the place getting sold to developers down the line—it made her sick.

  But what was the alternative? Guilt her mother into staying when she didn’t want to? Or take over the whole thing herself? It would be one thing to run the ranch with her mom, even if Dalia managed the bulk of the work. But doing it solo... Was she really up to that? She could always hire out the heavy stuff, of course, but that added up fast, money-wise. Could she balance the money and make it all work?

  The really maddening part was, if she’d only played things differently last night with Tony, this whole situation might be taking a completely different turn. She might be texting him right now, saying, Can you come over? There’s something going on that you need to hear about.

  And the long and short of it was, they’d have gotten married and run La Escarpa together.

  It wasn’t just possible. It was how things were supposed to be. Tony belonged to her, the same way the land did. She could see that now. But she’d ruined everything. She’d been wrong, dead wrong. She’d treated Tony like a child because she was afraid of losing him—and ended up pushing him away and losing him all the same.

  Could she fix her mistake? Or was it too late?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  DALIA WALKED INTO Lalo’s Kitchen, straight through to the counter in back, not too slow and not too fast, like she had a perfectly legitimate reason for being there, which she did.

  “Order for Dalia,” she said to the kid at the counter.

  He looked familiar—not like he was in her graduating class, but like she ought to know who he was. Late teens or early twenties, green eyes, nice smile. Might be the Mahan boy, the son of her fifth-grade teacher.

  The kid went off to get the food, and Dalia took a seat at the counter. Stage One, accomplished.

  It was ridiculous that she was here looking for Tony when he worked every day at her house. But he’d been different these past few days—cold, grim and terribly efficient. No more joking around with his guys, no more singing along with his carefully crafted high-energy playlists coming out of his portable Bluetooth speaker. Everyone worked in silence. The crew was on edge, but the work was coming on fast. They had all the windows and doors installed and were about to start on the metal roof.

  All of which was fine from a work standpoint...but inconvenient for Dalia now that she wanted to talk to Tony. There was a hard wall of reserve around him that she’d never encountered before, and she couldn’t get past it. In short, she’d lost her nerve. She’d also lost one whole day in Austin, driving her mother to a follow-up with the orthopedic surgeon, plus a lot of hours handling urgent business for her clients.

  She didn’t want to text him or call him. She knew she came off cold in text, and anyway, she wanted to feel him out, get a sense of where he was emotionally. She had to talk to him in person—not at her mother’s house or his apartment, but in a neutral social setting. And thanks to Alex, she knew exactly where Tony would be on a Thursday night.

  Which was how she’d come to be here, stalking her ex.

  She’d told her mom she was craving some of those fried cheese curds from Lalo’s, which she’d first tasted when one of her mom’s church friends had brought some over as part of their meal contribution. And if her mom suspected she had an ulterior motive, she hadn’t let on.

  She took a look around, while keeping her gaze away from the pass-through in the wall that led to Tito’s Bar next door. This was her first time inside Lalo’s Kitchen. The space used to be a lawyer’s office, and she’d never been inside that, either, but whenever she’d walked by it, what little she could see through the windows looked dingy and depressing. Now the place was open and airy, with gorgeous hardwood floors and little tables, mostly four-tops, nicely spaced for privacy. The counter looked like a thick, wavy-edged plank taken from the center of an old mesquite, covered with a glassy-smooth clear finish.

  Tony and Alex had done the renovation. Alex had mentioned it that day she’d seen him in town. They’d done a beautiful job.

  What if Tony wasn’t even there tonight? What if she’d come all this way, and was suffering all this turmoil, for nothing?

  Quit being a coward.

  Time for Stage Two: locate Tony. She took a deep breath, turned around and looked into Tito’s Bar.

  Long narrow bar tables and benches, all covered in worn reddish-orange paint, ran the length of the room. People sat in groups, some with drinks and food, some with just drinks.

  And there was Tony, with his arm curled around a little notebook and his head bent low. She couldn’t see his face, but she’d have known that thick black hair, those shoulders, those long outstretched legs anywhere. He used to look exactly like that in English class, writing notes to her.

  A mic’d voice boomed out. “Okay, quizzers. As of the end of Round Two, our team scores are as follows. The Trivia Assassins, ten points. The Home Brew Hop Heads, fifteen points. The Royal Quizzers, ten points. The Dagobah System, five points. The Three Amigos, ten points. And now it’s time for Round Three, Technology. Question sixteen—what does HTTPS stand for?”

  The Royal Quizzers had to be Tony and Alex. Reyes meant royal. If things had gone differently a few nights earlier, Dalia might be over there with them right now, eating cheese curds and drinking a craft soda, wresting the notebook away from Tony and writing Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure in it, instead of Tony and Alex looking blankly at each other as they were doing now. It might actually be fun. The place wasn’t like a bar bar, and the people in it looked kind of nice.

  She swallowed hard and turned away again.

  Keep it together. Just hold tight, wait for a break in the quizzing...and go over to him.

  Where was what’s-his-name with her order, anyway? How long did
it take to walk a bag of fried cheese curds from the kitchen to the counter?

  To steady herself, she focused on the exposed brick wall opposite the pass-through. The words Flemish bond popped into her head, and suddenly she remembered being somewhere with her dad a long time ago, some city—San Antonio? Austin?—where he’d pointed out this same exact bricking pattern on an old downtown building. Stretchers and headers—long and short bricks—alternating both horizontally and vertically. It helped, concentrating on the pattern. The orderliness was soothing. She was pretty sure her dad had said there was some reason for the pattern beyond aesthetics, like it made the wall stronger. How had he even known all that about bricking patterns? Did Tony know it, too? He was a builder.

  The bricks were all different shades of brown, like horse coats—dun, chestnut, sorrel, buckskin, bay. The rough rectangles looked worn but solid, like they’d been around a long time and would be for a long time to come.

  In the dining room at La Escarpa, Tony and Alex and their crew had removed the plaster from what used to be an exterior wall—before the 1910 kitchen addition—taken it right down to the old limestone and left it exposed. Dalia had been doubtful of the idea, but once she saw it, she knew Tony was right. All his work on the house was exactly right. He’d taken it back to its roots in some ways, modernized it in others, blending everything into a harmonious whole. No one could have done as good a job with the rebuild as Tony.

  A man took the bar stool next to her, blocking her view of the wall. He already had a beer in his hand, and he held it up like he was saluting her with it.

  “Smile!” he said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  He had big round blue eyes and a weak mouth curling up in a stupid grin. It was a stupid grin; there was no other way to describe it. When people said Wipe that stupid grin off your face, this was exactly the grin they meant.

  “What did you say?” she asked.

  He didn’t hear the warning in her voice.