Courtship In Granite Ridge. Barbara McCauley
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again.
Something very strange was going on.
It wasn’t just the stares she’d gotten at the market in town, Kasey thought as she pulled her pickup off the main road and headed down the gravel drive that led to her house. There’d been sidelong glances and raised eyebrows, too. And Kasey would swear that June Bindermeyer had actually snickered when she’d bagged the groceries.
Very strange.
What could have happened in the two weeks she and her sons had been gone? She’d taken the last of the boys’ summer vacation and gone to Dallas to look for a broodmare, the first of what she hoped would eventually be a full stable of quarter horses. She’d looked at a dozen mares in the first three days and had finally settled on a beautiful sorrel from the Circle Q named Miss Lucy. The animal was more than Kasey could afford, but one look and she was lost. She’d bought her and made arrangements for her to be delivered in a few days, then immediately placed an ad for a stud in several papers, including the Granite Ridge Gazette.
But placing an ad for a stud was no reason for anyone to look at her oddly, Kasey thought with a frown. This was horse country. Still, at the post office when she’d picked up the bag with her mail and papers, disapproval had been plainly etched on Mildred Macklin’s face. And was it Kasey’s imagination, or had Mildred actually slammed her window shut when Steven, Mildred’s son, had come over to say hello?
Very, very strange.
Shaking her head, Kasey shut off the engine and looked down at her sleeping sons. Cody, her eight-year-old, and Troy, almost seven, were slumped into each other, making it hard to tell where Cody’s thick, dark hair stopped and Troy’s wavy auburn hair started. It had been a long, busy two weeks for them. After the horse business was taken care of, they’d gone to the amusement park in Arlington, the rodeo in Dallas and the water park outside of Fort Worth.
It didn’t matter to her that she couldn’t afford it. Her sons deserved a family vacation, a real family vacation, not an assignment that their father dragged them along on, then left them all in a hotel while he went off to do his research.
Cody sat up abruptly, realizing the car had stopped. “Are we home?” he asked, blinking several times.
Home. They’d only moved here from New York two months ago, and the word home had never had a nicer sound. She smiled and combed her fingers through his hair. “We are.”
Cody realized at the moment that his younger brother was sleeping on him. “Get off me,” he said, shoving Troy away.
Troy rubbed at his eyes and yawned. “We home?”
“Mom,” Cody whined in disgust. “Troy drooled on me.”
“Did not.”
“Did, too.”
“You’re a moron.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“Am not.”
“Are, too. Idiot, idiot.”
“That’s enough.” Kasey helped both boys out of the truck and sent them each a sharp look. Ah, yes, home, she thought with a sigh. Back to normal.
“Mom,” Cody said, putting the disagreement behind him and moving forward. “Can Troy and me go over to Brian’s house? We wanna show him the Battle Boy and Maniac Man we got on vacation.”
“It’s Troy and L” She reached into the bed of the truck, then shoved a bag of groceries into each boy’s arms before grabbing two herself. “And not today. It’s already starting to get dark, and you both still need to unpack.”
Cody and Troy started to argue with her, but she held firm and herded them through the front door and into the kitchen. She glanced at the answering machine on the kitchen wall phone, amazed at the number that was lit up on the display. Fifteen? Had her ad for a stud been that successful? She’d expected maybe five or six calls, but fifteen? She’d also noticed that her bag of mail had been stuffed to overflowing. Were there that many letters, also?
She’d deal with the messages and mail later. Right now she needed to get her food put away and her sons fed. They’d started arguing again, with Cody calling Troy a drool-mouth and Troy calling Cody a jerk. It would come to fists soon if she didn’t intercede, and she was too tired to deal with blood right now.
Separating them once again, the groceries were nearly put away when there was a knock at the front door. Like a call to dinner, both boys charged toward the sound.
Kasey frowned. She wasn’t expecting anyone, though it might be Sandy, Brian’s mother. She’d been caring for the horses and watching the house for Kasey while she was away. But Sandy thought they were coming home in the morning, not tonight.
She slid the last half gallon of milk into the refrigerator and shut the door, suddenly aware of the absolute quiet.
“Cody? Troy?”
When she came around the corner, she saw them standing just inside the screen door, staring at the ceiling. No, not the ceiling, she realized as she moved toward them. They were staring at a person. A very tall person she couldn’t make out through the screen door.
“Can I help you?” she asked, feeling a little nervous at the sheer size of the denim-clad stranger at her door. She tried to make out his face, but a black cowboy hat and the dim light shadowed his features. Though she was used to and didn’t mind being a single mom, at times like this she at least wished she owned a dog.
“Acacia Donovan?” a deep, strangely familiar voice asked.
Acacia? No one ever called her that. No one except...
Heart pounding, Kasey flipped on the porch light. He took off his hat and grinned down at her.
Her breath caught. It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible.
Slater.
Ten years fell away. She suddenly felt that her arms and legs were too long, her braces too tight, her hair too curly and her voice too high.
“Slater?” she whispered.
He nodded. “Yeah, Kasey, it’s me.”
Her knees shook as she moved closer to the screen door and studied his face. Older, a few more lines. He was more rugged, his dark hair a little longer. Different, but so familiar.
“You gonna make me stand out here all night?” he asked.
She looked down at her sons, who were still frozen in place, their necks bent back, their mouths open as they stared at the stranger. Under a different situation, she might have laughed. Unless they were sleeping, her sons were never quiet this long. But this wasn’t just a different situation.
This was Slater.
Her fingers shook as she reached for the screen door and pushed it open. Slater glanced down at Cody and Troy. Still staring, the boys slowly parted, and he stepped inside.
Kasey’s first impulse was to yell for Jeanie, to tell her that her big brother was here to pick her up. Her second impulse was to jump into his arms. She did neither. All she could do was stand there, a lump in her throat and a tight ache in her chest.
“Ah, these are my sons,” she said finally. “Cody—” she touched her oldest son’s head “—and Troy. Boys, this is Slater, an old friend of mine.”
Troy pressed against her, curious, but cautious, while Cody craned his neck upward and stared. “How old are you?” Cody asked.
“Cody Thomas Morgan,” Kasey reprimanded, “where are your manners?
“Well, you said he was old,” Cody grumbled.
With a half grin, Slater slipped his hat back on, then knelt and leaned close to Cody. “I’m thirty-four,” he whispered. “Is that old?”
Cody shrugged. “Not so