Logan's Child

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.”

There was no easy explanation for death, especially when speaking to a child. Logan stood with the children he was in charge of and wondered again if he’d handled any of this in the right way. Granted, he’d had training in counseling youths from the minister who was about to conduct Brant’s funeral service. But talking with children was never easy. Children demanded complete and total honesty, and sometimes adults, by trying to protect them, hedged and pawed around the truth. Logan certainly knew all about that.

Looking over at Trixie now, Logan felt a stab of guilt. He hadn’t exactly been completely truthful with her, but then again, she had kept her distance, and her secret, from him all these years, too. As he watched her now, so cool and pulled together in her black linen pantsuit, he had to wonder what her intentions were. How could she come barreling in here again after all these years and rearrange his whole way of life?

Feeling a tug on the sleeve of his chambray shirt, Logan looked down to find ten-year-old Marco holding on to him.

“Hey, buddy,” Logan said on a low whisper. “How ya doing?”

Marco, a beautiful Hispanic child whose mother had abandoned him when he was three, shook his shiny black-haired head and said, “Not too good, Mr. Logan.” He put a hand to his heart. “It hurts here, inside. I miss Mr. Brant.”

“Yeah, me, too, bud,” Logan replied, his voice tight, his words clipped. “Tell you what, though. You just stand here by me and hold tight to my hand, okay? We’ll get through this together. Then later I’ll bring out Radar and let you exercise him around the paddock. Deal?”

Marco’s sad expression changed into a grin. “I get to ride the pony?”

Logan gave the boy a conspiring wink. “You and you alone, partner.”

Marco took his hand and held on. Soon, all of the children had shifted closer to Logan. Their warmth soothed the great hole in his soul and made him even more determined to hold on to what he’d helped Brant build here. Then he saw Caleb standing by Gayle. Motioning for the seven-year-old boy, Logan waited as the youngest of the group ran and sailed into his arms, then wrapped his arms around Logan’s neck. Holding the boy close, Logan decided right then and there that he had to talk some sense into Tricia Maria Dunaway. He wouldn’t stand by and let her sell this ranch. Not after everything that had passed between them. With that thought in mind, he glanced over at Trixie and held tight to the little brown-haired boy in his arms.

She chose that moment to look up, her eyes meeting his in a silent battle of longing and questions. Soon he’d have his answers, Logan decided. And maybe soon she’d have hers, too. Whether she liked it or not…

Then the minister preached to them about finding their answers through the word of God. “For the Lord is good, his mercy is everlasting, and his truth endureth to all generations.”

The truth. Could it endure between Trixie and him? Was it time to find out? Logan stared across at the woman he’d tried so hard to forget and wondered if someone up there was trying to send him a personal message.

Much later, after all the mourners had paid their respects, after Harlan had headed back down the hill to the lodge to rest a spell, after the sun had dipped behind the distant live oaks and loblolly pines, Trixie stood alone beside her father’s freshly dug grave and remembered all the good and wonderful things about Brant Dunaway.

And she cried. She’d never felt so lost and alone.

Until she felt a hand on her arm.

Turning, she saw Logan standing there, his eyes as dark and rich as the land beneath their feet, his expression a mixture of sympathy and bitterness. He didn’t speak; didn’t offer her any pretty platitudes or pat condolences. Instead, he simply stood there beside her and let her cry.

And finally, when she could stand it no longer, when he could hold back no longer, he took her in his arms and held her while the red-gold September sun slipped reluctantly behind the Arkansas hills.

Chapter Three

“He used to bring me daisies on my birthday,” Trixie said later as they sat on a nearby hillside.

The shadows of dusk stretched out before them, darkness playing against the last, shimmering rays of the sun. Off in the distance, a cow lowed softly, calling her calf home for supper. Trixie stared across the widening valley, her gaze taking in the panoramic view of the beautiful burgundy-and-white Brangus cattle strolling along, dipping their great heads to graze the grasslands.

“He always did like wildflowers,” Logan answered. “Remind me to show you the field of sunflowers he planted just over the ridge. The wreath on his casket came from those.”

Trixie glanced over at the man sitting beside her. Logan had brought her such a comfort, coming back up here to sit with her. “Thank you,” she said at last.

“For what?”

“For not pushing me. For just being you.”

He snorted, then threw down the blade of grass he’d been chewing on. Glancing toward her, he said, “I thought me just being me was the reason you never came back here.”

Not ready to discuss that particular issue, she ran a hand through her hair and leaned her chin down on her bent knees. “I had a lot of reasons for not coming back here, Logan.”

He’d like to know each and every one of them. But he didn’t press her. That wasn’t his style. “Yeah, well, we all have our reasons for doing the things we do, sugar.” He looked away, out over the lush farmland. “I take full responsibility for what happened back then, Trixie.”

Shocked, she glanced over at him. Did he know about the baby, after all? “What do you mean?”

Logan looked back at her then, his dark eyes shining with regret and longing. “Our one time together—I should have stopped before things got so out of control.”

“I played a part in that night, too, Logan.” And paid dearly for it She shrugged, hoping to push the hurtful memories away. “Besides, it’s over now.”

“Is it?”

She looked down at her clenched hands, not wanting him to see the doubt and fear in her eyes. “It has to be. We were young and foolish back then and we made a mistake. We’re adults now. We just have to accept the past and go on.”

He nodded, then lowered his head. “Well, one thing is still clear—our lives are still very different. That much hasn’t changed. Just like then. You were the boss’s daughter, and I took advantage of that. I won’t do it this time around.”

Ignoring his loud and clear message, she reminded him, “No, you didn’t do anything I didn’t let you do.”

“Yeah, well, I could have been more careful.” His voice grew deeper, the anger apparent in his next words. “Then you saved my hide by begging your father not to fire me. The rich girl helping the poor, unfortunate stable hand.”