Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
There were so many people at the Gardner ranch that no one had a job for a clown.
Dillon knew how to drive a tractor, mend fences and worm horses. Sadly, so did every asshole in the county. He could help the kids with their math homework or do the books for AJ, but really, that didn’t need to be done, either.
He could dance and sing, but that seemed inappropriate, given the gravity of the situation.
So he grabbed his laptop and his foot warmer, Pansy, and went to sit on the back porch. Time to surf.
The sun was shining, but Coke insisted there was a blue norther coming, if not tonight, then tomorrow. All the Gardners had nodded, oh so seriously, so Coke must be right.
Right now he would enjoy the sun.
He checked the bank accounts, then glanced at his sponsor’s emails. Boring.
Oh, . He loved that shit.
He’d done the Walsh line back to the middle ages, so Dillon started with Coke, and found nothing. Like, absolutely nothing. Okay. Weird. A challenge! Woo. So, broader. Pharrises in Texas.
There were a bunch of them, but no one even near his age. Coke was just a year older than him—that was it.
Dillon cracked his knuckles. Okay, so Coke lived outside of Waco. Was that where he was from, though? Coke had met Jason Scott’s dad at little rodeos early in his career, and Jason was from east Texas.
So, he narrowed his search from say, Waco to Texarkana and hunted for…what? And why was he pretending this was about genealogy? He burned with curiosity about Coke’s past.
Maybe a public records search. Births, deaths, driver’s licenses. Well, he’d seen Coke’s license, had the number right in the hard drive for all the bank paperwork, so he went that direction. The license had been issued in the year 2000.
Wait.
Wait, that couldn’t be right. No way. Coke had never lived anywhere but Texas, right? So why was his number issued that late? Dillon chewed his lower lip.
Maybe… Maybe Coke… Maybe Coke was a nickname, something that had been used for so long that was what was listed.
Okay. So, what next?
“Hey, Dillon.”
Dillon jumped, feeling guilty as hell. “Hey, Denver. What’s up?”
“Have you seen Cash?”
“Not this morning, no.” He fought the urge to hide his screen.
“Huh. Maybe he went ahead and left with Ace. I’ll ask Cheyenne if she knows.”
“Sure.” He waited for Denver to trot off before widening his public records search to divorces and name changes. What the hell.
Dillon could totally see that—Coke getting married real early, then getting divorce when he realized he was gay. Guys in their world did it all the time. Hell, a lot of them swung whatever way they could, just like his ex, David.
He crowed when he got a hit, and he paid the $9.99 to join the site so he could see what it said.
Aaron Bell.
What the fuck?
Coke’s real name was Aaron Bell?
It had been changed back in 1990, and there was the paperwork to prove it, right there in Harris County. Pasadena, Texas. How weird was that? He’d have just been a baby back then.
There were no divorces for Aaron Bell, though.
Huh.
Coke’s birthday was April 28. A Taurus. Good to know. Dillon grinned. As a Gemini, they were probably not supposed to be compatible.
Good thing he didn’t believe in that shit.
Okay. Aaron Bell, April 28. Now, what else could he dig up? Bell family? Pasadena? Lalala.
Two names came up with that birth date. Aaron and Anthony. The same address. The same hospital.
Holy shit. Dillon stared at the computer, stunned.
His Coke was a twin? Seriously? How could you not tell people that you have a twin? At least your people. As in people you loved people.
Maybe Anthony had died young. Or had been abducted by aliens.
That would be a fun story, at least. Fun for him, if not Coke.
“Dillweed!” Adam Taggart jogged up the steps to the porch. “Come play horseshoes with us.”
“Is there beer?” He snapped shut his laptop.
“Of course there’s beer.”
“Then I’m in.” If the cowboys were relaxing some, there must be good news.
“How’s Missy?”
“Better, from what I understand. Mr. Gardner is staying in the room with his missus, but he’s released and she’s awake.”
“Oh, thank God.” The Gardners were such good people.
“Yeah. Yeah, that’s just it, huh?”
“Tag, did you ever meet any of Coke’s family?”
“We’re Coke’s family, honey.” Tag gave him a sideways kind of look.
“I know, but it’s not like he was hatched from an egg.”
“Doesn’t matter to me if he was. He’s just one of us. Maybe the best of us.”
The sentiment made Dillon punch Tug on the arm, happy in his soul. “He is, no doubt. I’m just nosy.”
“Eh. I ain’t got time for that.” Tag winked at him and waited for him to put his laptop away out of the reach of little fingers. “Coke and them are waiting.”
“Well, let’s not keep cowboys waiting. They might get into trouble.”
“Worse, we might miss it.”
“God, yes.” Dillon liked to be in on the action. “Last one there is a rotten egg.”
Tag snorted and cockblocked him at the screen door, then sprinted for the yard. He forgot Tag could flat-out run, but he’d been a track star. Dillon could outrun everything.
Well, everything but his own curiosity.
Coke wasn’t sure what bee Dillon had in his bonnet, but the man was just ramped up, bouncing along from subject to subject like a kangaroo rat.
Birthdays, families, occupations—Dillon’s questions came like fighter planes. “You’re good at picking out stuff for the kids. Were there lots of kids in your family? Did your dad teach you to work cattle or was that later on? Did your mom like German chocolate cake? It’s my mom’s favorite.”
Coke murmured and avoided and sighed. That wasn’t a can he intended to open. It wasn’t one he even wanted to dig out of the dirt. His folks, well, he knew they were still alive. That was about it.
Dillon was dancing, doing a jig, he thought, making the kids squeal. Dork. God, he loved the crazy little shit.
“Who taught you to dance like that, Dillweed?” Tag asked.
“My mom. Your gran taught you three, right?”
“Lord yes. She insisted we ought to be able to two-step and waltz. She said it was important.” Tag’s expression was warm, fond, and Chrissy’s head bobbed along, agreeing.
“I learned from my dad. He showed me.” Joa chuckled. “Not to samba, but to dance with girls.”
“Who taught you to two-step, Coke?” Dillon asked.
“Lord, I don’t remember. It’s been a long time. Maybe I was born knowing how.” His granny had taught him, he thought. Maybe not.
“Oh.” Dillon’s face fell a bit, and Coke wondered again what the hell was going on.
Things started to wind down, the fire playing with the breeze, the air heading into cold. There was a bunch of them who just circled around the flames, and Coke felt like an old timey cowboy, out on the range.
Dillon plopped down next to him finally, more than a bit wore out. The kids did love him.
He handed over a beer, leaned a bit.
“Hey.” Dillon hummed, sounding happy as a clam.
“Hey, there.” Pansy and Jerome came over, wagging and cuddling. They didn’t love the cold air any more than Coke did.
He gave pets, though, and listened to Natty telling stories, teasing Tag and Chrissy about the little arenas they’d all started in.
“You remember that one, Hoss?” Natty said, hooting. “So small Tag’s horse wouldn’t fit and he had to rope on foot.”
“God, yes. Lord, that was where? Quinlan? Tawakoni? That was back in the olden times, huh?”
Tag hooted. “I like it better now I have money, y’all.”
“No shit on that.”
Coke nodded. “Oh, I don’t know. There were some good times, huh? I don’t miss having to wear makeup, though.”
“Really?” Dillon sounded surprised as hell. “Why?”
“Uh… It’s sticky.”
“Oh. I thought you said you missed it.” Dillon slapped his leg. “Here I was all thinking you were like Jimmy Stewart in that old circus movie, hiding a terrible past behind makeup.”
He glanced at Dillon, confused as fuck. “What?”
Was that what all the questions were about? Did Dillon think he was…creepy or something?
“You know. Jimmy Stewart. What was that movie? The Greatest Show on Earth. He was masterful.”
“You are a weird one, Dillweed.” Natty shook his head, snorted. “The man has a clown fetish.”
“Not so.” Dillon made a rude gesture. “You want to know about a clown fetish, ask me about a birthday party I did once for this oil baron in Dallas.”
They all stared at Dillon, wide-eyed.
“He and his dinner guests paid me five thousand bucks to put my makeup on while they watched.” Dillon shuddered. “Very odd.”
“Five thousand dollars? Really?” Tag blinked. “I guess there ain’t no accounting for taste.”
“Yeah. I was still an up-and-comer then. I should have had a live skunk in my act. I would have appealed to a wider audience.”
“Hoss wouldn’t have hired you. He don’t like skunks, after all.”
“Shit, y’all remember when the skunk got stuck in Cash’s cattle trailer and he didn’t find out until after the bulls trampled the thing to death and he’d driven three hundred miles?”
Natty nodded. “It was well over the century mark and he had to go another five hundred before he could unload.”
Coke hooted. “What I remember is the other Four Horsemen gave him skunk presents for two years after that. Birthdays, Christmas, Halloween.”
They all started cackling, the lot of them damn near hysterical. Even Balta woke up from his doze to chuckle.
“You ‘bout ready to head to bed, cowboy?” Coke asked. He sure was. He was wore.
“I am.” Dillon popped up like a Jack-in-the-Box.
He did like to see that. Dillon loved him, and obviously didn’t think he was creepy.
Hell, he was starting to think that last hit by Jackhammer had loosened something in his skull. He grinned when Dillon took his hand, swinging it a bit, but not enough to make his shoulder hurt. The bassets followed them, yawning, stopping to pee before they made it inside.
He stripped down to his BVDs, then waited for Dillon to do the same before tugging him in for a hard hug.
Dillon wrapped around him, warm and easy, lips on his upper arm. “Hey.”
“Hey, cowboy.”
They stood there and held each other for a second, then they headed to bed, sliding under the blankets. His bones ached and he knew that there was a cold front on the way.
No question.