Epilogue
EPILOGUE
T he text pinged in: Hurry! It’s almost her turn! Avery was tearing down the road as fast as he could safely go. He’d never get there in time if he wrecked or got stopped by the cops.
He slammed on the brakes in the gravel of the fairgrounds parking lot and took off at a dead run. Her message had said barn three, and it was at the far end, but he was going as fast as his legs could carry him. He rounded the corner and headed down the back of the stands just in time to hear the announcer say, “This is contestant number eighteen, LillianHolcomb.” Avery didn’t have time to climb the stands. He just stopped at the edge of the ring and watched.
Lillian led the calf away from the judge, turned it, and led it back. Then she led it from one side of the ring to the other and back again. Finally, she turned it to face the judge and moved Coco’s legs until the heifer calf was in the perfect stance. Avery watched as the judge ran an appreciative hand down the calf’s legs, down its face, and down the ridge along its back. When he was done, he motioned for her to lead it out of the ring. Avery headed that direction and, as he did, he looked up into the stands. Even from where he was, he saw Lydia wave, and when Lydia pointed his dad out, Landon waved too. Avery gave them both a big wave and headed to the holding area.
“Daddy, did you see? She did so great!” Lillian gushed. “I hope we win something!”
“Even if you don’t, you were the prettiest girl out there today, baby. I’m so proud of you,” Avery told her and leaned down to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Thanks, Daddy. Hey, did you see Jeremy?”
“Not yet. I just got here. I couldn’t miss this. Oh, they’re done. Let’s see how you came out.”
The judge stepped to the microphone and announced the honorable mentions, then started on the ribbon recipients. “Third place goes to DanielleThompson with MightyMoe,” he said into the mic, and cheering erupted. Avery looked down to see his nine-year-old daughter’s fingers crossed behind her back, and he chuckled.
“Second place goes to FranklinBradford and Tinkerbell,” the judge called out, and they watched as the boy and his calf took the red ribbon. The young man proudly clipped it to the calf’s halter, and everyone cheered.
“And this year, first place in the elementary calf competition goes to LillianHolcomb and her calf, Coco, from over on the Flying H Ranch!” Lillian let out a squeal and hugged Avery’s waist.
“Go on, baby! Claim your prize!” he whispered to her.
He watched as his oldest took her calf’s lead and led the little thing out into the ring, eager to claim the prize that not only designated her as a skilled handler, but also celebrated the quality of Flying H Ranch’s stock. The judge handed her the blue ribbon, photos were taken, and Lillian clipped the ribbon to Coco’s halter. By the time she got out of the ring, Lydia and little Landon were there too, laughing and hugging her. Avery took the calf back to her holding pen and then rejoined his family.
They took seats in barn two and watched as JeremyDavidson showed his miniature Nubian goat. For a six year old, he was surprisingly mature, and he’d done a good job with Patches. But the goat had a bad habit of stepping on people’s toes, and it cost Jeremy first place. Still, he seemed happy with second, and he proudly showed off his ribbon when they’d all come down to congratulate him. Avery had lucked into the Atherton place next door, over two thousand acres, and he’d bought it and given Jason and Danette the house plus five hundred acres. They had use of the farm pastures for some animals, and the kids could walk back and forth without ever having to leave the property. It was a great setup, and one Avery and Lydia had never regretted. And Jeremy loved that goat, so everybody won.
“Guess we’re all done, huh?” Avery asked as he wrapped an arm around Lydia’s shoulders. Just as they started away, the announcer picked up the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen, for the final event today, we’ve got the greased pig contest! This contest is for kids three to eight, and we’ve got a pig ready to grab! If you’re a child age three to eight and want to join in the fun, come on down and get ready to chase this pig!”
“Thank goodness I’m nine,” Lillian sighed.
“Want to chase the pig?” Jason asked Jeremy.
“Ick! No! I don’t want to chase a greasy pig!” the little boy scoffed.
“I wanna chase da pig!” Landon yelled. “Can I chase da pig?”
Lydia looked at Avery, and he just shrugged. “I guess so, if you really want to,” he told the mini-Avery.
“If I catch it, do I get ta keep it?” Landon yelled.
“I don’t think so. But you get a prize. I don’t know what the prize is, but there’s still a prize,” Lydia told him.
“Dey got ribbons, but I didn’t get nuffin’,” Landon pointed out. “I wanna prize!”
“Well, okay! Let’s go!” Avery said and took his hand. They ran to the gate, Avery confirmed his age with the volunteers there, and Landon took his place in the line with the other kids.
“Are we ready?” the announcer called out, and the entire line of kids nodded. “Okay, then. Ready, set, GO!”
Someone opened a dog crate on the other end of the tarp-sided ring and a small pig all of about twenty-five pounds bounded out into the open. When the line of kids shrieked and headed toward it, the pig took off in the opposite direction as fast as it could and it was time for the chase.
Kids were everywhere, and everyone around was laughing at the top of their lungs. The pig darted in and out of kids’ legs, through their arms, and generally left lard on everything it touched. Avery and Lydia watched as the bigger kids jostled until Landon didn’t stand a chance, but Avery knew his boy. It was just a matter of time…
The pig feigned to one side and streaked right past Landon, but not before the four-year-old future bulldogging champ dropped onto its back and threw his arms around its neck. And the pig ran. It ran like a demon, streaking around the ring, with Landon on its back, hanging on for dear life, hands locked together in a death grip. He wobbled and bobbled and slid from side to side, but he wouldn’t turn lose. The pig did everything it could manage, but it couldn’t dislodge the determined preschooler. As it tore around the ring, they could hear Landon yelling, “I GOT ME A PIG! I GOT ME A PIG!”
Avery was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, and he could hear Lydia screaming, “Hang with ’em, Landon! You got it, baby! Hang on!” Lillian was laughing and squealing, and even Jeremy was in on the action, cheering Landon on with Danette and Jason standing right there, laughing so hard they were crying.
The pig ran around for a full ten minutes until finally, exhausted, it stopped and wobbled back and forth for a minute. Quick as a wink, Landon flipped over onto his back, the pig still in his arms. He wrapped his legs around it and yelled, “SOMEBODY GET A ROPE. I NEED TA HOG-TIE DIS PIG!”
“You’ve taken that kid to too many rodeos!” Jason yelled, howling with laughter.
“From the looks of things, I’d say I haven’t taken him to enough!” Avery dropped to his knees, laughing so hard he couldn’t stand, and the crowd shrieked with laughter and clapped so loudly the roof shook.
Five minutes later, the exhausted pig was back in the crate, and a four-year-old Holcomb stood in the middle of the ring and claimed his prizes consisting of a year’s supply of sausage from one of the local meat-packing plants and a fifty-dollar gift card to the farm store. Caked in lard and dirt, he grinned from ear to ear as they snapped his picture for the local newspaper.
“Good lord, that kid’s tenacious,” Lydia laughed to Avery.
“Just like his mama,” he laughed back and kissed her.
* * *
Lydia worked at cleanup from dinner and Skipper’s successor, Dandy, danced about her feet until she finally handed him a green bean. Both kids were finished with their homework and were supposed to be getting ready for bed when Lillian asked, “Daddy, will you tell us that story again?”
Avery glanced at his daughter and son. “Which story would that be?” he asked, knowing full well what Lillian was asking about.
“The one about the prince and the princess.”
“Oh! That one! Well, you’ve heard that so many times, I’m sure you’d rather hear another one.”
“No!” Landon insisted. “I wanna hear it again! Same story, again!”
“Okay, okay. So, once upon a time there was a princess. She had a vast kingdom. It had been her father the king’s kingdom, and his father the king’s kingdom, and his father the king’s kingdom, for as long as anyone could remember. But one day, the great-grandfather of the princess traded his kingdom for something.”
“Whadda he trade it for?” Landon asked, knowing the answer.
“Girls in bikinis. He traded it for money to see girls in bikinis. Have you ever heard of anything so silly in your life?”
Lillian snorted. “No. Nothing so silly, Daddy.”
“Yeah. So, anyway, he never got his girls in bikinis. He died before he could see them. But the guy he’d traded the kingdom to was just a nobody who raised pigs in the village. Just a pig farmer. A nobody. And it made the princess very mad. You see, she was going to plant money trees on the land in the kingdom and grow more money than anyone had ever seen. And then, when her great-grandfather died, she found out he’d traded his land to the pig farmer for a paltry sum so he could go and see girls in bikinis, and she was furious.”
“And then what happened, Daddy?”
“The dragon, Daddy, the dragon!” Landon said.
“You’re ruining it, Landon!” Lillian shouted.
“Am not!” Landon yelled back.
“Hey, hey! Let me tell my story my way, okay?” Avery snapped, and they both turned their eyes up to him. “Okay. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah, the princess found out that the pig farmer owned the kingdom and she was really, really angry. So she sent out her men on horses and even sent out the kingdom’s dragon to slay him, but he was a really, really strong pig farmer, and very patient too. One day, as she was riding by in her coach, the pig farmer, all scarred up from the lances and the arrows and his hair singed by the dragon’s fiery breath, looked up to see her stop in front of his pigpen. ‘Fair lady, do you stop today to deal me a death blow?’ he asked. And she slapped him.”
“Oh, no!” Landon mocked. “She slapped him?”
“Yes. Right there, in front of the whole village. But he didn’t let that stop him. Every week, he made bacon and sent it to her. And every week, she got angry and chewed up and spit out the bacon and threw it out the castle window. But one day, she tried to throw the bacon out the window and she couldn’t because it was so delicious.”
“What did she do?” Lillian asked, knowing the answer already.
“She went to the pig farmer and said, ‘You’ve proven that you’re a good pig farmer, and you’ve never tired of sending bacon to me, even though I didn’t appreciate it. Might I ask you: Would you consider planting money trees for me on the land of the kingdom?’ And the pig farmer said, ‘Fair lady, I would be honored.’ And as the pig farmer planted the trees and they grew, the love the princess felt for the pig farmer grew too. And one day, after the trees were all planted and the bacon and sausage all made, they fell in love. And the princess became queen and she made the pig farmer a prince and then the king. They had a princess and a prince and they lived happily ever after. And he still made bacon when he felt like it. The end.”
“No. Not the end, Daddy. They’re still in love and still together,” Lillian corrected.
“It’s you and Mommy!” Landon squealed, laughing. “It’s always you and Mommy!”
“Yes. It’s me and Mommy, minus the pigs. Cows instead. And now it’s time for you to go to bed. You’ve got school tomorrow. Scoot!” Avery told them, and they jetted up the stairs. He could hear their feet pounding across the floors up there and he smiled over at Lydia as she finished up in the kitchen. “I guess they’ll never get tired of that story. You’d think they would.”
“I hope they don’t,” she said, plopping down on the sofa beside him and smiling up into his face. “I like the pig farmer. He turns out to be a knight in shining armor.”
“And the princess turns out to be not quite the bitch he thought she was,” Avery laughed into her hair, then kissed her cheek.
“Good thing they stopped you from saying ‘the end.’ You’re going to be telling that story for a long time.” Lydia said, her eyebrows popping up and down.
“Oh?”
“Yeah.” She took his hand and laid it softly on her tummy. “At least a few more years.”
His grin was a mile wide. “No! Seriously?”
“Yeah!”
Avery stared down into those blue eyes that still made his breath catch in his throat and his cock jump in his boxer briefs. “We did it again, huh?”
“Yes, my dear, we did it again.”
“So what was your late fiancé’s middle name? I didn’t mind naming Landon after him, but not another one. Got any old boyfriends? Scorned lovers? The guy at the hardware store who winked at you when you were eleven?”
Lydia chuckled. “No. I wouldn’t do that. This one will be named after you, no matter what!”
“A girl named AveryAidan Holcomb. That should be interesting.” He pulled her up into his lap and gave her a huge, hot kiss. “I love you, LydiaSimone Holcomb. Thank you for never giving up on me.”
“You? Thank you for never giving up on me! I was a real bitch.”
Avery laughed out loud. “Wow! You can say that again!”
She play-scowled and slapped his arm just to hear him laugh again, but then she sobered and stared into those big hazel eyes of his. “And now, maybe we can go upstairs, tell the prince and princess goodnight, and grab a little shut-eye for ourselves,” she said, winking.
“You mean that shut-eye we get with our eyes open and our clothes off?”
“That’s the shut-eye I’m talking about,” she giggled. “Race you up the stairs!”
“No running for you, my preggie wife. Nope. You take it easy.”
“Until you get me into bed.”
“Exactly!” Avery let out a laugh. “And then I’m your hard-riding rancher!”
He wasn’t stupid. He knew she felt embarrassed sometimes by her body. It had borne them two beautiful children, and no matter what it really looked like, when he looked at her, he saw that same beautiful, tight, firm girl he’d taken on ten years before. He knew every inch of that wondrous body, from the big, hard nipples twice the size they’d been before Lillian had come along, to the softness of her tummy, to that warm, waiting haven between her thighs that had welcomed his manhood home so many times. He sat cross-legged in the bed and Lydia straddled him, letting herself down over his hardness and gazing into his eyes as he wrapped his hands under her ass, lifting her and letting her fall, watching her face and the delight there as his always-needy cock filled her over and over. “I love you, LydiaSimone. I love you more than anything.”
“I love you too, more than anything.”
“And I love to fuck you,” Avery told her and bit her lower lip.
“And I love to fuck you too,” she whispered back and tweaked one of his nipples.
“Oh, baby, you shouldn’t have done that,” he groaned. “Now I’m going to have to get serious about this fucking.”
“Yeah? Well, let’s see it, cowboy. Bring it on,” she whispered back, goading him along.
Avery tossed her backward onto the bed, braced himself above her, and ground down into her, listening to her let out a tiny cry, mindful of the two kids across the hallway while still giving in to the passion of their lovemaking. He was thankful every day for the bales of hay he had to haul and toss, the buckets of feed he had to load and carry, the cows he had to push around, and the saddle he had to toss onto old Dixie. All that work kept his body hard and lean, and he was stronger, faster, and tougher than he’d been ten years before. He could manipulate Lydia’s body any way he wanted, easily and quickly, and he’d heard her bragging just a couple of weeks before to Danette that she couldn’t believe how voracious their lovemaking was, even after ten years and two kids. He didn’t know about that; all he knew was that she still turned him on, still got him hard, and still made him groan out her name at least five times a week, more if they could find somewhere for the kids to go, and he never wanted for satisfaction. He made sure she didn’t either, and it showed. She was still flirty and girlish, and he hoped he could keep it up forever, figuratively and literally, so that would never change.
He made her come a third time before he finally let go, emptying himself into her just as he did every time, but knowing this time it would result in no little Holcomb―there was already one on the way! That sensation, the feeling of his warmth and wetness filling her, made him smile. His cattle were fertile, and so was his family. The herd was just about as self-sustaining as it could get, with only a few heifers having to be bought each year as replacements for the bull calves they got out of the breeding. The three thousand plus acres he owned held over three hundred head of cattle, some of the finest Angus beef on the hoof in the region, but his children and his gorgeous wife were his greatest joy. He felt powerful, complete, and whole, and Lydia did that for him. It was all her.
Lying there together in the darkness, still panting just a little, Lydia whispered, “So have you thought about it?”
“There’s no thinking about it, babe. If your mom wants us to build her a little place out here, we will. I’d love having her out here.”
“She said when she sells the house she’ll pay for it. No problem.”
Avery shook his head against the pillow. “No. I can build her a little house. If she wants to pay me back, fine; if not, that’s fine too. I know she’s lonely now that your dad’s gone, and I don’t want that for her. She’s always welcome here, but I’d rather she had her own place than be under our roof.”
“Agreed. You do realize, we’re going to have a child in this house steadily for twenty-eight years, maybe more, when all’s said and done. You sure you’re up for this?”
Avery snickered. “Watch out, we’ll have another one five years from now. That’s our average. Why mess it up?”
“God, no! This had better be the last! I can’t be raising babies when I’m sixty!” she laughed.
“When is Liza supposed to be here?”
“Soon, I hope. Danette thinks she’ll probably go into labor this weekend. She’s big as a house. Jason’s really excited about having a girl. What do you want this one to be?”
“Healthy. And if it’s not, I’ll love it anyway,” Avery assured her.
“Just one more reason why I love you.” She stopped for a second, then asked, “What about your mom?”
“What about her? She wants to stay in Clarksville. Now that I’m the principal partner in the business, Ben has to do what I say. I bailed them out, I tell him what to do, and he does it or I fire his ass, end of discussion.” His trust fund money had come in handy for getting Holcomb Industries back on its feet, and it was on firm footing with the new management he’d put in place, not to mention that it had turned enough profit to pay him back with interest. Ben’s position as general manager was a figurehead slot; as president, Michael ran the place and answered to Avery. And the quarterly reports had looked good for quite some time. He had no worries there.
“So you think he and Beth will take care of her?” Lydia asked, worry tinging her voice.
“Yes. I think Beth is a good person. She’s keeping Ben in line, isn’t she?” he asked, chuckling as he thought about his new take-charge, whip-cracking, no-holds-barred sister-in-law.
“Seems to be,” Lydia agreed.
“So I think she can handle Mom too. After all, Mom’s not the problem; Ben’s the problem,” he growled.
Lydia laughed. “Some things never change!”
“Yeah. Like the way I love you. And the way you turn me on. And those meatballs you make. God, baby, those are delicious.”
Lydia laughed. “You do love ’em.”
“Whooo-weeee, if you made those every day, I’d weigh six hundred pounds in no time!”
“You could use a few more pounds on that rock-hard body of yours, you sexy cowboy you,” Lydia purred.
“Hey, I worked hard for this body! And yes, I love those damn meatballs, but not as much as I love you.” A cry sounded out from across the hallway and Avery glanced at Lydia. “I’ll take care of it. Be back in a few.” He climbed out of bed, put on his pajama pants, and crossed the hall, opening the door. “Landon? Buddy? You okay?”
“I hadda bad dream, Daddy. A dinosaur ate Dandy.” At the sound of his name, the dog who was a dead ringer for old Skipper perked up and moved closer from his little doggy bed at the foot of Landon’s bunks.
“Dandy’s right here. See?” Avery said and pointed at the dog, who crept up to the edge of the bed and licked Landon’s hand.
“Dandy’s okay,” Landon whispered, his eyes closing again. Avery rubbed his back for a few minutes until he was sure the little boy was asleep before he stepped out of the bedroom and closed the door.
Making his way silently down the stairs, Avery pulled a bottle of water from the refrigerator, then snatched up another one for Lydia. Out of habit, he started to check the back door but instead, he stepped outside.
The night air was fresh, clear, and crisp, and the stars were out in the billions. AveryAidan Holcomb stood there and looked out toward the barn. In the distance, one of the calves lowed, and he knew it had wandered a little too far away from its mother in the darkness and was afraid. She’d find it and pull it back into the herd, and all would be well. Except for the occasional coyote call and an owl hooting, it was silent there in the country, and he turned his face upward and decided to use the stars to count his blessings.
But it only took him a few seconds to realize there weren’t enough stars. And there never would be. More than money, or cows, or land, he had the love of a family, and especially that fine woman upstairs waiting for him. She meant everything to him, and no matter how many kids they had, they’d always take second place to her. He loved them, but he loved that sassy little blond more than anything. He never could’ve guessed that he’d head out of Clarksville, Tennessee, without a clue where he was going and wander into everything he’d found on Sirus Kinsey’s farm. He’d found happiness. He’d found love.
His heart had found its home.