Chapter Twenty-Two
Charlie drove onto Dixon McClintock Farms, the messy business of filing a restraining order behind her, and eyed the banjo beside her.
Excitement brimmed. Relief relaxed her, the officer assuring her he’d serve the restraining order immediately, and she slowed, rolling by the shops, scanning the faces of the farmhands, and eventually rolled down her window when she didn’t see Thaddeus’s truck.
“I’m looking for T.R.?” she called.
He shook his head. “Ain’t seen him since this afternoon!”
She glanced at the time. There was no way they were still getting ice cream. It was nearly six.
She pulled up to the farmhouse and got out, leaving her Rover idling, and knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again. Moved to a window and glanced inside. All seemed still. Lights killed except for sunlight streaming through windows.
She returned to the door, hesitated, then tested the knob. Locked.
She knocked harder. “Daisy? Thad?”
Her pulse quickened.
She took a calming breath, walking down the porch to peer in another window.
Of course there was a logical explanation.
She shouldn’t jump to conclusions. This wasn’t like the time that Jason had taken Daisy, and not shown up to drop her off, or when Jason hadn’t answered his phone for hours, having been passed out at a friend’s place hungover while Daisy ate stale potato chips, hungry…
She tempered herself with a deep breath, quelling the irrational fears that Jason had bred into every fiber of her every thought. Trouble wasn’t like Jason. He was cocky, but he was a good guy, working hard, and helping her out.
She strode over to the workshops, peering inside a rolling door that was dragged wide. A couple farm hands were working inside and looked up amid the rumbling air compressor.
“Have you seen T.R.?”
They shook their heads. “Was out in the pasture stocking troughs earlier today, but ain’t seen him since he stabled Beau.” And that had been at lunchtime, right after Daisy’s summer program had dismissed, and she’d arrived out here with Heart’s records.
Her pulse quickened again, and this time, despite her efforts to calm it, a twist kept tightening in her belly. She dragged out her phone from her bib pocket, willing herself to remain calm as sweat beaded her brow, and texted T.R. as she stared off the front porch into the pastures.
Charlie: “Where are you?”
No reply came. Nerves gathered in her hands, as she strode around the porch, jogged around the house and off the back steps. No one on the back lawn. No one playing soccer in the empty goal that Seth practiced on.
Charlie: “Not kidding. Where are you two?”
You’re doing the right thing, T.R. had assured her when he’d met them at the station. She took another deep breath. There had to be a logical explanation.
She hurried across a gravel drive, across a work yard, to a cattle chute and rotolactor barn. No Thaddeus.
But he said they’d visit the horses…
Thank God! Her rational side finally kicked in, and she took another calming breath. She walked through the dust toward the stables, hearing a man talking, hard to distinguish amid all the farm noise.
She smiled. She’d been foolish to imagine scenarios that Jason would have done, even if she couldn’t help it.
“Hey, you two…”
A tall, dark-haired man looked up as her words trailed off. Chiseled jaw, tall, stacked, lean, Stetson low over his eyes. The spitting image of Tyler Dixon with dark brown eyes to boot if not a touch taller, but he wasn’t Tyler.
He touched the brim of his hat at her and unhooked his horse’s halter from the crossties, leading it into a stall, his gait an uneven shuffle, when another man in the hayloft, who looked eerily similar to T.R. if not for his cropped hair and different nose, lowered a bale to the floor from a pully.
“Howdy.” He flashed a charming grin and jutted out his chin.
Oh man, and he had the same playful attitude, too. “I’m looking for Thaddeus?”
The charmer from the hayloft shook his head with an amused smirk. “Thaddeus, eh … Ain’t seen him since midday.”
No one had seen him since midday?
“But I’d say our cousin’s a lucky bastard if a beauty like you is lookin’ for him.”
The dark-haired man harrumphed at the remark inside a box stall where he was settling his horse.
“Cousin?”
At this, the dark-haired man came out of the stall.
He held out a hand to her, tattoo of a soldier on his forearm, and shook hers firmly.
“Travis Dixon. Up there’s Toby, mine and Tyler’s brother,” came his deep, soft-spoken voice.
“T.R. and Toby are the asshole littles,” he deadpanned, and yet, an undercurrent of affection warmed the insult.
“My brother from another mother,” the blond added, his grin so much like Thaddeus’s.
“He’s watching my daughter.”
The men’s brows shot up. They flashed an unreadable look at each other. “I’ll be damned…” Toby murmured, shaking his head as if he’d just had a revelation. “You’re his Flower Girl?”
God, her blush. What was she, a schoolgirl being told she was pretty for the first time?
She nodded. “I’ve tried texting him, but he isn’t answering.”
The blond in the hayloft nodded. “Give him a call. He hates texting.”
Dyslexic.
“Yeah, I forgot. He mixed up a couple numbers when he gave me his cell,” she muttered.
As much as he wanted her to trust him, he hadn’t talked to her about his reading difficulties yet, only talked to her daughter when he thought she wasn’t listening.
She pulled out her cell and hit his number this time, waving a thank you and walking out as the blond reached for a trucker cap and tipped it to her, placing it on his head.
“Damn … the boy’s watching her kid, and he screwed up his phone number?” trickled out behind her from the younger brother’s mouth.
“He’s so gone for this one…” the soft-spoken one said. “About time someone sees past his mistakes and gives him a chance…”
Mistakes?
Chuckling rumbled, as their words faded onto the farm noise.
The cell rang. And rang. It went to voicemail.
She hung up.
Called back.
Called back again as she hastened back to her Rover, passing an empty mechanic’s shop with an aluminum sign hung over the door. Rex Auto Works.
Voicemail again. “Rex Auto Works. Can’t talk now. Don’t text. Leave a message.” Beep.
“Thad where are you? I’m looking all over and…” An incoming call reverberated through her message.
She whipped the phone away from her ear to see Trouble flash on the screen.
She answered. “Oh my God, where are you?”
“Huh? What’s wrong?”
“Where are you?” she demanded, her voice wavering. “I called, and your cousins—”
“Baby—”
“You’re not here, and I texted but you didn’t answer and no one’s here—”
“Flower Girl—”
“And I can’t find Daisy and—”
“Charlie!”
The tears finally pricked as her voice shimmied, and she stifled them hard.
“Baby, what the hell is wrong?” he growled through the cell, huffing as if he paced away from wherever, and lowering his voice to a dark rumble promising pain. “You’re crying. Is it Jason?”
She slowed at his protective growl. He thought she was in trouble? “I just.” Her voice cracked. “I can’t find Daisy.”
He rested, quiet for a beat. “You all right? I don’t need to come find that asshole and—”
“I’m fine.” She bit her lip when he exhaled as if coming to a realization. Guilt niggled. “I was worried. I’m here at the farm. I thought you’d be here.”
“She’s at my place helpin’ me. She’s fine, baby. Relax.” He tried to sound normal. “Girlie, say hi to your momma!” he called away from the speaker and a cheerful voice chirped in the distance. “Hi, Momma! We got banana splits! And I got my reading all done with the trick T. Rex showed me!”
How he’d helped her yesterday before falling asleep on her couch, filling her house with his presence.
“And I got to pet Beau!” Daisy squealed. Charlie could picture Daisy jumping to punctuate each word. “Will you let T. Rex teach me to ride? He said he’d teach me if you said it was okay…”
“See? She’s having the time of her life,” T.R’s voice returned as Daisy chattered away, an edge of eagerness to his words. “Deep breath.”
Relief rushed through her when…
“I thought you were bringing her to the farm. Where’s your place?”
“The farmhouse belongs to Ty and his fam. Just keep going past it and stay on the main farm road where it winds up through the pine trees. I’m in the cabin at the top of the ridge.”
“Cabin?”
The knot in her chest unraveled. She jumped back in her Rover and continued up the gravel road, winding into pine trees and switchbacks until she spilled out onto an escarpment that spanned the horizon in an arc.
And the view!
The road split here, the main stretch continuing down into the back acreage upon which sat a defunct oil grasshopper. A tangent road forked off along the ridge to a cedar cabin in the distance where a mint-green truck was parked in a detached garage.
She turned at the fork, bobbed and dipped over the gravel, as the cabin nestled into the pine trees with a beautiful wraparound deck and “A” window that overlooked the western horizon, loomed bigger.
She held her breath … she’d always dreamt of a house like this!
A matching cedar shed sat with the doors propped open, a pristine shop on display, where lumber, pavers, and other building supplies were neatly stacked.
An old playset? Maybe a previous foreman had had a family here before?
And lilacs planted around the perimeter?
Spilling about in a gorgeous fluff of lavender.
His truck was pulled into the tidy garage, devoid of anything other than a generator and a canister of gas.
Voices filtered from behind the cabin as she got out and hauled her banjo with her.
Humming. A deep baritone reverberating on the wind to a soft radio playing tunes.
This was where he lived? Her heart clenched so tightly with years of yearning she’d poured into her scrapbook as a little girl wanting so badly to escape.
She circumvented it, gazing up at the stone chimney touching the sky, and followed the mulched path, followed the sounds of T.R.
’s calm voice and Daisy’s incessant chatter to a patio decked out in lawn chairs, firepit, smoker, and grill, when her eyes landed on them.
Among the tree line at the back of his yard. An entire chicken coop framed in.
A toolbelt slouched around his hips below his buckle. His old boots were scuffed and dusty. His bare, tan arms in that old tank he’d worn earlier, his work shirt tucked into his back pocket like a rag, his cowboy hat shielding his eyes as shards of light cast rays through the fragrant pine boughs.
And there was Daisy. Happy as could be. Framed within his powerful arms as he hummed soft and low, a palm braced on the plywood desk lying across two sawhorses, while he showed her something with the other.