Lone Star Diary. Darlene Graham

she’d choked on it. He had checked her left hand then, its slender fingers entwined with the other hand around the grip of a heavy revolver. A diamond the size of Dallas had winked at him in the blazing Southwest sun.

      He’d never met a woman that way, while she held a gun on him in a firm firing stance. When she shot the head off the copperhead snake coiled less than a yard from his boot, he had decided this particular woman was something else.

      Too bad this Frankie McBride…Hostler was married.

      Five Points. He was headed back there for sure. Back to the home place of Frankie McBride.

      CHAPTER TWO

      My birthday. And I cannot believe I am actually writing these words in this journal: I am divorcing Kyle. I signed the papers yesterday. The weird thing is, ever since I made my decision, I’ve felt this enormous sense of…peace. Well, relief at least. And the strangest…euphoria from facing the truth.

      My sister Robbie was right about one thing. Writing it down in this journal has clarified the hell out of things. I guess keeping a journal runs in our blood. Great-grandmother McBride started that tradition back in the territory days. I’ve been scribbling the most atrocious stuff in here, mostly about how I’d like to murder Kyle, but I couldn’t believe how seeing what Kyle had done written in black and white helped me face up to what I had to do.

      I caught a glimpse of Robbie’s journal once. A cheap thing from Wal-Mart with a picture of a puppy dog on the front. That’s the main difference between me and my younger sister. She takes life as it comes and I manage it to death.

      But I doubt I’ll change my ways. I’m turning forty today, and being fastidious and organized is in my blood, too. Like Mother.

      I am terrified that I’ll end up like her someday. I seem to be well on my way. Fussing over another woman’s children, starting up another woman’s business, living in another woman’s house, a nineteenth-century rattletrap that would be condemned if not for the improvements Zack Trueblood has made to it.

      Soon Robbie and Zack will be getting married and they’ll move the children out to the farm. The Tellchick-Trueblood Farm, Zack renamed it.

      Then what? Will I become a boring little drudge? Fussing with the displays in the shop, lunching with lady friends, buying extravagant gifts for my niece and nephews? Will I fall into a sad little rut, a childless divorcée piecing together a half-life around her extended family, but in reality, so alone.

      But even with all my fears, I can’t shake this feeling that I’m alive again for the first time in years. As if I’m breaking free. As if I could conquer the world.

      And speaking of the world, time to get out in it. The sun’s up, and I want to get down to the store early. We’re putting up wallpaper today. Robbie’s coming in right after she drops the boys at school.

      FRANKIE MCBRIDE inhaled a bracing dose of icy January air as her numb fingers worked the key in the lock of her sister’s craft shop. It was cold enough in the Hill Country to freeze a Yankee’s behind this morning, but Frankie felt full of unaccountable excitement and purpose. The littlest things seemed to make her happy lately. Her baby niece. This store. Fresh coffee in the morning. It all seemed so vital, so far removed from the sterile life she’d left behind.

      She glanced up and down Main Street. Except for a half dozen antique stores, a handful of upscale art galleries and a general spiffing up for the ever-increasing tourist trade, the main street of Five Points, Texas, had not changed since Frankie’s high school days.

      The store sat nestled where the narrow brick avenue made a gentle S half-way through town, visible to tourists who left the beaten path where five highways converged. Frankie’s dad and Zack Trueblood had done an excellent job of making the shop stand out, with its turned posts and gingerbread trim, painted in authentic Victorian shades of pumpkin, teal and cream. Robbie had insisted that the front door be painted true Texas red, and had carried the signature color over in a stenciled Lone Star design high on the front window and again on the doors of the antique display cabinets.

      Frankie loved this place. She took a second to delight in the familiar—the lavender curves of the Texas Hill Country touched by a golden sunrise, the aroma of Parson’s pancakes wafting from the Hungry Aggie, where a cluster of pickups gathered like cattle at a trough, the whine of the school bus engine, the firefighters raising the single door on the old limestone firehouse that sat in the other curve of the S.

      She jiggled the key as she wondered if Zack was on duty today. Ah. Here he was now, headed for the tiny bakery where the fluorescent lights were glaring and the pastries were hot.

      Zack waved. He was a handsome man, virile and fit. And genuinely kind. Her sister Robbie was so lucky.

      Which reminded Frankie that she was…not so lucky.

      Right on the heels of that deflating thought came guilt. How could she envy her sisters for the love they’d found? Her problems were nothing compared to theirs. Robbie’s husband had been killed in a tragic barn fire only a year earlier. Markie had endured the pain of giving a child up for adoption when she was a mere teenager. She admired the way her sisters had triumphed, had found happiness despite their setbacks.

      Still, Frankie couldn’t help but think that at least Robbie had her children, whereas Frankie had lost all her babies, one after another. Four wrenching miscarriages. She studied Zack’s back and decided it was easier to think about the contrast between solid, generous-hearted firefighter and her own tightly wound, bone-selfish husband. Immediately on the heels of that thought came the memory of meeting that other man, the Texas Ranger, the one with the broad shoulders and piercing eyes. This memory had been deviling her, off and on, for weeks. Her attraction to the man had been immediate, electric, and, to Frankie, thoroughly shocking.

      At first she’d thought it was some kind of rebound thing, being drawn to an attractive man out of sheer loneliness. But her preoccupation with him persisted, and she began to wonder if there had been something special about him after all. Mercifully, the memory faded over the weeks, as if the whole meeting had been some kind of fantasy, and ultimately she was back to her sad reality—divorcing herself from an unfaithful husband.

      Tears stung her eyes, as they did every time she thought about Kyle’s betrayal, but Frankie was quickly learning to shake off self-pity. Work, she had decided, was the answer to her woes. Her sister needed her help, and even with a substantial settlement in the offing, Frankie knew she couldn’t live on Kyle’s money forever. Getting this store up and running was going to solve both of their problems.

      The lock finally clicked open and she bent to pick up the plastic storage tub she’d carried from the trunk of her Mercedes.

      “The Rising Star is looking real good,” a chiming female voice called out. It was Ardella Brown, the proprietor of the flower shop down the walk. “Getting things all organized over there, are you, Frankie?” Ardella nodded at the plastic bin.

      Frankie smiled. “Trying to.”

      “Good girl!” Ardella’s smile was as bright as the eastern sun that glinted off her spectacles. Ever since Ardella and Frankie’s mother had been young women, they had passed each other bits of juicy gossip as if trading sticks of gum. Ardella made no secret of her feelings about the McBride sisters. She liked Robbie, didn’t like Markie, and was carefully respectful, even a tad admiring, of Frankie.

      But Frankie didn’t know how to take Ardella’s new attitude about Robbie’s shop. Marynell had reported back every sniping thing Ardella had said about the beginnings of their enterprise. But recent events made Frankie wonder if Ardella had actually said those things or if Marynell had conveniently inserted words into someone else’s mouth. It was going to be hard to trust their mother ever again.

      One thing was sure, her sister Robbie had been much warmer toward Ardella since Ardella had been alert enough to report smoke on the night of the shop’s fire, saving baby Danielle’s life.

      “Have a good day!” Frankie shot Ardella a smile, scooted inside, plunked the bin