Long Way Home. Gena Dalton

his gear bag for the usual aches and pains from bull riding.

      For one long moment, he dreaded moving and creating greater pain, then, without stopping, he lowered his arm and began to try to sit up. He wouldn’t think about it; he wouldn’t let the pain into his mind.

      It flowed in anyway, but he got to his feet in spite of it and staggered to his bag and to the bathroom. Ten minutes later, his face and hair wet by hasty ablutions performed while unable to bend over the sink, he stepped outside. He stood on the stoop and squinted in the sunlight.

      Time to go up to the house. Time to face the music. Time to see his mom. He’d feel guilty at the sight of her, but she’d welcome him anyway.

      Carefully, he stepped down onto the grass.

      “Mommy, Mommy, look at me!”

      The trilling cry of a child’s voice stopped him. It was close, within a stone’s throw. None of his siblings had a child, did they? A wave of disorientation swept through him.

      Did they? How long had he been gone, anyhow?

      He turned around and saw a golden-haired little girl, maybe four or five years old, standing on the bottom railing of the old wooden fence, leaning over, offering a handful of grass to Annie, who was ambling over to investigate it.

      “She likes me already!”

      Probably the child of one of the hired hands.

      “I see you,” a woman said. “Be sure to hold your hand flat and don’t let her get your fingers by mistake.”

      Jo Lena. It wasn’t some woman, it was Jo Lena. The irresistibly husky voice was unmistakable.

      Well. Chalk one up to the Hill Country grapevine. He’d expected word to get around, but not this fast—not Jo Lena Speirs on his doorstep first thing in the morning.

      His breath stopped as she walked into his view.

      Hair the color of honey, hair that felt like silk in his hands, hanging down her back in one thick braid. Hair pulled back from her beautiful face, tanned just a little from the sun. She was too fair to go without a hat, but today she wasn’t wearing one.

      She saw him then. Saw him and stopped dead in her tracks.

      “Monte!”

      Her voice vibrated with his name.

      His heart racketed in his chest. Did she still care for him?

      Cold reality killed that thought as the miserable guilt washed over him.

      How in the world could she? He had left her without a word.

      She remembered that at the same time he did. Her big, blue eyes narrowed and she turned away from him to check on the little girl.

      Mommy. The little girl had called her Mommy.

      The strangest sense of loss came over him.

      No, Jo Lena didn’t still care. She hadn’t cared for a long, long time. This child had to have been born within a year of when he left the Hill Country.

      Now Jo Lena had her arm around the little girl and she was looking at him again.

      “Monte, come and meet Lily Rae,” she called. “We need to talk to you about Annie.”

      He walked toward them.

      “Can you believe she just came through the sale?” he said.

      “No, and I can’t believe you bought her,” she said, in a warm, cordial tone.

      A tone that clearly said they were fine acquaintances and nothing more.

      He walked up to them.

      “Monte, I’d like you to meet Lily Rae,” she said.

      Lily Rae held out her hand like a grown-up and gave him a straight look from her deep blue eyes. The very same shade of blue as Jo Lena’s.

      “Nice to meet you,” she said in her piping little voice.

      Well, her voice wasn’t anything like her mother’s. At least, not yet.

      “Same here,” Monte said.

      Her smile was that of an imp. Her hand was tiny.

      “Are you LydaAnn’s brother?” Lily Rae seriously wanted to know.

      “Yes,” Monte said.

      The little girl looked at him, considering.

      “She already has two brothers.”

      Great. Even this kid who didn’t know him thought he was unnecessary. He was home, all right.

      “You don’t think she can use another one?” he asked the child.

      Lily Rae shook her head.

      “Clint and Jackson are enough,” she said decisively.

      Then she flashed him a smile that looked so much like Jo Lena’s—which he had not seen for years—it brought back a world of hurt.

      “You can be my big brother,” Lily Rae announced. “I don’t have any and I need one.”

      He was so busy thinking about Jo Lena’s smile from six years ago that it didn’t quite soak in. And then it did. And it warmed a tiny cockle of his heart.

      “Why do you need one?” he foolishly asked.

      “To give me a hard time,” she said. “LydaAnn says that’s what brothers are good for.”

      A hole like a crater opened inside him. What had he missed in six years? He didn’t even know his brothers and sisters anymore.

      “It takes one to know one,” he said, his voice suddenly rough with emotion. “LydaAnn can give a person a pretty hard time herself.”

      At least she used to. She must be a grown woman now. Had her personality changed, too?

      “I know,” Lily Rae said happily. “She’s my big sister.”

      Then she turned back to the mare, stroking her nose and crooning wordlessly. Jo Lena had raised a happy little girl.

      “How much are you asking for this mare, Monte?” Jo Lena said.

      “She’s not for sale.”

      Two pairs of blue eyes with identical expressions—worried, but mostly surprised—fixed on him.

      “You can’t be serious.”

      “Oh, but I am.”

      Jo Lena smiled. Lily Rae glanced at her, then went back to petting the mare.

      “Everybody knows what you paid for her, Monte. Don’t try a horse trade with me.”

      “I’m not,” he said flatly. “I bought her to keep.”

      “Why? You’re a bull rider, going down the road.”

      Used to be. I don’t know what I am now.

      “Bought ’er to look at,” he said.

      “Once every six years?”

      “You sound downright sarcastic there, Jo Lena. It doesn’t become you.”

      “As if I’m worried about your opinion,” she said tartly.

      Six years and motherhood seemed to have put a little edge on Jo Lena.

      “You’re trying to buy a horse from me that’s not for sale,” he pointed out.

      “Look, Monte,” she said earnestly, “I’ll have to take out a loan to pay you what you paid for her. I’ll do it and add a five-hundred dollar profit.”

      Her eyes were so blue. A deep, bluebonnet kind of blue. But she still hadn’t smiled at him since the moment she saw him. Not a real smile, the way only Jo Lena could smile.