A Cowboy Comes Home by Barbara Dunlop Read Free Book Online Page A

the room. “Did you ever stop to wonder why he did it?”
    “Reed or Wilton?”
    “Your father.”
    Caleb nodded. “I did. For about thirty-six hours straight. I called Reed half a dozen times after I left my lawyer’s office that day. I thought he might have some answers. But he didn’t call back. And eventually his voice-mail box was full and I knew it was hopeless.”
    “Danielle’s office?”
    “Different lawyer.”
    “Oh.”
    Caleb set down the papers and turned to prop himself against the lip of the desk. “I guessed maybe Reed and the old man had a fight, and leaving me the ranch was Wilton’s revenge.”
    “They had about a thousand fights.”
    Caleb gave a cold chuckle. “Wilton fought with me, too. A guy couldn’t do anything right when it came to my old man. If you piled the manure to the right, he wanted it to the left. You used the plastic manure fork, you should have used the metal one. You started brushing from the front of the horse, you should have started from the back—” He stopped himself. Just talking about it made his stomach churn. How the hell Reed had put up with it for ten extra years was beyond Caleb. The guy deserved a medal.
    “My theory,” said Mandy, moving farther into the dimly lit room, “is that once you were gone, he forgot you were such a failure.” An ironic smile took the sting out of her words.
    “While Reed was still here to keep screwing up over and over again?”
    “Got a better theory?”
    “He found my corporation thanks to Google and decided I was worth a damn?” Even as he said the words, Caleb knew it was impossible. He’d spent the better part of his adult life warning himself not to look for his father’s approval. There was nothing down that road but bitter disappointment.
    Mandy perched herself on the inset, cushioned window seat. She was silhouetted now by the lights from the yard. “You have to know you are worth a damn.”
    “You’re too kind.”
    “Reed’s worth a damn, too.”
    “No argument from me.”
    She tucked her feet up onto the wide, bench seat, and he noticed she was wearing whimsical sky-blue-and-pale-pink, mottled socks. It surprised him. Made her seem softer somehow, more vulnerable.
    “I don’t understand why you’re in such a rush to sell,” she said.
    “That’s because you live in the Lyndon Valley and not in Chicago.”
    “Rash decisions are compulsory in Chicago?”
    He moved across the room and took the opposite end of the bench, angling his body toward her and bracing his back against the wall, deciding there was no reason not to give her an explanation. “I’ve had two weeks to think about it.”
    “Reed had ten years.”
    “In many ways, so did I.”
    Mandy shifted her position, smoothing her loose hair back from her face. His gaze hungrily followed her motion.
    “Did you ever wish you’d stayed?”
    He hesitated at the unsettling question, not sure how to answer. Back then, he’d second-guessed himself for months, even years, over leaving Reed. But it all came down to Wilton. “He killed my mother,” Caleb said softly. “I couldn’t reward him for that.”
    “She died of pneumonia.”
    “Because it was left untreated. Because she was terrified of telling him she was sick. Because he would have berated and belittled her for her weakness. Terrells are not weak.”
    “I never thought you were.”
    “I’m not,” he spat, before he realized it wasn’t Mandy he was angry with.
    She tossed back her hair. “Reed wasn’t weak. Yet, he stayed.”
    “He squared it in his head somehow.”
    Reed claimed he wanted to protect his mother’s heritage, since half the ranch had belonged to her family. Which, looking back, was obviously the reason Wilton had married her. The man was incapable of love.
    “She was twenty years younger than him,” Caleb remembered. “Did you know that?”
    “I knew she was younger. I didn’t know by how much. I remember thinking she was beautiful.” Mandy’s voice