Excerpt of Lone Star Rising by Darlene Graham

DEAR DIARY,

I feel like a fool for even writing the words Dear Diary — a woman my age (37!), a pregnant mother of three who definitely has better things to do with her time than scribbling in a diary like some teenager.

But I promised my sister Markie that I would start a diary again, just like the three of us did when we were young. Markie said to call it a journal if it made me feel better. Whatever I call it, she claims writing out my feelings will help me, heal me, give me focus, put me in touch with my deepest desires and blah, blah, blah. I don't know about all that, but God knows I could use a little diversion.

So here goes.

Dear journal, or diary or whatever, allow me to introduce myself. Roberta McBride Tellchick. Bankrupt widow. Mother of three boys with yet another on the way. Freckle-faced, redheaded middle sister. The one sandwiched in between two smart, vivid brunettes like a piece of pale cheese.

What can I possibly have to write about here? My sister has no concept of what it is like to walk in my low-heeled shoes. She's caught up in an exciting, glamorous life in Austin and has recently gotten herself blissfully married to the gorgeous man of her dreams.

Okay. That's not fair. Markie's had some serious pain to deal with in her life, and I have to say, I'm very proud of the way she handled herself. I mean, giving a baby up for adoption when she was only seventeen! And then seeing him again out of the blue when he's all grown up. Markie claims writing in her baby diary kept her sane while she endured all that pain so long ago. She says it's in our blood, this urge to write everything down. She says I'm not supposed to censor my feelings on these pages or worry about what anybody else thinks.

Okay. I have just had the day from hell.

I look like I've got a beach ball stuck under my shirt and I didn't have time to wash my hair before I went to work. I'm exhausted because I have to go to work at dark-thirty, which is the way of it when you're a lowly waitress in a diner that specializes in the monster Texas breakfast. We have to get in there and help Parson — that's been old Virgil's "real" name ever since he was in the Navy — roll out the biscuits and chop up the home fries.

Nattie Rose, the other waitress at the Hungry Aggie, told me I don't have to come in early if I don't want to. She is too kind, that Nattie Rose. Has a real heart of gold, even if she does cake on the eye makeup worse than Tammy Faye Bakker. I told her that I am grateful for the job, and I am not going to start slacking off my very first week. Especially since I'll be taking off to have the baby in only five short weeks. It's ridiculous for me to be working at all in my condition. I know that. But Danny left me and the boys with nothing, and I do mean not a thing. It looks like the farm is gone for good now, not that I'm sorry to be away from that place, away from the terrible memories.

I try my best not to relive the fire, but sometimes your mind just insists on rolling the video anyway, you know? It's been almost four months now and I still don't have the report from the local fire marshal. What's the holdup?

At least I finally started getting the social security checks, thank the Lord, but that money barely covers groceries and rent. It's not enough for those new Nike tennis shoes my oldest is suddenly needing. Not enough for the extras I'll be needing for this baby. I'm still holding out hope for the insurance money on the barn.

I don't want to waste paper and ink on my problems. I find it's actually easier to focus on something trivial like my hair. When I woke up and looked at the clock this morning, I had no choice but to twist the mess up on top of my head and clip it up into a treetop. But since my hair's the kind that has a mind of its own, by noon I'd developed a frizzy little orange halo around my face. Very, very cute.

But what does it matter how I look when — now who on earth could be ringing my doorbell? The boys know it's too late to be having any kids over.

WHEN ROBBIE opened the door, the first thing that registered were Zack Trueblood's dark eyes, traveling over her face, then widening with what she imagined to be involuntary shock — or was it disgust? — when he came to her hair. But he rearranged his expression quickly enough. "Hello, Mrs. Tellchick."

"Hello, Zack."

"Did I catch you at a bad time?" Again his gaze slid to her hair, then slammed back down to the porch boards, then flicked up to her face, once again composed and polite. Robbie thought it was decent of him to skip her pumpkin- shaped midsection.

But when he looked once more at her hideous hair, she gave him a level gaze and patted it. "It's easy, you know. I just stick a fork in the toaster and I'm done."

The corner of his mouth lifted a little then, but he didn't actually smile. His expression said he was here on serious business. Oh, Lord help me, Robbie thought. She was in no mood for this. But a bad feeling in her gut told her this was some kind of follow-up visit about the fire.

"May I come in?" The way he said it was almost apologetic. Zack, she remembered from high school, had always been famously polite.

"Sure." The door of the old house Robbie had recently moved into creaked like something out of a horror movie as she opened it wider for him.

Robbie imagined a grossly pregnant widow was so not supposed to think thoughts like, Damn, that man is hot. But boy, was he ever. Deep-set black eyes, bronze complexion, heavy black hair. As he ambled past she couldn't help a quick glance at his muscular backside, and she caught a whiff of the most delicious aftershave she'd ever smelled.

As for herself, Robbie imagined the oniony odor of the home fries over at the Hungry Aggie mixed with the lingering aroma of the spaghetti sauce she'd made for the boys was enough to make any man retch.

She had seen Zack at the diner several times this past week with a couple of his firefighter buddies. Booth six. She suspected those big tips under the saltshaker were from him. Was that out of guilt? Pity? Robbie figured she was the one who should be feeling the guilt. It was her pleas, her screams that drove this man into that burning barn. Her hysteria could have cost him his life, and it had certainly done nothing to save Danny's.

These were her jumbled thoughts as Zack walked past her. That she was a mess, and that his shoulders were to die for. That his whole physique, in fact, was most impressive. He positively dwarfed her, even now, when she was fatter than a cow. Her guess was he spent a lot of time pumping iron over at that fire station.

No sooner had he stepped foot in her house than there came a scary crash from the kitchen. It sounded like glass breaking, followed by a stunningly abnormal silence, followed by the dogs' wild barking, followed by the high- pitched changeling voice of Robbie's twelve-year-old. "Now look what you've done!" he screamed. "Mom's gonna kill you!"

"Shut the hell up!" That clever retort came from Robbie's eight-year-old, who recently acquired that delightful word, along with some others she didn't want to hear in her house. If Danny were alive he'd box his son's ears for talking that way.

The pandemonium that followed — three boys yelling and two dogs barking — made Robbie wince.

"Would you excuse me?" she said sweetly to Zack.

"Oh —" She turned back to him. "Please. Come on in. That is, if you think you can stand it."

This time the corners of Zack's mouth tipped up into a full-fledged grin.

ZACK TRUEBLOOD followed Robbie Tellchick down a narrow corridor that ran parallel to the stairway and ended at a high-ceilinged kitchen at the back of the house. He watched her tangled thatch of hair bounce around on the crown of her head, and wondered if this was the new style or something. Curls upon curls upon curls, and his guess was that none of it had seen a comb today.

She had always been a true redhead, he recalled. He remembered how pretty her hair was in high school, strands of spun copper mixed with streaks of blond. The rest of her looked equally disheveled. What was with the perpetual overalls? She even wore them at the diner, as if she didn't care what anybody thought of her.

The last time he'd been to her home she'd looked even frumpier, if that were possible, standing in the shadows behind the screened door of her mudporch out on the farm, cinched up in a faded pink bathrobe that looked to have seen better days. She'd grown even rounder, too. Was the poor woman having twins? He dared not let his eyes travel down to her gently swishing backside. Wouldn't that be some kind of sin against nature, to check out a pregnant woman's behind? He guessed it was those deviling memories of how cute her bottom had been in high school that made his eyes flick down there anyway.

He immediately wished they hadn't.

Despite the deterioration of her looks, he had found himself as drawn to Robbie Tellchick as ever. What was it about her? Her cheery determination to please even the grumpiest customer? Her laugh? Surely that. He could pick up the sound of it from all the way across the diner. Was it the way she'd taken hold with her boys, valiantly trying to be both mother and father? He'd seen her at a T- ball game last summer, pregnant and hot, but cheering on her youngest with all her might. And now here Zack was, about to add to her problems.

Whatever his fascination with the woman, he didn't have long to dwell on it, or his guilt, because two mutts came hurtling out of the kitchen and bumped into Robbie's legs, knocking her off balance and backward into Zack.

"Whoa!" Zack said as the dogs shot out the open front door while Zack grabbed for Robbie in several awkward places as she stumbled against him. He'd never felt anything so soft! All women were soft and, yes, he delighted in that softness, but this was a kind of softness that was unearthly, so buoyant as to be angelic, almost as if she herself were the baby. She pushed off of him like he was a brick wall and yelled, "Those dang dogs!"

Then she barreled onward into the kitchen.

The three Tellchick boys froze like little statues when they saw Zack coming up behind her. He hoped it wasn't because their young minds were flashing back to the one and only time they'd seen him before. But Zack had been in full firefighting regalia that night — turnouts, helmet, asbestos mask. Covered in black soot. Eyebrows and hair singed to brittle little filaments of scorched beige. Surely they didn't recognize him, standing here in a clean and pressed day uniform. He hoped they didn't connect him with his failure in the event that had shattered their young lives. He wondered if their mother had told them who Zack Trueblood was — the man who hadn't saved their father.