Life goes on whether you like it or not. The quality of that
life is up to you. That is the lesson both Logan and Nora
have to learn but before they can do that they have to
realize they deserve to be happy. Their happiness seems
rather illusive as their pasts keep haunting them -- riddling
them with guilt. Loan's guilt stems from his inability to
prevent the death of his young son. Nora's is her inability
to measure up to her deceased husband's idea of the perfect
ranch wife. Leave it to a kid to bring a parent to the
breaking point.
Nora's oldest son Sean is haunted
by memories of his father's death and the only one who seems
to be able to reach him is the younger brother Harry. Nora
valiantly tries to give Sean the benefit of a doubt but his
misbehaving seems to be getting out of hand. Sean needs his
mother as an ally but can't seem to earn her trust. Now he
is facing blame for damages at Two Wings their neighbor,
Logan Cathcart's wild bird sanctuary and as expected has no
one willing to listen to his side. Nora's truly worried
about how solitary Sean has become and thinking to tackle
two issues at once suggests to Logan that he allow Sean to
come work at Two Wings to amend for the damages he did
there. Logan, at first, worries about getting involved with
the Archer family, most pointedly Nora. There is no doubt
that he is acutely aware of a growing attraction to the
widow Archer but is sure that it will go nowhere. They are
in socially and financially different leagues and for now
his life revolves around getting Two Wings ready for its
public opening. But life has a way of interfering with the
best of plans and as Logan begins to spend more time with
Sean he sees past the troublemaker to a troubled kid that he
could help. Sean might not have broken wings but his broken
heart is preventing him from learning to fly just the same.
Logan could very well be the best thing to happen to this
Archer family in a long time. Now he just has to realize
it.
This is an engaging story about trust and love --
essential elements in any relationship -- easy to lose and
difficult to earn back. No one here is anything other than
ordinary but their problems seem to need some intervention.
Mother's are notoriously good arbitrators as you will once
again see in this story. Enjoy.
Life was better for Logan
Cathcart before he crossed paths with nine-year-old Sean
Archer. Because now he has to face the kid's mom, Nora. It's
not that Logan doesn't like Nora. He does--a lot. Perhaps
too much. Even though she's captivated him from the moment
they met, socially he and the wealthy widow next door are
leagues apart.
Still, keeping his distance is next to
impossible with Nora constantly on his ranch, determined to
clean up the mess Sean made. With the kind of sparks that
erupt whenever she and Logan are within touching distance of
each other, there's a whole lot of trouble in Logan's
future...the adult, let's-get-serious kind of trouble.
Excerpt
A dragonfly hovered inches from Nora Archer's shoulder, its
wings hypnotically beating the warm air of the hacienda
courtyard. She ought to get up, get going, get Sean ready
for Little League, but peaceful moments were too rare these
days. She used to love sitting out here in the late
afternoon, when the Bull's Eye Ranch was quiet, the shadows
stretched across the bricks, and the breeze was full of
honeysuckle and wind chimes.
Milly, the housekeeper, was vacuuming on the second floor, a
way of keeping an eye on Sean without making him feel like a
prisoner. So, temporarily off duty, Nora lay on the lounger,
prepared to steal a few more minutes.
A battle was coming with Sean, and she wasn't eager to
engage. They'd quarreled as soon as he got home from school,
about whether his homework could wait until after the game.
She hadn't budged, though as always she'd needed to steel
herself against the pain behind his angry hazel eyes. He was
only nine…He'd been through so much.…
But dealing with Sean called for discipline and routine, not
sloppy emotion and inconsistency. So she'd held firm. As
usual, he'd stomped upstairs in a fury and slammed his door.
Most days, after a scene like that, she would send Harry up
to remind Sean it was time to shower and put on his uniform.
No matter how prickly Sean was with his mother, no matter
how sour he'd grown about his former love, baseball, he
never took it out on Harry.
The hero-worship of a little brother had once been the bane
of Sean's existence, but not anymore. These days, Harry was
the only one Sean seemed to trust.
Unfortunately, Harry was playing at a friend's house.
So for just a few minutes more, she wanted to watch the
dragonfly, bask in the spring sunshine, and pretend
everything was normal. She wanted to pretend that her boys
had a father, who at any moment might come whistling around
the corner, shouldering a trio of fishing poles. She wanted
to pretend that Sean hadn't grown surly and difficult, that
he hadn't begun to hate everything he used to love, and that
his nights were peaceful under acres of starry Archer sky,
not haunted by nightmares of madmen, guns and fear.
A lovely fantasy, but it couldn't last. Too soon the quiet
hour was gone. She opened her eyes and saw that the sunlight
had abandoned the last inch of courtyard, the shadow of the
tiled roofline on the west touching the shadow of the tupelo
on the east.
She sat up. Had she just heard a sound…maybe a car
coming through the iron gates at the front of the hacienda?
Evelyn, already? Could it really be almost five?
Nora's sister-in-law had agreed to picked up Harry and meet
them here so that they could ride to the game together.
Darn. Nora had hoped to get the war with Sean over and won
before Evelyn showed up to witness it.
Evelyn always meant well, but the older woman always
preferred sandpaper to honey, so she and Nora rarely agreed
about how to handle even the smallest parenting issues.
Nora was tugging on her sneakers when, suddenly, the air
seemed to burst into chaotic sound.
First, the shrill ringing of the telephone. She felt around
under the lounger for the cordless handset. Just as her
fingers closed around it, a whoosh of air swept through the
courtyard, followed by the bang of the massive wood-and-iron
front door.
Then voices. Her sister-in-law's agitated alto. "Sean
Archer! I told you I want an answer! What have you been
doing?"
"Sean!" The short, high-pitched squeal of the
housekeeper, Milly. "How did you get out? What happened
to you?"
And, finally, the tearful defiance of her older son. "I
didn't do it. I don't care what they say. I didn't do it."
Nora flew into the great room, the telephone still ringing
in her hand. She determined first that Sean was all in one
piece—and so was Harry, who stood holding Evelyn's
hand, eyes wide. Clearly upset, all of them, but no one
seriously hurt.
Then she noticed that Sean was covered in dirt, and his left
cheek was bleeding.
"I found him trying to sneak in through the side loggia.
Look at him! God only knows what he's been up to."
Evelyn tried to grab Sean's shirt, but he ducked away.
"Explain yourself, Sean!"
Nora winced at the tone, which was guaranteed to make
Sean—or anyone—mulish. "Honey," she said
more gently. "What happened?"
He took one step toward his mother, as though his instinct
was to run to her arms. But then he checked himself. His
eyebrows drew together, and his jaw jutted out. "I
didn't do it. That guy is a liar."
Harry had no scruples about racing over and burrowing his
face into his mother's stomach. "Sean's bleeding, Mom.
His face is bleeding."
"I see that. But it doesn't look too bad, really."
Nora kept her hand on Harry's carroty curls, but she focused
her gaze on her older son. She fought to keep her voice
calm. "What guy, Sean?"
"Over at Two Wings. That son of a—"
Evelyn, whose weather-beaten face was every bit as grim as
her nephew's, raised her palm. "Sean Archer. We don't
use words like that."
Nora felt a twinge of frustration. Bad language obviously
wasn't the real problem here. Two Wings, a newly constructed
private bird sanctuary, was the property next door to Bull's
Eye Ranch. But in Texas terms, next door meant
maybe a mile away. Could Sean possibly have been at Two
Wings while she thought he was safely pouting in his room?
Without meeting Evelyn's reproachful eyes, she bent down and
spoke steadily to her son. "What guy at Two Wings? Do
you mean Mr. Cathcart?"
"No." He wiped at his cheek, his fist coming away
streaked with dark red mud. Nora saw gratefully that the
skin beneath was no longer bleeding—a fairly
superficial scrape. "I mean Mr. Cathcart's manager. He's
probably the one who was calling just now."
Nora glanced down at the phone in her hand. It had given up
its demands and gone silent, cycling over to voice mail.
Sean sniffed. "He thinks I killed a bird. But I didn't."
"Killed?" Evelyn's voice roared. "For
God's sake, Sean, what did you—"
"I told you I didn't," Sean began hotly.
"Evelyn, please—"
"Mom," Harry broke in, his voice rising as he
absorbed the agitation around him. "Mom, is Sean okay?
Does he have to go to the hospital?" The little boy's
voice trembled, and his arms tightened around her waist.
"We don't like the hospital."
Her heart squeezed hard at the childish understatement, and
all the pain that lay behind it. Little boys shouldn't have
the kinds of memories her sons had. They should barely know
what hospitals were for.
"Of course not," she said with authority. "It's
just a tiny scrape."
Harry lifted his face, brightening, but Sean's expression
grew darker. His hazel eyes flashed, and his red eyebrows
dug down toward the bridge of his nose. "I still want to
go to the game."
"You must be joking," Evelyn snapped. "Do you
think this kind of behavior will be rewarded by—"
"It's not a reward!" Sean interrupted his aunt
without thinking, but Nora cringed inside, well aware that
the older woman had already been offended, and would now be
doubly so. Every social faux pas the boys committed was
proof, in Evelyn's eyes, that Nora hadn't taught them
manners…or respect for their aunt.
"I hate baseball." Sean turned to Nora. "But you
said it was a commitment, remember? You said when people
made commitments they had to follow through, and—"
"This is different."
Nora knew what she'd said, but she also knew the rules about
being consistent with your parenting message. Whoever
invented those rules must never have been a parent.
"We need to get that cheek looked at. And then you've
got a lot of explaining to do. Most importantly, if you've
been in some kind of trouble over at Two Wings, we need to
talk to Mr. Cathcart."
"We certainly do," Evelyn agreed.
"No!" Sean wheeled on her, his hands fisted.
"Not you! Why would you go?"
Oh, God, could this get any worse? Nora tossed her
sister-in-law a smile, asking her to understand that Sean
was afraid, and undoubtedly ashamed. He loved his aunt. He
probably just didn't want any extra witnesses to his disgrace.
But Evelyn didn't understand. Nora could see by the
narrowing of her eyes. She looked as if she'd been struck.
Evelyn Archer Gellner was a tough Texas widow, pure steel
from the inside out. But the boys, her only blood relations
left in this world, were her Achilles' heel. They could
break her heart by simply twitching away from her kiss.
If only she could lose some of that barking bossiness,
perhaps they could enjoy her more. But right now Evelyn's
wounded pride was not the focus.
"I want you to go upstairs with Milly," Nora said
quietly. "I want you to wash up and change into clean
clothes. I'm going to call Mr. Cathcart."
"He's going to be mad. Because his manager is a liar,
and—"
"Sean. Enough."
Sean recognized his mother's tone, and he took in a huge
breath, preparing to throw a fit. But Milly, who had worked
at the ranch since Nora's late husband had been a little
boy—and, thus, for the duration of their
marriage—recognized the tone, too. This discussion was
over. She swooped in and took Sean by the arm before he
could get out the first furious syllable.
"Come on," Milly said. Sean balked, digging in his
heels, but Milly, who could see three hundred from her spot
on the scales, just grinned. "You don't want me to have
to sling you over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes, now,
do you? With your little brother looking on?"
At that threat, Harry mustered the courage to leave his spot
in Nora's embrace. He walked over to his big brother and
took his hand.
"I know you didn't kill anything, Sean," he said.
"Really. And Mom knows, too."
Born to be a peacemaker, Nora thought with a rush
of tenderness. And thank God they had one in the family
these days. Evelyn looked like a thundercloud, and Sean's
scowl was almost as fierce.
But then Sean glanced toward Nora, and for a minute she
thought she saw something else hiding behind the hostility.
Something like…hope.
Hope that she believed in him.
In spite of the other sins, the tempers, the sneaking out,
the running away and whatever had caused all that mud and
blood, he wanted her to trust that he hadn't done anything
as terrible as destroy a living creature.
"Harry's right," she said, praying it was true.
"I know you didn't kill anything." She ignored the
intake of breath from Evelyn, who clearly thought she was,
once again, being too soft.
Refusing to meet her sister-in-law's outraged gaze, Nora
watched as Milly and the boys climbed the winding staircase,
Sean dragging his dirty hand along the iron railing. When
they rounded the first curve, she called up the voice mail.
"Nora," an elegant baritone said smoothly, "this
is Logan Cathcart. My manager just said your son was at the
sanctuary. He was—He'd been—" A short
silence. "It's nothing serious, but…I think we
should talk."
She shook her head, frustrated, and clicked the button.
"He didn't leave any details," she said, for
Evelyn's benefit.
She began scrolling through the handset's electronic address
book. "I'd better call him and see what really happened.
His message said it wasn't serious, but of course he might
be trying not to upset me. He's a very nice man, actually."
She had just found the Two Wings's main number when she
sensed Evelyn's gaze boring into the top of her head. She
glanced up. Her sister-in-law's expression was even more
unpleasant than Nora had imagined. It tried unsuccessfully
to disguise her real anger as amusement.
"I know you want to come with us, Evvie," Nora said,
trying to smile. "But I honestly think we'd do better
alone. Sean's pride is one of his problems, and if you see
him—"
"Oh, I know you would rather go alone. That doesn't
surprise me. I was just surprised that…You have his
number on speed dial?"
"What?" Nora looked at the handset, confused.
"Whose?"
"His." Evelyn jerked her head toward the phone, as
if there were someone in it. "Logan Cathcart's."
Nora's hands stilled on the keypad. She was so shocked, she
couldn't think of a single response. Evelyn's
face…her tone…
What could she possibly be hinting at?
But then Nora realized her silence sounded guilty. It even
felt guilty, which was ridiculous. She had nothing
to be guilty about. She hadn't spoken to Logan Cathcart,
except to say hello if they passed in town, since Harrison's
funeral six months ago.
She'd hardly exchanged ten words with him even then. Or for
several months before Harrison's death, for that matter.
Occasionally, in the middle of the night, Nora might wrestle
with a guilty conscience about the handsome New Englander
who had shocked Texas society by turning good cattle acres
into a bird sanctuary, but Evelyn couldn't possibly know that.
Could she?
"Of course I have the Two Wings's number programmed. Why
wouldn't I? They're our closest neighbors."
Evelyn's smile was cold. "And he is, as you say, such a
very nice man. The kind of man you'd like to
see…alone."
Nora set down the phone carefully on the end table beside
Harrison's favorite leather couch. She faced Evelyn
squarely, and waited for her to explain.
Clearly in no hurry to do so, Evelyn stared back, folding
her arms neatly in front of her chest. Though she was almost
sixty now, her skin leathered by years of too much sun, she
was still a handsome woman. She wore her salt-and-pepper
hair cut short and straight around her ears, accenting her
black, bright eyes. Her body had been kept young by constant
motion.
If she'd ever given a human being the same warmth she
bestowed on her Jack Russell terriers, she might have been
quite beautiful. In the ten years Nora had known her,
though, she hadn't seen that happen.
"I'm not sure what you're trying to imply, Evelyn."
"Of course you are."
Nora hesitated, feeling as if she'd been caught on a
dangerous square of an invisible chessboard. She knew that
Evelyn didn't like her. For so many reasons—many of
them completely justified.
From the outset, Evelyn had been suspicious of a young
nobody's motives in marrying a very rich man twice her age.
When it was clear she couldn't prevent the marriage, Evelyn
had tried to train Nora to deserve the name Archer, but in
spite of her best efforts Nora's social skills were slack,
her ranching inferior.
She didn't keep the correct distance with the servants, she
couldn't manage the appropriate intimacy with the horses and
she never made friends easily with Harrison's business pals.
And, of course, there was the matter of Bull's Eye, the
ten-thousand-acre horse and cattle ranch that had been the
Archer home for generations.