The texans secret son, p.1
The Texan's Secret Son, page 1
Marcos picked up a plastic dinosaur. He made it stomp around on the table, then headbutted it into his tea mug with a “grrraaawwrrr!”
It was the most adorable thing she’d ever seen him do.
“Logan seems like a good kid,” he said. “He looks like you.”
“Oh, do you think so?”
“Yeah, in the shape of the eyes.” He made a vague gesture to his own face. “His are brown, though.”
Hazel, actually. Light brown flecked with green...like the ones staring across the table at her right now.
“Guess he gets that from his father,” Marcos said.
Her heart was beating way too fast. She took a sip of her drink and burned her tongue. Warning! Hull breach imminent! Change subject!
But then again...
Logan didn’t openly pine for a father like she had, but he needed a father whether he showed it or not. She owed him that much.
Dear Reader,
It’s summertime at La Escarpa, the Ramirez family ranch—and Marcos, the oldest Ramirez child and only son, is home again after twelve years away. His mother and sisters don’t know what brought him there, and Marcos isn’t sure himself. He swore off the ranch when he joined the Marine Corps, but something is drawing him back.
Nina never had a settled home like La Escarpa. Now that she’s moved to the Texas Hill Country, she’s hoping she and her young son can finally put down some roots and belong somewhere. Her new friend Eliana Ramirez is ready to welcome Nina and Logan right into her own family...but one member of that family isn’t a stranger to Nina. She and Marcos have met before, on a wild night eight years ago that changed the course of Nina’s life.
Welcome back to Limestone Springs, that small rural town deep in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. I hope you enjoy your time here.
Kit
The Texan’s Secret Son
Kit Hawthorne
Kit Hawthorne makes her home in south-central Texas on her husband’s ancestral farm, where seven generations of his family have lived, worked and loved. When not writing, she can be found reading, drawing, sewing, quilting, reupholstering furniture, playing Irish pennywhistle, refinishing old wood, cooking huge amounts of food for the pressure canner, or wrangling various dogs, cats, goats and people.
Books by Kit Hawthorne
Truly Texas
Hill Country Secret
Coming Home to Texas
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To my son Daniel, who started making up adventure stories almost as soon as he could talk and signed up to serve his country at the age of nineteen. He was the first of my children to stow plastic dinosaurs in my purse and is now my go-to guy for obscure questions about weapons and ammunition of various historical periods. Thank you for your service.
Acknowledgments
Thanks to all those who answered my questions about military life: Daniel Midkiff (Specialist, ARNG), Tony Perez (Corporal, USMC) and Sergeant First Class Stephen M. Zuniga, ARNG. Thanks also to all the other veterans in my life—my brother Stephen, my brother Kevin, my dad, my grandfather, my uncle Gary, my cousin Tony, my cousin Matt, my cousin Christian. It’s a long list, and I’d need a lot more space to get to the end of it. Thanks, all of you.
Thanks to my critiquing partners for extra help and encouragement through a tighter-than-usual production schedule; to Johanna Raisanen, my editor at Heartwarming, for making my books so much better; to Greg for picking up the slack around the house while I worked to meet deadlines; to Isaac Dehoyos, Kathy Garner and Laura Woods for being quick and cheerful in sharing their expertise; and to my daughter Grace for her unfailing discernment and taste.
Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM A FOURTH OF JULY PROPOSAL BY KIM FINDLAY
CHAPTER ONE
“ANY LUCK?” Eliana called from the other side of the dressing-room curtain.
Marcos grunted in reply. He felt like he was fourteen again and any second now his mother would come barging in and start pointing out everything that was wrong with what he was trying on. Eliana even sounded like their mom, all cheerful and bossy.
“Come out so I can see,” she said. “There’s a three-way mirror out here.”
“You don’t need to see,” said Marcos. “They’re fine.”
The curtain whooshed back, and his sister burst in.
“Hey!” Marcos said. “A little privacy here?”
“Oh, relax. I heard you zip the zipper.”
Then her face got all focused. She looked him over and said, “No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean those jeans are wrong for you.”
“They fit fine.”
“The cut is wrong. You need a roomier thigh.”
“Are you saying these jeans make me look fat?”
“I’m saying you’re too buff for them, Marcos. I’m saying that on your body type, straight-leg jeans look like skinny jeans.”
He checked himself out in the mirror again. Hmm. Maybe she had a point. Marcos had been wearing mostly uniforms for the past twelve years, and there might be some things about men’s fashion he’d missed.
But he wasn’t about to learn from his six-years-younger baby sister. He’d been driving a tractor on the ranch while she was still rolling around on the floor with her stuffed bunny. He’d taught her to tie her shoes. She was supposed to look up to him, not order him around like some little kid.
Eliana frowned. “Although...you are thinner than when I saw you last. Like ten to fifteen pounds’ worth, I’d say.”
He shrugged. It had been more like twenty, but he was slowly gaining it back.
“Still,” she went on, “your quads are too big for this cut. You need to try a regular and a relaxed in classic wash.”
“These are good enough, Ana. I’m not gonna go back out there and root around for regular this and relaxed that.”
She handed him something folded and denim. “Well, lucky for you I already did. Now try them on. Both pairs.”
They had a brief staring contest before Marcos took the jeans and said again, “Little privacy, here?”
Eliana went out and pulled the curtain shut, but not before Marcos saw that tiny triumphant smile.
He took off the straight-legs and pulled on one of the others, grumbling to himself. His last day off before the start of mandatory overtime at the factory, and how was he spending it? Shopping. For clothes. There was nothing wrong with the clothes he had. But Eliana always got her way. Part of it was bossiness, part of it was charm and part of it was bribing him with dinner.
Eliana stuck a green shirt past the curtain and waved it at him.
“Just look at this color, Marcos! It would be fabulous on you. Really bring out the green in your eyes.”
“My eyes are brown.”
“They’re hazel. Brown on the outside, green on the inside.”
Wow. She was correcting him on his eye color now?
“It’s too bright,” he said. “I’d look like a tree frog.”
“It is not! It’s a lovely rich shade and it would suit you perfectly. Just try it.”
He snatched the shirt out of her hand and pitched it onto the floor.
Ever since Marcos had come back home, Eliana had felt like a stranger to him. She’d been so young when he enlisted, just fourteen. Still complaining about algebra and wearing sparkly stuff on her face and dotting the I in her name with a little flower. Now she was this elegant, confident woman with perfectly manicured nails and an unending stream of sophisticated boyfriends with names like Julian.
Of course, she’d always been pretty—the kind of pretty that attracted guys in droves. His other sister, Dalia, was pretty too, but she had a way about her that kept guys at a distance, and anyway she’d only ever had eyes for one guy, who was now her husband. So high school had been pretty straightforward for her, romancewise. Eliana was a whole ʼnother story. But by the time she started high school, Marcos was gone, serving his country. From what he heard, he’d missed a lot of drama.
Huh, these jeans really did look better on him.
Yeah, and a lot of good that would do him in the days and weeks to come as he stood at his station in the factory, doing the same thing over and over, hour after hour, shift after shift, with nothing to make one minute any different from the next except the company of his asinine coworkers. They were su
He hated that job—but it was the only one he’d been able to land since his discharge from the Marines.
He changed into his own jeans, picked up the pile of jeans and the green shirt and stalked out of the dressing room. He tossed all but one pair of jeans toward the discard rack.
Eliana gave a longing look at the green shirt, but perked up when she saw the jeans he was holding on to. “You’re getting them? You’re actually taking my advice?”
“Oh, are these one of the ones you brought me? Yeah, they’re okay.”
He couldn’t let baby sister think she knew too much. It would set a bad precedent.
She rolled her eyes.
“You need to be more deliberate about this whole thing, Marcos. You need to learn to dress for both your body type and your fashion style.”
“I don’t have a fashion style.”
“Of course you do. You are the rebel type. You’ve got that whole brooding bad-boy thing going on. It’s a good look for you. But you have to be careful not to overdo it, or you’ll just look like a criminal.”
“I don’t look like a criminal. I don’t even have any ink.”
“But you repel people with your glowering silence and overall demeanor. And then there’s your hair.”
“What about my hair?”
“What about it? You barely have any! You need to let it grow. It’s been ten weeks since you were discharged and still it’s barely more than a quarter-inch long on top and nothing but scalp on the sides.”
“High and tight. That’s how I like it.”
“It makes you look unapproachable.”
“Good.”
“And you have such nice hair too! So glossy and thick with that hint of curl. I’d like to see you try an undercut, or maybe a less extreme fade that’s longer overall. What you have now looks like no guard at all, or maybe number-one guard. What if you tried a number eight on top, fading to a three or maybe a two? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“I don’t know how you even know so much about men’s haircuts and clipper-guard sizes, but an eight is way too long. I’d look like a hippie.”
“Hippie? We’re talking about one inch of hair!”
“Not doing it.”
She sighed hard. “Oh, Steve. You’re so stubborn.”
The old nickname almost made Marcos smile. It had been a long time since anyone called him Steve.
In the end, he bought two pairs of regular-cut jeans and some new black T-shirts, a whole stack identical to each other and to the black T-shirts he already owned. Eliana didn’t say anything, but he could feel her fuming all the way to the parking lot.
But she cheered up once they got in her car.
“I hope you’re hungry,” she said. “I’m starving.”
Right on cue, his stomach let out a loud growl.
She laughed at that, and for a second she looked like the Eliana he used to know. He even smiled a little himself.
Then she took out her phone and started texting.
“Who’re you talking to? Is it that guy Julian or whatever?”
Eliana didn’t even look up. “His name is Nigel, and no, it’s not him. That’s over.”
“Over? Since when? You were just telling me about him yesterday.”
“I broke it off this morning.”
She didn’t look upset, but maybe there was more to the story. There had to be. This was just a brave front.
“What did he do? Do I need to pay him a visit?”
She smiled but didn’t look up from her phone. “Aw, Steve, that’s so sweet. But unnecessary. Nigel didn’t do anything terrible. He just wasn’t very mature.”
She put her phone away and started the car.
“Well, who’d you text, then?”
“Dalia. To tell her we’re going to be late.”
Marcos snorted. “She knows you’re going to be late. You’re always late.”
“I am not! Anyway, I wanted her to be on the lookout for my friend who’s joining us.”
“A new boyfriend? That was fast, even for you.”
“No! Just a friend.”
Marcos smelled a rat. “Are you trying to set me up?”
She looked at him, horrified. “Of course not! I said this was a friend, didn’t I?”
She was perfectly serious. He could see it in her eyes. He actually laughed. “All right. Good.”
And then it hit him.
“Waaait a minute. It’s your friend from that place, isn’t it? That clinic you want me to go to, that quack shack.”
“It isn’t a clinic. It’s a resource center for veterans.”
“I don’t need any help. I’m not broken.”
“Nobody said you were broken. But there’s nothing wrong with accepting help when it’s offered. It’s not a sign of weakness.”
“Is this why you wanted to drive me in your car and not take separate vehicles? Because you knew if I had my truck I’d bail.”
She gave him that sweet look of hers, with her chin tucked low and her eyebrows raised.
“All you have to do is meet her,” she said.
“Aha! So it is a she!”
“Oh my gosh, you are so paranoid. Relax. I told you, I’m not trying to set you up. She’s married with a kid, okay? They’re new in the area and want to meet people.”
“Well, I’m not buddying up to her.”
“I don’t expect you to. That’s what the rest of the family will be there for. You can sit there as silent as a tree stump for all I care. All you have to do is eat.”
His stomach growled again. Something was gnawing away in there, right in that spot midway between his belly button and his breastbone.
He hoped that thing would settle down and cooperate.
CHAPTER TWO
BENDING OVER, Nina sprayed and sprayed the underside of her hair, then righted herself, tossed it back and checked the result in the mirror.
Her shoulder-length brown hair, usually straight, now hung in perfectly tousled loose waves.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d curled her hair. She’d forgotten she even owned a curling iron until she’d come across it while packing back in California. She hadn’t forgotten how to use it, though.
It was kind of embarrassing how excited she was—and not because of the possibility of reeling in a new client for the Veterans’ Resource Center of South Central Texas. That would either take care of itself, or not. If she’d learned anything in all her years of dealing with veterans, it was that you couldn’t make them do what you wanted. If Eliana’s brother decided to come to the center, he’d do it. If he didn’t want to, no amount of coaxing or manipulating would change his mind. More likely, he’d dig in his heels.
So she wouldn’t push him. She’d just do what Eliana said: be herself. Relax with Eliana’s family. Let the brother see that she was a regular person and not some psychobabbler urging him to talk about his feelings.
That was fine with Nina. Eliana was the first friend she’d made in Texas, and Nina loved her already. They’d met a few days earlier at a coffee shop called Jittery Jim’s, where they’d both ordered iced coffees. That had naturally led to some comments about Texas heat. When Eliana had learned that Nina worked at the veterans’ center, she’d told her about her Marine brother, recently discharged, and after finding out that Nina and Logan were new in town, she’d said the two families ought to get together. It was the sort of polite but meaningless remark that usually led nowhere, but Eliana had immediately taken out her phone, started texting her mother and sister and set a date.
Eliana’s family sounded nice too. And after two days of unpacking, assembling, cleaning, organizing, and setting up utilities, all while making sure Logan had three meals a day and didn’t take apart any major appliances, on top of a week’s worth of packing and driving before that, Nina needed a break in the worst way.
