A Love to Call Her Own

Book 3: A Tallgrass Novel

by Marilyn Pappano

Genres: Family Life; Women's Fiction; Contemporary Romance; Military Romance

Synopsis

A LOVE TO CALL HER OWN
It's been two years since Jessy Lawrence lost her husband in Afghanistan, and she's never fully recovered. Drowning her sorrows didn't help, and neither did the job she'd hoped would give her a sense of purpose. Now trying to rebuild her life, she finds solace in her best friends, fellow military wives who understand what it's like to love-and lose-a man in uniform . . . and the memory of one stolen night that makes her dream of a second chance at love.
Dalton Smith has known more than his fair share of grief. Since his wife's death, he revels in the solitude of his cattle ranch. But try as he might, he can't stop thinking about the stunning redhead and the reckless, passionate night they shared. He wasn't ready before, but Dalton sees now that Jessy is the only woman who can mend his broken heart. So how will he convince her to take a chance on him?

(95,000 words)

Release date: August 26, 2014

Publisher: Forever

Print pages: 400

Sample

Chapter 1

Monday mornings came too damn soon.


Jessy Lawrence rolled onto her back and opened her eyes just enough to stare at the shadows the sun cast across the bedroom ceiling. It was high in the sky. Ten o’clock, maybe eleven. In the four weeks since she’d lost her job, she’d been sleeping in late. Why not, with no more annoying alarm clock beeping at six forty-five? No more dressing up, putting on makeup, smiling for customers who annoyed her so much that she wanted to smack them. No more caring whether she was late or if she looked more ragged than she should or if anyone noticed—like that nosy hag, Mrs. Dauterive—she was having a tough day.

It should have been heaven.

If possible, she was more miserable than before.

After her eyes became accustomed to the sun’s glare, or what there was of it peeping around the edges of the blinds, she turned her head carefully to the nightstand and bit back a groan. It was twelve twenty-one. Officially afternoon. She’d slept away the whole morning.

She should shower. Brush that god-awful taste from her mouth. Put some drops in her eyes so they didn’t feel so puffy. Get something to eat—proteins, vegetables, carbs, fruit. She’d been subsisting on junk food and booze so long that she couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a real meal.

She should get dressed, too, walk down the street, buy a copy of the Tallgrass newspaper, and check out the help-wanted section. She needed a job. A sense of purpose. A reason to get out of bed in the morning…or afternoon, as the case may be. She didn’t need the money. Bless Aaron and the United States Army, his life insurance would cover her expenses for the next few decades even if she did nothing but loll on the couch.

What she did need was a reason for living. It was two years and eight months too late to crawl into Aaron’s grave with him, and she didn’t deserve to be there anyway. He could have done so much better than her if he’d survived his last two weeks in Afghanistan.

But he hadn’t survived, and she had, and here she was, wasting her life. It was shameful.

She sat up, her head pounding, and slowly eased to her feet. The shuffle to the bathroom jarred every pain sensor in her head and made her stomach do a queasy tumble. Once inside, she peed, turned the shower to hot, then faced herself in the mirror. She wasn’t a pretty sight.

Her red hair stood straight up on top, a counter to the flattened frizz that cradled the sides of her head. At some point in the last day or two, she’d put on makeup, then failed to remove it before crawling into bed. Shadow smeared and mascara smudged, giving her eyes a hollow, exaggerated look. Deep circles underneath emphasized their emptiness. Indentations from the pillow marked her cheek and forehead, and her usual healthy glow had gone gray and pasty.

It was a wonder small children didn’t run away at the sight of her.

Only because small children didn’t frequent the places she did.

Steam was forming on the mirror when she sighed, turned away, and stripped off her tank and shorts. She took a long shower, scrubbing herself once, twice, closing her eyes, and letting the stinging water pound into her face. By the time she was ready to get out, it had turned cold, bringing shivers and making her teeth chatter.

Four weeks since she’d been fired from the bank—all because some snotty teenage brat with a sense of entitlement could dish it out but couldn’t take it—and she hadn’t told anyone yet. Not that there were many people to tell, just the margarita girls, her best friends. None of them banked at Tallgrass National. Like her, they were all Army widows, and like her, they kept their accounts at the Fort Murphy Federal Credit Union.

She should have told them at the first Tuesday Night Margarita Club dinner after the dismissal happened. She liked to think she would have, except all the earthshaking going on in their lives was the good kind: weddings, babies, mad love, and lust. They didn’t get fired from their jobs; they didn’t keep secrets or prove themselves to be colossal losers like Jessy did. If they knew all her failings, they would lose respect for her, and she would lose the most important people in her life. Better that she stay quiet awhile longer.

God, how she wished she could talk to someone.

For the first time in years, she mourned the family relationships she’d never had. They lived in Atlanta: mother, father, two sisters with husbands and children who got regular gifts from their aunt Jessy but wouldn’t recognize her if she break-danced in front of them. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d gotten an affectionate hug from her mom or a word of advice from her father. She’d been such a disappointment that she was pretty sure, if asked, Prescott and Nathalie Wilkes didn’t even acknowledge the existence of their middle daughter.

She got dressed, finger-combed her hair, then wandered through the empty apartment with its high ceilings and tall windows to the kitchen. A quick look in the refrigerator and freezer showed nothing but a few bottles of water, condiments, and some frozen dinners, age unknown. The pantry held staples: rice, pasta, sugar, plus a lonely can of pinto beans and some packets of instant mashed potatoes. The cabinets were empty, as well, except for a box of oatmeal and another of instant pudding. Like the childhood poem, her cupboards were bare.

Except for the one below and to the left of the sink. Out of sight, out of mind, the old saying went, but the bottles in that cabinet were never far from her mind. That was her problem.


She needed food, real food, healthy food. Though she wasn’t much of a cook, she could learn. She could fill a few of her empty days with taking care of herself: eating properly, exercising, cleaning, detoxing herself. It was a momentous project, but she was worth the effort, right? And what else did she have to do?

She would start with shopping, she decided, grabbing her purse and keys and heading toward the door before she could talk herself out of it. She was a champion shopper, though she preferred to look for killer heels and cute outfits and Bobbi Brown makeup. She could handle a sweep through Walmart, maybe even grab a burger at the McDonald’s just inside the door, and at this time of day, she wouldn’t risk running into any of her margarita sisters. They would all be working, as they believed her to be.

After locking up, she took the stairs to the street level, stepped out into the warm May afternoon, and stopped immediately to rummage in her purse for a pair of dark glasses. Cars passed on Main Street, a few steps ahead, and a few shoppers moved past, running errands on their lunch breaks or grabbing a meal at one of the nearby restaurants. Jessy loved living right in the heart of downtown Tallgrass, on the second floor of a sandstone building that dated back to Oklahoma’s statehood. She loved the busy-ness of the area during the day and the quiet at night, her only neighbors few and far between in other converted spaces.

Her car was parked down the alley in a tiny lot shared by the owners of Serena’s Sweets next door and a couple other businesses. She drove to First Street, then headed south to Walmart, stoically ignoring the bank at the intersection of First and Main as she passed. They’d replaced her with ease—people with the skills to be customer account reps weren’t hard to come by, else Jessy couldn’t have done the job—and after electronically sending her final paycheck, they were done with her. Not even Julia, the account rep she’d known best, had bothered to contact her.

Walmart was always busy, even in a military town where service members and their families had the option of the post exchange and the commissary. She parked at the far west end of the lot, figuring she could use the exercise and a little fresh air, since among the many things she couldn’t remember was the last time she’d seen daylight. She felt a tad like a vampire—had looked like one, too, in the mirror before her shower.

Determination got her into the store and all the way to the back, where she started with bottled water. Municipal water in Tallgrass tasted like it came from one of those shallow ponds that cattle stood in on hot summer days. She added milk, two percent, though she wasn’t sure for what. But healthy diets included dairy products, right? She tossed in a twelve-pack of Greek yogurt and added fake egg blend, turkey bacon, whole-grain bread—whatever caught her attention as she trolled the aisles.

She was standing in front of the jarred pasta sauces, remembering the spaghetti sauce Aaron had taught her to make—ground beef, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and just a bit of sugar—when a crash jerked her attention to a woman fifteen feet away. A jar of pizza sauce lay splattered on the floor around her, its bright red spotting her jeans like blood, and she was clenching her cell phone tightly to her ear.

Such a look on her face.

Jessy went hot inside, then a chill spread through her. She knew that look. Dear God, she’d lived that look. She still wore it in her nightmares, still saw it at times in her mirror. That awful, heart-stopping, can’t-breathe, can’t-bear-it look of shock and pain and anger and grief and pure, bitter sorrow.


The nearest shopper edged her cart away from the woman while sneaking looks. Other customers and a few stock boys barely old enough to shave stared at her outright as she sank, as if in slow motion, to the floor, a wail rising out of her, growing with anguish until it scraped Jessy’s skin, uncovering her own barely scabbed-over anguish.

This shouldn’t be happening here, and it damn well shouldn’t be happening with Jessy. Therese—she was motherly, loving, kind. Carly, too. Ilena, Marti, Lucy, and Fia could empathize and offer comfort with the best of them. Jessy didn’t comfort. She didn’t reach out. She couldn’t handle her own emotional messes without turning to the bottle. She certainly couldn’t get involved in a stranger’s emotional messes.

But no one was helping the woman. No one was trying to move her off the glass-shard-littered floor, giving her any assistance or, barring that, any privacy. Jessy knew too well what it was like to grieve alone. She’d done it for eighteen months before she’d met her margarita sisters.

She knew in her heart that this woman had just found out she could be a margarita sister, too.

Her first step was tentative, her stomach knotted, her chest struggling for air. Too soon she was beside the woman, though, sobbing amid the broken glass and splattered sauce as if she, too, were broken. She was older, probably in her fifties, gray roots just starting to show in her brown hair. Her clothes were casual but well made: faded jeans in the hundred-dollar price range, a cotton shirt whose quality shone in its very simplicity, stylish leather sandals. Dior clouded the air around her, mixing with the scent of tomatoes and basil, and the gems on the fingers that still clenched the cell phone were tastefully impressive.

Jessy noticed all those things to delay that first touch, that first word. What did you say to a person whose world had just shifted so dramatically that it might never be normal again?

Trying to channel Therese, Carly, and Ilena, Jessy crouched beside the woman, touched her, and said, “I’m so sorry.” Three totally inadequate words that made her feel almost as low as the jerks gawking from both ends of the aisle.

“Patricia? Patricia, are you there?” The tinny question came from the cell phone.

Gently Jessy pried the phone free and raised it to her ear. “Hello?”

“Who is this?”

“A friend of Patricia’s. What did you tell her?”

“Oh. I thought she was alone. At least, she was when she left her house.” The voice belonged to a man, old, smug, with a touch of a whine. It brought back long-ago memories of visits from Nathalie’s parents, a hateful old woman and a spiteful old man. “I told her there’s two Army officers all dressed up in their finest lookin’ for her. I bet it’s about her husband, George. He’s in the war, you know. Over in—”

Jessy disconnected and pocketed the phone. Despite the Army’s best intentions, things sometimes went wrong with casualty notification calls: no one home but kids who called their parent in a panic, nosy neighbors who couldn’t resist being the first to pass on bad news. She’d received her call at work, just about this time of day on a Wednesday, back from lunch and summoned into the bank president’s office to face a weary chaplain and a solemn notification officer. We regret to inform you…


Army wives knew that soldiers on their doorsteps never brought good news, especially during wartime. Just the sight of that official government-tagged vehicle in the driveway, those dress uniforms, those somber expressions, was enough to break their hearts before they started beating again, slowly, dully, barely enough to sustain life, or pounding madly until it felt like it might explode.

Everyone in the margarita club had been through their own notification, and every one remembered two things about it: the unbearable grief and those five words. We regret to inform you…


“Come on, Patricia,” she said quietly, wrapping her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Let’s get you off the floor. Let’s find someplace quiet.”

Unexpected help came from one of the young stockers. “The manager’s office,” he volunteered, taking hold of Patricia’s arm and lifting her to her feet. “It’s up at the front of the store.”

Jessy paused to take the woman’s purse from her cart—her own bag hung messenger-style over her head and shoulder—then the three of them moved haltingly down the aisle. By the time they reached the end, a heavyset guy in a shirt and tie was hurrying toward them, a dark-haired woman on his heels. The manager, she presumed, and likely an assistant. Maybe she could turn Patricia over into their care and get back to her shopping. Get those awful memories back into the darkest corners of her mind.

But Patricia was holding on to her like they were best friends, turning a stricken look on her. “Please don’t go…You know…don’t you?”

Jessy claimed sometimes that she could recognize a drunk from a mile away. Could a newly widowed woman recognize someone who’d been through it before?

Her smile was a grimace, really, but she patted Patricia’s hand, feeling like the biggest fraud that ever lived. “I know,” she admitted. “I’ll stay.”

*  *  *

Dalton Smith gave the palomino colt one last assuring rub, then headed toward the house. The animals were all cared for, including the colt who’d opened a laceration on his leg, so now it was time to feed himself before he went to work on the tractor sitting uselessly inside the shed. The hunk of machinery was as cantankerous as its owner and broke down a lot more. He ought to give in and buy a new one, or at least new to him.

But in this economy, ranchers didn’t pay the bills by giving in, not without a hell of a fight first. Besides, he’d been working on old hunks since he was ten. Ranching 101, his dad had called it.

When he cleared the barn, the first thing he noticed was Oz, the stray who’d adopted him, stretched out in a patch of lush grass. He lay on his back, head tilted, tongue lolling out, all four legs in the air, letting the sunshine warm his belly. When he’d come limping down the driveway, the shepherd had been painfully scrawny and covered with fleas and ticks. Five weeks of regular meals had turned him into a new dog. His coat was thick and shiny, his ribs no longer showing through his skin. He had retired his herding instincts, suckered Dalton into giving him a cushy new home, and was making the most of it.

The second thing Dalton saw was the dusty RV parked behind his truck. He groaned, and Oz opened one eye to look at him. “Some watchdog you are,” he muttered as he passed the dog. “You could’ve at least barked.”

Not that he really minded a visit from his parents. Since they’d retired to South Texas six years ago, they’d spent more than half their time traveling the country in that RV, and any time their route wandered near Tallgrass, they dropped by. His dad helped with chores, and his mom filled his freezer with home-cooked meals. There wasn’t a piece of equipment made that David couldn’t fix or a house that Ramona couldn’t make feel like home.

It just took a bit of effort for Dalton to make himself sociable.

Unfazed by his criticism, Oz jumped to his feet and fell into step with him, heading for the back door. As Dalton pried his boots off on the top step, he scowled at the dog. “You’re gonna wish you’d warned me. Mom doesn’t allow animals in the house.” He might have bought the house from his folks, but that didn’t make it any less Ramona’s house.

The first thing he noticed when he walked inside were the smells. The house never stank; he wasn’t that bad a housekeeper. It just sometimes smelled a little musty from the dust accumulated everywhere. At the moment, though, it smelled of beef, onions, jalapeño peppers, sugar, and cinnamon, and it made his mouth water. How many times had he come home to the aromas of hamburgers, Spanish fries, and cinnamon cookies in the oven? Hundreds.

Dad was sitting at the kitchen table, reading glasses balanced on the end of his nose, the Tallgrass newspaper open in front of him, and Mom stood in front of the stove, prodding the sliced potatoes, onions, and peppers in a pan filled with hot Crisco. She looked up, smiling brightly. “Sweetheart! I thought I was going to have to send your father looking for you. I hope you haven’t eaten lunch yet because there’s way too much food here for just your dad and me.”

Before Dalton could do more than hug her, her gaze shifted lower to Oz. “Didn’t I already tell you once that you couldn’t come in?”

As Oz stared back, Dad spoke up. “Ramona, you’re the queen of the house on wheels parked out there, not this one. If Dalton doesn’t mind having him in here, then you don’t get to mind, either.” He folded the paper and laid it aside as he stood. Tall, lanky, his face weathered from years working in the sun and wind and cold, he looked the way Dalton expected to look in thirty years. “How are you, son?”

No handshakes for David. He was a hugger. It used to drive Dillon, Dalton’s twin, crazy, being twelve, sixteen, eighteen, and getting hugged by his dad in front of everyone. Knowing that was half the reason Dad did it was enough to make it bearable for Dalton. Noah, the baby, never minded it at all. He was more touchy-feely than the rest of the family combined.

“Good,” Dalton replied as Oz defiantly pushed past Ramona and went to his water dish. “I wasn’t expecting you guys.”

“Don’t worry, we’re just passing through.” Mom spooned the Spanish fries onto paper towels to drain, then tossed in a second batch. “Our friend, Barb Watson—do you remember her? She and her husband, Trey, stopped by here with us a few years back. Anyway, Barb died yesterday, so we’re heading home for the funeral.”

“Sorry.” Dalton went to the sink to scrub his hands.

“It’s such a shame. She was only eighty-three, you know, and she got around as well as I do. She was too young to die—”

In an instant, everyone went still in the room, even Oz. Mom’s face turned red, and her hands fluttered as if she could wave away the words. “Oh, honey…I didn’t mean…”

To remind him of his wife’s death. No one in the family talked about Sandra, not because they hadn’t loved her or didn’t miss her, but because it had always been so hard for him. It had been four years this past January—four years that his grief and anger and the secret he’d guarded had made tougher than they had to be.

She’d been a soldier, a medic, on her second combat tour when she’d died. Twenty-seven years old, way younger than his parents’ friend Barb, bleeding out in the desert thousands of miles from home. Losing her had been hard enough. Knowing she’d died in war had made it worse. Finding out she’d chosen to die had damn near killed him, and keeping that knowledge from everyone who’d loved her had almost finished the job.

What had eaten at him the most? The heartbreak of losing her so young? The ache in his gut that she hadn’t trusted him? The anger that she hadn’t given him any say, hadn’t cared a damn about what he wanted? Most days he wasn’t sure, but at the moment he thought maybe it was the guilt every time he lied by omission to the family. Her parents, her sisters, his parents, and Noah—they all believed she was a hero, tragically killed doing the job she loved, saving fellow soldiers. They believed she would have done anything to come home to them.


They didn’t know she’d lacked the courage to come home. They didn’t know she’d chosen to die in that damned desert and leave them forever.

And though it hurt soul-deep, Dalton intended for them never to find out. He wished like hell he didn’t know. He would make damn sure their families didn’t.

“It’s all right, Mom. I know what you meant.” Shutting off the faucet, he dried his hands on a dish towel. He took care to rehang it perfectly straight on the rod, then slipped his arm around his mother’s shoulders. “Oz and I are starving. Are those burgers about ready?”

*  *  *

Benjamin Noble was dictating notes in the small workspace outside the exam rooms that made up his pod of the clinic when the office manager came around the corner. He paused, wasting a moment trying to decipher the look on her face. Luann was competent, capable, and faced crises on a regular basis without so much as a frown, but this afternoon the smallest frown narrowed the space between her eyes.

“Dr. Noble, you got a call from a Jessy Lawrence. She asked you to call your mother. Said it’s urgent.”

She offered him a pink message that he hesitated to take. His cell phone was on vibrate, as it always was while he saw patients, but he’d felt it go off three times in the last half hour. Jessy Lawrence’s name had shown up on caller ID, but since he didn’t know anyone by that name and she’d left no voice mail, he’d ignored it.

“Urgent” messages from Patricia were common enough, given their relationship, that this one didn’t concern him. It could mean she wanted a diagnosis of her cough over the phone or information about hormone replacement therapy, despite his polite reminders that he was an orthopedic surgeon. It could mean she’d made the acquaintance of a friend’s children or grandchildren and wondered about her own or that she was feeling a rare moment of remorse.

Remorse that had come way too late.

“Thanks, Luann. I’ll take care of it when I get a chance.” He pocketed the number, breathed deeply to clear his head, then picked up the dictation where he’d left off. His exam rooms were filled with patients, and they’d run out of chairs in the waiting room an hour ago. Clinic days were never good days for dealing with his mother.

Honestly, he couldn’t imagine a good day for dealing with his mother.

Twenty years ago she’d walked out on the family. She hadn’t just left his father for another man. She’d left all of them—Dad, him, and his sisters. Ben had been fifteen, old enough and busy enough with school to not be overly affected, but Brianne and Sara, eleven and nine, had missed her more than any of them could handle.

Not the time to think about it. He put on a smile and went into room one. “Mrs. Carter, how’d you do with that last shot?” Picking up the needle his nurse had waiting, he sat on the stool and rolled over in front of the patient on the table. She was fifty-five—Patricia’s age—and had severe osteoarthritis in her right knee, bone grating on bone. The injections weren’t a cure but helped delay the inevitable surgery. Though she’d recovered beautifully from the total knee replacement on her left, she was hoping to put off a repeat of the brutal rehab as long as she could. He didn’t blame her. It was human nature to put off ugly things, the crinkle of paper in his pocket reminded him.

He positioned the needle, deftly pushing it in, and was depressing the plunger when his cell phone vibrated again. His hand remained steady. Whether giving shots, inserting appliances to strengthen badly fractured bones, or sawing through the femur or tibia to remove a diseased knee, his hands were always steady.

The nurse blotted Mrs. Carter’s knee and applied a Band-Aid while they exchanged the usual chatter—Don’t stress the joint for twenty-four hours, call me if you have any problems, see you in six months if you don’t—then he returned to the workspace to dictate notes again. There he pulled out the cell and looked at it a moment.


He routinely told his patients to call him if they had any problems, but that courtesy didn’t extend to his mother. Granted, his patients didn’t abuse the privilege—most of them, at least. There were a few for whom hand-holding was part of his job, but when Patricia was needy, she did it to extremes.

He was still looking at the phone when it began to vibrate. Jessy Lawrence again. He might ignore her, but she apparently had no intention of remaining ignored. Since he had no intention of being stalked around his office by a stranger on a smartphone, he grimly answered. “This is Benjamin Noble.”

There was that instant of silence, when someone was surprised to get an answer after repeatedly being sent to voice mail, then a husky, Southern-accented voice said, “Hey, my name is Jessy Lawrence. I’m a—a friend of your mother’s over here in Tallgrass.”

He’d heard of the town, only an hour or so from Tulsa, but he couldn’t remember ever actually having been there. “I didn’t know she was back in the state.”

Another moment’s silence. She clearly thought it odd that he didn’t know where his mother was living. When Patricia had left them, she hadn’t made much effort to stay in touch except when guilt or selfishness pushed her, and he’d learned not to care.

“She is,” Jessy said at last. “If you’ve got a pen, I’ll give you her address. Ready? It’s 321 West Comanche—”

“What is t. . .