Rescue Me

the chair. “Did you tell him to fuck himself?”
    “Pert near.” She grabbed her mug. “Is that about what you told him?”
    “Not about. That’s exactly what I told him.”
    “You don’t want to reconsider?”
    “No.” Forgiveness wasn’t easy for him. It was something he had to work at, but Vincent Haven Senior was one person who wasn’t worth the hard work he’d have to put into it. “Is that why you called me to come here? I thought you had a proposition for me.”
    “I do.” She took a drink and swallowed. “I’m getting old, and I want to retire.” She set the mug on the desk and closed one eye against the smoke curling from the end of her cigarette. “I want to travel.”
    “Sounds reasonable.” He’d traveled the world. Some places were pure hell. Others so beautiful they stole his breath. He’d been thinking about going back to some of those places as a civilian. Maybe that was exactly what he needed. He had no strings now. He could go wherever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. For however long he wanted to stay. “What can I do to help?”
    “You can buy the Gas and Go, is all.”

Chapter Three
    H e’d turned her down. She’d asked a stranger to take her to her young cousin’s wedding and he’d turned her down flat.
    “Don’t own a suit,” was all he’d said before he’d walked away. Even if she hadn’t seen his driver’s license or heard the lack of twang in his voice, she would have known he wasn’t a native Texan because he hadn’t even bothered with a good lie. Something like his dog died and he was grieving or that he was scheduled to donate a kidney tomorrow.
    The setting sun bathed the JH in bright orange and gold and filtered through the fine plumes of dust disturbed by the Saab’s tires. He’d made the offer to repay her, but of course he hadn’t meant it. Asking him had been a dumb, impulsive idea. And dumb, impulsive ideas always got her into trouble. So, if she looked at it that way, Vince the stranded guy had done her a favor. After all, what was she supposed to do with a huge, enormously hot stranger all night long once he’d served her purpose? She clearly hadn’t thought it through before she’d asked.
    The dirt road to the JH took ten to twenty minutes depending on how recently the road had been graded and the type of vehicle. Any moment, Sadie expected to hear mad barking and see the sudden appearance of half a dozen or so cow dogs. The ranch house and outbuildings sat five miles back from the highway on the ten-thousand-acre ranch. The JH wasn’t the largest spread in Texas, but it was one of the oldest, running several thousand head of cattle a year. The ranch had been settled and the land purchased on the Canadian River in the early twentieth century by Sadie’s great-great-grandfather, Major John Hollowell. Through good times and lean, the Hollowells had alternately both barely survived and thrived, raising purebred Herefords and American paint horses. Yet when it came to securing the future of the family with a male heir, the Hollowells came up short. Except for a few distant cousins whom Sadie had rarely met, she was the last in the Hollowell line. Which was a source of grave disappointment for her father.
    It wasn’t quite grazing season and the cattle were closer to the house and outbuildings. As Sadie drove along the fence line, the familiar silhouettes grazed in the fields. Soon it would be branding and castration season, and since moving, Sadie did not miss the sounds and smells of that horrific, yet necessary, event.
    She pulled to a stop in front of the four-thousand-square-foot house her grandfather had built in the 1940s. The original homestead was five miles west on Little Tail Creek and was currently occupied by foreman Snooks Perry and his family. The Perrys had worked for the JH for longer than Sadie had been alive.
    She grabbed her Gucci bag from the backseat, then shut the car door behind her. Whippoorwills called on a cool breeze that touched her cheeks and stole down the collar of her gray Pink hooded sweatshirt.
    The setting sun turned the white stone and clapboard house golden, and she moved to the big double, rough oak doors with the JH brand in the center of each. Coming home was always unsettling. A tangle of emotion tugged at her stomach and heart. Warm feelings stirred with the familiar guilt and apprehension that always pulled at her when she came to Texas.
    She opened the unlocked door and stepped into the empty