Taming a Texas Devil - Katie Lane Page 0,69

the ranch without talking to an adult first, do you?” Lucas said. “She told me about your mama and about the abuse you suffered from her boyfriend. And we both figured that a summer at the ranch would do you good.”

It had done him good. It had changed him from a delinquent to a young man who wanted to do everything right. But now he realized good grades, excelling at sports, and becoming a lawman hadn’t fixed the real problem inside him. As a kid, he had tried to prove he was so tough he didn’t need a mom or a dad or his grandmother or anyone to survive. As an adult, he’d been trying to prove the same thing. He’d been trying to prove he was tough enough that he didn’t need anyone . . . until a beauty queen had proved him wrong.

“Why didn’t you tell me you knew about my mom?” he said.

Chester spit a stream of tobacco to the ground. “Everyone has a right to their secrets.”

“Unless it hurts folks,” Lucas said. “And keeping your love for the deputy a secret is not only hurting her, it’s hurting you.”

“Tell her, boy,” Chester said.

Part of him wanted to listen to Chester and Lucas and hop in his truck and head straight into town. The other part was scared of confessing his love and discovering Dixie didn’t feel the same way. The fear won out.

He shook his head. “If Dixie wants to leave, that’s her choice.”

Before he could blink, Lucas had him by the shirt. “Now you listen to me, Lincoln Hayes. I know what happens when a man lets his pride get in the way of love. I did it with my sweet Gertrude and wasted decades of my life. I won’t let you do the same thing. You get your butt into that town and you talk to that girl. You hear me?”

Before Lincoln could answer, his cellphone rang.

Lucas released his shirt. “That’s probably the deputy now. Don’t screw this up, Lincoln.”

At just the thought of talking to Dixie and confessing his love, Lincoln’s insides started to shake.

Chester patted his shoulder. “You can do this, boy. Come on, Luc, let’s give the man some privacy.”

The two old cowboys walked away as Lincoln pulled the phone from his breast pocket with a shaky hand. But as scared as he was of talking with Dixie, he was twice as disappointed when he saw it wasn’t Dixie calling. It was a number he didn’t recognize. He thought about not answering. But the spark of hope that maybe Dixie was calling from another phone had him tapping the accept button.

“Lincoln Hayes.”

“Hey, Linc. It’s Cal Daily.”

He tried to disguise his disappointment. “Hey, Cal. What’s up?”

“You told me if I remembered anything about the night Sam disappeared to give you a call. It’s probably nothing, but I did remember something. While I was closing up the bar that night, one of the bouncers brought in a cowboy hat he’d found in the parking lot. I recognized it immediately as the sheriff’s. So I called him and left a message telling him that I’d found his hat in the parking lot. But he never called me back. When I saw him in town the next day, I tried to give it to him. But he still claimed it wasn’t his. And since he had on a hat just like it, I figured I’d made a mistake and it belonged to someone else.”

“Do you still have the hat?”

“I did until it got burned up in the fire. Damn, I loved that hat too. Wore it almost every day.”

“You kept it?”

“Yeah. No one claimed it and it was a damn fine hat . . . after I had the stains removed.”

“What kind of stains?”

“I don’t know what they were. It looked like something got splattered on the brim. Probably mud from Cotton-Eyed Joe’s parking lot.”

Or blood.

“And Sheriff Miller said it wasn’t his?” Lincoln asked.

“Miller? Oh, sorry, my mistake. I thought you knew I was talking about the sheriff we have now. I guess back then he was a deputy.”

Lincoln’s muscles tensed. “Willaby was the one you called that night?”

“Yeah. Sheriff Miller always took off to go fishing with his brother the second week in June—wait a minute! It was the second Saturday in June. It had to be if Sheriff Miller was fishing. You were right, Lincoln. The more you talk about something, the more you remember. Does any of this help you out?”

It did