“Exactly as you would expect of a soldier.” In her mind, Alana relived the scene. “Don’t forget, they were strangers and hadn’t parted on the best terms. But I felt he was truly sorry.”
“Not so sorry that he wanted to try again over the twenty years.”
“Well, maybe Fred took the answer to that to his grave with him, but that communication thing works both ways. Besides, he’s done tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and who knows where else before that. Cut him some slack.”
Duke nodded as he digested that. “God bless him, then. And I wasn’t being judgmental, I was just curious.”
Alana leaned her head against his shoulder and rubbed his broad back. “I know.”
“I take it that you brought him next door?”
“It was foolish for him to insist he could walk when he was obviously sore. It seems he’s been hitching and hiking his way here all the way from the East Coast. So, after having him sign the appropriate paperwork, I called Eberardo to give him a heads-up, and drove Mack, yes.”
As her uncle put her egg on her platter, along with a portion of the hash browns and bacon, he handed it over, asking, “So? What do you think of him? He sounds like a fine specimen of manhood. If he didn’t inherit Fred’s ugly mug.”
“OMG,” Alana groaned. “You’re worse than Bunny. When I called in that I was checking out someone along the creek, she went into some nonsense about blue moons.”
Duke frowned as he plated his breakfast. “Was there a toxic spill in the area that I missed on the radio?”
“My thought exactly.” Leading the way to the table, she saw a way to get him away from his rabid matchmaking focus. “I told him about the will.” She’d never disclosed anything about Fred’s proposal to her uncle, afraid that it would upset Duke and forever alter the two friends’ relationship—if not destroy it. But she had shared the rest.
Sighing as he relieved his legs of some weight, Duke opined, “Bet he loved that.”
“You can say that again.” Remembering that kiss forced Alana to take her time with her napkin and taking a slice of toast from the plate on the center of the table. Her lips all but tingled as though she was reliving the experience again. “Why do you always make the toast first? It’s practically as hard as Sheetrock.”
“Don’t exaggerate. You can inhale your weight in those stale croutons they put on your Caesar salad at Doc’s, but you’re faulting my toast?”
“Now you sound like an indignant wife, all puffed up,” she teased.
“And you sound like an ungrateful husband,” Duke muttered. “Get back on topic.”
Instead, Alana took a big bite of toast with jam and chewed. The later it grew, the more compelled her uncle would be to get to the station. He was determined to retire with the pride of knowing that he’d probably had the best attendance record of most police chiefs in Texas, and a more impressive tardiness record.
“Ally, how did he take the news about the will?”
“He now thinks I’m a Jezebel. The kids today would just say ‘ho,’ but it all amounts to the same thing. He’s concluded I used my feminine charms to con Fred into making me the alternate heir.”
Duke’s eyes bulged. He stopped in midchew.
“Swallow, please,” Alana directed. “It’s a completely rational reaction if you consider what his opinion of women must be after what he learned about them through experiencing his mother’s behavior.”
“I can worry about you,” Duke said, poking his chest with his thumb. “People can gossip because you drive like you’re auditioning for a NASCAR sponsorship—”
“I was very respectful of the speed limit driving Mack to Last Call.”
“—but nobody calls you...that!”
As Duke’s fist struck the table, the reverberations had Alana lifting her mug to keep coffee from splashing into her plate. “One bright spot.” Alana continued to soothe him. “Fred can rest in peace knowing Mack doesn’t seem to have a cozy relationship with Dina.”
Duke’s coloring slowly eased to a mild pink. “Is that so?”
“He didn’t sound like he would be heading there anytime soon, even if things hadn’t worked out for him here.”
“You covered a lot of ground.”
“It’s a long shift.”
Looking as though he had a few choice things to remind her about that, Duke managed to settle down and instead ask, “Where is she these days?”
“Managing a strip club in California.”
Her uncle slumped back in his chair and looked toward the ceiling. “You called it, Fred.” To Alana, he explained, “He said she would squander the money he gave her in the divorce settlement, and take the boy to ruination, too.”
“Uncle Duke, you’re sounding a bit like an offended mother-in-law. From the rest of what I learned so far, Mack didn’t have much of a childhood once they left here, but he’s made a life for himself that he can be proud of.”
“Let’s hope you’re right about that.” Duke returned to his meal and took another bite. “Did you tell me if he’s married? I forget.”
The wily fox never forgot anything, but Alana let that slide. “Not married. No children.”
“At thirty-eight?”
Of course, people of her uncle’s generation would think there was something wrong with that. “If he’s gay, my antenna is way, way off,” Alana replied, again thinking of the kiss. “But I meant what I said—don’t even think of matchmaking.”
“Fine. Send me to my grave without a great-niece or -nephew to spoil.”
“If that’s the way it works out, you have my apologies. You can apologize for throwing every male at me that passes through the city limits.”
“I do skip bona fide transients and felons. One of us has to pay attention to your biological clock.”
Alana’s mirthless laugh had an edge. There was no denying he did that. “Hasn’t it crossed your mind that he could be a post-traumatic-stress candidate, a walking powder keg waiting to go off? Leave him alone and give him a chance to come to terms with this loss. He’s already a tired soldier.”
With that, she attacked her food in all seriousness and ate in record speed. Inevitably, her uncle noticed.
“In a hurry to meet the sandman?” he drawled. “You never do sleep well, and never at all on a full stomach.”
“Don’t plan to sleep. I plan to change and get to the barn and work on Tanker. If the abscess in that tooth is completely gone, he needs to start being worked again.”
“Does that include a ride to Last Call? I’ve yet to meet the man who can resist the picture you make when you’re on a horse. Not that you seem to notice.”
“If I head that way, it’ll be because I jumped every other fence and tree and creek on this place,” she said, although she knew what that would do to him.
Duke turned pale. “Try to remember people count on you to show up for your shift this afternoon.”
“I never forget,” she said softly. That was the problem.
* * *
After Duke left and once Alana changed into jeans along with one of Chase’s big football jerseys from UT—just in case Mack Graves got the wrong idea and thought she was intent on seducing him—she locked up the house and headed for her truck. She did intend to check Tanker, but first she wanted