An hour down the road, Gavin noticed a billboard advertising Millie’s World Famous Hotcakes. He took the exit ramp and pulled into a parking lot crowded with eighteen-wheelers. Gavin found an empty stool at the end of the lunch counter. He rested his hat on his knee and flipped over the white mug in front of him.
A gray-haired waitress named Peggy strolled by with a coffeepot and filled the cup. “Didn’t make it to eight?” She offered a sympathetic smile.
“Not today.” Not in a long while.
“You ain’t alone, handsome.” Peggy nodded to a table where three cowboys sat, one with an ice pack strapped to his shoulder. “Special’s barbecue ribs and corn bread.”
“That’ll do.” While he waited for his meal he mulled over his schedule. The Wickenburg rodeo had a decent purse. If he made the final go-round he’d be guaranteed a share of the prize money. If he lost…he’d head down the road.
A self-admitted rodeo junkie, Gavin got high on the buzz and danger of riding bucking stock. Feeding his adrenaline addiction was his number one priority because it fueled his strength—strength he needed to run from the demons that had followed him home from war.
* * *
“HOW WAS THE RODEO?” Dixie asked her brother Johnny when he walked into the kitchen of their grandparents’ farmhouse early Saturday evening. She was dying for news about a particular bareback rider, but as soon as her brothers had returned from the Piney Gorge Rodeo they’d gone to their bedrooms to nap.
“Merle made it to the final round before getting thrown.” Johnny grabbed a beer from the fridge, then sat at the kitchen table. “Shannon said she hopes your ankle feels better soon.”
Dixie’s cheeks warmed. She’d discovered she was pregnant two weeks after the Boot Hill Rodeo in July. She’d hated to disappoint Shannon and give up the third thousand-dollar payoff, but she hadn’t dared risk the baby’s health. She’d told Shannon and the other women about her pregnancy but had asked that they keep it a secret and to tell anyone who inquired after her whereabouts that she’d sprained her ankle—the excuse she’d given her brothers when she’d told them she wasn’t competing today.
“Anything else exciting happen at the rodeo?” she asked.
“Depends on what you consider exciting.”
“I suppose Veronica Patriot was there.” Dixie fussed with the dishes in the sink while contemplating her dilemma—how to glean information about a certain cowboy without drawing her brother’s suspicion.
“Veronica’s hot on Gavin Tucker’s tail.” Johnny chuckled. “He got thrown in the first round then split.”
“Did Veronica leave the rodeo with Gavin?” Drat, the question slipped from her mouth.
“Why do you care if Tucker went off with Veronica?”
“I don’t.” After Dixie had spent the night in Gavin’s motel room she’d returned to the farm the following morning and confessed she’d stayed at a friend’s house because she’d had too much to drink at the Spittoon.
Johnny tossed his empty beer bottle into the garbage and made a beeline for the back door.
“Hey, you promised to fix the shelf in the barn cellar.”
“Conway said he’d take a look at it.”
Conway Twitty was the fifth born Cash son. All six of her brothers had different fathers. Only Dixie and Johnny shared the same daddy. Her mother had come full circle in her quest for the perfect man and had reunited with her first love, Charlie Smith, only to become pregnant with Dixie. Aimee Cash had never married any of the men she’d slept with, so Dixie and her brothers had taken her surname—Cash.
Dixie and Johnny had the same dark brown hair and blue eyes, which they’d inherited from Charlie. Their brothers had brown eyes and various shades of blondish-brown hair like their mother. “Conway’s preoccupied,” Dixie said.
“Is he still pouting because Sara broke up with him?”
“I think so.” Conway was the handsomest of her brothers and women fawned all over him, which derailed his love life on a regular basis. Each time he found the one, another woman would happen along and tempt him to cheat. Then when the one caught him two-timing, she’d send Conway packing and her brother would mope like a coon dog left home on hunt day.
“I’ll look at the shelf before I leave tonight,” Johnny said.
“You and Charlene have big plans?” Charlene was Johnny’s longtime girlfriend. They’d been together six years and Johnny had yet to propose.
“We’re going to the movies then back to her place afterward.”
None of her brothers brought their significant others to the farm. Paper-thin walls and shared bedrooms prevented any privacy, not to mention having only one bathroom in the house.
“What about you?” Johnny winked. “Got a hot date?”
Right then Dixie’s stomach seized and she bolted from the kitchen. She took the stairs two at a time then skidded to a stop in front of the bathroom door. One hand clamped over her mouth and the other pounding the door, she fought the urge to vomit.
“Go away! I’m reading,” Porter Wagoner shouted.
Ignoring the bedroom doors creaking open behind her and Johnny’s shadow darkening the top of the stairs, Dixie banged her fist harder. Blast you, Porter. She spun, intent on dashing outside, but Johnny blocked her escape.
Oh, well. Dixie threw up on his boots.
“Eew!” Willie Nelson chuckled.
“I’ll fetch the mop.” Merle Haggard leaped over the contents of Dixie’s stomach and hurried to the kitchen.
“Sorry.” Dixie wiped the back of her hand across her mouth.
“What’s all the commotion?” Porter emerged from the bathroom, his eyes widening at the mess covering Johnny’s boots.
“Have you been drinking Grandpa’s pecan whiskey, sis?” Conway asked.
She ignored her brother’s sarcastic joke.
“I see your ankle sprain has miraculously healed.” Johnny’s gaze drilled Dixie.
“You think it’s food poisoning?” Buck Owens asked in his usual quiet voice.
“No. I drank too much coffee today and skipped supper.” Growing up the youngest in the pack she’d learned from her brothers how to talk her way out of trouble.
Johnny pointed to the floor. “If all you’ve had to drink is coffee, what are those white chunks on my boots?”
Merle saved her from having to answer. “Here’s the mop,” he said, shoving the handle at Dixie.
Her stomach lurched and she tossed the mop back at her brother and fled to the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. Dixie offered up the remainder of her lunch to the porcelain god, then once her stomach settled, she sank to the floor between the toilet and the pedestal sink, too exhausted to face her brothers.
At only five weeks pregnant the morning sickness was hitting her hard. Amazing that her mother had gone through this so many times—by choice. Dixie holed up in the bathroom until the uproar in the hallway faded. Until Buck quit asking if she was okay. Until the shadows of her brothers’ boots disappeared from beneath the door. Then she brushed her teeth and gargled with mouthwash. When she emerged from the bathroom, the hallway was empty save for Johnny sitting at the top of the stairs.
Through thick and thin her eldest brother had always been there for her. Dixie sank down next to him on the step. “I’m twenty-three, Johnny. A grown woman. I can take care of myself.”
The hurt look in his eyes cut through her. She hated disappointing