Page 6 of Welcome Home, Cowboy
“Hello?”
“Julie.” Her mother’s soft voice came onto the phone, better for stress than any beach on earth.
“Hey, Mom. How are you?” Julie was already smiling. When she’d lived in Charlotte, she’d missed her mother and was ashamed at how seldom she’d called or come home to visit.
“Concerned,” her mother said.
Julie’s foot instinctively lifted off the gas pedal. Her mother only lived thirty minutes away. If she had to, she could be there in twenty. “What’s wrong?”
“Daren just called me again.”
Julie’s heart sank to her belly. “And? You did what I asked you to, right?”
Please, Mom. Just this once say you did what I asked you to.
“He asked where you were and I really hated to lie to him, dear,” her mother said.
The car suddenly felt like the air had been vacuumed out of it. Julie’s gaze wandered to her side window where the ocean bordered the road now. Calm and scenic.
“But I did,” her mother continued. “I told Daren you’d gone to the West Coast to visit one of your college friends. Jennifer.”
Julie’s body sagged even as she continued to grip the steering wheel, holding on for dear life. “Who’s Jennifer?” she asked, pulling into the public parking zone for the beach.
“I don’t know.” Her mother laughed lightly. “You know how they say one lie leads to another? Then it gets easier and easier? Well, apparently that’s true.”
Now Julie was laughing. She parked and laid her head back against the headrest. “I love you, Mom. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Take care of yourself, dear. And you and Kat come see me sometime. I’m old and lonely.”
Julie shook her head. “You’re fifty-two years old and you have more friends than I do. But yes, we’ll come see you soon.” Julie owed her mother that much. Becky Chandler may have just saved her a visit from Daren, for a while at least. All she needed was a little while longer, to figure things out and to find herself. Daren had broken off little pieces of her until she no longer knew who she was. It’d been nearly a year, but she still couldn’t face him. Not until she was stronger, bulletproof, and immune to the poison he seemed to funnel into her whenever she was with him.
She said goodbye to her mother and grabbed her yoga mat from the backseat. Then she headed toward the crashing waves, feeling better with each sandy step. She set up and went through a few sequences, pushing the stress of Mr. Banks and Daren out of her mind.
The one person she hadn’t been able to get off her mind, not since yesterday’s encounter, was Lawson Phillips.
—
Lawson had called in “sick” yesterday. He was sick again today. The only thing turning his stomach, though, was feeling this elephant-sized pressure sitting on his chest when he thought of flying.
He headed to the barn that housed his sister Beth’s and her four-year-old daughter’s horses and grabbed a shovel. This was the work of his youth in Texas. It was what he’d always done to kick his stress to the curb, although since his short-lived deployment last winter that was a lot harder.
Julie Chandler flashed across his mind. An hour or two with her and he bet he’d be feeling all right.
He scooped a pile of manure out of one of the stalls. He didn’t need a woman, he needed…Hell, he didn’t know what he needed these days.
“Hey,” his sister called behind him, stepping inside the darkened barn.
Lawson stopped working and glanced over his shoulder at her.
“Something wrong?” Beth asked.
“Nope.” Handling the shovel again, he worked harder, faster.
“You’ve never been able to fool me, Lawson. Want to talk about it?”
“That’s a negative, little sister.”
She didn’t respond to that immediately. Instead, she sat on a chair in the barn and stared at him.
