The Road to Reunion

“So I understand.”

Kelly probably referred to Kyle’s injuries. She couldn’t know that the physical pain was the least of what Kyle had suffered.

Glancing toward the kitchen window, Molly wondered if anyone in her family would notice the changes that had taken place in her during the time she had spent with Kyle.

Chapter Eleven

“And my daddy said when I get bigger I can ride in a barrel race. Have you ever seen a barrel race, Mr. Kyle?

Daddy used to do rodeo, but he wasn’t very good.”

“Hey, I wasn’t that bad,” Shane protested, placing a hand on his daughter’s bobbing blond head. “I just had other things I wanted to concentrate on. Like keeping all my bones intact,” he added in an aside to Kyle.

Kyle smiled obligingly as they made their way across the sweeping back lawn toward the main house, but his head was still spinning from spending the better part of an hour with Shane and Lucy. Kyle had noted on more than one occasion that Molly liked to talk, but she couldn’t hold a candle to her four-year-old niece. At least Molly had to pause for air occasionally.

“Run on into the house, honey, and ask your mommy for a glass of milk or something,” Shane instructed, giving Lucy a little push. “We’ll be right in.”

Lucy disappeared into the house. Shane turned to Kyle, motioning toward one of the wrought-iron rockers grouped invitingly around the brick patio that stretched across the entire back of his parents’ home. “Have a seat, Kyle.”

He chose a rocker warily, wondering what was coming next. An interrogation? Had Shane somehow sensed that he and Molly were involved in…well, in something?

Shane dropped into one of the nearby chairs, stretching his lanky, denim-clad legs in front of him, battered boots crossed at the ankle. “Does the ranch look pretty much the way you remembered?”

“With a few exceptions, yeah, it’s the same.”

“You ever think much about your time here?”

“Occasionally. It was the one good time during a generally lousy period in my life.”

“You’ve always been welcome to come back for a visit, you know.”

Kyle nodded. “I figured. Time just got away. Things changed. You know how it goes.”

“Yeah, I know. You start feeling like a different person. Not sure how you’ll connect again with the people who knew you the way you were before.”

“That sums it up pretty well.” Kyle was surprised Shane understood.

“I’ve been talking to Daniel Andreas since he married my cousin B.J. He said that’s sort of the way he felt when the thought of visiting crossed his mind during the past few years.”

Recalling a hazy memory of a slender, dark-haired youth about his own age, Kyle nodded again.

Shane wasn’t discouraged by Kyle’s lack of verbal response. “You know, the big party for Dad and Cassie is only four days away. If you don’t have anything pressing to get back to this week, we’d sure like it if you could stay long enough to visit with them for a while.”

Anything pressing. Kyle rolled the phrase around in his mind for a moment, wondering if working out, watching TV and stewing about his future counted as “pressing.” It wasn’t as if he had to hurry back, but he still wasn’t sure he wanted to stay for the party. Even at his best, he wasn’t much of a party guy.

Maybe it wasn’t as uncomfortable as he had feared, being back at the ranch, faced with so many old memories. And maybe he wouldn’t mind seeing Cassie and Jared again. It was the thought of all those other people—strangers, extended Walker family members who would look vaguely familiar but whose names he would probably never recall—that made his palms go damp.

Not to mention the awkwardness inherent in seeing Jared again after sleeping with Jared’s daughter.

It was that last thought that made him stammer a little when he said, “I, uh, don’t know that I can stay that long.”

“I’m not going to pressure you. I just wanted to assure you that you’re more than welcome to stay. Molly’s been working on this party for months, with some help from Dad’s sisters, Layla and Michelle. She’s determined to make everything work out perfectly—hence, her trip to Tennessee to drag you back here.”

“I don’t really think she sprained her ankle just to get me here.”

Shane chuckled. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”

“She’s got a big heart.”