Second Chance Rancher. Brenda Minton

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       Chapter One

      Late morning sun in his eyes, Dane Scott thought he couldn’t be seeing right. There was an old Chevy truck tangled up in the fencerow and a half-dozen head of his cattle grazing in the ditch. He pulled to the side of the road and got out. His dog jumped off the back of the truck and followed him down the slope. As he drew closer, Dane prepared himself, hoping he wouldn’t find anyone inside the truck that he knew belonged to his neighbors, the Palermos.

      Fortunately the truck was empty. The tires were bogged down in mud, compliments of two days of rain and a driver who had tried to back out of the mess. Barbed wire from the fence was wrapped around the passenger side tires.

      At least he could surmise that seventeen-year-old Maria Palermo wasn’t injured. The big problem was, who to call. The Palermo family was what the good folks of Bluebonnet Spring, Texas, called “a mess.” That was usually followed by a “bless their hearts” or “it wasn’t really their fault.”

      The most functional member of the family was Lucy Palermo. But last he’d heard, she was a couple of hundred miles south, near Austin. The twin brothers, Alex and Marcus, were somewhere riding bulls. Their mother was in California with husband number three.

      Dane knew Maria was home alone and running wild. Even when her brothers showed up and pretended to be responsible, she was on her own.

      He guessed he could call Essie Palermo, great-aunt of the four siblings and owner of Essie’s Diner in Bluebonnet Springs. Essie lamented the children of her late nephew. She said a little religion wouldn’t have hurt them, but the kind they’d gotten from their own father had wounded them to the core.

      Dane pulled the keys out of the ignition of the abandoned truck and walked back up the embankment to the road. He pulled his hat low and scanned the field where another two hundred head of Black Angus cattle grazed. Good thing they hadn’t spotted the truck-sized hole in the fence.

      At the moment it didn’t matter who he called. He had to get that truck out of his field and patch up the fence. As he headed for his vehicle, a dark blue truck parked behind his. Even with a glare on the windshield, he could see the driver, her dark hair pulled back and a big frown tugging at her mouth.

      Lucy Palermo. The oldest of the Palermo siblings, and the last person he expected to see on this stretch of the road. A year younger than his thirty years, she had reasons for avoiding her childhood home. And they had reasons for avoiding each other.

      She was out of her truck and heading his way, cutting short his trip down memory lane. Not that he wanted to go there. He opened the toolbox on the back of his truck and pulled out gloves and wire cutters. From the frown on her face he could tell she was half mad and half worried.

      “She’s not in the truck so she must be okay.” He guessed that might ease her worry, and then she could focus on being mad.

      “She needs to be locked up,” Lucy said on a huff, her gaze shooting to the wrecked truck.

      He gave her a quick look, trying to come to terms with the woman at his side, because the girl he’d known hadn’t been this cool person with the clipped tone. A smile took him by surprise but he tamped it down because he didn’t need her ire. That’s exactly what he would get if she knew he’d even dared to think of that girl and that summer. It was safer to keep the conversation on Maria, her little sister.

      “She’s just a kid.”

      She responded with rapid-fire Portuguese, then briefly closed her eyes and shook her head.

      “She’s a kid who ran her truck through a neighbor’s fence and left.” She spoke again in English.

      He shook his head and walked away, because she knew better. Lucy followed, still talking. He hid a smile as she continued to rant about their mother leaving town, her irresponsible brothers and the call from Aunt Essie telling her she was needed in Bluebonnet Springs.

      “She didn’t know what to do.” He defended her aunt.

      “I know. And it isn’t her responsibility. I should have been here.”

      He stopped because something needed to be said. She nearly ran into him, so with his free hand he reached out to steady her. Her dark eyes snapped as she looked down at his hand on her arm, not saying a word, but clearly reinforcing the Don’t Touch policy.

      Yeah, that was the Lucy he remembered. She’d been wearing that Hands Off sign for a long time. “You’re here now,” he offered. “Maybe if you stay, you can help her out.”

      Wrong words. Her dark eyes narrowed. Try as he might, he was a man and he noticed that even spitting mad, she was beautiful. Not the flowery, glossy kind of beauty, but strong СКАЧАТЬ