One Texas Cowboy Too Many (Burnt Boot, Texas #3)(51)

Mavis glared at him for a few seconds, then whipped around and went back to the kitchen, where they could hear her barking orders at the ranch cooks.

“We’ve got half an hour. Let’s go to my office,” Russell said.

“I should set the table.”

Russell looped his arm through hers and led her out of the dining room. “She pays people to do that. I think it’s time we had that talk you’ve been asking for.”

He closed the door to his office and sat down on the edge of his desk, motioning for her to take one of the leather chairs facing him. “You’ve contacted or at least tried to contact your mother, haven’t you?”

“How did you know?”

“Honey told Declan and he came straight to me. He did the same thing when he was a teenager.”

“Does that make you sad, Daddy?”

Russell touched her cheek like he had when she was a little girl. “No, it makes me sad that you never knew her. She was quite a woman, but things got twisted up when we came back to Burnt Boot after we finished college.”

“She had an affair with her old boyfriend. Granny told me.”

Russell’s smile looked tired. “It’s a deeper story than that. I told Declan last night, and now he can make up his own mind about getting in touch with her.”

He circled around behind his desk and sat down. “It all started when we were kids. I was about seven, and she was six and I think we fell in love that summer at Bible school.”

“But my mother didn’t come to Burnt Boot…oh!” She slapped a hand over her mouth. “It wasn’t her that you fell in love with, was it?”

“No, her name is Joyce. She’s a cousin to the Gallaghers on the maternal side, but that was enough that your grandmother threw a fit and forbid me to bring her on the ranch.”

“Oh. My. Lord.”

Russell pinched his nose between his fingers. “Now you are beginning to understand. We snuck around and saw each other when we could, but I knew it could never work. Then your mother moved to town and we started dating. I picked your mother in a fit of rebellion because I couldn’t have the woman I really loved. It was complicated, as you kids say today.”

“You married Mama, but you still loved Joyce, right?”

Russell dropped his hand. “I tried to forget her, but then we moved back here, and those were hard times for me and Eden both. Our marriage suffered and so did you kids. Mama hated Eden and made life miserable. Eden wanted us to build our own house. Mama said if we did, she’d disown me.”

“Granny ruled the roost like she still does today,” Leah said.

“Yes, she did. Joyce had never left the area. She worked at a bank over the line in Oklahoma and spent a lot of time at Wild Horse. She was at church, at the bar when I’d drop in for a beer, at the store when I went in for supplies. Hell, she was even down at the river on Sunday afternoons when I went fishing.”

“And you started the affair?” Leah asked.

Russell nodded. “We did, and Eden found out. To retaliate, she got in touch with her old boyfriend. Mama found out, and you probably know the rest.”

“What happened to Joyce?” Leah asked.

“She never married, and we’ve been seeing each other for more than twenty-five years now. She works in a bank over in Saint Jo these days, and I see her as often as I can.”

“And you never married her?”

Russell shook his head. “Not because I didn’t ask. She refuses. I don’t blame her. She knows Mama. Someday, when I’m in full charge there, maybe she’ll say yes. But we have a good thing, Leah. Neither of us is unhappy with our arrangement. Like I said, it’s complicated, but it works for us.”

“I can’t believe you kept this a secret,” Leah said.

“I didn’t. Mama knows. Naomi knows. Joyce isn’t welcome on Wild Horse anymore, even if she is shirttail kin. But there’s been a lot of battles since that one, and no one cares about it anymore.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy. I wish this damn feud had never gotten started, and I wish it would end.”

“So you could fall in love with Tanner?”

“So I could fall in love with whomever I please.”

“Leah, don’t follow in my footsteps. Let your heart guide you, not your head.”

She leaned across the desk and hugged her father. “Thank you, Daddy. That couldn’t have been easy to tell me all that.”

“You should have been told years ago, but days run into years and years into decades, and suddenly my little girl was all grown up. Speaking of being grown and standing your ground for what you believe in, I don’t think it was Tanner that you were out with until the wee hours of this morning, was it?”

She shook her head. “No, it was Rhett O’Donnell. I used to have a crush on Tanner, and we talked about it when he showed up at the school a few days ago. Now he’s flirting and trying to get me to go out with him. I think Naomi is behind it, thinking that if she can tear down the Brennan family through me that it would be a feather in her cap.”

“And do you still like Tanner?” Russell asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t. I thought he’d always have a little place in my heart since he was my first crush, but even that’s gone.”