Renegade: A Taggart Brothers Novel Read Free Page B

quickly dialed his elder brother, Elam.
    The phone was answered on the first ring. “Hey, Jace.”
    “Are you still on the ranch?”
    “I’m finishing up. I left the leases on your desk.”
    “Thanks. I’ll sign them as soon as I get in.” Jace paused, then asked, “Are you in a hurry to get home?”
    Since Elam and Prairie Dawn Raines had become acouple the previous summer, Jace had seen a real change in his brother. Where once he’d been stony and wracked with grief after the death of his first wife, now he was more relaxed and easygoing, quick to smile and even quicker to lend a hand at the ranch. Often as not, when he was finished with his work breaking colts, he would join P.D. at her restaurant in town or head to his newly built cabin on the hillside.
    “Nah,” Elam said. He must have been on his way into the Big House because Jace heard the squeak of the front screen. “P.D.’s meeting with a supplier until seven or eight, so I’ll probably hang around here and use the weights or something. What do you need?”
    “Could you pick up Barry and hang on to him for a while?”
    “Sure. What’s up?”
    Jace sighed. “I don’t know. I was driving past Annie’s and some of her relatives were there.”
    “They must have heard about the accident.”
    “Not exactly. It came as a shock.”
    Elam sighed. “That’s a hell of a welcome.”
    “Yeah. I think I’ll make sure they get to the hospital. Annie’s granddaughter wasn’t real clear on how to find it.” As if the words gave Jace the permission he’d been seeking, he began turning the ranch truck around.
    “Don’t worry about Barry. After her meeting, P.D. is taking the rest of the night off, so she’ll enjoy spoiling him. She was bringing flatbread pizza from Vern’s, so I’ll go with Barry and get some sodas at the Corner. Then, since it’s the weekend, we’ll keep him Friday and Saturday night. He was asking when he could have another sleepover at the cabin. I’ll have to bring him with me to the ranch tomorrow morning. I’ve got buyer appointments throughout the day, but as soon as I’ve finished, I’ll take him with me to Vern’s. The band will be playing, and he loves that.”
    “Thanks, Elam.”
    “We’d enjoy having him even more. Maybe you should take some time off.”
    And wasn’t that the truth.
Sometimes Jace felt like crawling out of his skin with the need for a few hours of blissfulsolitude. Although Elam didn’t know it yet, Jace had already begun thinking that once the harvest was in and the winter wheat planted, he might go somewhere. Alone. Somewhere other than Taggart Hollow.
    But it was too soon to mention it to his brothers—it wasn’t even something that he allowed himself to think of all that often. It was a half-formed idea that had begun to take root in his brain, growing stronger with each day, until he would find himself toying with the idea of seeing Austria in winter this time, or a tour of Italy. Or England. It’d be cold as hell in January—
    “Jace?”
    Realizing that his brain had wandered down a trail that might never come to fruition, Jace quickly yanked his thoughts back to the matters at hand.
    Elam.
    Barry.
    Check.
    Now he could make sure Annie’s granddaughter had everything she needed.
    Jace ended the call and carefully drove back down the rutted access lane toward Annie’s house, wondering why his pulse had begun to beat faster.
    *   *   *
    THE prospect of another journey—even one of only a few miles—proved to be too much for Bronte’s twelve-year-old van. After she had received directions from the unknown neighbor on how to find the medical facility, she’d returned to her car. Ignoring Kari’s complaints and Lily’s questions, she’d turned the key.
    Click.
    Then . . . nothing.
    She couldn’t even get the radio or the windshield wipers to turn on.
    That final defection—even one directed at her by an inanimate object—was more than she could bear. Dropping her