Second Chance Rancher. Brenda Minton

       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 and wildly feminine even in jeans, a plain T-shirt and boots.

      She scrubbed a hand over her face and sighed. “I plan on staying. And I’m sorry about the fence. I’ll help you get your cattle back in, and then I’ll see to getting the fence fixed.”

      They stood side by side studying the wrecked truck and the fence. Dane’s dog, Pete, a black-and-white border collie, sniffed the tires.

      “I’m sure she’ll be okay, Lucy. She’s been through a lot.”

      “I know she’s been through a lot.” She kept a steady gaze on the truck but he saw moisture gather in her eyes. “I thought Maria was staying with Aunt Essie.”

      “I think she might have stayed there for a few weeks but eventually she moved back to the ranch.”

      “I can’t say that I blame her. Essie is used to living alone. But I wish someone had told me our mother had skipped town again. If nothing else, I could have taken Maria to Austin with me.”

      Dane shot her a look, knowing she was talking more to herself than to him. She confirmed that by giving him a hard stare that seemed to ask what he was looking at. So he shrugged it off and started clipping wires wrapped around the wheels of the truck.

      He wasn’t getting involved. He was just going to fix his fence and head home to his own life. Lucy Palermo could take care of her problems. He’d take care of his.

      * * *

      After pushing the truck out of the way, Lucy had helped Dane get his cattle back. They’d patched the fence but she promised she’d be back to make it right. As she headed up the dirt drive that led to the home she’d been raised in, she felt that old familiar tightening around her heart. She recognized it as panic. A few deep breaths helped to ease the pain. There was nothing here to fear. Her father was gone. His life claimed by a bull he’d hoped would be his ticket to the big time.

      Her mother wasn’t in the kitchen pretending there was nothing wrong with a man who randomly drank, quoted the Bible and then beat his children for the slightest infraction.

      Lucy parked in the circle drive, just a dozen feet from the front steps of the house. It no longer looked like a home, not with the lawn covered in weeds, flowers growing wild up the posts that supported the porch roof and no lights glimmering from inside. The one thing that had been a constant had been the facade of this home. It had looked like a house where a happy family lived. The house had been a real metaphor for their lives. Picturesque on the outside, dark and painful on the inside.

      As she headed for the front door she gave herself a pep talk. She didn’t have to stay here. She could take Maria with her back to Austin. Why should either of them stay in Bluebonnet now that Maria would be graduating high school? It seemed like the perfect solution.

      She stepped through the front door, chastising herself for reliving the past. The house was quiet