“Yup.” She downed a third of the long-neck bottle before setting it down on the coffee table and burping. “That wasn’t very ladylike, but then I don’t feel much like a lady today. Grady didn’t want to take our friendship to a new level. His new girlfriend doesn’t want him to talk to me anymore. She’s not comfortable with him having a woman for a best friend. Now, your turn about all this.” She waved her hand around the room.
“I’ve lived in barracks for twenty years. I wanted to feel like I was home. Now back to you, why are you so pissed?” he asked. “You can kick any bush between here and the Gulf of Mexico and find a dozen best friends. There’s one sitting here drinking beer with you if you don’t want to start kicking.”
“He shouldn’t let a woman control him, especially one who’s named Aurelia, and looks like his deceased wife, Amelia,” Addy said.
“He hasn’t been out here to the ranch in days. Didn’t that give you a clue that something was going on?”
“You’d think it would have, but I was giving him all the benefits of doubts.” She turned up the bottle again. “And that pisses me off.”
“I’m not surprised that Grady let a woman railroad him into doing what she wants. He always was kind of a pushover.” Jesse dropped his feet down to the floor. “I’m having another beer. You want one, or do you want a shot of Jack Daniel’s?”
“Beer, please,” she answered.
He went to the kitchen area and brought back two more long-neck bottles. “I missed good beer when I was out on a mission. Sometimes all we could get was nonalcoholic.”
“Monkey piss tastes better than that.” She reached out for the bottle he offered her.
“How much monkey piss have you tasted?” he asked.
“None, but I have an imagination.” She was glad that Jesse was home, happy that their friendship was coming back, but she wanted to get serious now. She had never been one to beat around the bush, especially with Jesse, so she came right out and asked, “What’s wrong with me, Jesse? I can’t even keep a best friend.”
“Nothing that I can see, except maybe your hair is a fright on rainy days,” he chuckled.
“I’m serious,” she declared. “You wouldn’t ask me out in high school. We had a one-night fling because we were both sad that you were leaving. I haven’t been able to hold on to a relationship since, so something has to be wrong with me. Tell me what it is. I don’t want to grow old by myself.”
Jesse didn’t answer for so long that she thought he was avoiding her question altogether. Finally, he said, “We didn’t want to ruin the friendship, remember. We had been best friends since we were maybe four years old. I couldn’t imagine not having you to talk to or to lean on in times of trouble. That didn’t mean I wasn’t interested in you, Addy, or that I didn’t dream about you. That night here in this very room was…” He paused and gazed into her eyes. “More than words can ever describe.”
“And now?” she asked.
“Now we have a smart-ass daughter we have to figure out how to handle.” He blinked and studied his beer bottle. “We can’t go back and recapture that night. We’re not eighteen anymore.”
“Tell that to this room,” she said with another sweep of her hand. “I’d say that you’ve done a pretty good job of it.”
“Well, then…” He wiggled his eyebrows.
“Don’t tease me,” she said.
He slid down to the middle of the sofa and drew her close to his side. “You are a wonderful person, Addison Hall. You have a kind heart and just enough sass to make you interesting. You are beautiful, even when it rains and your hair gets crazy, and any man on the face of this earth should be glad to have you as a friend. Grady is a stupid ass for not seeing that and treating you like the queen you deserve to be. He will never, ever find as true of a friend as you are, and I’m speaking from experience. Want me to go toilet paper his house or write ugly things on his car with shoe polish?”
“No, I just want to sit here with you until suppertime and know that there’s one man in the universe I can trust to make me feel better when I’m pissed,” she whispered.
“I’ll always be here for you, Addy. Don’t ever forget it,” he said.
“I know, Jesse, and I’m sorry we drifted so far apart, but I’m glad we’re back in each other’s world now.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Me, too, darlin’.”
Chapter Twelve
The temperature had already risen to eighty-nine degrees by ten o’clock that Tuesday morning when Addy and Jesse got on the four-wheelers and headed over to her old home place to check on the alpacas. They crossed two pastures, waved at Henry and the hired hands who were putting up new fencing, and then drove across the dirt road. Since alpacas didn’t do well when the weather got hot and needed a shady place to get under, Henry had moved them into the corral next to the hay barn, which had a lean-to shed attached to its side.
Addy brought her four-wheeler to a stop, slung a leg over the side of the seat, and counted the animals before she stood up. “Looks like they’re all here,” she said. “I’m seeing the male or macho in the middle of his harem, six hembras, and two crias. You ever dealt with alpacas before?”
“Nope. I’ve seen a few but never dealt with them,” he answered.
Jesse nodded as he parked, got off the four-wheeler, and went over to the corral fence. “Dad wants us to move them over closer to the ranch house on Sunflower Ranch so he can enjoy them more. Maybe that pasture right outside the yard fence?”
“Great idea,” Addy agreed. “The shed at the end of the barn could provide shelter for them in hot and cold weather, and there’s a water trough up there close by. We’d just have to be careful to keep the barn door closed. All that hay and feed would be like a never-ending buffet to them. We’d be calling Stevie out every week to take care of them if they ate too much.”
Jesse propped a foot on the bottom rail of the corral and leaned on it. “I never thought Stevie O’Dell would turn out to be a vet. She was so prissy in high school. Is she still single?”
“Yep,” Addy answered. “You interested?” A shot of jealousy stabbed her in the heart.
“Nope, never did like prissy girls,” Jesse answered. “I prefer women with a little sass in them.”
Addy cocked her head to one side. “I hear a cria crying from inside the barn. One of them must’ve found a way in, and now it can’t find its mama.”
“That’s not a cria,” Jesse said. “It sounds more like a human, not a baby, but a child. Maybe somebody’s kid got lost.”
Addy took off in a run around the end of the barn. She slid the door open enough to slip inside and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Mia’s truck. Had the vehicle been sitting there the whole week and no one noticed it? If so, had she left with Ricky in his truck?
“Holy smoke,” Jesse gasped. “Isn’t that Mia’s truck?”
Addy’s hands trembled, and her stomach twisted into knots. Something was dreadfully wrong. She felt like a boulder the size of an elephant was sitting on her chest. Her child was out there without a way to get back home.