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Chapter 36.1
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LOVE IN TEXAS chapter 1
It had been a long two years, but Wade Harrison was grateful for every second of that time. He was lucky to be alive, and he knew it. He knew, too, that he wouldn’t have survived if not for the death of a stranger and his generous gift. He owed his life not only to his team of doctors, nurses and therapists, but also to a man named James Donald McCormick, who’d had the guts to sign an organ donor card.Wade wasn’t supposed to know the name of the man whose heart now beat inside his chest, but money and tenacity could find out just about anything, and Wade had plenty of both and wasn’t ashamed to use either. The least he could do was make certain McCormick’s family was getting along all right.Funny, he thought as he stood on Main Street in Tribute, Texas, and looked up at the neon sign that read Dixie’s Diner. He hadn’t been this nervous when he’d chaired his first board meeting, yet here he stood, palms sweaty and stomach jumpy. To give himself a minute, he plunked coins into the mac
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 1.1
“Yes. Palms up.”Wade tucked the newspaper beneath his arm and held his hands out, palms up, suddenly grateful for time spent on the tennis court.She grasped his hands and ran her thumbs over the slight calluses along the pads of the fingers of his right hand. “Well, I guess you’ve done some work before.”He just shrugged. “I’ve worked.” Not manually, not for many years, but he’d worked his butt off in more than one boardroom. He thought it ironic that playing tennis, which he did to relax, would turn out to be more important in getting him a job than having been CEO of the nation’s largest media conglomerate. The latter had not put calluses on his hands.“Were you interested in night cooking or daytime dishwashing?”While he could cook—he was a bachelor and didn’t like to starve—he doubted his repertoire matched the diner’s menu. Also, the woman before him was the key to the boys he was looking for, and she obviously worked days. Sticking as close to her as possible seemed his best
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 1.2
Maybe she was coming down with a bug.“How’s it going?” she asked. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why did she feel the need to speak to him, to get him to speak to her?He shrugged. “You tell me.”Dixie blinked. Oh. He was responding to what she’d said, not what she’d thought. Thank God.She looked around. The tubs of dirty dishes from the breakfast shift were gone. Trays of clean glasses stood stacked in their proper place alongside stacks of clean plates and a stack of napkin-wrapped cutlery settings ready for use.“Wow,” she said. “You’ve been busy.” She hadn’t expected so much work out of him so quickly.“That’s what you’re paying me for,” he said with a smile.How could anyone be so damned cheerful while washing dishes? Dixie hated washing dishes. She’d hated it from the day she’d opened the diner and realized what a horrendous job it was cleaning up after so many customers all day long.Not that she minded the customers! God love and bless each and every one of them with a hearty appet
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 1.3
“Yeah, but you’re a girl.”Pops made a strangling sound and tried to look as innocent as an angel.It wasn’t working.Dixie glared first at Pops, then at the boys. “And that means…?” She propped her fists on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Ben.“Oh, uh…” Ben hung his head, shuffled his feet and peeked up at his mother with a small grin. “Uh, gee, nothing, Mom.”“You’re darn right, nothing.” She nodded sharply. “Unless you’re worried that you, as a mere boy, might not be able to do as good a job as a girl could.”“Aw, Mom.”“Aw, Mom,” she mimicked back at him with a smile.Wade watched the byplay, and, as trite as it sounded even to him, he felt his heart melt. And why not, he thought. It was their father’s heart.“What kind of homework do you have?” their mother asked them.The youngest one, Tate, made a face, complete with gagging noises for sound effects. “Ugh. Yucky math.”“Poor baby.” She smoothed a hand over his head and smiled.“Huh. You think that’s bad,” Ben said, “I’ve gott
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 2
Wade followed his new boss and her sons out the door at 4:30 that afternoon and drove back to his motel, three blocks from the diner, in a daze. He had yet to stop grinning when, several moments later, he called home.“I found them.”His father put him on the speakerphone. It was his mother who responded to Wade’s remark. “Honestly, Wade, you can’t simply traipse off to the wilds of Texas—”Wade broke out laughing. “You say that like it’s the middle of the Sahara Desert.” He could almost see one of her fiercest frowns; his mother was a champion frowner.“It might as well be,” she complained. “Texas, for God’s sake.” “Texas has been very good to us,” he reminded her. “We have twoproductive printing plants in Fort Worth and a profitable shopping mall in Houston.”“That doesn’t mean I want my only son there,” his mother said tersely. “You know it hasn’t been that long since—”“Mother,” he interrupted. “It’s been two years since my transplant, I’m in excellent health, my doctor says ther
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 2.1
On his way he passed a flower-and-gift shop, grocery store, ice cream shop, auto parts store, and dentist’s office. Next to the pizza parlor sat a bank, then the town square. He didn’t walk the square, but noticed the businesses lining it included a newspaper office. It was still open, so he decided that after he ate, if they were closed, he would walk by and peer through the front windows. Harrison Corporation owned more than a few newspapers.His great-grandfather had started the family’s first newspaper from nothing, wrote the columns, edited, set the type, printed the copies and sold them. A true one-man operation for the first several months of publication. But, since his had been the only paper in the tiny Wyoming town, it had been a hit.The rest, as they said—at least, in his family—was history.Wade would enjoy poking around this particular weekly paper, but he would settle for a view through the window later.The center of the town square was occupied by city hall, the polic
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 2.2
“Sorry,” she said with a grimace. “I don’t talk much about him.” And she wondered why she was running off at the mouth this time. “The boys barely remember him.”“That’s too bad,” Wade offered. “I can’t imagine growing up without a father, but these days I guess kids do it all the time.”“They do,” she agreed. “And many of them are better off for it. I know mine are.”There came that blank look on Wade’s face again. “I’ll just go check those salt and pepper shakers,” he said. “Then I’ll get to the silverware.”“Thanks.” She wondered what Wade was thinking to give him that blank look.Wade was thinking that maybe McCormick hadn’t been the best father, but he wanted Jimmy Don remembered in a better light, not for what he hadn’t done right or well, but for that one great thing he did do that made such a difference to so many people.He needed a plan.During the next couple of days, business at Dixie’s Diner kept everybody hopping. Wade felt the beginnings of a friendship developing betwe
LOVE IN TEXAS Chapter 2.3
“Yeah?” Tate said. “Then gimmie a fiver.”The sound of the boy’s voice reached down into the deep recesses of Wade’s brain and brought him back to awareness. He swallowed, hard, his mouth lined with cotton.Dixie seemed to be having as much trouble as he was. “Five?” she finally said, her gaze still locked on Wade. “A soda doesn’t cost that much.”“No,” Tate said with a snicker, “but you know how those delivery charges are. They just keep going up and up.”Dixie finally looked away, and Wade felt suddenly new and exposed, as if she’d taken a layer of his skin with her.“Highway robbery,” Dixie said to Tate, handing him a five from the purse in her lap. Her hand was shaking.Good, Wade thought. At least he wasn’t the only one who felt as if lightning had just struck.Wade watched her watch her youngest son traipse down the steps until the boy reached the ground and dashed the five yards to the concession stand. She seemed to have recovered faster and easier than he was able to.He clea
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