LITMIR.BIZ

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her plastic lotion bottle. “Of course! Let’s tell a perfect stranger, but not our own daughter. I don’t get—” Then she stopped, her hand flying to her mouth at the distress on her mother’s face. “I’m sorry, Mother. This isn’t about Campbell and me. I know Daddy had his reasons, but it still doesn’t sit very well. I’m just glad he’s okay now.”

      Gayle nodded. “He is, honey. And he would have told you sooner, but, well, everything is changing so fast with our families these days. Death, weddings, retirements.”

      Autumn pulled a brush through her hair. “I guess so. I mean, Summer’s grandparents moved into a retirement home without even letting her know a thing about it.”

      “Exactly,” Gayle said, shaking her head. “It’s almost too much to keep up with.”

      “And we were all three so caught up in our lives in New York. We should have communicated better.”

      “Not that it would have mattered,” her mother replied. “Stubbornness and pride seem to be the dominating traits in our family tree.”

      Autumn got up to pace around the carpeted bedroom. “I don’t understand the Maxwell men. Uncle Stuart kept his illness from April until it was almost too late for her to make it home in time to see him before he died. Uncle James had some sort of late-life crisis that had everyone thinking he was going to run off with some rodeo queen, until he broke down and told Summer and Aunt Elsie the truth—that he’s just afraid of getting old. And now this with Daddy. Why can’t they just open up to the people who love them?”

      Gayle laughed again. “Because they are Maxwell men, honey. You know the stories and the legends. Rough and tumble, tough and ornery. Their ancestors helped win Texas from Mexico, helped build empires and conquer worlds, including everything from oil to railroads to the Alamo. They can’t show any signs of failure or weakness. And they can’t communicate for anything, I’m afraid.”

      Autumn had to agree there. “So he decided to retire after Uncle Stuart died?”

      “No, actually just before he died. He hired Campbell back in the spring, but your father officially retired a few weeks ago.”

      “Right after the heart attack?”

      “That pretty much sealed it, yes.”

      “But he decided way back?”

      “Yes,” Gayle said, puzzled.

      “I knew it,” Autumn said, bobbing her head. “I think April knew about this. I wonder why she didn’t tell me?”

      Gayle looked up at her. “Well, she’s had a lot to deal with—her father’s death, moving back to Texas from New York, starting a new job and planning a wedding. Don’t blame her if she didn’t put this at the top of her priority list.”

      “Oh, I’m not blaming April. She kept urging me to call Daddy and talk to him. I blame myself—and him, of course.”

      “Like father, like daughter,” her mother said, getting up to smooth the wrinkles out of her pink satin robe.

      “I’m not quite as stubborn as Daddy,” Autumn retorted.

      “Oh, really? So you don’t call it stubborn, turning your father down flat today?”

      “That was before I knew about his heart attack. He just told me he’d had a little scare.”

      “More like a big scare for me,” Gayle said. “I was so worried.”

      “But you didn’t call me,” Autumn said, her heart hurting with all the undercurrents running through this day.

      “No, and I’m sorry for that,” Gayle said. “But I promised your father I wouldn’t tell anyone. And I’m sure he won’t like it that I told you today. He’ll think you feel sorry for him, and we wouldn’t want that, now, would we?” She walked slowly to the door. “You know, honey, with you girls up there in New York, we just kind of let things slip by. No need to bother them—that’s what we’d always say. I’m beginning to see that was wrong. We need our children around us, no matter good times or bad.”

      Autumn followed her mother to the door. “He needs me now, right?”

      “Yes, he does. But he’d never admit that.”

      “You know I won’t let him down, don’t you, Mother?”

      Gayle touched a hand to Autumn’s face. “I know you will do the right thing, darling. You’ve always been a strong girl. And I know you love your daddy.”

      Autumn kissed her mother good-night, then turned to stare at herself in the mirror, the silence of the room echoing with a soft rhythm inside her brain. She could do this. She didn’t have any other choice. She was out of work and at the end of the road. And her father needed her.

      Autumn looked out the window at the starry night. “I hear You, Lord. I know when You close a window, You always open a door. Or is it when You close a door, You open a window?”

      Either way, Autumn knew an opening when she saw one, and this one was clearly showing her the way home.

      “I guess I’m going to work at Maxwell Financial Group,” she told her worried expression as she turned back to the mirror. “And that means, I guess I’m going to work with Campbell Dupree. Whether I want to or not.”

      Autumn decided she’d need lots of extra prayers tonight. But then, so would Campbell Dupree.

      Chapter Three

      A motorcycle.

      Autumn stared out the double windows of her father’s office, watching as Campbell lifted his long legs off a big black-and-chrome motorcycle. He wore a business suit and a red helmet. And those irritating suede sneakers.

      “Does he always arrive in such a showy manner?” April asked her father’s secretary, Janice Duncan.

      No one knew how old Janice was, and no one ever dared ask. She’d been a fixture at Maxwell Financial Group since Autumn was a baby. She’d had the same sensible short-clipped platinum hairstyle for as long as Autumn could remember. She never aged and she never, ever spoke about work or her personal life outside the office. Inside the office was another matter, however. She knew how to settle office squabbles and she knew how to peg new hires, and she didn’t mind telling the Maxwell clan when she thought someone wouldn’t make the cut. Autumn ranked Janice right up there with her own mother, trust-wise. So she knew she could depend on Janice to give her the goods, straight up, on Campbell Dupree.

      “What’s he driving today?” Janice asked, her green eyes never leaving the computer screen in front of her.

      “Something Harley-Davidson, I think,” Autumn said, careful to stand back so Campbell wouldn’t look up and find her spying. “It’s huge and shiny.”

      “Oh, that’s nothing,” Janice said, eyes smiling through her black-framed glasses. “He also owns a vintage Corvette and an overhauled Chevy pickup that he says used to belong to his grandfather back in Louisiana.” Then Janice grinned. “He’s part Cajun, you know.”

      “No, I didn’t know.”

      Autumn watched as Campbell greeted the president of the Chamber of Commerce as both men arrived for work, his whole body stance animated and sincere. Since the chamber was right across the street, it figured that Campbell would get to know the staff there. Friendly fellow, she thought. Waving to everyone in town, laughing and chatting it up on Main Street. Probably mostly for show.

      “Is he from Louisiana?” she asked Janice, following the other woman into the next room so Janice could grab papers from the buzzing printer.

      “That’s what he told us. Grew up dirt-poor in some backwater bayou near the Gulf of Mexico.”

      “Hmm.” Autumn gained a new respect for Campbell. He sure didn’t look dirt-poor now. His suit was well-made and fitted

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