Page 38 of Texas Made
“Right. With your head buried in your hands and a pretty miserable expression on your face when you looked up. Come on, Jaclyn. You can talk to me.”
“Fine,” she said, giving in. After all, she had to talk to somebody and Rachel was her best friend. “Shut the door and sit down.” Rachel did so and waited for her to go on. “Marshall just called. He isn’t coming up tonight. Or the rest of the weekend either.”
“Did he say why?”
“Yes. Everyone at the ranch is sick except him. He has to take care of everything—the horses, the ranch, the rest of the animals. Everything. With no one but a teenager to help him.”
“That’s too bad. Wait,” she said when Jaclyn didn’t speak. “Do you think he’s making it up?”
“No.” She shook her head decisively. “He sounded really stressed. Besides, if he didn’t want to come he could have made another excuse that didn’t involve his family. I could easily call Damaris to check. Of course, if she’s throwing up she won’t answer the phone.”
“Are you going to call her?”
“No. I trust him.” She’d thought about calling but only for a moment. She trusted Marshall had told her the truth. She was simply disappointed.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I miss him.”
“And?”
“That’s it. I miss him.” Horribly and it hadn’t been very long since she’d seen him.
“There’s more to it than just missing him,” Rachel said perceptively.
Jaclyn glared at her. “This habit of yours of seeing what I’m not saying is really annoying.”
Rachel grinned. “What are friends for?”
True. “I’m afraid this is the beginning of the end.”
“Because he canceled once? Isn’t that a bit of an overreaction?”
Jaclyn shrugged.
“Go see him.”
“I offered. He said no, he doesn’t want me to get sick.”
“That sucks. He has a point, though, but it still sucks.”
“Yes, it does.” She sighed.
“Cheer up. There’s always next weekend.”
Maybe she was overreacting. If he couldn’t come to her, she’d go see him the following weekend. There was no reason she couldn’t. Unless something came up on her end. Or Marshall got the virus.
Chapter Fifteen
Two weeks afterwhat Marshall called, “The Great Vomit Virus Disaster,” he was finally able to leave the ranch to see Jaclyn. She had wanted to come see him the weekend before, but then had an emergency come up at her work. It looked like things were going exactly as she’d feared. And to be honest, he’d feared that same thing too.
Good job, Marshall.He’d managed to time it so he got to Dallas at rush hour. Since Jaclyn lived north of downtown, near Addison, that meant he had to drive through most of Dallas and a good many suburbs. That was fun. Not. Mile after mile of stop and go traffic, or completely stopped at times, added more than an hour to the time it usually took to drive there. But he finally made it to Jaclyn’s newly redone condo. It was in a nice area sandwiched somewhere in between an older, shabbier neighborhood and some really ritzy, expensive-looking neighborhoods. Her condo was in a gated community and according to her, safe.
Nice, he supposed, if you liked city living. Having lived on the Walker ranch most of his life, except when he’d taken the year off and traveled, Marshall gave his vote for the wide-open spaces of the ranch. Dallas was a little too urban for him. Not that he’d tell Jaclyn that. She was a city girl, after all. He called her from his cell phone to open the gate.
“I’ll buzz you in. Park in one of the visitors’ spots and I’ll come get you.”
“I’m sure I can find it myself.”
