AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER ONE
OFALLTHEthings that Alana Parkman had figured could happen at the cemetery, she certainly hadn’t expected running into her ex. An ex she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Yet, here he was.
Gray Russell.
Former rodeo champion, hot cowboy and all around breaker of hearts.
Well, breaker of her heart, anyway. In all fairness, that didn’t mean he’d made a habit of it since he’d dumped her on the night of their high school graduation thirteen years ago. Gray had then hightailed it out of their hometown of Last Ride, Texas, and to the best of her knowledge, he hadn’t returned except to go to his father’s house for visits that didn’t involve going anywhere else in or around town.
But he was sure as heck here now.
The years had been kind to him.Unfairlykind, she considered on a lust-filled sigh. His face had gotten even more character to go along with that cover-model jaw stubble, and he’d put on some muscle in all the right places on his once rangy body. The hair—oh, the storm-black hair that made you want to plunge your fingers into it—was thick and rumpled, making him forever and ever look as if he’d just climbed out of bed and over to the photo shoot for one of those calendars of dreamy guys.
Since her mouth seemed to have stopped working, and her feet had as well, Alana just stayed put on the gravel path that led to the graves of Hilltop Cemetery. The place had dozens of graves with varying sizes of tombstones, but Gray wasn’t actually standing in front or near any of them. Holding his Stetson by the side of his leg, he was under the shade of one of the massive oaks that dotted the final resting place for many of Last Ride’s locals.
Even though it was going on 5:00 p.m., it was still hotter than Hades. Typical for Texas in early June. That was probably the reason for Gray being in the shady spot, but this time of year, most folks kept their outdoor visits short and sweet. Judging from the sweat beading on his bunched-up forehead, this had not been especially short and definitely not sweet.
“Uh, I’m sorry,” Alana managed to say once she’d gathered enough breath to speak.
The apology was because she figured she’d interrupted him while he was visiting a loved one, but then she frowned. Because to the best of her knowledge, and her knowledge about Gray was pretty extensive, none of his relatives or friends were buried here. His mother had died from cancer when he’d been in high school, but she was buried in one of the town’s other cemeteries.
None of Alana’s friends or relatives had graves in this particular cemetery, either, though she did have a legit reason for being here. Well, legit-ish, anyway.
With his left hand crammed in the pocket of his great-fitting jeans, Gray slowly shifted his attention toward her in a way that made her think he’d already known she was there before she’d even spoken. Maybe he had, too. From his position under that tree, he had a good view of the parking area, and he likely would have seen and heard her car approach.
Since her Ford Focus and a shiny silver truck were the only vehicles in that parking area, it meant they were the only visitors at the moment. So, yes, he would have noticed her before she’d started the trek up the hill that’d given Hilltop Cemetery its name, and now he no longer had the place to himself.
Considering his somber expression, he’d likely needed that alone time.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. Obviously, there were some things about him she hadn’t known, but this certainly wasn’t the time to ask what the heck he was doing here.
Gray did some asking of his own, though. “Are you here to get a picture of Sadie Jo Walker’s tombstone?”
That stopped Alana in her tracks, but she doubted that was a wild guess on his part. “Either you have ESP or you’ve been back in town long enough to hear gossip about the Last Ride Society.”
“Gossip,” he verified. “I dropped by the Quik Stop to fill up with gas, and in the span of the five minutes or so I was there, Melvin Ford tried to catch me up on the past thirteen years of things I’d missed.” Gray leveled his brown eyes on her. Eyes that were just as dreamy as the rest of him.
Alana shook off the effect of having those dreamy eyes directed at her, and she groaned because Melvin, who was an attendant at the gas station, would have almost certainly focused that “catching Gray up” on things related to her. It wasn’t exactly a grand secret in Last Ride that they’d been high school sweethearts. No secret, either, about that whole broken heart/his dumping her deal.
“So, you know I’m divorced and have had not one but two broken engagements,” she laid out there. “Folks call me the Typhoid Mary of relationships. Melvin would have also told you that I was the winner of the Last Ride Society drawing.” Balancing her phone and her purse in her hands, Alana managed to use her available fingers to putwinnerin air quotes.
Gray nodded, verifying that he had indeed been told that. “You drew Sadie Jo Walker’s name.”
Alana nodded as well, and was that a touch of disdain she’d heard in his voice? Maybe. Plenty of people didn’t care much for the Parkmans, their silver spoon upbringings and their various legacies.
One such legacy, the Last Ride Society, was formed decades ago by the town’s founder and Alana’s ancestor, Hezzie Parkman. Hezzie had wanted her descendants to preserve the area’s history by having a quarterly drawing so that one Parkman descendant would then in turn draw the name of a local tombstone to research.
And that was the reason Alana was here.
Research that required her to take a photo of the tombstone, dig into the deceased person’s history and write a report for all the town to read. Well, for all the town who was interested in reading such things, anyway. She wasn’t particularly interested in it, but family legacy meant family duty.
The Parkman name and the trust fund that had come with it had opened some doors for her. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t necessarily chosen to go through those doors. Alana felt as if she owed this to Hezzie for founding the town that Alana loved. Yes,loved. Despite Alana’s overbearing, judgmental parents, this was and always would be her home.
“The drawing was actually last month, but I couldn’t get started until school finished,” she babbled to fill in the awkward silence that followed. And just in case Gray thought she’d procrastinated in getting this done.
“You teach theater arts at the high school,” Gray supplied. “Melvin mentioned that.”
“Yep,” she verified. “And the end of the year stuff always keeps me busy. I couldn’t get out here until after graduation.” She paused. “In that five-minute conversation, Melvin probably told you my folks think I’ve sold myself way short in the career department.”
