Page 3 of Sweet Beginnings (Honeysuckle, Texas #1)

“Oh my. This is beautiful.” Liz Klein, Alice Sweet’s middle sister, lifted the item out of the box and held it up for her sister Vicki to see. Only Vicki’s gaze was locked on the phone in her hand. “What’s more interesting than this?”

“Alice still isn’t answering her phone.” Vicki looked up at her sister and smiled. “It is pretty.”

“Pretty?” Liz shook her head and gingerly set the bean bag holster around her hips, snapping the front closed. “It’s almost too pretty to sell.”

“What?” Vicki looked up from the phone again.

Exasperated, Liz placed the custom-made holster back in the shipping box. “You’d think this was the first time our baby sister has ever not answered her phone.”

“No, but she hasn’t worked with the cattle since the kids were old enough to help Charlie. This is the first time she’s been out working the ranch instead of one of the hands. Ever.”

The way her sister emphasized ever gave her pause. Serious pause. “We should have closed the shop and gone to help.”

Vicki shook her head. “You know she wouldn’t have stood for it. This is the biggest season of the year for us with the annual championship coming up and bringing extra tourist dollars.”

“About that.”

Vicki tapped at her phone and grunted something that sounded similar to ‘yeah.’

“We should enter this year.”

“What?”

“You and I are the best corn hole players in the state and you know it.”

“No. We were the best. Then we opened the Corn Hole Heaven and retired from competition. Conflict of interest. Now we just sell to players.”

“But this is different. Alice is in a rough spot.”

“I know.” Vicki stared down at her phone again. “You ever get that feeling in the pit of your stomach that something just isn’t quite right?”

“It’s the new millennium and the world is turning upside down. I get that feeling every day.”

Vicki blew out a deep and soulful sigh. “You’re right. Who the heck ropes cattle and rides a horse with their cell phone in their hand?”

“While I get your drift, I doubt Alice is roping any cattle. She’s probably just doing something safe like checking fence lines or feeding chickens.”

“They don’t have chickens.”

“You know what I mean. Our sister is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. She wouldn’t do anything dangerous.”

Vicki pressed her lips together and then blew out another sigh. “I sure do wish all the kids weren’t spread out so far from home. My Luke and Chase would want to do all they could to help their aunt.”

“I know, same with my boys, but if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Liz flashed her sister a toothy grin, something she did often when quoting their Grandma Davis.

“Which brings me back full circle. First prize is fifty thousand. That could go a long way to helping Alice get back on her feet.”

“Yes.” Vicki fingered the new holster and a sparkle lit in her eyes. “Yes, it would.”

Liz’s cheeks pulled back in a wide smile to rival her sister’s and snapped the new holster onto her hips again. “Looks like we’re going to show Mildred McEntire she’s not the only one who can bedazzle the crowd.”

“You’d better not mean you’re going to blind me with bling.”

“Of course not. That’s not my style.”

“Good. For a minute there, I thought I was going to have to find a new sister.”

“Don’t you look serious.” The door closed behind their niece Jillian.

“Oh, hi sweetie.” The holster still on her hips, Liz turned and drew her niece into a big bear hug. “You look prettier than an East Texas rose.”

“I do take after my aunts.” Jillian grinned at them. The long-running joke between the Davis women and the twins always brought a smile to their faces.

Liz undid the holster. “What brings you by? I thought y’all were going to the ranch for a family dinner.”

“I am.” Jill picked up a red bean bag with an embroidered American flag on it and weighed it in one hand. “I was just thinking.”

Liz looked to Vicki. She didn’t like the glint in her niece’s eyes. Ever since the twins learned to speak, they could get their aunts to do or say anything. Right about now, say was the problem.

“Mama tells y’all absolutely everything.”

Uh-oh . With there being nothing but boys in the family until Jill and Rachel were born, it was plum easy for every adult in the family to cave in to the blonde pigtails and sweet smiles.

Even if they didn’t wear pigtails anymore, resistance was futile.

Except this time their sister had sworn them to secrecy.

“I don’t know about everything,” Vicki offered up quickly. They needed to stay strong—and silent.

“But enough?” Jillian dropped the bean bag back in the display bowl, then inched closer. “Something is going on with Mom and I’d like to know what it is.”

“Something’s very wrong.” Preston stomped the dust free from his boots and strode across the kitchen. “The bunkhouse is empty. No sign of Ray or any of the other hands.”

Carson sprang to his feet. “What do you mean no sign of?”

“No clothes, no equipment, nothing. Except for one bunk.”

“That does it.” Rachel reached for the phone. “I’m calling the sheriff.”

“You do realize,” Jillian held up a hand, “I couldn’t get a word out of Aunt Liz and Aunt Vicki. I admit they looked a little nervous, but you know neither one of them has ever been able to keep a secret.”

“At least not from us,” Rachel added.

“So, if Mom has whatever is going on under control, she is not going to like us bringing in the sheriff.”

Preston pinched the bridge of his nose. “No, but all this is simply—”

A scratching at the back door, followed by a single woof had everyone turning their heads toward the sounds.

“Brady,” a couple of voices muttered.

Another bark and the siblings already on their feet sprinted to the door.

Brady seemed to focus directly on Preston, maybe because he was the brother who looked the most like Kade, or maybe he was simply the closest to the door, but the dog let out a single woof and doubled around, hurrying away from the house.

“I guess we’re following the dog.” Preston raised his hands and quickly dropped them to his sides.

Jillian muttered, “We don’t have any wells.” The teasing reference to Lassie and Timmy falling down the well fell flat on most of them. Especially once they one by one realized the dog was now galloping at full speed and there was no way they were going to keep up on foot.

“I’ll get the four-wheeler,” Rachel shouted over her shoulder.

Carson shook his head. “Jeep would be better. Then we can all ride together.”

Jillian stopped in her tracks. “I’ll stay put. At least one of us should be here in case that dog isn’t taking us to Mom and only leading us on a wild goose chase to a stash of buried dog treasures.”

“Good idea.” Preston did his best to sound calm and collected and hide the fear from his voice. Right about now, none of this looked good to him.

A few minutes more and the dog barked again, this time doing an impatient-with-them dance in place, and once again bolting across the field when the Jeep appeared ready to follow his lead.

Rachel shook her head. “I swear that dog is definitely directing us somewhere and none too happy that it’s taken us this long to follow.”

Preston’s first thought was it better not be a treasure trove of dog bones, but his second thought kicked that aside—hard. If it wasn’t bones, then it would be his mother, and if she needed to send the dog out with an SOS, wherever she was, couldn’t be good.

As his speed demon sister drove them over the uneven terrain, the backseat of the Jeep sent him nearly airborne again. If he wasn’t careful, the next bump might just send him flying off the back end and the poor dog would have to do search and rescue.

“There!” Preston pointed ahead to a big blur of a horse on the horizon. “Blaze is just standing.”

“Then Mom should be nearby.” Except the dog wasn’t running toward the horse, the animal ran at a diagonal.

He was heading toward the fence line between their land and Doc Conroy’s property.

Preston didn’t think he’d ever hear himself say this while his sister Rachel was at the wheel, but never say never: “Gun it.”

Carson yelled over the roar of the engine. “When the dog stops, slow the hell down. We don’t want to run Mom over.”

There. Someone had finally said it out loud.

None of them expected to find their mother picking flowers.

In what seemed like only a heartbeat of time, the dog stopped at the fence line and Rachel eased her foot from the gas pedal.

The closer they got, the tighter the knots in his stomach twisted.

He couldn’t quite make out what the dog was doing, and then he heard a collective gasp at the same time he figured out what Brady was up to.

Ever so gingerly, the dog that had lived at their mother’s side since retiring out of the military, inched his way left and right, carefully sniffing from head to toe at their mother tangled in the barbed wire fence.

“Oh, hell,” Rachel muttered. She’d barely come to a stop when both he and Carson had bolted out of the Jeep.

Half a step away, Preston stopped and grabbed the tool bag from under the seat.

“I’ll get the first aid kit.” Rachel leaned over the other side. Ranch vehicles were often a combination of tool shed and doc’s office. Just enough equipment to patch something or someone up until later.

“Took you…” their mom sucked in a low breath, “long enough.”