Long Road Home by Joann Ross Page B

been paying attention. Perhaps there was that rare dad a girl could talk with about boys, but Buck Merrill had never been him. “ ’Bout time one of you made a move.”
    She was about to insist that she had no intention of making a move, when Sawyer’s truck—which she knew he’d bought used from Radley Biehn, who’d moved up to an SUV because his wife was pregnant with a surprise fourth baby—pulled up in front of the house.
    “I’ve got to go.” She grabbed her jacket from the hook by the front door.
    “Not till he comes in and gets you proper-like,” Buck said.
    “Dad.” Austin rolled her eyes. “I’m not sixteen.”
    “And neither is he. Which is why he should know that a gentleman doesn’t expect a lady to come running out to his truck like some girl in a country song.”
    “Interesting analogy.” Who’d have thought her dad and Heather would be on the same page about anything? Even as she watched Sawyer climb out of the cab of the red truck and come around the hood, headed toward the door, Austin laughed. “My life seems to have turned into a country song the past couple years.” Including marrying a man whose last name she could barely remember the next morning.
    Her father’s rugged features softened in a way that she hadn’t seen since she was ten and Matilda, the loyal Australian shepherd he’d allowed to sleep on her bed after her mother had left them, had died of old age.
    “You’ve been through a rough patch,” he said, not even trying to deny what everyone in River’s Bend already knew too well. “But country music is about a helluva lot more than crying in your beer. Some of those tunes have happy endings.” He nodded decisively. “Which, if you ask me, you and that boy are overdue for.”
    Love flooded through her like a river. Buck Merrill might not be one to toss compliments around like confetti, he might be gruff and stubborn as one of the mules he used to use for packing supplies up to high pastures, but Austin had never, for one minute, doubted that she was well and truly loved.
    She bent down and hugged him. “You’re the best dad ever.”
    She knew she’d disappointed him by up and marrying Jace, but he’d never, not once, said anything negative about her impulsive behavior. Even when she’d filed for divorce, all he’d had to say about the situation was, “Good riddance to bad rubbish.”
    She was about to ask him not to share their conversation with Sawyer, when there was a knock on the door. Smoothing down the front of the skirt—wishing her fairy godmother would suddenly show up and add three, make that six inches to it—Austin went to let him in.
    “Hey.” His gaze, as it moved from head to toe, lingered for a heartbeat on her cleavage. Or lack of it, not that he appeared to care. “You look great.”
    “Which is another way of saying I clean up well?” Realizing that she may have sounded defensive, she tried to move on by skimming a look over him. “You look pretty good, too, cowboy.”
    This time she’d managed a teasing tone, like one old friend ragging on another. “I like that shirt.” Instead of the expected snap-front western shirt, he was wearing a black Sleater-Kinney band T-shirt topped with an open green-and-black watch plaid shirt with his Wranglers and Tony Lama boots.
    “The girls have made a comeback,” he said, flashing that quick grin that had started making her toes curl back in middle school. “And high time.”
    Although he listened to country like everyone else Austin knew, Sawyer had stood out in high school with his band shirts, some of which had gotten him sent home to change. Which was yet another trip down memory lane.
    Which, in turn, had Austin wondering if, just maybe, he’d worn the shirt to send a message. Maybe that while a lot had changed, he wasn’t all that different? And even, perhaps, that she wasn’t the only one wishing they could go back in time and take a do-over?
    Glancing past her to Buck, who was