The Oklahoma Brands
The Brands Who Came for Christmas
Brand-New Heartache
Secrets and Lies
A Mommy For Christmas
One Magic Summer
Sweet Vidalia Brand
Prologue
Maya
Most people in Big Falls, Oklahoma, thought it must have been a case of immaculate conception when they saw me, Maya Brand-eldest of the notorious Vidalia Brand's illegitimate brood-with my belly swollen and my ring finger naked.
Personally, I thought it was more like fate playing a cruel joke. See, all my life, I had struggled to be the one respectable member of my outrageous family. I went to church on Sundays. I volunteered at the nursing home. I wore sensible shoes, for heaven's sake! I never aspired to notoriety. I just wanted to be normal.
You know. Normal. I wanted a husband, a home, a family. I wanted to be one of those women who make pot roast for Sunday dinner, and vacuum in pearls while it simmers. I wanted a little log cabin on the hillside behind my family's farm, with a fenced-in backyard for the kids, and a big front porch. I wanted to sit down in one of the pews on Sunday and not have the three women beside me automatically slide their butts to the other end.
And it had been starting to happen-before the big disaster blew into town. Bit by bit, I'd felt it happening. The PTA moms and church ladies in town had been slowly, reluctantly, beginning to accept me. To see me as an individual, rather than just another daughter of a bigamist and a barmaid. And it wasn't that I didn't love my mother dearly, because I did. I do! I just didn't want to be like her. I wanted to be like those other women-the ones who were always asked to bake for the church picnic, who did their grocery shopping in heels, and who drove the car pools. The ones who slow-danced with their handsome husbands on anniversaries and holidays, and who took golf or tennis lessons with groups of their friends. They have minivans and housekeepers, manicured lawns and manicured nails, those women.
What they do not have are mothers who own the local saloon, or sisters who ride motorcycles or pose for fashion magazines in their underwear.
Still, I was certain my background was something that I could overcome with effort. And, as I said, my efforts had actually been working. Once or twice, one of those other women had smiled back at me in church. The ladies on the pew hadn't moved so far away, nor quite as quickly, and one of them had even returned my persistent "good morning" one Sunday.
Things had been going so well! Until that night?.
That night. He ruined everything! Made me into the biggest (literally) and most scandalous member of my entire family! The good people of Big Falls have stopped gossiping about Kara being a jinx-then again, none of her boyfriends have wound up in the hospital from any freak accidents lately, either. They've stopped whispering about Edie, who found the success she chased to L.A. when she became a lingerie model for the Vanessa's Whisper catalogue. Mom just about had kittens over that one. The locals used to speculate on Selene, because of her oddball customs and beliefs. Vegetarianism and Zen and dancing around outdoors when the moon was full, were not big in Big Falls. And Mel used to generate gossip for being too tough for any man, with her motorcycle and her unofficial job as bouncer at the OK Corral. That's our family's saloon; the OK Corral. Because we live in Oklahoma. Cute, huh?
But the point is, no matter how much I wished that my sisters would conform, or that my mother would suddenly cut that wild black hair of hers to a style more fitting for a woman her age, and maybe convert the saloon into a restaurant like that nice Haggerty family a town away-none of their antics did as much damage to my standing in the community as that one night of insanity with that man. That drifter with the eyes that seemed to look right through my clothes. Right through my skin.
I suppose, if I'm going to tell you about all this, I should probably start with him, and that night.
See it all started just short of nine months ago?.
Caleb
How was I to know that one night of insanity would change my life forever? I mean, I was respectable, responsible, highly thought of. The Montgomerys of Oklahoma were known far and wide. We had money, and we had power. The name Cain Caleb Montgomery had a long and proud history. My father, Cain Caleb Montgomery II, served two terms as a U.S. senator. His father, Cain Caleb Montgomery I, served five.
I am, as you have probably guessed by now, Cain Caleb Montgomery III. And already my political career was well underway. I had just stepped down from my second term as mayor of a medium-sized city. On the day all this insanity began, my entire future was being planned for me. My father and grandfather, and a half dozen other men-men whose faces you would recognize-sat around a large table plotting my run for the U.S. Senate.
They discussed when and how I would declare my candidacy nine months from now, just a little before New Year's Day. They discussed what I was going to stand for and what I was going to stand against. They didn't discuss these things with me, mind you. They discussed them with each other. I was an onlooker. A bystander. They went on, telling me what I was going to wear, eat, and do on my vacations, as I sat there, listening, nodding, and growing more and more uneasy.
And then they went too far. There we all were, in my father's drawing room. Eight three-piece suits-seven of them straining at the middle-seated around a long cherry wood table that gleamed like a mirror. The place reeked of expensive leather, expensive whiskey and cigars of questionable origin. And all of a sudden, one of the men said, "Of course, there will be a Mrs. Montgomery by then."
"Of course there will!" my father agreed, smiling ear to ear.
And I sat there with my jaw hanging.
"Got anyone in mind, son?" A big hand slammed me on the back, and a wrinkled eye winked from behind gold-framed glasses. "No? Great. Even better this way, in fact. We can start from scratch, then."
And suddenly they were all talking at once, growing more and more excited all the time.
"She should be blond. The latest analysis shows that blondes hold a slight edge over brunettes or redheads in public opinion polls."
"Of course, there's always dye."
"Medium height. Not too tall."
"Yes, and not too short, or she'll have to wear heels all the time."
"And of course, she has to be attractive."
"But not too attractive. We don't want any backlash."
"Educated. Not quite as well as you, though, but that goes without saying."
"Well versed. She should have a good voice, nice rich tones. None of those squeaky ones. And no gigglers."
"Oh, definitely no gigglers!"
"Sterling reputation. We can't have any scandals in the family. That's probably most important of all."
"Absolutely. No scandals."
"We can run background checks, of course. Just to be sure. And-"
"Wait a minute."
They all fell silent when I finally spoke. Maybe it was because of the tone of my voice, which sounded odd even to me. I placed both my palms on the table and got slowly to my feet. And for the first time in my entire adult life, I let myself wonder if this was what I really wanted. It had been expected of me, planned for me, even from before I was born. Everything all laid out, private school, prep school, college, law school. And I'd gone along with it because, frankly, it had never occurred to me to do otherwise. But was it what I wanted?
It shocked me to realize I wasn't sure anymore. I just?wasn't sure. Giving my head a shake, I just turned and walked out. They all called after me, shouting my name, asking if I was all right. I kept on going. I felt disoriented-as if, for just one instant there, a corner of my world had peeled back, revealing a truth I hadn't wanted to see or even consider. The fact that there might be more for me out there. Something different. Another choice.
Anyway, I went out that night looking to escape my name. My reputation. My identity, because I was suddenly questioning whether it was indeed mine. Everyone who knew me, knew me as Cain Caleb Montgomery III. CC-Three for short. Hell, wit
hout the name and the heritage, I didn't even know who I was.
I shed the suit. Dressed in a pair of jeans I used to wear when I spent summers on my grandfather's ranch. God, I hadn't been out there since my college days, and they barely fit anymore. I borrowed the pickup that belonged to our gardener, Jos?. He looked at me oddly when I asked but didn't refuse.
And then I just drove.
Maybe it was fate that made me have that flat tire in Big Falls, Oklahoma, on the eve of Maya Brand's twenty-ninth birthday. Hell, it had to be fate?because it changed everything from then on. Although I wasn't completely aware of those changes until some eight and a half months later.
But really, you have to hear this story from the beginning.
It all began nine months ago, on the day I began to question everything in my life?.