Second Chance at Sunflower Ranch

by Carolyn Brown

  “No, I just want to sit here with you until suppertime and know that there’s one man in the universe I can trust to make me feel better when I’m pissed,” she whispered.

  “I’ll always be here for you, Addy. Don’t ever forget it,” he said.

  “I know, Jesse, and I’m sorry we drifted so far apart, but I’m glad we’re back in each other’s world now.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Me, too, darlin’.”

  Chapter Twelve

  The temperature had already risen to eighty-nine degrees by ten o’clock that Tuesday morning when Addy and Jesse got on the four-wheelers and headed over to her old home place to check on the alpacas. They crossed two pastures, waved at Henry and the hired hands who were putting up new fencing, and then drove across the dirt road. Since alpacas didn’t do well when the weather got hot and needed a shady place to get under, Henry had moved them into the corral next to the hay barn, which had a lean-to shed attached to its side.

  Addy brought her four-wheeler to a stop, slung a leg over the side of the seat, and counted the animals before she stood up. “Looks like they’re all here,” she said. “I’m seeing the male or macho in the middle of his harem, six hembras, and two crias. You ever dealt with alpacas before?”

  “Nope. I’ve seen a few but never dealt with them,” he answered.

  Jesse nodded as he parked, got off the four-wheeler, and went over to the corral fence. “Dad wants us to move them over closer to the ranch house on Sunflower Ranch so he can enjoy them more. Maybe that pasture right outside the yard fence?”

  “Great idea,” Addy agreed. “The shed at the end of the barn could provide shelter for them in hot and cold weather, and there’s a water trough up there close by. We’d just have to be careful to keep the barn door closed. All that hay and feed would be like a never-ending buffet to them. We’d be calling Stevie out every week to take care of them if they ate too much.”

  Jesse propped a foot on the bottom rail of the corral and leaned on it. “I never thought Stevie O’Dell would turn out to be a vet. She was so prissy in high school. Is she still single?”

  “Yep,” Addy answered. “You interested?” A shot of jealousy stabbed her in the heart.

  “Nope, never did like prissy girls,” Jesse answered. “I prefer women with a little sass in them.”

  Addy cocked her head to one side. “I hear a cria crying from inside the barn. One of them must’ve found a way in, and now it can’t find its mama.”

  “That’s not a cria,” Jesse said. “It sounds more like a human, not a baby, but a child. Maybe somebody’s kid got lost.”

  Addy took off in a run around the end of the barn. She slid the door open enough to slip inside and stopped dead in her tracks when she saw Mia’s truck. Had the vehicle been sitting there the whole week and no one noticed it? If so, had she left with Ricky in his truck?

  “Holy smoke,” Jesse gasped. “Isn’t that Mia’s truck?”

  Addy’s hands trembled, and her stomach twisted into knots. Something was dreadfully wrong. She felt like a boulder the size of an elephant was sitting on her chest. Her child was out there without a way to get back home.

  “Yes, that’s her truck,” Addy whispered. “And I think there’s someone inside it.”

  Jesse closed his hand around hers. Together they eased across the scorching hot barn. The windows were rolled down and the truck was covered with a layer of dust. When Addy peeked inside, the whole world around her disappeared and everything went black. Jesse caught her as she started to fall backward and held her tightly against his chest.

  “It’s Mia,” she gasped when she got her bearings.

  “Mama?” Mia sat up and slung the door open at the same time. She fell into her mother’s arms, laid her head on Addy’s shoulder, and sobbed until she got the hiccups.

  “I should go,” Jesse said.

  Addy shook her head. “Don’t you dare leave.”

  She led Mia over to the side of the barn and pulled her down to sit beside her on a bale of hay. “How long have you been here? Why didn’t you come to the house?”

  Mia kept her eyes glued to her boots. “I’ve been here since midnight last night. I didn’t want to wake up the whole house. Poppa might have had a heart attack.”

  “You could have called me, and I would have let you in the house. You didn’t need to sleep in your truck,” Addy said.

  Mia shook her head but still didn’t look up. “No, ma’am. I don’t deserve to come home, and you have every right to say that you told me so.”

  Jesse sat down beside Addy. “We’re just glad you’re safe.”

  Addy put her arm around Mia and drew her close to her side. “What happened, sweetie?”

  Mia put her head in her hands. “I was a fool. I trusted Ricky.” She hiccupped through her tears.

  “Do you want to talk about what happened?” Jesse said.

  Mia shook her head again. “I don’t want to say his name or talk about him or anything, but Mama, Poppa and Nana deserve to know what happened. “On Sunday night we had this big argument. I went out to get food…” She closed her eyes and shivered in spite of the steaming hot barn. “When I got back, there was another woman in our room, and he was kissing her.”

  Addy’s mother instincts kicked in and anger boiled up from depths that she didn’t even know existed. Not only had Ricky taken advantage of her child, he had broken her heart. The guy had better stay out of Fannin County for a long time because it would take years for her to be able to look at him without wanting to strangle him.

  “He said that she kissed him and…” Mia wiped tears away from her cheeks and sat up straight. “I was a fool to believe him, but I did. That night he lost the rest of our money at the poker table.”

  “How much money did he put in with yours when you left together?” Jesse asked.

  “That’s none of your business,” Mia said through clenched teeth.

  “I’d say it is our business,” Addy disagreed. “You need to face the fact that you’ve been conned, not only for the past week, but for six months. How much did Ricky contribute to the living expenses when you two moved in together last semester? Did he get a job and help with food and rent?”

  “Did you get a job?” Jesse asked. “Is that why you failed every class?”

  Addy was about to ask the same question, but hearing it said out loud made her angry at her daughter as well as Ricky. Mia should have known better than to throw her entire future away on a smooth-talking bad boy.

  “Did you?” Addy asked.

  “When my money was gone in my savings and checking account, I worked as a waitress in a café not far from our apartment. I couldn’t go to school and keep up with the bills. Ricky liked to have his friends over to play poker and drink beer. That took money.” Mia shrugged. “I was happy if he was.”

  “Do you want me to go find that worthless guy and kick his ass?” Jesse asked.

  She nodded. “I wish you would, but he’s not worth driving all the way to Vegas for. Mama, I have no money and no sheep, and…” Mia started sobbing again.

  “You’ll make more money. Time will heal your broken heart. You can go back to school in the fall and repeat last semester. There’s an old saying that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” Addy told her. “But you will take your fall classes online and pay for them yourself. You are going to apologize to Sonny and Pearl. Then you are going to talk to Jesse, one on one, not here but after you talk to Sonny and Pearl. It’s up to him whether you have a job on the ranch.”

  “Why not Henry?” Mia asked.

  “Because he’s retiring pretty soon, and Jesse will be the foreman and boss then. If you’re going to stay on the ranch, then you will be working for him, and it’s only right that he makes the decision,” Addy answered. “You wanted to make your own decisions and you have. Now it’s time to be accountable. Sonny paid out money for your tuition and books, and your dorm and meal ticket. You wasted every bit of that, so you can st
udy and work at the same time next year. Then we’ll talk about whether you can go back to the campus to live in another year.”

  “But—” Mia started to argue.

  Addy shook her head. “I love you. I’m glad you’re home. I’m sorry that Ricky did this to you, but there are no buts, Mia. Accept the fact that you messed up.”

  “I already did,” she whined. “I told you I was sorry, and I didn’t have a right to come back home.”

  “That’s the first step. The second one is proving it.” Addy hugged her again.

  “Where is Ricky?” Jesse asked.

  “I don’t know. I guess he’s in Vegas still, but I never want to see him again.” Mia brushed her kinky dark hair away from her wet cheeks.

  Her eyes and height are from Jesse, but at least she got her curly hair from me, Addy thought and then wondered why on earth she would be thinking about genetics at a time like this.

  “I feel ugly again,” Mia whispered. “Ricky made me feel pretty. I should have known that he only saw my money. I’m like a tall, lanky old sunflower growing wild in the field. The girl he left with was a tiny blonde with blue eyes, like a delicate little rose.”

  “Being tall does not make you ugly,” Jesse said. “How do you know that he left with a girl?”

  “He wrote a note saying that he was leaving with the love of his life, that I should be out of the hotel by noon, and that he was taking the rest of the money we had. We!” She doubled up her fist and hit the hay bale beside her. “He didn’t put a dime into the trip and spent all of my money at poker. He kept saying that he could feel a lucky streak, and when he won enough, we’d travel around the world.”

  “How did you get home if you didn’t have any money?” Addy wasn’t sure she even wanted to know the answer.

  Mia looked at the ceiling. “After the kissing fight, I hid a hundred-dollar bill in the pocket of the hotel bathrobe. I didn’t have enough for a hotel, so I drove the whole distance. I only stopped for gas, and I got hot dogs and chips when I filled up the truck. The trip took almost twenty hours, and…” She started weeping again. “My life is ruined. Everyone will know what he did to me.”

  “I expect if Justine can hold her head up, then you can, too.” Addy wanted to cry with her. Mia didn’t deserve what had happened, but she had made bad choices. Addy realized two things in that moment. One was how much she loved her daughter. The second was that she had never fully appreciated all the love and support she had had through the years.

  Mia’s brow wrinkled, reminding Addy of Jesse when he frowned. That she hadn’t seen herself in Jesse’s mannerisms was a mystery. Addy thought of clearing the air completely and telling her that Jesse was her father, but that could come later. One crisis today was enough for all of them to get through.

  “Why would you say that about Justine? What has her being pregnant got to do with me?” Mia asked.

  “Ricky is the father of her baby,” Jesse answered.

  Mia’s green eyes popped wide open. She stared at Jesse like he had horns, a pitchfork, and a long-spiked tail. “You’re lying.”

  “Nope, he’s not,” Addy said. “After the way he’s treated you, why would you think Jesse was lying to you?”

  “Because that would mean…” She jumped up to her feet and began to pace again. “I can do the math. That means she got pregnant at the end of last summer. Ricky and I were secretly dating back then. He was cheating on me.”

  “Maybe he was cheating on her,” Jesse said. “Ever think of it that way?”

  Addy did some math in her head, too. “So you were dating him your first semester of college? When you came home on weekends…”

  “Dammit!” Mia crossed her arms over her chest. “He said we had to be careful because Poppa didn’t like him. He was seeing Justine the whole time, wasn’t he?”

  Addy had thought she was a blessed woman when Mia was growing up. Her child never gave her any problems, but now she realized that her daughter had been saving it all up for one big boom—like an exploding bomb that rattled every emotion and hit every raw nerve in her body. “Betsy told me that Justine wouldn’t tell anyone who the father was until the baby was born. Guess Ricky was telling her the same things he told you, that they should keep things secret, too. You should go talk to her. Y’all were friends before you went to college.”

  “What would I say to her, Mama? I didn’t know it at the time, but I was the other woman back then,” Mia said softly.

  “Just being able to share might be good for both of you,” Jesse offered.

  “But first, you have to go home, talk to Sonny and Pearl, get a shower, and unpack your truck. Then after lunch, you and Jesse will have a long visit about whether you can work on the ranch or if you’ll need to find a different job. Betsy might hire you to clean her house. She mentioned a couple of months ago that she wasn’t happy with her cleaning lady,” Addy said.

  Mia groaned.

  Addy stood and was surprised that her legs supported her. She took a few steps, went up on her tiptoes, and hugged her daughter. “Get in your truck and go to the house. We’ll be along in a little while. Mia, I know this seems like the end of the world right now, but it will pass, and you’ll be stronger on the other side of it. I love you, and I’ll help you.”

  “Will you come with me to talk to Poppa and Nana?” Mia begged.

  Saying no was one of the hardest things Addy had ever done, but she slowly shook her head. “That part you need to face on your own, hon.”

  Mia sucked in a lungful of air, let it out in a loud whoosh, and marched over to the barn doors. She slung them both open and headed back to her truck.

  “Do you think she’ll be okay?” Addy asked Jesse.

  “Of course she will. She’s got us.”

  * * *

  Jesse liked the sound of that word. Us.

  Addy was pacing the barn, clearly wrestling with her thoughts.

  “You know I’m going to give her back her job, don’t you?” he said.

  “I never doubted that for a minute, but don’t give her any authority, Jesse. Make her work like the summer help, with either Henry or you to supervise her,” Addy advised.

  “Tough love?”

  She plopped down on the floor and leaned back against a bale of hay. “Yes, but it’s tough on both of us, all three of us really. My first instinct is to shower her with love, give her back her position, and not ever mention this again.”

  “But?” Jesse sat down beside her.

  “But that wouldn’t teach her anything. She needs to be accountable.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m going to ask a tremendous favor of you right now. Make her work right along beside you all summer. She’ll be surly at first, so it’ll be a pain in your ass to work with her, but she needs to know you better before we tell her that you are her father.”

  “You forget that I was in the Air Force for twenty years. I’ve dealt with lots of folks who were a pain in my ass,” he chuckled. “That’s the least I can do after not helping you raise her.”

  “Thank you, Jesse,” she sighed. “You are a good friend.”

  “Our first job, hers and mine, will be to bring the alpacas over, one or two at a time on foot.”

  “They’re tough to herd,” Addy said.

  “Maybe I’ll learn something.” He grinned. “That should give us the better part of a day to spend together.”

  “You are the boss. Just don’t let her forget it. Now, can I please fall completely apart?” she asked.

  “Have at it.” Jesse got ready for tears and weeping.

  Addy slapped the barn wall so hard that the metal rattled, then she kicked a bale of hay, sending two field mice running across the floor. “I’m so mad at Ricky that I could chain him up to the back of a four-wheeler and drag him out to the back forty for the coyotes and bobcats.” She drew in a breath. “If Mia was ten years old, I would ground her to the house for five years with no phone, no tablet, and no computers.”

  “That’
s pretty mad,” Jesse said. “I expect her having to work with me is far worse than that, and honey, it would be best for Ricky if he stayed in Nevada. I imagine Justine’s daddy and I would both like to take a turn at teaching him a lesson, too.”

  “This isn’t all his fault. If Mia had been honest with me”—she waved her hand around the barn—“with all of us, we could have talked to her.”

  “Think she would have listened? All those secrets were exciting, and making her own decisions made her feel like a grown-up,” Jesse told her. “Ricky is a con artist and she got took. We’ll put that behind us and move on to the future.”

  “You are such a good man, Jesse Ryan,” Addy said.

  Jesse didn’t feel like such a good man. If he had been, he would have realized that something wasn’t right twenty years ago when Addy stopped writing and didn’t take his calls anymore. A good man would have pursued the issue to find out why his best friend was brushing him off—especially after that incredible night they had just shared.

  Chapter Thirteen

  This is the second time in the five years I’ve lived here that I hate to go into the house,” Addy said as she crawled off the four-wheeler and sat down on the porch step.

  “When was the first time?” Jesse followed her and sat down beside her.

  Addy closed her eyes and sighed. “Last week when Mia left. She broke Pearl and Sonny’s hearts. How could our lives get in such a mess in such a short time?”

  Jesse laid a hand on her shoulder. “They love her, so they will forgive her.”

  She covered his hand with hers and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Forgiveness when you love someone is easy, but trust has to be rebuilt.”