by Jeannie Watt
“Were you expecting anyone at your ranch last night?”
“No.”
Drat. Another comforting theory shot. She tried for a casual shrug. “I just noticed tracks on the opposite side of the gate, and the padlock had been moved so that it hung down that side of the gate.”
“Huh.” Nick shook his head. “It’s possible that someone wanted to just drop by our place, I guess. They might have checked the padlock to make sure it was locked and not just fake-closed.”
“Yes. That’s probably it.”
Nick reached out to touch her arm as she started toward the sink to rinse the glass she was holding, and she stopped in her tracks. He instantly dropped his hand back to his side, seeming to remember that he’d agreed not to touch her. “You know that this is a safe area in which to live, right?”
“I do.” She was more concerned about people who weren’t from the area.
“Unless you have reason to believe that someone you knew from before you moved here is stalking you, I’d say that having someone drive to the gate was a total fluke.”
It was a nice bit of mind reading, and, after he spoke, Nick watched her face while she formulated her response.
Alex honestly had no reason to believe anyone from her old life was stalking her. Everything had been quiet on that front. Her mother had recently assured her via text that no one had been asking about her, and her mother had a large network of “friends” who’d be happy to report questions being asked about her daughter.
“What are the chances of someone following me here?” she asked, speaking more to herself than to Nick.
“Slim, I hope.”
“Yeah.” She let out a breath and glanced down at his sturdy leather work boots. There was something about Nick Callahan that made her feel safe. Made her feel like she could confide in him. “I’ve had a lot of bad things happen in a short period of time.”
He tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear. “And maybe you’re still dealing with PTSD?”
“Maybe,” she allowed.
“You know the invitation to stay at the ranch if you feel overwhelmed stands.”
She worked up a smile. “Thank you. I’ll remember that.”
“And if you get nervous, call me or Katie. Anytime at all.”
“Darn it, Nick,” she said on a breath, meeting his dark gaze.
“What?” He looked genuinely perplexed.
“You’re making it hard to keep a distance.”
He waggled his eyebrows, and Alex fought a smile as the girls came in through the screen door, letting it bang shut behind them.
“You can smile,” he murmured to her in a low voice. “I won’t look.” True to his word, he turned to his daughters. “Gather your things, girls. We’re heading home.”
“If they’re coming back tomorrow, they can leave what they don’t need,” Alex said. “That way they can save a step.”
“You’re catching on to this parent thing fast.” Nick knelt down to tie the shoe Bailey held out to him, oblivious to the fact that he’d made her heart jump with the casual statement.
She was catching on, and she loved interacting with his little girls. In another place and time she would have been all about interacting with him.
But maybe...
Not yet.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING Alex walked to the gate again, heart pounding harder as she approached, but today there were no new tracks and the lock was hanging on her side of the gate. When she got back, Nick had already arrived and the girls were waiting for her in the kitchen.
“I brought the masks,” Kendra said, pointing to the stack of dust masks on the table.
“Excellent. I’m so glad you remembered.” Alex picked up a mask and put it on. Kendra did the same, but Bailey announced that masks made her nose feel funny and that she and Roger would help her daddy.
The day passed pleasantly as Alex and Kendra sanded and Bailey played. The house, which had been so lonely and depressing when she’d first moved in, was a whirl of activity with dogs and little girls and a ridiculously attractive man knocking holes in her walls to access pipes. Holes Nick assured her would be properly patched when he was finished with the pipe work.
After the pipe work, he planned to climb up onto the roof and patch as much as he could. He warned her that the patches might be ugly, since they would involve a different shade of roofing and a lot of tar, which in turn had her thinking about investing in a brand-new roof. She’d truly have to live like a college kid if she decided to do that, but patches could take her only so far.
Words to live by, she decided as she wrote out a check for Nick’s first week of work.
She felt like she was slapping patches on her life instead of dealing with the real issue, but it was hard to deal with the real issue when she wasn’t certain what exactly she could do to fix things. She’d run to a safe place but still didn’t feel safe. She may or may not be conjuring things up in her head. The fact that a set of tire tracks made her jumpy spoke volumes. She had a ways to go before she was ready to ease back into normal life.
When she presented Nick with his wages after he’d buckled the girls into their seats, he gave her a surprised look. “A check.”
“Do you prefer cash?”
“No. I’m good with a check.”
He thought she was avoiding bank accounts. Well, she had been.
“I’m not going to live like a fugitive when I did nothing wrong.”
He had no way of knowing that when he looked at her with his gaze edged with protectiveness, it was all she could do to keep from moving closer, sliding her arms around him and leaning into him.
And she was going to make sure he didn’t know that, because he looked as if he was equally close to reaching for her. It was as if the air was vibrating between them.
“You’ve been through a lot. Anyone would lose their bearings.” Nick’s voice was gentle, but the look he gave her made her breath catch in her throat.
Breathe.
She folded her arms over her chest, taking a half step back. “I’m fine. The tire tracks unnerved me, but I understand why I’m unnerved, and that helps me deal with matters.”
“Daddy, can we go?” Bailey asked. “I think my unicorn is lonely at home.” She’d brought only her elephant that day.
“Just one more second,” he called.
He looked as if he was about to say something that Alex didn’t think she was ready to hear. So she changed the subject. “As to your payment, I can get cash next time if you prefer.”
“I don’t work under the table, so no need for cash.” He patted the pocket where he’d stashed the check. “It’s good, right?”
She let out a choked laugh. “If not, I have yet another issue to work through.”
“Am I one of those issues?” There was a note in his voice, a quiet intensity to the mildly spoken question, which made it difficult to answer.
“Maybe.”
Yes.
“This is new territory for me, too.”
“I get that,” she said softly. New territory was always the most exciting...and sometimes the most dangerous.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NICK WAS WORKING on the roof of the Dunlop house when Rosalie drove through on her way to the ranch to make practice cupcakes. He waved from the roof, and she pulled over to have a word.
“Kind of dangerous working up there when no one else is around.”
“Actually I was just scoping things out. I have some small projects in the house that I’ll finish while Alex is gone.” He headed toward the ladder, and Rosalie automatically put a hand on a side rail to steady it as he climbed down. “It was nice of you to ask her over.”
“She volunteered. According to Katie she has some experience piping frosting and offered to help.” She gave him a sidew
ays look as they started walking back to her SUV, which she’d left running. She had a feeling from a few things Katie had said that Nick was interested in the new neighbor in more than a neighborly way, and Rosalie was looking forward to meeting the woman who seemed to be bringing Nick back to the land of the living. She’d love to see him dating again, but it had to be a woman who was worthy of Nick and the girls.
Nick opened the SUV door, and she slid into the seat. “I assume that both of my girls will be covered in frosting when I get home?”
“They might be a little sticky,” Rosalie agreed. “But I’ll try to keep them from turning blue this time.” There’d been a slight mishap with a concentrated food dye packet while making Christmas cookies.
“Good. Saves me having to squire around a couple Smurfs.”
When Rosalie arrived on the ranch fifteen minutes later, the girls came racing out of the house to meet her.
“Aunt Katie said we’re going to fweeze the cupcakes for later,” Bailey said. “That we don’t get to eat any of them.”
“You’ll get cupcakes,” Rosalie said as she went around to the back of her SUV and opened the hatch. “Kendra, would you please carry this box for me?” She handed her oldest granddaughter the container of miniature cupcake pans. “And Bailey, I need you to carry this bag.”
“What’s in it?” Bailey asked as she took the handles of the tote.
“The pretty cupcake wrappers and a few other things.”
Bailey beamed at her, then hugged the bag to her chest as she followed her sister up the walkway to the house where Rosalie had spent almost all of her adult life. Yes, she loved the house, had great memories, but she didn’t belong there anymore.
And Will understands that.
She was still marveling over the fact that Will hadn’t thrown down his napkin and walked out of the restaurant when she’d told him she didn’t want anything to do with ranching. Not that he’d do anything so dramatic, but she’d expected questions, not acceptance.
“Is there anything else, Grandma?” Katie asked as Rosalie followed the girls through the door.
“No, I believe I have everything.”
“In that case, let me introduce Alex Ryan, who is in for a treat today, baking with the Callahan crew.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Alex said, coming around the counter to shake Rosalie’s hand. She was blonde and beautiful and just a touch nervous. Rosalie sensed that she was also practiced at hiding her nerves.
“Likewise. I have to thank you for allowing us to use your road. I know it’s inconvenient with it running between the house and the barn, so we truly owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“I’m glad to do it.”
She sounded sincere, so Rosalie took her at her word. Personally, she could fully understand not wanting a stranger to drive through one’s property. What she couldn’t understand was why Alex had bought the place.
“By the way, Grandma. Nick made me promise not to turn the girls blue.” Katie pulled bowls out from a cabinet as she spoke.
“This once,” Rosalie said in a resigned voice. She glanced at Alex and got a conspiratorial smile in return. Another point in the plus column.
“I like turning blue,” Bailey said.
“I’m sure you do, sweetie, but not today,” Rosalie murmured. “It distresses your father.”
“What would you like me to do?” Alex asked.
Rosalie glanced up. “I don’t know if Katie filled you in on the master plan—”
“You’d better go over it again, Grandma, in case I got it wrong.”
“Good idea. My business partner, Gloria, and I had a soft opening of our gift and garden store a little more than a month ago. We’re going to announce the business in a big way at the June in Bloom event.”
“It’s a big vendor show and community celebration,” Katie added. “Everyone comes, so it’ll be a great way to spread the word about The Daisy Petal.”
“There’s also a lot of competition for attention, so Gloria and I are giving away mini cupcakes and having drawings for prize packages that we’ll assemble a day or two before the event. Today we’re making the cupcakes.” She glanced down at Kendra and Bailey, who were wearing the aprons she’d made them for Christmas. “We will freeze most of them, but not all of them, because helpers need cupcakes.”
The girls smiled their approval, and then Rosalie shifted her attention back to Alex. “I hear that you have a knack for making buttercream frosting.”
“Actually, it’s one of my few domestic skills. My mother’s...friend...taught me one summer vacation.”
“Excellent. I have recipes here, and I suggest we start a sort of assembly line...”
By the end of the afternoon, they’d turned out a whopping twenty dozen mini cupcakes. Alex, it turned out, not only made an excellent buttercream, but she was talented with a piping bag, too. She showed the girls how to make simple daisies, then demonstrated the more elaborate flowers in her arsenal. The girls were amazed at what she could do with a piping bag, and, frankly, so was Rosalie.
The longer they worked, the more Alex relaxed, and by the end of the day, she was laughing and sipping wine with Katie while Rosalie and the girls indulged in some fruit punch, their bright yellow hands looking very cute on the dark blue glasses from which they were drinking.
“So Grandma,” Katie said after the last of the cupcakes were in freezer containers. “You haven’t said a word about Vince Taylor. Is he behaving himself? Are his guests keeping you awake at night?”
Rosalie assumed from the fact that Katie made no move to fill in their guest that Alex knew all about the brouhaha between herself and her neighbor.
“He has been behaving himself,” she said. “He hasn’t shown his face since we got the approval to start bridge construction.”
“He’s probably irked that whichever commissioner he had in his pocket failed to do his or her job.”
“And I don’t think he’s getting as many guests as he’d hoped. There’ve been a few, but not the number that he bragged he was going to be getting on a weekly basis, and I don’t think he’s hosted an actual corporate retreat.”
“That was supposed to be his main draw.”
Rosalie took her glass to the sink, then took her glasses off the top of her head and settled them back on her nose. “He needs to practice patience and perhaps rethink his advertising.” She looked out the window, then said, “It’s getting late. I should go now before the deer come out.”
“We’ll help you carry stuff to the car,” Kendra said, once again claiming the cupcake box. Bailey took the tote and the girls headed for the door.
Rosalie followed, stopping long enough to say to Alex, “Thank you so much for all your help.”
“I’m glad to have something to do.”
“Well, if you find yourself at loose ends, feel free to join us when we make the gift baskets next week.”
Alex’s eyes lit up. “I’d love to.”
The words were heartfelt, telling Rosalie that rural life wasn’t exactly what Alex had expected it to be. That it was lonely at times and that one needed to get involved in community—any kind of community, be it a town gathering or a group of friends.
“Katie will give you the details when we firm it up. We would love to have you. Oh—bring those quilt tops and the lace you told us about. We’d love to see them and maybe give you some ideas about what you can do with them.”
“Excellent. Thank you.”
Rosalie nodded and then headed toward the car, where her great-granddaughters were waiting. She liked Alex Ryan and not only because of her piping skills. If Nick was interested in the woman, then he had Rosalie’s blessing. She knew how hard it was to move on after losing a spouse, but she also knew that moving on was part of the process.
Part of living one’s life.
* * *
DURING HER AFTERNOON at the Callahan ranch, for the first time since arriving, Alex was able to forget the circumstances that had brought her to Montana and simply enjoy her day.
It was an empowering feeling, to say the least. She couldn’t say that she had friends yet, but she was moving in that direction. She was starting to build the new life she so desired. A new life where she wasn’t afraid all the time.
What are your new friends going to think when they find out about your past?
Nick had accepted it.
Okay. There’s that...
Nick was in his truck when she drove up, and she had the feeling that he’d been waiting for her to get home so she wouldn’t be nervous going into the house alone.
“Did Roger and Gus behave?”
“They did,” Nick said with a crooked half smile. “If you don’t count the part where Gus ate my lunch.”
“He didn’t!” Alex said on a gasp.
“You had frozen pizza. I’ll pay you back later.”
“No need. Trust me on that.”
“I locked the front gate,” he said as he put his truck into gear.
“Thanks. I had fun with your sister and your grandmother.”
“Did the girls get into the food coloring?”
“A little.”
He rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way, and Alex smiled. Was this how normal families acted? Not taking things like dyed hands all that seriously? Actually enjoying one another’s company? Watching each other’s backs?
“See you tomorrow,” he said in a low voice that made her think about how close she was to breaking her own rules, sliding a hand around the back of his neck and pulling his mouth to hers. From the way he was regarding her, she didn’t think Nick would put up much of a struggle.
“Yeah. See you.”
The dogs greeted Alex at the door, Gus with his slow-wagging tail and canine grin and Roger with a series of hops and clever circles, both of them happy to have their foster mom back with them, where she belonged. She needed to call Wanda tomorrow to make certain that if someone was interested in adopting Gus or Roger, she had first dibs on giving them their forever home.