by Sandi Scott
Mr. Musgraves had met the two of them at one of Seagrass’s summer festivals, and loved their work, both at Patty’s The Southern Bird and Ashley’s Seagrass Sweets, and had contacted them with a very profitable offer.
It was going to be a lot of work. But it was also going to be worth it.
After Dizzy had collected praise from the crew, the co-pilot led the three of them into the modern log-cabin-styled airport, where they were delivered into the hands of their employer, Mr. Musgraves.
He wore a black cowboy hat and a khaki vest with a hundred pockets in it, blue jeans, a yellow plaid shirt, a beard, worn cowboy boots, and a broad smile. “Miss Ashley! Miss Patty! Miss Dizzy!” Dizzy waited until he crouched down, then gave him her standard greeting: a face full of kisses.
“Who’s a good girl?”
Ashley sneaked a glance at Patty, who rolled her eyes and mouthed “not me!”
Mr. Musgraves stood up. “Well, ladies, you’re not quite home free yet. We have another flight out to the ranch.”
“Another flight?” Patty’s face had paled slightly.
“Yep. In my floatplane.”
“Aren’t we...kind of far away from any large bodies of water?” Patty asked.
He chuckled. “Don’t worry, there’s a good-sized lake next to the ranch that works just fine. I’ll make this as easy as possible on you and Dizzy here. I heard that the two of you were concerned travelers.”
“Terrified of flying, you mean,” Patty said.
“Unfortunately, the roads are more or less out right now. The spring melt, which even in June is a pretty serious trickle out there, has made a couple of the roads unfit to drive on. It’s going to be a pain trying to get everyone in and out on time, but we’ll all work together to make sure it’s a wonderful wedding, won’t we?”
Patty gulped. “Of course. Did the food...?”
“I made sure the food supplies made it in before the two of you even took off from Texas. I think the two of you over-ordered, but I love it! Please tell me you’re going to stock me up for a couple of months. I loved your cooking in Texas...”
Mr. Musgraves led them to the front of a hangar where a strange airplane was waiting for them. It had a pair of pontoon-style floaters, but also retractable wheeled landing gear. The plane was smallish, looking like it could hold six people total in the cramped, tiny seats.
“Normally,” Mr. Musgraves said, “I like to bring people out to the ranch in a luxury SUV, where they can watch those little seat-back TV screens with nature videos. Gets ’em softened up for when they see the rescue animals. But this’ll have to do.”
“I like it,” Ashley said firmly. Dizzy was cowering behind her legs, not looking forward to another plane ride. “I like to fly.”
“Speak for yourself,” Patty muttered.
A handler drove over with their luggage and gear on an electric cart and loaded everything into the back of the plane.
“What do you think, Dizzy?” Ashley asked while she was taking Dizzy out for a short walk in the grass beside the main runway. “Can you use your crate, or do you need to sit with me on the flight?”
But she already knew the answer to that one! Dizzy jumped up into her lap.
ASHLEY’S MIND WAS FILLED with concerns about the job coming up, mostly due to the unfamiliar kitchen she’d be baking in. Would the ovens be up to par? Would there be hot spots? What if the pans were too thin? But she’d adapt. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d had to make a strange catering situation work. Patty was used to working around issues as well.
They had both ordered enough food to feed an army for two weeks. They had indeed planned to take the extras and stock the freezers at the ranch so that Mr. Musgraves’s guests would be wowed by their cooking for a long time to come. Normally, the cooking was run by rotating local caterers. Ashley had researched the competition. They were all solid businesses, but tended toward California cuisine or Tex-Mex. French comfort food and decadent French-based pastries and cakes weren’t the locals’ strong suits.
The two of them would wow Mr. Musgraves and his guests, Ashley was sure of it.
The flight to the ranch took only fifteen minutes, but it was rougher than the flight with the private jet. Ashley worried about Patty and Dizzy, but they kept it together during the flight, even if they did both seem quiet. Ashley chatted pleasantly with Mr. Musgraves during the flight about the ranch and the work he did there.
The flight itself was through some of the most gorgeous scenery that Ashley had ever seen, with mountains still white with snow and open meadows dotted with mountain flowers and old cattle barns, sparkling streams, and tiny, gorgeous lakes like mirrors framing the sky.
“We get all kinds of animals,” Mr. Musgraves was saying. “But mostly horses. Lord, I remember the one time we took in a couple of llamas. I grew to love ’em, but they tested my patience, all right.”
“I haven’t been around horses very much,” Ashley admitted. “Is there anything I should know?”
“Well...you have to be careful what you feed a horse. They can’t throw anything up, so if something gets stuck or is not good for them, it can cause them real trouble, even kill them.” He sighed. “But we do have a horse who can’t seem to understand that. It’s a real miracle she’s alive.”
“Oh?”
“Her name’s Cocoa. She’s about twenty years old, which is a fair age for a horse, especially one who likes to get into human food. She’ll beg for anything. Don’t listen to her.”
Ashley nodded.
“Always move slow around a horse. They don’t see as well as humans do, so they tend to get jumpy at any sudden movements. They’re all pretty much trained to be mounted from their own left-hoof side, so you’re less likely to spook ’em if you come in from that direction. You should always listen to your horses. They vocalize a lot, for one thing, and most of ours love to ‘talk’ to our guests. But they’re also pretty sensitive. If something is wrong, they’ll let you know.”
“Thank you,” Ashley said. “I’ll try to remember all that!”
“You’re an animal lover,” Mr. Musgraves said. “You’ll take one look at those pretty loves of mine and it’ll all make sense.”
She smiled. Mr. Musgraves talked about his rescue animal like someone talking about their first sweetheart.
The plane touched down on the water of the small lake next to the Muddy M Ranch with a graceful glide like a swan’s landing. Mr. Musgraves sailed the plane smoothly up to a dock, cutting the twin engines and letting the plane drift through the water and come gently to a stop against the rubber-edged wood dock.
Before the plane could drift away from the dock, Mr. Musgraves hopped out of the plane and clipped two hawsers onto rings on the dock, holding the plane steady.
First he helped Patty out. “This is it? We’re here? No more flying?”
Mr. Musgraves let out a belly laugh. “Not until after the wedding.”
Patty sighed with relief. By then, Dizzy had helped herself out of the plane. She was not waiting around for assistance. Ashley climbed down onto the dock with Mr. Musgraves’s help. It wasn’t as awkward as she had feared.
Ashley and Patty wanted to get straight to work, but, after locking up the plane, Mr. Musgraves insisted on giving them the tour of the ranch. “Once the guests start coming in, I won’t have time to show you,” he said, “and it really is special.”
It was. It really was.
The main house was a huge log cabin with stone accents. It lay only about fifty feet from the water’s edge, and it was surrounded by porches with swings and rocking chairs. A smaller cabin peeked around one side of the main house. A weathered wagon with wooden wheels overflowed with wildflowers in planters.
“Barn’s on the other side of the house,” Mr. Musgraves said. Inside the house, they found a dining room easily big enough to serve thirty. The eight big, round tables that had been set up only took up a third of the room; more tables and chairs were stacked to the side. “G
ot a decorator coming in tomorrow with the flowers,” Mr. Musgraves announced. “Like to have the wedding outside, but you know how weather is. Soon as you let Mother Nature know what you’re planning, she does her best to thwart you.”
They took a tour of the kitchens that had both Ashley and Patty ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the equipment they’d be working with. Mr. Musgraves’s kitchen was almost as good as the professional kitchen they rented back in Texas, complete with walk-in freezer. At least the kitchen logistics wouldn’t be a problem. And, as promised, all their food supplies were already in place.
Mr. Musgraves showed them their room, which had two twin beds and a tiny but private bath. Beautiful photographs of animals hung everywhere. Horses, bears, birds, moose, and even fawns were featured. Ashley glanced out the window and saw a huge barn. Everything was so gorgeous!
The rest of the house passed by in a blur. Mr. Musgraves took them out the back door and onto a trail that led past two small cabins to the biggest barn that Ashley had ever seen, the same one she’d seen out their window.
The log-style barn dominated the rest of the property, with a wide gravel road leading away from the ranch.
“That’s the road that’s out.” Mr. Musgraves waved a hand toward the road. “Normally, we have all kinds of people coming up and down this road all day long. This is the most peaceful things have been since I can’t remember when.”
Ashley didn’t comment; she was thinking about how the floatplane could hold at most six people, and how that would mean a lot of flying in and out over the coming days. All things considered, it probably would have been better to reschedule the wedding. If there was some sort of emergency, like a house fire or a broken ankle, how would emergency services reach them?
Inside the barn, things were busier and noisier, with at least half a dozen other people present and working with the animals. Mr. Musgraves introduced them to a couple of his ranch hands, Bronc and Duke, who would be their assistants. Both men were busy, though, so there wasn’t much of a chance to talk. A few other hands were out working on the further reaches of the ranch, which stretched some length along the high mountain meadow. “Some horses are people horses, and some horses just aren’t,” he explained. The wilder horses tended to spend the day out in the pastures, coming in only during bad snowstorms, but they still required someone to look after them, even if only to make sure they hadn’t been hurt. “The ornery cusses,” Mr. Musgraves called them.
“Speaking of ornery cusses,” Mr. Musgraves said, “This here’s Cocoa.”
The horse who ate anything and lived! Ashley remembered the story. Cocoa was a lovely brown mare who looked sleek and beautiful, with just a few gray hairs in her coat. She was in a stall with the door closed, but as soon as she spotted Dizzy, she whickered and, with lips as agile as fingers, unlatched the clasp holding the door closed and pushed the door open, coming out to nuzzle the friendly dog.
Dizzy took it in stride, wagging her tail and sitting still on the floor of the barn as the big horse snuffled her fur.
“Cocoa!” Mr. Musgraves said. The horse turned her head toward him, then began nosing around his pockets. “Greedy thing!” Laughing, he led her back to her stall. The mare accepted being led back inside, and soon was hanging her head over the door of the stall and sniffing at Mr. Musgraves’s clothes again.
“She’s a real darlin’, but she’ll never learn to behave,” Mr. Musgraves said. “She knows this isn’t her stall, don’t you, love? But we have to muck it out sometime.”
Cocoa snorted and shook her mane, as if she understood perfectly well what Mr. Musgraves was saying but still didn’t like it.
“She’s one of the horses who will still tolerate children to ride,” Mr. Musgraves explained. “She normally stays in a different stall, one that the little ones feel more comfortable in as they pet her and brush her. They ride her around a paddock behind the barn and feed her apples all day long, and she loves it. I think she’s more than a little upset that not many young ’uns have been out lately due to the roads.”
“She’s a sweetheart,” Ashley said. “Can I pet her?”
“Careful,” Mr. Musgraves said. “Once you start, it’s hard to get her to let you stop. Pet her on the side of her neck, low down by her foreleg. That’s the withers. Horses like to rub each other there. If you pet a horse on the front of its head first thing before they trust you, you might spook ’em. With their eyes like that, they can’t see right in front of their faces.”
Ashley did as she was told. The big horse leaned into her hand, forcing Ashley to scratch harder. Ashley giggled as Cocoa sighed a big horsey sigh of contentment. After a moment, Cocoa turned her head toward Ashley and touched the side of Ashley’s face with her nose, breathing out another big sigh that went right into Ashley’s ear. She giggled again and scratched harder.
“I think she likes you,” Mr. Musgraves said in mock-seriousness. “But then she’s the kind of horse who likes everybody.”
“Oh,” Patty said. “Who’s this?”
Ashley looked around. A beautiful, green-eyed calico cat was twirling around Patty’s ankles, rubbing its head on her legs.
“That’s Bebe,” Mr. Musgraves said, pronouncing it like the French bébé. “She’s the senior cat around here. Getting up there in years, though.”
The cat purred as Patty reached down to pet her. Bebe sniffed her fingers and allowed Patty to scratch her behind the ears for a few seconds. Then Bebe decided to investigate Dizzy, who was still carefully sitting still. A sniff here, a sniff there, and a shake of Bebe’s arched tail followed. Dizzy’s tail swished back and forth on the barn floor.
Bebe made up her mind abruptly; Dizzy was, if not a human who would scratch her and bring her treats, a perfectly acceptable dog. Purring again, the cat proceeded to curl up against Dizzy’s side with her front paws tucked under her, winking both eyes in contentment.
Dizzy gave Ashley a proud, wide doggy grin. Dizzy liked other animals a lot, but she also tended to bounce around too much and scare them off.
“Good job, Dizz,” Ashley said. Dizzy’s grin widened and her tongue flopped out in pure happiness.
Mr. Musgraves introduced them to horses, mules, a lollygagging black pot-bellied pig lying in a patch of sun, a pair of miniature goats so fat that their bellies were diamond-shaped, about half a dozen other cats, and a deer that stood just outside the wood paddock fence with his chin leaning on the wood. The young buck was looking longingly toward the horses grazing inside paddock.
“And that’s Bambi,” Mr. Musgraves sighed, indicating the buck. “We got in the habit of feeding him when he was a fawn coming through the yard, and now he thinks that all he has to do is stand around and look pretty in order to get a handout.”
He took an apple from one of the ranch hands, cut it up with his pocket knife, and took them over to hand slices to the deer. Bambi accepted a single slice, then went running back into the nearby woods. “He’s nervous of strangers,” Mr. Musgraves explained. “I don’t want him to get too used to people. People who aren’t me, that is.” He grinned.
Bebe the cat still lay against Dizzy’s side. Human cat lovers know that it’s impossible to disturb a comfortable cat; apparently Dizzy was finding it just as difficult. Ashley petted her dog, then followed Mr. Musgraves into the open back end of the barn.
Two people were arguing in the middle of the open area. Whatever the argument was about, it was a passionate one. The two didn’t even notice their employer gesturing toward them.
“And this is Dennis Longley, our veterinarian, and Sabrina Doyle, his assistant,” Mr. Musgraves said.
Another man, who was wearing a pair of heavy leather gloves and had hay all over his blue jeans, did notice, however. Stepping between the two combatants, he said, “Folks, we have guests.”
The argument stopped abruptly as all three people turned toward Mr. Musgraves, Ashley, and Patty.
“Oh, hello,” Dennis Longley said. He was an attractive man in his thi
rties, tall and loose-limbed. He wore a baseball cap with a John Deere tractor logo on it and carried a small leather bag about the size of a toiletries kit.
The young woman next to him, Sabrina Doyle, was about Ashley’s height, with blonde hair looped up in a sloppy bun. She wore a blue t-shirt with a galloping stallion on it and there was a smear of dirt on her face. She and Dennis Longley introduced themselves, then turned to leave.
The third man, who was smaller and wore a black cowboy hat that matched that of Mr. Musgraves, put his hand on Mr. Longley’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t be so hard on her,” he said.
“What do you know about it?” Mr. Longley snapped. “Shouldn’t I know whether they have a virus or not?”
“I’m not saying you don’t,” the third man said. He had a TV weatherman’s accent, pure neutral southern California. “But wouldn’t it be better to handle things more encouragingly? Many young women get driven out of a business for being treated too harshly.”
“I have more respect for Miss Doyle than to treat her with kid gloves,” Mr. Longley snapped.
Miss Doyle rolled her eyes and walked out of the barn, taking long strides. She wore boots spattered with mud. Mr. Longley walked out after her, shaking his head.
The third man sighed and exchanged a long glance with Mr. Musgraves.
“This is Leo Norton, my not-quite-nephew-in-law,” Mr. Musgraves said. “He works in movie finance, although that doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person. Leo, these two ladies are our caterers from Texas.”
Leo chuckled politely, although it was clear that he’d heard that joke before. “Welcome, welcome. I, for one, will be glad to eat something that isn’t grilled steak.”
“That’s heresy,” Mr. Musgraves said.
“Steven, you’ve become like a father to me. But two weeks of nothing but steak will kill anyone’s appetite.”
“Not me,” Mr. Musgraves announced, patting his well-formed waistline. “I’ve been at it for long enough now that all I need in life is a good steak and a can of beans to keep me running.”