“Mmm-hmm,” Dahlia King Deacon murmured in response.
In fact, all of Dahlia’s answers since her father’s death were either nods, shoulder shrugs or noncommittal mumbles. Although, to be fair, her daughter hadn’t ceased her rapid-fire questions since they’d said goodbye to the rest of the family and driven away from the Twin Kings Ranch ten minutes ago.
“Do you think Gan Gan is gonna move to Heaven, too?” Amelia asked next.
“Someday, but not anytime soon.” Dahlia put her elbow on the windowsill of her truck, using one hand to prop up her pounding head while the other hand steered them down the familiar route. Normally, she would encourage her only child’s inquisitive mind and happily engage in the back-and-forth. But today had been emotionally draining, and she was trying to hold it together as best she could.
Plus, Dahlia’s twin sister, Finn, had already answered most of Amelia’s questions when they’d been in the back seat of the limo, going from the church service to the family cemetery, and then back to the main house for the somber reception.
So far, Amelia’s questions today included:
Did Grandpa Roper really know all these people?
Why are there so many movie cameras outside?
Do all those policemans work for Uncle Marcus?
Is it okay if I ask the President for one of her candies?
Can I be the president when I grow up?
When can we go home?
The last question had been exactly what Dahlia needed to hear to snap her back to reality.
Instead of saying goodbye to her mother, Dahlia had made a quick excuse to one of the Secret Service agents on protective detail before taking Amelia’s hand in her own and sneaking out through the kitchen, past the catering staff who were hauling the leftover food to the matching bunkhouses behind the stables.
As soon as she’d gotten Amelia buckled into her booster seat, Dahlia had driven home on autopilot. She hadn’t expected so many news vans to still be parked outside the front gates of her family’s cattle ranch, and breathed a sigh of relief when none of them followed her.
Nobody ever expected the daughter of the third richest man in Wyoming to be driving a fifteen-year-old Ford F-150 crew cab with a cow-sized dent in the front grill and a Follow Me To Big Millie’s sticker on the back bumper. They especially didn’t expect it when that same man was Roper King, vice president of the United States.
Make that the former vice president of the United States.
To everyone else, Roper had been larger than life—war hero, politician, billionaire, national icon. But to Dahlia, he’d simply been Dad.
And now he was gone.
A ribbon of pain curled around Dahlia’s throat, all the pent-up emotion of the day’s orchestrated funeral threatening to suffocate her. She choked down a rising sob, telling herself it was only a twenty-minute drive to their little apartment in town. Twenty minutes before she could put on a Disney movie for her daughter, and then go have a good cry in the shower where nobody would be able to see her. Or ask her if all mommies got red-faced and snot-nosed when they cried.
The dark sunglasses she’d been hiding behind all day were no match for glare reflecting off the snow-covered Grand Tetons as the bright sun lowered along the opposite end of the sky. Dahlia was so busy adjusting her sun visor she almost didn’t see the ball of white fur dart across the road in front of her.
Slamming on the brakes, she yanked the steering wheel to the right, keeping her grip on the worn leather as the truck skid off the road and shimmied to a stop. She threw the gearshift into Park and turned around before she could unbuckle her seat belt.
“Are you okay, Peanut?” she asked Amelia, hoping her daughter couldn’t tell that Dahlia was still trying to catch her breath.
“Why did that doggy run into the road like that?” Amelia replied, whipping her neck around for a glimpse of the white ball of fur who’d nearly caused them to careen into the ditch. “Where is his mommy? Is it a boy doggy or a girl doggy?”
“Amelia.” Dahlia reached between the seats and put a hand on her daughter’s bouncing leg. Other than a sagging black hair bow and matching snags across both knees of the white tights (which had come courtesy of the child’s earlier visit to the stables with her twin cousins), Amelia appeared none the worse for wear. “Focus over here. Are you hurt at all?”
“I’m fine.” Her high energy daughter barely glanced her way before unbuckling herself from her seat. “Can I go pet the doggy?”
“We don’t pet strange do—” Dahlia started, but Amelia already had the back door open.
“Is that the doggy’s daddy?”
Dahlia fumbled out of her own seat and dove into the back, trying to snatch the corner of Amelia’s black velvet skirt before her daughter could climb out the door that should have been set to childproof lock. She had no idea who her daughter was talking about, nor would she unless she could get her hips unstuck between the driver’s and passenger seats and follow after the girl.
Could this day get any worse?
Dahlia had to simultaneously wiggle at the waist while doing an elbow crawl over the discarded patent leather shoes on the floorboard before she could pull her legs the rest of the way through. By the time she was able to use the armrest of the wide-open door to pull herself upright, Amelia had already made her way to the front of the hood and was talking to someone.
A man.
“Is that your doggy? What happened to his leash? What’s his name? Is it a boy? Why aren’t your shoes tied?” The steady stream of questions didn’t provide the man with any opportunity to respond. But it did buy Dahlia a little bit of time to get her bearings, allowing her to push her sunglasses back in place and adjust the pencil skirt that had twisted up like a corkscrew during her ungraceful descent from the truck.
It also gave her a second to study this irresponsible dog owner, who was now holding his palm cupped against his forehead like a visor as he scanned the dense trees lining the road.
And really, a second was all she needed to make a snap judgment. Dahlia owned the only bar in town and could read a person the second they walked through the door. Five bucks said this guy was just another hipster tourist lost on his way to nearby Jackson Hole.
The man was over six feet tall, lean but muscular. He wasn’t completely winded by the recent chase of his dog, so he must work out somewhat regularly. His faded Aerosmith T-shirt could’ve been well-worn, or it could’ve been one of those hundred-dollar designer shirts that people paid extra to achieve the same look. His stiff jeans still had the fold creases down the leg, and a pair of high-top basketball sneakers were in fact, as Amelia had just pointed out, untied.
“You want us to help you find your doggy?” her daughter asked before Dahlia could stop her. “Mommy is the bestest at finding my shoes and my crayons and my grandpa’s glasses. Gan Gan says that Mommy could find trouble in a haystack without even looking.”
The stranger turned toward her, his eyes shaded behind his hand. Dahlia forgot about searching for the runaway dog, and instead concentrated on finding a deep enough hole that she could hide in.
It was a mistake to stay quiet for any length of time around Amelia, because that only encouraged the child to continue talking. As if to prove her point, her daughter added, “But Grandpa doesn’t need to look for his glasses no more because he went to Heaven.”
Amelia’s voice had gone softer with the last sentence, the young child’s sadness creeping into her normally exuberant tone. Dahlia’s throat did that constricting thing again, and she didn’t trust herself not to start bawling in front of a perfect stranger. Instead, she sucked in her cheeks, trying to take a few steadying breaths through her nose.
The man finally parted his lips, opening and then closing them before kneeling down so that he was eye level with Amelia. “I’m very sorry for your loss.”
“That’s what everyone keeps saying to us. But we didn’t lose Grandpa. He went to sleep and didn’t wake up. Right, Mommy?”
Two curious gazes turned up to Dahlia. One set was the same blue as her own, full of curiosity. The other set was an unfamiliar golden brown with flecks of green, full of uncertainty and maybe a hint of pity. Or maybe the guy just wanted them to think he was some stranded motorist in order to lure them into a false sense of security.
Crap. Getting abducted would be the green olive garnish to this four-martini day.
“That’s one way to put it.” Dahlia used her trembling fingers to push a fallen strand of hair behind her ear. She stepped closer to Amelia, putting her arm around her daughter’s shoulder while simultaneously easing the five-year-old back a few paces so that she wasn’t within snatching distance of a potential kidnapper.
Maybe Dahlia had been a little too quick to refuse the Secret Service’s offer of an escort home. She’d always felt perfectly safe in her small hometown, well-known by the locals, yet pleasantly anonymous to most outsiders. Now, though, she’d broken all of her own rules about talking to strangers. Sure, there might not be a windowless panel van parked nearby or lollipops falling out of the man’s pockets, but helping a random guy find his “lost dog” was supposedly one of the oldest tricks in the book.
The stranger in question rose to his full height, which was still several inches taller than her—even in her uncomfortable high heels. Stepping backward again, she glanced down at his large hands and the skin on the back of her neck prickled. He wasn’t holding any sort of weapon, but he also wasn’t holding a leash.
If she could get Amelia anywhere close to the rear door of the truck, Dahlia might have a better chance of making a run for it and locking them both in the cab. She spoke without taking her eyes of the man. “Peanut, go back to the truck and get your shoes on so we can help look for this man’s lost dog.”
Luckily, Amelia’s need to ask a million questions was usually only superseded by her need to help an unfortunate animal, and she quickly obeyed.
“No.” The man lifted up those same hands, palms out. “It’s not my dog. He was on my property and I thought he might be lost. So I was tracking him, trying to get close enough to see if he had a collar. I almost had him, but then he heard your truck and took off running across the highway.”
She noted the golden skin of his uncovered forearms. Nobody who lived in Wyoming this time of year had a sun-kissed tan like that.
“So you’re saying you live in Teton Ridge?” she asked, knowing full well that if anyone new had moved to town, she would’ve heard about it. Amelia was now by the passenger side door, and Dahlia took another step in retreat.
“Lady, if you want to run back to your truck and lock the doors, I’m not going to stop you. I get it that you’re out here on this road in the middle of nowhere and you think I’m some sort of madman chasing after a dog that clearly doesn’t want to be caught. I’ll just head on back to my ranch and everyone can go about their business.”
“How?”
“How what?” He tilted his head, his dark copper hair cropped short, almost military-length.
“How are you going to get back to your ranch?” she asked, sounding like Amelia, who was now sitting on the loose gravel buckling her patent leather shoes onto the wrong feet.
He rocked back on the heels of his untied sneakers. “The same way I got here, I guess.”
She didn’t mean to let out a disbelieving snort, but the only ranches between the Twin Kings and the heart of town were the abandoned Rocking D Ranch, which was at least another eight miles south, and the Ochoa family’s Establos del Rio. Most of the Ochoas had been at her dad’s funeral, though, and they certainly hadn’t been wearing Air Jordans and an Aerosmith T-shirt.
“I’m Connor Remington. The new owner of the Rocking D.” He glanced at the sun sinking behind the trees, but didn’t seem especially concerned by the fact that, in less than twenty minutes, it would probably be pitch-black outside and at least twenty degrees colder.
His story was at least plausible, considering the owner of the neighboring ranch had recently passed away. Besides, if the man was going to pretend to be a local rancher in order to flag down a passing motorist, he would’ve at least tried to dress and act the part. Which meant he wasn’t pretending.
Lord, save her from dumb city boys who had absolutely zero sense of direction. Dahlia sighed in resignation. “Hop in the truck. I’ll give you a ride.”
* * *
Connor Remington hadn’t been planning to meet any of his neighbors on his first day in town, but here he sat. In the front seat of an older truck, next to a quiet woman whose face was obscured by the largest sunglasses he’d ever seen, and fielding questions from a magpie of a little girl who was making her mother’s white knuckles—no wedding ring on the left hand—grip the steering wheel tighter every time she asked a question.
“So I take it you live nearby?” he asked, trying to be polite.
The woman gave a tense nod. Her hair was a dark blond and twisted into a tight knot on top of her head. Her somber black outfit, coupled with the little girl’s comments about her dead grandfather, suggested they’d just come from a funeral.
“We live in town” the little girl offered. “Gan Gan wants us to live at the big house on the ranch, but Mommy says she’d rather live in Siberia. Have you ever lived in Siberia?”
“Actually, I’ve stayed in a tent there once.” Connor turned in his seat to smile at the child in the back seat. “It was summer, though, so it wasn’t as cold as you’d think.”
“You don’t have to play along,” the woman murmured out the side of her mouth. “It’ll only make her ask more questions.”
“I don’t mind,” Connor answered honestly. Besides, he was getting a free ride back to his ghost town of a ranch. The least he could do was be hospitable. Even if only one of the other occupants in this vehicle felt like engaging in conversation. “So since you’re the first neighbors I’ve met, what else do I need to know about living in Teton Ridge?”
“Well, my Mommy’s name is Dahlia but my aunts and uncles call her Dia. ’Cept Grandpa. He was the only one allowed to call her Dolly.”
Connor caught a slight tightening of the muscles along the woman’s already rigid jaw line and again felt the need to apologize for their loss. However, when his own father had passed away all those years ago, Connor hadn’t been comfortable being on the receiving end of condolences for a man most people never really knew. It had felt forced and overly polite. So instead, he remained silent as she took a right onto the road that led to the Rocking D. Clearly, she’d been here before.
The adults’ awkward silence, though, didn’t stop the little girl in the back seat from continuing. “All of Mommy’s brothers and sisters have nicknames. ’Cept Uncle Marcus. But he kinda has a nickname because everyone calls him Sheriff. Do you have a nickname?”
“Some of my friends at my old job call me by my last name,” he replied, but the child squinted at him as though she were about to tell him that didn’t count. “My dad used to call me Con.”
Whoa. Now that wasn’t something he’d thought about in a long time. Maybe it was being here in Wyoming, fulfilling a promise his dad broke, that had Connor thinking so much about the old man. Or maybe it was all this talk about dead fathers and their unique names for their kids.
“Well, I’m Amelia, but my friends call me Bindi.”
Dahlia whipped her head around, a line creasing the smooth area right above her sunglasses. “No, Peanut, nobody calls you that.”
“They will. When I go to school, I’m gonna ask Miss Walker to tell all the kids to call me Bindi Irwin from now on because I love kangaroos and doggies and owls and hamsters and someday I’m gonna be a zookeeper for all the animals and be on TV like my aunt—”
“Here’s the Rocking D,” Dahlia loudly cut o
ff her daughter. The truck hit a huge pothole in the rutted-out dirt driveway, but the woman didn’t seem to notice as she murmured again to Connor, “They were having a Crocodile Hunter marathon on the Animal Planet channel last week.”
“Where’s your chicken coop?” Amelia asked, her head on a swivel as they pulled into the driveway between the farmhouse and the barn. “Where are all the cows and horses?”
“Well, I just moved here today so I don’t have any animals yet. At least none that I know of.” Hell, he’d only had one real conversation with his great-aunt before she’d passed away. At the time, he’d been so busy trying to absorb the shock of having a long lost relative that he hadn’t thought to ask her about the livestock. “In fact, I haven’t even gone inside the house yet. All my stuff is still in the car over there.”
“That car’s just like the one in the Princess Dream House commercial. It’s even white like Princess Dream’s.”
“It’s actually a rental,” Connor explained when Dahlia parked behind it. He wasn’t the flashy sports car type, but when his plane was diverted to Rock Springs late this morning, the white convertible had been the only option available. Having lived on military bases the past twelve years, Connor was in a hurry to finally settle into a place of his very own and gladly took the keys to the last vehicle in the lot.
Plus, in his one and only conversation with his great-aunt, he’d promised her that he’d take care of her ranch and make her proud. He didn’t have much experience with fulfilling dying wishes, but from what he’d learned from her probate attorney about the state of things out here, Connor was already way behind.
Amelia burst out of the truck before either of the adults, but luckily didn’t go too far. Dahlia was quick to follow and caught up with the little girl by the overgrown bushes that were blocking the path leading to the house.
“So you bought the old Daniels ranch? Sight unseen?” Dahlia finally removed her sunglasses, and Connor was rendered almost speechless at the clear blue depths. They were slightly red-rimmed—from crying?—but that didn’t take away from her beauty.
His Forever Texas Rose Page 21