Winning Over the Rancher

by Mary Brady

THE NEXT MORNING Baylor held a sleeping KayLee in his arms. She was the most amazing woman he had ever met. She didn’t look to anyone to solve her problems. She didn’t expect to be handed things because she was pregnant, and she had more daring than might be sensible. And the way her golden hair fell over her shoulders and her full pink lips parted in sleep were almost more that he could resist.

  Almost.

  Whatever this was between them wasn’t going to work out for either of them. He knew he had to be the one to step up—or rather, step away. He could break his own heart, he’d done it often when he was younger, but he would not break hers.

  She had found a safe place in the world. She’d have her baby in a few weeks and she’d have the people of St. Adelbert as solid backup—they would be there when she needed them.

  He gently eased up from the bed.

  He could not give up on finding his sister, or give up the job that could shore up the ranch’s finances. He’d leave for Denver as soon as he could get away from the ranch and the less time KayLee and he spent together, especially with no one else around, the better off she would be.

  The day was sunny again and more of the snow had melted. When enough of it was gone, they would be able to get the construction started. It might still take a few weeks, but they didn’t need his constant presence for the digging to actually start.

  He sat in the chair by the window and watched her sleep and when she awoke bleary-eyed and tousled, he wished somebody had tied him to the chair with a rope. When she smiled at him, it was hard to remember what was good for either of them outside of the motel room.

  THEY HEADED TOWARD a picnic table in the small park on the way out of Kalispell. Things had changed; KayLee had known as much since she awoke that morning, when Baylor had smiled at her, but he had not come to her.

  “Why did we stop here?” she asked. It wasn’t much of a park: one table under a tall pine tree and a flattened space to park.

  “Let’s sit for a while.” He pointed to the table, and they perched on top with the town at their backs, their view filled with distant mountains. Sporadic clouds floated in the sky, a pair of pines and an oak tree stood in the foreground for contrast.

  “This is beautiful.” A beautiful place to say goodbye?

  “Wait for it.” He sat close, but not too close to her.

  “We got a lot done today, electrical, water, lumber. I can see why you trust Bullet Lumber to harvest on the Shadow Range. Walter knows a lot about forestry, and thank you for pointing me toward the environmental engineer.” She smiled when she thought of the bearded man with the red suspenders and his jeans tucked into his dark wool socks.

  Now that Baylor was comfortable with the vendors and materials, he would be free to leave.

  “He’s a character.”

  When she glanced at Baylor, the deepening glow of the sunlight had turned his hair to a rich shade of gold. She had a feeling if she asked him to stay, he would.

  “I thought I knew a lot about green building,” she said in a tone to match the quiet of the park, “but the man’s information still has my head spinning. I wanted to run outside and stay there when he told us most products used in our homes and businesses outgas volatile organic chemicals.”

  “Made me kinda glad to live in a hundred-year-old house.”

  A house he wouldn’t be living in much longer, she thought. They watched the sunset with the sounds of nature around them.

  “In fact, thanks for the past two days.” She shifted to get more comfortable. “We got a lot more done together than I could have gotten accomplished by myself. The Doyle name carries a lot of weight.”

  The sun dropped to sit on the mountaintops. The sky to the right and left of it began to thread pink into the purplish-gray clouds.

  “How did you get into the business of design and building?”

  She watched the bottom of the sun disappear behind the mountains. “I was brash and gutsy when I was young. I borrowed money to get my company off the ground.”

  The faint smile he gave her could have been for anyone, not a lover.

  Though her heart wanted it, it wouldn’t be a favor to either of them for her to ask him to stay. No permanent relationship could be built in a week.

  “The second job I landed was with a forward thinker who wanted to build a concept community from scratch, a place where he and like-minded people could live and thrive, he said, no matter what was going on in the rest of the world. And he wanted fresh, rockin’ ideas. I’m sure I looked rockin’. Skinny. Crazy blond hair. Lots of fun jewelry. Juls was my favorite jewelry maker. My tan was sprayed on and I applied my makeup with a trowel.”

  He stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time.

  “I know. I’m a different person. You would have been scared by the old me. Anyway, the concept community guy decided to go with K. L. Morgan and Associates because he said I wasn’t tainted by real life yet. I was so happy at the time, I didn’t care if he was leveling some sort of insult at me.”

  She was yammering on, probably saying way more than he cared to hear, so she shut up, and the sun dropped a little more until it was half-gone.

  “Go on.”

  His quietly spoken words gave her the feeling of intimacy like nothing else they had done, as if he wanted to know her, to be able to carry some part of her away with him.

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.” He gave her a small smile.

  “The job went well. One of the community’s biggest features was the shared facilities where the people could congregate, share meals, share a garden, have classes if they wanted. Every home, every building was built for green living, right down to the solar panels and adequate green spaces.”

  “Your enthusiasm bodes well for the Doyle family.”

  “I’m excited for the digging and hammering, but I—”

  The sun seemed to just disappear and suddenly the western sky burst with a pink like she had never seen. It shot through the clouds, and when she looked around her, she could see it banded the horizon for three hundred and sixty degrees.

  “It’s beautiful.” And the sun set on their relationship that was never there.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  When the pink began to fade, he pushed off the table and held her arm while she climbed down.

  “Thank you.” For the sunsets.

  When he stopped in the driveway at Cora and Ethel’s house, the lower apartment was ablaze with lights and populated by at least a dozen people.

  When KayLee got out of the SUV, three teenaged girls flew out of the house and ran toward her.

  “Ms. Morgan! Ms. Morgan!”

  Even the teenagers knew who she was.

  Baylor came around to where she was standing. “Hang on, ladies,” he said to the teens. They all grinned at him. Baylor Doyle commanded attention even from the young. “Give me your keys, Ms. Morgan, and I’ll put your things in your apartment.”

  She handed Baylor the keys to what she was sure was the only locked household in town.

  “We need you, Ms. Morgan,” said another of the girls. She was about fourteen with red curling hair. “We need you to help us.”

  The girls took hold of her arms and “helped” her into the lower apartment. Cora and Ethel welcomed her with big smiles.

  “They’ve been waiting for a couple of hours for you,” Cora said.

  “We’re all out of cookies.” Ethel bobbed her head.

  “Girls, let her catch her breath.” Cora directed them all to the dining room and sat them around the table. “Now introduce yourselves and tell Ms. Morgan who you are.”

  Lexie, the red-haired girl, Becca and Samantha each introduced herself. They were students at the local high school.

  As they spoke, KayLee tried not to listen to Baylor’s footsteps as he climbed the stairs to her apartment or when his boots tread on the hardwood floors above, heading to her cheery little kitchen. She was sure her milk and the rest of her dairy produc
ts would be in her refrigerator when she went upstairs.

  “It’s our very first play and we’ve been trying to get it together for weeks,” Lexie began with more enthusiasm than KayLee could remember having at that age. “We heard you’re from Hollywood and your husband was a movie producer.”

  Cora cleared her throat.

  “We’re so sorry he’s dead,” said the pretty, brown-haired girl who called herself Becca Taylor—Rachel’s daughter, she assumed.

  “Thank you.” At the sight of the solemn expressions the three faces suddenly held, KayLee held her grin. “So tell me what this is all about. What do you need me for?”

  “We ne-e-e-d to do a play.” Lexie’s need had become a three-syllable word.

  “Okay.” KayLee had no idea how that involved her, but she was sure the girls would explain it.

  “We need you to be our director.”

  “Ah.”

  “There are so many roles and it’s really funny and we can’t get enough boys to do the male parts.” Samantha, who spoke for the first time, was no less enthusiastic than the others.

  Headlights popped on in the driveway and the Shadow Range’s big SUV backed up and drove away with Baylor in it. KayLee couldn’t help thinking a part of her life had driven away with him—a wonderful, glorious part of her life.

  “Ms. Morgan?”

  “Yes, Lexie.” She gave her full attention to the girl almost dancing in her chair.

  “Would you direct our play?”

  “But I’ve never directed a play before.”

  “Yeah, but you’re the closest thing we got to a director.”

  The girls must have realized how that sounded as soon as Becca said it because they all giggled.

  “So sorry,” Lexie said. “So will you?”

  “Tell me about the play.”

  With antics and role-playing they described a play about the cheapest airline in the world. KayLee had to admit it sounded funny and intriguing.

  “When is your next practice?”

  “Thursday after school. Come and check it out. You’ll see we need you,” Lexie said as she twirled her red curls around her finger.

  Very intriguing. Outside her work, she hadn’t been needed for a very long time.

  “You’re the only person in town that can help us,” Becca insisted, looking more and more like her mother.

  After KayLee promised to come after school on Thursday, the girls clamored out the door and dashed down the street.

  “Well, wasn’t that exciting,” Ethel said as she sat back in her chair. She didn’t even have the energy to bob her head as she spoke.

  “They wanted to wait in your apartment, but we talked them into staying here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “How was your trip to Kalispell?”

  “I couldn’t believe how big the town is and how fun the Old West buildings are downtown.”

  “We enjoy spending the night there from time to time.”

  Not doing what I did.

  “Excuse me, ladies, but I need to go up to my apartment and decompress and go over the information Mr. Doyle and I collected yesterday and today.”

  “Yes, you go upstairs, now. You must be tired.” Cora studied her as if she were trying to learn something. KayLee hoped no telltale signs showed of the time she and Baylor had spent together.

  Ethel went into the kitchen and came back out with a plate covered with a blue-and-white-checked kitchen towel. “We thought you might need something already prepared to eat when you got home.”

  KayLee took the warm plate gratefully. She might want it later. She wasn’t the only one eating in this body these days. “Thank you. That was very thoughtful.”

  “Well, we sort of encouraged the girls to ask you to help, so we sort of owe you.”

  “You did, did you?”

  The ladies grinned from ear to ear—Cora’s wider than Ethel’s—as they saw her to her door. A plot was afoot and she was the mark.

  She climbed the stairs to her apartment, inhaling what was left of Baylor’s scent. What a great two days they’d had. She’d be a mark, she’d be a friend with benefits, she didn’t care. All she found in her heart tonight was happiness with a touch of melancholy.

  Mr. Doyle. Baylor. She missed him already.

  A bad habit to get into.

  As she suspected, the chilled and frozen food she had bought at their last stop on their way out of Kalispell had been put away, too. She tucked the covered dinner plate in the refrigerator and made her way to the bathroom.

  Tears streamed down her face.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  BAYLOR.

  Do not go there.

  KayLee leaned on her elbows in her sunlit kitchen overlooking Cora and Ethel’s side yard, which was almost empty of snow. The April day was mild and the kitchen curtains—with their red tulips, green stems and leaves on white panels—fluttered in the breeze of the open window. Working at the old maple table was far cheerier than the office she’d set up, so she did most of her planning and designing there.

  She was going to have to go call or visit the ranch to see what was available there for onsite storage. Although she had been putting that off, hoping she could get her rampaging hormones in check, or at least stuffed down where they could not cloud her brain.

  She spread the papers she had collected the past few days with price estimates and availability of supplies in front of her. If she got a stretch of this warm weather, she’d need to hit the ground running. Who knows, they might even get the concrete poured for the cabins before June.

  Once the concrete set, things would fly along. When the building materials were ordered, the second payment from the Doyle family would be due. Baylor or Curtis Doyle was most likely in the process of negotiating that now.

  Baylor.

  No. She couldn’t think about him.

  She had other important things to concentrate on right now anyway. It was Thursday already and she had a play practice to check out in twenty minutes.

  She organized her things and shut down her laptop.

  KayLee Morgan, director. It had a decent ring to it. An interesting addition for her résumé.

  She shook her head. If she said yes—uh, when she said yes—she would be digging herself deeper into the structure of this small town. That would be good, wouldn’t it? The more she incorporated the town into her life, the more she would feel secure and that would trickle down to her child.

  What if she decided to live in St. Adelbert for the rest of her life? She could commute to jobs, couldn’t she?

  Baylor wouldn’t be here.

  He would be off in the world making a life for himself. I’ll most likely live in the city, he had said. He’d be living the less-than-stable life of a single with no kids. She had enjoyed that part of her life and now she intended to enjoy motherhood and stability.

  The bluest of eyes, riots of blond curls.

  Yes, she missed him, and he wasn’t even gone yet.

  She yawned again and put her head down to rest on the table for a moment. The school was only two minutes away and she didn’t need much time to get ready.

  When she was no longer pregnant, she’d come to her senses and remember Baylor as the man she most liked to lust after.

  She smiled at the memories they had made together. Those she’d get to keep forever.

  Oh, yeah.

  Her phone rang and the sound startled her. Oh, no, it woke her up. She thought she had learned that lesson. Guess not.

  “Hi, Ms. Morgan. It’s Lexie Daley.”

  “Hi, Lexie.”

  “You can come to the school anytime and see what we’ve got so far for our play.”

  KayLee’s watch told her she was fifteen minutes late. What a tactful child. “I’ll be there shortly. I need to do a couple more things.”

  Like use the bathroom.

  “See you soon,” Lexie said and then the line went silent.

  KayLee gripped furniture and doorwa
ys to get her groggy self to the bathroom. In the mirror, to her horror, she saw a round sleep mark on her forehead from the tabletop.

  “Good job, Morgan,” she scolded her image.

  She rubbed and powdered her forehead, fluffed her hair and put her California coat on again. It hadn’t taken long for her old life to creep back in.

  Not totally, she hoped. She had been an idiot not to know how much debt Chad had dragged them into and he had been a shocking fool for buying into so many failing projects.

  She tugged the collar of her coat up fashionably and hurried down the stairs.

  As she approached the high school, Lexie Daley charged out of a side door and ran up to her. “There you are.”

  KayLee could hear an unspoken finally in the girl’s tone. She had been an impatient teenager once and thought her problems had been the most important in the world.

  “Yep, here I am.” Yep? She was beginning to talk as though she belonged here.

  Lexie took hold of KayLee’s arm. “Let’s go in, Ms. Morgan. We’re all waiting.”

  They entered a gymnasium with a stage at the far end. She liked gyms with stages better than cafeterias with stages. The high ceiling gave the illusion of grandeur.

  “I can’t wait. Tell me more about your schedule.”

  Becca, Samantha and two other girls ran up to join them.

  “Well, we wanted to put the play on in May,” Becca said.

  “Do you have a date in mind?” May was nearly upon them.

  KayLee realized she must have looked shocked because the girls laughed. “Mrs. Pierre said we could do it the last weekend—the Friday and Saturday.” Lexie shrugged one shoulder. “It’s Memorial Day weekend and we’ll have Monday off, but nobody goes anywhere and it’s the only time we could get the gym.”

  She had the kids sit in a circle on the stage facing the rear, while she paced in front of them facing the gym nasium. She listened to their visions of what the play should be. Then she had them tell her how far they were into production. Finally, she asked about a faculty advisor and was told by one boy about Selma Pierre, who mostly made sure they didn’t break things or plan anything too sexual. The way the boy made the word sexual sound prissy must have been an imitation of the way Mrs. Pierre had said it to them. And they all giggled.