She helped Andee down and they went into the house, where a second wave of fatigue swept over Jenna. It was only marginally cooler inside, and yet the inspector she’d hired through the Realtor had said the house had swamp coolers. Of course, she knew swamp coolers weren’t air conditioners and they worked better if a couple of windows were cracked open. It was at least reassuring that she could hear the sound of a motor running somewhere.
She had promised to call Melody the minute they arrived. But knowing that her sister and Rob insisted she was making a bad decision—and worried they were right—she decided to wait until she was settled in.
She glanced out the living room window and saw the moving van lumbering toward the house.
Good. A reprieve.
After telling the movers where she wanted her furniture and boxes to go, she and Andee went to unload the SUV. On her second trip, while her daughter remained inside unpacking her stuffed animals, the drone of an airplane directly overhead made Jenna pause. Unable to shade her eyes because she had both arms filled with clothes on hangers, she squinted to scan the sky.
She was surprised to see a small red-and-white plane flying incredibly low. So low, her heart skipped a beat. It swooped over the ostrich pens and for a moment blocked the sun, casting a hulking shadow.
Tearing her eyes from the plane, Jenna saw spindly-legged birds bolt from under the canopies and run awkwardly to the far end of the enclosure. The plane’s shadow followed, causing birds to bump into fences and one another. Then the plane made a right turn and headed for a low rise Jenna thought probably marked the edge of her property.
She held her breath and waited for the sound of a crash. Nothing.
“Mom,” Andee called from the doorway.
“I’ll be there in a minute, honey.”
At the fence, she had no idea what she should do to settle the agitated flock. Thankfully, before she could come up with a plan, they calmed themselves and wandered back to the shade.
Since she hadn’t heard a boom, Jenna assumed the plane must have landed. She had no idea she’d bought property near an airport. That very notion unnerved her.
“Mommy, are the ostriches okay?” Andee asked, appearing at her side.
“I think so.” Turning to go into the house, Jenna muttered, “That plane shouldn’t have flown so low.”
She watched her daughter carefully after that close encounter with the small plane.
She knew neighbors on base had discussed Andrew’s plane crash around their kids. And even though Andrew had been gone too much to be a hands-on dad, their little girl had always tagged after him when he was home. And he’d taken her to see his plane. Flying had been his life. He’d even bought her picture books of planes.
But since Andrew had come and gone so often, Jenna was aware that Andee hadn’t yet fully comprehend his death.
Up to now they’d only casually mentioned that Andrew was in heaven. But Andee was a bright child and Jenna’s mom had said there would be an appropriate opening to discuss what death meant.
This wasn’t the time, though, Jenna decided.
To distract them both, she toured Andee through the rest of the four-bedroom, two-bath house while two of the movers set up their beds.
The wood floors in the living room needed waxing, Jenna noted. And hot as it was, Jenna couldn’t imagine ever needing the beautiful old fireplace at one end of the room. But when she expressed that thought, the youngest of the three movers laughed.
“Nights in the desert can be brutally cold. I grew up in New Mexico,” he added as if to prove his point.
The kitchen was outdated but clean, its cupboards painted a sea-foam green. Jenna imagined she’d like them better in white. But she also knew it’d take time to put her stamp on the place.
After the movers left, she dug out the linens to make up Andee’s bed.
She wished she’d thought to note the call letters painted on the underside of that plane. Even if there was an airport in the vicinity, the plane had flown dangerously low. If the pilot had violated some local flight ordinance, she should report the incident.
The plane could belong to a local rancher. She knew it wasn’t uncommon for ranch owners to fly private aircraft. If that was the case, perhaps he—or she—would respond to a neighborly request to not swoop so low over her pens.
Martin’s ranch manager might shed some light on the matter. Where was he? He obviously didn’t live on-site. Later she would sit and read Martin’s notes. It would suit her if the helper only worked part-time. She hadn’t factored in the cost of hired help.
“There, Andee, your bedroom looks put together. Would you like to help me make up my bed?”
“Mommy, I wish there wasn’t a bathroom between our bedrooms. You’re too far away,” she said as she scooped up Cubby Bear.
“Honey, you’ll be fine sleeping in here. We’ll leave both connecting doors open. You’ll have your animals and dolls to keep you company.”
Andee’s shoulders slumped.
Jenna worried about how clingy she’d become since the funeral. “Tell you what. I need to phone Auntie Melody to let her know we arrived. Would you like to talk to her a minute?”
“No, it’s okay.” Andee wrapped her arms tightly around her much-loved bear and trailed her mother into her bedroom.
Jenna made her bed, then sat on it and punched her sister’s speed-dial number on her cell phone. She kept the call brief, putting a rosy spin on everything. She might have broken down if she’d heard the hint of an “I told you so.”
“Our next step,” she told Andee after ending the call, “is lining kitchen cabinets with the pretty contact paper I brought. Do you want to help peel the backing off after I measure and cut?”
“I guess so. Can we eat first? I’m hungry.”
“Sure. I’ll fix cheese sandwiches from stuff in the cooler and slice an apple for dessert. Tomorrow we’ll find a store and shop to fill our refrigerator.”
“Mommy, why isn’t our house near other houses like where we used to live?”
“This is a ranch and we need more land to raise birds as big as the ostriches.”
“Where are houses with other kids?”
That question stopped Jenna. She cleared her throat. “Soon we’ll hunt up the school where you’ll go in September. And I saw a park on the map the Realtor gave me. I’ll bet kids play there.”
That seemed to satisfy Andee, but it made Jenna wonder why she hadn’t given more thought to how isolated they’d actually be living here.
No, we’ll be fine. Pioneer women survived in much more isolated conditions.
They ate a light lunch, then lined the cupboards, a chore that took most of the afternoon. “Andee,” Jenna said as she pressed down the last piece of contact paper, “I need to look over Mr. Martin’s notes on how to care for ostriches. While I do that, why don’t you color?”
The girl ran to her room and came straight back with two picture books.
Jenna understood that Andee didn’t want to be out of her sight given that she’d left the child with her grandparents for a week after the funeral while she’d visited the ostrich farm in Georgia.
A farm, she might add, that looked much more prosperous than this one.
Then they’d moved in with Rob and Melody, and Jenna had hoped things would settle.
Stifling a sigh, she opened the envelope and started to read.
There were instructions about gathering eggs every other day and choosing some to put in incubators for hatching, similar instructions to those she’d gotten from the Georgia couple. She knew that eggs not sold to a wholesaler stayed in the incubators for forty-two days.
It seemed straightforward. It was as she’d told Melody: raising ostriches wasn’t difficult.
Oscar Martin apparently had deri
ved income from four markets: the sale of eggs, feathers, meat and leather. The last two involved aspects of the business that didn’t appeal to Jenna. But it looked as if the manager was used to handling the meat and leather production for Martin. And it didn’t seem as if the man’s salary would break the budget Jenna had set up for herself.
“Before the sun sets, Andee, I want to inspect the pens, the hatchery and get a closer look at our ostriches. Would you like to come along?”
Nodding, the child closed her book, slid off the kitchen chair, picked up her bear and then reached for her mom’s hand.
“Oh, nice,” Jenna said as they left the porch. “There’s a slight breeze. It’s still hot, but that gives us some relief.”
“Ostriches are funny-looking,” Andee announced. “But they have pretty eyes,” she added, stopping to stare at the three birds that had ventured close to the fence. “They kinda look like Big Bird.”
“They do at that. Look at their long eyelashes.” Jenna pointed to one peering at them over the fence. “Each adult eats about three pounds of food a day,” she said, consulting the notes she’d brought with her.
“What do they eat?” Andee asked. She shifted her stuffed bear.
“Um, mostly grass. I suppose that’s why it’s much greener in the pens than in the yard around the house. We’ll be sowing grass seed in the empty pens, which explains why there are so many empty ones. When the grass comes up, we’ll move the birds and reseed the pen they were in.”
Jenna opened the door to one of several sheds that were really small barns. “Good, these bins are labeled. I see the grass is supplemented with alfalfa and corn that has vitamins mixed in it.”
“What’s supple...supple... What you said?”
“Supplement means ‘added to.’ Like we eat salad with our meat and potatoes. And I give you chewable vitamins as a supplement.” They left the shed and turned to the next page of notes. “The man who owned these birds said they do best living outside in the fresh air. But they need exercise. Each pen is big so they can run around.”
Andee ventured closer to the pen of milling birds. “I like being outside, too. Maybe I can play with them, Mommy.”
“Well, we will have to see about that. Perhaps you can pet some of the babies. I saw eggs under the lights in the incubators, but it doesn’t look like we have any smaller than some juniors in that pen farthest from the house.”
As she finished speaking, a small plane rose out of the direction where the earlier plane had disappeared. This one climbed higher and didn’t fly directly over them. Even so, she knew the noise of an engine winding up could put some of the birds in a flap.
Jenna watched the plane until it became a speck in the distance. The Georgia couple had told her that ostriches were excitable. And Martin, too, had indicated in his notes that being overwrought could lead to disrupted egg production.
Like it or not, Jenna decided, first thing tomorrow she needed to locate where the planes were based and register a complaint.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, electing to breakfast at the café she’d seen in town, Jenna gave the waitress their orders for pancake combos and then casually added, “We’re new to the area. Yesterday I saw a couple of small planes in the air, but I don’t see an airport on the map my Realtor gave me.”
The waitress paused. “Airport? There’s none closer than El Paso. Oh, wait. I almost forgot, one of our hometown boys recently moved back and has reopened a defunct private airpark about twenty minutes out of town.” She popped her gum and stabbed a finger in the direction of Jenna’s ranch.
Later, after their breakfast was paid for, Jenna managed to extract from her the name of the road to the airpark. They buckled in and set off.
The road to the airpark was gravel and littered with potholes. After she hit a particularly bone-jarring dip, she muttered a prayer that she wouldn’t blow a tire or break an axle on the Cherokee.
Her sister had been right about that, too. Her old car wouldn’t have survived this treacherous drive.
At last she topped a small rise and looked down on a weather-beaten facility. Definitely the airpark, because runways marked by reflectors fanned out from the opening of a low-slung multiplane hangar.
Slowing, Jenna saw a plane parked outside what might be an office. She braked when she caught sight of a man standing on a ladder, his head buried inside the open airplane engine.
Setting her emergency brake, she fought an unexpected kick to her stomach. It shook her to see the lean man in an olive-drab military jumpsuit, the type Andrew and his fellow flyers wore.
She fumbled with the key as she shut off the motor, grappling with her feelings.
Andee unfastened herself, threw open the back door and raced toward the ladder yelling, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
“No, no, sweetheart.” Scrambling out, Jenna registered the shock on the mechanic’s face as he straightened, dropped a tool and nearly toppled off his tall perch.
Jenna caught up with Andee just short of the ladder. She dropped to her knees, arms encircling her daughter even as her heart spiraled.
The blond stranger’s short-cropped, trying-to-curl hair didn’t resemble Andrew’s dark buzz cut. But he had those clear blue eyes—flyer’s eyes. Eyes the exact shade of a perfect sky for flying. It was the attribute that had first attracted Jenna to Andrew.
As the stranger descended the ladder, Jenna controlled her fast-beating heart as she cradled Andee, who by then had discovered her mistake and had begun to sob.
“Shh, sweetie. Mommy’s right here.” Even as Jenna’s gaze lit on the stranger’s scuffed boots, she heard his taut voice above her.
“Lady, I don’t even know you.”
Moving her inspection up his long legs, past narrow hips to a wider chest, she mumbled, “I’m so sorry. It’s your flight suit. My husband was an Air Force pilot. Andee’s barely six. I’m afraid she hasn’t fully grasped that her daddy’s...uh, in heaven.”
Jenna hugged the child tighter and kissed the top of her curls. She saw the man yank a red rag from his back pocket and wipe his greasy hands. And in the moment before he took a step back, she thought she saw those gorgeous blue eyes cloud with pain.
CHAPTER TWO
FLYNN’S LEGS STILL felt shaky from his near slip off the ladder. His bad leg had buckled when the kid had run toward him calling “Daddy” as if she meant it. That had more than rattled him. Now, though, looking at the attractive woman who’d announced she was an Air Force widow brought back memories he’d wanted to forget.
Such as the duty visit he’d paid to his best friend’s pregnant widow after he’d gotten out of the hospital. Chip’s widow had wept throughout his twenty-minute stopover even while she’d demanded to know how he’d survived the crash when her husband had come home in a casket.
Yes, Chip had been the pilot assigned to fly that mission. Also true, Flynn knew his best friend hadn’t slept well the night before. Maybe the outcome would have turned out the same if Flynn had volunteered to fly. But maybe it wouldn’t have. And that continued to haunt him.
Now this woman and child brought everything hurtling back. What did she want? Flynn hoped it wasn’t flying lessons. He didn’t think he could teach a service brother’s widow to fly.
“Is she okay?” he nervously asked the woman who stood once the little girl’s crying had tapered off.
“She’s better. The concept of permanent loss is difficult for a child to grasp,” the woman said, leaning over to blot the child’s tearstained cheeks with a tissue she’d pulled out of her blue jeans.
He found himself mesmerized by the tender mother-and-child moment.
Flynn hadn’t let himself fall for any woman since the one he’d figured he’d marry had dumped him. Saundra had made it clear that she’d expected him to stay in the military until
he made full colonel and could provide her a better lifestyle than...well...than the one he wanted.
“You know,” he said, wading through his memories, “the concept of permanent loss isn’t easy for anyone.” When the woman didn’t respond, he quickly added, “My name is Flynn Sutton. I own this airpark, such as it is. What can I do for you?”
“I’m Jenna Wood. This is my daughter, Andee. I own the ostrich ranch beyond those hills.” She pointed and Flynn turned to look over his shoulder.
“Really?” he said. “I know a guy who raises ostriches somewhere over there. Well...we aren’t actually friends, more like we were introduced. I’ve never visited his ranch,” he said, gesturing with a hand.
“This whole county was mostly small farms when I was a kid. I left to join the Air Force and have only recently returned. Nearly all of my daylight hours have been spent clearing runways and readying hangars to house planes. I plan to teach flying, but for now I’m tinkering with my planes and renting out hangar space...” He caught himself babbling and paused. “Uh, do you own a small plane? Or...is it lessons you’re after? I won’t be offering classes for a while.”
“Oh, no to both. I’m here because a plane flew far too low over my pens yesterday. It scattered my flock, and I worry that if it happens again some of them could be injured. I came to ask if planes could take off and land from a different direction so as not to frighten my birds.”
Flynn frowned. “If your husband was a pilot, surely you know planes take off and land with prevailing winds. Anyway, this airpark had the runways already set when I bought it. But I’m only set up for daytime flying... Although, eventually I’ll install lights so my customers can take off or land at night, but—” Once again Flynn found himself running off at the mouth. “What I’m saying is, the lane directions are what they are.” He gave an offhand shrug.
Jenna filtered her fingers through Andee’s hair. The girl continued to cling so tightly to Jenna’s leg, she couldn’t have left if she’d been ready to give up and go.
An Unlikely Rancher Page 2