The Ranch Solution

by Julianna Morris

  “We’re here to help, Ms. Weston. I’m sorry you had trouble getting through.”

  Mariah disconnected. In a way it would be easier to have an excuse to evict the O’Donnells, yet it was good to know she hadn’t read Caitlin wrong.

  As for Jacob...the jury was still out. He wasn’t just a closed book she couldn’t fathom; he was an entire library of closed books.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ON FRIDAY MORNING Jacob dragged himself from bed and took a walk around the perimeter of the ranch complex to loosen his muscles. It helped, though there was a distinct ache when he sat down with a cup of coffee in the mess tent.

  He’d looked in on Kittie, but she was curled up asleep and he had decided not to disturb her. There was time—the wranglers and Benjamin and Mariah Weston were the only ones stirring.

  “I understand you asked for more liniment. Grams sent this for you,” Mariah said, coming over and handing him a tube. “You must be really sore if you already used up the other.”

  “It isn’t bad, but we had an...uh...incident with the stuff Dr. Weston gave me yesterday.” He didn’t want to explain that Kittie had acted her usual charming self and squirted the contents of the original tube in the trash—at least he figured that was what she had done. He’d given it to her and she’d gone into the restroom for a minute before coming out and giving it back to him, totally flat. She couldn’t have applied it in so short a time, so she must have emptied the tube deliberately. His one consolation was that at Kittie’s age, the aches and pains didn’t last as long.

  “That’s okay. We have plenty in stock.”

  “Appreciate it. Didn’t your grandmother want to speak with me herself?” Elizabeth Weston had asked a number of questions and checked his blood pressure prior to dispensing the liniment. Whether she did that for everyone, or mostly overworked businessmen with rebellious teenage daughters, was something yet to be discovered.

  “She’ll catch up with you after breakfast. At the moment she’s stitching up a cowhand who got on the wrong side of one of his girlfriends.”

  “One of his girlfriends?”

  “That’s the problem. Judy was under the impression she was the only one. She threw Billy’s boots at him...along with everything else she could put her hands on.”

  Jacob grinned. “Does that happen to him often?”

  “They usually stop short of drawing blood, but Judy doesn’t take things lying down—she’s a very forthright lady. Billy loves her—he just can’t keep his jeans zipped. He’s lucky she didn’t get her shotgun and fill his keister with buckshot.”

  “I’m sure his keister is grateful for her restraint,” Jacob said drily.

  The corners of Mariah’s lips twitched. “I’m sure it is. Let us know if there’s anything else you need.”

  She walked away as a ranch hand ambled over with a coffeepot and refilled Jacob’s cup. He nodded his thanks. The brew wasn’t bad for something boiled on an outdoor cookstove and kept warm on a hot plate, though the dregs contained a fair amount of coffee grounds.

  It was interesting to observe the early-morning camaraderie in the mess tent between the Westons and their employees. The chatter was comfortable, but when Mariah and her grandfather weren’t in the mix, the talk became earthier and the jokes more ribald. The tales of Billy’s war wounds from Judy were a particular source of amusement, and when the young man came in with a white bandage on his scalp and an impressive shiner, the ranch hand endured a royal roasting from his fellow wranglers.

  “One at a time, boy,” advised one of them after several minutes of kidding. “And don’t make promises.”

  “I didn’t make promises. I just didn’t tell her about the other girls. I work all over the state. What am I supposed to do when she ain’t around?”

  “Well, you should ask Judy that. But I’d wear an iron cup, ’cause next time she’s gonna aim for your privates.”

  The wranglers laughed as Billy dropped his cowboy hat on his head and slunk to a table. He was plainly the youngest among them and the least experienced at holding his own.

  The teasing ended as the guests began arriving. A lot of them knew each other by name and Jacob shifted uncomfortably, not having made an effort to be sociable.

  He was climbing to his feet to rouse Kittie from bed when his daughter showed up wearing her most hideous outfit—a black T-shirt with a leering skull and crossbones in red rhinestones, and black jeans ripped at the knees. The fake spiderweb tattoo she wore over her belly button was visible below the raggedly hacked hem of the knit shirt. It appeared to be fading, but that was the only nice thing he had to say about her entire appearance.

  Hell.

  Late the previous day he’d driven into the nearest town to buy shirts and jeans that weren’t so outrageous, though he’d doubted she would wear them. Apparently he’d been right. Yet despite Reid Weston’s comment that her clothes would frighten the livestock, Kittie’s assigned mount seemed unfazed by her bizarre taste in apparel. Of course, Blue was a gentlemanly horse that probably wouldn’t twitch an ear if Kittie rode him wearing a Star Wars costume.

  As the majority of the guests were happily eating, Mariah came in and whistled for attention.

  “You may be aware we have a barn dance on Saturday nights during the summer,” she said.

  A ripple of pleasure went through the group and even Kittie looked interested.

  “The first one is tomorrow and the barn we use for it has to be swept and gotten ready. I need volunteers to help with the job. It shouldn’t take more than two or three hours if there are enough of us, and anyone volunteering gets a slice of triple-layer chocolate-fudge cake afterward.”

  “You didn’t bake the cake, did ya, Mariah?” shouted a cowhand from the back.

  She wrinkled her nose. “No, Grams did.”

  “Then I’m in. I was gonna clean and oil my saddle, but it can wait.”

  “Count Susan and me in, too,” called a man at the front, and Jacob vaguely remembered that he was a newlywed, visiting the ranch for his honeymoon.

  Mariah smiled. “Thanks, Chad.”

  A number of others volunteered as well and Jacob looked at Kittie. This was what Mariah had talked about that first day—getting involved. “We should help,” he told her.

  Kittie crossed her arms over her stomach. “That’s illegal child labor.”

  The headache he got when Kittie mouthed off began to grow in his temples. “No, it’s being part of the group and doing something that needs doing. Ranching isn’t just riding horses and eating sack lunches on the range. It’s hard work. We have to take our turn with things that aren’t as fun, the same as everyone.”

  “Whatever. You’re going to make me do what you want anyhow.”

  Jacob swallowed a discouraged groan and put his hand up. Mariah seemed startled, but she added them to the list and told everyone they’d start after lunch.

  * * *

  “OKAY, GUYS,” Mariah said as she opened a set of double doors to the U-2’s biggest barn. “Let’s turn this place into a dance floor.”

  The guests and wranglers who’d volunteered for cleanup duty trooped in with brooms and other supplies. The cavernous space did not appear promising, but Mariah didn’t give them a chance to think about it. Come Saturday night, it would look just fine. She flipped on the light fixtures and opened the remaining doors so the breeze would help clear any dust they raised.

  With things so busy, Mariah hadn’t found time to get the barn ready for the weekly event. Yet the dances were important, both to their guests and to the U-2’s neighbors, which included everyone in the nearby town of Buckeye.

  Buckeye served the needs of ranches for miles around—it had schools, churches and a variety of businesses. But the one thing it lacked was a nightlife. So the U-2 provided Buckeye’s summer nightlife
, every Saturday evening. The neighbors brought desserts to the gathering. The U-2 supplied the beverages. And the wranglers took care of the music and called the square dances—between them they had a mean Western band, though they only rehearsed for an hour before each dance started.

  While the barn was built in the style of the older U-2 ranch buildings, it was less than twelve years old. Her parents had designed it with the community dances in mind, with multiple sliding doors on each side to make the space open and inviting. Not that it didn’t have other uses—from late fall to early spring the “Big Barn” was where they stored gear like the guest tents, mattresses, footlockers and winter feed.

  “This wood floor is great,” Susan said as she and Chad swept the last corner. “And it looks different than the rest. Did you build over an earlier foundation?”

  Mariah was surprised the other woman had noticed, then recalled that Susan was an interior designer. “No, but you have an excellent eye. It’s American chestnut and was cut in the 1800s.”

  “Chestnut?” Susan knelt and ran her fingers across the smooth grain, polished from decades of human and animal use. “It has a wonderful grain. I wonder where I can get a supply—one of my clients is a natural-wood fanatic.”

  “You probably won’t find any except in historic buildings from the plains states or in the East,” Mariah said. “My parents spent years locating nineteenth-century barns that were being demolished and buying the usable chestnut planks. Unfortunately, blight hit the American chestnut a long time ago—the roots are alive, but those tall, beautiful trees are gone.”

  Chad helped his bride to her feet. “What a shame. Can’t it be cured?”

  “Not unless they’ve found one in the past few years. My mom and dad stayed current on the research, but I...well, I haven’t kept up with it.”

  Caitlin leaned on the handle of her push broom. “Why use such old stuff?” She’d been sullen since her father had volunteered them, and it was a relief to see her showing an interest in something other than sulking.

  “For a lot of reasons,” Mariah said. It was hard to explain choices that weren’t made for practicality. “We could have saved money using new timber, but it wouldn’t have been the same. Think of the feet that have walked on this floor...not only the animals, but the barn raisings and weddings and other celebrations that it’s seen. Can you sense the spirit of those people in here, laughing and dancing and being happy?”

  Caitlin rolled her eyes. “You mean it’s haunted. That’s so dumb.”

  The barn wasn’t haunted, or Mariah was certain she would have felt the echo of her parents there. It used to be their special place, a tribute to the lost chestnut trees that Dad’s Tennessee grandmother had loved from her childhood.

  “No, I wouldn’t say haunted, but I believe people have an energy that rubs off on things,” she said. “Good and bad, like a memory. And this barn has wonderful memories. I try to hear them whispering to me when it’s quiet.”

  “What a lovely thought,” declared Edna Sallenger, one of their retired visitors. She’d stopped sweeping along with the others and was listening. Edna had come from Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband, a Western fiction fan who’d never been west of the Alleghenies before their U-2 vacation. Now they were debating a move to Montana. They might do it, but Mariah figured they’d go home and decide their roots were too firmly planted in Hartford. It wasn’t unusual for one of their visitors to talk about moving to Montana, but most people couldn’t change their life so radically.

  “Are you folks gonna keep dillydallying or get back to workin’? I got another job for ya if you’re done with the sweeping,” Burt said gruffly. The aged wrangler gestured to the strings of lights that needed to be tested and hung; the twinkling lights weren’t traditional barn-dance decor, but people liked them and they made everything festive.

  The guests good-naturedly returned to their chores. All except Caitlin, who’d crouched down and had her palms pressed to the wood floor. There was an odd look on her face, almost as if she was trying to hear the bygone whispers that Mariah had talked about.

  “You weren’t serious, right?” Jacob said in an undertone, watching his daughter with a frown.

  Mariah glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Buying old lumber to build a barn...that’s a story concocted for the tourists. You can get wood from a lumberyard and beat it up to look ancient. Hell, the designer for my corporate offices went on and on about the popularity of ‘distressed’ wood. You may think it’s harmless and adds to the ambience to tell tall tales, but I don’t want my daughter getting fanciful notions that will end up disappointing her.”

  “It’s the truth.” Mariah’s temper, which had been unaffected by Caitlin’s sour mood, quickened. She grabbed Jacob’s arm and pulled him outside for privacy. “I don’t invent stories for tourists. We’re a ranch, not a theme park.”

  “You’re running a business. Why would you spend that kind of money? It’s pointless.”

  “I didn’t spend the money, my parents did, but I would have made the same decision. Don’t you have any sense of history or continuity?”

  His baffled expression showed he didn’t, or at least that he’d denied that part of himself for so long he could no longer find it. “Do you honestly think it makes a difference whether your family used hundred-year-old timbers or new ones?” he demanded.

  “Yes.” Mariah didn’t know how to make him understand, but it was more than just choosing the right words. If Jacob didn’t understand already, she doubted he ever could. To him the barn was merely a place built of new and ancient timbers. Yet through this place, she felt connected not only to her parents, but also to the men and women who set out in covered wagons and trusted to God and fate that they would discover a safe home in the West.

  Jacob rolled his eyes the way Caitlin had done, and Mariah resisted the temptation to point out where his daughter might have learned her attitude.

  “That nonsense about ‘sensing’ spirits and hearing them whisper to you is foolish romanticizing,” he said.

  “It isn’t nonsense. Why does it annoy you so much? Or do you resent someone being able to value something beyond the dollars and cents that it represents just because you can’t?”

  * * *

  JACOB OPENED HIS MOUTH to retort, but Mariah turned on her heels and disappeared inside again.

  Damn it all. What was the problem with practicality? If anything, he would have expected a Montana rancher to be the ultimate pragmatist.

  He glared at the barn and the cheerful discussion drifting through the wide doors. Mariah was wrong—he didn’t resent what she’d said; he was simply watching out for his daughter’s best interests. If someone wanted to have idiotic fantasies over a ranch building, that was their concern. To think he’d believed that volunteering for cleanup duty would be good for Kittie; instead, she’d gotten a load of mystical crap and another chance to be rude.

  Still annoyed, he went in and saw Kittie putting up tables with Burt at the end of the barn near a faucet and a broad, odd-looking sink. He couldn’t tell if she was being difficult or cooperative or somewhere in between. So far she hadn’t found many ways to wreak havoc on the ranch, but she seemed to like it in Montana and might be holding back. On the other hand, she could be taking a hiatus in order to plot her next act of wholesale chaos.

  Mariah stood on a ladder with a string of lights over her shoulder, stretching to catch the cord on hooks fastened to a crossbeam. The last of his irritation fled as he watched. Whatever else he thought of her, she took his breath away with her long, auburn hair and sweet curves.

  Even if she wasn’t blonde or sophisticated.

  The unbidden afterthought made him shift his gaze to the snug fit of Mariah’s jeans. It was a sight no red-blooded man could fail to appreciate, regardless of their preferences when it came to w
omen. Luke Branson was a fortunate man if Burt’s and Ray Cassidy’s jokes about him “courtin’” her were to be taken seriously. Mariah would be a delectable armful for any man willing to consider giving up his freedom; she certainly wasn’t the type for a brief affair where both parties knew the rules and didn’t expect more.

  “It isn’t diplomatic to ogle a man’s granddaughter in his presence,” said a voice at Jacob’s elbow.

  It was Benjamin Weston. Thankfully, Mariah’s grandfather seemed more amused than insulted.

  “I didn’t realize you were present,” Jacob said. He couldn’t claim he hadn’t been ogling, since it was exactly what he’d been doing. Mariah had a body he could take a lifetime getting to know.

  Benjamin’s merry eyes grew more solemn. “That girl of ours is pretty special. She’s got a fine man, too. They’ll be married in a year or so. Luke Branson lives on the next spread over. I hear you met him the other day.”

  Whoa. Was the old rancher warning him not to poach in another man’s corral? A warning wasn’t necessary, but Jacob also suspected Mariah would be displeased about the interference. She seemed determined to take care of herself.

  “Yes, I’ve met Mr. Branson,” he murmured.

  Kittie marched up to them. “Dad, you’re supposed to be working. Jeez, you’re the one who said we should help,” she announced resentfully.

  “I’ll be there in a moment, Kittie. I’m speaking with Mr. Weston—it isn’t polite to interrupt.”

  She stomped away and Jacob’s jaw tightened. Even when Kittie was pleasant to other people, she acted as if she hated him.

  He turned to Benjamin. “I apologize for my daughter, but she’s right. I should be working.”

  Jacob joined the group using rags to wipe off wooden folding chairs and small square tables. Cleaning the barn might not have sounded fun when Mariah asked for volunteers, but everyone appeared to be enjoying themselves. Chad, the newlywed, was telling his wife and the others in the group about the dances he’d attended on previous visits to the U-2.