“Gregory is terrific on the banjo. And Burt Parsons plays the fiddle like a maestro,” he said, pointing at the wrangler on the far side of the barn. “He reminds me of the song from the Charlie Daniels Band where the devil goes down to Georgia and challenges a kid to a contest, with the winner getting a gold fiddle. Burt would win it, every time.”
Susan looked at her new husband in astonishment. “The Charlie Daniels Band? I didn’t know you listened to country music.”
“Uh...yeah. Occasionally, when I can’t get anything else on the...uh...radio,” he stuttered.
“I love country.”
“You do?” Chad gave her a delighted—and relieved—smile. “I thought you just listened to jazz.”
“I play Coltrane at the design showroom to create a specific atmosphere, but I’m a Nashville junkie at home. I never said so because I thought you didn’t like it.”
“Oh, sweetheart...”
They kissed and a shred of nostalgia caught Jacob by surprise. He remembered the little disclosures after getting married, the accidental “oh my God” revelations that turned out to be nothing at all. It likely seemed worse when you were younger, as he was when he’d married Anna. Everything loomed so large at that age. Cocky self-assurance only carried you so far, particularly for a middle-class grad student marrying a girl from the wealthy social upper crust.
A pickup truck drove up to the barn and Luke Branson got out.
“Hey, Luke,” Mariah called. She gave the coil of lights she was stringing to one of the wranglers and hurried over. “What are you doing here?”
The tall rancher shrugged. They didn’t kiss, but he tugged a lock of her hair in a familiar way. “Benjamin mentioned you were setting up for the dance, so I brought the hay bales you like to use as extra seating. You’ll need it—folks are really looking forward to tomorrow night.”
“I appreciate it, but the U-2 has hay. You’re busy. You didn’t have to spend the time to come over.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t want to...” The conversation continued in tones too low to make out and Jacob dragged his attention to the chair he was working on. The hinges were tight from disuse and he jammed his knuckle trying to unfold it.
Damn.
The wounded digit throbbed, but it was the illogical flash of jealousy that bothered him the most. Okay, so he was attracted to Mariah and thought she was attracted to him. That and a couple of bucks might get him a cup of coffee at a roadside café.
A short while later Luke Branson lowered the gate of his truck and began unloading the hay bales. Several wranglers pitched in and soon the bales were distributed along the walls of the barn, leaving the broad center clear for dancing. The bales were a nice country touch, and Jacob frowned. The Westons might be a longtime ranching family, but they’d been entertaining tourists for two-plus decades—some of what they did must be calculated for effect. Still, hay bales were inexpensive seating and could be used afterward for feed or bedding.
“Is anybody ready for dessert?” queried Benjamin after another ten minutes. He’d returned with some ranch hands, carrying a chocolate cake big enough to serve an army and two large buckets that proved to be hand-cranked ice-cream freezers.
A chorus of agreement came from the workers and they gathered around, eager to get the reward for their less-than-glamorous task.
“Do you want to lick the paddle?” Mariah asked Kittie. She’d pulled it from one of the canisters and it was adorned with thick globs of vanilla ice cream. “You’ll have to eat it quickly—homemade melts faster than ice cream from the store.”
“Uh...I never had homemade.” The questions were churning visibly in Kittie’s face as she hesitated. In particular, how uncool would she look if she accepted, yet how could she turn it down? “O...okay, sure.”
She settled at one of the small tables with a plate for the paddle. Next to it was a plate with a thick slab of fudge cake and a mound of strawberry ice cream from the second canister. Jacob shook his head. She was so skinny—where did she put all that food?
Susan and Chad were offered the paddle from the other freezer and they giggled as they ate the treat, taking turns licking it and sharing kisses in between. Their innocent pleasure sent a strange sensation through Jacob. They were obviously an urban couple with upscale careers, yet were having fun with a simple ice-cream paddle, their sophistication falling away like rain off a roof.
Maybe it was from being on a honeymoon or being in love and feeling as if anything was possible.
Jacob pushed the odd thoughts away. He knew the harsh lessons life could teach, and since he would never be going on another honeymoon, he didn’t need to worry about the crazy things love could do to a person.
* * *
KITTIE LOOKED AROUND, hoping Reid wouldn’t come in and see her eating cake...or, especially, licking the ice-cream paddle. Her friends at school said guys didn’t want girls who ate a lot of food, so they’d have a sandwich or drink milk before going on a date. Then there was Nana Carolyn, who was always telling her to take petite portions and be ladylike. She loved Nana Carolyn and Grandfather Barrett, but that junk about being a proper lady was boring.
Grandma and Grandpa O’Donnell were more comfortable, and their house wasn’t so formal and fancy. The only thing she liked about Nana Carolyn and Grandfather Barrett’s house was getting to sleep in her mom’s old room. They’d kept it the way it was when she was a teenager.
Kittie’s mouth turned down. Sometimes she thought she remembered her mom or could hear her voice, but she was never sure.
Mariah switched on the little lights crisscrossed overhead and everybody clapped. Kittie kept eating since it was dumb to clap, but it did look pretty.
Her dad was across the barn. He was looking at Mariah, probably because they’d had another fight. Kittie scrunched her nose. They sure didn’t get along. Of course, he was real good at pissing people off.
Burt plunked a cup of coffee on the table. “You mind?” he asked and sat opposite her without waiting for an answer.
“N-no.” But it was weird. She was sure Burt didn’t like her. He only seemed to talk to her when she’d done something wrong or when he was saying it was time to learn to clean up after the horses. That was what they were supposed to do on Monday morning and it sounded gross. She’d refuse, except she knew that Reid shoveled horse stalls nearly every day, so she’d just have to suck it up and do it.
“Y’er missin’ old Blue, aren’t you?” Burt said.
Kittie blinked. Cleaning the barn for the dance hadn’t been so bad, but she did miss the gray horse. There weren’t any kids visiting the ranch and things didn’t seem so lonely when she was with Blue. He was a really smart horse and already recognized her when she visited him in the barn or corral.
Still...she wouldn’t have gotten chocolate cake if they’d gone riding, and this homemade ice cream was the yummiest stuff she’d ever tasted. It was yummier than pepperoni pizza, and she loved pepperoni pizza.
“Blue is awful nice. When was he born? Everyone keeps calling him ‘old.’”
“Let’s see now...” Burt drank some of his coffee. “He was foaled the year after Mariah went to college, so that makes him nine, and horses can live twenty, thirty years if they’re took care of. And nobody takes care of horses like the Westons.”
Kittie was glad that Blue would be on the ranch a long while, even if she wasn’t going to be here to see it.
“Does it matter to horses if you’re sad or sick or anything?”
Burt looked at her over the rim of his cup. “I suppose that depends on how you see things. Folks who don’t have the heart for ’em think they’re nothing but dumb animals, but I know Ringer takes extra care of me on the days my arthritis hurts. I don’t trust most people the way I trust Ringer.”
“I trust Blue.”
“And he trusts you. I can tell. By the by, a girl your age is coming on Sunday with her family,” Burt said. “From Brisbane, Australia. They’ll be here two or three weeks. It’s a long way to Montana from Brisbane, and she won’t know the ropes round here.”
“Yeah?” Kittie tried to sound casual and hide her excitement. There was the barn dance tomorrow, and she was hope, hope, hoping that Reid might want to dance with her. And now a girl from Australia was arriving who may have seen a real koala bear, not just one in a zoo. Better yet, she might want to be friends. “I guess she’ll have to learn.”
“Guess she will.”
In the middle of the barn, a wrangler pulled out his harmonica and another got out his banjo. Soon a bunch of them were playing and Burt tapped his foot in rhythm with a song that Ray Cassidy was singing. The words were sad, about a man whose son had died in a war, but he was going to ride his horse forever, only stopping when the angels called.
Burt seemed faraway when the song was done.
“Did you ever get married, Burt?” she asked when the cowboys started playing something else.
“Nearly did. My sweetheart was a rancher’s daughter down by the Big Horn Mountains in Wyoming. She was pretty, too, with hair the color of corn silk.”
“What happened?”
“I went to Texas to work so I could save up money and get us a place, but someone told her I got killed in a stampede. She married a man in Cheyenne before finding out it weren’t true. Her oldest boy sent a letter when she passed—said she never forgot me...and that we’d meet again in heaven.”
Kittie hugged her tummy. “That isn’t fair. She should have waited to get married until she knew for sure.”
Burt rubbed his jaw and she heard the scratchy rasp from his whisker stubble. “I don’t know ’bout that. She did what she had to do. You see, that boy who wrote me...he was mine, and in those days it weren’t proper for a girl to have a baby without a husband. I didn’t know that Wade was my boy till I got that letter, but his stepdaddy did and loved ’em both, just the same.”
“Omigod, you have a son,” Kittie said, fascinated.
“Grandkids, too. Wade comes to visit often, and seein’ his smile is like seein’ my sweetheart’s again.”
Burt fumbled in his pocket and took out a worn leather wallet. It was thin, without much inside but some pictures. A girl smiled at Kitty from a faded photograph, and a man with Burt’s brown eyes laughed at the camera. He said the other photos were of his grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
“Do you see them, too?” she asked.
“Now and then. Wade wants me to retire and come live closer to him and his wife in Cheyenne, but I’ve been at the U-2 for forty years and I ain’t ready to go yet. You make a place yer home, and it’s hard to leave.”
Kittie sighed, unable to decide if she was sad for Burt or glad that he had a family, even if he’d only known about them for a short while. She got up and collected the ice-cream paddle and plates.
“I’m going to visit Blue. Do you think he’s still in the corral?” That morning they’d moved a herd of cows to a new grazing area before coming back at lunch to help with the barn.
Burt nodded. “Yup. I didn’t know if we were going out again later, so I left him there. Bring him an apple. They’re his favorite. He snorts when you jis got a carrot.”
“Uh...thanks,” she said.
“Not at all. Us horse folk gotta stick together.”
Horse folk.
Burt thought she was horse folk?
Outside the barn, Kittie grinned and broke into a run toward the corral, stopping first at the apple barrel to grab the four biggest apples it held. Horse folk took care of their mounts, and Blue deserved the best.
CHAPTER SIX
“MA’AM, HAVE YOU ever considered paving the road from the highway?” asked the courier as he handed Mariah an electronic clipboard. “It’s a long drive into your ranch over gravel, and this is the second time I’ve been out today.”
“Maybe in four or five years.” She signed her name, deciding not to tell him that he’d probably be coming to the U-2 regularly while Jacob O’Donnell was staying there. As for paving the road, it might happen when Reid was through college and more pressing needs had been taken care of. In the meantime they’d just keep laying down gravel, which was expensive enough.
“Hmm.” He gave her the two packages he held and climbed back into his truck.
Mariah wasn’t surprised to see both parcels were for Jacob, and both had been sent by overnight shipping. One, a large envelope from O’Donnell International, was marked urgent. Good grief, the guy had been in Montana for a few days—what could be urgent already?
She thought about getting a wrangler to give Jacob the packages, then decided it would be an act of cowardice. She’d lost her temper...again...and it would be uncomfortable talking to him so soon following their argument, but it might teach her to keep her mouth shut. Okay, so he’d cynically assumed the story about the Big Barn was an invention, basically accusing her of telling a lie to turn a buck. It wasn’t enough of an excuse to kick him back to Seattle the way he deserved.
Stop, Mariah ordered herself crossly. Just thinking about it annoyed her. They’d had difficult guests in the past, but none of them had frustrated her so much or made her wish she’d refused to let them come to the U-2.
Sighing, she went hunting for Jacob.
She saw Caitlin and Burt in one of the corrals. He was teaching the teenager to groom Blue. Even after several days, the sight of Caitlin in her black clothes was startling, though with the bright red rhinestone skull and crossbones on her T-shirt, the spiked leather collar and belly tattoo were barely noticeable.
Jacob wasn’t in his tent or the mess tent, so she checked at the guest “power” station. Sure enough, he was unplugging his phone and plugging in his computer. Three years before, she’d faced up to the fact they had to have a spot for visitors to charge their cell phones, camera batteries and other toys. Granddad hadn’t liked it, particularly since they’d already built a similar station to recharge the lanterns used in the tents, but he’d finally agreed it was a necessary evil. The alternative was having the guests constantly asking to plug their electronics in at the house or casually appropriating outlets in the barns or elsewhere, causing its own set of problems.
Mariah held out the deliveries. “These were just dropped off for you.” She almost added Mr. O’Donnell, but knew he might see it as a provocation when he’d told her twice already to call him Jacob.
“Thanks.” He tucked the envelope under his arm and looked at the other package for a long moment.
“Is something wrong?”
“It’s from my mother-in-law. Do you have a knife I can use? Carolyn used a lot of tape sealing this.”
His mother-in-law?
Not ex-mother-in-law?
“Sure.”
Mariah led him to the nearest barn and unlocked a storage cabinet. The question of in-laws could be sensitive. Five years ago Luke’s parents had transferred the ranch into his name and moved to Florida for his mother’s health. The Bransons were in their forties when he was born, a gift after they had given up hoping for children. Mariah got along with them, but they’d started pushing for a fall wedding. It wasn’t tough to guess the reason—they were anxious for grandchildren. Ranchers around Buckeye tended to marry young and have big families.
Jacob sliced the package open and read the note inside, a curious expression on his face. When he tipped the remaining contents into his hand and cut away the protective bubble wrap, Mariah saw a gold locket on a chain. He clenched his fingers on the necklace so hard that his knuckles went white.
“Put the knife back in the cabinet when you’re done. I’ll lock it later,” Mariah murmured, eager to escape. It was as if she’d stumbled into somet
hing that should have remained private.
“Mariah, wait,” Jacob called when she was almost to the door.
She turned reluctantly.
“I want to apologize for that crack I made about foolish romanticizing,” he said. “But the way you talked about the barn and the spirit of people being there—it hit a sore spot. Kittie tends to have an overactive imagination and I don’t want to encourage her.”
That sounded like Jacob. He probably thought any imagination was too much. Still, she had the impression he was trying to keep from saying something else to offend her. Apparently he believed in nothing beyond the here and now, or maybe he didn’t want to believe in anything. She was sorry for him, but mostly she was sorry for Caitlin. Her father was protecting her to the point of smothering her, and yet he discouraged the imagination that could give her soul some freedom.
“I suppose it’s never easy knowing what to do with kids,” she said awkwardly. “Reid and I used to talk, but lately he’s very closemouthed. I don’t know if something is wrong, or if it’s just a phase, or if I should even worry about it at all.”
Jacob slipped the gold locket and the note from his mother-in-law into his pocket. “That’s right, you mentioned you were Reid’s guardian. I take it your parents are gone?”
“They were...” She swallowed. It shouldn’t be so hard to say after four years. “They were broadsided by a drunk driver on their way home from Billings one night. Mom was killed instantly and Dad was critically injured. I got to the hospital in time to see him. The doctors thought he’d make it, but he...he simply gave up when he found out Mom was dead. Reid was twelve and he’s still having a rough time dealing with it.”
“It can’t be any easier for you.”
“I’m managing.”
Jacob absently rubbed his neck with the hand holding the borrowed knife, nearly causing Mariah heart failure. What if he stabbed himself? She’d hate to see a guest get hurt, but he also might have to spend the night in the Buckeye Medical clinic, leaving her temporarily responsible for his daughter.
The Ranch Solution Page 9