by Janet Dailey
"Mmm, coffee." Alison took one of the cups and held it while Edie filled it half-full. "I wish I could have gone with you guys to see the ranch."
"Don't be expecting too much," Edie cautioned. "The place is run-down and needs a lot of work to put it in shape."
"I hope there is enough coffee there for me." Jerry paused beside her, wearing an insulated vest over his plaid flannel shirt, but otherwise coatless. He rubbed his hands together to warm them as Edie poured him a half of a cup of coffee, too. "The ranch may not look like much, but we know for sure it isn't worthless," he said, picking up the conversation where Edie had left off.
"What?" At first Edie didn't follow his meaning. Then she remembered with a nod of her head. "You mean that offer."
"Yes." He sipped at the hot coffee. "We could have sold the place for a handsome profit even before we'd signed the final papers to buy it."
"Maybe we should have," Alison suggested.
"Where would we have gone?" Edie reasoned. "Our place was already sold. We had to move. Who knows how long it might have taken us to find another ranch so ideally suited. Can you imagine how much it would have cost if we'd had to pay to board our horses?"
"I suppose you're right," her daughter conceded.
Edie knew why her daughter was having doubts. The answer was simple—Craig Gurney. He had managed to turn up at every farewell party given for them. It was to Alison's credit that she had treated him coolly in the beginning, but Craig's persistence had her weakening toward the end.
"Speaking of horses—" Jerry paused to drain the last of the coffee from his cup and hand it back to Edie "—I'd better check on them."
Edie watched him for a second then turned, a light of anticipation glittering in her eyes. Tomorrow they would be riding the horses on their very own ranch, exploring the property. Her mouth opened to share the thought with Alison until she saw the wistful, faraway look in her daughter's eyes as she looked back at the road they had traveled.
"Are you sorry we left, Alison?" Edie asked gently.
It was a full second before Alison blinked and let her gaze refocus. "I…" she began uncertainly, then finished with a sighing, "No."
Masking her relief, Edie offered, "More coffee? There's only a little bit left in the thermos."
Alison held out her cup in silent acceptance. "Mom, were you a virgin when you married dad?" she asked thoughtfully.
Craig Gurney had to be responsible for that question, Edie thought as she replied, "Yes."
"You didn't…anticipate your wedding or anything like that, did you?" Alison persisted.
"No." A smile twitched at the corners of Edie's mouth, hinting at a pair of dimples. "But it isn't easy to anticipate anything when you have a five-year-old boy along as chaperon on all your dates."
While taking a sip of coffee, Alison was overcome by a laugh. She choked and sputtered, and coughed out the laugh. "I'm sorry." Her eyes were brimming with tears and shining with laughter. "But for a second I was trying to visualize dad sweeping you off your feet. And he just wasn't the type," she declared in a voice that bubbled with her amusement. "I can't see dad ever tempting any woman into a sinful situation. Maybe a daughter can't visualize her father as a lover."
"Probably not," Edie agreed, smiling with her daughter, knowing Alison wasn't criticizing Joe.
"Dad was good-looking in his own way," Alison recalled. "But he was never an exciting kind of man. I don't mean he was dull. I used to get so exasperated with him when he'd forget your birthday that I wanted to bat him over the head. One time I told him that instead of kissing you on the cheek when he came home, he should take you in his arms and do it properly. Of course he didn't take my advice," she sighed in a gentle way to indicate it hadn't mattered.
"Joe wasn't very demonstrative, but he was a good man—the best." There was a tiny catch in Edie's voice. While he hadn't been a passionate man, he had made her feel good—needed, wanted and loved.
"You miss him, too, don't you, mom?" Alison offered in commiseration.
"Yes. It isn't so bad during the day because he was usually at work. In the evenings he was usually in his workshop. But when I wake up in the night and he isn't there to cuddle up to, that's when I really miss him," Edie admitted softly, staring into her empty cup.
"Do you think you'll get married again, mom?"
The question jerked her chin up. After a startled second had passed, Edie emitted an incredulous and breathless laugh. "Your father hasn't even been dead a year. I'm certainly not looking for a replacement."
"But if you meet someone," Alison persisted.
"If I met a man that I thought I could love and who could love me, I would consider it." What else could she say? She certainly wasn't going to pretend she was blind to the possibility it might happen. Her life certainly wasn't going to come to an end if it didn't.
"They say that every man makes love differently, that just because you've been to bed with one man doesn't mean the feeling will be the same with the next. It has to do with the two chemistries involved, I guess," Alison volunteered absently.
"They say that, do they?" Edie mocked, amused by the "voice of experience" talking. "I'm afraid I wouldn't know about that."
"Oh, mom!" Alison blushed and laughed.
Edie joined in. "I hope you don't object if I don't bother to check their theory to see if it's true or not."
"I'll disown you if you do," Alison continued to laugh.
"Hey! Come on, you two!" Jerry shouted from his truck. "Let's get on the road. We still have a way to go and a lot of unloading to do before nightfall."
"We'll be right there!" Alison called back, and handed the plastic coffee cup to Edie. "I think he's trying to tell us to hurry up," she grinned.
"You could be right." Edie stacked the cups inside one another and screwed them onto the thermos.
Jerry was in his truck with the motor running by the time Edie crawled into the cab of the rental van. She warmed up the engine and waited until Alison had pulled onto the highway before falling in behind the car. Jerry was right. They did have a way to go, and the last stretch would be on graveled roads.
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Chapter Three
STOPPED IN THE RANCH YARD, the three of them were slow to step out of their individual vehicles. When they did, they gravitated toward each other, unconsciously solidifying into a united front.
"It looks worse, doesn't it?" Edie murmured.
Without the pristine whiteness of snow cover, the run-down condition of the ranch stood out against its stark background of brown grass and craggy hills with shaggy clusters of pines. The buildings were weathered and gray, the patchwork repairs telling their own tales of shoddy workmanship. The corral behind the barn looked incapable of holding a newborn calf. The house had four different colors of shingles on its roof.
"This is it?" Alison's skeptical expression revealed her opinion.
"I warned you that it needed work," Edie reminded her.
"I thought you meant a face-lift, not major surgery," she replied with faint disgust.
"The first thing we have to do is fix that corral, so we'll have somewhere to unload the horses," Jerry stated with his usual practicality.
Glancing at the sun dipping toward the western horizon, Edie added, "We'd better all help if we want it done before dark."
They practically rebuilt the corral before they were finished—replacing this post, bracing another, ripping out rotting boards and tearing barn stalls apart for replacement boards. When they were finished it was almost twilight. The end result didn't look any more attractive than the previous corral, but they knew it was sturdy.
The temperature was dropping with the setting of the sun. Although the hard labor had all three of them perspiring, Edie felt the clammy chill setting in. Jerry was maneuvering the horse trailer into position to unload with instructions from Alison. Edie glanced toward the bleak exterior of the house and the soot-blackened chimney on its roof.
"You two unload the horses. I'll see what I can do about getting a fire started in the house," she said, and received an acknowledging wave from Jerry.
Without the clutter of Anson Carver's worn furniture, the interior of the house was more depressing than the exterior. The cold, dreary emptiness of the rooms was not welcoming. To make matters worse, when Edie flipped the light switch to chase away the gathering shadows, nothing happened. It was the same with every light switch in the house, which meant they had no electricity. Evidently the power company had not carried out their instructions.
Sighing, Edie walked back outside to the rental van for the battery-operated flashlight. Somewhere, packed neatly away in boxes, there were candles and a hurricane lamp; with her luck, Edie was positive they would be in the last box she searched.
The beam of the flashlight gave off enough illumination for her to check the wood stove to be certain the damper was open before she lighted it. When the fire was blazing strongly, she left the living room to check out the rest of the house. What she found made her spirits droop even lower and reminded her of Anson Carver's comment that his house had known dirt intimately. Cobwebs, dust and dirt coated everything. And this was her new beginning on her dream ranch. Her mouth twisted in irony.
The front door opened and she heard two pairs of footsteps stomp wearily into the house. "I'm starving," Alison mumbled. The comment was followed immediately by, "Mom? What's the matter with the lights?"
She stepped into the hallway to flash the beam toward them. "We don't have any electricity. There must have been a mix-up."
"Oh, good grief!" her daughter exclaimed in disgust. "Now we'll have to stumble around in the dark to unload everything. What about something to eat?"
"We'll probably have to settle for cold sandwiches," Edie admitted in a sigh.
"Do you want me to bring in the ice chest and groceries from the truck?" Jerry asked.
"Yes, and all the cleaning supplies, too," she added.
As Alison walked down the hallway illuminated by the flashlight beam, she ran into a cobweb. "Ugh!" She wiped it off her face with an expressive grimace of distaste. "This place is filthy!"
"Yes," Edie agreed. "I'm afraid all we're going to accomplish tonight is scrubbing out the bedrooms so we'll have a place to sleep."
It was nearly midnight before all three bedrooms were cleaned, the bedroom furniture unloaded from the van and the beds made. Alison unearthed the candies and kerosene lantern, which helped. They were not only without electricity, but also without hot water. None of them relished a cold shower no matter how dirty they were, so Edie warmed a pail of water on the wood stove. They washed the worst of the dirt off and tumbled into their beds too exhausted to care.
The next morning they unloaded the rest of the furniture from the van. Edie left Alison and Jerry at the ranch to finish cleaning the house and arranging their belongings while she drove the rented truck into town to return it and find out what the problem was with the electricity. She expected to be finished by noon and made arrangements with Jerry to pick her up at the grocery store.
It was almost three o'clock before she met him. What groceries they had needed he had already bought and stacked in the front seat of the cab.
"I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you." Jerry took one look at her seething expression and tried to hide a grin. "I don't think I'll ask what kept you."
"I've been getting the royal runaround," she snapped and crawled into the cab of his truck, pushing the grocery sacks out of her way and still fuming. "I kept getting shoved from one person at the power company to another. First they tried to tell me that we hadn't requested service."
"Did you show them a copy of the letter we sent?" Jerry started the motor and reversed away from the curb into the street.
"Yes." Edie glared out the window at the boardwalks shaded by jutting overhangs of western-styled buildings. "Then they tried to tell me we hadn't made a deposit. I have never been anyplace where people were so incredibly ignorant and uncooperative!"
"Did you get it straightened out?"
"Finally. We are supposed to have the electricity connected late this afternoon." She leaned back in her seat, rubbing her forehead where it was pounding.
"Should we hold our breath?" Jerry teased.
"They'd better have it turned on. I want a shower tonight." She closed her eyes and tried to will away the angry tension. "How is everything going at the ranch?"
"Okay. I left Alison cleaning the kitchen…and swearing," he answered.
Edie opened one eye to look at him, an impish light dancing in the hazel depths. "I hope she has it finished before we get back so we don't have to help."
"Right!" Jerry tipped his head back to laugh in hearty agreement. "My hands are starting to look all funny and pink from all that detergent water."
Edie closed her eyes again and let the rhythm of the rolling wheels on the pavement soothe her into relaxing. When Jerry made the turn onto the graveled road, she opened them to study the scenery racing by the pickup window. Tall ponderosa pines hugged the edges of the road to form a green corridor. Here and there they thinned out to make a meadow of yellow grass. The winding gravel road alternated between sun and shadow. Beyond the pine branches there were glimpses of high mountains, granite rock interlacing with trees. A valley opened up, grassy and serene.
"Even with all the unexpected problems, I'm glad we're here," Edie murmured.
"So am I. None of us thought it was going to be easy. But we know all about work." Jerry slid her a smile. "We never have been afraid of it, and we have more reason than ever not to be now."
"That's true," she laughed softly. They had a ranch to build and a future.
"Tomorrow we'll have to ride the perimeters and check the fences."
For the rest of the drive they talked of the things that needed to be done to prepare for the purchase of stock cattle as well as some yearling calves for fall sale. When they arrived at the ranch, Alison met them at the door, demanding to know where they had been. Edie and Jerry exchanged a silent look of humor. They knew Alison was disgruntled because she had been left to finish the cleaning alone, and they knew how much she detested housework. As Edie was relating her tale of battle with the power company, the lights came on. Alison forgot her ill temper to join in the cheers for Edie's triumph over the utility company's red-tape foul-up.
With the house in some semblance of order and as sparkling clean as the dingy place could ever be, the three went out to briefly exercise the horses, then brushed them down and grained them for the night. At six-thirty they sat down for the first home-cooked meal they had had in three days.
"Did you hear a car door slam?" Alison asked and cocked her head to listen before helping herself to a second portion of macaroni and cheese.
"If you turned that radio down a notch we might be able to hear ourselves think," Jerry suggested dryly.
"It isn't that loud," she protested, but reached behind her to turn down the volume of the radio on the kitchen counter.
Instantly there was a loud knock at the front door. Edie frowned in surprise and started to get up. "Who could that be?"
"I'll answer it," Jerry waved her into her seat. "It's probably that real-estate agent checking to see how we've settled in. Wasn't his name Jenkins?"
"I think so," Edie agreed as he left the room. The lights flickered overhead and her mouth thinned into an angry line. "Or maybe it's somebody with the utility company. I'd better go to the door, too."
She emerged from the kitchen as Jerry opened the front door. Edie could tell by the reserved tone of his greeting that her stepson didn't know the person calling.
A pleasantly deep male voice responded, "Good evening. I would like to speak with Mrs. Gibbs if she's free."
There was an impersonal quality to the request, yet it carried the crispness of authority. Edie noticed the way Jerry unconsciously squared his shoulders and stood a little straighter, as if he was facing a commanding offi
cer.
"If you'll step inside, I'll call her." Jerry swung the door wide to admit the man. As he pivoted, he saw her in the hall. "Edie, there's a man here to see you."
Curious, she moved forward. The man was tall, over six feet. She knew that because he had to remove his hat and duck his head to walk through the front door. He was wearing a tailored leather jacket that emphasized the breadth of his shoulders and the relative slimness of his hips. Western-cut brown trousers flared slightly over his boots.
Her first impression of the stranger reminded her of a range bull, all leashed power and raw virility. This power and virility were repeated in the way he carried himself with an aloof nobility. He held dominion over his kind and it showed. Members of this proud, rugged breed were dangerous when riled and implacable in the face of danger. Even the most powerful predators would veer away from this range bull.
And Edie found herself treading warily in his presence. When her gaze skimmed his hard-hewn features, there was nothing in the thrusting power of his jaw and chin, the slightly crooked bend of his nose or the firmly cut line of his mouth to change her initial impression. The flecks of iron in his shaggy dark brown hair was a sign not of encroaching weakness, but of maturity, of a man in his prime. Or maybe her opinion had been influenced by the hardness of the iron-gray eyes that took note of her approach.
Her smile was pleasant enough when she stopped in front of him. It was only natural, Edie supposed, to feel intimidated by his size. She also understood why Jerry had felt the impulse to snap to attention, but she suppressed it. Here she was the one in charge. The fact remained that, although this stranger was standing in her living room with his hat in his hand; there was nothing humble about him.
"I am Edie Gibbs," she confirmed her identity. "You wanted to see me?"
The mocking glint that flashed in his eyes gave Edie the impression that he was mentally quirking an eyebrow at the information, although there wasn't a flicker of any such movement. His gaze started at the top of her head and slowly worked its way down.