Stay with Me (Cowboys of Crested Butte Book 4)

by Heather Slade

  Zack volunteered to help coach the academy track team, when he was stationed at Peterson Air Force Base. He also volunteered with the Wounded Warrior Program. At the time, he told her she didn’t understand. He’d been right. She understood now, but only after reading his journals.

  She walked out on the porch and looked out at the lake. It was warm today, warm enough to go for a walk.

  “Hey, now, there’s a pretty girl,” Red said, coming around the corner of the house.

  “Hey, Red. I was just thinking about taking a walk. Join me?”

  “I’ll do ya one better. How about a ride?”

  They took the truck to the ranch, and Red called the barn on their way over. “Hey, Wyatt, can I talk you into saddlin’ up a couple horses?”

  He smiled at Bree when he hung up. “Perks of bein’ the boss.”

  “All that time, I thought you were just another ranch hand.”

  “I like to keep a low profile around the guests.”

  That made Bree laugh. “I’ll say.”

  They rode a trail south, through the woods.

  “How’s reading?”

  “No easier, but no harder either. There are things about Zack I never knew. Or maybe I knew, and I just didn’t understand.”

  “I learned a lot when my wife got sick. There were times I felt the same way you are now.”

  “How so?”

  “I never realized how much she held inside.”

  Red reined his horse in. “It had been years, you see. For years, she kept her feelings bottled up, and I did nothing to draw them out of her. Instead of leaning on each other, we dealt with the grief of losing our daughter each in our own way.”

  “How would you have done it differently, if you had to do it over again?”

  “I don’t know. I would have tried harder to get her to talk about how she was feeling.”

  “How?”

  “I asked her once, you know, how I could’ve been a better husband.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me to figure it out for myself.”

  Bree nodded. It sounded like something she’d say.

  “She told me to look inside myself, maybe I’d find I had been the best husband I knew how to be.”

  “Did you?”

  “In some ways, I suppose I did.”

  “Is there a lesson for me in what you’re saying? I feel that way whenever I’m with you.”

  “There is.”

  “But you aren’t going to tell me what it is.”

  “Nope.”

  “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”

  19

  “He needs a break,” Jace overheard Billy say to Ben and Tucker. “And we’re gonna give it to him.”

  “Of course we are,” answered Ben. “We’ll all have a break until the beginning of January. Unless we try to get into the New Year’s Eve Extreme Bull Bucking up north.”

  “We’re not, and we’re also givin’ Jace the whole month of January off. As far as I’m concerned, this isn’t negotiable.”

  Jace couldn’t decide whether to let them know he was within earshot, or turn around and walk away. Evidently, Billy hadn’t taken his resignation seriously.

  “Guess you heard all that,” Billy said, walking up behind him.

  “Yeah, I did. Taking a month off might not change my mind about leaving the partnership.”

  “I hear ya. Let’s address it again after the holidays. But I’ll tell you this, ain’t none of us gonna be worth a damn if we keep runnin’ ourselves ragged. We don’t have to do it all the first year, ya know.”

  “What are you thinkin’?”

  “I’m thinkin’ you should head home early. Now, in fact. Then, we talk again after Christmas and figure out where we’ve bit off more than we can chew, and where we can scale back.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “After I heard you bought the Beiman place, first thing I thought was ol’ Jace and I are gonna partner in buckin’ bulls and horses. It wasn’t this three ranch circus. Originally, I saw it as you and me partnerin’ up. Nobody else.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get?”

  “Why me?”

  “We already had this conversation,” Billy chewed on a piece of straw. “Ain’t gonna have it again.”

  “Come January, what happens if I still want to bow out?”

  Billy motioned for Jace to follow him over to the bar. “Let’s get you back on track before we talk about any of it.”

  He held up two fingers, and the bartender brought over two shot glasses and a bottle of bourbon.

  “Get things settled with Bree before anything else. It’s either gonna happen or it ain’t. But you can’t keep goin’ like this. If you don’t think you can make a life with her and be a partner in the Flying R, then we’ll move forward without you.”

  Jace threw his shot back and motioned to the bartender for another. “Sometimes I think you were captured by aliens, and they left mister sensitive behind when they went back into the galaxy.”

  Billy pulled his wallet out. “You see this?” He showed Jace a photo of Willow. “My life wasn’t worth shit until this little girl came into it.” He showed Jace a second photo, of Renie holding Willow on her lap. “And this? This here’s my dream come true. This is what life’s about. It ain’t about stayin’ on a bull or bronc for eight seconds. It ain’t about winnin’ a gold buckle, or havin’ a big bank balance. It’s this, right here.” He pointed at the photo again, and then handed it to Jace.

  “If there’s a chance you can have this in your life, you gotta take it. You’ll regret it every day, for the rest of your life, if you don’t.”

  “Bree isn’t interested.”

  “Bullshit,” Billy shook his head. “If you don’t take another single bit of advice from me ever again, take this one. It ain’t time to give up yet.”

  Jace threw back another shot.

  “Where’s she at?”

  “Idaho.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea.”

  “Why’d she go there before?”

  Jace told Billy the short version of why Bree went to Idaho last summer.

  “When we were together at Thanksgiving, I thought she was ready to move forward.” He never would’ve made love to her if he thought she wasn’t ready.

  “Somethin’ happened.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t know, but it’s gotta be somethin’ big for her to stay away from home for Christmas. Bree lives and breathes for baby Cochran.”

  December 20

  Our first Christmas as husband and wife, and Bree and I aren’t together. She’s angry with me about it, but she knew this was how it would be when she married me.

  She did? Bree remembered the conversation she and Zack had had when he told her he couldn’t be home for Christmas. He couldn’t take leave while at pilot training. She didn’t understand. He was in Texas, not overseas. She’d offered to come to him, but he told her not to.

  She remembered that week, and how much they’d argued. There were several entries written between December 20 and Christmas Day.

  December 25 - Christmas Day

  Only someone with no sense of their own purpose could be so closed off to the needs and beliefs of others. How could I have been so wrong?

  Bree slammed the cover of the journal closed and threw it across the room. The door to the bedroom was open just enough that Red, walking by, witnessed her display of anger. She heard the door creak and saw he had opened it enough to stick his head in.

  “Everything okay?”

  Bree crossed her arms in front of her. “No, it isn’t. He thought he was the only one with doubts. He wasn’t. I had doubts, too.”

  “Came up to tell you I was headed into town. Good time to take a break?”

  When Bree stood, she knocked the pile of envelopes to the floor, from where they sat on a foot stool. She bent down to pick them, and when she stood, her eyes were fille
d with tears.

  Red took the envelopes out of her hand, set them on the bed, and put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Let’s get you away from this for a couple hours. Change of scenery will do you good.”

  They drove south from the ranch, rather than north. Red almost always went north. The only time she’d traveled south was with Jace, when they went to Sun Valley.

  Her mind raced with memories of the arguments she and Zack had in the few years they were married. How many times had he accused her of not understanding him? Now she knew he’d been right. At the time, she’d agreed that she didn’t, but what she meant was she didn’t understand his ambivalence to her when he was deployed.

  “He was so different when he was on leave. He would relax. We would have fun. That’s who I thought he was.”

  “And you were wrong?”

  She nodded her head. “Very wrong.”

  Jace pulled into Helena a little after five. Since his parents were still in Monument, he decided to stop and get takeout Italian food. Once his belly was full of homemade pasta and a couple of glasses of Chianti, he fell into bed and slept for twelve hours.

  When he woke, late the next morning, he called the ranch manager, Yance, and asked him to come up to the house when he had a break in his day.

  Jace hoped Yance would tell him everything was under control, after which, he’d fall back into bed and sleep for another twelve hours, guilt-free.

  Two days later, Jace felt as though he’d finally caught up on sleep. Since they bought the ranch, his focus had been on operations, and then on the rough stock start-up.

  He hadn’t spent much time in his house other than to eat and sleep. Even when he injured his leg, he kept active and spent most of his time outdoors. He walked from room to room, taking a longer look at the shape it was in. He pulled up a corner of the carpet in the main room and discovered hardwood floors underneath. Three hours later, the carpet from the first floor of the house was in a pile outside.

  When he pulled it up, he found tracks at each of the entryways to the living room. He went out to the barn, returned with a crowbar, and removed the molding around the wide doorway. Under it, he found two pocket doors. The wood of the doors matched that of the floor. And apart from where the carpet had been tacked to the wood, the floors were in good shape. It wouldn’t take much to repair and refinish them.

  There were two staircases in the house, a narrow one in the back, and a larger, grander one near the front door.

  Jace climbed the stairs to the landing and studied the wood on the wall. It wasn’t drywall. It looked more like shiplap.

  Starting at the lower corner, he used the crowbar to loosen one of the boards. He could see there was something underneath. Little by little, he loosened and removed the boards. When he finished, he stood back and studied the five foot wide by eight foot tall stained glass window that the shiplap had covered.

  Four circles, like something you would see looking through a kaleidoscope, overlapped slightly in the middle of the window. The focal point, though, was the silhouette of a woman, which overlapped the kaleidoscope circles. The starkness of it was so dramatic against the bold primary colors used in the patterns of the circles, it almost looked three-dimensional.

  The window had been boarded over on the outside of the house too. If it was warm enough the next morning, he’d remove those boards as well.

  With the dawn of the next couple of days, Jace discovered more hidden gems built into his house. He asked Yance if he knew much about its history, and why so much of the beautiful craftsmanship had been hidden away, but he said he had no idea.

  His parents called to say they’d decided to stay in Monument through Christmas, given Jace was at the ranch and Yance had everything under control.

  Billy called to check in, as did Tucker. Both wanted to know if he had changed his mind about coming south for Christmas.

  “Have you heard from her?” Tucker asked.

  “Not a word. Has Blythe?”

  “Nope. She told me to ask you. I think her folks are gettin’ worried.”

  “If she’s in Idaho, she isn’t alone.”

  “What’s the story with this Red character?”

  Jace told Tucker how Red had taken Bree under his wing. If Billy was right and something big had happened, at least she had Red to lean on.

  Instead of dwelling on his relationship with Bree, Jace filled his day with more projects on the old house. He decided it would be better to paint the downstairs walls before refinishing the hard wood flooring. He also wanted to replace the linoleum in the kitchen. While he was at the hardware store in Helena, he picked out tile for both the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom.

  “Back again?” asked the woman behind the counter. “You must have some big project goin’. Third time I’ve seen you this week. Don’t think we’ve met otherwise.”

  Jace reached across the counter to shake her outstretched hand. “My name’s Jace Rice, ma’am. My parents and I bought the Beiman Ranch.”

  “My, oh, my. Folks have been wonderin’ when we’d catch sight of the cowboy who took over that place. Your parents have been to town. In fact, I invited your mama to join our bunko group.”

  “That was real nice of you,” Jace smiled at the woman who had introduced herself as Vi.

  “We haven’t seen much of your parents lately. Everything okay with them?”

  “They’re traveling for the holidays,” he explained.

  “Thanks for your business, and I guess I’ll see ya later this week,” Vi smiled.

  He was about to walk out the front door, but turned back. “I’ve been meaning to ask—do you know anything about the history of the main ranch house?”

  Vi came around the counter. “I was wonderin’ how long it would take you to ask.”

  She scooted Jace out to the sidewalk and turned the open sign in the front door to closed.

  “Time for my break anyway. What do you say we have a cup of coffee over at the café?” She pulled him along with her, down the block, and across Main Street.

  “My daughter owns this place. What can I get ya?”

  “Uh, coffee would be fine, ma’am.”

  “Stop bein’ so formal. Call me Vi, and make yourself comfortable. I got quite a story to tell you, cowboy.”

  Vi came back to the table with two coffees and two pieces of cherry pie. He hadn’t realized how hungry he was until she set it in front of him.

  “His wife designed the stained glass window. I’ll bet that’s the first thing you’re curious about.”

  “I didn’t know about it until a few days ago. It was hidden behind a wall of shiplap.”

  “Yep, Walt couldn’t stand to look at it after she left.”

  “Was that when he had the carpeting put in too?”

  Vi nodded. “Found the pocket doors yet?”

  “Why’d he cover it all up?”

  “Old man Bieman’s wife was from Boston. Her family was loaded, if you know what I mean. She never did fit in too well around here. My mama told me she was mighty uppity for the wife of a rancher.”

  She went on. “Back in those days, it was as true as it was today—you never asked how much land a rancher owned, or how many head of cattle. It just wasn’t done.”

  Jace nodded; Vi was right. Unless you were plannin’ to buy a place, it wasn’t polite to ask those kinds of questions.

  “That was her first mistake. Comin’ into town, braggin’ about her husband’s ‘holdings,’ as she called ’em. Wanted a big, fancy, East Coast-style house, too. Walt was close to thirty when they married, and all he had at the time was the land. It was her money that got that house built.”

  “I’ve been workin’ on the main floor. Anything on the second floor for me to unearth?”

  “Not on the second floor so much as the attic.”

  “Attic? I don’t remember seein’ access to it.”

  “There’s an access door, probably painted over years ago, at the top o
f the back staircase. Used to be a set of pull-down stairs, unless Beiman took ’em out. If he did, get yourself a ladder.”

  “What’s up there?” he asked.

  “Can’t say for sure. Some of what I heard might be true, but most is probably just rumor.”

  “I’m not gonna find any dead bodies, am I?”

  Vi laughed. “Goodness, no, but I heard there are some treasures boarded up in there.”

  By the time he finished the second piece of pie Vi fetched for him, she’d told him all she knew about Walt’s wife, Beatrice.

  She’d hired an architect from Boston to design the house, but hadn’t been able to convince the man to travel west to oversee it being built. Consequently, she wasn’t happy with its quality of construction, so instead, Beatrice focused her efforts on the interior.

  The stained glass window was only the beginning. There were lead glass windows and chandeliers, fancy bathroom fixtures, and a kitchen that was big enough for a full-time cook, even though they never had one.

  “All that and she didn’t live in the house more than five years.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “You heard why the Beimans were forced to sell?”

  He had. They were caught driving cattle across the US-Canadian border. If what Lyric heard was true, Beiman’s sons got into a lot of trouble for it.

  “That ranch in Canada belonged to Beatrice’s second husband. She met him at the Calgary Stampede. His family was from Vancouver, and appealed to her more ‘gentrified’ side. Did I mention she and Walt went to the stampede together?” Vi laughed.

  “Walt wasn’t the most observant guy,” she continued. “He hadn’t picked up on her affair until she told him she was pregnant. The story around town is that he picked her up, walked through the front door, down the porch steps, and told her to get the hell off his land.”

  “How did he know he wasn’t the father?”

  “He knew.” Vi grinned.

  “They had a kid before all this happened, a boy. When he forced Beatrice out, Walt raised him on his own. When that boy, Walt Junior, was in his early twenties, they got word Beatrice had passed away. Junior traveled to Vancouver alone for her funeral, even though he didn’t remember much about her. While he was there, he met his half-brother, and the two became close.”