He shouldn’t have kissed Paula, because now he wanted to kiss her again. He definitely shouldn’t have cussed her out. Miss Betty would have washed his mouth out with soap, for sure. The ranch housekeeper was a stickler for proper behavior.
It was just a kiss, but he hadn’t asked, he’d only taken. He’d become some kind of brute.
Not that he cared. He didn’t care about anything anymore. From the moment that IED had blown him up, he hadn’t cared. He hadn’t wanted to live. How could he live like this?
The vicious homemade bomb had blown off one of his feet—and doctors had the nerve to tell him he was lucky because it was only one. He used crutches because he hated his artificial leg, what he derogatorily called the fake foot. He’d had more leg at first, but then they’d explained that blood vessels couldn’t support it. They took more. That was the first operation. They kept on saying he needed more. At first he couldn’t walk at all, and they said he had nerve damage. Couldn’t see out of one eye, either. A few operations later, they said he’d gotten lucky. He moved his foot. Soon he could walk with the crutches. He didn’t want to. There was nowhere he wanted to go.
He’d lost some flesh, muscle, and bone from the other leg, but it had healed. Wasn’t pretty and wasn’t all that strong, but he’d be okay. He wouldn’t let them take his other foot just to make his life easier. Or theirs.
He’d lost a couple of fingers. His sister had the nerve to tell him that most ranchers lost of a finger or two, so big deal.
Tess was right about that. Their dad had lost a finger doing something really stupid on the ranch—holding a rope the wrong way when he was a kid. Happened to a lot of people on ranches. The reason for wearing thick leather gloves and being slow and careful. JD and his brother, Baron, had learned caution at their father’s knee, as the saying went. On a big place like the Selkirk ranch, so many miles from anywhere, there was no instant help if they got into trouble.
In Iraq he’d had the backing of his buddies. Damn, he missed them. Rolf Pedersen was from Texas. Grew up on a ranch, too. He understood where JD was coming from. Frank Finger was more urban than rural, but he’d also wanted to fight rather than be another coddled college kid. And Rob. Rob Wright.
Damn. He hated to think about Rob. The IED that had blown JD up had killed Rob. JD had asked, but they never found enough of Rob for a casket. That’s what he’d heard. That was tough. He’d always meant to go to Rob’s widow and tell her what a great guy he was. Now it was eighteen months since the blow-up. He hadn’t gone. The doctors claimed he could if he wanted to. They were wrong. He wasn’t in any shape to do anything.
Chapter 2
Paula strode out of the VA hospital and clicked her car door lock to make the Mercedes chirp. She’d been here so many times in the past eighteen months she’d parked in every single spot in the parking garage. Using the clicker was the only way she could find her car anymore. This was no way to live, visiting a hospital almost every day, hoping and wishing that JD would come out of his funk.
She had to do something. The Selkirk family couldn’t go on like this. JD’s father having that heart attack ought to be a wake up call to them all. Six months ago, Baron had gone crazy and abducted a stranger. Lucky for him, Addie Jelleff had a will of steel and she’d fought his every move. Baron had made some big mistakes with her, keeping her a virtual prisoner on his ranch because he was convinced she had a drug problem. She could have had him thrown in prison for what he did. Instead, she’d decided to give him another chance. They were engaged to be engaged now. Addie lived on the ranch and worked on her horses, while Baron pursued hiring a manager or getting his family to take over. Baron had told his father flat out that he wouldn’t stay on the ranch pinch-hitting anymore, with all the weight of responsibility on him.
But Robert Selkirk hadn’t listened. Paula wasn’t sure why. Tess said her dad had been against Baron pursuing a career in geology instead of ranching. That was years ago. Surely he’d made peace with Baron’s choice?
Maybe not. Maybe Robert Selkirk hung out here in Cheyenne instead of returning to the ranch to force Baron to take the job permanently.
If so, Robert Selkirk had made a miscalculation. The news that Baron had gone beyond advertising for a manager to finding a buyer for the ranch had come as a huge shock to Robert Selkirk. It had brought on his heart attack.
She should call Tess, who had spent the whole night at Robert Selkirk’s hospital, as had Anita, his wife. Paula hadn’t told JD how much worry the women had gone through in the early hours after Robert’s attack. It was enough to know JD cared about his father. Perhaps that was a wedge she could use to urge JD to get on with his own life.
Paula checked the dash. Four o’clock. Tess would be done with her few clients and hopefully not too drunk yet.
“Hey, what’s up?” Tess said. Her voice was slurred.
“I tried again with JD. No go.”
“Damn him. He’s got to return to the ranch. Baron will sell it if he doesn’t.”
“Have you been working on your dad, trying to get him to return?”
“I can’t get him to listen. Mom can’t, either, but she wants him to retire completely. She wants to move to Alabama to be near her sister, Aunt Ida. She says she’s had enough ranching for a lifetime.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Mom says the heart attack is a warning that it’s time for Dad to retire. She put her foot down.”
Paula maneuvered her car through the tiny amount of rush hour traffic Cheyenne produced. After what she’d seen while a student at Stanford, it was nothing.
“So what happens next?” she asked. “I’m almost at your place. Come outside so I don’t have to park?”
“Okay.”
Paula thought she heard the slosh of liquid in a glass. Was Tess fortifying herself with another shot before their planned hospital visit and evening entertainment?
“Are you still there?” she asked.
“Getting ready,” Tess said. “I’ll be on the sidewalk in two minutes. See you.”
It was more like four minutes, but Paula had to sit through a long light. She pulled up in front of the Selkirks’ condo building just as Tess slammed the door and hurled herself down the front steps.
“Hey, girl,” Tess said, climbing into the front passenger seat.
“Hey.” Paula steered the car into the traffic again. She described her visit with JD, but left out any mention of the kiss he’d forced on her. “Since neither of your brothers wants to, why don’t you go home and run the ranch?” she asked as she drove. “It would solve your family’s problem.”
“Sons run ranches, not daughters.” Tess said it with a certain glumness that made Paula perk up her ears.
“You’d like to?”
“Forget the ranch. I want to be a movie star, not a stupid life coach who barely has any life experience. I’m advising women my mom’s age to write the novel they always wanted to write, or go on that artists’ retreat they always wanted to take, or be really daring and sign up for yoga classes.”
Paula chuckled. “That’s because your mom has made friends here and sends you all your clients. You haven’t bothered to look for any on your own.”
“What about you? You pretend to work at Daddy’s investment bank, but you’re really hanging around this two-bit town because of us Selkirks.”
“Got it in one. My MBA means nothing and I have no management skills.”
Tess gave Paula a side glance. “You’re the most managing person I know.”
“Sometimes, you even appreciate it.” She grinned as she turned the car into the hospital parking lot.
Robert Selkirk was comfortable in a bed in a private room, courtesy of the Selkirk money. There was enough to be in a private hospital, for that matter, but they didn’t flaunt it. Robert looked large and powerful even stuck in a hospital bed. Despite his graying hair and a drawn expression on his face, he had an air of command even in sleep. Anita Selkirk, a tidy little woma
n whose sons towered over her, was sitting next to his hospital bed crocheting. In the nearly eighteen months since JD was brought to Cheyenne, Anita had crocheted dozens of baby afghans for charity. Paula would have gone mad doing so much close work day after day, but Anita was quite happy to do conventional women’s crafts. She rose to meet them at the door.
After greetings, Paula said, “I hear that you want to move to Alabama?”
“It’s true. My sister—you’ve never met Ida, have you?—retired to Alabama a few years ago. Down to Mobile, on the coast. She loves it there. No cold winters like we have here in Wyoming. Considering everything, it seems like a good idea to retire now. We’ve already parted from our home. I haven’t even seen the ranch once since we left it. Might as well move along and make ourselves a nice retirement nest.”
Paula nodded. “That sounds like a good plan. Is your husband with you on it?”
Anita cast a glance at the bed and sighed. “No, but stubborn doesn’t automatically win. We’ve done it his way for the past eighteen months. Now we’ll change course.”
“I hear you talking about Alabama,” Robert’s stentorian voice reached out to them. “No way am I leaving our son here.”
“He’s almost recovered,” Anita said, as if she’d said it many times before. “It’s time to pull away so he can take the next steps on his own.”
“He’s a cripple now,” Robert replied.
Anita’s face took on a pained expression. Her voice was soft as she said, “He had losses, but he’s alive. He could have a wonderful future if he’d make an effort to get past his injuries.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve never faced death like that,” Robert grumbled.
Anita raised an eyebrow. “I gave birth three times, and each time the doctors warned us the next pregnancy could kill me. Or have you forgotten?”
Robert’s face took on a pinker hue.
Whoa. Paula said, “Uh, what kind of home would you buy in Mobile?”
“At first we’d rent a condo like we do here. Then we’d nose around, I expect.” Anita brightened. “It’ll be fun.”
Paula didn’t want to bring it up, but Anita did. “Tess can stay here or come with us.”
“What if I want to go back to the ranch and live there?” Tess asked.
“The ranch belongs to Baron now,” her father said.
“Daddy, he’s said it over and over. He isn’t staying. He doesn’t like running the ranch or any part of the business.”
Her father waved that aside. “He’ll do his duty.”
Paula said, “Excuse me, but Baron came here six months ago and flat out said he was moving on unless you or JD went back to run the ranch.”
“He didn’t mean it. He’s a good boy. He knows his destiny is to run the ranch.”
Paula gave Anita a sideways glance, wondering if she concurred. Anita looked at her husband with impatience in her expression.
“Now you know that is not true, Robert,” Anita said. “Why won’t you listen to the children? They’re adults now.”
Her words sounded as if she’d said them to Robert many times.
A nurse bustled in, then stopped short seeing so many of them in the room. “Mr. Selkirk needs to rest. Why don’t you all come back tomorrow?”
Anita stood, carefully putting her crocheting in a drawer. “I’ll have dinner and then I’ll return to stay the night with my husband. Girls, why don’t you come with me?”
Tess and Paula dutifully said their farewells and followed Anita out. As soon as they were in the hall and away from Robert Selkirk’s room, Tess said, “We’ve got to do something, or Baron will sell the ranch right from under us. He has the power of attorney.”
“He wouldn’t do that,” Anita retorted. “He’s a good son.”
“He’s fed up, Mom. It’s been a year and a half since JD came home from the war.”
Anita sighed. “That long?”
They took Anita to dinner in the hospital cafeteria. It looked like any hospital cafeteria anywhere, with the usual plastic chairs and tables on metal legs. Institutional design dictated the bars on which people slid their trays, and health laws kept food behind glass or individually wrapped on plates. All three women made automatic choices from long practice. The usual chicken with rice, gravy, and beans was on offer, or a livid orange macaroni and cheese. Uninspiring desserts. They took their trays to a table and sat.
“The way things are going in this family, we’ll be trying out every hospital cafeteria in Cheyenne,” Tess said with no humor in her voice. Her buzz was wearing off.
Anita appeared pained. She was a quiet woman, but all the Selkirks listened to her when she bothered to speak. Her hair was still a dark chestnut and she wore it shoulder length. “I am getting rather tired of eating in cafeterias,” Anita said, with a bit of humor. “With JD so much better now, I didn’t expect to be in another so soon.”
“How is Robert, really?” Paula asked, laying a hand on the older woman’s.
Anita sighed. “At first the doctors said it was a warning. Now they’re threatening possible bypass surgery. Robert could have many healthy years ahead of him, but not if we spend all our time hanging around hospitals. We need to go start a new life somewhere pleasant.”
“Can’t you both return to the ranch, instead? Take the pressure off Baron?”
The older woman seemed to consider the idea. Finally she said, “I don’t think so. We’ve already made the big break and adjusted to city living. Robert’s retired now. It’s time to move on to where we can relax and enjoy life at a slower pace.”
“I can’t think of a slower pace than an isolated ranch in southwestern Wyoming,” Paula said. “At the ranch there’s nothing to do, no one to see, and no place to go.”
Tess snorted. “Your views on ranching are well known.”
Anita said, “I was plenty busy at the ranch, but a young woman of your education and business accomplishments might not have enough to do there.”
Paula wondered if Anita’s words contained a barb. Did the older woman disapprove of educated women? Or women in business? Perhaps some of Tess’s chronic insecurity stemmed from her mother’s attitude about proper roles for women, not from her father’s. Paula’s own mother had been her biggest booster. She’d died of cancer five years ago, but Paula still missed her.
Anita was still talking about the complexities of the ranch finances. “Lots of ranch wives do the accounting for the business, but as we grew the holdings, ours became too much for one untrained person to handle as the ranch grew larger.”
“That’s why Baron advertised for a business manager in addition to a day-to-day ranch manager,” Paula said.
Tess said, “He hasn’t found anyone for either spot. Addie told me that’s why he’s putting the entire ranch up for sale.”
“Addie’s a nice girl from what I know of her after just one meeting six months ago,” Anita said. “But she doesn’t seem terribly interested in helping Baron stay on the ranch.”
Tess shrugged. “Why should she? She cares about her horses. She doesn’t need a cattle ranch to be a horse whisperer.”
“I believe she sold her own ranch, which was a much smaller property,” Paula said.
“She did,” Tess replied. She turned to her mother. “Addie had a manager just for her tiny little ranch. All we’ve got is Hoot Hawkins, and he’s up in years and semi-retired. He can’t pull the load.”
Paula asked, “If your husband can’t return to the ranch—and he sounds as if he has no intention of returning, either—then what happens?”
Anita did not reply.
Tess said, “I know for a fact Baron isn’t going to wait any longer.”
Paula threw down her fork. The cherry pie was terrible anyway. “It all comes back to JD. If he’d just check himself out of that hospital and start living his life again, he could run the ranch and Baron wouldn’t leave.”
Tess said darkly, “JD’s turned into a selfish pig. He has, Mom,” she insist
ed, as her mother frowned on her words. “All he thinks about is himself and his miseries.”
“Says the pot calling the kettle black, missy,” her mother snapped. “You mind your business and let the adults decide what’s best.”
Tess turned to look at Paula with a plea in her expression.
Paula said, not unkindly, “Anita, Tess was only twenty when JD returned, but she’s passed her twenty-second birthday now. She’s an adult, not a child.”
Anita said, ruefully, “Oh, I keep forgetting. It’s as if time has stopped while we wait for JD to recover himself. Except today I think the clock re-started.”
Paula nodded. When Tess seemed about to burst out with more protests, Paula shook her head slightly. “Tell us more about your plan to move to Mobile, Anita. How quickly can you do it?”
After they’d parted and Anita went back to sit by Robert’s bed for the rest of the evening, Tess and Paula walked to the parking lot.
“Will you mind if Baron sells the ranch?” Paula asked. She clicked the key fob and her car chirped. They walked toward it.
“I’d hate it. I love the ranch. It’s my home,” Tess said. “It’s the only home I ever want, but Dad and Mom made it clear years ago that the ranch belonged to the boys. That leaves me with pretending to be employed as a life coach, or following my true ambition and going to Hollywood to become a movie star.”
“Your parents would fight you tooth and nail. So would Baron and JD.” Paula unlocked her car.
Tess said, before she opened her passenger door, “But none of them is in shape to fight me right now, are they? Baron is wrapped up in his own needs, and Addie supports him. JD thinks only about his losses. And Dad and Mom are battling over hanging on here forever or retiring to Alabama. That leaves me free to sneak out to California.”
Saving the Soldier (Selkirk Family Ranch Book 2) Page 2