Love Inspired June 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: The Cowboy's HomecomingThe Amish Widow's SecretSafe in the Fireman's Arms

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Who did he think he was fooling?

  Lee clutched the padded backpack Abby had set on the back of the quad, taking a few seconds to contain himself. The tension between him and Abby was almost thick enough to see. So, obviously, his little speech about moving past what had happened between them wasn’t changing anything.

  But at least he had gotten it out in the open. They wouldn’t have to pretend the pain and uncertainty weren’t there.

  “I’ll take my backpack, please,” Abby said as Lee slipped the one strap over his shoulder.

  “I don’t mind carrying it. I’m afraid it will throw you off balance in this high grass.”

  “Those cameras and lenses in there are my livelihood,” she informed him, her hand still out. “I have never entrusted that backpack to anyone before.”

  He wanted to protest, not sure he should risk helping her again if she stumbled, but she seemed adamant, so he reluctantly handed the bag over to her. He shoved his hands in his back pocket so he wouldn’t be tempted to rush to her rescue again.

  That moment, when he had held her arms, it was as if something electric surged between them. He blamed his reaction to the heightened feelings she created in him all across the board. It was just their history that made him so aware of her, but for both their sakes, he knew he had to find a way to keep a tight lid on his emotions. Otherwise this whole arrangement could become untenable.

  Lee slowed his steps to match her pace and when they came to a depression in the ground, he stopped.

  “Don’t know if you can make it out from here, but that’s what’s left of the first foundation of the house that my great-great-grandfather Cecil Bannister built.”

  “Is it a darker color?” she asked, pointing to the mounded rectangle in the grass.

  “It is. My grandfather used sod from a field closer to the river for the foundation. Different grass type, that’s why it shows up.”

  “A soddy house, I’m guessing?”

  “When Grandpa Cecil and his wife came here in 1865, they stayed with a single man who lived a ways down the road. Apparently he was a head case, so Cecil decided he needed to get out as soon as possible. So he built the sod house. It was a quick shelter for them.” He spared her a look. “When I was growing up we would come up here for a picnic at least once a year, as if to remind us of the ranch’s humble beginnings. When Heather came into the family, this was one of the first places we took her.”

  “Heather was adopted, wasn’t she?”

  He nodded slowly. “She was ten when she came into our family.”

  “I vaguely remember that. Must have been hard for her.”

  “It was. But she had come from a bad situation. Her mother pretty much neglected her. But she loved the horses...and me and Keira and John took her riding whenever we could. It was the best therapy for her, apparently. It helped her settle in here.”

  “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man,” Abby said quietly.

  He shot her a quick glance. “You know that quote?”

  “I know lots of quotes. They rattle around in my brain, taking up space, waiting for the right opportunity to get hauled out,” Abby quipped.

  “Well, my dad would say it whenever we were out riding the hills, checking cows and pasture, and he was right.” In fact, Lee had hoped to go riding this morning, to reconnect with the land and his legacy, but then he heard Abby was coming. This afternoon, he thought, turning to look at the valley below. The hills called to him and seemed to soothe the restless wandering that defined his life the past couple of years.

  “I can see why your great-great-grandfather built up here. It’s a beautiful view,” Abby murmured as she looked in the same direction.

  “It gets windy up here. And when those sod walls dried out, not so good for the relationship between Cecil and Betty, apparently.”

  “Betty being your many times great-grandmother?”

  Lee nodded, drawing in a cleansing breath of the fresh mountain air.

  He heard the distinctive click of Abby’s camera and glanced over his shoulder to see her with her crutch under her one arm as she took pictures of the foundation. She looped the camera around her neck and made her way to the far side of the old foundation and lifted her camera again.

  Lee stepped aside to get out of the picture.

  “No, stay there,” she said. “But with your back to me.”

  He did so reluctantly, hands on his hips, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Though he was looking out at the view that he had so missed while he was gone, his attention was focused on the woman behind him, taking picture after picture, her camera beeping, clicking and whirring.

  “Are you done yet?”

  “Just keep looking away,” she ordered.

  “You’ve gotten bossy,” he grumbled, but he did what she told him to.

  “I’ve learned a few lessons while traveling overseas,” she said. “Dealing with reluctant clients and shy subjects. And some belligerent ones.”

  He allowed her a few more photographs, her comment about belligerent subjects making him stay where he was. After a while, however, he was done with this.

  “So I thought I could show you the current yard site now.” He turned and walked toward her.

  She took a few more photos, then paused, her camera still in front of her face. A cloud passed over the sun and her camera click-clicked again. “That’s perfect,” she breathed. “Just perfect.”

  She unlooped her camera from around her neck, snapped the lens cap on and slipped the camera in her bag.

  “Can we stop halfway down?” she asked. “I’d like to get some different angles of the yard.”

  “Your wish is my command.” He gave her a mocking salute, pleased to see a faint smile tease her lips as he started up the quad. He hadn’t seen her smile since she discovered who he was. For a brief moment up at the lookout point, he’d seen her natural and unreserved. He wished he could see that part of her again.

  He stopped halfway down the hill as she asked, but this time he stayed on the vehicle while she walked to a hummock, sat down and took a bunch more photos.

  Then she looked at the back screen of the camera, adjusted a few settings, took a few more.

  The only sounds were from Abby’s camera and the occasional lowing of cows from one of the pastures closer to the ranch. John, his father and Nick had moved the cattle a couple of months ago and had figured on moving them to the next pasture when Burt was here to do the anniversary piece.

  Lee glanced over at Abby, wondering if she would be willing and/or able to come along on a cattle drive. His mouth quirked. Somehow he couldn’t imagine her on the back of a horse.

  He was about to look away when she glanced over at him. Their eyes met and it took mere seconds to return to that breathless place of a few moments ago when he had steadied her. Then Abby averted her gaze and Lee gave himself a mental smack.

  She’s here to do a job and you’re here to help her, he reminded himself, folding his arms over his chest. After that you’re both heading back to whatever it was you have to head back to.

  * * *

  “And how was your day at the Bannister place?” Abby’s mother asked, setting a plate of spaghetti in front of her.

  Ivy Newton had always been slender, but the past few years had not been kind to Abby’s mom. Though her makeup was still impeccable, and her steel-gray hair fashionably styled in a trim pageboy, it wasn’t hard to see how time and the events of the past few years had taken their toll. Her cheeks were gaunt and her eyes dull, and once again Abby felt the guilt that always nagged at her when she thought of all her mother had lost after her father’s accident. Instead of spending her days taking care of the lovely home they had built up on the hill, puttering in their extensive gardens, her mother now held a job as the manager of the produce department of Saddlebank Market Goods.

  “It was okay” was all she could say. Truth was, she wasn’t sure herself what to think of
the day.

  After Lee had brought her down from the original homestead, he showed her the house, yard and barns, giving her background information at each site. It had been a lot to absorb.

  And from Lee’s account, it was evident he had shown her only a small portion of the Bannister wealth. Hard not to compare the palatial house she had only seen from the outside with the modest apartment her mother now lived in. Though the table and chairs she and her mother sat at were the same elegant set Ivy had been so proud to purchase, and the leather couch, love seat and hand-hooked rug were remnants of a more prosperous life, they looked out of place crammed in the small and somewhat dingy rooms.

  Her mother sat down across from her, unfolding her napkin and setting it on her lap. “Spending the afternoon out there probably gave you enough for your piece?”

  “I wish. I just got the basics. I gathered, from Maddie, that Burt had figured on spending over a week at the ranch, so I better figure on the same. On top of that, Maddie expects me to attend the actual anniversary celebrations.”

  Her mother’s thinned lips didn’t bode well for pleasant dinner conversation. “When you told me you were coming back home, I never thought you would be spending time with the Bannisters.” She spoke their name as if she were talking about a communicable disease. “Especially not with that Lee fellow.”

  “I’m not thrilled about it either,” Abby said, restraining her own frustration. Sure, she didn’t like the idea of being with Lee every day, but she had to treat this like any other job. Her mother’s obvious antagonism wasn’t going to make being dispassionate about it any easier. “I’ll be home every night and you’re working all day anyway,” she added in her defense.

  “You’re right, of course. It’s just...”

  “Awkward. I know.”

  “Just get through it,” her mother said. “It will be over soon enough.” Then she folded her hands and lowered her head to pray a blessing over the food.

  “Thank you, Lord, for this food you have blessed us with,” she prayed. “May it nourish our bodies. Forgive our sins. Be with the poor, the sick and the needy. Amen.”

  Abby couldn’t help a slight smile as she kept her head bowed a moment longer. The prayer was the same one her mother had prayed over every meal as long as she could remember. Abby’s own prayers had always been a snarled mixture of petitions and frustration and fear. After her father’s accident, they centered on her anger with Lee Bannister and the changes his actions inflicted on her family. But all through the family’s struggles, her mother’s simple prayer remained steadfastly the same.

  “And how was your day?” Abby asked, picking up her fork.

  “The usual. Keith McCauley was complaining about the grapes we brought in, when I think he was really grumping about the fact that his daughters don’t come visit him anymore.” Her mother huffed lightly. “Can’t help but feel bad for the man. He’s so lonely. Plus I think he misses being sheriff.”

  “His daughters stayed at the ranch over the summer months, didn’t they?” Abby asked, vaguely remembering seeing three young girls sitting with Mr. McCauley in church on Sundays from June to the end of August.

  “They did. Until each of them turned eighteen. Then they stopped.” Ivy wiped her mouth and took a drink of water. “Kind of like your little brother.”

  Abby didn’t reply. She knew embedded in the comment about Elliot was a tiny barb directed her way. The same reasons that kept Elliot teaching at a secondary school in inner-city Chicago had kept her wandering the world. A combination of a need to stay away from the bitterness pervading their home after her parents’ divorce and an unspoken shame at what their father had become after the accident.

  A stumbling town drunk who didn’t work anymore. Who spent most of his day hanging around the bar, railing against the injustice of life in spite of the fact that he had been awarded a two-hundred-thousand-dollar settlement.

  Abby knew some of the payout paid their living expenses after the accident and a lot of medical bills; one of the reasons she’d pushed her father so hard to get the settlement in the first place. But Cornell had been unable to keep his job at the accounting firm he worked at. He started drinking and then he started gambling, and in the space of seven months, the money Abby had hoped would help counteract the effects of the accident was almost depleted.

  That was when her mother filed for divorce. The house on the hill was sold, the assets divided between her parents. Ivy got a job working at the grocery store and moved into this apartment with Abby and her brother. Her father left town and his communications with his family became erratic.

  “Elliot is very busy with his work,” Abby said by way of excuse.

  “As are you.” Her mother’s voice held an edge that she chose to ignore. “I just hope this Bannister job doesn’t take up all your time, as well.”

  “It won’t,” Abby assured her, swirling her noodles around her fork. “I don’t want to spend any more time there than I have to.”

  Her mother’s smile told her she had said exactly the right thing, but the tension permeating the atmosphere since she had told her mother about the job seemed to linger.

  Then the phone rang and her mother excused herself to answer it.

  Abby took another bite of food, feeling suddenly weary. She had come home to rest. To recuperate, but it seemed that wasn’t going to happen here.

  Please, Lord, she prayed. Help me get through this. Help me find some peace, somewhere.

  “Please, you don’t need to call,” she heard her mother saying, her voice strained. Abby felt a twist of concern. Who was on the other end of the phone?

  “Yes. Abby is back. She’s doing a piece on the Bannisters. No. I don’t like it either...” Ivy’s voice faded away as she walked into her bedroom and closed the door, muffling anything else she might say.

  A few moments later her mother returned, lips pressed tightly together, looking tense.

  “Bad news?” Abby asked.

  Her mother’s gaze darted anxiously toward her, but then she shook her head slightly, as if brushing it all off. “No. No. Well...it’s nothing.” Ivy concentrated on her food again, but Abby knew something was up.

  “I think it’s something,” she insisted. “Sounds like whoever called is causing you trouble.”

  Her mother pushed a noodle around with her fork, then eased out a heavy sigh. “That was your father. And that’s not the first time he’s called.”

  “What does he want?”

  Her mother took a sip of water, smoothing a strand of hair away from her face. “He found out you were home.”

  “And he didn’t want to talk to me?”

  “I suppose I should have let him talk to you, but I didn’t want to spring that on you. Not without warning.”

  “Was he calling about money?” Abby asked, stabbing at a meatball.

  “No. He knows better than to do that,” her mother said.

  A couple of years after her parents’ divorce, her father had called Abby asking if she could spot him a couple of hundred dollars. The only reason she gave in was that she had felt sorry for him. The next time he called her he was drunk asking for money again. This time it was only fifty. She complied. The third time he called, Abby said no. And the fourth. And the fifth.

  After a while his calls became more and more sporadic.

  “Whatever you do, don’t you give him a single cent,” Abby warned her mother.

  “He didn’t ask for money.” Ivy sighed, rubbing her forehead with one finger. “He said he’s changed. That he wants to try again. I can’t. I don’t have the energy. But for now, I think we should talk about something else.” Her mother forced a smile. “Are you and Louisa doing anything special while you’re both here?”

  “Nothing special,” Abby said. “This is Saddlebank, after all. But we hope to get together at the Grill and Chill for coffee sometime this week. Louisa is busy with her own visiting.”

  “Maybe George Bamford will be working on the
premises,” her mother said brightly. “He’s still single.”

  George was the owner of the Grill and Chill. Good-looking enough, but too much scruff and grumpiness for Abby’s liking.

  “That’s a huge no to the George situation,” Abby said, needing to stop this before her mother started picking out names for her future grandchildren. “I’m not here to find a husband, Mom. Just to visit. Catch up. Decompress.”

  “I’m just being a mother,” Ivy countered with a melancholy smile that tugged at Abby’s heart. “I want to see you settled down and happy. But you’re probably right. You shouldn’t put down roots in Saddlebank. This town has not been good to you.”

  “You’re right there,” Abby agreed. “But for the rest, I’m happy. I have a great job and I’m making decent money.” She gave her mother a smile, though deep down she knew it for the fib it was. Truth was, she hadn’t appreciated her job or the money she made for a while now. She yearned to do more photography work, less traveling. She just hadn’t found a place she wanted to settle down permanently yet.

  “Money that you never spend,” her mother admonished gently. “You’re turning thirty next month and you don’t own anything more than that run-down car you’re driving. You haven’t had a serious relationship since high school.”

  Since Lee Bannister had dated her. On a bet.

  “I didn’t have a serious relationship then either.”

  And didn’t that make her sound like Loser of the Decade? she thought, pushing her half-finished plate of food away.

  “Which is why you should start thinking about settling down. You’re not getting any younger.”

  “I don’t know why you’re pushing me to get married,” Abby said crossly. “It’s not like everything turned out so great for you and Dad.”

  As soon as she spoke the words, she regretted her outburst.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Her mother waved off her apology. “It’s fine. You’re right, of course. But your father and I were dealing with extenuating circumstances that caused our problems.”

  As Abby acknowledged her mother’s comment, her foolish thoughts reverted, unwittingly, to Lee. To the moment when he’d made his little speech about putting everything behind them.