Copper Lake Encounter

by Marilyn Pappano

  She summoned the remnants of her composure. “I thought, with it being so late and with the ranch short on staff, it wouldn’t be so bad for me to step in.”

  Agnes threw an arm up in dramatic disgust. “Wouldn’t be so bad? In the name of all things holy, she’ll get us all canned.”

  “Agnes,” Mathilda soothed, “of course Kate’s face is flushed from working in the heat of the kitchen.” She set a supportive hand on Kate’s shoulder. “But am I noticing correctly that you changed into a clean smock, dear?”

  “A clean jacket, yes, ma’am.” Kate’s face heated. She loathed being talked down to day in and day out by these women who controlled the flow of life and information at Dead River Ranch. But with no money or family she could turn to, this job was all she had. At least it came with a well-stocked kitchen to work in and a house of people hungry for sweets.

  “As you so astutely pointed out, there’s no time to waste,” Mathilda said to Agnes. “If Mr. Colton doesn’t get his dessert in short order, we’ll all pay the price for the delay. There’s no sense in you traipsing up two flights of stairs to Mr. Colton’s quarters, not after the scrumptious meals you slaved all day to prepare.” Agnes swelled up like a toad at the saccharine compliment. “Allow Kate to do the work.”

  Well, gee. Thanks. She mashed her lips together and thought about cheesecake. Plain, with a single fresh strawberry sliced on top.

  “It would serve you right, Miss High and Mighty. You might as well take over serving Mr. Colton all his meals. If anyone can teach you a lesson about keeping to your rightful place in this house, it would be Jethro Colton.”

  Mathilda interrupted with a reproachful tsk. “Mind your tone. He’s Mr. Colton to you.”

  Agnes’s glare cut past Kate and narrowed on Mathilda. “As if you don’t know what he’s like.”

  A chorus of chimes, low but distinctive, came through the open ground-level door.

  Mathilda gazed at the door, her lips pursed. “What in the world would someone be thinking, intruding on the family at such a late hour?”

  “You’re not expecting anyone?” Agnes asked.

  “Of course not. Mr. Colton needs his rest. I’m afraid our late-night visitor is going to be sorely disappointed. Excuse me.” Holding her long, black skirt out of the way of the spill, Mathilda sidestepped around Agnes’s ample form and strode with neat, stiff steps down the stairs and through the door.

  “I think I’d like to see who it is myself.” Agnes shoved the dessert tray into Kate’s hands. “Go on, now, and hurry up. You think you’re too good for kitchen work? Fine. From this point forward, Mr. Colton’s meals are your responsibility. Maybe he’ll have more mercy on you than he does on the rest of us.”

  * * *

  Nothing had ever been handed to Levi Colton except his curse of a name.

  Not love or prestige, and definitely not money.

  In fact, it was a wonder his fingers retained the dexterity and sensitivity needed of a doctor given the succession of backbreaking jobs he’d toiled through to fight for the life he wanted.

  For the hundredth time since he’d driven through the opulent gold-and-white entrance gate to Dead River Ranch, he asked himself the same impossible question he’d been asking the whole drive from Salt Lake City.

  What the hell was he thinking, coming here?

  The reason had seemed so solid that morning when he’d left his apartment. And it had nothing to do with sympathy for Gabriella, who’d burst into the hospital office he shared with the other first-year residents, with her high-end tailored clothes and porcelain features, begging him to return to Dead River Ranch, insisting that he was the key to her poor, dear father’s survival.

  Return. As if he’d ever been welcomed there before. As if he would’ve set a toe on Jethro Colton’s property even if he’d been invited. He should’ve never said never because here he was, winding through the ranch land en route to the mansion he’d seen only in pictures.

  What the hell was he thinking? Why would he go out of his way, jeopardize his standing at the hospital and place himself in Jethro’s line of fire after he’d sworn to never do so again?

  “This is my last chance to look into the old man’s eyes before he dies,” he muttered in reminder as he took a corner too fast.

  It was the same answer—the only answer—he’d been able to come up with in the seven days since Gabriella ran from his office in tears, proclaiming, “You’re a lot like Dad. Stubborn to the end.”

  The insult hit its mark. Levi had smarted for days at the comparison, stewing about all the many ways he wasn’t like Jethro and cursing Gabriella because she’d made him feel something other than indifference for the Coltons, a state of mind Levi worked diligently to maintain.

  But for seven straight nights the usual dreams that haunted him were absent, replaced by his mother’s image standing beside Gabriella, both of them chanting that he was the spitting image of Jethro. As bad as him, they’d said, sneering. As corrupt and heartless. Time after time he woke drenched in sweat and breathing hard.

  Last night, he’d reached his limit. Hating the way the dreams and subsequent cold sweat made him feel vulnerable, he’d pushed from the bed and taken a shower without turning on the light. The bathroom fixture was too bright for 3:00 a.m., and besides, the darkness was exciting, as though he was bucking the rules. An explorer luxuriating in an underground waterfall.

  The whimsy of it almost erased the vision of his mother from his head. But not quite. The knot in his stomach wouldn’t completely ease. He braced his hands against the tile, picturing his mother, wondering how accurate his memory of her was, or if it had morphed over the years into someone more beautiful, less damaged by the world. He’d have to unearth the box of photographs from storage to know for sure.

  Standing there in the dark shower, thinking about her and the unsettling dreams, the eeriest feeling crept through him, as if he sensed the presence of his mother and she was trying to tell him something important.

  The problem was, Levi didn’t believe in ghosts. He was a doctor, for pity’s sake. He didn’t buy for one second that his mother had returned from beyond the grave to give him a message that he was the spitting image of the man she’d obsessed over until her dying breath. She’d said that very thing repeatedly while he was growing up, and so the dreams shouldn’t have gotten to him as profoundly as they had. Just random memories surfacing.

  Except...

  Except he couldn’t shake the idea that he needed to prove the lack of resemblance once and for all. He needed to look Jethro in the eye one last time before he died.

  Ludicrous because what did he think he’d see in those eyes besides Jethro’s typical arrogance and spite? He supposed regret would be too much to hope for from a man who didn’t have a soul. Then again, maybe Levi had come back to Wyoming because he knew it would infuriate Jethro to lie there helpless in a sickbed while Levi took charge.

  Hadn’t that always been a fantasy of his as a little boy—that his father would need him?

  Wincing with bitterness at the memory of the naive, hopeful child he’d been, he crested a ridge and the estate and surrounding pastures came into view. Illuminated by the moon, white fences spread in all directions over the rambling land, dividing it into sections for the livestock.

  The house itself rose in the center of the spread in grand design, looming over the grounds in absolute darkness. Not a single light was on anywhere around or inside the main house, but only flickers of brightness behind the drawn curtains—candles or flashlights—as though a power line had been cut.

  Given the violent wind, it wasn’t an outlandish theory that a falling tree had taken out the ranch’s power. In the beams of his headlights, leaves danced and skittered across the circular driveway.

  He stepped from the car. A gust of warm, foul-smelling summer wind
shoved against the side of his body, flipping up his shirt collar and pelting his cheek with bits of dirt. Those were two things he never missed about Wyoming—the relentless wind and the odor of livestock.

  Folding his collar into place, he studied the house. Thick, beige stucco walls with rows of identical windows reached up to the sky like a fortress, impenetrable and impersonal. How could anyone find comfort living in such a monstrosity? A monstrosity for a monster, he supposed.

  Gabriella hadn’t said if she or either of her two sisters lived here still, but he’d bet they did. He’d bet Jethro kept his children on short leashes—the bastard son excluded, of course.

  His old friend hatred crawled into his heart. He loathed that he was still quick to anger about how the old man had treated Levi and his mother. Because anger meant he cared. Why couldn’t he go numb about the past like he wanted to? If not numbness, then he’d settle for peace.

  Maybe peace would finally come to him when Jethro succumbed to leukemia.

  As he watched from the driveway, the place snapped into brightness. Floodlights burst to life, illuminating the driveway in blinding light. Startled, Levi jumped and gripped the car door. His heart hammering, he squinted until his eyes adjusted. Faint cheers, women’s voices, erupted on one of the upper floors.

  He ducked into the car and popped the trunk, then hauled out his suitcase and medical bag. There weren’t any hotels he could stomach staying at in the town of Dead—too many of those bitter memories he hated caring about—and so his only choice besides sleeping in his car was to stay at the ranch. That was, if Jethro allowed him to.

  The door was as thick and unwelcoming as the walls. He pushed the doorbell but didn’t hear a ring in response. After a few minutes of standing there, second-guessing his choice and asking himself over and over what the hell he was doing there, he raised his fist and knocked.

  The door was opened by a severe-looking woman wearing a conservative black dress, her blond hair cut short, utilitarian. “May I help you, sir?”

  Levi inhaled deeply. Here we go....

  ISBN: 9781460317044

  Copyright © 2013 by Marilyn Pappano

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