She was driving toward her favorite place in the world, the James Hill Ranch, after having the best night of her life. She’d gone into that night with her eyes wide open. She’d known she’d be alone today.
I’m coming back for you. Her tears at those words had taken her by surprise. She’d already known he’d be back, someday. She really had. Still, hearing him say it this morning had touched something inside her, something that made her want to cry.
But she was fine now.
Schumer’s convenience store was up ahead, on the right. Emily craved some caffeine, but stopping in for a cup while she wore the same dress she’d had on before midnight? That was not going to happen, no matter how badly she needed coffee. Mr. Schumer might expire of excitement as he jumped to all the right conclusions. Yup, she and Chicago had indeed had sex, just as he’d predicted.
Hours of it. Great sex—it had been the best sex of her life. At thirty, Graham was the oldest man she’d ever dated, with a man’s body and a man’s experience. He knew what he was doing. But when she was with him, so did she. Her touches, her kisses, the way she moved, the way she sighed, everything she did had pleased Graham. He’d told her, he’d shown her, he’d wanted her over and over. She could do no wrong. Addicted, he’d murmured more than once.
Her throat felt tight, her eyes burned. These memories ought to make her feel confident, not make her cry.
She wanted to go back and drive real slow past the spot where they’d first kissed. She’d remember how confident she’d been then, making the first move for that first kiss. Then she could keep driving, all the way back to Austin, and put her confidence to use. The first step really ought to be sitting down with her mother and stepfather and talking about that master’s degree. But her mom thought she’d spent the night at her aunt and uncle’s house at the ranch. Mom would be shocked if Emily walked in the door with a wet braid and a party dress on. It would be tough to steer the conversation toward MBAs and bachelor’s degrees.
Emily tightened her grip on her steering wheel. She was twenty-two and ready to move out and start her own life, her own career. She shouldn’t have to answer to anyone about wet hair and party dresses—but she wasn’t there yet.
She would be. But this morning, maybe she should start at the James Hill, get everything lined up there, and then tackle that conversation with her mother later—like on Sunday, when she wouldn’t be driving back to Oklahoma, after all.
The gate for the James Hill Ranch, like most ranch gates in Texas, was simply made out of two tall poles and a crossbeam. The brand for the ranch was a straightforward JHR, so those initials marked the entrance. Her truck rattled pleasantly over a cattle guard—it was a sound she missed all semester, every semester—and then she drove through the more formal wrought iron and limestone pillars of the second gate. There, spread before her across a bit of a rise—the hill in the James Hill—were the main buildings of the ranch. Three barns, the cow sheds, the garages, the bunkhouse.
After she was officially hired, she’d start living in the bunkhouse. Cowboys got lodging there as part of their compensation, and she was going to need that, a private bedroom and a shared kitchen, because her mother and stepfather were not going to be speaking to her for a while. Instead of making her feel angry, the reality of their ultimatums made her sad.
The road curved a little to the left, and the main house was straight ahead. A sense of homesickness blended with gratitude that it was still there, her aunt and uncle’s house, her vacation paradise as a child, her sanctuary as a teenager. Her aunt and uncle were traveling to the bottom of the globe to see penguins or something right now. Trey lived out of state and had for a decade. Luke was on his honeymoon, but the house was here, the one house that had stayed constant for twenty-two years.
She needed it now—but not to spend the night. She’d settle the job this morning and move into the bunkhouse tonight. She was looking forward to that, a real place of her own where real adults lived instead of student housing, but she could hardly go and talk to the foreman about the job while she was in last night’s mini dress. She needed to go into the house and get showered and get some working clothes on.
She parked around the back, next to a shiny new hybrid sedan. Maybe it belonged to Luke’s new wife, although he’d married into an oil baron’s family, and Emily couldn’t imagine his elegant bride driving such a practical little vehicle.
Emily tried the door to the mudroom. It was unlocked, but that wasn’t unusual. She used the boot jack to take off her fancy boots, then she dropped her real boots, her working cowboy boots, by the door as well, so she could put them on as she was leaving the house for the barn.
It wasn’t until she saw the cereal bowl and coffee cup in the kitchen sink that she realized someone else was living in the house. “Hello? Anybody home?”
She hoped not. She didn’t feel like being sociable after her night with Graham. She just needed to take a shower and change into work clothes, then go to the foreman’s office and tell Gus she was ready to take the position—
A woman her own age walked briskly into the black-and-white kitchen and came to a sudden stop. “Emily? You’re back.”
“Rebecca? You’re still here?” Oh, my gosh. What a rude thing to say. “Wait, let me try that again. Rebecca, you’re still here. It’s nice to see you again.”
Rebecca smiled, still as sweet as Emily remembered from Luke’s wedding. She was the sister of the bride, which made her Luke’s new sister-in-law. Emily supposed it wasn’t that unusual for Luke’s sister-in-law to be at his house, except for the fact that Rebecca lived in Massachusetts and the wedding had been weeks ago, before Christmas. She must have decided to extend her visit to Texas instead of returning right away to snowy Boston.
Yes, Rebecca was perfectly sweet and friendly—so Emily hoped she’d forgive her bad manners now. Emily just couldn’t keep up a normal conversation. She just couldn’t. She’d been banking on the house being empty.
Emily had a death grip on the jeans and fresh clothes she was carrying. “Are you using Trey’s bedroom?”
Rebecca seemed startled by that question. “Um—”
“I mean the guest bedroom with the big trophy shelf. That used to be Trey’s room.” Emily held up the clothes. “I was just going to dump these there and take a quick shower and change before I go to the barn, because I’m, uh, not dressed for the barn. Not really.”
Not even close. Please don’t ask me why I’m standing here barefoot in a mini dress with a wet braid, wearing a Marine Corps track jacket. She was blanking out on a reason she might be dressed like this, besides I met a man at a bar, and we went skinny-dipping in Cooper’s pond and had sex until we were worn out, and I guess this jacket is kind of a souvenir, which made something really wonderful sound really, really terrible. Emily inched her way toward the doorway to the rest of the house, longing for escape.
Rebecca kind of inched her way toward the mudroom door. “I’m so happy to see you again, and I really want to catch up, but I have to go to a job interview in Austin.”
“You’re moving to Texas? That’s great. Really great.” I can’t do this, I can’t make small talk when I can still taste Graham on my lips. She missed him. She wanted to be with him right now.
Rebecca and Emily continued circling each other gingerly as they talked, until Rebecca was closest to the mudroom and Emily was ready to bolt into the living room.
“We’ll catch up later, then? I’ve got to…” Rebecca looked at the wall clock apologetically.
“Yes. Good luck.” And then Rebecca was out the door and Emily was all but running through the house to Trey’s old room. She dumped the fresh clothes on the bed and backed far away from them. They smelled like fresh laundry, and holding them was making her arm smell like fresh laundry. She wanted to smell like a fresh lake and moonlight and Graham’s warm skin.
She walked int
o the bathroom, took one look at the shower stall and started to cry. She didn’t want to jump out of that airplane and jump into the shower. Her skin smelled like Graham’s skin, and she didn’t want to lose that. Not yet.
But she was going to lose it. She’d done such a good job acting confident, telling Graham not to worry about her, telling him not to act like he was her parent. She didn’t want to be a burden he’d carry for three months, and she’d made sure his last impression of her was a fearless woman who was going to be so busy, he might as well take his whole three months to work with his uncle and focus on whatever issues had driven him from Chicago to a new life.
She’d pulled the charade off and left him laughing. The only reason she’d been able to pull it off was because she loved Graham.
Otherwise, she would have crumpled like that ribbon at his feet and begged him to stay. She was just a fragile girl, she’d wanted to say. He couldn’t dump Jane back in the jungle without him; she had no defenses. He needed to hold her for hours and reassure her that he’d never leave her.
But he might leave her. He’d acknowledged the truth behind her theory that he might talk himself into believing she was better off without him. He’d called her an addiction. Didn’t men try to break addictions?
What if she never, ever smelled like Graham again?
Emily left the bathroom. She just needed a little longer, just a little longer, to remember the taste and feel of Ben Graham before she washed it all away.
She curled up on the bed and cried herself to sleep, wrapped in an olive drab track jacket.
* * *
The best night of his life was being followed by the worst morning of his life.
No, he couldn’t say that. The morning his convoy had been hit had been the worst morning. Men had died. Good men.
Graham wanted to punch something. One of the frustrating things about being a combat veteran was that he couldn’t ever complain that any day, no matter how awful, was really the worst day. Watching Emily Davis drive away from a bar’s empty parking lot—blowing him a kiss and smiling at him—tore his heart out, but nobody was literally dead. The standard had been set as low as it could get: no day could be the worst if there were no corpses lying around. Combat had stolen his ability to complain.
He hit the steering wheel. Screw Afghanistan. It wasn’t going to deny him the right to say this morning was painful. He missed Emily the way he’d miss a part of his body—something essential, like his heart. He’d known there was something special about Em from the first minute. He’d known he was risking what heart he had left when he’d held her on that bar patio. Knowing heartbreak was coming didn’t make it less painful when it came.
And now he was lost. Lost and late.
If there was one thing a Marine was not, it was late. To be fifteen minutes early was on time. To be on time was to be late. To be late was to be dead.
More death.
Sunrise was long past. The sun was up and there was no cattle ranch in sight.
He’d driven sixty miles from Keller’s, so far. He wouldn’t cause more gossip by using Schumer’s restroom to shave and make himself presentable for his uncle, but thirty miles had passed as he’d headed toward his uncle’s ranch before Graham saw another gas station. He’d stopped there and done his best in a cold-water sink. At least the coffee they sold was hot.
He’d driven another thirty miles since then. Now the blue dot on his phone’s GPS map said he should be looking at the James Hill Ranch. He was looking at nothing, just endless terrain sparsely covered with shrubs, all of it brown in January. A plateau in the distance was so abruptly flat that it looked like someone had sliced the pointed peak off a mountain.
He would’ve thought he’d found some virgin wilderness untouched by civilization were it not for the presence of a fence along the edge of the road, miles and miles of single-strand barbed wire nailed to wooden posts. It wasn’t the kind of concertina wire they used in the military. This fence wasn’t made to hurt men, just to set a boundary.
He had a signal for his cell phone, so he pulled off the road, stopping on the shoulder. Emily kissed me on the shoulder of this road, sixty miles back.
Yeah, well, nothing that great was going to happen to him again, not for another three months, at least. He needed to get used to that hollow feeling in his chest.
He called his uncle, told him which county he was in and the number from the last mile marker sign.
“I was afraid you’d changed your mind, son. Glad to hear from you. You’re just a little too far west. Head back toward town.” Uncle Gus always spoke slowly, like he had all the time in the world.
“I’ll be there as soon as possible. It won’t happen again.” Had this been his first day in the Marine Corps, Graham would’ve been lucky to get away with dropping for push-ups in a sawdust pit until his arms could no longer support his own weight and he smashed his sweating face into the sawdust.
Uncle Gus didn’t sound like being two hours later than expected was much of a problem. “That GPS took you to the James Hill. It just took you to the far hundred. My guess is you’re looking at the western property line. You need to head east about fifty miles to get to the ranch buildings.”
The ranch was fifty miles wide? How many millions of dollars did fifty miles of land cost? Graham thought of Emily and her twenty dairy cows. Her family ranch sounded like a cozy world, far different from this commercial cattle operation.
“The gate is marked with a JHR. North side of the road. If you hit a gas station called Schumer’s, you’ve gone too far. Just drive up to the ranch buildings. My office is in the third barn to the east.”
Schumer’s? Schumer’s?
Graham hung up and did a U-turn, heading in the right direction. His morning still sucked, but it wasn’t the worst ever, and not just because there was no body count. He was wasting time and gas on a hundred-and-twenty-mile, completely unnecessary round trip to nowhere, but that trip was going to land him somewhere in the vicinity of Emily’s family ranch.
Uncle Gus would know of the Davis place, surely. If Emily’s cousin’s name wasn’t Davis, Graham had no doubt Mr. Schumer could tell him where a local man named Luke owned a ranch. One thing was for certain: Graham was going to be able to see Emily. Soon. Often—as long as her cousin gave her the job this morning.
He drove a little faster, an addict craving one more hit. Graham hoped ol’ Cousin Luke wouldn’t put Emily through a wringer. She was going to have a tough enough time with her mother. Just give her the job. She’ll be so happy.
And she’d be here, in the middle of nowhere with him, instead of at Oklahoma Tech University.
The middle of nowhere might be just where he belonged.
Chapter Fourteen
Graham’s first sight of the James Hill Ranch was an eye-opener.
It looked like a small town itself, maybe a dozen buildings. What it did not look like was the middle of nowhere. All of Graham’s expectations evaporated like a puff of morning mist. Where had he gotten the idea that Uncle Gus lived in some kind of remote hunting and fishing cabin?
Gus met him as Graham got out of his SUV. Gus Montano looked older than Graham remembered, but he moved like a man in good physical condition. Maybe weathered was a better description than old. His uncle was weathered, a stereotypical cowboy. Uncle Gus wore a cowboy hat and spoke with a Texas drawl. When he was a very young man, he’d left Illinois for a two-year stint in the army and had never returned, except for Christmas every even-numbered year. He’d lived in Texas for at least forty years now, so that accent sounded as authentic as his hat looked.
Graham shook hands and thanked him for the job. Gus got misty-eyed and pulled him into a hug and told him how much he looked like his mama, Gus’s little baby sister. You’ve got the Montano look, boy, always did. A hug—when was the last time Graha
m had been hugged by another man? It was disconcerting, being treated like some kind of prodigal son. Graham had to readjust his thinking yet again. He wasn’t being treated like a shiftless drifter who was getting bailed out by a blood relative. Gus was genuinely excited to have him working here.
Being men, Gus and Graham soon turned to talking about Graham’s vehicle. “I’ve heard about these,” Gus said, opening doors and checking it out.
Graham stood steady, a good Marine, when he wanted to jump out of his skin as he watched his uncle unknowingly erasing traces of Emily. Gus opened doors, thumped the seats and ran his hand over the center console, and Graham tried not to feel the loss of the last of the floral shampoo and vanilla lip gloss that he’d spent a hundred and twenty miles believing still clung to the leather.
“You’ve got a real nice ride here,” Gus said approvingly.
He sounded like Emily; it must be a local thing, that real nice ride. Graham gave his uncle the keys and let him drive the SUV to the bunkhouse, Graham’s new home.
“You’re sure you don’t want to stay in my house, now? The offer stands. Plenty of room to put a roll-away in the living room.”
That was where Graham had gotten the idea that his uncle lived in a small cabin. “I’m sure, but thank you.” He slung one seabag over his good shoulder and carried the other in his hand.
His uncle grabbed a towel. It was still soaking wet. It was amazing, really, how much water Emily’s hair had held. Her braid hadn’t dried much at all by morning.
Gus said nothing, until he grabbed a second towel. The tags were still on the third one. “What the—where do you buy wet towels?” Since Gus was chuckling, Graham chuckled, too. Don’t ask me anything.
It didn’t deter his uncle. He picked up the last towel and made a show of looking at the cargo area’s light. “This vehicle has a shower in it, too?”
What excuse was there to have wet towels? Graham fell back on the facts. “Nah, I went swimming.”
Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon Page 37