Unexpected Father

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Find the peace that had eluded him ever since his parents died.

  Then the woman left and Evangeline turned back to him, the smile and sparkle in her intriguing eyes disappearing as quickly as storm clouds over the sun.

  Again he caught a trace of sorrow deep in her eyes, then the glitter of tears, and he felt as if, somehow, he was partly to blame.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” he said.

  Evangeline slipped the paper from the sale into the cash register and shoved the drawer shut. “What are you sorry for?” she muttered. “You didn’t do anything.”

  “I dunno,” he said with a shrug. “I learned from my sisters that if they’re crying, it’s because I did something wrong or said something wrong, so it’s easier to apologize.”

  “I wasn’t crying,” she said.

  Denny pushed down a sigh. Of course she wouldn’t admit to it. He lifted one hand as if surrendering. “Sorry. I should know that, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Denny clamped his mouth shut. When would he learn? Dealing with women was like trying to predict the weather. Just when you thought you had the direction of it, a storm would blow in and everything changed.

  “So your dad told me you knew everything about the ranch,” Denny said, trying to return to a more practical discussion. “That you could show me around.”

  Evangeline nodded, blinking quickly. She looked as though she was going to cry again.

  He restrained a sigh, his practical nature warring with the big brother in him that hated seeing his sisters sad. The part that always made him feel as though he had to fix things.

  “You’re not okay, are you?” he asked, resting his hand beside hers on the counter. “You look kinda pale.”

  Evangeline snatched her hand back, tucking it under her arm as if the casual contact bothered her.

  “I’m fine. Just fine,” she said through lips that had grown tight and hard. “Did you want to see the apartment now?”

  Denny’s frown deepened. She didn’t seem fine. “You sure? I can come another time if—”

  “You’re here now,” she said. “May as well see where you’ll be living for now.”

  Okay. Obviously he had overstepped the invisible boundary. “Sure. Of course.”

  Lesson learned.

  She opened the old-fashioned cash register again and pulled out a key. She walked around the long wooden counter and wove her way through the stacks of shelves. Denny followed; still amazed that one place could hold so many books, surprised that people would want to buy them.

  At the back of the store she opened a door that led to a hallway separating the bookstore from the apartment behind it. She crossed the hall and unlocked another heavy wooden door.

  She stood aside as he walked into the room. A couple of worn leather recliners flanked the fireplace. To his right, shelves, also filled with books, lined one wall. He guessed the doors on either side of the shelves led to bedrooms.

  A couch directly in front of him faced the recliners, and to his left he saw a small kitchen and another door leading to, he suspected, a bathroom.

  “Looks cozy,” he said, releasing a sigh of satisfaction. Though he knew he would only stay here until he could move onto the ranch, it would be perfect for now. Just enough room for him.

  “The fireplace doesn’t work,” Evangeline said. “My grandfather put it in when he renovated this place but my dad never hooked it up.”

  “Grandfather?”

  “My mother’s father. He was the one who owned the store. He set up the apartment upstairs where I live. My mother inherited it from him and my father from her when she...when she died.” Her voice faltered.

  “And you got it from your dad?” Denny asked.

  Evangeline shook her head. “He still owns it.”

  “And the ranch?”

  “Belongs to my father, as well. He inherited it from his parents.”

  Just as he had when his parents had died, Denny thought. Only Denny had been nineteen, too young to run a ranch on his own. Thankfully his uncle had stayed on to help him take care of the ranch and his three sisters and foster brother. It was tough, but they’d managed.

  And then Lila came into the picture....

  “It’s summertime,” he said, turning his thoughts to the future and his plans. “I doubt I’ll need a fireplace.” He flashed her a grin, hoping to ease some of the tension he sensed in her.

  “There’re two bedrooms off the living room,” she said, indicating with a lift of her chin the doors by the shelves. “One has a queen-size bed, the other a single.”

  Denny didn’t care about the rooms, but he didn’t want to appear rude, so he followed her, stopping in the doorway. The room looked like any other bedroom. Bed. Closets. Windows with flowered curtains that matched the flowered bed covering Evangeline fussed with.

  “Looks nice.” Then he noticed a couple of framed pictures hanging on the wall above the bed.

  “Is that you and your dad?”

  Evangeline glanced in the direction he pointed and nodded. “Yes, it was taken at the ranch.”

  She brushed her skirt as she walked past him and out the door. Her high heel caught in the carpet and she lost her balance for a moment. Denny reached out to catch her.

  Her hair swung over her face as she regained her footing, releasing a whiff of her perfume.

  She smelled like flowers, he thought. Delicate and feminine.

  Then she pulled away.

  Man, she was jumpy, he thought.

  “Did you need to see the kitchen?” she asked as she walked past the couch, stopping on the other side of it, as if giving herself some distance from him. “It isn’t large, but it’s adequate. The stove is fiddly and the refrigerator tends to freeze vegetables if you’re not careful, but it worked for my dad.”

  “I think I can figure it out,” Denny said, content with the setup. He’d been living in motels and sharing rooms with his workers the past couple of years. He missed having a home. “When can I move in?”

  “Today if you want.”

  “Sounds good. So my next question is when can I go out to the ranch to check it out?”

  “We may as well get that out of the way. How about tomorrow morning?”

  “Sunday?”

  “Yeah. Is that a problem?”

  “Well, I was hoping to find a church. To worship on Sunday morning.”

  She gave him an odd look that he wasn’t sure how to interpret. Did she have a problem with him going to church?

  “There’s one across from Canadian Tire. It’s a good church.”

  “Do you go?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “I thought your dad said you did?” he blurted. Denny was surprised. Andy had often talked about Evangeline’s strong faith.

  “Not the only thing my dad seems to have wrong,” she returned.

  Better to leave that comment alone. “What time does church start?” he asked, changing the subject to a safer topic.

  “Ten.”

  “Okay, how about I meet you at the ranch after that, say one? Unless the preacher likes to go long.”

  “I’ll see you then.”

  “Okay.” He dragged in a long breath as one thing after another fell into place.

  This was really happening. Sure, it wasn’t a commitment, but it was a step in the right direction. And if leasing the ranch worked out for him, who knew...

  He caught himself.

  Don’t plan ahead. One day at a time.

  He’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  “I’m guessing there’s another way out of the apartment that doesn’t take me through the bookstore. One that I could use to move my stuff in?”

  “The hallwa
y makes a turn and goes along the store and leads to the street,” Evangeline said. “And there’s another door that leads to the back parking lot. You can use that to move in.”

  “That’s perfect. Just perfect.” He glanced her way, surprised to see her looking at him.

  For a moment their gazes held and once again Denny caught a flicker of sadness. Something that he suspected had to do with Andy. He still felt bad that he had been the one to deliver a message that bothered her so much. He felt a need to make it right. “And I’m sorry about...your dad, I guess. That he’s not coming.”

  He added a quick smile and then, to his dismay, saw her lip quiver.

  Oops.

  She held her hand up as if to keep him at arm’s length. “It’s fine. I should have known better.”

  Known better about what?

  But he didn’t have the chance to ask.

  “If you don’t need anything else, I should get back to my store.” Evangeline gave him the key then strode out the door, her skirt swaying and her long hair bouncing with every movement.

  And that was Evangeline.

  He just hoped he wouldn’t have to do much business with her. She seemed emotional and complicated.

  He had enough of that in his life.

  Denny walked down the hallway, out the door and into the afternoon sunshine, stopping on the sidewalk to look at the mountains cradling the town.

  For a moment he imagined what it would be like to live here. To have a home again. Build up a cow herd again.

  Did he dare? Twice in his life he had lost everything. Could he risk it again?

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. He was tempted to ignore it. Carlos, one of his drivers, was finishing up a haul in Prince George with one of Denny’s trucks and had been calling him all morning, wondering when to bring the truck down to Hartley Creek. Denny had left a message and sent him a text. Surely that should be enough?

  But habit and the reality of running his own business made him look at the phone.

  And his heart thudded heavily against his ribs.

  It was a text message. From Deb, his ex-wife’s sister. Since his divorce from Lila two years ago, he’d never heard from her or any of Lila’s family. Now Deb was texting?

  Need to C U, her message said. Important. U in P G?

  Why did she want to know?

  Not Prince George anymore, he sent back. Hartley Creek right now. Staying awhile.

  He waited a moment, then his phone tinged again.

  Where living in H C? was her immediate reply.

  Behind Shelf Indulgence bookstore on Main Street, he typed, wondering why she wanted to know.

  He paused before sending the message, but then shrugged. Maybe Lila had something she needed to pass on just the way Andy had needed to pass something on to Evangeline.

  So he shrugged, hit Send then waited. The message was delivered, but a couple of minutes later she still hadn’t replied.

  So what was that about?

  He knew Deb had never liked him much when he and Lila were together.

  Denny had been living a wild life when he’d met Lila. Every weekend, after taking care of cows and horses and family, he’d head to town to blow off steam. He’d partied too hard, met up with Lila and they’d hung out together.

  One day Lila had given him the news that she was pregnant. So Denny had done the right thing and married her. Only, once that happened, Denny had found out there was no baby. Lila had figured she’d read the test wrong. She hadn’t been pregnant, after all.

  Denny had tried to stay true to the promises he’d made. He’d cleaned up his act. Settled down. Hung on, determined to do right by Lila.

  Then, five years after they were married, Lila had decided she didn’t want to hang on anymore. To satisfy the terms of the divorce, Denny had had to sell the family ranch where his sisters and foster brother still lived.

  The family scattered after the ranch was sold. Denny had taken what little he’d had left after helping out his sisters and Nate, and started trucking. It was a good business. He’d taken some risks that had paid off well. Now he had a decent fleet of trucks. Of course that came with debt, but with his five-year plan he could pay that off and afford a down payment on a new place. A new life.

  A place he would be by himself. Alone.

  Just the way life worked best for him.

  Chapter Two

  “So what kind of deal did you and my father strike?” Evangeline asked as she and Denny walked past the corrals back to where her car and his truck were parked. A breeze teased her wavy hair around her face, flirted with the flowing skirt of her gauzy gold-and-white dress, which was loose on the top, belted at the waist.

  She knew her outfit was hardly the type to go traipsing around a ranch in, but she had come directly from a meeting in Cranbrook with a toy distributor and hadn’t had time to change.

  Denny had obviously gone to church. He wore dark jeans, a white shirt and a corduroy blazer. He had shaved and his hair was tamed. When she’d seen him get out of his truck, she’d felt a jolt of awareness.

  He cleaned up good.

  “Five-year lease agreement,” Denny replied.

  “So it’s temporary. A hobby?”

  “Running yearlings is hardly a hobby,” he said, sounding testy.

  Evangeline shot him a surprised look. “Sorry. I understand yearlings don’t require a steady time commitment.”

  Her father had run yearlings just before he’d leased out the ranch to other ranchers. He would buy them in the spring, run them on pasture to fatten them up, then ship them out in the fall. “Easy-peasy,” he would always say. Paying hobby with no commitment.

  “It’s the best way for me to run my trucking business and the ranch at the same time,” Denny replied.

  “So no permanent plans?” No sooner had the question left her lips than she regretted asking it. It was none of her business what Denny did.

  “Not yet,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve got my gravel business going and I’m trying to set up my stake first.”

  No wonder he was friends with her father, Evangeline thought. Andy Arsenau always talked the same way.

  “We’re moving back to the ranch once I get my stake, once I have enough laid by to help us live in style,” he would say. “I want it to be perfect for you, poppet.”

  She used to cling to those words whenever her father came back to Hartley Creek throwing out promises as lightly as he threw out the cash he spent on her.

  And she always believed him. Never questioned why they needed a stake to move back onto a place they’d lived before her mother died.

  She pushed the depressing thoughts aside. This morning she had tried to call him again, and again she’d left a message.

  She was about to ask Denny another question when his cell phone sent out a tinny whistle.

  Denny looked at the screen with a crooked smile, then dropped it back into his pocket.

  “Do you need to get that?” Evangeline asked.

  “No. Just a text from one of my sisters. She’s trekking in Nepal right now.”

  “That sounds interesting.”

  “Not the way Adrianna travels. Open ticket and plans made on the fly. No thanks,” he said.

  His talk of a sister created a gentle yearning. As an only child Evangeline had spent hours on her own. When she’d stayed with her aunt upstairs at the bookstore, she would create imaginary playmates. Always a sister who would play dolls or cutouts or pretend plays about princesses being rescued.

  “Do you have other family besides your sisters?” she asked, suddenly curious about him.

  “Yeah. Besides the three girls, a foster brother.”

  “Do they live close by?”

  Denny shook his head. “A
drianna lives wherever she is working. Olivia and Trista are tree planting up in northern B.C. this summer. And Nate...” Denny’s voice trailed off and he gave a shrug. “Last I heard, he was at a cutting horse competition in Elko.”

  “That’s a lot of family,” she said with a wistful note in her voice. “And your parents?”

  “They died in a plane crash when I was nineteen.”

  A shadow crossed his face and Evangeline saw that the memory still caused him pain. In that moment Evangeline felt a bond between them. A bond between children whose parents had left a family too soon.

  At least she still had her father.

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, sympathy softening her voice. “That must have been so difficult.”

  “We got through it. I’m sure you know how that works. You lost your mother, too.”

  Then he gave her a rueful smile, which, combined, with his acknowledgment of her own pain and history, made her heart flutter. Just a bit.

  She returned his smile and as their eyes held, awareness bloomed.

  Evangeline caught herself and looked away. This was not the man for her.

  “Besides the house, is there anything else you need to know about the place?” Evangeline asked, feeling a sudden need to get this tour over and done with. From the first moment she’d met Denny, she’d felt as if her emotions were a tangle that she couldn’t sort out.

  She’d thought Tyler was the right man, and look how that had turned out. Andy Arsenau had broken Evangeline’s heart enough times that she would be crazy to feel anything for someone exactly like him. She didn’t trust her judgment in men anymore. “I’m sure my father filled you in,” she continued.

  “I think I’ve seen what I need to see,” he said, giving her another crooked grin.

  “Okay, then,” she said, then turned and walked toward her car, signaling the end of the tour.

  They arrived at the vehicles but Evangeline stopped there, drumming her fingers on the hood of her car. “How did you meet my father? How did you know about the ranch?” she blurted, unable to contain her curiosity about Denny and Andy.

  Denny scratched his forehead with a fingertip as if wondering himself.