Sweet Mountain Rancher

by Loree Lough

  The cousins shared a quiet chuckle.

  “Wonder when things went sideways?” Sam mused. “I mean, how does a guy go from harmless pranks to being…Brett?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care, long as he steers clear of me.” And Eden. And those boys.

  “Oh, you’ve got it bad, don’t ya, cuz. Real bad.”

  He’d stolen a glance at Eden. Again. And Sam had caught him. Nate swiped condensation from the side of the soda can. “I think you’ve been sitting in the sun too long. You’re babbling.”

  “Me think thou does protest too much.”

  Nate laughed. “Should have read the actual play instead of the CliffsNotes. Maybe then you’d know how to properly quote that line.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Whatever.”

  Over in the pool, Ben was on the diving board, trying to decide whether or not to try a backflip.

  “Just do it!” Cody bellowed.

  DeShawn agreed. “You’ll never know if you can or not if you just stand there!”

  “From the mouths of babes,” Sam said, nodding toward Eden.

  “There you go, babbling again.”

  Sam sat sideways in the chair and looked Nate in the eye. “Just do it. It’s good advice when you’re trying something for the first time.” He glanced toward the patio doors, where Eden was now frowning at her phone.

  “Woman like that doesn’t come along every day, y’know.”

  In other words, tell her how you feel before she gets away.

  She emerged and headed toward them, and Nate thought he could watch her slight, womanly sway until he was old and gray. Then he felt Sam’s eyes on him and realized he was grinning like a buffoon. If she wasn’t within earshot, he’d have a few choice words for his cousin.

  “Get everything settled?” Sam asked as she sat on the other side of Nate.

  “More or less.”

  “Things looked pretty grim from out here,” Nate said. “Anything I can do?”

  She sent him a smile so sweet, he wondered why his teeth didn’t ache.

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” Eden said. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your cousin?”

  Sam stood and reached across Nate. “This guy has the manners of a caveman. Name’s Sam.”

  “Oh, right. You’re the firefighter cousin. The youngest one, right?” she said, shaking his hand. “So how was the drive from Nashville?”

  “Used my frequent-flier miles this time. Gives me an extra couple days with my favorite cousin here.”

  She pointed at the redheaded boy in the pool. “That’s Nick Smith. For the past year or so, he’s been talking about becoming a firefighter.”

  “Well, he’s sure big enough to handle the ladders and hoses,” Sam observed. “I’ll catch up with him later, recommend a couple of the books I read before making the commitment.”

  She smiled at Sam. Not the same beautiful smile she’d aimed at Nate a moment earlier, but a nice one, nonetheless. She got to her feet, handing Nate her phone.

  “I’m going to take a few laps,” she said. “Would you time me?”

  The cousins watched her cross to the far end of the pool and dive into the water.

  “Is there anything she can’t do?”

  Sam’s question reminded Nate of the way she’d kissed him. “If there is, I haven’t seen it yet.”

  Nate leaned back and took in the scene, Eden gliding serenely through the water, the boys laughing and horsing around.

  “So what are you waiting for?” Sam said after a few moments, startling him.

  Nate didn’t get it, and said so.

  “You’re in love with her, so—”

  Eden splashed to the surface and folded her arms on the edge of the pool. “So, how’d I do?”

  Nate had totally forgotten he was supposed to be timing her. He fumbled with the phone, then repeated the numbers on the stopwatch.

  Grinning, Eden gave herself a thumbs-up and swam back to the ladder. She grabbed a towel and wrapped it around herself as Thomas ran up to ask her a question. She gave him her full attention. Nate believed that was her secret. Eden didn’t believe in doing anything halfway. Someday, she’d be a great mom. And the guy lucky enough to call her his wife—“Well?” Sam asked. “What are you waiting for?”

  “To be honest, cousin, I don’t know.”

  But it was high time he figured it out. Because Sam was right…a woman like that didn’t come along every day.

  *

  THOUGH THE TEMPERATURE sometimes rose into the seventies and eighties during the daytime, the Double M could be downright chilly at night. Today was no exception. When Sam suggested firing up the brick oven, Nate thought it made perfect sense. The boys were enthusiastic, too.

  “That thing throws off enough heat to warm your whole house,” Eden said.

  Nate agreed. “We’ve cranked her up to five hundred and fifty degrees a time or two, but only when Sam’s around.”

  Eden laughed. “It’s like a work of art, Nate. There isn’t a brick or stone out of place. How long did it take to build?”

  Too long, Nate thought, and not long enough.

  “About a month, start to finish,” he said. “The week my surgeon gave the go-ahead for me to fly back to Colorado, I went to work for the ranch, ordering supplies, paying bills, balancing the books. Drove me nuts, sitting at a desk all day. And then one morning, while sorting the mail, I found an ad for an oven like this.” He shrugged. “I’d always been pretty good with my hands, knew my way around a few power tools, so I thought, why not build one of my own?

  “The family thought it was too soon for all that manual labor, so I promised to take my time.

  “As it turned out, the exercise was good for me.” And the hard work kept my mind off the accident.

  “If it was a little bigger,” she said, “a person could live in it.”

  “Well, it’s sturdy enough to live in, I guess.”

  She looked into his face, then took his hands in hers, turned them this way and that, tracing every line and contour with the tip of her finger. “It didn’t leave you with any scars,” she said, releasing him. And meeting his eyes again, Eden added, “So why don’t you like it?”

  No one, not even his mom, knew his true feelings about the oven. But Eden had picked up on it straight away.

  “I like it fine,” he began. “It’s just…seeing it wakes old ghosts.”

  The boys were in the house, some making pizza dough with Zach and Summer while the rest cut up toppings with Hank and Sam. Nate didn’t know how it had happened, exactly, but somehow, his last-minute pizza party had turned into a full-fledged family gathering. Not his first choice, but he had to admit, at least no one would notice when he took Eden aside.

  This was as good a time as any to tell her the whole story. She had a right to know the truth. If nothing else, he’d have a better idea how to answer next time Sam asked what he was waiting for.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AFTER DARK, THE BOYS placed the chairs around the fire. Huddled under blankets and holding tight to mugs of hot chocolate, they leaned back and pointed out the constellations visible on this bright August night.

  “There’s Aquila,” Wade said. “The eagle that carried messages to humans on earth.”

  Chuckie pointed out Bootes, the bear driver. “Took me forever to find the spear and hunting dogs, until Eden told me to look for the handle of the Big Dipper.”

  “Job’s star,” Cody added, nodding.

  “My favorite is Auriga.”

  “Why’s that?” Nate asked.

  Ben looked over at him. “Because it has two cool stories. One about a crippled guy who invented a four-horse chariot to get around—”

  “The PC police are comin’,” Carlos said. “I hear the sirens!”

  “There wasn’t any such thing as political correctness when the myths were written,” Ben huffed.

  “Boys? I’d like to hear the other story, wouldn’t you?” It seemed all it took to
quell the minor disagreement was the sound of Eden’s voice.

  No surprise, there. Smiling as the kids tossed balled-up paper napkins and blew white paper straw coverings at one another, Nate gazed around the circle, the boys’ faces seeming younger in the amber-orange glow. He closed his eyes and listened to their banter, trying to determine who’d cracked the latest joke and who had laughed at it. They felt at home here at the Double M, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. This was what life could be like if he and Eden got together and headed up this odd menagerie—

  “So there was this shepherd,” Ben continued, distracting Nate from his reverie. “And one of his pregnant goats went missing. So he looked and looked and finally found her stuck on some cliff…” He paused for dramatic effect. “With her two babies! So the shepherd hangs her over his shoulders and makes his way back down to the pasture with one of her kids under each arm.” Ben frowned. “Don’t know how that has anything to do with a chariot, but hey, I aced that quiz, so there y’go.”

  “Some people,” Nate inserted, “think the kids represent the two daughters of the king of Crete, who brought food to the baby Jesus in Bethlehem.”

  “I’m impressed,” Eden said.

  “Me, too,” Thomas agreed. “That part of the story made me all starry-eyed.” He leaned left and gave DeShawn a poke on the shoulder. “Get it? Starry-eyed…”

  Laughing, DeShawn shook a nonthreatening fist. “Yeah, I get it, pip-squeak. And if you poke me with that bony finger again, you’ll be starry-eyed.”

  “Listen to us,” Silas said, “doing science homework and liking it.”

  Eden feigned shock. “Silas, does that mean you don’t always enjoy science class?”

  “I, ah, well…” He turned toward Nate. “Hey, what’s the story of the ranch? Bet it’s got all kinds of cool history.”

  “Nice save, kid,” he said, winking. And linking his fingers behind his head, Nate told them that in the 1880s, his great-great-grandfather Malcolm Marshall and his twin, Martin, bought and tamed the original acres. “While other men spent their energy digging and panning for gold, he and his brother turned barren land into planting fields. While Martin was off rounding up mustangs, Malcolm tended the oats, rye and pasture grass.”

  “The stuff to feed horses,” Carlos said.

  “Yup. And to feed themselves, too. They put together a big sturdy cabin.” He pointed at the barnlike structure that now housed the tractor, baler, tiller and harvester. “But when the brothers married, they built another house.” Again, Nate pointed, this time at what had become the bunkhouse.

  “You don’t mean…those are the original buildings?” Eden asked.

  “Back then,” he said, smiling, “they built things to last.”

  At last count, he told them, a couple dozen outbuildings and thirteen homes, each belonging to his cousins, aunts and uncles, and parents, stood on Marshall land.

  “I’ll bet Double M stands for Martin and Malcolm!”

  “You got it, Thomas,” Nate said.

  Nodding, Silas stroked his chin. If he wasn’t careful, Nate thought, he’d rub that sparse beard of his clean off.

  “I have a weird question for you,” the boy began. “Everybody here at the ranch told us that was Sweet Mountain.” He pointed at a nearby peak. “But I searched for it on the internet, like, a dozen times, and there is no Sweet Mountain.”

  “That’s because it exists only in the hearts and history of the Marshall clan. See, Mount Evans wasn’t always called Mount Evans. In the late 1880s, it was known as Mount Rosalie…which just so happened to be Martin’s wife’s name. We still have Rosalie’s diary, and there’s a passage where Rosalie claimed to start every day facing ‘her’ mountain. When the sunrise hit the snow-capped peak, she’d say, ‘My mountain is winking at me!’ Martin refused to call her anything but Sweet, so she renamed it. Sweet died giving birth to her first child, who grew up thinking his mama must have been one special woman to have a mountain named after her. Before long, all the Marshalls referred to it that way. These days, when I look up at Sweet Mountain at first light and the mountain winks at me, I understand what Rosalie meant.”

  When he stopped talking, Nate heard nothing, save the pop and hiss of the firewood in the belly of the oven. Had the tale bored them all to sleep? He glanced around the circle, and was startled to see everyone’s eyes zeroed in on him.

  “You tell a real good story, Nate.”

  “Thanks, Thomas. I can’t take any credit, though. I only repeated the story I’ve heard a hundred times or more.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Thomas glanced around. “Could there be a cougar out here, watching us?”

  Every kid in the circle looked over his shoulder. Twice.

  “Nah. They’re afraid of people. And fire. And people sitting around a fire.”

  Eden hid a smile behind one hand.

  “Yeah, well, last time we were here, I thought I heard one growl.”

  “It was probably wind in the trees. Or a gate that wasn’t fastened tight…plenty of the hinges could use a shot of oil. Cougars only caterwaul in the movies. In real life, the only time you hear one is when something spooks them, or if they feel threatened.”

  “Seen any cats lately?” Greg wanted to know.

  “No, and we’re hoping it means she got tired of horse meat and decided to go up into the mountains for some elk or mule deer.”

  Cody yawned, and David stretched.

  “I’m goin’ to bed,” Wade said. “You should go, too,” he told Thomas, “before you scare yourself to death.”

  Without being told, the boys put the lounge chairs back where they’d found them, and draping their blankets over their shoulders, shuffled into Nate’s house.

  He was glad Eden hadn’t gone with them, because there were things he needed to tell her…and things she needed to hear.

  *

  “THEY’RE GOOD KIDS,” Nate said. “No telling where they might have ended up if you hadn’t been there for them.”

  “We provided safe haven, but they decided to make it work.”

  “I don’t buy it, and if you asked them—or anybody else—neither would they.”

  “But I didn’t do it alone. I have help. A lot of it. Kirk for one, on his next-to-nothing salary, Cora, your family…” She spread her arms wide. “Every memory and experience the Double M has given them is all thanks to you. You taught them things I couldn’t have.”

  Nate cleared his throat. “I, ah, wondered…have you heard from Travis lately?”

  How like him, Eden thought, to take the spotlight off himself by giving her something else to focus on. “He texts me at least once a day, usually to ask where I put something in his dorm room.” Eden opened her phone and showed Nate Travis’s responses to her pictures of tonight’s pizza party. You’re mean! said one, followed by, No fair! and a smiley face.

  “Travis is a good example. He chose the right direction,” she said. “He decided not to let anything get him off track. That’s his accomplishment, not mine.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Look at it this way—if he’d taken a different route, started using drugs or robbing stores or something, would you expect me to take the blame?”

  “Okay, I see your point.”

  “You have to love a man,” she said as he crossed to the stone oven, “who isn’t afraid to admit when he’s wrong.”

  He added logs to the fire. “Well, you don’t have to, but it sure would be nice.”

  What did that mean?

  “That’s the last of it,” he said, dusting his hands together. He glanced at the dwindling woodpile. “Looks like I need to schedule a day to split firewood.” Settling into the lounge chair again, he crossed his ankles. “So about that phone call earlier…what got you so riled up?”

  It didn’t seem fair that his talent for reading faces far outweighed hers.

  “It was Thomas’s dad. He’s tired of being judged for his past bad behavior.”

&nbs
p; Nate harrumphed. “What’s he gonna do, storm City Hall with a picket sign?”

  “Sort of. He went to the mayor’s office and refused to leave the room until the man agreed to hear him out. And he brought along a friend who works for the Denver Post, who threatened to write a piece connecting ex-con recidivism with disinterest on the part of politicians. Naturally, the mayor agreed to look into the matter. Although I can’t imagine it going further than that. Custody, visitation…it’s a matter for the courts.”

  “So the mayor spewed some politician-speak for ‘fat chance,’ to get rid of Burke,” Nate said, frowning. “I’ll say this for the guy…he’s shrewd. But that doesn’t mean he’s father material.”

  “My thoughts, exactly. He doesn’t know it, but I have a few friends in high places, too. After I got off the phone with him, I made a few calls. They can’t ignore his request—legally—but they can shelve it until I can figure out how to explain the whole mess to Thomas. Which I have to do soon.”

  “You’ll do the right thing,” he said. “You always do.”

  Well, he had promised not to offer his opinion unless she asked for it. “Not always.”

  Nate faced her. “You’ll need a really good story if you expect me to believe that.”

  Eden shivered at the memory of that awful morning…

  “Oh, come on,” he said. “It can’t be that bad.”

  Could she tell him?

  He grabbed her hand. “Ever play Truth or Dare?”

  She wondered if he’d been on the debate team in high school or college because he sure knew how to change the subject.

  “I played once,” she answered, “and promised myself, never again.”

  He leaned forward. “Humor me?”

  “Fine, but whatever happened to ladies first?”

  “Is that supposed to scare me?” He laughed. “Bring it on, Eden. Bring. It. On.”

  She matched his challenging stare, blink for blink. “Have you ever been married?”

  “What a marshmallow,” he teased. “Thanks to that goofy article, you know that I was engaged—once.” Wiggling his eyebrows and wringing his hands, he smirked. “My turn.”

  Her heart rate accelerated a blip or two.