Pops was setting up another game. “Do you have time for a first move?”
“No, I’m playing catch-up today.” Ben hurried down the stairs. “But I bet Katie can spare a moment for a turn or two.”
Ben knew he couldn’t conduct a serious negotiation on the street with Rachel, but he could hopefully get her to commit to a day and time to meet. He pulled around the corner, as she had. There weren’t many blocks to drive around downtown. Falcon Creek hadn’t changed much. Antiques, secondhand shop, appliance repair. Insurance, coffee shop, sheriff’s office.
Just when he was afraid she’d driven to a more remote part of town, he spotted Rachel’s truck in front of a beauty parlor and parked next to it.
Jem Salon. Unlike salons in Manhattan, where you couldn’t see women with hair in curlers or aluminum foil from the sidewalk, Ben had an easy view of all the stylist stations through the front window. He got out of the car prepared to enter the female den.
Turns out, it wasn’t necessary. Rachel held the door for her grandmother, who walked out with carefully placed steps. The older woman wore crisp blue jeans, a blue polka-dot blouse and cowboy boots.
The elder Thompson spared Ben a glance that went from inquisitive to disapproving in a blink.
The expressions of the two Thompson women matched.
Ben decided to face the storm head-on. “Mrs. Thompson, what nice hair you have.” That came out wrong.
“The better to blind you with my beauty.” Rachel’s grandmother laughed, but it was more like a cackle. She patted her neat white curls and said to Rachel, “You should have married this one. He has a brain. Then it might have stuck.”
Rachel pressed her lips together, as if used to her grandmother’s barbs.
Ben fell back a step, more surprised by the information imparted by Rachel’s grandmother than the tone of her delivery. Deep down in his chest, where non-lawyerly feelings he rarely acknowledged dwelled, something tensed, something that felt suspiciously like jealousy. “Rachel is married? But...Thompson?” Rachel’s maiden name was written on the Double T brief.
Inside the salon, people were turning their way. Someone raised a hair dryer off her head to stare at them.
“Rachel took back the Thompson name when she got divorced.” Rachel’s grandmother was a fountain of information. “Ted Jackson was a real sour grape. Seems like there are a lot of ’em around Falcon Creek. At least the women who want to get rid of them know where they can find a lawyer with a sympathetic ear.” She tilted her white head toward her granddaughter. “They go to Rachel.”
“And now we’re all caught up.” Rachel blushed in a way that did nothing to allay the feeling in Ben’s chest. “Thanks, Nana.”
“Not quite all caught up.” Her grandmother nudged Rachel with her bony elbow. “Did you ask if this Blackwell fella was married?”
“She didn’t.” Ben grinned. “And I’m not.”
“Never?” At the shake of Ben’s head, Rachel’s grandmother kept talking. “I bet that means you never got over Zoe.”
Ben took another step back, losing his hold on his smile. Suddenly, the sun felt too hot on the back of his neck. “Oh, I got over her.” Quicker than he’d expected.
“Thank heavens for that.” Rachel’s grandmother fanned her sharp-angled face. “Golly, it’s hot. Why are you lurking outside the beauty parlor? Looking for a date?” She shuffled closer and fluttered her eyelashes in Ben’s direction.
“Nana,” Rachel scolded. “You’re embarrassing me.”
And amusing Ben, along with the gathering audience in the beauty parlor window.
Ben ignored Rachel, ignored the pin-curled ladies in the salon and played along with the elderly minx on the sidewalk. “Are you free to date, Mrs. Thompson?”
“I’m not free or easy.” The old woman chuckled. “And neither is my granddaughter.”
Cheeks still aflame, Rachel took her grandmother by the arm. “I’m going to give Nana Nancy a ride home and lock her up where she belongs.”
“That’s the trouble with you kids nowadays,” her grandmother said, trying unsuccessfully to dig in her boot heels.
Kids? Ben mouthed to Rachel, feeling that easy camaraderie they’d had when they were younger. He was tempted to sling his arm over Rachel’s shoulder and laugh.
Rachel rolled her big brown eyes.
“You kids,” the old woman continued. “You don’t come right out and say you’re ready to settle down.” She moved as slow as a snail.
“I tried settling down.” Rachel put more authority in her voice than she’d had in the courtroom.
“And now you’re overextending yourself. You should quit that law practice and focus on the ranch.”
“I own the law practice, Nana.”
“I get the feeling that this is a long-standing argument.” Ben pointed to Rachel’s truck. “Does this old thing have air conditioning?” He knew it didn’t. He’d seen inside. Plus, Rachel drove with the windows down.
“It doesn’t. All that wind.” Nana Nancy stopped on the hot asphalt. “It straightens my curls.”
“Why don’t I drive you home, Ms. Thompson?” Ben offered on impulse, reaching for the old lady’s arm. “I have air conditioning.”
“Objection.” Rachel swatted his hand away from behind her grandmother’s back.
Inside the salon, their audience laughed.
Rachel won the hand war, but glared at him for good measure. “You only want to drive Nana home so you can spy on the Double T.”
“I’m hurt.” Ben tried to look innocent instead of relieved. “I’m only concerned the money your grandmother spent on her lovely hair will be blown to pieces without air conditioning.”
“He’s right,” her grandmother said, turning toward his car like a windup toy with limited movement. “It’s not like Beatrice does my hair every day. Lead on, youngster.”
Rachel sputtered. “But...”
Nana Nancy put her palm inches from Rachel’s face. “Talk to the hand.” She shambled toward Ben’s Mercedes, chuckling as she went. “Saw that in a movie the other day.” She repeated the phrase under her breath and chortled some more.
Ben opened the passenger door.
“I don’t know what you’re up to exactly,” Rachel said, poking Ben’s chest as her grandmother almost fell backward into the low front seat. “But you better be careful with my grandmother.”
Ben liked the way Rachel’s dark eyes flashed. He liked the way she called his every move as she saw them. He liked how she looked in a suit and those ridiculous overalls she’d worn the other night. “I’ll treat your nana as if she was one of my own grandmothers.” Probably better, considering he didn’t talk to the women his grandfather had married and divorced, including his paternal grandmother, Dorothy. Apart from the birthday and Christmas cards his assistant sent to her.
“If you treat my nana the way you treated Judge Edwards all those years ago...” Rachel left her threat unfinished and leaned down to her grandmother’s level. “This is your last warning. Ben is not to be trusted. I can’t be responsible for your safety if you let him drive you home.”
Nana Nancy reached for the door handle with a petite hand. “I can take care of myself.”
“Fine.” Rachel watched her grandmother try to close the heavy door. And then she made a grumbly noise deep in her throat and closed it for her. “Blackwell, you’d best behave.”
“Always, Thompson.” Ben walked around the car, slid behind the wheel, started the engine and pointed the middle air conditioning vents at his passenger. “Nana Nancy, it’s my honor to drive you home.”
“You can’t call me that,” Rachel’s grandmother snapped. “I don’t like you.”
“That seems to be going around today,” Ben murmured, thinking of Myrna and Darnell. “You liked me well enough to get in the car.” And to ask about hi
s marital status.
“I was annoyed with Rachel. She wouldn’t let me stay longer at the parlor. I was going to miss all the news about Marilee Inez.”
“What news?”
“I don’t know.” Nancy frowned. “I had to leave just as June was snapping the drape around her neck. Last I heard she was chasing the new principal around town because your brother Jonathon got engaged to that woman on the news.”
Ben backed onto the street and pointed the car toward the north end of town, noting that Rachel went in the opposite direction. “We seem to have lost your granddaughter.”
“She’ll be along.” Nancy lowered the visor and opened the mirror. She patted her hair, turning her head from side to side to admire her new ’do. “Rachel used to like you, you know.”
Why wouldn’t she have liked him? “Well, sure, we were friends.”
“But you didn’t take friendship into account when you took the Double T to court all those years ago. And then my son died because of you and Big E.” The look she gave him was sharp but not hateful. She might say she blamed Ben and his grandfather for her son’s death, but she didn’t really believe it. “I used to tell my son he needed to learn to like you because someday you’d come to your senses and quit Zoe for Rachel. What a fool I was.”
The air left Ben’s lungs in a rush. He remembered being dumbstruck by Rachel earlier in the day. She had substance, whereas Zoe did not.
“Let’s be honest,” Nancy continued, seemingly happy to have the floor. “Zoe has always wanted to be a trophy wife and it didn’t much matter to her which wealthy Montana rancher she found for herself.”
“That’s very insightful.” Ben wished he could have recognized that truth when he was eighteen. Or twenty-seven.
“From an early age,” Nancy went on, “that girl played with her mama’s good china, ordered the most expensive item on the menu and demanded a new wardrobe every season. My friend Janet would not be rolling in her grave to hear what her granddaughter is doing today. She’d say, yep, I called it.”
“And Rachel?” Ben drove past the turn for the Blackwell Ranch, feeling something suspiciously like relief.
“What about her?” Nancy lifted her chin, which was as sharp as her gaze.
“I meant—” Ben used the conciliatory tone he employed in early negotiations with opposing counsel “—what was Rachel like as a little girl?” He knew, but he was interested in her grandmother’s perspective.
“She always tried to be what anybody needed. A good daughter, a good sister, a good friend.”
True. “A good lawyer?”
She peered at him. “That remains to be seen, doesn’t it? If she beats you?”
“She’s been practicing for years and you said she’s getting divorce clients.”
Nancy waved a thin, leathery hand. “That’s small stuff. Her clients can barely afford to pay her fees.”
Ben slowed to enter the driveway of the Double T. There was only a simple metal sign marking the property with a cowboy wielding a lariat chasing after a steer, nothing as grand as the Blackwell arch. The land looked dry and thirsty. The driveway extended about a mile before reaching the ranch proper. A row of rusted paint-faded old tractors served as a metal hedge around the main buildings. To a kid, they’d been a jungle gym, but to an adult, they were an eyesore.
He glanced at his passenger. “What’s the real reason you accepted my invitation to drive you home?”
“Ha!” She swatted his arm gently with the back of her hand. “Points to Mr. Blackwell for knowing I have enough hairspray on my pin curls to withstand a strong wind.” Nancy chuckled. “Fact is, I don’t want to see my granddaughter get hurt.”
“Successful lawyers have thick skin.”
“I’m not talking about your court case.” The old woman scoffed. “I’ll take those points back now.” She shook her head. “And they say you’re the smart Blackwell.”
Ben was at a loss as to which attack to defend against—her assumption that he and Rachel might be about to be involved or her derision about his intelligence. He decided the safest course of action was to keep silent. Besides, they’d arrived.
He hadn’t been to the Double T since almost forever. It looked much more rundown than Ben remembered. The house needed paint. A rain gutter on the house hung lopsided. The gravel between the outbuildings was thin and the road full of potholes. The gate blocking the road between the Thompson and Blackwell properties listed as if the hinges were loose. Regardless, it would never withstand a blow from Ferdinand.
Is this what his family’s ranch would look like if they lost the aquifer and took second position in river water rights?
That’s right, boy. Water makes or breaks a spread.
And Ben had helped break the Double T.
Guilt churned in his gut. Ben might not want to live on his family’s property, but he didn’t want to see it sink into disrepair. An unlikely sense of determination sparked inside him.
Ben parked and got out into the heat, hurrying around to the passenger door to help Nancy.
Nancy grunted as she rose to her feet a bit unsteadily. “Why do they have to make cars lower than they used to? The only people getting shorter are old folk with creaky joints. Does it hurt your knees to squat down to reach that leather?”
“No, ma’am.” Ben escorted her to the front door, a process that seemed to take forever given her short, shuffling steps.
“You have manners, I’ll give you that.” She put her hand on the doorknob. “But I’m not letting you in until Rachel gets here, and she might not let you in. Ever.”
Rachel’s truck sped over the gravel driveway, fast approaching.
“I can live with that,” Ben said, although he didn’t budge from the porch.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BEN STOOD ON the Thompsons’ front porch, looking as out of place as a crystal ornament on Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.
Rachel didn’t know whether to be awed or annoyed.
Seeing Ben over the past few days had been like that. Pulse-jumping annoyance that he’d one-upped her on everything. Energy-draining relief that he’d survived a charging bull and a bullish defendant. And his good looks...
A part of her was peeved that Ben was still waiting for her, pushing up the folded sleeves of his white dress shirt as if he planned to do some work around the property. She wanted to project the image of a bulletproof lawyer, but her suit was wrinkled, her hair was escaping from its bun, and she had Poppy in the back seat. Dear, sweet, adorable Poppy. She wouldn’t trade her for anything, but Rachel knew how a man like Ben viewed moms. He’d think she was a softhearted pushover. Rachel wanted to be viewed more like Judge Edwards—powerful and respected, if a little less cranky.
Rachel hadn’t suffered postpartum depression, but she was struggling with her own identity. Princess? Lawyer? Rancher? Mommy? How could all those things exist inside her? And how was she supposed to present herself confidently in each role?
“Ga-ga-ga-gahhh!”
Rachel parked and moved quickly to the back seat, unbuckling a pink-cheeked Poppy and lifting her into her arms.
“Why are you hanging out here, Blackwell?” Scowling, Rachel turned to face her adversary.
Ben stared at Poppy. “Is that...yours?”
“I was married,” she huffed, grabbing Poppy’s diaper bag and marching toward the house.
Her mother and grandmother had their noses pressed to the front window. They scurried back at Rachel’s approach.
He matched her step for step. “I’m sorry.” It might have been her imagination, but he’d never looked at her in that way before. With compassion. “Really sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Rachel captured his blue gaze and stopped walking to face him. “You’re sorry?”
He nodded and his gaze drifted to Poppy.
“Y
ou were sorry to hear about my dad’s passing and now you’re sorry to hear that I have a baby?”
“Yes... No...” His blue eyes scanned the horizon before meeting her gaze squarely. “I’m sorry your marriage didn’t work out. I’m sorry the guy you thought would love you forever wasn’t strong enough to stick around for her.” He gestured to Poppy.
Rachel’s breath stuck in her throat.
It was a nice thing to say and completely unexpected coming from the heartless, egotistical Ben Blackwell. Only...it wasn’t so unexpected coming from a man who’d been jilted by his first love. It wasn’t just nice. It was honest and conveyed how he’d felt when Zoe left him.
If Rachel had learned anything from her marriage and subsequent divorce, it was that marriage wasn’t just about love. It was about trust. And with Ben’s words, with his apologies, Rachel trusted him a little bit more.
At least as far as an adult Thompson could trust an adult Blackwell.
Poppy stared at Ben with wide eyes and then reached for him. “Bye-bye.”
“I think she’s confused.” Ben grinned. No. It was more than that. He twinkled in a way that heartless, egotistical Ben Blackwell wasn’t supposed to.
“I think she has the right idea.” Rachel stepped around him, almost at the front door. “Goodbye, Blackwell.”
Her grandmother and mother were fogging up the front window. Rachel waved them away. Poppy began to wail, reaching her hands toward Ben over Rachel’s shoulders. “Bye-bye! Bye-bye!”
Ted’s mother had mentioned she’d been unsettled today, probably because Rachel hadn’t gotten her to bed at her regular time last night. She’d been out rescuing a lawyer from a bull.
Rachel struggled to hold on to her squirming baby and the diaper bag. Why didn’t her mother or grandmother open the door and help?
She knew the answer to that question. They were engrossed in the unfolding drama in front of them.
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