“Come on in.” Nick moved forward and swung the door wide. “That breeze is chilly this morning, but tomorrow’s supposed to be warmer, so if we decide to take a look around, it should be nice to do it then.” He removed his hat, set it on the counter, picked it right back up when Angelina tsk’d him, and hung it on a hooked rack inside the door. “Where’s Achilles?”
“I decided that today’s a workday so not a good day to bring him along,” she explained.
“Tomorrow, then. Give him a little sun.”
She’d considered telling him no to the tour on the drive over. She’d weighed it and knew what her answer should be, but the minute she spotted the gracious, terraced land and the sprawling house, she felt like Elizabeth Bennet first seeing Pemberley.
“That would be really nice. We’ll both enjoy it.”
Angelina set out a tray of fresh baked goods and pointed out the single-cup coffee brewer on the counter. “The doctors want to run some tests on Sam, so I’m driving him down to the hospital this morning. Nick promised to grill sausages and dogs on the wood-burner grill outside for lunch later, and my mother will laugh in the face of her Latino roots by making one of the best Irish potato casseroles you’ve ever had. We’ve found it best not to question these things,” she advised Elsa with a look that only a woman would understand, and Elsa did. “We just roll with them.”
A man approached the kitchen from a side wing of the house. At first glance she thought he was elderly, but as he drew closer, she realized her mistake. Older, yes, but not aged. Ill health seemed to be taking its toll on him. Ashen skin and hollow cheeks gave him a gaunt appearance, but when he spotted her, a hint of steel sharpened his expression.
“Dad, this is Elsa Andreas,” Nick told him. “She’s here to work with the girls.”
He started to extend his hand, then gripped the counter instead and looked downright aggravated at the necessity of it. “Welcome to the Double S, Miss Andreas.”
“Doctor Andreas,” Cheyenne corrected at the same time Elsa waved that off.
“Elsa is fine. It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Stafford.”
“Where is your walker?” Angelina crossed her arms over her chest again, but this time Elsa was pretty sure that temperature had nothing to do with the gesture. “You’re being stubborn and uncooperative, and if you fall on your way into the professional building, it will serve you right.”
“I won’t fall because you’ll give me your arm,” he retorted. “Dang fool walker is for dang fool old folks, and when I need one of those to get around my own blasted house, it’s time to call the undertaker.”
“Perhaps our infirmities are meant to offer a dose of humility.” Angelina tipped her head slightly. “Have you considered that, Sam?”
“I expect I’ll be humbled on a regular basis before this thing is done,” he grumbled as he made his way to the door. Angelina moved alongside and offered her arm, and the big man grasped it gently. “Thank you, my friend.”
She smiled at him, their height difference minimized by his stooped stature, as if standing straight proved too painful. “You’re welcome, as always. We’ll be back later, although maybe not in time to have lunch with all of you.”
“Vaya con Dios y bendiciones!” A busy-looking woman entered the kitchen from the opposite direction. “I’ll have lunch waiting unless Sam needs to eat as he waits.”
“If you’re making those special potatoes, Isabo”—he turned and sent her an expectant look from the doorway —“I’ll enjoy them when I get home.”
“They’ll be ready,” she promised, and when Elsa shifted her attention to Angelina, she read the gravity of the situation in the other woman’s face.
Sam’s illness added another layer to the broken family dynamics, which meant she needed to find out more about his prognosis. Children dealt better with the elements of life and death when they were prepared for them.
Sam and Angelina went through the door, and Elsa wondered why Nick didn’t move forward to offer his assistance. Was it to salve the older man’s pride or because grievance lay between them?
And that added a different layer of mortar to the already hard walls of being born Stafford.
A part of Nick longed to assist his father to the door, but Sam would only shrug him off. Nick had spent a lifetime being shrugged off. He should be used to it by now, but he wasn’t, so he let Angelina help his father. Angelina wasn’t mired in old hurts where Sam was concerned. In Gray’s Glen that put her in a miniscule minority status because at least two-thirds of the town hated Sam Stafford, and at least half of them did so with good reason. The others just went along for the ride.
Colt and Nick were determined to turn that around. Sam’s change of heart would help make that possible, if he lived long enough to see it through, and right now that appeared to be a big if.
“Girls, come on over here to the table, and let’s get organized, shall we?” Elsa set a bag down on the broad braided rug, and a smaller one on the table. “Who can get me crayons, scissors, pencils, and erasers?”
“I can!”
“Me too!”
The girls dashed off to the corner of the great room to gather supplies, and when they hurried back to Elsa’s side, their looks of anticipation blessed Nick. He’d put off meeting with a therapist for long months because of stupid, Stafford pride. He was a moron, plain and simple, and right now he wanted nothing more than to stay inside and hang with Elsa and his daughters.
Isabo would take a rolling pin to him if he tried, but it might be worth it to coax Elsa’s smiles. He started to pull out a chair when one of the ranch hands yelled his name.
“Nick!”
The ranch hand’s bellow from outside came at the same time Nick’s phone buzzed a 911 incoming text. He raced out the door, looked up, and saw the catastrophe unfolding from a distance but could do absolutely nothing to help. He ran for the ranch Jeep. One of the ranch hands jumped in alongside, and they torqued up the hill as the huge tractor careened over the small embankment and into the slow-running creek below.
The first thing he hoped was that Hobbs was all right.
The next thing he figured was that he’d have to kill the old-timer for taking that upper corner too sharp with a monster-sized rig.
He paused the SUV as a summer hand ran his way. He let the kid jump in behind Brock and raced toward the creek’s edge. Fear tied his gut into a massive knot. They hadn’t had a serious ranch accident in over a decade because Sam ran a tough, tight ship. Accidents cost lives, time, and money, and for all his father’s faults, Sam Stafford took safety seriously. As he spotted Hobbs making his way up and out of the creek bed, Nick knew the old man’s days of running tractor were over, but he had no idea how to break that kind of news to one of the hardest working cowboys he’d ever had the pleasure to team with.
Nick jumped out of the Jeep as soon as it drew to a stop. “Hobbs, get in.” He helped the old man into the backseat. He motioned for the younger ranch hand to take the wheel. “Get him to the emergency care clinic. If they can’t handle this, run him right to the hospital.”
Nick turned his attention back to his devoted old friend. “Are you okay to ride in this?”
Hobbs brushed the question off with old-timer ease. “I’ve rode in worse, and I'm just banged up. Maybe busted.” Hobbs glanced down, and it was then that Nick noticed his arm hanging at an impossible angle. “Yup. Busted.” He scowled. “Don’t much care to run into your daddy at the hospital when I just wrecked a major piece of equipment,” he muttered. “I thought I had it, Nick. I took that corner same’s I always do, and then the next thing I knew, I was heading for the edge. Mebbe I ain’t cut out to drive them bigger rigs.”
“Let’s get you fixed, then I’ll ream you out, okay?”
Hobbs smiled thinly through the pain. “Your daddy will take care of that, more’n likely. I can stay, you know.” He scowled at the creek bank where the monstrous wheel spun sideways, cutting the air smoother than a Dutch win
dmill. “We can fix this later.” He nodded to his arm as if working with broken bones was okay, and from the stories Sam, Hobbs, and Murt spun around the supper table, it might have been, back in the day.
But this was a new time, and Nick sent Hobbs and the kid off to get medical care while he and Brock surveyed the situation. He called Colt and told him to gather Murt, the local sheriff, and anyone else he could grab hold of and get back to the ranch a.s.a.p. They’d all been working on the new church, but everything stopped when the call for help was sounded. In farming there was a time for every purpose, just like the Good Book said. If you missed that window of opportunity, you could mess up an entire year or more.
It took all afternoon and lots of good-natured ribbing as they positioned massive equipment every which way to haul the tipped tractor back to navigable farmland, and when they’d finally gotten the big rig back on level soil, Nick drew a sigh of relief. “Don’t know how to thank you all,” he told the group of men as the double winch lines eased the rig over a shallower embankment. “Tank, you got enough daylight to give it a look?”
“Plenty,” the ranch mechanic told him. “Me and the kid can team up, then come up for supper in a few hours.” He’d driven an old farm rig out to the accident site, loaded with tools. “I put a sack of sandwiches and cookies there too, Tim,” he added when the rangy nineteen-year-old sent a longing look back to the ranch. “And Miss Izzie will hold stew for us. She promised.”
“Thanks, Tank.”
Colt smacked Nick on the back, a move that could have gone either way. Today it was a friendly gesture. “You handled this like a pro.”
“I am a pro,” Nick told him, irritated. It wasn’t as if he needed Colt’s approval on anything. Ever. “I’ve spent twenty years doing what needs to be done, half of which you spent in big cities.”
“What’s the burr in your boots?” Colt asked. “This is a job that would have taken days on your own. We got it done in a few hours. You’d think we interrupted some hot date or —” He stopped and stared at the house, then his brother as they followed Murt and a couple of area ranchers into the newer SUV. “I forgot. The doctor was in.” He made quote marks with the fingers of two hands. “That’s a mighty pretty reason to want to get back to the house, little brother. I thought you’d sworn off women completely.”
“Shut up.”
“Hey.” Colt lowered his voice so the other guys wouldn’t hear as he paused Nick with one hand. “I’m not messing with your head. I think Cheyenne’s got a better outlook these past few weeks, and while I’m no expert on women or raising kids, I can spot a happy face when I see it. For the first time since I’ve been home, my niece looks happy. And that’s something I’m thanking God for.”
Nick wasn’t sure how to handle this. Colt had spent his life messing with Nick’s head. To have him shoot straight and sincere was new and might take some getting used to. “Well, I was supposed to be back at the house to grill lunch for all of them. That didn’t happen.”
“Isabo and Elsa took care of things from what I saw, and when I stopped into the house to grab the waters, Elsa was cutting vegetables for the stew pot and the girls were helping.”
“She was ticked, I bet.”
Colt shrugged as they reached the SUV. “Didn’t look ticked at all, and you might want to stop assessing every woman by Whitney’s standards. A lot of women are willing to jump in and help out. Maybe Elsa’s not the exception. Maybe she’s the rule.”
He hated that Colt was right and that he hadn’t understood the measure of a good helpmate a dozen years before. Was he that blind? Or just stupid? Or was he so busy trying to create the perfect family to show up his father that he failed to look beyond appearances?
More likely.
They climbed into the car. Colt swung it around in an easy arc and headed downslope. “We’re two men down now, what with Dad and Hobbs, and with the work on the church in full swing, there’s not a lot of help around.”
“Dad doesn’t worry much, but he worries when we’re short on help. For good reason.”
“When’s Trey due in?” Murt asked from the backseat. “He knows his way around.” The youngest Stafford had followed his dream to Nashville years before. He’d stuck it out through hard times, made it big, and was setting everything aside to come north as they faced Sam’s prognosis together. He was a solid singer and musician, and an even better ranch hand, and Murt didn’t offer praise like that—or any, he realized—lightly.
“His last concert is Tuesday,” Colt answered. “He said he’ll close down the tour as quick as he can and get back here, but I don’t know what that means.”
“Then we slide by for a bit,” Murt said. “Won’t be the first time we’ve pulled double duty. Won’t be the last.” He climbed out of the SUV once it rolled to a stop. Angelina came out the side entrance to meet them.
“It’s upright.” She pointed to the distant hill and the tractor. “That’s a good sign.”
“It is, darlin’,” Colt told her. He hauled her in for a kiss, then tapped the brim of his hat. “I’m on barn duty for those F1 cross babies due now. To everything there is a season, and this appears to be the season for calves, ready to drop for the next few weeks.”
“Supper?” she asked and he sniffed the air, looking hopeful.
“Bring me some?”
“I will once the kids are in bed.”
“My girls rope you into letting them stay here overnight?” Nick asked as he moved toward the kitchen door.
“They didn’t have to rope hard.” She slanted the noisy front room a fond look as she led the way back into the kitchen. “And don’t even think of wearing that mud-spattered nonsense in here. Ditch it by the laundry room entrance and we’ll take care of it.”
Isabo came into the kitchen with a basket of fresh sweet peas. “I thought these would be stringy, but they’re not. They’re perfection. We’ll do some fresh and some steamed tomorrow.” She spotted Nick and turned her attention his way. “Your friend—the girls’ doctor friend?”
“Elsa?”
“Yes!” Her face split into a wide smile when he said the name, as if just hearing it made her happy, and Isabo wasn’t what Nick would call the effusive type.
“What about her?”
“Magnificent!” she declared. “With the girls, with Noah, with the kitchen.” She stressed the last because Isabo had great respect for anyone who could hold their own in her kitchen. “She made the best biscuits we’ve ever had, warm and cheesy and good, and she was not afraid to take the girls to the barn when I was too busy.”
“Translation: you wanted to see if she was tough enough to handle kids and half-ton animals without caving, and she passed the test,” Nick offered reasonably.
“That is one way of putting it, yes.” Isabo looked quite agreeable as she rinsed the peas beneath a stream of cold, clear water. “I like her.”
Nick wasn’t sure when winning Isabo’s approval became important but figured it was about the time she walked through the door a couple of months before, after being holed up in a cabin with Angelina’s little boy for two years. “I do too.”
“Well, good.” She waggled her head from side to side as if a momentous decision had just been made. “We are in agreement. Angelina, can you put the bread out with fresh butter?”
“Absolutely.” Angelina withdrew two soft, fragrant loaves from the warming oven. She handed them off to Murt as the other guys trooped in, looking tired and hungry. “I’ll finish serving supper, Mami. You take care of your produce.”
Their combined voices brought the kids running into the kitchen. “You got it out!” Cheyenne clapped her hands together as if proud of Nick, and Nick couldn’t remember the last time his oldest daughter seemed proud of him. “We were watching from down here, Daddy, and we weren’t sure what would happen, but when Isabo said we should pray for your success, we did! And it worked!”
“I heard you guys took care of everything down here while I was stuck u
p there.” He pulled her in for a hug and realized Colt was right. She seemed happier. Lighter. More relaxed since he’d brought Elsa into her life, which only made him feel bad for not following up on the principal’s idea sooner. “How’d the schoolwork go?”
“So fun!” Dakota twirled around, grabbed a toy gun from a holster she must have borrowed from Noah, and took pretend aim at a bear head on the great room wall, tomboy to the max. “We practiced sounding things out, and I didn’t know where to put my teeth with the letter v, but Elsa showed me and then it seemed like so easy! And she showed me how to figure out big math things right in my head. I just think of the bigger number, watch, Daddy.” She pulled on his hand and then tapped a finger to her temple. “I’m adding twelve and seven, so I keep twelve up here and then”—she held up seven fingers —“I add the seven!” She counted up and waved her hands, triumphant. “It’s nineteen! And it was so easy. I don’t know why I used to think it was hard to learn my numbers, because when Elsa showed me, it was so fun!”
Angelina cleared her throat.
When Angelina cleared her throat, it meant either you should listen up because something momentous was going on beneath your nose or she was about to explode and take a rolling pin to your head. And since she was a former cop, he figured a rolling pin was better than a small, lightweight Glock, her pocket weapon of choice.
He looked her way. “Say it.”
She tipped a look down at the girls and lifted one shoulder. “I don’t need to say a thing. It’s there, in front of your eyes.”
He smiled because it was suddenly easy to smile, despite the tractor mishap. Hobbs was going to be all right, the tractor didn’t appear to have suffered dire damage, and his precious girls were acting happy on a more regular basis for two reasons: he was encouraging them to be the rancher’s daughters they deserved to be, and he’d finally taken outside advice and given the girls someone to talk to, to listen to, to hang out with.
The quirky therapist who preached laughter with sad eyes made him interested in getting to know her more, in hanging out with her. She brought out the protector in him, but why? He was pretty sure Elsa could take care of herself.
Home on the Range Page 9