Trey shook his head. “Just walked in, although if he’s sleeping through all this racket, more power to him. Maybe I should take my things over to the cabin, get settled in there, and then come back. I’ve got an early July charity gig I have to leave for, but other than that, I’m here as needed. I figured I’d drive back from that and cart more stuff in the SUV.”
“Coulda done that now, couldn’t you?” Hobbs asked, and Trey made a face.
“I didn’t want to waste days when we’re down on help here, so I flew into SeaTac and grabbed a rental car.”
“You’re staying in the cabin?” Nick looked surprised, then shrugged. “I suppose it makes sense.”
“It does if he wants to keep his sanity,” Angelina noted sensibly. “And write songs. The big house isn’t conducive to quiet thought at the moment. Would you like some help taking your things over?”
“That would be great, actually.” Trey moved toward the porch door. “I’ll change into ranch clothes and Nick can put me to work.”
“But we’ll feed you here,” Angelina told him as she pulled out a bank of steaks from the double-door refrigerator. “Starting with fatted calf on the big grill for dinner.”
“Elsa, you’ll stay, won’t you?” Nick must have seen her edge toward her bag. “Have supper with us. Achilles seems happy on the front stoop.”
Achilles loved coming to the ranch. He’d spent the first day sniffing anything and everyone, then found a shady corner of the front porch and claimed it. Within hours he’d adapted to sun and shade, a wonderful combination. And she’d left Hoyl inside at home today, just in case she was gone longer than expected.
“I’d love the help in the kitchen.” Angelina pulled the makings of a monster salad out of the other side of the fridge. “If Mom’s watching the kids, it’ll be just the two of us in here. Which means you men are on grill duty. No complaints.”
“Cheyenne, how would you like to ride over to the cabin with me?” Trey asked. “Help me unload my stuff ?”
“I’d love to! Can we listen to your music in the car?”
“We sure can.”
“This is so cool.” She gripped his hand and tugged him toward the door. “See you guys in a little while, okay?”
“Hold it, Chey. Did you get all your work done today?” Nick asked before they got to the door. “And I expect the answer to be ‘Yes, Dad.'”
She smiled because she was holding Trey’s hand, not because she’d been happily working while Whitney visited earlier. She’d pouted and fussed, but when Elsa didn’t cave, she’d gotten down to work. “Yes, Dad.”
“Then you can go.”
Trey exchanged a look with Nick before he and Cheyenne went through the door, and when he did, Elsa noted the emotional resemblance between the brothers. They didn’t look alike in any obvious way, and she was pretty sure they grew up fighting like a litter of ill-mannered pups, but there was a bond between them.
She’d seen it with Nick and Colt despite their different natures. And now she saw it with Nick and Trey, as if something deeper than blood or relationship bound them.
Bound by loss.
Three motherless boys and a clueless father who spent too much time building his financial legacy and too little time being a dad.
“I’m glad you’re staying.” Nick’s voice brought her gaze to his, and she smiled because when she looked at Nick Stafford, the urge to smile overwhelmed her. It felt good to smile again.
“Me too. And hey, I heard the back-and-forth on the porch earlier. With Whitney.”
“Before she stormed off in her car?” Nick scrubbed a hand through his hair and grimaced. “I figured you did, and I hoped Cheyenne didn’t. If you’ve got advice, Doc, I’m ready to hear it because I’m caught in a meat grinder and I’m not sure how to turn it off.”
“Keep doing what you’re doing.” She moved forward and gripped his hands.
“God will lead; you will follow. God shows the way.” Angelina pulled out a bottle of steak rub and liberally dusted the meat, first one side, then the other. “When we forget that, we make wrong turns.”
Elsa hadn’t found faith that simple in recent years, but maybe she had long ago. Back before she lived a purposely jam-packed life and tragedy hit full swing.
“I’ve got computer work waiting.” Nick faced Elsa. “You’re okay if I go do it?”
“And why wouldn’t I be?” She looked from him to Angelina and raised one brow. “Isn’t that the primary rule we’re trying to instill in Cheyenne? To get work done when it’s supposed to get done?”
“It is.” Nick’s smile said she’d done something really right. “I’ll be back in an hour.”
She saved Cheyenne’s work into an electronic folder on the laptop, then filed the girl’s hard-copy work into her bag before she took her place at the counter. “I’m walking a fine line here, Angelina.”
Eyes down, Angelina kept working on food. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I can’t be Cheyenne’s counselor and Nick’s girlfriend.”
“My immediate response is, too late. My more measured response is, why not let life take us along the path and then choose as we go? Is it better to see the path ahead or to worry about unseen bends in the road?”
“I used to plan everything. Down to the minute, daily.”
“But you haven’t done that for a while, I expect.”
She hadn’t. Elsa shook her head as she chopped lettuce.
“I’m going right back to letting God lead the way,” Angelina told her. “When we forget that, we take ourselves too seriously. We take on too much. We’re the humans. He’s God. The times I’ve gotten myself into trouble are when I’ve forgotten that simple truth.”
It seemed awfully complicated to be called a simple truth, but maybe Angelina was right. Maybe she was mentally confounding things instead of believing in God’s plan. But did he have a plan? Or did things just happen because people chose right or wrong?
“…thy kingdom come. Thy will be done…”
God’s will or man’s choice?
“I saw a lot in Seattle.”
Angelina’s words put a halt on introspection, but Elsa kept chopping cucumbers, then celery.
“There was a part of me that spurned God and faith for a while. Maybe because I was too into myself, maybe because I was surrounded by greed and evil.”
“Maintaining a distance isn’t easy.”
Angelina’s expression didn’t agree. “I thought that too, but then I realized my choices put me in that situation. I was too busy with life to bother with faith. Too busy ladder climbing at work to remove myself from the presence of evil often enough. And after a while you get jaded, as if you expect evil. And that wasn’t good.”
“But you jumped off the roller coaster before you got burned,” Elsa noted. “And before anyone else got hurt. That says you were in charge and made strong choices.”
“While that sounds real good, the truth is I came here to hide after my father was gunned down in cold blood as retribution for something I did. I was part of a unit that brought down a major drug and human trafficking ring.”
Elsa stopped chopping and stared at her.
“I put my mother and my son into seclusion to avoid further retribution. I changed my name and became a cook and a housekeeper. For two years my son didn’t see other people or have friends or visitors because I was too afraid to bring him out of the shadows and into the light.” Elsa must have looked as surprised as she felt, because Angelina nodded. “It’s all true. Sam Stafford took me in, gave me a job, and hid my family. In return, God has given me the man I love, a father for Noah, an amazing friend and father in Sam, and he’s brought my family out of hiding. But only once I turned over the reins.”
“I had no idea.”
Angelina smiled as she pulled a potato casserole out of the refrigerator and tucked it into the preheated oven. “Life dares us to live it, Elsa. God longs for us to live it fully, in his name.”
>
Her kind words fell like a blessing on Elsa’s ears. It made sense, put that way, as if God’s hopes and dreams for her, and for every person, were that of a kind parent for their child. The longing of joy that comes in the morning. She reached over and gave Angelina a spontaneous hug. “Thank you.”
“It’s my mother you should thank. She had a stubborn daughter who took a long time to listen, but once I did?” She smiled and shrugged. “I listened well.”
Isabo came through the back door, toting a laundry basket of line-dried sheets. “It is the perfect day for drying! Sun, breeze, laughter!”
“Did Lucy already come by to pick up Belle? Lucy is the next farm over,” she explained to Elsa. “Single mom, three cute kids.”
“She did, yes!” Isabo set the laundry basket down by the back stairs. “She was in a hurry to get back home and get things done. Those boys are getting big, but I wonder if they’re truly a help at the Fresh Market or too busy being pesky boys.”
“Most likely the latter. It’s a long day for them,” Angelina remarked. She pointed east as she set the meat aside so the rub would season. “Lucy owns the Christmas tree farm east of here. Isabelle spent the day with us while her mom took flowers and plants to the fresh air market near the highway.”
“The little one with all the curls and a face like a Precious Moments figurine?”
“And a nature to match,” said Isabo. “A gentle heart, easily broken. Her mother’s child.”
“Lucy’s toughened up,” Angelina said. “She’s got a heart of gold, but she’s gotten stronger.”
“I’m taking Noah and Dakota to visit Kita.” Isabo moved toward the back door as she spoke. “Her puppies are due and I saw her making a nest.”
“I can’t wait to see the puppies,” Elsa told them. “We bred dogs on my parents’ ranch up north, and I helped with a lot of birthings before I went to college. My sister wanted absolutely nothing to do with it, and my brother preferred big animal work, but I loved working with the dogs. The miracle of birth, those sweet babies, weighing each one, keeping logs. And then watching them grow. It was marvelous.”
“Be careful.” Angelina slid her gaze to the screen door and the sound of male voices beyond and then leaned close, as if sharing a secret. “The minute they realize you can do something, they expect you to do it. It isn’t a bad idea to keep our abilities understated around here. If you get my drift.”
Elsa laughed as Colt and Murt clopped along the side porch. They kicked their boots off outside. Two summer hands followed, which meant the kitchen was about to get noisy, and at that moment, the sound of Sam’s walker softly thumped in the back hall. “I’ll stay here and see to Sam and these guys,” added Angelina. “Why don’t you walk with Mom and the kids to check the dogs? We’re expecting Kita to deliver any day. BeeBee will follow with her first litter in a week or so. The girls would love to show you, I’m sure.”
“You’re okay here?”
“Fine, now that the salad’s done and my future husband has set a fire in the big grill.”
Colt grimaced, turned, and went right back out the door with Elsa. He shoved his feet back into his boots and went toward the party-sized cooking area.
Elsa headed toward the barn and followed the contagious sounds of children’s laughter.
Nick had given Whitney an inch and she wanted a mile, which meant not much changed in her time away.
Did she honestly think he’d let her take the girls? Yes, she’d stopped drinking to the best of his knowledge, but she was shrugging off self-help programs and didn’t seem to realize how her abandonment affected her children.
A shriek of joyous laughter eased his encroaching stress.
Dakota was happier here on the ranch, pure country. Cheyenne wasn’t really happy anywhere yet again, but her confidence was growing, and that was a major step. He stood, stretched, and clicked Save on the files for the coming calves. He’d sent acceptance e-mails to a half-dozen buyers. Ninety percent of their designer calves were sold before they hit the ground, and that was a good-faith gesture. His father had studied genetics before genome sequence had been cataloged, and now that it had, they’d fine-tuned production to reflect science, not chance. The result was an amazing ranch filled with high quality cattle possessing an enviable feed-to-pounds ratio. Farmers across America were buying Stafford stock.
He closed the office door and headed toward the voices at the far end of the newest barn. “What’ve we got?”
Dakota’s face puckered. “Nothing. Isabo says that Kita is making a nest, but she’s not having any babies.”
“Having babies takes time.” Nick squatted low and stroked the Aussie’s head. “And remember that animals tend to like dark, cozy places to have their young.”
“But, Dad, the cows have babies in the field all the time. In the wide open.” Dakota offered him a skeptical look. “I don’t think that’s the problem.”
“It could be the problem because dogs are different from cows.” Elsa sank down onto the straw stacked along the inside of the stall and kneaded the dog’s neck. “When we were breeding police dogs at my parents’ place, we always let the mother seek out her spot. But then we moved her indoors with the puppies as soon as she started giving birth so we could give them round-the-clock care.”
“Did that help reduce the loss rate?” Nick asked and Elsa nodded.
“Well, sure. Big dogs tend to have big litters, and my father had developed a line of dogs that served on a lot of police forces across the country, so they were valuable puppies. My mom and I took turns sleeping by them and caring for them. But my mom always respected that nesting process before birth.”
“That’s brilliant.”
She tipped a smile his way. “Sometimes simple is best.”
“I concur. So…” He pointed beyond the dog and hooked a thumb. “Now that I have you out here, would you like the grand tour?”
“You have time?”
“I’ll make time.” His words brought color to her cheeks. She gave the dog one last stroke, then stood. Nick reached out a hand, hopeful.
She slipped her fingers into his and sighed when he gripped them gently.
It felt right, holding Elsa’s hand. Talking to her about school and dogs and crazy birds. “Where’s Achilles?”
She smiled as the sunlight touched her face. “Still napping. He dashed around in the sun like a puppy while the kids were playing earlier, then found the deepest shade he could and collapsed in a heap under the porch swing. He’s barely twitched a muscle since.”
“Racing around with kids takes a little getting used to, for certain.” He headed out the near end of the barn, then pointed back. “Office, laboratory, treatment areas.”
“Treatment for…?” She arched a brow in question.
“Anything necessary. That area has a private pasture on the west side so we can keep animals close as needed.”
“Was this your father’s vision years ago? Or did it all just kind of grow, being in the right place at the right time and using science to augment nature?”
“Both.” He mulled the question as they moved on. “I think the vision for what could be sprang from his partnership with Murt and Hobbs—seeing this, trying that, back in the day. They both had a great eye for crossbreeding animals. The science aspect came later, but it fit, and Dad saw an opportunity to blend the two concepts.”
“So he engineered nature?”
“To a degree.”
“And that doesn’t seem weird to you?”
He laughed. “No. But then I was raised around it, and the whole thing made sense. Did your parents run a lot of cattle?”
“Nothing like this. It was a small, hands-on operation, and I was so glad to leave it. To move on to school, and then the city. And then I ended up missing it once they’d moved to an island in the Sound. Maybe that’s why I enjoy being here so much.” She gazed around as they emerged from the barn into the light. “It’s like a second chance to appreciate what I ha
d.”
“That’s the only reason?” He bumped shoulders with her. When she smiled, he knew he’d made his point.
“There are multiple reasons to enjoy being here, and having a hot country music star on hand isn’t exactly a bad thing.” He pretended to scowl and she laughed. “I had no idea that Trey Walker was your brother until today.”
“The disadvantages of reclusive living.”
“So it seems. I was still on the coast when he lost his wife.”
Nick had been caught up in his own drama then. Looking back, he knew he hadn’t been as supportive as he should have been. Colt gone, and the younger two brothers facing life-altering crises, not one of them smart enough to ask for help. “It was rough. He stuck by Kathy through all the craziness, the rehab, thought he was finally on solid ground, and then repeated the whole thing.”
“Except she didn’t make it through that last downward spiral,” Elsa said softly. “It was like watching a fairy-tale romance go up in smoke.”
“Mostly illusion,” Nick told her bluntly. “But they were already married before he realized the truth. Trey lost both parents to drug addictions. My father adopted him when he was just a little guy and raised him as carefully as he did any of us.” She squeezed his fingers and made a face of sympathy. “Then Trey married someone who followed his parents’ pattern, and I married a woman who walked out, just like my mother did. So maybe we’re destined to repeat the mistakes of those who went before us.”
“That’s not one bit true.”
“It feels kinda true.” He paused at the split-rail fence and leaned forward, elbows propped. “You’d think we’d have learned from our parents’ mistakes, but we didn’t come close.”
“Which is why you brought the girls to see me,” she told him softly. “Children can’t be expected to understand loss and motivation on their own. A few might, but the majority try to fill voids with what feels right. And sometimes what feels right is the same old wrong we knew twenty years before.”
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