Harlequin Superromance December 2013 - Bundle 1 of 2: Caught Up in YouThe Ranch She Left BehindA Valley Ridge Christmas

by Beth Andrews

And she had taken their daughter with her to that world of jewelry, supermodels, clothes, diets. When they chattered together, Max tuned out. If he hadn’t, he would have walked out.

  He hadn’t blamed Lydia. He knew she clung to her daughter because she needed an ally, and because she needed an unconditional admiration he couldn’t give her. But as the gulf widened between Max and Lydia, it had widened between Max and Ellen, too.

  He might not travel that much anymore, but he’d been absent nonetheless.

  “Ellen.” He resisted the urge to give up. “You’re going to have to talk to me. Stealing is serious. I have no idea why you’d even consider doing something you know is wrong. You have enough money for whatever you need, don’t you?”

  She made a tsking sound through her teeth. “You don’t understand. It’s not always about money.”

  “Well, then, help me to understand. What is it about?”

  “Why do you even care? I’m sorry I caused you trouble. I’m sorry I interrupted you on your date.”

  He frowned. Could his dating already be what had prompted this? He’d talked to her about the dinner ahead of time, and she’d professed herself completely indifferent to when, or whom, he chose to date.

  But he should have known. Ellen rarely admitted she cared about anything. Especially anything to do with Max.

  “I don’t care about the date,” he said. “It wasn’t going well, anyhow. Right now, all I want is to be here. I want to sort this out with you.”

  She laughed, a short bark that wasn’t openly rude, but again, barely. “Right.”

  “If you want me to understand, you have to explain. If it’s not about money, what is it about? Are you angry that I went on a date?”

  “No. Why should I be? It’s not like Mom will mind.”

  He flinched. “Okay, then, what is it?” He took a breath. “Ellen, I’m not letting this go, so you might as well tell me. Why would you do such a thing?”

  She unwound her arms so that she could fiddle with her seat belt, as if it were too tight. “You won’t understand.”

  “I already don’t understand.”

  “It’s like an initiation.”

  He had to make a conscious effort not to do a double take. But what the hell? What kind of initiation did eleven-year-olds have to go through?

  “Initiation into what?”

  “The group. Stephanie’s group.”

  “Why on earth would you want to be part of any group that would ask you to commit a crime?”

  “Are you kidding?” Finally, Ellen turned, and her face was slack with shock. “Stephanie’s the prettiest girl in school, and the coolest. If you’re not part of her group, you might as well wear a sign around your neck that says Loser.”

  A flare of anger went through him like something shot from a rocket. How could this be his daughter? He’d been brought up on a North Carolina farm, by grandparents who taught him that nothing seen by the naked eye mattered. The worth of land wasn’t in its beauty, but in what lay beneath, in the soil. The sweetest-looking land sometimes was so starved for nutrients that it wouldn’t grow a single stick of celery, or was so riddled with stones that it would break your hoe on the first pass.

  People, they told him, were the same as the land. Only what they had inside mattered, and finding that out took time and care. Money just confused things, allowing an empty shell to deck out like a king.

  For a moment, he wanted to blame Lydia. But wasn’t that the kind of lie that his grandfather would have hated? All lies, according to his grandfather, were ugly. But what he called “chicken lies” were the worst. Those were the ones you told to yourself, to keep from having to look an ugly truth in the eye.

  So, no. He couldn’t blame Lydia. First of all, where did Lydia come from? From Max’s own foolish, lusty youth. From his inability to tell the empty shell from the decked-out facade.

  And, even more important, why should Lydia’s influence have prevailed over his?

  Because he’d abdicated, that’s why. He’d opted out. He’d failed.

  But not anymore. He looked at his little girl, at her brown hair that used to feel like angel silk beneath his hands. He remembered the dreams he’d built in his head, as he walked the floor with her at night. He remembered the love, that knee-weakening, heart-humbling rush of pure adoration....

  “We’re going to have to make some serious changes,” he said. His tone was somber—so somber it seemed to startle her, her eyes wide and alarmed.

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” he said. “But you should brace yourself, because they’re going to be big changes. We’ve gotten off track somewhere. Not just you. Me, too. We have to find our way back.”

  She swallowed, as if the look on his face made her nervous. But she didn’t ask any further questions.

  Which was good, because he didn’t have many answers. Only one thing he knew, instinctively. He couldn’t do it here, in Chicago, with the traffic and the malls and the Stephanies. And the memories of Lydia around every corner.

  He had no idea how, but he was going to fix this. He was going to stop giving her money, stop assuaging his guilt with presents and indulgence. He was going spend time with her, get to know her and teach her those hard but wonderful life lessons his grandparents had taught him.

  And maybe, along the way, he’d relearn some of those lessons himself.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two months later

  SILVERDELL, COLORADO, HADN’T changed much in seventeen years. Penny had noticed that last year, when she came back as the dude ranch idea was first being considered, and then again when her sister Rowena got married.

  But on this visit, she was particularly struck by the snow-globe effect—perhaps because her own world had changed so dramatically. She drove slowly down Elk Avenue, noting how many stores remained from her childhood, and how many of the replacement shops had maintained the feel of their predecessors.

  August. Early fall in Silverdell. She remembered it so well. And here it all was. Same big tubs of orange and gold chrysanthemums on the sidewalk, same colorful awnings over shovel-and ski-jacket-filled windows that warned of the winter to come.

  Same park square, roiling with what might easily have been the same laughing children.

  She slowed now, watching them kick piles of leaves into tiny yellow storms and chase each other, squealing, until someone fell, then got up, giggling, with grass stains on elbows and chin.

  She and her sisters, Rowena and Bree, had rarely been part of all that. In fact, she used to watch those mischievous kids and wonder where they got the courage to be so naughty. Didn’t their fathers have tempers, too?

  Their fathers...

  She knew she ought to go to the ranch. Or at least by her new duplex.

  But she knew she wasn’t ready. It didn’t make any sense, but she needed more time to come to terms with being in Silverdell again—and with the big changes that were coming.

  It didn’t help to remind herself that they were changes she’d wanted. Changes she’d chosen. Suddenly the changes seemed more than “big.” They seemed crazy. Risky. Terrifying.

  Annoyed with herself, but unable to break through the emotional paralysis, she found a parking space and headed into the ice-cream shop. She was hungry and nervous. Even before she had grown a full set of teeth she’d learned that a banana split could make everything better.

  Her father and Ruth would both have been horrified—ice cream before lunch? Instead of lunch? But they weren’t here. And she wasn’t a child. Surely this one tiny act of independent thinking wasn’t too much for her, even today.

  Baby steps.

  “Hey!” The string-bean-shaped young man behind the counter tossed down his magazine and stood at attention, apparently delighted to see h
er. The shop was empty, so maybe he really was. “What can I get you?”

  She glanced at the calligraphy on the menu over his head. “I’d love a banana split. Double whipped cream.”

  “Awesome!” He grinned as if she’d said the magic words and began pulling out ingredients. “It’s getting nippy out, and we don’t get much business once it turns cold. We sell hot chocolate, but it takes a lot of hot chocolates to pay the rent, you know?”

  She smiled, thinking how close her calculations had been when she decided how much rent she’d need to ask for the other side of her new duplex.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I know.”

  “About a hundred million,” the young man said, inserting his knife into a banana as carefully as if he were performing surgery. “Plus, there’s no art to making a cup of cocoa. Not like a good banana split.” He arranged the slices into the curved boat, tossing away a couple of bruised bits. “Now this is something you can get creative with.”

  A warmhearted ice-cream artist who worried about making the rent but couldn’t force himself to serve a bruised banana. She made a mental note to come in as often as she could. Her sweet tooth didn’t know seasons.

  She smiled. See? She hadn’t taken a single bite, and she was already feeling better.

  “Go ahead and grab a seat,” he said. “I’m Danny. This is my shop. I’ll make you something special, and bring it to you.”

  She arranged herself by the window, dropped her purse on the other side of the table and pulled out her legal pad and pen. Maybe if she worked on her list, she would retrieve her courage, and she could head to Bell River.

  She flipped over a couple of pages, filled to the margins with practical information about who to call if the water wasn’t hooked up, or the electricity went wonky. All that was important, but not right now.

  The third page... That’s the one that mattered. She tapped her pen against her lips and read what she’d written so far.

  The Risk-it List.

  The very words looked good, in her favorite turquoise ink, against the yellow lined paper. Last night, when she’d stopped—not wanting to arrive in Silverdell after dark—she had worked on the list. Right before she fell asleep, she’d doodled a small bluebird in the upper right corner of her paper.

  The bluebird of happiness. That’s what Ro used to call it. Ro and Bree used to take Penny “hunting” in the woods, with butterfly nets that supposedly were magical, nets that could catch the bluebird that would make everything at Bell River right.

  Obviously, they’d never captured one. But Penny had drawn birds, photographed them, been fascinated by them, ever since. This one was fat and contented, and smiled at the list below him.

  The Risk-it List. She’d decided it should be twelve items long. She had six entries so far, and two check marks.

  Sell town house. Check.

  Buy place in Silverdell— Don’t let Bree and Ro overrule. Don’t tell Bree and Ro until purchase complete! Check.

  Host a party...wearing a costume.

  Learn to juggle.

  Learn to dance.

  Cut hair.

  Seven...Seven...

  Penny chewed on the end of her pen—a habit she’d never been able to break—and tried to make up her mind what number seven should be.

  Ben had been right, of course. When the shock of the wasp spray incident had worn off, a strange pride took its place. She felt empowered. Why shouldn’t she? She’d prevailed over a big, hulking intruder. She might have been terrified, but she hadn’t panicked. She’d kept her head, and she’d driven him away—without anyone getting seriously hurt.

  She’d decided that very day to start the list. And before any doubt could set in, she’d accomplished numbers one and two. Sell the town house—almost frighteningly easy. And buy a small house in Silverdell—much scarier, as she didn’t have time to see it for herself but had to trust Jenny Gladiola, Silverdell’s longtime real estate agent.

  But she’d accomplished both, and now here she was, less than three miles from Bell River Ranch. Here to stay. Here to call Silverdell home again, after all these years.

  A shiver passed through her. Thanks to Jenny’s discretion, no one in the family yet knew she was in town. Jenny had been a Dellian real estate agent forever, and she’d kept her career flourishing, through good markets and bad, by knowing how to keep her mouth shut.

  For now Penny was safe. However, telling Bree and Rowena absolutely had to be next.

  Her sisters had been begging her for months to come live at the dude ranch with them. They could use the help, they said. They needed an art teacher, they said. But she knew the truth—they were worried about her. They wanted to slip her into their nest, straight from the nest Ruth had kept her in.

  No one wanted her to learn to fly.

  But, by golly, she was going to learn anyhow.

  So...back to the Risk-it List. What should number seven be? She had to pick very carefully. After the two big jolts of selling the town house and buying the duplex, she wanted the rest of the list to be relatively easy. She’d tackle a few of her phobias—but she wouldn’t set herself up for failure. No wrestling pythons in the rain forest or taking a commercial shuttle to the space station.

  Just juggling, costumes, kissing...

  Ben would laugh. He was much more the space station type. She’d decided not to call hers a bucket list. It sounded too ambitious. That might come later, after she’d accomplished everything on this one. After she’d learned a little bit about who Penny Wright really was.

  Instead, she’d called it the Risk-it List. A list of things she’d never had the nerve to do—though she’d always envied others who did. Things that looked daring, or exciting, or just plain fun. Things that might be mistakes. Things that might make her look silly. Things she had phobias about...

  Aha! Phobias!

  So seven would be: Ride in a hot air balloon. (fear of heights)

  Take a picture of someone famous. (shyness)

  Get a beautiful tattoo. (fear of disapproval)

  Kiss a total stranger. (fear of...everything)

  Go white-water rafting (fear of dying J)

  Make love in a sailboat.

  Number Eleven, the white-water rafting, would probably be the scariest. She really, really found the rapids terrifying. So obviously she’d left that till toward the end of the list.

  But where had that crazy Number Twelve come from? Was it from some movie she’d seen? Some couple she’d spotted setting off into San Francisco Bay...with her imagination supplying the rest?

  “What’s so funny?”

  Danny, the ice-cream artist, was at her table, holding a bowl so laden with beautifully arranged sweets that she knew she’d never be able to finish it.

  He looked for a safe place to set it down. Flushing, she tilted her legal pad toward her chest to hide it, then felt ridiculous. Why did she care whether he saw it?

  “Nothing, really,” she said awkwardly. “I just wrote the wrong thing... You know... I mean I spelled it all wrong.”

  Argh. Why did she always feel nervous if she did anything remotely unconventional? She was unconventional, darn it. She was an artist at heart, not a banker. She wanted to dress in flamboyant colors and patterns, and laugh loudly, and lie down on the sidewalk to get the best angle on a snail. She wanted to sing and dance and go to parties—and make love in a sailboat.

  Ruth wasn’t here to reproach her. Her father wasn’t here to mock. No one cared. No one.

  She could simply have laughed and said, “I wrote ‘sex on a sailboat’ on my wish list, though until this very minute I had no idea it was a fantasy of mine.”

  Danny was probably no more than twenty-three, fresh out of college—he’d probably be a lot more embarrassed than she was.

  New Num
ber One: Stop Being Such a Doormat.

  Oh, well. Baby steps, remember? She gave him a warm smile to offset any insult he might have taken from the snatched-away list. She complimented his gorgeous creation, stuck a finger—sorry, Ruth—into the whipped cream, then stuck the finger into her mouth and sighed. Real whipped cream. Sinfully delicious.

  “It’s fantastic,” she said. “I’ve moved back to town, and you can be sure I’ll be a regular customer!”

  But it was too late. Obviously offended, he’d dialed his friendliness down about three notches. He wandered toward the ice-cream cases and began stacking and restacking prepackaged tubs—though they’d been perfectly aligned already.

  Darn it. She sighed, annoyed with herself all over again. That was three strikes. Afraid to pull into Bell River. Afraid to pull into her own new duplex. Afraid to let this nice man see that she was making a list of dreams.

  She’d better stiffen up, and fast, or the ego boost of banishing her intruder would disappear into a cloud of self-doubt. Her life might slide right back into the gray, conformist soup of the past seventeen years.

  No. Darn it. No.

  She couldn’t stand that. She wouldn’t let it happen. One way or another, she’d find the courage to—

  The bell rang out as the door opened. She kept her legal pad against her chest as two people walked in. A little girl, maybe ten? Sulky, angry about something.

  As she did with everyone she saw, Penny mentally began to sketch the child. A duckling still, but with definite traces of swan showing up around the edges. Her chubby cheeks were out of proportion to her longish, narrow chin. Someday, in the next year or two, her contours would lengthen, and she’d have the sweetest heart-shaped face....

  Her hair was a glorious mess—shining, thick, brown, glossy curls that she had no idea what to do with now. And her figure obviously was hard to fit. A thick waist over too-long, too-skinny legs that made her look a little like a candy apple on toothpicks today. But when she got her teenage growth spurt, and that torso stretched out to match the limbs....well, watch out, Dad.

  Ohhhh. When Penny’s gaze finally shifted to Dad, she felt a small kick beneath her ribs. What a wonderful face...and the rest of him wasn’t bad, either.