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

by Beth Andrews

  Ellen hadn’t even tried to look at the pictures for a week now. No way Ellen was going to let awful Mrs. Biggars touch them.

  It was hopeless. She might as well be locked away in the Cook County Jail back home. If she’d guessed in a million years that letting Stephanie talk her into putting that lipstick in her purse would lead to this, she would never have...

  Well, that wasn’t true. She probably still would have done it. It was really hard to say no to Stephanie.

  She heard the glassy pinging sound that usually meant Alec was out back. He always lobbed a small pebble at her window, so that he didn’t have to knock and run into Mrs. Biggars. She got on her knees, surprised, because he’d said he was going to be at the dude ranch all day, helping teach the kids to ride horses.

  But it wasn’t Alec. It was Penny, who had apparently dropped a heavy ball that had shattered, sending off bits of something. One of the bits must have hit Ellen’s window.

  She watched for a minute. Oh...cool. Those must be the gazing balls Penny had mentioned. They were so sparkly—all kinds of colored glass pieces, put together like mosaics, like the ones she used to make out of colored beans, back in first grade. Only much prettier.

  “I’m going to sit on the back porch and read,” she called out from the kitchen. “Okay?”

  Mrs. Biggars was in the front room watching her “story,” which meant a dopey soap opera. Ellen had tattled on her the first day, hoping her father, who hated soap operas, would fire the old lady.

  He hadn’t.

  “Okay.” Mrs. Biggars wouldn’t stand up from that TV show for anything short of a fire or a bomb. “Just don’t leave the deck.”

  “I won’t.”

  Actually, Ellen hoped Penny might invite her over to look at the gazing balls, but technically that wasn’t leaving the deck, since it was connected.

  And sure enough, as soon as Penny spotted her, she smiled. “I was hoping you were home,” Penny said, and she looked as if she meant it.

  Ellen wandered over casually. She pointed at one of the big globes, a blue one that sparkled in the sunlight. “Are those your gazing balls?”

  “Yep.” Penny bent over to pick up a bunch of little diamond-shaped pieces of glass. “What’s left of them. The movers broke two, and I just broke another.”

  “But you have so many! They’re awesome.” Now that she was out here, Ellen saw that Penny had at least a dozen of the balls, in all sizes and colors. The sun was bright today, and it sparked off the bits of glass like hundreds of tiny magic flames. With these things out here, the deck looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  Why didn’t everyone do this with their backyards? But Ellen knew why. Most people weren’t artistic like Penny.

  Sometimes, over the past couple of weeks, Ellen had seen Penny sitting out here with an easel and a palette, just painting—and she’d wandered out to watch. In fact, she could watch for ages without getting bored. She loved to try to figure out how Penny created shadows, or water, or how she could make it seem that some things were up close, and others far away.

  Penny never seemed to mind being watched, or answering questions about why she put yellow in the clouds, or green in a face. She seemed to like to talk to Ellen—and Ellen felt that they had become friends, in a way, even though Ellen was just a kid. Maybe it was just convenient, because they lived next door. But sometimes Ellen wondered whether maybe Penny didn’t have very many people to talk to about artistic things.

  Ellen didn’t have any. If she tried to talk about painting to Stephanie and the gang, it was like...like their ears couldn’t even hear her. Ellen would be right in the middle of a sentence, and Stephanie would hold up her fingernails and say, “Do you think I should take off the Dusty Rose and put on Flamingo Pink instead?”

  It was different with Penny. The first day she’d watched Penny paint, Ellen had tentatively said, “I like Monet.” She’d really half expected to be ignored.

  But Penny had nodded and smiled. “And Renoir,” Penny had added casually, as she touched her brush to her canvas and turned some of the aspen leaves brown. “Renoir is dreamy.”

  At Ellen’s house in Chicago, her mom had a picture of Monet’s water lilies in the living room, so she hadn’t been making it up that she liked him. But she didn’t know very many other painters yet, not by name. She didn’t want to admit that to Penny, who obviously knew them all. So of course Ellen had looked Renoir up on the computer that very night.

  Penny was right. Renoir was dreamy. His pictures looked like they’d been sprinkled with pink sugar and happiness. The next day, they’d talked a long time about Renoir.

  Eventually they’d talked about other things, too. Now Ellen felt as if she could probably tell Penny anything. She wondered if she could tell her about how annoying Mrs. Biggars was.

  But not right now. Now she wanted to help Penny arrange these great mirror balls, if Penny would let her. She’d been waiting two weeks for Penny to show them to her.

  She edged closer to the railing between the two decks. “Can I help?”

  Penny had just picked up the biggest gazing ball, a fancy blue-green-purple one that looked like a big circle of magical water. It was obviously really heavy.

  “Actually, that would be great!” Penny frowned at the ball. “I forgot the stand inside. Would you mind grabbing it for me? It’s in a box next to the kitchen table.”

  Ellen nodded and eagerly jumped over the railing. She loved to be a part of Penny’s projects, and she loved to go in Penny’s house. It was beautiful, and all the walls had paintings on them. The house didn’t smell like perfume and little bowls of sachet, the way her mom’s house always used to. Stephanie’s house smelled like that, too, and sometimes it made Ellen sneeze.

  Instead, Penny’s house smelled cleaner. Like fresh flowers and oil paints and clean sheets. Like a summer wind had just blown through.

  Ellen poked her head in first, checking the walls before she went any farther. She always did that. It was odd, but she always got excited when Penny put a new picture up.

  But, at least from here, the only new picture she could see was on the refrigerator. It was really just a bunch of colorful doodles on a piece of sketch paper, but Ellen was curious anyhow. She went into the little kitchen nook, which was just like her own at home—maybe that’s why she always felt so comfortable in Penny’s house.

  Anyhow, when she looked closer she saw that it was really just a list that Penny had drawn pictures all over. A blue bird at the top, and some vines and random sketches of horses and canoes and stuff at the bottom.

  Why decorate a list so much? It must be pretty special. It wasn’t really a grocery list, or any normal kind of list. The Risk-it List, it said at the top, and below that the numbers one through twelve, with things written after them. Things to do, like get a haircut or take a picture of somebody famous.

  So just a to-do list. At first, Ellen fought a feeling of disappointment, but then she found herself curious to see what Penny thought was cool and fun to do. She had often thought about asking her dad to invite Penny to go with them when they had a picnic, or a hike, but she wasn’t sure Penny would say yes.

  Some of the twelve things had already been crossed off—like “buy place in Silverdell.” Others hadn’t. But one of them—“Hot air balloon (fear of heights)”—had a date scribbled next to it, and five exclamation points. The date was tomorrow. Saturday, August 23, 9:00 a.m.

  Ellen kept going. Number Ten had been crossed off so hard and black Ellen couldn’t tell what it said. But later... Oooh, was Penny really going to get a tattoo?

  Some of the stuff seemed pretty expensive for a woman who lived in such a tiny house and probably didn’t have much money. Like, at the end, for Number Twelve, Penny had more crossed-off words, and then just the one word, “Sailboat,” with a heart next to it.
<
br />   Sailboats cost a whole lot.

  “Hey, I’m about to drop this on my toe! Is the stand not in the kitchen after all?”

  Ellen’s cheeks flushed. Ashamed to have been prying, and sorry that she’d left Penny holding that heavy ball, she scooped up the stand and raced outside with it.

  “Thank goodness!” But Penny was still smiling, so she wasn’t mad that Ellen had been dawdling. Ellen hadn’t ever seen her mad, actually—which was more than she could say for her own mother. Mom had been pretty easy to set off, especially when she was trying to hide how angry she was with Dad.

  “Can you put it over there, by the table?”

  Ellen stood the metal base in the corner, where she knew it would look prettiest. Groaning, Penny loaded the ball onto the stand, rolling it into its cradle. It rocked gently, then settled securely.

  They both stood back, admiring the effect.

  “Thanks,” Penny said. “I think I like it here. How about you?”

  “I think it looks amazing.”

  It really did. It reflected blue sky on one side, and on the other it caught one little curve of the creek. The constant movement of the reflected water made the gazing ball seem alive.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Ellen saw Mrs. Biggars open the kitchen door and poke her head out, checking on her. Like the rounds at a jail. Bed check every hour, on the hour.

  Darn it. She’d have to go in soon, and she could hardly stand the thought of being trapped in there with Mrs. Biggars. She suddenly, passionately wished Penny could be her babysitter instead.

  But Dad was obviously never going to ask Penny to babysit again. And that was Ellen’s own fault. She’d been bad, and she’d made Penny look like a bad babysitter.

  She started to apologize for making such a mess of things. She stopped herself at the last minute, though, realizing it might sound like she thought babysitting her was some kind of special thing everybody wanted to do.

  Maybe, she realized sadly, Penny was glad she didn’t have to. Maybe Penny thought she was a brat, like her Dad did. If only she had more time, away from Mrs. Biggars, to show Penny that she wasn’t always like that.

  “Are you going to be out here painting tomorrow?” Ellen knew the answer already, because she’d looked at that list. But she tried to sound totally innocent.

  Penny shook her head. “Not tomorrow. I’ve got quite an adventure planned for tomorrow. I’m going on a hot air balloon ride!”

  Ellen made an impressed, envious sound. She hoped she was a good enough actress to pull this off. She would be ashamed if Penny knew she’d snooped at her private list.

  “Oh, that sounds awesome. I’ve never been on a hot air balloon.”

  Then she waited, holding her breath, wondering if Penny might invite her. But Penny was still fiddling with the smaller gazing balls, rearranging them so that they caught the sunlight better, or made prettier color combinations.

  “Where does the hot air balloon take off from?” Ellen was pushing, but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to be a part of Penny’s adventure so bad. “Whose hot air balloon is it?”

  “It’s called Air Adventures. And it’s over by Montrose, about half an hour from here, I guess. Bell River has an arrangement with their company so that we can bring our guests over as a day trip.”

  “So it’s not some private thing? Can anybody go?”

  “Sure.” Penny laughed and ran her hand through her hair. “Anybody brave enough, that is. Frankly, I’m terrified—and I just get more terrified the closer it gets. I hope I don’t chicken out at the last minute.”

  Ellen couldn’t quite believe Penny was scared of anything. She seemed so comfortable with herself. She did all kinds of things that Ellen found terrifying. Think how she took that needle out of Ellen’s ear, for instance. And she rode horses over at her family’s dude ranch a lot. Ellen was scared to death of horses.

  Penny could paint right out in the open, too. She didn’t seem to worry whether other people thought she was any good, or whether they thought she was weird.

  And she always wore such cool clothes. She wore colorful, flowing dresses, or narrow pants with loose green sweaters that fell off one shoulder and sagged in the most comfortable-looking way. She never seemed to feel self-conscious about looking different. It never seemed to occur to her that she should wear what everyone else wore.

  Plus, she was the only grown-up woman Ellen had ever met who didn’t wear makeup, not even lipstick. And yet somehow she managed to still be the prettiest woman Ellen had ever seen.

  Except her mom, of course.

  It made Ellen feel odd inside, kind of squirmy and inferior, to imagine what Penny would say if she learned Ellen had tried to steal something as dumb as a lipstick. Penny would never understand doing something really wrong just to impress a mean girl like Stephanie.

  She’d never understand being desperate to fit in.

  “I can’t picture you being scared of anything,” Ellen said impulsively. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud. But she wished Penny would explain where that magical ability to just be yourself came from. She wished Penny could teach her not to care what other people thought. “You seem very brave.”

  Penny smiled, but to Ellen’s surprise the smile had something sad inside it.

  “Well, you know what they say about courage,” she said, touching the big blue-and-green gazing ball with one hand, as if she needed to steady herself on it. “It doesn’t mean you aren’t ever afraid to do something. It means you can be absolutely petrified, but you do it anyhow.”

  * * *

  SATURDAY MORNING CAME far too early for Max. He stifled a yawn, hoping Ellen wouldn’t see it. He was exhausted, having stayed up half the night trying to incorporate Acton Adams’s ridiculous requests into the resort’s design.

  But he didn’t want Ellen to know that. She knew it was his habit to sleep a little later on Saturdays—at least until eight or so—and he wouldn’t want her to think he resented giving up that luxury today.

  He didn’t.

  In fact, sleep was the last thing on his mind. His daughter had come to him last night, expressing a desire, out of nowhere, to take a hot air balloon ride. Even more amazingly, she wanted to take it with him.

  So by God, he was going to make it happen.

  If he could just find the darn hot air balloon company’s building. And they had to find it in the next ten minutes, or else they’d miss the 9:00 a.m. ride.

  For some reason getting on that balloon—and only that balloon—had become the most important thing in Ellen’s world. Until he got home last night, and she began lobbying him, he’d had no idea she even knew what a hot air balloon was, much less cherished a dream of riding in one.

  It was a beautiful morning for it, though. Cool, but not cold. A cloudless blue sky that went on forever. Hardly any wind, which seemed like a good thing, though he really didn’t know much about ballooning himself.

  And he darn sure didn’t know how to get to this Air Adventures Incorporated place. They’d given him directions over the phone, when he made the reservations. Plus, he’d asked at the gas station as he left town, just to be sure.

  But in these small towns directions were iffy, at best. People said things like, “It’s about half a mile beyond where that old elm was struck by lightning in ’eighty-five,” or “Just park between the riverbank and that big rock they can’t get rid of.”

  Every landmark was where something used to be, or where something memorable had happened long ago. If you didn’t have a history here, you were out of luck.

  “There it is!” Ellen bounced in her seat, pointing through the window. “See?”

  Max had spotted the small Air Adventures trailer, too, but he let her have the victory. He turned the wheel, smiling—not just because he was glad to find the plac
e, but also because that uninhibited eagerness used to be a hallmark of his little girl.

  Maybe five years ago, Ellen had been nothing but laughter and enthusiasm. His nickname for her had been Bubbles. What had happened to all that delightful effervescence?

  Was it his promotion, which necessitated the extra traveling? Was it sending her to that ridiculously snobbish elementary school, full of affected, world-weary first-graders? Was it Lydia, or the loss of Lydia? Was it Mexico?

  Perhaps it had been all those things.

  But identifying the cause, assigning the blame, was pointless. Somewhere along the way, his family had taken a wrong turn on the happiness road, and they’d been wandering in the darkness ever since. The only important thing was finding their way back.

  “Good eye,” he said, careful not to let it sound patronizing. “If we’d driven past that trailer, we would have been in Nevada before we realized we were lost.”

  She was clearly not listening. She leaned against her door, craning her neck and squinting, as if the balloon would be difficult to spot and she didn’t want to miss it.

  Hardly. As they pulled in, cresting a gentle, rounded rise in the land, they suddenly saw the balloon, lying nearly flat on the ground, stretched out in huge, impressive stripes of bold color—blue and yellow and red and white.

  “Is that...” Ellen stopped bouncing. “Is that...”

  “That’s the balloon. They haven’t filled it yet, which is a good thing, because it means we’re not too late.”

  He found a good parking space, though a surprising number of cars already filled the small lot beside the trailer. A few yards away from the balloon and its impossibly small wicker basket, a large knot of people in long sleeves and sweaters milled around, avidly watching the process.

  Max had been told that the basket held four, and they’d be going up with one or two others. No way that whole crowd was going with them. Must be people waiting for the next flight, or maybe other members of Air Adventures staff.