Snowed in at the Ranch

by Cara Colter

  Finally, they broke from the woods and crossed alpine meadows on fire with wildflowers, still going up.

  The horses picked their way through rocks, and then Ty stopped and offered her his hand as she dismounted.

  Hands intertwined, they climbed up yet some more, scrambling over rocks, his hand helping her, pulling her.

  And finally they stood at the very crest.

  Amy could barely breathe. She was standing on top of the world. She could see everything for a hundred miles. Ty’s house and the old homestead were like dollhouses far down in the valley. Contented cattle grazed on new grass.

  And he stood beside her, strong and sure. The strongest man she had ever met.

  Only, when she pulled her eyes from the panorama of the view, that strong man was on one knee before her.

  He had a ring box in his hand and was gazing up at her with a look in his eyes that dimmed the panorama of what she had just seen.

  “Amy,” he said softly, “you know I am not a religious man. But even so, I thank God as I know Him every single day for that wrong turn you took in the road.

  “I thank Him for bringing me your smile and your laughter and your ability to listen and your ability to see things in me that I had never seen in myself.

  “I thank Him for bringing your son into my world and for allowing me to know what it is to be a dad to that little boy.”

  To her amazement, the strongest man she had ever known suddenly looked shy.

  And maybe even a little scared.

  His gaze drifted from her to the view. “Do you remember when I read The Iliad?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Achilles had to choose between nostos, homecoming or kleos, glory. If I had that choice to make? I would choose homecoming. I would choose coming home to you.

  “I cannot imagine my world without you. Amy Mitchell, I am asking if you would consider being my wife?”

  She took his chin in her hand and drew his gaze back to her. In the sapphire of his eyes she saw her whole world and the future beyond.

  She saw laughing babies and cattle and horses, she saw books and movies and heated discussions and quiet moments.

  She saw what she had yearned for her entire life.

  In the quiet strength in his eyes, she saw a place where neither of them ever had to be alone again.

  She saw home.

  She whispered yes, and he leaped to his feet and gathered her in his arms and then he lifted her and swung her around and shouted “yes” over and over and over again.

  And his affirmation of love and of life, his shouted yes, reverberated off the mountains and the valleys, and echoed back to them and surrounded them.

  In glory.

  “Some of us don’t have to make a choice at all,” Amy told the man she loved. “Some of us are allowed homecoming and glory.”

  EPILOGUE

  TY came out of the barn, leading the pony. It was saddled—that same saddle that he had given Jamey all those years ago. The pony had a red plaid Christmas ribbon woven into his mane and was tossing his head because of the red bow attached to his thick forelock.

  His father disliked ponies, and had argued that for Christmas they should give Jamey a horse, just as he had given Ty a horse when he turned five.

  But Ty had liked this pony. It had a soft eye and a willing way, and it was pretty with its lush black mane and the big brown spots all over it.

  He sniffed the air as he moved toward the homestead place. Snow. It was going to snow very soon.

  He hoped not too much.

  A man, he thought wryly, should be careful what he wished for.

  Because, really, he did not want to get snowed in right now.

  The old homestead place had been his and Amy’s for just over a year. After Amy and Ty’s twin girls, Millie and Becky, had been born, his dad and Beth had suggested the trade. The new house was more practical for the older Hallidays, with its one floor and two bedrooms. It had been easy to make it one hundred per cent wheelchair accessible.

  And the old homestead place had the four bedrooms upstairs that had been closed up for years.

  Amy had taken that on as if she was on an episode of Save This Old House. The old homestead house was refurbished to shining. Every nook and cranny had her stamp on it, her love sewn into drapes and cushions and pot holders...and little pink baby blankets.

  Now, on Christmas Eve, it was filled to the rafters. Her parents were here. And Jamey’s grandparents.

  For a long time, Ty hadn’t known quite how to forgive his mother for her abandonment and indifference. But then, at Amy’s suggestion, they had found out every single thing they could about her.

  And they had discovered he had a grandmother, and an aunt and uncle, and a passel of cousins.

  His grandmother, Elizabeth, had been shocked that she had a grandson. Since her daughter had been in her teens she had disappeared for long lengths of time and would eventually resurface with no explanation about where she’d been.

  Elizabeth was desperate to meet Ty. When they had first met, she had kept touching his face and weeping. They had connected almost instantly, and through stories and pictures and shared letters, unraveled the mystery of his mother.

  If the mystery of mental illness could ever really be solved.

  Millicent Williams had always bounced between two extremes. On one side, his grandmother told him, her beautiful daughter had been high energy, on fire, talkative, charming, brilliant, sensitive, creative, passionate, charismatic. On the other side she had been needy, manipulative, darkly sensual, secretive, jealous, selfish, conniving, and capable of unbelievable cruelty in her ability to use people and discard them.

  Ty had learned his mother had suffered a disease of extreme self-centeredness where everything and everybody in the world were perceived only through the filter of how they could benefit her.

  And because of that, she alienated everyone she had ever touched, had ended up alone, increasingly desperate, highly dependent on the alcohol and prescription drugs that had led to her demise.

  It was a tragic tale of undiagnosed illness.

  When Ty looked at pictures of her, he felt a strange and gentle tenderness for the woman he had never known. He knew that he looked at his own life differently because of her.

  Jamey, as far as he could tell, came from generations of solid, pragmatic ambitious people. But as he watched his own girls, the twins, just turning one, he sometimes found himself wondering how early you would see signs of it.

  His father had told him, even though he had never defined it as mental illness, he had watched him the same way.

  Nowadays, at least, there was more chance of it being caught. Treated. Not ignored or mislabeled.

  His mother had just been considered wild. And unpredictable. Untamable. A lot of people had given up on her way before his dad entered the picture.

  When he thought of her now, he felt his heart soften with sympathy. There was no anger left for the woman who had abandoned him with hardly a look back. He felt he loved her, despite it all.

  And maybe that’s what forgiveness finally was.

  The ability to see it all in a larger way.

  The lights from the windows of his house poured out over the snow, golden and warm. He could smell the wreath on the door. Amy had insisted on Christmas lights, and the whole place was lit up in traditional red and green. It had taken him about three weeks to get all those lights up tracing the lines of the roof, and every time he’d wanted to just forget it, he’d look down at Amy, tumbling around in the snow beneath him with the twins and Jamey, their happiness echoing on the air.

  So hanging a few Christmas lights was a small price to pay.

  The front door opened, and the noise from inside spilled out. Laughte
r, conversation. His family.

  And wasn’t it what he had always wanted?

  Be careful what you wish for, he told himself again wryly. He and Amy would sleep on a mattress on the floor of the back porch tonight, snuggled together to keep warm because they had given up their bed to Amy’s parents, Dolores and Adam, who were recovering from jet lag.

  Cynthia and John had the guest room. Before she was done, Cynthia would refold every single towel in the house and arrange the tinned goods in order of their size, labels to the front. She would tut disapprovingly over baby clothes put in drawers without being pressed.

  Amy’s parents would bring out flowcharts and trap him into a discussion about a business plan for the ranch, and all their great ideas to make Baby Bytes the most visited website on the planet. They didn’t understand that Ty was working at nights online to get a university degree for the simple love of learning, not so that he could turn the ranch into the most viable business enterprise ever.

  Cynthia, John, Dolores, Adam, none of them got the concept of enough. That you could have enough and be enough. That you could quit trying so hard and just enjoy the plentiful gifts life had given you.

  He saw Amy standing on the porch, hugging herself, watching his approach.

  She was rounder than she had been, her curves full and womanly. Her hair had inexplicably lost its curl after the twins were born, and it hung in a soft, lush wave to her shoulder.

  But her eyes remained the same, and the curve of her mouth.

  A long time ago, without knowing, he had ridden through the dark to a light she had put on, without knowing it was for him.

  At the beginning of all of this, he would have said that he and Amy were about as different as two people could be. She was city. He was country. She was small. He was big. He was rugged. She was refined. She knew all about computers and cell phones, and he used technology only reluctantly, as a means to an end. He liked nothing better than a good book. She liked nothing better than a good movie.

  But underneath all those superficial differences, Ty knew he and Amy had the most important things in common.

  They had both wished for that place called home.

  And at one time, they had both given up on that wish.

  It almost seemed the universe was offended by this refusal of its greatest gift, the refusal to love.

  It almost seemed as if the universe had conspired to bring them together, had put Amy on the wrong road, that led them both to the right place. The only place.

  She flew down off the steps and snugged under his arm, petting the pony.

  “Hello, Sampson,” she crooned to their newest family member.

  One small, perfect moment, just the two of them, and then the door flew open and Jamey came flying down the steps, screaming the word Ty never ever got tired of hearing.

  “Papa!”

  Behind him, Cynthia appeared, one of the twins, Becky, in her arms, freshly washed and a new bow in her hair. “A pony? What are you thinking? Jamey is just a baby! Surely, he’ll be killed.”

  And Amy’s mother, Dolores, had the other baby, Millie, who was clinging to her early gift of a Baby Einstein calculator.

  Dolores nodded her agreement with Cynthia, and added, “I can’t imagine what it costs to feed one of those for ten years or so.”

  Ty didn’t even bother telling her a pony, if you were lucky, could live for thirty-five years.

  John and Amy’s father spilled out onto the porch, too, arguing about stock prices, not even aware there was a pony in the yard. Or three grandchildren nearby.

  His father wheeled out and scowled across the yard at them. “A pony! Sheesh. I told you to get a horse. I’ve never met a pony I liked.”

  Be careful what you wish for, Ty told himself, remembering that long-ago wish to be part of a family.

  He showed Jamey how to use the stirrup, refused to help him, even when his grandmother Elizabeth called out, “Ty, lift him up, for Pete’s sake. It’s too hard for him to get on by himself.”

  Beth called from in the house, “I’ve nearly got dinner ready. Don’t be out there too long. Jamey doesn’t have a coat on!”

  Yes, be careful what you wish for.

  Jamey, with a hoot of pure satisfaction, managed to heave himself into the saddle. Ty passed him the reins.

  “You are not going to let him ride by himself!” Cynthia cried.

  But he was going to let him ride by himself. As he watched the boy who was the son of his heart, Amy, who had once been afraid of everything, breathed her fearlessness after Jamey. She snuggled deeper under Ty’s arm and sighed her contentment.

  The pony stopped partway across the yard and Jamey flailed away, to no avail, trying to get the pony moving with his heels.

  “I told you,” Hunter said grumpily, “you should have got him a real horse.”

  The smile pulled harder on Ty’s mouth.

  He had wished for this thing called family.

  And he would not change a thing.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt of The Cowboy Comes Home by Patricia Thayer!

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  CHAPTER ONE

  WILLIE NELSON’S “On the Road Again” poured out of the open windows of Johnny Jameson’s truck as he drove along the country road. It was January in Texas, but he was energized by the cold air, knowing the temperature would rise to triple digits soon enough come spring. No matter what the weather, he’d much rather be outside than cooped up indoors.

  He always liked to keep on the move. Never felt the need to stay at any one place too long. More times than he could count, he had lived out of his vehicle.

  He’d been lucky lately. The jobs came to him, and he could pick and choose what he wanted to take on. That was the reason he was coming to Larkville. He’d been intrigued when he’d heard the job description. Also because Clay Calhoun and his prize quarter horses were legendary in Texas. But before he got too excited, he wanted to assess the situation before he made any promises to the man, or to the job. If there still was a job, since the offer had been made months ago.

  He’d been delayed by a stubborn colt, but after he’d finished training it, the thoroughbred was worth what the owner had paid. When he’d called Calhoun to let him know he’d be delayed with previous commitments, he’d ended up talking to Clay’s son Holt, who’d explained that his father was ill, but assured him that the job would be there whenever he arrived at the ranch. Johnny had said to expect him around the first of the year.

  As it turned out it was the first of the year, and he was finally headed for the Double Bar C Ranch. He glanced in the rearview mirror at his trailer, and his precious cargo, Risky Business, his three-year-old roan stallion.

  His attention focused back ahead and on the southeast Texas landscape of rolling hills and pastures that had the yellow hue of winter. He looked toward a group of bare trees and a cattle water trough nestled at the base. There was also a visitor, one beautiful black stallion. The animal reared up, fighting to get loose from his lead rope that seemed to be caught on something.

 
He glanced around to see if anyone was nearby. Not a soul. He pulled his truck to the side of the road and got out. After walking back to check his own horse, he headed toward the open pasture to hopefully save another.

  * * *

  Jess knew she was going to be blamed for this.

  Since her brother Holt was away on personal business, her sister, Megan, was away at school and her brother Nate was in the army, she was the one family member around to handle Double Bar C emergencies. Even though she really wasn’t involved in the day-to-day running of the ranch—Holt was in charge of that—she knew finding Night Storm had to take top priority.

  The bigger problem was, how do you find, much less bring back, a rogue stallion? No one but Clay Calhoun had ever been able to handle the valuable quarter horse. Now that Dad was gone, the question was what to do with Storm.

  The ranch foreman, Wes Brogan, had decided to let the animal out to the fenced pasture, but before Wes was able to transport Storm there, the horse broke away.

  When she’d gotten the call early this morning, she immediately went to the barn, saddled up Goldie and rode out to find Storm. She’d been on a horse since she was a baby, so there wasn’t any problem keeping up with the ranch hands. To cover more ground, the crew took off in different directions of the vast Calhoun land and so Jess set off on her own.

  The Double Bar C had been in the family for generations, and her father had worked hard so it would remain with the Calhouns for many more. Big Clay had loved his horses, especially this stallion, but there had been trouble since Storm had arrived at the ranch. The valuable horse had been mistreated in the past. Eventually Storm began to trust her father somewhat, but since Clay’s death a few months back, the horse’s behavior had gotten worse and no one had been able to handle him.

  She sighed, feeling the bite of the January cold against her cheeks. She slowed her horse as they came to the rise and suddenly caught a spot of black. Taking out her binoculars, she saw the welcome sight.

  “Hallelujah!” she cried out, seeing Storm. Then she looked again and saw a man holding on to his lead rope. She didn’t recognize him as one of the hands, then she spotted a truck and trailer alongside the road.