Heartbreak Ranch

by Kylie Brant

  “How come this guy’s in the foaling barn?” she asked.

  Jed fed the colt one last handful of oats, then shook his head at the horse. The beast would eat all day if allowed.

  “He snagged a back fetlock on the barbed wire. Got a nasty gash. The vet came and took care of him, but we need to keep it clean for a few days. Then he can go back to the fields with his mama.”

  They walked through the nearly empty barn. Although it was usually full in spring, most of the foals were pastured with their mothers when they were a few weeks old.

  When they exited, Jed led her to a gleaming red, half-ton pickup. “Hop in. I want to take you to the new cattle barn we’re building, and it’s a ways from here.” He could see the slight stiffening in her shoulders before she shook her head.

  “I don’t mind walking.”

  He stopped in his tracks and looked hard at her. He wasn’t used to seeing her this edgy, and a sudden thought bloomed and twisted through him viciously. He strode over to her and took her elbow, forced her to face him.

  “What’s going on, Julianne?”

  Her eyes met his, startled, wary. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been nothing but nerves every time I’m within two feet of you. Is it me? Or any man?” His voice went lethal as he voiced the questions, and his fingers tightened unconsciously. “Was it Richfield? Did he hurt you?”

  Her gaze widened as she caught his meaning, and she shook her head vehemently. “No, Jed, nothing like that. Andrew had more than his share of vices, but hitting women wasn’t one of them.”

  He dropped his hand as relief coursed through him. “Then what?”

  She lifted a shoulder. “I guess you’re right. I’ve been a little nerved-up lately. But it doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

  Unconvinced, he continued to watch her, but her eyes were cool and dark, revealing nothing. Out of patience, he turned away. If there was something riding Julianne, he wouldn’t find out about it until she was good and ready to tell him. The last several months had proved that.

  “Get in the truck, then,” he said brusquely. “I’ll show you the barn we’ve got going up. It was supposed to be done last week, but they ran into some supply problems and missed the deadline.” He opened the door and swung into the truck. After the briefest of hesitations, she complied. He drove the quarter of a mile to the structure.

  The building was little more than a massive skeleton. As they walked up to the framed building, she said disbelievingly, “Good Lord, it’s going to be huge. What in heaven’s name is it for?”

  “We’ve added to the herd, and we’ll be expanding more.” He pointed to a far corner that had been framed off. “I have plans to leave space there for a veterinary office. When there’s a problem, we’ll have some basic equipment right here.”

  “That will be convenient. Is Mike Lytrell still the vet around here?”

  Jed nodded. “He’s got an assistant now. He wanted to take it a little easier. Haven’t noticed that he’s slowed down much, though. We’ll still be using the old barn, too. We’re going to need them both.”

  “This is wonderful,” she said, turning a shining gaze on him. The sincerity in her voice uncurled a ribbon of pride deep inside him. Then she continued, and just as quickly the feeling withered. “I can’t believe that Harley is finally taking an interest in the ranch again. All these changes…” She indicated the structure with one hand.

  “He must be planning to come back here for good.”

  He chose his words with care. “I don’t really know what Harley’s immediate plans are. I know he wants to see you, though. I was surprised when you said he didn’t show up in Florida.”

  She tilted her head back to examine the high ceiling. “I’d much rather see him here. I’m glad he didn’t choose to put up another metal building. We have enough of those, and I think a wooden structure adds character, don’t you?”

  “Jules…”

  “I wonder why Harley didn’t mention his plans for the ranch when I talked to him.” Then, just as quickly, she shook her head, laughed a little. “What am I saying? I couldn’t keep him on the phone long enough to say much more than hello.” She looked at Jed. “Did he give you any indication of when he’d be moving back?”

  Jed stared hard at those wide brown eyes, that expressive face, and silently cursed. Not for the first time, he damned Harley Buchanan to hell. “Jules, listen to me. Your father isn’t coming home. At least, not to stay.”

  She blinked slowly, and a feeling of guilt pooled in Jed’s chest, sprouting fangs as the hope faded from her eyes.

  “But…why would he do all this, then? Why would he care about expanding the herd and improving the conditions here, if…”

  “Harley isn’t making all these improvements. I am.” He looked away, wished for a cigarette. He didn’t reach for one though. They were too close to the new structure, and caution on a ranch was ingrained in him. “My adoptive father, Luther Templeton, died last year.”

  She nodded slowly. “You mentioned that on one of your visits to Florida.”

  “He left me everything.” Even now, the knowledge gave him no pleasure. The man had never been Jed’s father in any real sense of the word. Being named his heir had seemed the height of irony. “I guess he didn’t want his estate to go to one of his ex-wives.” He gave a shrug, as if it didn’t matter. And it didn’t. Not anymore.

  He consciously gentled his voice when he looked back at Julianne. “But that’s the money being poured into the ranch, Jules. Not Harley’s.”

  Her face went smooth and blank. “Well, that makes sense, I guess. It was foolish to think he was going to change his priorities at this point in his life, wasn’t it?” She turned and walked back toward the entrance, and Jed followed reluctantly. Although he knew it was illogical, he couldn’t help feeling responsible for this latest disappointment of hers.

  Harley, he thought grimly, you’re lucky you’re not close enough for me to get my hands around your throat. The first thing he was going to do after supper, he vowed, was to call the man again and demand that he hop the next plane out here. There was a great deal he owed his daughter. It was time someone forced him to live up to his obligations.

  Julianne didn’t mention her father for the rest of the day. She rode with Jed, inspecting the various outbuildings, listening and asking questions when he filled her in on the changes that had been made, and the reasons for them. As he pulled up in the ranch yard, he reflected that he’d talked more that afternoon than he had in a week. The ranch was one subject that he and Julianne had never had problems communicating about.

  He stopped in the mudroom off the kitchen to get rid of his dusty boots, and Julianne went to her room to change for dinner. It was just too damn bad, he thought grimly, as he grasped the heel of a boot and tugged, that the two of them couldn’t seem to talk about any other subject as calmly.

  The second boot joined the first, then he headed upstairs for a shower and change. Like it or not, the time was rapidly approaching when they were going to have to broach some ticklish subjects.

  The certainty of the fireworks to follow made his temples thud in painful anticipation.

  “Great meal, as usual, Annie.” Julianne placed the last dish in the dishwasher, filled the receptacle with soap and turned it on. The other woman finished wiping off the table, and Julianne sat down again, a sense of comfortable familiarity flowing through her.

  After Harley’s failed marriage, his gambling excursions had grown more frequent and longer in duration. He’d failed to return at all from one trip he took when Julianne had been sixteen. With single-minded focus, he’d chased one streak after another: cards, horses, casinos. There had really been no one moment when the realization had hit her that her father, such as he was, wasn’t coming back to live at the ranch. Certainly, he’d never come right out and said so. But there had always been another game, another race, another high stakes purse to go after. Life on the ranch had moved se
amlessly on.

  One night, instead of eating in the dining room with its mile-long walnut table and formal wallpaper, Annie had set their places in the kitchen with her. Jed and Julianne had eaten there ever since. She remembered many dark winter nights when she and Annie had sat here after dinner playing rummy or just talking, while the savage Montana wind had blown snowdrifts up to the eaves of the house. There was still a cozy feel to the kitchen; still a sense of coming home.

  “Sit down, Annie. Everything’s done. Just relax.”

  The woman closed the cupboard she’d been wiping out.

  “Easy for you to say,” she replied, with no sting in her voice. “This blasted house doesn’t clean itself, you know, and it’s not getting any smaller.” She started to scrub at the counter with brisk movements. When Julianne rose to help, she was waved away, so she sank back into her chair.

  Once dinner was over, Jed had retired to the study, a habit Julianne remembered from her teen years. After putting in a twelve-hour day on the ranch, there were always markets to be checked, a mound of paperwork to be done. With a start, she realized that he had taken over the role of running the ranch long before Harley had left. Certainly he’d played a part in its daily operations since he’d first come here. Harley had always been content to leave the major decisions to Gabe, who acted as the ranch foreman. When Jed had shown the interest and the knowledge, he’d gradually been given more authority. She supposed she would have been jealous if she didn’t recognize exactly where the ranch would be today without Jed’s management.

  When she thought of how much he had invested in the place, financially, physically and emotionally, she felt the initial tuggings of guilt. She’d never thought about how her plans for coming back here might affect Jed. Even as a young child she’d been aware of Harley’s pendulum of luck. He’d made and lost more fortunes than even he could keep track of. But after years of pestering, she’d gotten his promise that he’d hang on to the ranch for her, and she’d made certain he’d kept his vow.

  This place was a part of her, as it was a part of Jed. He’d been the one to keep it running in her absence; he’d been the one to expand its operations. She stroked the wood grain on the table absently. She should have known better than to assume that Harley was responsible for the latest improvements at the ranch. He’d always been more anxious to siphon money away than to sink any into it. Jed must have had to work some magic on the man over the years to keep him from bankrupting the place. And now it was his own money he was sinking into it to keep it running.

  She pushed aside the sense of unease. Nothing had to change; surely they could co-exist here peacefully enough. Today had proved that they could get along remarkably well, when they were talking about the ranch. And that was all she was willing to talk to him about.

  She almost winced as she remembered the conclusion he’d drawn about the reason for her edginess. There were a great many things she could and did blame Andrew for, but he wasn’t the cause of her show of nerves today. The cause had been Jed himself.

  Julianne raised an unsteady hand to push her hair back from her face. It must be the recent stress that had her so unnaturally aware of the man, so skittish around him. Whatever the cause, she was anxious to return to the soothing routine of life on the ranch. There was safety in resuming the old familiar relationship with Jed. Her lips quirked. However that was defined.

  Annie finished scrubbing the kitchen spotless and laid the washrag over the faucet with a sigh. “Should I get the cards out?”

  “Go ahead, if you’re that anxious to get fleeced.”

  She took a deck of cards, a pen and paper from a drawer and seated herself across from Julianne. “As I recollect, I cleaned you out more often than not.”

  Grinning, Julianne shook her head. “Age will do that to a person’s memory, I hear. But if it makes you feel better to think so…” She dodged the pencil Annie flicked in her direction.

  “Age, is it? We’ll see about that, miss. Same stakes as usual—a penny a point. Go ahead and deal those cards. And none from the bottom, mind you. I was on to your tricks long ago.”

  Expertly, Julianne shuffled and dealt the cards. She picked them up and arranged them, and the two settled down for some friendly competition.

  “I talked to Gabe today,” Julianne said, drawing a card and discarding another.

  “Good. He’s missed you something fierce, just like the rest of us. I know you called him when you could, but he didn’t get down to Florida to see you like Jed and I did. He’s going to enjoy having you back.”

  Memories of those trips to Florida had discomfort flickering. Jed had brought Annie out at least twice a year. After the first couple of years of her marriage, it had gotten more and more difficult to hide her dissatisfaction with it. And certainly impossible to admit that the dire warnings Jed had uttered about her choice in husbands had proved true.

  Annie picked up one of Julianne’s discards with a sound of satisfaction, and Julianne made a mental note of what the woman was collecting. “Did you roam the ranch over today?”

  Julianne nodded, then corrected herself. “Well, I got a start, anyway. Sounds like Jed has some big plans for changes.”

  The other woman nodded. “He’s determined, our Jed is. I don’t think there’s anything he can’t do once he sets his mind to it. He’s a good man—takes care of his own.” Studying her cards, she clucked her tongue absently. A sign, if Julianne remembered correctly, that the woman was close to gin.

  Annie drew another card. “You might be surprised to find out how much folks around these parts have started depending on him. Looking up to him.”

  She managed, barely, to avoid rolling her eyes. “I’m sure he enjoys that. I know he always expected me to treat his opinion as if it had been brought down from a mountain, chiseled on stone tablets.”

  “Now, Julianne,” Annie scolded, “that’s just not true. Jed’s got some mighty fine qualities, if you’d just take the time to remember.”

  Tilting her head, she pretended to try to summon those memories Annie spoke of. “I remember that his blood runs hot, and so does his temper. But it’s when he’s the coolest, the quietest, that he’s the most dangerous.” She remembered other things, too, memories much more recent. The way his hair still fell across his forehead despite his efforts to comb it back severely; the flex of the muscles in his arms when he’d dragged the heavy gates open so the truck could enter the north pasture; the heat that had transferred from his hands to her skin when she’d been unable to avoid his help getting back into the pickup.

  She ducked her head to hide the color she could feel blooming in her cheeks. Those certainly weren’t the type of memories to be shared with Annie. Or harbored herself, for that matter.

  “Neither of you ever did give the other an ounce of credit if it could be helped. But try as you might to deny it, you always looked up to Jed, just as he watched out for you. That protective streak of his is still a mile wide. Why, after he and his lawyer visited a few of those newspapers down there in Florida, they stopped including you in that trash they were printing soon enough.”

  The air clogged in Julianne’s lungs, and for a moment she forgot to breathe. Forcing the words through stiffened lips, Julianne said, “Jed…was in Florida…before the divorce?”

  Annie looked up quickly, regret shimmering in her dark eyes. “Oh, I’m sorry, honey, I meant not to tell you. Jed thought it best if we kept it to ourselves.”

  “Did he?” Emotion bubbled and churned just beneath the surface. Through the tangle of sick feelings circling in her stomach, she plucked out anger and focused on it. It was infinitely more comfortable to fix on her fury than the shamed panic that arose when she thought of Jed hearing all the messy details of the scandal that had rocked her life. Details that she’d gone to considerable length to be sure no one here would have to know. “I don’t suppose it occurred to him that if I’d needed his help I would have called.”

  Annie gave up all pretense o
f playing cards, her discomfiture apparent. “I don’t know how he got wind of it, honey. But you know he takes all those newspapers for the stock reports. He must have read something about it in one of them. And I have to tell you, I’ve never seen the man more enraged than he was that day. He just stomped upstairs, threw some clothes into a bag and hopped on a plane.”

  “Without a word to me,” Julianne murmured. The cards dropped from her nerveless fingers. That entire scene yesterday in her bedroom took on new meaning. He’d led her to believe that the facts he knew of the debacle with Andrew had been gleaned from the media. The thought of him down there, in the midst of all the rumors and innuendoes, made nausea roll greasily in her stomach.

  Reaching across the table, Annie grasped her hand. “He was in a temper, Julianne, some of it aimed at you for not telling him. I’ve never seen him in such a state. It was better he handled it the way he did.”

  She concentrated on moving air in and out of her lungs. That single act seemed to require a great deal of attention. “Maybe you ought to tell me what else you know.”

  Annie sat back in her chair. “I don’t think…”

  “I do,” she interrupted flatly.

  Annie regarded her steadily, her gaze reflecting all the wisdom and compassion she’d drawn on to raise Julianne to adulthood. “He hired a fancy lawyer out there, and they paid some visits to a few of the newspapers, threatening libel lawsuits. Since most of the details they were writing about you were speculation, they backed off quickly enough. And then he went to see Andrew.”

  Shock held her still. “Andrew? Why?”

  Annie shook her head. “Jed didn’t share the details with me. But there was murder in his eye when he left here. I don’t think things went too well for your ex.”

  Julianne closed her eyes, embarrassment clawing up inside her. Sir Jed, riding to the rescue. He wouldn’t have trusted that she would be capable of dealing with the mess on her own. No, he’d just figured that spoiled, frivolous Julianne, party girl of the Keys, lacked the intelligence to extricate herself from the situation.