The One (Book 1, of The Wilde Brothers, A Contemporary Western Romance)

by Eckhart, Lorhainne

  Stan Jerow and his wife, Hazel, were the hub of Post Falls. Well into their seventies, they knew everything about everyone. Stan had been close friends with Carl Spick, Margaret’s crotchety old grandfather. He frowned from behind his bifocals. “Now, I think you’re misreading things a bit there. She’s a hardnose, but Margaret’s got a heart of gold.”

  “Yeah, gold, my ass. More like gold-digger,” Joe barked. “I’ve got a mind to go back over there and pick Storm up. Last thing I need is him hurting her. She’d be coming after me next, suing me for everything.”

  “You know Margaret’s not like that,” Stan said. “She’s a good girl. Had a hard time, you know, growing up. Just give her a chance.” He called out to the back room, “Hazel, Joe’s here about the Gordon girl!”

  Hazel Jerow was the other half of the husband–wife team that ran the feed store, and she could talk anyone’s ear off for an hour, catching up on all the community gossip. She always had big curls from the rollers that she was sure to set in her thin gray hair every night.

  “Now, Joe, don’t you go fretting about Margaret,” Hazel said, tapping his arm with her bony, wrinkled hand. “She’s a tough girl. I’ve seen her take her own mama down a peg or two, and that woman has ice water flowing through her veins. If you’d seen her with Angel, what she got her to do, why, that horse follows her around like a puppy dog now.” She patted his hand this time. “Remember, Stan? Every time we go out there, she’s with that horse, talking away to it. With the way that horse responds to her, well, let’s say she’s got the touch.”

  “Touch, my ass,” Joe scoffed. “All I’ve seen is a woman who annoys the hell out of me, and that’s when she’s not tripping all over herself to run the other way.”

  Stan and Hazel exchanged a glance. “Hmm,” Stan said, and Hazel clucked her tongue. Then they both smiled in the way people do when they know something you don’t.

  “What?” Joe asked, stifling the urge to slam his fist on the counter.

  They exchanged a look again, and it was Hazel who spoke. “Well, you make the girl nervous, always have, and she’s having a rough time after what happened to that little boy.”

  “What little boy? What are you talking about?” Joe asked again.

  “The reason she’s home, some boy she was operating on. All I know is what she told me. She made a mistake on a simple surgery, a simple tumor, she said, and something went wrong. The kid couldn’t talk or recognize his parents. She’d left him brain damaged,” Hazel whispered loudly.

  Joe had known Margaret was some highfalutin surgeon, but he didn’t know why she was back in Post Falls. “I just thought she was back here, getting the place ready to sell,” he said.

  Joe remembered when old Carl Spick had died alone. He had gotten a frantic call from Stan Jerow about how Hazel had found the crotchety old guy’s decomposing body. He’d driven as if the hounds of hell were on his heels down to the Spick house, beating the emergency services, and he’d stood in the background and listened when Hazel called Margaret and told her the news. He’d even rode out on his horse when Stan Jerow asked him to and found the one hundred or so cows Carl owned. Although they were fine, with plenty of pasture to graze and a large pond to keep them watered, he rounded them up and brought them in so Stan could look after them until something else could be figured out.

  He worried about Margaret and had even come to pay his respects, offer his help, but the day of the funeral, Margaret’s high-class corporate mother had shown up at the farm in a chauffeured limousine, stirring up all kinds of shit, and he’d overheard them arguing about selling the place and money and who got what. Well, he’d walked the other way. He never thought Margaret would be a moneygrubbing high-society snob like her mother. Joe couldn’t believe it.

  “Sell? Hell, no,” Stan said, almost choking, and Hazel stared at Joe as if he had a screw loose. “She’d never sell the Spick place. She promised her grandfather. My God, Carl and Mary and their three young ’uns are buried there. That just wouldn’t be right.”

  “Well, then, why is she still here?”

  They stared at each other again, and Stan cleared his throat. “She was fired,” he said.

  Chapter Five

  The day had warmed up quite nicely. Margaret had spent two hours working Storm in the round ring, and she was breathing as hard as the horse, but by God she felt good—no, great. The first day, she had spent time watching Storm, figuring out who he was. He had a strong mind and energy, not an easy horse for someone young and green, with no self-confidence, and definitely not a horse for some cowboy who thought to control him, because that wasn’t going to happen. No, the first day for Margaret was all about small steps, and she took all of them. The second day had been better, although Storm made nothing easy. She worked hard, keeping her circle out, not letting her energy wane. Oh, he challenged her, bucking, changing directions, leaping around, showing her how strong minded he was.

  This wasn’t about overpowering him, because overpowering a twelve-hundred-pound animal wasn’t even logical. This was all about gaining trust, getting him to recognize that whatever problems or distractions were going on out there, she would protect him. Only then was change going to happen, and only through her calm, steady approach. Only one of two things happened in a ring: Either the rider took on the erratic, high-strung behavior of the horse, or the horse would eventually calm to the powerful energy of the rider. It was about who was stronger, as well as hard work. Staying focused, balanced, and well away from Storm’s hooves was a challenge, Margaret had to admit—a challenge she was enjoying every minute of, because it took her mind from her problems, from going to that lonely, dark place where she’d lived in silence for the past six months.

  On the second day, when she was covered in sweat and her thin t-shirt felt glued to her back, and every inch of her was covered in dust and grime from head to toe, and she swore her teeth were filled with so much grit that she’d be eating it for dinner, Storm turned and faced her, licking his lips. She took that one tiny gesture, because for Storm, it was a huge step toward trust. The third day was when magic truly happened. When she tossed hay into the trough for Angel and then into the round ring where she kept Storm, he stepped forward calmly, his head down, and the dynamic presence that he scared everyone with was dimmed. “Good boy,” she said, patting his side, and he let her. She quietly left him to eat, taking that huge victory with her, knowing when to quit and walk away.

  Margaret had just cleaned up the corral and was pushing a wheelbarrow of manure around the side of the shed when she heard the unmistakable purr of Joe’s monster truck. Her tan t-shirt was coated in grime, her hair pulled back in a ponytail. When the dark blue truck appeared, it sent her heart skittering again. Instead of being neighborly and friendly, she scowled as Joe slid out. She looked this time but didn’t see a blonde, and she let out a sigh of relief. Ryan climbed out of the passenger side, and Storm, who was in the riding ring, started whinnying and stomping his hooves, snorting. The whites of his eyes flared with an attitude she hadn’t seen during the time he had been with her.

  “Hadn’t heard from you. I thought you were going to call,” Joe said. He slammed his door and walked straight to her in his sexy, he-man way. All she could see was how he was with Sara, and it hurt.

  “I don’t have a phone,” she said.

  He stopped as if she’d tossed a pail of ice water on him. “You don’t have a phone, seriously?” he said, scratching his head.

  Margaret shrugged. “Hey, Ryan,” she said before lifting the wheelbarrow and continuing away from them toward the manure pile around the side of the corral, closer to the line of trees. She dumped it and looked up at Joe, who was following her with a puzzled look.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have a phone when I brought Storm over?” he said. “I asked you…”

  “No, you told me to call you. I recall I didn’t answer,” she said, cutting him off. She lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow and turned to walk a
way, but Joe grabbed her arm just above the elbow.

  “Is there a problem?” he said. Margaret stared at the warm, rough hand that held her, and he dropped it. “Look, we just came to find out how it’s going with Storm. Maybe this is a waste of time….”

  “Storm has done very well,” she said, gesturing to him and noticing his skittish behavior. “This is the first time he’s reacted this way since being here. We’re working on trust, building it slowly between us. This is a step back, what I’m seeing here.” She moved away from Joe.

  “Well, that’s great. Could we see what you’re doing?”

  There weren’t very many rules Margaret lived by, but having anyone watch her, judging the few capabilities she had, wasn’t going to happen, not here, and definitely not with Joe. “I’m not comfortable with that yet. I work alone. I’m building trust with Storm, and I can’t do that with someone watching over me. For one, look at how he’s reacting now with you two here.” Margaret glanced at Ryan, who was standing in the grassy field between the corral and round ring, watching Storm. “Would you mind if Ryan stayed?”

  Joe crossed his arms. “I suppose that would be okay. You have something in mind?”

  “Joe, can I ask you something?” she said. She took in his unshaven face and large nose, which made him look entirely too dangerous to her, even though she had pined for him as a kid. She glanced at his shoulders, which were wide and solid like a quarterback’s, and then finally turned her back on him completely.

  “What are you doing?” He actually started laughing at her, stepping in front of her and resting both hands on her shoulders. “I can’t talk to you if you’re going to keep turning your back on me or running the other way. Stand still, will you?”

  “I’m sorry I can’t look at you…. I mean, I’m not used to having people around.” This really wasn’t going well, and she considered sticking her head in a hole and hiding.

  “I’m not going to bite,” he said. “Unless you ask really nicely, that is.”

  Her face burned, and she gaped at the devil who grinned before her. She brushed his arm away and shut her eyes, and he was laughing at her again.

  “You’re a nervous thing, aren’t you?” he said.

  “What…? No! Listen, you’re distracting me. I wanted to ask you about Ryan. Did something happen recently between him and Storm? I mean, from what I understand, you’ve had Storm for what, ten years? This is a recent problem that’s come up, so it makes me think something happened. This isn’t about people with horse problems, it’s about a horse with people problems. Horses only feel guarded if there’s a reason.” She didn’t want to say that horses reacted to the pressure of people’s elevated emotional energy. She sensed that a problem had been building and building for a long time, and until she got to what the root of that problem was, she had no hope of connecting Ryan with his horse.

  Joe appeared to consider what she said, then gave a dismissive wave, as if she didn’t know what she was talking about. “I think you’re reading too much into it. I’ll leave Ryan and be back later for him, since you don’t have a phone,” he said before turning toward the corral and calling out to his son. “Ryan, I’m you leaving you here! I’ll come back later to pick you up.”

  He left without another word to Margaret, and judging by his sharp reaction, she wondered if she’d hit a very sensitive nerve.

  Chapter Six

  “Please come to my birthday party! I really want you there,” Ryan asked with bright, innocent eyes—eyes far different from the morose ones he saved exclusively for his dad. Margaret hadn’t seen Joe since the day he left Ryan and came back three hours later, honking his horn and driving away without even a wave for Margaret. That had been three days ago.

  “Ryan, I can’t. I don’t do so well around people. I’m just not comfortable. Besides, your dad’s giving you this party. I don’t think he’d want me there.” Margaret hung up Storm’s halter and left him in the large, fenced-off field to graze with Angel, who was calm and balancing against Storm’s fiery personality. Margaret rested her forearms on top of the fence.

  “Please, Margaret? I don’t have very many friends, and I really want you there. Besides, you’re wrong—Dad does like you.” Ryan was squirming beside her, shuffling from one booted foot to the other. She didn’t miss the hopeful look on his face.

  “You didn’t tell me your dad had a girlfriend. Sara, is it?” she asked. She knew darn well it was, as the woman’s name was burned into her brain. Spending time, even five minutes, at Ryan’s birthday, watching Sara and Joe fall all over each other like two love-starved puppies, was about as appealing as a root canal.

  “I wouldn’t exactly say she’s Dad’s girlfriend,” Ryan replied.

  Well, that got her attention. She scratched her elbow and watched something in the boy’s eyes that had her backing up. “Oh no, you’re not trying to matchmake, are you, set me up with your dad?”

  “You two would be great together!” he said. “Look how you’ve helped Storm! He’s so calm with you, and Dad listens to you.”

  “No, he doesn’t. Your dad doesn’t like me. He never did,” she barked, shocked at what Ryan had said even though she silently wished for just that. She would die before ever admitting it to herself, let alone telling anyone. “Why, Ryan? What’s wrong with Sara? I mean, your dad looked really happy with her,” she said. As she spoke, she saw the loss and disappointment in Ryan and started to connect some things, like a roadmap of secrets, and Storm was the key. “How long has your dad been dating Sara?”

  “About a month, I guess. Not long. He had a couple girlfriends at one time.”

  Margaret pushed away from the corral and stared at the scraped blue mountain bike Ryan had rode over on. She’d dealt with this kind of stuff in her residency, having to mask her judgment during difficult conversations. She must have been slipping, because right now she wanted nothing more than to go over and kick Joe somewhere that’d make him think twice about engaging in such things. She loathed guys like that.

  “So your dad dated two women at once. That must have been awkward for you.”

  Ryan actually smirked. “Only when I slipped up and called one the wrong name. Dad gave me one of those looks that let me know I was in big trouble, but she knew. I think it was Patti, or maybe it was Peggy. Can’t remember—there’ve been so many. Dad never saw her again.”

  “You did that deliberately, didn’t you?” she said.

  He shrugged, and she noticed the sadness return.

  “How many women have there been?” She tried to keep her voice light, but what she was hearing gave her a whole different view of Joe, and not in a good way.

  “I don’t know, really. I lost count. After Dad got his computer, he signed up for online dating about three years ago. I’d see him on the computer after dinner at night, chatting with women. He’d meet them for coffee, have them out for dinner, even took me with him a few times into town. There was one named Julie—I liked her, but she was last year, a schoolteacher and a good cook, too. She was pretty, like you, but Dad got this weird look in his eye after she spent the night one time, and I knew she wouldn’t be back,” Ryan replied with a forlorn look.

  Margaret wondered what kind of stupid expression was on her face, because she couldn’t believe Ryan had called her pretty. She had to blink a couple times and swallow. Margaret had never been pretty. She’d been awkward, too tall as a teen, but she’d never once considered herself pretty. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t you like Sara?”

  He gave her a look as if she had sprouted a second head. “She’s not real! Everything is fake about her, and I don’t think she tells the truth. I know she doesn’t like me, though. She pretends with Dad, always hanging on his arm, completely useless. She’d never do what you do, scoop up manure. She hates the dirt, and when we were at her place in town, she shrieked when I almost sat on her white couch.”

  Margaret smiled. “Were your pants dirty?” She laughed and couldn’t shake that pictu
re from her head.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t check, but Dad got after me. She stays over sometimes and makes a lot of noise in Dad’s room, carrying on. She giggles a lot. It’s annoying.”

  Margaret watched the hopeful look on Ryan’s face and gazed out at the peaceful sight of Storm munching happily with Angel. “Okay, I’ll come,” she said.

  “You will, really? You won’t regret it. It’s going to be a great party now.” Ryan threw his arms around her neck and hugged her, then bounced up and down.

  Margaret then realized the enormity of what she’d just agreed to. Panic, dread, and every fear imaginable had her breaking out in a cold sweat, but she saw the hopeful look on Ryan’s face, and she knew she couldn’t let him down.

  Chapter Seven

  What do you get a fourteen-year-old boy? Margaret asked herself. She certainly hadn’t considered all the ramifications of her decision to go to Ryan’s party. First she had to drive to town, which she had avoided since returning. Although Post Falls was large enough, the chances of running into anyone she might recognize were high, and she worried the entire way into town to the hardware store, her foot shaking on the gas pedal. She eventually spied a great pocket knife that had tons of gadgets and hoped Ryan didn’t already have one.

  She recognized the redheaded balding guy behind the counter from school. It was Rick, one of Joe’s old friends. He’d stared at her when she asked to see the knife, and he had even asked her name, but thankfully, when she told him, it hadn’t seemed to register. By the time she got home, she didn’t have much time to get ready, as the barbeque started at five. She hadn’t done any work at all that day with Storm because she’d been worrying about the party, and what did one wear to a party for a fourteen-year-old, anyway? She wasn’t going to know anyone there—well, except Ryan, Joe, and that blond bimbo who would be hanging off his arm.