by Tanya Hanson
Something fun and crazy skittered up her spine. A teacher? American Lit? Didn’t they say girls always ended up with guys like their fathers? She held off an eye roll and shoved the foolish thought from her brain.
“What about the rest of your family?” she asked, quick to change the subject. “Do you all help out?”
“Yep. All eight of us,” Kenn stretched out his legs. “When we were kids, Pa told us right off the ranch couldn’t sustain everybody. So we have other jobs and help out here when we can.”
“Wow. Eight. That must be some Thanksgiving dinner. I’m an only child.” Even she heard the trace of wistful in her tone.
“Must be lonely.”
Christy shrugged over her last bite of brownie. Never shy about food, she’d taken two. “Well, yeah. But Faculty Row was a tight community. Most of the profs had kids. But tell me about the eight of you.”
“Me and Hooper, you already know. I’m the fourth. Kelley, after me, is sous chef at a restaurant in Denver. Uses her vacation time to cook for the tours.” He slathered more barbeque sauce onto his burger. It was delicious, and she wondered if Kelley made it from scratch. “You sure you want me to go on? Could be a snooze-fest.”
“Oh, yes. Inquiring minds want to know.”
He shrugged. “All righty, then. Rachel’s second-oldest, after Hoop. She’s an attorney, and Hearts Crossing is her biggest client. Right now, she and Nick are expecting their first child. A boy.” His shy grin melted her heart. “Third born, Pike is a wrangler—” he pointed to another good-looking cowboy working with the string of horses “—as well as a large animal vet. Scott comes after Kel. He and I take turns as wagon master and alternate running our Cowboy College. He’s also our webmaster and runs our on-line store. ”
“Cowboy College?”
“Yep. Back at the ranch. Our three-day workshop on ranching skills. Roping steer. Branding. All the things you can imagine a cowpoke ought to know how to do.”
“Cool.” It did sound great, inviting even. His large and busy family intrigued her. “But that only brings us to six,” she said.
“Bragg’s a CPA.”
For whatever reason, he stumbled over the name, and his fingers tensed around his fork, but then he spoke up in his usual tone. “He’s busy during tax season for folks all over Jackson County, but rest of the time, he tends the ranch finances. And Chelsea, well, she was Ma and Pa’s little afterthought. She’s a freshman at Boulder. My alma mater. You?”
“Oh, I love Boulder. It’s noted as a ‘green’ campus. I’m a landscape architect in Calabasas, California.”
For a moment, sadness surged. It was Dad’s insurance money that had helped her expand Forrest for the Trees Landscape Design in the high-end community. Business had really taken off, recession or not. Of course the guest feature on HGTV last winter had certainly helped.
She forced out the words as casually as she could. “Dad used to read to me every night. Regular stuff like Where the Wild Things Are and Little Women. When I was in middle school, he started me on Walden. Thoreau taught me something about myself I hadn’t known.”
“What was that?” His voice was soft.
She looked down at her toes, somehow shy. “That I wanted to get down and dirty with nature.”
“Thoreau’ll do that to you.” Kenn spoke the name almost reverently. Wind rustled like music. “We’ve something in common, then. After reading him, I knew I was meant to teach American Lit. And get my nature fix here at Hearts Crossing.”
Something in common. Christy liked the sound of that.
2
Night took a long time falling over Hawk Meadow. Tops of tall pine trees sketched a squiggly line across the twilight sky overhead. Over a plate of Kelley’s marvelous beef stew and jalapeno cornbread, Christy chatted with Jennie Blake, longing for the after-supper program of songs and stories around the campfire. She might have a chance to sit near Kenn. Along with the other wranglers, Kenn had swallowed a quick meal and now busily set up camp for the night.
Although he’d helped her mount a mare called Sugarfoot after lunch, he’d ridden at the head of the train. She found herself missing him terribly, her ride slow as she got used to the horse. On the trail, he had caught her eye frequently but with business-like nods as if satisfied with her riding skills. Nonetheless, meeting his gaze any time at all managed to take her breath away.
Ah, what riding skills? She groaned as she got up from the supper table.
“You OK?” Jennie asked.
Christy patted her backside. “I wore the cycling underwear they recommended, and I’ve sure got more padding of my own back here than when I was thirteen. But seriously, it’s been way too long since I learned horsemanship at Girl Scout camp.”
“Want some Ibuprofen?” Jennie asked maternally, although she couldn’t be but a few years older.
Christy laughed out loud. “I suspect that’s too modern for Hearts Crossing’s Wild West experience. Maybe I should hunt down some willowbark instead.”
Wincing as she walked, she joined Kelley at the chuck wagon. Although the wide-eyed Blake twins eagerly joined the forces pitching tents, the adult guests relaxed over their tin cups of coffee, which Kelley had called Arbuckle’s.
“That meal was fantastic, Kelley. Now let me help clean up,” Christy insisted. “It’ll be dark soon.”
“Well, we do have lanterns,” Kelley teased. “We like our tours realistic but we do spare you hardship.” She’d just finished grinding some coffee beans in a hand cranked machine.
Kenn’s next-youngest sister looked the part of “Cookie” in her black gingham shirt and homey calico apron. With her western hat pushed back on her head, it was easy to enjoy her hazel-flecked eyes and sun-streaked braids. But…Christy noticed right off the interlocking hearts tattoo on her forearm and her black Roper Rockstar boots. This was no country bumpkin.
“I like your tat,” she said and recalled yet again the brochure in her pocket. “It’s the ranch logo, right?”
“Yep. Our brand, too.”
“I like it. I’ve always…” She had thought about getting a dainty tattoo of Daddy’s initials, but after his terrible accident, she had decided it was more important to be a regular blood donor, making piercings and tattoos impossible. She pushed away the pain. “You shouldn’t have to clean, too. Let me get the others to help. You take a load off.”
Kelley shook her head. “It’s that way at the ranch. The cook doesn’t wash up. But out here…” Hands up, she shrugged at her tidy little chuck wagon, “I’d rather do it myself. Things don’t get lost or mislaid that way.”
Christy pointed to the nearest tree, ready to scrape the plates stacked at the tailgate of the chuck wagon. “Where can I dump the scraps?” She figured behind a tree was good enough compost.
Kelley held out a box of trash bags. “Right here. We take home everything we bring in.”Ah. That explained the port-a-potties discreetly hidden behind a tarp.
“I like that,” Christy said simply.
Kelley nodded, dipping a plate in a dishpan. “Even my dish soap is biodegradable. Sure, it would be easy enough to dump everything in the stream and hope for the best. But that’s just not our way.”
“I like your way,” Christy told her, sparing her a Thoreau lecture. Being Kenn’s sister, Kelley had probably already heard one. Or more. She grinned, recalling Hooper’s orientation before they left the ranch. He’d said quick wash-ups in the stream with biodegradable soaps were OK. But shampoos and full-body had to be done under a big black bag filled with water that heated up during the day and had a shower head attached. Somehow, that reminded her.
“Is it hard, being a vegetarian in this group?”
Kelley rinsed a cast iron frying pan. “Not as hard as you’d think. We’re increasingly getting guests who are vegetarian. Vegan, even. I know how to fix up garden burgers and portabella.” Then she winked at Christy although her eyes held a tinge of sadness. “I was nine, had raised my sweet steer from the gr
ound up. He was Grand Market Champion at the county fair that summer, and I was as proud as a mommy. Then Pa raised a small fortune on him at auction for my college tuition, and he went away to slaughter. And that…” she nodded firmly, “was my life’s defining moment.”
“Ouch,” Christy said foolishly, feeling more than a twinge for that little nine year old girl.
Kelley chuckled. “Now, twenty years later, I’ve healed up. But I have never since then eaten anything with eyes. Oh, I used to get Pa so mad!”
From the corner of her eye, Christy watched Kenn start up a campfire. Somehow his movements were musical and muscular at the same time. He was in splendid shape, and she guessed winters full of skiing and summers riding herd over tourists in the great outdoors would do that to a man. For a flash, she wondered how it would be to run her fingers over the shadow of whiskers lining his cheeks. Would it feel soft?
Like slow motion, she noticed Kelley observing her.
“My favorite part of these trips,” Kelley remarked softly over the clang of drying pans. “The campfire. Marshmallows. Music. Kenny plays a mean harmonica. Ma’s a great fiddler, but she didn’t make this trip. Had a bunionectomy last month. Pike, now, his guitar riffs are good enough for Keith Urban.”
“Pike? Like Peak?”
“Exactly.” Kelley’s white teeth and pretty smile reflected in the lantern glow as she lit it. “Zebulon Pike Martin. Ma claims she was hiking half-way up the Peak when she went into labor with a ten-pounder.”
Christy gasped and stumbled against a tree root. “You’re kidding.”
Kelley shrugged. “You never know with Ma.”
For an instant a vision of her own mother, pale and tragic, flashed inside Christy’s head. Sometimes her sympathy tangled itself with irritation, and she didn’t like the sensation.
Handing her a dishtowel, Kelly asked casually, “So are you married, engaged, or involved with anyone?”
The frankness of the question made Christy burst out laughing. Slowly, she plunked a dried-off tin plate onto a shelf before replying. For almost five years, she’d thought Jacob was The One before she was brave enough to realize he wasn’t. Even with all her sorority sisters married and pregnant and worried about her, the lone bachelorette.
“No to all three,” she said firmly. “Why do you ask?”
Although deep inside, she hoped she knew the answer.
With raised eyebrows, Kelley gave her busy brother Kenn a full-on glare of significance.
Christy tingled, but no. Kenn lived in Colorado. She was a Californian through and through. Thoreau was good, but he wasn’t enough, and neither was three days on a wagon train.
“Aw, come on, Christy. I’ve seen the way he looks at you. And if I may be so bold. The way you look at him.” Kelley’s face had reddened, but her voice held strong.
Heat rose in Christy’s cheeks that had nothing to do with the exertions of the day.
“You come on, Kelley,” she said lightly. “He takes these trips all the time. With people just like me.”
“He’s been lonely too long.”
The unlikelihood of it all didn’t amuse her anymore. She shook her head and finished drying a handful of tin forks. “You don’t know anything about me. I could be a…an axe murderer. And I don’t know. I may be best as a singleton.”
“Aw, Christy. Everybody wants somebody.”
She’d thought so once. “I had a long-term relationship with a guy I thought was the love of my life. Until one day it hit me. Right between the eyes. He wasn’t. I didn’t want to settle. After all that, I think I’m just too independent.”
“What do you mean?” Kelley’s head bent as she scoured another big black cast iron frying pan, but then her gaze met Christy straight on. “Today’s men don’t want a lapdog.”
“I know. Not exactly what I meant.” Christy sighed, squeezing her fists tight about her towel. “My dad died fifteen months ago, and my mom can barely breathe. My heart can’t depend on anybody that hard.”
Kelley quickly dried her hands and sympathetic fingers touched Christy’s shoulder. “Oh, I’m so sorry. But it isn’t always like that. My ma misses Pa, no doubt, but she always holds her own. Anyway,” Kelley moved away to pour a pan of dishwater behind a tree. “Kenn got burned bad a while back. I think he could be ready again.”
Christy huffed, a little uncomfortable now. He might be, but it was weird for his sister to come on to a perfect stranger on his behalf.
****
From time to time, Kenn could feel Christy’s gaze on him. His face heated in a way that had nothing to do with the campfire he’d just set to raging inside a circle of rocks. Catching sight of her and Kelley in deep discussion over the dishes, he could tell he was the subject of their chitchat from Kelley’s peeking and pointing. He couldn’t help preening a little. Since his sister wasn’t a matchmaker at all, Christy Forrest must really be interested in him.
Self-conscious, he ran a hand over his scruffy three-day beard. Maybe he should have gone clean-shaven this trip. A girl from an upscale California suburb might not go for the rough and tumble look of the trail even though most guests did.
“Yo, Kenn?” Bragg broke into his thoughts. “You spinnin’ the yarns tonight or is it me?”
His kid brother was awfully good at mesmerizing folks over a campfire, but tonight Kenn just might do the honors himself. His rendition of Twain’s tall tale of Calaveras County’s jumping frog was a popular one. A girl with an American studies prof for a father might like that. But…if he let Bragg do it, or his mean Pecos Bill, Kenn might get to sit by Christy around the campfire.
“You go, bro,” he told Bragg, wishing again he’d not let the kid down so hard. But soul searching was something for another time. Bragg seemed somewhat at peace these days.
Not, Kenn grumbled deep inside, that he himself had a soul worthy to work peace on. If only…if only he’d turned in the swim coach who was doping the athletes instead of kowtowing to the man’s threats and lies.
“Come on.” For the millionth time, Kenn forced away bad thoughts to think through some other time. With an expansive gesture, he herded the guests around the fire. He had a job to do. “Time for an authentic cowboy concert. You ain’t heard nothing like this on CMT.”
He continued with his practiced drawl. “And let my little brother regale you with tales of the Old West. All the while feasting on my sister Kelley’s award-winning version of S’mores.” He bowed toward her. “Four years now. Blue Ribbon at the Jackson County Fair.”
“S’mores?” P.J. Blake called out eagerly as he crossed his legs in the dirt. “Isn’t that just marshmallows and chocolate on a graham cracker?”
“Not when Kelley makes graham flatbread herself and shows you how to add blueberries, which we grow ourselves.” Kenn had the group laughing as they settled down, but it was the sweet haze of Christy’s lavender perfume that finally brought him down into the circle, right beside her, calm and eager.
“How do you like it?” he managed to ask while the rest belted out “All Day on the Prairie in a Saddle I Ride” to Pike’s hectic guitar.
He felt her smile all the way to his toes. “Again, perfect. Everything I imagined and more.”
Did that include him? His heart thumped. “Glad to hear it.” He leaned closer, over the noise, and fought for something normal to talk about. “Looks like the twins will sleep under their wagon tonight. Just like the old days.”
On cue, Christy peered around the camp. The wagons had formed a circle where the horses grazed on its outer edge and small tents sprouted in the center.
“More power to them.” Christy chuckled. “Me, I find it amazing how safe I’ll feel inside those three square feet of nylon.” As the song petered out and the attention turned to Bragg, she whispered, “I think we better listen.”
Kenn nodded, and watching her face, he realized her father’s interest in American Lit lived on in her. After the raucous applause, when Bragg finished his energetic Twain recit
ation, she looked Kenn straight on, a glaze of tears visible in the firelight. “Daddy and I loved that story. It’s almost like he’s still here with me. I better go thank your brother.”
“He’ll be around for days yet,” Kenn reminded her softly, not wanting her to leave his side. And she didn’t, for another sing-along started, full of lullabies and heart-tugging love songs. When he took out his harmonica, he watched delight shine in her eyes, and he played the best he ever had.
“Oh, Kenn. ‘Lorena.’ That was so beautiful.” Her eyes glinted with tears as she looked at him. “Said to be such a heartrending song during the Civil War, soldiers went AWOL after hearing it to get back to their sweethearts.”
“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” he said softly.
She smiled, tears gone. “You didn’t.”
He nodded at Bragg, who pulled out his own harmonica. His rendition of “Amazing Grace” always got folks sniffling, and tonight was no exception.
By then, the fire was dimming and folks hid yawns.
Bragg stood. “Good night to those of you wanting to hit the hay. But ya’ll are welcome to join me for an evening devotion if you’ve a mind.”
Everybody but Christy and Kenn nodded eagerly. He had no use for God at bedtime or ever. And from the tight set of her jaw, maybe she didn’t either.
“I think I’ll take a walk. See you all in the morning.” Christy waved, and Kenn debated whether to follow her. About the only wildlife anybody had seen in Hawk Meadow for years were its namesake birds, deer, and foxes. Nobody had seen bears or cougars for a long time, but there was always the chance a city slicker like Christy might want someone alongside her in the dark.
“If you don’t mind, let me come along,” he said. “You never know what things go bump in the night out there.”
“You serious?” Her eyes widened in the glow of the dying embers as Kenn pulled out a flashlight. “Are we in danger?”
“Nope…but you greenhorns always think you are.” He winked and chuckled. “But just in case, the guys and I take turns keeping watch all night.”