The Ranch

by Danielle Steel

  “Were you planning to marry Adam before he got sick?” He was curious about her, about them, about the baby she'd adopted and why, and why she seemed so comfortable alone. She was an intriguing woman.

  “Not really. I think we might have eventually, but we didn't talk about it. He'd been married, and he had kids. And I was busy building up my practice as an internist. I was in a practice with two other docs then, but I left it when I set up the clinic. I never felt compelled to be married, or even to be with anyone indefinitely. We saw each other a lot, and we were very close, but we didn't live together actually until he was dying. I took three months off work and took care of him. It was very sad,” but she looked as though she had made her peace with it, She was serious, but not grieving. It had been a long time since he'd died and a lot had happened in the meantime. She still saw his children from time to time, but she hadn't been close to them, it was only after Jade was born that she actually understood the extraordinary joy of having children. He asked her about that too, and she told him how it had come about. Jade's mother had been nineteen years old, unmarried, and had no desire to keep the baby. And her family had refused to take her in when they discovered that the baby was Asian.

  “She's the greatest thing that ever happened to me,” Zoe said simply. And then she turned the tables on him. “What about you?” She knew he'd been married briefly in Chicago. “What happened with your marriage?” They had lost track of each other during their residencies, and by the time he came back to San Francisco, his marriage was behind him and he said very little about it, and it was rare for Sam and Zoe to take a night off, just to talk, like this.

  “The marriage lasted for two miserable years, while I was doing my residency,” he explained, looking thoughtful. “Poor kid, I never saw her. You know what that's like. She hated it. She said she'd never get involved with another doctor. But she was genetically doomed. Her father was a big thoracic surgeon in Grosse Pointe, her brother is a sports doctor in Chicago, and after me she wound up marrying a plastic surgeon. She has three kids and lives in Milwaukee, and I think she's very happy. I haven't seen her in years. And when I first came back to California, I lived with a woman for several years, but neither of us ever had any interest in getting married. We'd both had bad experiences before, and neither of us was ready. You remind me a little bit of her actually. She's kind of a saint like you. She had a real need to make a difference, and she was always pressuring me about it. In the end, she did what she had to do, and I stayed behind. She's a nurse-practitioner in a leper colony in Botswana.” Zoe vaguely remembered hearing about her, but it was before Sam had done locum tenens for her, and Zoe had never met her.

  “Wow! That's serious.” Zoe looked at him, fascinated by what she was hearing. “And she couldn't talk you into joining her?” Zoe thought it sounded vaguely appealing, but Sam clearly didn't, as he shook his head, with a look of horror.

  “Not on your life.” He grinned. “No matter how much I loved her. I hate snakes, I hate bugs, I was never in the Boy Scouts, and I think camping trips and sleeping bags are sheer torture. I was definitely not cut out for a life serving mankind in the jungle. I like my nice comfortable bed at night, a good meal, a warm restaurant, a glass of wine, and the wildest vegetation I want to see is in Golden Gate Park on a weekend. Rachel comes over here about once a year, and I'm still crazy about her, but we're just friends now. She lives with the head of the leper colony, and they have a baby. She loves Africa and she says I don't know what I'm missing.”

  “By not having children, or by living here?” Zoe was laughing, but it was quite a story.

  “Both. She says she'll never leave Africa. But you never know. The politics over there get pretty scary. It's definitely not for me. She's a great gal, and she did the right thing. She left five years ago, and I don't know, the time has just flown. I'm forty-six years old and I guess I've just forgotten to get married.”

  “Me too,” she laughed at him, “my parents used to go crazy over it. They both died in the last few years, so there's no one to bug me about it anymore.” And now she knew she certainly wouldn't be getting married. But talking about his own life suddenly made Sam feel braver.

  “What about Dr. Franklin?” He felt nervous asking her, but he was curious. And she definitely didn't put out vibes that said she was open to invitations. He wanted to know if it was because of Dick Franklin, or if there were other reasons, maybe even someone else he didn't know about. It was hard to believe that a woman like Zoe only cared about her practice and her baby.

  “What about Dick?” Zoe asked, looking puzzled. “We're good friends, that's all. He's an interesting man,” she said kindly, but Sam was looking into her eyes for deeper meaning.

  “You don't give much away, do you?” he said, and she laughed at him.

  “What exactly do you want to know, Dr. Warner? How serious is it? It isn't. As a matter of fact, I'm not seeing him anymore. I'm not seeing anyone, and that's the way I intend to keep it.” There was something very firm about her voice as she said it that startled him. He couldn't figure out what she was saying. But there was a message there for anyone who chose to listen.

  “Are you planning to go into a convent sometime soon?” he teased. “Or are you just going to freelance?” Looking at him, she suddenly had to laugh at herself. This was very new to her, and she realized she could have learned a lot from her patients. How did they manage it? What did they say? She knew that many of them told people they had AIDS before they began relationships, but she didn't want to do that either. She just wanted to keep to herself, and enjoy her life with Jade. It would have been different if there had been someone in her life when it happened, but since there wasn't, as far as she was concerned, the doors were closed now.

  “I don't have time for a relationship,” she said simply, and he looked startled. The way she said it sounded so final, and seemed so unlike her. She was such a warm person, and it was such a waste to think of a woman like Zoe without a man in her life. It really bothered Sam.

  “Are you telling me you've made a conscious decision to that effect, at your age?” He looked horrified by the prospect.

  “More or less.” She was referring to the decision she'd made, but she didn't want to get into it with him, and they were getting onto dangerous ground, which she didn't want to happen. But he was ready to pursue the subject with her with dogged determination. “I can't give anything to anyone, Sam, I'm too involved in my practice, and with my daughter.” It was an excuse, but Sam felt certain that she meant it.

  “Zoe, that's bullshit,” he said firmly, “you're wrong if you think you can't give anything to anyone. There's more to life than just devoting yourself to your work and your baby.” He wondered why she was so determined to stay alone, if she was still mourning her old flame, though he doubted it, since he knew she'd gone out with Dick Franklin. But why wouldn't she get involved with anyone? Why was she hiding? She couldn't be that obsessed with her child and her work, or was she? “You're too young to close the doors on a relationship in your life. Zoe,” he said firmly, “you have to rethink this.” He felt a sense of personal loss as he looked at her and realized that she meant it.

  She smiled at him, but she was unmoved by what he had said so far. “You sound like my father. He used to tell me that overeducated women threaten men, and I was making a big mistake when I went to Stanford. College was okay, but medical school was pushing. He said that if I'd wanted to be in medicine, I should have gone to nursing school and saved him a lot of money.” She was laughing as she said it, and Sam shook his head. He knew about people like her. His whole family were doctors, including his mother.

  “Well, you should have gone to nursing school, if becoming a doctor was going to make you come to a dumb decision like that one. Zoe, that's just plain stupid.” He wondered if she'd had a bad experience, been raped perhaps, or if Franklin had actually done something to upset her and it was still fresh, or maybe she was involved with someone secretly, maybe
someone married. Or maybe she was just telling him, nicely, that she wasn't interested in him, but he hoped that wasn't the case either. Otherwise he just couldn't understand it, but she seemed very firm about it.

  She turned the conversation then to other things, which frustrated him even more. He found that they had even more in common than he'd previously thought, people, plans, their shared views about medicine, and passion for all it represented. Worse yet, he realized that he was even more attracted to her than he'd previously suspected. She had a great sense of humor, and a quick mind. She had traveled extensively, and there was something wonderfully honest and genuine about her. She told things the way they were, analyzed situations very astutely, and as she talked about her patients to him, it was obvious how much she loved them. She was the first woman he had met in a long time that he was really crazy about and wanted desperately to go out with. He had been attracted to her for years, but he had always hesitated to do anything about it, and having dinner with her and talking to her about a variety of things had infatuated him with her completely. And she was even more tantalizing because she was so insistent that she had given up on having any relationship and she wouldn't even discuss it with him. He felt sure there was another reason, most likely an affair with someone she was protecting, and the more he thought about it, the more he wondered if it was someone married. But as far as he was concerned, she could have said that. In fact, everything in her life pointed to it, the fact that she had so much time available to spend on her work, that she had no desire to get married, she was obviously involved and didn't want to admit it. And he was very sorry to know that.

  And as Zoe watched him as they ate, and afterward as they sat and drank cappuccino, she found that she liked him too. He was exactly what he had always seemed, a real teddy bear of a man, someone intelligent and kind, someone you could really count on. And he was as enamored as she was with her clinic. He thought it had been an incredible thing to do, an enormous undertaking, and he admired her a great deal for it.

  “I think of all the practices I've seen, yours is the one I most enjoy, and most respect. I really like the way you handle your patients, particularly the home care.”

  “That was the hardest part to set up actually, to find the right people that you could trust without monitoring them constantly. I watch them very closely, but they still have a lot of leeway. The patients take a lot of responsibility too, though.” Many of her patients’ lovers and families cared for them almost without professional assistance, until the very end when they were assisted by hospice groups. Dying of AIDS was not an easy business.

  They talked again for a while then of what she wanted him to do while she was gone, and he smiled as he listened to her. He knew it was going to be hard for her to leave them, and he tried to reassure her that her patients would be in good hands with him, and she believed him.

  “So tell me about Wyoming,” he asked genially over their second cup of cappuccino. But he noticed when it came that Zoe was looking exhausted. He had noticed several times recently how tired she looked, but he didn't think much about it. Her practice was so draining that it wasn't surprising she was pale, and it was only tonight that he also noticed a certain gauntness to her figure. She was obviously in serious need of a vacation, and he was glad for her that she was going, “Who are you going to Wyoming with? You're not going camping, are you.?” he asked, wishing for an insane moment that he were going with her.

  She laughed at his question. “I don't think so. I'm actually going with an old friend, from college. She's an incredible woman, and I haven't seen her in a while, but she called the other day and invited me. At first, I turned her down, but when I felt so lousy, I decided to do it. But believe me, knowing my friend, it won't be camping. She's even more spoiled than I am.” Zoe was not a camping aficionado either, and never had been. Like Sam, she didn't like bugs, snakes, or creepy-crawlies. “She lives in L.A., and I'm sure we're going to the Hollywood ranch of all time, if she could find one.”

  “Who is she?” he asked casually as the check came, and he opened his wallet. “Is she a physician?”

  Zoe smiled before she answered. “Not exactly. She's a singer. We've been friends since school, and she's never changed, not that anyone would believe it. The media give her a bad break, it's really not fair.” She looked thoughtful as she said it. “I almost hate telling people who she is, they immediately leap to a million inaccurate conclusions.”

  “I'm fascinated,” he said, looking straight at Zoe as the waitress took the check away with his money. He was so intrigued by her, by the deep green eyes, and everything he saw there. “So who is she?”

  “Tanya Thomas,” Zoe said quietly. To her, it was just a name, to everyone else it was a lifetime of hype, a million lies, a golden voice, a thousand images they'd seen, she was the legend, and Sam had the usual reaction. His eyes widened, his mouth dropped, and then he laughed at his own reflexes and grinned, feeling sheepish.

  “I don't believe it. You know her?”

  “She was my best pal in college. We were roommates. I love her more than any other friend I've ever had,” she said quietly. “I don't see her enough, but whenever we can get together it's all still there. It's amazing, no matter what happens to either of us, nothing ever changes. She's a remarkable woman.”

  “Wow! I'm impressed.” He couldn't help saying it, and he meant it. “I know that sounds dumb, but it always amazes me that someone knows people like that, that they hang out with them, that they sit around and eat pizza and drink coffee like the rest of us, and wash their hair and wear pajamas. It's pretty hard to think of them as real people.”

  “She's suffered a lot from that. I gather she's getting divorced again. I think it would be impossible to have a normal life with the kind of pressures she lives with. She married a really nice guy when we got out of college, her high school sweetheart, but within a year, she hit it big, she had a gold record and a career, and I think it just blew her marriage. Poor Bobby Joe didn't know what hit him, and neither did Tanny. She married a real shit after that, her manager, and he ripped her off, predictably, and was pretty abusive to her. I think it was fairly typical for the milieu, but it was miserable for her. And three years ago she married some guy in L.A., I think he's a developer. I thought it was going to work, but now they're breaking up, and he won't let her take his kids to Wyoming, as planned, so she had this cabin at a dude ranch, and she asked me to go with her.” She made it all sound so ordinary that it amused him.

  “Lucky you!” he said, and meant it. “What fun!”

  “Yeah, seeing Tanny will be fun more than anything. Neither of us are that crazy about horses,” she laughed. “Actually, all I want to do is sleep for the whole week.”

  “It might do you good,” he said, looking at her with concern, and then he looked at her oddly. “You're all right, Zoe, aren't you? You've been looking tired, and I know you weren't feeling great last week. I think you're really pushing.” He said it very gently, and what he said touched her deeply. She was so used to taking care of other people, that when anyone took care of her it surprised her.

  “I'm fine. Honestly,” she said, but she wondered what he had seen. She wondered suddenly if she looked ill. She was tired, but she didn't look any different to herself when she looked in the mirror. She had no sores, no other signs. There were no indications that she had AIDS, and she knew there might not be for a long time, or there could be a lot of them at any moment. And her greatest risk was from infection. But she knew what she had to do to protect herself, and she was being careful. “You're sweet to ask,” she said, and was surprised when he reached across the table and took her hand. She hadn't expected him to do that.

  “I care about you. I want to help you, but most of the time you're pretty stubborn.” The way he said it made her look into his eyes. They were dark brown, and infinitely gentle.

  “Thank you, Sam…” Feeling a wave of emotion wash over her, she looked away from him, and then took aw
ay her hand a moment later. She knew more than ever that she couldn't let her guard down. No matter how kind and appealing he was, she couldn't let herself do it.

  It had been so easy with Dick, when she went out with him. They were just friends, and if they took it a little further than that once in a while, there was no harm done. She had no illusions about how he felt about her. He just wanted a comfortable companion from time to time, someone to go to the theater with him, or the symphony, or the ballet, or an expensive dinner. But he wanted nothing more from her than she wanted to give. In fact, if she'd given him more than that, it would have scared him. Dick knew exactly how far he wanted to go with her, and he was always careful to keep his distance. And although she would have liked a serious relationship with someone, there hadn't really been anyone who'd appealed to her that way in years, and it was easier to avoid the cheap imitations. And now that her whole life had changed, it was such bad luck to discover that Sam Warner might have once been important to her. She had never realized how deep he was, how kind, how compassionate, how in tune with what she was doing. She had just thought of him as a good doctor, a good friend. And now she found that there was more to him, and to what she felt for him, and she had no right to explore it further. The door to that part of her life was closed forever. What could she possibly give anyone now? A few months? A few years? Even if it were five or ten, it wouldn't be fair to them. And through it all, there was always the remote but potential risk of illness for them. She had lived through all of that with Adam. She couldn't do that to anyone. And she had no intention of doing it to Sam. There was not a chance in the world that she was going to let him come any closer to her. They were colleagues and friends, and nothing more, and she absolutely would not let him come beyond her limits, and he sensed that. It made him sad as they left the restaurant. As much as he liked her, he could sense that she was pulling back from him. He didn't know why, but he didn't like it, and he sensed correctly that there was nothing he could do about it.