The Rancher Takes a Family

by Paula Altenburg

  Not to mention, it was hardly her place. Her job was to get him to function as part of the team. Greg, too. Neither boy got to quit over this. She’d get to the bottom of it.

  “Go sit with your uncle. Tell him I’ll talk to him once practice is over,” she said to Mac, and he trotted off the field.

  Then she returned to her other charges, determined to rebuild the fun they’d been having.

  Chapter Five

  Despite dividing his attention between his nephew and the way Lacey’s black running shorts caressed her ass and thighs, Jake had witnessed the entire confrontation between the two boys.

  The bigger kid had said something to Mac. Mac responded with a fist to the boy’s face. Jake had started to rise, planning to intervene before Mac got his ass handed to him, but the dad next to him—Jeff O’Brien—grabbed his arm to keep him from doing anything stupid.

  “Let the boys work it out,” Jeff had said.

  Jake took his advice, even though it was hard, because Jeff had five sons so he spoke from experience.

  Then Lacey waded in like the warrior princess she was, ignoring the flailing fists and feet, and pried Mac loose. The whole incident was over in less than a minute. Jake was damned proud of the pair of them—Mac for holding his own, and Lacey…for being Lacey.

  After practice was finished, she’d cornered Mac for an explanation in private, Mac refused to offer one, and she’d let it go.

  “Be here a half hour early next week. You’ll run laps before the next three practices,” she said in her stern, schoolteacher voice.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mac muttered.

  Jake wasn’t as inclined to give up. The drive home started out in silence while he waited to see what Mac had to say—which turned out to be nothing.

  “Want to talk about it?” Jake finally asked, side-eyeing his nephew.

  Mac stared at astoundingly large sneakers sprouting at the ends of thin, gangly legs. He was going to be tall whenever his growth spurt decided to hit.

  “He asked if Mom and Dad were sitting at the front or the back of the plane,” he blurted out. Each word quivered with rage.

  It was a good thing Jeff had kept Jake from going over. If he’d known what was said, he might have lost control, too. He kept his eyes on the road while he counted to ten. He heard Lacey’s schoolteacher voice in his head. Remember, these are boys.

  “Did he ask it to be mean or did he ask because he was curious?”

  Mac shot him a look riddled with ten-year-old attitude. “What difference does it make?”

  “It makes a big difference,” Jake said. “Meanness deserves a punch in the face, but sadly, you can’t beat smart into stupid people.”

  He let Mac chew on that as the miles slipped away. Soon, the bridge that led to the ranch appeared. Five more minutes and they’d be home.

  “Am I in trouble?” Mac asked.

  “No,” Jake said.

  But he could no longer ignore that the boy was headed for it.

  Later that evening, once the kids were in bed and Jake was alone because his brothers had gone out, he kicked back on the plump, dark brown leather sofa in the den, propped his feet on the squat oak coffee table, and called Lacey.

  It was a Saturday night. She might not be home.

  But say she was… Would she be alone, too?

  She answered on the first ring.

  A good sign.

  “You were right about Mac’s anger issues,” he said.

  “Did punching Greg Brown help ease them at all?”

  She sounded so hopeful. He had to smile, reminded of how his mother used to call her Mary Poppins because she always looked for the bright side. Mary McGregor had liked Lacey.

  She’d also thought she was too young for him—not in years, but in maturity—but the shoe was on the other foot these days. Lacey knew a whole lot more about kids than he or his brothers did, despite what Luke and Zack liked to think. And in this case, she was a whole lot less biased.

  “Question for you,” he countered, rather than answering hers. “Why did you break Rob Leslie’s nose the night of the prom?”

  He had no idea where that came from. He must have held it in for too long. At the time it happened, he’d been too angry to ask—too afraid of how he might react—and she hadn’t offered any explanations.

  The pendulum swung back and forth on his great-grandmother’s grandfather clock. He imagined Lacey’s mouth pursing up while she decided whether or not to tell him the truth.

  “That was a long time ago,” she said.

  Not to him. “Are you saying you can’t remember?”

  “I’m saying I was sixteen and it doesn’t matter anymore.”

  “But you were sixteen. That’s exactly why it did matter then.” The helpless anger he’d suffered because of having to bide his time wasn’t forgotten. Not only had she been his girlfriend, and therefore off-limits, she’d been sixteen—which was why he hadn’t wanted to take her to the grad party after the prom in the first place. He’d been responsible for her. She’d been so innocent and sweet—although with a thin layer of steel pressed in between that hadn’t bent in the slightest over the years. “Did breaking his nose give you any satisfaction?”

  “No. It’s not something I’m proud of. It got my point across. That was all I cared about.”

  “Punching him got my point across, too.” It wasn’t something he was proud of either. It was simply something he’d needed to do so he could look himself in the eye every day.

  “You never punched Rob.”

  She sounded so certain. Had she really believed he’d let something like that go?

  Was that why she’d broken up with him?

  “I waited until his nose healed,” he said. “I didn’t want any unfair advantage.”

  “How sportsmanlike of you.”

  It was hard to read what she was thinking when he had nothing to go on but the sound of her voice. He’d meant to be funny, but her neutral tone suggested he’d missed his mark. He wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “Maybe we should talk about Mac.” He settled deeper into the sofa. “To be fair to him, the other kid had it coming.”

  He ground the heel of his palm against his forehead and winced at the stupidity of that remark. Every parent—or uncle—probably said the same thing. Even better, now she likely believed he thought violence was the only way to resolve conflict.

  If so, Lacey didn’t let on. “Greg’s not the brightest, but he has a big mouth and a sixth sense for weakness. Now that he knows Mac will fight back, he’ll leave him alone. The bigger problem is why Mac hit him first. What set him off?”

  She’d had her back turned to the boys, yet she’d figured out that Mac was the first to whip off the gloves. Maybe the other kid’s mother had told her. Or maybe it was an intuitive guess.

  He neither confirmed nor denied. He couldn’t bring himself to repeat what the other kid said. “I’m going to call the number for the counselor you gave me and set up appointments for him and Finn. I’d rather wait until school is out, though.”

  “Jake.” He could smell the disapproval across the wireless connection. “Grieving is nothing the boys need to be ashamed of.”

  The delay until the school year was as much for his benefit as theirs, although he’d never admit it. Everyone in Grand already knew his financial affairs. They didn’t need to know his family’s business, too. He hated that the whole town was staring—at him, at Luke and Zack, and worst of all, Mac and Finn. He had to protect them.

  And he didn’t want Lacey thinking of him as weak.

  “Maybe we should get together again and discuss it,” she continued. “I’m not doing anything right now. You could meet me somewhere. Maybe for coffee again?”

  This was the real reason he’d called her. He’d wanted to ask her out. And she’d beat him to it. A choir of angels threatened to burst into song. It had been far too long since he’d felt this happy. He was about to say yes when he remembered he was no longer free to come
and go as he pleased. The baby monitor on the coffee table by his foot caught the soft sounds of Lydia sucking her thumb in her sleep as an additional reminder.

  “I can’t tonight. Luke and Zack are both out and I’ve got the kids.”

  “Another time, then.”

  “Wait.”

  His heart started pounding. He hadn’t been this nervous when he was eighteen and asking her out for the first time—mainly because he’d been interested, but not yet in love. That had happened somewhere between sharing a bucket of popcorn and kissing her good night on her front step. She’d laughed during the movie over something Captain Jack Sparrow said, her pretty, animated face bright enough to light up the whole theater, and he’d tumbled head over heels.

  He wasn’t in love with her anymore—a lot of water had passed under that particular bridge—but he remembered the feeling.

  He remembered how it felt when she told him she didn’t want to see him anymore, too. So, yeah. He was nervous. Cautious, too. She wasn’t the girl he’d once known. Did she really only want to talk to him about Mac?

  Well, he was about to find out. “The kids are asleep,” he said. “You could come here.”

  It would be just like old times—except his mother and father wouldn’t be poking their heads into the family room every few minutes to make sure they had all four feet on the floor.

  “It wouldn’t be too weird for the boys if they woke up and found a teacher in their house?”

  A kink in his neck worked itself free. She wanted to come.

  “What’s weird is that we can’t seem to keep pajamas on Finn. It turns out he doesn’t like wearing anything tight when he’s trying to sleep. So prepare yourself. Austin Peters is no longer the only man in this town who likes exposing himself.”

  Lacey laughed and warmth curled through Jake. She could be headstrong. She could be opinionated. But she brought sunshine into a world where it felt like there’d been nothing but dark, dreary storm clouds for too many days. He’d looked for this same brightness in other women he’d dated. So far, he hadn’t found it.

  Right now, he’d never needed it more.

  “Give me a half hour,” she said.

  *

  She arrived a few minutes before ten, parking her car in the driveway in front of the garage. Jake was watching for her and opened the door so she wouldn’t ring the bell and wake up the kids.

  He stepped onto the porch. A wide cedar board creaked beneath his weight. The night was still and warm and speckled with stars. A nighthawk grumbled in the shadows behind one of the barns. Out on the Tongue River, a loon wailed mournfully to the world.

  And then, from the tangle of shadows, a bright beacon of light emerged. Jake parked his butt on the stoop, and with his arms on his thighs and his hands dangling loose between his bent knees, watched it sail toward him.

  A pair of pale pink, suede ankle boots and a light denim jacket over a short-skirted dress had him swallowing hard. The hem of the dress fluttered around the strong, shapely legs his imagination had dwelled on all day. Straight, shining brown hair brushed her shoulders.

  She hadn’t looked like this when she stepped off the soccer field twelve hours ago and it was doubtful she’d been lazing around home in these clothes when he’d called, either. The shower he’d taken and clean clothes he’d scrambled into weren’t because he was milking first thing in the morning, so he guessed they were both sending out signals.

  She stopped at the foot of the stairs. The light from the window behind him highlighted the upward tilt of her lips. She glowed from the inside and his heart wedged into his lungs. Since laying eyes on her for the first time in years in the schoolyard the other morning, he’d been hovering on the edge of a precipice he’d once leapt from without looking.

  A memory of exactly how hard the landing had proven quickly reached in and jerked him to safety. There was another man in her life, and even though he’d bet big money she wasn’t serious about him, she wasn’t really serious about Jake, either. He was a morbid curiosity to her. A cause.

  Calm down, Jake. She’d been willing to come see him at ten o’clock on a Saturday night. No way was she here out of concern for one of her students.

  The baby monitor he’d stuck in his back pocket dug into the small of his back. He reached behind him and pulled it free, setting it on the stoop next to his hip. Lacey’s smile broadened when she spied it. She climbed the stairs, smoothed her skirt underneath her, and sat down beside him. Her shoulder brushed against his arm. There wasn’t a whole lot of extra room on the stoop, which wasn’t a problem. Not on his end.

  “Wow. Having kids really has changed your life, hasn’t it?” she said. Then, because she’d always had a need to poke a little too deep, she added, “For better or worse?”

  It was a good question. He loved the rug rats—a little more every day. He was struggling with losing his parents and sister too, and wouldn’t mind taking time to grieve for them, but his mourning would have to wait. He was an adult with an adult’s understanding that, sometimes, life didn’t go according to plan. He couldn’t imagine how hard it must be for Mac and Finn, who’d not only lost their parents, but had their whole world turned upside down, too. If his life had changed, then theirs had imploded. He wanted to make things as easy for them as he could.

  “Better,” he said. “Although I wish the circumstances were different. I wish I could give them something more…” He struggled to find the right words to explain. When he couldn’t, he shrugged. “Normal, I guess. And maybe a little less public.”

  Lacey would get what he meant. She’d been gone for a while, but she’d grown up in Grand.

  She patted his arm. “I’m not sure normal exists as more than an ideal. From what I’ve seen, every family is different. Two moms, two dads, no mom, no dad… And as far as your life being public, people in Grand might know a lot more about each other than we probably should, but nobody really knows what goes on behind closed doors.”

  She spoke from personal as well as professional experience—a gentle reminder that the McGregors weren’t the first family to face hardship and wouldn’t be the last. When they were dating, they’d spent more time at his house than hers because she hadn’t liked taking friends home. He didn’t know the story behind her birth father, or why he wasn’t a part of her life, but all of Grand knew her stepfather’s story. He’d been a champion rodeo rider with plenty of money, a huge ego, and an unfortunate drinking problem to match.

  Her stepfather and mother had moved to Sweetheart, Montana a few years ago. Jake guessed it was no coincidence she hadn’t returned until after they left. He wondered whatever became of her younger brother.

  He hadn’t invited her here to bring her down though, or to make her revisit a place she had no desire to be, so he didn’t ask. He didn’t want to spread sadness around. Stars blinked at him in agreement.

  “My grandmother—my mother’s mother—is in a nursing home in Nevada and couldn’t make it to the memorial service,” he said, “but we spoke to her by phone. She said that life is for the living and we all need to get past this and move on. That’s what I’m trying to help Mac and Finn do. At the same time, I want to be able to keep their parents’ memory alive for them.”

  “It’s a tightrope,” Lacey agreed.

  The baby monitor behind him let out a wail, sending Jake to his feet. Lydia was awake, and if she woke Finn too, he’d end up in Jake’s bed again.

  “Back in a sec.”

  He returned a few minutes later with a tousle-headed, rosy-cheeked Lydia perched on the crook of his elbow and clutching her sippy cup in both tiny hands. A pink cotton onesie left her chubby legs bare to the balmy night breeze.

  Lacey’s raised eyebrows displayed her surprise. “Exactly how many children do you have, Mr. McGregor?”

  She’d met Mac and Finn, but unless she was hardwired into the local gossip network, she’d have no way of knowing about Lydia, who wasn’t yet in the school system. No one but Posey next door,
and the local ladies auxiliary who’d dropped off casseroles and a half dozen cakes the first week after Jake brought the kids home, had met her.

  “Just the three. Four, if you count Zack,” he said.

  He reclaimed his spot on the stoop, taking up his fair share of room and then some so that Lacey had to sit close. Lydia clung to him like a monkey, with one arm wrapped in a death grip around his neck and her sippy cup in her free hand, and began to play peekaboo with the stranger.

  Zack could be right. Perhaps she did need a social life, even at her tender age. Maybe shyness was a stage all kids went through. He vaguely recalled Mac clinging to Liz this way at the same age.

  Finn, on the other hand…

  His moods swung whichever way the wind blew them. He was headed for a fine arts degree. Or prison. It was too soon to tell.

  “You are seriously adorable,” Lacey cooed in the sing-songish voice women reserved for small children and babies. She tickled Lydia’s leg. Lydia responded by squirming away in the opposite direction.

  Jake wrestled the toddler into a sitting position on his knee and claimed the compliment as his own. “Why, thank you.”

  Lacey smiled at him, as he’d intended. She eased one of her pink suede ankle boots closer to his bare foot. Her knee bumped his thigh next to where Lyddie’s plump little toes dangled.

  “Does your niece have a name?”

  “Lydia. Lyddie, can you say hello to the pretty lady?” She pressed her face into the front of his shirt. “I guess that’s a no. Unless she’s playing hard to get. I haven’t figured out which game is which yet.”

  “You really do have your hands full.”

  Lacey sounded so impressed.

  Or maybe it was pity he heard. If so, he didn’t want it. He wasn’t a cause. “Yes and no. Luke and Zack do their share.”

  Lydia, now that she was safe and secure in her uncle’s arms, began to fade. Her head flopped on his shoulder and her eyelids drifted closed. He eased the sippy cup from her slackening grip. She whined a half-hearted protest, then stuck her thumb in her mouth, and he cuddled her close. Fussing over her the way they did maybe wasn’t doing her any long-term favors, but it gave the McGregor brothers a great deal of enjoyment.