Strawberry Hill

by Catherine Anderson

  Now, after forty-one years, here she was. It made no sense. If she’d intended to shake him up, she’d done a good job of it. If he’d seen her at the ranch, maybe it wouldn’t have startled him so badly, because that was the most likely place where she would go to find him. The trailhead at Strawberry Hill was another matter entirely. How had she known to wait for him here? Her car had been parked at the edge of the clearing when he’d pulled in.

  Slade went through the motions of getting his men lined out. Per his request, they’d each brought two of their own horses. It appeared that all their gear was in order. Slade had planned to ride up the mountain with them once the cook arrived, but V. L. Brown hadn’t made an appearance yet. He didn’t know what the hell he’d do if she didn’t show up, and right now he was too upset by Vickie’s appearance to even think about it.

  While the men unloaded their livestock and began the saddling process, Slade stood aside, feeling like a fence post that had been planted in the ground and never had any rails attached to it. Useless. Inanimate. Frozen. He could feel Vickie staring at him and knew he had to face her, but his pride waged war with his emotions. He didn’t want her to know how unnerved he was. Didn’t want her to know that he’d dreamed of seeing her again and thought he never would. She’d become a beautiful memory, something he had tucked away in a separate corner of his heart and only brought out into the light of day when he had a weak moment.

  When he finally turned to face her, he had decided to play it casual. He forced himself to smile. “When you first got out of the car, I thought I was seeing a ghost,” he said, following the words with a laugh that sounded fake even to him. “What the hell brought you to the trailhead? You waiting for friends to go on a hike?”

  She lifted her chin—a small, stubborn chin with a dainty indentation at its center. He’d traced its shape with a fingertip at least a thousand times. Memorized it. Loved it. She’d always been small—a delicately made child who’d grown into a delicately made woman. But despite her diminutive stature, she’d been a force to be reckoned with, ready to double her fists and take on the world. He had once admired that about her. It had also made him fiercely protective of her. When Vickie got her dander up, she was hell on wheels, but like a Chihuahua challenging a pit bull, sometimes she needed backup. As a young man, he’d felt honored to take on that job.

  “I thought you’d be expecting me.” She glanced at the trail, which began about twenty-five yards behind him. “If I were here to go hiking, I’d already be gone. I don’t need a gaggle of friends to hold my hand.”

  Hearing her voice again was like something straight out of a dream for Slade. Seeing her hair sparkle like fire in the sunlight only added to his sense of surrealism. Trying not to be obvious, he took measure of her tidy figure. He’d always known she would age well, but he hadn’t expected her to look so much the same. In the harsh light of day, he could detect wrinkles on her sweet face, a little crepe skin on her slender neck, and some liver spots on her forearms and the backs of her hands. A few more freckles had been sprinkled across her nose as well. But in most ways, she looked like the girl he remembered. She wore jeans, a tank top, and a flannel overshirt, an ensemble well suited to the rugged terrain. She’d chosen sturdy, square-toed boots with two-inch heels as footwear, a wise choice for both walking and horseback riding. Weird. She looked ready to step right back into his world. But he wasn’t a big enough fool to believe that was her intent, and he wasn’t about to let her know that he wished it were.

  “So,” he said, letting a note of question trail behind the word. “If you aren’t here to hike, what are you doing here?”

  “In your email, you instructed me to be here at one o’clock. I got here an hour early, so I just parked and waited.”

  Slade got that brain-freeze feeling again. He stared down at her for a long moment. Then he blinked. “My email?” He let that hang there between them like a comic bubble. He hadn’t sent her an email. He hadn’t even been sure she was still alive until ten minutes ago. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Her green eyes locked with his. He’d almost forgotten how beautiful their color was. “You advertised on Craigslist for a camp cook. I applied for the job. You hired me and said to meet you here.”

  The cold sensation inside his head increased, and pain knifed from his left temple to his right one. “What? I hired a woman named V. L. Brown.”

  She nodded. “Victoria Lynn Brown. That’s me.”

  “You’re V. L. Brown?” Slade knew he sounded like a dumb cluck, but he was so startled and bewildered he couldn’t collect his thoughts. “What the hell were you thinking not to identify yourself in our correspondence?”

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans and hunched her narrow shoulders. “You want the truth or a story I can make up really fast?”

  “The truth!”

  She took what appeared to be a bracing breath. “Well,” she said on an exhale, “I was afraid you wouldn’t hire me if you knew who I was, and I need this job.”

  “There are a lot of camp jack jobs on Craigslist. Why pick on me?”

  Her eyes turned a brilliant mossy green. Even after all these years, he knew what that meant. She was getting pissed off. “Simple. The chef jobs dried up where I live. An economic downturn, they call it. A huge drop in tourism. I was faced with working locally as a fry cook for piddling wages or working through the hunting season as a camp cook and making enough to pad my pockets until spring. For me, that choice was a no-brainer. But, given that it’s been years since I’ve done any outfitting, I wanted to get back up to speed in an area I know like the back of my hand. This happens to be it.”

  “Did it occur to you that we didn’t part company on the best of terms, and that maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t want you on my payroll?”

  “It’s been a long time, Slade. I’ve long since buried that particular hatchet, and I figured you probably had, too.”

  Slade felt backed into a corner. If he admitted that he still hadn’t buried that hatchet, he’d sound like a lovesick fool. But the truth was, he hadn’t. He’d trusted her with his heart, and she’d walked all over it. Questioned his word. Called him a liar. Left him without so much as a goodbye and disappeared. Maybe she’d moved on with her life, but he hadn’t. He’d never found another woman he could love the way he’d loved her. So here he stood, still unmarried at almost sixty-four. He’d never had children. When he died, a multimillion-dollar ranch that had been in his family for four generations would probably go to the state. In short, she’d ruined his life. He hadn’t been able to just put that behind him. Hell, no.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made a long drive for nothing,” he said. “I try to avoid having friction of any kind in my camp. I get enough of that with paying guests who come in from different parts of the country and have personality clashes.”

  “So you anticipate that there would be friction between us? It’s all water under the bridge now. Right?”

  He didn’t know what bridge she was standing on, but from his vantage point, all he saw were Class VI rapids, the kind that either pulled a man under and drowned him or threw him against the rocks until he was beaten to death. “I’m sorry, Vickie. There’s too much history between us.”

  “So you’re sending me away.”

  She didn’t pose it as a question, so he felt no obligation to respond with an answer.

  Shoulders straight and head held high, she just stared at him for a moment. Then she said, “All right, Slade. I’ll go. But first we have some old business to settle.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at his men. “Not today. I’m pressed for time.” He met and held her gaze. “I wish you the best of luck. I hope you find another position as a camp jack. Your folks trained you well. You should be a good one.”

  “I will be a good one. And I don’t care how pressed for time you may be. I’m not leaving until we’
ve hashed things out. And when I say things, you know very well what I mean.”

  Slade could only wonder what things she was referring to. If she thought for a second that he was going to discuss his alleged fall from grace with April Pierce again, she had another think coming. One of his men shouted his name. He turned his back on her. “I guess you can hold up a tree to pass the time,” he said over his shoulder. “I’ve got a business to run.”

  He’d almost reached the horse trailers when something struck him dead center on the back. He whirled to see a pinecone ricochet off him and then bounce across the ground. Even with the evidence of his own eyes, he couldn’t quite believe that she’d dared to throw something at him. Vickie. He doubted she tipped the scales at much over a hundred and ten, but she had a huge attitude to compensate for her lack of size. He gave her a long study. Her eyes flashed at him like green traffic lights.

  “Did you just throw that pinecone at me?” he asked, incredulity welling up within him.

  “Hell, no. If I’d been trying to hit you, I would have knocked that hat off your head. Or is it glued down so it won’t get snatched off by the wind to reveal your bald pate?”

  Slade had no clue what a pate was, but he got the gist, and now he was getting pissed off. She wasn’t exactly a spring chicken herself, and there were plenty of mean shots he could take at her. Throwing stones when you lived in a glass house was dangerous.

  “Hey, boss?” one of the seasonal workers called again. “Do you think we need both of these, or should we leave one behind?”

  Slade reached the men. “I don’t know if we’ll need two.” They were quarreling over come-alongs, handheld winches with ratchets that helped a man pull or lift things he couldn’t otherwise handle alone. “And they’re heavy. The less extra weight we carry up that mountain, the better.” Slade’s mind was still on Vickie, the pinecone projectile, and her crack about his bald head. The woman always had been able to frustrate the hell out of him. “But come-alongs are also extremely handy. I say take both of them. I may have room in my packs if none of you do.”

  John, a stout young fellow with dark hair who’d been with Slade the longest, cast a curious glance at Vickie. Slade refused to let his gaze drift that way. He didn’t want to encourage her by seeming to notice that she was still hanging around. “Who is that, boss?”

  Slade sighed. “She was going to be our cook. Applied for the job online, getting creative with her name so I didn’t realize who she was until I actually saw her.”

  “Our cook, and you’re using past tense?” John’s eyebrows arched in question. “Does that mean you gave her the boot?”

  Slade nodded. “We have a history, and not a pretty one. I don’t want to spend the next month trying to tiptoe around her.”

  Rex, the youngest of Slade’s seasonal workers, dropped the come-along he held and said, “Does that mean you’re taking over as the cook? Because that’ll be a freaking disaster. Us guys can make do with sandwiches, even if we have to make them ourselves. But the paying guests expect fancier grub than that.”

  Slade sighed and rubbed beside his nose. “I stay way too busy to be the cook, son. But we have another six days before the guests start showing up. That gives me time to find someone else.”

  “It sure is too bad Cheyenne is pregnant,” Dale inserted. “I mean, I’m glad she is. I know she and her husband want a baby like no tomorrow. It just sucks that she can’t be here to cook for us this season.”

  Slade nodded in agreement. “Chances are she’ll retire from outfitting now. A mother can’t be gone for a solid month every year. I’ll need another cook anyway.”

  John shot a second look at Vickie. “Six days doesn’t give you much time. A thousand things could go wrong. You could hire someone else online, and then that person may get a better offer and never show up.”

  “Yeah,” Rex inserted. “Craigslist is rip-off central. All kinds of scammers are on there, too. If an applicant asks you for money to travel here, don’t fall for it.”

  “I wasn’t born yesterday,” Slade assured him. “I won’t be sending money to some total stranger.”

  Dale, a wiry blond who got sunburned easily, gave Vickie a slow once-over. “She any good?”

  For a moment Slade thought the kid was asking about Vickie’s talents in bed, and his temper started to flare. Then he realized that Dale rarely talked smack about women and wasn’t likely to start now. “As a cook, you mean?” When Dale nodded, Slade said, “Vickie was born and raised in Mystic Creek. Her father used to be an outfitter, and her mother worked for years as his camp jack.”

  “You talking about Old Man Granger?” Rex asked. At Slade’s nod, he added, “Oh, wow. My dad took me on a guided hunt with Granger one year, and the food his wife put on the table was second to none. If your friend—or whatever she is—can cook half as well as her mother could, she’d be one hell of an asset.”

  Slade couldn’t argue the point. Vickie was perfect for the job. Unfortunately, deep down where reason held no sway, Slade still loved her. Always had and always would. She’d nearly destroyed him forty-one years ago by running away and never looking back. Over time, he’d healed, at least after a fashion. He’d stopped dreaming of her in his arms. He’d stopped searching the streets of Mystic Creek for her. He’d finally accepted that she was gone for good and was never coming back.

  “Yes,” Slade admitted. “In some ways, she would be an invaluable asset. But in other ways, she might bring unpleasantness into camp, and I can’t take that risk.”

  John shook his head. “Unpleasantness is when a rich man gets your coffee served to him over a breakfast that your dog won’t even eat.”

  Everyone laughed but Slade. “I know I don’t make the best coffee.”

  “Your food sucks, too,” Rex observed.

  “Yep. Half-raw fried potatoes, rubbery eggs, and burned bacon half the time,” Dale added.

  Slade sighed again. “Don’t worry about my feelings. Just say what’s on your mind.”

  John laughed and said, “We just did. You’re a horrible cook. If you can’t find someone else, we’re going to be up shit creek without a paddle, so I think sending that woman away is a mistake. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” He inclined his head in Vickie’s direction. “You said yourself that she’s probably a great cook. You can keep looking for someone else, but if you’re smart, you’ll keep her on the hook until you can reel somebody else in.”

  “Are you saying I should let her think she has the job until I find someone to replace her?” Slade shook his head. “I can’t do that. If I send her packing now, she still has time to find another position before the season starts. If I fire her after the kickoff date, all the positions may be filled.”

  John shrugged. “It’s your outfitting business, and if you end up without a cook, it’ll be your funeral.”

  Slade wanted to say words he rarely used. Vile words. Not because he disagreed with his men, but because the thought of letting Vickie stay on scared him. She held some kind of power over him that no other female ever had, and no matter how he circled it, he knew being around her, day in and day out for an entire month, could take him on a return trip to heartbreak. He’d been young the last time she’d walked away from him. He’d dealt with the pain and disillusionment by putting all his energy, hopes, and dreams into rodeo competition. It had kept him on the road a good portion of the year. He’d slept with so many buckle bunnies that he couldn’t remember their faces from one night to the next. It had been the worst period of his life, and he wasn’t proud of the way he’d handled any of it, but at least he had survived. He was too damned old for that kind of nonsense now, though. Too worn out. Too close to the finish line. If he let Vickie back into his life and she left him again, he might never recover.

  He finally turned to look at her, and what he saw turned his blood as hot as a solder iron. Pistol was at her
feet. No, not just at her feet. The damned dog was wiggling around on his back, begging for a tummy rub. Pistol bared his belly to no one, absolutely no one, except Slade. In canine language, it was a sign of surrender and absolute trust. Pistol was fond of Wyatt, Tex, and Kennedy, and the dog was a love hog when it came to petting, but he had never assumed that position with any of them.

  “Damn it,” Slade said under his breath. “She’s trying to steal my dog!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Hips resting against the front fender of her Nissan, Vickie stood in the shade of a pine tree. Slade’s dog had decided to curl up on her feet to take a nap, and her right ankle was going numb. She was texting back and forth with Nancy, who was beside herself with anger. Even her typed words looked pissed off, with capitals and quotation marks to accentuate them. Vickie had the absurd feeling that they might morph from mere letters into shouts that exploded into the mountain air. She kept wanting to warn Nancy to keep her voice down.

  “If he won’t set aside a few minutes to talk with you, just yell the truth at the top of your lungs. Embarrass the hell out of him! DEADBEAT DAD!”

  Vickie clenched her teeth. It was always so easy for people on the sidelines to coach the actual players. Nancy wasn’t present, and she hadn’t seen the deadly calm in Slade’s expression. He was a proud man, and a stubborn one. Vickie wasn’t certain how to handle him, but she was certain that embarrassing him wasn’t the wisest tactic.