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Shrugging on her long gray coat, she called to the lone reporter left in the newsroom, “See you tomorrow, Marty.”
His blond head lifted.
Marty, of the fatal crash that killed Susie McKee. A foolhardy, energetic kid raring for the next story. You should be in Iraq or the Congo, not in Podunk, USA.
“You moving out to the Flying Bar T?”
He’d eavesdropped on her call.
“I am.”
His mouth twisted. “Don’t let Ash McKee bite you on the ass.”
Hooking her scarf behind her neck, she stopped. “Why do you say that?”
“He’s a loner.”
“He has family, Marty.”
He frowned. “Take care, okay? You’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg with him.”
No, she thought, sitting in the car, waiting for Charlie to exit Lewis-Clark Elementary. Marty was wrong. What you saw with Ash McKee was exactly what you got. No secrets there. Portraits of his wife proved the point. He’d loved her. As he loved his daughter and father.
When she arrived in an hour with the U-Haul, would he be at the house protecting his inside flock rather than outside with his cows? At the thought of seeing him again, her heart hastened. She leaned a little to the right and checked her hair in the rearview mirror. Good grief. What was she doing, preening for a taciturn man with a snarky disposition?
You need a life, Rachel. Well, the minute Charlie was finished second grade, she was out of here. Leaving town on a jet plane at the speed of light. His next school year would be in Richmond, Virginia, and they would be living in a little house with a backyard and she would work for American Pie. She hoped.
Charlie ran down the steps of the school, parka flapping open to the wind, book pack swaying from an arm. After hopping onto the backseat, he tugged the door closed.
“Hey, baby.” Rachel smiled between the front seats. Her little guy, her pride and joy. “How was your day?”
“Okay.”
Perpetual kid answer. “Any homework?”
“Have to do some math problems.”
Second grade and already homework was arriving two or three times a week. Rachel needed to schedule an appointment with the teacher who continually wrote in her son’s agenda: Charlie read a novel again during lessons today. Class work not completed.
From the day she brought home Barbara Park’s book Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket for his fifth birthday, he’d loved reading. But the ability hampered his progress in emotional and social areas. Fantasy offered comfort amidst the angst of new schools and new friends for a lonely little boy.
And she was to blame. Restless Rachel.
Disillusioned, she pulled onto the main road.
“Can I play first, Mom?”
He always asked, no matter that her response was the same, that she was a stickler about getting homework out of the way.
“You won’t have time for playing tonight, Charlie. We’re moving out to the ranch right away.”
“We are? Yippee! I get to see the horses now.”
Rachel chuckled. “Not so fast, partner. First we buy groceries for supper, then we pick up the trailer, and then…” She paused. “You’ll do homework while I unload our stuff.”
“I want to help.”
In the mirror, his bottom lip pouted.
“Homework first, Charlie. And push up your glasses.”
He did. “Will Mr. Ash be there all the time?”
“Yes. He runs the ranch.”
“But will he show me the horses?”
“Let’s not bother him about the horses just yet.” Or any part of the ranch. She did not need those dark looks boring into her soul.
“I wanna see the horses,” Charlie persisted.
Thrusting horses and Ashford McKee from her mind, Rachel pulled into the grocery lot and centered on what she and Charlie needed to eat.
What’s on your supper table tonight, Mr. Rancher?
Most of all, why did she care?
He saw her the instant he rounded the juice aisle. She stood in the first checkout line with her son, her dark head bent to the kid’s wheat-colored one. At twenty feet, Ash studied her face. She had those clean, fine Uma Thurman lines. Sophisticated with a mixture of sweetness.
He debated. Go back up the aisle, or head for the checkout?
His feet chose for him and he walked past the second cash register with its two customers to stand behind Rachel. Like him, she carried a basket and was busy unloading items onto the counter. Potatoes, lettuce, a quart of milk, steaks. A grin tugged his mouth. “Steaks, huh? Good choice.”
She snapped around. “Ash.”
“Rachel.” He reached for the separation bar, set his own filets behind hers on the counter. He couldn’t think of another word to say, not with her eyes glued to his face.
Charlie stared up at him behind round-rimmed glasses. Kid had her nose. Small and straight and slightly freckled. Why hadn’t he noticed before?
“Hey, Charlie.”
“Hey.” The boy moved timidly behind his mother; she set a protective arm around his shoulders.
Had Susie given Daisy the same sense of support at that age? He couldn’t recall. Susie had been guiding guest riders up ridges and across ranch woodlands when Daisy was seven.
Rachel looked at his purchases. “I thought ranchers ate their own beef.”
“Where do you think stores get their beef, if not from ranchers?” he teased, setting his empty basket on the rack.
A smile lifted the corners of her lips. If he bent his head, he figured his mouth would fit there just fine.
Hold on. Where had that come from?
“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said, suddenly spellbound by the cashier’s scanner.
He dug out his wallet. “You don’t expect me to eat?”
“That’s not what I meant. I thought maybe you’d be—”
She looked so flustered, he couldn’t help chide, “Where? Home on the range? Down on the south forty?”
Suddenly, he liked teasing her, liked the sound of her little gust of laughter. Liked a lot of things about her. Things he hadn’t thought of in years. Things he hadn’t experienced in years. She made him feel. He wasn’t sure if he liked that.
“You should laugh more often,” he remarked suddenly. “Does something to your eyes. Makes them bluer.”
This time she flushed pink. “Are you flirting, Ash McKee?”
His teasing died. “No,” he said curtly, thinking of the last woman he’d joshed around with—Susie, the night before she died.
“Don’t worry,” Rachel said, but the sparkle in her eyes dimmed. “I’m not interested, anyway.” Pulling money from her purse, she guided Charlie forward, then paid the cashier. “Bye.” She flung the word over her shoulder and left the store carrying two bags.
Ash watched through the store’s wide windows as she walked Charlie through the dark parking lot, then climbed into her car.
He wanted to hurry after them, tell her he had been flirting, that he liked the way her laugh lit her eyes and, oh yeah, he was glad she’d be living ninety feet from his house.
Grabbing up his meat package, he strode through the electronic doors. Hell. Next he’d be admitting he fancied Rachel Brant, reporter for the Rocky Times, as a potential date.
She wasn’t interested in flirting, dammit. Not in the least. And certainly not with Ash McKee with his frost-lined attitude.
She understood his abrupt mood change, understood it as if he’d lectured an hour. Flirting meant he thought of her as a woman. He did not want to think of her as a woman. He did not want her living in his dead wife’s dollhouse. Well, tough. He’d made his decision and she was moving in.
Snow fell again. Confetti flakes that came out of a nowhere night and zeroed in on the headlights and windshield in long, gossamer needles.
She drove with care and caution on the road out of town. One slip and they could wind up in a ditch, miles from help, impotent against the cold. With a U-Haul trailer on top of us.
Tonight, the radio forecasted temperatures dipping to twenty below with the windchill. February, galloping like the great lion, Aslan of Narnia, through winter. On the ranch those mothers with little calves would hunt for protection inside the barns.
Or will you herd them inside, Ash?
Unlikely. His animals no doubt were descendants of the Texas longhorns Nelson Story and his cowboys had driven to Montana in 1866. Cattle that died by the thousands in blizzards twenty years later, but evolved over the past hundred and forty years into sturdy range creatures with hardy hides and thick coats, barriers against freezing winds and drifting snow. Historic details she picked up from the old-timer talk at the coffee shop and in the archives of the Rocky Times.
Nonetheless, Rachel shivered for those tiny newborn calves, and looked in the rearview mirror to check her own offspring. “Okay back there, champ?”
“Yeah.”
“Want to sing a song?” He loved singing in the car.
“No.”
“Something happen today, Charlie?” His mood had been off-and-on from the moment she’d picked him up from school.
“Nuh-uh.”
“You’d tell me, right?”
“Maybe.”
Uh-oh. Something had happened. Though Rachel understood her son was a quiet student, Mrs. Tabbs may have had a bad-hair day. Or gotten frustrated with the novel reading and daydreaming.
“Have a fight with Tyler?”
“No. Tyler’s nice. He’s my bestest friend.”
“What happened then, baby?”
“I want to live here forever. I don’t wanna leave anymore.”
“Oh, Charlie, you know that’s impossible.”
“Why? Why do we have to move all the time?”
“Honey, I’ve explained it lots of times. The old soldiers live in different states and it takes a while to build up their trust for the story. Besides, we like living in different areas,” she added cheerfully. “Right?”
“But I want to stay in one house forever.” In the mirror his eyes were hard blue jewels.
One house forever. She had grown up in one house forever and it hadn’t been happy. With Charlie, happiness had come naturally—from the moment she knew of his existence, Rachel had loved her child. “Next house,” she promised him. “Richmond will be the one forever.” If she had to flip burgers for extra money, she’d get him that home, that school, those friends, the dog, a tree house.
“Okay,” came his little voice.
“I love you, champ.”
“Love you, too, Mom.” He drove the Hot Wheels car over the window glass where it left toothpick tracks in its wake.
Through the dark, she saw the ranch house ablaze with light. The collies, black shapes in the night and yellow eyes in headlights, crept around the car as she cut the engine.
The green truck Ash drove was nowhere in sight.
He said he wouldn’t be here.
Had he bought those steaks for someone in town? A lady friend? One who enjoyed his company, his flirting? Who didn’t get the evil eye one minute and a sexy grin the next?
What on earth had her assuming he wouldn’t have a woman in his life? Naturally, he’d be seeing someone. It’s been fifty-five months, Rachel. Hadn’t he quoted the exact time frame last week?
She and Charlie climbed from the car. Her nose picked up friendly scents—cows, barns, wood smoke and the perfume of beauty: mountain snow and wind and night.
A sweet-faced Latino woman with a braid that touched the curve of her spine answered Rachel’s knock. “Mrs. Brant?” She smiled down at Charlie. “I’m Inez, the housekeeper. Ash let us know you’d be on your way.” She offered a set of keys. “For the cottage. There’s room to park around the side. Follow the graded area. Ash plowed it out this morning.”
So. He’d been expecting her today.
“Thank you.” She took the keys and then, following the sheared path rapidly filling with snow, towed the trailer around to the guesthouse.
Someone, probably Inez, had turned on the lights; the windows glowed with warm welcome. Rachel pulled up and shut off the motor. “Home sweet home,” she murmured.
Charlie leaned forward. “Do I get to pick my bedroom?”
“Absolutely.”
Warmth greeted them the moment she opened the door. Had Ash left the heat on all day in anticipation of her arrival?
Charlie kicked off his boots and ran for the stairs.
“Remember, you have math to do,” she called, as he scrambled puplike to the loft. His feet thundered back and forth. She gave him a minute.
“I’m taking this one, Mom,” came his shout. “It’s got a window bench and everything! You can have the fireplace.”
Rachel shook her head. A fireplace in a bedroom? She couldn’t wait to see.
A thought rooted. Had Ash and his wife…?
She hurried into the snowy night. If she was to save an extra day’s rent on the trailer, they would need to return the U-Haul to the dealership by six-thirty.
The snow had mutated into a storm. A white wall that hit before she reached the county road three miles from the ranch. Three miles of snow and wind battering the car, swaying the empty trailer and swallowing the headlights. Please. Show me the track, the ditches.
“Mom?” Charlie’s voice, small and frightened from the rear seat. “It’s really, really snowy.”
“We’ll go slow, baby. We’ll get there.”
“Maybe we should go back to Mr. Ash’s place.”
She would, if she could turn around, if she knew for certain the road would still be in front of her when she pointed the nose of the car in the other direction. Best to keep going.
She drove five miles an hour. The wipers strained against snow buildup and wind blasts.
A shape emerged in the headlights.
“Mom, look out!”
She saw the red eyes a millisecond before the deer leaped—one long, high bound—into snow and night. But already she’d reacted to the animal’s sudden appearance. Braking, swinging the steering wheel to the right to miss the animal.
The Sunburst’s front tires thumped against a thick drift that spewed snow up and over hood and roof.
“Nooo!”
The rear wheels spun on the icy pavement. She jerked against her seat belt as the car shifted sideways and slid. Slid with the ease of a skater, nose-first down into the ditch.
She heard the scream of metal before she realized the trailer had ripped from the hitch.
“Charlie!”
The U-Haul slammed into the rear of the Sunburst.
Ash left town at 6:55 p.m., earlier than planned. A couple days ago, he’d seen the sun dogs—rainbowlike spots on each side of the sun—and knew a storm brewed before the radio confirmed the weather system hailing from the north this afternoon.
When he’d phoned home, Inez told him Rachel had arrived.
That he inhaled long and loud hearing the news meant he didn’t favor the idea of anyone out in this weather. It had nothing to do with her. Nothing.
Hell, he’d practically forgotten her when he’d left the grocery store and taken the steaks over to Meggie’s house. And when he and his teenage nephew, Beau, stood, bundled up in parkas and wool hats, grilling the meat on her outdoor barbecue, he hadn’t thought of Rachel at all.
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