Christmas On The Range: Winter Roses

2

Ivy could hardly contain her amusement. Merrie’s brother was one of the most self-contained people she’d ever known. He never lost control of himself. “Stuart ran the Jag through the barn? The new Jaguar, the XJ?”

Merrie grimaced. “I’m afraid so. He was talking on his cell phone at the time.”

“About what, for heaven’s sake?”

“One of the managers at the Jacobsville sales barn mixed up the lot numbers and sold Stuart’s purebred cows, all of whom were pregnant by Big Blue, for the price of open heifers,” she added, the term “open heifer” denoting a two-year-old female who wasn’t pregnant. Big Blue was a champion Black Angus herd sire.

“That was an expensive mistake,” Ivy commented.

“And not only for us,” Merrie added, tongue-in-cheek. “Stuart took every cattle trailer we had and every one he could borrow, complete with drivers, went to the sale barn and brought back every single remaining bull or cow or calf he was offering for sale. Then he shipped them to another sale barn in Oklahoma by train. That’s why he’s in Oklahoma. He said this time, they’re going to be certain which lots they’re selling at which price, because he’s having it written on their hides in magic marker.”

Ivy just grinned. She knew Stuart would do no such thing, even if he felt like it.

“The local sale barn is never going to be the same,” Merrie added. “Stuart told them they’d be having snowball fights in hell before he sent another lot of cattle to them for an auction.”

“Your brother is not a forgiving person,” Ivy said quietly.

The other girl nodded. “But there’s a reason for the way he is, Ivy,” she said. “Our father expected Stuart to follow in his footsteps and become a professional athlete. Dad never made it out of semipro football, but he was certain that Stuart would. He started making him play football before he was even in grammar school. Stuart hated it,” she recalled sadly. “He deliberately missed practices, and when he did, Dad would go at him with a doubled-up belt. Stuart had bruises all over his back and legs, but it made him that much more determined to avoid sports. When he was thirteen, he dug his heels in and told Dad he was going into rodeo and that if the belt came out again, he was going to call Dallas Carson and have him arrested for beating him. Dallas,” she reminded Ivy, “was Hayes Carson’s father. He was our sheriff long before Hayes went into law enforcement. It was unusual for someone to be arrested for spanking a child twenty years ago, but Dallas would have done it. He loved Stuart like a son.”

It took Ivy a minute to answer. She knew more about corporal punishment than she was ever going to admit, even to Merrie. “I always liked Dallas. Hayes is hard-going sometimes. What did your father say to that?” she asked.

“He didn’t say anything. He got Stuart in the car and drove him to football practice. Five minutes after he left, Stuart hitched a ride to the Jacobsville rodeo arena and borrowed a horse for the junior bulldogging competition. He and his best friend, Martin, came in second place. Dad was livid. When Stuart put his trophy on the mantel, Dad smashed it with a fire poker. He never took the belt to Stuart again, but he browbeat him and demeaned him every chance he got. It wasn’t until Stuart went away to college that I stopped dreading the times we were home from school.”

Involuntarily, Ivy’s eyes went to the painting of Merrie and Stuart’s father that hung over the fireplace. Stuart resembled Jake York, but the older man had a stubborn jaw and a cruel glimmer in his pale blue eyes. Like Stuart, he’d been a tall man, lean and muscular. The children had been without a mother, who died giving birth to Merrie. Their mother’s sister had stayed with the family and cared for Merrie until she was in grammar school. She and the elder York had argued about his treatment of Stuart, which had ended in her departure. After that, tenderness and unconditional love were things the York kids read about. They learned nothing of them from their taciturn, demanding father. Stuart’s defiance only made him more bitter and ruthless.

“But your father built this ranch,” Ivy said. “Surely he had to like cattle.”

“He did. It was just that football was his whole life,” Merrie replied. “You might have noticed that you don’t ever see football games here. Stuart cuts off the television at the first mention of it.”

“I can see why.”

“Dad spent the time between football games running the ranch and his real estate company. He died of a heart attack when I was thirteen, sitting at the boardroom table. He had a violent argument with one of his directors about some proposed expansions that would have placed the company dangerously close to bankruptcy. He was a gambler. Stuart isn’t. He always calculates the odds before he makes any decision. He never has arguments with the board of directors.” She frowned. “Well, there was one. They insisted that he hire a pilot to fly him to business meetings.”

“Why?”

Merrie chuckled. “To stop him from driving himself to them. Didn’t I mention that this is his second new XJ in six months?”

Ivy lifted her eyebrows. “What happened to the first one?”

“Slow traffic.”

“Come again?”

“He was in a hurry to a called meeting of the board of directors,” Merrie said. “There was a little old man driving a motor home about twenty miles an hour up a hill on a blind curve. Stuart tried to pass him. He almost made it, too,” she added. “Except that Hayes Carson was coming down the hill on the other side of the road in his squad car.”

“What happened?” Ivy prompted when Merrie sat silently.

“Stuart really is a good driver,” his sister asserted, “even if he makes insane decisions about where to pass. He spun the car around and stopped it neatly on the shoulder before Hayes got anywhere near him. But Hayes said he could have killed somebody and he wasn’t getting out of a ticket. The only way he got his license back was that he promised to go to traffic school and do public service.”

“That doesn’t sound like your brother.”

Merrie shrugged. “He did go to traffic school twice, and then he went to the sheriff’s department and showed Hayes Carson how to reorganize his department so that it operated more efficiently.”

“Did Hayes actually ask him to do that?”

“No. But Stuart argued that reorganizing the chaos in the sheriff’s department was a public service. Hayes didn’t agree. He went and talked to Judge Meacham himself. They gave Stuart his license back.”

“You said he didn’t hit anything with the car.”

“He didn’t. But while it was sitting on the side of the road, a cattle truck—one of his own, in fact—took the curve too fast and sideswiped it off the shoulder down a ten-foot ravine.”

“I don’t guess the driver works for you anymore,” Ivy mused.

“He does, but not as a driver,” Merrie said, laughing. “Considering how things could have gone, it was a lucky escape for everyone. It was a sturdy, well-built car, but those cattle trucks are heavy. It was a total loss.”

“Even if I could afford a car, I don’t think I want to learn how to drive,” Ivy commented. “It seems safer not to be on the highway when Stuart’s driving.”

“It is.”

They snacked on cheese and crackers and finger sandwiches and cookies, and sipped coffee in perfect peace for several minutes.

“Ivy, are you sure you’re cut out to be a public accountant?” Merrie asked after a minute.

Ivy laughed. “What brought that on?”

“I was just thinking about when we were still in high school,” she replied. “You had your heart set on singing opera.”

“And chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?” Ivy asked with a patient smile. “The thing is, even if I had the money to study in New York, I don’t want to leave Jacobsville. So that sort of limits my options. Singing in the church choir does give me a chance to do what I love most.”

Merrie had to agree that this was true. “What you should really do is get married and have kids, and teach them how to sing,” she replied with a grin. “You’d be a natural. Little kids flock around you everywhere we go.”

“What a lovely idea,” she enthused. “Tell you what, you gather up about ten or twelve eligible bachelors, and I’ll pick out one I like.”

That set Merrie to laughing uproariously. “If we could do it that way, I might get married myself,” she confessed. “But I’d have to have a man who wasn’t afraid of Stuart. Talk about limited options...!”

“Hayes Carson isn’t scared of him,” Ivy pointed out. “You could marry him.”

“Hayes doesn’t want to get married. He says he likes his life uncluttered by emotional complications.”

“Lily-livered coward,” Ivy enunciated. “No guts.”

“Oh, he’s got guts. He just doesn’t think marriage works. His parents fought like tigers. His younger brother, Bobby, couldn’t take it, and he turned to drugs and overdosed. It had to affect Hayes, losing his only sibling like that.”

“He might fall in love one day.”

“So might my brother,” Merrie mused, “but if I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t bet on that any time soon.”

“Love is the great equalizer.”

“Love is a chemical reaction,” Merrie, the nursing student, said dryly. “It’s nothing more than a physical response to a sensory stimulus designed to encourage us to replicate our genes.”

“Oh, yuuuck!” Ivy groaned. “Merrie, that’s just gross!”

“It’s true—ask my anatomy professor,” Merrie defended.

“No, thank you. I’ll take my own warped view of it as a miracle, thanks.”

Merrie laughed, then she frowned. “Ivy, what are you eating?” she asked abruptly.

“This?” She held up a cookie from the huge snack platter that contained crackers, cheese, cakes, little finger sandwiches and cookies. Mrs. Rhodes loved to make hors d’oeuvres. “It’s a cookie.”

Merrie looked worried. “Ivy, it’s a chocolate cookie,” came the reply. “You know you’ll get a migraine if you eat them.”

“It’s only one cookie,” she defended herself.

“And there’s a low pressure weather system dumping rain on us, and you’ve had the stress of Rachel worrying you to death since your father’s funeral,” she replied. “Not to mention that your father’s only been dead for a few weeks. There’s always more than one trigger that sets off a migraine, even if you don’t realize what they are. Stuart gets them, too, you know, but it’s red wine or aged cheese that causes his.”

Ivy recalled one terrible attack that Stuart had after he’d closed a tricky big business deal. It had been the day after he’d attended a band concert at Ivy and Merrie’s school soon after the girls had become friends. They were both in band. It had been Ivy who’d suggested strong coffee and then a doctor for Stuart. He’d never realized that his terrible sick headaches were, in fact, migraines, much less that there were prescriptions for them that actually worked. Ivy had suffered from them all her life. Her mother and her mother’s father had also had migraine headaches. They tended to run in families. They ran in Stuart’s, too. Even though Merrie hadn’t had one, her father had suffered with them. So had an uncle.

“The doctor gave Stuart the preventative, after diagnosing the headache,” Merrie commented.

“I can’t take the preventative,” Ivy replied. “I have a heart defect, and the medication causes abnormal heart rhythms in me. I have to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.”

“I hope you brought your medicine.”

Ivy looked at the chocolate cookie and ruefully put the remainder down on her plate. “I forgot to get it refilled.” Translated, that meant that she couldn’t afford it anymore. There was one remedy that was sold over the counter. She took it in desperation, although it wasn’t as effective as the prescription medicines were.

“Stuart has pain medicine as well as the preventative,” Merrie said solemnly. “If you wake up in the night screaming in pain because of that cookie, we can handle it. Maybe when your father’s estate is settled, Rachel will leave you alone.”

Ivy shook her head. “Rachel won’t rest until she gets every penny. She convinced Dad that I was wilder than a white-tailed deer. He cut me out of his will.”

“He knew better,” Merrie said indignantly.

She laughed. “No, he didn’t.” Nor had he tried to find out. He drank to excess. Rachel encouraged him to do it. When he was drunk, she fed him lies about Ivy. The lies had terrible repercussions. That amused Rachel, who hated her prim younger sister. It made Ivy afraid every day of her life.

She pulled her mind from the past and forced a smile. “If having the estate will keep Rachel in New York, and out of my life, it will be worth it. I still have Aunt Hettie’s little dab of money. That, and my part-time job, will see me through school.”

“It’s so unfair,” her friend lamented. “It’s never been like that here. Stuart split everything right down the middle between us. He said we were both Dad’s kids and one shouldn’t be favored over the other.”

Ivy frowned. “That sounds as if one was.”

She nodded. “In Dad’s will, Stuart got seventy-five percent. He couldn’t break the will, because Dad was always in his right mind. So he did the split himself, after the will was probated.” She smiled. “I know you don’t like him, but he’s a great brother.”

It wasn’t dislike. It was fear. Stuart in a temper was frightening to a woman whose whole young life had been spent trying to escape male violence. Well, it was a little more than fear, she had to admit. Stuart made her feel funny when she was around him. He made her nervous.

“He’s good to you,” Ivy conceded.

“He likes you,” she replied. “No, really, he does. He admires the way you work for your education. He was furious when Rachel jerked the house out from under you and left you homeless. He talked to the attorney. It was no use, of course. It takes a lot to break a will.”

It was surprising that Stuart would do anything for her. He always seemed to resent her presence in his house. He tolerated her because she was Merrie’s best friend, but he was never friendly. In fact, he stayed away from home when he knew Ivy was visiting.

“He’s probably afraid of my fatal charm,” Ivy murmured absently. “You know, fearful that he might succumb to my wiles.” She frowned. “What, exactly, are wiles anyway?”

“If I knew that, I’d probably have a boyfriend,” Merrie chuckled. “So it’s just as well I don’t. I’m going to get my nursing certificate before I get involved with any one man. Meanwhile, I’m playing the field like crazy. There’s a resident in our hospital that I adore. He takes me out once in a while, but it’s all very low-key.” She eyed Ivy curiously. “Any secret suitors in your life?”

Ivy shook her head. “I don’t ever want to get married,” she said quietly.

Merrie frowned. “Why not?”

“Nobody could live with me,” she said. “I snore.”

Merrie laughed. “You do not.”

“Anyway, I’m like you. I just want to graduate and get a real job.” She considered that. “I’ve dreamed of having my own money, of supporting myself. In a lot of ways, I led a sheltered life. Dad didn’t want to lose me, so he discouraged boys from coming around. I was valuable, free hired help. After all, Rachel couldn’t cook and she’d never have washed clothes or mopped floors.”

Merrie didn’t smile. She knew that was the truth. Ivy had been used her whole young life by the people who should have cherished her. She’d never pried, but she noticed that Ivy hardly ever talked about her father, except in a general way.

“You really do keep secrets, don’t you?” Merrie asked gently. She held up a hand when Ivy protested. “I won’t pry. But if you ever need to talk, I’m right here.”

“I know that.” She smiled back. “Thanks.”

“Now. How about a good movie on the pay channels? I was thinking about that fantasy film everyone’s raving about.” She named it.

Ivy beamed. “I really wanted to see that one, but it’s no fun going to the movies alone.”

“I’ll ask Mrs. Rhodes for some popcorn to go with it. In fact, she might like to watch it with us. She doesn’t have a social life.”

“She’s married, isn’t she?” Ivy probed gently.

“She was,” came the reply. “He was an engineer in the Army and he went overseas with his unit. He didn’t come back. They had no kids; it was just the two of them for almost twenty years.” She grimaced. “She came to us just after it happened, looking for a live-in job. She’d lost everything. He got a good salary and was career Army, so she hadn’t worked except as a temporary secretary all that time. When he was gone, she had to go through channels to apply for widow’s benefits, and the job market locally was flat. She came to work for us as a temporary thing, and just stayed. We all suited each other.”

“She’s very sweet.”

“She’s a nurturing person,” Merrie agreed. “She even gets away with nurturing Stuart. Nobody else would dare even try.”

Ivy wouldn’t have touched that line with a pole. She just nodded.

* * *

She was looking through the program guide on the wide-screen television when Merrie came in with a small, plump, smiling woman with short silver hair.

“Hi, Mrs. Rhodes,” Ivy said with a smile.

“Good to see you, Ivy. I’m making popcorn. What’s the movie?”

“We wanted to see the fantasy one,” Merrie explained.

“It’s wonderful,” came the surprising reply. “Yes, I went to the theater to see it, all by myself,” Mrs. Rhodes chuckled. “But I’d love to see it again, if you wouldn’t mind the company.”

“We’d love it,” Ivy said, and meant it.

“Then I’ll just run and get the popcorn out of the microwave,” the older woman told them.

“I’ll buy the movie,” Merrie replied, taking the remote from Ivy. “This is the one mechanical thing I’m really good at—pushing buttons!”

* * *

The movie was wonderful, but long before it was over, Ivy was seeing dancing colored lights before her eyes. Soon afterward, she lost the vision in one eye; in the center of it was only a ragged gray static like when a television channel went off the air temporarily. It was the unmistakable aura that came before the sick headaches.

She didn’t say a word about it to Merrie. She’d just go to bed and tough it out. She’d done that before. If she could get to sleep before the pain got bad, she could sleep it off most of the time.

She toughed it out until the movie ended, then she yawned and stood up. “Sorry, I’ve got to get to bed. I’m so sleepy!”

Merrie got up, too. “I could do with an early night myself. Mrs. Rhodes, will you close up?”

“Certainly, dear. Need anything else from the kitchen?”

“Could I have a bottle of water?” Ivy asked. “I always keep one by my bed at home.”

“I’ll bring it up to you,” Mrs. Rhodes promised. “Merrie?”

Merrie shook her head. “No, thanks, I keep diet sodas in my little fridge. I drink enough bottled water at school to float a boat!”

“You said you could lend me a nightgown?” Ivy asked when they were at the top of the staircase.

“Can and will. Come on.”

Merrie pulled a beautiful nightgown and robe out of her closet and presented it to Ivy. It was sheer, lacy, palest lemon and absolutely the most beautiful thing Ivy had ever seen. Her nightgowns were cheap cotton ones in whichever colors were on sale. She caught her breath just looking at it.

“It’s too expensive,” she protested.

“It isn’t. It was a gift and I hate it,” Merrie said honestly. “You know I never wear yellow. One of my roommates drew my name at Christmas and bought it for me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t my color, I hugged her and said thank you. Then I hung it in the closet.”

“I would have done the same,” Ivy had to admit. “Well, it’s beautiful.”

“It will look beautiful on you. Go on to bed. Sleep late. We won’t need to get up before noon if we don’t want to.”