The Ranch She Left Behind (11 page)

Penny knew the marriage to Dallas was still strong, still joyous, so it wasn’t that.

“Has there been any word from Bonnie and Mitch? Do you think they’ll come back for the wedding?”

The disappearance of Dallas’s brother, Mitch, who had run off with Rowena’s friend and employee Bonnie O’Mara, on the day of Rowena’s wedding, was another mystery no one could solve.

Everyone knew Bonnie was running from something, but no one knew what.

Perhaps that was weighing on Rowena’s heart. Dallas must be suffering, wondering if his brother was all right, wondering when he’d see him again. And Rowena had grown deeply fond of Bonnie in the short time she’d known her.

“They send postcards now and then, just to let us know they’re okay. But they never say where they are. And no talk of settling down. Certainly no talk of coming home.” Rowena smiled. “But the cards are full of Mitch’s ridiculous jokes and puns, so apparently life on the road is suiting him.”

Okay, good. Worry about the nomadic couple wasn’t the problem, either.

Getting the dude ranch up and running must be too much for her. This first year was critical—and there were so many decisions to be made. Though the fall season was clearly off to a successful start, they were simultaneously deep into planning for the winter season, which began on January 2.

In addition to getting the new cottages finished, they were hiring staff, arranging for ski instructors and sleigh rides and snowmobiles…and sorting out all the insurance and budget issues that came along with winter activities.

Penny felt a pang of guilt. Did she really have the right to insist on striking out alone at a time like this? Her Risk-it List of dancing and tattoos seemed frivolous compared to the possibility that Rowena was making herself ill with all the work. Shouldn’t Penny just saddle up and ride her responsibilities, as their father used to say? She was a full partner—was it right of her not to shoulder a full share of the burden?

“Ro, you look awfully tired. Are you feeling all right? Is running the ranch getting to be too much?”

Rowena squeezed her hand and smiled. “I’m fine. Now that Bree has set a date, and Gray can relax, I’ll be great.” She put her lower lip between her teeth thoughtfully, her eyes regaining their mischievous sparkle. “Although…if I played the martyr card, would it get you to agree to move back home?”

“Ro.”
Bree smacked her sister’s arm. “You promised. Leave her alone.”

Rowena laughed, unabashed. “It was worth a try.”

She stood, indicating that she was through discussing her health. “How about if I show you around the new wing?”

Typical of Rowena, putting on a strong face the minute she was questioned. She’d never liked to admit weakness, and though she’d mellowed in many ways, she still didn’t enjoy pity.

Penny decided to let it go, though she made a mental note to ask Bree about it privately. “You bet,” she said cheerfully, standing. “I can’t wait to see what you’ve done!”

By the time the tour was over, and they returned, chattering happily, to the dining room, a feast of sandwiches and salads had been beautifully displayed on the sideboard. Penny was suddenly ravenous, her mouth watering and her stomach rumbling.

Each of them filled a plate, then sat down to dig in.

After a minute or two devoted to ecstatic appreciation, Rowena spoke. Her voice was full of mischief.

“So…aren’t you ever going to tell us about Mr. Dreamy?”

Penny stirred her salad and didn’t make eye contact. She was glad to hear Ro sound very much her old, incorrigible self. But she hadn’t wanted to open this discussion today.

“Nothing to say, really. It’s almost as if no one’s over there. He’s gone a lot, working. His daughter goes to Millicent Starling’s day camp, I think. Remember how awful Starling’s was?”

All three of them had been forced to attend Starling’s Day Camp at least one summer, so she hoped this topic might divert the conversation away from Max. She looked up and smiled as naturally as possible.

“No one cares about Millicent,” Ro said flatly. “Back to the hunky widower.”

“He’s just a tenant.” Penny sighed. “And a pretty good one. He paid three months in advance.”

Ro laughed. “Notice how she says nothing about…ice cream.”

Penny rolled her eyes. She should have known she wouldn’t get away without a debriefing on this. “And you wonder why I am not keen to move back in. I do one impulsive thing in my entire life, and I’m never going to live it down.”

“You don’t have to live it down,” Bree said, shooting their sister a dirty look. “You can kiss every man who walks into the ice-cream store, if you want to. Ro is just being Ro.”

It was nice, listening to Bree tease Ro this way—with no real anger or bitterness. For so many years, the two of them had been estranged, and Penny had struggled in vain to help them reconcile. Even if Penny had to be the butt of the joke today, it was worth it to see them act like real sisters again.

“I don’t really have the urge to kiss every single man. I don’t even have the urge to kiss that one, except that one time.”

Even as she said it, though, she knew it wasn’t true. She’d had the urge to kiss him again the other night, on the back deck. That urge could become a habit.

“Why?” Rowena ignored Bree’s body language, which clearly said “enough, already!” “What was different about that one time?”

“He was with his daughter, who was being a real brat. I expected him to…you know. Say something cruel. Go nuts. I kept imagining what Dad would have been like if I…if one of us…”

She lifted her shoulder. She didn’t need to explain further. She could tell they were imagining, too. “Anyhow, Max was surprisingly gentle. And very patient. So…I just felt the urge to thank him for restoring my faith in men.”

Darn it. She should have said “in fathers.” Restoring her faith in
fathers.
But correcting herself would have been more conspicuous than letting it stand.

Bree looked a little misty-eyed. Ro did, too—although as usual she clearly didn’t want it to show. She wiggled her eyebrows dramatically. “Of course, it didn’t hurt that he’s wildly attractive, right?”

She ducked sideways, anticipating Bree’s teasing swat. “Okay, well, as long as I’m in trouble,” Ro said, returning to center when Bree withdrew her hand. “I might as well confess that I checked him out.”

“Checked him out?” Penny wasn’t sure what that meant. Checked out his good looks?

“Yeah. You know. Cyber digging. It’s amazing what you can find out, if you’re really trying.”

“Aw, Ro.” Bree put her head in her hands. “You’re impossible.”

“Well, initially I asked Dallas to do it. He’s got all those law enforcement programs that would make it so easy. But he refused. Some ethics nonsense or something.”

Ro’s eyes were laughing, though she pretended to be serious. “So anyhow, apparently Thorpe is exactly who he says he is. Successful architect. Travels a lot, site planning, construction oversight, stuff like that. Wife died last year of an aneurism. Daughter a little mixed up but not Bad Seed material or anything. Just cranky.”

“Ro, what were you thinking—”

But Rowena pretended she hadn’t heard Penny’s interruption and helped herself to another plate of salad. “He’s clean. Bree and I decided he can stay.”

“Not Bree and I,” Bree corrected emphatically. “You leave me out of this.”

Penny was still looking for her voice.

“You…you actually… You snooped into…” She scowled, wishing she didn’t turn into an inarticulate child every time Rowena flustered her. “Tell me you’re kidding.”

“Sorry, Pea.” Ro grinned. “It doesn’t matter how old you get. I’m always going to be the big sister.”

“And she’s always going to be an interfering know-it-all,” Bree added pleasantly. She winked at Penny. “I’ve finally made peace with it. You’d probably better just do the same.”

She reached down beside her chair and hauled up a stack of pastel binders, each labeled something like Caterers or Bridesmaids Dresses.

“Okay, ladies. If Rowena is finished being insufferable for the moment, we’ve got a wedding to plan.”

* * *

E
LLEN
HATED
THE
day camp her dad had decided to stash her in while he was at work. It was almost all outdoors, which meant it was too hot, and too…Colorado.

Kids out here thought the weirdest things were fun. They shot arrows, climbed rocks, paddled canoes, rode bikes… No wonder they were so skinny. One of the girls had laughed at her for sweating during the rock climbing. Well, ex
cus
e her if the shopping and movies and YouTube stuff she did for fun in Chicago didn’t build up Amazon biceps.

Where she lived, nature wasn’t always trying to kill you, so you didn’t have to play “survival games.”

Today hadn’t been the worst, because someone from a place called Bell River Dude Ranch had joined them to teach an art lesson. Alec Garwood had come along with the woman. That was nice, if only because Ellen actually sort of knew him.

His parents owned that dude ranch, she discovered, which was kind of cool, except he said it was mostly horses and more of this outdoorsy stuff—canoes and bikes and rocks and campouts. Still, the other kids looked up to him, you could tell. When he came over and sat next to her during the art class, they all began treating her better.

It didn’t seem to matter that he was only ten, and some of the other kids were all the way up to twelve. He was like one of those natural born leaders or something.

He was rotten at art, though, and he laughed about it, adding colors and blobs to his painting until it looked like a picture of wet mud. She was pretty good, and she’d expected him to be nasty about it. Boys sometimes were if they felt stupid. But he wasn’t nasty. He kept saying how good she was, and several other kids heard him, which was nice.

She painted a watercolor of some loblolly pines, which she liked the name of, even though she’d just learned it today. Her other choice had been to go to the stables and paint a horse, but horses made her nervous. She didn’t want anyone to notice that—especially Alec. She had a feeling he would be like a horse guru or something, considering he owned a ranch.

Anyhow, the pines had turned out really pretty. Even the teacher said so. Ellen found herself checking her watch, hoping it was almost time for her dad to come get her. He approved of her doing art—it was the one thing she liked that he didn’t call “inappropriate.” Besides, he’d promised to take her out to dinner.

“So did you decide if you want me to pierce your ears?” Alec had tilted his chair back on its rear legs, and he was ruffling his paintbrush through his fingers, spraying paint on his paper. The teacher had stopped reprimanding him half an hour ago, when it became clear his painting was hopeless.

Ellen ran her hands across her drawing, smoothing it out. “No,” she said flatly. “Why would I let you do that? You don’t know anything about piercing peoples’ ears.”

“What’s to know?” He got his brush sopping wet, swished it around in the green paint, and let loose a spray of dots that looked like Martian blood. They hit the paper, then slid down in blobs, picking up the mud color as they dragged along. “You use ice to numb your ear, I know that. Then take the needle and…bam!”

He jabbed with the paintbrush, mimicking the needle through her ear. She winced, in spite of herself.

“See?” He smiled. “I knew you were scared.”

“I’m not scared. I’m just not an idiot. You didn’t say anything about sterilizing the needle. You’d probably cut my ear off.”

He laughed, then put down his brush, noticing that the teacher was winding up and preparing to leave.

“Suit yourself,” he said happily. “She’s my ride, so I gotta go.”

Something went flat inside Ellen’s chest, like a bike tire with a hole in it. She didn’t want to be left alone here with these other kids, who weren’t nice to her. She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes until her father came. She wondered if there was any way to get Alec to hang around till then.

But as she was searching her mind for an excuse that didn’t sound pathetic, Mrs. Starling showed up at her elbow. She hated Mrs. Starling most of all, because she was suntanned to the color of leather, and she had muscles so big they looked as if they were play dough mounds added to regular arms and thighs.

“Ellen, your father called,” she said with a smile that was probably supposed to be friendly. But her teeth were so white and square inside that leathery face that it just looked weird. “He’s been delayed at work, and you’re supposed to go home in the camp van.”

Ellen’s mouth fell open. “He’s not coming to get me?”

The woman gave her a narrow look, as if Ellen might be kind of slow. People thought that sometimes, because she was chubby. She always wanted to take out the picture she kept of her mom, who had been chubby when she was eleven, too, and turned out to be really beautiful and smart.

“Yes.” The woman spoke more slowly. “I said, he’s been delayed at work.”

“Well, what will I do when I get home? Will he be home then?

Ellen knew she was sounding just as brainless as Mrs. Starling suspected, but she was so upset she couldn’t think straight. Although, really, why should she even be surprised? Back before her mom died, her dad was always stuck at work.

But he’d promised her. That’s why they moved here in the first place, he said. So that he wouldn’t have to travel so much, and he could “put her first.”

Ha.
And she’d been dumb enough to fall for it.

“I’m sure someone will be there by the time you get home,” Mrs. Starling said, but you could tell she wasn’t one bit sure. She didn’t care. If no one was home, it wouldn’t be her problem.

The woman walked away to talk to the driver, who had already begun to gather his group over by the front door. Ellen had always felt a little bit superior, because she didn’t have to get herded up like one of the sheep. She was one of the lucky kids whose parents could get off work early, or didn’t work at all, and always showed up on time.

Well, not anymore.
Thanks, Dad.

Just then Alec came sauntering by, talking to a couple of the other kids, his hands in his pockets and his mouth full of chocolate. They were heading for the door, following the art teacher. Going back to Bell River Dude Ranch, no doubt.