Reuniting With the Rancher (2 page)

But her niece seemed determined to follow her aunt’s wishes. He watched her walk to her car, a slender woman with beautiful auburn hair and blue eyes, and thought how utterly alone she looked. And how very sexy. Since those thoughts had gotten him in trouble once before, he clamped down on them hard, and wished them to hell.

No way was he going to fall for that blue-eyed seductress again.

With any luck, Holly Heflin would blow back out of town as fast as she had blown in, taking whatever funds Martha had left her and leaving the ranch to rot. She was a city girl, after all.

He wondered if she’d let the house and barn turn to dust. He certainly wasn’t going to do all the maintenance for her as he had done for Martha. He didn’t owe her that and she wouldn’t even qualify as a neighbor.

Damn, he felt angry for no good reason that he could figure out. He’d had a low opinion about Holly for years, so no shock there. Absolutely no reason to be angry all over again.

Cussing under his breath anyway, he skipped the potluck and headed home. He had a ranch to take care of and only one task remaining as far as Martha went: to take her niece to the bank and see that the accounts got turned over to her.

And, he supposed, to ensure she didn’t try to sell the ranch. It didn’t look as if she would care, so what the hell.

Trying to get himself into a better mood, he turned on some music on the radio, discovered a sad country song and turned it off again.

Damn,
he thought. “Martha, why do I get the feeling you left me a mess and I don’t even know how bad it is yet?”

Of course there was no answer.

* * *

Holly arrived at the ranch with sand in her eyes and lead in her heart. She climbed out of the car and looked around, memories whispering to her on the breeze. As a child she had absolutely loved coming out here. As a young woman, after Cliff, the charm had rested entirely with her aunt’s company.

Turning, she surveyed the changes. Cliff must have rented damn near all the land, to judge by how close the fences were now. But he’d also kept the place up for Martha, and sooner or later she was going to have to thank him for that no matter how the words stuck in her craw.

Memories wafted over her. She’d spent some summers here as a small child, then when she’d grown up her visits had been shorter because she had a job, but still she had come, for Martha. With one exception, every memory was good. Time and frequent visits, at least, had mostly cleared Cliff from her memories of this place. It almost seemed that only Martha remained here.

Great-Aunt Martha had been the kind of woman that Holly hoped she’d grow up to be: tough, independent, doing things pretty much her own way, but kind and loving to the core.

She made herself brush away her reaction to Cliff and climbed the steps of the porch to the front door. Her key still worked and she stepped into the past, into familiar smells that carried her back over the years, into familiar sights, into a place that had always been her second home.

In that instant, knowing she would never see Martha again, she burst into the tears she’d been trying to hold back.

She’d always felt close to Martha, despite the miles that had separated them for so long, and it hurt to realize she could never again pick up the phone and hear her aunt’s voice.

Never again.

* * *

Keeping busy seemed to be the only answer. Holly was used to being busy all the time, and sitting around her aunt’s house weeping and doing nothing went against her grain. Martha, thank goodness, hadn’t been sick. She had died suddenly and unexpectedly of a stroke, a merciful way to go, for which Holly was grateful. But it also meant the house was in pretty good shape inside as well as out. Not a whole lot of housework to occupy her, other than putting away the groceries she had bought and changing bed linens.

That left going through things. Martha had been a minimalist most of her life, buying very little, keeping very little that she didn’t use. But in going through drawers and looking at photos, Holly found plenty to carry her into memory. Pictures of her visits here, pictures of her parents, photos of Martha’s own parents and grandparents. She wasn’t awash in photos, as Martha hadn’t been one for taking very many, but there were enough to be cherished.

The furnishings showed their age and use but were still serviceable. The house seemed to be ready for her, and she wondered if Martha had intended that. Maybe.

She certainly hadn’t left any unfinished chores behind her.

Finally, unable to bear any more, she headed for the bedroom she had used during her visits. The big stuffed teddy bear Martha had given her as a child still occupied the rocker in the corner. Holly fell asleep hugging it and thinking of her aunt, the last of her family.

* * *

Morning brought no relief. Sleep had been disturbed, and she hardly felt any more rested than yesterday.

Then she remembered something Martha had been definite about. “You want to do something for me? Plant a tree.”

So she decided, after choking down her breakfast, that today she would go find a tree to plant just for Martha. Its importance grew in her mind as she thought about it. Martha had wanted it, and Martha would get it.

After she finished washing her dishes, Holly gripped the edge of the counter, closed her eyes, and tried not to hear the empty silence of the house around her. She couldn’t believe she wouldn’t hear Martha’s voice at any moment. Couldn’t believe that Martha was really gone.

God, it was beginning to hit. Numbness had begun wearing off yesterday, but now it seemed to be deserting her completely.

Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and her heart ached as if a vise gripped it. She had known it would hurt to lose her aunt, but she hadn’t imagined this. It was every bit as bad as when her parents died in the car crash. Every bit, and that grief still haunted her.

Martha had been her anchor ever since, her family, the person who kept her from feeling like an orphan, and now Martha was gone.

Never had Holly felt so utterly alone.

She wept until she could weep no more, until fatigue weighed her down and her sides hurt from sobbing. But at last quiet returned to her mind and heart. Temporarily, anyway. She fixated on getting that tree, the one wish of her aunt’s that she could still carry out.

She washed up, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, the clothes she wore when she was working with the children, and stared almost blindly at her reflection in the mirror.

Who was she? It almost seemed as if she had become a stranger to herself, as if grief were sweeping huge parts of her aside. Closing her eyes, she thought of the kids she worked with back home in Chicago, kids who were always hungry, often cold, flotsam in a sea beyond their control.

Thinking of them grounded her again, reminding her she had a purpose, and purpose was the most important thing of all.

When she finally stepped outside to face the day’s duties, she paused in the drive, feeling the spring breeze of Conard County, Wyoming, whisper all around her. Here the air was almost never still, and it seemed to carry barely heard words on it, as if it were alive.

She opened herself to it, letting it wash over her like a tender touch, the kind of tenderness she wouldn’t feel again, the tenderness of mother, father, aunt.

She took time to walk around the house taking in the small changes, having random thoughts about what she could do with this place. Her job as a social worker lay back in Chicago, but as she strolled around she realized that an ever-present tension had begun to evaporate. Today she didn’t have to walk on those streets; she didn’t have to visit tiny apartments in public housing where despair seemed to paint the walls. She didn’t have to deal with the problems of too-skinny children who were having trouble in school or at home. She didn’t have to wage a battle against desperation and hopelessness. Not today.

Then, squaring her shoulders, she strode to the car. A tree. She needed to get a tree.

She saw a vehicle coming up her driveway. A dusty but relatively recent pickup of some kind. Who could possibly be coming out here?

She didn’t have to wait long for her answer. She quickly recognized Cliff’s silhouette behind the wheel. A few seconds later he pulled up beside her.

“Going somewhere?” he asked.

She resisted the urge to tell him it was none of his business, because she might have to deal with him for a long time to come. “My aunt wanted me to plant a tree in her memory. I was about to go look for one.”

He glanced at her rental. “Hard to carry in that. I was coming if to see if you wanted to take care of the bank account transfer. The sooner we clear the decks, the happier we’ll both be.”

Her teeth tightened. He
really
wasn’t going to let her forget. “Fine,” she said shortly.

He looked at her car again. “You planning to stay long?”

“I have a couple of weeks before I have to get back. If that’s long, then yes.”

“One rain and that car won’t get anywhere. You’ll bog down.”

“It’s a rental,” she said defensively, feeling as if he was criticizing her somehow. “Do you
ever
say anything that’s not critical?”

He paused. “I call things as I see them. So did your aunt. How about you?”

“What I see is a man I intended to thank for helping Aunt Martha, but right now I couldn’t choke the words out to save my life. You’re rude.”

His lips tightened, but his response was mild. “I see a little of your aunt in you.”

She didn’t respond. Ordinarily she would have taken that as a compliment, but right now she wasn’t in the mood. Besides, with this man, it must have been a sideways condemnation of some kind. He had plenty of reason to hate her, she knew, but after ten years, shouldn’t he be over it? Stupid question, she thought immediately. Her own behavior still troubled her after all these years.

“Well, climb in my cab. I can carry a tree in my bed better than you can in that car, and we can take care of the bank.”

She wanted to refuse. Oh, man, did she want to tell him to take a hike, and even more so because of the antipathy that radiated from him. She was starting to feel a whole lot of dislike for him, too. Before, she’d never disliked him, but now she wondered if she had been more wise than foolish all those years ago.

Damn this unwanted sexual attraction. Any woman would feel it, she assured herself. It was just normal. He was that kind of guy, a real-life hunk.

She didn’t want it, though. Not one little bit. She’d tasted that apple a long time ago, and it hadn’t been enough to keep her here. She’d grown up, but she was beginning to wonder if he had.

She had to give in to reality. He was right—carrying a tree would be easier in his truck.

Setting her chin, she marched around and climbed in the cab, prepared for a couple of unpleasant hours, not the least of which would be the way her body kept wanting to betray her mind and heart.

Chapter Two

A
s unneighborly as it felt, Cliff didn’t say a word on the way to town. What were they going to talk about anyway? Discussing Martha didn’t seem exactly safe right now, although maybe he was wrong.

On the other hand, he didn’t want to renew his relationship with Holly. Not in the least. A summer-long torrid affair a decade ago had left him scarred and her...What had it done to her? She’d turned her back on him readily enough, giving him all the reasons why she couldn’t stay in this county. She’d suffocate, she’d said. She had important things to do, she’d said. She was going to be a social worker and save the world, or at least part of the world.

He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and thought that social work didn’t seem to be agreeing with her. She looked entirely too thin, for one thing. He couldn’t judge anything else because she was grieving for her aunt, after all, but if he’d been looking at a horse showing those signs, he’d have been thinking “worn to the bone.”

Fatigue seemed to wrap around her. She didn’t really have the spark he remembered. Much as he didn’t want to, he wondered if social work had gutted her in some way.

But damned if he’d ask. She’d be leaving here in two weeks. By the grace of heaven, he hoped that wouldn’t be long enough to open scars or get him all tangled up in her barbed wire again.

Because that was how he thought of it: barbed wire. Her departure had scored him deep, like a million sharp knives. No freaking way was he going through that again.

Of course, he thought, she might not be the same person any longer. He might not even really be drawn to the woman she had become. So far he hadn’t seen much to like. It was almost as if he were the enemy, not the other way around.

Which got him to wondering how she had justified her cruelty. Ah, hell, leave that can of worms alone. Take her to the bank, help her buy and plant the damned tree, and then forget she was on the same part of the planet with him.

Listening to his own thoughts, however, yanked him up short. He was thinking like a kid again. She was causing him to revert. Well, to hell with that.

He was relieved the bank took only a few minutes. He showed the paper the lawyer had given him, Martha’s account was moved into a new one in Holly’s name and it was done.

Mercifully soon, they were climbing into his truck again. Holly, however, seemed to sag. Finally he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“What’s wrong?”

“Did you see how much money she left me? Cliff...I’m stunned.”

“Well, you could take a decent vacation. Looks like you need one.”

She bridled, but only a bit, not as she once had. What the hell had quenched her fire? “That’s more than a vacation or even ten. And what do you mean I look like I need one?”

“You look too thin and exhausted,” he said bluntly. “Whatever kind of work you’re doing, it’s not good for your health.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I never did.” He waited for an explosion that didn’t come. Oh, this was bad. This wasn’t the Holly he remembered at all. Now, right alongside his annoyance at having her around for a while, he felt the first tendrils of worry. Was she sick?

None of his business anymore, he reminded himself. She’d made sure of that.

The town didn’t have anything like a big nursery. Around here, most planting was reserved for hay, alfalfa and vegetable gardens. But there was a corner at the feed store where it was possible to buy houseplants and some ornamental trees. Not a huge selection, but no huge demand, either. They
would
order stuff in, though, if, say, someone wanted to plant a windbreak or something bigger.

“What were you thinking of planting for her?” he asked as they stood looking at the tiny selection.

“Well, she always said she wanted to leave a small footprint in the world, so it should be something native.”

He hesitated a moment, wondering how far into this he wanted to get. “What are you looking for? Fast growing, flowering?”

“I want something pretty that will last. It doesn’t have to grow fast.”

He pointed. “That tulip poplar over there will give you fantastic autumn foliage. Almost like aspens, which are related. It’s pretty hardy, though.”

She looked at the tree, which right now was little more than a twig with a few leaves. “Will it get really big?”

“It’ll grow into a great shade tree.”

That decided her. Ten minutes later he was carrying it out to his truck for her.

* * *

Holly felt as if someone had let all the air out of her. Grief? Maybe. More likely it was the release of the constant tension she lived with in Chicago. Fatigue seemed to envelop her, demanding she go home and fall asleep for hours, if not days. But she still had to plant a tree. She doubted that could be safely put off for too long.

“You ever planted a tree before?” Cliff’s voice broke the silence she would have liked to continue forever.

“No.”

There was a notable pause before he said, “I’ll help.”

His reluctance couldn’t have been any more obvious. Hers equaled it. But before her pride could erupt and get her into trouble, she faced the fact that she needed the help. If she did it all wrong, she’d kill the tree. And from the size of the root ball, she questioned whether she’d even have the physical strength to dig a hole so big.

She glanced at Cliff from the corner of her eye. He’d have the strength. Damn it. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

Another mile passed, then he surprised her by speaking again. “Your aunt was a remarkably caring, giving woman,” he said. “If anyone in this county hit hard times, she was there for them. I guess you take after her.”

Reluctantly, she looked at him. “How would you know?”

“I’m assuming. You’re a social worker, right? That means you help people, right?”

She heard the annoyance in his tone and realized her response to him hadn’t been very gracious. In fact, it had been challenging. Sheesh, she needed to get a handle on this antipathy toward him. He at least was making some kind of effort, much as she really didn’t want it.

“In theory,” she said. “Yeah, in theory. Once in a while I feel like I’ve gotten something good done. Most of the time I’m not sure. It takes kids a long time to grow up.”

“You work with kids?”

“Mostly. With their parents, too, depending on what the problems are.”

“Do you get any short-term rewards?”

The question surprised her with its understanding. She hadn’t expected that. “Sometimes. But I’m not in it for rewards.”

“No, you’re in it to help.”

The echo of her words a decade ago was so strong she winced. She distinctly remembered telling him that she had a bigger need to help people than she could meet around here as a rancher’s wife. God, how full of herself she had been. She’d left wounds behind her as she’d set out like Don Quixote, with little idea of what she was getting into, or how many windmills would shatter her lance.

She didn’t answer him, instead turning her attention to the countryside that rolled past. What was the point? They’d be better off having as little to do with each other as possible. It was just that simple. Hard to believe that a fleeting affair, however torrid, might have left scars that lingered this long.

She certainly hadn’t expected it to.

One summer, a long, long time ago. She’d been visiting her aunt between semesters. He’d been gradually taking over the reins of his ranch from his father, just beginning to reach the fullness of manhood.

She had been sunning herself on a cheap, webbed chaise in the front yard, wearing a skimpy halter top and shorts, a book beside her on the grass. Martha had shooed her outdoors and was inside lining up a potluck dinner for her church. A potluck Holly had no intention of being dragged to. She was just a visitor, passing through, her sights set far away.

But then Cliff had come riding up. She hadn’t seen his approach because he came from the rear of the house, but as he rounded the corner, she caught her breath. Against the brilliant blue clarity of the sky, he had looked iconic: astride a powerful horse, cowboy hat tipped low over a strong face, broad shouldered, powerful.

She should have run the instant she felt the irresistible pulse of desire within her. She should have headed for the hills. Instead, caught up in an instant spell, she had remained while his gaze swept over her, feeling almost like intimate fire, taking in her every curve and hollow. She’d felt desire before, but nothing like what this man had ignited within her.

Then the real folly had begun. She had to return to school in two months. She’d thought he understood that. When she talked about getting her master’s and going into social work, she had thought her goals were clear. She had no intention of remaining in this out-of-the-way place as a rancher’s wife, and just as she couldn’t give up her dreams, he couldn’t give up his ranch.

So who had been at fault, she wondered now, staring out the window. They had played with fire, they’d seized every opportunity to make love anywhere and everywhere, but then the idyll had come to an end. He had wanted her to stay.

She had snapped in some way. She had been living a fantasy of some kind, and he’d intruded on it with reality. She had thrown his declaration of love back in his face, then had called him stupid for thinking it could have ever been anything but a fling.

To this day she didn’t know what had driven her cruelty. By nature she wasn’t at all cruel, but that day...well, the memory of it still made her squirm. Maybe it had been a self-protective instinct, a way to end something that could move her life in a direction she didn’t really want to go. Or maybe some part of her had been almost as desperate as he was, but in a different way.

She would probably never understand what she had done that day, but it had not only driven Cliff away, it had dashed the entire memory of that summer fling. She could not enjoy the memories of even the most beautiful or sexy moments of those weeks. All of it had to be consigned to some mental dustbin.

She had figured at the time that Martha must have known what was going on, but she’d never said a word. Now this? Maybe Martha hadn’t guessed. If she had, then there was an unkindness here she wouldn’t have believed her aunt capable of. And not just to her, but to Cliff, as well.

She sighed, pressing down memories that seemed to want to reignite right between her legs, reminding her of the dizzying pleasures she had shared with Cliff. That was gone, done for good. Over. Finished.

If only the words would settle it all in her body, which seemed inclined now to react as foolishly as it had all those years ago.

When he spoke, she felt so far away that his voice, deeper now than in the past, nearly startled her.

“I don’t mean to sound like a rube,” he said, then paused. “Hell, I
am
a rube. But I hear parts of Chicago can be pretty dangerous.”

“They are,” she said cautiously, wondering where he was headed.

“Did you work in those parts?”

“They’re the parts where we’re needed most, usually.”

He fell silent, and she waited. Surely he wasn’t going to leave it at that.

“You have guts,” he said, and not one more word.

“No more than the people who have to live there.”

“But you choose to be there, to help.”

She couldn’t imagine how to answer that. Yes, it was her choice, but the need cried out to her. She only wished she could provide a safer environment for those children, but the problems were huge. No one person could solve them.

“It’s partly drugs,” she said. “They encourage gang wars.”

“Like during Prohibition.”

“Yes, like that. Turf wars. Other things. Poverty grinds people down and sometimes brings out the ugliest parts of them. I just try to help kids so that they don’t get drawn into it. There’s not much else I can do to protect them, unless there’s abuse in the family.”

“It must feel thankless at times.”

She couldn’t believe he was talking to her in this sympathetic fashion. Not after the dislike that had radiated from him on their first meeting. Was he trying to mend bridges? She squirmed a little, thinking that if anyone should be trying to rebuild bridges, it was her. “Seeing just one kid make it is enough.”

“Is it?”

She had no answer for that, either. But the tension that seemed to have lifted from her just by being away for a short while was settling heavily on her. She had matters to take care of here, she reminded herself. She had to decide what to do with her aunt’s possessions, whether to rent the house—a million ends to tidy up. She couldn’t spend all her time worrying about her kids back in Chicago, not when she was too far away to do anything.

Mercifully, he dropped the subject, and little by little, she returned fully to Conard County. She wished her kids could come out here, taste life without gunshots up the street any hour of the day or night and know what it was like to live even briefly without the fear.

She sighed, twisted her hands together and reset her sights on all that lay ahead of her.

What
was
she going to do with the house? Her job lay over a thousand miles away. She couldn’t sell it. But renting it might lead to its ruination if she wasn’t here to keep an eye on it.

Too soon,
she argued with herself. She had time. No decisions had to be made this moment. Just plant the tree for Martha and then try to find comfort in residing in Martha’s house, with all the good memories she had of her aunt.

She felt her eyes sting as she thought about Martha. The world had lost a true character and a great soul.

* * *

Cliff watched her from the corner of his eye, glancing her way from time to time as the road permitted. On a weekday, on these back roads, there wasn’t a lot of traffic. Ahead of him stretched an empty road, its only danger the potholes left behind by winter. Along either side ran fences, often hidden behind the tumbleweeds caught in them, creating a low tunnel. But in those grasses to either side of the road, he knew there were drainage ditches, invisible in the grass, but enough to cause a minor accident.