High Desert Detective, A Fiona Marlowe Mystery (Fiona Marlowe Mysteries) (30 page)

Fiona said, “This place could use a little fixing up.”

Jake smiled. “I can see you burning it down and starting over.”

“Please, no more mention of fires, I’ve had quite enough.” She
walked back and forth in front of the house. “I’d have to bone up on
manufactured home renovation.”

Jake smiled. “I like the sound of that statement. Maybe we could
form a partnership.”

Fiona smiled back at him. “Maybe we could.”

A fixer-upper ranch might be the best thing that could happen to
them.

A man appeared at the front door and peered out, cocking his head
at an odd angle like he couldn’t see that well. Jake walked toward the door. “Hello,
Mr. Lovejoy. It’s Jake from over at the H Bar O.”

Old man Lovejoy eased open the door and came out, leaning on a
cane. “Jake, you say? I can’t walk so
good
. Come over
so I can get a look at you.”

Jake and Fiona mounted a couple of steps onto an unpainted deck extending
across the front of the house. The old man shuffled over to peer into Jake’s
face.

“Now I recognize you. You’re Opal’s ranch hand.”

“That’s right. This is Fiona. She’s here visiting.”

The old man swung his squinty gaze in Fiona’s direction. “I see.
Young thing.
Pretty, too, far as I can tell.
This your
wife?”

“No, not yet.”
Jake smiled at Fiona.
“She’s visiting.”

“That’s right. You said visiting. I forgot.” He swiveled his gaze
back to Jake on a head too stiff to turn. “What brings you over here?”

“I’m looking for a ranch to buy, and I heard you wanted to sell
yours.”

The old man looked down at a splintering deck board. “I’m an old
man. I can’t seem to keep things going like I used to, especially not since my
wife passed.”

Jake waited. Sometimes it took patience listening to an old man. It
took time to organize your thoughts, especially when they were colored by
illness and old age. Fiona crossed her arms and looked at the weedy flower
beds. Off to the south was a rusted fence around a weed grown garden that
didn’t look like it had been worked in many years.

The old man’s head nodded like he might have fallen to sleep.

“Mr. Lovejoy, are you okay?” asked Jake.

He slowly raised his head. “I’d be more okay if I were six feet
under.”

Jake didn’t know what to say. Fiona spoke up. “It must be hard
living out here by
yourself
. Do you have anyone
helping you?”

The old man looked in Fiona’s direction. “A neighbor boy comes
over in the mornings to feed the goats. I should get rid of the goats but I
like them, and they keep me company.” He turned stiffly to look at the pair of
goats who bleated at him. “I try to keep the house going but my arthritis keeps
me immobile most days.”

“Have you thought about moving to a smaller place?”
asked
Fiona.

“I’m too old. I’m going to die here, but it seems to be taking an
awfully long time.”

Fiona crossed to where the old man stood and put a hand on his
shoulder. “Maybe you could work out a deal with Jake to buy the ranch, and you
could continue to live here.” She looked at Jake as she spoke the words.

The old man turned his gaze from his goat friends and looked to
Fiona. “It’s taking such an awfully long time.”

Jake said, “I’d consider the idea that you stay on here, but the
question is, do you want to sell?”

“I guess I’ll have to. The bank says they’re going to take it
from me. Have you been here before?”

“Once, a while back when your wife was still
alive.
You had all the neighbors over for a barbecue. I believe it might
have been a friend of one of your goats that was the main dish.”

The old man smiled for the first time. “Things were different
then. We used to have picnics and invite the neighbors over for a goat roast in
the summer.” His smile faded away. “Now all I have is memories.
Just memories.”

Jake wasn’t sure what to do. The old man didn’t seem to have his
full faculties, and he wondered if someone else had power of attorney. He
wasn’t aware of any children or relatives. He’d have to look into that.

Then like the sun coming out after a storm, the old man’s eyes
lost their cloudy look, and he said, “You take a walk around and look the place
over. There’s a deed to the place around here somewhere, but I don’t know
where. There’s the house and outbuildings. The well is deep. The water tastes
good.”

“How many acres do you have?” asked Jake.

“I think there’s four hundred total. My place is long and sort of
winds back toward the canyon. It is not a perfect square or anything. There’s a
little grove of apple trees toward the creek. Need some pruning though. You
look around. I’ll see if I can find that deed while you are looking.”

Jake and Fiona started toward the back sheds.

“Let’s see what kind of machinery he has,” Jake said. “I can tell
by the look of the place he hasn’t done any farming for a long time. I doubt
he’ll have any decent equipment.”

Fiona stopped to look at flowers, landscape, the back of the
house, the goats. She talked to them and made a fuss. He’d forgotten how much a
woman wanted a home and a man an occupation. Work was everything to him, but he
could see that Fiona was more interested in the trappings of a home. That was a
good sign.

They finally made it to the shed where a tractor and other farm
equipment sat. The tractor was newer than Jake had imagined and didn’t have
much dust on it. He found more relatively new equipment which surprised him.
Where did the old man find the money? Why did he need this equipment when he
wasn’t farming? He probably couldn’t afford the payments and that was why the
bank was going to foreclose.

Fiona had gotten bored with the machinery and had walked down the
road toward the pasture. Jake followed her.

“It’s pretty here,” she said when he caught up with her. “Look at
those buttes. I thought I saw some horses up on one of those, but maybe my eyes
were playing tricks on me.”

Jake looked in the direction of Fiona’s gaze. “You may have seen
horses. Wild horses, probably.
Kiger
mustangs are
known to roam in this area.” He studied the pasture and saw a lot of fresh
manure but no cows. He wondered if the old man was leasing his pasture to
another rancher. Maybe the equipment belonged to someone else. He’d ask the old
man.

They opened a gate, closed it again, and walked through the
pasture which circled the back of the ranch buildings.

“This would make a good pasture for horses,” said Jake. “It has
more grass, not any greasewood that I can see.”

Again he saw fresh cow manure but no cows. That was puzzling. He
looked around 360 degrees but saw no small black or brown dots that would
indicate cow and calves.

“Horses make a ranch, don’t they?” said Fiona. “They are such
beautiful creatures.”

“Cows and bulls make a ranch for me. It is peaceful watching
horses graze, but they are expensive to maintain and dangerous. I’ve been
kicked more than once and bitten as well. I like a well-trained horse for ranch
work. They have to work to earn their keep in my opinion. But we could get you
one like Harriet, a nice, quiet mare or gelding, and we could ride the ranch
together.”

Fiona looked far away into the distance. Would she tell him what
she was thinking? He watched the breeze lift strands of hair from her
shoulders. He liked when she wore it down. He put his arm around her shoulders.
They watched the play of the sun and wind in the trees in the distance.

“It’s beautiful here,” she said.

He turned and gathered her into his arms. It was now or never, he
thought. He wanted to ask her to marry him. He had never voiced the words
before. But he hesitated.
If he asked her to marry him, and
she refused, then what?
They’d be back at square one. If she said yes,
where would they live? He had no home to offer her yet. But what could it hurt
to ask that simple question?

He cleared his throat. “Will you marry me, dear, beautiful
Fiona?”

She returned his gaze and searched his eyes. “That’s the first
proposal I’ve had today.”

Jake laughed. “Stop it. I’m serious. I want you to marry me.”

She sighed. “Living out here would be a big step for me. There’s so
much to work out before we make any decision about us.”

“I may explode before that.”

She smiled. “Don’t explode.” Then her gaze turned serious. “Jake,
we haven’t known each other very long. Do you realize that we were together
about two weeks last year when you were in Virginia and now a little over a
week here? That’s not enough time for me. People crazy in love with each other
ride off together into the sunset only in one of Olympia’s romance novels. But
that’s not us.”

“Fiona, I’ve been in love with you since I first saw you. I loved
you when you weren’t here. I loved you when you didn’t return my calls. I loved
you when you went to Australia without me. I’ve had a lot of practice loving
you already. I’m prepared to do it for the rest of my life.”

She put her cheek against his, and they stood pressed together.
 
Her body was soft and inviting. His passion for
her was hard to rein in. He released her, took her hand and began to walk back
toward the house. If he kept holding her, he would burst into flames.
 
He wanted to throw her on the ground and make
love to her right then and there. But he knew how fragile their relationship was.
For a long time he had held onto a fantasy that she would feel the same passion
for him. Reality was much different.
Much, much different.
He had not realized how much she was not your basic, standard,
let’s-get-married female. She was her own woman, with her own strengths, goals
and aspirations. He realized that he was not in that mix and might never be.
But he could keep on trying.

He stopped again and faced her. “You could move in with me. I mean,
Fiona, we’re adults. What’s holding you back?” He wanted her to say that she
loved him. He wanted to hear the words and if she couldn’t say them, he needed
to know why.

She said, “I’d like waking up to you in the morning.”

“That’s a big step. What about marrying me and being my wife and
we make a home together?”

“I need more time. I can’t make fast decisions like you can. I
need to think about them, get used to the idea. I have never considered being
married. Do you realize that?”

“I do now. I thought most women wanted to be married.”

“Maybe in your world, but not in mine.
But then I’m probably the only woman in the world that feels that way and you,
the marrying kind of man, had to fall in love with me, the strong willed,
independent, career woman.”

Jake sighed. “At least the question is on the table. I’m not
going to take it off.”

“I promise I will consider your proposal. Please believe me that
I have to get used to the idea. You are asking me to do a 180 degree turn in my
world. That takes some thinking about. I need more time.”

He smiled. “Okay, okay, okay. We’ll see how things go.”

She turned the conversation away from making a commitment. “This
ranch has possibilities. It has a nice setting, nice views. Probably the house
would have to be replaced.”

“I’ll talk to the old man about some things that concern me. Like
the new equipment and the fresh cow manure.”

“What?”

“New farm equipment and a pasture full of fresh manure don’t fit
with an old man with a rundown ranch and one person coming in to feed two
goats.”

“Let see if he’s found a deed or something that can tell us what
he owns and doesn’t own.”

They found old man Lovejoy sitting on a chair on the deck,
looking at the floor boards.

“Are you okay?” asked Jake. “Can I get you anything?”

The old man looked up. “Who are you?”

Jake sighed. This was going to be more difficult than he had
hoped, but at least Fiona now had his very solid marriage proposal to consider.

* * * * *

On the way home Fiona’s thoughts circled not so much on Jake’s
proposal but what she had not shared with Jake and that was her disastrous
affair with Rob Calloway. They had been lovers when Rob was going through a
difficult period with his mentally unstable wife. Not until after they had
consummated their passion had she learned he was married. She broke it off but
that didn’t last. He had said he would leave his wife, but then the doctors found
the right combination of medications to keep his unstable wife on an even keel.
And his two teenage children needed a father. A month before she had met Jake
in Virginia, Rob had ended their on-again-off-again affair that had manifested
in long sultry afternoons at her condominium. Occasionally they escaped on overnight
excursions on his sail boat on the Chesapeake Bay. They had talked of business
partnerships, of a future together. But that was never to be.

Her fondness for Jake couldn’t blossom and bloom because Rob
Calloway still took up the region of her heart where romantic love resided. She
had sealed up that region with a wall. Walls could keep emotions under lock and
key, but more difficult was turning off her hormones. Jake triggered them for
sure, and it had been all she could do to stay out of his bed. She might not be
able to keep the hormones under wraps much longer. Jake was too sexy. She
wasn’t the only one who thought so. She could see it in the way other women
looked at him. How they flirted with him. He was a catch, no doubt about it. Susie
and some of the other women might jump at the chance to be his wife. She had felt
little pricks of jealousy about those women. She would keep that nice, solid
wall around her wounded heart, but maybe let her roaring hormones loose.