Homecoming Ranch (7 page)

Luke’s father clenched his jaw. He put his hand on Luke’s shoulder and squeezed it. “It’s time you faced the fact that things have changed for us. And what’s done is done. Now, I’ve got to give Leo his medicine.” He turned away, stepped to the counter next to the fridge where three rows of dark brown pill bottles were lined up. A chart was taped to the front of the fridge, which his father consulted.

What about me?
Luke thought. What about
his
life at the ranch, his memories, his hopes for it? He felt the hard kernel of resentment sprouting in him—resentment at how life had turned out for his family, all of it. “It’s not done,” he said tightly, but his father ignored him.

In a village where flannel ruled and elkhorns seemed to be mandatory décor, Jackson Crane looked as fresh and as Hollywood as he had the first time Madeline had met him. She’d found his office easy enough in this postage stamp of civilization that was Pine River. It was a low gray building that looked like a bomb shelter.

Jackson—who did not have a receptionist, Madeline noted—showed her into his office. He had a gunmetal gray desk, a squeaky office chair. On the wall behind him was a calendar with the picture of a man gleefully kissing a big fish, and the 18
^th
of the month had been circled with a fat red marker. Below the calendar was a montage of pictures of Jackson Crane. He was skiing, or wearing a big hat and riding a horse, or grinning at the camera from behind goggles on a snowmobile. But what Madeline found odd about the pictures was that Jackson was the only person in them.

This man was an enigma to Madeline. He was a personable guy; he’d greeted her warmly, shaking her hand earnestly. “So glad you made it,” he said, as he moved some papers around on his desk, obviously seeking something. “I don’t have much time before my next appointment, but I wanted to get you the particulars of our meeting.”

“I thought this
was
our meeting,” Madeline said as he thrust a file folder into her hands.

“This?” he asked, his eyes widening slightly with surprise. “No, no, I asked you to come here so I could give you some basic information. We’ll be meeting this afternoon at the ranch. We’re on for three.” He suddenly smiled. “You’ll be meeting your sisters!”

A shudder of trepidation ran through Madeline. Of course she knew she would be meeting her sisters, but with it suddenly so concrete, Madeline did not feel prepared. She needed more warning than this, she needed time to mentally gear up. She felt like something was missing, like a flowchart, dossiers, pictures,
something
. “Just like that?” she blurted. “I fly out here and meet them just like that?”

Jackson chuckled until he realized she wasn’t kidding. “Sorry—did you have something else in mind?”

No, Madeline didn’t have anything else in mind. She just needed time to prepare, she always needed time to prepare. Meeting new people was never easy for her, and for two new sisters, she needed to collect herself, to tamp down unnecessary feelings about how these “sisters” had had a father, and she hadn’t, that sort of thing. She assumed that they had been the recipients of the fatherly love that she’d been denied, that the reason she had never heard from him was because he’d been completely satisfied with his other two daughters.

“In the file I gave you is a copy of your father’s last will and testament, as well as some information about the ranch,” he said, and began to recite some statistics that flew over Madeline’s normally tidy and organized head. “I’ve included a map.” He looked at her curiously when Madeline didn’t speak. “So we’ll see you there at three to go over the details.” He stood. “Okay?”

No, it was not okay. It wasn’t remotely okay. Madeline really needed someone to hold her hand right now. But she stood reluctantly. “Yes,” she said, and tucked the file into her purse. “Thank you.”

Jackson walked her to the door like he had some place to be, and as Madeline walked down the gravel path to the parking lot, she heard the door shut behind her. She had just reached the parking lot when an orange jeep barreled up, coming to an abrupt halt. She barely had time to register that she’d seen the vehicle before when the man who had changed her flat stepped out of the Bronco.

Madeline tried to ignore the little thrill she felt sweep down her spine. She’d been standing on the road yesterday trying to convince herself that she could change a tire, to not panic, when he’d driven up in an old jeep-looking thing. A modern day knight in shining armor in his trusty orange steed. Not only was he almost unconscionably good-looking, he had changed that damn tire in about two seconds.

But now she felt a shiver of trepidation. What was he doing
here?

He was wearing a white shirt tucked into skin-tight jeans, and a dark blue hoodie and boots. He’d combed his dark hair back so that it brushed his collar. He was tall and muscular, more than what she remembered. He fixed his gray eyes on her; she saw a flicker of recognition, and her pulse ticked up a notch.

She would have been very suspicious had he not seemed so surprised to see her. How was it possible that a man who looked like that, whom she’d met briefly on the road to Pine River, would end up outside Jackson Crane’s office?

He looked at her, then at Jackson’s office, then at her again, and his eyes narrowed slightly. Something changed in his expression. It seemed to tighten somehow. “You’re the highlighter—”

“The what? I’m Madeline. The flat, remember?” she said, and fluttered her fingers in the vague direction of where the flat had occurred.

“I remember,” he said, and pointed in the opposite direction of where she had fluttered her fingers.

She smiled. “Luke, right?”

“Right. Are you here to see Jackson?”

“Do you know him? I mean, I guess you do, seeing as how you are here. You do, right?”

“Sort of,” he said, and looked at the office again, like maybe he wasn’t in the right place.

“What a coincidence!” she said, feeling a little off kilter. “Are you from Pine River?”

“I was,” he said, his gaze settling on her again. Now he looked at her as if he was seeing her differently. “I’m in Denver now. I’m here visiting family.”

“Oh.” She laughed nervously, her gaze flicking between his eyes, his shoulders, his mouth. Holy smokes, but the air felt weird. Sort of electric. She needed a script, something to follow. But since she didn’t have one, she blurted, “So tell me, is there anything to do here? I have a three o’clock meeting and I am looking for something to do until then.”

Luke shifted, peered closely at her. “There’s a
lot
to do in Pine River.”

“Like what?”

“Well,” he said, his gaze sliding down to her shoes and up again, “Do you fish?”

Madeline snorted. “No.”

“Hike?”

She’d never even
contemplated
hiking, much less done it, and shook her head so that a strand of dark hair escaped the claw and bounced down on her face. His gray eyes were fixed on hers, making her feel just the tiny bit woozy.

“What about riding horseback?” he asked.

For some reason, that made Madeline laugh. “I don’t have a horse.”

He arched a brow. “You don’t have to have a horse to know how to ride.”

“But if you don’t have a horse, how would you know how to ride?”

He studied her curiously, as if he’d just discovered a dinosaur bone. “So basically, you came to a mountain town, but you don’t do mountain stuff.”

“Yes. I mean,
no.
I’m only here for a couple of days to tend to some business.”

He nodded, almost as if he knew what her business was. “Well,” he said, “there are a couple of souvenir shops in town. If you aren’t here for recreation, I’m not really sure what else there is.”

Souvenirs? He was telling her to go buy a souvenir? “Oh. Okay. Thanks.”

“You bet. If you will excuse me, Madeline, I’m a little late for an appointment,” he said, and stepped around her, all six foot plus, impossibly broad shoulders of him. Had she missed his shoulders yesterday? “I’ll see you around, okay?”

What did that mean?
Would
he see her around? “Okay,” she said, trying to sound airy and unconcerned. She walked on, got in her ridiculously tiny car, and surreptitiously watched him walk into Jackson’s office. This much could be said—that man knew how to fill out a pair of jeans.

“That is enough of
that,
” she muttered to herself, opened the file Jackson had given her, and removed the hand-drawn map to Homecoming Ranch. “Get a grip, Madeline. You are not here for fun and games. Or ogling.”

She would start, she thought, by comparing the map Jackson had given her to the map of the area she’d picked up at the visitor’s center. She certainly hoped this map didn’t include any “sometimes” passes over the mountains. In her humble opinion, roads should be clearly labeled and marked on all maps.

Luke almost kicked my
ass
on “Hounds of Hell,” but I came back with a surprise assault and pulled it out. I like it when Luke is home. Dad tries, but sometimes, a guy just needs his brother home so he can
totally
annihilate him on “Hounds of Hell.”

I know Luke and Dad argue a lot. Dad says things aren’t like they were before and we have to face that they aren’t. Luke says there’s no reason they can’t be like they were, except without Mom, and without me on a horse driving cattle down the mountain, but I’m pretty good at directing traffic from the back of the pickup. Luke rigged up a deal where I can ride back there. It’s cool. I don’t tell him that it hurts like hell because I like getting up on the mountain. I miss it.

But last night, Dad and Luke had this big argument about Homecoming Ranch, and this morning, Luke was in a mood. He put on a good shirt, a go-to-Sunday-meeting shirt, and went down to Poplar Street to have a “word” with Jackson. I told him that Jackson’s an okay guy, but Luke wasn’t buying it. He said anyone who worked for Grant Tyler was suspect. I had to remind Luke that my muscles may not work, but my brain is still a functioning miracle of exceptional genius, and I’m serious, Jackson’s okay. He had an asshole for a boss. Luke’s had a couple of bosses like that, so he ought to be a little nicer about it, right?

He came back from the meeting all pissed off because Jackson told him what I
knew
Jackson would tell him—it’s up to the heirs. It’s not as if Jackson can rewrite all the Colorado state laws to make Luke happy. Still, that made Luke
super
annoyed because apparently he met one of the heirs. He said she was coming out as he was going in, and he was pretty sure she had to be one of the heirs, because why else would she be on Poplar Street? He’s got a point there. Dani said Jackson took up space in an old gray building that looks like a morgue, only it isn’t, but the story would be a whole lot more interesting if it was a morgue, wouldn’t it? Dig it—Jackson Crane holding meetings in the middle of a bunch of dead bodies covered by sheets. What if they started rising up, one by one, and it turned into Zombieland?

Okay, so anyway, Luke sees this woman coming out of the incredibly ugly building and he didn’t really know her, but he’d changed her flat yesterday on Sometimes Pass. I was like, “What the hell was she doing up there?” And he said he thought she was lost, and then today, she’s coming out of Jackson Crane’s office and that she was a highlighter. And I was like,
highlighter,
what’s that? I mean, I know my way around the ladies, and I have
never
heard one called a highlighter.

“She highlights things. Maps. Car manuals.” Luke said the first thing that popped out of his mouth when he saw her again today was
Highlighter,
and she was all
Whaaat
?

If it were me, I’d have been a little smoother, but Luke, he’s got those gray eyes and dark hair, and he’s really tall and built like an NFL quarterback, so he can say pretty much whatever he wants to a woman and she melts all over the floor. Trust me, I’ve seen it happen a thousand times. But this one didn’t melt, and I bet that ticked Luke off. He’s not used to having to work for it. Neither am I. I used to be like him, had women falling at my feet. Now I’ve got a disease that I can milk for attention. What, you think I’m above using it? No way. Women are very sympathetic about debilitating conditions, and if you look at them with cow eyes and a smile, it works like a charm.

So then the Highlighter smiled, and Luke said she had a really nice smile. And I said, “Maybe you should tap that,” and Luke gave me one of those looks and said, “What is the
matter
with you?”

I just wish Luke would get over Julie Daugherty, that’s all. He says he has, but she calls once in a while with her “problems” and there he is, ready to talk her through it. Anyway, back to the Highlighter. Luke said she announced she was only here for a couple of days, and then she walked away.

I can just picture how that walking-away view was for my brother. If he’s like me, and I think he is, he appreciates the walking away as much as he does the walking toward. We Kendrick boys are connoisseurs of beautiful women.

Luke talked to Jackson, and Jackson told him there wasn’t much he could do, but he was meeting with the heirs this afternoon, and maybe Luke could come out and make nice, that sort of thing. He also gave Luke the name of a lawyer, and he said,
You’re going to need one if you can’t work this out with the ladies.

I have faith that Luke can work it out with the ladies. He said he was going out to the ranch to scope things out, get a feel for them. I said, “Are you going to tell them their dad stole the ranch from our dad?”

He looked at me like that was a dumb question and said, “Well yeah, Leo. That’s the whole point.”

Boy, I’d like to be a fly on the wall for that one. Women are superhot when they’re mad.

But then I got to thinking about it, because that’s what I do, I
think,
and I said, “You know, you ought to invite them to dinner.”

Luke said, “Now I know you’re crazy. I don’t even know them. I’m not bringing them here,” he said, and honestly, I wasn’t sure if it was because of the house or because he didn’t know them.