Letting Hearts Heal (4 page)

“W
ROOOOM
.” M
ASON
kicked up the silly car noises a notch, making Wyatt chortle with laughter. They were sitting on the living room floor after Dean chased them out of the kitchen while he made lunch.

“Which car is your favorite?” Mason asked. He had the feeling that Wyatt might benefit from actually talking. He still hadn’t heard father and son exchange anything but orders and nods. And he knew how it felt to be a kid who wasn’t comfortable in his own home.

Wyatt carefully studied the cars on the floor, and Mason suppressed a groan. The kid was way too serious. “The blue one,” Wyatt finally replied.

It was the only truck among the toy cars. Its color almost matched Dean’s truck. Mason smiled and picked up the red sports car. “I like this one the best. It’s fast. Vrooooom.”

Wyatt giggled again, and soon the blue truck and the red sports car were engaged in a race around the living room. Had it not been for their drivers’ quick reflexes, they would have crashed into the stocking feet that suddenly appeared in the middle of the race track. Mason glanced up and burst out laughing at the expression on Dean’s face. He looked like he’d never seen a car race in a living room before.

Wyatt froze next to them, clearly not sure how to react. Mason wished he could paint a permanent smile on the kid. “Seems like you chose the right car, Wyatt. A truck will do better than a sports car in this rough terrain, but I’ll do my best.” Driving the little red car over Dean’s feet and making more vroom noises, Mason continued the race, hoping Wyatt would follow his lead. It took a few moments, but finally the boy drove his car silently around Dean’s feet and caught up to Mason, who let him win the race.

“I’d say you’re ready for your driver’s license,” Mason said and tickled Wyatt until he at least smiled.

Dean cleared his throat. “Or lunch. If you’re done racing.”

“Buzzkill,” Mason muttered under his breath. “Come on, Wyatt. Looks like you won a free lunch.”

Apparently never one to argue, Wyatt followed. The rebellious part of Mason, which had appeared only after he left the valley and was one of the biggest reasons that he survived in the city, wanted to shake both Wyatt and Dean until some kind of reaction spilled out. They were so alike.

“Are you ever going to put me to work?” Mason asked Dean as they sat down around the kitchen table, which was laden with grilled cheese sandwiches, steaming bowls of tomato soup, and a small cup of peas for Wyatt.

“What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know. Anything. I just can’t do the whole lazy-doing-nothing thing when you’re letting me stay for free.”

Dean sighed. “I thought we’d been over that. Wyatt, you can skip the soup if you want, but please eat your sandwich with the peas, okay?”

“At least let me shovel snow or something,” Mason insisted.

“Joe already cleared the paths between the buildings, and I shoveled the porch before breakfast.”

“Joe? Old Joe’s still here?” Mason remembered the old foreman fondly. He was always ready to help an eager kid learn, and that’s what Mason had been back then.

“Oh yeah. He’s still here. Truth be told, I was nervous to tell him about my plans after Dad died. I half expected him to sneer and go on his merry way. But no. The old coot surprised the hell out of me. ‘Just gimme some livestock and some hands to order around, and I’m right as rain,’ he said.”

Mason chuckled.

“There’s plenty of livestock—all kinds,” Dean continued. “And we’ve got about ten hands at the moment, working with the livestock, the polytunnels, the greenhouses, the foraging, and the big kitchen. So Old Joe’s happy enough. He oversees a lot of the operation, as I tend to get caught up in new ideas all the time.”

“It sounds really impressive. And you’ve done it in such a short time. Hey, that reminds me. Alice called while you were outside. I hope you don’t mind that I answered the phone. She’s accepting your offer about her cider.”

“Really?” Dean looked surprised. “I was so certain that she’d need to see a bit of success before jumping on the train.”

“Well….” Mason took a bite of his sandwich, chewed it carefully, and swallowed before continuing. “I might have helped convince her… a little.”

“You? Why? And how?”

Mason shrugged, not completely sure either. “I guess I figured that since you’d asked her, then it was something you wanted her to say yes to. And she didn’t seem sure of anything, so it wasn’t hard to sway her.”

“I’m seriously tempted to offer you a job so you can talk all the skeptics and the doubters into selling their products at the store in town. It’s only going to be a success if the community supports the idea.”

Mason was long past being critical about what kind of work he did, as long as it put food on the table and offered him a roof over his head. Expecting more from life than necessities had never gotten him anywhere. “I can do that.” It wasn’t like he had anything else to do or anywhere else to go.

“Really?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Dean smiled widely. “I’m so taking you up on that. And I’m glad you want to stay.”

Mason had to smile at that too. A job, a place to stay, a sexy, smiling Dean…. His gaze drifted to Wyatt, who was busy eating his peas one at a time. Now he just had to make the kid smile some more, and he’d feel almost accomplished.

D
EAN
PUT
Wyatt down for his nap and then helped Mason with the dishes. He was feeling mighty pleased with himself for getting Mason to stay—not that it had been hard, but still. It gave him a good feeling to have Mason around again. It wasn’t as it had been a decade ago. Back then it had felt like they’d singlehandedly invented love and lust—it had been that overwhelming and all consuming. Time and distance had come between them, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to do his best to keep Mason around. They were still more in sync than Dean had ever been with anyone else.

“Can I be nosy?” Mason asked and handed Dean the last plate to dry.

“Sure.”

“Did your dad know about your dreams or plans or whatever they were at that point? About converting the ranch, I mean.”

Dean snorted. “God, no. I’d like to think that he might have been proud at my initiative after getting used to the idea, but I’m not sure. He might be rolling over in his grave because I’ve ruined generations of hard work.”

“I don’t remember him as particularly flexible when it came to others’ suggestions or ideas, but it was probably different with you since you were family,” Mason said slowly, almost as if he were afraid of being rude.

“Not really.” Dean grabbed two beers from the fridge, settled down at the kitchen table, and nodded at Mason to follow his example. “He was pretty set in his ideas. It didn’t matter if it was me or someone else who tried to change his mind. There was the wrong way and his way. Not that he was mean about it or anything, but he loved being the boss.”

Mason hummed and sipped his beer. Dean tried to push all thoughts of his father to the back of his mind. They’d never been close, although it had always just been the two of them.

“So, are you serious about wanting a job?” Dean asked, focusing on Mason, instead. It felt entirely too natural to do that.

“Absolutely.” Mason straightened in his chair, stopped fiddling with his beer, and put it on the table.

“Talking some locals into joining our concept isn’t really much of a job, but if you’re willing to do a bit of everything, you’ve got work. I try to let the hands do whatever jobs they like and are good at, but in the end we all pitch in to do what needs to be done.”

“I’m cool with anything except cooking.”

“Not much of a cook?” Dean chuckled but Mason looked serious. “Okay. No cooking. I think that needs to be my next hire, though. I’d hoped Roy, the guy who does all the butchering and stuff, could make up recipes for the boxes of fresh produce we deliver to people, but he can’t. I’ve also been considering a small restaurant in town or maybe a catering thing that would only cook with local ingredients, but that won’t be for a while.”

“Sounds like you’re building your own little empire.”

Dean drained his beer and considered it. “That’s not really what I want. I guess I just found something I’m passionate about, and when you do that, wanting to share it with everyone seems important.

“Want another beer?”

“Sure, thanks.”

Dean got up to grab two more beers from the fridge. A glance out the window revealed snow against the glass. He shuddered, suddenly cold. A quiet afternoon in front of a lit fireplace—with Mason—suddenly seemed like the most brilliant idea he’d ever had.

“Why don’t we go into the living room? I’ll get a fire started. It’s getting chilly.”

It wasn’t until he had the fire going and dumped himself on the couch that Dean noticed Mason hovering in the door, looking fidgety and nervous. Had he misinterpreted the fire for something romantic? Not that Dean wasn’t tempted, but he wasn’t about to start something with Mason again, only to have him skip town a second time.

“I’m not going to molest you if you sit down,” Dean said dryly and took a big gulp of his beer. Molesting Mason was exactly what he felt like doing.

“Um, I’m actually a bit tired. I think I’ll take a nap.

Dean’s head whipped around, but all he saw was Mason’s back as he left. What had just happened? Drinking both his own beer and the one he’d brought for Mason, Dean analyzed and analyzed, but he never figured out what he’d missed.

The next morning, Wyatt was fussy—not noisy fussy, but dragging his feet and refusing to eat his breakfast. And Dean had a lot of work to do, so he wasn’t in the best of moods, especially since he was still wondering what he’d done to scare Mason off.

“Come on, Wyatt. Time to go outside and see the horses.” Technically, they weren’t going to the stables, but Dean had reached the point where lying to his kid to get him moving wasn’t below him. He sucked as a parent, which was no surprise.

An hour and a half later, Dean had calmed down enough to patiently teach Wyatt how to pull leeks out of the ground in one of the polytunnels—something that was apparently incredibly amusing to a four-year old. He suddenly felt Mason behind him. Looking up, he saw that he was right.

“Morning, guys.” Mason was bundled up in the clothes Dean had offered him—it was clear that the bag Mason had arrived with didn’t contain much of anything. Mason had taken the clothes with a murmured “thank you,” and Dean hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of it.

“Morning.” Dean smiled and noticed it was mirrored on his son’s face. The Walkers were clearly Mason fans.

“I’m ready to be put to work,” Mason said.

“Well….” Dean brushed the dirt off his hands. “I think we’ll show you around first, and then I’ll make you a list of those doubting individuals you seem to have a gift for persuading.”

Mason chuckled as Dean had hoped. Maybe whatever had happened last night was forgotten. “Sounds like a plan.”

M
ASON
WAS
slightly in awe as they trudged through the snowy paths between the buildings. The whole thing was a lot bigger than he expected. “How long have you been doing this again?” he asked Dean.

“I started phasing out the horses and experimenting with my own stuff two years ago. It took me a year after Dad passed away to gather up the courage to go my own way.”

“You’ve gotten a lot done.”

Dean shrugged. “Not as much as I want.”

He showed Mason the polytunnels full of winter vegetables, the greenhouses, the newly added microbrewery, where they experimented with local flavors, and the structure affectionately known on the ranch as the Meat House, where they did the butchering. The varied livestock was spread out in different places, but Mason got the gist of just how big a production it was. He’d had no idea. For the first time, he started to understand all Dean’s plans, ideas, and dreams—the potential and the charm. Dean was a genius. A genius with a success on his hands.

That afternoon, with a list and a borrowed truck, Mason drove to town on newly plowed roads. He’d been thrust into too many unfamiliar work situations to be rattled about simply talking to some people, but he was unsure about meeting people he used to know. They were sure to have an opinion about him and his family, and he didn’t want those to get in the way of the job he had to do—and wanted to do well.

His first stop was at the store Dean had opened to sell his products. Mason wanted to see what it had to offer the people he was going to persuade.

He parked out front and slowly got out of the car while getting his first look. It wasn’t the small grocery store he’d expected, and he was smiling when he went inside. The cash register was in the middle and worked as a divider between the food and the nonfood sections. Behind it there was a small café area shielded by a few hand-painted dividers that Mason remembered seeing at the ranch. A lot had obviously been done to make the place look inviting. Prints and original paintings hung on the walls, all with price tags. The place was done in various warm greens and browns, and comfortable-looking furniture was provided for those wanting to sit down for a cup of coffee.

The only thing that struck Mason as a problem was the amount of unused space. Dean hadn’t been kidding when he talked about potential. Mason had his work cut out for him if he was going to help fill all that space with new local products.

“Hi. Mason Schneider, right? Dad told me we might see you.”

Mason smiled and shook the offered hand. The blonde woman looked slightly familiar, but he couldn’t remember her name or where he’d seen her before. “Sorry, I don’t….”

The woman laughed. “I’m Karen. I remember you from the ranch years back. You know my dad, Joe.”

“Oh. Right. Joe’s daughter. I think I remember you now. Weren’t there two of you?”

She nodded. “Yes. Erica moved to California after college, though. I run the store for Dean with my husband, Pete.”

“Dean told me names, but not who you were. Do you have a few minutes to talk? I’d like to ask you a few questions so I have some ammunition when I talk to people about their products being sold here at the store.”