The Ranch She Left Behind (12 page)

It sounded so cool. During art class he’d talked nonstop, telling her all about it. Apparently he had a father, a stepmother, some kind of almost-aunt person, and an almost uncle, too. And a ranch manager who played the guitar and sang songs all the time, like in an old-fashioned cowboy movie. And a cook who baked awesome cookies just for him.

Not to mention about fifty other people who worked for them, making everything nice.

“Hey,” she said impulsively. “Alec.”

He turned, smiling. That probably was why everybody liked him. He was just plain nice. He didn’t smile in a needy way, praying you’d like him. He seemed to smile just because he liked
himself.

“Hey,” he said. He didn’t even make it a question. He just stood there, even though his friends kept walking. He didn’t look annoyed that she’d stopped him.

“So…I was thinking.” She swallowed. “Why don’t you come over to the cottage? I think I’m in the mood to pierce my ears.”

* * *

A
S
M
AX
LISTENED
to Acton Adams—retired big-deal golf pro and owner of Silverdell Hills—drone on, he had to summon the “out of body” control he’d learned in Mexico just to keep from throttling the jerk. Adams, who had clearly bought into his own PR, had been holding forth for the past two hours about absolutely nothing.

Max had already been forced to ask Ellen to ride the van home from camp, which she’d probably hated like fire. If Adams didn’t shut up in the next twenty minutes, Max wouldn’t get home before the van dropped her off, either.

That was the real problem. But Max also had an issue with feeling trapped, even in a luxurious conference room like this. He tapped his pencil on the green blotter. Under the mahogany table, his thighs burned with the need to stretch, to move, to prove to his brain that he was free….

So he put himself elsewhere. Compared to Mexico, this jerk was a piece of cake. Max evened out his breathing, then put himself on a horse, on his grandfather’s farm, with the cabbage, peppers and potatoes greening under the spring sun.

But another ten minutes passed, and Adams was still pontificating, still asking Max the same questions over and over.

Olivia Gaynor, the VP who’d hired Max, had begged him to give Adams the attention he wanted. Adams was hot-tempered, she said. If he decided he didn’t like Max, then her job, and a couple of others, were on the line—not just his.

Max didn’t give a damn about finishing this resort. He’d completed the architectural plans, which was the part he loved. But he had a background in construction, so overseeing the construction phase was one of the extra services he’d tossed in when he left corporate work after the Mexico incident. As he struck out on his own, he’d needed to set himself apart from the other million or so available architects.

He didn’t need that anymore. But Olivia liked her job.
Needed
her job. And he liked Olivia. He liked the others, too. So strangling The Big Deal wasn’t an option. Sadly, making nice was required.

But so was ensuring Ellen had supervision. Before he came to Colorado, he’d been clear about his schedule with Olivia and everyone else on the team. They all knew he had to be out of here by four o’clock, every day, no matter what. So, foolishly, he’d assumed he wouldn’t need babysitter services.

As Adams signaled for more water in his crystal pitcher, Max sighed.
Crap.
He’d have to get a sitter somehow. He thought through his options. Then, coming up with a plan, he offered to get the water. Olivia widened her eyes, but The Big Deal took it as his due.

Max didn’t care. All he wanted was to get out of the room. He stepped into the hall, handed the pitcher to a passing office runner and took out his phone.

Penny had given him her cell number, in case he had an emergency with the rental. He hoped she wouldn’t mind being asked for a personal favor instead. He wouldn’t have asked—in fact, he’d deliberately steered clear of her for the past few days. But Ellen came first, and, other than the people in this conference room, Penny was the only person in Silverdell he knew well enough to trust.

The thought flitted through his mind that he didn’t really know Penny very well, either. He’d been in Silverdell maybe eighty hours, and everyone he knew here was the same: an acquaintance of about eighty hours.

But he dismissed the overly literal logic of that. Some things weren’t counted in hours. He trusted Penny Wright, and it didn’t matter whether he could explain it. Trust was born on some other level entirely.

Luckily, she answered on the second ring.

“Max?” Her ordinarily warm voice was guarded. He wondered if she dreaded seeing his name on her caller ID. Maybe she didn’t have a lot of spare cash, and she was afraid the pipes had exploded, or the roof had caved in. “Is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No…” Still, she sounded careful. “I’m at the ranch with my sisters.”

“Oh.” Darn. He’d have to think of a Plan B, and fast. Maybe she could recommend a sitter. “I’d been hoping that… But if you’re busy, then—”

“I’m not busy. I mean, I’m not too busy to help, if you need something. We’re just chatting.”

He heard female laughter in the background. She put her hand over the phone a minute, as if dealing with someone in the room.

When she spoke again, her voice was more normal. Maybe she’d stepped out to get privacy, as he had. “Really, I’d be glad to help, if there’s anything I can do.”

She sounded sincere. Something relaxed inside Max for the first time since the idiot had begun blathering two hours ago.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m stuck at the office, but Ellen will get home on the camp van in the next half hour or so. Is there any chance you could meet her at the cottage, and keep an eye on her till I get home? It shouldn’t be more than another half hour after that.”

He looked through the window toward the conference room, where The Big Deal had put his feet up on the table and was leaning back, absently plucking at his belt as if he wished he could loosen it and get comfortable.

Needed more room for all the hot air, presumably.

“At least I hope it’ll only be half an hour,” Max amended honestly. “And I guess I should warn you…I promised Ellen I wouldn’t ever work late like this again. So she’s probably going to be mad.”

* * *

P
ENNY
GOT
HOME
in fifteen minutes, thinking she’d have time to change clothes, maybe make a cup of tea. She knocked on Max’s side of the duplex first, just in case, but no one answered. So she left her door open, listening for the van, and slipped off her pretty flowered skirt, kicked off her heels and tugged on a pair of jeans.

The yellow gypsy shirt, with its smocked neckline and cuffs, would have to stay as it was. No time to take it off. She had an angry little girl arriving any minute.

But another twenty minutes came and went. Penny started to be nervous. She paced out onto the road, looking for the Starling van. She knew it well—she would have recognized it anywhere, even if she hadn’t seen it tooling around town, looking just the same as it had seventeen years ago.

Same bright orange paint. Same busted springs and bumpy lurching over railroad tracks. Some childhood traumas you never forgot.

The road was empty. This wasn’t a busy street, backing up on the elementary school as it did—at least not until school started again next month. Frowning, she went back inside. Maybe she should call Millicent and see how many stops had been on the driver’s route. She might also call Dallas and see if there had been any accidents downtown, the only spot likely to create a traffic jam.

She’d just picked up the telephone when she heard Ellen’s footsteps outside the door. Thank goodness.

But then she realized she hadn’t heard the van. That was strange. It was so quiet out…just wind in the trees and birdsong. She couldn’t have missed the rumble and sputter of a van like that, could she?

She turned, smiling. “Hey, there,” she started, and then came to an abrupt stop.

“Miss Wright. Come quick.”

Penny’s heart raced. Ellen’s voice was thin with distress. What had happened? Had there been an accident after all? What about the other children?

She moved quickly toward the door, trying to assess Ellen’s condition. The child’s face was splotchy, as if she might have been crying, but she stood normally, and Penny couldn’t see any blood.

But…what was going on with her ear?

Ellen was backlit by the afternoon sun, so it was hard to be sure, but…

Penny came closer. The little girl didn’t move. Penny bent and put her hands softly on Ellen’s shoulders, so that she could look more carefully.

Dear heaven.
Ellen’s glossy brown hair was piled up on her head with plastic toothy clips, but just on one side. And there it was. Penny hadn’t been imagining things. On the bared side of the girl’s head, a silver sewing needle protruded from her earlobe, which was gently seeping blood.

“Oops,” Penny said calmly. Ellen’s eyes were wide and panicked. She didn’t need an anxious adult screaming questions at her. “What’s going on here?”

She tried to touch the needle, thinking she might be able to slip it out quickly, but Ellen flinched and drew back.

“You have to come quick,” the girl said again. “Hurry. I don’t know what to do. It’s Alec.”

“Alec?” Penny stood. The needle was very fine, and it had done its damage already. If necessary, taking it out could wait until Ellen was calmer. Right now, Penny needed to find out what was going on with Alec.

Ellen led her wordlessly down her front steps, then up the steps that led to the rental side. She pushed open the door, but she didn’t enter. She stood as if frozen, pointing toward the floor.

“There. I think he fainted.”

Penny didn’t take time to process what she saw in words. If she had, she might have fainted, too. The sight of Alec, mischievous, lively Alec, lying in a heap on the living room floor, was enough to take her breath away.

Instead of thinking, she acted. She knelt beside him, confirmed that he was breathing…thank God, thank God…and slipped her fingers into his mouth. His tongue was where it belonged.

So far so good. His skin wasn’t hot to the touch. There was no blood. No limbs twisted at strange angles, no bones jutting out.

She rocked back on her heels and took a deep breath. Maybe he really had merely fainted.

But why?

She was pulling her phone out of her pocket to call 911 when Alec suddenly opened his blue eyes. When he registered Penny bending over him, it seemed to take him half a second to sort things out. Then his eyes went impossibly wide, his mouth formed a perfect circle, as if he were blowing smoke rings, and he clambered to his feet.

“Oh, heck.
Heck!
What the heck happened?”

Ellen, who had tentatively tiptoed through the doorway and now stood just a few feet away, her shadow almost touching Alec’s body, made a contemptuous noise. “You fainted, that’s what happened, you poser! I
knew
you didn’t know anything about piercing ears!”

Alec narrowed his eyes to angry slits. “How did I know you were going to start gushing blood like a stuck pig?”

Penny stood, putting her hands between the feuding children like a referee at a boxing match. Which this might become in a minute or two, if she didn’t stop them. Ellen and Alec were both clearly scared to death, and embarrassed—and both were the type who couldn’t tolerate those emotions without lashing out.

“Hang on,” Penny said, still keeping her tone calm. “I need to know what’s going on. And I need to hear it from one at a time.” She glanced from one heaving, fiery little body to the other. “Ellen, it’s your house and your ear. Why don’t you tell me?”

Alec grunted, but he didn’t interrupt. Ellen didn’t look at Penny while she talked. She kept her furious gaze on Alec, as if daring him to contradict her.

“My dad didn’t come get me, so I had to come home on the van. Which he said I would never have to do. Then he wasn’t even here. So Alec came over, and he said he wanted to pierce my ears. He said he knew how.”

Her delivery sped up at this point, as if to discourage questions. Obviously this was the tricky part, and Penny suspected that the girl didn’t have permission to entertain friends when her father wasn’t home.
Or
to pierce her ears. Penny didn’t mention any of that, though, because right now she just needed the facts.

“But I knew he was lying. He didn’t even numb my ear right, because it really hurt.” Ellen looked indignant, as if Alec had deliberately tricked her. “And then, the minute he put the needle in, he passed out.”

Alec reared up to half again his height. “I did
not.
”

“Oh, yeah? What were you doing down there, then? Counting the threads in the carpet?”

“Well, it was gross.” Alec hadn’t stopped scowling since he stood, but his face was like a thundercloud now. “You’re a bleeder, that’s what you are, like one of Gray’s sick horses. Besides, it’s a lie that I
wanted
to do it. You
asked
me to do it. But if I’d known what you are, I wouldn’t
ever
have done it.”

“Done what?”

A shadow fell into the room as a new, larger figure appeared in the doorway, his back to the setting sun.

For a split second, the tableau of three froze. Penny stood in the middle, arms stretched, one palm gently turned toward each of the red-faced children. Alec’s finger was midair, jabbing toward Ellen.

Ellen, of course, still had a winking, silver needle hanging out of her ear.

And, of course, her daddy had chosen that moment to come home.

CHAPTER SIX

F
IFTEEN
MINUTES
LATER
—after making a call to Rowena—Penny, Max, Ellen and Alec crowded into the small kitchen, preparing for surgery. Penny was working hard to remain outwardly calm, for Ellen’s sake, though she was angry with Alec and just a little flustered by this intimate proximity to an angry Max.