The Montana McKennas Five-Book Box Set, page 6
Today, for the first time, she was alone in the house. The kids were in school and James was working with Sam on the ranch. Weak December sunlight filtered through the guest room window. Liz stood in the middle of the floor considering the double bed with the knotty pine headboard. A patchwork quilt that looked handmade covered it. Probably an heirloom of some sort. Not suitable for a growing child.
She would get James and the boys to take down the bed and store it. She’d fold up the quilt and put it away. Then she’d have space to transform this guest room into a nursery. They needed to buy a crib. Maybe one of those new ones that could be converted into a toddler bed. Would James buy her a changing table? She’d seen them in catalogs. When the child no longer needed it, the changing topper lifted off to create a dresser. That would be practical. Surely James would agree.
But there was one item in the guest room Liz knew she would be able to use. It was a Windsor-style rocker. She wanted to paint it white, because she envisioned the whole room in white—white furniture, frilly white and pink curtains and crib accessories. She wanted a girl. With her whole heart, she longed for a girl.
Suddenly she knew what the room also needed.
Liz scurried into the master bedroom, her one place of solace with James that was off limits to the kids. She’d thrown her mother’s handmade afghan over one of the easy chairs. Now she snatched it up and carried it back to the guest room.
Although the afghan was knitted with blue and black wool, she wanted it in her baby’s nursery. It was only fitting that a piece of her mother should be here with her, comforting her through her own trials as a second-time mother.
Liz sat down in the rocker and hugged the blanket to her chest. Rocking. Rocking. The rollercoaster ride of emotions caught up to her. It had been a long few weeks. Suddenly she cried.
James found her like that. “Liz! What’s wrong?”
He knelt by the rocking chair and took her hand.
“Nothing,” she said with a sniff. “Everything.”
“Tell me?”
Liz squeezed his hand. “I’m just so happy. And sad all at the same time. I miss my mother. She would have so enjoyed seeing my children grow up, meeting you, being a part of all this.”
He nodded, seeming unsure of what to say. How to help.
“And in a way, making this house a home is more difficult than I imagined. Because, you see, James, it is still Claire’s home. I feel like an outsider here.”
“Oh, my beautiful Liz, I understand,” James said. He stood up and walked to the window, pulling back the curtain. “That’s why I’m going to do something about it.”
“What do you mean?”
He turned to face her. “Sam and I were just down by the lake laying out a spot for a new house.”
“A new house?” Liz couldn’t believe her ears. She stood up and went to him.
James brought her to the window. “You can’t see the area from up here. You can just see the tip of the lake. But there’s a nice spot where we can build a new home. Maybe out of logs.”
“Would it have enough rooms for all the children?”
“Yes, and a guest room. Six bedrooms. What do you think?”
Love and gratitude ripped through Liz’s heart. “It will be our home. Truly our home.”
James put his arm around her shoulders. “Yes, for my kids, yours, and ours. Our new family.”
Together they gazed out the window over the McKenna lands. Liz put her head on her husband’s shoulder and for once in her life felt safe and loved.
BRODY: THE LONG ROAD HOME
Champion bull rider Brody Caldera returns home after his stepfather’s accident only to discover things have changed big time.
When rancher James McKenna is critically injured in a riding accident, his wife calls his daughter and stepson home for a family meeting. Ironically, home is where stepson Brody Caldera wants to be. He’s taking stock of his life—past, present, and future. Can the champion bull rider turn his life around and make up for past mistakes?
Single mom Stephanie Chambers hopes to keep her daughter away from the man who deserted them years ago. But the spunky ten-year-old is enamored with the famous cowboy, and Stef’s best intentions are sidetracked from day one. She’s made a life for herself and her daughter, but Brody’s return challenges what Stef knows about herself and that life she’s created.
Chapter One
Two o’clock a.m.
Chicago, Illinois
He was home.
Brody Caldera’s heart quickened as he turned the key to the door of his high rise apartment on North Sheridan Road. When his girlfriend, Lori Ann, helped him pick it out soon after they met two years ago, she had loved the apartment’s “million dollar view” of Lake Michigan. The location was trendy and close to downtown and her job at an up-and-coming ad agency. The apartment was “to-die for,” and she said she’d be very happy living there between Brody’s “business” trips.
Yeah, Lori Ann was spoiled, all right. He gave her anything and everything she wanted. But why not? He could afford it, and what else did he have to spend his money on but the woman he loved. Since the day he met her at a promotional event for the Professional Bull Riders, he’d been head-over-heels in love with her. And she with him. They were a perfect match for each other. There was just something right about them together. And one day they’d get married and make beautiful blond babies together. Maybe soon.
Even after all this time, he adored her. Still bought her clothes and jewelry. Still had hot sex with her. That’s why he’d caught an early plane home. He wanted to surprise her this morning and kiss her awake.
His adrenalin surged just like it did when he was about to climb down on the back of a seventeen-hundred-pound bull. Brody slowly turned the doorknob, so he wouldn’t make noise and wake Lori Ann. She wasn’t expecting him.
What the hell? Every light in the place was on. He blinked his eyes against the glare reflected off the bank of windows that faced the lake.
Cocking his head to the side, Brody stood at the threshold and surveyed the strange sight in the fashionable, black-and-white living room Lori Ann had decorated. It didn’t look like their peaceful living space. It looked like a scene from a college frat party. Not that he would know firsthand, of course. He’d never gone to college and never been to a frat party, but he had a good imagination.
Furniture was shoved back against the walls. Empty glasses and plates littered the glass table-tops. Cigarette butts filled several ashtrays. He’d never had an ashtray in the apartment in his whole time living there.
Lori Ann didn’t smoke. And folks didn’t smoke in Montana where he came from. He’d learned his lesson the hard way. He’d tried it once out behind the barn. His stepfather had caught him and tanned his hide. His mom had given him the “what for” too. Told him smoking interfered with drawing in the clean mountain air. It made riding and roping harder work with lungs full of crap. They were right.
Tightening his jaw, Brody took a step inside, dropped his duffle bag by the entrance, and shut the door behind him. He turned slowly, absorbing the dead silence of the place and drawing in a pungent scent of skunk.
He’d smelled it before on the streets of Chicago as he biked. He’d smelled it on sidewalks in the Loop and on the “L.”
Brody walked over to the glass coffee table and looked down at the ashtrays, which weren’t filled with cigarette butts, but paper-wrapped joints.
Someone had been smoking marijuana.
So that explained it. Lori Ann had been acting strange for six months. He’d overlooked red flags because he had wanted to. But now he couldn’t. The tightening of his gut told him he’d been a fool.
A damn fool.
A pair of man’s, black leather wingtips kicked off by the black leather sofa told him the same thing.
Brody strode toward his bedroom, the one he shared with Lori Ann, and turned on the light switch beside the door. The overhead chandelier illuminated the king-size bed beneath it.
The spectacle rocked him. Looked like some other man had been enjoying the fruits of his labor.
Brody planted his legs wide for balance, anger rolling through the length of his slim, muscular body. So this is what betrayal feels like.
He reached the side of the bed in two strides and grasped the edge of the red satin sheet covering Lori Ann and another body. He flicked the covering off her with a quick snap of his wrist.
“Who’s he?” he asked between clenched teeth.
Lori Ann sat bolt upright pulling the red satin sheet back over her well-endowed breasts.
“Brody! What are you doing here?”
“Seems you’ve been taking me for a ride,” he said in his quiet cowboy way.
Lori Ann stared at him wide-eyed. He might not look like a cowboy with his frayed blue jeans, Chicago Cubs T-shirt, tennis shoes, and ball cap, but his jaw was set with the same cowboy determination that made him a champion bull rider and the same instinct that made him competitive from the time he was seventeen.
And that instinct was kicking him right in the seat of his pants.
The other man turned over onto his back and mumbled something about turning off the lights.
“I can explain,” Lori Ann said with a frantic note to her voice.
“Nothin’ to explain. I get it.” Brody didn’t need a picture drawn for him. “Be out of here by the time I get back.”
He turned on his heel and headed for the door.
“Wait!” she shrieked, ripping the sheet off her bed partner and leaving him buck naked sprawled out in the king-size bed. Running after him, Lori Ann caught up to Brody in the living room and grabbed him by the arm.
Brody stopped and looked down at her disheveled blond hair, seeing for the first time the unhealthy pastiness of her porcelain skin and the selfish pout of her full lips.
His sister, Mercer, had warned him about Lori Ann a long time ago. He hadn’t listened then. But he was listening now.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going home,” Brody said slowly, as the idea formed in his dazed brain.
“But this is your home.”
“I’m going home to Montana.”
“You can’t leave me!” Lori Ann sobbed.
“Looks like I’m about to.”
Brody shrugged off her hand, picked up his canvas duffle bag, and opened the door. “I’ll send my lawyer for my clothes.”
“But what about me?”
“I suppose you need to get yourself another sugar daddy. Looks like there’s a candidate in my bed.”
That other candidate stood barefoot in the doorway of the bedroom, his trousers hastily jerked up around his hips. “Hey, man,” he muttered. “All is cool.”
Brody glared at the idiot and turned quickly. He left his apartment before he did something stupid like punch the bastard’s lights out. He may have been played for a fool, but that was no reason to let his temper lead him into something he’d regret later.
Hiking the duffle bag over his shoulder, Brody strode down the hallway, his hands shaking worse than when he was getting ready to ride a rank bull with eighty thousand dollars on the line.
At the elevator, he punched the button for his ride down and out of a life he realized he’d been hanging on to for far too long. Better to go back to the folks he used to know. Honest, decent, hardworking folks who were what they seemed to be. Not lying opportunists like his ex-girlfriend.
His iPhone buzzed just as the elevator door opened. Thinking the text was from Lori Ann, he almost didn’t remove his cell phone from its belt clip holster. But he did. The text was from Mercer.
Mom needs you. Daddy’s had an accident. He’s in the hospital. Brody, come home.
Chapter Two
The Lodge’s Fly Fishing Shop
McKenna’s Ranch
Working Cattle and Guest Ranch
With James McKenna’s booming voice and ready laughter silenced for the moment, it was hard to do her job, but Stephanie Chambers knew the ranch’s guests must be served.
Life goes on.
Mr. McKenna had told her that when her daddy died and she could hardly contain her grief. There was no time for tears, he’d said. No time to feel sorry for herself. She had a daughter to care for who was grieving too.
Years earlier, her daddy had told her the same thing. “There’s no cryin’ on horseback, Stef, honey. Get back up on that horse. You ain’t gonna quit. I won’t let you.”
Words of wisdom from two important men in her life. Stef had always tried to live by those words—to “cowboy up” as people in the West said.
She pressed enter on the computer keyboard and looked up at the customer on the other side of the counter and smiled. “Okay, Mr. Reynolds. You’re all set for tomorrow morning. I reserved a float trip for you and your wife with Bud, one of our most experienced guides.”
“Are you sure he knows the river?”
Stef nodded. “He grew up in the valley, Mr. Reynolds. Knows the waters like the back of his hand.”
It was true. Bud was a great fly fishing guide. When her father was alive, he’d managed the outfitters for the ranch and trained all the crew himself. There’d been no personnel turnover since his death a year ago. These young guys knew how to give a tourist a fun but safe trip. Maybe catching a blue-ribbon, eight-pound rainbow trout wasn’t in the cards for most of these first-timers, but it wouldn’t be because their fishing guides lacked experience.
Stef sold a pair of lightweight roll-up pants and a long-sleeved, button-front shirt to Mrs. Reynolds. Both husband and wife bought Tilley hats for sun protection. When they had paid and left the shop, Stef paused and drew a deep breath. With the outfitting store empty of customers, she had time for a break.
It was scary quiet at the lodge with Mercer and Liz at the hospital with James. They usually kept her company in the morning while the guests were gearing up for their day’s activities.
Mercer hadn’t called from the hospital as she’d promised. It was almost as if time was on hold, waiting for a miracle. It was hard not to imagine the worse when the phone didn’t ring. But the worse couldn’t happen. If James died, what would happen to her and Livy?
Taking her morning cup of coffee with her to the front porch, Stef set the stoneware mug on the railing and looked out over the creek-fed lake. She never tired of the view from the porch. She’d been a fool to stay away from home so long.
When she’d gotten pregnant with Olivia, her daddy had sent her away to live with his sister in Dallas. It was far enough from home for a fresh start. With Aunt Imelda’s help, Stef had given birth to her baby and started college. By the time Livy was five, Stef was working as an administrative assistant. Life had been good with her aunt—working and raising her daughter—that is until Daddy got sick.
Stef’s chest tightened, as it always did when she grieved for her father. Sixty-five was too young to die of heart failure. She hated to think what Mercer and Liz were going through right now.
Picking up her mug, Stef cupped it in her hands and savored the aroma of good, strong coffee. It was a typically crisp morning, and the hot coffee mug felt good in her grasp. Overhead white cirrus clouds danced against the Big Sky of Montana.
Behind the log lodge, the centerpiece of the guest ranch, foothills met the distant mountains behind the creek that fed the lake. A few miles away, the Yellowstone River meandered through the valley.
Spring had finally come to the area. The grass was turning green and the weather changed every five minutes. Stef wondered if any calves had been born overnight. She knew Parker McKenna and his men were watching the herd closely. There has been a lot of wolf activity lately.
James McKenna’s ranch was a working cattle ranch as well as being a dude ranch. The guest part of it had been his wife Liz’s idea one winter when they’d had trouble making ends meet. James had agreed, and against his son Parker’s objections, turned over part of the family’s ranch land to Liz.
Liz’s first hire had been Stef’s daddy, a cowhand with a serious fly-fishing hobby. Sam Chambers had a mind for business. He’d just needed a chance to prove it. The hunting and fishing part of the dude ranch was one of its most successful attractions.
Stef smiled at a memory of her daddy trying to teach his granddaughter Olivia to fish.
“Oh, Pop, are we goin’ to put him back?”
“No, honey, we’re gonna eat him for dinner.”
“But he needs to go back with his brothers and sisters!”
Daddy had rolled his eyes at the small child’s question, but he’d been as patient with Livy as he’d been with Stef growing up. It had been hard for her daddy to raise a daughter alone, but he’d been successful at that too. That’s why Stef knew, when she faced the same situation, she could handle it. She was Sam’s kid, wasn’t she?
Almost as if she’d conjured her up, Stef’s daughter appeared at the opposite end of the porch, and she scampered toward her mom wagging a calico kitten in her hands. A black and white border collie followed at her heels.
“Look, Mom, Sissy’s kittens came out of hiding.”
Livy held up the four-week-old kitten. Putting down her coffee mug, Stef took the kitten from her daughter and cuddled it. “She is so cute.”
“The others are just like this one. And Ranger doesn’t even bother them.” Livy patted the head of her constant companion, a rangy border collie.
Livy loved animals. You had to love them out here living as close to them as people did. During summer trips to the ranch, Livy had learned how to ride. Because she liked to ride, she hadn’t been upset to leave her Dallas classmates to move home to Montana where Stef was homeschooling her.
Stef handed the kitten to Livy. “Take her back to her mama, honey.”
“Sure.”
Stef picked up her mug and watched Livy walk slowly away, dog at her heels. Her daughter was going to be tall like Sam, but she had her father’s dark blond hair.
Gripping the mug tighter, Stef shoved thoughts of Brody aside. She’d gotten off that horse a long time ago.
