Maybe she didn’t have enough Common Monkeyflower to get Jack living with cheerful enthusiasm, but she might have discovered another secret weapon. Addison Rose Trimarco.

  If Addie being herself got to him, who was she to interfere? Especially since it was for the man’s own good.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Good heavens, Jack. Looks like you’ve turned the back of my truck into a garden.” Matty called out from the porch of the Slash-C’s main house. She’d come outside as they pulled up, with Brennan on her heels.

  Jack swung out of the driver’s door as Val extricated Addie. “No dents or damage, so you shouldn’t have any complaints.”

  “I’m not complaining. I’m delighted. Sure looks better than bags of feed or a load of tools. But what’s the occasion? Did you get these for Val?”

  “What? No,” she said quickly. “They’re for you, Matty. We — Addie and I — brought you some flowers as a small thank you for all you’ve been doing for us, all the dinners, and letting stay here, and that party.” Better not to pursue that topic. “I hope you like them.”

  “There’s absolutely no need for that, Val. You’re great to have around and you and Addie entertaining Brennan has been priceless. But I sure appreciate you thinking of this.” Matty peered over the side of the truck bed. “What are they? Look sort of like snapdragons, but the bloom’s so much bigger.”

  “Monkeyflower,” Jack said. “She bought an acre’s worth of monkeyflower.”

  “No,” Matty said in disbelief.

  “Yup,” Jack confirmed with dour pleasure. “Just what you’d want along a fast-moving stream that was cutting away at mountain that was there first, minding its own business.”

  With that he turned on his heel and headed toward the new office.

  “What was that about?” Matty asked.

  “I have no idea. The woman in the shop didn’t say anything about fast-moving streams or mountains. She did say they’re called common yellow monkeyflower. Mimulus guttatus.”

  “Huh.” Matty stared at the plants, hands on hips. “Monkeyflower can be a pest in the ditches and such if we have a real wet stretch. But they are kind of cheerful.”

  She grabbed onto that. “They are. The woman in the shop said they can spread across the top of the soil to make new plants, but she swore they wouldn’t be invasive unless conditions were ideal.”

  Matty snorted. “Fat chance of that.”

  “I thought I’d plant them for you by the trough where you’ve had such trouble getting anything to grow.”

  “Oh.” Matty turned her head to look at that offending patch of muck, then back to Val. “You know, that might be a really good idea. Well, let’s see how they do.”

  *

  Matty stood, brushing off her hands, head tipped as she surveyed their work. “I like it,” she declared.

  “You should have let me do all the planting.” Val nested the now-empty pots together.

  “No way. Especially after being kind enough to get me these flowers. You all were a great help,” she added, extending her smile to their pint-sized not-so-helpful helpers. Then she spotted a familiar figure cutting across from the office toward the horse barn. “Hey, Jack, come see what we’ve accomplished. Thanks to all of us, we’ll now have pretty yellow monkeyflowers to enjoy every time we use the pump, instead of a bed of mud.”

  Val watched Jack stop, then change the angle of his path to come toward them. Slowly. With reluctance. Geeze, why didn’t the man just shout that he’d rather not join a group that included her?

  “We planted all the monkeyflowers you brought back from Jefferson, so thanks to you, too, for helping Val get them. Doesn’t it look great?” Matty asked Jack.

  “Very nice.”

  “Monkey,” Addie said. “Because it looks like a monkey face.”

  “Monkey face,” echoed Brennan Currick.

  “That’s right,” Matty said. “Monkeyflower. Don’t forget the flower part.”

  “Monkey’s better,” Brennan declared.

  “Flower’s better,” disputed Addie.

  “And they’re off,” muttered Val. She and Matty grinned at each other as their offspring debated the relative values of flowers and monkeys with the highly developed logic of “is not” and “is so” until Val interrupted with, “Aren’t we lucky that this has both. Monkey and flower.”

  Addie stared at her mother a moment, then turned to Brennan and pronounced, “Storm.”

  “Storm,” Brennan confirmed.

  Unified, they headed for the closest corral fence, where Storm stood.

  “You stay outside the fence,” Matty reminded them. She turned back to the bed they’d just planted. “You know, there’s an area at the Flying W could use some flowers, too. Would you pick up more, Jack?”

  He nodded. “Now I’d better go. Not sure that fence will protect Storm.”

  Val pivoted. He daughter had one foot on the bottom rail. At least she hadn’t tried to go between, the way she had last time. “Addie!”

  “It’s okay,” Jack said, striding away. “I got them.”

  That figured. Most single men ran the other way from a woman with kids. This man would rather herd a couple of rambunctious kids than stay where she was.

  “He’s so good with kids,” Matty said, putting a much more positive spin on the situation. The woman should work for D.C. politicians.

  Though, he was good with kids.

  *

  After they’d collected the kids, cleaned them up, then themselves, Matty insisted Val and Addie stay for dinner. A low-key affair of burgers and hotdogs on the grill, she said. Donna arrived from a trip to town to visit with friends, and added her voice to the invitation. “Do stay. I want to hear how you and Addie are liking Wyoming.”

  Matty nodded. “Sure. This’ll be a good chance to catch up. We’re saving the fancy stuff for when Lisa and Shane get here. You know we’re having a party for them, don’t you? And of course you and Addie have to come. Oh, and come to the dinner we’ll have a couple nights before, too. Lisa’s dying to meet you in person. She’s so impressed with your blog.”

  “We better get busy so the men have something to grill.” Donna’s easy tone broke the silence.

  “What can I do to help?” Val volunteered.

  “Go get Jack,” Matty said.

  Before she could do more than open her mouth to propose an alternative, Matty added, “That’s not as easy as it sounds because you have to walk over to the corral where he’s working with the mare. Jack doesn’t allow anybody to drive around the rescues at first. And you need to approach slow and calm and quiet — in other words, he doesn’t let me around the rescues at first, either.”

  Val couldn’t help joining Donna in laughter, and soon she found herself walking toward the far corral, slow and quiet and calm on the outside.

  If that wasn’t good enough for the horse and Jack Ralston, too bad.

  *

  Val didn’t make noise as she came closer and he couldn’t say she disturbed the mare, who watched her with apparent interest.

  Which didn’t mean he had to do the same. He kept his gaze on the horse.

  Val reached the corral fence a dozen feet from his position inside it and stopped.

  The mare looked right at her and made a sound.

  “Oh.” Apparently feeling obliged to explain her delight, Val added, “Matty said when a horse makes that sound they’re saying hello.”

  “Pretty much.”

  The mare’s ears flickered at Val’s voice. Alert but relaxed.

  “And when they make that other sound, like a whinny, that’s like asking if there are any other horses around, because they’re such herd animals they naturally try to find their band. And other horses respond with this same sound to say, yes, here we are. But this sound—”

  “Nicker.”

  “Nicker,” she repeated, “is definitely hello. Only there aren’t any other horses around.”

  “They use it to greet humans, too.”

  He saw her recognize that they were only two humans around, and since he’d been here all along there was no need for the animal to vocalize a greeting to him.

  “Me? She’s greeting me?” Without waiting for an answer, she turned toward the horse. “Oh, you big, beautiful sweetie you.”

  The mare moved toward the fence, hesitated a moment, then put her head over it.

  “I know. Let her sniff my hand,” Val followed the words with the actions. “Stroke her on the withers. Steady strokes. Right, Sweetie Pie?”

  He snorted. “Her name’s Phantom. There,” he added as the mare lowered her head slightly and turned it more toward Val, “that’s saying she’s okay with what you’re doing. But that’s enough now.”

  Val patted her twice more, then stepped back from the fence. The mare almost seemed to nod, then ambled toward the far side of the corral.

  Still watching the horse, Val said, “I’ve been sent to tell you it’s time for dinner.”

  “I don’t eat with the family.”

  She looked at him then. “Ever? Because I kind of doubt Matty sent me out here to tell you it was time for dinner if she didn’t expect you to join us.”

  He wouldn’t put it entirely past Matty Brennan Currick. But Val had a strong point that it was far more likely that this was Matty’s way of informing him this was a command performance.

  If he’d known socializing was going to be part of his job when he’d signed on…

  “Give me a minute,” he said, keeping his voice even — for the mare’s sake. He repeated his end-of-session routine.

  But the mare didn’t do any more than that as he exited the gate and walked to where Val still stood. So no harm done. And it had vented a bit of his irritation.

  Val turned and headed toward the house as he came along beside her, walking in silence.

  They’d covered three-quarters of the distance to the house when she broke it. “Going to put a saddle on her soon?”

  “Good bit to do before that.”

  “But she has to be able to be saddled, right? I mean for her to be useful around the ranch.”

  He doubted any of the Curricks would push him if he said this horse was more likely to be a pleasure horse, maybe even more of a pet than a working horse. Interesting the way she’d reacted to Val. Maybe she’d had good experiences with women. She sure hadn’t with men. But no need to discuss all that with Valerie Trimarco. “Look at it from the horse’s point of view.”

  “You mean who wants leather strapped around your belly, then people climbing on your back?”

  He felt the tug of a smile but kept his tone serious. “More than that. Out in nature, they’re prey animals. If something lands on their back, their instinct say it’s more likely to be a mountain lion intent on dinner than a hunk of leather that’s just going to lie there.”

  “So you work with the animal to get her to accept that it’s the hunk of leather, not the mountain lion, just like you did to accept that the human sitting in the corral isn’t going to do something awful to her.”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s too bad you don’t know what happened to her before she came here.”

  He shrugged.

  “Wouldn’t it help to know how she got to that state?”

  “You can’t always know what happened to them before. Maybe you don’t want to. No matter what, you move forward slowly, steadily. Cautious. Just like with people. Because you can’t know who you’re dealing with. Not really. Not ever.”

  “Oh, sure you can. Just listen to your instincts.”

  “I’ve read your blog.”

  *

  I’ve read your blog.

  Where on earth had that come from?

  She’d thought they were circling around whatever it was that had happened to him that had put him so off of humanity. Hinting that she’d be better off if she knew. Possibly edging toward his telling her why he made cautious look like a party animal.

  And then he said I’ve read your blog, as if he’d confessed a sin.

  “Have you? What did you think?”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “It is to me. If I draw in male viewers, I double my audience. Maybe do segments on dads and—” She stopped herself, looking at him. There was something more here. “Did you hate it?” she asked, more to give herself time to think than because she thought he’d tell her if he had.

  “No.”

  She believed him. But there was definitely something else behind his words and she had no idea what.

  “Jack, you’re going to have to give me more to go on if you want me to know what you’re getting at.”

  He gave a kind of growl. “It’s what I said before. You don’t know who’s on the receiving side. You look into the lens, all open and honest and vulnerable, as if everyone who’s watching you is just the same, and you have no idea who’s out there. What they’re thinking. How they could take what you give and hurt you.”

  Whoa. She didn’t think he’d said that many words to her all in one breath before.

  But she was finally waking up and putting pieces together.

  “You wouldn’t, Jack. You wouldn’t take what I give and hurt me. Yet you were one of the watchers.” He didn’t look away. He seemed to want to, but he didn’t. “What were you thinking when you were watching, Jack?”

  “That I wanted you in my bed.”

  He’d meant to shock her. Possibly to scare her. And he’d done it just as they approached the group on the patio, no doubt trying to maximize both her flusteredness and her inability to respond.

  She had the eminent satisfaction of shocking and silencing him when she smiled broadly and said loud enough for everyone to hear — but with only him knowing the significance — “Oh, good.”

  *

  Yes, she’d shocked and silenced him, but she was the one who didn’t sleep that night.

  Dinner had been no problem.

  There’d been plenty of distraction from the gathered Curricks and Ruskoffs, who were happily planning for the arrival in a few weeks of Lisa and Shane and their five-month-old baby Alexa.

  They drew Val into the conversation with easy expectation that she would join in all the activities.

  “So, we’ll give them a couple days to relax while we have Alexa all to ourselves, then have dinner here with the gathering of the clans on that Thursday,” Matty said, consulting a July calendar. Donna and Ed had gone to New York to help Lisa and Shane when their baby was born. The rest of them were looking forward to meeting the newest member of the family. “Then Friday is party prep and Saturday we have all of Lewis and Clark counties for the party.”

  There’d also been the distraction of the dark looks Jack darted toward her when he thought she wouldn’t notice.

  At one point, Taylor had given her a brows-raised look, silently asking if everything was okay. She’d smiled brightly to say everything was fine.

  And it had been.

  Until she got home — to the foreman’s cottage, she corrected herself — put Addie to sleep and slid into bed.

  Then came Jack’s voice into her head.

  That I wanted you in my bed.

  Did he want that?

  She thought so. Part of him, anyway.

  Did she? Oh, hell, yes.

  But should she?

  What about the part of him that wanted nothing to do with her? The part that tried so hard to avoid her. That pulled back time and again even when he didn’t — or couldn’t — avoid her.

  Yes, there were moments…

  But it was the other moments she needed to think about.

  Especially with Addie the most important factor to consider.

  Between those thoughts and much steamier ones that slipped in whenever she started to drift toward sleep, she spent most of the night awake.

  Addie was fractious all morning.

  After lunch, she insisted her daughter lie down for a short rest. Addie resisted with words, pouts, and stomps.

  For a full minute, she laid resolutely stiff on her bed, her face turned to the wall. Then she released a long breath and was asleep.

  Val considered a nap herself, but she was too restless … And then there were those thoughts she could hold off while she was awake, but that slipped free if she tried to sleep.

  She looked at her laptop, reminding herself she should work on her blog.

  Instead, she pulled out her phone and dialed a familiar number, not bothering to say hello.

  “Have you ever heard of monkeyflower?”

  “What?”

  Her cousin Eleanor Thatcher McCrea wasn’t much of a gardener. Val didn’t know why she’d asked. Didn’t know why she’d been hopping around the Internet looking at information about the plant, either. Nothing she’d found was going to say whether or not it would survive in Matty’s garden, and that’s what mattered. All that mattered. “Never mind.”

  El ignored that order. As usual. “What about monkeyflower?”

  “It’s a wildflower out here. Blooms all summer, I’m told. Bright yellow with touches of red. According to what I’ve been reading, Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark found it on July 4, 1806.”

  “That so?” El said dryly.

  “It’s also supposed to help heal wounds, especially rope burns. Relieve tightness in the shoulders. Ease somebody who’s suffering from anxiety because of a specific cause. Impart faith and optimism and inner peace.”

  “That’s a lot for a flower.” El sounded like someone feeling their way across ice they suspected might crack any second.

  “Uh-huh. Also can use it in salads. That’s why I’m interested. All that other stuff? A bunch of hooey.”

  “What does it taste like in a salad?”

  “Bitter.”

  “Okay. Well. That sounds like a winner.”

  Val held onto her own bitter mood for another beat, then heard the echo of their conversation in her head like it had been on a delay.

  She laughed. She laughed hard. After a while, El joined in.

  When they stopped, El said, “Blog seems to be going okay.”

  “I guess. Got behind for a while, but I’m caught up now.”

 

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