She patted her belly, and Addie leaned over and did the same thing. Matty grinned as she continued, “Problem is, the family keeps growing. When everyone’s here, it’s a madhouse. So next step will probably be taking over the bunkhouse. We rarely have anybody in it, because the permanent hands want their own place, and Jack likes to keep a close eye on the few seasonals, so they usually stay with him in the Flying W main house.”

  Jack chose to live in the main house at the Flying W. That’s where most of Val’s brain had stalled. The house she’d driven past on the way to the highway. Just down the entrance road from the cotta — foreman’s house, where she and Addie were. Not far at all.

  She’d thought he lived here on the Slash-C, which was the neighboring ranch, but a healthy distance away. Unlike the Flying W’s main house, which was an easy walk. A stroll down the road and…

  …stayed with Jack in the Flying W main house.

  Other workers lived with him there.

  Good. That was good. Very good.

  “But here I am rattling away, and not asking what I can do for you, Val. Is it something at the Flying W? Do you need anything? Or—”

  “No, no. The cot — house is perfect. We don’t need a thing. I came over to say I’m sorry, Matty. After all the trouble you went to putting on Saturday’s party, to have the whole thing wasted—”

  “Quit. You started all this yesterday. Wasn’t a lot of trouble and wasn’t a waste. No party is ever wasted.” Her grin faded quickly. “And we’re not licked yet. What you need is a second shot at Jack Ralston.”

  “I’m not sure a second chance—”

  “Not a second chance, a second shot.” Her eyes brightened. She shifted Addie on her hip and used her other hand to pull open drawers in the big desk, checking folder labels as she kept talking. “And I might have an idea … But you’ve got to realize what you’re going up against with some of the hard-headed men out here. Think in terms of elephant guns, not second chances.”

  Val grinned. “I’ll introduce you to some of my family someday, Matty, and you’ll know Wyoming doesn’t have a monopoly on hard-headed men.” Or women, for that matter. But they weren’t discussing women.

  The door on the far side of the room swung wide, and Dave walked in.

  “Hey, Val. Good to see you.” He raised an eyebrow in the direction of his wife. “If you tell me what you’re looking for I might be able to help before you have to resort to the extreme measure of returning this little girl to her mother.”

  “Oh, good. Dave. Where’s the folder with all the employees’ information? You know, Social Security numbers and such. Has it already been moved?”

  He went to a cabinet behind the desk, extracted a file and handed it to her. “Nothing’s been moved yet. With you and Jack adding that book loft we got behind. Why do you want Social Security numbers?”

  “I don’t.” She opened the folder one-handed. “I want — ah-hah! — birthdays. And that’s what I thought. Jack’s birthday is tomorrow. Tomorrow!”

  Dave looked wary, which put Val on alert.

  “Okay,” he said slowly. “So Jack’s birthday is tomorrow.”

  “So we give him another party. We’ll have to do it in a way so he can’t leave. And—”

  “Matty. No.”

  Val was glad Dave said that.

  Despite the lowered hat brim, despite seeing him only through the lens of the camera, she’d seen — or felt — something in Jack’s response at the party that made her not want to put him through that again.

  “Jack’s made it pretty clear he doesn’t want—”

  “Oh, pooh,” Matty interrupted. “What Jack Ralston thinks he doesn’t want could fill a library.”

  “You have to respect a man’s boundaries.”

  “No, you don’t,” his wife shot back. “Sometimes that’s the very worst thing you can do.”

  Dave looked around. Possibly for reinforcements. “What do you think, Val?”

  She looked at them, now standing side by side behind the desk, touching along their arms and sides, probably unconsciously, yet in a silent declaration that their differences on this or any other topic didn’t detract one iota from the fact that they were a team. Always.

  It reminded her of her cousin El and El’s husband Cahill. Reminded her so much of them that it closed up her throat with emotion for a moment.

  Was that missing El and Cahill? Or was it sorrow that she had nothing like they and this couple she’d just met so clearly had.

  She swallowed, forcing her throat open. “I don’t think another surprise party would be good. But I agree with Matty in another way. If we respect his boundaries, Jack will stay inside them.”

  “Exactly. Even worse, he’ll keep building them higher and higher and higher. You know he’s done that, Dave. You’ve mentioned it.” She turned to Val. “So, what are you going to do?”

  Ah. So Matty, like her mother-in-law had gone from we to her doing something. She should push it right back into we. Right now. Make it clear she certainly wished Jack Ralston all the best, would forever be grateful to him. But, really, she had no personal stake in what he did or how he lived, even if he did look bleak when people threw a surprise party in his honor.

  She’d make that clear right now.

  Put her foot down.

  Step away from all of this.

  “I have an idea,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In town to pick up what she needed to implement her plan, Val stopped at the Café for lunch.

  She barely got in the door when two women descended on her, or more accurately on Addie. Both stretched their arms out. The older woman won, because she was closer, while the waitress had to come around the counter.

  Val and Addie had met both of them at the surprise party. The older woman was Ruth Moski, office manager for Dave’s law practice. The waitress’ name was Rainie.

  “Nice party,” said one of the men sitting at the counter.

  Val turned to him, recognizing Ruth’s husband, Hugh. Another of the party attendees. “Glad you enjoyed it.”

  “Everybody did.”

  “Everybody?”

  “Oh, you can’t let Jack Ralston get you down. If you judged by him, there hasn’t been a good party in this neck of the woods since he arrived. Besides, he used to be worse,” Hugh Moski said matter-of-factly.

  “Worse?”

  “Yeah. Didn’t react at all. Didn’t show a thing. You know those movies the kids liked so much for a while? People not really alive?”

  “Vampire movies?” Jack as a vampire? She wanted to giggle. Who’d ever seen a vampire with a suntan?

  “Nah. The other kind. Walked funny.”

  “Zombies.”

  “That’s it. Jack would get that way early on. Staring off like he was looking at something far, far off. Like he didn’t see anything here and now.”

  “Why?”

  Hugh shrugged. “Nobody knows as far as I’ve heard.”

  “And if Hugh’d heard, everybody would know,” said his wife.

  “Had his heart broken’s what I say,” Rainie contributed.

  “Can’t argue with that,” Ruth agreed. Then added less agreeably to Rainie, “Oh, all right, you can hold her, though why you can’t just hold your own, I don’t know.”

  Rainie grinned as she took Addie into her arms. “They’re too big, and you should talk. What about all your grandchildren?”

  Ruth snorted. “All too big and too old. I’d be starting to think about great-grandchildren if that Zoe of ours ever found a man worth putting up with.”

  “Have you introduced her to Jack?” Rainie asked.

  Val felt herself stiffen. She fought to hold on to her half grin.

  Ruth glanced at her then said, “Like each other fine as friends, but no spark. Gotta have that spark.”

  “Don’t know how anybody’d have a chance to spark with Jack Ralston. I know some have tried without the least bit of success. Course their sparking opportunities were awfully limited. He’s either not around or he’s working.”

  Although Ruth didn’t look at her this time, Val felt as if the gray-haired woman was addressing her. “That’s true enough. Anybody needs help, he’s right there. Anybody offering fun, he’s gone.”

  She grabbed the opening to change the subject. “Speaking of fun, have you heard Lisa Currick and Shane Garrison are due in town in mid-July. Sure am looking forward to meeting them.”

  “Of course we know,” Ruth said.

  “Oh, you’ll like them for sure, Val,” Rainie said. “Especially Shane. Told Lisa early on that if it weren’t for three kids and having a few years on him, I’d have done my best to cut her out.”

  That drew a few chuckles from the men seated at the counter. Rainie informed them they were getting no more coffee out of her, which led to wider discussion of a legend from the previous century of how a woman in a nearby county had disposed of her ungrateful husband with poisoned coffee.

  After Addie repeated one of the storytellers’ phrases about “dead as a doornail,” Val escorted her to a booth along the far side of the building and got down to the serious business of lunch.

  *

  “Here, hold Addie.”

  Jack recoiled. First, from the shock of finding Val and her daughter in the kitchen of the Flying W’s main house when he entered it after a long day of work. Then, from the words ordering him to hold the girl. And finally from something else he wasn’t going to consider.

  “I don’t know how to hold a kid.”

  But he hadn’t recoiled fast enough or far enough. So he already was holding her. Val had thrust the girl at him, and what choice did he have? Drop the kid?

  It was like holding an oversized watermelon with arms and legs. Thank heavens for the arms, because he had his hands under them, and they kept his suddenly-damp hands from slipping loose. Another thank heavens was that right now she wasn’t using the legs for anything but dangling. Didn’t take any experience with kids to know that her swinging those legs around could quickly destabilize this situation.

  He raised his gaze from his survey of her limbs and encountered the wide, concentrated, dark-eyed stare of her mother in miniature.

  No. That wasn’t quite right … But he didn’t have time to consider the differences. Not now. Not with them here. Not with his peripheral vision catching Val turning toward him.

  “You don’t know how to hold her? Are you kidding?”

  He risked diverting his attention long enough for a glance over Addie’s shoulder to her mother. She was opening the oven door, using a mitt to pull out a rack. “No.”

  “Well, you should be, because where Addison Rose Trimarco is concerned, you set the standard.”

  His gaze had gone back to Addie’s eyes. It wasn’t Val’s stare. There were similarities, sure. But it was like a different light shining through a piece of stained glass. Both results were beautiful, yet different. Individual.

  At this moment the light shining through Addie’s wide, dark eyes held bright, frank questioning.

  “What?” he mumbled.

  “You set the standard,” Val repeated. “You were the first one to ever hold her. So you’re the one she measures everyone else against. I was terrified when you first handed her to me that she’d demand to go back to you.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  Addie must have heard something in his dry tone she liked, because she chortled.

  “She agrees,” Val claimed, turning back to open the oven door. “Don’t you, Addie?

  “Jack,” the little girl said, as if that were an answer. She also started squirming. The watermelon with arms and legs had suddenly become a cross between a jellyfish and an octopus.

  “She’s moving.”

  “Hold her tighter.”

  Addie squawked a protest. Val looked around, still bent over the open oven and with her head down. “Closer to you,” she instructed, “not tighter around.”

  He loosened his hands’ grip and she nearly squirted out. Instinctively, he hauled her back in. One arm slid under her butt and the other spread wide across her back, giving up the distance his first hold had offered.

  “You got it,” Val said, turning back to the oven. “She’s tired. Needs a little rest, don’t you, Addie?”

  “No.” But she settled her bottom more comfortably against his forearm, and rested against his chest with a quick huff of contentment.

  He was sweating.

  Were they nuts? They were. Had to be. The pair of them. He’d nearly dropped the kid. If Addie hadn’t realized it, she needed better instincts for self-preservation or she wouldn’t last very long.

  A catalog of potential dangers flashed through his mind. Look at this kitchen, with an oven and knives and things that could fall off the counter. Then outside with the vehicles, animals, tools of a ranch. And nature. Good Lord, he’d have to spend every second—

  No. No, it wasn’t his job. Not only that, he hadn’t asked them to come here and didn’t want them here. If there was any looking out to be done, it was Valerie Trimarco’s job to do it. But it wouldn’t come to that, because they were getting out of here. Right away. Going to be gone. So it didn’t matter how many dozens of ways for a not-yet four-year-old to get hurt on a ranch came to him in a blink. And it didn’t matter what percentage of them might also apply to her mother.

  …Who was pulling a pan out of the oven now with a contented smile.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  “Baking.”

  “I can see that.” And smell it. And feel the mouth-watering response. “Why here?”

  “Matty said the stove at the foreman’s co — house isn’t to be trusted.”

  First he’d heard of that. And even if it were true, why here, why not at the Slash-C with her great good friend Matty Currick?

  Before he could ask, Addie tilted her head back and up. “Everything’d be okay, Jack. Everything okay.” She smiled at him before dropping her head back against his shoulder and seeming to burrow into him.

  At first he thought — stupidly — that he’d somehow gotten grit in his eyes, the way you could moving the herd or roping a horse or placing irrigation pipe or haying or any of another two-dozen tasks. Except they were all outside, and he was standing in the kitchen, where nothing resembling a cloud of dust happened to blowing through at the moment.

  Not dust. He hadn’t shed tears since — No. He wasn’t going to let them go now. What he could do — had to do — was get these two dangerous females off the Flying W and Slash-C. Get them far away. For good. And fast.

  Addie stiffened abruptly. As he looked down to see why, her head snapped up, driving his lower jaw up into a collision with his upper jaw.

  “Down!” she demanded. “Down! Bownies done!”

  With the oven door now closed, he complied.

  “They’re too hot, Addie. We have to wait for them to cool.” Val shot him a look. “What’s wrong? Are you okay? Oh, God, you got the chin-clip, didn’t you? I’m so sorry. Was your tongue—?”

  “Fine. I’m fine,” he said.

  Her brown eyes studied him, the sharp light of her intelligence streaming through the stained glass, making it so entirely different from Addie’s looks that in that moment he couldn’t believe he’d seen any similarity.

  She saw too much, too clearly. He almost turned and walked out to avoid it. Then he remembered he had the perfect excuse for any signs of something stinging his eyes.

  “Well,” she said slowly, “you will be fine. As soon as you experience the magical cure of Trimarco brownies. Because who makes the best brownies in the world?”

  Addie piped right up with, “We do!”

  *

  A man with a child, especially a big, strong man being gentle and kind to a child, always filled Val’s heart.

  Make it her child they were being gentle and kind to and the emotion swelled enough to burst any dam.

  She’d been touched many times by the men in her family interacting with their own babies and each other’s. It always made her smile with warmth and delight.

  Not now.

  She couldn’t catch her breath, wondered if the yawning in her gut might swallow her whole.

  So, why was this so different?

  It hit her like a punch expelling all the oxygen out of her. When her dad settled a grandchild on his lap, when one of her brothers or brothers-in-law consoled a child of his own or not his own, when Cahill held his son or her daughter high above his head to draw cascades of giggles, there was always, always a thread of joy in the connection.

  In Jack there was no joy. There was sorrow. Sorrow and loss.

  She pivoted away, sucking in her breath.

  “Now these have to cool while Addie and I clean up. Because it’s not nice to leave messes behind, is it, Addison Rose?”

  “No messes,” she agreed emphatically, though Val knew a pair of dusty brown outlines on the refrigerator door perfectly matched her daughter’s handprints.

  “Why don’t you sit down and keep us company while we clean up?” she invited Jack.

  He stepped back. Not yet turning and fleeing, but definitely retreating to the threshold of the coat hook-lined area by the back door. “I, uh, I gotta go. Gotta get back out.”

 

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