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He returned his attention to his burger and fries, leaving Sarah feeling slightly breathless and surprisingly intrigued by the man.
Within minutes, he’d finished his meal, while she’d only made it through half a sandwich. He put some money on the counter and picked up his hat.
“Nice talkin’ to you.” He touched the brim of his Stetson and sauntered out the door.
In spite of herself, Sarah exhaled in relief.
Bonnie came over to pick up his cash and the dirty dishes.
“He’s something else, isn’t he?” she said, putting the ketchup bottle back where it belonged. “When he lost his wife, I’d never seen a man so stricken. And his two kids.” She shook her head. “A real shame, that’s what it was. He could sure use all the help he can get.”
Sarah glanced out the front window. Kurt had parked across the street, a black extended-cab pickup. He stood talking with another man, one hand resting on the open window of his truck.
“Do you think he really wants to hire a house keeper?” she asked.
“I imagine so. Grace Livingston, his mother-in-law, is still grieving. Can’t get over losing her only child. I don’t expect trying to take care of Kurt’s two kids is easy at her age.”
Sarah waited for a full minute, trying to decide what to do. Taking a chance warred with her fear of hurting people who had given her so much. She’d come here to help the Ryder family. Had she just been presented with a way to do that?
Please, God, let me do no harm.
She dug some money out of her wallet and put it on the counter. “Thanks.”
“Wait, you didn’t eat all of your sandwich. Was there something wrong?”
“No, it was fine. It’s just that—” Across the street, Kurt was getting into his truck. She didn’t want him to leave until she had a chance to talk to him.
She left the diner at a dead run.
Kurt slid his key into the truck’s ignition. He had to get back to the ranch. Lately, Beth and his mother-in-law had been all but coming to blows over one thing or another. His job was to referee.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ryder?”
The feminine voice startled him. He turned to find the woman from the diner standing next to his truck, her sky-blue eyes filled with an intensity that pulled her blond eyebrows closer together. Her short, sassy hairdo and the way she dressed in slacks and a blouse identified her as a city girl.
“What can I do for you?” He mentally shrugged. Maybe her impractical little car had broken down and she needed a ride.
“My name’s Sarah Barkley. I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation in the diner. If you’re really looking for a housekeeper, I’d be interested in applying for the job.”
Kurt’s eyebrows shot up, and his mouth went slack. She was the least likely looking housekeeper he’d ever met. Way too slender and dainty to handle any heavy work. A real lightweight. He had to wonder if she even knew how to cook.
“Miss, my ranch is five miles out of town. My closest neighbor is more than a mile away as the crow flies. I’ve got two kids who can be a handful and are forever tracking dirt into the house, stacks of laundry are always piling up and three meals a day need to be fixed.” His wife, Zoe, had grown to hate the isolation, the constant sameness of each day. That’s why they’d gone to Seattle, to give her a break. A second honeymoon, they’d said. And he’d as good as killed her with his own hand. The grief, that truth, had been lying in his stomach like a sun-baked rock for more than a year.
“I don’t mean to insult you,” he said, “but you don’t look like you’d be up to a job like that.”
A blush traveled up her slender neck and bloomed on her cheeks. “Mr. Ryder, I’m a lot like my car. I may look small but I’m strong and dependable and tougher than you think.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a business card and wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell number. I’ll be in town for a day or two if you change your mind. Naturally, I’d be happy to provide references.”
“References as a housekeeper?” Maybe as secretary for a big-city law firm, or even a paralegal. Not a housekeeper. That didn’t fit.
“References from people who know me.”
With that, she whirled and walked briskly back across the street. In the side mirror, Kurt watched her go, a bundle of energy in a small but very attractive package. He’d give her an A for spunk, too.
He glanced at the number she’d written on the card then flipped it over. Sarah Barkley, Puget Sound Business Services, Payroll & Accounting, Seattle, Washington.
Maybe she’d been laid off or the company went out of business. He shrugged and tossed the card on the passenger seat. No matter. Time to get back to the ranch.
Less than ten minutes later, he drove over the cattle guard and through the entrance of the Rocking R Ranch. His great-grandfather had moved to the northern plains of Montana with his family when he was ten. They’d homesteaded the land, raised cattle, made friends with the Indians and sometimes battled them. His ancestors’ blood and sweat and tears had nurtured the land, protected it. Now it was Kurt’s turn to protect that legacy for his own children and teach them to love the Rocking R as much as he did.
He pulled past the two-story ranch house and parked near the barn. By noon today, the temperature had topped ninety degrees. Now clouds were forming on the western horizon, but that didn’t mean they’d get rain. Not the way weather patterns had been lately.
He climbed out of the truck. Rudy, their aging border collie, ambled out of his favorite shady spot by the tractor to greet Kurt. Automatically, Kurt scratched behind the dog’s ears and gave the old guy a friendly pat on his rib cage before going into the house.
He found his daughter in the kitchen grabbing a soda out of the refrigerator, the twelve-year-old’s face as red as a flag hanging off the rear end of a truck with a long load.
Sitting at the oak table, Nana Grace’s face was almost as red, not from embarrassment but from one of her “spells.” A line of perspiration had formed above her lip.
Kurt’s heart sank. More trouble at the Rocking R.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nana grounded me! For a week!” Beth’s shrill cry pierced the air. “Tell her she can’t do that, Daddy. Tell her she can’t.”
He held up his hand to quiet Beth, like a referee separating two boxers. “What happened, Grace?”
“This morning I told little Miss Smarty Pants that I couldn’t drive her into town. I had the laundry to do and I wasn’t feeling well.” Using a napkin, she wiped off the perspiration from above her lip. “Next thing I know, I see her get into a car with a boy and they drive off. She hadn’t even told me where she was going.”
“It was Caroline’s brother. I was going to go see her, like I told you.” Using her hips, Beth smacked the refrigerator door closed. “I wasn’t doing anything wrong.”
Caroline was Beth’s best friend, but it didn’t sound like the girl had been in the car. That troubled Kurt. Beth not telling Grace where she was going troubled him even more.
“An hour later,” Grace continued, “a deputy sheriff brought your daughter back home. That boy had been speeding, going close to a hundred miles an hour, the deputy said. An seventeen-year-old boy. The deputy gave him a ticket. He thought leaving a girl as young as Beth—”
“I’m almost thirteen!”
“—with someone so irresponsible wouldn’t be safe.”
Kurt didn’t think so either. He knew Caroline’s big brother. The kid was too old for Beth and played too fast and loose with the rules. “Is what your grandmother said true?”
“I didn’t know he was going to speed.”
“But you knew he was going too fast, didn’t you?” Kurt asked.
She made a great study of opening the soda can. “I guess.”
“Did you ask him to slow down?”
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t’ve listened to me.”
“Then you shouldn’t be hanging out with a boy who doesn’t care about your feelings or your safety.”
“He was just showing off.” Her lower lip extended into a full-fledged pout.
Anger and love, fear and frustration tangled in his chest. “I think your grandmother is right to ground you for a week. Maybe that will teach you to respect yourself enough not to allow some kid to put your life at risk. And next time, you tell Nana where you’re going and with who.”
“You’re taking Nana’s side?” Beth shrieked, shock and dismay twisting her pretty face into an ugly mask.
“You’re grounded, Beth. For a week.”
“You can’t do this to me!” She let loose a fountain of tears that ran down her cheeks. “I hate you! I hate you both!” She whirled, racing out of the kitchen and thundering up the stairs to her room. A door slammed, shaking the house.
Taking off his hat, Kurt slapped it against his thigh, creating a puff of dust. “I’m sorry, Grace. I don’t know what’s got into her lately.”
“I don’t either, son.” She used the napkin to dab the sweat from the back of her neck. Her hair looked unkempt. She hadn’t had a color job in months, and her hair had turned mostly gray. She’d lost weight in the past year and gained a web of wrinkles that crisscrossed her face. “But I can’t take it anymore. It’s too hard being around here every day, around memories of Zoe, and that child bickering with me constantly. Every time she goes out, I have to check to make sure she isn’t wearing some outlandish outfit. I just can’t—” She broke into sobs and put her head down on the table.
Feeling helpless, Kurt’s hands hung at his sides. His mouth worked but no sound came out, no magic words of consolation or support. Like a dry summer wind-storm, a sense of failure swept over him, sucking the life from him and his family.
“Go on home, Grace.” His words were thick with regret, his chest hollowed out with his own grief and guilt. “Get some rest. Take some time off. I’ll try to—” He didn’t know what he’d do. He only knew that he needed help.
In a hurry.
Chapter Two
In the hour since Kurt had driven away, Sarah had walked the length of Main Street, as far as the glistening white church steeple that rose at the east end of town, then back to her car. She had explored the town where Zoe Ryder had lived, the town that perhaps Sarah’s new heart already knew.
Since her surgery she’d worked hard to gain strength and build endurance. In recent months she’d walked three or four miles several days a week and felt stronger because of the effort. She had needed that energy today to work off the adrenaline and distress that flooded her veins and her heart.
She’d walked past buildings constructed in the early 1900s with the brick facades and actual hitching posts left over from an earlier era, making the town look like a set from an old Western movie. Kurt Ryder, with his long legs and masculine swagger, fit like a well-cast actor in this setting.
He still fit into the scene now that horses had been replaced by battered pickups with large dogs standing guard in the beds of the trucks or tied up to the fenders.
He wasn’t going to hire her as a housekeeper. She’d seen rejection in his golden-brown eyes and the surprised arch of his brows.
Probably for the best, she thought as she had stood staring off into space, trying to quell her sense of failure. Admittedly, she wasn’t the greatest housekeeper in the world. Or cook, for that matter.
She never should have told him she had planned to stay around for a couple of days. He wasn’t going to call. She’d been foolish to even consider coming here.
There was no reason for her to stay.
No way for her to help the family who had lost so much.
On a weekday afternoon, no one seemed in a rush in Sweet Grass Valley. Traffic through town was light. The lush scent of sage and grass on surrounding open rangeland drifted on the air along with the smell of hay stacked in the backs of passing trucks.
Zoe Ryder had walked down this sidewalk, past the bakery, dress shop, grocery store and the one-screen movie theater across the way, probably greeting the proprietors by their first names. She’d been a part of this community in a way that Sarah had never been a part of Seattle.
Did the people miss her? Had Zoe left a hole in their lives as she had in those who had loved her?
It felt strange to envy someone who was dead. But Sarah did, at some cavernous level she hadn’t realized existed in her soul.
Please, Lord, help those who loved Zoe and miss her to find peace within Your loving embrace.
Sarah had seen a decent-looking motel about twenty miles back in Shelby, on the highway the way she’d come. She’d stay there tonight and then head home to Seattle tomorrow.
As she got into her car, her cell phone rang.
She froze, momentarily paralyzed. It could be her friend who was waiting on the results of her CPA exam and handling Sarah’s accounting business while she was out of town. A simple business question she could answer.
Or it could be…
With a shaking hand, Sarah flipped open the phone. She didn’t recognize the number.
Her throat tightened and her mouth went dry. “Sarah Barkley,” she answered.
“Ms. Barkley, this is Kurt Ryder. If you’re still interested in the housekeeper job, I’d like to talk to you.”
“Yes…” Her voice caught. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Yes, I’m still interested.”
“Good. I think it would be best if you came here, to the ranch. Then you’d know what you’re getting into.”
That sounded a bit ominous, as though she’d agreed to work for the local ax murderer. “I can come there.”
She propped the phone against her shoulder and searched for a notepad and pen in her purse while he gave her directions to the ranch.
When he finished, she closed the phone and took a deep breath. Her insides quivered with a combination of excitement and trepidation. Second thoughts assailed her like the bugs that had spattered her windshield on the highway.
This is what she wanted. This is why she had come to Sweet Grass Valley. To help those who had given so much.
As instructed, she took Second Street north out of town. Residences on modest lots quickly gave way to open prairie. Scattered clusters of cattle grazed on rolling hillsides and horses stood head-to-tail in pairs beneath shade trees, switching flies with their tails. A gentle breeze rippled the fields of tall grass like waves on a summer-green ocean.
Soon she spotted her destination. She turned off the road to drive under the arched entrance of the Rocking R Ranch. In the distance, a two-story house appeared through the rising waves of heat. Several outbuildings were also visible including a large red barn and a corral. The Rocking R appeared to be a profitable enterprise.
In front of the house, a white gazebo sat in the middle of a lawn surrounded by flower beds that had been left untended for some length of time. Weeds had invaded the plots where rosebushes and irises had gone scraggly. Sarah suspected Zoe had kept her garden a showpiece. Since her death, the family had let the beauty wither away.
A porch with two wicker rocking chairs and a cedar porch swing stretched the width of the house on the western side. She imagined sitting there at the end of a day, drinking iced tea and watching the sun set behind the distant mountains.
A black-and-white dog wandered out of the barn and barked at her.
As soon as Sarah came to a stop, the front door of the house opened. Kurt waited for her on the porch, his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans, his legs wide apart. The cuffs of his blue work shirt were rolled to his elbows, revealing muscular arms lightly covered in dusky hair.
The dog had kept track of her as far as the corner of the house, where he stood guard.
“Thanks for coming,” Kurt said as she reached the porch steps.
“You have an amazing place here. How much of this land do you own?”
“About all you can see plus a little bit more.” She sensed he wasn’t bragging. He was simply stating a fact.
Sarah’s small cottage on a city lot didn’t bear comparison.
