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“You’re still at home in a truck, I see.” She let her gaze brush over him as she turned her head to reverse out of the parking space. “Do you drive one in San Francisco?”
“I’ve got a Mercedes for town. The clients prefer it.”
“Do they know your ranch background at the law office?”
“My partners are aware. I have some pictures in my office, but most people don’t notice. They’re concerned with their own issues, not mine.”
“Not like Bisons Creek, where everybody wants to hear your business?”
“Not remotely like Bisons Creek, which has its good and bad points.”
The drive to Kate’s Café took all of three minutes. Caroline parked in a spot the next block up—one of the five blocks that made up Main Street—because the lot around the restaurant was full. They didn’t talk as they walked to the café, but the never-ending Wyoming wind blew her hair in all directions.
Caroline sighed. She would be giving an important presentation to the most intelligent, educated and sophisticated man she knew in front of at least half of the town’s citizens, and she’d look as if she’d walked through a tornado. Great.
Ford held the door open for her again when they reached the café. The bell on the handle rang as he came through behind her, and every face in the building turned in their direction. Caroline kept her smile in place and scanned the suddenly silent crowd for a table.
“Here ya go, son.” Marvin Harris stood up from the table in the front corner. “The missus and I are done. You’re welcome to sit here.”
“Thanks, Mr. Harris.” Ford shook the older man’s hand and his wife’s. “Good to see you, Mrs. Harris. How are those grandsons of yours? I hear they’re real firecrackers.”
“You got that right.” Mr. Harris chuckled and rubbed his hands together. “Caught them one day trying to fly out of the hay loft with a pair of wings they’d made out of cardboard. Lucky they didn’t break their darn fool necks!” He turned to Caroline. “Hello, Missy. How’s your mama these days?”
“Just fine, Mr. Harris, thank you.” At least, she hoped so. She hadn’t visited with her mom in almost a month.
Mrs. Harris walked up to Ford and patted his arm. “It’s about time you finished with this San Francisco foolishness, boy, and came back home where you belong. Get yourself a wife and some kids and settle down.” As she left, she gave Caroline a wink that Ford would surely notice. “You two have a nice afternoon.”
Just kill me now, Caroline said to herself. It can only get worse from here.
Chapter Two (#ulink_8fd6042d-4003-50da-9381-aa763fe20e5b)
By the time Ford had pulled out Caroline’s chair and then settled into his own, one of the waitresses had come to clean the table. “Thanks, Angie.”
Caroline said the same thing at the same moment. Their gazes met and held before sliding apart.
“How’s school?” Ford asked the waitress.
“Good.” The college sophomore gave him a grin. “I made the rodeo team. Cool, huh?”
He nodded. “As long as you remember to study for classes.”
Angie stuck her tongue out at him and turned to Caroline. “You rode for the University of Wyoming team, didn’t you, Caroline?”
Caroline brushed her hair behind her shoulders. “For three years. I dropped out my senior year—too busy.”
The waitress sighed. “I’ll never be too busy for rodeo. I’m hoping to go pro when I graduate.” She loaded up plates and glasses on one arm. “What can I get you two to drink?”
Caroline asked for water, Ford ordered a soda and Angie went on her way, which left them facing each other across the table. “Glad to be back in town?” Caroline asked him.
He gave a rueful smile. “Something of a challenge, I admit. The locals are ready to plan your life out for you, aren’t they?”
“Oh, yes. Not to mention telling you exactly what you did wrong in the past.”
“But surely you don’t hear that often. You were everybody’s favorite rodeo queen.”
She rolled her eyes and frowned. “Hardly.”
“Oh, definitely. That’s how I remember you—prom queen, homecoming queen, rodeo queen.” Her expression didn’t lighten. “You won all the votes, every time.” For good reason, since she’d been the prettiest girl in the school.
Not to mention the daughter of one of the richest ranchers in Johnson County. “Is your mother doing well? Your brother still riding bulls?” He wouldn’t bring up her dad. They were likely to have very different perspectives on George Donnelly.
She met his gaze, and he was surprised to see sadness in her eyes. “I haven’t talked to Reid for...a while. My mom says he’s doing okay, but will be retiring from the rodeo pretty soon to come back and work on the ranch with Daddy.”
“That’ll be...interesting.” As much as he enjoyed working with his own family, Ford didn’t envy Caroline’s brother a life with his father as his boss. His own dad had spent ten faithful years working at the Donnelly ranch and, from what Ford remembered, George Donnelly had been a tough taskmaster.
He also remembered how, just months after his mom’s death, Donnelly had fired his dad without a second thought. The resulting downward spiral had cost him and his brothers their remaining parent. Though Donnelly couldn’t logically be held responsible for his dad becoming an alcoholic and killing himself in a car accident two years later, his indifference certainly hadn’t improved the situation.
But the Marshall boys had turned out just fine without anybody’s help. Wyatt’s strong hand and determination had seen them through. In the end, the only people you could rely on were your family.
“Working with my dad is a challenge,” Caroline said, in an unexpected echo of Ford’s thoughts. “I’m not sure Reid will stick it out. He can be pretty volatile himself.”
Angie reappeared with their drinks. “What can I get y’all to eat? Chicken fried steak is the special today,” she announced. “Comes with mashed potatoes, green beans and Kate’s homemade rolls.”
“Sounds great,” he and Caroline said in unison. Again.
“That’ll be two.” Angie wrote on her notepad. “Back in a bit.”
When Ford looked over at Caroline, she had set her forearms on the edge of the table and leaned a little toward him. He gathered they were about to get down to business.
“We’re here,” she started, “because I want to tell you what I’m planning. This is a project Garrett and I are very excited about, and I think the Circle M Ranch would be the perfect setting to use.” Her expressive face wore the prize-winning smile he’d never forgotten.
Ford drew a breath and relaxed into his chair. “Okay, I’m ready. Go for it.”
She talked without stopping for at least fifteen minutes while Angie delivered their plates and refilled his drink, while he ate and Caroline took a bite here and there. Ford listened and didn’t interrupt—she was clearly in the moment and very prepared with numbers and details, genuinely committed to her plan. Only when she actually finished and sat silent for almost a minute did he try to get a word in edgewise.
“You’ve worked hard on this.”
She nodded, chewing a bite of her steak.
“And you’re really driven to succeed with it.”
Another even more vigorous nod of her head.
“So let me go over what I’ve understood from your presentation. You want to start up a summer program for at-risk teenagers—the ones who have gotten into trouble at school, or with the law, or who have problems at home, like documented abuse. Not hardened criminals, but kids who still could be rescued and sent in a different, safer direction.”
“That’s right.” She took a sip of water. “I’ve screened all the children I work with very carefully to identify the right kids for the group. I don’t want to put anybody at risk. I just want to give them a different experience, a chance to see that they can succeed in life.”
“Right. And the kids in your program will reside at the Circle M, where they would be expected to learn how to do ranch work—riding, herding, roping, feeding, treating...whatever is on the schedule for me and my brothers to do, the kids would also do.”
“Yes. I know they would have a learning curve—none of them have a ranching background.”
“So they would have to learn how to ride, and ride pretty well. They’d have only a couple of weeks to acquire the kind of skills it takes a ranch hand several years to master.”
“You would be doing the main part of the work, but you’d be doing it anyway, so it’s not a loss for you.”
“As long as they didn’t do anything dumb and hurt themselves.”
“Well—”
“But you’re expecting us to be there to protect them and see that they don’t get injured, along with doing our own work.”
“I know it’s asking something extra, but I’ll be there, too, so I could do a lot of the supervision and help out—I was a pretty good roper in my day.”
“Sure. And you were a champion rider. I get that. What about the legal liabilities? Will the parents sign a waiver and a consent form, just in case something does happen?”
“People stay at working guest ranches all the time, Ford. They agree to hold the owner and the ranch workers blameless in case of injuries or...or death...if something happens. We would cover the Circle M and the Marshalls the same way. The parents would agree to it. And we’d have a medical consent form in case we needed care fast.”
“There is no fast medical care in Bisons Creek.”
“Ah, but there you’re wrong. We have a doctor coming to town this summer, and she’ll be opening her own clinic. If something happened, we’d be just a few minutes away.”
“Progress is wonderful,” he said drily. “So these kids, who aren’t the most upstanding citizens, are going to live and work at the ranch for three months, with access to our animals, our equipment, tools and house. We’re supposed to trust they won’t do any damage or take anything. We have computers, you know. Cell phones. TVs and radios and audio equipment. There’s beer in the fridge, whiskey in the sideboard. But you believe your kids will be immune to the temptations.”
Caroline was quiet for a moment, staring down at the table in front of her. Then she looked up at him. “I have to be honest—three of the boys were caught stealing candy from a gas station a few weeks ago. The manager took them to court, for their own good, he said.”
Ford sat up straight in his chair. “And you want to bring them into our home?”
“They’re boys, Ford. Little more than children. The judge was going to sentence them to community service all summer, but I persuaded her to let me try this program. I want to show these kids where choosing the right side can take you. I think they will be immune because bad behavior will carry penalties.”
“What kind of penalties?”
“If they fail this program, they return to the court system and end up with a juvenile record. They don’t deserve that. They’re not bad. Just confused.”
He blew out a deep breath, just as Angie sidled up to their table. “Dessert?”
Caroline shook her head. “I couldn’t possibly.”
But Ford nodded. “Kate’s apple pie? With ice cream?”
“Coming up.”
He’d welcomed the interruption, though it only delayed the inevitable. He wasn’t a man who went around kicking puppies. But right now he felt like one.
Propping his elbows on the table, he captured Caroline’s gaze with his. “Listen, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. I served several internships in family law, dealing with these kinds of kids. I mentored them. I wrote briefs for their court appearances. I investigated their home lives, their schools, their friends. Do you know what I saw?”
“What?”
“Nine out of ten didn’t give a damn about what we were doing for them. And the ones who did couldn’t escape, even if they wanted to. I don’t think I caused meaningful change for a single kid I worked with.”
Caroline clasped her hands together on the table. “That’s terribly sad. But does it mean you stop trying?”
He wasn’t getting through to her. “Why are you so determined to implement this plan? What do you hope to gain?”
Her chin lifted, and a stubborn light came into her eyes. “Why are you so opposed to it?”
Ford shook his head. “You first.”
She blew out a short breath. “I honestly believe that everybody deserves a chance to succeed, regardless of their income, their family situation, their history. Kids in particular ought to be offered options for a better life. What I hope to gain is a better place to live for all of us.”
“So you’re basically trying to save the world?” He meant it as a joke, to ease the tension.
Caroline didn’t smile. “Somebody needs to. Why not me...and the Marshall brothers?”
“Because some people can’t be saved.” Ford folded his arms across his chest. “No matter what you do for them, they break the rules out of self-interest and simple, downright meanness. In the process, they often hurt the people around them, including the ones trying to help them.”
“These are kids, Ford. They’re not old enough for meanness.”
“This is my family, Caroline. This is our home, which I spend my life working to protect. You may believe a signature on a release form reduces our liability. As an attorney, I can tell you that lawsuits are easy to file and hard to evade. An injured kid could cost us thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe cost us the ranch itself. More important, our reputations are vulnerable in this situation. One of those kids could claim they were molested on the ranch, and all of us would become suspect. Frankly, I’ve come too far in my professional and personal life to take that risk lightly. My brothers are good men—I would hate for them to deal with that kind of public harassment. You wouldn’t be immune, either. Your job—your whole life—could be ruined because of a teenager’s whim.”
She didn’t flinch. “I think it’s worth taking the chance.”
“I disagree.”
“You’re saying no.” Her face was pale, her big eyes wider than ever and, as he watched, they started to shine with unshed tears.
He let his arms relax, resting his fingertips on the table. “I’m really sorry, Caroline. I understand what this means to you, what you hope it might mean to the kids. But I’m saying—”
Angie slid a saucer laden with pie and a huge scoop of ice cream across the table in front of him. “Jerk,” she said before walking away.
He used his index finger to move the scoop of ice cream from the table back on top of the pie. “What I’m saying is that I’ll vote no when the time comes.”
Caroline frowned. “Vote?”
“That’s how the Marshalls make decisions.” Ford pushed the plate away. He’d lost his appetite. “Everybody gets a vote on something that affects the ranch as a whole. Like this program of yours.”
“What do you do if there’s a tie?”
“Wyatt’s the boss, so he gets an extra vote if he wants one.”
Hope replaced despair in Caroline’s pretty face. “So even if your vote is against me, there’s still a chance that the Marshalls as a family would agree?”
Ford sat forward, resting his arms on the table. “My vote isn’t against you.”
There wasn’t anything about Caroline to vote against, that he could see. The tousled mahogany hair, the rosy cheeks and shining eyes, the way a lightweight yellow dress set off her curvy figure and slender legs... No, not a single thing to object to, in his opinion. “I don’t consider your plan to be in our best interest. That’s all.”
“Wyatt may think differently. Garrett certainly does. What happens then?”
“I guess you go forward with your project.”
