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Vy knew how good that felt.
“Plus, his land is beautiful. It would make an excellent ranch. Wouldn’t it be amazing for him to have a legacy to leave to both Tori and Beth and any children we might have together?”
“Yeah, it sure would.”
Was she doing the right thing in recommending that Travis take on this stranger? She thought so. She’d met evil in her past. She’d known bad men. Her intuition told her this guy wasn’t one of them. Besides, she liked his prickly porcupine of a daughter a lot. The girl reminded Vy of herself. On the other hand, there did seem to be something fishy going on with him. What? If it affected her town, Vy needed to know.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.
Travis and Rachel were smart people. They could keep an eye on this man.
“Sooo, you and Travis can make extra money by renting the fake cowboy and his daughter the rooms that Sammy and her two boys would have used. What do you think?” When Rachel hesitated, she rushed on, “And Travis would have a ranch hand.”
“Not much of one if he’s not a real cowboy.”
Vy wanted to see the ersatz cowboy brought down.
Unreasonable, Vy. What’s your problem? He’s done nothing to you, so why the big push to destroy a man you don’t even know?
Bits and pieces of memories, of another time and place threatened to intrude, and she turned them aside with a firm resolve.
Nope. She wouldn’t be going down that road.
Suffice it to say, she disliked liars.
“Do you think we can trust him in our home?” Rachel asked. A reasonable question.
“Yes. I’m certain he isn’t dangerous or I wouldn’t have called. Besides, he has his daughter with him. She’s either a teenager already or a tween and has some attitude, but don’t we all?”
“You do,” Rachel retorted and Vy laughed.
“True.”
“Why are you so upset about this man?” Rachel asked.
Vy didn’t want to look too closely at that. She brazened it out. “Anger is my natural response to any kind of charade or dishonesty. I dislike fraud with a passion.”
“I know,” Rachel said quietly, “but you’ve never shared why.”
Vy sidestepped the deeper issue. “I just don’t trust any man who comes to my town with an agenda. If this guy doesn’t have a scheme up his sleeve, I’ll eat every one of the six coconut-cream pies I made first thing this morning.”
She wanted to see him brought down. No! Not true. She wanted to bring him down personally.
Too strong a response, Vy. Cool it.
“Tell you what, Vy.” Rachel interrupted her thoughts. “We’ll give the guy a trial run, but only if you bring out one of those pies this afternoon.”
“Deal.”
* * *
SAM SAVORED THE last bite of an exquisite pineapple upside-down cake.
“This is incredible,” he said, sighing.
“I know, right?”
“I could eat here every day.” He put down his fork and rubbed his stomach. “Take that last bite of chocolate layer cake.”
“Are you sure, Dad?”
He smiled. “Honey, don’t you know I’d give you my last dollar if it would make you happy?”
For a change, a genuine smile lit Chelsea’s face and, while it might be tiny, it reminded him of her smiles of old. And, God, he loved it.
He smiled in return and watched her enjoy the cake.
“Everything’s taken care of.”
Sam started. The waitress-cum-manager-cum-owner had appeared beside the table without making a sound. He didn’t like surprises.
“What do you mean?” he asked, but he knew, and all the good feelings at the table evaporated.
“I called a friend. Her husband’s ranch is brand-new. He hasn’t hired any hands yet and they could sure use some rent on a couple of spare rooms in the house.”
She slapped a paper with directions on it onto the table and picked up the cash he’d left for their meal.
Sam was trapped.
He’d left New York too quickly and without enough preparation. He hated this feeling.
But how could he leave without solving Gramps’s dilemma first?
He needed to blend in. He’d done research online. Successful no matter what he took on, he could do this.
But damn, he didn’t know a thing about working on a ranch. He’d be as naive as Chelsea if he thought he could be any good as a cowboy after one night of research. This had been a crazy idea from the start.
Sam opened his mouth to object, to halt this mad process before it went too far, but Violet raised her hand.
“No need to thank me. It’s what people around here do. Help each other out.” An odd smile hovered at the edges of her full red lips, as though she were having a laugh at his expense, reminding him of his daughter’s smiles these days. “Travis is a newcomer himself, so he’ll make you feel welcome. His wife, Rachel, will take good care of Chelsea while you’re working. Or will she be enrolling in the local school?”
“Not yet,” Sam replied, not expanding on the subject. No need to air dirty laundry here.
Sam wondered why Chelsea didn’t object to having a babysitter, this woman Rachel, before realizing his child enjoyed his discomfort. She knew he was trapped.
Gramps. Think of Gramps. This is all for him.
“Sure,” he said weakly. “Sounds good.”
“By the way, in case you didn’t realize, I’m Violet Summer.”
He figured as much, and Rachel’s last name must be McGuire, one of the women Gramps had told him about. Before his time in this town ended, he’d meet all six of the women resurrecting the fair and possibly ripping off his grandfather.
“I’m Sam—” He’d almost said Carmichael. He’d been christened Carson Samuel Carmichael like his father and grandfather, but his mother had always called him Sam to distinguish him from his father. That part was easy, but changing Carmichael to Michaels had nearly caught him up. “I’m Sam Michaels. This is my daughter, Chelsea.”
“I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around town.”
He had to start thinking of himself as Sam Michaels or he’d never pull this off.
Chelsea shot him a look of censure at his name change but he ignored her.
Sam picked up his hat on the way out of the diner, stepping onto Rodeo’s Main Street and standing a minute to look around town. Might as well know what he was getting into.
So this was his father’s hometown, the one Dad had left at nineteen when he’d headed east to attend college. He’d made, and married into, a lot of money in New York City. Carson II had never returned to Rodeo, which meant that Sam himself had never been here, either.
Sam craned his neck to take it all in, curious about his dad’s town. Dad had never talked much about Rodeo, but Gramps sure had.
Rodeo, Montana. Gramps’s favorite spot on earth.
He’d described everything to the avid little listener Sam had been as a boy. Two stoplights on Main Street and one small shop after another with names like Jorgenson’s Hardware and Hiram’s Pharmacy and Nelly’s Dos ’n’ Don’ts.
Angled parking ran all along a wide street filled with plenty of pickup trucks heavy with rust, dust and dirt.
He drank in every detail, his avidity surprising him with its intensity. He hadn’t realized until arriving how much he’d wanted to see Gramps’s town.
Why hadn’t Dad ever talked about Rodeo? It didn’t look so bad. Just the opposite in fact, charming but real, unpretentious and normal compared to Manhattan, where people seemed compelled to jump on every trend.
In this town, every man, woman and child wore well-used denim. Sam detected not a single pair of designer jeans.
Thank God the jeans he’d bought before they left home were plain and would fit in. He’d gone to a work-wear clothing store to find denim without embroidered pockets or slashed knees or distress wash thighs or fake-faded creases or any of the other fads going around.
Certain he fit in, he adjusted his cowboy hat. Here, almost everyone wore a cowboy hat.
Sam soaked it all up like the proverbial sponge. Gramps hadn’t lied about his good-looking, if rustic, town.
And Sam was immediately smitten.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“Savoring the heritage I’ve never checked out until now.”
“Why didn’t you ever check it out?”
“School and then work and then getting married and then having you. You know...” He shrugged. “Life.”
“Let’s go to the car,” Chelsea demanded. Back to doom, gloom and ’tude, as Violet had called it, all traces of the friendly girl who’d laughed with the waitress dissipated on the cool air.
Sam grimaced. When he’d married Tiffany, he’d believed in “for better or for worse.” Apparently, she hadn’t.
He’d loved her. Not so much since her betrayal, though.
He felt the same way about children. You loved them. You did not give up on them. Purely and simply, they deserved to be loved through thick and thin, without question. He just wished right now that it were easier, especially when he had so much on his mind.
“Let’s go visit Gramps,” he said.
Chelsea ran to their vehicle. “Come on, Dad. Don’t be so slow.”
Ah, enthusiasm. She did love her grandfather. Until recently, he’d come to Manhattan for Christmas every year, but now lived in a retirement home.
“We should have come here sooner to visit Gramps.”
Yep. Love for her grandfather for sure.
Correction, his grandfather, but they’d dispensed with the great part of great-grandfather when Chelsea was little and it had proved too much of a mouthful for her. To Chelsea, he was just Gramps, exactly as he was for Sam.
An old cowboy nodded to him and Sam smiled and nodded back. Friendly people.
They drove toward the next small town, where a seniors’ residence that served the entire county housed Sam’s nearest and dearest. They passed spectacular scenery on the way.
Chelsea shouted, “Dad, look!”
Sam glanced to his right. In the field a pair of young lambs ran up one side of a small hillock and down the other, kicking up their heels at the top.
“Frisky,” he commented.
“So cute.” In her voice, he heard longing and wonder, refreshing to hear after her recent negativity. His daughter loved animals.
“Remember when you saw all of those baby lambs at that petting zoo and we couldn’t drag you away for an hour? You were only six years old and fascinated.”
Good memories.
She smiled. “That was awesome. You convinced them to let me sit on some hay and hold one for, like, an hour.”
Sam squeezed her hand. “It was only fifteen minutes, but you were small and that was a long time for you. I think I took twenty photographs. You were so cute.”
“It was the best, but it’s even better to see them out frolicking in their natural habitat, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.” He slowed down. “Do you want to watch for a while?”
“Can we?” She sounded so hopeful he couldn’t disappoint her.
He sat on the shoulder for fifteen minutes listening to Chelsea laugh, the sound a sweet balm for his ravaged psyche. For the past year and a half, he’d missed his ex-wife’s presence in his life, but even more, he’d missed his daughter’s laughter. He wanted to make her happy again.
“I guess we should go,” he said reluctantly.
Sounding contented, she said, “Yeah. I want to see Gramps.”
A couple of miles later, Sam pulled onto the shoulder of the small highway with a squeal of brakes and spraying gravel.
