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“A woman,” Gramps barked. “Why else? He was young and foolish and heartbroken. Silly pup.”
“Who? Did the woman stay in town?”
“She married someone else. She’s still here.”
“Dad did all right with Mom. They seemed to be happy.” His mom had died five years ago.
Gramps motioned for Sam to come around to the back of his chair. “Push me out to the sunroom. Faces east. Too hot in the morning. Have to wait until afternoon. It’ll be cool enough now.”
Sam wheeled him down the hallway, with Chelsea walking alongside holding Gramps’s hand. “Which way?”
“Right at the far end.” He took a big plaid hankie out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Pretending to be a cowboy might be your first failure, Sam.”
No, not his first. Not even close.
What of his marriage? What of his wife leaving in the most dishonest way possible? What of not protecting himself from his father-in-law?
What of not being able to protect his child from the fallout?
He glanced at Chelsea. What of his failure to bridge the gap that separated them?
Sam positioned Gramps beside a window that looked out onto a golden field with low purple-gray hills in the distance.
“Can you visit while you’re staying in Rodeo or will that blow your cover?”
Blow his cover? “Gramps, this isn’t a spy movie. But, yeah, we’ll visit a lot. Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.” Or maybe they would. Were cowboys still expected to break in Mustangs? He didn’t have a clue. He’d have to look it up online. Why? No way could he fake that.
Could he fake any of it?
In the solarium, another resident, a tiny woman with an eye for Gramps and a tiny shih tzu in her lap caught Chelsea’s attention, and she went and played with the dog and talked to the woman.
Yet again, she had more smiles for everyone else than she did for him. A split second of despair rattled him. How did he bridge the gap?
“She sure likes animals, doesn’t she?” Gramps asked.
“She’s never met an animal she didn’t like.”
“How long you planning to stay?”
“I have a month to determine the intentions of these women.”
“How come you can take so much time off work? I know you’re the owner of the company, but shouldn’t you be there to oversee things?”
For a few tense moments, Sam worried in silence. He’d already explained all of this on the phone to Gramps before he came. “I no longer own the company. Tiffany got it as part of the divorce settlement. She bought me out. To be accurate, her father bought me out. Since he’d bankrolled the company for Tiff and me at the start and owned a controlling share, it was easy for him to pull the rug out from under me.”
The betrayal had come on so many levels. “Those two. That snake.” Aching with all he had to say, he nonetheless held back with Chelsea nearby. After all, Tiffany’s father was her grandfather.
Sam leaned against the wall. “I’m free for the next month.” He knew he sounded bitter. Divorce and losing his livelihood, even if he had come out ahead with millions in the bank, had never been part of his life’s plan. He told his grandfather about the new venture starting in a month.
“You sound excited.”
“I am, Gramps. I don’t like to be idle.” In fact, without the formation of the new firm, Sam didn’t know what he would do with his life. He’d never, not once, felt so rudderless.
Even these months off since the company had been given over to Tiffany had been hell.
He felt better when he had purpose and activity driving his days. As well, there were those thoughts ringing through him, every day, about success and revenge.
Oh, yeah, he’d like to show Tiffany and her father how successful he could be without them. And he would. Be successful, that was.
He had a talent for business. Not so with this cowboy stuff. What had he been thinking?
“Always felt the same way myself,” Gramps said. “Didn’t want to be idle for a single second of the day.” They visited for an hour while Sam itched to get to the ranch, to find out how hard his job was going to be and whether he was truly up to the task.
On the way out, he stopped at the nurse’s desk and asked about Gramps’s doctor. He wouldn’t be in until Monday. Sam would have to wait for answers.
As soon as they left the building, Chelsea voiced what she’d obviously been thinking inside.
“Dad, I’m worried.”
“About Gramps? Me, too. He’s not himself.”
They got into the SUV and drove away.
“Dad...”
Sam glanced away from the road for a second. Chelsea chewed on her bottom lip.
“What is it, possum? Something worrying you? Spit it out.”
“You’ve been strange lately. Is it because of the divorce?”
“Strange how?”
He sensed her shrugging beside him. “I don’t know. More hard. Tougher. You were an easygoing guy and so much fun. I loved that about you. But now you don’t seem to like people anymore. You don’t trust anyone.”
“Yeah. True. That’s because of the divorce.” Sam hesitated to criticize Tiffany to her daughter. “I’m not comfortable talking to you about your mother behind her back, but her...”
“Her affair, Dad. I know what she did. She shouldn’t have slept with that guy.”
Sam hated that Chelsea knew about that kind of thing. “Her betrayal was profound,” he admitted. “It’s going to take a long time for me to trust like I used to.”
The farther they drove away from Gramps and the closer they got to the ranch, the more Chelsea slumped in her seat. She crossed her arms and settled into the sulk she’d been in for the drive out.
Gone were the smiles for Gramps and the old woman with her cute dog.
“I don’t want to stay with people we don’t know. I wish Gramps wasn’t in an old-folks’ home so we could stay with him.”
“You and me both, Chelsea.” He thought of the two-story house that sat on Gramps’s land. Tonight, they could have been sleeping in the very house his dad had grown up in if the townsfolk hadn’t talked Gramps out of his land.
* * *
ONCE THE LUNCH crowd finally left and she knew she had a couple of hours before launching dinner service, Violet packaged up a container of rice pudding for her friend Rachel and Rachel’s daughter, Tori. They both loved it. She added a jar of parsnip soup for Travis.
At the last minute, she remembered the coconut-cream pie Rachel had bargained for.
Why was the new man in town pretending to be a cowboy? Did he think people in Rodeo were so stupid they wouldn’t notice? Who was he? Why was he here?
Since he’d left her diner, questions hadn’t stopped swirling through Vy’s brain.
Rodeo had taken her in with open arms fourteen years ago as a grieving sixteen-year-old and she’d spent her years here giving back ever since.
This close to resurrecting the fair and rodeo that would bring much-needed tourism dollars to the town, they couldn’t take a chance on anything going wrong.
What could that project possibly have to do with the new stranger in town, Vy?
She had no idea.
She phoned Rachel. “Is he there yet?”
“Not yet, Vy.”
“Why not, I wonder? Why didn’t he go straight to the ranch? If he isn’t there, where is he?”
“Why are you so worried about him?”
Vy bit her bottom lip. “Maybe I’m seeing shadows where there aren’t any, but what if he tries to screw up the fair and rodeo somehow?”
“Vy, that’s a huge leap. Why would this guy have anything to do with our fair?”
“He has money. I’m sure of it. Maybe he wants to steal our ideas and put on his own show.”
“That’s crazy talk. You’re overreacting. What’s gotten into you? You usually have more common sense than this.”
“I just... God, Rachel, I don’t know.” She sighed, battered by intuition not based in fact and clueless about her worry. She tried to shrug it off. Strangers came through all the time, for Pete’s sake. “I’m coming over for a visit, anyway. I’ve got food.”
Rachel laughed. “Yum. Good. I’m exhausted. Beth was up nursing every two hours last night. Must be a growth spurt.”
“Plenty of tasty calories on the way to replace what that little cutie is using up.”
Vy loaded the food into her car and drove out of town.
She slowed down when she realized the SUV she followed on the small rural highway possibly belonged to the stranger. Okay, so she hadn’t been above watching him leave the diner to check out his vehicle. Good thing. She didn’t want to walk in at the same time.
She pulled onto the shoulder to sit and allow Sam and his daughter to get inside the house.
Travis Read had bought the Victorian on the two-lane highway when he’d moved to town back in October or November.
In the past, he’d been determined to remain single and not be tied down. But he’d quickly fallen for Rodeo’s own effervescent, lovely Rachel—even though she’d already had a three-year-old and had been more than seven months pregnant with her second.
In the end, he’d taken on a ready-made family, a house and a new ranch.
Vy glanced across the road toward the ratty trailer from which he’d rescued Rachel. Dark and lonesome against the cloudy sky, it stood like a festering wound.
Trailers left Vy feeling antsy and slightly nauseated. She hated them. Hated what they represented to her.
Despite her envy, she was damned glad Rachel and her children had a real home now.
Vy didn’t need a husband and children. Men were a complication she avoided outside the odd booty call with one of the town’s more reliable, discreet single guys.
What else could she possibly need from a man?
She loved her independence. Enough said.
* * *
SAM STEPPED OUT of the car in front of the big old Victorian and wondered why the owner of the diner ever thought to call this a ranch.
All along the highway, he’d passed low-slung ranch houses better suited to the prairie. But he could probably take the house and plunk it down into an old Boston neighborhood. He fully expected to find a parlor inside outfitted with velvet sofas and crocheted doilies.
After knocking on the oak door, he waited, his stomach dancing with nerves. How did he possibly think he could handle this?
He could handle it. Look how well he’d done with the Harper acquisition. He’d made millions on that. Or how he’d managed to fight off the hostile takeover by Steig Industries.
He could do just about anything. As long as they didn’t have him shoveling manure, he should be fine.
Well, duh. Of course, cowboys shovel manure. Chelsea’s imagined sarcasm sounded in his head.
She sat in the car, elbow deep in a self-indulgent pout.
The door opened before Sam raised his hand to knock again.
A tall, fair-haired man stood in the dim hallway, denim shirt and pants outlining a work-hardened body. A chiseled jaw and enough fine lines at the corners of his blue eyes to add character prevented a slide into movie-star territory.
“I’m Travis Read.” He stuck out his hand. “You must be Sam. Rachel told me you were coming. Expected you sooner.”
“I drove around a bit. I’ve never been in Montana before. It’s beautiful.” Not a complete lie. He and Chelsea had seen a bit of the country on their way to the nursing home and here.
“Come on in.” Travis peered beyond Sam and asked, “Is that your daughter in the car? Doesn’t she want to come inside?”
“She’s...she’s not completely happy we’re here.” He left it at that.
A tiny girl, only three or so, popped up beside Travis. “You gots a little girl? I go get her.”
“She’s not little,” Sam began, but the girl shot off the veranda and tried to open the car door.
Sam reached her and opened the passenger door. Maybe this cute child would succeed where Sam hadn’t. Her dimples could charm even a hardened criminal.
“Hi,” she said to Chelsea, leaning into the car. “My name’s Victoria. Mommy calls me Tori. What’s your name?” Without waiting for a reply, she forged on. “I gots pink cowboy boots. Look! Do you gots cowboy boots? Why don’t you come out? We can play.”
