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Second chances rarely happened in real life. Sometimes a man had to grasp that second chance with both hands before it slipped away. A determined man did, at any rate. Zach had managed to spend years, long swathes of time, forgetting about Nadine, but here she was back on his ranch.
“I remember her from years ago before she left town,” Dad said.
Maybe Dad had known how Zach had felt. He could be intuitive...when it suited him.
“She stood out, back then,” Dad said.
“Pop, let’s go,” Zach insisted, trying to get his father to step away from the window. “Get away from there.”
Aiden shrugged off Zach’s hand on his shoulder and joined his grandfather at the window. Ryan did the same thing.
“She’s getting out of the car!” Ryan shouted.
“Modulate, Ryan,” Zach said.
“She’s got pretty shoes on,” Aiden whispered.
Aiden spoke too low. Ryan lived at full volume. If only Zach could even them out. On second thought, no. Each was perfect in his own way.
“Those shoes will get wrecked,” Pop said.
A thought occurred to Zach. “How come you remember her from when she was a teenager?”
His father pretended to look surprised. What game was he playing? “She came out here once with a bunch of kids when you were in high school, for some project or other.”
“Yes, she did.” Zach remembered that visit with vivid discomfort.
“She didn’t like the ranch,” Pop said, bringing back Zach’s disappointment.
It had hurt his teenage ego. The ranch had been, and still was, his world. His pride and joy.
Aiden tugged on his sleeve. “They’ll get wrecked, Dad.”
“Those shoes? Sure will. You two,” he said, touching their heads, “root through the rubber boots in the back porch and see if you can find a pair that might fit our guest.”
Maria’s would still be back there. She sure wouldn’t have taken reminders of the ranch with her, and Zach hadn’t cleared out the porch in the three years since she’d left.
The boys ran off toward the back of the house.
Pop turned from the window. “Didn’t she used to have a mess of curly hair to her waist?”
Yes, her hair had been a mass of long, red curls. Her face had sported more freckles than Zach could ever hope to count. Where had those gone, both the curls and the freckles? How did a person change her appearance so drastically?
Zach eyed his father. “I don’t remember you having a photographic memory.”
“She stood out,” he said, “’cause I knew you liked her. I paid attention. Wanted to make sure she was worthy of my son. She didn’t like the ranch. End of story.”
Pop had known he’d liked her? And he’d worried about Zach? It warmed him.
Nadine still stood out, just in a different shell than the one she used to wear. And hadn’t he always wanted to get a good long look inside that shell?
Dad watched him altogether too carefully before raising that pesky eyebrow again and murmuring, “Well.”
Yes. Well. Some feelings died over time, but some only pretended to, living underground and flaring back to the surface the second a woman came back to town after years away. When she had returned a year ago, he’d been shocked. After high school, she’d told anyone who would listen that she was heading off to New York City to meet her destiny. To forge a career on television.
Now she was back and no one knew why. She didn’t seem to have plans to leave. Zach hoped that would work in his favor. But obviously too much showed on his face if Dad, in his oblique way, was commenting on it. Zach wiped his expression clear of emotion and stepped out onto the veranda.
Lee Beeton, owner of the Rodeo Wrangler, had pestered Zach for an interview for years. Zach had said no. Then Nadine had come back to Rodeo. A year later, she’d asked for an interview. Zach had said yes.
A second chance...
Would she like the ranch any better this time? Would she like him?
She stretched her slim legs, her pretty high heels emphasizing their length while she rummaged in her purse. She didn’t belong here. Their differences struck him anew. I am a sturdy Clydesdale and she is an exquisite Arabian.
He crossed his arms. Why was it taking her so long to get out of one small car?
And what’s the rush, Zach? You aren’t usually this impatient.
Yeah, but Nadine had come back to his ranch.
* * *
NADINE CAMPBELL COULDN’T delay her meeting with Zach Brandt any longer. She had to get out of this car. She had to face him down.
What had started as a simple story about Zach’s love of the landscape and painting it, a story she had looked forward to writing, had turned into a snafu of huge proportions just this morning.
Nadine did not want to be here. There was no way out. Trapped, panic clogged her throat. Could a person suffocate on anger?
Her nerves rattled like a pair of castanets. She shouldn’t have stopped in at the newspaper office before coming out for the interview. Then she wouldn’t have seen her boss, Lee Beeton, who wouldn’t have put her into this awful, awful bind.
Find out that family’s secrets.
No. That wasn’t Nadine’s job. Her job was to talk to Zach about his artwork. That’s it. Nothing else. No digging up dirt. What was Lee’s purpose in needing to know secrets anyway? He didn’t publish a gossip rag.
But he’d issued an ultimatum—do it or you’re fired—and now she had no choice but to write the story he wanted.
In the brilliant sunshine bathing Zach’s ranch, Nadine felt clunky and awkward, an old feeling she’d thought she’d outgrown. With this awful new directive from Lee, any smooth confidence she might have possessed had deserted her this morning. She ran a hand over her twitchy stomach.
From the car, she retrieved the canvas bag that contained the tools of her trade: notepad, laptop, recording device, pencils and pens. The bag was her raison d’être. Her security blanket, its very existence reminded her that, yes indeed, she was a bona fide journalist who deserved to be writing.
She sensed Zach’s presence on his veranda. She couldn’t avoid him any longer, so she turned and walked toward the house.
He stood on his porch steps and watched her approach with his unnerving steady regard. Did the man never blink?
The ranch hadn’t changed since her tour here in high school for a project about local cattle ranching. The sturdy white brick house with blue shutters might be considered by some to be pretty. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t to her taste. She liked modern and sleek. Not that she found much of either here in Rodeo, but back in New York City—oh, heavenly, perfect New York—there’d been plenty of it.
Well, the Big Apple was history, wasn’t it? No sense wishing for the unattainable. No sense chasing down a past that hadn’t turned out the way it was supposed to.
Shake it off, Nadine.
Zach still hadn’t moved, but his intensity snagged her attention. What went on in the man’s mind when he gazed about with such deep, earnest interest?
She reached the bottom stair. He stepped down and loomed over her. She was tall. He was taller. He smelled nice, like soap.
“Zach.”
“Nadine.”
She held out one hand to shake. He took it in his, calluses rubbing roughly against her palm, but released it when two kids, a pair of identical twins, came running out of the house.
She guessed them to be about seven years old, but what did she know? She didn’t have a lot of exposure to children. They each carried a single rubber boot. Two different boots.
“I wanted to get just plain black,” one boy shouted, “but Aiden wouldn’t.”
“The lady is pretty,” the other boy said. Oh, sweet. “She might want flowers.”
Zach grasped Nadine by the arms and spun her around.
“Oh!” Whoa.
“Sit,” he said, “and we’ll get you into those boots.”
She sat on a step. He grasped her leg, not quite what she expected.
For a moment, he looked sheepish, as though he’d made a mistake. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be bossy. Can I take off your shoes?”
“Okay,” she said. At her nod, he wrapped long fingers around one of her bare ankles to take off her shoe. Soda pop bubbles fizzed in her bloodstream. The twin who had called her pretty handed him a yellow boot with turquoise flowers on it. When Zach squatted on his haunches in front of Nadine, his face hovered close enough for her to detect flecks of yellow in his hazel eyes.
One of the boys, the flower boot one, distracted her by staring at her pink toenails. He grinned and said, “Nice color.”
Nadine didn’t know how to react. The only children she’d spent any time with were her friends’ kids—the kids they insisted on having as they married and started families.
Zach gripped Nadine’s other ankle in his warm hand and pulled off her second shoe. The soda pop bubbles went electric.
Double whoa. Heat suffused her.
“Can I sit here?” The first boy cuddled close to her on the step. The second boy copied him on her other side. Like a pair of bookends, they nestled against her.
These males overwhelmed her, even the young ones. “Sure you can sit,” she said. “It’s your house. But—”
Zach finished sliding the black boot onto her other foot and stood up. He stepped away with a satisfied smile on his face. Worn jeans hung low on his narrow hips. Biceps filled out his white T-shirt.
“There,” he said. “Now you’re ready for walking on the ranch. Can’t walk it in high heels.”
Nadine stared at the mismatched boots on her feet, the flowered one spotless. Straw and muck clung to the dark one. Oh, God, she hoped it was only muck. The rubber boots mocked all the care she’d taken with her choice of dress and the meticulous application of her makeup this morning.
She might no longer work in New York, but she maintained standards.
Glancing up at Zach, she said, “I brought a pair of boots. They’re in the car.”
He stared at her. “Really? I—” A blush crept up his neck, darkening the tanned skin and spreading into his cheeks. “You did?” Wonder of wonders, the guy looked awkward and not at all his usual assured self. She’d never seen him less than together before.
It kind of charmed her.
She bit back a smile. “Yes. You said we’d be walking so I came prepared.”
“Oh...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you’d forgotten.”
Was he as shy as he looked? Shy wasn’t a word Nadine had ever applied to Zach Brandt. Intense, quiet, self-contained, certain of his place in the world, yes. But shy? No.
Also, masculine. Let’s not forget that, Nadine.
“Do you want to change into your own boots?” he asked.
“Perhaps after we do the first part of the interview,” she said.
“The first part?”
“Yes. I hoped to see your studio. Maybe take a look at your current work.” She wanted to ease into that other story. Lee’s story. The real one, he’d said. The longer she could put off Lee’s agenda, the better.
Her stomach threatened to send up her breakfast. Wouldn’t that be the epitome of embarrassing?
If she could concentrate on Zach’s paintings first, maybe it would become possible to segue into questions about his family’s past. Her problem lay in how to ask those uncomfortable questions.
“No,” Zach said and he didn’t look happy.
“No?” Immersed in her own troubling thoughts, she’d lost track of the conversation.
“This interview is not about my paintings alone. There are no paintings without the land.”
“Yes, we’ll cover everything. But your painting is a big part of who you are.”
“This ranch—” he flung an arm toward the fields “—is a big part of who I am. That’s what the readers will relate to. The land, not paintings.”
Nadine could have argued that point, but too much of her energy today had been taken up by the conversation she’d had with her boss just before driving here. She should ignore it and try to forget, just do her job as she should, but that one misbegotten discussion had rocked her world in the worst possible way.
Pushing up her metaphorical sleeves, she opened her mouth to get this show on the road, but Zach pointed behind her.
“You know my dad, Rick Brandt.”
She turned around on the step to peer up. Nadine smiled. She liked Rick and the perpetual twinkle in his eyes. Where Zach was reserved, his father was gregarious and friendly. Where Zach was long and muscular, Rick was short and spare.
“These are my boys, Ryan and Aiden.” Zach gestured toward the twins, pointing to each one as he said his name. No way would Nadine be able to tell them apart.
They were vaguely familiar to her. She’d probably seen them around town, of course, but hadn’t paid them much attention. Kids weren’t on her radar, probably because there weren’t stories attached to them. She could talk to anyone on any subject, but foreign little creatures called children stumped her. She liked kids, in theory. She just didn’t know what to say to them, or how to entertain them.
Judging by expressions as watchful as their father’s, she didn’t think the twins would go in for fist bumps, or that lamest of lame adult gestures—high fives.
