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Sighing, Merry concentrated on remembering the road, the road that would take her back to the airport when she was done with her business here. But there were no landmarks, no side streets and still no signs. They just kept climbing, twisting, then descending.
Buck must have heard her sigh. “It’s not much longer,” he said. “About twenty more minutes.”
“Thank you.” She racked her brain for more conversation, but for a woman who made a good chunk of her income as a TV personality, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to this man with broad shoulders and dark stubble that made him look more than a little dangerous.
The weather was always a safe subject, so she dove in. “Have you had much rain lately?”
“It’s the desert.”
“Oh…I guess not, then.” So much for conversation with the cowboy. She twisted her fingers together and checked her manicure, remembering how Karen had gotten her to stop biting her nails. Seeing her good friend again would be wonderful.
She looked out the window. Every so often, she was surprised by the flash of color from a patch of fragile-looking wildflowers, or daunted by a lethal-looking cactus, both co-existing in a strange type of harmony.
All right, so this wasn’t Boston. It was…tolerable. And she told herself that there weren’t acres of poisonous reptiles out to get her, just wild burros.
She resolved to concentrate on helping Karen just like she’d promised. The sooner she did that, the sooner she’d be back home in familiar territory.
With that decided, she relaxed her grip on what was left of her purse.
“Over there.” Buck pointed off in the distance, to his left. “Rattlesnake Ranch.”
She craned her neck and squinted. “Where?”
“Over there.”
“Over there” got closer, then disappeared again, as they turned another bend and descended until the mountain road turned into packed dirt barely wide enough for a car. They were on flat land now, up close and personal with the desert.
Buck turned right and before them was a bleached sign proclaiming Rattlesnake Ranch. She shuddered involuntarily and immediately her eyes scanned the road for anything slithering.
“Um…Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“About snakes…”
“What about them?”
“Do you have a lot of them out here?”
His blue eyes glanced at her briefly, and then returned to the road. “It’s the desert.”
“Of course there are snakes” was what he didn’t say.
Quit obsessing, she told herself.
They rolled to a stop in front of a sprawling ranch house.
“Here we are,” he said.
Merry heard the obvious pride in his voice. She took out a notebook and leafed through it for a clean page, free from burro slime, and found a pen at the bottom of her purse. Brainstorming time had arrived.
At first sight, the ranch house was welcoming. Designed in traditional Santa Fe architecture, it had a big porch that ran the length of the house. Bright flowers spilled out of terra-cotta pots of every size and shape along the brick walkway. More colorful flowers cascaded from hanging baskets.
Beautiful.
She knew that the flowers were Karen’s doing. She’d always had a green thumb and went into the business program and floral arranging curriculum at Johnson & Wales with the hope of opening her own florist shop.
The car door opened, startling her. Buck held out a hand to help her out, and she placed her hand in his. She wasn’t a small woman, but when his rough, callused hand covered hers, she felt very feminine and protected.
She tried to analyze why she was having a cowboy fantasy, when a small hurricane descended down the thick wood stairs.
“Merry! It’s been so long.”
Buck dropped her hand, and Merry found herself in Karen’s bear hug.
“I see my lug of a brother found you, or did you find him?”
Merry laughed. “He found me. I was lost.”
“I knew it,” Karen said, turning toward her brother. “Buck, thank goodness you’re okay. When Bandit came home without you, I got worried and sent Juan and Frank out looking for you. What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” Buck said, carrying Merry’s suitcases up the stairs, as easily as if they contained feathers instead of a closet’s worth of clothes.
Merry scribbled in her notebook. That would make a perfect picture for Karen’s brochure—a rough-and-rugged cowboy bringing luggage up the stairs of the dude ranch.
Perfect.
Buck stopped on the porch and looked down. “Karen, where do you want this stuff?”
“In your bedroom, Buck.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Well, you haven’t been using it,” Karen snapped, and then turned her attention back to Merry.
At just the thought that she’d be staying in Buck’s room and sleeping in his bed, Merry’s heart flip-flopped in her chest, and her face heated as if she were a teenager.
Jet lag. It must be jet lag. Or the low elevation.
Karen gave her another hug. “I am so glad to see you in person. I watch you on TV all the time, but it’s not the same.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” And it really was.
“How’s business?” Karen asked.
“Overwhelming.” She’d hired an additional publicist, Joanne Gladding, to handle the George Lynch fallout. Joanne was a go-getter, but Merry wasn’t sure that Joanne was right for her. She’d hired her anyway, though, because she was leaving on this trip, and the matter had to be deflected immediately.
Whenever Merry thought of the tabloid articles, a new layer of humiliation settled like lead in her chest. Her parents were still absolutely furious with her about the one before George Lynch—her assistant director Mick, who also blabbed to the tabloids about their relationship.
Her parents. They never missed an opportunity to remind her not to get involved with an “underling” ever again, saying that her actions reflected on them and their business, too.
She never could win with them. Yet something inside her still made her want to keep trying.
Merry pushed her parents and the George Lynch fiasco to the back of her mind. She was going to enjoy her time here.
“I have some presents for you from Boston and Rhode Island.” Merry opened the trunk of the car and began to lift out some boxes. “I hope everything made it in good shape.”
She handed Karen a couple of the boxes. “This is chocolate-covered fruit from that shop by City Hall, and this one contains those cookies we lived on in college. And I bought some homemade bagels from Mrs. Jeeter, who said to say hello to you. And…ta-da…some New England clam chowder, packed in dry ice, fresh this morning from Clamdiggers.”
“Be still my heart.” Karen laughed. “But no clam cakes from Rhode Island?”
Merry pulled out a bright purple bag. “Two dozen of them right from Point Judith.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
Singing the song they’d made up about Johnson & Wales University, their alma mater, they climbed the stairs and entered the ranch house.
Merry stood on the thick, glazed Mexican tiles and looked at the brightly striped serapes over the couches and side chairs, the rough-hewn beams, the beehive fireplace in the corner and the thick wood furniture. She could smell fresh paint.
“Karen, it’s beautiful. The pictures you sent didn’t do it justice. The architecture is magnificent. It’s so homey.”
Peeking out from behind one of the couches was a small, blond-haired girl with big blue eyes—just like Buck’s. She had two straight ponytails that started high on her head and brushed her thin shoulders.
Caitlin. Merry gave a cheery wave and a wink to the little girl, who then disappeared back behind the couch.
Merry raised an eyebrow at Karen.
“Cait, come and meet my good friend Meredith Turner,” Karen said. “You know her. We watch her on TV all the time.”
But there was no sign of Cait again.
Karen turned to Merry and shrugged. “She just loves to watch Making Merry with Merry with me. She even helped me make your chocolate-chip snowball cookies last Christmas.”
“Maybe we can make them together, even though it’s not Christmastime. I like them all through the year.” Merry felt as if she was doing the dialogue from her show.
Merry deposited her tote bag on the gleaming plank floor and looked around again. “It’s perfect, Karen. Your guests could gather here and play cards, or read a book by the fire, or just talk.”
“I can’t wait,” Buck said sarcastically, walking into the room.
“Buck, for heaven’s sake, Merry is trying to help us.” Karen lifted her hands in the air, as if she were giving up.
“And to that end, I was thinking of a feature on my show once the ranch opens, like a ‘before and after’ segment. I can get a crew out here, and they can start filming the ‘before’ segment.”
“Think of the publicity. It’d be fabulous.” Karen clasped her hands together.
“You’ll also need a brochure and a commercial. We might as well take care of both of those, too.” Merry leafed through her notebook. “I have some ideas.”
“Excellent,” Karen said. “I knew you’d help.”
Merry eyed Buck. He seemed less than thrilled. Matter of fact, his face looked like he had just eaten something sour. “Karen, you were the business major, you have to tell me your ideas.”
“Let’s have some chowder and clam cakes first.” She looked into the bags and pulled out plastic containers. “Then we can talk business.”
“It’s a deal, but I’d like to change first, if you don’t mind,” Merry said. “Some burros thought my suit was lunch.”
“I can’t wait to hear that story.” Karen laughed and raised a shopping bag in the direction of a hallway. “Last door on the right. I’ll show you.”
“Don’t bother. I’m fine. You go and find a place for all the goodies.”
“Don’t be long,” Karen said. “I can’t wait to catch up.”
Merry felt a warm feeling building inside and spreading out. She hadn’t felt that in a long time. Real friends were hard to find, and Karen was a real friend.
Merry inched down the hall to the bedroom, stopping at frequent intervals to admire the bold paintings of cowboys and cowgirls at work. She hoped to catch another glimpse of Caitlin somewhere.
“Would you like to join us, Buck?” Merry heard Karen say.
“No, thanks. I’d rather muck the stalls,” he answered. Then the door slammed.
She flicked the light on in Buck’s bedroom. She had to brace herself against the sheer force of masculinity. It was a man’s room with its big, thick furniture and no frills. Her gaze focused on the centerpiece of the room, a bed that looked as if it had been shaped from a fallen tree.
Merry was instantly drawn to the bed. She inspected every inch of it, and reminded herself to ask Karen who the artist was that had created such a masterpiece. For heaven’s sake, it looked as if there were some buds ready to bloom on some of the branches that were twisted to form the headboard. More branches formed a canopy above. It was almost as if the wood were still alive.
She imagined lying on the bed as green leaves and flowers cascaded above.
Exquisite.
A vivid blanket in blocks of stripes and arrow designs covered the bed, and she couldn’t resist inspecting the workmanship. It was handmade, and unless she missed her guess, it was the genuine Native American article.
She noticed a huge bleached-wood armoire that was the focal point of one wall. A matching seven-foot-long dresser lined another, and on each side of the bed were matching nightstands accented with saguaro cacti ribs in the doors. She had seen similar pieces in galleries in New York City and Boston, but nothing as magnificent as these.
Against another wall was a couch, but on closer inspection, she saw it was actually a futon or a daybed. The arms were of thick wood with inserts of some kind of long, spindly, bleached wood on the back for ornamentation. Lying on one of the colorful cushions of the futon was a beat-up, floppy stuffed cat. She assumed it was Caitlin’s.
Merry picked up the pathetic beige cat with only one eye, and remembered a similar cat. Hers. She’d called it Bonita, and she had been a Christmas gift from Pamela, their housekeeper and cook, because her parents wouldn’t let her have the real thing, no matter how much she begged or no matter how good she was.
Merry had cried many times into Bonita’s gray fur. Once, she remembered coming home to find Bonita missing. She looked all over the house, sobbing. Finally, her mother had ordered her to stop crying and told her she was too old to play with a stuffed cat.
Merry had been inconsolable. She knew in her heart that her mother had thrown Bonita away. The cat had become too dirty and too worn to be a resident of the Beacon Hill house any longer.
She returned the cat to its exact place and chuckled as she remembered how she’d rescued Bonita from the trash can in the alleyway in the dead of night.
She’d hid Bonita from her parents from then on. Currently, her childhood confidant, lovingly mended and with additional stuffing, rested on an antique rocking chair in the bedroom of her condo.
She looked at all of the various cowboy and Indian artifacts that were displayed in the room. Each piece was a work of art and seemed to be positioned perfectly.
If all the guestrooms looked like this, and with the media blitz that Merry had planned, the phone would soon be ringing off the hook with people making reservations for the Rattlesnake Dude Ranch.
Gingerly, she sat down at the edge of the bed, and bent back to study the twisted canopy of branches over her head. She imagined Buck lounging on the bed, wearing nothing but his hat, holding out his hand for her to join him there.
