A Reunion For The Rancher

“He does tend to go on.” He helped Iva through the main room and headed her toward the doors.

He nodded at Ingrid Edwards, once again behind her desk. She was shuffling through a drawer but she smiled up at him, her glasses sliding down her nose and red hair coming loose from a clip that held it to the top of her head. She winked and he wasn’t quite sure what to do.

Last week she’d brought him fried chicken. The week before that, brownies. Ingrid was on the prowl, looking for a husband before she turned twenty-six. Or so the rumor went. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but she’d have to look elsewhere. He was thirty-one and had no intention of settling down.

“It isn’t my Derek,” Iva muttered as they headed for the front door. “I know you think you know him, Carson Thorn, but you don’t. He’s a changed boy.”

“He’s almost twenty, Iva. That’s not really a boy.”

“He’s still my boy and I won’t let you or anyone else run him down. I appreciate what you’ve done over the years, but when it comes to family, I draw the line.”

“As you should.”

She stopped just feet short of the door, leaning heavily on the walker. She studied him with those blue eyes of hers. “I’ve always appreciated your help.”

“My help?”

“The lawyer, for Derek.”

He cleared his throat and glanced out the door, hoping to avoid a conversation he didn’t want to have. But she wouldn’t let it go.

“Johnny Mac fixing my truck,” Iva continued. “And that beef in my fridge.”

“We should go. I need to get in there before Byron and the others really do form a posse like they’ve been discussing. We can’t have them riding off on horses, guns blazing.”

She laughed a gravely sounding laugh. “Your daddy was made of the same cloth as that Byron McKay. You’re a different breed. Don’t be like them.”

“I try not to be.”

“You ain’t been to church in a good long while.”

He should have known it would come back to that. “I’ve been busy.”

“Oh, land’s sakes, don’t give me that. I’m not sure what burr got under your saddle, but it isn’t so big that God can’t fix it.”

He smiled and shook his head. “I know He’s capable. But there’s no burr, just a busy life.”

“Help me to my car, then.”

They were on the sidewalk heading for the old Buick Iva drove. And that’s when he saw Ruby Donovan. She stood in front of the white car dressed in shorts, canvas sneakers and a T-shirt. Her auburn hair lifted slightly in the breeze and she pushed it back and held it with her hand as she watched him approach. Seeing her like that took him back to the first time he’d seen her. She’d been fifteen. He’d been seventeen. She’d just gotten off some crazy ride at the county fair. She’d been laughing at something her friend had said and walking toward the Ferris wheel.

Today felt a lot like that moment when they’d met. And nothing like that moment. Today when she looked at him her hazel eyes didn’t sparkle. Her mouth didn’t form that generous smile. No, she glared. He felt more than a little edgy seeing her up close and in person for the first time in twelve years.

One of these days he’d like to get an answer from her. He’d like to know what he’d done to deserve her walking away without even saying goodbye. He’d like to know how she’d gone from wanting to spend a life together to wanting nothing more than a free ride to college, compliments of his father.

But maybe it was better if he didn’t know.

* * *

Ruby sucked in a breath and tried to pretend her heart wasn’t tripping all over itself the way it had always tripped when she saw Carson Thorn. She’d managed to avoid him for a dozen years. That hadn’t been easy considering he lived just down the road from her grandmother. But somehow on her odd trips home she’d managed.

But seeing him, the tall rancher with the dark brown hair and brown eyes that a girl could get lost in, was like going back. It was like being in love again. And she wasn’t in love. He was no longer that boy, and she was no longer an impressionable teenage girl who believed in happy-ever-after.

It was this man who had taken those dreams from her. This man and his family. Until she’d met the Thorns she had always been good enough.

To see him helping her Gran to the car, that sizzled down deep where the red in her hair lived waiting to be unleashed.

She stepped forward, ignoring the confused look on his face. She ignored expensive cologne that smelled like the mountains and the ocean and everything good in between. She tried, desperately, to ignore the fact that the air seemed too thick to breathe when he was in her space. The need for oxygen meant she had to get him gone as quickly as possible.

“Thank you, Carson. I’ll help her to the car.”

“Be nice, Ruby Jo,” Iva warned.

“I’m being nice.” Ruby stepped close to help her grandmother off the sidewalk.

Iva leaned in. “No, you’re showing your claws. You have no idea, Ruby.”

“I have ideas.” She looked back. Carson was still there, watching them.

Her younger brother, Derek, was nowhere to be found. He’d said something about errands to run and he’d get a ride home. She didn’t like when he disappeared. She trusted him, but since cattle had started disappearing just a little too close to the time Derek had been released from prison, she knew he was going to continue to be a suspect until someone was caught.

These days everyone was a suspect.

She was surprised no one had tried to blame her since she’d arrived back in town only a few weeks ago.

Carson interrupted her thoughts, and that was too bad because she’d been trying to block him from her mind and her memories. He stepped past her and opened the car door.

Once Iva was situated, Ruby took her purse out of the walker and folded the contraption up to store it in the trunk of the car. She turned, and Carson Thorn was there. Without a word, he took the walker from her hands. If she’d trusted herself to speak, she would have told him that she could take care of things herself.

Funny that his name was Thorn, because he was a real thorn in her side. A thorn she’d prayed like the apostle Paul that God would remove from her. She’d tried to pray away his memory. And now? She didn’t need him lurking, being kind, respectful. She needed him to go away and not be a reminder of everything she’d lost and why she’d left Little Horn.

If it hadn’t been for Iva and Derek, she would have stayed in Oklahoma, and then she wouldn’t have had this issue to deal with. But she was home. And they did need her here. Her grandmother needed her.

“Is that frown for me?”

What should she say to that? She could say, of course it wasn’t. Or she could admit that it was. “I didn’t realize I was frowning.”

He leaned against the back of the car, long legs in new jeans and those expensive boots of his. The walker was still in his hands.

“You were definitely frowning.”

“I should have sold the ranch and convinced Gran and Derek to move to Oklahoma with me,” she admitted without intending to.

“What would have been the fun in that? You’re not a city girl, Ruby. You were born and raised in Hill Country, and you can’t outrun it.”

“I’ve been living in the city a long time, and I’m adaptable.”

His smile faded. “Yes, I guess you are.”