Betting on the Cowboy

He almost walked right past it. The place was still under construction, and the sign hadn’t even been hung yet. It leaned against the front bay window, but at the last minute he registered its kelly-green letters in a Celtic script. Donovan’s Dream.

He backed up and took a look through the cute bay window, which was framed by white Irish-lace curtains draped over a shining brass rod. He spotted Marianne immediately, and smiled to see how little she’d changed. Still fighting those messy red curls and those extra five pounds. Still unable to fully hide the sprinkle of freckles she’d inherited from her mother. Still a well-bred, classic good girl, even though she was his age—pushing thirty.

She was taking someone’s order, listening intently to every word they said. But at the same time, her intelligent green eyes were alert to everything going on around her, as any good restaurant owner would be.

Within a few seconds, she noticed him at the window. He expected her to take a minute to recognize him, and maybe another minute to believe her eyes. But she didn’t look the least bit surprised to see him standing there. She simply smiled and extended her free hand, beckoning him in enthusiastically.

So...she had heard. Either she was still in contact with his grandfather, or the Silverdell grapevine was as dependable as ever. He nodded, returning her smile, and moved back toward the front door, which opened with a sweet cascade of bells he recognized as the first few notes of “Danny Boy.”

She met him at the threshold, holding out her arms for a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Gray,” she said. She didn’t stint on the hug, and when she pulled back she gazed at him uninhibitedly. “It’s been so long. Too long. But you look every bit as gorgeous, you devil.”

He grinned. “So do you.”

To his surprise, she flushed and self-consciously put a hand to her hair. “Don’t be silly. I—” For a moment, her smile faded. “I don’t know if your grandfather told you about...well, it’s been a tough year. My husband died just before Christmas. And my mother lost her battle with breast cancer about a month later.”

Suddenly Gray felt as if he’d been gone a hundred years. Her mother, dead? He’d liked Eileen Donovan very much—and he’d always understood that his grandfather worshipped the woman from afar, his one grand chivalric gesture in a lifetime of rapacious greed and domineering chauvinism.

But Gray hadn’t even realized her mother had been sick. That’s what happened when you peeled rubber as you sped out of town, then tore off your rearview mirror and chucked it onto the asphalt at the county line.

He frowned. “No. He didn’t tell me. I didn’t even know you were married.”

“Eight years,” she said, lifting her left hand, which still wore a simple gold band. She folded her fingers into her palm, as if to feel the comforting squeeze of the ring. “We met in college.”

He touched her shoulder. And then, for the first time, he could see that she had changed after all. Her eyes, once as clear as clover, as simple as grass, held depths and complexities and pain. They looked more like his eyes now—although his had been this way since he was thirteen.

“I’m so sorry, Mari. That’s a heavy load, losing them so close together.”

“Yes,” she said simply. “Of course, you understand better than most.”

But then, as if she knew he wouldn’t want to open that conversation, she smiled again. She hadn’t ever been one to wallow in self-pity, anyhow, he remembered. She had wanted their relationship to go further, but when he told her he just wanted to be friends, she’d accepted it like a trooper.

“But enough about me.” She tilted a sideways glance at him. “Let’s talk about you. For starters, I know exactly why you’re here.”

“You do?”

“Absolutely. You’re looking for a job.” She was teasing. He knew her voice well enough still to recognize its notes.

“I am?”

“Yep. But I’m sorry to say we’re not hiring today. I’ve just found an excellent teenage boy who is happy to wash my dishes for gas money, which is all I can afford to pay him.”

Gray tilted his head, smiling down at her. “How did you know that I—”

She laughed and put her hand under his arm, leading him deeper into the café. “Everybody knows, silly. Don’t you remember Silverdell? They certainly remember you.”

“So I’ve gathered. Most of them have clearly decided they wouldn’t hire me if I were the last day laborer on earth.”

“Exactly. No fatted calf for you, my friend. In the eyes of Silverdell, you are not forgiven.”

He raised one eyebrow. “So...what do you think sealed my fate? Switching tombstones that Halloween? Teaching the naked limbo to Mayor Simpson’s cross-eyed niece? Or...I know...maybe it was that thing with the moose head?”

“All of the above.” Her green eyes twinkled, and she looked more like herself. “Although that moose head...that was plain nasty.”

He chuckled. They’d arrived at the one empty table in the restaurant. She pointed to a chair, wordlessly instructing him to sit. Then she grabbed a bright green laminated menu card from its slot in the nearest wait station and placed it in front of him.

“But don’t despair, Gray. I happen to know there’s at least one person in town who will be completely sympathetic to your cause. And, lucky for you, she is hiring right now.”

Gray looked up. “She?”

“Yep. She. Our newest local entrepreneur. The one person in town whose reputation was even half as bad as yours.”

He tried to think. Had anyone around here ever been as reckless and rude as he had? Surely no female. Silverdell women tended to be well-behaved and demure. The cadre of bitchy elder ladies, like that skinny harpy Mrs. Fillmore, insisted on it. No one dared to—

And suddenly he knew. His eyes widened.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Crazy Rowena Wright has come home.”

CHAPTER THREE

BREE DIDN’T CALL ahead to let Rowena know she was coming.

It wasn’t that she thought surprising her sister would be fun. Rowena was as likely to be irked by an unannounced visit as she was to be delighted. Bree didn’t call because, right up until the last minute, she couldn’t bring herself to commit to really, truly going to Bell River Ranch at all.

Every mile along the way, she kept assuring herself she could always change her mind. Drive away. Get back on an airplane and fly home to Boston.

But somehow merely saying that phrase, “home to Boston,” made her realize how little she belonged there, even after sixteen years. And so she didn’t turn around. She kept driving, from the Gunnison airport toward Silverdell, every minute bringing her closer to the one place in the world she had ever thought of as home.

And the one place in the world she’d ever thought of as hell.

She skirted Silverdell’s downtown area, not ready to be seen by anyone she used to know. Instead, she took the loop-around on what the locals called Mansion Street—though maps and strangers called it Callahan Circle. Bell River was the first ranch you encountered as you exited the city limits, so after she passed the elegant old Harper estate she knew she had only about two more miles to go.

Her heart beat faster, and she tightened her fingers on the wheel. Dread...or excitement? She no longer knew.

Man-made structures thinned out the minute she crossed the city line, giving way to open spaces, acre after acre of rolling country greening with spring. The occasional cow or horse gazed placidly at her as she coasted by, and a pair of brown falcons watched her sternly from a fence post, but for those two miles she didn’t see another human being.

And then, too soon, the acres that spread out beside the road were Bell River acres. She knew every undulation, every tree, as well as she knew the lines and pads of her own palm. The rippling pastures were achingly the same as they’d been twenty years ago when she’d ridden her bike home from elementary school along this same road.

The same—except better. Much, much better.

She hadn’t visited since the wedding four months ago. It had been winter, then—and Rowena had still been in the early, messy stages of renovations, the part of the process where you saw only the broken eggs, not the promise of the omelet.

Now it was April, the time when Colorado clouds began to lift, as if the tent of blue sky actually were being winched up higher and higher each day. The air felt fresh, green with sunshine and sweet breezes.

And the creation of the dude ranch was much further along. The first thing Bree noticed as she turned into the long front driveway was how well the grounds had been groomed. The palsied bristlecone pines on either side of the rickety front fence had been pruned up, as if by dancing masters obsessed with posture. The fence itself had had been replaced with a pair of scrolled wrought-iron gates that stood crisply open, smiling a glossy black welcome.

Muddy patches that once had pitted the fields on either side of the driveway had been converted to smooth carpets of emerald grass.

A few more yards and she got her first good look at the house, set like a jewel in its setting of sparkling white paddocks. It had been freshly painted pale green, with a brand-new hunter-green roof and a wide white porch trimmed in lush hanging baskets of ferns, ivy and lipstick-red geraniums.