The Ranch She Left Behind

“Ah, man, I’m sorry,” Danny said, running a dishrag under some water. “I’ll make her another one. No charge.”

Yeah, right. Penny tightened again, thinking how unlikely it was that the father would reward such rudeness with a second chance at ice cream.

“Don’t be silly,” the man said in a pleasant tone, surprising Penny so completely she felt her lower jaw sag. “Of course we’ll pay for it. But make it a double, okay? And what the heck. I’ll have one, too.”

And just like that, Penny’s tension drained away, as if someone had pulled the stopper out. She felt a wave of irrational happiness wash in after it. The happiness was irrational because logically, just one nice man, one patient father—that didn’t change anything, not for her. She had grown up with a terrifying father, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.

This man was no one to her—she didn’t even know his name. But he was...well, right now he felt like hope personified. He was the rainbow after the storm, the unicorn emerging from the forest, the olive branch that proved land still existed, land that an exhausted sailor might someday reach.

Right now, she absolutely loved this beautiful, beautiful man.

Impulsively, she stood. He’d run out of napkins, and he still had whipped cream flecked across his neck and under his chin. He probably didn’t even realize it. She extracted a dozen napkins from the dispenser on her table and moved toward him.

Danny was absorbed in making the new floats.

“Here,” she said as she reached the counter. “Let me help with that. You’ve still got a spot, here—” She stood on tiptoe. He was tall. “And here.”

She leaned in.

Number Ten. Kiss a total stranger.

This was perfect. Not an artificial check mark on an arbitrary list. She wanted to kiss him. For daughters everywhere, including the angry kid in the bathroom, and the terrified little girl she herself once had been, Penny wanted to give him a heartfelt thank-you kiss.

On the cheek, of course. She shut her eyes. Her lips tingled, anticipating the soft bristles of his stubble. He smelled sweet, as if he’d been traveling in a perfume-filled car. But not a grown woman’s perfume. A pink-cotton-candy perfume—the kind a ten-year-old would wear.

Cotton candy and honey bristles... Something fluttered in her belly. How could such a combination be sensual?

But as she moved in, he must have shifted his face toward her, because her impetuous kiss landed not on soft bristles, but on the warm, ridged flesh of his lips.

She inhaled sharply, opening her eyes—and found herself staring into the deep pools of his. She had connected with the edge of his mouth, not the center, where the sharply drawn bow formed. But still...she felt the warmth of the stiff rim around the velvet flesh. She felt the minty heat of his surprised breath.

For a minute, she couldn’t pull away.

He didn’t, either. For a second, a few seconds—it was hard to tell, because time seemed as sticky and easily stretched as the caramel on her sundae—they stood there, joined by shocked eyes and warm, half-open mouths.

He made a low sound, a primitive sound that could be identified in any country, on any planet, as pleasure. But he didn’t dive in, snatching the opportunity lewdly, as some men might have done. Instead, he slowly, almost imperceptibly, tilted his head to the right...then delicately drew it back again to the left.

The subtle movement caused his lips to brush hers with an excruciating tingle. All through her body, nerve endings reacted, as if he’d put a match to her mouth. Her cheeks flamed. Her chest radiated heat like a sunburst. Her heart couldn’t remember exactly what to do, and thumped around in her chest, confused.

Surely the whole thing didn’t last more than two or three seconds. Danny hadn’t even finished churning ice cream into the floats. Two or three seconds, and then—it might have been prearranged—they both pulled back at the same moment. She had to work hard to steady her breathing, as if she’d been jogging, and she felt the strangest urge to adjust her untouched clothes and smooth her unruffled hair.

In contrast, he looked surprised but utterly calm. His caramel eyes were smiling. The outside corners tilted up, managing to look quizzical and delighted at the same time.

“I’m not sure what I did to deserve that,” he said in low, pleasant tones. “But I hope you’ll tell me...so that I can do it again.”

“It isn’t what you did,” she said awkwardly, backing up a step. “It’s what you didn’t do.”

“What I didn’t do?”

She tried to laugh, tried to match his composure, though she suddenly felt utterly ridiculous. He’d never understand. He probably had no idea what some fathers were capable of doing to a daughter who got mouthy and rude.

She let her gaze drift to the hallway where his daughter had disappeared only two or three minutes before. “I guess I wanted to thank you, on behalf of all the clumsy, fussy little girls out there, for not losing your temper.”

For a minute he looked truly confused. His brows drew together a fraction of an inch, and he tilted his head one degree. “Over ice cream?”

“Partly ice cream.” She raised her eyebrows. “But mostly...attitude.”

“Ah. The attitude.” He sobered slightly. “Well, we’ve got kind of a special case, because—”

“Dad, let’s go.”

The little girl had emerged, still scowling, clearly not happy to see her father talking to Penny. At the same moment Danny came around the counter, big silver containers in both hands, whipped cream oozing in snowy rivers down the sides.

“Here you go!” He beamed. “Extra whipped cream, extra cherries, I even threw in some jimmies.”

He tilted one of the floats, eager to show off the happy face he’d made with cherries and sprinkles—and he almost lost his grip on the slippery vessel. For a few laughing, chaotic seconds, both father and daughter were absorbed in trying to make the transfer without upsetting another drink.

Penny took advantage of that moment to slip out, her legal pad tucked safely under her arm.

Yes, she was running away. But it didn’t feel like the same kind of cowardice she’d hated in herself earlier. It was more...preservation of something inexplicably special.

She simply couldn’t bear to let the girl start quizzing her again about why she’d been drawing Dad. And, for whatever reason, she didn’t want the frozen-time beauty of their accidental kiss to become...ordinary.

She moved quickly, let the door fall shut on the chimes behind her, and then turned left, making her way toward her car.

Time to go to Bell River. She could handle it now. She felt, in fact, as if she could handle anything.

Still hugging her legal pad, she took a deep breath of the crisp August afternoon air. She felt so buoyant she had to make a conscious effort not to skip, or break into song.

She might have made a fool of herself in there, but looking foolish hadn’t killed her.

In fact, it had made her sizzle and pop inside. As if Danny had put her under the soda water spigot and injected her with fizzy carbonation. She felt free.

The idea of freedom was so new, and at the same time so old, that she laughed out loud. A saleslady who had been arranging flowers in front of a store looked up with a cautious smile.

“May I help you?”

“No, thanks,” Penny said, smiling. “I’m fine. I know exactly what I want.”

And, for the first time in years, that was true. She did know what she wanted.

She wanted to be herself.

* * *

MAX TWIRLED THE rusted pressure relief valve at the top of the cottage’s water heater carefully. Ellen had tried to grab a quick shower earlier, but turning the spigot had triggered a series of banging, popping noises. Sounded like sediment buildup to Max.

Since they’d arrived in town almost a week early, he couldn’t blame their landlady for the problem. And since it was Saturday, he couldn’t expect a plumber to come out on a moment’s notice—not without charging a fortune in overtime.