“Company, my foot,” Lonny countered. “Could you see Mom or any other woman you know sitting around making idle chatter while everyone else is working around her?”
Letty had to acknowledge that was true.
“Did you notice how she wanted everyone to think she’d made those rolls herself?”
Letty had noticed, but she didn’t consider that such a terrible thing.
Lonny reached into the middle of the table for a carrot stick, chewing on it with a frown. “A wife,” he murmured. “I agree that a woman would take more interest in the house than I have in the past few years.” He crunched down on the carrot again. “I have to admit it’s been rather nice having my meals cooked and my laundry folded. Those are a couple of jobs I can live without.”
Letty practically swallowed her tongue to keep from commenting.
“I think you might be right, Letty. A wife would come in handy.”
“You could always hire a housekeeper,” Letty said sarcastically, irritated by his attitude and unable to refrain from saying something after all.
“What are you so irked about? You’re the one who suggested I get married in the first place.”
“From the way you’re talking, you seem to think of a wife as a hired hand who’ll clean house and cook your meals. You don’t want a wife. You’re looking for a servant. A woman has to get more out of a relationship than that.”
Lonny snorted. “I thought you females need to be needed. For crying out loud, what else is there to a marriage but cooking and cleaning and regular sex?”
Letty glared at her brother, stood and picked up their coffee cups. “Lonny, I was wrong. Do some woman the ultimate favor and stay single.”
With that she walked out of the dining room.
—
“So how did dinner go?” Chase asked his friend the following morning.
Lonny’s response was little more than a grunt.
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
Although his friend wouldn’t appreciate it, Chase had gotten a good laugh over this dinner date of Lonny’s with the gal from the hardware store. “Is Letty going to set you up with that Brandon woman again?”
“Not while I’m breathing, she won’t.”
Chase chuckled and loosened the reins on Firepower. Mary Brandon was about as subtle as a jackhammer. She’d done everything but throw herself at Lonny’s feet, and she probably would have done that if she’d thought it would do any good. Chase wanted to blame Letty for getting Lonny into this mess, but the Brandon woman was wily and had likely manipulated the invitation out of Letty. Unfortunately, Lonny was the one who’d suffered the consequences.
Chase smiled, content. Riding the range in May, looking for newborn calves, was one of his favorite chores as a rancher. All creation seemed to be bursting out, fresh and alive. The trees were budding and the wind was warm and carried the sweet scent of wildflowers with it. He liked the ranch best after it rained; everything felt so pure then and the land seemed to glisten.
“That sister of yours is determined to find you a wife, isn’t she?” Chase teased, still smiling. “She hasn’t been back two weeks and she’s matchmaking to beat the band. Before you know it, she’ll have you married off. I only hope you get some say in whatever woman Letty chooses.”
“Letty doesn’t mean any harm.”
“Neither did Lizzy Borden.”
When Lonny didn’t respond with the appropriate chuckle, Chase glanced in his friend’s direction. “You look worried. What’s wrong?”
“It’s Letty.”
“What about her?”
“Does she seem any different to you?”
Chase shrugged, hating the sudden concern that surged through him. The only thing he wanted to feel for Letty was apathy, or at best the faint stirring of remembrance one had about a casual acquaintance. As it was, his heart, his head—every part of him—went into overdrive whenever Lonny brought his sister into the conversation.
“How do you mean, ‘different’?” Chase asked.
“I don’t know for sure.” He hesitated and pushed his hat farther back on his head. “It’s crazy, but she takes naps every afternoon. And I mean every afternoon. At first she said it was jet lag.”
“So she sleeps a lot. Big deal,” Chase responded, struggling to sound disinterested.
“Hey, Chase, you know my sister as well as I do. Can you picture Letty, who was always a ball of energy, taking naps in the middle of the day?”
Chase couldn’t, but he didn’t say so.
“Another thing,” Lonny said as he loosely held his gelding’s reins, “Letty’s always been a neat freak. Remember how she used to drive me crazy with the way everything had to be just so?”
Chase nodded.
“She left the dinner dishes in the sink all night. I found her putting them in the dishwasher this morning, claiming she’d been too tired to bother after Mary left. Mary was gone by seven thirty!”
“So she’s a little tired,” Chase muttered. “Let her sleep if it makes her happy.”
“It’s more than that,” Lonny continued. “She doesn’t sing anymore—not a note. For nine years she fought tooth and nail to make it in the entertainment business, and now it’s as if…as if she never had a voice. She hasn’t even touched the piano since she’s been home—at least not when I was there to hear her.” Lonny frowned. “It’s like the song’s gone out of her life.”
Chase didn’t want to talk about Letty and he didn’t want to think about her. In an effort to change the subject, he said, “Old man Wilber was by the other day.”
Lonny shook his head. “I suppose he was after those same acres again.”
“Every year he asks me if I’d be willing to sell that strip of land.” Some people knew it was spring when the flowers started to bloom. Chase could tell when Henry Wilber approached him about a narrow strip of land that bordered their property line. It wasn’t the land that interested Wilber as much as the water. Nothing on this earth would convince Chase to sell that land. Spring Valley Ranch had been in his family for nearly eighty years, and each generation had held on to those acres through good times and bad. Ranching wasn’t exactly making Chase a millionaire, but he would die before he sold off a single inch of his inheritance.
“You’d be a fool to let it go,” Lonny said.
No one needed to tell Chase that. “I wonder when he’ll give up asking.”
“Knowing old man Wilber,” Lonny said with a chuckle, “I’d say never.”
—
“Are you going to plant any avocados?” Cricket asked as Letty spaded the rich soil that had once been her mother’s garden. Lonny had protested, but he’d tilled a large section close to the house for her and Cricket to plant. Now Letty was eager to get her hands in the earth.
“Avocados won’t grow in Wyoming, Cricket. The climate isn’t mild enough.”
“What about oranges?”
“Not those, either.”
“What does grow in Wyoming?” she asked indignantly. “Cowboys?”
Letty smiled as she used the sturdy fork to turn the soil.
“Mommy, look! Chase is here…on his horsey.” Cricket took off, running as fast as her stubby legs would carry her. Her reaction was the same whenever Chase appeared.
Letty stuck the spading fork in the soft ground and reluctantly followed her daughter. By the time she got to the yard, Chase had climbed down from the saddle and dropped the reins. Cricket stood awestruck on the steps leading to the back porch, her mouth agape, her eyes wide.
“Hello, Chase,” Letty said softly.
He looked at her and frowned. “Didn’t that old straw hat used to belong to your mother?”
Letty nodded. “She wore it when she worked in the garden. I found it the other day.” Chase made no further comment, although Letty was sure he’d wanted to say something more.
Eagerly, Cricket bounded down the steps to stand beside her mother. Her small hand crept into Letty?
??s, holding on tightly. “I didn’t know horsies were so big and pretty,” she breathed.
“Firepower’s special,” Letty explained. Chase had raised the bay from a yearling, and had worked with him for long, patient hours.
“You said you wanted to see Firepower,” Chase said, a bit gruffly. “I haven’t got all day, so if you want a ride it’s got to be now.”
“I can ride him? Oh, Mommy, can I really?”
Letty’s blood roared in her ears. She opened her mouth to tell Chase she wasn’t about to set her daughter on a horse of that size.
Before she could voice her objection, however, Chase quieted her fears. “She’ll be riding with me.” With that he swung himself onto the horse and reached down to hoist Cricket into the saddle with him.
As if she’d been born to ride, Cricket sat in front of Chase on the huge animal without revealing the least bit of fear. “Look at me!” she shouted, grinning widely. “I’m riding a horsey! I’m riding a horsey!”
Even Chase was smiling at such unabashed enthusiasm. “I’ll take her around the yard a couple of times,” he told Letty before kicking gently at Firepower’s sides. The bay obediently trotted around in a circle.
“Can we go over there?” Cricket pointed to some indistinguishable location in the distance.
“Cricket,” Letty said, clamping the straw hat onto her head and squinting up. “Chase is a busy man. He hasn’t got time to run you all over the countryside.”
“Hold on,” Chase responded, taking the reins in both hands and heading in the direction Cricket had indicated.
“Chase!” Letty cried, running after him. “She’s just a little girl. Please be careful.”
He didn’t answer her, and not knowing what to expect, Letty trailed them to the end of the long drive. When she reached it, she was breathless and light-headed. It took her several minutes to walk back to the house. She was certain anyone watching her would assume she was drunk. Entering the kitchen, Letty grabbed her prescription bottle—hidden from Lonny in a cupboard—and swallowed a couple of capsules without water.
Not wanting to raise unnecessary alarm, she went back to the garden, but she had to sit on an old stump until her breathing returned to normal. Apparently her heart had gotten worse since she’d come home. Much worse.
“Mommy, look, no hands!” Cricket called out, her arms raised high in the air as Firepower trotted back into the yard.
Smiling, Letty stood and reached for the spading fork.
“Don’t try to pretend you were working,” Chase muttered, frowning at her. “We saw you sitting in the sun. What’s the matter, Letty? Did the easy life in California make you lazy?”
Once more Chase was baiting her. And once more Letty let the comment slide. “It must have,” she said and looked away.
Chapter 4
Chase awoke just before dawn. He lay on his back, listening to the birds chirping outside his half-opened window. Normally their singing would have cheered him, but not this morning. He’d slept poorly, his mind preoccupied with Letty. Everything Lonny had said the week before about her not being herself had bounced around in his brain for most of the night.
Something was different about Letty, but not in the way Chase would have assumed. He’d expected the years in California to transform her in a more obvious way, making her worldly and cynical. To his surprise, he’d discovered that in several instances she seemed very much like the naive young woman who’d left nine years earlier to follow a dream. But the changes were there, lots of them, complex and subtle, when he’d expected them to be simple and glaring. Perhaps what troubled Chase was his deep inner feeling that something was genuinely wrong with her. But try as he might, he couldn’t pinpoint what it was. That disturbed him the most.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, Chase rubbed his hands over his face and glanced outside. The cloudless dawn sky was a luminous shade of gray. The air smelled crisp and clean as Wyoming offered another perfect spring morning.
Chase dressed in his jeans and a Western shirt. Downstairs, he didn’t bother to fix himself a cup of coffee; instead, he walked outside, climbed into his pickup and headed over to the Bar E.
Only it wasn’t Lonny who drew him there.
The lights were on in the kitchen when Chase pulled into the yard. He didn’t knock, but stepped directly into the large family kitchen. Letty was at the stove, the way he knew she would be. She turned when he walked in the door.
“Morning, Chase,” she said with a smile.
“Morning.” Without another word, he walked over to the cupboard and got himself a mug. Standing next to her, he poured his own coffee.
“Lonny’s taking care of the horses,” she told him, as if she needed to explain where her brother was.
Briefly, Chase wondered how she would have responded if he’d said it wasn’t Lonny he’d come to see.
“Cricket talked nonstop for hours about riding Firepower. It was the thrill of her life. Thank you for being so kind to her, Chase.”
Chase held back a short, derisive laugh. He hadn’t planned to let Cricket anywhere near his gelding. His intention all along had been to avoid Letty’s daughter entirely. To Chase’s way of thinking, the less he had to do with the child the better.
Ignoring Cricket was the only thing he could do, because every time he looked at that sweet little girl, he felt nothing but pain. Not a faint flicker of discomfort, but a deep, wrenching pain like nothing he’d ever experienced. Cricket represented everything about Letty that he wanted to forget. He couldn’t even glance at the child without remembering that Letty had given herself to another man, and the sense of betrayal cut him to the bone.
Naturally, Cricket was innocent of the circumstances surrounding her birth, and Chase would never do anything to deliberately hurt the little girl, but he couldn’t help feeling what he did. Yet he’d given her a ride on Firepower the day before, and despite everything, he’d enjoyed himself.
If the truth be known, the ride had come about accidentally. Chase had been on the ridge above the Bar E fence line when he saw two faint dots silhouetted against the landscape, far in the distance. Almost immediately he’d realized it was Letty and her daughter, working outside. From that moment on, Chase hadn’t been able to stay away. He’d hurried down the hill, but once he was in the yard, he had to come up with some logical reason for showing up in the middle of the day. Giving Cricket a chance to see Firepower had seemed solid enough at the time.
“Would you like a waffle?” Letty asked, breaking into his musings.
“No, thanks.”
Letty nodded and turned around. “I don’t know why Cricket’s taken to you the way she has. She gets excited every time someone mentions your name. I’m afraid you’ve made a friend for life, whether you like it or not.”
Chase made a noncommital noise.
“I can’t thank you enough for bringing Firepower over,” Letty continued. “It meant a lot to me.”
“I didn’t do it for you,” he said bluntly, watching her, almost wanting her to come back at him with some snappy retort. The calm way in which Letty swallowed his barbs troubled him more than anything else.
As he’d suspected, Letty didn’t respond. Instead, she brought butter and syrup to the table, avoiding his gaze.
The Letty Ellison he remembered had been feisty and fearless. She wouldn’t have tolerated impatience or tactlessness from anyone, least of all him.
“This coffee tastes like it came out of a sewer,” he said rudely, setting his cup down hard on the table.
The coffee was fine, but he wanted to test Letty’s reactions. In years past, she would have flared right back at him, giving as good as she got. Nine years ago, Letty would have told him what he could do with that cup of coffee if he didn’t like the taste of it.
She looked up, her face expressionless. “I’ll make another pot.”
Chase was stunned. “Forget it,” he said quickly, not knowing what else to say. She glanced at him, her eyes large and s
hadowed in her pale face.
“But you just said there’s something wrong with the coffee.”
Chase was speechless. He watched her, his thoughts confused.
What had happened to his dauntless Letty?
—
Letty was working in the garden, carefully planting rows of corn, when her brother’s pickup truck came barreling down the drive. When he slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the cab and slammed the door, Letty got up and left the seed bag behind. Her brother was obviously angry about something.
“Lonny?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“Of all the stupid, idiotic, crazy women in the world, why did I have to run into this one?”
“What woman?” Letty asked.
Lonny thrust his index finger under Letty’s nose. “She—she’s going to pay for this,” he stammered in his fury. “There’s no way I’m letting her get away with what she did.”
“Lonny, settle down and tell me what happened.”
“There!” he shouted, his voice so filled with indignation it shook.
He was pointing at the front of the pickup. Letty studied it but didn’t see anything amiss. “What?”
“Here,” he said, directing her attention to a nearly indistinguishable dent in the bumper of his ten-year-old vehicle.
The entire truck was full of nicks and dents. When a rancher drove a vehicle for as many years as Lonny had, it collected its share of battle scars. It needed a new left fender, and a new paint job all the way around wouldn’t have hurt, either. As far as Letty could tell, Lonny’s truck was on its last legs, as it were—or, more appropriately, tires.
“Oh, you mean that tiny dent,” she said, satisfied she’d found the one he was referring to.
“Tiny dent!” he shouted. “That…woman nearly cost me a year off my life.”
“Tell me what happened,” Letty demanded a second time. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her brother this agitated.
“She ran a stop sign. Claimed she didn’t see it. What kind of idiot misses a stop sign, for Pete’s sake?”
“Did she slam into you?”