The next morning Alana packed Marcel off to sail with one of his Parisian buddies, who was testing out a newly designed catamaran in the strong winds of San Francisco Bay. She’d been tempted to go but when she checked her email, she saw that the permit meeting had been moved up three days. Marcel had been very put out when she told him she’d have to stay on the ranch and deal.
It wasn’t just the broken sailing date that put Marcel in a foul mood. Alana had made him sleep in the guest room again. When he’d first arrived she was feeling mixed up, way too bemused about Matt to have Marcel in her bed, something he hadn’t taken lightly. She’d made an excuse, but he was a perceptive man. And after seeing Matt with his date in the restaurant the night before, her emotions had been too tangled to even consider the sensual night Marcel had proposed. He was too clever to sulk, but his lack of conversation and clipped answers when they’d shared an early, hurried breakfast betrayed his displeasure.
Frowning, Alana stood on her balcony and dragged a brush through her hair as she watched Marcel drive away.
Why couldn’t she just love Marcel and accept what he offered? There’d been a day when she thought she might’ve talked herself into settling for a relationship with him. He loved freedom as she did, days that stretched out, open, ready for pleasure and adventure. Sure, both of them had obligations, but nothing that couldn’t be handled by high-end consultants or a savvy personal assistant or expert hired hand. Both of them could afford to pay people to wrangle the details of their lives.
Freedom.
Wasn’t that what she’d fought so hard over the past years to keep? Wasn’t that why she scorned any commitment that would hem her in?
Yet since meeting Matt and since spending time at the ranch, she’d become aware of an untethered quality to the life she’d led up till now. In her fight to remain free of commitments, of shunning restricting relationships and avoiding activities that required advance planning and settling down, she’d created a different sort of trap. Admitting that she was trapped in a snare of her own making was like waking up from a stupor, like wearing clothes that once fit but were now so tight they were suffocating.
She stared from her balcony and watched the ranch come alive in the glory of the day.
She’d grown to love the sounds of morning on the ranch. Doves cooed as they rummaged for their breakfast in the rich mulch of the garden, and hummingbirds bubbled in their squeaky warbles as they perched on the honeysuckle clinging to the arbor just below her bedroom window.
Staffers greeted one another like old friends meeting on a village green. Rafael waved at Peg as he rattled by in his tricked-out golf cart.
Alana smiled at the inventive way he’d found to strap every imaginable garden tool along the sides and across the back. Rafael was innovative and clever and considerate. The previous week he’d invited her to his cottage to have dinner with him and Isobel.
Nana had deeded the four-room cottage and an acre of land to them when she’d died. She’d even created a private access road leading up to it—in case something happened to the ranch, Alana surmised. In case someone bought it and turned it into a resort or a summer home, or subdivided it for development.
In case Alana sold it.
That evening as they’d shared a simple but delicious meal, neither Isobel nor Rafael had asked her intentions regarding the ranch. Still, she had felt the question hanging heavy over them, like a pendulum swinging above their heads.
Commotion in front of the frantoio pulled her attention back from her thoughts.
Down in the courtyard Peg was herding the last group of campers to the arts and crafts tent. Alana didn’t have to search their faces to know that Sophie wasn’t among them. She’d come to love the squeals of delight and laughter of the children, but today that sound drove a wave of melancholy deep into her soul.
She shut the doors to her balcony and walked to the polished burled bureau and pulled on what she now considered her ranch clothes—a long-sleeved white shirt and buff-colored jeans. She laced up her half boots and tied a scarf around her neck, finding that a scarf kept her warm until the morning lost its chill.
She spied the robe—balled up in a corner of her bureau drawer—that she’d worn on the last night she and Matt had made love.
She hadn’t had the nerve to wear it since.
She pulled out the robe and breathed in his scent. A chill pinged down her spine as it dawned on her that his was the scent she’d been dreading ever since she’d heard about it. She pulled the robe tighter against her.
She’d read the reports—experts said that a woman would know with her body when a man was right for her, when a man was a near perfect mate, and she’d know it by his scent. At the time the report had seemed both far-fetched and intriguing. Yet she knew the magic of scent; there was every reason to believe the academics or scientists or whatever they were, even if they hadn’t had years of research to back them up.
She shook out the robe and hung it in her armoire. Though she was tempted to burn it, to rid herself of yet another reminder of yet another mistake, she couldn’t. The silky piece of cloth was her only tangible keepsake of the love he’d awakened. She didn’t want to forget that she could feel like that, even if it hurt to remember.
As she reached for her sun hat, her gaze fell on Piers, the bear Matt had won at the fair. His plush body slumped on a chaise in the corner of her bedroom.
“What are you staring at?”
Even the stuffed bear seemed to be taking her measure. She plumped him up and turned him so he could look out the window.
And she cursed Matt for making her want more than the life she’d had before she’d met him. For making her see that she didn’t have what it took to fit in with him and Sophie.
She grabbed her hat and headed downstairs. Maybe a cup of tea and another slice of toast would settle the rumbling in her stomach.
“Peg brought the checks for you to sign,” Isobel said as Alana entered the sunny kitchen. “They’re on the sunroom table. And Rafael said to tell you that Iris is settled into the north-slope cottage. He put in a new electric line so she could run her distiller, but there’s no phone.”
“Distiller?” Alarmed, Alana pictured moonshine and contraband.
“For her essential oils. We had an old distiller down in the barn. I didn’t think you’d mind. But she says she needs to speak with you, if you have the time.”
In only two days the ranch had welcomed Iris as if she’d been sent from the heavens. Even Alana felt that the old lady belonged on the ranch. Alana didn’t believe in spirits coming back and taking on new bodies, but if she had, she’d say some part of Nana resided in Iris. It was both eerie and wonderful.
“I’m glad you put the distiller to good use,” Alana said as she took one of the scones from a tray Isobel had just pulled from the oven.
“Careful they’re—”
“Hot!” Alana dropped the scone to the counter.
They both laughed. Five years ago she’d stood in the kitchen with Isobel and done the very same thing. The only difference was that Nana had been sitting in the alcove signing the stack of checks for the ranch payroll and Alana had been a rangy teenager chomping at the bit to grow up and be free to roam the world as she pleased.
“Patience,” Nana had said to Alana that morning. “Some things are best when they’ve cooled down a bit. And I’m not talking about just scones.”
Alana regretted that she hadn’t heeded more of her grandmother’s well-tested advice.
Isobel handed Alana a plate and a potholder.
“The permit meeting’s been moved up,” Alana said as she placed the scone on her plate to cool. “I’m headed over to Mr. Hartman’s. Apparently he’s the only one who can help me get the other ranchers on board. We have three days.”
“Take him some scones,” Isobel said with a knowing wink. “He may be a tough old bird, but he has a weakness for my scones. Señora Tavonesi took him a plate once a week.”