Reuniting with the Rancher. Rachel Lee

it.

      After she finished washing her dishes, Holly gripped the edge of the counter, closed her eyes, and tried not to hear the empty silence of the house around her. She couldn’t believe she wouldn’t hear Martha’s voice at any moment. Couldn’t believe that Martha was really gone.

      God, it was beginning to hit. Numbness had begun wearing off yesterday, but now it seemed to be deserting her completely.

      Hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and her heart ached as if a vise gripped it. She had known it would hurt to lose her aunt, but she hadn’t imagined this. It was every bit as bad as when her parents died in the car crash. Every bit, and that grief still haunted her.

      Martha had been her anchor ever since, her family, the person who kept her from feeling like an orphan, and now Martha was gone.

      Never had Holly felt so utterly alone.

      She wept until she could weep no more, until fatigue weighed her down and her sides hurt from sobbing. But at last quiet returned to her mind and heart. Temporarily, anyway. She fixated on getting that tree, the one wish of her aunt’s that she could still carry out.

      She washed up, dressed in jeans and a hoodie, the clothes she wore when she was working with the children, and stared almost blindly at her reflection in the mirror.

      Who was she? It almost seemed as if she had become a stranger to herself, as if grief were sweeping huge parts of her aside. Closing her eyes, she thought of the kids she worked with back home in Chicago, kids who were always hungry, often cold, flotsam in a sea beyond their control.

      Thinking of them grounded her again, reminding her she had a purpose, and purpose was the most important thing of all.

      When she finally stepped outside to face the day’s duties, she paused in the drive, feeling the spring breeze of Conard County, Wyoming, whisper all around her. Here the air was almost never still, and it seemed to carry barely heard words on it, as if it were alive.

      She opened herself to it, letting it wash over her like a tender touch, the kind of tenderness she wouldn’t feel again, the tenderness of mother, father, aunt.

      She took time to walk around the house taking in the small changes, having random thoughts about what she could do with this place. Her job as a social worker lay back in Chicago, but as she strolled around she realized that an ever-present tension had begun to evaporate. Today she didn’t have to walk on those streets; she didn’t have to visit tiny apartments in public housing where despair seemed to paint the walls. She didn’t have to deal with the problems of too-skinny children who were having trouble in school or at home. She didn’t have to wage a battle against desperation and hopelessness. Not today.

      Then, squaring her shoulders, she strode to the car. A tree. She needed to get a tree.

      She saw a vehicle coming up her driveway. A dusty but relatively recent pickup of some kind. Who could possibly be coming out here?

      She didn’t have to wait long for her answer. She quickly recognized Cliff’s silhouette behind the wheel. A few seconds later he pulled up beside her.

      “Going somewhere?” he asked.

      She resisted the urge to tell him it was none of his business, because she might have to deal with him for a long time to come. “My aunt wanted me to plant a tree in her memory. I was about to go look for one.”

      He glanced at her rental. “Hard to carry in that. I was coming if to see if you wanted to take care of the bank account transfer. The sooner we clear the decks, the happier we’ll both be.”

      Her teeth tightened. He really wasn’t going to let her forget. “Fine,” she said shortly.

      He looked at her car again. “You planning to stay long?”

      “I have a couple of weeks before I have to get back. If that’s long, then yes.”

      “One rain and that car won’t get anywhere. You’ll bog down.”

      “It’s a rental,” she said defensively, feeling as if he was criticizing her somehow. “Do you ever say anything that’s not critical?”

      He paused. “I call things as I see them. So did your aunt. How about you?”

      “What I see is a man I intended to thank for helping Aunt Martha, but right now I couldn’t choke the words out to save my life. You’re rude.”

      His lips tightened, but his response was mild. “I see a little of your aunt in you.”

      She didn’t respond. Ordinarily she would have taken that as a compliment, but right now she wasn’t in the mood. Besides, with this man, it must have been a sideways condemnation of some kind. He had plenty of reason to hate her, she knew, but after ten years, shouldn’t he be over it? Stupid question, she thought immediately. Her own behavior still troubled her after all these years.

      “Well, climb in my cab. I can carry a tree in my bed better than you can in that car, and we can take care of the bank.”

      She wanted to refuse. Oh, man, did she want to tell him to take a hike, and even more so because of the antipathy that radiated from him. She was starting to feel a whole lot of dislike for him, too. Before, she’d never disliked him, but now she wondered if she had been more wise than foolish all those years ago.

      Damn this unwanted sexual attraction. Any woman would feel it, she assured herself. It was just normal. He was that kind of guy, a real-life hunk.

      She didn’t want it, though. Not one little bit. She’d tasted that apple a long time ago, and it hadn’t been enough to keep her here. She’d grown up, but she was beginning to wonder if he had.

      She had to give in to reality. He was right—carrying a tree would be easier in his truck.

      Setting her chin, she marched around and climbed in the cab, prepared for a couple of unpleasant hours, not the least of which would be the way her body kept wanting to betray her mind and heart.

      Chapter Two

      As unneighborly as it felt, Cliff didn’t say a word on the way to town. What were they going to talk about anyway? Discussing Martha didn’t seem exactly safe right now, although maybe he was wrong.

      On the other hand, he didn’t want to renew his relationship with Holly. Not in the least. A summer-long torrid affair a decade ago had left him scarred and her...What had it done to her? She’d turned her back on him readily enough, giving him all the reasons why she couldn’t stay in this county. She’d suffocate, she’d said. She had important things to do, she’d said. She was going to be a social worker and save the world, or at least part of the world.

      He glanced at her from the corner of his eye and thought that social work didn’t seem to be agreeing with her. She looked entirely too thin, for one thing. He couldn’t judge anything else because she was grieving for her aunt, after all, but if he’d been looking at a horse showing those signs, he’d have been thinking “worn to the bone.”

      Fatigue seemed to wrap around her. She didn’t really have the spark he remembered. Much as he didn’t want to, he wondered if social work had gutted her in some way.

      But damned if he’d ask. She’d be leaving here in two weeks. By the grace of heaven, he hoped that wouldn’t be long enough to open scars or get him all tangled up in her barbed wire again.

      Because that was how he thought of it: barbed wire. Her departure had scored him deep, like a million sharp knives. No freaking way was he going through that again.

      Of course, he thought, she might not be the same person any longer. He might not even really be drawn to the woman she had become. So far he hadn’t seen much to like. It was almost as if he were the enemy, not the other way around.

      Which got him to wondering how she had justified her cruelty. Ah, hell, leave that can of worms alone. Take her to the bank, help her buy and plant the damned tree, and then forget she was on the same part of the planet