The Rancher's Redemption. Melinda Curtis

their land or pay through the nose for water that should have been theirs. Three years later and the stress of the struggle to keep the Double T alive had sent Dad to an early grave.

       Win back the water rights.

       Set the ranch to rights.

      Those were her mantras lately.

      A shiny red truck parked in front of the office where the Mercedes had been. Rachel’s ex-husband got out of the vehicle that used to be hers. Ted Jackson was uncouth, compact and cowboy rough—everything Ben wasn’t. Everything that shouldn’t throw Rachel off her game. She repeated her mantras, adding one:

       Win back the water rights.

       Set the ranch to rights.

       Get a signed custody agreement.

      Everything threw her off her game lately, especially the thought that she should add more to her list of mantras.

      Rachel opened the door to the June heat with a hand that still trembled. “The custody papers are ready for you to sign.”

      Ted paused on the porch, staring at her with bloodshot gray eyes. “I didn’t say I’d sign. I said I’d look.”

      She wanted to slam the door and shut Ted out of her life. She wanted to press the reboot button and start her adult life over. It’d taken her three months to get Ted to sign the divorce papers. Three more to get this close to him signing the custody papers. No way was she dividing custody of her nine-month-old baby equally with this drunk.

      And yet, if he didn’t sign that was exactly what the court demanded.

      Rachel gave Ted her lawyer smile, polite but withdrawn. “Let’s review the papers and see what you think.”

      He came inside and waited for Rachel to shut the out-of-kilter front door before following her back to the office, not taking off his straw cowboy hat. “One weekend a month. That’s what we agreed to.”

      “Only at your parents’ house.” His mother watched Poppy sometimes. She was a capable and trustworthy adult.

      “That’ll work since I don’t change diapers.” Ted slouched in a chair and stared at her with a lecherous smile.

      Rachel’s stomach did a slow, sickening roll. Ted was proof the pickings in Falcon Creek were slim. A ticking biological clock, a night of dancing, and she’d been convinced she could make her father’s handsome, blond ranch hand into something. She hadn’t counted on a prior, much stronger claim being staked by whiskey. Whiskey made Ted something else. Something sour and dangerous.

      She clicked the point on a pen and slid it with the papers across her desk. She’d flagged the places Ted needed to sign with red sticky notes. If he agreed to this, she’d file the agreement at the county courthouse within the hour.

      Ted didn’t reach for the paper or the pen. “I was talking to the boys down at the Watering Hole...”

      He’d been taking advice from his drunk buddies at the bar again? Rachel straightened her spine and cleared her throat of angry responses that would do her no good.

      Ted pointed at the custody agreement, still not touching it. “I want you to put in there that you can never take Poppy away from Falcon Creek.”

      Rachel’s neck twinged. She was a fool for once telling Ted she’d like to try life outside of Falcon Creek.

      “I want that moving bit in there because I deserve to watch my daughter grow up.” Ted stood, scraping the chair across the wood floor. “I deserve things, you know.”

      He did. He deserved a stay in a rehab facility or dry out in a county jail cell. He didn’t deserve Rachel’s truck, her money, her daughter or her freedom.

      “I deserve things,” Ted repeated, spinning in slow motion until he found his bearings and headed toward the door. He yanked it open and slammed it on the way out.

      Rachel tried to breathe normally. She shouldn’t feel trapped in Falcon Creek. This was home. It always had been. It was just...

      She had dreams. She sometimes wondered. What would it be like to be a lawyer in California or Florida, someplace it didn’t snow? Or even New York, where...

      It was foolish to think she was good enough to practice law in New York. It was foolish to think about anything but this life—managing the ranch, handling a few small cases, raising Poppy.

      She had to be strong for the Thompson legacy, for the Thompsons left. Mom and Nana Nancy. Her sister and her kids. Poppy.

      There was a noise in the second office. A thin wail. Poppy was waking up. The sticky front door had been slammed too many times.

      Rachel squared her shoulders. Dreams were for sissies. She had to accept the consequences of her choices and be strong.

      If not for herself, for Poppy.

       CHAPTER TWO

      THE BLACKWELL FAMILY RANCH.

      That’s what the new, grand metal arch over the gravel road proclaimed. Ben’s childhood home.

      Family? Not hardly. The only Blackwells who lived there were Big E and Zoe. Mom and Dad were dead. All five Blackwell brothers had vamoosed.

      Ben drove the Mercedes down the road with a speed that matched his reluctance to return.

      A new green metal roof rose above the rolling pasture, lifted by log framing. But it wasn’t a simple log cabin. It was a huge building. Two stories. Two wings. An imposing porch. Twenty or so vehicles parked in front. This must be the guest lodge.

      Farther behind the lodge, a huge gazebo shaded several wooden picnic tables. Beyond that sat a fire pit big enough to roast a pig in. Adults and kids milled about in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. In a nearby corral, two mares and two foals watched the afternoon proceedings with bright eyes and ears cocked forward, as if they couldn’t believe the West had been invaded by suburbia.

      Where were the blue jeans? The plaid button-downs with pearly snaps? The boots?

      “So much for the dude ranch,” Ben muttered.

      At the fork in the road, he steered to the right and drove on to a much smaller, white two-story home with green shutters and a wraparound porch. He took his foot off the gas and slowed to a crawl. The house was surrounded by lawn on all sides. He’d bet the big elm in the backyard still held the tire swing and that there’d be a picnic table and two benches near a modest fire pit, a place the Blackwells had enjoyed gathering around over the years.

      “Listen.” Mom had tucked Ben under one arm and Ethan under the other as the red flames crackled in the darkness. “Can you hear the owl hoot? He’s telling you he’s out hunting for food tonight.”

      “Boo!” Ben’s older brother, Jon, dug his fingers into Ben’s and Ethan’s shoulders from behind, like an owl striking its prey.

      Ben and Ethan screamed. But their screams turned into laughter as Jon ruffled their hair and handed them marshmallows to toast.

      “Jon, you need to take care of your little brothers.” Dad handed out sticks sharpened for s’more making. “And not wake up the babies.” The babies being Tyler and Chance, asleep upstairs.

      “Let the boy have his fun,” Big E said, smoking a cigar at the picnic table. “Ranch life has a way of making boys into men before you know it. And then they’ll have too many responsibilities to laugh.”

      His grandfather had been right. When Ben was twelve, his parents had drowned in a flash flood as they tried to cross Falcon Creek in their truck. After that, there wasn’t a lot of joking in the house for quite some time. Jon had taken on the burden of mother hen. Heaven knew the women Big E married, one after