The Ranch She Left Behind. Kathleen O'Brien

been able to break—and tried to make up her mind what number seven should be.

      Ben had been right, of course. When the shock of the wasp spray incident had worn off, a strange pride took its place. She felt empowered. Why shouldn’t she? She’d prevailed over a big, hulking intruder. She might have been terrified, but she hadn’t panicked. She’d kept her head, and she’d driven him away—without anyone getting seriously hurt.

      She’d decided that very day to start the list. And before any doubt could set in, she’d accomplished numbers one and two. Sell the town house—almost frighteningly easy. And buy a small house in Silverdell—much scarier, as she didn’t have time to see it for herself but had to trust Jenny Gladiola, Silverdell’s longtime real estate agent.

      But she’d accomplished both, and now here she was, less than three miles from Bell River Ranch. Here to stay. Here to call Silverdell home again, after all these years.

      A shiver passed through her. Thanks to Jenny’s discretion, no one in the family yet knew she was in town. Jenny had been a Dellian real estate agent forever, and she’d kept her career flourishing, through good markets and bad, by knowing how to keep her mouth shut.

      For now Penny was safe. However, telling Bree and Rowena absolutely had to be next.

      Her sisters had been begging her for months to come live at the dude ranch with them. They could use the help, they said. They needed an art teacher, they said. But she knew the truth—they were worried about her. They wanted to slip her into their nest, straight from the nest Ruth had kept her in.

      No one wanted her to learn to fly.

      But, by golly, she was going to learn anyhow.

      So...back to the Risk-it List. What should number seven be? She had to pick very carefully. After the two big jolts of selling the town house and buying the duplex, she wanted the rest of the list to be relatively easy. She’d tackle a few of her phobias—but she wouldn’t set herself up for failure. No wrestling pythons in the rain forest or taking a commercial shuttle to the space station.

      Just juggling, costumes, kissing...

      Ben would laugh. He was much more the space station type. She’d decided not to call hers a bucket list. It sounded too ambitious. That might come later, after she’d accomplished everything on this one. After she’d learned a little bit about who Penny Wright really was.

      Instead, she’d called it the Risk-it List. A list of things she’d never had the nerve to do—though she’d always envied others who did. Things that looked daring, or exciting, or just plain fun. Things that might be mistakes. Things that might make her look silly. Things she had phobias about...

      Aha! Phobias!

      So seven would be: Ride in a hot air balloon. (fear of heights)

      Take a picture of someone famous. (shyness)

      Get a beautiful tattoo. (fear of disapproval)

      Kiss a total stranger. (fear of...everything)

      Go white-water rafting (fear of dying J)

      Make love in a sailboat.

      Number Eleven, the white-water rafting, would probably be the scariest. She really, really found the rapids terrifying. So obviously she’d left that till toward the end of the list.

      But where had that crazy Number Twelve come from? Was it from some movie she’d seen? Some couple she’d spotted setting off into San Francisco Bay...with her imagination supplying the rest?

      â€œWhat’s so funny?”

      Danny, the ice-cream artist, was at her table, holding a bowl so laden with beautifully arranged sweets that she knew she’d never be able to finish it.

      He looked for a safe place to set it down. Flushing, she tilted her legal pad toward her chest to hide it, then felt ridiculous. Why did she care whether he saw it?

      â€œNothing, really,” she said awkwardly. “I just wrote the wrong thing... You know... I mean I spelled it all wrong.”

      Argh. Why did she always feel nervous if she did anything remotely unconventional? She was unconventional, darn it. She was an artist at heart, not a banker. She wanted to dress in flamboyant colors and patterns, and laugh loudly, and lie down on the sidewalk to get the best angle on a snail. She wanted to sing and dance and go to parties—and make love in a sailboat.

      Ruth wasn’t here to reproach her. Her father wasn’t here to mock. No one cared. No one.

      She could simply have laughed and said, “I wrote ‘sex on a sailboat’ on my wish list, though until this very minute I had no idea it was a fantasy of mine.”

      Danny was probably no more than twenty-three, fresh out of college—he’d probably be a lot more embarrassed than she was.

      New Number One: Stop Being Such a Doormat.

      Oh, well. Baby steps, remember? She gave him a warm smile to offset any insult he might have taken from the snatched-away list. She complimented his gorgeous creation, stuck a finger—sorry, Ruth—into the whipped cream, then stuck the finger into her mouth and sighed. Real whipped cream. Sinfully delicious.

      â€œIt’s fantastic,” she said. “I’ve moved back to town, and you can be sure I’ll be a regular customer!”

      But it was too late. Obviously offended, he’d dialed his friendliness down about three notches. He wandered toward the ice-cream cases and began stacking and restacking prepackaged tubs—though they’d been perfectly aligned already.

      Darn it. She sighed, annoyed with herself all over again. That was three strikes. Afraid to pull into Bell River. Afraid to pull into her own new duplex. Afraid to let this nice man see that she was making a list of dreams.

      She’d better stiffen up, and fast, or the ego boost of banishing her intruder would disappear into a cloud of self-doubt. Her life might slide right back into the gray, conformist soup of the past seventeen years.

      No. Darn it. No.

      She couldn’t stand that. She wouldn’t let it happen. One way or another, she’d find the courage to—

      The bell rang out as the door opened. She kept her legal pad against her chest as two people walked in. A little girl, maybe ten? Sulky, angry about something.

      As she did with everyone she saw, Penny mentally began to sketch the child. A duckling still, but with definite traces of swan showing up around the edges. Her chubby cheeks were out of proportion to her longish, narrow chin. Someday, in the next year or two, her contours would lengthen, and she’d have the sweetest heart-shaped face....

      Her hair was a glorious mess—shining, thick, brown, glossy curls that she had no idea what to do with now. And her figure obviously was hard to fit. A thick waist over too-long, too-skinny legs that made her look a little like a candy apple on toothpicks today. But when she got her teenage growth spurt, and that torso stretched out to match the limbs....well, watch out, Dad.

      Ohhhh. When Penny’s gaze finally shifted to Dad, she felt a small kick beneath her ribs. What a wonderful face...and the rest of him wasn’t bad, either.

      His coloring wasn’t dramatic—the daughter must have inherited that from Mom. He was brown-haired, with hints of honey in the strands, and a similar honeyed stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes, too, were brown—they caught the light through the window, and glowed amber, rich, a lot like the caramel sliding down her ice cream right now.

      But he didn’t need to be painted with bold colors to be memorable. He oozed power—it was in the jut of his cheekbones, the knife-edge of his jaw, the full sensuality of his lips. And in that body. If he didn’t work outdoors, he must work out indoors...about twenty hours