Cowgirl in High Heels. Jeannie Watt

but it’s a long drive home.”

      It was Monday. A workday in her book. Perhaps the employees worked flex time. Ellie had no way of knowing, since there appeared to be no records on the ranch other than a file folder with tax information.

      “Great. Well—” she held out a hand “—it’s good to meet you.”

      The kid grabbed her extended hand, pumped it once, hard, then released it. Ellie smiled briefly, waiting until the kid had started down the steps to the all-terrain vehicle parked near the front gate before rubbing her hands together to get the feeling back into the one he’d just crushed. The kid was almost to the bottom of the walk when he turned. “Hey, you might want to keep an eye out for Hiss.”

      “Hiss?”

      “He catches mice. He’s harmless.”

      “Hiss is a cat?” Ellie asked, wondering why she needed to keep an eye out for it.

      “A snake,” Lonnie called, then with a cheerful wave got on his ATV and started the motor.

      “Great,” Ellie muttered. “Thanks.” Mr. Madison was at the rodeo, Mr. Feldman was nowhere to be found and she needed to watch out for Hiss the snake. She couldn’t say she was overly impressed with Milo’s ranch operations so far.

      Ellie stepped back into the kitchen, then instantly turned toward fresh air as the pumpkin smell hit her. Taking a deep breath and holding it, she went inside, picked up the box with the pie and opened the sliding door off the dining room. She set the box on the back-patio picnic table, then quickly went back into the house. The smell lingered, not as strongly as before, but enough that Ellie knew she’d be spending some time at the other end of the house.

      The baby suddenly seemed a bit more real.

      CHAPTER THREE

      “IT WAS BAD,” Francisco said as he took the cup of coffee Lydia handed him. “Not as bad as right after he signed the sale papers, but I think he can’t hold his alcohol as well as he used to.”

      “If he’s going to do this every time someone from the family comes to the ranch... Well, that isn’t going to work at all,” Lydia said. “He’s going to—” She abruptly closed her mouth as the bathroom door opened, and then slow footsteps came down the hall.

      “Son of a bitch,” Walt muttered as he walked into the kitchen, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Where’s the truck that hit me?”

      “The truck had a big Budweiser logo emblazoned on the side,” Lydia said as she folded a dish towel. “And you know better than to stand in the middle of the street in front of it. Sit down.”

      Walt sat. He was a small guy, with a thin, wiry frame that had caused a lot of people to misjudge his strength in his younger days. “Who rescued me?”

      Francisco raised a hand.

      “I owe you.”

      “Yeah, you do,” Francisco said. “More than that, you owe Jessie. It was bath night.”

      “Sorry about that.” He raised red-rimmed eyes toward Ryan. “You’re quiet.” Ryan shrugged. “Did you win?”

      “Of course he won,” Lydia snapped. “The question is, are you going to keep doing this?”

      “What?” Walt blinked at her.

      “What?” Lydia propped a hand on her aproned hip and waved her spatula at him. “Drinking yourself into oblivion whenever the Bradworths show up.”

      “That’s not—”

      “Bull. How do you want your eggs?”

      “Scrambled.”

      “How about you?” she asked Ryan, eyeing him carefully.

      She had her mother radar on full force, having sensed something was off the moment he’d walked in the door with Francisco, twenty minutes before. There was no way he was telling her he’d had contact with the Montoyas. As far as he was concerned, that episode was over and done—unless, of course, his father did something stupid.

      “I’ve got to get to the vet clinic pretty soon,” Ryan said.

      “After you eat.”

      “Scrambled,” he said. Another hard mother stare and then Lydia turned back to her eggs. Ryan scowled at Walt. “Francisco will take you home and then you’d better clean up—just in case this lady wants to talk to you.”

      “Just like last time,” Walt muttered. When it’d taken Ryan a good day to calm him down after he’d discovered what Mrs. Bradworth had in mind for his ancestral home.

      “I know what you’re thinking,” Walt said in a grim voice.

      “Yeah?” Ryan bit.

      “You’re thinking that it’s stupid of me to stay at the ranch when it hurts knowing someone else owns it.” Walt placed his palms flat on the lace tablecloth. “Well, they might own the business, but I don’t feel like they own the land. They don’t know nothing about the land. That land is still mine.”

      Lydia’s eyebrows went up from where she was stirring the eggs at the counter behind Walt.

      “I’m part of it,” Walt said. “I’m gonna die there.”

      Lydia gave her head a shake and poured the eggs into the pan.

      Ryan tamped down the twinge of alarm that had started to rise. Walt had never talked of dying before. “If you’re talking about taking yourself out—”

      Walt’s eyes flashed up. “I didn’t say I was going to die soon. Or that I was going to take myself out. Just that I’m never leaving my property.”

      “In that case, play ball. Okay?”

      “I’ll do my best,” Walt grumbled.

      “See to it.”

      Fifteen minutes later Francisco escorted a muttering Walt to his pickup for the drive back to the ranch while Ryan hung around a few minutes to help his mother clean the kitchen. He figured, vet or no vet, it was the least he could do.

      “I don’t like this dying talk,” Ryan muttered as he closed the dishwasher and set the controls.

      “You aren’t his keeper, son.” Lydia brushed wisps of blond hair off her forehead. Despite the rather tumultuous life she’d led, his mother looked younger than her fifty years.

      “Closest thing he’s got,” Ryan said, wiping his hands on a towel and then hanging it to dry.

      Lydian touched his shoulder. “I heard about Matt Montoya.”

      Ryan sucked in a breath, wondering how his mom could mention Matt’s name so casually. “Yeah.”

      “How you doing with that?”

      Ryan met his mother’s eyes, so like his own. “I don’t quite know yet.”

      * * *

      IT TOOK A good twenty minutes before Ellie could no longer smell pumpkin, nutmeg and cloves, even with the windows cracked open. The sad thing was that Ellie loved pumpkin pie—or rather, she had.

      Finally she ventured into the kitchen and closed the windows, then took a cautious breath. All clear.

      Relieved to have the kitchen back, she put the shiny new kettle on the burner to brew some of Angela’s chamomile tea. She ripped open the packet, then quickly sniffed it to make sure the baby didn’t object before dropping the tea bag in the mug.

      Reality was definitely setting in. A reality she hadn’t counted on and frankly didn’t think she deserved. She’d planned her life so carefully, after all. Had dotted her i’s, crossed her t’s. Sacrificed. Stayed in and studied when other people went out during college. Worked overtime. Volunteered