Wander Canyon Courtship. Allie Pleiter

Three

      It was as if a bomb had just been dropped in the room. Yvonne didn’t fully understand what was being said, only that it was large and unexpected and volatile.

      In the chair next to her, Chaz was practically rattling with cold, barely held-in-check alarm. He stared straight at his stepfather and said very slowly, “What are you saying?”

      The tone sent a chill down her back. Pauline set down her fork and gave Yvonne a brace yourself look.

      Hank straightened as he met Chaz’s glower. “I’m saying I want you to manage Wander Canyon Ranch while I’m gone and when I retire.”

      “Manage,” Chaz repeated.

      “That’s what I said.”

      “Manage isn’t own.” Chaz’s voice somehow managed to get lower and colder.

      Hank didn’t flinch. “No, it’s not.”

      Yvonne had the vision of two enormous bulls stomping and snorting at each other, each waiting for the other to charge. She busied herself with the irritable contact lens, needing something to do rather than watch this unfold. Why had Hank done this in front of her and Pauline? This should have been a private conversation between Chaz and his stepfather.

      She realized, at that moment, what was actually happening. A surge of compassion rose up in her chest for Chaz. What a blindsiding blow to receive in front of strangers.

      Hank cleared his throat. “The land is best kept in one piece, son. You know that.”

      It seemed a cruel detail that Hank chose to use the word son at this moment. Chaz tightened his grip on the steak knife he was still holding, his knuckles white and his forearms flexing.

      “A choice had to be made,” Hank continued. “One we all knew was coming someday, so I chose to make it now. We all want it to stay Walker land, don’t we?”

      “My last name is Walker,” Chaz practically ground out through his teeth. “I have never, ever regretted changing my last name. Until now.”

      Chaz put the knife down on the table in something just short of a slam. “Seems I’ve never been anything more than a stepson after all.”

      “Chaz,” Pauline began, scrambling for calm Yvonne saw no signs of coming.

      “Don’t!” Chaz shot back, scowling at her as if she’d put Hank up to this. “Don’t you even—”

      “Don’t you talk like that to my bride,” Hank growled back with a force equal to Chaz’s tone. “I get you may be upset.”

      “May be?” Chaz shouted. People around the restaurant began to stare. Yvonne and Pauline traded cautious looks, wondering what to do if one of the men would stalk from the room or throw a punch.

      Yvonne sent a prayer flying up that Chaz and Hank would remember they were in public and miles from home. It seemed that Chaz somehow overheard her prayer, for he lowered his voice, but still jabbed a finger at her and Pauline.

      “Is that why you did this here? In front of them? So I wouldn’t haul off at you like I want to right now? Manage Wander Canyon? Manage? No wonder you bailed on fishing. You know what I would have done had we been alone. Well played, Dad.” Chaz spit the final word out with such bitterness Yvonne felt it stab her chest. “You always did know how to drop a bomb.”

      Yvonne looked to Hank’s reaction. He looked pained, but not ashamed, or regretful, or in any way unsure of his decision.

      Auntie P. wasn’t marrying into a tangle. She was marrying into an all-out war.

      * * *

      Yvonne could barely believe they didn’t leave right there and then, but it was as if neither Chaz nor Hank would flinch first. Eat? Now? She was practically nauseous from the anger flowing between those two men.

      She’d never been so grateful to lose a contact lens in her life. She didn’t even bother to really look for it, just pounced on it as a reason to wrap up this torturous meal and go home. There wasn’t a dessert in the world worth staying at this table for.

      “I’ll drive,” Chaz declared as they reached the parking lot, grabbing the keys out of her hand when she pulled them from her bag. At least it would give him something to do—he’d probably implode from just having to sit steaming in the passenger seat.

      Only that left her in that passenger seat as she directed Chaz home along the back roads toward Matrimony Valley. The van echoed with an icy silence, Hank and Pauline huddling in the back seat holding hands and exchanging wary looks. Chaz gripped the steering wheel and drove with careful, angry precision.

      And silence. He merely nodded at her directions to turn here or there, barely uttering a word since they left the table. Even with half her vision blurred, Chaz looked angry enough to walk the forty-some miles back to the valley.

      Now what? Yvonne’s brain spun in a dozen directions trying to figure out what to do next. Short of enduring the drive in ragged silence, there seemed to be nothing to say or do. There was no way to make this less awkward. There simply was...

      A dark mound loomed into her headlights without warning. “Look out!” she cried and Chaz stomped on the brakes, but not before a heartrending thud and bump announced they’d hit whatever it was. Chaz wrestled for control of the van as it screeched into a slow-motion, tilting arc that veered it off the road.

      Yvonne yelped as she was knocked against the van door, and Pauline and Hank gasped as they were tossed about in the back seat. The airbags deployed and deflated in a heartbeat, leaving Yvonne stunned by the sudden whack back against her headrest. For a moment she couldn’t breathe.

      “What...?” Hank gasped, coughing. Yvonne tried to pull in a breath to answer and found her lungs didn’t work. She tried to ascertain what had just happened, but all she could take in was a hissing, ticking sound and the smoke rising off the crunched front of her van. No. Oh, no. Please no. Absurdly, her brain reminded her she had only four payments to go on the vehicle.

      “Is anyone hurt?” It was the first words Chaz had spoken in half an hour. He was shaking his head, recovering from the whack of the driver’s-side airbag now hanging deflated from the center of the steering wheel.

      “I...don’t think so.” Yvonne gulped, finally able to breathe. Her shoulder felt pummeled by the seat belt, her cheeks stung from the slap of the airbag, but she hadn’t hit her head, and her arms and legs seemed to move freely.

      “Dad?” The raw panic in Chaz’s voice pricked Yvonne’s heart—such a different tone from what he’d used at the table. Anger hadn’t erased every bit of love and worry, just most of it, and hopefully only for now.

      “Auntie P.?” she said, twisting around to see Hank and her aunt righting themselves from where they’d tumbled over in the crash.

      “We’re okay back here,” Pauline said in a breathless gasp. Yvonne saw no blood or evidence of any injury.

      Chaz looked at her, his features sharp in the moonlight. “Are you okay?”

      “I think so,” she replied, even though she didn’t feel anything close to okay.

      “What was that in the road?” Hank asked.

      Yvonne looked up the embankment to see the silhouette of an animal struggling in the road. Based on the whining sounds, it was injured. Could tonight get any worse?

      “That sounds like a dog,” Pauline said, worry pitching her voice high.

      “Or a fox or a wolf,” Hank cautioned.

      Chaz took immediate control of the situation, holding out his hand. “Give me your phone to call 911. Your local number will be better to call from than mine.” Rather than be annoyed, Yvonne found herself grateful. One hour’s curmudgeon was another hour’s useful hero, it seemed.

      Yvonne