Summertime on the Ranch

by Carolyn Brown

  She figured more watermelons were coming in when she heard the hinges on the door squeak. “Just stack them over against the wall.”

  “Hey,” Dalton said.

  His deep Texas drawl made her drop the butcher knife on the floor.

  “Hey.” Her eyes locked with his across the room.

  “You ready to talk?” he asked, but he didn’t take a step forward.

  “How did you get back from Haskell so quick?” she asked.

  “I didn’t go,” he answered. “Didn’t plan to take the bulls myself from the beginning. I just thought it would be a good little trip for the two of us, but…” He blinked and took a deep breath. “Need some help?”

  “Doin’ what? Apologizing for not trusting you, or juicing melons?” she asked.

  “I was thinkin’ of melons,” he said. “Are we going to talk about last night or pretend it didn’t happen?”

  “I think we’d better talk about it.” She picked up the knife and carried it over to the sink. “I’m not a big believer in sweeping things under the rug.” She motioned to a couple of green lawn chairs over in the corner.

  He waited for her to sit down, and then he eased down in the chair beside her. “I visited with Lacy this morning on the phone. I didn’t go to her place or invite her to come to mine. Everyone in town knows that I live out here on the ranch in the original old house, but until last night she’d never been in my place.”

  “I believe you,” Becca said. “I shouldn’t have reacted the way I did.”

  “Actually, you had every right to react that way. I also talked to my grandpa and my dad this morning. They both reminded me that I was just reaping what I’d sown. I’ve chased women since I was a teenager, and they told me time after time that the day would come when I would have regrets about being so wild,” he confessed.

  “Grammie read me the riot act, too, only she said that we shouldn’t even consider having a few dates because I didn’t trust you,” Becca told him. “In her opinion I should have kicked Lacy’s arse out of the house when you told her that the baby couldn’t be yours.”

  “She’s not pregnant,” Dalton said. “She got angry when she saw us buying baby blankets, and she wanted to break us up.”

  “What a bitch!” Becca said.

  “She might be, but it worked for her last night anyway,” Dalton said. “Now what do we do?”

  “I’m sorry for the way I acted,” Becca said. “Everyone has a past, no matter how good or bad it is. The important thing is to leave all that where it belongs and go forward.”

  “Is there a forward for us?” he asked.

  She had loved being with him on Sunday and then again last night. She had swallowed her pride and apologized.

  “I sense by your hesitation that you don’t know,” he said. “Anything I can do to change your mind?”

  “You could ask me out on a date that doesn’t involve wine, and we could take it one step at a time, if you’re willing for that,” she said.

  “Becca, will you go out with me tonight? There will be no wine and no drinking, but I can promise you supper and a nice quiet evening where no one will barge in on us.” He smiled for the first time.

  “I’d love to go with you. What can I bring to help with supper?” She returned his smile.

  “Not one thing. I make a real mean ham-and-cheese sandwich, and I’ve got just the hideaway spot for us to visit.” He stood up. “We could leave from here when you get off work at five.”

  “I probably should go home and get cleaned up if this is a date,” she told him.

  “If you want to, you can lose the apron. If not, then you look pretty damn gorgeous in it.” He extended a hand to help her up.

  Her fingers tingled the moment they touched his. One date, and then she’d make a decision and never look back with regrets whichever way it went. After the way she’d acted the night before, he deserved that much. When she was on her feet, he pulled her to his chest and kissed her—long, hard, and passionately.

  Well, maybe two dates just to be sure, she thought when the kiss ended and he walked out of the winery without saying another word.

  Chapter 8

  Becca wasn’t sure what to think when Dalton came to get her for their date. He was driving the beat-up old ranch work truck. When he had told her she should just take off her apron, she hadn’t expected that they would go to a five-star restaurant or a dinner theater, but she did think maybe he would spring for his fancy club-cab vehicle.

  “Where are we going?” she asked as she fastened her seat belt.

  “Somewhere secluded and so quiet you can hear the tree frogs singing,” he answered. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes,” she answered.

  “I promise you’re going to love it, and before you ask, I’ve never taken anyone, male or female, there before. It’s my hidden place where I go to think,” he told her.

  “I feel special,” she said.

  “Darlin’, you are far more than just special,” he whispered softly before he closed the door.

  This wasn’t her first rodeo when it came to pickup lines. She had worked in bars all over Nashville and fended off lots of guys when they brought what they thought was a game good enough to sweet-talk her into bed. What Dalton said didn’t affect her as much as his tone, and the way his warm breath caressed her neck when he spoke.

  He drove through Terral, passing the elementary school on the right, Mama Josie’s café on the left, and then he crossed Highway 81, and drove through a cattle guard with HT welded onto the gate.

  “What does that stand for?” she asked.

  “Hard Time Ranch,” he answered. “The owner is a friend of mine, and he doesn’t mind if I cross his property to get to my hidey hole down by the river.”

  She envisioned a place where they’d have to crawl back into a cave of some kind and hoped to hell there were no spiders or field rats in it. “The river, huh?” She pulled her phone from her purse, found the song they’d listened to the night before, and played it.

  “Yep, and I do love that song,” he answered. “We’re going to the river to sail our vessels. I’ve got them ready in the back of the truck, along with our supper in a basket.”

  She turned around and looked out the back window, but all she could see was a big basket and some chunks of wood. Maybe he was speaking symbolically instead of having a real vessel to sail.

  The truck rattled and groaned when he drove down a rutted path toward the river. She was amazed when they passed a herd of white-tailed deer and a wild hog with a dozen little piglets following behind her. They flushed a covey of quail out of the path, and she watched them fly away, and then a bobcat with a couple of kittens watched them go by.

  “Aren’t they the cutest things ever? I wonder what Grammie’s new babies would think of one of those,” Becca said.

  “I’m not sure you could tame one of those any better than a cowboy can a wild Irish lass with a temper.” Dalton grinned.

  “So, you think I’m a wild lass?” she asked.

  “I saw a little of that in you last night, and truth is, I kind of liked it,” he admitted.

  “I’m glad you like me just the way I am,” she said, nodding.

  He braked and brought the truck to a stop. “Honey, I wouldn’t change a single thing about you. We’ll walk from here. It’s not far. I’m taking my boots off. I like to feel the sand beneath my bare feet like when I was a kid.”

  She kicked off her shoes and tossed them in the bed of the truck along with his boots. He shoved the wood and some string down into a paper bag and picked up the basket. “See that willow tree over there with the limbs hanging in the water?”

  “It’s beautiful,” she gasped.

  “That’s where we’ll have supper. Would you bring the quilt? I’ve kind of run out of hands.” He pointed toward the cab.<
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  She reached over the side and picked up the patchwork quilt. This just might be the most interesting date she’d ever been on in her entire life. The river was peaceful, flowing along, just like it had been since the beginning of time. A pungent aroma filled the whole area, and the willow branches swayed in the warm evening breeze.

  When they reached the huge tree, Dalton set the basket and sack down and parted the thick limbs. “Welcome to my secret place, Becca McKay.”

  She carried the quilt inside the opening and spread it out on the sand. “It’s lovely, Dalton. Thank you for trusting me enough to bring me here.”

  He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “Thank you for trusting me, period. Have a seat and we’ll have our supper, and then we’ll go sail our vessels.”

  “Are you serious?” She eased down on the quilt.

  “Yep, I brought homemade sailboats and string so we can guide them down the river. Sometimes I fish right here, but tonight, I want us to float our little boats and think of that song about the river.” He sat down and opened the basket. “Another confession. I haven’t dated much. Last time I actually asked a woman out was probably for my senior prom in high school.”

  “Really?” she asked.

  “I want us to be open and honest with each other,” he told her.

  “I’ve dated a lot, but I’ve never been picked up in a bar,” she told him.

  “Then we’ve had two different lifestyles.” He handed her a cold bottle of root beer and then laid the rest of the food out between them on the quilt. “The sugar cookies from last night and the bananas are for dessert.”

  Supper was a ham-and-cheese sandwich, a small bag of potato chips, and sweet pickles that they ate with their fingers right out of the jar. Every bite tasted better to Becca than if she had been eating filet mignon in a five-star restaurant.

  “I can see why this would be your favorite place,” she said. “It’s so quiet that I really can hear the tree frogs.”

  “Sometimes they argue with the owls and the other birds roosting in the trees for center spot,” he said.

  At that moment Becca could feel peace surrounding her heart, much like the drooping branches of the weeping willow tree circled around her and Dalton.

  “If this works out between us, we should come here once a week and leave all our troubles, arguments, and disagreements in the river,” she said.

  Dalton leaned over the food between them, cupped her face in his hands, and brushed a sweet kiss across her lips. “That’s what I do when I float my little boat down the river. I put all my worries on it and give them to the current.”

  “Then why the string to control the boat?” She touched her lips to see if they were as hot as they felt and was surprised to see that they were actually cool.

  “Because sometimes I’m not quite ready to let go of my worries, but when I am, I drop the string,” he answered.

  “What worries are you going to put on your boat today?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he replied.

  “You first.” She nodded toward him.

  “My first worry is that this will be our one and only real date.”

  You kissed me on Sunday. According to Grammie, that makes it a real date, she thought.

  “My second is that my wild past will always hang around to haunt us both.”

  Not if we work at squashing it every time it rears its ugly head.

  “My third is that I won’t have the courage to tell you how I feel about you, and make you believe me.”

  I think I already know because I’m listening to my heart.

  “Now, it’s your turn,” he said.

  “You cited three, and that’s a lot to put on one little boat. My worries are number one”—she held up a finger—“ that if we did enter into something serious, you’ll get tired of me and break my heart.” The second finger went up. “That I might regret not giving Nashville one more year.” The third finger shot up. “And that you’ll never bring me back here again.”

  “I would never get tired of you, darlin’”—he took her hand in his—“and if we get really serious about each other, I will love you so much that Nashville will never enter your mind again.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed each knuckle. “And Friday or Saturday night can be our official weeping-willow-tree date night. Are you ready to sail our vessels down the Red River?”

  “This is crazy to think about this right now, but I just remembered that Austin scattered her grandmother’s ashes on this very river. Do you think she’ll destroy our worries for us?” Becca put all the trash and leftovers back into the basket and then stood up.

  “Rye told me that the first time he laid eyes on Austin, she was at the edge of the river giving it her grandmother’s ashes, and it was love at first sight,” Dalton said. “I bet her granny will be glad to drown our worries for us.”

  Dalton got to his feet and picked up the paper sack. In a few long strides they were beyond the willow tree, and he took two small pieces of wood from the bag. He’d drilled a hole in the top of each one that held a tiny paper sail affixed to a dowel rod.

  “They really do look like little sailboats,” Becca said.

  He tied a long piece of twine to each of the dowel rods and handed one to her. She set her boat in the water and mentally loaded it down with her worries. Dalton did the same, and soon the river gently took them both downstream. Within a few minutes, the strings got tangled up together and tightened in their hands.

  Becca took a deep breath and let go. Dalton held on for just a second longer and then turned his vessel loose. The strings were so tangled up with each other that the little boats floated side by side on down the river, forever touching each other.

  “Think that’s an omen?” she asked.

  He slipped an arm around her shoulders. “I hope so. We’ve known each other almost six months, Becca. We’ve worked for the same folks and gone to the same church, so we know each other pretty well. I don’t know where the future will take us, but I hope that those little boats with their strings all tangled up together mean that wherever our life journey takes us, we are together in it. I would never rush you, but will you be this old cowboy’s lady?”

  Without hesitation, she wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered, “Yes, Dalton, I will be your lady.”

  Read on for a peek at an exciting re-issue of one of New York Times bestseller Carolyn Brown’s first romances, with a classic story of redemption and a chance to win back the love you thought was lost forever:

  Coming soon from Sourcebooks Casablanca

  Chapter 1

  Clancy Morgan hadn’t planned to go to the Tishomingo Alumni Reunion, but changed his mind at the last minute. The banquet part of the evening was almost over when he arrived, so he stood in the back of the room and scanned the crowd from the shadows. Evidently, one of his classmates was doing the same thing, because a woman stood over behind a huge fake tree just inside the double-wide doors leading into the ballroom. Clancy’s dark brows drew down until they were almost a solid line above his chocolate-brown eyes. Something about her silhouette looked familiar, but it had been a while since he’d seen most of his former classmates, and he couldn’t make out her face in the dim lighting. Perhaps she hadn’t been a member of his graduating class, but was someone’s wife or plus one.

  A vision popped in his mind of a girl who used to stand like that, with one hand on her hip. He shook the memory out of his mind. Angela wouldn’t show up to a noisy ten-year high school class reunion, not as shy as she had been.

  “And now, please welcome Dorothy Simpson, valedictorian of the class of nineteen fifty-three, and the woman who keeps this alumni association going,” intoned the master of ceremonies from the podium. “Isn’t she wonderful?”

  The crowd applauded as a frail, elderly woman made her w
ay to the front. Clancy sneaked in and sat down at the first table with an available empty chair.

  “Dorothy Simpson is probably the only living member of that class,” Janie Sides Walls whispered to him.

  Clancy smiled and applauded dutifully with the rest of the alumni. When he looked back to see if the mystery woman was still standing in the shadows, she was gone. There was nothing but the doors swinging to and fro, as if she had seen enough…and left. Clancy wished he had gone over just in case she had been Angela.

  “Damn,” he mumbled under his breath. “Now she’s gone, and I’ll probably never see her again.”

  Dorothy leaned in close to the microphone and held up her palm for them to stop the applause. “Thank you all, but really, I’m just good at delegating, and I managed to live to be eighty-five. I always told that Emily Jacobs that I’d be famous someday.”

  Everyone laughed and clapped even harder.

  “Welcome to the Tishomingo Alumni Banquet and Reunion,” Dorothy went on, “a place where we’re all seventeen or eighteen again. Too damn bad that we don’t look like we did then.”

  Clancy laughed with everyone else, but he couldn’t get Angela Conrad off his mind.

  * * *

  Angel was aware that he had spotted her. She had felt the questions in his soft brown eyes, but she wasn’t ready to face him. Before the evening was over, he would know who she was if she had to sit in his lap and tell him herself. But for now, she had to get ready. The sound equipment was in place, the microphones set up, the amps ready to bring the house down, and the rest of her band members were in the bus.

  Angel slung open the door, stomped up the steps and slumped down on the short sofa against the far wall. She crossed her arms over her chest, sucked in a lungful of air, and let it out slowly.

  “Did you see Clancy?” Bonnie asked.

  All of the members of the band except Angela were blondes. Patty and Susan were the same height, but Bonnie stood at just under six feet tall when she wore her cowboy boots.