A Rancher to Trust

by Laurel Blount

  “I really want the four of us to be a family, Bailey. I know that comes with a steep price tag for you, and I’m sorry. But there’s not much I can do about it.”

  “Maybe there is, though, Dan.” She rushed forward, desperately. “I still don’t see why you couldn’t stay here. There’s somebody who wants to buy the ranch, and you said yourself the place is struggling. Wouldn’t selling it be the most sensible thing to do?”

  Dan shook his head. “We’ve talked about this already, Bailey. Selling the ranch isn’t an option. The Bar M has been in the McAllister family for generations.”

  “But you’re not a McAllister, Dan. And neither am I.”

  “Finn and Josie are. As far as I’m concerned, the Bar M is theirs, no matter what the legal papers say.”

  “They’re only babies, Dan. They don’t have any emotional attachment to the ranch. You don’t even know for sure if they’ll want to be ranchers when they grow up. If you sell the place, you could put the money into a trust for their educations. That way they could choose their own paths.”

  “I’ll make sure they get whatever kind of education they need, but I’ll find a way to do it without selling their birthright. I’m sorry, Bailey, but like I’ve said before, I don’t have a choice here. Colt knew that I’d see this the way he and his grandpa did. He trusted me to do the right thing.”

  “But is it more important to do the right thing for the McAllisters or for us, Dan? My business is turning a solid profit. You keep talking about the importance of family? Well, your family, your real family, is in Pine Valley. Abel and Emily are just a few miles down the road, and the twins could grow up knowing their cousins. Do we really want to give all that up for a ranch that could very well go belly up and leave us with nothing?”

  Dan studied her, a muscle jumping in his cheek. “You really think I’d let that happen, Bailey? That I’d ever see you and these babies left with nothing? You don’t believe that I’d make sure the three of you had everything you needed?”

  “Dan—”

  Just then a horn blew behind them. A large truck with Banks Building Supply in script on its sides was pulling into the driveway.

  “The material’s here.” Dan looked down at Finn. “I’ll go get him changed real quick. Then can you watch the twins while I help get the stuff unloaded?”

  “Sure.” There was something stiff about the way he asked, like he was asking a stranger for a favor. It hurt her heart. She snagged his sleeve as he passed her. “Dan, I care about you, all of you. I do.”

  He halted, but he kept his eyes fixed on the approaching truck. “I believe you care, Bailey. I just don’t think you trust me all that much. And that’s where we get mired up, you and me. Every single time.”

  And with that, he left her and headed into the house.

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Dan stepped back from the tractor and wiped his greasy hands on a rag. “Try her now, Abel.”

  Abel obliged by turning the key, and the tractor sputtered before choking down again. “Still not quite there.”

  “At least she’s turning over. I’ll do some more adjusting, and we’ll see where we are.”

  “All right. But before you get back into it, there’s something else I’d like you to have a look at. Wait here a minute.”

  Abel climbed off the tractor and disappeared out the barn door. For a few seconds, the only sounds were the contented clucking of the Goosefeather Farm hens in their enclosure and an occasional honk from Glory the goose, who was strolling around the yard. Dan finished wiping off his fingers, a waste of time since they were just going to get greasy again, and waited uneasily.

  Looked like Abel was finally getting around to the real topic he’d wanted to discuss when he’d summoned Dan over here. Dan had known this wasn’t really about a broken-down tractor. It had taken Abel long enough. They’d been working in the barn for the better part of two hours.

  Not that Dan was complaining. Abel probably wanted to talk about all the sniping plastered across the Broken Bow Tribune’s website, and Dan wasn’t particularly anxious to have that conversation. Focusing on the ailing tractor had been a welcome distraction.

  Abel came back in with a folded-up paper in his hands. “Here,” he said, thrusting at Dan. “This is for you.”

  Dan unfolded the paper and scanned it. It was some kind of legal document. Dan didn’t speak lawyer all that fluently, so it took him a minute to figure it out. “This is the deed to the cabin.”

  Abel nodded. “And the ten acres around it. Emily and I have talked it over, and we’re agreed. We want you to have it.”

  Dan shook his head and held the paper out. “I can’t accept this, Abel.”

  Abel made no move to take it. “Sure you can.”

  “I guess this means you’ve heard about the stuff on the internet. So what, now you’re going to try to talk me into living at the cabin instead of going back to Wyoming?”

  “Nope. The cabin’s yours free and clear. You can sell it if you want. Use the money for whatever you might need back at that ranch of yours.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t need a handout, Abel.”

  “Good, because I’m not giving you one. I’m just splitting things up fair, that’s all. I kept the fifteen acres that adjoin Goosefeather, and I’ve been thinking ever since the twins were born that I needed to move my woodcarving shed closer to home. So this makes sense.”

  Dan shook his head and set the deed on the worn seat of the tractor. “You’re not fooling me. You saw that comment about the ranch being underwater financially, and you’re trying to help me out. I appreciate it, but there’s no need, Abel. I’ll have the Bar M back where it ought to be soon enough, and I’ll do it on my own.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Then you’re the only one that doesn’t.” Dan reached back into the engine. This conversation had gone about far enough. “Let me tweak this a little more and we’ll see how she does. I think we’ve just about got her straightened out.”

  That was Abel’s cue to climb back up on the tractor, but he stayed where he was.

  “You’re talking about Bailey, aren’t you? ’Course you are. She’s the only person whose opinion you’ve ever cared much about apart from your own. Danny, I don’t have much business giving anybody advice, but I’m going to give you some anyhow. You’ve got to stop pushing Bailey. If you don’t, you’re likely to lose her for good.”

  “Seems like that’s going to happen anyhow.” Dan weighed the wrench in his hand.

  “And that’s scaring you to death and making you stupid. You know better, Dan. You have to. You’ve worked around animals, and people aren’t that different. You push ’em, they just dig in their heels and fight you harder. ’Specially if they’ve been hurt in the past. Trust takes its own sweet time, Danny. You can’t rush it.”

  “Then there’s no hope, I guess.” Dan’s heart sank to the bottom of his boots, and he flung the wrench onto a nearby hay bale. “Bailey still doesn’t trust me as far as she can throw me, and I’m leaving at the end of the week.”

  “As long as we’ve got the Lord in our corner, there’s always hope. Sometimes He likes to show off by waiting until the last minute, and sometimes He doesn’t answer our prayers the way we want Him to. Could be Bailey’s not the only one who’s got to learn how to trust. Leave it in His hands, Danny, and see what happens.” Abel hoisted himself back up onto the tractor. He plucked the folded deed off the seat and held it out wordlessly in Dan’s direction.

  Dan hesitated, then he took the deed from his brother’s hand and stuffed it in his pocket. “All right. Let’s get this tractor running. I guess I’d better go have a talk with Bailey.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bailey grabbed the lowest plank of rotten siding with both hands and gave a mighty tug. Nope. It still wasn’t loose enough to come away. She looked
down for the crowbar she’d dropped on the ground a few seconds ago, but it had disappeared.

  “Lucy!” Bailey spotted the calf a few yards away. She’d dropped the metal tool on the ground and was nosing it curiously. “I need that!”

  She’d known better than to let the calf out when she was trying to work on a project, but nowadays the house just seemed so empty whenever Dan and the twins weren’t here. When a person was miserable and lonesome, even the company of a mischievous calf was better than nothing.

  Bailey was determined to stop mooning around and worrying. Even if Dan did go back to Wyoming, it wasn’t the end of the world. She’d had a perfectly good life all planned out here before Dan had come back, before he’d brought the twins into her life. If Dan was determined not to listen to reason, she could go back to that plan and be perfectly happy.

  Eventually.

  That’s what she was telling herself, anyway. If it seemed a little hard to believe right now, that just meant that she had to try harder. She needed to start handling things on her own again, like she’d been doing before Dan’s truck had rolled up in her driveway.

  To start with, she could rip down some of this rotten siding Dan had pointed out. But she needed her crowbar.

  Lucy watched Bailey’s approach cautiously. “I need that, Lucy.” Bailey took another step, and Lucy rolled her big brown eyes and nudged the crowbar an inch or two on the grass. “They’re rotten enough to need to be replaced, but not rotten enough that they come off easy. Although,” Bailey added in a mutter, “I don’t know why on earth I expected anything about this house would be easy. Everything has been a challenge right from the start, and things just keep ballooning. Wyoming’s starting to look not so bad.”

  She was joking. Sort of. Sure, homeownership was turning out to be tougher—and more expensive—than she’d expected, but so what? She’d gone through the same sort of stuff when she’d opened Bailey’s, and she’d made it through that. Now the store was doing great.

  Well, more or less. Not only was she coping with an endless flow of customers who really just wanted to chat about her personal life, but yesterday she’d received the official word that Lyle’s grandfather was taking her off his delivery route. She’d spent most of the afternoon trying to find another organic citrus supplier, but her options didn’t look good.

  That plus the house problems plus the whole dilemma with Dan was pushing her stress level into the danger zone. But, she reminded herself, pretty much anything worth doing had its tough moments. That came with the territory.

  She just wished all the hard stuff wasn’t happening at once. It was chipping away at her resolve to stand her ground.

  “You don’t want to move to Wyoming, do you, Lucy Ball? Probably not. You wouldn’t be the star of the show. Lots of other pretty cows out there.”

  Lucy Ball huffed at her and shifted her weight. Then the calf leaned down, nimbly picked up the crowbar in her mouth and dragged it farther away.

  Bailey sighed. She knew the drill. Lucy Ball’s interest in that crowbar would last about as long as Bailey’s did. If Bailey left her alone, Lucy would probably abandon the tool in search of something else.

  “It’s a good thing you’re so cute.” Bailey shot the calf a dirty look before turning back to the house. She’d give that siding another mighty pull and see if she could get it to give way with just her hands.

  She’d succeeded in loosening it a little more when she heard Dan’s pickup crunching up her gravel driveway. Her heart immediately leaped up and wedged itself in her throat.

  Bailey tiptoed and tried to see into the truck cab. Had he brought the twins with him? She darted a quick look at the watch on her arm. Nearly time for a bottle. She’d knock off work and feed Josie for him. The baby girl always lost interest in her bottle before Finn lost interest in his, and she was so much tinier than her brother. Bailey had discovered that if she burped Josie a little more frequently, the baby would take an ounce or two more formula.

  Bailey started toward the truck, but she only made it a few steps before Dan climbed out of the cab. Alone.

  “Where are the twins?” she called, not quite able to keep her disappointment out of her voice.

  “I asked Emily to watch them for me for a little while so we could talk.”

  Bailey shivered suddenly, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms. Three guesses what he wanted to talk about. He needed a definite answer, and she didn’t have one. Whenever she tried to pray about it, she just ended up having imaginary arguments with Dan about staying in Pine Valley. If he pressed her now, she was going to have to say no. It was the only sensible thing to do. Her brain knew that. Her heart was arguing with her, the same way she’d argued passionately with her mother back when she was eighteen.

  You can’t throw just your future away for the sake of that Whitlock boy, Bailey! You’re smarter than that!

  But I love him, Mom!

  Dan walked over and squinted up at the siding. “You’re trying to take this off by yourself?”

  “Yes, but I’m not getting very far. I can’t pull it loose with just my hands, and Lucy stole the crowbar.”

  “Of course she did.” Dan grabbed hold of the piece she’d been fighting with and pulled it free in one quick move. He tossed it on the ground.

  “Show-off.” She wrinkled her nose at him. “And just so you know, I loosened that up for you.”

  “Yeah, I noticed. I was planning to get these boards down for you, Bailey. I just got tied up over at Abel’s.”

  Bailey shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I know you don’t have much time. I can manage.”

  Dan sighed deeply, but he didn’t argue. “Look, I’ll put this board someplace Lucy can’t get hold of it, and then we need to talk. Okay?”

  Bailey nodded. They’d talk. But if he wanted an answer from her today, he probably wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

  * * *

  They settled on the porch rockers. Dan looked out over the budding forsythia. “I forget how early spring sets in around here. Hard to believe it’s only February, with things already blooming.”

  “It’s nearly March. The forecast is calling for a freeze tonight, though.” Bailey pointed at the fruit trees, frothing white beside the house. “Bad news for those. I was excited when I saw all the blooms, but Arlene was right. I doubt there’ll be any apples or pears this year. Early springs bring false hopes. That’s what the farmers around here say.”

  Dan nodded. “After a long winter, a nice warm spell is mighty welcome. But then when the cold comes back, it feels even sharper.”

  Bailey was watching him closely. “Sometimes it causes a lot of damage, too.”

  He didn’t think they were talking about the weather anymore.

  Dan looked down at the hat he was holding in his lap. “Bailey, listen. I know you don’t understand why I’m so set on going back to Wyoming, but I want you to know that it’s not because I don’t care enough about you to stay. The truth is—” He halted, his heart pounding so hard he could hear its pulse against his eardrums as he struggled to find the right words to go on with. “The truth isn’t just that I love you, Bailey. It’s that I don’t think I ever stopped loving you. In all the years we’ve been apart, there’s never been anybody else for me. The other guys used to rag me about that some.” One side of his mouth tilted up as he remembered. “Called me Brokeheart. Kept introducing me to girls. I even went out with a few. I didn’t know we were still married. I thought for sure we weren’t. But even so, I never asked anybody out a second time. It didn’t matter how pretty they were or how sweet. They weren’t you, and I couldn’t get past that.”

  To his surprise, Bailey reached over and took his hand in her own. “If you really feel that way, then don’t go, Dan. Sell the ranch and stay here with me. Let’s build a new life together with the twins.”

  “I can’t
do that, Bailey. It’s killing me. But I can’t.” He took a minute to get hold of himself before he went on. “And I can’t keep asking you to give up your life to come with me, either. I did that before. I was wrong to do it then, and it’s just as wrong of me to do it now. And just like last time, I’ve made this all about me, whether you cared about me enough, whether you believed what I said or what other people said about me. I’m sorry for that. Wyoming taught me a lot of things, Bailey. And one thing was that a man doesn’t ask for anything that he hasn’t earned, fair and square. I haven’t had the time to earn your trust back like I’d hoped to. So I’m not asking you to trust me, not anymore.”

  Bailey’s lips went pale, but she squeezed his hand gently. “I wish—I really wish—it could be different, Dan.”

  “So do I.” He looked down at their entwined fingers. “It’s funny. Your hand always felt like it fit so perfect in mine. It still feels that way to me. Our lives, though. They never did seem to fit together like that.”

  “No. I guess not.”

  There was just one last thing he needed to do, and he’d stalled long enough. “Wait here a minute. Okay?”

  * * *

  Bailey rose, watching as Dan walked to the truck. Part of her mind was noticing that there was something grim about the set of his shoulders. The other part was trying to memorize everything about him before he disappeared from her life again.

  Because from what he’d just said, it sure sounded like that’s what he was about to do.

  She felt a flutter of panic. She wanted to call after him, tell him she’d changed her mind. That she would go with him after all.

  She bit her lip and stayed silent, her pulse pounding. It was a painful place to be, caught here between her breaking heart and her hard-earned good sense. But she couldn’t let that pain push her into making another mistake.