Sun Kissed

by Catherine Anderson

  “What independent-woman thing?”

  He waved the wooden spoon at her. “That independent-woman thing, the one where you get all huffy and bent out of shape over silly stuff.”

  In her estimation, her need to feel independent wasn’t silly, but critical to her emotional health and well-being. She needed her father and brothers to respect her boundaries, and none of them even seemed to realize she had any. They meant well. They’d always meant well. But without intending to, they had a way of taking over her life.

  In all fairness, she couldn’t hold them totally to blame. She was the one who allowed it, after all. How difficult was it to say no? She frequently rehearsed exactly how she would handle the next infraction. No, I think I’ll do it this way. Or, I appreciate the advice, really I do, but I’ve already made my decision. In her head, those responses sounded so reasonable, but even if she managed to say them, she had trouble making them stick.

  Other women who found themselves being suffocated by a meddling family moved away, found a job, and cultivated friendships outside the familial circle. That was impossible for Samantha. Like her brothers, when she turned twenty-one, she had inherited from her father a two-hundred-acre share of the original Harrigan ranch and enough capital to start her own business. Out of respect for her dad, she couldn’t just walk away, turning her back on everything he had sweated blood to build. It would break his heart.

  “I need to be my own person,” she said softly.

  “So be your own person,” Clint replied. “Who’s stopping you?”

  Who, indeed? Her father’s place lay due west of hers, Clint’s was directly to the north, and her other three brothers lived within shooting distance of her front porch. From anyplace on her property she could see the rooftops of their homes, and they all took frequent advantage of the short distance to visit her whenever they pleased. The only time in her life when she’d had any sense of separateness had been during the dark years of her marriage, when they’d all stayed away because they couldn’t abide Steve.

  “Forget it,” she said wearily. “Just forget it. I could talk myself blue and never make you understand.”

  Clint made it clear he didn’t care to understand by brusquely saying, “Get that spud back on your eye.”

  And there it was, the very essence of her problem with him and all the rest of her male relatives. They refused to treat her like an adult. In their minds she would always be Sammy, daughter and pesky baby sister. When she was eighty, they would still be telling her what to do.

  “Do you have to be so bossy, Clint?” she asked. “It’s my eye. If I have a shiner tomorrow, oh, well.”

  “Bossy?” Her eldest brother looked genuinely incredulous. “What in the Sam Hill are you talking about?” Before she could answer, he put the question up for a family vote. “Am I bossy, you guys?”

  Quincy flashed a broad grin. “I’m not touching that one with a ten-foot prod.”

  “So you agree?” Clint shook his head. “You actually think I’m bossy?”

  Parker chuckled. “Of course you’re bossy, Clint. Helping Dad to raise all of us screwed you up.”

  “Yeah,” Zach interjected with a lazy grin. “You think the power of persuasion is a size-eleven boot up somebody’s ass.”

  “What is it with you and boots today?” Samantha asked Zach. “As for that, you can all clean up your mouths. This is my kitchen, not the barn.”

  “I haven’t taken the Lord’s name in vain,” Zach protested. “Neither has anyone else.”

  “That soup is starting to smell mighty good,” Quincy observed in an obvious attempt to change the subject. Boot heels tapping the slate tile, he crossed the kitchen and nudged Clint aside to put the bread in the oven. “I’m hungry enough to eat the south end of a northbound don key without wiping its ass first.” He slanted Samantha a glance. “Sorry, sis.”

  Samantha knew when to cut her losses. Her brothers would never break themselves of using colorful language. She picked up the potato to stare at the discolored pulp. “How long do I have to keep this stupid thing on my eye?”

  Parker came to set the bowl of salad on the table. He stooped low to examine her bruise. “It’s taken down the swelling some,” he pronounced. “A few more minutes ought to do it.”

  The security system chimed just then, yet another sign of her family’s devotion to her safety and well-being. The moment she’d kicked Steve out, the alarm system had been installed, and now, an entire year later, her dad still phoned her every evening at dark to make sure she remembered to set it.

  The sound of the front door closing echoed through the house. A moment later Samantha heard her father’s distinctive footsteps echoing on the hardwood floor.

  When he appeared in the doorway, hat in hand, she said, “Mission accomplished?”

  “Mostly,” he replied, the expression on his burnished countenance unabashed. “And don’t start,” he warned. “I did what I needed to do, and whether you approve or not, there’ll be no discussin’ it.”

  It had been a long day, and Samantha was too weary to argue.

  “What’d you think of Coulter?” Zach asked.

  “I like him.” Frank raked his fingers through his hair, trying to comb away the hat ring. Age had streaked the strands with silver at his temples, but they were otherwise as black as his children’s. “I found him outside the ER, probably waitin’ for a ride. He’s a clean-cut, polite young fellow.” He shot Samantha a sidelong glance. “Tall, sturdy. Good-lookin’, too, in my estimation, even if he is sportin’ two black eyes. I figure the other guy probably feels worse than he does.”

  “We can only hope. Sammy laid down the law.” Quincy grinned at his sister. “If we go anywhere near the jail, she’s gonna kick our butts.”

  “I think Coulter took care of the paybacks for us,” Frank said, patting his shirt pocket. “And one good turn deserves another. I got his card. Reckon I’ll steer a little business his way, maybe even some of my own.”

  “That’s a good idea, Dad,” Clint remarked. “Old Doc Washburn will be retiring soon. Having a young vet on line who knows his stuff can’t hurt.”

  “Just because he took up for me doesn’t mean he knows his stuff,” Samantha pointed out.

  Hooking his Stetson over the finial of a tall-backed chair, Frank sat down next to her. Even at sixty-one, he was as fit and trim as a thirty-year-old, testimony to a lifetime of hard work. Though semiretired now, he could still run circles around men half his age.

  “You’re absolutely right, Samantha Jane. And you know me: I don’t let just any vet touch one of my horses.”

  “So why consider recommending him to others or giving him business yourself?” she asked.

  “On the way home, I did some callin’ around to check him out,” Frank replied. “Thought the name Coulter sounded familiar. Now I know why. He’s that new fellow old Jim Ralston has been braggin’ about. I trust Jim’s opinion. He claims the boy is flat amazing with horses.”

  “How so?” Parker asked.

  “Not afraid of ’em, for starters. That’s important in a vet.”

  A rumble of general agreement urged Frank to continue.

  “More important, Jim says the boy has a gift.”

  Samantha recalled Tucker’s talking about his rapport with equines. “How do you mean?”

  Frank’s brow furrowed in thought. “Jim says the young man can calm a frightened horse like nobody he’s ever seen, as if he communicates with the animal in a way most folks can’t.”

  Samantha knew firsthand how charming Tucker Coulter could be.

  “Jim had a filly go lame on him,” Frank went on. “Thought she had real promise as a cuttin’ horse, and he’d hoped to put her with a professional trainer. But all of a sudden she developed a limp. He took her to a couple of other vets. They prescribed confinement and inactivity to let the foreleg heal. But she kept goin’ lame again as soon as Jim let her resume normal activity. He finally took her to Tucker Coulter, and now that
filly is fit as a fiddle.”

  “What’d Coulter do to fix her up?” Clint asked.

  “Come to find out,” Frank continued, “there was nothin’ wrong with her foreleg. Coulter X-rayed it and discovered Jim’s farrier was trimming her hoof wrong. Too much inward slope. It was puttin’ a strain on the tendon, and every time she got the least bit active, the swelling and tenderness returned.”

  “And the other two vets didn’t find that?”

  “Never bothered to X-ray the hoof and leg.” Frank chuckled and shook his head. “Can’t find somethin’ if you don’t look for it, now, can you?”

  The conversation turned to veterinarians—stories about good ones and bad ones and all the mediocre ones in between. When supper was finally on the table, all talking came to a halt. Frank began the blessing by making the sign of the cross, and the six of them quickly recited the prayer that they’d been saying before meals for as long as Samantha could remember.

  “Boy howdy, Clint, you’ve surpassed yourself. This soup is superb,” Frank observed after taking a bite. “You got any wine, sweetheart? We’re celebrating Blue’s big win tonight. An occasion like this calls for a toast.”

  Samantha left the table to get wineglasses and a bottle of merlot. As she set the bottle on the table and started to open it, Parker snatched the corkscrew from her hands. “Here, let me.”

  “I do know how to open a bottle of wine,” Samantha reminded him.

  If Parker heard her, he gave no sign of it. She circled the table to resume her seat. The wine was soon poured, and Frank passed her a glass.

  “To the finest breeder and trainer this side of the Mississippi,” her dad said with a lift of his goblet. “Congratulations, sweetheart. Blue Blazes is a horse to be proud of.”

  “Hear, hear!” her brothers said, and each took a swallow of merlot.

  “Present company excluded, of course,” Zach said with a grin. “About you being the finest breeder and trainer, I mean. On that count, I think we all run neck and neck.”

  Another toast was made to Blue, the finest cutting horse this side of the Mississippi, which prompted Zach to once again say, “Present company excluded, of course.”

  There followed hoots of laughter when Parker said, “Speak for yourself. I’m not a horse.”

  Clint seconded that with, “Me, neither.”

  When the laughter abated, Clint was complimented yet again on the soup.

  “It’s all that cheese he puts in it,” Quincy, the health nut, complained. “You can make anything taste good if you put in enough cheese.”

  “You ever stop to think that God gave us cheese?” Zach protested.

  “Not to mention our taste buds,” Parker tacked on. “They regenerate every four days. Seems to me we’re supposed to enjoy the taste of our food.”

  “You can enjoy your food without clogging all your arteries,” Quincy countered. “Do you have any inkling how much fat is in just one of those sausages?”

  And so it went, the members of her family arguing good-naturedly back and forth as they enjoyed the meal. The tension eased from Samantha’s shoulders, and a slight smile touched her lips as she attended the conversation. There would be time enough later to worry about her difficulties with them. Tonight she wanted only to relax and enjoy being together.

  Chapter Five

  The log walls of Jake’s living room shimmered in the light like polished amber. Tucker, replete after a fabulous steak dinner, relaxed from being pampered, and kicked back in a leather recliner with an ice pack on his nose, was considering the possibility of a short nap. With half his face covered and still partly numb from the Novocain injections, he couldn’t comfortably engage in the after-supper conversation taking place between his dad and elder brother, so he stared at the open rafters above him instead, only half listening to the debate on all the possible causes of mad cow disease. Occasionally when Harv and Jake were both dead wrong, he thought about putting in his two cents’ worth, but the wine he’d had with his meal was making him feel too sleepy.

  That was one of the things he liked about Jake’s log house: its relaxed atmosphere. Shortly after Jake’s marriage to Molly, a cute, whiskey-haired woman no taller than Tucker’s mother and almost as round, the original structure had burned to the ground. Tucker had expected the identical new house to take on a different character with Molly in charge of decorating. But somehow she’d managed to put her stamp on every room without altering the rustic theme. Handmade furniture, an array of Western paintings by local artists, and a collection of antique farming and ranching implements worked together with more feminine accents to create an appealing space where a man could sprawl in a comfortable, oversize chair and not worry about his boots soiling the upholstery.

  Tucker liked his own house, a two-story Victorian surrounded by English gardens and a white picket fence. He’d had the spacious interior professionally decorated, and every room was the antithesis of what he’d known as a kid. The furniture had fine upholstery and lots of curlicues in the wood, the dishes were dainty, patterned with tea roses and trimmed in gold, and almost every room sported an imported area rug that had cost the earth. He’d loved it all at first and determinedly ignored the ceaseless ribbing from his brothers, who were all men’s men with rugged tastes. Tucker loved fine things, and he was confident enough in his masculinity to surround himself with them.

  Only now that the newness had worn off, he wondered sometimes if he’d made the right choices for long-term living. Yes, crystal decanters and fine bone china appealed to him, but practically speaking, they weren’t things he wanted to use on a daily or even monthly basis. His finger wouldn’t fit through the handles of the teacups. The decanters dribbled out booze when he preferred a generous slosh, and when he wanted a mixed drink in the evening, he always sought out a sturdy tumbler. For his library, he’d also broken down and bought a comfortable chair, which looked blockish and far too massive for the room, rather like Tucker himself.

  In short, he was a bull living in a dollhouse with a huge, graceless rottweiler named Max as a roommate. Max chewed knucklebones on the fine area rugs, his black fur constantly drifted on the currents of circulating air, and the teacups on the rack in the formal dining room performed the singular purpose of collecting dust. It wasn’t a wholly practical situation, and Tucker had been toying with the idea of making a change, the only problem being all the merciless teasing by his brothers that he would have to endure if he sold his Victorian home and bought a place on a larger acreage better suited to his lifestyle.

  “The mad cow threat makes a man afraid to eat beef,” Tucker’s father said. “I wish we still raised our own. Buying meat at the supermarket, I could wake up some mornin’ mad as a hatter and drooling at the mouth.”

  “Just don’t eat the brains, spinal tissue, or vital organs,” Tucker muttered. It wasn’t easy to speak clearly around an ice pack, especially with a numb upper lip. “Not much danger otherwise.”

  “I’m still not talking to you,” Jake said, his voice laced with teasing gruffness. “My one big chance to meet Frank Harrigan, and you didn’t even think to introduce me. You knew I was right upstairs in the cafeteria.”

  “I’m sorry,” Tucker said, not for the first time. “I don’t know where my head was.”

  And that was the truth. Tucker hadn’t felt so nervous since going to pick up a girl on his first date. What had her name been? His head was too foggy to remember. He recalled only being so tense that he stuttered and tripped over his own feet.

  Until this afternoon, he’d believed himself to be over that awkward stage. But meeting Frank Harrigan had plunged him back into it, leaving him uncertain what to say and worrying about the impression he’d made. How crazy was that?

  Tucker wondered if his numb lip had wandered all over his face when he smiled. And had he gripped Harrigan’s hand firmly enough? Ranchers judged a man by his handshake. And—oh, damn—had he really been leafing through a fashion article, looking at the best- and w
orst-dressed people of the year, when Samantha’s father approached?

  Why Tucker cared, he didn’t know. Then he decided he was lying to himself. He was taken with Samantha, and it was important that her father approved of him. How else could he hope to make any headway with the woman?

  Cheyenne Lee, Jake’s fifteen-month-old daughter, let loose with a shriek from somewhere upstairs, followed by the sound of running footsteps. “Young lady, you get back here!” Molly cried.

  The next thing Tucker knew, his baby niece stood on the landing overlooking the living room, her plump, naked body rosy from her bath, damp chocolate curls framing her cherubic face. Peering down at him through the log railing, which had been constructed for toddler safety, she grinned broadly, flashing eight new pearly whites.

  “Hey, gorgeous,” Tucker called up to her.

  She jabbered something and then giggled as if she’d just told a joke. The punch line was yet to come. She assumed a suddenly intent expression and started to pee, the stream running down her chubby thighs to puddle on the floor.

  “Jake!” Tucker called, exercising a childless uncle’s prerogative to call on the parent when accidents occurred. “She’s taking a leak without a diaper.”

  But the call came too late. The puddle cascaded over the edge of the landing to rain on Tucker, the recliner, and the floor. The ice pack went in one direction and Tucker in another as he scrambled to escape the downpour, wondering how a quarter cup of urine could sprinkle such a large area.

  He cursed under his breath and swatted at his jeans. A chortle of delight came from above, and Cheyenne stomped her chubby feet, clearly pleased with the ruckus she had caused.

  Tucker growled, doing an imitation of an angry bear, and charged up the stairs. His intended victim screeched in delight and launched a counterattack, running toward him instead of away, making him increase speed considerably to reach the unlatched safety gate at the top of the staircase before she did.