As she’d gotten older, she’d gained more confidence and found some friends, especially during her time at the University of Texas. But deep within, she was still the shy, awkward, introverted girl only her Daddy really made feel special.
“I’ll come for longer then, Daddy, I promise. You know I love it here when the bluebonnets are blooming.”
“Be almost done by mid-April. But I’ll try to convince a few flowers to hang around for you. Anything for my princess.”
She chuckled. “You do that, Daddy.”
Reaching the barn, they both dismounted. “Go on up to the house and get packed,” her father said. “I’ll put Starlight up for you. And set the coffee brewing! Won’t take me long here.”
“I will.” Leaning up, she kissed her father on the cheek. “Love you, Daddy.”
“Love you, Princess.”
*
After lingering over coffee with her father and the long drive back, six hours later Harrison parked her car in the driveway of the upscale Dallas condo she shared with Parker. Gathering her overnight bag and briefcase of papers that went everywhere with her, she walked up the sidewalk.
Although night was falling, there were no lights on in the house. Not that she’d expected any. Parker would probably be either meeting with a prospective client or having dinner with a friend at one of his favorite bars and restaurants. Not a throw-a-steak-on-the-grill kind of guy, he preferred eating out, one of the reasons he enjoyed entertaining clients.
Wondering how late he would be, she juggled her purse and her bags as she picked her house key from the several on the key ring, inserted it in the lock, and tried to turn it. The lock didn’t budge.
Drat, in the dim light, she must have selected the wrong key. Setting her bags down with a huff of frustration, she lifted the key ring into the band of illumination provided by the streetlight and used both hands to pick out the correct one. She inserted it into the lock—which again refused to turn.
Sure she had the right key, she jiggled and wiggled, but the lock remained stubbornly closed.
Shivering against the sharp bite of the February wind, she checked the key again. It was definitely the correct one. After trying for a few more minutes with no luck, she pulled the key back with a muffled curse. She’d never been good with locks, but this was ridiculous!
She’d try the back door.
But a few minutes of wrestling with that door didn’t get her in the house either.
Frustration turning to puzzlement—and anger—she fished out her phone and texted Parker. After waiting, fuming, for a few minutes with no response, she stomped back to the car.
If Parker were with a client—or even out with friends—he might not text her back for an hour or more. She couldn’t imagine what had happened with the locks, but until Parker sent her back some instructions for dealing with them, she might as well drive to the office and do some work.
*
Switching on the lights in the outer office suite—mercifully, her office key worked just fine—Harrison walked through the reception area and into her office. Outside the window, the nighttime skyline of Dallas sparkled with light.
She paused a moment, admiring the view, before turning on her desk lamp.
A sealed envelope with her name on it in Parker’s sloping script sat propped against the base of her desktop computer.
That sick feeling in her stomach intensifying, she tore it open and unfolded the single sheet.
“I’m sorry, Harrison. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell you, but there never seemed to be a good time. I’ve known for months that I was falling for Madison, and I just couldn’t fight it anymore.
I’ve put the condo up for sale, changed the locks, and turned the keys over to a Realtor. I had a lawyer draw up documents dissolving our partnership; I left them on your desk for signature.
I’ve also had an unusually long run of bad luck at the tables lately. I was sure I’d make it back, but this weekend, things got sort of desperate, so I had to borrow some funds from the firm’s account. I’ll pay you back as soon as I can.
Again, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for it to end like this. Parker.”
Nausea and a numb sense of disbelief slammed her in the gut. Madison, the recent college grad Parker had insisted they hire last fall as a part-time intern, even though Harrison didn’t think they needed extra help. Curvaceous, sultry, blonde Madison had always been perfectly polite to her. Had never seemed to be making a play for Parker—at least, not when Harrison could see her.
The pressure in her chest made it hard to breathe. She pressed her hands down over her lungs, forcing herself to drag in air.
Hadn’t this been what she’d secretly feared ever since she let Parker talk her into living together? That someday he’d get bored with a nerdy number-puncher and fall for someone more lively, more flirtatious, prettier?
Through scouring waves of hurt and pain, the last part of his note suddenly registered. Borrowed some money from the firm’s account . . .
With shaking fingers, Harrison turned on her computer, punched in her passwords, and swiped through several screens until she could access the firm’s bank account.
The figures she saw there poured the acid of indignation over the raw wounds of hurt, heartache, and humiliation.
She’d invested all the money her mother had left her into this business. Of those several hundred thousand dollars, the cash sum in the account was barely a thousand.
Sitting in the semi-darkness of the office, she stared at the unbelievable figures while the cursor blinked at her like a mocking accusation.
When the implications of all the horrifying words in Parker’s note finally sank in, she uttered a hysterical laugh.
It appeared that she now had no home, no partner—and less than a thousand dollars cash to her name.
What was she going to do?
Chapter Two
Three weeks later, Harrison drifted along the back porch of her father’s ranch house, cup of coffee in hand as she gazed out over the pasture, now awash in a vivid sea of bluebonnets.
Though she’d always loved that spring vista, for the last two weeks when she walked out to face it, she’d hardly been able to summon a smile. Finally, this morning, a flutter of warmth lifted her heart, her leaden spirits rising as she looked over the wildflowers, their blue heads nodding in the breeze.
She’d had enough of despondency and loss. Though that night in the office she’d thought her life couldn’t get much bleaker, there had been worse.
The next morning, she’d started calling their accounts, explaining the partnership was breaking up. After the fourth client apologetically explained he’d prefer to remain with Parker, with whom he’d dealt for their whole association, she’d stopped calling. Humiliated, angry, and still reeling at the idea that the man she’d loved could have done this to her, she’d accepted that she now had neither a partner nor any clients.
So she signed the papers he’d left her, terminating the partnership, collected her things from the condo, took her name off the office lease, and transferred all but ten dollars of the corporate funds into her personal account. Then drove back to Whiskey River—and lost her father two days later.
It had been painful enough when her mom died just a year after her parents settled in the Hill Country. But not until that moment had she realized what desolation truly was: having to face the terrifying truth that the one remaining person who had always sheltered and protected her was gone, and she was now completely alone in the world.
With no job, limited funds, and a ranch she didn’t know what to do with.
Yesterday, she’d finally dragged herself out of the stupor in which she’d been frozen the past two weeks and gone to the bank to discover how things stood financially with the ranch. Just as she had invested all her mother’s money in her accounting business, Daddy had put his into the ranch. The business ran at a profit—barely—but with his retirement check coming in monthly, he�
��d been able to keep a healthy cash reserve.
Unlike her father, she didn’t have any other income to offset the fluctuations in ranch earnings. She did have a small cash reserve of her own, having always put aside some of her salary in a savings account. Although most of it was in an IRA she couldn’t touch without incurring tax penalties, at least she had it if things got truly desperate.
Fortunately, her car was paid off and since she and Parker had never gotten around to buying the house they’d talked about, she had no other debts.
Parker. She closed her eyes against the dull ache even the thought of his name still caused her.
But Parker was gone, and he wasn’t coming back. Even if she wanted him to, which, after the anguish he’d caused her, she’d be a fool to wish for. It was time to stop drifting, time to shove herself past the heartache and come up with a plan.
She’d always been a problem-solver. Maybe the solutions in life didn’t tally up neatly like the numbers she loved working with, but she would figure out something.
Time to make some decisions.
After draining the last of the coffee, she left her cup on the patio table and set off into the bluebonnet meadow. A cattle trail that created a meandering path across the meadow led down to the little creek, a tributary of the Pedernales. At the bend of the creek, two enormous tumbled stones sat atop one another, projecting into the creek and creating a peninsula around which the stream ran. It had always been her favorite place to come and sit, to just relax, or to think.
Clambering over the rock, she perched at the edge, the water flowing soft and swift at her feet.
What was she going to do?
Her reputation in the accounting community was good, and she had friends from college to whom she could reach out to recommend job openings. She was confident that the partners of the firm for whom she and Parker had worked their first four years after college, before Parker convinced her they should go out on their own, would give her references.
She absolutely didn’t want to work in Dallas, where she might run into Parker, but there were a number of large financial companies in San Antonio. She’d probably have to start at an entry level, but it would be a job with a salary, which would solve her immediate cash flow problem.
She had always been super focused on work, whether it was getting the grades in high school to enable her to go to the college she wanted, or earning high enough marks in college to make her an attractive prospect to a successful accounting firm after graduation, or putting heart and soul into making the partnership successful. But the debacle with Parker had left such a sick feeling in her gut that at the moment, she had zero desire to look for another accounting job.
Maybe she should consider staying on at the ranch.
Though Daddy was gone—her heart squeezed painfully at acknowledging that bitter fact—the ranch was Daddy. She felt his presence everywhere—in the house he’d built so lovingly with her mom, in the whicker of the horses who greeted her when she went to the barn, in the rocky paths they’d ridden together, in this place and the field of bluebonnets. He’d loved his career in the Navy, but he’d always intended one day to return to the land of his roots, able after a lifetime of saving to purchase the ranch he’d always wanted.
For the last ten years, he’d poured all his love and energy and passion into building, tending, and nurturing it.
Selling it would be like turning her back on him.
She couldn’t do it.
Juan had been putting in extra hours, taking over the chores that Daddy had been performing. She was smart, and she was certainly willing to work hard. Surely she could get him to teach her what she needed to know to be a competent rancher.
If it later turned out that she couldn’t handle it, if it didn’t work out for some other reason, there would always be the possibility of an accounting job in San Antonio.
She leaned back against hard rock surface, let the gentle sound of trickling water and soft March breeze wash through her, and breathed in deeply of the bluebonnet-scented air.
As she emptied her mind of everything but the sound of the water and the sigh of the wind through the cypresses, a sense of peace descended, soothing the rawness of grief. Easing the ache of being betrayed by the man she’d loved.
She’d spent her whole life migrating from place to place. Dallas had been where she ended up working, but she’d never really established a home there.
But as she sat here, surrounded by land Daddy had claimed and loved, feeling her father’s presence all around her, this place felt like . . . home.
Making the ranch a reality and then making it a success had been Daddy’s dream. She’d honor his life and legacy by making it hers. And know every moment that she rode the trails or tended the cattle, her father rode beside her.
*
Duncan drove his truck down the long driveway toward the Scott ranch house. He’d visited his neighbor’s place several times over the years, and if it still chafed to find a house and barn on what had once been the Triple A’s eastern pasture, at least the man had done a good job when he’d built them. The spacious house, set on a rise overlooking a meadow that descended to the creek, was made of native stone and oak and blended into the landscape as if it belonged there.
He expected to find Harrison at home. She hadn’t been out much, he knew. He’d seen her at the funeral, of course, looking stunned and lost, and paid her his respects, feeling for her grief. From the way Scott had talked about her, Duncan knew the two had been close, especially after the death of her mother. Losing him so unexpectedly—a massive heart attack, he’d heard—had to have been terribly difficult.
He knew what it was like to suddenly lose a father you adored.
He wouldn’t normally have intruded on her grief this soon, but he figured, being a partner in an accounting business with a major tax filing deadline approaching, she probably needed to get back to the city as soon as possible. He wanted to see her before she left. With her father gone and her boyfriend uninterested in the ranch, there was no telling when she’d be back.
But sometime in the not-too-distant future, she was going to have to decide what to do with the property. She might well make that decision without ever visiting Whiskey River again. He wanted to put his proposition before her now, so she’d have it to consider when she evaluated her options.
She might be relieved to hear his offer, thinking he was doing her a favor to provide an easy answer to the problem of what to do about her father’s ranch. It might ease her pain to know that the place her father had loved could be handed off to someone who would care for it as devotedly as he had.
Pulling up before the house, he shut down the engine and stepped down from the truck. Walking up onto the broad covered porch that surrounded the house on three sides, he knocked at the front door.
After waiting a few minutes, he knocked again. He could see her car and her Daddy’s truck parked in the shed attached to the barn, so he knew she must be on the place somewhere.
But after waiting a few more minutes without anyone coming to the door, he stepped back. She could be sleeping, or out riding the ranch, or just not up to receiving company. He really wanted to see her, but he wasn’t going to track her down and invade her privacy.
Disappointed, he turned around and headed back to the truck.
He’d just about reached the Chevy when he spotted a figure walking up the meadow from the creek. Angling his hat down over his eyes against the late-afternoon glare, he watched for a moment, then smiled.
The person approaching through the bluebonnets was Harrison.
Still smiling, he walked down to meet her.
*
She was dressed as he’d seen her when he encountered her and her father by the highland plateau—was it barely a month ago? Old jeans, well-worn boots, barn coat open over a cotton shirt, a straw cowboy hat instead of a battered Stetson over dark hair caught back in a low ponytail. She walked with a lithe sort of grace, he thought,
like maybe she’d once been a dancer. She didn’t have the sort of beauty that could make a man fall off his horse, but her slender figure and pale oval face, with its generous mouth, pert nose, and large dark eyes, were attractive.
Feeling the automatic reaction of his body to that assessment, he reminded himself again that she had a live-in boyfriend. In addition to which, she’d just lost her beloved father. Even if she weren’t in a relationship, she wasn’t likely at the moment to have any interest in hooking up with anyone.
Suddenly she halted, having just then noticed him approaching. Alarm widened her eyes before she recognized him, her body relaxing as she gave him a little wave.
Not wanting to crowd her, he waited for her to walk up to him.
“Hello, Duncan,” she said. “What brings you here? By the way, thanks for your kind remarks about Daddy at the f—” Her voice broke for a moment. “At the services,” she continued, steadying her voice. “I really appreciated them.”
“Your father was a fine man, a good neighbor, and a good rancher. His loss couldn’t have hit the rest of us as hard as it did you, but everyone in Whiskey River was shocked. We all grieve with you and for you.”
She nodded, her eyes sheening. “What did you need to see me about? Oh, excuse me, I’m forgetting my manners! Would you like some coffee?”
It would probably be better to share some pleasant chat and a cup of joe before he broached his offer, Duncan thought. “Thanks, I’d like that.”
“It’s a beautiful day. Would you like to sit out on the porch? I’ll go grab some coffee in the kitchen and be right back.”
“Sure, that’d be fine.”
They reached the back porch, Harrison continuing down the walkway to disappear inside while Duncan took a seat in one of the casual armchairs flanked by small tables. Tossing his hat onto one of them, he looked back out over the meadow.
The view from the back porch was panoramic, with the hills of the Edwards plateau to the north while the bluebonnet-dusted meadow descended eastward in a graceful curve of blue to the unseen creek below.
The Rancher Page 2
