Second Chance at Sunflower Ranch

by Carolyn Brown

  The animals were tame enough that it didn’t take much to get them separated and out of the corral. Then it was a simple matter of leading them over to their new home. Right up until they reached that ditch full of water, and the hembras set their heels. The crias had been romping behind their mothers like little wind-up toys. When the grown-ups decided that they weren’t wading through water and climbing up a hill to a barbed wire fence, the babies balked, too.

  “Let’s take them on down the road a bit to where the gate is,” Jesse suggested.

  “If they’d just hop over the puddle, we could lead them down the fence line and we wouldn’t have to be so careful with the crias and the traffic,” Mia said.

  “If plan A doesn’t work, we move to plan B. If we hear a car, we may have to carry the babies until it gets past us.” Jesse slipped an arm around his alpaca and whispered in her ear.

  “Now you are an alpaca whisperer?” Mia asked.

  “Nope, but that mama told me that she’d prefer to go down the road rather than jump the ditch. It’s only a few hundred yards.” Jesse tugged gently on the lead rope, and the animal followed him.

  Sure enough, when they got to the place where Jesse could open the gate, the alpaca sailed over the ditch and then turned around and called its baby to it. The cria ran up and down the ditch and then made a jump, landed on the other side, and nuzzled against its mama’s neck. Crazy animals, Jesse thought. but then realized the first place had water in it and that's probably what spooked the alpaca.

  Mia hopped over the water, tugged on the lead rope, and her animal made the leap. When the baby started over, it misjudged the distance and landed neck deep in the water. The mother panicked and pulled against her rope, and the other female became agitated.

  Jesse handed both ropes to Mia and waded right out in the water to get the baby, put it on his shoulders, and started up the slippery slope. He’d only gone a step or two when he fell backward into the water, but he managed to hold the cria up high enough to keep water from getting in its little nose.

  In seconds, Mia had tied the two mother alpacas to a fence post and waded out into the water to get the cria. She managed to get it up onto dry land so it could run to its mama for comfort before she made a misstep and landed firmly on her butt in the water right beside Jesse.

  “I’m sure glad this is not mud.” Jesse stood in water nearly to his knees. “I’m cooled off. How about you? Getting those mamas tied up was fast thinking. You did good.”

  Mia got to her feet. “Aren’t we going to go to the house and get into dry clothes?”

  “Nope,” Jesse answered. “We’ve got three more trips to get the animals crossed over. Why change when we might have the same problem next time?”

  She kicked at the water, sending a spray all over him.

  He chuckled and did the same right back at her.

  Before long, they were soaked from head to toe, and Jesse was sure that the folks back at the ranch could hear their laughter.

  She reached out and gave him a push, and he fell backward to sit in waist-deep water. He grabbed her by the ankle and pulled her down beside him.

  She looked over at him and grinned. “Bet I can beat you to the top of the ditch,” she challenged.

  Before he could answer, she jumped up and scaled the slippery bank like a monkey going up a tree. Jesse had to concentrate to get up to the top without falling backward, but he made it on the first try. He poured the water out of his boots, put them back on and untied his hembra from the post. “Come on, pretty lady. The worst part is over. From here, it’s clear sailing to your new five-star home. Hey, Mia, close the gate before you untie your animal.”

  “Yes, sir…boss!” Her tone was cold but not quite as bad as it had been that morning.

  “Progress,” he muttered under his breath.

  She had to hustle to catch up to him, and when she did, the first words out of her mouth were, “So you and mama were, like, friends and nothing more?”

  His worry radar shot up into the red zone. “Why are you asking?”

  “She never mentioned you one time when I was growing up. I didn’t even know you existed until we moved in with Poppa and Nana. They told me that you and Mama were inseparable until you went to the Air Force right out of high school. What happened that y’all didn’t stay friends?” Mia asked.

  “Time and distance,” Jesse answered.

  “Since you came home, y’all are good friends again, right? I know that she tells you stuff, and you tell her things,” Mia said.

  “Yes, that’s right.” Jesse wondered where she was going with this line, so he answered with as few words as possible.

  “So,” Mia sucked in a lungful of air, and then blurted out, “has she told you who my father is, or does she even know? Was she sleeping around with more than one guy, and is that the reason she’s never told anyone?”

  “Yes and no,” Jesse answered.

  “What does that mean?” Mia frowned.

  “It means that I will never lie to you. Yes, I know who your father is. Yes, your mother knows who he is. No, she has never been a person who sleeps around. You were conceived out of deep love between two people,” Jesse answered.

  Mia stopped in her tracks and locked eyes with him. “Who is it? I have a right to know.”

  “Yes, you do, but it’s not my place to tell you. Your mother has worked hard to make sure you have a good life, so she should be the one to tell you, and I’m sure she will when she feels like the time is right,” Jesse answered.

  “I don’t like you so much,” she said.

  “Well, darlin’, I’m not too fond of you either,” he said. “But maybe we can remedy that in the future.”

  “Why should we?” she asked.

  “Because working for a boss you like is a lot easier than working for one you hate,” he answered.

  * * *

  Addy drove Sonny out to the barn after dinner so he could see the alpacas. She set up a folding chair for him and wrestled a bale of hay out of the enclosure so he could prop his feet up. The two babies ran back and forth from their mothers to inside the barn, where they checked out every corner. At the faintest sign of something strange, they took off back to their mamas for protection.

  “Nosy little devils, aren’t they,” Sonny chuckled.

  The small side door at the end of the stalls opened and Jesse waved. “Hey, y’all. I thought I might find you out here. What do you think, Dad? Do we need to do anything different?”

  “Just keep the big doors that lead out into the pasture closed for a few days,” Sonny said. “I’m thinking maybe we need to rope off a section on that side for them, rather than turning them out in the whole twenty acres.”

  “I’ll get Henry and the boys on it the first of the week.” He closed the door tightly and started down the aisle separating the stalls.

  Addy’s heart pounded with each step that he took toward them. She stared at his lips and wished they were alone so she could see if another kiss would be as hot as the one they’d shared.

  “How much trouble was it to get them over here?” Sonny asked.

  “Tell you in a minute.” He went straight for the tack room and returned with three bottles of cold water. “It’s hot in here even with that little breeze. You need to stay hydrated, Dad.” He handed the first bottle to Sonny and the second one to Addy. “So do you. We can’t have either of you dropping from heat stroke.” He sat down beside Addy and chuckled. “Mia and I both got cooled off on the first trip, but we’re pretty well dried out now, except my boots are still a little sloshy.” He went on to tell them the story about the ditch.

  Sonny laughed until he got the hiccups, and tears rolled down his cheeks. “I would love to have seen that. You do know you could have loaded them in a trailer and brought them over in less than an hour, don’t you?”

  “And miss all that fun?” Jesse chuckled with him, and then grew serious. “She tried to manipulate me into telling her who her father is, Add
y.”

  Her breath caught in her throat and she forced herself to remember how to breathe. “And?”

  “She played on the fact that we were best friends and asked me if I knew who it was. I told her I would never lie to her, that I knew but that I wouldn’t tell her because it wasn’t my place,” he told her.

  “Good answer,” Addy said. “She needs a few weeks to get over this thing with Ricky before we tell her.”

  “I agree,” Jesse said. “Got to get back to the fencing. See y’all at supper.”

  “I think I’m ready to go, too, Addy,” Sonny said. “Heat is a little worse than I thought it would be. Just put my chair over behind the panels by the hay. I’ll probably be ready to come back in the morning when it’s cooler.”

  See you later? Jesse mouthed at Addy over the top of Sonny’s head as he headed toward the tack room.

  She gave him a brief nod and handed Sonny his cane. Tonight, she would get the full story of what all happened between Jesse and Mia, but that was secondary to the idea that she would get to spend time with him—alone.

  * * *

  Jesse picked up another wire stretcher from the shelf and walked with his dad and Addy out to her SUV. He held his dad’s cane while Sonny hiked a hip into the passenger seat and grabbed a hold of the hand grip on the ceiling.

  “All settled?” Jesse asked.

  “Yep, but it gets harder to get in and out of a vehicle every time,” Sonny admitted. “Don’t wait until you are past seventy to retire, son. Do it as soon as you can and enjoy a few years when you can travel.”

  Jesse patted him on the shoulder and stretched the seat belt over his chest. “Been there, done that already, Dad. I’m ready to do ranchin’ work until I drop now. Fasten this thing. Addy’s always driven too fast.”

  “That’s the pot calling the kettle black. I’ve never had to call Sonny to bring the tractor and get me out of a ditch,” she smarted off to him.

  “Hey, don’t go draggin’ up the dead bones of old mistakes.” Jesse flashed a brilliant smile across the top of the SUV.

  “Then don’t make me,” she said with a grin.

  He tossed the stretcher over into the back of his truck, got in, and drove across the pasture to where Henry, Mia, and the summer help were all working on putting up a new fence and taking down the rotted old wooden posts. Mia came over to the truck and got the stretcher and jogged back.

  “You and Pete tighten up this length while me and these other two boys get the next few posts in the ground,” Henry said.

  Pete whipped off his cowboy hat and wiped sweat from his brow with a bandanna he pulled from his hip pocket. “Put me with someone else. I’m not working with her. She’s ruined our family by dragging Ricky off to Las Vegas. Mama is crying because he won’t come home, and Daddy is mad all the time. He says he’d sue her if he could afford a lawyer.”

  Mia didn’t waste a bit of time getting right up in Pete’s face. “It was Ricky’s idea to go to Vegas, and he went through thousands of my dollars at the poker tables, then ran off with another woman and left me stranded. How can this be my fault?”

  “He told Mama that he felt sorry for you, and you begged him to move in with you. Then you promised him anything he wanted if he’d go to Vegas with you. You’re the reason he flunked out of college last semester and why he left town. You ain’t no better than that slut Justine, who says her baby belongs to him.” Pete jacked his chin up a notch so that he was looking down at Mia. “Daddy says I can work here, but I’m to stay away from her.”

  Mia’s hand knotted into a fist, and she drew it back to deck Pete, but Jesse closed his big hand around it and held tight. “Pete, you collect your gear, whatever it is, and go home. Don’t bother coming back. The next time you even remotely insult Mia, I won’t hold her back from knocking you on your ass.”

  Pete turned around and stomped back toward the house, then he turned with a sneer and said, “You’ll be sorry you did this to us, Mia. Ricky is a good guy, and he just felt sorry for a big old plain girl like you. You shouldn’t have ruined his life.”

  “We’ve got fences to build before quittin’ time,” Mia said through clenched teeth, “so let’s get with it. Thanks, Jesse, for standing up for me.”

  “Anytime,” he said, then turned to the other three guys. “Any of you have something to say?”

  “No, sir,” Tommy said. “I’m glad you fired him. I got tired of hearing him bad-mouth Mia. We all know what kind of person Ricky is.”

  “Then we’ll all get back to work,” Henry said. “Jesse, why don’t you help Mia with the wire while we put down some more posts?”

  “Be glad to,” Jesse agreed.

  As soon as the others were out of hearing, Mia turned around and glared at Jesse. “Why didn’t you let me hit him? He deserved it.”

  “Yes, he did, and it took all the willpower I could muster to keep from knocking him cold myself, but think about it, Mia,” Jesse answered, “if you had hit him, Patrick O’Malley would have brought assault charges against you, and that would feed the gossip that Lylah is spreading. We want it to go away, not keep spreading like weeds in a pasture.”

  “You’re right, but it would have felt good to put him on the ground.” She shoved her hands down into her gloves.

  “You’ll have your chance, but when it comes around, do it with your brain, not with your fists,” Jesse advised.

  “What does that mean?” Mia asked.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Jesse answered and changed the subject. “Your feet dried out yet?”

  “Nope, but I’ve kind of gotten used to the warm slushy feeling of wet socks.” She smiled. “How about you?”

  “Same here. Are you thirsty?” He pulled a bottle of water out of his hip pocket and handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she said as she opened it and downed a third of it before tucking it away in the back pocket of her jeans. “Now let’s get this wire stretched. We can probably catch up with the other crew by suppertime if we work hard.”

  A little more progress, Jesse thought.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Addy had spent the afternoon in the office and was more than ready to get out of the house that evening after supper. She ran a brush through her shoulder-length hair and twisted it up on the top of her head with a wide hair clamp. She didn’t bother with makeup, since the only place she was going was to the pharmacy to pick up the next month’s supply of medicine for Sonny. She was looking forward to some time alone to think about whatever this was with Jesse, and how to tell Mia that Jesse was her father.

  A blast of heat hit her in the face when she stepped outside that evening. Mia was sitting in the porch swing. Jesse had just rounded the end of the house with Tex right beside him.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Mia asked.

  “Got to make a run to the pharmacy in Bonham,” Addy answered without slowing down.

  “Hold up,” Mia said. “I’ll go with you if we can stop at the ice cream store afterwards. I’ve been wanting a hot fudge sundae for days.”

  “My treat and I’ll even drive if I can crash the party,” Jesse offered.

  So much for a nice quiet evening to think before she took a walk down to the bunkhouse after dark. “Can’t turn down an offer like that,” she said.

  Addy expected Mia to say that she’d just stay home if Jesse was going, and then Jesse would suddenly remember that he had something he needed to take care of somewhere on the ranch so the two women could have some time together. But neither happened.

  The swing looked a little lonely when Mia left it going back and forth, and poor old Tex pouted when Jesse told him that he had to stay home. Mia rushed out to Jesse’s truck and got into the backseat. Evidently, things weren’t going well enough for her to call shotgun and ride next to him all the way to Bonham.

  Jesse stuck his head in the door and yelled, “Hey, Mama. Addy, Mia, and I are going to Bonham. Y’all need anything?”

  “Just Sonny’s medicine.�
�� Pearl’s voice floated out to the porch.

  Tex dashed into the house while the door was open, and Addy felt much better about leaving the poor old boy behind. She got into the vehicle and fastened her seat belt. “After that big supper, I shouldn’t have an ice cream sundae, but I’m going to,” she said.

  “Me, too, but it sounds so good on a hot night like this,” Mia said. “Poor old Tex. I bet he misses his rides to the feed store when Poppa was able to drive.”

  “I’m sure he does,” Jesse said as he slid behind the steering wheel. “Dad used to take Tex’s daddy with him before Tex was born. Addy, do you remember Hondo?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Addy smiled. “He came over and bred our dog on Hall Ranch. Daddy wasn’t happy about it since his dog was a registered blue heeler, and Sonny didn’t know exactly what Hondo’s blood lines were.”

  “At least Tex knows who his father was, even if Hondo didn’t have a pedigree,” Mia said.

  Addy turned around enough that she could see Mia. “And we’re not having this conversation tonight.”

  “Oh, all right!” Mia huffed. “If you won’t talk to me about that, then can I have a consolation prize and not have to go to the bake sale?”

  “Not happening,” Addy said.

  “All right then, can I have a banana split instead of a sundae?” Mia pressured.

  “That’s doable,” Jesse said. “I was thinking of having one myself. I have an incurable sweet tooth, and ice cream is my favorite dessert.”

  “Did you know that about Jesse, Mama?” Mia asked.

  “She knows everything about me.” Jesse smiled.

  Except how I feel about him, Addy thought.

  Jesse had to slow down just slightly to go through Windom and Dodd City, two little communities that each had less than four hundred people. Addy remembered spending lots of Saturday nights in an old barn halfway between the two little towns. That’s where the teenagers went to drink beer, turn up the radio on Jesse’s old pickup truck, and dance to the music. That’s where they had both lost their virginity—but not to each other—and where Addy had gotten drunk for the first time when her first had dropped her for another girl. It’s where Jesse held her hair back for her when she threw up, and where he held her while she cried over the breakup.