“Liz and Tara McNeil will be in town for the auction and Lauren thought it would be fun if they could stay here.” Closing the dishwasher, Jessica added, “It’s been years since I’ve seen them. I’m looking forward to it.” She reached for the hand towel.
Rachel was silent. Jessica glanced at her as she hung up the towel and saw that the older woman’s lips were pressed in a grim line. “It’s out of the question.”
A pang of disappointment shot through Jessica. “Why?”
“Surely I don’t have to tell you.”
The past ten years evaporated and Jessica once again felt like the new bride eager to please her stern mother-in-law.
“I don’t understand what’s wrong with them staying here,” she said. “We’ve certainly got the room.”
“It isn’t appropriate,” Rachel pronounced in a low voice.
“Why not? You used to have house parties all the time!”
“That was...before.”
Now Jessica understood. Walking over to Rachel, she put her arm around the older woman’s shoulder. “It’s been nearly nine years since Sam and his father died, Rachel, though I know it sometimes seems like yesterday. Just because I want to see a couple of my friends doesn’t mean that I’m forgetting Samuel.”
Rachel stiffened and Jessica dropped her arm. “I should hope not. As a Fremont, you have certain obligations.”
Jessica stepped back. “Supporting this auction is one of those obligations, isn’t it?”
“You’ve supported it plenty.”
“I know.” Jessica waited, her expression as Fremont-like as she could make it.
Rachel scrutinized her, then nodded slightly. “Have your friends here, if you must. But, Jessica, do try to maintain some decorum. Remember, you’re a Fremont.”
Jessica hadn’t been reminded that she was a Fremont in quite a while and was irritated that Rachel did so now. Hadn’t she proved herself yet? “I’m aware of my responsibilities and one of them is upstairs, very upset that he can’t have a horse.”
Rachel shot her a sharp look. “I’m surprised you can even contemplate it.”
But Jessica was contemplating it. This was the latest in a series of escalating disagreements between her and her mother-in-law on how to raise Sam, and it was by far the biggest. The others were small—just differences of style mostly. Like the high-fat snacks Rachel let Sam eat more often than Jessica thought was reasonable. She yielded on that, as she did on most issues when it came to Sam. After all, Rachel was more experienced. She’d raised Sam’s father, the man Jessica had fallen in love with.
“Let’s at least look into this camp that he wants to go to,” Jessica suggested. “I’m going upstairs to talk with him.”
Her footsteps sounded loud as they crossed the polished wooden floors to the grand double staircase with the banisters and railings carved by local craftsmen. The designs didn’t match, though they were all carved from ponderosa pine. Ever mindful of potential votes, Samuel’s father had used more than one local carver. At first, Jessica had thought it too obviously political. Now she liked the differing styles.
As she reached the top of the stairs, her footsteps slowed. It was past time she returned to work, but she didn’t want to leave Sam while he was angry.
She knocked on his bedroom door and waited, not expecting an answer. She didn’t get one. Turning the knob, she pushed open the door. “Sam?”
“Go away.” He was standing by his dresser. On the top, framed in rough wood with barbed wire embedded in it, was a photograph of his father and grandfather, dressed in fancy Western outfits and sitting on their horses as they prepared to ride in the Frontier Days parade.
Jessica walked over to join him, encouraged when he didn’t tell her to go away again. “No promises, but I’ll talk to Gramma.”
Sam gave her a bleak look. “She’ll just make me go to Marshallfield.”
As she stared into the unhappy face of her son, Jessica felt as though she were awakening after a long sleep.
She’d been raising Sam in the same house with the same woman and the same experiences that had molded her late husband—the man she’d fallen in love with. He even had the same name. My God, she thought. Rachel is raising her son all over again. Only Sam is my son, too.
But Jessica had liked this environment for her son. She had grown up without a sense of where “home” was. Her father, a surgeon, had invented a type of clamp that temporarily stopped blood flow without as much tissue damage as its predecessor. He’d traveled all over the world, accompanied by Jessica and her mother, demonstrating the clamp and lecturing at medical schools. Until she’d gone to boarding school, Jessica had had a private tutor who’d traveled with them. Even after she went to boarding school—because her mother wanted her to have the opportunity to make friendships that lasted longer than a few weeks—Jessica hadn’t realized how different her childhood was, since many of the other students had parents who lived and worked in other countries, or traveled like Jessica’s.
It was only after holiday visits to friends’ homes that she experienced a taste of what she now thought of as a real home life.
The Fremonts had a real home life. She’d been impressed with how deep their roots were in Wyoming. When faced with raising her son without his father, she’d tried for the next best thing—raising him in the same house with the same woman.
Had she made a huge mistake by living with her mother-in-law and allowing her such a big role in rearing Sam all these years?
“Tell you what. I’ve got to go back to work now, but this evening, I’ll call Kevin’s mother, and if I like the sound of the camp, then I’ll sign you up,” she promised recklessly.
After all, she was Sam’s mother, not Rachel.
CHAPTER TWO
“SO YOU’RE REALLY GOIN’ through with it?”
“I’m really going through with it.” Matt Winston closed the door of the horse trailer and patted the rump of Black Star, his best horse.
“You’re gonna regret it.”
Matt glanced at Frank—aka the Flying Francisco—and nodded. “Probably.”
“I know it. Carmen read the tea leaves this morning.”
“I had coffee.”
Frank gestured dismissively. “So maybe it was coffee grounds. No matter. I’m tellin’ you that this trip will not be as you expect.”
“Things rarely are.” Matt didn’t know whether Frank was referring to the sale of Black Star, or Matt driving from his ranch in Texas to Wyoming to take part in the bachelor auction at Lost Springs Ranch for Boys this weekend. Didn’t matter. Matt would likely regret both.
“On the other hand, they say regrets are the spice of goulash.”
“Do they?”
Frank shrugged, causing the capuchin monkey perched on his shoulder to shift and curl its tail. “They do in the old country.”
Privately Matt thought the old country was some place like New Jersey, but he’d never called Frank on it. “What do they say about bachelor auctions?”
Squinting, Frank stared off into the distance. “They say being a rich woman’s play toy is nice work if you can get it, but keep your own horse in the stable.”
Matt grinned. “It’s just a date in return for a donation to Lost Springs.”
“Yeah, yeah, for charity. Homeless boys like you once were. I know all this.” Frank nodded toward the trailer. “And the horse?”
Matt’s smile faded as he rubbed the animal again. “There are going to be people with money at this auction. Black Star will fetch a better price than if I tried to sell him from here.”
“Barnaby would not sell an animal he wanted to keep. He’d just spend a coin. Right, Caesar?” Frank fed a nut to the monkey.
A coin? It would take a lot of coins to keep Winter Ranch going. Hund
reds. Thousands. Millions would be nice. How had Barnaby Schultz, the late owner, managed? Matt had only inherited the ranch—not the knack for keeping it going on nothing.
Before he came to own Winter Ranch, Barnaby had been a carnival magician. Matt figured he must have been a pretty good one, because magic was about the only explanation he could think of for the way Barnaby had always come up with money when they needed it.
Matt sure couldn’t—at least not the extra to support the former circus animals who were just living out their final days.
Caesar chattered and there was an answering growl from the shade beneath the big pecan tree in the ranch yard.
“How’re you doing, Sheba?” he called to the old tiger. At the same time, Frank barked a command in some language the animals understood, but Matt didn’t.
“They see you putting Black Star in the trailer and think we are getting ready to move like in the old days,” Frank said. In the distance an elephant trumpeted.
Matt noted that the sound was closer than it should have been and shot Frank a questioning glance.
“You’re upsetting the animals,” Frank warned. “And, hey, you’re gonna need a horse. Where are you gonna find a horse who’s friends with them, eh?”
“Selling Black Star isn’t my first choice, just my best one.” Matt’s jaw tightened as he tested the latch on the trailer. “It appears that Barnaby spent all the ‘coins’ you keep telling me about.”
Frank’s handlebar moustache quivered and he gave Matt a dark look from beneath heavy black brows. “Nothing was said of this.”
Frank looked very much like Francisco at the moment. The closest thing to a foreman that Matt had, Frank had acted as the liaison between the ranch hands and the circus folk who’d traditionally wintered at the far northeast corner of the Hill Country ranch. Only somewhere along the line, the regular ranch hands had drifted away and the retired circus folk had become the ranch folk. Frank’s accent changed according to which hat he was wearing at the time.
“Nothing much to say. There wasn’t a lot of money in the ranch account when Barnaby died. There’s less now.” Matt gave Black Star a last reassuring pat and headed toward the door of his truck until a chattering interrupted him. Right. He’d said the word coin a few moments ago.
Caesar leaped down from Frank’s shoulder and scurried toward Matt. The monkey turned around once, gave a funny hop and held out a tiny hand.
Matt searched the pockets of his well-worn jeans. “You used to dance a lot longer than that, Caesar.”
“He’s gettin’ old like the rest of us.” Frank was back to being Frank.
Matt finally found a nickel and handed it to the monkey. Caesar snatched the coin, bit it, chattered some more, then scampered away until he came to the base of the pecan tree, where Sheba yawned at him. He turned around, saw Matt and Frank watching him and let loose with a stream of monkey chatter. They turned away and Caesar ran off to who knew where.
“Maybe I should hit Caesar up for a loan,” Matt said only half kidding. After Barnaby died, Caesar had relentlessly pestered Matt for coins. The monkey might be worth more than he was, he thought.
“No, no, Matthew,” Frank said, his voice slow and deep. “Approach your rich lady—maybe after your date, eh?”
“No.” Matt bent to pick up his duffel bag and tossed it into the back of his pickup.
“No?”
“Definitely no.” Out of the corner of his eye, Matt saw Frank shrug philosophically.
“What kind of date you got planned, anyway?”
“Well, if she doesn’t have her own ideas, I thought I’d get one of those fancy hotels in Casper to pack us a picnic lunch and take her riding through some of the prettiest country God created.” With luck, she’d be a horsewoman and would be impressed with Black Star, impressed enough to buy him.
Matt felt a pang at the prospect, even though Black Star was mostly vanity, anyway. The colt had been a gift from Barnaby when Matt had arrived at the ranch straight from Lost Springs. The horse was the offspring of one of the black Hungarian performing high-steppers and ranch stock. Barnaby used to say he liked the fire that the circus horses added to the breeding, but they needed the stability of the ranch horses to settle down and make a really fine animal.
Matt would miss him.
“A picnic,” Frank repeated thoughtfully. “With a soft blanket underneath a shady tree and a little vino...” He pursed his lips. “Could work. And afterward—”
“There’ll be no afterward!”
“Women expect afterward. You young men today know nothing of how to woo a woman.”
“Wooing’s got nothing to do with it. I won’t even know her. It’s only a date!”
“No.” Frank held up a finger and shook his head. “You must make it an event. I saw the brochure. The
ladies, they will be buying a fantasy, you know?”
Matt had seen the brochure, too. The former Lost Springs boys had done well—at least the ones returning to help out at the auction. He’d thought long and hard about going back to the ranch where he’d spent his adolescence. It wasn’t that he hated the place—he could see now that living there had been the best thing for him and he definitely wanted to see it keep going for other boys. The second thoughts came when he’d seen the printing proof of the brochure. The other guys had worked hard—real hard. Some were doctors, a couple were ranchers. One of them even owned a toy company.
There was nothing like a reunion to make a man take stock of his life and see how he measured up. Matt supposed he looked more successful on paper than he actually was. On the other hand, he guessed it all came down to how a person defined success. He considered himself successful in the ways that counted—all the people and animals that depended on him had a home and food to eat. And right now, Lost Springs was depending on him to help them. Matt always responded to a plea for help, but this was different. He owed Lost Springs a debt he could never repay.
Frank was still going on about the date part. Truth to tell, Matt hadn’t given as much thought to what happened after someone bid on him at the auction as he should have, considering that his dating skills were as rusty as the siding on the storage barn. “So...you think the picnic idea is fantasy enough?”
“It’s what you make of it, eh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ninety percent is all up here.” Frank tapped his temple. “Dreams, fantasies, desires, endless possibilities—all up here. Most men know they must pleasure a woman’s body, but a great lover also pleasures her mind.”
This was too much information. “Well now, Frank, you see, it’s not—”
“In my prime, the ladies looked fondly upon me.” Frank stood straighter and threw back his shoulders. “And even after the fall—” he swiped at his lame leg “—my upper body was molto bene, you know? From the trapeze catching. You...you are not so bad—not for trapeze work, you understand, but not bad for the ladies. You have good shoulders and your belly is not so much in evidence.” Frank laughed and patted his slight paunch. “You will draw many eyes.”
Matt hoped he’d draw many bids. He tilted his hat further down on his head. “Yeah, well, it’s about time for me to take off here.”
“They like the quiet ones who watch them. You are good at this.” Frank crossed his arms over his still-massive chest and narrowed his eyes at Matt. “Yes. You pick one or two ladies and you look at them as though they are the only women in the room. Look fully into their eyes—let me see you look into my eyes.”
Matt winced. “Frank—”
“Look.”
Matt looked.
“No...look. Like so.” Frank gave him a look that made Matt glad he didn’t have any sisters to protect.
“Notice the smile.” Frank gestured. “Just a slight movement of the lips. You are making the promise
, no?”
“I don’t make promises I can’t keep,” Matt muttered.
“Matthew, Matthew.” Frank’s accent thickened and he attempted to throw his arm around Matt’s shoulders. Matt was considerably taller, so all Frank managed was a heavy pat.
There was still a lot of power in his arms, Matt realized.
“You have promised your time, and the lady who wins you expects to receive all your attention. You must make her believe that you will think only of her, that you find her utterly fascinating—that you are content merely being near her, and your only thoughts will be those of how to please her.” Frank spread his hand, indicating a vista of possibilities. “She must be convinced that she is your only reason for living.”
“All that from a look and a smile?”
“Think of yourself as a character in a play. You both know it will end, for a brief time you are together—or a longer time, who knows, eh?” He poked Matt in the ribs. “Maybe you won’t come back to us here.”
“I’m not going to run out on you.” Even Matt heard the harshness in his voice.
Frank regarded him thoughtfully. “If you don’t want to come back here, then you shouldn’t.”
Matt looked at him in genuine surprise. “Who said I didn’t want to come back here?”
“I only meant that if you find a path that leads you in a different direction, then you should follow it.” Frank waved his arm to encompass the ranch yard, the barn and outbuildings and the rolling hills in the distance. “Not much opportunity for a different life comes your way here.”
“I don’t want a different life.”
“You came here as a young man. You don’t know what you want.”
“All I ever wanted was a place I could set down roots and call my own.”
“And Barnaby took advantage of that. He should have never left you the ranch—and in such a way.” Frank shook his head. “You should sell it. No one would blame you.”
The Rancher and the Rich Girl Page 2
