Homecoming Ranch

by Julia London

  Blue Eyes blinked. She folded her arms over her middle uncertainly.

  Luke smiled at her. “You know the marauding mountain men up here usually have long beards and dirty clothes, right?”

  Her eyes widened slightly, but then she slowly smiled, producing a dimple in one cheek. “Is that how I spot them? Thank you—that’s information I need to have.”

  He grinned. “No offense, but you look a little lost. I’m from around here, and can probably point you in the right direction.”

  “Pine River,” she said, dropping her arms. “The guy at the gas station told me to take Sometimes Pass road. He said it was straight up the road I was on, but I can’t find it.”

  “You’re on it.” Luke casually flicked his gaze over her. Definitely a nice figure. Not too thin, curvy in all the right places. He wondered what business she had in Pine River. “The problem is, only the locals call it Sometimes Pass. It’s only a pass after the snow season. Hence the name.”

  “No wonder I couldn’t find it! Would you mind?” she asked, and crowded in beside him, brushing against his arm as she leaned into her car—way in—affording Luke an excellent view of her derriere. He had only a moment to admire it before she emerged holding the map. She spread it on the hood of her car and clicked her highlighter for action. “Where am I?”

  Luke pointed at the county road that was Sometimes Pass on the map.

  “Aaah,” she said, and highlighted it.

  She stood back, admired her highlighting for a moment, then glanced up. She seemed surprised to find him still standing there and peered up at him with those Caribbean blue eyes. “So which way is Pine River?” she asked.

  A man could definitely lose his way around those eyes, Luke thought. “West.”

  “And that would be…?” She pointed north.

  Man, she really was lost. He pointed down the road. “That is west, the direction you’re headed. Pine River is about ten miles down.”

  “Great. Thank you.” She picked up her map.

  “Welcome.” He looked at those sparkling eyes again and moved to the safety of the back of the car. He discovered she had taken out the spare, the change kit, and had laid out the tools in a neat row. He took a look at the back tire that had gone flat. “Probably a nail or something like it,” he said.

  “I worried about that when I drove into the construction site,” she said.

  Where the hell was there a construction site around here? Luke paused to look down at the tools lined up.

  “Oh, ah—I’ve been reading the manual,” she said, and hopped around him. “It says to loosen the lug nuts first.”

  “Does it?” He reached for the Mickey Mouse car jack. “Not to worry. I’ve changed a lot of tires in my life.”

  “Sure, sure,” she said, looking at the jack in his hand. She didn’t look as if she fully agreed with him. “I just thought maybe, since it’s a small car… you know.”

  No, he didn’t know. He stepped around her, going down on one knee to slide the jack into its little sleeve beneath the car. He started to jack it up, but she was standing too close. He paused, looked up. “It’s probably better if you stand back.”

  “Right,” she said, stepping back. But her feet, stuffed into her heels, were in his peripheral vision.

  He removed the flat tire, then fit the spare donut onto the rim. He noticed her turn the page of the manual, as if she was following along. He secured the spare and stood up. “You’ll want to get that tire fixed as soon as you can.” He began to toss the tire change implements into the trunk. “Those donuts are definitely not made for the roads up here.” He shut the trunk, put his hands on his hips. “Anything else I can help you with?”

  “I think that should do it.” She shut her manual. “I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Luke.”

  “Luke,” she said. “Luke, thank you, so much. I’m Madeline.” She smiled gratefully, and extended her hand to be shaken.

  That smile knocked Luke back a step or two. It changed her face, made her softer somehow. Her eyes shone, and her mouth—well, there were a lot of fantasies floating in his head at the moment. He suddenly wanted to take Grok’s claw from her hair and unbutton the top two buttons of her blouse.… But instead he took her hand. It felt weightless in his.

  “Thanks,” she said again, still smiling, and backed up to the rail again. “I won’t keep you any longer.” She carefully pulled her hand free.

  “Welcome,” Luke said, and with a weird little touch of two fingers to his brow—what the hell was that?—he added, “Take care.”

  “Thanks!” She clasped her hands behind her back and stood next to her car like a cheerful little armed guard.

  Luke couldn’t help but smile with amusement as he passed. He walked back to his truck, started it up again. He pulled out onto the road, drove up the road a little bit until he could turn around, then headed in the direction of Pine River. He waved as he passed her. She waved back.

  A moment later, he glanced in his rearview to see what she was doing.

  Blue Eyes had her map on the hood of her car and was folding it into a neat little square.

  FIVE

  The little town of Pine River sat at the very center of the valley, on the edge of the river for which it was named. One could see it on the descent down from the mountains, sitting in the middle of the valley like an oasis in a mountain wilderness. The town had begun as a hub for miners and ranchers, but as the mining operations had shut down, and larger ranches had consumed small ranches, Pine River had morphed into a tourist town. It was a little too far from the slopes to be a ski resort. Summers were the draw here. Hiking, white-water rafting, horseback riding, cycling, camping. Any outdoor sport a person wanted could be found here.

  Luke had grown up in and around Pine River. It was where he’d gone to school, played football, fallen in love.

  He pulled onto the shoulder at the intersection of a rural road that led to the family ranch. He debated driving the eight miles up, but thought it was probably more important to talk to his father first. As Luke pulled out onto the main road, a little Honda turned onto the ranch road, and behind it, a truck hauling Port-A-Johns. Odd. There was rarely any traffic on this road—just the ranchers who lived out this way. Maybe old man Kaiser was finally going to build that new house his wife had talked about for years.

  He drove on down to the valley floor, coasting into Main Street. Two rows of western-style wooden buildings faced each other along one long strip. The business names were all designed to appeal to tourists: Grizzly Lodge and Café and Rocky Creek Tavern.

  Luke stopped at the Blue Jay Grocery and Tackle Shop.

  The grocery portion of the shop was small and close, and carried only essentials like toilet paper and milk. If a person needed more than basics, they could drive out to the Walmart on the old Aspen Highway.

  Luke walked back to the junk-food aisle and squatted down to have a look. Cookies, that would do. He grabbed two boxes. What he didn’t eat, he knew Leo would. He picked up some tortilla chips and salsa, then swung by the cooler to pick up a twelve pack of Coors, because he had a feeling he was going to need it.

  With his booty paid for, Luke walked outside, his keys jangling in his hand. He hadn’t quite reached the Bronco when he heard someone call his name.

  He turned around, felt the shock and glance of pain at once.

  “Luke Kendrick,” the woman said. She smiled, and it went through Luke like it always had, sloughing off the years that had passed as it sank deeper into him.

  “Julie Daugherty,” he said. How long had it been since they had split? Three years? Maybe not quite. Julie was the woman Luke had intended to marry. She was the woman he’d bought the ring for, had gotten down on one knee for, the whole nine yards.

  She was the one who had broken his heart.

  “What a surprise,” she said, walking cautiously forward.

  She looked as gorgeous as ever, her blond hair cut stylishly short, her figure
trim and athletic, only a few months past bearing her first child. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Good,” she said, and stopped at his bumper, her gaze flicking over the Bronco. “Still running, huh?”

  “Better than ever.” Luke turned to look at his Bronco, but a movement caught his attention. It was a tiny car with a donut spare driving slowly past. Blue Eyes was leaning forward, squinting up at the signs above his head.

  “You look good,” Julie said, not noticing the car. “But then, you always did.” She laughed, and touched her earring. It was a simple but familiar gesture that took Luke back a few years. They would sit on the porch swing out at the ranch, talking about everything and nothing, and she would idly play with her earring.

  “Thanks,” he said. He didn’t know what more he should say. All he could think was that if everything had gone according to plan, he and Julie would be married, and her child would be his. If it hadn’t been for Mom and Leo—

  “Are you still in Denver?” she asked.

  “Yep. I just came home to check in with Dad and Leo.”

  Julie nodded. She smiled coyly. “Girlfriend?”

  He hated that she felt she had the right to ask. He shrugged. “Sometimes.”

  She laughed. “I bet you have them falling at your feet, Luke. So how is Leo? I haven’t seen him around.”

  Luke’s breathing hitched a tiny bit. “He’s good,” he lied. “Doing great. And Brandon?” he asked, referring to her husband, although he could care less how that ass was doing. Did he hope it, or did a slight shadow glance over Julie’s face when he asked about her husband?

  She shoved her hands into the pockets of her jeans. “He’s a proud papa.” She didn’t say more than that. They stood there, looking at each other, maybe looking past the weeks and months and years since it had ended between them.

  Fortunately, Luke was saved from saying something stupid or inappropriate by the little car, which caught his attention once more. It drove by again, but in the opposite direction.

  “Well,” Julie said. “Tell your Dad and Leo I said hello, will you?”

  “Sure.”

  She smiled warmly. “It was really good to see you, Luke. Really good.”

  There was something in her voice, something he didn’t quite understand, but that he felt in his gut. He stood there a moment too long; he could feel himself softening. Luke made himself move first. “You, too, Julie.” He turned around, walked to the driver side of his Bronco.

  Julie Daugherty had let him down in the worst way, and somehow, Luke had picked himself up and gone on with his life. He wasn’t going to go backward now.

  He looked back over the hood of his truck. She was still standing there, her hands tucked into her back pockets, biting her bottom lip, almost as if she was trying to keep from speaking. Her gaze was full of yearning and it sent a shiver of disturbing familiarity down Luke’s spine. He got into his truck and turned the ignition before he made the mistake of asking her why she was looking at him the way she was.

  If Pine River had a backwater part to it, Elm Street was it. On this street, the houses were smaller and a little more run-down than elsewhere in town.

  Luke found the house where his dad and Leo were staying easily enough—it looked just as Dad had described it when he explained he and Leo were temporarily renting a place. It was a little green clapboard that sat in the middle of a square patch of manicured lawn, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The detached garage was only big enough for one car. A doghouse that looked new sat under a towering elm tree in the yard, but there was no sign of any dogs.

  The house was tiny. Luke guessed two bedrooms, one bath. And there was no wheelchair ramp.

  He parked outside the fence, grabbed his things, and walked up the gravel drive, hopping up onto the porch and knocking twice before walking inside.

  “Hey, hey!” Leo called out as Luke stepped into the front room. “You took your own sweet time getting here, didn’t you? Look at this, Luke, I am about to blow the top off this game!”

  It always amazed Luke that Leo could operate a game controller with hands that curved in like lobster claws, the fingers useless. But Leo was a master at making do as his body slowly deteriorated. His head was bent slightly to one side, and his legs collapsed in on each other. He was only a shadow of the man he used to be.

  Like Luke, Leo had played football, a big strapping nose tackle with a scholarship to the Colorado School of Mines, and dreams of making the pros. But the spring of his freshman year, his left arm started to shake in a weird way. He couldn’t seem to grip a ball. Their parents took Leo to a slew of doctors and finally, to the specialists. That summer, Leo had earned the dubious distinction of being one of the younger people to be diagnosed with a motor neuron disease.

  None of the Kendricks had known what that was, but Luke knew it was bad because of the look on his mother’s face when the doctor said it was closely akin to Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Her face went ashen and she gripped the arms of her chair as if she were fighting to keep from sliding off and melting onto the floor.

  The doctor had tried to make it better by telling them that the disease didn’t progress in exactly the same way as Lou Gehrig’s disease, that everyone with motor neuron disease progressed differently. To Luke, that meant there were no rules; it could go fast, it could go slow. But there was nothing that doctor could say that would change the fact Leo’s disease was devastating and deadly.

  As far as Luke was aware, Leo had only let the grim change to his life put him on the floor once. After a night out with the guys, Luke had awakened to the sound of his brother sobbing. Leo was on the floor, sobbing for what was lost, for what the future held. He was only twenty years old. But then, in true Leo Kendrick fashion, he’d picked himself and his useless arm off the floor, wiped his face and had said, “Okay. Change of plans.”

  There was no greater hero than Leo Kendrick to Luke’s way of thinking.

  About a year later, Mom was diagnosed with cancer, and Leo never showed his feelings about his debilitation again. Now, having just turned twenty-six, he liked to joke that his was a different sort of disease that only happened to geniuses—counting himself and the physicist Steven Hawking.

  Luke walked over and had a look at the TV. There were dragons breathing fire and a guy that looked like the quarterback Peyton Manning darting around them. Luke put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Is that supposed to be you?”

  “Dude, it is me!”

  Luke leaned down, kissed the top of his brother’s bent head. “Here,” he said, and put the bag of cookies on a table next to Leo. He dropped his things, opened the bag, and shook a few of the cookies out. “Oreos.”

  “Thanks, man. I’m not supposed to eat anything like that, so don’t let the warden see it.”

  “Are you having trouble swallowing?” Luke asked, a balloon of fear swelling in him.

  “No, you moron—they make me fat.” Leo laughed as he reached for one, managing to pick it up in his almost useless hand. He tucked it into his mouth and chewed crookedly.

  “Where is Marisol? Hiding from you again?” Luke asked, referring to Leo’s daily in-home care.

  “Marisol adores me, what are you talking about? She’s off today. Dad’s here. He’s out back, building a workbench. He’s got grand designs for this place. A gym, a guest suite, a media room, you name it.”

  Luke chuckled. “You’ve been watching the house and garden channel again, I see. I hope Dad is planning on building a ramp.”

  “The fastest ramp in Pine River! Hey, Luke,” Leo said, and turned his head slightly, as much as he could. “Go easy on Dad, okay? He does the best he can.”

  Luke smiled sadly. Personally, he didn’t know how their father managed to do what he did; it all seemed so overwhelming to Luke. “I know, man. I know.”

  He walked on through the little house, his nose wrinkling at the musty smell. There were water stains on the ceiling, and the rust-colored carpet was threadbare in place
s. The wall paint was peeling around the window frames, and where there wasn’t paint, there was a garish, seventies-era gold paper on the walls.

  Luke paused in the kitchen to deposit the chips and beer on the tile counter. The kitchen was a small galley type, but it had the requisite appliances for an all-male household: a microwave and a dishwasher. The dirty dishes stacked in the sink looked as if they had the remnants of pasta clinging to them, and the handle of a ladle stuck out of a pot on the stove. Since Mom had died, this was how the Kendrick kitchen looked—like a giant Petri dish of experiments gone wrong.

  Luke opened the back door onto a small, bi-level deck. There was room for only one folding chair and a table on the upper deck. On the lower deck, Dad had draped a two-by-four across the railing and was busy running a belt sander across it. When he paused, Luke called out to him.

  Startled, Luke’s father jerked upright. “Luke!” he said, his face one big grin. He turned off the sander, rubbed his palms on his jeans and walked up the steps, his arms outstretched. He was an affectionate guy, and gave Luke a tight bear hug, slapping him on the back a few times before letting go. “You look good, son. Real good,” he said.

  “Thanks. Are you all right, Dad?”

  “Right as rain,” he said.

  “And how’s the world’s best armchair quarterback?” Luke asked, referring to Leo.

  “Oh you know him,” Dad said. “He’s always good. Got him a new video game and that’s all he’s talking about this week.”

  “Marisol is still coming every day, right?” Luke asked, fearing that for some insane reason, his dad wouldn’t tell him if Leo’s in-home care stopped coming. Luke worried about it—he paid Marisol what he thought was a pittance, but it was all he could afford.

  “Oh yeah, yeah, she comes around every day, like clockwork. She had some personal stuff today, that’s all. Leo loves her.”

  Luke snorted. “I can imagine—Marisol is a good-looking woman.”