The Runaway Bride

by Patricia McLinn

  “She’s a kid.”

  “Fifteen, going into her sophomore year in high school. It’s not a bad time to be socializing more with the opposite sex. And Steve seems like a responsible guy.”

  “He’s eighteen—”

  “Seventeen. I checked. He skipped a grade.”

  “Either way, he’ll leaving for college at the end of summer on a rodeo scholarship. He wants to go pro. You know what kind of life that is? A few make it big, but too many end up broken and broke. And their wives and families have to make do with what they get. I want better than that for Becky. She deserves better.”

  His outburst sank into silence before she spoke.

  “Okay, putting aside that you already have Steve pursuing a rodeo career until he’s decrepit—he might succeed, you know—” She put up a hand to stop his response. “Putting that aside, you also think that going on her first date to a dance with a boy she’s known all her life will lead Becky directly to marriage and kids? If that were true, I would be the wife of Alec Tresser, with a passel of little Tressers at my apron strings. Which would surprise the heck out of Alec and his roommate Ron.”

  A rush of something had surged up in Thomas at the image of her dancing with the unknown Alec Tresser, never mind her being the guy’s wife and having his kids… But what had taken a split second to build to a surprising level crashed into laughter at her finish.

  She put her palm lengthwise along his upper arm. It felt cool and clean, yet it made his skin hotter. Or maybe that was his blood heating up.

  “Becky’s got to start somewhere, Thomas. She needs to take this step toward being an adult. And she wants to dance—didn’t you ever want to dance?”

  A slow dance. With this woman snug against his body. Her silky hair brushing his mouth. His hands molded to her back. Her arms a warm presence around his neck. His legs moving against hers in the motion of the dance. A motion that promised a dance of a different kind. The best dance. The most intimate dance.

  He swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’ve wanted to dance.”

  “Well, then, you should understand.”

  That was just it—he was afraid he did understand. If Steve had the same sort of thoughts about little Becky—

  “Thomas? Did you hear what I said? Promise me you’ll think about letting her go Saturday. Whatever you do, don’t tell Becky you’re thinking about it because she’ll hound the life out of you, but make the promise to me.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  And try not to think about the rest.

  “Here.” Folded denim landed in front of her on the table.

  “What’s this?”

  “Jeans. And a jacket.”

  Judi looked up and raised her brows at Thomas, demanding an explanation.

  “Alice picked ’em and brought ’em out when she came for Gran’s physical therapy session today.”

  “Alice did. How’d she know to do that?”

  Predictably, he frowned at being backed into that corner. “I asked her to.”

  She checked the label. These should fit. “How’d she know the size?”

  “I split the difference between Becky and me.”

  “Too bad you don’t do that more often.”

  The frown crashed down harder. “You want them or not?”

  “Yes, thank you. I’ll pay you—”

  He’d turned away on her first prim word. “No need.”

  “Hey, Thomas, now that I’ve got jeans, when are you going to give me a tour?”

  He didn’t slow down, and he didn’t turn around, but he said loud enough for her to hear, “Tomorrow morning. And you’re welcome.”

  Judi watched Thomas’s face as he looked over the land.

  They’d ridden for more than an hour, while he named the creeks, ranges of hills and distant mountains. He explained how they decided where to grow soybeans and hay. He described how they rotated the grazing. And once or twice he slipped, and let his dreams for the future peek through.

  Now they’d dismounted to let the horses drink and rest. The stream dropped from a taller hill behind them, but they were high enough to have a panoramic view.

  There was something about this man and this land that gave her that heart-swelling, can’t-catch-my-breath combination of awe and happiness she felt when she watched a particularly compelling athlete being honored with a gold medal and his or her national anthem at the Olympics. It didn’t matter which country or which event, it was the sense of a great endeavor suitably rewarded that always got to her.

  “You love ranching, don’t you?”

  “It’s something different every day. You’ve gotta be good at a lot of things and able to get by at the rest. You can’t afford to say there’s something you’ll never do, and you can’t get to thinking there’s just one thing you do best.”

  But she was shaking her head. “Stubborn’s what you do best.”

  “Takes a stubborn man to ranch.”

  “Or woman,” she added. “When do you first remember loving this ranch?”

  He stared at the hilled horizon ahead of them. The rises slipped down to troughs before gathering into yet another green and tan rise until it looked like a magician had waved a wand to transform the rolling waves of an ocean into still and solid form. His attention seemed to snag on one particular section of this ocean of grazing.

  “Maybe riding with my mom. She would put me in front of her on the saddle when I was still too little to ride on my own. And she’d talk. Tell stories about the land and horses and cattle—I didn’t even know she was teaching me stuff then.”

  “What else do you remember about her?”

  “Sometimes Gran’ll use an expression, or make a gesture… It’s like seeing an old movie come to life. But Mom’s voice was different, lighter. She could always make my dad laugh. He used to say she was worth any two hands. She worked hard, and having her around lit up his day, so he worked even harder.”

  “She sounds like a wonderful woman. And your parents obviously loved each other a great deal.”

  “Dad said they thought the same things were important. That’s why I never understood…” His laugh was harsh. “Not that a blind man couldn’t see what he saw in Maureen. Becky looks like her. Only Maureen took what Becky has natural, and polished and primped and perfumed it like a ta—” He bit off the word along with a stem of grass.

  “Is that why you won’t let Becky go to the dance Saturday with Steve? You think she’s just like her mother?”

  “What? No! Becky’s not like her. Nothing like her.”

  “Then give her a chance to prove that. You don’t want to open the door and let her loose when she goes to college do you? You need to be treating her more like an adult, so she’ll become one. It’s like driving the ranch trucks—you didn’t put her in a truck and say Hit the highway, kid. No, I bet you showed her how first. Then let her try a little, with you right beside her. Gradually let her do more, until she’d learned enough to drive on her own. Dating’s not so different. Wouldn’t it be better to let her take test drives under your…”

  He narrowed his eyes, and she discarded thumb as her word choice. No sense riling the fish when you were trying to reel him it.

  “Your, uh, watchful eye.”

  “And you think this dance would be a good first driving lesson?”

  “Sure. There’ll be responsible adults chaperoning. It’s with kids she knows. She’ll be with a boy you know. Heck, the kid knows you can fire him if he misbehaves. Besides,” she shot him a grin, “it’s a fifties theme party. Worst they’ll probably do is share a first kiss, and everybody knows those are pretty dull. Now, if it was a sixties party, you might have to worry.”

  He smiled, but it faded quickly. His attention had settled again in that one direction. The land was as beautiful as the rest of the Diamond V. Why would he be more interested in it than… And then she had it.

  “That’s the section that would be sold off if you can’t raise the money, isn’t it?”


  He didn’t confirm it directly. He didn’t need to. “When I told you somebody holds the right to sell a quarter of the ranch, what I didn’t tell you is it’s Becky’s mother, and the person who gave her that power was our father.”

  Her eyes widened, but she said nothing.

  “He left it to her in his will. He thought that somehow after he died she’d care about the ranch, even though she’d never cared about it during all the years he spent trying to get her to come back. It was like meeting her and falling for her was a dose of middle-aged crazy and he never got over it. A terminal case.”

  “And now she’s the reason the ranch could be broken up. That’s got to be hard on Becky.”

  “She doesn’t know—not about the sale, and especially not about Maureen. I’ve never told her, and Gran agreed not to. There’s no reason for her to worry about what might happen to the ranch or why.”

  “And you think that’s it—a news blackout? Boy, you don’t know teenage girls, do you? But even if she doesn’t know what Maureen’s doing now, it must have been hard for Becky when she left like that. And for your father. And you.”

  “Me?”

  “To have lost your own mother, and then to have your surrogate mother leave.”

  His bark of laughter held no humor. “She was no mother to me. As far as I was concerned, her leaving was a relief. Sure cut the whining and moaning around here. Only way it affected me was Dad fell apart, so I took on more of running the place.”

  She was doing quick figuring in her head. “At twenty.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “I’d been doing ranch work since I could walk. After Dad married Maureen he spent more and more time—and money—trying to keep her happy, so I’d picked up more. But her leaving was real hard on Becky. I guess she looked to me then. Dad was mooning after Maureen and Gran was running the house plus teaching. Becky used to trail me around like a little shadow.”

  A smile lit his green eyes like sunshine on grass, then faded to nothing. And that lack of expression was bleaker than any of his frowns.

  “That’s why it’s been…strange these past months.” He shrugged, seeming to try to shake off the mood. “Teenagers, huh?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Or maybe it’s getting half her genes from Maureen. When I marry and have kids, I’m going to find somebody with deep roots in ranching. Somebody who knows this life and loves it. Not somebody out here on a lark. Someone who knows where she’s going in life. Practical, levelheaded, who’s never impulsive or gets in scrapes.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Judi said brightly. “Oh, look at the time! I better get back. No need for you to come—”

  But he insisted on accompanying her. At least on the trail they didn’t talk.

  Could he have been any more obvious? Not that she had any expectations or hopes in that direction. But all he’d had to do was make his ideal mate five-foot-two, blond and blue-eyed and he’d have had her total opposite.

  “Thank you for showing me around, Thomas. If you have other things you need to do…”

  When didn’t he have other things that needed doing? But she’d been trying to get rid of him, and the more she did, the less he felt like being gotten rid off.

  “I’m heading to the house, too.”

  “Uh, I thought I’d check on the garden.”

  “I don’t mind looking in on the garden.”

  “I might stay a while, do some weeding.”

  “I could help, since you’ve been helping me out today.”

  The growing annoyance on her face gave way to curiosity. “I have?”

  “Yeah. With so few hands, our horses aren’t getting as much work as they should. They need to keep in training like any other athlete. Was going to ask if you could help out again.”

  “Sure—if Gran can spare me, of course.”

  “We’ll all be out moving cattle up higher Sunday. Won’t expect you to do any cowpunching. But riding along will get Xena some work.”

  “I’d have to check with Gran, and— Oh, look!” She didn’t wait for him to look. She took off into the garden, and dropped to her knees. “Do you see it?”

  “What?”

  “The first tomato from the garden.”

  “That’s a tomato? Looks like a green bump to me.”

  She frowned fiercely, but her eyes sparkled with humor and pride. “It’s a baby tomato. Give it time. A green bump today, a juicy layer in a sandwich tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s a little optimistic. And there’s early frost to worry about.”

  “It wouldn’t dare. It’s a lovely tomato and— Oh! There’re more.” She jumped up. “Look at this one! It even looks like a tomato. We’re going to have a crop, a real crop of tomatoes. I wonder if Gran has canning supplies.”

  While she happily contemplated putting up gallons of tomatoes based on a couple of fledgling bumps, he didn’t tell her that Iris Swift had never put tomatoes in a can in her life. She took them out of the cans she got at the grocery store.

  He didn’t have the heart to inject reality into Helga’s glory. Her joy.

  Reality would set in soon enough. Then she’d see there was no reason to glow over a tomato. That she didn’t like the sweep of empty hills and wide blue sky as much as her face said she did. That she got bored with a retired teacher, a teenager and a small-time rancher. That she wanted more. That she wanted different.

  He might not know who she was, but he knew the kind of woman she was. The kind with expensive clothes, perfectly cut hair, pampered hands.

  For now, all this was fun for her because it was different. She’d probably never tended a garden before. It qualified as a lark, a vacation. She would tire of this triumph, as she would tire of the work, of the life, of the ranch, of him.

  So he couldn’t let himself think it was real. That she was real.

  “Do you smell it, Thomas?”

  “Smell what?”

  “Summer.”

  When she breathed in deeply, his sense of sight, not smell went into overdrive.

  “The smell of the sun on the earth and the plants. The smell of heat. I love that smell. I store it up during the summer and pull it out in the winter to get warm.”

  She looked up at him and laughed.

  “I know, I know, you think I’m crazy.”

  No, he didn’t. Because he was storing up the sound and sight of her. On her knees in the dirt. Sunlight burning red into her hair, her eyes bright and her smile quick. He would take the memory out when he was cold inside, and it would make him warm. But he would not be like his father. He would not drive himself crazy and threaten the Diamond V by trying to hold on to her. He’d be satisfied with a memory.

  He shrugged at her comment. “Whatever works for you.”

  Judi had steered clear of Thomas since Becky and Steve left for the dance.

  Thomas had restrained himself at supper when Becky, swathed in Judi’s silk robe after her shower, had chattered about the band, whether they would dance current style or fifties dances, and her outfit—sweater twin set, fake pearls, a wide skirt with a petticoat and matching scarf to tie around her ponytail.

  He’d done no more than wince at the door slamming as Becky rushed from her bedroom to the hall bath and back a dozen times before Steve’s arrival.

  He had rolled his eyes at Becky’s excitement when Judi gave her the clunky gold charm bracelet as an added accessory, especially at Becky’s squeal when Judi said she could keep it.

  Judi even had to give Thomas high marks for limiting his comments to the teenage pair to curfew and expected driving behavior.

  But as soon as door closed behind Steve and Becky, he’d gotten such a pained, haunted expression, she’d decided it was a good time for the let-them-go girl to read in her bedroom. But now Gran was in bed, asleep, and the curfew was nearing, and she felt an obligation to be on hand.

  Whether that was to make sure Thomas didn’t intrude on the end of Becky’s date, or to ease his last quar
ter hour of anxious waiting, she didn’t know.

  She tracked him down on the darkened porch, sitting on the swing, arms crossed over his chest, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. She stepped over his feet and sat beside him, looking up at stars bursting into the sky like kernels of popcorn.

  “If you laugh, you’ll regret it,” he grumbled.

  “Who’s laughing?”

  She felt more than saw his look as he studied her profile. Then he faced straight ahead and sighed his resignation. “You might as well laugh—this is worse.”

  “No, no, I’m restraining myself now in recognition of how restrained you were when Steve picked Becky up.”

  A small grin eased his mouth. “I’ve known him all his life and I still wanted to grill the kid, then scare the bejeezus out him.”

  She nodded. “That’s what my older brother used to do.”

  As soon as she said it, she tensed for him to pounce on the fact that she’d remembered something. Surely he wouldn’t let a comment like that go by.

  “What did your brother do?”

  She hid her surprise—no sense giving him ideas.

  “Even after he was living on his own, he’d somehow find out when I was going out with a new guy, and he’d show up at the house. He’d answer the door if I didn’t tackle him first—” She closed her eyes in mock horror, but felt a grin tug at her mouth. “Once I wasn’t quick enough and we got there at the same time, and the sight that greeted the poor guy was Paul and me trying to bump each other out of the way with our hips. Surprisingly, that was the shortest date I ever had. And he never called back.”

  “Guy was a wimp if that scared him off.”

  Thomas wouldn’t scare off. Not if he really wanted something—someone.

  “The door routine was just the start. Paul would fire questions at the poor boy like he expected the kid to admit he had the Lindbergh baby in his back seat.”

  “Back seat, hum? Did back seats figure prominently in the questioning?”

  “You’re beginning to catch on. Another time, Paul arranged to have his two great buddies, Grady and Michael, there, too. When my date brought me home, the three of them had their chairs pulled up in a row in front of the door, eating popcorn, like we were the floor show.”