A Rancher's Christmas (Saddlers Prairie)

by Roth, Ann

  He whipped off his hat and extended his arm. “Pleased to meet you.”

  She had delicate fingers and a firm grip, her skin soft against his callused palm. “I’m sorry about Lucky,” Zach said, sounding gruff to his own ears. He cleared his throat. “He talked about you quite a bit.”

  “He told me about you, too. I remember how happy he was when he hired you several years ago. He was always talking about how much he liked and respected you. I loved him so much.” Her eyes filled.

  As the tears spilled over, Zach’s throat tightened, pressure building behind his own eyes. He turned away and nodded at the conveyor belt. “Here come the bags. Which one is yours?”

  “I checked three—two big and one smaller. They’re red with cream trim.”

  She was staying what? Ten days? This wasn’t a vacation, and little Saddlers Prairie had only one real restaurant. What did she need all that stuff for? Zach didn’t miss the laptop peeking out from her huge shoulder bag. She must be planning to work from the ranch. He’d expected that.

  Gina pulled the smaller of the three bags from the conveyor belt and Zach grabbed the remaining two. Redd reached out to take one, but Zach shook his head. “Leave those to me.”

  “I’ll take the other one, then.” Redd pulled the smaller bag from Gina’s grasp.

  “Thank you both.” She hooked her free arm through Redd’s. They bowed their heads and made their way toward the exit.

  * * *

  SHIVERING, GINA TUCKED her cashmere scarf into her coat collar as she, Uncle Redd and Zach made their way toward her uncle’s old station wagon. The icy Montana wind was every bit as biting as she remembered—not much different from Chicago in late November.

  Snow flurries danced in the glow of the parking lot’s perimeter lights. A few flakes could easily turn into a deluge, and she hoped they made it to the ranch while the roads were still passable.

  “You sit in the front with Zach,” Uncle Redd said, the breath puffing from his lips like smoke while Zach loaded the luggage into the cargo area.

  Tired from lack of sleep and the long travel day, and feeling emotionally raw, Gina preferred to sit in the back and just be. “You take the front, Uncle Redd,” she said. “I’m fine sitting in the back.”

  “That’s where the dogs ride. You don’t want to get dog hair on those pretty clothes.”

  He had a point.

  Zach slammed the cargo door closed and headed toward the passenger side of the car. “Hop in,” he said, opening the door for her.

  He was big and muscular and movie-star good-looking, with a strong chin and wide forehead, and he was tall enough that even in boots with three-inch heels, she had to tip her head up to meet his gaze. She’d noticed his striking silvery-blue eyes halfway across the crowded baggage-claim area.

  Despite her grief, and despite the fact that she was usually attracted to corporate-executive types, she was hyperaware of him.

  What drew her most was the sorrow evident in his face. No one had expected her still-spry Uncle Lucky to die at seventy-four. His loss would no doubt be keenly felt by Zach and everyone in town.

  She slid onto the bench-style front seat—Uncle Redd’s car was that old. In an attempt to get warm, she hunched down and hugged herself.

  Zach got into the driver’s side with a fluid grace she hadn’t expected of a man his size, shut his door and started the car. “Once the engine warms up, I’ll turn the heat up high,” he said.

  As he rolled toward the exit, she glanced in the rearview mirror at her uncle. “I’ve missed Sugar and Bit. Are they still inseparable?”

  “Pretty much. You’ll see them at the house. If you want, you can keep them with you tonight for company. Wish I had the room at my place, but I don’t.”

  The thought of staying alone at Uncle Lucky’s didn’t bother Gina. “Thanks, but your dogs won’t even remember me. I’ll be okay by myself.”

  “Probably better off without them.” Uncle Redd chuckled. “Bit still thinks he’s human, and that always gets Sugar’s goat. They’re like an old married couple.”

  “Sort of like Gloria and Sophie?” Gina teased. Her elderly cousins, widowed sisters, lived together and bickered constantly.

  “Exactly, and almost as old in dog years. Bit’s almost ten and Sugar just turned nine.” Redd sighed. “We’re all gettin’ up there—present company excluded.”

  “Don’t forget, I recently turned thirty,” Gina said. “That’s not so young.”

  Zach made a sound that could’ve been a laugh. “You’re just a kid.”

  She scoffed. “You can’t be much older than me.”

  “Four years. That may not seem like a big difference, but trust me, I’ve been around the block a lot more than you have.”

  “I’m not exactly naive,” she argued.

  “From where I sit, you’re both still babies,” Uncle Redd quipped from the back.

  Gina shared a look with Zach, both of them acknowledging that today, they felt old and weary.

  At last Zach cranked up the heat, and a welcome blast of warm air hit Gina. The highway was dark and deserted, with only the car headlights lighting the way. No one spoke. The combination of warm air, darkness, silence and exhaustion was impossible to resist. Gina’s eyes drifted shut. She was almost asleep when Uncle Redd broke the silence.

  “Gina grew up here.”

  Zach glanced at her, his face shadowed in the dash lights. “Lucky said that after you graduated from high school, you left town.”

  She remembered that day well. Her parents had both been alive then, and excited about her future, yet sad to see her go. She’d been the opposite—desperate to leave Saddlers Prairie, get her education and start fresh in a big city. All her life, her parents had fought about money and struggled to make ends meet. From the time she was in grade school, Gina had vowed to leave town someday and find a high-paying job. She had no interest in ever coming back, except for occasional visits.

  “She’s the first one in our family to graduate college, let alone earn a master’s degree,” Uncle Redd said with pride. “She’s a smart one and pretty, too.”

  “Uncle Redd!” Gina said, embarrassed.

  “Well, you are.”

  She snuck a glance at Zach. His gaze never left the road, but his lips twitched, and she thought he might even crack a smile.

  “Since the day she left she hasn’t been back to visit but three times,” Uncle Redd went on. “Once over Christmas break that first year in college and again when her dad—my oldest brother, Beau—passed that summer. After that, we didn’t see her for another four years, when her mama took sick with pneumonia. Marie was forty-two when she had Gina. She and Beau had been married almost twenty years and didn’t think they’d ever have kids. When Gina came along, they were over the moon. We all were. Of the three of us brothers, Beau was the only one to have a child.”

  “You don’t need to bore Zach with all that,” Gina said.

  “I don’t mind.” Zach glanced at her. “I knew you were the only kid in the family, but Lucky didn’t tell me the rest.”

  After another stretch of silence, Uncle Redd let out a loud yawn. Soon, soft snores floated from the backseat.

  Gina glanced behind her. “He’s out cold.”

  “I don’t think he slept much last night.” Zach rolled his shoulders as if he, too, were tired. “You’re in marketing, right?”

  She nodded. “I’m an assistant vice president with Andersen, Coats and Mueller.”

  “That’s a big firm.”

  “You’ve heard of them?”

  “I’ve read a few articles where they were mentioned. Do you like what you do?”

  No one had ever asked her that, and she had to stop and think. “I love it.”

  That wasn’t quite true. She loved
the perks that put her in contact with the decision makers in big and small companies, and she liked the respect from her boss, colleagues, family and friends. “It’s hard work, though. Right now, I’m in the middle of holiday campaigns for several clients.” Her turn to yawn. “It seems like weeks since I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.”

  Even without the holiday push, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept through the night.

  “Let me guess—you live on caffeine.”

  “And chocolate. Lots of both.”

  “And you enjoy living that way?”

  “The chocolate part, for sure.” She smiled. “Everyone knows that if you want to get ahead, you have to work long hours.”

  Although Zach didn’t comment, Gina had the feeling he wasn’t impressed. She wanted him to understand.

  “Growing up, we had enough to eat and a roof over our heads, but we were poor,” she said. “My maternal grandfather owned a farm equipment business, and when my parents married, he hired my dad to work for him. Then, when my grandfather died, my dad took over the company. For some reason it never did very well. My mother worked two jobs to pay the bills. I always wanted something better.”

  “That makes sense. So do you have the life you want?”

  She was getting there. “I own a condo in an upscale high-rise and I drive a Lexus.” Between the steep mortgage, car payments and credit-card bills, she never quite made ends meet, but that was her business. “I can eat out wherever I please and buy new clothes anytime I want. You draw your own conclusions.”

  “Sounds as if you’re doing well.”

  A few moments of uncomfortable silence filled the car. Gina searched her mind for something else to talk about.

  “Where are you from, Zach?”

  “Houston.”

  “I thought I heard a bit of the South in your voice.”

  She was about to ask about his background and what had brought him to Saddlers Prairie when he turned on the radio. A Carrie Underwood song filled the air. And with that, the conversation was over.

  Gina shifted so that she faced the passenger window. Giving in to the exhaustion weighting her down, she closed her eyes.

  She didn’t wake up until Zach shut off the engine and touched her shoulder. “Wake up, Gina. We’re here.”

  Chapter Two

  Zach gathered with the entire Arnett family, dogs included, in the living room of Lucky’s house. They’d asked him to help play host to a steady stream of visitors, including the four members of the ranch crew and their families who stayed on during winter.

  Lucky hadn’t even been dead forty-eight hours, but that didn’t stop the well-meaning townspeople. They brought food, offered solace and shared stories about the old rancher.

  A cheerful fire danced in the fireplace, at odds with the occasion, and the little room was almost too warm. None of the Arnetts seemed to mind the heat or the company. Zach was grateful for the support and for their acceptance of him, no questions asked. It was a good thing because he wasn’t about to air his dirty laundry to anyone. Only Lucky had known the truth.

  From that first day Zach had drifted into town nearly three years ago, lost and broken, the people of Saddlers Prairie had welcomed him. Zach hadn’t planned on staying, had only known that he needed to get out of Houston and start fresh someplace else. The big sky, rolling prairies and wide-open spaces of Montana had appealed to him, and the welcome mat in Saddlers Prairie had pulled him in.

  In need of money—he was damned if he’d touch his bank account—he’d applied for work at the Lucky A. He hadn’t known squat about ranching, but Lucky had taken a chance on him and offered him a job. Wanting the rancher to know what kind of man he was first, Zach had told him the whole sorry story of the commercial real-estate company he’d built and his subsequent downfall, sparing none of the ugly details.

  Lucky had accepted him anyway and advised him to put the past behind him. Zach had done just that. He’d learned the ranching business and had soon become Lucky’s foreman. The successful CEO he’d once been and the beautiful woman he’d been engaged to seemed like part of someone else’s life.

  Clay Hollyer, also a transplant and a former bull-riding champion who now worked as a rancher supplying stock to rodeos around the West, wandered toward Zach. His pretty wife, Sarah, pregnant with their first child, was at his side.

  The couple offered their condolences. “What will you do now?” Clay asked.

  The near future was a no-brainer. “Someone needs to take care of the ranch, so I’ll be staying at the Lucky A for a while.”

  After that, Zach had no idea—except that he wanted to stay in town. His father and stepmother thought he was out of his mind for living in a trailer on a run-down ranch and working for peanuts when he didn’t have to. But Zach had learned to draw happiness from the little things in life and, for now, he was content.

  He glanced around for Gina. She was standing to the side of the fireplace, beautiful and animated as she chatted with people.

  Make that he used to be content.

  Now that Zach had met Gina, keeping his promise to Lucky and convincing her to hold on to the Lucky A seemed even more of a Sisyphean task than he’d thought. He seriously doubted that Gina would give up her career to run the Lucky A, but if he could at least convince her to keep the ranch in the family... That was what Lucky really wanted, for her to pass it down to her heirs—that was, if she had children one day.

  She seemed so driven that Zach didn’t know if she wanted kids. She sure was good with Bit and Sugar, though. The two dogs seemed wild about her, too. Bit, a Jack Russell, pranced around her, and Sugar, a white, sixty-pound husky, wagged her tail nonstop. Both of them hovered close and gazed at her adoringly, which said something about her.

  Locals and transplants seemed to want to be around her, too. A group of women, some of whom she’d probably known growing up, surrounded her. Among them were Meg Dawson and her sister-in-law, Jenny Dawson, and Autumn Naylor, who were all married to ranchers, and Stacy Engle, who was the wife of Dr. Mark Engle, the sole doctor in Saddlers Prairie.

  As engaged as Gina appeared to be, Zach noticed her yawn a few times. After spending the whole day traveling, she had to be exhausted. It had been a tough couple of days, and Zach fought the drowsies himself. Without thinking about it, he moved toward her. Her friends offered condolences to Zach before wandering off.

  “You doing okay?” he asked, leaning in close to be heard over the noise in the room. He caught a whiff of perfume, something sweet and floral that reminded him of hot tropical nights.

  “I’m managing. I found out from Stacy that you’re the one who found Uncle Lucky yesterday. What exactly happened?”

  Zach didn’t like talking about it. “Lucky was supposed to meet me at the back pasture first thing in the morning. When he didn’t show and didn’t answer his phone, I came here, to the house, looking for him.”

  “And you found him still in bed. Uncle Redd mentioned that Uncle Lucky had a heart attack, but he didn’t tell me about you finding him.” Gina shuddered. “That must’ve been awful.”

  “Not the best way to start your day.” Zach grimaced. “The only good part of it is knowing that Lucky was asleep when he died and didn’t suffer. We should all be so lucky.”

  “Pun intended?” she asked, her mouth hinting at a smile.

  “No, but what the heck.” Zach grinned.

  He liked Gina. He couldn’t help himself. Not just because she was easy to look at. She also cared about her family and the people in this house. They seemed genuinely pleased to see her, and she acted as if the feeling was mutual.

  She fit in well here. She belonged. Did she know how special that was?

  “Do you ever see yourself moving back to Saddlers Prairie?” he asked, feeling her out.

&nbs
p; “Are you kidding?” She let out a humorless laugh. “I’m staying through Thanksgiving, period. One week from Sunday, I’ll be on a flight back to Chicago. I hope—”

  “I’m glad you two are getting a chance to know each other,” Gina’s cousin Gloria said as she and her sister Sophie squeezed past several people to join the two of them.

  Both gray haired with sharp, brown eyes, their faces looked so much alike, they could’ve been twins. That was where the resemblance stopped.

  Gloria, bigger boned and taller than Sophie by a good four inches, patted his arm. “Isn’t Zach wonderful?”

  Sophie, who was two years younger than Gloria and soft around the middle, fluttered her lashes at him. “I hope you’re getting enough to eat, Zach. There’s a ton more food in the kitchen.”

  “I’ve had a plate or two, thanks.”

  “That’s good.” Sophie turned to Gina with a fond smile. “You’re so thin, cookie. Did you eat?”

  “I’ve been nibbling.” Gina yawned.

  Gloria gave her sister a dirty look. “You don’t look too thin to me, sweetie. You’re just right. Tomorrow will be a busy day. You have an early afternoon meeting with Matt Granger, Lucky’s attorney. He’ll give you a list of errands like you had had when your mother passed—stopping at the bank and so forth. You’ll also want to make calls to cancel Lucky’s health insurance and Social Security, any subscriptions he had and who knows what else.”

  Sophie frowned. “Don’t burden her with all that now. She’s exhausted, aren’t you, cookie?” She grinned at Zach. “I call her ‘cookie’ because I could just eat her up!”

  “You’ll eat anything,” Gloria muttered. “Land sakes, Sophie, she isn’t a child anymore.”

  Used to the bickering, Zach glanced at Gina and saw her smother a smile.

  “Now, now,” Gina soothed, hooking her arms through her elderly cousins’. “Remember what’s happened. And don’t refer to me in the third person.”

  “All right, sweetie. Excuse us a moment, Zach.” Gloria pulled Gina away from Sophie, speaking loudly enough that anyone within ten feet could hear. “What I was trying to say before she—” Gloria jerked her chin Sophie’s way “—so rudely interrupted, is that tomorrow you’ll be going nonstop, and you should probably get some sleep.”