“I talked to Mallory,” he said. After a long pause, he continued, his voice raw with emotion, quiet, so that Amy had to strain to hear some of his words.
“I had no idea at all,” he said. “Mal was another employee—like Wes or Wade or any of the guys. I like them all, and I care about them all, but I’m not really personally involved in their lives. Now I can see that some of what Mallory said and did should have alerted me to how she felt.”
“Like what, Jake?”
“Well... no really big things, I guess. But she came by my place a bit too often, for no real reason—just to kinda visit. And she’d get sort of dressed up for no reason, just to tell me something about one of the horses she was working with.” His hand found Amy’s, and he clutched it, probably more strongly than he realized. “I feel like a real jerk now. But I honestly didn’t know what sort of feelings she was harboring. I never led her on in any way—you have my word on that.
“I never thought of myself as being insensitive. I’ve helped out employees who needed a little money for an emergency, and I even bailed one of my guys out of jail after he got in a bar fight. But with Mallory...” He shook his head. “When she came here with her father years ago, I could see he paid next to no attention to her, and maybe I was extra nice to her because of that. But she was a grown woman—only three or four years younger than I am. I didn’t think in terms of romance and crushes. I thought that was high school stuff. I guess I kind of assumed she had a guy at home.”
“Maybe the word crush is a high school thing,” Amy said. “But having strong feelings for someone isn’t.” Her eyes found Jake’s. “I’m afraid men don’t always pick up on things like that. It’s not that they’re insensitive or uncaring, but... well... oblivious. What’s blatantly obvious to a woman can pass right over a guy’s head.”
“I think maybe she was picking up on how I was beginning to feel about you, Amy. ’Cause I think that was fairly apparent to anyone paying any attention. That would account for the way she treated you. That I did see—but had no idea what to do about it. I asked her once, after the storm, and she said that I was imagining things.”
Amy nodded and waited for Jake to go on. He let go of her hand and draped his arm over her shoulders.
“What did you say to her tonight?”
“I told her about us, that we loved one another. That we were going to be together. Then, I told her she’d have to leave.”
Amy drew a breath that sounded much like a gasp.
“I couldn’t keep her around as an employee knowing how she feels about you, and about me. It’s a big ranch, but it’s not big enough to hold something like that. I gave her as much of a severance package as I could. Her work with horses is great, and I’ll give her a reference letter that says just that. I wished her the best, and I meant that. But she can’t stay here. Maybe if she’s away from me, she’ll get her life together. I hope so.”
“I’m sorry. All that must have been hard for you, Jake.”
Jake nodded sadly. “I wish there’d been some easy way to fix all this, Amy.” He was quiet for a time. “I should’ve seen what was happening. Maybe early on I could’ve changed the direction of what Mal was feeling, but I didn’t see what was right in front of me. I’ve got to work on that, learn to be more aware of what’s going on in other people’s lives.”
“You’re not insensitive, Jake,” Amy assured him. “Should you have somehow noticed what was happening with Mallory? I don’t know. But I do know this: beating yourself up over it isn’t going to accomplish anything for her or for you.”
“I guess you’re right,” Jake said. He stood, and Amy stood with him. “I’m going back to my place now, get some sleep. How about if I come over in the morning and we go to the café for breakfast?”
“I’d like that.”
They hugged at the door. Jake’s whispered “I love you” was spoken into her hair as he held her. The words were just as precious this time as they’d been the first.
Amy was suddenly as tired as she could ever recall being. She turned off the living room lamp and slowly went up the stairs to her bedroom in the dark.
In the smallest hours of that night, not too long before dawn, Amy was stirred from sleep by the muted grumbling of a truck engine from Jake’s place. She listened, half awake, for a minute, and then sleep and the dream of Jake Winter she’d been savoring claimed her once again.
In the morning Mallory’s silver Airstream was gone from the place where it had rested for the past month.
Amy’s new leather desk chair whooshed quietly as she leaned against the thick, luxurious padding of the back behind her. The chair had been a bit of an extravagance, but she was spending so much time up here in her den that the investment seemed worthwhile. And, since the money came from the advance on her second novel, she felt justified. Further, the check every two weeks from the News-Express made a big difference.
Snow beat against the den window, sounding like tossed sand against the glass. The wind, seeking something else to numb and freeze, whistled outside, gathering its strength for another day of subarctic, December-in-Montana temperatures. Amy looked out the window to her side and shivered as she watched the snow whirl crazily about in the open space between the house and the big steel building.
She reached down and ruffled the fur at Bobby’s shoulders before she refocused on her keyboard and monitor. The collie grunted happily, shifted his position slightly, and went back to sleep. Nutsy, dozing on a prerelease copy of The Longest Years, didn’t stir.
Amy couldn’t see her old home from where her den was positioned, and she was glad of that. It was—is—a great place. And, she reminded herself, the family in it now loves it—the kids have a pony and two dogs, and the garden in back that they all work on is using that land the way it should be used. She smiled. I didn’t want Jake to see me cry the day I handed over the keys, but then I’m glad he did. Talking about it made everything better.
Movement outside caught her attention. Wes, bundled up in a long duster with his Stetson snugged on his head with a scarf that covered his ears and tied under his chin, was carrying something big with a tarp tied over it toward the house. He leaned against gusts of wind and struggled to keep control of the awkward thing he was carrying.
She heard Wes’s quiet tapping at the back door, and Jake slide his chair back from the kitchen table to tug the door open. She heard their voices—she even heard the sshhhh one of them warned the other with.
“Darn good thing we don’t have no brass monkeys outside, Jake,” Wes said. “They’d be ruined if we did.”
Amy heard something clunk down on the kitchen floor. “OK if I take a look?” Jake asked.
“Nope, it ain’t. Miss Amy gets the first peek. That’s only right. Where’s she at?”
“Upstairs,” Jake said, “working on her book.”
“Takes some time to write one of them things, don’t it?”
“Takes as much patience as it does time,” Jake said. “But she says it’s coming along real well.” He moved to the doorway, his boots thumping on the floor. “Amy? Can you come down here for a second?”
“Be right there. Let me shut down up here.”
Amy smiled when she saw Wes standing in the kitchen. Bobby, at her heels, dashed to his friend, tail swinging, nosing at the old cowboy’s pocket for the treat he knew was hidden in it.
She stopped abruptly when she noticed the sawhorse’s legs revealed under the tarp. “What’s this?”
“Everything happened kinda quick, and I didn’t have time to get your gift ready, Miss Amy,” Wes said. “I wanted you to have somethin’ I made with my own hands. So, this is a combination—it’s your Christmas present too. Go on, take the cover off of it.”
Amy stepped to the center of the kitchen, crouched down, and began working the knot in the twine that held the tarp in place. The sharply bright winter light that streamed in the window brought glittering life to the diamond on Amy’s finger and the simple go
ld wedding band in front of it. She whisked the tarp away and brought her hand to her mouth in awe. “Wes, it’s beautiful. Thanks so much. I love it.”
The Western stock saddle was a thing of beauty, yet more so because it’d been made with the skills of a man who knew and loved horses. The leather, hand-tanned and precisely cut and stitched, released its natural perfume into the room.
Montana folks, Amy had learned, weren’t much for hugging, but that didn’t stop her. She rushed into Wes’s arms, embracing him, holding him tightly for a long moment. “It’s wonderful, Wes. I’ll ride it forever and ever, and each time I step in a stirrup, I’ll think of you.”
Wes shifted his boots nervously a bit, suddenly unsure what to do with his hands as he stepped back from Amy. “Thing is, a good saddle don’t really wear out. I thought maybe when you an’ Jake start a family, a little boy might sit that saddle too.” After a second he added quickly, “Or maybe a little girl, ’course.”
Amy’s eyes met Jake’s for a moment. They both smiled. Neither had realized that Wes Newton could predict the future—the future that was less than seven months away on Amy and Jake Winter’s ranch.
Chasing the Dream Page 18
