Harlequin Heartwarming March 21 Box Set

by Claire McEwen

  That offer touched Quinn. “Thank you so much.” Julia glanced at the photo again, then back to Quinn with a sad smile. “That’s truly a wonderful picture.”

  “It was taken just before we found out about his leukemia,” she said softly, surprised she’d added that, and that the pain, which was always with her, didn’t deepen. She was thankful.

  Julia cleared her throat softly, then stood. “I need to get back to Sarge,” she said. “I hope you can get some sleep.”

  Quinn hoped so, too.

  * * *

  IT WAS TEN minutes past seven a couple days later, when Quinn stepped outside into the icy morning air with Seth. He was wearing a black Western hat along with his denim jacket, jeans and boots. After two days with Seth gone from dawn until dusk, he’d come to her bedroom door last night and asked her about going into town today. She’d jumped at the chance to get her bandage changed, and to finally meet Henry Lodge and get going on her car repairs. She also would have some alone time with Seth on the ride.

  She was wearing the blue jacket Daniel had loaned her with a navy pullover and had skimmed her hair up in a ponytail. Seth, wearing his leather jacket over a red thermal along with faded jeans and scuffed boots, continued to look like a ranch hand, especially when he was wearing the black Stetson. With his jaw showing the shadow of a beard and his hair carelessly combed back, there were no hints of the billionaire businessman in his appearance. She was kind of glad there wasn’t. Seth seemed relatable, not like the other executives she’d met. She felt he listened when she spoke. She was looking forward to their drive together.

  He started up the old red truck, then turned more toward her, resting his left forearm on the top of the steering wheel. “We’ll go see Henry, then stop by the clinic. After that, I need to do a few things.”

  “I wish I could get the stitches out, but it’s too early. A new bandage would be a huge help, though, and I really want to talk to Henry about my car.”

  “Then let’s go,” Seth said as he put the truck in gear, flipped on the heater and swung around to drive toward the gates. When they got to the barriers, and were waiting for them to open, Seth brought up something Quinn couldn’t believe she hadn’t even thought about. “We need to talk about your salary.”

  She wouldn’t take any pay from him, no matter what, but saying she didn’t want any wouldn’t work, either. Better just to put it off. “We can talk about it later.”

  He drove out onto the county road and headed east. “Now’s as good a time as any.” He went on to lay out what he’d pay her. “That’s weekly, plus room and board.”

  She thought that from the amount he offered it would be monthly. “I don’t know. That seems too much.”

  “It’s worth it to me to have Julia freed up to concentrate on Sarge. She has a cooking compulsion, and she’s good at it, despite Sarge’s comments, but that’s not part of her job description.”

  Quinn didn’t argue. She just wouldn’t take his money. By the time she left, win or lose, she would be in debt to him forever for all his kindnesses. He was a good man, and it bothered her deceiving him on any level. As soon as she could possibly lay out the truth, she’d do it, and hope and pray he wouldn’t be angry about what she’d done.

  As they got closer to the curve, Quinn felt herself tensing. “So, what does Sarge do on the land down here?” she asked, not really interested but needing to distract herself.

  “Nothing lately, but it used to be mostly cattle grazing,” Seth said. He told her about the original entrance to the ranch and about a mess hall and bunkhouse past the old cabin, but she couldn’t focus on his words when the blind curve came up. She reflexively closed her eyes tightly, then Seth tapped the horn, startling her, and she took a sharp breath but kept her eyes shut.

  A moment later, Seth said, “You can open your eyes now. We’re almost to the highway.”

  She felt so embarrassed he’d noticed what she’d done, but when she looked at him, his attention was on the road in front of them. She grabbed at some general subject to talk about. “It must take forever to see the whole ranch.”

  He slipped right into the conversation without another mention of her reaction to the accident site. “It’s worth the trek. Once the camp’s up and running, the boys can ride, hike, fish and swim without having to leave the ranch at all.”

  He was slowing for the highway when she said, “You’re going to have some very happy campers.”

  There was a rough chuckle at her intended pun. “That’s the plan.”

  “I don’t know anyone, kid or adult, who wouldn’t love to ride around here.” Quinn exhaled, some of the tension leaving her. “The sense of freedom must be wonderful.”

  “Do you ride?” Seth asked as he drove onto the highway heading south.

  “Yes, but not lately.” She and Michael had gone riding most weekends until he got too sick. “I really love it, though.”

  “When you’re up to it, how about letting me show you some of the ranch on horseback?”

  She caught herself before she automatically declined his offer. The truth was she’d love to go with him. Plus, if she went riding with Seth, they’d be together one-on-one. There would be no chances for interruptions. That could be a huge help to her in trying to figure him out. “I’d love to go for a ride when you have time.”

  He nodded. “We’ll do it soon”

  Quinn looked away from Seth and out at the hints of yellow and pink lingering in the early morning sky. When she inhaled, she caught the scent of pine and freshly turned earth. The wide-open highway had no other cars anywhere in sight. “It’s so nice here,” she said.

  “It seemed like paradise to me when I first got here.”

  She liked this kind of conversation, with just the two of them, but with no need to face each other. It seemed easier to say what she had to not facing him, to think about what she was doing and why she was doing it—for Michael. “Where did you come from before you arrived here?”

  “A lot of places,” he said vaguely. “I was assigned here when I was fifteen, and three years later, I left for college and ended up in Seattle. Where were you before Pasadena?”

  That was easy to answer. “I was born in San Diego, then my dad got work in the LA area, so we moved there when I was in third grade. I went back to San Diego for college. Then Michael and I moved up to Pasadena.”

  “What brought you up here?”

  She was as vague with her answer to that as he’d been with his answer to where he’d been before coming to the ranch. “I was curious about what this area was really like, and I was between substitute teaching jobs.” That was true.

  He cast her a quick glance. “So, you just picked up and came?”

  “It was a split-second sort of thing. I hadn’t even thought about coming here until six or seven days ago.”

  He kept his eyes on the road as he spoke. “And you didn’t know anyone around here before you came?”

  “Nope. My parents are in Florida and my sisters are in Alabama and Texas. And I’m here. I mean, Pasadena’s been my home since…since Michael and I got married. He was from New York, but he came to California for college on a full scholarship.” She didn’t know why she’d said that to Seth, but she added, “He was really smart. He was in the world you’re in, technology, computers. I honestly never fully understood what he did.”

  Seth asked, “Really? What was his specialty?”

  There it was, sitting right in her lap. “Mostly coding.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  THAT WAS THE last thing Seth had expected. “Who did he work with?”

  “He didn’t. I mean, he received his graduate degree, but he was diagnosed with leukemia around the same time. He had three companies interested in him.”

  Some of his best people had been recruited straight out of college. “He must have been good talent.”

&nb
sp; “He was. He…he loved what he did.” He heard her exhale. “It meant everything to him.” Then she asked, “Is that the way it is with you?”

  He told her the truth. “Yes, for a long time. But I’m working on prioritizing my life differently.”

  “We all have to do that, don’t we?”

  “We should, but some of us take longer to do it.” He pulled back, realizing he’d gotten into the tough subject of his life. Now that life, in a small measure, included Quinn Lake. He’d fought the attraction he felt around her, partly because he’d assumed at first that she was married, and partly because his choices in the field of romance had been painfully wrong in the past.

  But Quinn seemed unique and caring. She was a soft person in a way, with none of the sharp edges he’d seen in any of the other women who’d come and gone, like Allie. He’d run up against a lot of sharp edges in his life, and he was tired of them. But Quinn seemed different, beyond being very attractive. He wouldn’t forget how she helped Sarge the other night.

  “Thanks again for asking Sarge to be your friend.”

  “I’m glad he accepted.” She exhaled softly. “It’s hard when you really love someone and then they’re taken away. It’s not a…an easy thing to comprehend, much less accept. I can see he misses his wife.”

  Seth could hear the loneliness in Quinn’s voice. “It’s been hard for him, and his illness makes it all that much harder. Maybe when he gets to the point of not remembering, maybe then he won’t get so sad. I’d hate him to get there, but maybe later on it’d be a blessing to forget.”

  “You know, no matter what happens with him, I don’t believe he’ll ever not remember his wife. She’ll always be there in some way, even if it’s in his dreams.”

  He wondered if that made loving again even possible. He sure didn’t think Sarge, if he were healthy, would ever have looked for love again. But Quinn was twenty-seven, with a long life ahead of her to remember. He stopped that line of thinking and said, “Well, I hope the camp can fill some of the emptiness for him, and bring back good memories of Maggie.”

  “Oh, I think it will be a very good thing for him,” she said as if remembering something not quite sad, but hard to think about. “It’ll give him a reason to get up in the morning and to just be here.”

  Seth wondered what reason Quinn had to get up in the morning after her loss. “That’s what I’m hoping for,” he said as he regripped the steering wheel and stared down the highway ahead of them.

  Thankfully, Quinn asked, “It snows around here this time of year, doesn’t it?”

  Snow he could talk about, and he would. “We had snow in early August the first year I came here. Then there was three feet of snow on my last day at the ranch before I headed to college.”

  “When was that?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “Wow,” she said. “Can I ask why you didn’t come back here after college?”

  “I took an offer from a great company in Seattle. Then that work-priority thing set in with a vengeance when I started my own company. My business became my life for almost eight years. But I came back for visits on Christmas or birthdays when Jake and Ben would be here, too. As my company took off, I really got tied down by it.”

  He wouldn’t mention Maggie passing nearly six years ago, and how he’d tried to show up more often after that but had failed miserably by giving in to the pressures of work. “The last time we were all here before Sarge’s accident was just over two years ago.”

  He’d come back to the ranch with Jake and Ben for support after his messy break-up with Allie. He’d never have guessed she would turn from being sweet to vindictive when he’d realized their relationship wasn’t what he was looking for. There had been too many lies, too many demands that he couldn’t ignore. The break-up had been ugly, with her threatening to take “their story” to the press. He had no idea what story she was talking about, but she hinted at exposing who he “really” was. He had no idea what she meant, but he’d given in and paid her for what she called “her time lost while he’d used her.” Seth had had no heart to fight, and she walked away with money, enough to make her smile and leave quietly. He hadn’t been open to a relationship since. He might be a genius in technology, but he sure didn’t have a clue how to deal with women. “Since then I’d been calling Sarge to keep in touch. We had no idea he’d almost completely shut down the ranch, until his accident,” he continued.

  Quinn sighed softly. “I’m sure Sarge really appreciated you keeping in contact. Even a phone call keeps the loneliness at bay…at least for a while.”

  When he glanced at her, she was staring down at her hands clasped in her lap. He knew she was talking about herself again. The picture of Quinn and her husband on the nightstand had shown them glowing with happiness that he doubted had anything to do with the golden California sun.

  “Sarge isn’t going to be here alone anymore,” he said. “I just hope I can make the camp how he and Maggie dreamed it would be. They wanted a place where the troubled kids could come for a time out of their lives. To offer healing, if they could. They wanted to keep giving and helping and caring.” He paused, then said, “I just hope I’m able to do that for Sarge.”

  “You will,” she said as if she knew that for certain. “You love him, and I’m sure you felt the same way about Maggie. That makes up for so much. You’re doing it to make Sarge happy while he can enjoy it. You understand him.”

  “Sarge always understood us, gave us what we needed. Like the way he used horses, assigning each of us a ride, and putting the care of the horse in our hands during our time at the ranch. He wanted us to learn responsibility.”

  “Very smart, and horses are great therapy for kids.”

  “He did what he could to give us all the tools to survive in the system when we left here.”

  “How bad is it in foster care?” she asked.

  He wouldn’t go into his life before the ranch. Saying what he went through out loud was something he avoided completely. No one wanted to know about a little boy who learned how to not cry by pushing at his nose. A bloody nose was better than letting the other kids see him sobbing. No one wanted a kid who had to think about what he was going to say so no one got mad at him. That was gone, and he wished the memories were gone, too. But they had a way of rearing at the worst times.

  He pushed back his thoughts and settled for saying, “The caseworkers try, they really do, but they have heavy caseloads. The kids either have no parents or if they do, they’re totally absentee or abusive or useless or locked up. It can be pretty bad. Being in foster care is something you can’t understand until you’ve gone through it.”

  “Can I ask you why you were in foster care?”

  Her simple inquiry brought back more of the past. He remembered thinking he’d never had a mother or father, until a case worker had told him when he was six that everyone did. But he knew he didn’t, and he thought he had to be pretty awful to be the only one who’d never had parents. It wasn’t until he was ten when one of his counselors had mentioned they’d died in a car accident. He’d been almost been happy to hear that.

  “My parents went out for their anniversary. I was told it was snowing and there was an accident. I was about three and was with a babysitter. Child Protection searched for family members to take me, but there wasn’t anyone, so I became a kid of the system until I turned eighteen. My real life started the moment I set foot on the ranch, although I didn’t know that right away.”

  “When did you figure it out?”

  It was odd that he found telling Quinn about his past was almost easy for him. “It was rough at first, until I realized no one at the ranch was my enemy. Sarge laid down the rules, but they were fair, even the riding rules.”

  “What were they?”

  “Every boy had to ride, respect and care for their horse. I remember the day he introduced me t
o Chuckie, an old gelding who had one speed—slow. At first, it went well, riding around the training ring, and I felt pretty brave. Then a snake slithered out of nowhere to cut right in front of us. Chuckie turned from old and plodding into a mass of fear and muscle. I think he was trying to jump the fence but didn’t make it and plowed right through the rails.”

  He could almost hear the grimace in her voice when she said, “I’m guessing it ended badly?”

  He actually smiled about the incident. “The only blessing was it ended quickly, leaving me with a sprained wrist and scrapes.” He was almost living that memory while he told Quinn, and it wasn’t all bad. “I thought I’d get time off. But as soon as Sarge could, he got me back up on Chuckie.

  “Jake and Ben and I became friends and started riding all over the ranch together. Sarge told me later that going out in the world meant ups and downs, and he never wanted me to stay down for too long.”

  “A wise man.”

  “And opinionated,” he said with a low chuckle.

  “I can tell he understood you, got you on the right path. And you have to admit, he’s still pretty opinionated. I mean, he tried to get you to fire Julia right in front of her.”

  Seth was relieved that he’d found his smile talking about what had been trauma at the time, and that he was actually grateful on some level that it happened. It had centered him more, and he realized that right about that time was when he really began to admire Sarge. “Yes, he understood me more than I understood myself and probably still does.”

  “Did he and his wife have children of their own?”

  Seth saw a sign announcing Eclipse five miles ahead. “No, they didn’t.”

  “That’s too bad. Sarge would’ve made a great dad.”

  The town was starting to come into view when Seth spoke a truth. “He is a great dad. He’s my father. He was from day one. For Jake and Ben, it was the same. He’s always been there for us.”

  Quinn was quiet for a long moment, then asked, “Do you believe in some greater plan behind your life, or do you think it’s all just crazy coincidences and luck?”