Palomino

by Danielle Steel

  “Well, cowgirl, made up your mind yet?”

  “Shhh!” She put a finger to her lips and beckoned him in. No one else knew in the office and she particularly didn't want Harvey to know yet. Not until she was sure.

  “What are you going to do, Sam?” He threw himself down on the couch and grinned at her. “Want to know what I would do if I were you?”

  “No.” She tried to look forbidding, but he always made her laugh. “I want to make up my own mind.”

  “That's smart. Just don't make any mistakes and tell your mother what you're considering. She'd probably have you locked up in the nut house.”

  “Maybe she'd be right.”

  “Hardly. Or at least not for those reasons.” He smiled at Sam and sat up just as Harvey's secretary appeared in the doorway.

  “Miss Taylor?”

  “Yes?” Sam turned to face her.

  “Mr. Maxwell would like to see you.”

  “God himself?” Charlie looked impressed and went back to his office as Sam followed Harvey's secretary down the hall.

  And when she reached his office, she found him looking tired and pensive. There was a mountain of papers on his desk and he only glanced at Samantha as he finished some notes. “Hi, Sam.”

  “Hi, Harvey, what's up?” It was another minute before he turned his attention to her, and he went over the amenities before getting down to the reason she had been called.

  “How was Thanksgiving?”

  “Very nice. Yours?”

  “Fine. How did you spend it?” It was a loaded question and Sam felt suddenly nervous.

  “With the Petersons.”

  “That's nice. At their place or yours?”

  “Mine.” But it was truthful, she reassured herself. The ranch was hers now after all.

  “That's terrific, Sam.” He smiled at her. “You're really doing amazingly well.”

  “Thank you.” It was a compliment that meant a lot to her, and for a moment they exchanged a smile.

  “Which brings me to why I called you into the office this morning. You haven't given me your answer.” He looked expectant and Samantha sighed and slumped back in her chair.

  “I know I haven't, Harvey … I feel awful about that, but I just needed time to think.”

  “Is it really a choice?” He looked surprised. What choice did she have after all? “If you're still worried about the travel, all you really have to do is hire a competent assistant”—he grinned at her—“like I did, and you'll be all set. The rest you can certainly handle. Hell, Sam, you've been doing my job and your own for years now!” He was teasing but she wagged a finger at him.

  “Now you admit it! I should ask you to sign a statement to that effect.”

  “Not on your life. Come on, Sam, get me off the hook. Give me an answer.” He sat back and smiled at her. “I want to go home.”

  “The bitch of it is, Harvey,” she said, looking at him sadly, “so do I.”

  But it was obvious that he didn't understand her. “But this is your home, Sam.”

  She shook her head slowly. “No, Harvey, I just realized something this weekend. It's not.”

  “You're unhappy at CHL?” He looked shocked. That possibility hadn't even occurred to him. Did she mean that she wanted to quit?

  But she quickly shook her head. “No, I'm not unhappy. Not here … but… well… I don't know if I can explain it, but it has to do with New York.”

  “Sam.” He held up a hand to stop her. “I'm warning you, if you've come in here to tell me that you're moving to Atlanta with your mother, I will go into shock. Call my doctor now if that's what you're going to tell me.” She could only laugh in answer and shake her head again.

  “No, it is most certainly not that.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I've been holding out on you, Harvey.” She looked guiltily at her boss of ten years. “My friend Caroline left me her ranch.”

  “Left it to you?” He looked startled. “Are you going to sell it?”

  Samantha shook her head slowly. “I don't think so. That's just it.”

  “You're not going to keep it, Sam, are you? What could you possibly do with it?”

  “A lot of things.” And then, as she looked at him, she knew her answer. “It's just something I have to do. Maybe I won't be able to do it, maybe it'll be too much for me, maybe it'll be a terrible fiasco, but I just want to give it a try. I want to set it up as a place to teach handicapped kids to ride, teach them how to be independent, to cover ground in something other than a wheelchair—on a horse.” Harvey was looking thoughtfully at her. “You think I'm crazy, don't you?”

  He smiled sadly. “No, I was wishing that you were my daughter. Because I would wish you luck, and give you all the money I have and tell you to do it. I wish I could tell you that I think you're crazy, Sam, but I don't. It's a long way from being a creative director on Madison Avenue though. Are you sure that's what you want?”

  “The funny thing is that I wasn't sure. Until right now when I told you, but now I know. I am sure.” And then with a small sigh, “What are you going to do about the job? Give it to Charlie?” He thought for a minute and nodded.

  “I guess so. He'll do a good job.”

  “Are you sure you want to retire, Harvey?” But she had to admit that he looked ready and that she would do the same thing in his place.

  He nodded, looking at her. “Yes, Sam, I'm sure. As sure as you are about your ranch, which is to say that I want to retire and it's always a little scary to deal with the unknown. You never know for sure that you're doing the right thing.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Think Charlie will want the job?”

  “He'll be thrilled.”

  “Then it's his. Because it has to be like that. You have to want to work fifteen hours a day, take it home on the weekends, louse up your vacations, eat, sleep, and drink commercials. I just don't want that anymore.”

  “Neither do I. But Charlie does.”

  “Then go tell him he has a new job, or should I?”

  “Would you let me do it?” It was the last thing she would do at CHL that would mean something to her.

  “Why not? You're his closest friend.” And then he looked at Sam sadly. “How soon are you leaving us?”

  “What would be reasonable?”

  “Why don't I leave that up to you.”

  “First of the year?” It was in five weeks. That was a reasonable notice, and Harvey seemed to think so too.

  “We'll retire together then. Maggie and I may even come to visit you on the ranch. My advanced age should be a sufficient handicap for us to qualify as guests.”

  “Bull.” She moved her wheelchair around his desk and came over to kiss his cheek. “You'll never be that old, Harvey, not until you're a hundred and three.”

  “That happens to be next week.” He put an arm around her shoulders and kissed her. “I'm proud of you, Sam. You're quite a girl.” And then he coughed in embarrassment, fumbled on his desk, and waved her out. “Now go tell Charlie he has a new job.”

  Without saying anything further, she left his office and rolled her way down the hall, wearing a broad smile. She stopped in the doorway of Charlie's office, which was in its usual state of chaos, and she barged in on him as he attempted to find his tennis racket under the couch. He had a date to play at lunchtime, and all he could find were the balls.

  “What are you looking for, slobbo? I don't know how you find anything in this mess.”

  “Huh?” He emerged, but only briefly. “Oh, it's you. I don't. You don't happen to have a spare tennis racket, do you?” Only from Charlie could she take jokes like that.

  “Sure. I play twice a week. Ice skating too. And cha-cha lessons.”

  “Oh, shut up. You're disgusting. What's the matter? Don't you have any decency, any taste?” He eyed her with mock outrage and she started laughing.

  “Speaking of which, you'd better buy some of both, you're going to need them.”
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br />   “What?” He looked blank.

  “Taste.”

  “Why? I've never needed taste before.”

  “You were never creative director of a large ad agency before.” He stared at her, not comprehending.

  “What are you saying?” His heart pounded for a moment. But it couldn't be. Harvey was offering the job to Samantha … unless … “Sam?”

  “You heard me, Mr. Creative Director.” She beamed at him.

  “Sam …? Sam!” He jumped to his feet. “Did he—am I—?”

  “He did. And you are.”

  “But what about you?” He looked shocked. Had they passed her over for the job? If that was the case, he wouldn't take it. They would both quit, they could open up shop together, they could …

  She could see his mind racing and held up a hand. “Relax. The job is yours. Me, I'm going to California, Charlie, to run a ranch for handicapped children. And if you're real nice to me, maybe I'll let you and the kids come and visit me in the summers and—” He didn't let her finish. Instead he ran to her and hugged her tight. “Oh, Sam, you did it! You did it! When did you decide?” He was as thrilled for her as he was for himself. He was almost jumping up and down like a kid.

  “I don't know.” She was laughing as he held her. “I think just now in Harvey's office … or last night on the plane… or yesterday morning when I talked to Josh … I don't know when it happened, Charlie. But I did it.”

  “When are you going out?”

  “When you get your new job. On January first.”

  “My God, Sam, does he really mean it? Creative director? Me? But I'm only thirty-seven.”

  “It's all right,” she reassured him. “You look fifty.”

  “Gee, thanks.” He was still beaming as he reached for the phone to call his wife.

  “So? How's it going? When do you open?” Charlie called her every week, to cry on her shoulder about all the work on his desk and find out about the progress at the ranch.

  “We open in two weeks, Charlie.”

  “What is that? Like a bank? You give out toasters and balloons and party hats?”

  She smiled into the phone. For the past five months, he had done nothing but encourage, and it had been a long haul. In the course of a lifetime five months was nothing, but her working sixteen and eighteen hours a day made it seem like ten years. They had torn down small buildings, put up new sheds, altered cottages, put in ramps, built a swimming pool, sold the livestock for the most part, except for a handful of cows to give them milk and to amuse the kids. There had been therapists to hire, nurses to see, doctors to contact, and then inevitably there had been the traveling. Sam had flown to Denver to see the doctor who had first operated on her back, to Phoenix, to Los Angeles, and to San Francisco, and then finally to Dallas and Houston, and in each city she had seen the top orthopedic men. She had hired a secretary to travel with her, which made it easier for her and made it look more businesslike. She wanted to explain her program to the doctors, so that they would refer patients to heir, children who would spend four to six weeks on the ranch, learning to enjoy life again, to ride horses, to be with other children with similar disabilities, and to be independent of their parents and able to take care of themselves.

  In her presentation she showed photographs of the ranch as it had been and architectural renderings of what it was going to be. She detailed the facilities and the plans for physical therapy, gave resumes of the staff and detailed references for herself. And everywhere she went, she got a warm reception, and the doctors were impressed. All of them referred her to other doctors, most of them invited her to their homes to meet their wives and families. And in Houston she could even have had a date, but she declined graciously, and still won the doctor over. By the time she had finished her travels, she was certain that at least forty-seven doctors in six cities were going to refer patients to her ranch.

  She still called it the Lord Ranch and she had kept on a handful of the old cowboys. Josh was, as promised, made the foreman, and she had even given him a bronze plaque to put on his front door, and he had been thrilled. But what she needed was a new breed of ranch hands, and she and Josh had picked them all carefully, for their attitudes about children, about handicaps, about horses. She didn't want anyone too old, or impatient, or ornery, or willing to take risks with the children or the horses. Just hiring the men had taken them almost two months. But she had a dozen ranch hands now, two of them from the old days, and the other ten all new. Her favorite among them was a broad-shouldered, handsome, redheaded, green-eyed “young'un,” as Josh called him, named Jeff. He was shy and closed up about his own life, but he was always willing to talk for hours about what they were going to do with the ranch. His references told her that at twenty-four he had been working on ranches since he was sixteen, and in eight years he had been on five ranches in three states. When she asked him why, he said only that he used to travel a lot with his father, but now he was on his own, and when she called the last two ranches he had worked at, they told her to do anything she had to to hang on to him, and if he didn't stay with her, send him back to them. So Jeff Pickett became assistant foreman, and Josh was pleased with his new team.

  The only problem Sam had had for a while had been the money she needed, but it was amazing what could happen if you really wanted something badly enough, and she did. Caroline had left her a small sum of money, which had been absorbed by the alterations on the ranch within the first few weeks. After that the sale of the cattle had been a big help, and then Josh had come up with an idea to help her. They weren't going to need a lot of the fancier pieces of ranch equipment anymore, tools and tractors and trucks to transport the cattle, so she sold those and that paid for six new cottages and the swimming pool. After that she began to look into grants and discovered a wealth of untapped resources she hadn't considered, and once she'd gotten three of those, she applied for a loan at the bank.

  Only a month before, Harvey had called her from Palm Springs, where he and Maggie were on vacation while he played golf in a tournament with some old friends, and he had asked if they could come to see her, and when they had, he had insisted that he wanted to invest fifty thousand dollars in her ranch. It was just over the final amount that she needed, and it was a godsend for her, as she told him when he wrote the check. And now she was going to be all right until they opened, and hopefully after that, within a year or two they'd be in the black and totally self-supporting. She didn't want to get rich on what she was doing. She just wanted to make enough money to be comfortable and support the ranch.

  The opening date, as she now told Charlie, was June 7, and in a few days the rest of the physical therapists would be arriving, along with some new horses. The Jacuzzis were all installed, the pool looked terrific, the cabins were cozy, and she already had reservations for thirty-six kids over the next two months.

  “When can I come?”

  “I don't know, love, anytime you want. Or maybe, just give me a chance to catch my breath after we get started. I think I'm going to have my hands full for a while.”

  As it turned out, that was the understatement of the century. She hadn't counted on being nearly as busy as she was. She was snowed under every morning, after they opened, with mountains of paperwork, letters from doctors, requests from parents, and she spent the entire afternoon teaching children, with Josh. One of the grants had gone toward having special saddles made for the children. They had fifty now, and had already applied for another grant for another fifty saddles, which Sam suspected they would soon need. Her patience with the children proved to be endless, as she taught them in groups of two or three. And invariably each time, after the initial terror as they sat there clutching the pommel, the horse would begin to walk as Josh led them, and the feeling of freedom and movement and actually walking would so completely overwhelm the children that they would squeal with glee. Sam never got over her own feeling of excitement and jubilation as she watched them, and time and again she watched Josh and the oth
er cowboys stealthily brush away a tear.

  All the children seemed to love her and, as the old ranch hands had more than two years before, they began calling her Palomino because of her sun-bleached fair hair. Suddenly everywhere on the ranch were shouts of “Palomino! … Palomino!” as she wheeled herself about, checking on children in therapy, at the pool, making their beds, or sweeping their rooms in the pretty little cottages. Sam kept an eye on them everywhere, and at night, in the main hall where everyone ate now, including Samantha, there were endless discussions about who would sit at her table, who would sit at her right or her left, and at the campfire, who would get to hold her hand. The oldest child there was a boy of sixteen, who had arrived surly and hostile from twelve operations over nineteen months, after injuring his spinal cord in a motorcycle accident in which his older brother had been killed. But after four weeks on the ranch he was like a new person. Redheaded Jeff had become his mentor, and the boy and he had become fast friends. The youngest was a little girl of seven, with enormous blue eyes, easy tears, and a lisp. Her name was Betty and she had been born with stumps instead of legs and she was still a little afraid of horses, but she was having a great time with the other kids.

  Sometimes when she looked around herself in amazement, as the summer wore on and the numbers of children grew, Sam marveled at the fact that the handicaps didn't upset her. There had been a time in her life when only perfection seemed normal and when she wouldn't have known how to handle any of the problems that were now part of an ordinary day: children who wouldn't cooperate, artificial limbs that didn't fit, diapers for boys of fourteen, wheelchairs that got stuck, braces that broke. The mechanics of it all sometimes struck her as extraordinary, but most extraordinary of all was that it had become a way of life. And for a woman who had once longed for children, her prayers had been answered: by the end of August she had fifty-three. And now a new aspect had been added. They had bought a specially equipped van, with yet another grant, and made arrangements with the local school, so that after Labor Day the children who came to her, or stayed on, would go to school. For many of them it would be a reintroduction to schooling with normal children, and it was a good place for them to make the adjustment before they went back to their hometowns. There was almost nothing that Sam hadn't thought of, and when Charlie and Mellie came out in late August, they were absolutely stunned by what they saw.