by Merry Farmer
Casey’s mouth went dry. “We need to be careful, yes. But we can’t let the Bonnevilles win this one.”
A wistful smile touched Louise’s lips. She took a step to the side, trying to lead Casey to the row of hay bales that doubled as seats. Casey held her ground. Louise sighed and shifted to stand in front of her again.
“Where is this all coming from, sweetheart? I thought you were against Scott Martin building on your property.”
“That was before—” She hesitated, not sure how much she wanted to share with Louise, not sure she wanted to admit to herself how much Scott mattered to her. “That was before I caught on to the trick the Bonnevilles are trying to play,” she said instead of baring her soul. “This is a blatant ploy for them to buy out ranches from families like us who might run into financial trouble.”
Louise stared at her long and hard, her penetrating blue eyes boring into Casey’s soul. Louise was next to impossible to fool in the best of times. That’s what made her such a good coach. Casey couldn’t maintain eye contact under Louise’s stare and glanced off to the side. A few of her old rodeo team’s horses had come to the edge of their stalls to see what was going on, or maybe because they heard a familiar voice. For Casey, it was like looking at the incriminating faces of a group of friends she’d left behind without saying goodbye.
Heart racing, she glanced back to Louise. “We can’t let them win, Louise. We can’t let the Bonnevilles take everything that means anything to us. You have to vote against this law next week.”
“Aww, honey, I know this means a lot to you.” Louise’s eyes were sadder still. “But there were some provisions in that law that we talked about at the meeting before the one a few days ago that didn’t get mentioned when everyone in town was there. I, for one, am concerned about the quality of the houses that folks might try to build. Your sweetie Scott’s house is so well-thought-out and beautiful, but the next guy might throw up a shack and say it’s green. I’m all for encouraging innovation, but I don’t want to see Haskell turn into an eyesore.”
Panic threaded its way through the grief that was already close to choking Casey. “But what about the ranches?” she pressed on, breathless with fear. “What about the fact that this is just another Bonneville trick? They’ll end up swiping everyone’s ranches out from under us. We’ll lose everything. I just want things to stay the way they are.”
She hadn’t intended to blurt out the last bit, and as soon as she did, she knew she’d tipped her cards. Louise’s expression turned so compassionate that Casey wanted to burst into tears of rage. She didn’t want compassion. She didn’t want sympathy or another person telling her that she would be okay, that her mom would want her to move on and be happy. She wanted things back the way they’d been. She wanted her mom back.
“Why don’t you come by on Saturday when the rest of the team is practicing?” Louise said, stopping Casey’s impending meltdown in its tracks.
“What?” Casey answered as if she’d been punched in the stomach.
Louise smiled wistfully. “Why don’t you just come by? Everyone’s been missing you something fierce. You should bring Carrot over and go through exercises with us.”
A wave of elation struck Casey at the very idea. “No.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. “I’m not on the team anymore.”
“Well, you should be.” Louise was blunt this time. “I kept telling you last year that you needed the team as much as the team needed you.”
“They really didn’t,” Casey argued. “I was losing my edge anyhow.”
Louise laughed. “So beating the time of everyone on the team and most of the people in the state counts as losing your edge these days?”
The sliding, hollow feeling of being caught in a lie filled Casey. “I didn’t really have time after…I don’t have time anymore. I’m needed on the ranch.”
“And I’m sure if you asked Roscoe, he’d be overjoyed to give you a few hours a week to come out and train with the team,” Louise countered her.
She was right. Her dad would whoop for joy if she told him she was taking up rodeo again. And she’d feel like a total jerk as her world turned into time trials and practice and the thrill of competition as she forgot about her mom.
“I’m busy with Scott,” she blurted out another excuse, feeling as bad about her time with him as she would have if she’d accepted Louise’s invitation to come back.
“Well, all right.” Louise nodded. “That’s an excuse I’ll accept. That young man is just what the doctor ordered for you, I think.”
“I don’t know.” She knew full well she sounded like a fickle, inconsistent teenager, but the world was as confusing now as it’d been when she was just figuring out homework and hormones and a world that was changing faster than she could keep up.
To her surprise, Louise reached out and caressed Casey’s cheek. “Oh, honey. You’ve got to stop tying yourself up in knots like this.”
Casey flinched away from her hand. “I’m not tying any knots. I’m just trying to help Scott get a chance to build his dream house. Will you support him?”
Louise answered with a wistful smile. “I tell you what, honey. I’ll give some serious thought to everything that this proposed law could mean for this town and for ranchers like us. But in return, I want you to give something a thought for me.”
“What?” Dread burrowed into Casey’s heart.
“I want you to consider loving on that boy until all those holes in your heart start to heal up again.”
Tears stung at Casey’s eyes, but she swallowed them before she would explode.
“I want you to consider coming back to the team, because this is where you belong, and you know it,” Louise went on. “And I want you to think about how happy it would make your mom to see you smiling and carefree, the way you once were.”
“I’m still…I’m not…I haven’t….” Nothing Casey tried to say would come out. Her body ached as if she’d slammed full-force into a wall—a wall that had been there, looming over her, for a year—a wall that she couldn’t avoid anymore. “I’ll think about it if you’ll think about your vote,” she pushed out, then turned and bolted for the door.
She didn’t exactly run, but she couldn’t stand to be in the place where love and joy were calling to her from every corner. She couldn’t face the woman who was as much like a mother to her as the one she’d lost.
But most painful of all, she knew that the time had come. She couldn’t run away anymore.
Chapter Eighteen
As he and Casey drove out to Piper Strong’s ranch the day before the vote, Scott mentally ticked off their progress with members of Haskell’s city council. Of the seven members of the council, Ronny Bonny and Jessica Chapman were hopeless causes. They were certainly going to vote for the law. Luna Clutterbuck was a sure shot to vote against it, as was Gary Haskell, Howie’s brother. Gary was as quiet as Howie was loud and had done nothing but sit back and observe at the meetings, but Howie made certain Scott knew in no uncertain terms that Gary would vote to oppose anything the Bonnevilles wanted on principle.
“That leaves Darren Ross, Louise Meyers, and Piper Strong,” Scott said aloud.
“What?” Casey blinked herself out of whatever deep, deep thoughts had pulled her under and turned her head to him. She continued to hug herself in the passenger seat as if the car were cold, though.
“I’m just trying to figure out if we stand a chance with tomorrow’s vote,” he said. “Luna will vote for us, but I’m not so sure about Darren.”
They’d been over this several times in the last few days, although there’d been times over dinner or while the two of them were walking through downtown Haskell where Scott wasn’t sure that Casey’s heart was even in the fight anymore. That struck him as highly unlikely, and yet she’d given him more one-word responses and hums since her meeting with Louise Meyers than long, impassioned answers.
“Any further thoughts about Mrs. Meyers?” he asked, hoping t
o prompt her into conversation, hoping she would get back that fire he loved so much about her.
“She’s wrong,” Casey muttered, staring forward again.
Scott’s brow shot up. That was a new sort of answer. “About what?” His pulse beat harder as every part of him wanted to reach toward her.
“Oh.” Casey blinked. “I mean, I’m not sure. She could vote either way, I think.”
Her answer was an evasion if ever he’d seen one. For three days, he’d let it go, given her space and time to deal with whatever she needed to on her own. Why the dam chose that moment to break, he didn’t know, but he wasn’t having any of it anymore.
“What was she wrong about?” he asked, sending her a quick sideways look that said he was on to her.
Casey returned his look with a shifty one of her own, then sighed, arms loosening. “She thinks I should go back to doing rodeo, that I should join the team again.”
The fact that she answered him honestly was like sunlight bursting through the clouds. He made the turn onto Piper’s road, then ventured another glance at her. “Sounds like a good idea to me.” When she arched a brow at him, he went on with, “From everything I’ve been able to see, you miss competing in something. And several people have told me you were very good at racing.”
A few weeks ago, Casey would have argued with him, gone into a rage and told him off for something he couldn’t grasp. Now she just shrugged.
“What’s that reaction?” he asked, pushing her.
Again, a few weeks ago she would have snapped at him for being nosy, but instead she said, “I…I think…I dunno, maybe she’s right.”
Scott’s brow flew up. He had to keep his eyes on the road so that he didn’t miss the turn-off to the Strong ranch, but he wanted to give her his full attention. “Which is it? Is she wrong or is she right?”
Casey was silent for a long time. At last, she asked, “Scott, have you ever had someone really close to you die?”
Firecrackers of victory exploded in his chest. At last, the moment he’d been waiting for almost from the moment they’d started getting close. She was opening up to him. And he was stuck driving down a country road on the way to a crucial meeting instead of in a spot where he could hold her and comfort her.
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I had a buddy, a best friend, you could say, from basic training in the army. We met on day one and were like brothers from then on.” He took a breath. “Only, when I was sent to Kuwait, he ended up being deployed to Afghanistan. He died trying to disarm an IED.”
“Oh.” Casey’s response was weak and soft. “I’m sorry.”
Scott shrugged. They reached the Strong ranch’s driveway and he turned from paved road onto crunchy gravel. “It was years ago, but it still hurts to think about everything that he might have done with his life if he’d made it home.”
“Yeah.”
They were both silent as he drove up the long drive toward a cluster of buildings sitting in the center of a vast, wintery plain.
“Did you ever feel guilty for having fun doing the things the two of you used to do together after he was gone?” Casey asked just as he pulled into a spot next to a couple of beat-up old trucks.
“Well,” he started as he put his car in park and cut the engine. As soon as he could, he turned to her, squeezing her shoulder. “I certainly think about him when I’m shooting hoops or watching any sort of movie with car chases. Stu freakin’ loved movies with car chases, from those goofy seventies movies like Cannonball Run to the Fast and the Furious movies. But guilty?” He shook his head. “Stu would beat the crap out of me if he thought I was doing anything but enjoying myself.”
“Oh.” Casey lowered her head, slipping back into thought. “Now I kinda feel stupid.”
“Why? There’s nothing to feel stupid about.”
Scott reached to undo his seatbelt, but before he could twist to face her fully, a knock on his window scared the bejeebers out of him.
“Morning, you two,” Piper greeted them with a wave. She painted quite the picture in her quilted, flannel coat, grey hair tied back in a ponytail, smile as broad as the Wyoming horizon. Casey laughed, probably at how badly Scott had been startled, which was just fine with him. “I’ve been waiting for you,” Piper went on.
“Waiting for us?” Scott murmured.
They got out of the car, the emotional conversation they’d been so close to having temporarily forgotten.
“Come on up to the house,” Piper said, leading the way to the 19th century farmhouse where generations of her family had lived and raised cattle and kids. “I made some of my mama’s sticky buns for you this morning, and I can whip up some hot chocolate to go with them in a jiffy.”
“You knew we were coming?” Scott asked, taking Casey’s hand and walking up the porch steps to the front door.
“Of course I did,” Piper chuckled, leading them inside. “Louise told me you two kids were going around talking to all the members of the city council. Well, I expect you’re not bothering with Ronny or that sour-faced old hag, Jessica.”
Scott’s brow flew up.
“Small towns,” Casey explained with a grin. “If you sneeze, five minutes later everyone knows you have pneumonia.”
Piper wasn’t kidding when she said she had been expecting them. She walked them through a long front hall to the back of her house, where the kitchen table was set for an afternoon snack worthy of the finest hotels in LA. Although those big city hotels had nothing on her sticky buns and hot chocolate.
“I can’t remember the last time someone made hot chocolate for me in a pan on the stove with real milk,” Scott said as Piper ladled the sweet, steaming treat into a mug for him.
“There’s no other way to do it,” Piper said with a nod. “And I could say the same for your grass-roots campaign against Bonneville’s proposed law.”
“You do see what they’re trying to do with that law, don’t you, Mrs. Strong?” Casey jumped right into things.
Piper chuckled as she brought two steaming, frothing mugs to the table. She placed one each in front of Scott and Casey, returned to pour one for herself, then sat at the table with them. “I see exactly what Rich and his son are plotting,” she said with a nod. “That family has been trying to get back what they lost for a hundred years.”
“So you understand why we can’t let them do it,” Casey said, brighter than Scott had seen her for days.
Piper pursed her lips and took a sip of her hot chocolate before answering. “I see that they’re trying to maneuver ranchers into a position where they’d have to sell. But I also see how the fact that they’re trying this is a warning that some of the ranches around here are in trouble.”
“Ranching has always been a risky business,” Casey argued. “And so has dealing with the Bonnevilles.”
“True,” Piper conceded with a nod. “But I’ve been at this far longer than you, dear. In fact, my family’s been butting heads with the Bonnevilles ever since Hubert Strong ran off with Bebe Bonneville in 1881.”
Scott broke into a grin. That was a story he’d love to hear. But Casey had other plans.
“So you’ll vote with us to stop the Bonnevilles in their tracks?” she pressed.
Piper tilted her head to the side. “I’ve been thinking about it. Of course, what I really want to do is figure out a way to let those snakes think they’ve won, then turn the tables on them.”
Casey nearly choked on a bite of sticky bun. “You plan to vote in favor of the law?”
Piper shrugged. “I haven’t honestly decided yet.”
“But…our ranch. Scott’s house,” Casey stammered.
Scott opened his mouth to jump in and try to rescue the situation.
“There is another way you could rub all this in their faces,” Piper went on before he could get a word out.
“How?” Scott and Casey asked simultaneously.
Piper grinned. “I know it’s kind of sudden, but since rumor has it that things are going so wel
l.” She sent a mischievous grin between the two of them before going on. “Let those B’s go ahead and pass their historical preservation law. Meanwhile, go ahead and get married.”
A hot rush swept through Scott, leaving prickles in its wake. “Married?”
“Us?” Casey squeaked. She glanced to him, her cheeks fast going pink.
Neither of them rushed to nay-say the idea. In fact, part of Scott thought it might just be a brilliant plan.
“Sure,” Piper went on, spreading her hands. “That law Rich and his son want to pass would forbid the historic ranches from being broken up and sold for parts. But if you’re part of the family—” She nodded to Scott. “—then there’s no need to buy or sell anything. You can go ahead and build your house on whatever Flint land you please, and none of it has to leave old family hands.” She finished and sat back, grinning like she’d won the lottery.
Scott and Casey were silent. They exchanged looks. Scott couldn’t tell whether Casey was terrified by the idea or whether she was actually considering it. As far as he was concerned, it was worth consideration. Although he hadn’t gone nearly as far as thinking about marriage yet, it was a distant glimmer on the horizon. But to marry someone so that her family could keep its ranch? It didn’t seem particularly romantic to Scott.
“I’ve shocked you.” Piper leaned back in her chair, cradling her hot chocolate with both hands. “Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I shocked someone, and it probably won’t be the last.”
“No, it’s okay,” Casey said, voice distant, expression vague.
“Think about it, though.” Piper nodded. “And in the meantime, tell me more about how you plan to keep your green house cool in the summer.” She shifted to address Scott. “Heat I can understand, but how do you keep a house like that cool without AC?”
