A Rancher to Remember

by Patricia Johns

  “But you were friends with my wife,” he said. “I’m just trying to piece it all together here.”

  “Before you two started dating, Mia hung out with us a lot, too, and she was crazy about you. She harbored this huge crush, and it took you a while to clue in.”

  Sawyer met her gaze, but didn’t answer.

  “So, maybe you had more options than I did,” Olivia conceded. “But Mia was beautiful and fun, and she could ride better than you.”

  “I don’t know why, but I feel mildly insulted with that,” he said with a soft laugh. “How well do I ride?”

  “Better than you play baseball,” she joked. But then she remembered that he didn’t know, and she sobered. “You’re a really good rider. You always have been. You go on the cattle drives to move the herd, and you come back with all these stories about hungry wolves and belligerent cows.” She paused, remembering the way his eyes would sparkle when he embellished his tales. “You taught me to ride.”

  “Am I a good teacher?” he asked.

  “No.” She crossed her arms, as if she needed to defend her position on that. But he really hadn’t been. He expected his students to function on instinct, like he did.

  “No?” He laughed softly. “But you said I taught you. That’s something.”

  “You’re bossy,” she countered. “You yell a lot when you’re teaching. After that first ride, I wouldn’t take your calls for a week.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Obviously, we made up.”

  “Just barely.” Olivia chuckled. “We had fun, mostly. When you weren’t bossing me around and telling me I’d get myself killed. We were good friends.”

  “So, this is your chance to turn the tables, I guess,” he said, sobering. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

  “I’m a nicer teacher,” she said with a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll take my revenge.”

  The coffee maker burbled as it dribbled fresh brew into the pot, and Bella toddled up to her father and held a plastic toy up for his inspection. Sawyer bent down, looked at the toy seriously, then said, “Very nice. I like it.”

  Bella looked at the plastic block in her fingers as if seeing it again for the first time. Then she smiled up at Sawyer, her blue eyes glittering.

  The girls remembered their father just fine, and they obviously recognized their daddy in this broken version of him. Olivia recognized the old Sawyer in him, too. She always had been able to get him to relax. But there was something different there, as well...something foreign around the edges. When you stripped away someone’s memories, maybe it loosened up other parts of their personality that had been held down.

  Or maybe there had been sides to him that she’d never known...that he’d never opened to her. That was possible, too.

  But she had been his friend, even if she’d kept her distance in the last few years.

  Olivia pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and glanced down at the screen. No missed calls. That meant that despite all the messages she’d left for her brother, telling him she was going to be in Beaut, Brian hadn’t called her. She’d come back to town for Brian...to try and mend this rift between them. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have returned. Her life here was over—this town couldn’t be home for her again.

  “Sawyer, I’m going to go make a call,” she said.

  Sawyer looked up from where he crouched next to his daughters. “Sure.”

  Olivia slipped out the side door and walked a few paces away from the house. She could hear the growl of a tractor’s engine somewhere in the distance, and the sunlight warmed her shoulders. There was no breeze right now, just sunny warmth, and she dialed her brother’s number once more.

  It rang four times, then the voice mail kicked in: “Hi, it’s Brian. You know what to do.”

  She hung up. She’d already left three messages.

  Lord, what do I do? she prayed. He won’t talk to me, and I’m kind of intimidated here. He’s my little brother, and he can’t stand me. Do I deserve this?

  Olivia had said she was leaving Beaut in order to go to school, but there was more than a simple desire for an education and a career that pulled her away. This town was the kind of place that had a long memory. Olivia had always thought of herself as pretty tough, but those rumors had been devastating. People looked at her differently. They whispered when she walked by. It didn’t matter that the rumors weren’t true—they were juicy, so they had spread like wildfire. They had affected the way Olivia saw herself, eroding her sense of self-worth. Just as soon as she and her mother had scraped up enough money for college, she’d left for Montana State University and never looked back.

  The problem was, she felt guilty. She’d had good reason to leave Beaut, but she’d left Brian behind, and she’d always been a little extra protective of him. From where Brian stood, Olivia had abandoned both him and their mom. They hadn’t known she was sick yet, and when Olivia left town she’d thought she had decades left with her mother in her life. And now that she wanted to make up with her brother, he wasn’t interested.

  Still, Brian didn’t know that she might have a solution to their mutual money problem...

  As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and she looked down, hoping to see Brian’s number. It wasn’t—it was the Whites. She sighed and picked up the call.

  “Hello?”

  “Olivia.” It was Irene. “You must have arrived in Beaut by now.”

  “Yes, I’m here,” she said. “I arrived this afternoon.”

  “Have you spoken with Sawyer yet? I mean, I hate to hound you, but Wyatt and I are just sitting here waiting, and the wait is worse than when Wyatt was running for office!” Irene laughed at her own little joke.

  “Right.” Olivia sighed. “Well, I’m going to need a bit of time. As you know, I haven’t been back to town in years, and I cut a lot of ties when I left, so...”

  “Will Sawyer not talk to you?” Irene asked.

  “No, it isn’t that, it’s just... I appreciate that you’re willing to help Brian and me with the hospital debt, and believe me, I don’t want to jeopardize that. But I need to be able to do this in my own way.”

  “We don’t mean to be demanding, but we are offering you a rather large recompense for your time,” Irene said.

  “But it is my time,” Olivia replied, then tried to soften her tone. “I want to help you reconcile with Sawyer—you know that. But this can’t be rushed.”

  “We’d just like a general timeline, so we aren’t jumping at every phone call,” Irene said.

  Was that a reasonable request? Probably, but the situation here in Beaut was not what any of them had anticipated, and Olivia suddenly felt tight-lipped about the details.

  Sawyer was incredibly vulnerable right now, and he’d asked her to help him remember...not to complicate his life further with his late wife’s parents. If they knew he didn’t remember them, they might seize the moment to press him when he had no ammunition to fight back. She couldn’t let that happen. When his memory returned, she could present their case, but until then, she couldn’t take advantage of his weakness for her own gain—or for the Whites’.

  “I’m not playing games. I don’t know how long this will be, but I will call you the second I have news.”

  Irene sighed, then there was the muffled sound of her covering the phone and the murmur of voices. Then she came back on the line. “We appreciate anything you can do on our behalf, Olivia. You’re like a daughter to us.”

  A daughter who had to do them favors to get one in return...but still. They’d kept Olivia close after Mia’s passing, and in a way, it seemed to keep Mia’s memory alive for all of them.

  “I’ll be in touch as soon as I can,” Olivia said. “I promise.”

  After saying goodbye, she hung up the phone, and stared at it in her palm for a moment.

&nbs
p; The Whites wanted results, and they were used to getting them. Wyatt White was a senator, and his wife had been the financial engine behind his political career. They were used to having to wait on results for things like elections, but not being forced to wait by people like Olivia.

  She was putting off the very people who could lift the burden for her and Brian, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to do any less.

  Father, guide me, she prayed. She needed God’s blessing more than she needed the Whites’ money.

  * * *

  Coffee had been something familiar—making it, waiting for it, listening to the sound of the burbling coffee maker... And Sawyer had so little that was familiar. Olivia said he used to like his coffee sweet and creamy, so he was giving it a try. He took a sip, and made a face. Too sweet, a bit filmy on his tongue.

  The screen door clattered shut behind Olivia as she came back into the kitchen.

  “Don’t like it?” she asked. “Which one is that?”

  “This is cream and sugar,” he replied, and turned to dump the mugful of coffee down the drain. He poured a fresh mug and took a sip of the black coffee. It tasted fresh, bitter, smooth. “Mmm. Yeah. This is good.”

  Olivia pulled out her phone, glanced down at the screen, and then pocketed it again. She looked distracted, and he felt a wave of misgiving.

  “Are you putting off plans for me?” Sawyer asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’re checking your phone,” he said. “If you have stuff to do, I don’t want to keep you here. I know my uncle is worried about me, but I can handle the girls for a while—”

  “No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

  He didn’t believe that. He might not remember Olivia, but he knew what tension looked like, and she had tension written all over her. It was brought out by baseball and phone calls, apparently.

  “I’m not as helpless as I look,” he said, and he made a point of not touching the bandage on his head.

  “I don’t think you’re helpless,” she said.

  “Sure, you do.” He fixed her with a direct look. “And I might not have my memory, but I’m okay. I don’t want to be your obligation here.”

  “Sawyer, you have a brain injury. You might have all the best of intentions, but you need a little looking after. Sorry to break it to you.”

  A faint smile tickled at the corners of her lips, and he thought he saw some friendly teasing in that gaze. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible to be spending a few days with this woman. They’d been friends once, apparently, and he could tell what he must have seen in her before. She was likeable.

  When she looked at him like that, he was reminded again of that fragment of memory—the woman in the black coat, how he had put his hand out to touch her. She turned...and he couldn’t remember more than that. Except this time, he recalled snow on the ground—mucky, wet, dirty snow on the edge of a sidewalk. Nothing else. It was frustrating having these little shards of memory that didn’t connect. He needed to find where they fit in.

  And he had already tried doing that sitting inside.

  “Okay, so even if I am recovering here, it doesn’t mean we have to sit in the house and stare at each other. You want to get out for a bit? I have a feeling Lloyd is going to be a while.”

  “I have that same feeling,” she agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

  “Well, my uncle doesn’t want me helping out on the ranch until my memory’s back. So maybe we could start out where I used to work—at the barn maybe.” He looked down at his rough, calloused hands. “You said I used to work a lot, right?”

  “You did,” she agreed. “It might jog a few memories.”

  Bella and Lizzie looked up at them, and Olivia glanced around the kitchen. “We should bring something for the girls. What do they snack on?”

  “Um...” Yeah, and he’d just been saying he could take care of things on his own. “I’m not sure.”

  Olivia opened a cupboard, looked through the contents and then moved on to the next.

  “Yesterday they each had a sippy cup around this time of day. Lloyd got it for them,” he added.

  Olivia went to the fridge and opened it. “Ta-da.” She pulled out two cups, both filled with milk. The toddlers beelined toward her, holding their hands out for the milk, and she gave them the cups. The girls started to drink. Bella spun in a circle as she slurped on the rubber mouthpiece, and Lizzie sat down to drink.

  “Cereal?” Sawyer asked, pulling a box of Cheerios out of a bottom cupboard.

  “Put some into a baggie,” Olivia said.

  “I don’t know where to find those...”

  The next few minutes were spent putting a toddler-friendly snack together and piling everything into a diaper bag that Sawyer did know the location of. It turned out that there weren’t baggies, but there were plastic containers, and soon enough they were heading out the side door, each of them carrying a child in their arms, and the diaper bag slung over Sawyer’s shoulder. He glanced back at Olivia, and shot her a smile. It felt good having her here with him—a little less lonely. Or was he just responding to being with a beautiful woman? Here’s hoping he wasn’t that shallow.

  They headed down the gravel drive toward a winding road. It was downhill from there toward the barn—Sawyer had stared at it all morning, trying to tease some memories free. A young blue jay squawked at them from high in a tree.

  “Birdie,” Bella said.

  “Yeah, that’s right.” He smiled down at his daughter, then glanced over at Olivia. “So, tell me about you and me. What should I remember?”

  “You’re older than me by about two years, so we didn’t run in the same circles,” she said. “But you liked to eat in the diner where I was working, and one night you were the only guy in there. And we started talking. Turned out, we both liked the same movies.”

  “And rest is history?” he said wryly.

  “I guess so. We got along. I mean, we didn’t have a lot in common. You were a ranch hand, and I was a recent high school grad, saving up to go to college for nursing. You were ready to spend the rest of your life here while I was pretty determined to get out of town. Your girlfriend had already graduated a year before, and after she worked for a year, she left for college. I think she was going to travel a bit first. Anyway, before she left, she dumped you. That was at the same time I was graduating. So when we met, you were a bit heartbroken.”

  “Ouch...” he murmured, but he didn’t feel it. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to say. This was like listening to a story about other people. He couldn’t remember any of it.

  “We just...clicked,” she said. “We cheered each other up.”

  “So, what did we do together?” he asked.

  “Oh, we went to movies, ate out, went to the local fair...that kind of thing. I was your date at some family event, but that was just because your great aunt had been overly attached to your ex-girlfriend, so you needed some distraction.” She laughed softly. “She wasn’t overly attached to me...”

  “So I have a great aunt?” he asked.

  “You did. She passed away, I think.”

  Their boots crunched over the gravel, and Bella started to wriggle in his arms, so he set her down and let her walk. Olivia followed his lead and put Lizzie down, too.

  “And you came back to see me...” He looked over at her, and some color tinted Olivia’s cheeks.

  “I came back for my own reasons. Seeing you was...a bonus.”

  “Ah.” Sawyer pushed his hands into his pockets. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”

  “Tell you what?” Her gaze flickered toward him.

  “What was really between us,” he said.

  Olivia sighed. “I’m being honest. We were friends. All friendships have different balances between them, I suppose.”

  “
And ours?” he prodded.

  “Like I said, your girlfriend left you for college,” she said. “And I was going to do the same thing. I had plans to get my education and I didn’t want a life here in Beaut. We both knew that a romantic relationship between us couldn’t go anywhere.”

  “So there was some history between us...something more than just friendship,” he clarified.

  “You ended up marrying my best friend,” she replied. “That’s the history that matters.”

  “I agree, but you and I stayed in touch, it seems.”

  “I came to the wedding,” Olivia replied. “I was the maid of honor. But after that, I...gave you two space.”

  “So, we didn’t manage to hold on to that friendship after all,” he said. Why was she being evasive here? He could sense that there was something more she didn’t want to tell him.

  “No,” she said.

  He nodded. Apparently, he’d had his own life with his wife. It seemed strange that they’d just lose touch like that, and a little sad they’d lost a friendship that had mattered to them very much. What wasn’t she telling him? “So, why did you come back? Why did you show up here?”

  “Because—” Olivia cast him an apologetic look. “I came back to see my brother. I have to patch things together with him one way or another, and he’s really bitter toward me. I’d hoped that you might be able to help me with that...but obviously, you have your own stuff to deal with right now.”

  They both paused as the toddlers got distracted with a stick. She wasn’t here for him, exactly. That might explain the tension he sensed in her earlier.

  “Maybe I can still help,” he offered.

  “No.” Her voice firmed. “You need to get your memory back. Don’t worry about me. I’ll sort it out.”

  “I guess I’m not much use right now,” he admitted.

  “Not for this,” she said. “Just focus on getting better.”

  The barn wasn’t far away now, and Sawyer’s gaze swept across the cow-dotted field, over the corral that held a couple of horses. Was this familiar? He dug about inside his head, looking for something, some sense of connection at the very least...but there was nothing.