by Diana Palmer
Rolling her eyes, she said, “Stop the ma’am, will you? You make me feel old! I’m eighteen! And I don’t smoke either, although it’s the rage right now. Hate the smell of the stuff.”
He laughed with her, that husky tone riffling through his heart once more. “What are you thinking of majoring in, Maud?” She reminded him of the fierce feminists who had risen in 1960, and wondered if she was a member of one of the women’s protest groups at the university. There was a refreshing air of confidence and individuality with her. Maud was not like the girls he’d gone through high school with. No, this filly was wild and undomesticated in an exciting way. He wanted to know everything about her. Everything.
“Math. My mother graduated from here,” she said, and she hooked a thumb over her shoulder in the general direction of where Rider College was located.
“You’re here for six years?”
“Yep, I am.”
“So am I.”
Tilting her head, she said, “What are YOU thinking of majoring in? Being a cowboy? I haven’t seen any classes on that!”
They laughed.
“I want to get my AB and then a master’s in architecture.”
“Really?” She gave him a bold look, sizing him up from head to toe and back to his eyes. “Aiming to be another Frank Lloyd Wright, are you? A western version?”
He felt heat in his cheeks, looking away for a moment. “Oh no, nothing like that.” Lifting his hand, he gestured toward the hundred people sitting at the tables. “My goal is to create sustainable, but good housing for people in the third world countries.”
“Really?” She rocked back on her heels, giving him a long look. “You aren’t what you seem.”
“Is anyone?” he teased.
She snorted. “Touché.”
“How long have you volunteered here?”
“Since I came earlier in the summer. My parents believe in giving back. Last summer I came here to Cranbury Township and worked with Reverend Annie before entering college. My mother is going to send a yearly donation to her, as she does about a hundred other food pantries and soup kitchens around the US. Since I had been accepted to college, I wanted to find the nearest facility and volunteer. I just love this place. Rev Annie is a force of nature, just like my mother. She gets things done and everyone is better off because of it.” She sighed and smiled softly. “This has become a second home to me. I love having family around me.”
“It looked like you knew everyone when you came through those doors.”
“Yeah,” she chuckled. “I like people and animals. The better you know someone, the more you find similarities between you and them. My parents took me with them on long trips around the world, and I learned very quickly that what we have here in the US is rare. We have it good here, but most of the rest of the world doesn’t. I don’t like inequities. All people deserve a roof over their head, clean water to drink, and food to eat.”
“It sounds like your mother is very focused on women and children.” He looked up. “When I arrived, they showed me a huge building that’s being constructed right now near the food pantry. It was housing for families who were living out of cars in this area.”
“Yes, that’s my mother’s donation money at work.” She wrinkled her nose, becoming sad. “No one in the world should have to live in a car with their family. No one . . .”
Hearing the grit in her voice, he admired her sincerity. “It’s good that your parents can afford this type of donation.”
“Mom says she wants everyone to have a chance to fulfill their dreams. I agree with her.”
“I like your attitude,” he said.
“What about you? Are you a real cowboy?”
His heart expanded with unexpected joy over her question. “I’m the third generation of a ranching family at the Wind River Ranch. It’s located in the Wind River Valley, fifty miles south of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Grand Teton National Park is a little beyond that town.”
“So, you ride a horse?”
“Grew up on one. I like throwing a leg over a good horse and doing a hard day’s work at the ranch.”
“I love horses,” she sighed, lifting her hand, waving to a new family coming down the line.
He was going to say something sexist, but stopped, rethinking it all before he spoke. Since Gloria Steinem’s exposé of the NYC Playboy Club fired up the feminist revolution in 1963, that had made him start looking at how men treated women. His own mother, Lydia, was a highly outspoken and independent Wyoming-bred woman. She didn’t get cowed at all by men, or it was a man’s world. In fact, it dawned on him that his mother ran the ranch; his father, Sam, didn’t. She was the chief manager of the 150,000-acre ranch, did the accounting, and did a darned good job at it. Since he was ten years old, he’d seen the ranch prosper as never before in the multigenerational family. Lydia had visionary plans for the ranch and by the time he was eighteen, they had more money in the bank than ever before.
Smiling a little as he served the families coming through his line, he thought that Maud would love to meet his mother, Lydia. They were like two peas that came from the same pod. Powerful women who each followed a vision and put it into action.
* * *
Maud tried to keep her attention on the people she was serving. Steve Whitcomb stood out from the rest of the men due to his hat, but from what she could see, he was nice to everyone and that counted a lot in her book. He wasn’t arrogant, acting entitled, attitudes that she’d come to expect from the rich sons of rich parents. In fact, she was turned off by them, despairing of ever finding a young man with manners, with respect toward women and children, and who wasn’t a Neanderthal jerk. That was important to her.
Keeping one ear keyed to Steve’s quiet conversations with their clients as he served, she found herself liking him more and more. He was handsome in a rugged, cowboy kind of way. Most of all, she liked the devilry that danced in his light blue eyes, that short blond hair of his more like a Vietnam War military haircut, unlike the hippie men who insisted upon wearing their hair long. And that well-shaped mouth of his, the way he crooked one corner of it when she knew he was teasing her or a client, was a turn-on, not a turn-off.
Her mind raced with questions about this enigmatic cowboy from Wyoming. He insisted upon wearing his western clothes, not dressed in expected Ivy League clothes like every other young man attending Princeton. No sport coat, pants, shirt, and tie for him! She liked his sense of self. She had always dreamed of living out west; the books on cowboy heroes, horses, and cowgirls she’d read growing up filled her with a burning desire to see that part of the USA.
In another hour, breakfast was over. The steam line was closed down, and soon she and Steve were carrying the huge aluminum trays back to the kitchen area where twenty other volunteers were working nonstop. She liked the way he walked, that boneless kind of grace, confidence, and most importantly, always alert and sensitive to others. What was there NOT to like about this guy? Really?
After they delivered the last of the huge aluminum trays, she pulled off her gloves. Sensing that he wanted to be with her, Maud took it as an opportunity.
“Hey, you like horses. So do I. My car’s out in the parking lot and I’ve got a riding lesson at a nearby stable in about forty-five minutes. Are you doing anything right now? Would you like to come with me? It would give you a chance to be around horses again.” How she wanted him to say yes! He halted outside the swinging doors, standing out of the way of the people going in and out.
“Sure, that would be nice. I don’t have a car. The apartment I’ve rented is about half a mile from here.”
“Can I drive you? If you trust me to drive?” She saw him grin and slide her a knowing look.
“Somehow, I think you drive just fine.”
“Well,” she huffed, “men always call women bad drivers, but in reality? If you asked the insurance company who has the most accidents? Turns out it’s men, eighteen to twenty-five years old, not women.”
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nbsp; He walked with her to the front doors, opening one for her. “I can believe that.”
Outside, she gestured for him to follow her. She had a blue Ford Falcon station wagon that had some wear and tear on it. If she was as rich as Jose said her mother was, her taste in cars went to common sense and practicality, not status. Another box checked. He saw several bales of timothy grass hay in the rear of the car. As she slid into the driver’s seat, he settled into the passenger side.
“Hay for the horses?” he asked.
“The Pegasus Horse Center is where we’re going,” she said. “It charges an arm and a leg for a bale of alfalfa or timothy hay. I get mine from a local farmer about fifteen miles from here for half the price.”
“You have a horse stalled there?”
She put the car in gear, a stick shift, and they took off. “I’ve leased a thoroughbred gelding for a year.”
“So, you’re a rider?”
“I’ve been around horses all my life,” she confided, giving him a glance. He seemed pleased. “What? You don’t think Eastern women can ride horses?” she said, and she laughed heartily, as if it were an inside joke. She put the car in gear and they were off.
Steve drank in the multicolored fall trees that lined the highway. The sky was a deep blue and it made the rich, vibrant colors even more intense. “I guess my way of looking at the East is a bit off,” he admitted. “No, I didn’t think of women riding horses back here.”
“Have you traveled much?” she wondered.
Shaking his head, he said, “Well, I’ve been to Utah, Montana, and Idaho. Does that count?”
Her lips pulled upward. “Sure, it does.”
“What about you? It sounds like you’ve traveled the world.”
“My parents are globe-trotters. I was born in New York City. They live there to this day.” She shrugged. “Most kids who have rich parents, with some exceptions, are raised by nannies and kept at home when their parents travel. Mine didn’t do that. I did have a nanny, but they always took me with them when they traveled. It gave me a bird’s-eye view on how people around the world struggle to just eat or find water to drink.”
“Why did your parents travel?”
“My mother has charities around the world that she donates to. She loves all people and is a stickler on giving women a chance to run their own business like she does.”
“Tell me about that. My mother, Lydia, is the boss of our ranch. She doesn’t have a college education, but she has a vision for our ranch. She’s helped us make more money in the last twenty years with her innovations and seeing how to make the ranch prosper far more than anyone in the family before her.”
“Sounds like my mom,” she agreed. “I don’t think you need a college education to be a good businessperson. Many people learn it hands on. Their experience is actually better than going to college. It sounds like Lydia is one of those rare birds.”
“What about your mother?”
“My mother is a chip off the old block of Gloria Steinem long before she became associated with the feminist movement. My father owns a seat on the Stock Exchange and my mother wanted to start an investment firm of her own. She got an MBA from Rider University. She went around the world investing in corporations owned by women. She has nothing but women’s companies in her portfolio, and everyone on Wall Street said she wasn’t going to make a plug nickel. But she did.” Maud filled with pride. “My mother has been making good money at it. Every year she attracts bigger investors. And the women who own these businesses are prospering as a result, too.”
“And you don’t want to work on Wall Street, too?” he asked. “You’re going after an MBA like her.”
Maud liked his remembering those details. Opening and closing her fingers around the steering wheel, she turned off to a two-lane highway outside the town limits. They were now in green, rolling pastures with groves of trees here and there. “Originally, Mom wanted me to take over her company, but I got cold feet. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel up to it, because I was. Like her, I wanted to help the women’s businesses continue to prosper. I want to learn how to help people create a business, thereby lifting the entire community I lived in. That would mean helping women and men. I think when a small town prospers with mom-and-pop businesses, everyone prospers. Then the county they are in is lifted economically, as well. It’s a positive domino effect.”
“A small town? I thought you were a city girl.”
“I guess I’m far more limited in how I see myself, Steve. I don’t like traveling very much. I love being in one place forever and knowing and making friends with those who live around me. Community is vital to me. Knowing everyone is very important to me.”
He rubbed his chin. “You’ve never lived in a rural community, though?”
“No, and I really want to. I love New York City, but I pine for greenery, grassy hills, and dales, not concrete, glass, and steel skyscrapers.” She slowed, turning into a white-fenced lane, several huge riding rings along with an indoor arena sitting on two hundred acres before them. “I feel my heart is in the country,” she said, and she made an expansive gesture with her hand.
“A city girl with a country heart?” he teased her gently.
“Oh,” she said, giving him a brilliant smile, “I love that thought! Yes! Yes, that’s who I am at heart. I really want to live in the country. That’s one reason I love the Princeton area so much. It’s got a country feel to it. My mom doesn’t understand, but I’m hoping after I get my degree and then my MBA, I’ll be looking for a small, rural community to go live in and help the people prosper.”
“If you want to see country,” Steve said, “on summer break you should visit our ranch. THAT is rural country. Have you ever been to the West?”
“No,” she said, pulling into the parking lot that was filled with Mercedes-Benz vehicles. “The closest I got to your state was New Mexico one time, and I just loved Santa Fe!”
Getting out, he settled the Stetson on his head, glancing around at the riders on tall, sleek thoroughbred horses, wearing English apparel and sitting on English saddles. He came around and opened her door for her and she thanked him. He’d never seen such an odd-looking little saddle before. The only one he knew about was the western saddle that all ranchers used out west. Glancing up, he saw Maud waving for him to follow her.
“I’ve got to get the hay manager, Julie. I have my own stash of hay for Peppy, my leased horse.”
Following her, he smiled to himself. Maud took off like a rocket, calling to her friends riding in some of the rings, waving hello to them, and then diving into the cavernous riding arena. Steve increased his stride. She was a woman on a mission, no question. There was nothing aggressive or mannish about Maud, in his opinion. She wore loose-fitting jeans, but it couldn’t hide her curves or her long, long legs. Maud was all energy, focused, committed, and he kept up with her as they entered the stall area on one side of the long building. He saw several women dressed in English riding togs look up and stare at him as they walked past them in the aisleway. His hat always drew attention and he chuckled to himself.
East meets West.
That pleased him for no discernable reason as he slowed and watched Maud dive into a door with a sign over the top of it that said: OFFICE. Looking around, he saw a number of horses, some bay, a gray, and a sorrel, were all in ties being either saddled or unsaddled by their attentive riders. There were a lot of young women here, he guessed in their late teens or early twenties. All were dressed spiffily in proper English garb. Even the long stovepipe black leather riding boots that snugged to just below their knees. He knew the cost of a good pair of cowboy boots, and there was a lot of money in the English variety, he was sure.
He wondered if Maud was going to ride. He missed his horse, Tiger, a blood bay quarter horse. It had been a long time since he’d been riding, and he acutely missed it. And clearly, there was some very nice, but expensive horseflesh here in this barn.
Inhaling deeply, Steve filled h
is lungs with the sweet scent of the alfalfa and timothy hay. The smell of a horse was euphoria for him. And the scent of freshly cleaned saddle leather was wonderful, as well. All those fragrances wafted around him, reminding him sharply of home, which he missed so much. Both ends of the arena, where there were box stalls on either side of the concrete aisle, were opened to allow not only light, but fresh autumn breezes in.
There were horses of varying sizes and colors sticking their heads out from their roomy box stalls and into the busy aisleway, watching the comings and goings of horses and riders. He knew horses had a very low threshold for boredom and relished constant distraction. They were also herd animals and needed their own kind around them. Even the way the eyes on a horse were set in their head was for maximum vision of the world around them.
“Hey! Steve!” Maud called from the opened door. “Come on in! I’ll only be a few more minutes and then, I’ll show you around.”
Maud’s smile was infectious, and he appreciated her being sensitive to the fact he was a stranger here in their midst, in more than one way. Her light green eyes were large, fringed thickly with black lashes, like a frame for a gorgeous painting. As he turned and walked toward her, he kept sternly reminding himself that he had years remaining at Princeton to make his architecture degree a reality. He couldn’t afford to fall in love with the first woman he met.
Chapter Two
August 1, 1966
“I just love your ranch, Steve,” Maud sighed, looking up from where they rested their elbows on the pipe rail fence of the corral. She lifted her face to the overhead sun. August was the hottest month of the year in Wyoming, Steve had told her. Since she came to the ranch, the bright red baseball cap his father, Sam, had given to her to wear was on her head all the time. She tipped the bill upward. “I love the smell of the grass, the sound of cattle mooing, and the horses whinnying . . .” she said, and she tilted her head, catching his glance. As always, he wore his black Stetson, jeans, a blue chambray cowboy shirt, and boots. It was just who he was and that was more than enough for her. She melted beneath his warming smile, her body running hot, remembering how, over a year ago, they agreed to live together off campus. Her love for him had only increased over time. This was her second summer at the Wind River Ranch.
