The Rancher's Redemption

by Melinda Curtis

  And yet, her hands shook.

  Because Ben Blackwell was intimidating. Perfect walnut brown hair. Strong chin. Cold blue eyes that judged her just as harshly as she’d judged others as a teenager. Tailored suit and red silk tie. Ben spared no expense to look like a rich and powerful attorney who’d crush the opposition beneath his fine Italian loafer.

  For heaven’s sake, those shoes cost as much as the used truck she was driving.

  He’d looked at Rachel as if she was a speck of dust, an inconvenience that ruined his shine, just like the dust on his car.

  Five years ago, she’d been a speck of dust. She’d been a young, green lawyer paired with a crotchety old man who’d been no match for Ben. The Blackwells had stolen their river resources, forcing Dad to sell off some of their land or pay through the nose for water that should have been theirs. Three years later and the stress of the struggle to keep the Double T alive had sent Dad to an early grave.

  Win back the water rights.

  Set the ranch to rights.

  Those were her mantras lately.

  A shiny red truck parked in front of the office where the Mercedes had been. Rachel’s ex-husband got out of the vehicle that used to be hers. Ted Jackson was uncouth, compact and cowboy rough—everything Ben wasn’t. Everything that shouldn’t throw Rachel off her game. She repeated her mantras, adding one:

  Win back the water rights.

  Set the ranch to rights.

  Get a signed custody agreement.

  Everything threw her off her game lately, especially the thought that she should add more to her list of mantras.

  Rachel opened the door to the June heat with a hand that still trembled. “The custody papers are ready for you to sign.”

  Ted paused on the porch, staring at her with bloodshot gray eyes. “I didn’t say I’d sign. I said I’d look.”

  She wanted to slam the door and shut Ted out of her life. She wanted to press the reboot button and start her adult life over. It’d taken her three months to get Ted to sign the divorce papers. Three more to get this close to him signing the custody papers. No way was she dividing custody of her nine-month-old baby equally with this drunk.

  And yet, if he didn’t sign that was exactly what the court demanded.

  Rachel gave Ted her lawyer smile, polite but withdrawn. “Let’s review the papers and see what you think.”

  He came inside and waited for Rachel to shut the out-of-kilter front door before following her back to the office, not taking off his straw cowboy hat. “One weekend a month. That’s what we agreed to.”

  “Only at your parents’ house.” His mother watched Poppy sometimes. She was a capable and trustworthy adult.

  “That’ll work since I don’t change diapers.” Ted slouched in a chair and stared at her with a lecherous smile.

  Rachel’s stomach did a slow, sickening roll. Ted was proof the pickings in Falcon Creek were slim. A ticking biological clock, a night of dancing, and she’d been convinced she could make her father’s handsome, blond ranch hand into something. She hadn’t counted on a prior, much stronger claim being staked by whiskey. Whiskey made Ted something else. Something sour and dangerous.

  She clicked the point on a pen and slid it with the papers across her desk. She’d flagged the places Ted needed to sign with red sticky notes. If he agreed to this, she’d file the agreement at the county courthouse within the hour.

  Ted didn’t reach for the paper or the pen. “I was talking to the boys down at the Watering Hole...”

  He’d been taking advice from his drunk buddies at the bar again? Rachel straightened her spine and cleared her throat of angry responses that would do her no good.

  Ted pointed at the custody agreement, still not touching it. “I want you to put in there that you can never take Poppy away from Falcon Creek.”

  Rachel’s neck twinged. She was a fool for once telling Ted she’d like to try life outside of Falcon Creek.

  “I want that moving bit in there because I deserve to watch my daughter grow up.” Ted stood, scraping the chair across the wood floor. “I deserve things, you know.”

  He did. He deserved a stay in a rehab facility or dry out in a county jail cell. He didn’t deserve Rachel’s truck, her money, her daughter or her freedom.

  “I deserve things,” Ted repeated, spinning in slow motion until he found his bearings and headed toward the door. He yanked it open and slammed it on the way out.

  Rachel tried to breathe normally. She shouldn’t feel trapped in Falcon Creek. This was home. It always had been. It was just...

  She had dreams. She sometimes wondered. What would it be like to be a lawyer in California or Florida, someplace it didn’t snow? Or even New York, where...

  It was foolish to think she was good enough to practice law in New York. It was foolish to think about anything but this life—managing the ranch, handling a few small cases, raising Poppy.

  She had to be strong for the Thompson legacy, for the Thompsons left. Mom and Nana Nancy. Her sister and her kids. Poppy.

  There was a noise in the second office. A thin wail. Poppy was waking up. The sticky front door had been slammed too many times.

  Rachel squared her shoulders. Dreams were for sissies. She had to accept the consequences of her choices and be strong.

  If not for herself, for Poppy.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE BLACKWELL FAMILY RANCH.

  That’s what the new, grand metal arch over the gravel road proclaimed. Ben’s childhood home.

  Family? Not hardly. The only Blackwells who lived there were Big E and Zoe. Mom and Dad were dead. All five Blackwell brothers had vamoosed.

  Ben drove the Mercedes down the road with a speed that matched his reluctance to return.

  A new green metal roof rose above the rolling pasture, lifted by log framing. But it wasn’t a simple log cabin. It was a huge building. Two stories. Two wings. An imposing porch. Twenty or so vehicles parked in front. This must be the guest lodge.

  Farther behind the lodge, a huge gazebo shaded several wooden picnic tables. Beyond that sat a fire pit big enough to roast a pig in. Adults and kids milled about in T-shirts, shorts and flip-flops. In a nearby corral, two mares and two foals watched the afternoon proceedings with bright eyes and ears cocked forward, as if they couldn’t believe the West had been invaded by suburbia.

  Where were the blue jeans? The plaid button-downs with pearly snaps? The boots?

  “So much for the dude ranch,” Ben muttered.

  At the fork in the road, he steered to the right and drove on to a much smaller, white two-story home with green shutters and a wraparound porch. He took his foot off the gas and slowed to a crawl. The house was surrounded by lawn on all sides. He’d bet the big elm in the backyard still held the tire swing and that there’d be a picnic table and two benches near a modest fire pit, a place the Blackwells had enjoyed gathering around over the years.

  “Listen.” Mom had tucked Ben under one arm and Ethan under the other as the red flames crackled in the darkness. “Can you hear the owl hoot? He’s telling you he’s out hunting for food tonight.”

  “Boo!” Ben’s older brother, Jon, dug his fingers into Ben’s and Ethan’s shoulders from behind, like an owl striking its prey.

  Ben and Ethan screamed. But their screams turned into laughter as Jon ruffled their hair and handed them marshmallows to toast.

  “Jon, you need to take care of your little brothers.” Dad handed out sticks sharpened for s’more making. “And not wake up the babies.” The babies being Tyler and Chance, asleep upstairs.

  “Let the boy have his fun,” Big E said, smoking a cigar at the picnic table. “Ranch life has a way of making boys into men before you know it. And then they’ll have too many responsibilities to laugh.”

  His grandfather had been right. When Ben was twelve, hi
s parents had drowned in a flash flood as they tried to cross Falcon Creek in their truck. After that, there wasn’t a lot of joking in the house for quite some time. Jon had taken on the burden of mother hen. Heaven knew the women Big E married, one after another, hadn’t been able to fill a mother’s role. Big E resumed running the ranch after his only son had died.

  Ben parked between two trucks in front of the white house—one newer and one on its last legs. Ben got out, grabbed his designer suitcase and expensive silver briefcase with his laptop inside and moved up the walk.

  “Late, as usual.” Ethan stood on the porch, looking like a true ranch hand. Dirt-smudged blue jeans, dusty boots, sleeves rolled up on a blue chambray button-down. The junker truck had to be his. Ethan tilted his worn blue baseball cap back and surveyed Ben as if he was one of his veterinary patients with an unknown illness. “You sure you don’t want me to roll out the red carpet? You might get those fancy shoes of yours dirty.”

  “Never joke about your lawyer’s shoes.” Ben climbed the porch steps, stopping one riser away from the top, just short of the shade. The last time he’d been on this porch had been the day he was to be married. They’d taken pictures—five brothers and the old man who’d finished raising them, who’d guided them, who’d betrayed each of them in turn. Ben had worn a tux that chafed his neck and shoes that pinched his feet. He should have known those uncomfortable clothes were a sign that his marriage wasn’t meant to be.

  “We can’t joke about our lawyer’s shoes? Is that kind of like saying never joke about a man’s cowboy’s hat?” Jonathon appeared in the doorway, a black-and-white dog at his side. He had the Blackwell dark brown hair and was dressed similar to Ethan, except he didn’t look as dirty. He stuck his gray Stetson on his head, looking the part of a respectable rancher.

  Jon had his own spread farther north and two twin girls he’d been raising alone until recently. Gen and Abby had to be about six by now. Ben’s assistant sent them birthday and Christmas gifts every year. With any luck, Ben would be breaking in a new assistant before long and instructing them to add the girls to his gift list.

  “Shoes say a lot about a man.” Ben gave his brothers a hard stare and let it drift down to their footwear. The last time Ben had faced these two, they’d tried to convince Ben that Zoe jilting him at the altar was a good thing.

  “She was only interested in your money,” Ethan had said.

  “If nothing else, her running away with Big E proves it,” Jonathon had added.

  “But you knew they were eloping,” Ben had spat back.

  It hadn’t been enough that Ben had suffered through the humiliation of standing at the altar as friends and family filled the church. His brothers had known their grandfather and Ben’s fiancée were running away together. And they hadn’t said anything!

  They’d let Rachel tell him.

  Rachel.

  For the love of Mike, she was Zoe’s best friend and his opposing counsel even then.

  Rachel had tossed her blond ringlets over one shoulder and glared at Ben. Gone was the casual camaraderie they’d had as teenagers; not surprising given she’d just lost the Double T’s water rights the day before. “Did you honestly think Zoe would move away from her family and friends to live with you in New York City?”

  Ben had to keep himself from shouting, Yes! Instead, he’d said through stiff lips, “Marriage to me seemed more likely than my twenty-seven-year-old fiancée eloping with my seventy-two-year-old grandfather.”

  Big E, Zoe, Rachel, Jon, Ethan. Five people he’d thought were family. Five people he’d never trust again.

  He’d done little more than exchange text messages with his brothers in five years. Even then, his replies were often brief—I’m fine. Can’t get away. Not coming home for Christmas.

  And then ten days ago, Ethan had texted and left voice mail, and then texted and left voice mail again: Big E has run away from home. Double T taking us to court over water rights. Help.

  Ethan’s second text and voice mail had come on a bad day. Ben had been coming down from the sixty-seventh floor in the elevator, escorted by Transk, Ipsum & Levi security, carrying a box with his personal belongings. His stomach had long since reached the lobby, having plummeted there when his boss told him he was being removed as lead counsel on a big case and—oh, by the way (as if it was an afterthought)—fired for unethical practices.

  Unethical practices? Being a lawyer was about bending the law to justify your client’s stupidity. The utility company had broken federal laws regarding safety standards and people had been killed. In their homes, no less. Leaving husbands without wives and kids without fathers. Ben had been brokering generous settlements with survivors, apparently, not to the client’s satisfaction.

  A cherubic face drifted through his memory. Big brown eyes. Gummy smile. That baby didn’t know what it meant to be orphaned yet.

  That child had made Ben rethink what constituted a fair settlement in a legal case that was spinning out of control, spun faster by Ben’s actions to make things right. And coming down in that elevator, he’d felt the need to lean on someone.

  In that moment of weakness, he’d stepped out of the building in midtown and called Ethan back, agreeing to return to Falcon Creek to defend the ranch.

  Now here Ben stood, back where the cow pie had hit the fan five years ago, staring at the faces of the brothers who could have warned Ben he wasn’t getting married.

  “You think Ben convinced Rachel to back off?” Ethan said to Jon.

  “Nope.” Jon eyed Ben like the time he’d caught him trying to feed his beets to the family dog under the table.

  Ethan tsked. “Then he’s going to need a pair of jeans and boots.”

  “He’s your size, not mine.” Jon knelt and rubbed his dog’s black ears.

  “I’m standing right here, gentlemen.” Ben shook his head. “I’m not going to be staying long enough to wear boots.”

  “He’ll be in boots by sunup.” Jon gave Ben a half smile.

  “Definitely.” There was nothing half about Ethan’s smile. It was wider than a pregnant heifer’s hips.

  The sun beat down on the back of Ben’s neck. He sighed and shook his head once more. He had things to do. The latest in Montana water rights to research. And the legal precedents behind those rights. “I don’t have time to play home on the range.”

  “He wants us to think he hasn’t forgiven us for being right,” Ethan said smugly.

  “I haven’t,” Ben said as darkly as any villain.

  Jon ignored him, continuing to pat his dog on the head. “But we know better, because there’s no other reason he’d show up in Falcon Creek.” Ben’s older brother was far too smug when he added, “Family means forgiveness.”

  Ben scowled, possibly with his entire body. “When you apologize for humiliating me, then I’ll forgive you.”

  Five years ago, Jon and Ethan had presented their case for letting the revised wedding plans and ensuing drama play out. They’d thought Zoe was wrong for him. And sure, Ben had probably dodged a bullet when Zoe chose to marry a wealthier Blackwell, but he lived by the strict rules of the court. He’d been wronged. Restitution had never been made. His brothers owed him a sincere apology and a reason to trust again.

  “You’re lucky I’m here at all.” Ben lowered his chin. “I wouldn’t have come if Big E and Zoe were home.”

  “That solves where he’s sleeping.” Ethan pointed toward the henhouse near the main barn.

  Jon chuckled, albeit briefly, and then stood. “But seriously, Ben, I’m glad you came home. All hands on deck tonight. We’ll need you to bus tables for the ranch guests. Mrs. Gardner is helping us out and making tamales.”

  “I’m not the hired help,” Ben said firmly, despite the prospect of homemade tamales. “I’m your lawyer.” For two weeks and two weeks only.

  “Prima donna, more like
,” Jon muttered. “I suppose your pride won’t let you come inside until you’ve had a poke at someone. Go ahead. Give it your best shot, little brother.” He angled his jaw Ben’s way.

  Ben’s fingers clenched so hard around the handles of his briefcase and suitcase, his knuckles popped.

  Ethan hurried to stand between the two. “Or we could go inside, have a beer and give Ben a chance to get even with a couple hands of poker.” Ethan wasn’t smiling when he turned to Ben. “I told you. Big E and Zoe have run away. The ranch is in trouble, both financially and in terms of resources. Primarily, water resources. We need you.”

  Without another word, Ethan and Jon walked inside their old family home. With one inquisitive look at Ben, the black-and-white dog followed, leaving Ben little choice but to do the same.

  Ben crossed the threshold and stopped. “What the—” He nearly dropped his bags. He turned, looking outside to make sure he was still in Montana. There were the Rockies. No mistaking those peaks. He turned to take in the interior once more.

  The house looked like a Wild West boudoir. Red velvet wallpaper. Crystal chandeliers. Furniture that wasn’t for flopping on at the end of a hard day on a ranch. The chairs and sofa were white and prim, not to mention they weren’t made for anyone over six feet in height. A black lacquered table with gold pinstripes sat in the dining room in front of a large gilded mirror that looked like the one the evil queen used in Snow White.

  “Zoe redecorated.” Jon sounded disgusted.

  “You should see the master bedroom.” Ethan sounded horrified.

  “Or not,” Ben murmured.

  Both brothers turned to Ben, who was trying to remember what the place had looked like when he’d left. Blue plaid couch. Brown leather recliner. Coffee table scarred with circles from glasses of ice tea and cold cans of beer.

  “You dodged a bullet,” Jon said.

  “In other words...” Ethan slung his arm around Jon’s shoulders and grinned at Ben. “You should thank us.”