Home on the Range
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Praise for
Home on the Range
“I’ve been so eagerly awaiting this book by Ruth Logan Herne—and it’s even better than I’d hoped. An overprotective cowboy daddy and the therapist masquerading as a woodland fairy princess called on to help his daughters…What could possibly go wrong? Just everything. The whole delightful story is full of fun twists and poignant turns. Home on the Range is a great new installment in the Double S Ranch series.”
—MARY CONNEALY, author of No Way Up
“Home on the Range showcases Ruth Logan Herne’s ability to write wounded, damaged characters grasping for grace with both hands. My heart ached for Nick’s loss, Elsa’s guilt, and little Cheyenne’s desperate need. As always, Herne’s story is sprinkled with hope and gives the reader glimpses of the One who came to save. A satisfyingly happy ending left me sighing with contentment.”
—MARY JANE HATHAWAY, author of The Pepper in the Gumbo
“In Home on the Range, the finely crafted second story in the Double S Ranch trilogy, Nick is caught in a downward spiral of repeating his father’s mistakes and no amount of cowboy gumption is going to fix things. But Elsa, a family therapist who sought refuge in Gray’s Glen to escape her own tragic past, defies her fears and conventional wisdom to connect with Nick and his daughters, bringing a soothing balm to this hurting cowboy’s wounds. Ruth Logan Herne explores the darkest recesses of her characters’ souls and bring light into the shadows, giving hope to the lost and healing to the broken. This latest story is no exception and one of her finest!”
—JAN DREXLER, award-winning author of Hannah’s Choice and Mattie’s Pledge
“A child in crisis, a hunky but clueless single father, and a reclusive therapist with a big secret…Intrigued? I sure was. Home on the Range is a fabulous story of hope, faith, and real-life family drama. Filled with heart-tugging emotion, delightfully sassy bantering, and a cowboy to die for—what’s not to love? I loved it so much I quickly ordered the first book in the series. Well done, Ruth Logan Herne!”
—VICKIE MCDONOUGH, best-selling, award-winning author of Sarah’s Surrender, book 3 in the Land Rush Dreams series
BOOKS BY RUTH LOGAN HERNE
Running on Empty
Try, Try Again
Safely Home
Refuge of the Heart
More Than a Promise
The First Gift
Winter’s End
Waiting Out the Storm
Made to Order Family
Double S Ranch Series
Back in the Saddle
Men of Allegany County Series
Reunited Hearts
Small -Town Hearts
Mended Hearts
Yuletide Hearts
A Family to Cherish
His Mistletoe Family
Kirkwood Lake Series
The Lawman’s Second Chance
Falling for the Lawman
The Lawman’s Holiday Wish
Loving the Lawman
Her Holiday Family
Healing the Lawman’s Heart
Grace Haven Series
An Unexpected Groom
Her Unexpected Family
HOME ON THE RANGE
Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version and the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.
Trade Paperback ISBN 9781601427786
Ebook ISBN 9781601427793
Copyright © 2016 by Ruth Logan Herne
Cover design and photography by Kelly L. Howard
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published in the United States by Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
MULTNOMAH® and its mountain colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Herne, Ruth Logan, author.
Title: Home on the range / Ruth Logan Herne.
Description: First Edition. | Colorado Springs, Colorado : Multnomah, 2016. | Series: Double S Ranch ; book 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2016037857 (print) | LCCN 2016043720 (ebook) | ISBN 781601427786 (paperback) | ISBN 9781601427793 (ebook) | ISBN 9781601427793 (electronic)
Subjects: LCSH: Man-woman relationships—Fiction. | Domestic fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Contemporary Women. | FICTION / Christian / Romance. | FICTION / Christian / Western. | GSAFD: Christian fiction. | Western stories. | Love stories.
Classification: LCC PS3608.E76875 H66 2016 (print) | LCC PS3608.E76875 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016037857
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Contents
Cover
Books by Ruth Logan Herne
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
From the Kitchen of the Double S Ranch
Acknowledgments
A Selection From Peace in the Valley
To Seth, my second son: This one’s for you, my guy who stayed close to “home on the range.” You’ve grown to be a wonderful man in so many ways. I’m proud of you, son. And I really love the sweet wife and adorable grandkids!
Nick Stafford stared at the half-buried, round-roofed dwelling and realized he couldn’t go through with the elementary school principal’s edict. Not if it meant meeting with a hermit who lived in a toadstool shack tucked so deep in the forest that woodland mice couldn’t find it.
A hobbit house. No way on God’s green earth was Nick Stafford about to risk his daughters’ mental health by having them counseled by a recluse who lived halfway to a mole hole. No matter what the girls’ principal said.
What was next? A hollow tree?
He did an about-face, ready to stride away, and came face to face with a dryad.
Cool gray-green eyes appraised him from beneath a hooded cloak, Celtic friendly, except they weren’t in the lush green hills of Ireland. They were in the forestland of central Washington, and the thin spring leaves did little to protect him from today’s chill drizzle. Which made her hooded wrap more sensible than his bare head.
A dark dog moved their way, darting furtively through the shadowed edges of the small, rounded property.
“Achilles. Stay.”
The dog paused, peering at them through the dense undergrowth edging the rain-soaked clearing.
“Dr. Andreas?”
The rain and shadows shifted. An oblique ray of sun made quivering raindrops sparkle along the mostly bare branches framing her. The quick change to filtered light forced his pupils to adjust.
He thought she winced when he said her name, but maybe it was the dance of light. With the shadows bobbing and weaving, he couldn’t be sure, and when the sun broke through, brighter and stronger, nothing but a mild, placid expression stared back at him. �
�Elsa, please. And you are Nicholas Stafford?”
“Yes. Mrs. Willingham recommended you, and just so we start on the same page, I’m not here by choice.”
“Then leave.”
She didn’t blink, didn’t move, and for a moment he was caught up, staring into Monet-like watercolor eyes, absolutely gorgeous if you liked whimsical characters in a fairy-tale setting.
He’d tried for a fairy-tale ending once. But he’d crashed and burned because no matter what he did to make his princess wife happy, Whitney Stafford hadn’t been ready to take the role of queen seriously. She ended their marriage after abdicating the throne to run off with the court jester, a.k.a. one of the ranch’s rodeo-riding hired hands. She’d abandoned her husband, her vows, and, worst of all, two beautiful daughters to become a rodeo cowboy–chasing buckle bunny.
But he couldn’t possibly have heard correctly. Did the wood nymph just tell him to go? What kind of therapist did that?
She moved toward the door, reached out, and twisted the handle. The door opened easily, no key needed. Of course if you were this far off the grid, maybe no key was ever needed. He started to follow her, but she turned, effectively blocking the entrance. “You’re still here.”
“We had an appointment.” He stretched out the last word, miffed by her mandate, his life, his lack of choices, and pretty much everything known to man, and despite what his older brother, Colt, said, he was not one bit depressed. He was simply mad about everything, and that was his God-given right.
“Mr. Stafford—”
“Nick is fine.”
“Mr. Stafford,” she continued in a cool, clear voice. “I don’t want to be here either. Which means our sessions are doomed, so why waste time? You have a life, dysfunctional, of course”—an easy shrug and her matter-of-fact expression said that was a given—“but you haven’t done irreparable harm, so you’re free as a bird. I have a life as well, and I appreciate my privacy more than most these days, so let me save us both from a dead-end path we needn’t take. Go home. And if things continue to spiral downward and out of control, take my sister’s advice and find a therapist you do want to see. I’m closed.”
She took one step back and shut the door in his face.
She couldn’t do that, could she? They had an appointment. He’d even set up a reminder on his phone! He’d scheduled time to see her, against his will, and he’d followed through.
You followed through because Angelina and your brother hounded you until you walked out the door. Left on your own, you’d have conveniently forgotten the whole thing. Do you want to make the same mistakes your father made thirty years ago? Or try to fix things for the girls by expending some kind of sincere effort? Cheyenne nearly got killed earlier this spring because you refused to compromise. But of course—the voice of reason paused as if resigned to being brushed off—the choice is yours. Again.
Well, he was here. He’d shown up as promised, and finding her little hut in the woods hadn’t exactly been a cakewalk.
He glared at the door and lifted his hand to knock.
A long, low growl from behind him said the dog wasn’t all that enamored by his presence either.
Nick was pretty sure this couldn’t get worse, but then a brightly colored bird winged its way to the tree alongside the house, squawked, flapped its wings, and screeched, “You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk!”
The dog sank back on his haunches and barked twice in agreement.
Nick conceded defeat. The bird was right. He dropped his hand and started to back away from the door, hoping to escape before the dog attacked while the bird pecked his face off. Where was his trusty Remington long barrel when he needed it? Sixty feet away, in the rack behind the seat of his extended-cab ranch pickup truck.
The dog barked again, but this bark didn’t sound threatening. It sounded sad, if such a thing was possible, and the croon in the bark said the mutt was either looking forward to hand-to-paw combat or he wanted someone to pet him.
Nick crouched and tapped the path beneath him. The dog ambled over. He sank onto the stones and flipped to his back, waiting for a good scratch.
“You’re no watch dog, that’s for sure,” Nick said as he rubbed the dog’s belly. “As far as protection goes, you’re on the low end of the scale, my friend.”
“Dumb dog! Dumb dog! Dumb dog!”
Nick glared up at the raucous bird. “Listen you rude, loud pile of feathers. No one needs your guff, okay? And you’re so stinking ugly, no one more than twenty miles north or south of the equator would even use your feathers to decorate their hats. So there.”
“You’re arguing with a macaw.” He hadn’t heard the door open but was kind of glad it had.
“Just having my say,” he returned, not looking up. “The bird’s obnoxious and it poops when it roosts.” He shrugged a shoulder toward the offending pile to the dog’s left. “Reason enough to make pie out of it right there.”
He’d figured to tick her off, because she had animal-loving, tree-hugging, far-left liberal written all over her eccentric outfit, but she surprised him by laughing. Only her laugh sounded rusty, like his.
“I can’t deny I’ve been tempted.”
“Is there more to your menagerie?” He angled his gaze up while still petting the dog. “Stray monkeys and elephants, perhaps? A dinosaur or two? Jumanji inspired?”
Her smile deepened at the mention of the fantasy movie. “No, just these two. Why are you still here?”
He studied the dog, then her, assessing. “I’m not sure. Now that I know the dog’s not going to maul me, I could have simply walked to my truck, backed around, and left.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” He stared around and shrugged again. “I’m in a bind. I’ve got to do something to jump-start my oldest daughter, and the principal…your sister, right?”—he met her gaze and she nodded slightly—“gave me your card and threatened further action if I don’t get help for both my girls. So here I am, in the last place I ever expected to be.”
“In the woods, petting a dog?”
He frowned at her deliberate misinterpretation. “Hunting down a therapist to fix things that never should have been broken.”
“Ah.” She sank onto one of two garden benches, still damp from the quick rain shower. “Life has a way of doing that, doesn’t it?”
“You got that right.” He kept petting the dog, and when he paused, the hound pulled his head around and pushed it against Nick’s flank, a silent plea for more. “I’ve got two daughters. Cheyenne and Dakota.”
“Western girls.”
“Except they’re not,” he answered instantly, as if denying the girls’ ranch identity was important. And it was, to him, but that was part of the problem. “Well, they weren’t western girls, that is. Washington girls, sure, but not western, as in riding and roping. Is there something wrong with a father wanting what’s best for his children? And who has the right to question that?”
“Is it the questioning that’s hard or the fact that your definition of best is being criticized?”
“What do you know about it?” He sounded petulant, but he didn’t care because he was sick to death of people second-guessing his choices, his ideas, his deeds when it came to the girls and just about anything else these days. He shifted to face her. “Do you have kids?”
“No.”
“Do you work with kids?”
“Not currently.”
“So what makes you an expert on them or me?”
She accepted his question with a nod, and between the hood and the curved chair made out of bent forest limbs, he felt like Luke Skywalker chatting with Yoda, only he actually liked the Star Wars character. “You search for understanding.”
Yup. Yoda, all right. He sighed.
“And yet, when others want to help, it has to be on your terms, your way.”
“Not always,” he shot back, indignant, and when she didn’t meet his gaze, he realized he was angry…again…beca
use she’d hit the truth and he didn’t like it when people hit the truth. He sighed and stood with one last pat to the dog. “Listen, this probably won’t work.”
She nodded, quiet.
“And it’s silly to waste our time.”
She accepted that as well, still quiet.
“I—” He shrugged. A quick breeze shook the baby leaves above him, sprinkling him with fresh raindrops, chilling him despite the warming spring temperatures. “I’ll get on my way, and one way or another, we’ll muddle through. Families have been doing this a long time. I don’t expect we’re any different than most.”
“And that’s all right with you?”
Her voice didn’t change but her question hit home. “I—”
“To settle on chance rather than taking firm steps to set your children on the right path?”
Put that way, he sounded pretty stupid and self-centered, as if he knew what was best for the girls. If he’d known that, for real, they wouldn’t be in this hot mess of crazy right now. Cheyenne was about to fail her grade, and Dakota pretended acquiescence while she did what she pleased, a dangerous combination for a first grader.
“Sometimes people just need someone to talk to. Someone they’re not trying to protect. Someone who’ll listen to their complete thought without building instant brick walls of rebuttal.”
“You think I should bring them to see you.”
She lifted her eyes to his, and when she did, he recognized something he hadn’t seen when their gazes locked before.
Pain. And that realization inspired added caution. “I don’t know anything about you.”
“A valid point. The kind of thing a responsible parent would say. What would you like to know?”
“Why are you buried in the woods?”
She made a face at the stone drive leading up to her small home, then raised a brow to him. “You found me, which means I’m not buried.”