Back on Bittercreek Ranch

by RaeAnne Thayne

  While she and the children had finished picking the berries, she’d tried to catch hold of what had seemed so important but nothing came to her. And though that anxiousness, that sense of impending evil, had washed over her several more times throughout the afternoon while she and the children helped Pam with the laborious process of making jam, she hadn’t come any closer to figuring what it all might possibly mean.

  “Did you remember something?” Mason asked again now, his silvery eyes spearing her to the wall of the kitchen with their intensity.

  She shivered under the sheer force of that gaze that seemed to see right through her skin. If he ever decided to give up ranching, he could make a living interrogating hostile combatants, she thought.

  Pam had said he had been in the Army Rangers. Perhaps that had been his specialty, prying secrets out of the enemy. She wasn’t sure she liked that idea.

  She did know she certainly couldn’t equivocate very well around him. “I didn’t remember anything concrete,” she admitted. “A few random images, but I can’t imagine what they might mean. I saw a suitcase with women’s business suits.”

  Oh, and I’m suffering delusions of grandeur that something locked in my memory bank might be important to the security of the world. But other than that, it’s been a slow day.

  “I don’t suppose you found anything out about me, did you?” she asked him.

  “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I had?”

  “I hope so.”

  He studied her for a moment, then shook his head. “Daniel Galvez said his deputies searched all the logging roads in a two-mile radius from where I found you and didn’t find anything to indicate a car accident.”

  She sighed, depressed all over again. “I suppose that would have made everything just too easy, wouldn’t it? To find an automobile with a handbag containing full identification. Driving license, passport, diplomatic papers, everything.”

  He stared at her. “What did you say?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said diplomatic papers.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Did I?”

  “Yes!”

  “Why on earth would I say that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’re somehow attached to the British consulate, traveling in Utah on diplomatic business. That might at least give us a place to start.”

  Hope flickered through her. To know who she was again, to have a place in the world instead of all this frustrating blankness, seemed within her reach once more.

  Nibbling at the edges of her hope, though, was more of that strange anxiety. Some odd, inexplicable instinct warned her she was better off keeping a low profile here at the ranch, where no one could find her. She shivered but to her relief Mason didn’t appear to notice.

  “I’ll call Cale in the morning to tell him what you’ve remembered and see if that helps narrow down the possibilities,” he said. “Maybe by this time tomorrow you’ll be back where you belong.”

  The thought should fill her with relief, she thought. So why did she feel this deep sense of loss?

  She countered it by manufacturing a smile for Mason. “That would be wonderful. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You’ve opened your home to me, a complete stranger. I can’t imagine many people would have done that.”

  He looked uncomfortable. “Daniel and Lauren didn’t give me much choice in the matter.”

  “You had a choice. You could have said no and made the sheriff take me to some shelter somewhere. I’m very grateful you didn’t.”

  This time her smile was genuine. She meant only to thank him for his help but at her smile, his gaze seemed to lock on to her mouth like a heat-seeking missile and she suddenly realized how alone they were in this darkened house.

  The warm intimacy of the evening wrapped around them again, binding them close, and her stomach started a long, slow tremble.

  She was suddenly intensely aware of him—of his silvery eyes, vivid and intense, of his rugged features that seemed so oddly familiar, of the smell of leather and horses and male that clung to him.

  The air left her lungs in a rush and she could only stare at him, a sudden fierce attraction fluttering through her. He was a remarkably good-looking man, with those distinctive eyes, those rippling, powerful muscles in his chest and shoulders, that overwhelming masculinity.

  She wanted him to kiss her, she realized. With a deep, urgent ache, she wanted to lean into him, to wrap her arms around those shoulders and hang on tightly until the rest of the frightening, uncertain world faded into nothingness.

  Something kindled in those eyes, something hot and dark, and she recognized some of the same awareness there that she suddenly couldn’t seem to breathe around.

  He stepped forward and she held her breath, her lips parted and her heart pulsing with anticipation….

  At the last instant, just before he would have kissed her, the refrigerator motor rumbled to life and Mason jerked as if he had received an electric shock from it.

  In a cold rush, reality intruded and Jane let out her breath, horrified with her instant response to him.

  What on earth was wrong with her? She didn’t even know the man. Worse, she didn’t even know herself. What if she had a husband or a boyfriend tucked away somewhere or, heaven forbid, children! She had absolutely no business even thinking about kissing Mason Keller, no matter how attractive she might find the man, until her memory returned.

  She had to get out of here, to retreat to the safety and solitude of her bedroom. She started to speak then stopped, appalled when her voice came out low and throaty like some kind of West End party girl.

  She cleared her throat and tried again. “I… Good night. It’s late and I imagine you’re more than ready for bed.”

  A muscle twitched in his jaw. “Right. Bed. It’s been a long day and we both could use some sleep.”

  She couldn’t seem to wrench her gaze away from his mouth that had been just a hair’s breadth from kissing her, and her stomach whirled as if she’d just stepped off a high-speed lift.

  Oh, heavens. She needed to get out of here before she did something idiotic like grab the man and plant one on him.

  She murmured another good-night, flashed a hesitant smile, then headed for the stairs.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jane woke the next morning to brilliant sunshine streaming in through her bedroom window and an echoing silence that left her restless and edgy.

  Her inquisitive little alarm clocks of the day before seemed nowhere in evidence. Perhaps Mason had read his children the riot act and warned them not to disturb her.

  This time they must have decided to obey him, she thought. Funny how the sunshine didn’t seem as cheerful and bright without the children there smiling and giggling.

  No matter. It was better this way. If they weren’t here, she wouldn’t have to treat them with the cool disdain their father requested. Now if only she could avoid them all day. She supposed she would have to stay in her room after all, though the prospect appealed to her about as much as nibbling a mouthful of broken glass.

  With great creativity and effort, she dragged out the time it took her to shower and dress in more of the young-looking clothes belonging to Pam’s daughter. This time she chose a pumpkin orange T-shirt and denims that ended about four inches south of her navel. Though the shirt was long enough to cover her abdomen, she still felt exposed in the hiphuggers.

  She wouldn’t have dared to wear these kind of clothes if they had been in style when she’d been a teenager. Her father would have pitched a screaming fit. She smiled at the thought, then her smile froze.

  Her father! She had a father. She must or she wouldn’t be so certain of his displeased reaction if he ever saw her wearing a piece of clothing so revealing.

  Her father. Was he the man she had remembered so briefly the day before?

  What was he like? Was he worried about her? She wante
d desperately to remember. Her heart pounding, she scrunched up her eyes and focused as hard as she could, trying to conjure up a face, a smile, anything.

  Finally, her head aching and whirling a little from the effort, she opened her eyes and released a heavy sigh. Nothing. She couldn’t grab hold of one single memory of the man, couldn’t even say for sure whether she’d imagined him in her desperation for some link to her past.

  What now? She sighed, flopping back onto the bedspread. The day stretched out ahead of her, frustrating and dull. If only she could go out in search of Pam, just for companionship of some kind, but the children were likely with her. She couldn’t take that chance—she knew she owed it to Mason to try harder to honor his wishes.

  She could use some coffee, but going in search of it would also probably lead her to the children.

  Anyway, as prisons go, this one was probably more comfortable than most.

  She closed her eyes and behind her eyelids flashed an image of a hole in the ground covered with a piece of wavy green metal roofing material.

  Dark. Fear. Cold.

  Let me out. Oh, please. I want to go home.

  Daddy, help me!

  Jane blinked back to reality and was once more in Mason Keller’s sparse guest bedroom, with its wobbly bedside table and the squat, ugly bureau with the missing knob.

  Where had that come from? She shivered, chilled even though the room was a comfortable temperature and likely to get much warmer as the June day wore on.

  That couldn’t have been a memory. Who has memories like that? Perhaps it was something she’d seen at the cinema or read in a book. She sat up. Still, she couldn’t completely discount it. Not when her insides still twitched with a strange mixture of terror and guilt and when she could still smell damp, musty earth and the smell of her own fear.

  She needed to write all these impressions down. With what? She opened the small drawer of the bedside table and pawed through the meager contents until she found a stubby, gnawed pencil and a piece of paper.

  If she wrote down everything that entered her mind, perhaps she could determine some sort of pattern.

  She wrote every impression she could think of about that odd image. Metal scraping, scratchy rope, choking down thick water and a tiny portion of plain rice.

  How were they all connected? And did it have anything to do with those eerie moments in the garden the day before? She had no idea but she wrote them anyway, circling them and connecting with lines to the word suitcase and father.

  This all seemed an exercise in futility. The doctor had said she was probably in her mid-to late-twenties. More than two decades of life and all she had were a handful of memories to show for it, and odd ones at that. What if her memory never came back? What if she had to spend the rest of her life never knowing what had come before, what people she might have left behind, who might be looking for her?

  Tears burned her eyes and panic fluttered just around the edges of her mind. What if she was trapped in this nothingness forever?

  She had to get out of this room. She would go crazy if she had to be shut up here all day with only a few pitiful memories. Perhaps if she went outside, took a way around the ranch, she could still avoid the children.

  Working hard to tamp down the rising panic attack, she hurried to the door and yanked it open, only to find Pam on the other side, her arm upraised in a fist, ready to knock.

  Jane didn’t believe she could ever be so glad to see another human being.

  Pam frowned and dropped her hand. “Here, now, what’s the matter? You’re pale as a ghost. Have you remembered something?”

  Oh, she was heartily sick of that question. “Nothing significant.” Frustration sharpened her voice. “Just stupid bloody details that don’t make any sense.”

  “I’m sorry, honey. This is so hard on you. But remember, it’s only been a few days.”

  The other woman’s calm good sense helped steady her. “I know,” Jane answered. “I’m just tired of being a burden.”

  “You’re not a burden. You’re a guest. And speaking of such, I thought I heard you moving around up here and wondered if I could interest you in some breakfast.”

  Her stomach rumbled again and she had an almost violent urge for coffee. “Breakfast would be wonderful. Thank you.”

  “Why don’t you come into the kitchen and keep me company while I scramble some eggs for you?”

  Oh, how she would love to sit in that warm, cheerful kitchen. But what if the children were there? The prospect of shunning them filled her with dismay but she couldn’t risk angering Mason again. “You know, on second thought, I’m not really hungry after all. I believe I’ll just stay here.”

  Pam cocked her head, green eyes suddenly cool. “I can bring you a tray if you don’t feel like a visit.”

  Oh, dear. Now she’d offended the woman who felt very much like her only friend in the world. “I love talking with you! You’ve been wonderfully kind. It’s just that Mason…”

  She faltered, not sure how to finish her sentence without appearing to criticize the man.

  “What?”

  “He was angry about yesterday,” she finally said. “He’s asked me again to do my best to discourage the children from forming an attachment to me. I thought it would be better if I avoided them altogether.”

  Pam shook her head, warm and friendly once more. “You don’t have to worry about that this morning, since he took the little rugrats with him for the day. It’s just us girls.”

  Jane sighed with relief, feeling a bit like a hostage finding unexpected freedom.

  What an odd way to phrase it, even in her own mind, she thought. Taken in concert with her odd flash of memory about that hole in the ground and the fear still gnawing in her stomach, she had to wonder what it might mean.

  All this worry over something she couldn’t explain would make her ill. She vowed to pack it all away for now and focus on the present instead of a past she couldn’t pin down.

  “I’ll come with you on one condition,” she said.

  Pam raised an eyebrow. “And what’s that?”

  “That you find something for me to do again today. I have a feeling I’m one who needs to stay busy.”

  The other woman laughed. “Darlin’, you’ve had the great good fortune to lose your memory in exactly the right place, then. There’s always plenty to do at the Bittercreek. This place has been empty for two years. My Burnell has done a good job with the cattle side but the house is falling down around our ears. We picked all the strawberries yesterday but I’m sure I can find something else to keep you busy.”

  * * *

  He had spent most of his adult life about as far away from the Bittercreek as he could get, but Mason was surprised how quickly he had eased back into the familiar rhythm of a working ranch.

  Several things about returning to his roots took him unawares. He hadn’t expected to feel this connection to the ranch that had been in his family for four generations, this deep flare of pride when he looked at what his father and his father’s father had built, the even deeper sense of responsibility when he realized the legacy left for him to uphold.

  Who would have thought Mason Keller would ever find himself running the Bittercreek? He wouldn’t have, certainly.

  He had left the ranch an angry kid, vowing never to return after that last bitter fight with his father. Both of them had said things they shouldn’t have, had channeled years of disappointment into words that stung like a whole nest of stirred-up yellow jackets.

  He had hated ranch life—the constant work for such paltry rewards, living on a financial knife’s edge, doing the same thing day after endless day until you couldn’t tell yesterday from six months ago except by whether you were sweltering or freezing your ass off.

  Boyd Keller had thrived on running the ranch. He had been the ranch. Maybe that’s why Mason had always viewed it with such conflicted emotions—because his relationship with his father had been complicated and tense. Maybe t
hat was also the reason why over the years his animosity toward the Bittercreek had begun to fade as he and his father had worked their way slowly toward peace.

  After his father died and left the ranch to him, somehow Mason’s views toward it had undergone a subtle but powerful shift. Hip-deep in intrigue and secrecy, deceptions and subterfuge, he had needed something good and decent to hang his dreams on. Without even realizing it, he had started to envision what he could do here.

  The Bittercreek had always been a cattle operation, but for the last few years, Mason had started to dream of changing that.

  Now, as he drove back to the ranch that had begun to feel like home again, he glanced at the white horse trailer that filled the rearview mirror. He had just written a pretty sizable check on those future dreams. He just had to hope his gamble would pay off.

  While Mason didn’t foresee a time cattle wouldn’t be part of the ranch, what he really wanted was to breed and train horses. When he’d been a kid, he had loved working with the ranch horses. He’d even ridden one of the cutters he’d trained himself in the national high school rodeo finals.

  Though just about every other good and decent thing had been pounded out of him over the last decade, that spark still flickered and danced inside him.

  He didn’t know if he could do it, but he sure as hell was going to try. Raising horses seemed so clean and straightforward. Honorable. If he succeeded, he would have something decent and good he could leave to Charlie and Miriam.

  He glanced across the truck cab at the two of them. Charlie was asleep, his head cushioned on Mason’s folded denim jacket. Miriam sat beside him, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes gazing straight ahead.

  How was he supposed to reach past that unnatural poise of hers to the grieving child within? he wondered.

  “So do you think we made a good buy today?”

  She seemed surprised he would ask her opinion and just gazed at him in confusion until he gestured over his shoulder toward the horse trailer.

  “Unforgettable back there. What do you think of him?”