Winter at Mustang Ridge

by Jesse Hayworth

  As Kitty’s brow furrowed a little on that one, Jenny added, “Bonus points for yellow and white.”

  Her mother opened her mouth to protest, but Kitty brightened. “If you’re after yellow and white, I’ve got just the thing. Follow me!” She led them through a maze of little scenes, a whole lot of them featuring bedrooms that were made from bark-on pine trees and birch, and looked like something out of a hunter’s catalogue. Hanging a left at a rabbit-themed nursery, she breezed past a whole bunch of antlers and stopped in front of a bedroom set that looked nothing like the others. “What about something like this?”

  The cubicle-size display held a glossy white queen-size bed done up in a diamond-pattern quilt in three different shades of lemony yellow against a creamy white background. A gorgeous afghan lay folded at the foot of the bed, knitted in stripes of the same yellow, and the throw pillows that drifted up against the headboard wore yellow and white flowers with pops of a lovely sky blue.

  “I don’t think—” Rose began.

  “It’s perfect,” Jenny interrupted. She reached out to her mother, intending to grip her arm but catching her sleeve instead, like she was tugging and going “Mama, Mama, I want this one!” Which in a way she was. “I’ll make you a deal—if you go with me on the bedding and the color scheme, I’ll let you pick the rug and the curtains. No fuss, no arguments. Free rein.”

  Her mother’s eyes narrowed. “Free rein?”

  What was the worst that could happen? “Cross my heart. Is it a deal?”

  “I want to pick the mirror, too.”

  “You . . . Okay, but no antlers. No offense, Kitty, but they’re not my style.”

  “Mine, either,” the shop owner said cheerfully, “but sometimes a girl has to go where the money’s at.”

  “Words to live by,” Jenny agreed. Because, hey, she had wanted to do documentaries, not a dating show. “What do you say, Mom? Deal?”

  “Deal.” They shook on it.

  “Sheesh. You drive a hard bargain.”

  “Big Skye used to say the same thing,” Kitty remarked, “back when you were just a baby.”

  Jenny looked over at her. “Oh?”

  “My dad was a wrangler at Mustang Ridge, and I part-timed at the ranch during the summers when I was a kid, doing chores, helping put up hay and such.”

  “You . . .” Okay, it made sense, small town and all that. But Jenny was having a hard time picturing the woman opposite her slinging square bales. “What was it like? As a girl, I mean, working with the cowboys back in the day?”

  “Oh, it was great fun! Lots of work, mind you, but loads of fun. My daddy kept an eye on me, of course, so there wasn’t much fuss about me being a girl. And, besides, everyone knew Mustang Ridge wasn’t the place for anyone who thought cowboying was a man’s job. She was a tough one, your mom, but fair. And like I said, there wasn’t anyone on that ranch—maybe even the town—who could beat her in a negotiation. Supplies coming in, cows going out, payroll, you name it, if it had to do with the business end of things, you went to Rose.”

  Jenny glanced over at her mother, who at that moment was fluttering over a blue ceramic vase filled with dried twigs, cooing things like “darling” and “evocative.” How times have changed.

  “And the roundups!” Kitty threw up her hands. “I know I don’t need to tell you how exciting it is the first time you ride out with the herd. I pretended I was Mercy Skye, running the ranch after her Jedediah was gunned down by those rustlers, or Pansy Skye and the other women riding out when the men got sick at the poisoned watering hole.”

  “Wow. You really know your Mustang Ridge history.”

  Kitty pressed her lips together, then confided, “Well, your daddy was a handsome man who didn’t mind telling campfire stories. You can say I paid better attention than I would have otherwise.”

  Jenny liked where this was going. Okay, not so much that her science teacher used to have a crush on her dad—squick—but the roundup stuff rocked. “Would you be willing to tell some of those stories on camera?”

  Kitty’s brows drew together. “Excuse me?”

  She explained the video project, adding, “We could do a short piece on the store, too. You could put it on your Web site, share it around, get some more buzz going.”

  “You’d do that for me?” Kitty’s voice nearly squeaked in her excitement.

  “Sure. Why not?” It would only take a few hours, and if she could survive postproduction on Rose’s Boudoir, she could handle calico ruffles and dried-apple zombies. “We could do it one day next week.”

  “Oh, my, yes! Wow, thank you! That sounds like so much fun.” They chatted for a few more minutes, going through the do’s and don’ts of an on-camera interview. While they talked, Jenny’s mom puttered around the store, adding things to a rapidly growing pile on the counter. By the time the three of them convened at the register, with Jenny carrying the quilt and afghan, and Kitty following with an armload of pillows, the pile had become a mountain, with an avalanche threatening.

  Jenny eyed the jumble, but didn’t bother trying to dissect it.

  “Should I put this on your tab?” Kitty asked.

  “No,” Jenny said, at the same time that her mother said, “Yes.”

  Kitty blinked. “Which is it?”

  “I’m paying,” Jenny said firmly, pulling out her credit card. Her mom grumbled but gave in, and wandered deeper into the store as Kitty rang her up. And kept ringing. Jenny frowned at the mounting total. “Did I okay all that?” She only remembered about half of it.

  “Trust me.” Her mother appeared behind her with an armload of apple grannies, making her twitch. “We’ll take these, too.”

  Kitty beamed. “Aren’t they just darling? They’re each one-of-a-kind. A woman over in Calverton makes them from windfall apples she picks out of her nephew’s pasture. She swears the apples that land in the cow patties make the best grannies.”

  Jenny stifled a laugh. Only in Three Ridges would the presence of manure be considered a selling point when it came to home decor. I think we’ll leave that out of the advertising. Then again, far weirder things had gone viral.

  Once they were back outside, loading their smaller purchases into the car, Jenny said, “Those dolls are so not going in my room.”

  “I was thinking they would make a real statement in the dining area.”

  “What, abandon hope, all ye who enter here?” Gran would have a fit.

  “Hush,” Rose said primly, but with a thread of amusement. Slamming the rear door, she pointed across the street to the hardware store. “Next stop, paint.”

  “I want white.”

  “Which shade of white?”

  Jenny would’ve argued that white was white, but her inner photographer rebelled on that one. “How about pizza? We could hit Harry’s for a Hawaiian.” She and her mom were the only two people in the family who dug ham and pineapple on their pies.

  “Paint before pizza, young lady.”

  Jenny hung her head. “Yes, Mom.” But she bumped Rose with her hip as they started across the street, and ducked a return hip check, dancing aside as laughter bubbled up.

  Turned out this mom-daughter stuff wasn’t so bad, after all.

  • • •

  Jenny stayed up late and got up early to put the last few polishing touches on the clips of her gramps talking about Mustang Ridge. As she worked, new scene snippets kept sneaking into her brain, forcing her to jot them down so she could clear some space for the work at hand. Just past ten thirty, when she really needed to be heading out to meet Shelby at her in-home office, Jenny pushed away from the desk and blinked at the screen, where Big Skye’s weathered face was frozen in a John Wayne grin.

  “Gotcha.” This time she said it out loud, putting the word to the certainty that had lodged itself in her belly. “Done and done.” And, damn, she was glad this hadn’t turned into an epitaph.

  Rex’s tail thumped twice, giving her words a syncopated backbeat. The big dog was sacked
out on his bed near the space heater, replete from all the bacon and toast that had snuck its way under the table during breakfast.

  “Thanks, buddy.” She didn’t remember the last time she had actually built a film from the ground up, even a five-minute short like this one. Sure, she knocked off Look what I’ve been up to! clips every month or so and sent them to the family email loop, but that wasn’t the same as a fully produced piece.

  It felt good. Really, really good.

  As she was getting ready to leave, with her computer packed and ready to roll, the office phone rang.

  “Leave a message,” she sang out, but then checked the caller ID, in case it was Shelby needing to rearrange things. The sight of Nick’s cell number in the display put a light, happy pressure in her lungs. She picked up the handset. “Hey, there! This is a nice surprise. I figured you’d be jammed up, trying to get all of today’s and tomorrow’s patients seen.” With the storm predicted to hit overnight, he had already cancelled his Saturday appointments.

  “I am.” His voice, warm and mellow, came through the phone and seemed to surround her like a down parka that carried his warmth and scent. “I snuck out between an abscess and a tartar scrape so I could wish you luck on your presentation.”

  Sweet warmth stole through her. “Thanks.”

  “How do the clips look?”

  “At the risk of total immodesty, they rock.”

  “When can I see them?”

  “How does tonight sound?”

  “Sounds good to me. Let’s keep an eye on the storm, though. The weather hens are starting to do their the-sky-is-falling routine on this one, making blizzard noises and saying it might start more like late this afternoon. I guess one front stalled right on top of us, but the other one is moving faster than expected.”

  “Nope,” Jenny said, “not going to happen.”

  “What’s not going to happen?”

  “I’m not going to let snow mess with date night.”

  His chuckle carried down the line. “Alas, I don’t think the Wyoming weather cares about our plans.”

  “You’ll see,” she predicted.

  “How about I call you after I’m done with my patients, and we can go from there?”

  “Sounds good. Right now, I should hit the road.”

  “Me, too. My halitosis hound awaits.” He paused. “Drive safe, okay?”

  “Will do.” She wanted to linger over the good-byes, but wasn’t sure how long it would take her to get out to Foster’s family ranch. “Thanks for the call.”

  “Knock ’em dead.”

  She hung up, grinning, and then slung her computer bag over her shoulder and patted her thigh in invitation. “Come on, Sexy Rexy. Last one out to the Double-Bar H is a rotten egg.”

  The goldie lurched to his feet with a “whuff” and a wiggle, all but dancing with glee. We’re going somewhere! Yippee!

  17

  “You should see the databases they’re running here!” Krista gushed along the storm-static’d cell connection. “They’re seriously drool-worthy.”

  With twenty minutes until her meeting and only a couple of miles left to drive, Jenny had pulled the Jeep over to take her sister’s call, killing time while Rex hung his head out the window, seeming delighted to scan the winter landscape from inside the warm vehicle. “Is that all that’s drool-worthy?” she asked. “Lame.”

  “I’m here to learn how to ramp things up a notch at the ranch, not add a notch to my bedpost.”

  “Which would bring you up to a grand total of, what, two notches?” Krista’s one serious relationship had been in college, and there hadn’t really been anyone since then. Which was another way the two of them differed—Krista did Deep and Meaningful in the guy department, while Jenny, well, didn’t.

  “Speaking of notches,” Krista said, paralleling her thoughts, “how are things going with Nick? Have you seen him since the two of you played Search and Rescue?”

  “Are you asking me to kiss and tell?”

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  “Whether the kisses are worth telling about.”

  Most definitely. But where she and Krista usually told each other anything and everything, now Jenny hesitated. “How about this—you find someone to kiss out there in Cali, and report back. Then I’ll tell you all about things with Doc Hottie.”

  Krista hooted with laughter. “Doc Hottie? Oh, I am so calling him that the next time he’s out to the ranch.”

  “Don’t you dare.”

  “Why not? You’ll be long gone.”

  Ouch. Unable to argue the point, Jenny said, “Uh-oh, I’m down to eight minutes. I don’t want to be late meeting Shelby.”

  “Don’t stress over it. She’s figured out that time is relative out in the backcountry.”

  “Still. I’m going to get going.”

  “Are you dodging the question?”

  “Don’t make me do the sssssss . . . You’re breaking up . . . sssssss thing. Besides, this meeting is for your advertising project. I’d think you’d want me to be on time.”

  “So go already. But don’t think I missed your not so subtle subject change. I want details, sister. Preferably juicy ones I can use for blackmail when I get home.”

  “Ssssss . . . What was that? I think the clouds are messing with the signal.”

  “Fine, be that way. I’ll talk to you later.” Laughing, Krista killed the connection.

  Refusing to replay too much of that particular conversation—or her own responses—Jenny said, “Hey, Rex, you want to get your head back in here?” When the dog complied, she buzzed up the window and got them back on the road.

  The Double-Bar H took up a shallow bowl of a valley that was undoubtedly “ooh, stop and look” gorgeous when everything was green and lush. Foster had bought the family acreage back from an absentee owner just this past summer, and he and Shelby were renovating the place from the ground up while living there. According to Shelby, they had floors, a table and a couple of chairs, plus heat and WiFi—and what more did they need?

  Jenny liked her already, and not just because Foster was head over heels.

  Shouldering her computer bag, she headed along the shoveled path to the main house, with Rex right behind her.

  The door opened as she came up the steps, and a vivid brunette stepped out, seeming not to notice the cold, even though she was only wearing jeans, thick socks, and a fuzzy sweater. Spreading her arms wide, she said, “Jenny! I’ve been dying to meet you! And Sexy Rexy!”

  “Shelby, hi!” Coming up the last steps, Jenny did the hug-and-air-kiss thing. “I feel like I already know you.”

  “I know what you mean, but I didn’t want to say it because I thought it would come out like ‘Krista and I are friends, therefore you and I are friends.’ I didn’t know if you were touchy about the twin thing.”

  Feeling that whole-body relaxation that came from meeting a kindred spirit, Jenny shook her head. “Not so much anymore, and I wouldn’t have taken it like that anyway, coming from you. It’s because we’re working on a project together. If you’re lucky enough to get along, working together breaks down the barriers fast. If you’re not lucky . . . well, then the project is pretty much guaranteed to be a headache, or worse.”

  “Been there, done that. But why are we standing out here like half-frozen fools? Come inside. It’s a disaster area, but it’s home.”

  Shelby waved them through, giving Rex—in full wriggle mode—a thorough head rub on the way by.

  While the house wasn’t quite a disaster area by Jenny’s definition, it definitely smacked of a renovation, complete with the smell of sawdust and latex paint. The open-concept living, dining, and kitchen areas were a patchwork of old surfaces and new drywall, suggesting they had recently been the smaller, interconnected rooms of the usual family ranch home, circa eighteen-something. The furniture was equally mismatched, with a folding table and aluminum chairs taking the place of what would be a breakfast bar when the gran
ite went in, opposite a pretty oak buffet that would probably make Jenny’s mom drool.

  It was a mishmash, admittedly, but Jenny could see what they were going for, and that it would be amazing when it was done. Better yet, a blanket of warmth wrapped around them as they entered, making her sigh with pleasure. “Oh. That’s nice. I’ll take a project-in-progress as long as I’m not freezing my butt off.”

  “Me, too, which is why we splurged. Put radiant heating in the floors as soon as humanly possible, and hooked them to the big solar panels on the roof.” Shelby glanced out a window. “Not that there’s much in the way of sun today. Here. I’ll take your coat.”

  “Boots off?”

  “Your call. With a kid, a dog, and a cowboy who’s known to forget his spurs, I’ve given up on keeping the floors pristine.” Her tone was fond, her face soft.

  “Lizzie’s at school?”

  “For a few more hours yet. She didn’t want to miss another day, which is a very nice change from how she was back in Boston.”

  “I’d like to meet her.” Shelby’s nine-year-old daughter was the reason Shelby had come to Wyoming in the first place. Foster, though, was why they had stayed.

  “Check your barn on the weekends. She’s usually out there with Foster—or, rather, with the horses.” Shelby’s lips curved. “Krista’s yearling, Lucky, is a particular favorite of hers. She was there when he was born. Anyway, let’s go into my office.” She gestured to the dining area, where a gorgeous mahogany table with ball-in-claw feet was covered in a drop cloth and a layer of books, papers, and a sleek laptop hooked to a flat-screen monitor. “Rex can have the dog bed. Vader won’t mind sharing.”

  The goldie did his two and a half circles, flopped down, and started gnawing on a well-used bone.

  Jenny looked over Shelby’s setup with interest. “I would’ve thought a workspace would’ve happened before even the floors. Home business and all that.”

  “That was the original plan, but I decided I wanted warm feet more than a real desk. It’s funny how quickly I went from Type A ad exec to ‘work at home, uh-oh, the UPS guy is here, better put on a bra.’”