The Rancher's Return

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Adam stopped pushing. Carter shifted him onto his hip, caught his balance and pulled the horse’s head around.

  “Whoa, boy. Easy now,” he murmured, walking Banjo around in a circle. His horse took a quick sidestep as he shook his head and then blew. But his ears pricked up, and Carter knew he had the horse’s attention. “It’s okay,” he murmured, reassuring the horse.

  “Will my bag of cookies scare him?” Adam said in a quiet voice, now resting one hand on Carter’s shoulder.

  “I don’t think so,” Carter said, his own heart faltering at Adam’s touch. It had been two years since he held a little child. Two years since a child’s arm laid on his shoulder.

  Adam smelled of fresh baking and warm sun and little boy. Longing and pain rose up in Carter, and he didn’t know which emotion was the strongest.

  “Is everything okay?” Emma asked quietly.

  “We’re fine,” Carter said, surprised at the tightness of his throat. When Adam saw his mother, though, he reached out for her.

  Carter felt a sense of loss as Adam’s weight came off his hip and the little boy’s hand slipped off his shoulder. For just a moment, the emptiness had eased. For a nanosecond, his arms hadn’t felt so empty.

  But right behind that came the pain.

  “Sorry about that,” Emma said, setting Adam on the ground and then tousling his hair. “I’m sure Adam didn’t mean to startle Banjo.”

  “No. He didn’t do anything.” Carter looked down at Adam, his heart beginning a heavy pounding. “I startled him, that’s all. I hope Adam’s okay.”

  Adam squinted up at him, his face scrunched up as if trying to figure Carter out. “I’m okay,” he said quietly. “Thanks for helping me and for not getting mad at me.”

  Carter couldn’t speak. How could he explain to this little boy the complications his presence created and the memories that resurfaced around him? It wasn’t Adam’s fault he was the same age Harry was when he died. But every time Carter saw him, the reminder of his loss plunged into his heart like a knife.

  He caught Emma’s enigmatic expression. As if trying to puzzle him out.

  Don’t bother, he wanted to tell her. It’s not worth it.

  But as their gazes caught and meshed, she gave him a careful smile, as if forgiving him his confusion.

  He wasn’t going to return it. He was also going to look away. But he couldn’t.

  Something about her called to him, and as he looked into her soft brown eyes, emotions shifted deep within him.

  “Are we going now?”

  Adam’s voice jerked Carter back to reality and he looked away.

  “That is the plan,” Emma replied. “But I want to go say goodbye to Wade and Miranda first. They’ll probably be gone by the time we return.” She looked at Carter. “Did you want to come too?”

  “I’ve already said goodbye,” Carter said, dismissing her with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ll wait here with Mr. Carter.” Adam flashed him a grin as if all was well between them.

  “Make sure you don’t eat all the cookies,” Emma called back as she walked away.

  “The cows are looking good,” Emma said, leaning forward, her hands stacked on the saddle horn. Her eyes swept the green hills edged with fir trees, and she grinned as a half dozen calves chased each other along a fence line. Their tails were straight up and their legs stretched out. Running for no reason other than the fact that they could. Goofy creatures.

  “Looks like we’ve got more animals on the pasture than other years,” Carter said, shifting in the saddle. “I’ve never seen the grass so long up here before. You’ve done good work here.”

  His quiet approval warmed her heart for some silly reason. It’s because he’s your boss, she reminded herself.

  “We’ve been doing a bit more intensive grazing this year,” Emma replied, keeping her attention on the calves and not the quiet man beside her. On the ride up here he’d been quiet, watching her as if trying to figure her out.

  His attention made her uncomfortable but, curiously, also created a feeling of anticipation.

  “We’ve made the pastures smaller and moved the cows more often,” she said. “Rotational grazing is more labor intensive, but I believe it lengthens the life of the pasture, which makes it possible to graze more cows on less land.”

  “That’s a lot of fence to run.”

  “We use electric fencing. Run it off a solar-powered battery. That’s why we come up here more often—to make sure the fence is working.”

  Adam’s horse, Dusty, stamped, telegraphing his impatience with the lack of movement.

  “Can I go up to the river?” Adam asked, cookie crumbs stuck in one corner of his mouth. “I think Dusty needs to walk a bit more, and I want to go look at that cabin.” He turned to Carter. “Me and my mom found it,” he explained. “It has some neat stuff in it that I want to put in the tree fort. Did you see the tree fort at the ranch, Mr. Carter?”

  Carter nodded.

  “I found it in the trees by the barn,” Adam said, warming to his topic. “But it’s not finished yet. My mom said she didn’t want to do too much work on it, ’cause we might be getting the acreage. Then we can build our own fort there too. And it will be even cooler than the one we found on the ranch. And there is some really cool stuff in the cabin that I want to put in my own fort. Lanterns and stuff. Did you and your boy make that tree fort?”

  Carter didn’t reply, but Emma guessed, from the pensive look on Carter’s face, that Adam’s mention of his son hurt.

  “I think Mr. Carter gets the picture,” Emma said, rescuing Carter from her son’s monologue. “But I don’t want you going to the cabin,” she warned him. “It’s too far away. Just stay close, and we’ll be with you in a minute.” Emma wanted to check the solar panel on the fence.

  “Okay, but we have to get the stuff from the cabin before someone else takes it.” With that warning, Adam clucked to Dusty and, with a twist of his wrist, got him turned around.

  “He seems pretty confident,” Carter said, watching Adam leave.

  “He’s been riding horses since he was a baby,” she admitted, swinging her leg over Diamond’s back as she dismounted. “I used to take him up on the saddle using those buddy stirrups. He loved it. Always asked to come along when me and my dad went to check the cows. We went out a lot when I was back on the ranch.” She took a breath, forcing herself to stop. Nerves, she figured. Carter’s presence was a bit unsettling and she blamed her blabbering on that.

  Just check the fence, she reminded herself, dropping Diamond’s lead rope on the ground.

  She walked over to the panel and checked the connections. All was well. Now all she needed was the tester, a small box with a digital readout that would tell her how much power was on the fence.

  Carter had dismounted and was stretching his back. “It’s been too long,” he muttered as he took a few stiff steps.

  “I’m sorry. I should have taken a break, but I didn’t want to insult you by thinking you needed it,” Emma said, daring a smile.

  “I could have said something.”

  Indeed, all the way up here it had been Adam who filled the quiet with chitchat about the ranch, the horses, how the garden Miranda had put in was doing, the fair that was coming to town and, finally, the old cabin in the hills above the pasture that he wanted to get stuff from.

  It wasn’t lost on Emma that everything Adam said centered on the ranch. It was all he’d known since they moved here.

  But Carter had remained quiet. Once in a while Emma had looked back to see if he was okay. Each time she caught him looking around, and occasionally she saw a smile. Did he miss the ranch when he was gone?

  “How did you manage to teach your horse how to ground tie?” Carter asked.

  Emma looked down at the lead rope she had left coiled on the ground. “Took time and patience, but Diamond figured it out eventually.”

  “Very impressive.”

  Emma bent her head over her saddl
ebag, wishing his compliment didn’t warm her. She was supposed to be immune to him. Aloof.

  But there had been a moment, when he caught Adam off the fence, that she intercepted a look of raw yearning on his face. And it hit her right in the heart, made it impossible to be indifferent to him.

  She found the tester and yanked it out, but her jerky movements made the ground wire come loose. As she pulled it out, the tester’s wire got twisted around the extra rope she always carried.

  Everything came out in a tangle, and with a sigh she laid it on the grass by the wire fence and tugged off her gloves.

  “Let me help you,” Carter said, kneeling down beside her.

  “It’s okay. I can manage.” But his nearness made her hands clumsy and unresponsive, leading to a worse mess.

  “So have you made any plans for after the sale of the ranch?” she asked, latching onto the one subject guaranteed to maintain a distance between them.

  “No solid plans. I’ll see what happens when the time comes, same as I have for a while now.” He pulled the box of the tester free from the tangle and unplugged the wire coming from it.

  In that moment their hands brushed, and Emma jerked hers back.

  This netted her a puzzled look from Carter. This was silly. Why was she so tense around him?

  She leaned back on her heels, her hands still holding the rope she had just freed. “So you’ve just been moving from place to place?”

  “Pretty much. I just try to find a job where they provide a place to live—either a camp job or a ranch job.” Carter shot her a quick glance as he shoved the grounding portion of the tester into the grass.

  Emma’s hands slowed as she looked past Carter to the land flowing away from them, the mountains with their jagged lines of purple against the sky.

  “I can’t imagine being away from here.”

  Carter’s eyes followed the direction of her gaze, and she saw his features relax. In that moment, she caught a sense of longing in his eyes.

  “I missed it, in some ways.” A melancholy smile drifted across his lips. “I grew up here, after all. As did my mother, my grandfather and his father.”

  “Nana Beck told me a bit of the history of the place,” Emma said. “But when she talked about the necklace, that was the first I’d heard about August and Kamiskahk.”

  Carter released a light laugh. “My cousins Hailey, Shannon and Naomi liked that story more than me and Garret did when we were kids.”

  “Why?”

  “August gave up searching for gold for the sake of a mere girl. Garret and I both said we wouldn’t have done that. In fact, Garret and I even went up into the mountains once, looking for the same gold, armed with shovels and bags to carry all the gold we were going to find.” Carter toyed with the contacts for the fence tester, squinting up at the mountain above them. “Of course, at age ten, girls weren’t a real priority.”

  Emma laughed, trying to imagine two young boys hiking up the mountain, shovels over their shoulders.

  “I don’t imagine you found any,” she said.

  “Nope. Naomi was very disappointed with us when we came back empty-handed. She had imagined all the pretty things she was going to make with the gold we found. Hailey just figured we could sell it and get rich.” He laughed again, and in that moment, Emma caught a glimpse of what Carter must have been like before his loss. She saw a man connected to a place and a family that he cared for.

  And she also felt a twinge of jealousy at the connections he had. Cousins. Grandparents. A place that had history and continuity.

  “Shannon didn’t have any plans for the gold?”

  “Shannon’s always been the most practical of us all. She knew me and Garret would come back empty-handed. So no, she didn’t have any plans.” He laughed, then placed the contacts on the electric fence to test the power. “And speaking of plans, what do you plan to do, once the ranch is sold?” he asked.

  Emma reluctantly returned to the present, wondering why he cared about her plans. “I guess I’ll have to decide once that happens.” She still planned on going into town on Thursday to look for a job and, hopefully, a place where she could board her horses.

  Carter looked up at her, his eyes holding hers. “Again, I’m sorry about how this is all coming down for you.”

  She didn’t want his sympathy, but at the same time, it still created a faint connection. She felt sorry for him, after all, and for even bigger things than the loss of a job.

  “Well, that’s life.” She shrugged and glanced down at the meter in his hand. “How’s the reading on the fence?”

  Carter glanced down at the readout. “Looks good,” he said. Then he rolled the wire back around the tester. “I could talk to the buyer. See if maybe you could work for him. I’m not sure Wade wants to stay on, but it might be an option for you.”

  “I want more than just a job out of the ranch. I’m looking for a place to settle down. A home. So Adam and I will be moving on. Again.” Why did she tack that “again” on? It sounded whiny, and if there’s one thing Emma knew, “whiny” turned men away faster than tears. She learned that quick enough from Adam’s father and from Karl.

  She pushed the bitter memories aside. That was in the past. She had to focus on the future.

  “But where would you go?” Carter asked.

  “I guess that’s nothing you need to concern yourself with,” she said, catching Diamond’s rope and vaulting back into the saddle.

  As soon as she got Diamond turned around, she regretted her snappy reply. His question was a way of making conversation, but it dragged out concerns and worries Emma struggled to keep suppressed.

  Yet, as she headed down the trail to where Adam had gone, she wished she’d been more diplomatic.

  She also wished she knew what it was about Carter that made her feel extra edgy around him.

  Chapter Five

  Carter pulled up on Banjo’s bridle and blew out a sigh of relief. Thankfully, he had made it to the yard before Emma and Adam. Adam wanted to stop a ways back to check out some mushrooms growing along the river so Carter, seeing a way to salvage his pride, said he would meet them at the corral.

  Without them as witnesses, he allowed himself to groan as he dismounted, muscles he hadn’t used in years protesting every movement.

  Banjo turned his head as if to ask Carter what the problem was.

  “It’s been too long,” he muttered to Banjo, absently rubbing the horse’s neck. “That kid is in better shape than I am.”

  He put his hands in the small of his back and stretched, then rotated his shoulders. He was tender in places he knew he would feel for the next few days. It would take a bit more riding before he could be as fluid in the saddle as Emma.

  He shot a worried glance over his shoulder, but thankfully she wasn’t coming up the riverbank yet.

  He took a few halting steps, pain shooting up his legs, and then sighed again as he unwound Banjo’s halter rope from the saddle horn. He led the horse to the corral by the tack shed, every step causing pain in one muscle or the other. He would be a hurtin’ unit tomorrow.

  He undid the cinch and unsaddled Banjo. By the time he got the bridle off, his horse whinnied and turned his head, signaling Emma and Adam’s approach.

  “Look at the cool mushroom I found, Mr. Carter. There was a whole bunch.”

  Carter glanced over at Adam who held up a creamy mushroom with an undulating cap. “Chanterelles are good eating,” he said quietly. “And they are hard to find around here.”

  “Mom said she was going to cook them. With our supper.”

  Supper. The thought made his stomach growl. All he’d had to eat since breakfast was a couple of cookies and a granola bar that Emma had shared with him, insisting that she didn’t mind.

  Nana Beck had gone with Shannon to town for a doctor’s appointment and to look at potential places to live, so he was on his own for dinner. Looked as if cold cereal was on the menu.

  Emma dismounted in one graceful moti
on and then helped Adam out of the saddle. With quick, efficient movements that made Carter both envious and a bit humiliated, she tugged the cinches loose on both horses and pulled the saddles off one at a time.

  He felt like an unchivalrous heel, but manhandling his own saddle onto the saddle tree in the tack shed was all he could manage.

  “A bit stiff?” she asked, a smile hovering at one corner of her mouth as she dropped the saddles on their respective trees.

  He was about to protest but realized it was futile.

  “Oh, yeah.” He dropped the saddle blanket on an empty rack and groaned again.

  “Make sure you do some stretches before you go to bed tonight. A brisk walk helps too.” Emma looped the cinch ropes over the horns of the saddles. “I’m sorry the ride was so long. I forgot that you hadn’t ridden in a while.”

  Carter rubbed the tops of his legs and eased out a sigh. “Over a year ago.”

  “You didn’t have to come,” she said quietly, snagging the curry comb and brushes off a shelf.

  “Until the ranch changes ownership, it’s still my responsibility. But now all I want to do is go lie down in my cabin and try to work up the energy to think about dinner.”

  Emma picked a clump of horsehair out of the brush, avoiding his gaze. “About that… Miranda made a casserole for us. I’ll go heat it up, and if you want we can eat it together in the house. I was thinking of frying up the mushrooms to go with it,” she added, “if that extra incentive will change your mind.”

  He looked over at her and caught a dimple forming in a cheek that held a smudge of dirt. She pushed her hair back from her face, and as she held his gaze her soft brown eyes held a gentle light of understanding.

  He felt a light thrum of awareness, and the thought of eating with her created a sense of anticipation. But it also meant spending time with Adam.

  “Just come,” she said, her voice quiet, as if she understood his reluctance. “It’s only food.”

  She gave him a gentle smile, and as their eyes met he dismissed his other concerns. “Sounds like a plan. Thanks.” Then he held out his hand for the brushes. “Give those to me. I’ll finish up with the horses.”