Montana Homecoming

by Jeannie Watt

  “You know,” Cassie said conversationally, “you and Brady should probably pick a date.”

  Katie shot her a sidelong look. “I’m just waiting for him to get home for good in a few weeks. He’ll be done with his final welding course in time for haying and then I’ll never see him because he’ll be on a swather in the field.”

  Cassie laughed, partly because what Katie said was so true. Haying waited for no man.

  “And he already has a job offer.”

  Cassie offered her palm for a high-five. “Congrats.”

  “Yep,” Katie said. “Between Nick and Brady and I, someone will be free to handle the ranch work and it’s so nice to have an outside income that isn’t reliant on cow or hay prices.”

  “I’m growing herbs,” Kendra piped up. “Aunt Katie will sell them for me.”

  “Great,” Cassie said. “Then you can save the money for college.”

  “Half to savings, half for fun,” Kendra informed her. “Daddy said.”

  “Well, we won’t cross Dad,” Cassie replied with a smiling glance at her sister. Katie smiled back, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes and once again Cassie had the feeling that her sister was on the verge of saying something, but wasn’t sure how to go about it, and she’d gotten the same feeling from her brother, Nick, while they’d been playing Sorry! with the girls the night before.

  Okay, she hadn’t been home in a while, and that wasn’t good. She’d managed to get home for two days the previous Christmas, before having to fly back to Wisconsin to tackle a serious personnel issue. At least she’d connected with her father, who’d flown in from Australia with her stepmother, for twelve whole hours. It would have been very disappointing to have not seen him, even if he’d joked that his flight was longer than their visit.

  But life wasn’t always easy. She had a demanding job as assistant district superintendent. When fires needed putting out, she needed to be there. Her job was not one that fell within the boundaries of nine to five on weekdays only. If a school was vandalized over the weekend, she was the one called. If something happened to a student which would impact the school they attended, Cassie was called. Parental problems—Cassie. If a teacher was fired over the Christmas holidays, she was the one who ended up teaching English for two weeks while the district searched for a replacement.

  The only reason she was able to take this sabbatical was because the district had lost student population. The administrative office had been top-heavy with a superintendent and two assistant superintendents. One position had to be cut at the beginning of the current budget cycle which had commenced in July, so to help the other assistant superintendent get the necessary years for a full retirement, Cassie had agreed to step back, take an unpaid sabbatical and work on her doctorate. Next summer, Rhonda Olson would retire and Cassie would be stepping back into the fray as the one and only assistant superintendent, with her eye on the prize of becoming the Grand Pooh-Bah. The superintendent. Yes, she was young, but she was driven, and she had already shown that she had the skill set to do the job and do it right. She’d even demonstrated that she could successfully substitute teach in a pinch.

  “Wear this coat, Aunt Cassie.” Bailey appeared from inside the hall closet with the fluffy fake-fur jacket she must have tugged from the hanger.

  “I haven’t worn that jacket since high school, sweetie. I don’t know if I can fit into it.”

  Sure enough, it was snug when she got it up over her shoulders, but Bailey beamed and Kendra told her it looked nice, so she wore it as she headed out the door holding her nieces’ hands. Katie shut the door, then caught up with them on the front walk. She stroked the coat like she was petting an animal and Cassie gave her a look.

  “Tastes change over the decades.” And she had no idea what she’d been thinking when she’d bought a fuzzy bubble gum–pink coat. She certainly hadn’t expected it to be waiting for her in the hall closet when she returned to the ranch.

  “I think Grandma hung on to some other bits and pieces of our pasts if you want to split a bottle of vino and take a trip down memory lane,” Katie said.

  “What’s vino?” Kendra asked.

  “Wine,” Cassie replied matter-of-factly. She wasn’t a big one for using secret talk around kids, whom she found were often underestimated.

  “I don’t like it,” Kendra said, screwing up her face. “We had sips at Christmas. Yuk.”

  Bailey made a choking sound to indicate her dislike of the fruit of the vine, and Cassie laughed.

  “About time,” Katie muttered.

  She shot her sister another look. “What?”

  Katie shook her head, but as soon as the girls raced ahead to open the greenhouse and made a show of how hot it was inside by pretending to wilt, she said, “It’s about time you loosened up and laughed. You’re so tightly wound that I expect you to snap at any minute.”

  “I am not,” Cassie said, insulted. She was a master at keeping her cool...except for the recent incident with Travis. But that was instinct kicking in. Eventually she’d found the override switch and gotten control of herself.

  “You are. You just don’t know it. Probably because it was a slow process.” She gave Cassie a hard look. “You know, the frog in boiling water and all that.”

  Cassie just shook her head and followed her nieces into the greenhouse with its neat benches of herbs in different stages of growth. There might be a grain of truth in Katie’s words. Before school ended in May, she’d been visiting an elementary school and overheard one of the kids calling her the scary lady. It had stung more than it should have. Kids used to love her, but now they gave her wide berth. And were shoulders supposed to ache all the time? She’d assumed it was an aftereffect of her workouts, but...

  Kendra took her by the hand, reminding her that some kids still liked her, and led her forward, naming each herb as they passed. “I grew those violets,” she said, pointing to the last bench, which held flats of flowers. “Did you know you can eat flowers? We’re going to sell ’em to a restaurant to put on desserts to make them pretty.”

  “Excellent,” Cassie said. “What did you plant, Bailey?”

  “Violets and catnip for Tigger. He gets all funny when we bring it into the house.”

  “I bet he does,” Cassie said, laughing again. If she kept laughing, then maybe Katie would see that she wasn’t really that uptight. She was just... What?

  A woman with a demanding job, which required her to hide her emotions in the name of professionalism. She may want to lean across her desk and throttle the whining board member on the other side, but, hey...that didn’t get you funding where you needed it.

  Actually, she was glad to take some time off, even if she was a bit nervous about being out of the loop for almost a year. Time off would help her get perspective and perform better. Nothing wrong with that, or with taking the time off so that Rhonda could retire without penalty. She’d go back to the school district feeling fresh and would bring with her new ideas gleaned from the classes she’d be taking. She’d be back in the loop.

  A win-win.

  So why did she feel so edgy about the situation?

  CHAPTER THREE

  TRAVIS LEANED ON the rail fence and smiled to himself as he watched the new foal nurse. His third and last McHenry baby, the first filly, was the spit of her mama, and in all probability, he’d keep her. Grow his herd.

  And he couldn’t help but wonder how Cassie was getting along with her recent purchase. Her grandfather Carl had only purchased well-trained animals for his grandkids, so although they’d ridden some rank mounts owned by other people, neither she nor her brother, Nick, had the joy of rehabilitating a horse with bad habits, while Travis had been up to his ears in such animals—by choice. He’d enjoyed the challenge, and being a bronc rider, it was the rare horse who could put him on the ground, especially when he could use both hands.

 
; He had a knack with horses who were slow to trust. He knew when to proceed. When to stop, and when a horse was too far gone to help.

  Funny how he didn’t have that same knack with Cassie.

  Nothing saying you can’t develop one.

  True.

  He pushed off the fence and headed to the house to grab his wallet and phone before driving to town.

  He could honestly say there was a time in his life when he hated Cassie Callahan. When just seeing her strut into an event was enough to make smoke start rolling out of his ears. She’d not only bested him more times than he wanted to think about before he’d reached the age of twelve, she was vocal about it. Rubbed it in.

  A fourth-grade footrace shortly after she’d moved onto the Callahan ranch had started it all, but matters had snowballed thanks to laughing friends and fourth-grade pride, and it wasn’t long before they were sworn enemies. One-upmanship ensued and as the legend of their rivalry grew, so did the ferocity of their competition. She was just such a know-it-all.

  As they continued through school, their competition became quieter—less direct confrontations, because frankly that was exhausting—but retained myth-like status. Cassie was a worthy adversary, so he gave back as good as he got until the day they’d graduated high school. He’d been valedictorian, while she’d held the runner-up spot, thanks to the fact that he’d gotten a slightly higher grade in AP government. And on that day, something odd happened. Cassie had tripped on her way to the stage. Seeing her down was nothing new. Travis had seen her get knocked end over teakettle by calves and rampant goats she’d been trying to tie during rodeo practice. He’d seen her get bucked off horses she shouldn’t have gotten on, and he’d seen her trip and fall in a mud puddle with an ice-cream cone in each hand at the county fair. All of those instances were different than seeing her hit the ground in front of a crowd, then struggle to her feet, her face bright red with embarrassment. He’d unconsciously started toward her to offer his hand when the principal beat him to it, and he had then retreated to his seat again.

  Cassie had headed to the mic and made a laughing comment about the dangers of graduation robes and then took her place on a chair on the opposite side of the podium from him. The ceremony continued, followed by the graduation after-party, and even though he’d only seen her a couple of times during the events that followed, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Thinking about how vulnerable she’d seemed during those few seconds. Vulnerability and Cassie were two words that he’d never in his life connected, but once connected, they stuck with him.

  He didn’t get a chance to see her again that summer. She’d taken off almost immediately to a summer internship in Seattle, while he’d continued working on the ranch until his first semester at Montana State started in September, pinch-hitting for his dad, who was having increasing difficulties with his mobility due to rheumatoid arthritis. His parents relocated to Arizona during his senior year in college, thus sealing Travis’s fate. His grandfather needed his help on the ranch. He couldn’t find a manager he could work with, and more than that, he’d believed that Travis’s dream was to return home and take over the ranch. Travis had never dissuaded him of the notion.

  He’d come home willingly. He’d always planned to return to the ranch at some point in the distant future, so why not start fresh from the gate? His grandfather needed him—for company, as much as for management. He didn’t get to spend his twenties seeing new countries and experiencing new ideas and perspectives, but he did get to carry on the family legacy. He knew a lot of people who would have given their right arm to do just that.

  But that didn’t stop Reynaldo from calling and asking when he was ready to go to work. Travis gave him a firm no every time, but his charmingly persistent friend refused to be dissuaded. He kind of reminded Travis of Cassie in that regard.

  Travis made Hardwick’s Grocery and Hardware his first stop, since the cupboards were bare. His grandfather rarely spent time on the ranch after he started keeping company with Rosalie Callahan, and now that his grandfather had bought a house in town, Travis assumed that he pretty much had the ranch to himself, with the exception of the two day hands he was in the process of hiring.

  Travis filled his basket as he walked up and down the aisles, tossing in anything that looked easy. Long days didn’t lend themselves to cooking gourmet meals. Or cooking, period. He spent a lot of time in the microwave and frozen-food sections.

  After checking out, he was in the process of dumping a bag of ice over his frozen food in the insulated cooler when someone behind him said his name. He turned to see Mrs. Gable, his former high school English teacher and Rosalie’s business partner, hailing him.

  “Isn’t it exciting?” she asked as she stopped next to his empty cart.

  “I assume you mean the upcoming wedding?” he asked with a smile.

  “I’ve never seen your grandfather so...approachable,” she said with a wink. Mrs. Gable had a way about her, and she still dressed in bright tunics and dark leggings, just as she had when she was teaching.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he teased back. “I never see him.”

  “You’ll probably be seeing more of him soon. After all, there’ll be a lot of work to do on the ranch before the wedding, and he’ll want to help.”

  “Which ranch?” Travis asked slowly.

  “Your ranch, of course. Didn’t you know?”

  Travis shook his head. “I didn’t.”

  Mrs. Gable made a dismissive gesture. “They decided for certain when Nick made sushi for everyone last night.”

  “Wait a minute... Grandpa and sushi?”

  “California rolls. Nothing raw.”

  Even so, Travis had a hard time imagining (a) Nick Callahan making sushi, even if he had lived in California for almost a decade, and (b) his grandfather partaking. After all, there was seaweed involved.

  Who was this man who’d taken over his curmudgeonly grandfather’s body?

  “I don’t suppose they set a date?”

  Mrs. Gable frowned at him. “I’m sure that Will wants to tell you himself.”

  “I won’t let on I know. It’ll help me with the ranch calendar.”

  Mrs. Gable’s gaze shifted, then she said, “A week before Cassie leaves for her classes.”

  “I’m sure he plans to tell me next time he sees me.”

  “Of course he does.” Mrs. Gable beamed and patted his cart. “May I take this off your hands?”

  “You may. Have a good one, Mrs. Gable.”

  “Gloria,” she said firmly.

  “Right. Gloria. Thanks.”

  Thanks for the permission to use her first name and thanks for the information he didn’t have. There would be a wedding on the ranch in a few weeks’ time.

  Travis blew out a breath as he closed the cooler. Should make for interesting times.

  * * *

  MCHENRY’S GOLD LOOKED just like her mother, but her temperament wasn’t anywhere near the same. Instead of a soft eye, she had a watchful eye, as if expecting something bad to happen at any given moment. Like, say, now, while Cassie brushed her way around the horse’s back quarters.

  Cassie let out a sigh and continued to brush, noting that the mare’s muscles didn’t give as she stroked. She had work ahead of her. Well, she was no stranger to work, but in this case, she also had research to do.

  Or you could reach out to Travis.

  Cassie continued to brush as she played with the idea. When Travis had bid against her at the auction, she’d instantly assumed that, even though they hadn’t seen each other since she graduated college, he was out to get the better of her. Again.

  That had been a big jump, and honestly, one she shouldn’t have made. She’d allowed past experience to dictate her responses rather than discovering what the actual circumstances were, and that was unacceptable. She stopped brushing and settled a hand o
n the crest of the mare’s neck. It was time to move past knee-jerk reactions. She’d promised herself that she would come home for the holidays from here on out, no matter what, which meant that she’d see Travis when she came home. She needed to make peace with the man. And with herself.

  Ten-year-old Cassie would be so angry with her.

  Ten-year-old Cassie had her day. Now it was time for something different.

  Now the big question was, how to make peace? It seemed rude to ask him for help with the mare she’d bought out from under him, so it had to be in another way.

  Cassie was a fan of the direct approach, so after she’d put the mare back in the small pen to keep her away from the other horses while she acclimated to new surroundings, she went into the house and asked Katie if she had Travis’s cell number.

  “Plotting an ambush?” Katie asked mildly, not bothering to look up from the cookbook she was perusing.

  “I’m going to make peaceful overtures.”

  “Good.” Katie pulled out her phone, unlocked it and handed it over. Cassie found the number in Katie’s contacts and put it into her own phone. Now the big question was, would he answer an unknown number?

  “Call from my phone. He’ll answer,” Katie said, making Cassie wonder for a split second if she’d asked the question aloud.

  “Thanks.” She hit the number, and, sure enough, Travis answered on the second ring.

  “Hey, Katie.”

  “It’s Cassie.”

  Stone-cold silence, and then... “Having trouble with the horse?”

  Cassie’s hackles started to rise at the inference that she couldn’t handle the horse on her own, but she told herself that it was a legitimate question, given the situation the last time she saw him. Maybe he thought she was ready to sell the mare to him for the bid price. “I don’t know yet,” she said honestly. “But that’s not why I’m calling.”