Montana Homecoming

by Jeannie Watt

  Her statement was met with another silence, so, speaking more quickly than she’d intended in order to fill the void, she said, “I’m calling because I think we need to iron out some issues.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I...” Should have figured that out before she’d called. The fact that she hadn’t was out of character, which perhaps spoke to the fact that she was a little burned-out. Weary of fighting the good fight and in need of rest in order to get back into top form.

  “Why don’t we discuss this face-to-face?” Travis asked.

  “Great plan.” That would give her time to figure out exactly what she wanted to discuss. If all else failed, they could discuss the horse.

  “My place or yours?”

  “Neutral ground.”

  “Maybe we could meet in the middle of that new bridge leading to your ranch. You know, like in the movies?”

  “Or we could do something logical,” Cassie said coolly. She didn’t let angry parents get her goat and she wouldn’t let Travis do it either—even though he had a lot of practice and was good at it.

  “Yeah.”

  She heard a smile in his voice and wished she could sound as relaxed as he did. She was about to suggest that they meet at the county library, when he said, “Why don’t we go out to dinner?”

  “Like on a date?” The words blurted out of her mouth. She instantly regretted them. A date with Travis. Right.

  “If you want to call it that.”

  Cassie’s cheeks began to warm as he expertly bounced the ball back into her court. “It doesn’t matter what we call it,” she said, taking care to keep her voice neutral and even. “We’ll meet, settle a few matters, set the tone for the future. If you want to eat dinner while we do that, fine.”

  “I want to eat dinner.”

  It was an odd feeling, scrambling to keep up. Usually she was the person causing others to scramble, which meant she was going to have to rehone her Travis skills. “Fine. We’ll meet at a dinner place.”

  “When and where?”

  “Six o’clock tomorrow at the Cedar Creek Inn.” At least she’d get a nice steak out of the meeting.

  “Which has been closed for two years. We should have the entire place to ourselves.”

  Cassie bit back a curse word. She really had been gone for too long. Katie looked up from her cookbook, frowned, then mouthed, “Tremaine’s.”

  Cassie blinked at her. That was the worst place in town the last time she’d been home for any length of time. Katie gave her a trust-me nod, so Cassie said, “How about Tremaine’s Diner? Six o’clock.”

  “Tremaine’s it is.”

  He didn’t seem one bit taken aback at the idea, as she would have been had he suggested the place.

  “See you there.” She hung up the phone before he could say anything that would make her have to say something back.

  “Tremaine’s Diner? Really?” she said as she handed Katie her phone. The place had been notorious for being periodically closed down for health-and-safety violations since she’d been a kid.

  “New owner. Actually, a whole new place. The interior was gutted by a grease fire three years ago. They renovated and all’s good, including the food.”

  Cassie poured a cup of coffee and joined her sister at the table. “I guess some things do change.”

  “Yes, they do.” Katie gave her another one of those questioning looks, and Cassie decided it was time for her sister to speak freely.

  “Something on your mind?”

  Katie gave an innocent shrug. “I’m glad you’re home.”

  “And...” Cassie tilted her head, but waited rather than speaking, since it appeared that Katie was gathering her thoughts.

  “You’re different.”

  Cassie almost said she wasn’t, but stopped herself. “How so?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to nail down. It’s like you’re here, but you’re not.”

  “I’m here.” And she was glad to be there. It had taken her some time to get used to the idea of not picking up the phone and asking for a status report on various situations, but she was doing better.

  “You’re also somewhere else.” Katie leaned back in her chair. “It’s like you’re plotting strategy for future battles.”

  “You could be right,” Cassie said, figuring it was best to be truthful rather than to stonewall. Katie had worked in HR. She was shrewd and she could be relentless once she decided to wiggle the truth out of someone. And she was equally driven when she decided to rescue something or someone. Cassie had to convince her that she didn’t need rescuing. “I spent the past three years not only being on top of everything, but also staying one jump ahead. Anticipation has become a habit.”

  “Do you like your job?”

  “I love it.”

  “How many hours do you work a week?”

  Cassie waved a hand. “It depends on the week.”

  “Your shortest week.”

  Cassie let out a sigh. “I’m single. I have no pets. I don’t log my hours, because I’m doing something I love.”

  “And you’re burned-out.”

  “Yes. I am.” Confession was good for the soul, but this confession didn’t feel so good. She was burned-out and had become the scary lady.

  “How are you going to fix that?” Katie asked.

  “I took the sabbatical to figure that out.” She lifted her coffee cup as if to make a toast. “I bought a horse. I plan to ride to relax.”

  “Oh. You mean the horse that almost took the trailer apart before you got her unloaded?”

  “Yep. That’s the one.” Cassie met her sister’s gaze, careful to keep her expression open.

  “I’m sure that’ll take your mind off work.”

  Cassie let out a sigh and leaned her forearms on the table. “What exactly do you think I should do?”

  “Connect with some friends while you’re here?”

  “Funny you should mention that, because Darby is driving up from Salt Lake City for a family visit next week and we’re getting together.” There. One box on the Katie list of things to do better checked off.

  “That’s a start,” Katie admitted, “but not enough. You need to find a balance.” She held up a finger as Cassie’s mouth automatically opened. “I know that you already know that, and you’re working out a plan, but I’m worried that you won’t follow through. Some emergency will crop up, just as it did last Christmas, and you’ll think you’re the only person who can solve it. And that will keep happening until your head explodes.”

  “That was a real emergency.” They’d had to fire a teacher for unprofessional conduct, which involved lawyer meetings and developing a contingency plan for covering her classes until a replacement could be hired. Cassie cocked her head at her sister. “Do I really come off as being that stressed?”

  “Yes,” Katie said simply. “You do. And that means you are.”

  * * *

  “LET ME GET this straight...you’re taking out Cassie Callahan.” Will gave Travis the look he always gave when trying to shake the truth out of him. It still worked pretty well.

  Travis took a seat across from his grandfather at the kitchen table, setting his longneck on the worn oak. “I am.” Kind of.

  Will tipped back his beer, as if needing fortification before continuing the conversation. After wiping away the foam with his forefinger, he gave Travis another quelling look. “Well, for criminy’s sake, don’t do anything to tick her off.”

  “That’d be a neat trick.”

  “Seriously,” Will said.

  “We are going out in order to settle a few things between us, because now we’re probably going to be seeing more of one another.”

  “That’s real possible,” Will agreed. “Rosalie says that Cassie has agreed to come home for the holidays fr
om here on out, and since you spend the holidays with me...”

  Yeah. He’d already figured all that out. But Travis sipped his beer and listened as his grandfather continued to explain why he’d see Cassie a whole lot more often than he had in the past.

  “I don’t want you guys at each other’s throats,” Will concluded.

  “Those days are gone,” Travis said simply.

  “Good.” Will leaned back in his chair, his hand still on his beer. “Rosalie sent us a casserole. All we have to do is take it out of the fridge and put it in the oven for half an hour.”

  Travis smiled. “She takes good care of you.”

  “She does.”

  “Why?”

  Will made a face at him. “Darned if I know, but she does.”

  Which made Will happy, and that in turn made Travis happy. His grandfather had been alone for a long time. Travis didn’t know his grandmother, who’d left after two years of marriage and one baby—Travis’s father. Travis’s parents were doing well in Arizona, where the warm, dry climate helped his father deal with the symptoms of RA, but despite constant contact by phone and email, Will missed having his son around. Another reason Travis had felt compelled to stay on the ranch.

  “I imagine that taking-care thing goes two ways,” Travis said.

  Will nodded. “I’m lucky.”

  “Yeah.” Travis tilted his bottle toward his grandfather. “You are.”

  “So don’t go screwing things up with Cassie,” Will said seriously. “It’ll upset Rosalie.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You two have a lot of baggage to sort through.”

  Travis gave his grandfather a wry half smile before raising his beer. “You’re right. Maybe we’ll have to have two dates.”

  “Heaven help us,” Will muttered. “I’m just hoping you guys make it through the first one.” He fell into silence, one hand on his beer as he stared at the table in front of him. Was he picturing scenarios of mayhem?

  Travis decided to probe. No sense having his grandfather worry about stuff that wasn’t going to happen. “Anything else weighing on you?”

  Will continued to study the table as if debating whether or not to discuss what was on his mind. Then he looked up and blurted, “I don’t have anything to wear to my wedding, and, looking at the long-term weather forecast, it’s probably going to rain anyway.”

  “Hey, that is good news,” Travis said. “You won’t have to worry about what to wear as long as you have a raincoat covering everything.”

  “Ha ha.” Will’s jawline tensed. “I have to go shopping, blast it, because I’m not wearing no darned raincoat to my wedding.”

  “I’m not going.”

  “Guess again.”

  Will looked so beleaguered that Travis almost laughed. The guy who’d faced off with a cougar that was threatening his favorite dog looked terrified at the prospect of shopping.

  “Won’t Rosalie help?”

  “Of course she will, but I’m not going to do that to her.”

  “Have you considered the possibility that she might like shopping more than you do?”

  “I’m taking care of myself—with your help.”

  Travis blew out a breath. “Okay. Shopping it is. Anything else?”

  “Yeah.” Will stared at his beer. “We need to clear out the barn so we can have the festivities inside if it does rain.”

  Clean out the barn. Right. The labors of Hercules came to mind. The barn acted as storage central and, as such, was packed with equipment, old and new, things that didn’t have any better place to be—hay, straw, grain. And everything had a layer of dust at least a quarter-inch thick. “That’ll be a job.”

  “It’ll take some doing. I’m going to hire a crew. It’s time we sorted through all that junk anyway. It isn’t like it’s going to just disappear on its own.”

  Travis let out a silent breath of relief. “I’m going to be honest with you, Grandpa. I won’t fight you on that front.” Not the crew, nor the sorting.

  “I figured that on top of everything else, we just don’t have the time. We meaning you, of course.”

  “You’re retired.” He wanted his grandfather to enjoy his retirement and it wasn’t much of a retirement if he spent all of his time at the ranch.

  Will nodded and went silent again.

  Travis was about to find out what else was on his mind when his grandfather raised his gaze, meeting Travis’s eyes with the very same expression he’d worn when he’d laid down the law about driving his “good” truck when Travis was sixteen. “And for Pete’s sake, don’t go drawing any lines in the sand with Cassie when you go on this date or whatever it is. Just...make peace.”

  “That’s why we’re going out. To address the past and set a path for future interactions.”

  “That’s why you mean to go out, but when she tells you she can do something better than you, what are you going to do?”

  “We’re not ten.”

  “You were still doing that when you were twenty.”

  “Okay. We’re not twenty. We’ll work things out. I promise.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  TREMAINE’S DINER HAD CHANGED.

  Cassie arrived early, but couldn’t find a parking place in the lot behind the once notorious eatery. She’d frequented the place as a teen, because the food was cheap, and it was never crowded. Being more interested in socializing than in pleasing their palates, she and her friends had spent many an afternoon or evening in “Ptomaine’s,” laughing, gossiping, plotting and planning.

  Cassie’s dark secret was that, even though she’d complained along with her friends, she’d secretly loved the frozen pizza they’d tried to pass off as homemade. Her freezer was currently stocked with the same brand, but while she might still eat the pizza, she hadn’t laughed or gossiped in a long time.

  She missed having close friends, but the circumstances of her job made that difficult. Healthy dinners had turned into frozen pizzas, and weekends with friends had turned into marathon cleaning/laundry/finishing work from the office sessions as she rose through the ranks and strove to prove herself while simultaneously taking classes for an advanced degree.

  While she’d been busy furthering her career, many of the friends she’d made while teaching had moved on, taking jobs in districts that offered more pay, or following spouses to other areas of the country. The same had happened in Gavin. Even Darby and Shelby—her two high school friends who had laughingly called themselves the Busy Bees—had settled elsewhere despite their resolve to stay in Gavin forever.

  So here she was in a lonely, pizza-overloaded phase of her life. It was time to regroup, learn how to take better care of herself. Perhaps it was a good thing that she’d eased into a sabbatical she wouldn’t have taken otherwise. Silver linings abounded.

  After finding a parking spot on the street, Cassie got out of her car and smoothed her tiered skirt, then started down the sidewalk, only to stop when she heard her name. A little jolt went through her at the sound of Travis’s voice.

  Enough of that.

  There would be no knee-jerk reactions tonight. She and Travis were adults, and she hadn’t acted like an adult at the auction. She’d acted like her teenage self, facing a line in the sand that Travis had drawn. Only he hadn’t.

  Not her proudest moment.

  After all the personnel management classes she’d taken, she should be able to handle a night out with her former nemesis. They’d both grown and changed and now they needed to get to a place of understanding so that old habits could be pushed aside. But if that didn’t work, she’d pretend that he was a difficult parent. An unknown entity that she needed to find common ground with, and in many ways, Travis was an unknown entity. Yes, she’d known him back in the day, but only on a competitive level. For obvious reasons they’d never let down their guards and reall
y talked.

  As she turned toward him, she curved her mouth into her professional smile. The one that didn’t make it to her eyes but gave an indication that she was willing to listen and search for solutions in a cooperative manner. One of her colleagues once told her that her professional smile kind of scared him. She’d taken it as a compliment at the time. She didn’t want to frighten children, but adults with an ax to grind—that was a different story.

  “You’re early,” Travis commented as he caught up with her. Everything about him seemed relaxed, from his easy smile to his loose gait as they fell into step. Cassie wondered if he was really relaxed or faking it. She was faking it. She, who met with angry individuals on a regular basis and had spoken in front of the state legislature, was far from relaxed.

  “You appear to be even earlier.” He hadn’t driven onto the street, so he must have been already parked and waiting.

  “Yeah. Grandpa needs me to look at plumbing in his town house, so I left the ranch early, but not early enough. I’ll have to see to it later.”

  “He bought a town house?” Cassie asked in surprise. The town houses in Gavin were few and far between, but there was a row near the community college.

  “No. That’s what he calls his house in town, and I’m not going to try to change his mind.”

  “I can’t fault you there.”

  Will was notoriously stubborn, although her grandmother seemed to have made progress on several fronts. According to Katie, Rosalie had told Will in no uncertain terms not to rescue her while she was doing battle with her bullheaded neighbor, Vince Taylor, or the county commission, who’d thrown up roadblocks when the family had tried to replace a washed-out bridge the previous summer.

  “You look nice,” he said, glancing down at her swirly chiffon skirt—her go-to outfit for anything that didn’t require jeans or a business suit. Skirts were comfortable and covering. She loved them.

  She cast an eye over Travis before saying, “Thank you. So do you.” And not only because of his pressed white shirt, well-fitting jeans, polished boots and the trophy buckle she recognized as the one he’d won for being the Montana High School Rodeo saddle bronc champion.