by Erica Penrod
“Yes, they have. Honey, you can’t hide those clouds in your eyes.”
“I promise, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.” Joye took her by the elbow and pulled her through the swinging door into the kitchen. Viv tucked her pad and pen back in her pocket. Lou, the head cook and Joye’s husband, stood at the grill flipping a burger.
“Hi, Viv,” he said.
“Not now, Lou,” Joye said, taking Viv into her arms. “Can’t you see she’s upset?”
“Uh, no … sorry,” Lou said, and turned to the deep fryer.
Against her will, her body collapsed into the woman’s embrace. Joye was in her late sixties, and her body was pillow soft, with a heart was so big you could see it on her sleeve. Her hair was an unnatural nutmeg brown bought once a month at the grocery store, and her dark eyes were enhanced by a pale shade of blue shadow.
Viv lifted her head. “My dad got married.”
Joye’s brow wrinkled. “What?”
Taking a napkin from the shelf, Viv wiped at her eyes. “I know, right?”
“You could knock me over with a feather. I never thought I’d see the day Eli McIntyre got married again.” Joye put her hands on her hips. “She must be some sort of angel to put up with—oh, I mean, to marry your father.”
“He married Amanda Royal,” Viv confessed.
A loud crash sounded to the right. The lid to a pan swirled on the floor. Lou stood there with his mouth gaping wide open.
“Amanda Royal,” Joye said. “No wonder you look like a cat caught in a room full of rocking chairs.”
Viv pulled a barstool from the corner. “Here. Take a seat,” she said to Joye. The look on Lou’s face had Viv laughing. “I wonder if that’s the same expression I had when they told me.”
Lou picked up the lid and dunked it in a sink full of soapy water. “Now, I’ve heard opposites attract, but I got to say, Amanda Royal and Eli McIntyre are like mixing pickles and peaches,” Lou said as he reached for a paper towel. “Nothing sweet will come from that.”
“But the most baffling thing about the whole situation is, how did they keep their nuptials a secret?” Joye stood up and smoothed her apron. “Customers tend to clear their conscience when their bellies are full. There’s not much that happens in this town that I don’t know about.”
Viv shrugged her shoulders.
“Was this planned or a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing?” Joye asked. “I didn’t even know they were dating.”
“Me neither.”
“They didn’t tell you?” Lou said.
“No. I just found out today.” Viv tucked her pen behind her ear. “And I was so upset I didn’t stick around to find out the details.”
The doorbell announced a new customer. Viv spun around, grateful for the interruption.
“No,” Joye said. “You stay back here for as long as you need. I’ll take care of them.”
Viv smiled. “Thanks, but I need to keep my mind occupied with something else other than finding out I just became Cinderella.”
“Okay, then,” Joye said. “But if you change your mind, you can take all the time you need. Lou and I can manage things around here.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine,” she said, pushing the swing door open with her hip.
She pulled the notepad from her pocket and she reached up for the pen, but paused to bite her tongue when she saw her customer. Lucas Royal.
* * *
Lucas Royal never went anywhere in this town where his name and bank account didn’t precede him. Four years away at college where no one knew him was like having an alter ego.
He’d learned a long time ago that acting like the spoiled rich kid everyone expected was easier than trying to prove otherwise. Maybe that’s why he’d always felt so drawn to Vivien McIntyre. There was a fire in her eyes that matched the wild flames in her hair, and he knew she’d spent her life trying to be anyone other than the daughter of a man who wanted a son. Viv was a couple years younger than him, but he’d always been aware of her. Of course, in Lewiston, it was hard to be ignorant of anyone, regardless of whether you wanted to or not.
His friends joked and called her the horse junkie, but Lucas never laughed. He had to admit, she was an easy target. Without a mother to soften her edges and with clothes obviously bought by her father, she wasn’t like any of the other girls. But that was what he liked about her. Her unruly curls and unacknowledged natural beauty kept him up at night, but admitting his fascination with the cowgirl in high school meant certain social annihilation.
He still remembered the first time he saw her again after college. When he came home for the holidays, one of his first stops was for chicken-fried steak at the diner where she’d worked for as long as he could remember. Nothing had changed. The rush in his head and trying to keep his heart in his chest meant he didn’t touch the food on his plate. She’d matured in all the right ways, and though he’d always known she was beautiful, she could only be described as stunning.
Even now, as a grown man with his own successful financial investment company, when he watched her walk towards him in the diner, his emotions surfaced, ready to paint his face an adolescent I want you shade of red. He shoved his hands in his pockets. She took one look at him, and her mysterious eyes narrowed. Some things hadn’t changed—she still hated him.
He clenched his teeth, trying to stay in control. Earlier, at her house, he’d been able to hide beneath his sunglasses, but now he was in the open range.
“What are you doing here?” Viv asked. Her lashes were thick and black. She had a touch of gloss on her lips. She didn’t try to hide the freckles splashed across her nose. He swallowed. She’d said something …
“I asked you what you’re doing here,” she said. The venom in her voice went from deadly to just paralyzing, and her hazel eyes softened enough for Lucas to know if he treaded carefully, he might get out of the diner alive.
“Well, obviously, I’m hungry,” he said, hating the Lucas Royal tone to his voice. Why couldn’t he ever just be real around her?
“Okay,” she said, and exhaled. “Take a seat over there—” She pointed to the booth to the right. “—and I’ll bring you a menu.”
He nodded and made his way to the booth as she walked over to the stack of menus on the counter. He gazed at her and wiped his hands on his jeans. Nothing in his life felt certain but one irrevocable fact: he would never see Vivien McIntyre as a sister.
Chapter 3
Viv had second thoughts about Joye’s offer to hide out in the kitchen now that she was face to face with Lucas. After she told Joye about her father’s marriage, she wanted to forget about her troubles back at the ranch. She didn’t need a reminder, even one as good-looking as Lucas. She couldn’t decide which reason she hated him more for: because he showed up here, making her think about what a mess her life was, or because of his bottomless checking account. Both seemed like good reasons.
Still, sitting in the booth, surrounded by the Coca-Cola memorabilia, he looked like a tall drink of soda inviting her to take a sip. His coal-black hair was trimmed short around the sides, while the top was left long enough for waves to escape the hold of his no doubt expensive hair product. Bronzed skin wasn’t a seasonal thing for him, and his dark brows set off his blue eyes, which were a genetic gift from his mother. He wore a T-shirt intended to look casual, but on this Royal, everything looked pretentious. Lighter denim jeans were stacked on tawny ostrich cowboy boots.
Cowboy boots?
Since when did Lucas Royal wear cowboy boots?
Dropping the menu in front of him, she recited the daily special and the two different types of homemade soup.
“Thanks. I’ll order something in a minute,” he said, looking up at her. “I wanted to talk to you.”
Viv shook her head. “I don’t have time to talk. I’m at work.”
Lucas pointed to the one other occupied table in the diner.
Viv exhaled. Why couldn’t this be like a normal Sa
turday night? On weekdays, the diner kept a steady pace with its convenient location just off the freeway, but on most weekends, Viv had to run to keep up.
“I’m sure you could spare me a second or two.” A big grin revealed his vividly white teeth. “Besides, we’re family now, and family makes time for each other.”
“You have a different definition of family than I do.”
Her father believed so little in her abilities as a trainer that he went and hired Boone Jameson. Then he came home with a wife. Family didn’t make time, conversation, or excuses where she came from.
“And what is the deal about Boone, anyway? He’s your uncle?” she asked.
“My mom is the oldest child, and Boone was a surprise many years later,” Lucas said. “He’s about five years older than me.”
Viv did the math in her head. “Okay. So, he’s not a Royal?”
“What does that mean?” Lucas asked.
“I mean … money. Is he rich, like you and your mom?”
“I don’t know what his bank account looks like … but he’s working for your dad.” He shrugged his shoulders. “That ought to say something.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I guess it does. But he sure has a nice truck and trailer.”
Lucas waited and watched her, and if she hadn’t been half crazy from the day’s events, she would’ve sworn she saw compassion in his eyes. “I’m not here to talk about our parents,” he offered.
“You’re not?”
“No. I’m here because I have a proposition for you.”
“What kind of proposition?” she asked. Leeriness jam-packed her mind.
“I want to hire you,” Lucas said, turning over his water cup.
“Hire me for what?” She scowled at him. “I don’t want to clean your house.”
Lucas threw his head back and laughed. “No. I don’t want you to clean my house. I want you to train my cutting horse.”
Viv plunked into the seat across from him. “That I have time to listen to.”
* * *
The midnight moon sat quietly in the sky and listened to Viv’s thoughts as she drove home later that night. Her shift lasted until ten thirty, and then there was an hour to clean up. After Lucas came in and offered her a job, she mixed up drink orders and brought soup instead of salad. Joye must’ve been frustrated, but she didn’t say anything, just patted her on the back and smiled. Viv didn’t tell Joye about the job offer, but let her believe her absentmindedness was all about her father’s marriage. She needed something of her own, even just for a little while.
Viv turned off the highway and headed west on the gravel road. Her 1999 Chevy truck was two-toned brown, and the odometer lost count of the miles after 200,000. The back bumper was tied on with two pieces of orange baling twine, and in the back window was a California souvenir decal from the previous owner—a place she’d never been.
Material things didn’t matter as much as good horseflesh. She’d take a quarter horse over a new half-ton truck any day. If her old truck could haul a trailer and get her from one place to the other without breaking down more than once every few months, Viv was happy. That was one trait she was grateful she inherited from her father—that and her love of cutting, a sport evolved from the early days of cattle ranches.
The summer night felt good through the open window, and she was tempted to pull over and just watch the stars, but she spent too much time in the diner’s parking lot, avoiding her father and thinking about everything Lucas had said. She knew she needed to get home. Not because her father would worry, but because that sun would rise whether she had any sleep or not, and there were chores to be done.
Turning into the drive, the three-railed fence was broken in scattered sections and repaired by an electric fence, which meant instead of fixing what needed to be fixed, her father put up a temporary strip of thin white fence that ran on the inside with just enough zing to keep the horses in.
In that respect, Viv did see things differently than her old man. She didn’t need the newest or flashiest of anything, but when something needed to be repaired, she wanted to have the means to do it right. Ever since she could remember, she’d been saving very dime she could.
She knew she would have to work harder than most to be able to purchase her dream on her own. Her father’s ranch was handed down to him from her grandfather, a man she never knew. If she’d been born a son, there would be no question that she would inherit the property. But her father made sure she understood there were different rules, rights, and privileges between the sexes, and she had the unfortunate fate of being born a female who wanted everything a son of Eli McIntyre would get. In his mind, a husband should provide for Viv. She had no idea what her father planned to do with the property when he died. Maybe now he could pass it on to Lucas.
Viv pulled into her spot, put the truck in park, and leaned her head back against the headrest. She looked over at Boone’s truck next to hers. He was Lucas Royal’s uncle. She should’ve recognized his arrogance as a family trait.
She argued with the handle until the door gave in and swung open. She hopped out and reached in for her wallet and keys.
“You’re home late.”
Viv jumped, and her key chain flew in the night like a bat with metal wings.
Boone sat on the top stair of the front porch, the dogs beneath his feet.
“You scared me to death.” She bent over and scooped up her keys.
“And here I thought a country girl like you wouldn’t scare so easily.”
“Yeah, well, I’m sure there’s a lot about this girl you don’t know,” she said as she walked towards him.
Boone leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I doubt that.”
Viv shook her head. “What?”
“One look at you, at this place … and your father, I know everything I need to know about you.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” she said as she stepped over a dog and up the stairs to the side of him. “You don’t need to know anything about me.”
“I know you’ve spent your life trying to prove something to your father.”
Viv stopped and looked down at him. She could see the top of his hat and the broad size of his back and shoulders. “Whatever you think you know, forget about it. You work for my father, and as far as you and I are concerned, we have nothing to say to each other.”
Boone turned towards her, reached up, and touched her hand.
She jerked her arm away like she’d been splattered by hot grease.
“If you’d quit acting like a child—”
“You’re such a—”
“Before you say something you’ll regret,” he interrupted her, “that was a low blow, them not telling you they were getting married.”
Exhaustion settled over her body, layered with defeat, and she sat down next to him. The small breeze sent a whiff of her deep fryer perfume through her nostrils and she slid to the edge of the step.
“I wish I could I say that was unusual, but not around here. I mean, you’re sitting there.” Viv squirmed in her seat. She didn’t know why she was talking to him except that he was a listening ear, and his touch had done something to smother the fight right out of her.
Boone looked at her. “You didn’t know your father hired me, either?”
“Not until yesterday.” She wished there wasn’t so much emotion in her voice. Even if she didn’t respect Boone Jameson as a person, she revered his success as a cutting horse trainer. There were so many techniques she could learn from him, if she could put her pride aside and ask. There weren’t many female trainers out there, and she wanted to prove she was one of the best.
“Wow,” he said. “And I thought my dad was tough.”
Tracing the leather seam of her wallet, Viv contemplated what her life was like as Eli McIntyre’s daughter. “I can’t make heads or tails of it. My dad and Amanda Royal?”
“After you stomped off today—”
“I didn’t stomp
off,” Viv said. “I walked away.”
“Walked away,” Boone corrected. “They said that they knew each other years ago and ran into one another a few months back. One thing led to another, and they decided to get married.”
“If you buy that, I’ll give you the key to my high-rise condo just up the road there.” Viv pointed to the west.
“I’m just telling you what they told me.”
“There’s got to be more to it than that. My dad doesn’t care about anyone but himself. Even if he thought he could marry her for the money, Amanda’s smarter than that.”
“She is,” Boone said. “But your dad did seem like a lovesick pup.”
The image of her father’s face from earlier today with his new wife was unlike anything Viv had ever seen before. If he’d been anyone else, Viv might’ve believed he cared for Amanda.
Viv bit her lip. “Something just doesn’t add up.” Then another realization hit her. “If you’re related to the Royals, why are you here? If you needed money, not that you do, I’m sure your sister would help you out. Besides, my father can’t afford to pay you much.”
Boone laced his fingers, stretched his arms above his head, and yawned. “That’s where you’re wrong.” He looked over at her. “Amanda’s money is her own. Not mine. She married a Royal, and she got everything when her husband died.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling the blood rush to her cheeks. “I guess I probably knew that.”
Boone sat up a little taller. “I know she’d help me if I needed her to, but some things aren’t about money.”
“Then why did you take this job, if it wasn’t for the prestige? Did you know about my father and Amanda?”
“No. Although I would have appreciated a heads-up. I guess the more I think about the secret lovers, something does seem off. Amanda has never been the impulsive type.”
“Neither is my father,” Viv said. She stood up. “I guess it’s time I find out just what in the heck is going on.” Viv moved towards the door.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said, over his shoulder.
