The Rancher's Christmas Reunion
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Brenda Harlen
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21
Chapter One
Hope Bradford glanced from the time displayed on her dashboard clock to the two-story clapboard house that was in complete darkness.
Of course, it was dark.
It was after two o’clock in the morning.
Tears burned the backs of her eyes as she gripped the steering wheel tighter.
Were they tears of relief? Regret?
Or maybe just exhaustion.
She’d been driving for more than nine hours, only stopping once en route to refuel her Corolla Cross—and herself.
Obviously she hadn’t been thinking clearly when she’d decided to head out or she would have realized that she’d arrive at her grandmother’s in the wee hours of the morning.
Or maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly for a while.
No doubt her agent would argue that Hope’s thoughts had been muddled when she’d torpedoed her career, and while that was probably true, there was nothing to be done about it now.
Nothing but make the six-hundred-plus-mile journey from Sherman Oaks, California, to Haven, Nevada.
Was it Robert Frost who said that home was the place where, when you had to go there, they had to take you in?
Regardless of who’d spoken those famous words, there was the truth Hope had tried to deny for so long: even after almost two decades away, Haven was home.
And when she’d called her grandmother the previous afternoon, Edwina Bradford assured Hope that there would always be a room available for her, whenever she needed it.
She needed it now.
Desperately.
But she could hardly walk into her grandmother’s house at two o’clock in the morning.
How long had it been since her last visit? Three years? Four?
She’d blamed her career for keeping her away for so long, and it was true that she’d been busy. But the bigger truth was that she hadn’t wanted to come back. Hadn’t wanted to remember the girl she used to be, the dreams she used to have, the boy she used to love.
And it wasn’t going to do her any good to walk down memory lane now.
Instead, she decided to lean her seat back and close her eyes for the next five hours.
Edwina was always awake by seven a.m.—a habit ingrained after more than thirty years working at the local post office—and Hope knew that she wouldn’t wake her if she knocked on the door then.
She’d just started to doze off when a knock on the driver’s side door made her jolt. She instinctively scrambled for her cell, ready to call 9-1-1, when she recognized the face peering in her window.
Tears sprang to her eyes again, and this time she couldn’t hold them back.
Edwina opened the car door as soon as the locks were disengaged, and Hope practically fell into her arms.
Even at this hour, her grandmother smelled of Chanel No 5, enveloping Hope in the scent of her past.
“I was starting to think you were going to stay in your car all night,” Edwina remarked, hugging her tight.
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Hope said, immediately followed by, “What are you doing up at this hour?”
“I’ve got one of those cameras on the driveway. It sends me an alert if the motion sensor has been activated.”
“I’m sorry I woke you. I was trying to avoid doing just that.”
“I wasn’t really sleeping,” Edwina admitted. “I was waiting for you.”
“But... I told you I would be arriving tomorrow. Actually today,” she realized. “But much later.”
“I know, but I could hear in your voice that you were itching to get away.”
“You were right,” Hope acknowledged, not so much surprised as grateful to discover that her grandmother still knew her so well.
“Come on in,” Edwina said now. “There are fresh sheets on your bed and clean towels in your bathroom.”
Hope reached into the backseat for the duffel bag she’d filled with essentials. The other suitcases in her trunk could wait.
“I figured you’d have a thousand questions for me,” she said, pressing her key fob to lock the vehicle.
“We’ll talk in the morning.” Her grandmother opened the door and gestured for her to enter. “Go get some sleep now.”
She nodded, though she didn’t hold out much hope that it would happen. Slumber hadn’t come easily the past few weeks, and she’d inevitably awakened in the mornings feeling as tired and restless as when she’d gone to bed.
Not just restless but directionless—because if she wasn’t Lainey Howard on Rockwood Ridge, who was she?
That was the question that had plagued her, every minute of every day, since the last meeting with the producers, the last phone call with her agent.
Or maybe Jenny Stanwyck was her former agent—because what was the point of having representation if she didn’t have a career?
After another fierce hug from her grandmother, Hope made her way up the stairs to her childhood bedroom. And despite the concerns swirling in her mind, she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.
Michael Gilmore—MG to his friends—pretended not to hear any one of the chimes from his phone that announced at least five text messages while he mucked out stalls in the main barn at the Circle G Ranch Tuesday morning. It was a little bit harder to ignore the buzz of the device in his pocket when the calls started, but he managed to do so.
He didn’t even pull out his phone to glance at the screen and check the identity of the caller. Because he didn’t need to look at the screen to know.
Bernie—his hundred-pound canine companion—barked an admonition. Obviously the dog had heard the buzz of the phone in his master’s pocket, too, and didn’t approve of him ignoring it.
“I’m not in the mood to talk to anyone,” he said, aware of the irony of the fact that he was, instead, talking to his dog. “Or not anyone who can talk back, anyway.”
Bernie barked again.
“Always have to get the last word, don’t you?” he grumbled, as he started to wheel the barrow filled with soiled straw out of the barn.
He gritted his teeth through the pain as he pushed forward, blaming the dampness of the air for the throbbing in his leg. He felt like an old man who could predict the weather by the ache in his bones, despite the fact that he’d only recently celebrated his thirty-fifth birthday.
He tipped the barrow to dump its contents, cursing the fact that the lingering effects of his injury had necessitated his demotion to the most basic—and unpleasant—chores at the family ranch.
Thirty minutes later, he was spreading fresh straw in the last stall when Bernie barked again.
A happy bark this time.
MG used to scoff when people said they could tell by a baby’s cry whether it was hungry or wet or just wanting to be held. In the six months that had passed since Bernie had come into his life—two months after the accident that had threatened to change it forever—he’d been forced to reconsider.
The almost two-year-old Bernese Mountain Dog had been a gift from his cousin, Skylar, who’d decided that he needed a reason to get his sorry ass (her words) out of bed every morning. Bernie ensured he did that—in addition to offering company and companionship when MG wasn’t in the mood to deal with the complications that accompanied same from a human source.
The dog’s happy bark told MG that Paige Gallagher, his girlfriend of nearly three years and a physiotherapist at the clinic in town, had arrived at the ranch. Because the fact that he’d ignored her text messages and phone calls apparently wasn’t enough of a hint that he wasn’t in the mood to chat.
Through the window, he saw the silver 4Runner pull up outside the barn. Bernie, well trained by Skylar’s husband—a former Marine—waited until the engine had shut off before racing outside to greet their visitor.
MG stayed where he was, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and trying not to resent Paige’s intrusion.
He knew that he should be grateful for everything she’d done for him.
Grateful that she cared.
And he was—both grateful and resentful.
She’d been the one to find him after he’d crashed his snowmobile during a late-night ride early in January. She’d called 9-1-1 and administered first aid while she waited for the ambulance to arrive.
He would have died if she hadn’t shown up—and that wasn’t an exaggeration. It had been twenty degrees outside and his snapped left femur had broken through his skin.
He heard the soft lilt of her voice as she fussed over Bernie, could picture the huge dog rolling onto his back, inviting her to give him one of the belly rubs he loved almost as much as he loved Paige.
A few minutes later, she finally came into the barn. When she spoke to MG, there was no hint in her voice of the affection she’d shown to his canine companion.
“You missed physiotherapy this morning.”
MG continued to spread fresh straw in the stall. “Was that today?”
“You know darn well it was today,” Paige told him. “It’s been every Tuesday and Thursday for the past seven weeks.”
Which was an improvement over the three days a week that had been required for the first few months after the accident—and the reason he’d stayed with Paige at her apartment in town during that time. She would have been happy to let him stay even when his schedule was cut back to two days a week, but he’d been ready to move back to the ranch. More than ready to have his own space again.
And didn’t that tell him everything he needed to know about their relationship?
“Kenzie said we could cut my therapy back to once a week,” he hedged.
“If you continued to show improvement,” Paige reminded him.
“As you can see, I’m doing just fine.”
“Then why does your dad still have you mucking out stalls?”
“You’d have to ask him that.”
“Maybe I will.”
MG sighed. “Okay, maybe there’s some sporadic discomfort, but I’m doing much better.”
“If you want to make a complete recovery, you need to keep up with your therapy.”
“You’re right,” he acknowledged. “Please tell Kenzie that I’m sorry I missed today.”
“You can tell her yourself when you see her on Thursday.”
He tightened his grip on the rake—for control of the pain as well as his frustration. “Fine. I’ll tell her myself on Thursday.”
She nodded. “Good. Now I need to get back to work.”
“Did you really drive all the way out here just to nag me for missing an appointment?”
“If you’d responded to any of my text messages or answered any of my calls, I wouldn’t have had to make the trip.”
“When did you text? Or call?”
A smile tugged at her lips as she shook her head. “You’re a horrible liar, MG.” Then she rose onto her toes to brush her lips against his. “It’s one of your more redeeming qualities.”
“I have more than one?”
She shrugged. “Depends on the day.”
“Ouch.”
“Make sure you ice that leg when you go in,” she told him. “And don’t forget to do your exercises.”
He caught her hand as she started to move past him, forcing her to halt in midstride.
She turned to give him a questioning glance.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Her brows lifted. “What, exactly, are you apologizing for?”
“I know I’ve been difficult—or more difficult than usual—since the accident.”
“I can’t disagree with that,” she told him. “Lucky for you, I love you, anyway.”
“I am lucky,” he acknowledged, experiencing a twinge of guilt because he knew that Paige deserved a lot better man than him—but he couldn’t seem to let her go.
She responded with a smile that was warm and sincere. “I figured you’d come to that realization eventually.”
He tugged on her hand to draw her closer, then dipped his head to kiss her again. “I’ll see you Friday.”
“You mean Thursday?”
He managed a smile. “Yes, I will see you at the clinic when I’m there on Thursday, and then I will see you again on Friday—to celebrate your birthday.”
“I wasn’t sure you remembered.”
“Have I ever forgotten your birthday?”
“No,” she admitted. “But you’ve been dealing with a lot more than usual for the past eight months.”
“You shouldn’t cut me any slack for something that was my own fault.”
“It was an accident,” she said pointedly.
She was right. He certainly hadn’t intended to run into a snowbank and flip his machine, but he never should have taken a ride in the dark of night when his mind wasn’t on what he was doing.
Of course, Paige didn’t know that he’d been distracted—or why. And it would serve no purpose to tell her that he’d been thinking of another woman.
The one who got away.
The one who, according to the internet, had just gotten engaged—for the fifth time—the day of his ill-fated ride.
Whether Hope Bradford would actually walk down the aisle with her most recent fiancé had yet to be determined at that point, but the fact that she’d accepted another man’s proposal proved to MG—again—that she’d moved on with her life. Without him.
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said to Paige now.
Because—as the song said—if you couldn’t be with the one you loved, you should love the one you were with.
