A Rancher's Promise
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Lisa Childs
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23
CHAPTER ONE
SHE CAME TO the funeral. While she hadn’t spoken to him, he’d caught a glimpse of her at the back of the church—as he’d carried out his brother’s casket. Her red hair had shimmered in the light streaming through the stained glass windows, and her green eyes had sparkled with a sheen of tears.
He wasn’t surprised she’d shown up since it seemed like everyone in Willow Creek had attended the double funeral. Even his brother Dusty had briefly left the rodeo circuit to be here. But the rodeo star hadn’t stayed. He’d cut out before the luncheon. Not that anyone had really expected him to stick around.
Was she staying?
Maybe. She’d already been back in town a year. But she’d been gone for eleven years before her return. In the year that she’d been back, Jake hadn’t seen much of her. That hadn’t exactly been an accident on his part, though.
And maybe not on hers either.
Things hadn’t ended well between them. That was why he was surprised she’d shown, especially since Jake hadn’t attended his funeral. Her husband’s.
Because her parents lived in town, other people had known about his death, but Jake had always made it a point to tune out all news of Katie, like her engagement announcement and her wedding.
Jake hadn’t even known she’d had a son until she returned to Willow Creek with him. With her son.
With his son.
The little boy looked exactly like the man Jake had seen Katie with that evening so long ago, but the child was probably only four or five, the same age as one of Jake’s nephews.
Now orphans.
He needed to focus on them now. Not her.
He’d already spent too much of the past twelve years thinking about her.
Fingers snapped in front of his face. Since his grandmother’s hands were arthritic from all the years she’d worked the family ranch, he was surprised she could still snap.
“What’s the matter with you?” she asked, her voice strong and steady despite her age and her grief. She was steadfast despite all the tragedies she’d suffered in her eighty years of life.
He jumped up from his chair at an empty table and realized that the room had cleared out. Everyone had filed into the large community room at the church—with its white walls, tall windows and thin commercial carpeting—after the funeral. Except for Dusty, who’d left after he’d helped carry his twin’s casket out of the church. How much time had passed since then?
He blinked and peered around, feeling like he was just waking from a dream. Or a nightmare.
This was definitely a nightmare: burying his younger brother, who was also his business partner at the ranch, as well as his lovely sister-in-law. Sweet Jenny. At least they were together, just as they had always been.
He needed to focus on their children now. He needed to be like his grandmother: strong and steady. For them.
Now, panic gripping him, he frantically scanned the empty room. “Where are they?” He was already failing as their guardian—since he didn’t even know where they were.
“Everyone’s gone,” she said.
“The boys,” he said, as his panic turned to fear. “Where are the boys? Who took them?”
He was the oldest—besides his grandmother—so he was the most responsible for them. Or he should have been.
Dale and Jenny had trusted him.
“Ben and Baker took them back to the ranch,” she said.
Ben was the second oldest, but even though he was the mayor of Willow Creek, he wasn’t as responsible as Jake was. And Baker was the baby.
Baker was also twenty-eight and a firefighter, though. His nephews were safe. They were fine. Or they would be if Jake could figure out how to help them.
First he had to figure out how to help himself. Losing Dale was more than losing his brother; it was like losing his right arm. And Jake was right-handed.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Grandma,” he admitted. “I know I need to get it together for the boys. For Miller and Ian and—” his voice cracked as emotion choked him “—Little Jake...”
The baby was named after him. After Big Jake.
His grandfather had always been Big Jake, but he’d died twelve years ago. With his big, broad body and his big, boisterous laugh, Big Jake had always been larger than life, like the widow-maker heart attack that had claimed his life.
Jake hadn’t become Big Jake then, not until Little Jake had been born a little over two years ago. But Jake didn’t feel so big right now as burdens weighed down on him, bowing his shoulders. He hadn’t been this devastated since he’d lost Katie.
KATIE SHOULDN’T HAVE gone to the funeral. It had been a mistake. A big one.
And not just for her but for her son too.
“Caleb, are you okay?” Katie O’Brien-Morris asked her little boy, her heart aching for his loss. A year had passed since his father’s funeral, but she was worried that attending the funeral today had brought back that nightmare for him just as it had for her.
He tipped his chin back and peered at her through a lock of blond hair hanging over his eyes. And a twinge of pain struck her heart. He looked so much like Matt—so much so that his paternal grandparents had said they couldn’t see him anymore because he was too painful a reminder of the beloved son they’d lost.
And so Katie had moved away from Chicago, back home to Willow Creek, Wyoming, even though it was the last place she’d wanted to be. But her parents would never leave the small town where they’d grown up and where they’d married and raised her in this pale blue Victorian on Main Street. She’d wanted her son to have more family in his life than just her, so she’d forced herself to return.
Even though she’d been back a year, she was still living with her parents. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to buy or even rent a house. A house seemed too much for just her and Caleb, and too much maintenance for her to handle alone while running her accounting business. Back home in Chicago, Matt had handled all the household chores.
She and Caleb sat at the small table in the breakfast nook of the kitchen, with the only sound being the murmur of her parents’ voices from the living room.
Her son had yet to answer her.
“Caleb?” she asked, with even more concern and self-recrimination that she’d brought him to the funeral.
“How come Jake doesn’t talk?”
Katie gasped with shock that her son even knew the man’s name. “What—Why do you ask that?” How did Caleb know about Jake Haven? What had he heard?
Did he know about them? Because Willow Creek was a small town, there wasn’t ever much going on, so people tended to gossip about the past.
Caleb’s little brow furrowed beneath that lock of blond hair. “Because he doesn’t talk anymore,” he said, as if she was stupid for not understanding his question.
She hadn’t seen Jake speak to anyone at the funeral. Not that she’d been watching him or anything...
But anytime she had inadvertently glanced his way, the dark-haired cowboy had been sitting alone and silent. With all the mourners—the entire town turned out for the funeral—no one had approached him.
She certainly hadn’t. But why had no one else? Because they’d known they would be met with silence?
How did her son know that?
“When...when did you meet Jake?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine where their paths might have crossed before, and during the funeral, she’d been so worried about bringing up sad memories for Caleb that she hadn’t let him out of her sight.
Caleb seemed unconcerned about the past. All his concern was for Jake. “I’ve known him for a while.”
Jake hadn’t reached out to her since she’d come back, not even to offer condolences, so she wasn’t thrilled that he’d talked to her son without her knowledge. Her voice a little sharper, she asked, “Where did you meet Jake?”
“At school,” he replied.
“He was at school?”
“He’s not going to school yet. He just came with his mom once to drop off something for Ian.”
She furrowed her brow now, with confusion. Jake’s mom had been gone a long time. Not dead. Just gone...
“Jake?” she asked again. “What Jake are you talking about?”
“Jake Haven,” he said with a weary sigh. Apparently he was growing tired of this conversation. But he continued, “He used to talk all the time when his mom would bring him into the classroom. Well, not really talk but like blabber and blow bubbles and stuff, but he was totally quiet in church. Like totally quiet.”
The baby.
She felt a flash of guilt that she’d forgotten the baby had been named Jake, after his uncle Jake. Dale and Jenny had been close to Dale’s oldest brother and had talked about him often, too often for Katie, so she’d had to tune out some of those conversations. She would have listened raptly to them now if only that were possible. But they were gone, just like so many other people in Jake’s life. She squelched the urge to pity him, knowing he would hate that.
“And Ian was acting weird,” Caleb continued. “Like he kept repeating the same things over and over, kept asking me the same stuff over and over.”
Ian was Caleb’s age—five years old. He and Caleb were in the same kindergarten class...or they had been until the car accident had happened a couple weeks ago, just as the family had been setting off on a spring break road trip. Dale and Jenny had died instantly, while the boys had been in the hospital. All but the baby, Jake. He’d survived unscathed, or so she’d thought.
Apparently he’d stopped talking.
She knew about Ian, though. “His head got hurt in the car accident. He has what’s called a concussion,” she explained. “That’s why he’s having problems remembering things.”
“He knew who I was,” Caleb insisted.
“He remembers things that happened longer ago,” she said. “But he forgets the things that just happened.”
The oldest boy, Miller, was still in the hospital recovering from the surgeries to fix his broken bones. Katie’s heart ached over the loss of Dale and Jenny and over all their poor children had endured. Even more than her son had.
Caleb must have come to the same realization because he murmured, “I guess it’s even worse if you lose both your mom and dad, huh? I didn’t quit talking or lose my memory when Daddy died. I just got really sad, like you did.”
As she thought of how much they’d lost when Matt died, tears stung Katie’s eyes. He’d been a loving, involved father, a super-supportive husband, her best friend...
Caleb’s breath caught and he anxiously said, “Don’t cry, Mommy. Please don’t cry.”
She quickly blinked away her tears and shook her head. “I’m not crying,” she promised. “I’m just emotional because I’m so proud of you. I thought today might be hard for you, but you were so brave and so good.” The tears threatened again, but she furiously fluttered her lashes and willed them away.
Just like his father, Caleb hated when she cried. Unfortunately she’d done too much of it over the past year. Not all the tears had been because of grief, though. Some had been because of guilt that Matt hadn’t been her first and only love, like she’d been his.
That was why she’d avoided Jake Haven and why she wanted to go on avoiding Jake Haven for the rest of her life, which wasn’t going to be easy now that she’d settled back in Willow Creek. Fortunately his family’s ranch was far from town.
“Katie,” her mother called out from the living room. “There’s a vehicle pulling into the driveway.”
“Must be for you,” Katie called back. “I’m not expecting anyone.”
“No, it’s for you,” her father chimed in with his deep voice.
She slid off the breakfast nook bench and headed through the archway toward the living room. “Why do you think that?” she asked.
“Because it’s a vehicle from Ranch Haven.”
No. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be.
He hadn’t talked to her once since she’d returned to Willow Creek. He hadn’t even called or sent a card to acknowledge Matt’s death. Not that she’d expected anything from him. Not anymore. Not ever again.
But who else could it be?
The only other people from Ranch Haven with whom she’d had any contact had been buried today.
THIS HAS TO WORK. And not just for her sake but for his. Sadie Haven had seen her grandson suffer many tragedies in the past—too many for such a young man. Jake was only thirty-two. He’d just hit his teens when he’d lost his father—her son Michael—in a terrible ranch accident. At least Darlene, Michael’s wife, hadn’t died with him like Jenny had died with Dale. Yet Darlene was dead to her family all the same—because she’d walked out on her young sons right after their father’s funeral. They’d managed just fine without her, but Sadie had been a younger woman back then. A stronger woman.
Then twelve years ago they had lost her beloved, Jake Sr., or Big Jake, as he’d been called. Her grandson was called that now—to differentiate him from his nephew, Little Jake.
Tears pooled in Sadie’s eyes, but she blinked them away and focused on the bright purple door in front of her. She’d knocked a moment ago, after she’d climbed out of her truck, but nobody had answered it.
Vehicles were in the driveway of the pale blue Victorian. Lights glowed through the leaded glass windows.
She raised her hand, curled her achy fingers into a fist and knocked again. This time the door opened, or maybe her fist had propelled it open because nobody stood in the doorway.
“Who are you?” a young voice asked.
She lowered her gaze to the little boy standing before her. “Oh,” she murmured. “I didn’t see you there.” She’d only seen a couple pictures of his father. First the engagement photograph the O’Briens had run in the local paper and then later the wedding announcement, but it was clear the boy favored his father with his golden hair and bright blue eyes. “Aren’t you a handsome young man!” Sadie exclaimed.
“Am I?” he asked with surprise.
She chuckled. “Oh, you’ll know soon enough when you’re beating off the girls with a stick.”
“Mommy says I can’t hit girls,” he said.
“I said you shouldn’t hit anyone,” Katie corrected her son as she joined them at the door. She might have been standing behind it the whole time.
“But I only wanna hit girls,” the little boy told his mother.
Katie’s face flushed nearly as red as her hair. “Caleb,” she said, the scolding evident in just the change in tone of her soft voice. She didn’t need to say any more.
Just use that tone.
Just as Sadie always had.
She hadn’t had to yell or threaten. Just use what the boys had termed her scary voice. Sadie chuckled.
Katie stepped back and pulled the door open wider. “I’m sorry to leave you standing on the porch,” she said. “Please come in.”
Good manners. The girl had always had them. But for just a moment she must have forgotten when she hadn’t answered the first knock. Unless she’d been busy elsewhere in the house.
Sadie stepped inside now, joining Katie in the small foyer. She glanced around and realized that someone must have seen the truck pull up. Someone, or two people, must have been sitting in that front parlor that overlooked the drive. A cup of tea, steam rising yet from the surface, sat on a spindly end table next to a needlepoint project while a paper lay crumpled on the couch. If Katie’s parents had been in the parlor, they must have left in a hurry, but she didn’t see any sign of them now aside from the things they’d left behind.
Instead of being offended, Sadie smiled. She wanted to have this conversation with Katie alone. But the little boy hadn’t left. His mother’s scolding had sent him a few steps back from her, but he peered around her, through his hair, at Sadie. He was curious about her.
“Never seen anyone as old as me?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “Mr. Lemmon is way older.”
She chuckled with delight. Mr. Lemmon was the former mayor, now the deputy mayor, to her grandson Ben. “You’re right. He is way older.” Like three whole months. They’d gone to school together back when the entire K through 12 grades had been in one building. An old redbrick schoolhouse with a steeple and a bell.
Sadie emitted a soft sigh of wistfulness for the simplicity of the past. Not much had ever been simple about her life, not once she’d met Jake Haven and he’d lured her out of the comforts of town to his family ranch. Would she be able to do the same now? Would she be able to lure Katie out there?
Maybe it was better that she didn’t have this conversation alone with the young woman. Maybe it was better that the little boy was present too.
Because she’d never met a child who hadn’t fallen in love with the ranch—with the horses and the cattle and the barn cats and all that wide-open space to run and fight and holler. All the kids she knew loved it. Even Baker.
He claimed he didn’t like it, but she knew that had nothing to do with the place and everything to do with the people. Not the people living there. The dead, and the ones who hadn’t been able to stay.
Like Dusty.
But Dusty would come back. Ranch Haven was in his blood; he just needed to find that out for himself. He wasn’t going to find what else he was looking for, though—what he’d left the funeral in such a hurry to find.
He wasn’t going to because Sadie already had. She’d found everything her grandsons and great-grandsons needed. And she was going to make sure they got it—even if she had to do a little bit of manipulating here and there to ensure that everything worked out how she wanted it.
No.
How it was meant to work out.
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