The Heart of a Rancher
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Trish Milburn
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CHAPTER ONE
IVY LAKE ENTERED the small ballroom and immediately spotted James on the other side talking to their boss and his wife. Ivy took a moment to appreciate the scene. Friends, family and colleagues were gathered at one of the company’s hotels to celebrate her engagement to James. Since the hotel had an art deco design, they’d decided to have fun with their party and go with a 1920s theme. Black and gold Gatsby-esque decorations covered the white tablecloths, and lively jazz music filled the air. She was even wearing a flapper dress, a crystal-covered headband and Mary Jane pumps.
James looked dapper in his suit, and it hit her anew just how lucky she was to have a successful career, good friends and a handsome fiancé.
With a smile for the people she passed, she headed straight for him.
“Don’t you look beautiful,” Mrs. Sterling said as Ivy approached.
“Indeed she does.” Mr. Sterling, who had built up an impressive collection of themed boutique hotels beginning here in Louisville and expanding to several other cities, gave James a friendly pat on the arm. “You’re a lucky man.”
“I am indeed.”
“Is that right?”
They all turned to see a woman Ivy didn’t recognize. In fact, there were two unidentified women, and neither of them looked happy. Ivy started to ask if there was a problem, if perhaps they were disgruntled hotel customers, but she stopped when she saw the look on James’s face. It had drained of anything remotely resembling color, and shock wasn’t too strong a word to describe his expression.
“James? What’s wrong?”
“I’ll tell you what’s wrong,” the second woman said with a smirk. “We just ruined his plans.”
Ivy shifted her gaze to the woman. “I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t,” she said. “He’s pretty good at hiding all his girlfriends from each other.”
“But not good enough,” the other woman said.
Ivy wanted to push the two women out of the ballroom, to clear up whatever lies they were telling, away from the eyes and ears of Mr. and Mrs. Sterling and all the other guests, but that would likely draw even more attention.
“What’s going on, James?” Ivy asked instead.
“I can explain.”
Those three words sent a chill through her body. It was such a cliché coming from a man caught cheating that Ivy almost laughed.
No, this couldn’t be happening. She refused to believe it.
“Why are you doing this?” she asked the women.
The sympathetic looks on their faces were almost worse than if they were hostile toward her, as if she was the one stealing their man. Instead, they pitied her. The woman who had spoken first, a cute blonde, extended her phone. On it was a photo of her and James at the Kentucky Derby, which had taken place only two weeks ago. She could tell it was recent because third-place finisher Sunrise on Sunday was clearly visible in the background.
Then the other woman, who was more voluptuous and had long, black hair, presented her Instagram feed filled with photos of her in a skimpy bikini and James in swim trunks. It was obvious they were vacationing in some tropical locale.
One photo stood out, and Ivy grabbed the phone to enlarge it. Sure enough, it was taken on Valentine’s Day.
She slowly looked at James and pointed at the photo.
“You said you went to visit your mother that weekend because she’d fallen. This does not look like your mother or Wisconsin.”
“I can explain,” he said again, as if he had no other words.
White-hot shame washed over Ivy as she handed back the phone.
“Somehow, I don’t think you can.”
Feeling as if she might actually pass out or die of embarrassment, Ivy turned her back on James and headed toward the exit. Air, she needed air. The ballroom felt smaller with each step she took, as if the walls and ceiling were closing in around her. The murmur of voices was like the buzzing of bees in her head.
Suddenly, her sisters, Lily and Holly, were next to her.
“Ivy, what’s wrong? You’re as white as that tablecloth,” Holly said, pointing at one of the tables set with beautiful china and crystal goblets.
“The engagement is off.” Ivy could barely get the words out.
“Off? Why?”
“He cheated on me. With two different people.” If not more. That idea horrified her, but if there were two, logically it could be more than that. She suddenly wondered how he had the time. And why he’d bother getting engaged and eventually married. It wasn’t as if he was marrying into a fabulously wealthy family.
Without any further questions, her sisters ushered her out of the ballroom and then out of the hotel.
Right out of her engagement.
IVY SHOVED ANOTHER spoonful of chocolate ice cream into her mouth, not caring that she’d probably gained five pounds over the past couple of days. Why did it matter? She no longer had to fit into her wedding dress.
If there was one thing to be thankful for, it was that she’d accumulated a lot of days off and had decided to take them all at once. Maybe by the time she’d exhausted them she’d have enough courage to face her coworkers again.
But right now, the thought of having to see James made her physically ill. He hadn’t called, hadn’t even tried to keep her from leaving the hotel after the truth bomb had landed. Either he didn’t care about her enough or he knew there was no way to talk himself out of the Grand Canyon–sized hole he’d dug for himself. The fact that it was likely both had led to her losing count of how many pints of ice cream she’d eaten.
A mirthless laugh escaped her. Not only had James’s response been a cliché, but now she was living one. How many movies had she seen where the heartbroken woman drowned her sorrows in ice cream?
That thought propelled her to the kitchen, where she tossed what little was left of the ice cream in the sink and washed it down. Even when it was gone, she stared at the stream of water coming out of the faucet until she heard her mother’s voice in her head telling her to stop wasting it. She shut off the tap and returned to the couch. Her apartment seemed quieter than ever now that she’d convinced her sisters and mom that she was fine and they should return home to Lexington. They’d tried arguing that they didn’t want to leave her by herself, that she should come with them, but she’d declined.
In all honesty, she’d sent them on their way because she’d been on the verge of cracking. She’d needed to be alone to cry her heart out, to punch things, to send all the pictures of James through her paper shredder. She hadn’t wanted an audience for any of that.
But with all those things done, now what? How in the world was she going to go to work every day and see the man who’d cheated on her and with everyone knowing it? She felt like the biggest of fools. If there was a major award for being an idiot, she’d have it on lock.
When nothing on TV caught her attention, she resorted to scrolling through social media. She’d already removed James and hidden his family members. It wasn’t their fault he’d done what he had, but she also didn’t want to see their posts. She’d probably end up removing them as well, but it felt wrong to do so now, as if she would be punishing them by association.
She watched kitty videos, read random posts about household cleaning hacks and urban gardening, got sucked into watching tours of tiny houses, colored a few pictures in her coloring app that appeared under the label “Zen.” Unfortunately, she still didn’t feel very Zen after she finished.
As she scrolled away from a video about a woman who lived in a converted grain silo, something caught her eye.
Click here for a chance to win a historic building in beautiful Wyoming.
With nothing better to do, she clicked.
The more she read, the more excited she got. The building was so cool. And the little town it was in looked charming. Her mind started racing with possibilities until it stopped on the perfect one. She could already imagine the building filled with handmade quilts, beautiful fabrics, endless baskets of yarn and sewing supplies. The dream her grandma Cecile had long had about opening her own quilt and fabric store settled in Ivy’s brain as if it had been hers all along. Grandma Cecile had never realized her dream, but Ivy could do it for her.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she wrote the required paragraph about why she wanted to win and paid the fifty dollars to enter the contest. Maybe she was being a fool again, but she was pretty sure she’d already eaten that amount in ice cream and chips. At least if she was making another mistake, no one was around to witness it. But a chance at a fresh start far away from her cheating ex sounded way better for her peace of mind—and her waistline—than continuing to eat boatloads of self-pity food. If nothing else, it would be fun to daydream of the possible rather than remember what she’d lost.
IVY WOKE WITH a painful crick in her neck. She guessed that’s what she got for falling asleep on the couch watching TV instead of actually dragging herself to bed. She rolled onto her back and grabbed her phone to check the time. A little number one next to her email icon drew her attention. She considered ignoring it, but what else did she have to do?
Congratulations! You have been chosen as the winner of the Stinson Historic Building Giveaway.
Ivy sat up so fast her head swam. She really should eat something remotely healthy. Protein would be good.
She scrolled through the message, then read it a second time. Alarm bells threatened to ring. Despite the research she’d done the night before, was this really just a scam? How had they chosen a winner so quickly? Was there something obvious she’d overlooked and, because of that, she was the only entrant? But the law firm handling the giveaway and transfer of the property was a real one in Casper. Jade Valley was a real town, and she’d found an article about the Stinson Building’s past as the town’s first grocery store. She’d tried finding a street view, but Jade Valley was one of those small towns that evidently hadn’t received such a drive-through yet. Nothing in town had a street view online.
Still, she called the number in the email and paced as she talked to a woman at the law firm who told her that the owner had been reading the entries as they came in so that it didn’t take long to pick a winner.
“He connected with your desire to start over, because that’s what he’s doing,” the woman said.
Just to be sure, Ivy contacted the county government and found out that if she accepted the property, it would be hers free and clear of any debt or liens.
She stood in the middle of her living room, stunned at the turn of events. She’d seen that contest notice literally an hour before the deadline. And she’d encountered it right when the idea of a fresh start somewhere else seemed like the perfect solution to her current situation.
She squealed and did a little excited dance.
Her friends and family might think she’d lost it, but she was moving to Wyoming!
AS SOON AS Austin Hathaway walked in the front door of his house, he heard his mother sneeze. He followed the sound to the kitchen and found her pulling a bowl of soup out of the microwave sitting on the rolling cart so she could reach it from her wheelchair.
“Are you sick?” he asked. “Do you need to go to the doctor?”
Sure, they had a stack of doctor bills that rivaled the tallest peaks in the Rockies, but he wasn’t about to let his mother fall ill and not give her proper care either.
She shook her head as he took the bowl and placed it on the table for her.
“I’m fine. Just a bit of the cold since it’s been damp.”
Damp was an understatement. They’d had an abnormal amount of rain for May, more than twice the typical average. His muddy boots sitting on the front porch were proof of that. But ranch work didn’t wait until it was sunny and dry. And there was always work.
“Are you sure? Because—”
“I said I’m fine.” She sounded a mixture of tired and irritated.
It was strange how the irritation was actually a good sign. He knew his mother was depressed a lot, even if she did her best to hide it from him and his younger sister, Daisy. While it was understandable why she felt that way, he nevertheless felt helpless in the face of it. How did you help someone get over losing both her second husband and the use of her legs at the same time? It didn’t matter that the loss of both had happened more than a year ago. They were still gone and always would be.
Deciding not to push her anymore, he didn’t ask anything else.
“I’m going to take a shower.” Between cleaning out a barn stall, replacing a couple of rotting fence posts and cutting up a tree that had fallen over the driveway when it uprooted from the wet soil, he’d gotten quite sweaty and dirty.
He was halfway down the hallway when he’d swear he heard his mother murmur that she was sorry. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard those words, but he always hated them. His mother used to be so active, first helping out on this ranch when she was married to his dad and later working with her second husband, Sam, in running his river rafting business. It didn’t take a high IQ to figure out that she now felt like a burden, both physically and financially. And though the financial burden weighed him down like a stack of anvils on his shoulders, he would not let her or Daisy see that. They’d been through too much already. All he wanted to do was make their lives easier.
But that was difficult on what money ranching brought in, especially when it felt as if things kept breaking around the place. Fence posts, a tractor tire, the starter on his truck. Then there was the unexpected jump in the property taxes. That was why he took every extra job he could while still being able to keep the ranch afloat. He would keep this home for his family if it was the last thing he did.
He stayed in the shower longer than he should, but the hot water felt good and he was honestly too tired to move. But he finally did because he still had to go pick up Daisy from school. Her geography club, all three members, were meeting with their sponsor, Sunny Wheeler, to plan some projects for the summer and the next school year. Sunny had traveled the world with the job she had before moving back to Jade Valley, and Daisy loved hearing about all the places she’d been.
Daisy was typically a shy, quiet girl, but her eyes lit up and she talked more when she learned about a new place or bit of culture that she wanted to share. Even as a toddler, she was entranced any time there was a travel, history or nature documentary on TV. He knew she wanted to travel, and he hoped that whatever path she chose in life would allow her to do so. Yet something else he couldn’t provide for her.
When he pulled up outside the school thirty minutes later, Daisy was waiting for him.
“Did you have a good meeting?” he asked.
“Yeah. We’re going to focus on Antarctica over the summer and then cover various parts of Asia next year.”
“Sounds interesting.” Those places seemed like they existed in another universe to him. The farthest away he’d been was Seattle once to go to a baseball game with a group of friends. None of them had much money, so they’d pooled their resources and six of them had shared one hotel room. But it was still one of the most fun times he’d ever had.
“I also won the end-of-year prize for doing the most projects.” She held up a certificate and an envelope. She tapped the latter. “I got fifty dollars. Can we stop at Trudy’s?”
“Sure.”
If she wanted a piece of pie or a milkshake to celebrate her hard work, she deserved it. But when they stepped up to Trudy’s front counter, Daisy ordered not only one but two full meals then looked at him.
“Order whatever you want.”
“I’m okay.” She didn’t need to be spending her money on him. It was supposed to work the other way around. She wasn’t his child, but he was still in charge of keeping her safe, fed and clothed until she reached adulthood in four years.
“Please.”
The tone of that plea, however, had him ordering a pork chop with sides. Daisy might be on the shy side, but she possessed that same stubborn determination to not be a burden that their mother did. He wished he could make them understand that he didn’t see either of them as a burden. They were the only family he had, and he’d almost lost his mother.
“You’re kidding.” He glanced over and saw Jonathon Breckinridge, Sunny Wheeler’s dad, chatting with a couple of his buddies. “I’m surprised anybody took that bait.”
Trudy stepped up to the counter in front of Austin with the bag containing the desserts and bread that went with Daisy’s order. She nodded toward the older men.
“You heard about what has everyone talking?”
“No. My cows aren’t big on gossip.”
Trudy chuckled. “They’re probably smarter than we are. But this is actually interesting. There’s a new owner of the Stinson Building.”
“Really? Someone finally bought it?” John Young had been trying to unload that building for probably ten years.
“Not exactly. Seems John ran a contest online where people could enter for a chance to win it for fifty dollars.”
Okay, so the building needed a lot of work, but a fifty-dollar price tag seemed like a steal. Whoever bought it could get enough salvage out of it to make that back and more. Or maybe they could afford to fix it up and flip it, sell it to someone with money to burn.
“Evidently there are a lot of people out there who want an old building,” Trudy said, “because John made out like a bandit and is moving to one of those fancy retirement communities in Arizona.”
“Maybe I should raffle off my barn,” Austin said. “Then I could afford to build a new one.”
Not to mention pay off all the debt, reminders of which arrived in his mailbox almost daily.
“You know,” Trudy said, leaning in closer so others couldn’t hear. “If whoever won that building wants to try fixing it up, they’re going to need help. I can give them your name and number.”
His heart skipped a beat at the idea of how much work that would be, how much income it might bring if the person didn’t just hire a contractor to handle it.
“I would really appreciate that. You’re the best.”
Trudy waved away the compliment. “I’d be doing whoever the new owner is a favor. You’re a good worker. I think I could tap dance on the new steps you built at the house and they wouldn’t budge.”
“You should have replaced those shaky steps ages ago.”
“I know, I know. Just always too busy to think about stuff like that.”
“You have to take care of yourself.” He saw in her eyes that she knew he was thinking of his mom, so he decided to lighten the mood. “You don’t want to give Alma an opportunity to snatch all your business.”
The two older women, who had competing cafés directly across from each other on Main Street, had some sort of long-standing feud. The cause was a mystery that kept everyone in the county guessing. But neither Trudy nor Alma ever spilled the truth.
Trudy huffed. “Not darn likely.”
Even Daisy laughed a little at that response.
Once he and Daisy were back in the truck that was now filled with the delicious smells of Trudy’s cooking, he glanced over at his sister, who was sneaking a french fry.
“Go ahead and eat them while they’re hot.”
“I’ll wait.”
“I wish you had saved that money for something you wanted.”
“This is what I wanted.”
Just as he hadn’t pressed his mother earlier, he let the topic go with Daisy. She had a few years before she was an adult, but she wasn’t a little kid anymore either. And she was more mature than a lot of fourteen-year-olds, but then tragedy tended to make you grow up quick. He knew that from experience, having gone through losing his father as well.
He forced his thoughts away from the sadness of the past. It did no good to dwell. Instead, he allowed a little hope to flicker to life. If he could get a long-term renovation job and no more unexpected expenses popped up, he could start to chip away more significant chunks of debt. While Daisy dreamed of traveling the world, he had simpler dreams.
He wanted to make sure his mom and sister were always safe, had a roof over their heads and never had to go without necessities. He wanted to find a way to make them happy.
And he wanted to breathe that first breath of debt-free air so much he could taste it.
