Homecoming Ranch (10 page)

“I know what you thought,” Emma said, appearing in the doorway again. “You thought this would turn into a chick flick where we bond
as sisters and discover we have all these things in common and we root for each other and marry brothers and raise each other’s children. But that’s not happening, Libby.” She disappeared into the other room again.

Libby looked so wounded by what Emma had said that Madeline couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. “Libby, I’m sorry… but I don’t… I don’t think this is for me,” she said honestly. “I don’t know why a father I never knew left me anything. My hope was that we could wrap this up as soon as possible.”

“Wow,” Libby said, her effervescent smile gone. “You
just
met us. Can you take a moment to decide if you want to know us? Have you considered
why
Dad left us this place? Maybe it was his way of reaching out, of giving you sisters, Madeline. Of giving me a purpose. Of giving Emma…” she trailed off.

Emma appeared at the door again. “Go on, Libby. Give Emma what?”

Libby frowned and looked away from Emma, declining to answer.

Madeline’s head was pounding. This was not going well at all—she’d never guessed they would want to somehow make this forced partnership work.

“Here’s what I think, if anyone is interested,” Emma said, and pointed at Madeline. “I don’t care if we are friends.” She cocked a brow, almost daring Madeline to challenge it, knowing that she wouldn’t. “And I’m going back to L.A. in a couple of days.”

“But we need to make some decisions,” Madeline said.

“I don’t.” Emma disappeared into the kitchen again.

Emma, Madeline thought, was a bitch. And Libby was too… eager. But of the three of them, Madeline was the one who had no real business here at all, no ties, no feelings, no history, not like these two apparently had. She wanted only to do what had to be done and leave before Grant could mess up her life any more than he already had. He could have left everything to Libby and Emma, and Madeline would never have known, would never have been the wiser.

“Then
go,”
Libby called out to Emma, her feelings clearly hurt. “How stupid of me to think that maybe three sisters could make something of this place.
Together
.”

Madeline felt awful. She hadn’t come here to hurt anyone’s feelings. “I’m sorry, Libby. I am. But I don’t know how we can be… partners,” she said, discovering that she couldn’t even say
sisters.
“We don’t know one another. Grant must have known it would be a difficult situation for us, so I don’t know why he left it to us like this.”

“There is nothing here!” Emma shouted, and that was followed by the banging of a cabinet door. “Nothing!”

“Because he was our father,” Libby said. “Isn’t that what parents do? Don’t they leave their worldly possessions to their children? And besides, he couldn’t sell it, not with the contract.”

“The what?” Madeline asked.

“What contract?” Emma asked, appearing again with a glass of water.

“Jackson didn’t tell you? There’s a contract Dad’s heirs must honor, and we can’t do anything before we meet the terms of it.”

Madeline’s pulse began to quicken. If she’d come all this way to find out it was even more complicated and impossible…

“The Johnson family reunion,” Libby said, enunciating a little more than was necessary, looking at them both. “The contract has been signed. The deposits have been paid and applied to the event. Two hundred Johnsons are going to show up in a matter of days and they are expecting one long weekend of happy family reunion, and we have to honor that commitment.”

For some reason, Emma actually laughed. “Well if that’s not the topper on the cake.”

Madeline thought she might pass out. She preferred to know what to expect, and she did
not
expect a family reunion. “I don’t understand,” she said, and rubbed her temples against the pounding in her head.

“I can’t believe Jackson didn’t tell you. It was Mr. Kendrick’s idea, a way to make some money. He and Dad were setting this ranch up to
host family reunions. The family will camp here, and they will use the kitchen, and the showers in the bunkhouse, and they will do all the things that make Pine River so attractive in the summer, only on private property with private guides. That’s why the Port-
A
-Johns.”

Two hundred Johnsons
. And just like that, Grant Tyler had complicated Madeline’s life even more.

Emma laughed again. “He’s dead and he’s
still
a prick. God, I need a drink.”

Luke felt a surprising swell of nostalgia when he turned into the ranch’s entrance. He and little brother Leo, separated by three years, had spent their childhood in a patch of heaven. In the winter, they would ski and snowboard, or, if necessary, use trash-can lids to careen down the grassy slope behind the house. Their summers consisted of hiking, fishing, building forts, and bear tracking, the latter much to their mother’s chagrin.

When they were older, they’d joined their father in working cattle. It’s what the Kendricks did—they were, and had long been, high altitude cattle ranchers.

But the rhythm of their lives had revolved around Luke’s mother. She’d been there to feed them home-cooked meals after a hard day of play or work, to remind them to bathe when they had more important things on their mind, and to soothe the injuries, both emotional and physical, two boys tended to suffer. She kept the books for the ranch, sang in the church choir, and never missed a school event.

Dad didn’t miss one, either. Mom had been their anchor, but Dad had taught them how to be men. He taught them how to cast a fly-fishing line, how to saddle a horse, and chop wood. To build things, to breed cows, to respect women.

Maybe Luke had taken all that for granted. Maybe he’d thought that even after Mom died, when the ranch had started to look and feel different from the one of his youth, it would always be there for him. He never saw this coming, never dreamed it would all slip from their grasp. He’d always believed that one day, when Dad was gone, he’d be here, carrying on the tradition.

He’d not realized how much it would hurt to lose the ranch. It felt as if the blocks of his life were being kicked out from beneath him, one at a time.

It still looked the same as the magical place of his childhood—with the exception of the Port-
A
-Johns, and Luke was sure he didn’t want to know what that was about. He stopped just inside the gate, got out of his jeep, and walked across the meadow to the hillside. He studied the trees a moment, then walked straight for a Ponderosa pine. He pulled away the vines that had grown up onto the rocks beneath the pine, and smiled when he saw it—the fort he and Leo had built with river rocks, its entrance carefully concealed for spying. Luke had learned about the importance of proper engineering in building that fort. It had taken several tries and consultations with Dad before they got it right, but there it stood, maybe three feet by three feet, the best fort in America.

He and Leo would hide here, watching cows meander by, watching Dad and Ernest work. They brought pellet guns and shot at grouse and pheasant… until Mom found out what they were doing and took their guns away that summer. One Christmas, they’d made Dad a toolbox, and they’d hid it in here so he wouldn’t find it.

Luke re-covered the entrance with the vines. He’d always assumed that he would bring his son to this fort. Then again, he assumed his mother would be here and Leo would be healthy and Julie would be his wife.…

“
Anh,
” he muttered, silently chastising himself. There was no point in reliving that heartache again.

He drove on to the house, bouncing over the little bridge Dad and Ernest had built over the mountain stream that ran through their property. The stream eventually widened and met up with Pine River, where they used to shoot the rapids.

As he pulled into the drive, Luke noticed things were looking a little worn, a little weathered. Repairs to the place had begun to suffer when his mother had gotten sick, but what he saw was nothing that he couldn’t fix up in a couple of weeks. He would do that, Luke thought. He would fix things for Dad. He would make some wheelchair-accessible entries—there was only one at present, in the back of the house—maybe modify one of the rooms downstairs for his little brother so he wasn’t living twenty-four-seven in the den. On the weekends, he could come up here and turn this into a home again.

Luke was used to seeing Dad’s old pickup and Mom’s Pontiac in the drive and was not used to seeing strange cars parked there. Mom’s Pontiac was a beast of a car that could have ascended Pikes Peak. It still ran. It was in the garage, gathering a new layer of dust. The cars in the drive were the cars of strangers, of people who had slipped in and stolen his childhood right out from under him.

That little car with the donut spare in particular made him irrationally crazy. It was front and center, the car of the woman with long dark hair and blue eyes and a yellow highlighter. A woman who wore Dr. Scholl’s inserts and suite to the mountains. She was definitely cute. And definitely quirky. And she was now, officially, on his shit list.

Luke pulled around, sliding into a spot beneath a canopy beside the garage. By the time he’d gotten out of his Bronco and returned to the drive, Libby Tyler had walked out onto the porch as if she owned the place.

She was another one on his list.

He had known Libby most of his life—or known of her. She was younger than him, Leo’s age. Luke guessed everyone in town knew that she’d broken up with Ryan Spangler and then shortly after that lost her job at the sheriff’s department. Leo said there was some trouble with Ryan after they broke up, although he didn’t know what. But never mind all that. Libby Tyler was in his house. Not
her
house. His.

“Luke?” she said, her voice full of surprise as he walked toward the house. “Wow! It’s been ages since I last saw you!” She smiled and extended her hand. “How
are
you? How’s Leo?”

“We’re all doing great, thanks,” he said. He held her hand a long moment, looking into her eyes for any flicker of understanding, any recognition of what her father had done to his. He saw none.

“What brings you out?” she asked cheerfully, conveniently forgetting, perhaps, that this had been his home. Maybe that helped her to settle in.

“A little unfinished business.”

She looked confused by that. “Jackson didn’t mention anything.”

“No?” Luke said as amicably as he could.

The screen door banged; Libby jumped a little as a woman with long blond hair and brown boots sauntered out onto the porch. She was as pretty as Libby was cute, sultry where Libby was fresh. But there was a resemblance between them, around the eyes. The third heir, he supposed.

“Well hello,” she said, eyeing him, a hint of a smile on her face.

“Luke, this is my sister, Emma Tyler,” Libby said, and to Emma, “This is Luke Kendrick. He and his brother, Leo, used to live here. I went to school with Leo.”

Emma’s smile deepened. “Hello, Luke Kendrick.”

Luke knew women like Emma—she was the type to know exactly what affect she had on men and how to use that to her advantage. But he wasn’t biting. “Hello,” he said.

Emma deliberately flicked her gaze over the length of him, but Luke was distracted. Behind her, Blue Eyes walked out onto the porch in her conservative suit, her hair clipped to the back of her head. She was staring at him, clearly trying to work out why he was here. “It’s
you
.”

Luke smiled. “It’s me.”

“You guys know each other?” Libby asked incredulously.

“No!” she said quickly, firmly. But she was blushing and her fingers fluttered nervously around that little
M
at her throat.

“We met only briefly,” Luke said. “Up on Sometimes Pass. I changed her tire.”

Madeline’s blue eyes were fixed on Luke, and she pointed in the general direction of her car and, presumably, the spare. “It was a nail.
Construction site.” She cocked her head to one side to peer at him. “Why are you here, again?”

“Yeah, why?” Emma echoed curiously.

“Jackson Crane invited me. Is he around?”

“He’s late,” Libby said. “No, wait—there he is.”

The four of them turned around to see a four-wheel drive F-250 truck barreling up the road. It slid into the drive and Jackson hopped out, all smiles. He’d changed clothes since Luke had last seen him, preferring hiking boots and cargo pants for the trip out to the ranch.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said to them all, and held up a six-pack of diet coke and a bag of potato chips. “I brought snacks.”

The four of them stared in disbelief at Jackson.

Jackson grinned, unfazed by them. “So, did you gals—and Luke,” he amended with a nod, “have a chance to get acquainted?”

Luke wanted to kick him. With the point of his boots, right between the eyes. It wasn’t as if they’d signed up for a class, here—they had some serious issues to address.

“Jackson, what is going on?” Libby asked.

“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, and I’ll answer them all, I promise. So what do you think, Madeline?” Jackson asked breezily. “Not as bad as you thought, right?”

The other two women jerked their gazes to Madeline, who looked startled. “What? I didn’t think it was
bad,
” she tried, but looked as if she were about to twist right out of her shoes.

“Hmm. From the look of things, you guys didn’t get at as acquainted as I’d hoped,” Jackson said, as if they’d somehow failed him. “No worries! Let’s go sit at one of the picnic tables and discuss a few things.” He began striding across the lawn.

Emma looked at Libby, then followed Jackson to the west lawn. Libby was close on her heels.

Madeline looked at Luke. “This is weird,” she said.

“Tell me about it.” Luke gestured for her to precede him. Madeline hesitated, but then reluctantly began to walk.

Jackson had chosen the longest picnic table, one that Luke’s grandfather had built. Perhaps he wanted to make sure there was plenty of distance between everyone in case the fists actually began to fly. He passed out cans of warm Diet Coke, opened the bag of chips, and tossed them to the middle of the picnic table. The only person Luke knew who would be comfortable with such an approach to serious business was Leo.