cast a suspicious look at his plate. The cinnamon and chocolate couldn’t disguise the fact that the cake was just plain awful. He wanted to spit the mouthful in the trash can next to his desk. But Merlita’s dark eyes were throwing off sparks now, and he didn’t dare.
Again he looked to his father for help. Pa had taken a small bite from his own dish. Cody could see he was having trouble swallowing.
“It’s…uh…a little different from your usual, isn’t it?” Cody ventured.
“Sí.”
“Trying a new recipe?” his father asked when he finally appeared to get his tongue under control.
“No,” Merlita said, looking indignant. “Emperor Maximilian ate my great-great-great grandmother’s cake in the Spanish court of kings. I do not change her recipe. But how you like it?”
“Might be a tad overcooked,” Cody suggested, clearing his throat and wishing he had something to wash the taste out of his mouth. “Or maybe the mixing bowl didn’t get cleaned well enough. Some soap-suds—”
“Tu eres loco? I don’t cook in dirty bowls!” Merlita exclaimed in horrified tones. She waved away his words with a broad sweep of the hand that held the paring knife. “It’s the salt. Dos. Two cups.”
“Oh.” Cody and Walter exchanged looks. Neither of them had a clue what went into the making of Mexican cake. Or what to say now. Cody settled on evasion. “Seems like a lot of salt.”
“That’s because it should be sugar. Someone switches the labels on the jars in my cupboard. A funny joker with yellow hair.”
“Oh. I see.” Cody straightened, suddenly understanding. He set the plate down on the only exposed corner of his desktop. Sarah! He should have known. Wasn’t it always Sarah these days? “Lita, darlin’, I—”
“You promised, jefe,” Merlita reminded him, making her point with the tip of the knife. “No more, you say. You say you straighten her out but good. You are el jefe grande around here, but you are not a man of your word.”
“I did talk to her. But I’ll talk to her again—”
“You do more than talk now. This is times three she makes jokes on me. The rubber bug in my guacamole. The bubbling soap pouring out of my washing machine. I can take no more. Comprende? She does not stop? Via con dios, jefe. I go home to Mexico.” The woman’s eyes narrowed threateningly. “And I take my rellenos recipe with me.”
With a clatter of annoyance, the housekeeper scooped up the plates and forks and left the study. She muttered a litany of Spanish complaints all the way to the kitchen.
Cody turned back to his desk, searching through the mess of paperwork for his plane ticket. He smiled at his father, whose faded-blue gaze gleamed with knowing concern. “Don’t say it, Pa,” Cody warned. He didn’t have time right now for a lecture about things he already knew.
“I didn’t say a word,” Walt Matthews protested.
“No, but you’re thinking it.”
“It’s still a free country, ain’t it? Man’s got a right to think whatever he wants.” Leaning heavily on one of the metal crutches that helped him get around, Walt came slowly to join him at the desk. “But I’m not one to stick my nose in where it ain’t welcome.”
Cody looked up with a laugh. “Since when?”
“Fine. Just don’t come looking for me to cook when Merlita up and takes a bus back to Chihuahua.”
“Damn! Where the hell is that ticket?” Cody complained as he threw down an empty envelope. “Someday I’m going to get this desk organized. If I miss this flight, it will be tomorrow afternoon before I can get another one out.”
“That might not be such a bad thing. Give you a chance to talk to Sarah.”
“Pa—”
Walt cut him off with a forestalling hand. “None of my beeswax, I know.”
Cody sighed. Might as well give in. He wasn’t going to get away from Luna D’Oro today without discussing Sarah. “It’s just a little harmless fun, Pa. You remember what I was like as a kid, don’t you? Always trying to pull a fast one on you and Mom and the bunkhouse crew? Nothing Sarah’s done is malicious. In fact, you have to admit that some of her pranks are pretty clever for a twelve-year-old.”
“That isn’t what you said last week when you turned on the air conditioner in the Rover and five pounds of rice flew out the vents and nearly scared you off the road.”
“Surprised, not scared.”
“Same thing.”
Cody rolled his eyes. He didn’t want to argue. Especially when Walt was probably right. Sarah—his sweet, precious baby girl—had turned into a royal pain in the butt in the past couple of months. Mouthy. Disobedient. With enough practical jokes in her bag of tricks to torment the family every day for the next ten years. And he didn’t want to even think about what her final school report was going to look like this year.
He stopped looking for the plane ticket long enough to glance at the picture he kept on his desk. Sarah, of course. The candid shot taken last year at the ranch’s annual cookout.
Pa’s camera had caught her pressed up against Cody, all smiles and girlish delight, hugging him with every bit of the strength and love she had in her. Nothing in that pert little nose and dimpled grin looked even remotely defiant. Her pale sunlit hair was made for angels, not devils. If there was any hint of the stubborn, willful behavior they’d seen lately, it was in the slight clef in his daughter’s chin. She’d inherited it from her mother. It was pure Daphne.
“Here’s your ticket,” his father said, rescuing it from beneath a pile of handbills advertising everything from horse auctions in San Antonio to Stampede Days in Laredo. He handed Cody the folder, and then another right beneath it. “And take this with you on the plane, too. Try reading it this time.”
Cody slipped the plane ticket into the inside pocket of his buckskin jacket. He barely glanced at the flyer his father had shoved into his hand. He knew what the old man was up to.
The flyer contained information about a parenting conference that had taken place two weeks ago in Austin. Struggling to understand what was causing the change in Sarah’s behavior, the two Matthews men had planned to attend, but at the last minute the deal Cody had made for Williston property had looked as if it might fall through. Walt had been forced to go alone.
He’d come back full of excitement and ideas and the flyer—with one name circled on the workshop list. A Virginia teacher and educational therapist named Joan Paxton had conducted a seminar on how to deal with kids suffering from attention deficit disorder. The blurb about her in the brochure was full of the kinds of things Cody hated most—sweeping praise from pompous-sounding academics and vague promises about what her lecture could accomplish. But Pa kept pressing Cody to contact the woman, see if she could give him some one-on-one advice.
Only one thing wrong with that idea, Cody had said. Sarah did not have attention deficit disorder. The flyer had been relegated to the read-when-I-get-around-to-it pile on his desk.
“I’m
