a patch of fragile-looking wildflowers, or daunted by a lethal-looking cactus, both co-existing in a strange type of harmony.
All right, so this wasn’t Boston. It was…tolerable. And she told herself that there weren’t acres of poisonous reptiles out to get her, just wild burros.
She resolved to concentrate on helping Karen just like she’d promised. The sooner she did that, the sooner she’d be back home in familiar territory.
With that decided, she relaxed her grip on what was left of her purse.
“Over there.” Buck pointed off in the distance, to his left. “Rattlesnake Ranch.”
She craned her neck and squinted. “Where?”
“Over there.”
“Over there” got closer, then disappeared again, as they turned another bend and descended until the mountain road turned into packed dirt barely wide enough for a car. They were on flat land now, up close and personal with the desert.
Buck turned right and before them was a bleached sign proclaiming Rattlesnake Ranch. She shuddered involuntarily and immediately her eyes scanned the road for anything slithering.
“Um…Buck?”
“Yeah?”
“About snakes…”
“What about them?”
“Do you have a lot of them out here?”
His blue eyes glanced at her briefly, and then returned to the road. “It’s the desert.”
“Of course there are snakes” was what he didn’t say.
Quit obsessing, she told herself.
They rolled to a stop in front of a sprawling ranch house.
“Here we are,” he said.
Merry heard the obvious pride in his voice. She took out a notebook and leafed through it for a clean page, free from burro slime, and found a pen at the bottom of her purse. Brainstorming time had arrived.
At first sight, the ranch house was welcoming. Designed in traditional Santa Fe architecture, it had a big porch that ran the length of the house. Bright flowers spilled out of terra-cotta pots of every size and shape along the brick walkway. More colorful flowers cascaded from hanging baskets.
Beautiful.
She knew that the flowers were Karen’s doing. She’d always had a green thumb and went into the business program and floral arranging curriculum at Johnson & Wales with the hope of opening her own florist shop.
The car door opened, startling her. Buck held out a hand to help her out, and she placed her hand in his. She wasn’t a small woman, but when his rough, callused hand covered hers, she felt very feminine and protected.
She tried to analyze why she was having a cowboy fantasy, when a small hurricane descended down the thick wood stairs.
“Merry! It’s been so long.”
Buck dropped her hand, and Merry found herself in Karen’s bear hug.
“I see my lug of a brother found you, or did you find him?”
Merry laughed. “He found me. I was lost.”
“I knew it,” Karen said, turning toward her brother. “Buck, thank goodness you’re okay. When Bandit came home without you, I got worried and sent Juan and Frank out looking for you. What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” Buck said, carrying Merry’s suitcases up the stairs, as easily as if they contained feathers instead of a closet’s worth of clothes.
Merry scribbled in her notebook. That would make a perfect picture for Karen’s brochure—a rough-and-rugged cowboy bringing luggage up the stairs of the dude ranch.
Perfect.
Buck stopped on the porch and looked down. “Karen, where do you want this stuff?”
“In your bedroom, Buck.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Well, you haven’t been using it,” Karen snapped, and then turned her attention back to Merry.
At just the thought that she’d be staying in Buck’s room and sleeping in his bed, Merry’s heart flip-flopped in her chest, and her face heated as if she were a teenager.
Jet lag. It must be jet lag. Or the low elevation.
Karen gave her another hug. “I am so glad to see you in person. I watch you on TV all the time, but it’s not the same.”
“It’s good to see you, too.” And it really was.
“How’s business?” Karen asked.
“Overwhelming.” She’d hired an additional publicist, Joanne Gladding, to handle the George Lynch fallout. Joanne was a go-getter, but Merry wasn’t sure that Joanne was right for her. She’d hired her anyway, though, because she was leaving on this trip, and the matter had to be deflected immediately.
Whenever Merry thought of the tabloid articles, a new layer of humiliation settled like lead in her chest. Her parents were still absolutely furious with her about the one before George Lynch—her assistant director Mick, who also blabbed to the tabloids about their relationship.
Her parents. They never missed an opportunity to remind her not to get involved with an “underling” ever again, saying that her actions reflected on them and their business, too.
She never could win with them. Yet something inside her still made her want to keep trying.
Merry pushed her parents and the George Lynch fiasco to the back of her mind. She was going to enjoy her time here.
“I have some presents for you from Boston and Rhode Island.” Merry opened the trunk of the car and began to lift out some boxes. “I hope everything made it in good shape.”
She handed Karen a couple of the boxes. “This is chocolate-covered fruit from that shop by City Hall, and this one contains those cookies we lived on in college. And I bought some homemade bagels from Mrs. Jeeter, who said to say hello to you. And…ta-da…some New England clam chowder, packed in dry ice, fresh this morning from Clamdiggers.”
“Be still my heart.” Karen laughed. “But no clam cakes from Rhode Island?”
Merry pulled out a bright purple bag. “Two dozen of them right from Point Judith.”
“You’re a sweetheart.”
Singing the song they’d made up about Johnson & Wales University, their alma mater, they climbed the stairs and entered the ranch house.
Merry stood on the thick, glazed Mexican tiles and looked at the brightly striped serapes over the couches and side chairs, the rough-hewn beams, the beehive fireplace in the corner
