There were statistics about profit and loss, land equity and... Chet couldn’t even remember all of it. All he knew was that he wasn’t selling, no matter how good the deal might be. This land wasn’t about cash; it was about roots, and Chet wasn’t about to be budged on that.
The chilly morning air mingled with the last dregs of his coffee. He drank it black and strong, the same way his dad used to take it. And when he pulled on his boots and dropped his hat on his head, he felt the same peace that flooded through him every morning. It was something to do with the smell of the barns and the sound of horses nickering before they could even see him. Or maybe it was the way the sun eased over the horizon as he lifted bales of hay into the back of the work truck—a twelve-year-old Chevy that was mottled with rust but still going strong. It was hard to pin down exactly what settled into his soul so perfectly, but this was the life for him.
He and Andy used to do chores together as kids, but there had been more than a few mornings when Andy was let off the hook—normally for a feigned stomachache—and Chet went out with his dad alone. He’d cherished that time. His father had been a quiet man who’d kept his own counsel, but when he and Chet would walk out to the barn together, his father would talk. Chet was the first to know about his mother’s cancer because his father had told him one morning in the field.
It wasn’t all heavy talk, though. His father would tell him stories about the Granger men who had come before him—working this very land under his feet. There was the grandfather who’d drunk himself into an early grave and a great-uncle who’d bought the most westerly section for ten dollars and a jar of preserves. One ancestor had been a ranch hand on this land and ended up marrying his boss’s daughter—Matilda Granger, if he recalled properly—and running the place for his father-in-law until the old man died. The ranch was then left to a Granger cousin instead. This land had been fraught with conflict and grit, and hearing the stories had made Chet feel as though he belonged with the rough group of men who had worked the land before him. As a kid listening to the family lore, he’d never imagined that he and his brother would be part of that Granger conflict, but remembering those stories now, he sensed the irony. Apparently, this land came with an ability to cause strife.
Chet’s chores went faster than usual, and after giving a few instructions to his ranch hands, Chet drove over to Mackenzie’s place. He didn’t know exactly what he was expecting today, but he was definitely looking forward to seeing her. This was different from before. She was a grown woman now, not a naive girl, and he found himself wanting to get to know her all over again. She was the same old Mack, and yet she was so much more now. Was it crazy of him to entertain these thoughts?
I’ll be her friend. I’ll help her out. That’s it.
That was what he kept telling himself, at least.
Mackenzie was waiting for him on the wooden steps. She cradled a mug of coffee between her hands, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail so that her face was fully exposed. She looked more vulnerable that way, her blue eyes lighting on his truck as he pulled up. She put down her mug and waved.
“Morning!” she called as he turned off the engine and hopped out. “You’re earlier than I thought.”
“I got an early start,” he admitted. “I was pretty eager to get out of there. My brother showed up last night.”
“Andy’s here?” She frowned, and he wondered what that meant to her. She’d been pretty smitten with his younger brother back in the day. “What’s he doing with himself now, anyway?”
“He lives out in Billings,” Chet said. “Manages a car dealership.”
“And why did he come here?” she inquired, squinting up at him from her perch on the steps. She shaded her eyes against the morning sun.
“He, uh—” Chet cleared his throat. “He had a bit of a falling-out with his fiancée. He’s out here to cool off and I’m hoping they’ll patch it up.”
“He’s engaged.” It wasn’t a question, and she looked away when she said it. “I hadn’t realized that.”
Well, he had been. Close enough. Sometimes it was better not to nail down any definitions and give a couple the chance to fix things if they wanted to. He was still hoping his brother would change his mind.
“Helen never told you?” Mack’s grandmother had been very much alive when Andy had gotten engaged, and she’d had her own opinions about the relationship. Helen had declared Ida sweet but unsuitable, which Chet had never agreed with. Ida was good for Andy.
“You know Granny. She kept me on the need-to-know. I guess she didn’t think I needed to know that.”
Helen hadn’t wanted him to tell Mackenzie about Andy’s cheating, either. Helen’s son was Mack’s father, and he had been cheating on his wife for years—hence the divorce. Helen loved family fiercely, but not fiercely enough to cover her disapproval when it came to infidelity. She’d said that Mackenzie had enough to contend with in her parents’ divorce and she didn’t need to develop a complex over cheating men, to boot.
“Let sleeping dogs lie,” Helen had said.
“Except Andy isn’t a dog,” Chet had said pragmatically. Andy couldn’t just be chained up or taught to heel.
“Isn’t he?” Helen had fixed him with a demanding stare, and that was that. They’d agreed to never tell Mack about Andy’s cheating, and it looked as if Helen had taken that a step further and never mentioned him again, period. Helen was ferociously protective of her grandchildren.
“Yeah, Andy met Ida a few years ago and they’ve been dating for a long time. He finally asked her to marry him about a year—maybe a year and a half—ago. She’s this artsy yoga instructor, and she’s laid-back enough to deal with Andy. He can’t flap her. They’re good together.”
“I imagine they would be.” She nodded briskly and pushed herself to her feet. “Let’s get to work.”
Technically, his duty was done. He’d given her the pertinent information about his brother, and she could take it from there. But he wished that Andy didn’t have to be a part of this. When Chet learned that Mack was inheriting her grandmother’s ranch, all those old feelings for her had come back. And he wanted a chance to see her again without his brother in the mix. Maybe it would be a simple hello and that would be it, but Andy was supposed to have faded into the background of engaged bliss. He was supposed to be out of the picture.
As they made their way toward the barn together, Mackenzie stayed half a step ahead of him, and he wondered what had brought her out here, besides the inheritance. The last he’d seen of her was when she left the ranch after Andy dumped her. She’d given him this unreadable look, then gotten into the truck, and Helen had driven her to the bus depot. That was it. As far as Chet knew, her last memories of Hope, Montana, were of heartbreak—a heartbreak that Chet couldn’t even explain to her, because it would only hurt her worse. So why on earth would she come back?
The small barn closer to the house was normally where horses and smaller livestock were housed, but when Helen sold off her herd, she’d moved the remaining cows—her bottle-fed babies—into the smaller barn, leaving the big high-tech barn empty.
Mackenzie pulled the heavy door open, and it took all of her body weight to do it. She obviously wasn’t going to let him take the lead, and he liked that. The more seriously she took this, the better the chances of her succeeding on her own, and staying...
Was he hoping
