looked down, working her lower lip between her teeth. “I know it sounds kind of funny now, maybe even a bit childish, but after Nicholas and I broke up, I haven’t been able to pray at all.”
“That was a hard time for you.”
“Not as hard as what you’re dealing with right now.”
“I still have Alan’s love. I know how much you cared for Nicholas and I know the hurt he caused in your life made you pull further away from God.” Aunt Lori looked down at their joined hands, her thumbs still making their soothing circles around Cara’s hand. “I hoped that by asking you to pray, you would be able to at least let God’s love fill you. Let God break down that barrier you’ve put up between you and Him.”
“He was the one that put it up, Aunt Lori,” Cara whispered.
“God always seeks us,” Aunt Lori assured her. “He never puts up walls. We do.”
Cara’s soul twisted and turned. “Love hurts, Aunt Lori. It hurts so much.”
Her aunt reached out and cupped her cheek. “That’s the risk of loving, my dear girl.”
Cara let the words settle into the wrenching of her soul. She knew her aunt was right, but she also knew, for now, she wasn’t going to take the chance of getting hurt again.
“I’ll pray this time,” Aunt Lori said, taking her hands.
Cara bowed her head and let her aunt’s prayer wash over her. And for the merest moment, she felt a nudging against the walls she’d put around her heart.
She knew that everything had changed. In the space of a heartbeat, or lack of a heartbeat, her world had spun around.
There was no way she could wander around the streets of Malta knowing that her uncle, the man she thought of as her father, lay helpless and recuperating from a devastating heart attack.
She had no choice now. She would have to cancel her trip and stay in Cochrane to support her aunt. Even if it meant running the risk of seeing Nicholas and having her pain reinforced.
Though she had told her aunt she didn’t pray much, she caught herself praying that when the time came she would be able to leave with her heart still intact.
Nicholas pulled up to his father’s house and slammed on the brakes, dust swirling around his truck as it fishtailed then abruptly stopped. He was being juvenile and he knew it, but his anger and frustration had to find some release and driving like a fool seemed to be a part of it.
The events of the past days piled on top of each other. Seeing Cara in at the clinic then at church. She acted so cool. So remote. He knew part of it was his own fault. He’d put up his own barriers to her and he had to remind himself to keep them up.
Like you did at the hospital?
For a brief moment, when he and Cara had seen Alan lying on the hospital bed, he thought she might lean on him just a little longer. But she had quickly pulled herself together and had drawn away from his support.
Nicholas grabbed his tie from the seat and opened the door, his anger fading with each moment. He felt tired and drained. In the next couple of weeks he had to get fences fixed, his haying done and then get ready for another work trip overseas.
He sighed as he trudged up the sidewalk. He wished he could stay home, at the ranch. Wished he could get on his horse and head up into the mountains.
He thought of Cara’s past insistence that he not go back to work and the ensuing fight that had sent her running.
Nicholas stopped at the top step of the house and, turning, let his eyes drift over the valley spread out before him. Cattle dotted the pasture near the house. His purebred herd painstakingly built up by him and his father over the past five years, had been paid for by the work he did.
Beyond this valley lay the land he and his father had purchased back from the bank after his parents’ divorce. When missed payments led to foreclosure, this, too, had been paid for by his work. He had focused his entire life on this ranch.
He could have found work closer by, but it wouldn’t have paid near what he got from working on oil rigs. The time off gave him the opportunity to work on the ranch. His father managed the ranch while he was gone. All in all it had been a convenient and lucrative arrangement.
One he wasn’t in a position to change. Not yet. He knew the beating his father’s pride took when they had to go, hat in hand, to the bank to refinance the ranch.
Four generations of Chapmans had farmed and ranched on this land and each generation had added to it and expanded it. Nicholas was the fifth generation and he wasn’t going to let the ranch fail on his watch.
He knew Cara couldn’t understand. She didn’t have his attachment to the land. She didn’t have the continuity of family and community he had. Though he didn’t appreciate his father’s puzzling antagonism toward Cara, he did agree with his father on one point.
Cara’s lack of strong roots made it hard for her to appreciate the generations of sweat equity poured into this place. She couldn’t understand how important the ranch was to him and to his father.
And if she didn’t get that, then she wasn’t the girl for him. Logically he knew his father was right about that.
He just had to convince his heart.
Chapter Three
“And how’s Uncle Alan?” Cara asked, shifting the phone to her other hand as she slowed the car down and steered it around a tight corner. Dust from the gravel road swirled in a cloud behind her.
“He’s still very tired, but the doctor says that’s normal. How are you doing?” Aunt Lori sounded tired herself.
“I’m fine, busy, but things are going well. I’m on my way to take a stick out of a horse.”
“Just another day at a vet practice,” Aunt Lori said with a small laugh. “Uncle Alan asked me to remind Anita to do the supply checklist. He thinks the clinic is running low on—”
“You tell Uncle Alan that Anita has already sent in the order and everything at the clinic is under control.” Except my driving, she thought, as she pushed the accelerator down, hoping she didn’t hit any washboard on her way to the next call.
The Chapman ranch.
The last call she’d been on had taken too long. A sheep with trouble delivering her lambs. Something that could have been dealt with at the clinic, but the woman insisted someone come out to look at it.
Then the woman wanted her to check out her dog’s gums and have a quick peek at her laying hens.
Which now meant that in spite of keeping the accelerator floored, she was twenty minutes late.
So it was easier to blame her heavily beating heart on the pressure of trying to get there on time rather than possibly seeing Nicholas again.
“But I gotta run, Aunty Lori. Tell Uncle Alan I’ll be there tonight and give him a full report of how things are going.”
“You
