she wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating him again. And there would be a next time. Someday, somewhere, Gabe Thornton would get his comeuppance, she guaranteed it. In the meantime, she still had to do her best for Gramps, and she was fresh out of ideas.
The bedside phone jangled, and she jumped to catch it on the first ring. Gramps murmured something indistinguishable and fitful, then subsided, snoring softly again.
“Sarah Ann, is that you?”
Suppressing a grimace of irritation, she tugged the phone cord to its length and stepped to the window to peer out between the slats. Her voice was low. “Hello, Douglas.”
Douglas Ritchie’s well-modulated words rumbled over the line. “Can you speak up? I can hardly hear you.”
“Gramps is sleeping.” Absently, she untucked her plain knit shirt from the waistband of her denim shorts and pulled her ponytail loose, getting more comfortable for the evening visiting hours still ahead of her.
“How is he today?”
“About the same.” She combed tired fingers through the mass of her hair, sighing at the sensation. “Weak.”
“And the doctors still don’t have any answers? That’s unacceptable. If I were you, I’d start thinking about malpractice—”
She stiffened. “Not now, Douglas, please.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. That was thoughtless. You know I’d never do anything to upset you.”
“Yes, I know.”
That was the whole problem, Sarah Ann thought. How did you tell a nice guy and successful Realtor like Douglas Ritchie that you just weren’t interested?
Gabe’s blunt question “Don’t you have a boyfriend…?” rang in her ears again, staining her cheeks with chagrin.
While she wouldn’t exactly call herself experienced, she’d had several, thank you very much, including one serious beau she’d almost married before she’d dropped out of college to help Gramps. Her almost-fiancé had opted out at that point, unwilling to take on a wife with responsibilities.
After that disappointment she’d been much too busy to worry about her social life. It was hard to cultivate those kinds of friendships when you were up at dawn running a struggling tomato farm and orange groves, keeping up with the bookkeeping, taking up the slack in the warehouse, even doing some of the tractor driving, then falling into bed exhausted every night.
Lately, however, there was a difference of opinion on the boyfriend question, at least in Lostman’s Island. But just because you’d been going out occasionally for the past year with the only guy who asked, and the whole town had begun to assume you were a couple, did that have to make it so?
Tall and bespectacled, Douglas was a soft-spoken teddy bear who’d been so solicitous during Gramps’s illness Sarah Ann would have felt like the most ungrateful wretch in the world to break things off. And she’d found it flattering to have a man pursue her, even though his conversation bored her to tears and his kisses were lackluster. But she felt guilty taking advantage of his good nature and had decided that the only honorable course of action was to gently, but firmly, decline any further invitations.
Unfortunately Douglas didn’t seem to be getting the message. And to ask him to pretend to be her fiancé to ease Gramps’s worries would only encourage him unnecessarily just when she most wanted to disentangle herself.
“Why don’t you let me take you out for dinner tonight?” he asked. “I hear the Cotton Patch has great chicken-fried steak.”
The thought of a greasy, crusty mass of beef in a plastic basket of fries held even less appeal than making conversation with Douglas. “Thanks, but I really can’t.”
“You’re swamped taking care of the farm and staying at the hospital, too, aren’t you? Sure, sweetheart, I understand.” His words were full of kindness and concern and made Sarah Ann feel guiltier than ever.
“You try to do too much,” he said. “One of these days you’re going to have to let me help you out from under all that responsibility. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“That’s not nec—” The dial tone buzzed in her ear. Chewing her lip, she turned to hang up the receiver.
“You ought not to turn the boy down. He’ll get discouraged.”
Smiling into a pair of surprisingly bright blue eyes, Sarah Ann bent over the bed and squeezed her grandfather’s hand. His deeply tanned skin was wrinkled from a lifetime of outdoor work, but his halo of wispy gray hair gave him a gnomish charm.
“Hey, there, sleepyhead. How was your nap?”
“Don’t change the subject, girlie. That Douglas would marry you in a minute if you’d give him the least bit of encouragement.”
She kept her voice light. “I’m not in love with Douglas.”
“Pshaw.” Harlan’s face was drawn with fatigue, but his spirit was as cantankerous as ever. “What do young.folks know about that? Time was when two people—”
“Did I tell you Charlie came by with the ‘dozer bid?” Sarah Ann interrupted. “If we get those damaged orchards cleared, we can replant right away.”
“Damn hurricanes. Always causing trouble,” he grumbled, sidetracked for the moment. “What about the roof on the tractor shed?”
“That’s next on the list.” She mentally counted all the other things that needed doing, too. The thought of climbing a ladder and hammering tin filled her with dread, but she’d do what she had to do. She always did. Keeping her tone cheerful, she added, “Oh, and we got next season’s contracts from the farmers co-op.”
“Those orange-eating buzzards! Until some other outfit puts in a new processing plant and gives them some competition, they’ll try to steal us blind.”
“I can handle it, Gramps.”
“No, dad-blame it, you can’t!” In the blink of an eye, Harlan worked himself into a state, harping back over ground they’d covered time and again. “And I won’t be around to tend to things for you.”
“Don’t say that, Gramps.” She tried vainly to keep the distress out of her voice. “You’re going to get well and come home very soon.”
“Time to face facts, girlie.” He wheezed painfully, and his gnarled, work-worn hands made restless circles across the white sheets. “Looks like I’ve run out of aces. Damnation, but I thought you’d be settled with a good man and a passel of babies by now. If you and Douglas—”
“Forget about him.”
He slapped a shaky fist against the bed rail, his voice quivering with both anger and physical weakness. “If you aren’t going to marry the boy, then I’m going to take him up on his offer.”
“What offer?”
“To buy the whole place, lock, stock and barrel.”
Shock widened her eyes.
