started to help themselves.
“You’ll have to come out to the ranch,” Lisa was saying to Barney, her hand on his arm. “I’ll teach you to ride. We’ll have a real western barbecue. Next Saturday. Okay?”
He grinned and shook his head, moving as he did on down the buffet. “Thanks, but I’m afraid not. I’ll be in Corvallis until late Sunday.”
“Another time,” she said. “I’ll get you out there and on a horse. You’ll see.”
He filled his plate and went to the dining table where he sat next to Todd.
Johnny seated himself next to Lisa at the round table. “When do we announce it?” he asked her.
“You mean formally? As in the newspaper? Or just start a rumor?”
“Formally,” he said, turning to Todd and Barney. “We’re talking about turning Brindle into a destination resort. I’m building the mountain resort, and Lisa and Grace are considering a new hotel across the creek from Warden House. We’ll have wilderness hikes, skiing in winter, desert treks.”
“A mammoth heated swimming pool, a water slide, a wave machine,” Lisa said. “Live music, a dance floor. And we’ll have a dude ranch out at the ranch. We’ll coordinate it all, have a theme destination resort. We’ll put Brindle on the map.” She picked at her food, but ate little. “I’m all for putting up false fronts on the buildings on First Street, and maybe on Spruce, too, to recreate an old western town. I still think we should have horses in the park.” She put her fork down and said, “Llamas! We’ll have to use llamas as pack animals for the wilderness hikes. People love llamas!”
“You’ll have a part to play,” Johnny said to Todd. “We’ll need brochures, fancy proposals, all sorts of things. We’ll work that out at the press.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Lisa said. “We’ll need a real ad agency. I know just who to get when we’re ready.”
Todd felt Barney’s leg nudging hers, and on the other side of her Sam said, “Last time Lisa was in town she had a scheme to bottle water and start a business to compete with Evian. Now it’s Disney in her crosshairs.”
Lisa gave him a contemptuous look. “Some of us have visions, dreams. This hellhole of a town is going to shrink down to nothing and blow away in the wind unless someone does something. Not that it would be a great loss.”
Sam put his napkin on the table and stood up. “Thanks, Ruth Ann. Marvelous brunch as usual. But I have a patient I’m monitoring closely. I have to run.”
He nodded at the others and walked out. For a moment there was silence, then Carol began to tell Grace about a new development being planned on the outskirts of Bend.
A little while later, Todd felt Barney’s hand take hers under the table, and squeeze three distinct and separate times. She suppressed a smile and returned the signal. They did not linger much longer.
When they left, Lisa and Johnny were huddled talking and Ruth Ann looked tired, or perhaps simply bored. Grace and Carol had begun to talk about a dude ranch in a way that implied Grace was serious about it.
The day was pleasantly cool. They had walked up, and now took their time walking down Ruth Ann’s winding drive to Crest Loop. The road was narrow, with a gorge on one side, and the mountain rising like basalt stair steps meant for a giant on the other. At a curve before the footbridge, there was a view of the entire town, pretty and postcard peaceful. The creek, fifteen feet down, tumbled and splashed over rocks in a little waterfall, causing a spray that glittered like diamonds in the sunlight.
“What did you make of them?” Todd asked.
“Grace is an embittered woman,” Barney said. “You didn’t feel anything around Lisa, did you?”
“Like what?”
“Or sense anything either, I guess,” he said. “You don’t have the right receptors. She walks in a cloud of pheromones. And she knows it.”
“Well, there’s no love lost in that family, that’s for sure,” Todd said. “I don’t think Sam even spoke to Grace. And you saw the look Lisa gave him.”
They reached the footbridge and crossed the rushing creek, on its way to nowhere, she thought. All that busy rushing only to vanish in the desert. “Do you think they’ll carry through with plans for a resort here?”
“No idea.” He laughed and took her hand. “But no matter, you’re out of it. She wants a real ad agency.”
“And you would look handsome on a horse.”
He laughed harder. Then he said, “I wonder why Ruth Ann invited us.”
“She said so that we could meet a few more people,” Todd said after a moment.
He said, “Um,” in a noncommittal way. “Well, this life in the fast lane, high society, upper-crust brunches, it’s taking a toll. I feel a nap coming on.”
They were skirting the park where some boys were flying kites.
“Why are we walking so fast?” Todd asked.
“All those pheromones floating around. They gave me ideas.”
This time she laughed.
After Grace and Lisa left, while Carol helped Maria carry dishes to the kitchen, Johnny turned to Ruth Ann. “Why did you invite Todd and Barney? You knew I wanted some time with you and Lisa. We have to talk about this idea.”
“I got the impression that it was all settled. Is there anything in writing yet?”
“No. This is preliminary, the planning stage. We’ll get to that.”
Carol came back and picked up the last chafing dish. “I won’t be long,” she said to Johnny. “I want to get that shrimp recipe.”
When she was out of the room again, Ruth Ann said, “Johnny, just a suggestion. Watch your step. Don’t get too wound up with Lisa.”
He stiffened. “What exactly does that mean?”
“I think you know as well as I do what I mean.” For a moment neither of them moved, then he jerked around, faced away from her. “I know, Johnny. I’ve always known. And I know what it did to you before.”
“We might become business associates, Mother. Nothing more than that. Business.”
“Good,” she murmured. “I’ll see if I’m needed in the kitchen.”
If she had been honest, Ruth Ann reflected after all her guests had left, she would have told Johnny that she had invited Barney and Todd to protect him. She smiled slightly as she imagined his indignant reply. But it would have been truthful. She had seen Barney and Todd together enough times to consider Barney safe from Lisa, but she was not at all certain Johnny was. Lisa had snared him once when she was twenty and he was single and twenty-seven, home from college, home from a couple of years of knocking around, uncertain what he intended
