for an outsider hadn’t been easy.
It hadn’t become easier, he recalled, until Bruce O’Rourke had gruffly given him a chance and hired him to work the ranch shortly after his parents died, leaving him an orphan.
Funny the turns that life took, he mused.
Mitch observed Wade McCallister making his way over to him. The heavyset older man looked more than a little curious. He jerked a thumb at the departing vehicle. “Hey, boss, was that—”
Mitch didn’t wait for the other man to finish his question. He already knew what the ranch hand was going to ask and nodded his head.
“Yup, it was.”
Wade had worked off and on at the Double E Ranch for a long time. Long enough to have known Bruce O’Rourke’s daughter before she was even a teenager.
Turning now to watch Ena’s car become less than a speck on the horizon, Wade asked, “Where’s she heading off to?”
“She’s on her way to talk to the old man’s lawyer,” Mitch answered. Even the dot he’d been watching was gone now. He turned away from the road and focused his attention on Wade.
Wade’s high forehead was deeply furrowed. The ranch hand had never been blessed with a poker face. “She’s gonna sell the ranch, isn’t she?” the older man asked apprehensively.
“She might want to,” Mitch answered. “But she can’t.” His smile grew deeper. “At least not yet.”
“What do you mean she can’t?” Wade asked him, confused.
Wade had known Bruce O’Rourke longer than Mitch had. But Wade didn’t have a competitive bone in his body and he wasn’t insulted that his normally closemouthed boss had taken Mitch into his confidence. As a result, Mitch had been devoted to the old man and everyone knew it. While the rest of them had lives of their own apart from the ranch, Mitch had made himself available to Bruce 24/7, ready to run errands for him no matter what time of day or night. No job was too great or too small as far as Mitch was concerned.
“The old man put that in his will.” He had been one of Bruce O’Rourke’s two witnesses when his boss had had the will drawn up and then had him sign it. Afterward, Bruce had expanded on what he had done. “He said the ranch was hers on the sole condition that she stay here and run things for six months.”
It sounded good, but it was clear that Wade had his doubts the headstrong girl he’d watched grow up would adhere to the will.
“What if she decides not to listen to that—what do you call it? A clause?” Wade asked, searching for the right term.
Mitch nodded. “A clause,” he confirmed. “If she doesn’t, then the ranch gets turned over to some charitable foundation Mr. O’Rourke was partial to.”
The furrows on Wade’s forehead were back with a vengeance. “Does that mean we’re all out of a job? ’Cause I’m too old to go looking for work with my hat in my hand.”
Mitch shook his head and laughed at the picture the other man was attempting to paint. “Too old? Hell, Wade, you’re not even fifty.”
Wade wasn’t convinced. “I’d have to pull up stakes and try to find some kind of work somewhere else, and I’m comfortable where I am.” The ranch hand’s frown deepened. “Like I said, too old.”
“Well, don’t go packing up your saddlebags just yet,” Mitch told the man he regarded as his right-hand man. “Even if the ranch does get sold down the line, whatever organization takes over is doubtlessly going to want the ranch to keep on turning a profit. But don’t worry,” Mitch assured the other man. “The old man was banking on the idea that once his daughter gets back to her roots, she’s not going to want to let this place go.”
Wade, however, wasn’t convinced—with good reason, he felt. “You weren’t here when she left. To be honest, I’m surprised the old man’s daughter came back at all.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mitch said, thinking back to his own childhood and adolescence. It had taken him time to make peace with who he was and where he had come from. Now he was proud of it, but it hadn’t always been that way. “Our past has a greater hold on us than we’d like to believe.”
But Wade was still far from swayed. And other problems occurred to him. “Even if she does wind up keeping it, she’s bound to make changes in the way the ranch is run.”
Mitch was used to Wade’s pessimism. It hadn’t been all that long ago that he had been just like Wade, seeing the world in shades of black. But then Bruce had taken him under his wing and everything had changed from that day forward.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Mitch advised. “Let’s just see how her visit with the old man’s lawyer goes.”
Wade took in a deep breath, centering himself. “Okay, you’re the boss, Mitch.”
Mitch grinned. “That’s right. I am. At least for now,” he allowed, deliberately playing on the other man’s natural penchant for gloom and doom.
For Wade’s sake, as well as for the sake of all the other men who worked under him at the Double E Ranch, Mitch maintained a positive attitude. The old man had taught him that there was nothing to be gained by wallowing in negative thoughts, saying that he himself had learned that the hard way. If things went well, then being negative was just a waste. And if things didn’t go well, there was no point in hurrying things along. They’d catch up to him soon enough.
Besides, who knew? Mitch thought. Maybe coming back here would help heal whatever was broken within Ena’s soul.
“C’mon,” Mitch urged, turning toward Wade. “We’ve still got work to do.”
Forever had built up since she’d been here last, Ena thought as she drove down the town’s long Main Street. The last time she’d been here, the town’s medical clinic had been boarded up, the way it had been for close to thirty years. From what she could see by the vehicles jammed in the small parking lot, the clinic was open and doing a healthy business.
She smiled to herself at her unintentional pun.
And that was new, Ena noted as she continued to travel along Forever’s Main Street. Slowing her vehicle, she took a closer look at what appeared to be—a hotel?
Surprised, she slowed down even more as she passed a small welcoming three-story building. Yes, it was a hotel all right.
Was there actually an influx of tourists to Forever these days? Enough to warrant building and running a hotel? Was it even profitable?
Ena looked over her shoulder again as she passed the new building. She had never thought that progress would actually ever come to Forever. Obviously she had thought wrong.
The law firm where she was supposed to go to see her father’s lawyer was new, as well—as was the concept of her father actually having a will formally drafted and written up. If her father had actually wanted to put down any final instructions to be followed after his demise, she would have expected him to write them down himself by
