Her eyebrows drew together gently. Then she smiled. “I was the prissy one. The ice queen. I thought you might remember that.”
Well, that brought the elephant out and plopped it on the table, didn’t it? He admired the cool aplomb that allowed her to mention it first. Maybe the episode really didn’t bother her as much as it bothered him. Maybe it was easier to live with the memory of having looked foolish than to live with the memory of having been cruel.
“I do remember,” he said flatly, without any attempt to make light of it all. Yes, they’d been kids. But even ninth graders bled when they were cut. “I remember that I was an insensitive jackass. You deserved better, and I knew it, even then. It may be sixteen years too late, but I want you to know I’m sorry.”
When he had started his speech, she had already begun to exit the stables. At his final word, sorry, she stopped walking and gazed placidly back at him, her elegant, symmetrical features half in shadow, half in sunlight.
“Thanks,” she said, but he didn’t know her well enough to guess whether the simple word was sardonic or sincere.
Truth was, “jackass” might be an understatement. He and his friends had always made fun of girls like her, the ones who were so bloody virtuous and civic-minded, always on committees to organize this and decorate that. But then, that January, just a month or so before her mother’s death, she had ratted on his best friend for smoking behind the bleachers.
Irked, Gray had decided she needed to be taken down a peg.
So, inspired by the instructions on one of his grandfather’s housekeeper’s frozen foods, he had printed out bold red letters on a piece of plain white paper. Then he’d recruited the girl who sat behind Bree in biology to surreptitiously tape it to the back of her shirt.
Caution: Contents Are Frozen. Thaw Before Eating.
She’d worn it for two whole class periods, in which apparently she had no allies. Finally, after school, one of her buddies saw it and yanked it off. By that time, the joke had made its way around the building like a virus, becoming more vulgar by the minute. Even Gray had felt naive when he realized some of the nasty interpretations that could be applied—though of course he pretended to have meant them all along.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself, though,” she added with a smile. “You had good reason to be rebellious. What happened to your parents...it was so unfair. I didn’t understand anything about it that day, of course, but I found out soon enough. When you’re furious with life, with fate, with everything, it can make you...” She seemed to search for the right way to express herself. “Less than kind.”
He nodded. “True. Although in some ways isn’t that just a cop-out? People still have choices about how they’ll express their anger.” He appreciated her generosity, though. “I have to say,” he added, “that tragedy doesn’t seem to have had a similar effect on you.”
Flushing, she rolled the pearl of her earring between two fingers and laughed softly. “That’s nice to hear. But then, you’ve known me all of...ten minutes? I suspect that the people who know me better would emphatically disagree.”
People who knew her better... He wondered whom she meant by that. A husband...an ex-husband? A lover?
Or...he glanced toward the pine-dappled path they’d taken to the stables, and saw Rowena striding briskly toward them, her black hair blowing out behind her in the breeze.
Or a sister?
“Gray!” Rowena met them at the stable door and held out her hand. “Gosh, it’s been a long time, hasn’t it? But you haven’t changed a bit! I would have known you anywhere.”
He accepted her warm, welcoming handshake. He would have recognized her, too, of course. Those eyes. Those cheekbones. But he couldn’t say she hadn’t changed. Though she had been in the eleventh grade the last time they met, and she was now probably nearly thirty-two, a married stepmother juggling family and business, she didn’t look a day older. Instead, she seemed, paradoxically, to have grown younger. Softer.
Was that what marriage to Dallas had done for her? Had love really erased all that dangerous tension that had once tightened the muscles in her face and in her body, until she had seemed a hairsbreadth away from exploding?
“I’m so sorry to keep you waiting,” she went on. “You’ve seen the stables, then? I hope Bree has been persuasive. Her mission was to convince you that Bell River Dude Ranch is the perfect place to work.”
Bree frowned, as if this was the first she’d heard of such a mission, but Gray spoke up quickly. “Absolutely. She’s made it sound terrific. I’d want to work here even if you weren’t the only place in town willing to hire me.”
Rowena laughed, but Bree’s deepening furrow told Gray that she hadn’t been brought in on the joke. When Gray and Rowena had spoken on the phone yesterday, he’d laid everything out frankly, black sheep to black sheep, and asked for her help. In the strictest sense, this meeting wasn’t even really an interview, because she’d already offered him the job.
“I was just about to show him where the Phase Two construction will start,” Bree said, obviously treading carefully. She pointed west. “We’ll be adding a pool and a lodge, just over there. Both of them will allow us to offer many more activities. Your position would be greatly expanded during Phase Two, I’m sure, and—”
Rowena laughed again, reaching out to touch Bree’s upper arm gently. “I don’t think Gray really cares much about Phase Two,” she said. “He’ll be long gone by then.”
Bree’s face went very still, and she twirled her left earring with a studiously careless motion. “Long gone?” she repeated without inflection.
He glanced at Rowena, who nodded subtly, giving him permission to tell Bree the details. “I talked to your sister yesterday, and I explained my situation. I need the dirtiest, most menial job she has, but I need it for only a month. Four weeks, to be exact.”
“Only a month?” Bree raised her eyebrows. “And that’s because...?”
“Because that’s what my grandfather requires, before he’ll put me back in his will.”
She stared at him a long minute, and the expression in her eyes subtly hardened as she did so, as if she was revising down her estimation of him.
Finally, she turned to Rowena. “You think this is the best decision for the ranch?”
“What do you mean?”
Bree glanced once, quickly, at Gray, then returned her gaze to her sister. “Shouldn’t we have employees who really want to work at a dude ranch? At this dude ranch? Surely that’s in our best interests. And yet, knowing that Gray wants this position for his own personal agenda, and no other reason, you hired him anyway? Sight unseen?”
“Not exactly unseen,” Rowena corrected, a slight edge creeping into her voice. “We’ve known Gray for years, Bree. But otherwise, yes. I knew, and that’s exactly what I did.”
“Why?” Bree’s one-word question dripped disapproval.
As Rowena prepared to respond, Gray thought he detected a spark of the old firebrand. Her green eyes narrowed, and they seemed to blaze hot inside her
