style="font-size:15px;"> Known better about what?
But he didn’t have the chance to ask.
“If you don’t need anything else, I should get back to my store.” Evangeline gave him the key then strode out the door, her skirt swaying and her long hair bouncing with every movement.
And that was Evangeline.
He just hoped he wouldn’t have to do much business with her. She seemed emotional and complicated.
He had enough of that in his life.
Denny walked down the hallway, out the door and into the afternoon sunshine, stopping on the sidewalk to look at the mountains cradling the town.
For a moment he imagined what it would be like to live here. To have a home again. Build up a cow herd again.
Did he dare? Twice in his life he had lost everything. Could he risk it again?
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He was tempted to ignore it. Carlos, one of his drivers, was finishing up a haul in Prince George with one of Denny’s trucks and had been calling him all morning, wondering when to bring the truck down to Hartley Creek. Denny had left a message and sent him a text. Surely that should be enough?
But habit and the reality of running his own business made him look at the phone.
And his heart thudded heavily against his ribs.
It was a text message. From Deb, his ex-wife’s sister. Since his divorce from Lila two years ago, he’d never heard from her or any of Lila’s family. Now Deb was texting?
Need to C U, her message said. Important. U in P G?
Why did she want to know?
Not Prince George anymore, he sent back. Hartley Creek right now. Staying awhile.
He waited a moment, then his phone tinged again.
Where living in H C? was her immediate reply.
Behind Shelf Indulgence bookstore on Main Street, he typed, wondering why she wanted to know.
He paused before sending the message, but then shrugged. Maybe Lila had something she needed to pass on just the way Andy had needed to pass something on to Evangeline.
So he shrugged, hit Send then waited. The message was delivered, but a couple of minutes later she still hadn’t replied.
So what was that about?
He knew Deb had never liked him much when he and Lila were together.
Denny had been living a wild life when he’d met Lila. Every weekend, after taking care of cows and horses and family, he’d head to town to blow off steam. He’d partied too hard, met up with Lila and they’d hung out together.
One day Lila had given him the news that she was pregnant. So Denny had done the right thing and married her. Only, once that happened, Denny had found out there was no baby. Lila had figured she’d read the test wrong. She hadn’t been pregnant, after all.
Denny had tried to stay true to the promises he’d made. He’d cleaned up his act. Settled down. Hung on, determined to do right by Lila.
Then, five years after they were married, Lila had decided she didn’t want to hang on anymore. To satisfy the terms of the divorce, Denny had had to sell the family ranch where his sisters and foster brother still lived.
The family scattered after the ranch was sold. Denny had taken what little he’d had left after helping out his sisters and Nate, and started trucking. It was a good business. He’d taken some risks that had paid off well. Now he had a decent fleet of trucks. Of course that came with debt, but with his five-year plan he could pay that off and afford a down payment on a new place. A new life.
A place he would be by himself. Alone.
Just the way life worked best for him.
Chapter Two
“So what kind of deal did you and my father strike?” Evangeline asked as she and Denny walked past the corrals back to where her car and his truck were parked. A breeze teased her wavy hair around her face, flirted with the flowing skirt of her gauzy gold-and-white dress, which was loose on the top, belted at the waist.
She knew her outfit was hardly the type to go traipsing around a ranch in, but she had come directly from a meeting in Cranbrook with a toy distributor and hadn’t had time to change.
Denny had obviously gone to church. He wore dark jeans, a white shirt and a corduroy blazer. He had shaved and his hair was tamed. When she’d seen him get out of his truck, she’d felt a jolt of awareness.
He cleaned up good.
“Five-year lease agreement,” Denny replied.
“So it’s temporary. A hobby?”
“Running yearlings is hardly a hobby,” he said, sounding testy.
Evangeline shot him a surprised look. “Sorry. I understand yearlings don’t require a steady time commitment.”
Her father had run yearlings just before he’d leased out the ranch to other ranchers. He would buy them in the spring, run them on pasture to fatten them up, then ship them out in the fall. “Easy-peasy,” he would always say. Paying hobby with no commitment.
“It’s the best way for me to run my trucking business and the ranch at the same time,” Denny replied.
“So no permanent plans?” No sooner had the question left her lips than she regretted asking it. It was none of her business what Denny did.
“Not yet,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve got my gravel business going and I’m trying to set up my stake first.”
No wonder he was friends with her father, Evangeline thought. Andy Arsenau always talked the same way.
“We’re moving back to the ranch once I get my stake, once I have enough laid by to help us live in style,” he would say. “I want it to be perfect for you, poppet.”
She used to cling to those words whenever her father came back to Hartley Creek throwing out promises as lightly as he threw out the cash he spent on her.
And she always believed him. Never questioned why they needed a stake to move back onto a place they’d lived before her mother died.
She pushed the depressing thoughts aside. This morning she had tried to call him again, and again she’d left a message.
She was about to ask Denny another question when his cell phone sent out a tinny whistle.
Denny looked at the screen with a crooked smile, then dropped it back into his pocket.
“Do you need to get that?” Evangeline asked.
“No. Just a text from one of my sisters. She’s trekking in Nepal right now.”
“That
