I’m sorry. It’s been a long night. I had two connector flights from Santa Cruz and an hour’s drive from Idaho Falls to get here and I’m afraid I’m not at my best. May I come in so we can discuss what’s to be done about our runaway parents?”
She wasn’t sure how he would have answered if the cell phone clipped to his belt hadn’t suddenly bleeped.
With a grim glare—at her or at the person waiting on the other end of the line or at the world in general, she didn’t know—then gestured for her to come inside.
“Yeah?” he growled into the phone as the toddler in his arms wiggled and bucked to get down. Wade Dalton let the boy down, busy on the phone discussing in increasingly heated tones what sounded like a major problem with some farm machinery. She caught a few familiar words like stalling out and alternator but the rest sounded like a foreign language.
“We don’t have a choice. The baler’s got to be fixed today. That hay has to come in,” he snapped.
While she listened to his end of the conversation about various options for fixing the recalcitrant machine, Caroline took the opportunity to study Wade Dalton’s home.
Though the ranch house had soaring ceilings and gorgeous views of the back side of the Tetons, it was anything but ostentatious. The furniture looked comfortable but worn, toys were jumbled together in one corner, and the nearest coffee table was covered in magazines. An odd assortment of circulations, too, she noticed. Everything from O—Marjorie’s, she assumed—to Nick Jr. to Farm & Ranch Living.
The room they stood in obviously served as the gathering place for the Dalton family. Cartoons flickered on a big-screen TV in one corner and that’s where the little blond toddler had headed after Wade had set him down. She watched him for a moment as he picked up a miniature John Deere and started plowing the carpet, one eye on the screen.
The older boy had vanished. She only had a moment to wonder where in the big house he’d gone when Wade Dalton hung up the phone.
“Sorry. Where were we?” he said.
“Discussing what’s to be done about our parents, I believe.”
“As I see it, we don’t have too many options. It’s too late to go after them. I’m assuming they left about midnight, which means they’ve got a nine-hour head start on us. They’d be married long before we even made it to the Nevada state line. Beyond the fact that I can’t leave the ranch right now, I wouldn’t know where the hell to even start looking for them in Reno since my mother’s not answering her cell phone.”
“Neither is Quinn,” Caroline said glumly.
“I can’t believe Marjorie would do something like this, just run off and leave the kids. This is your doing.”
So much for their thirty-second ceasefire. “Mine?”
“You’re the one who’s been telling her to reach for her dreams or whatever the hell other nonsense you spout in your sessions with her.”
“You don’t thinking reaching for dreams is important?”
“Sure I do. But not when it means walking away from your responsibilities.”
“Since when are your children your mother’s responsibility?” she snapped.
Again she had to force herself not to step back from the sudden fury in his eyes. She had to admit she deserved it this time.
“That was uncalled for. I’m sorry,” Caroline said quietly. “Marjorie has been caring for Nat and Cody and Tanner for two years. She doesn’t see it as a burden at all.”
“Right. That’s why she’s been paying a small fortune to some stranger so you can tell her all the things wrong with her life and how to fix them.”
“That’s not what I do at all,” she insisted. “I try to help my clients make their lives happier and more fulfilling by pointing out some of their own self-destructive behavior and giving them concrete steps toward changing what they’re unhappy about. Marjorie was never unhappy about you and your children.”
Before she could continue, his phone bleeped again. He ignored it for four rings, then muttered an oath and picked it up.
This conversation was similar to the first, only Wade Dalton seemed to grow increasingly frustrated with each passing second.
“Look,” he finally said angrily, “just call the tractor supply place in Rexburg and see if they’ve got a replacement, then you can send Drifty over to pick it up. I’ll be out as soon as I can. If we put the whole crew out there this afternoon, we might still be able to get the hay in before the rain.”
He hung up and then faced her again. “I don’t have time to get into this with you today, Ms. Montgomery. I’m sorry you came all this way for nothing but I think we’re too late to do anything about the two lovebirds. I’ll warn you, though, that if your father thinks he’s going to touch a penny of the income from this ranch, you’re both in for one hell of a fight.”
“Warning duly noted,” she said tightly, wondering how a woman as fun and bubbly as Marjorie could have such an arrogant jerk for a son, no matter how gorgeous he might be.
She should cut him some slack, Caroline thought as she headed for the door. He obviously had his hands full, a widower with three active children and a busy cattle ranch.
Just as she reached the door, an acrid scent drifted from the back of the house, stopping her in her tracks.
“Do you smell something?” she asked Wade Dalton.
“It’s a working ranch. We’ve got all kinds of smells.”
“No, this is different. It smells like something’s on fire.”
He sniffed the air for a second, then his eyes narrowed. He looked around the gathering room, his eyes on his youngest son still playing on the carpet and the notable absence of the older boy.
“Tanner!” he suddenly roared. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing!” came a small, frightened-sounding voice from the rear of the house. “I’m not doin’ anything. Anything at all. Don’t come in the kitchen, Daddy, okay?”
Wade closed his eyes for half a second then took off down a hallway at a fast run.
This wasn’t any of her business, she knew, but Caroline had no choice but to follow.
Chapter Two
Hot on Wade Dalton’s worn boots, Caroline had a quick impression of a large, old-fashioned kitchen painted a sunny yellow with a professional-looking six-burner stove, long breakfast bar and at least eight bow-backed chairs snugged up against a massive, scarred pine table.
She imagined under other circumstances it would be a pleasant, welcoming space, but just now the room was thick with black smoke and the acrid smell of scorched paper and something sickly sweet.
Flames shot up from the stove and she quickly realized why—a roll of paper towels was ablaze next to the gas burner and already flames were scorching up the cabinets.
