van and scrunched his features against the late afternoon sun. “Making friends already?”
“Heard some of that, did you?” Fitz took the bottled water his assistant offered and twisted the cap. “I saw her first.”
They watched Trish jog around the corner of the barn and trip over a cable. Her clipboard flew into a water trough.
Burke sighed and shook his head. “You should steer clear of that one.”
“Don’t worry.” Fitz pointed the bottle at Trish. “I wouldn’t let that one anywhere near the family jewels, especially with a sharp object.”
“Not the accidental castrator.” Burke hooked a thumb toward the barn. “The premeditator.”
“Ms. Montana?”
“She’s a widow,” said Burke. “And a single mother.”
“God.” Fitz’s scouting fantasies faded to black. “Sounds like a movie of the week.”
“Just so you know what you’d be getting into.”
Fitz emptied the bottle and swiped at his mouth with his sleeve. “Deep shit.”
Burke’s twitch and sniff were Montana-size. “Plenty of it to go around.”
The last thing Fitz needed was a new set of complications with a new woman. He turned his back on the barn, and on the intriguing but sharp and pointy woman inside. “You know one good thing about shit, Burke?”
“No.” He sighed. “But I suppose you’re going to mend that minor lapse in my education.”
“If you don’t step in it, it doesn’t stick to your shoes.”
ELLIE HASTILY GROOMED TANSY and released her in the south paddock. She made half a dozen phone calls from the barn office and hitched the trailer to the truck before notifying her small grains farmer that he’d be working through the night on the stock roundup. While she dealt with a swollen tendon and medicated a case of mastitis, she fretted over the possibility that too many more unexpected expenses might nibble all the profits from this film deal.
By the time she headed home to check her messages and pack a sandwich for the night’s work, she was in a foul mood. She hiked up the gravel road and stomped up the back porch steps, muttering a string of her favorite cuss words all the way.
Slamming through the screened mudroom door, she yanked off her hat before Jenna Harrison, her mother-in-law, could get after her for wearing it into the house. And then she stopped dead in her tracks.
Lasagna. She closed her eyes and breathed it in, tangy and garlicky and just about finished, and her stomach twisted into one big hungry knot. Heading toward the deep kitchen sink to wash some of the grit and stink from her hands, she hollered for her eleven-year-old daughter. “Jody!”
No answer. Probably upstairs, gossiping on the phone with a girlfriend. Might as well get her one of those headsets Trish wore—it would free Jody’s hands so she could get something done besides talking the whole day and half the night away.
At least she wasn’t talking to boys yet.
Ellie glanced at the ceiling. She wasn’t talking to boys yet, was she?
And what if she was? What was Ellie going to do about it?
Should she do anything about it?
Jenna swung through the door with a laundry basket of tea towels and table linens. Character lines bracketed her bluebell-colored eyes and a few silvery strands wove through her corn-silk hair, but she was still as willowy and graceful as the Texas debutante she’d once been. “Heard you calling,” she said. “Jody’s in her room, on the phone.”
“I figured.” Ellie opened the refrigerator door and reached for the heavy cut-glass pitcher filled with lemonade.
Jenna dropped her load on the kitchen table and took a seat. She pulled a napkin out of the basket and snapped it into a neat square. “Wayne called. Says he’s got two grays he can loan us.”
Ellie poured a glass and sipped, wincing at the cold, tart shock to her taste buds. “Good.”
“He’d like to come watch, if you don’t think he’d be in the way.”
Too bad Ellie couldn’t sell tickets to the set to offset expenses. “Don’t see how he could. I’ll call him back in a bit.”
Jenna shot her one of those mild looks, the kind that asked when Ellie was going to start using the manners Jenna had drilled into her. “Dinner’ll be ready in half an hour.”
“Sorry,” said Ellie. “I’m not going to be here.”
Jenna crumpled a napkin into her lap. “Oh, Ellie.”
“Can’t be helped.” She finished the lemonade and turned to rinse the glass in the sink. “Got to get some more horses out to Cougar Butte by dawn.”
“Is that why Wayne called?”
“Yep.”
Behind her, she could hear Jenna’s long suffering sigh. She opened a cabinet door and reached for the aspirin, battling back a fresh layer of guilt. Pleasing Jenna was one of life’s priorities, and it stung every time she failed.
Twenty years ago, Jenna had taken one look at undersize, underweight eleven-year-old Ellie Connors and had simply taken her in, into her life and into her heart. When Ellie’s nomad of a father had packed their bags after a six-month stint at Granite Ridge, Jenna had quietly pulled Ellie’s duffel from the back of his truck and carried it through the front door of the big ranch house.
Ellie had known what that meant—she’d likely never see her real father again.
But she’d also known it meant no more aimless searching for an easier life over every horizon. No more switching towns in the middle of the school term and falling another grade behind. No more standing off to one side in the school yard, afraid to make a friend she’d soon part with. She’d stood dry-eyed in the wide, dusty ranch yard, watching her old life disappear down the road as her new mother’s hand had fallen, soft and steady, on her shoulder and her new father’s voice, just as soft and steady, had asked her to come in to dinner. Her new sister had grinned at her from the front porch and, inside the tall white house, a handsome college-aged brother had grinned at her from family photos.
She’d traded up that day, gifted with a permanent foothold in a shifting world. But she’d also traded up to an adult’s set of worries and an adult’s burden of guilt. The worries varied from day to day, but the guilt was a constant, gnawing ache.
She shook a couple of aspirin into her palm and hoped they’d work off some of today’s sore spots before she started working on tonight’s. “I’ll go say good-night to Jody before I head out.”
“Is Will going with you?” Jenna waited for Ellie’s nod. “Then I’ll pack a sandwich for him, too.”
ELLIE STOOD IN JODY’S DOORWAY for a minute. The sight of her long-legged daughter draped over a pink and ruffled bed made the stresses and strains of the
