after I notify some of the staff that they’ll be taking a trip to the mountains.”
Lily slid her chair up to the desk and opened the file with rows of names listed in alphabetical order, management mingled with the most common of workers. It was no wonder McFarland’s company had gone under. The man clearly had no business sense.
Her gaze scanned down the first page. A name caught her attention, forcing her to reread the line.
Barns, Juniper. Juniper Barns.
The name slapped across her senses like a razor strap. A name she’d heard over and over in her mind since she was twelve years old, since the night her father’s business partner had stood on the front porch of her childhood home in Missouri, holding a hat and a gun belt.
“I’m sorry, Rose. Red won’t be coming back. He was killed in Mason by a gunslinger named Juniper Barns. Gunned him down with those pearl-handled six-shooters.”
Her mother had been devastated. Folks had said the influenza had killed her a few weeks later, but Lily knew better. Rose Palmer had stopped living that night on the porch. She’d let the sickness take her.
He’d killed her. The gunfighter had shattered Rose’s heart by taking her husband.
Juniper Barns. The man who’d stripped the sun from Lily’s sky. He’d stolen her parents, her life, forcing her into the care of strangers, relatives her mother had shunned so she could be with the man she loved. Lily didn’t have to wonder why her mother had run off to Missouri, preferring her quiet life in the small cottage on a flower-filled meadow with her and Daddy. Dear Lord, how Lily’d missed her home, the wide-open sky, the scent of spruce and aspen, the sound of her mother’s soft voice, her father’s strong embraces.
Old rage welled up and coiled across her shoulders. How many nights had she lain awake in her fancy prison, anger burning away tears she had refused to cry as she wished for the opportunity to shoot down the outlaw who’d stolen her family and turned her life into endless torment?
Juniper Barns. Lily’s hand trembled as she brushed her finger over the letters. Not exactly a common name.
A man ain’t no better than his name.
Her father’s voice echoed in her mind. They were some of the last words he’d spoken to her. She remembered the last time she’d stood with him in the sun-sprayed meadow filled with tall grasses and wildflowers, his strong arms closed around her, his big hands helping her to steady the revolver as she took aim at a bottle sitting on a rock in the distance.
He stepped away. She squeezed the trigger, kicking off a shot. Glass exploded into glistening shards.
“That’s my girl!”
There was always the threat of raiders in the high country. Daddy had insisted she practice with a revolver as well as a rifle. He said she was to tell her mother about neither.
“Your mama would have my hide for teaching you to handle a six-shooter, but she’s a delicate sort of flower. My baby girl is pure Palmer. You don’t have to be a man to defend your name and protect what’s yours. Out here, we look out for our own. You got that, Lily girl?”
“I got it,” she said, thinking of the gun belt tucked safely in her wardrobe upstairs.
You don’t have to be a man to defend your name…. A name the Carringtons had forbidden her to speak in their presence. She’d gotten even with the Carringtons, making her true initials, L. P., the prefix of the company name when she’d taken over Carrington Industries.
“Lily Palmer,” she said to herself, the name sounding foreign to her ears. Had she been labeled a Carrington for so long, she’d forgotten her true self? Her chest ached at the thought.
“What’s that, love?” Regi asked, stepping back into the open doorway of her office.
“I think you’re right,” she said, shaking off the chill of old memories. “I need a breath of fresh air.”
His face lit up with a smile. “Wouldn’t hurt.”
“Emily?” she called out.
The young woman who worked as her secretary and housekeeper stepped into the room. “Yes, Miss Carrington?”
“Pull out my spring dresses and have Charles retrieve my trunks.” She pushed back from her desk and stood. “Some winter dresses, as well,” she added, remembering the drastic temperature fluctuations of the higher elevations.
Emily gave a firm nod. “Right away.”
“Your trunks?” said Regi. “You intend to take a trip now and dump this lumber mess onto my lap?”
“Of course not. I’ll be accompanying our lawyers and accountants. I want to leave within a week.”
Reginald stared at her as though she’d suddenly sprouted wings. “You’re not serious.”
“Weren’t you the one just telling me I need to get out more?”
“I meant a trip to the zoo, a stroll through the park, not jaunting off into the wilderness!”
“How better to learn about my new company than to pay a visit? I won’t have to rely on long-distance reports. It’s the perfect solution.”
“Lily, I.” His hands clenched into fists. “I forbid it.”
Realizing he was quite serious, Lily couldn’t fight her smile. She was Lily Palmer Carrington, and she did as she pleased.
Lily breathed in the strong, nostalgic scent of spruce and pine as their carriage rounded the mountainside. Her gaze moved across a green canopy of giant pines rising up from a canyon below. She had to wonder why she’d waited so long to venture beyond the crowded parlors, tight streets and stifling buildings of San Francisco.
They’d left the valley at daybreak, and the moment they’d gone beyond the rolling green hills and into the forest of pines, she’d felt a sense of homecoming. Every bend in the road and new stretch of scenery had brought heartache and beauty … a longing for the life she’d lost.
A few hours back they’d stopped to rest the horses. She had stepped from the carriage into a grass-filled meadow bursting with wildflowers—clusters of orange, lavender and white. Granite mountains spiked up beyond the perimeter of towering pines. It was like stepping into her childhood, surrounded by the sights and scents of home, awakening memories she hadn’t realized she’d forgotten. Her eyes had burned at the vision of her mother standing in a similar meadow … the closest she’d come to crying since her mother’s death. Perhaps this was why she’d waited so long to leave the city. It had taken this long to let go, to find her place in the confines of the Carrington family.
A tree branch scratched across the window as the road cut inland again, and Lily sat back in her seat. Their armed guard had the best view. In front of the carriage, he rode his own mount, a beautiful black stallion. She’d been tempted to ask to sit atop the carriage with the driver, which would have been utterly inappropriate and would likely have given Reginald heart failure.
“Would
