crow cawed, flapping its wings toward the west and the coming sunset.
Given a choice, Holly Jane would be snuggled in a cozy chair beside the fireplace when darkness came. Since she didn’t have the choice, she would make another one. She would enjoy the beauty of the evening as it faded from light to dusk then full dark.
Coming out of the woods just now, she watched the sun slip behind the trees growing on the western edge of the ranch. The great orange glow peeked between a line of cedar and cottonwood, with elm and maple tossed in.
It would be dark by the time she reached the house, but a fat full moon rose behind her to light the way. Stars began to blink and twinkle. A raccoon rustled out of the brush and waddled up to Lulu.
“Good evening, Mayberry.”
Lulu oinked and the pair of them toddled behind Holly Jane toward the ranch house...the home she couldn’t even think of leaving.
Blame it, she wouldn’t leave. She had vowed that, to herself if to no one else.
Grandfather, in his wisdom...or confusion...hadn’t sold the entire ranch to the stranger. He had left her a perfect circle of land a hundred yards in diameter and only a short distance from the house.
Smack in the middle of the circle of land was her carousel, the gift Granddaddy had given her when she was five years old.
Why hadn’t he left her the house, as well? What could it have hurt to do that? These questions had plagued her like hounds on a scent.
Her grandfather had meant well, the lawyer had explained that day when her tears wouldn’t stop. Granddaddy’s intention had been to keep her from falling prey to the Folsoms and the Broadhowers, who would do anything to get the Munroe land.
“The new owner has agreed to watch over you, Holly Jane,” the lawyer had explained. “Your granddaddy only wanted to keep you safe.”
Holly Jane stepped onto the bridge that crossed the narrow river that Granddaddy had named Neighborly Creek. She sighed so deep that it must have alarmed Mayberry. The racoon stood on her back legs with her paws scratching the air.
“Can’t think of what got into Granddaddy. I don’t need a stranger looking after me. Haven’t I been watching after him and me since Grandma passed?”
Lulu oinked then trotted over the bridge. Holly Jane hurried after her. The chickens were probably pecking each other by now.
Two hours later, Holly Jane sat down on an overstuffed chair beside the fireplace with a cup of hot cocoa warming her palms.
The house looked like it had been shaken about in a jug then the contents dropped like gambling dice to lie where they landed.
Until Granddaddy’s passing, she had kept these rooms swept and in order. She’d put flowers in vases on the dining room table. She’d let fresh air waft in through open widows, carrying the scent of summer blossoms through the house.
But summer was gone and so was Granddaddy. And the stranger was on his way. As much as it hurt to turn the house she loved into a tumbleweed, she did not want the new owner to see it at its best. If she could prevent him from falling in love with the place, it would be easier for him to sell it back to her.
After a while, she couldn’t bear the unkempt look of the rooms so she went outside.
Her carousel glowed dully in the moonlight. She hugged her robe around her white nightgown, went down the steps and walked over newly deeded Travers land to her own inherited circle.
She stepped upon the carousel platform. It creaked, showing its age. She ran her hand over the peeling red paint of a horse’s rump.
There had been a day when the carousel still worked—before the steam engine that powered it quit—that she would ride for hours on end. Even the children from town would come to the ranch on Sunday afternoons. As hard as it was to believe, for those hours, the Folsom children and the Broadhower children forgot the feud between their parents and played peacefully together.
Holly Jane climbed onto the back of her favorite wooden horse. She glanced at the sky. An owl beat silently against the dark, its pale wings bright against the canopy of stars. It screeched and a mouse exploring the platform dashed between the boards to safety.
Years had gone by since those days; the carousel had broken and faded. The children had grown up to hate each other.
“I understand why you sold the ranch, Granddaddy,” she whispered to miles of shadowed land, quiet except for the scurrying night creatures.
And she forgave him. She only hoped that from wherever he was, he could see that she had avoided becoming a Mrs. to a Broadhower or a Folsom and she’d done it all on her own.
When she did become a Mrs., it would be because she was madly and completely head over heels in love with some handsome man who was brave, tender and devoted all at once.
To her knowledge, that man did not exist in Friendship Springs. From what she had seen of men, he might not exist at all.
Holly Jane gripped the carousel pole and leaned her cheek against it.
Then again, he may have passed through this afternoon, and thanks to Lulu, seen her at her very worst. She had cursed, blame it, right in front of him and the old ladies.
Oh well, chances are he was only passing through. But he was handsome...so handsome that it was hard to put him out of her mind.
He had sandy, brown-blond hair that grew past the collar of his flannel shirt and the shadow of a beard. It could be that he might have forgotten to shave...or maybe he was beginning to grow it out.
A body wouldn’t think she’d had time to notice his eyes, but lordy, they were blue and they flickered mischief. She didn’t know him well enough...she didn’t know him at all, really...to know this to be true, but she’d lay a bet on it.
And honestly, the pair of dimples flashing in his stubble-roughened cheeks when he had handed her Lulu and called her bacon had nearly made her fall again.
As far as handsome went in her requirement of a husband, the stranger was all that and more.
Still, there was brave, tender and devoted to be considered. Chances are he was devoted, having taken his valuable time to bring a pair of old women to tea.
Whether he would be brave and tender in a marriage, she had no way of knowing. He might be married already. She ought to quit daydreaming and recognize that.
And aside from everything else, there was one more quality she would require of a mate. He would have to be a good kisser. Over the years she had imagined kisses of all kinds. Tender, wild, demanding and sweet as sugar.
There was one thing she did know about the stranger. Fate would never give her the opportunity to discover what mysteries those expressive lips might hold.
* * *
It was nearly dawn and Holly Jane hadn’t managed to capture a wink of sleep. There was something wrong with her bed and she knew just what it was.
It was no longer her bed. After years of snuggling into its downy sweetness, it was now the property of one Colt Travers.
