One Bride for Four Ranchers

“And a desk! That came with the house. You can, you know… set up your books. Or whatever. No pressure!”

I smile tightly. Nothing says all the pressure like the phrase no pressure.

He shifts from foot to foot.

“So, okay!” he announces. “I'll just go grab whatever you’ve got left in the Subaru and be back in a jiffy. Check out your bathroom!”

“Thanks. Will do,” I say with a little salute.

As he leaves the room, my shoulders slump just a little bit. One interaction down, several more to go.

The truth is, I need to tell them I don't want to go back to college. Emptying out my dorm room felt amazing. After four semesters of trudging dutifully through finance and accounting classes, with a little bit of math and English thrown in for good measure, I was glad to empty out that tiny little closet, those cramped cubbies. I was happy to chuck all my stuff into the back of Subaru and set out for the highway toward this admittedly strange destination.

Two years in college felt like a prison sentence, and I’m finally on parole.

Still, I take my duffel off the bed and move it toward the desk to attempt to do wh

at my dad asked. The books clunk together when I set it on top. They're worthless now. Six hundred dollars in textbooks, and for what? How can a book possibly cost $150 when you can only use it once? That seems stupid.

I never even picked a major, just straddled the fence between business management and finance, hoping that I could see myself as a banker or a CFO or something. But it never clicked. It all just seemed so absurd.

And really, shouldn't my parents have known that? It's been a source of family pride that we are the kind of people who can always be on the road, always ready for the next new adventure, always taking up the challenge when it's presented to us. How could they have thought that I wanted to sit in an eight-by-twelve-foot dorm room for years at a time? Scribbling out notes in spiral-bound notebooks until somebody granted me yet another piece of paper? Why would they think that was me?

I push aside the pale curtains and peek out through the pretty, divided light window. Just below, my dad marches across the lawn to my mom. They stand there moving their hands and pivoting ninety degrees this way and that, like keys that won't turn completely in their locks.

In a few moments they separate and she walks around the side of the house, while he walks to the back of my car. He pulls out another couple of boxes and stacks them on the edge of the driveway, then takes my guitar case and closes the trunk.

Who would've thought that guitar case would cause so much trouble in my life? But we've argued over it quite a bit. Last time we talked, I laid down the ultimatum that I would only go back to school if I could major in music. If college was so important to them, I should at least have some say so in what I studied, was my reasoning.

That conversation didn't go very well.

But I can't help but be excited when I see him carrying my guitar. It's like watching my own kid from far away, knowing it's coming closer, knowing it will be right back in my arms at any moment now.

Dad clomps back up the stairs and carefully angles the case into the room ahead of him, making sure not to bang it against the shiny wood work. He casts me a look and then lays the case on the bed, scowling at it for just a millisecond before looking at me again.

“Well,” he announces finally. “That’s just about it, I guess. Welcome home, Vanessa!”

“Thanks, Dad,” I smile. I know I have a thousand things I need to say to them if we are going to work through this together, but I don't have to say them all right at this moment. We've got the rest of the summer.

Learn what happens to Vanessa and the five sexy brothers…