“No. No, thank you. Just coffee, please.”
She went to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, washed her face, tried to tame her short curls with her hands. When she came out, her coffee was waiting. She drank it quickly and then she sat back and told herself to be calm.
Whatever was going to happen, whatever Tanner would say on seeing her, would happen soon.
The car waiting for her was a four-wheel-drive SUV. The kid who delivered it planeside wished her a sleepy good morning even as the sun rose higher in the early morning sky.
He tossed her the keys.
Alessandra reached into her carryall, took out the iPhone Caleb had given her, and bells went off.
The carryall was full of smartphones.
She did a quick count. Every member of the Wilde clan seemed to have tucked a phone inside it.
It made her laugh. It was the first time she’d laughed in what felt like forever.
Because Caleb’s phone was the one in her hand, it was the one she answered. Yes, she was fine. Yes, the weather was clear. Yes, the SUV had been waiting for her. Yes, she would keep in touch.
The questions kept coming. There was only one way to stop them. She hated telling the small lie, but if she kept talking, she’d never do what she’d come here to do, and finding Tanner was all that mattered.
“Caleb? Caleb, you’re breaking up…”
One by one, she shut off all the phones, even Caleb’s. The SUV had its own GPS and she decided to rely on it and on the old-fashioned paper map she’d found in the console.
Alessandra put the SUV in gear and drove off.
* * *
The Flying Eagle ranch, Tanner’s father’s ranch, had consisted of fifty acres of woods and prairie dotted with a couple of small lakes and streams.
Tanner hadn’t thought much about the place when he was growing up except to know that he wanted to get out and leave it behind.
Over the years, his feelings had changed.
He’d realized it hadn’t been the ranch he’d wanted to escape. It had been his life.
The land was rugged and beautiful. After he joined the SEALs and after he became a STUD, he’d returned to it whenever he could.
Spending time on the land, in the rugged forests and peaceful prairie, had become a kind of spiritual renewal.
And he’d made the ranch his.
He’d put sweat equity into the house and outbuildings, and brought them back from the disasters they’d been under his father’s stewardship. Then he’d started adding acreage. For as long as he could remember, an unbroken stretch of several hundred acres to the north had been for sale.
Gradually, he’d bought it up.
He’d figured that by the time he’d return to it for good, he’d have what could be a working ranch.
He ‘d even known what he’d do with it. Breed and raise Appaloosas. As a kid, he’d worked odd jobs for an old guy who raised them and he’d discovered that he not only liked horses, he was good with them.
All that had been tucked away for the future.
What he hadn’t expected was that the future would suddenly turn into now.
He had been home, if that’s what this was, for almost two weeks. The first few days, he’d kept busy. Laid in groceries. Bought a horse. Not an Appaloosa—the old guy who’d kept them was long gone, but he found a good Quarter Horse and he was pleased with it. He’d put hours into tuning up the old Silverado he’d bought a couple of years back, and he chopped wood for the big living room fireplace in advance of what would soon be winter.
That hadn’t been easy.