Tempting the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 1)

“You friends with Dear Agnes?” asked January.

“Why ever would you say that?” said Mona at a half-titter, palms excessively wiping against her apron, as if her daughter had just asked her if she slept with Garth Brooks back in the day.

She was hiding something.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were living on Meier land?” January said. “I had to ask around town to find you.”

Her mother pulled her attention from the eggs long enough to level a stare. “Would you have come?”

January weighed nostalgia against money. She had the privilege of sleeping outside in adverse weather because she had no money. Nostalgia was a distant second. “I need Meme’s money.”

No better way than out with it. January didn’t want pretense. This wasn’t a memory lane kind of trip. It was a stop-gap that threatened to break her while she waited for a coveted work-travel assignment in Nepal.

“I see.” Frypan shifted to a cold burner, her mother crumbled into the booth’s opposite seat. Embroidered butterflies on the collar of her bathrobe shifted their 3-D decal wings then stilled as if they intended to take flight but were pinned in place.

January reached for her mother’s hand, spottier and thinner than she remembered. “Of course, I came to see you, too.”

“I guess I figured after ten years, you might stick around awhile.” Her mother’s voice wavered, nothing at all to do with the way it always sounded before she had her morning coffee.

“I’m waiting on good things, Mom. I have a good life. It’s just taking longer than I thought for my next assignment to come in, and I need a little of my inheritance to fall back on.” And if I stay, I’ll suffocate, like last time. She had to change the subject. “I see you got my last postcard from Norway.”

January stood, took the two strides to the opposite wall, and marveled at the display. A world map—her world map from all those years ago, empty holes still punched through that made her weak in the knees, even now. And new pins everywhere she had been. Lines of yarn connected the pin heads to postcards she had sent from every corner of the world—forty or more. Enough to spill onto the ceiling for the northern hemisphere and all manner of living surfaces for the southern hemisphere, like an immense tree of life. The Norwegian fjord she had witnessed from a kayak called her back: cold exhales, flocks of gannets taking flight from shore, frozen tears because she didn’t find the serenity captured in the photograph. Maybe if she went again…

“Sometimes I have to go to the library to look up the places. Took me two weeks to locate the Bay of Kotor. Montenegro sounded more like somewheres in a Cary Grant movie.”

“This is amazing. I had no idea you were saving them all like this.”

“Not everyone in Close Call gets such fancy mail. Causes quite a commotion down at the post office. Harlan posts them in his window for everyone to enjoy until I can get into town.”

“Everyone?”

“Whole town. Sometimes even a blurb in the newspaper. Had a nice article when you were working on that project to bring clean drinking water to those children in Guinea.”

“Ghana.”

Sure enough, taped to a potted ficus, a yellowed article from Close Caller-Times, a fancy name for cutting-edge quilting bee and Future Farmers of America updates.

“Guinea. Ghana. All the same.” Her mom shuffled back to the stove and plated the eggs. “I don’t have your money. Least not right now. It takes days for a transfer and sometimes Austin don’t open the bank up but for a few hours if his teller has morning sickness. Lord if that woman don’t look green most days.”

“Days are okay. We can catch up.”

“Unless you have tools in your hand, that might be impossible. Wood bottom floors on the oldest trailer rotted clear through, have to be replaced.”

Mona Rose was a simple woman. Always had been. She grew up the only child of a naval engineer who made it his mission to take things apart so she could puzzle them back together. There wasn’t one piece of equipment, large or small or obscure, that Mona couldn’t fix, blindfolded. Most days, motor grease was her makeup, and she looked more like Rosie the Riveter. In January’s younger days, her mother had been a source of embarrassment, but more than a dozen times in remote places, January wished she had a fraction of her mother’s skill for fixing what was broken.

“So long as you’re here,” her mother added, “you’ll make yourself useful. Busiest time on this ranch. Nat needs all available hands pitching in.”

“Oh no. No-no-no. I can’t be around him.” Her feet itched to reverse course across the open field, back to the moment she told Stan-who-smelled-like-shrimp to pull over near the next tangle of live oaks.

“You can, J-Rose, and you will. Nat gave me a place to live, rent-free, when that apartment in town went up in flames a couple years back. Never takes a dime from me, despite my monthly offer. So, if Nat says aliens are landing at dusk and he wants a barbeque buffet delivered on a homecoming float to greet them, by God, I’ll make it happen with ten minutes to spare.”

“I don’t know how much help I’d be.”

“Didn’t you herd sheep in Australia?”

“No, orphans.”