Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

place never changes. I need it light here because it was so damned dark over there. But she’s changing all that, man.”

“How?”

“Just looking at her reminds me of Daniel because they have the same eyes.” Wes snapped his fingers, stiff from the cold. “Like that, I’m back, watching the life slip out of him, right there in my hands, because we can’t get him evaced out fast enough. I can’t be pulled back there every time I look at her. I just can’t.”

Nat shrugged and unsnarled a cluster of lights the size of his fists. “Make new memories. She isn’t her brother, Wes. In fact, she’s almost nothing like him—what I remember of him. You heard her story around the table that first night—she hadn’t even been in the same room with him since she was nine. They were continents apart after the divorce.”

“But the parts of her that are like him…”

“Are the parts you’re falling for.”

Wes dropped his string. No part of his brain could process how to disentangle the mess. His stomach felt rich, like he’d downed a truck load of holiday cookies in a single sitting. “Yeah.”

“Remember that time the bull kicked me?” said Nat. “Broke my collarbone when I was down?”

“Yeah.” Wes had been on a remote assignment, little communication. He didn’t hear about the incident until his brother’s bone had already healed.

“For months after the bandages came off, I couldn’t step inside a bull pen. It was like I couldn’t stop my brain from going right back to that moment of pain, focusing on that, feeling it all over again.”

Wes frowned. “You never told me that.”

“You were kinda busy, kicking some militant ass halfway around the world.”

Wes backtracked his thoughts to the last time he’d seen Nat up close with a bull. Insemination tests. Clearly, he had gotten past whatever it was. “What’d you do?”

“When I started to feel like my nuts were kicked up into my throat, I remembered other details about that moment. That day, Jared wore the most god-awful shirt. Color of baby shit with a big stain from where he’d spilled his red sports drink down the front. And the grass when I went down? Had sprouted tiny, white, crown-looking flowers. White onion, I think. I felt a rope burn on my hand from when the bastard had pulled loose, and when I brought my hand up to my lips, I tasted blood.”

“All nice additions to the memory, I’m sure.”

“That was the thing. The more I remembered about the moment—the angle of the sun, how hot it was that day, how my right boot slipped clear off my foot—the less I remembered the pain. Every time I approached a bull after that, I’d remember something new. After a while, memory got too crowded, I guess. I didn’t remember the pain as much.”

Wes’s chest felt heavy; his mind in that pen, in Afghanistan. The breath he drew might as well have been knocked clear out of him, and when it soldiered back in, it was cold and unsatisfying. There were days he felt as if he, too, had been trampled by a one-ton beast. Those were the times he shifted off-center, found his happiness in empty things.

They lapsed into a quiet union, watching the movement of those around them, some neighbors, none strangers.

“I’m not saying that getting kicked by a bull is anything close to what you experienced,” said Nat. “Hell, little brother, I’d have taken a bone break for every horrible memory you made over there if I thought it would put you back to the easygoing kid who enlisted. Try to remember the rest of the memory, not just the part where you became a martyr and blamed yourself for what happened.”

Wes buried his chin inside the warm collar of his coat. He wished he could do the same for the rest of him. Coming here, bringing this all up, was a mistake.

Nat freed the remainder of his string, stood, and stretched it out enough to pass it down the line to those with extension ladders on the courthouse. He may have been done with that particular length, but he wasn’t done with Wes.

“Until you can get inside the pen of that memory, ask her to stay for Christmas. January says she’ll be all alone in New York if she goes back.” Nat flagged down a passing beverage cart, bought two hot cocoas, and handed them both to Wes. “Last I saw her, she was stringing lights outside the book store. Probably could use some help.”

Hands full, retreating home seemed pointless. Besides, Nat had sight of him across the town square. His brother wouldn’t hesitate to pile on Mona’s extra holiday chores—and guilt—if Wes didn’t follow through.

Wes reached the strip of concrete where Olive’s statue would be erected and stopped. He became oddly aware of time pushing forward, and he felt powerless to stop it. When the live oak pushed out fresh leaves in spring, the place his boots occupied would be buried inside a bronze’s base. He wondered what the sculpture would be. Abstract or lifelike? Something open to interpretation or literal? Olive had only allowed the mayor a peek of her final sketches for approval. According to town gossip, Gretchen wasn’t talking.

He glanced back at Nat, who watched him from the courthouse steps. His brother nodded, his expression clouded into a slight stink-face that might have been attributed to the unpalatable task of untangling another snarl of lights. Wes read it as a telepathic kick in the ass.

8

Close Call’s bookstore was a catchall—new books, old books, volumes about local paranormal stories like Eliza Grace’s, largely embellished to sell copies. The shop had coffee and tea, a few Polish kolaches brought down from the bakery, and places to sit and talk—tables and dining room chairs, armchairs and sofas, all harvested from dozens of estate sales. Local artists’ works for sale crowded the walls. To Wes, the décor paled in comparison to the building’s skeleton: Acme brick, stamped 1925, originally the pharmacy and soda fountain where Clem took his bride out for a treat in a truck whose rebuild was coming along nicely inside the Meier barn.

Close Call’s bookstore was also the most artfully festive business on Main. Every other bulb on the strings had been diligently swapped to create a candy cane effect, and strands of light hugged every line of the storefront’s architecture. It was entirely possible Olive had overloaded the circuits, but it did make for an impressive display as the clock tower chimed five times. One by one, proprietors lit their businesses.

Olive climbed down from a ladder and studied her handiwork with a critical eye.

“Competitively speaking, it’s the best on the street.” Wes handed her one of the cocoas.