Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

“Non-competitively speaking?”

“You’re an overachiever, and the ladies group of the Missionary Baptist Church might organize a takedown for overshadowing their Cowboy Christ.”

“That’s a thing here?”

“Only every other year.” Wes winked and took a sip.

Her pink cheeks rounded into a smile. She missed nothing. He loved that about her.

“Let’s warm up inside,” he suggested.

Olive wanted no part of sitting. The moment she laid her eyes on the displayed art, she had to spend time with each creation. Time and again, a painting near the back drew her attention—a grassy field, the distant, shadowy form of a man with some kind of pack or figure on his back. His image repeated to the foreground, progressively blurred, until the closest looked more like dust kicked up on a breeze. Strokes of bright yellow-white and blue-white paint drew the eye to different points on the canvas—a lantern, the horizon, what looked like a small fire on the horizon. At Olive’s most reflective, her eyes rounded, the fingers of her right hand shielded her lips, and she allowed the curtain of her hair to shroud her—a study in enchantment. Wes could have watched her all night.

As patrons cycled through, Wes and Olive remained. The owner’s son, Chet, came over to say hello. Wes introduced them.

“This one is...” she stalled on a thought.

Chet waited for her to finish. She didn’t.

“My uncle painted this. He died last year in Chicago. We brought some of his things back, but mom didn’t have room in her house for them all.”

/> “Was he known?”

“He had a few gallery shows a couple of decades ago. Never really took off, I guess. This was his last.”

“Do you know anything about it?” asked Olive.

“He told me once it was a self-portrait,” Chet said. “Unconventional, given that there are so many figures. I always thought the third one looked like a woman.”

“Did he tell you anything else?” She was rapt, insistent.

“Toward the end, he said he had learned that each day was a new life but also a carbon copy if he allowed it. He said he had finally figured out a way to live in the now.”

Wes’s gaze slipped to the card. George Langley. The Infinite Nows.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Olive placed her free hand on the man’s sleeve.

Chet gave a sad smile, as if her touch was a welcome gesture after what she had asked of him. “Stay as long as you like. We have some bookkeeping to do in the back.”

The crowd had dwindled; most people had gone home. A soft instrumental slipped through the speakers, a welcome retreat from the forced cheer. In a pair of mismatched chairs around a too-small table, Wes asked Olive what she saw when she looked at the painting.

“I don’t share that. With anyone. Not about art.”

“Why not?”

“Too personal. What we see in art unlocks parts of us that no one sees.” She turned the cup in her hand and tugged at the cardboard sleeve as if she mentally toyed with sliding away other barriers. “My interpretation will never be yours. By telling you, I might make you feel as if your ideas are wrong in some way.”

“Not even a glimpse?”

She met his gaze. He saw the temptation lingering in the slight part of lips poised to answer, in her more frequent blinks, as if her courage and her isolation waged an inner war.

“The fire in the background. The way it lights up the dark sky. It reminds me of why I wanted to sculpt.”

The sleeve slipped free of her cup. She allowed it to remain there, exposed in the light of a vintage Edison bulb hanging just above their heads. Her hands were close enough to hold.

“Not one photo of me as a small child exists anywhere. My father had just moved to New York with Daniel. My mother and I stayed on a few more weeks in Amsterdam, presumably to sell the house, I’m not sure. It was more like an estate or an old castle, hundreds of years old because that was what impressed people. More bedrooms than I remember, but I loved it there. I was happy. For a time, they were happy, too. I suppose the extra space insulated us from those who didn’t understand how a woman of substantial means could marry a man with none then drive him away.”

Olive’s words were bitter; her delivery was anything but. Her matter-of-fact tone, her unwavering strength as she navigated the past told him she had made peace with the truth long ago. This time, when he looked into her eyes, he didn’t see Daniel. He saw her memory.