Redeeming the Rancher (Meier Ranch Brothers 2)

As the pinnacle of the sprawling ranch house, the Meier attic was substantial—the length of at least two rooms and enough height at its center for the brothers to stand comfortably. The air was tight and stale and heated by a single-paned window at the far end. Iron and wood objects dating back to their grandfather’s day sprouted on either side of a middle walkway like an ancient garden and existed alongside early gaming systems and sports trophies—modern artifacts from the boys’ generation. Her intrusion on the hallowed space incited a blizzard of dust motes inside the afternoon beams of light.

Livie zeroed in on boxes substantial enough to hold decorations. She was an explorer in a foreign land, picking her way through, aiming to leave the landscape precisely as she had discovered it. Box after dusty box netted nothing but craft supplies, old cookbooks, and enough Future Farmers of America awards from all three of the boys to wallpaper the room.

A larger box that seemed out of place, almost clean, snagged her gaze. Likely too substantial for ornaments. Still, she lifted the flaps.

Blackish, royal blue, and red fibers, folded neatly inside a thin dry-cleaning bag crowded the contents and covered plaques, a desert-pattern combat utility uniform and cover, and a much older Army-issue green uniform. Chevrons and metals and dog tags, each in their own velvet-lined boxes with clear lids filled the remainder of the space but for the most arresting artifact: a Marine dress cover—pristine white on glossy black, the gold-plated cap emblem.

The very same Daniel had once worn.

She knelt beside the box. Her pulse quickened and challenged her instincts. As a sculptor, to feel was to create. One minute with the combat utility cover, the very same her bronze would wear. Then she would return it.

Reverently, she pulled out the utility cap, careful to keep it safe, clean, preserved. Her fingertips mapped the eight stitched points, the brim. She closed her eyes.

“What are you doing?”

Wes’s locked and loaded voice came on like sniper fire—one bullet, straight to her heart.

The cover slipped from her grasp and tumbled onto the dusty floor. She scrambled to take hold of it again, but he was there, snatching it from her grasp. He tossed it into the box and closed

the flaps as if it were a bomb and the only way to keep it from detonating was out of sight, out of mind.

“I’m sorry, Wes. I just wanted—”

“You had no right.” Between the rafters that bisected the room, he paced what he could of the attic. The narrow strip was a pen to a bull. “You don’t stop, do you? You just keep pushing and pushing. First with the barn, then Daniel, then this. I don’t eat. I hardly sleep. You represent everything I’m trying to put behind me, and just when I think I get to a place where I might be okay with you being here and you don’t remind me of the guy I killed every time I look at you, you push into territory you have no right to understand.”

The guy I killed.

There were no words. Livie tried. They were all buried under a massive pile of guilt at the line she had crossed, at putting Wes in a position to relive his trauma simply by existing. He had no more killed Daniel than if he had ordered him to draw breath, but getting him to see that required him to step away from his crazy penance long enough to forgive himself.

Her knees barely held her weight as she stood. She was numb, what came of that deceptive connection between cognition and emotion. A floorboard shifted beneath her and snapped the frail stillness. When she spoke, the voice that left her was low, husky, controlled.

“You don’t get to stockpile all the hurt, here. You may have lost a combat brother, but I lost a brother, too. A real brother who was the biggest part of the last time I knew happiness. I may have no right to your territory of grief, but if you look close enough, mine looks a whole lot like yours. And it doesn’t make other people feel bad about theirs.”

Six years of guilt played out on Wes’s face, lines that marred his sculpted features. He lifted the box and carried it down the attic stairs and free of the house.

The hinge on the porch door betrayed his silent retreat.

She held it together, even managed to find the ornaments before January appeared at the attic door. One sweet, sympathetic smile, and Livie’s resolve crumbled. January hugged her and said, “Meier men are prone to hissy fits with the tail still on them. But they always come around. Usually sooner rather than later.”

“I should leave.”

“On Christmas?” January shrieked, as if Livie had suggested an oracle circle and a séance on the most holy of nights. “Not a chance. Come on. Willie’s egg nog makes everything better. You’ll swear you’ve seen the Coming firsthand.”

She led Livie down the attic steps, ornament box in tow.

Wes did not make an appearance on Christmas Eve. Each of his brothers, in turn, came out to the barn, pretended to care about the internal mechanisms of their grandfather’s truck, then made Wes feel like a shit heel for whatever it was that had happened with Livie. They knew none of the details; that didn’t change their opinion any. Mona came out with a portable feast and another opinion—hers most surprising of all: She’s a Yankee. Bless her heart, they do things differently up there.

By the time Olive darkened the barn door, Wes expected her. He knew the steady parade of visitors was meant to gauge his internal temperature like a cooked bird. With each consecutive hour, he cooled. Regret, it turned out, was a holiday dish best served cold.

Olive looked ridiculous in an ugly sweater Mona had gifted her—elves in their workshops with paintbrushes. That she took one for the team broke down his defenses even more. Despite his intention to convey the seriousness of the situation, how he felt, he couldn’t suppress a smile.

She pressed her frames closer to her face and matched his tentative smile. “Wait until you see yours. Santa in ass chaps and Mrs. Claus embarrassed about his naked butt.”

On her barely-there lilted accent, he had never heard anything more sublime.

Fully inside the barn, she held out a gift with a single blue ribbon. The wrapping paper was a repeating image of some moody-looking dude in an old brown coat. Upon closer inspection, the dude looked an awful lot like him.

This time, the laughter came more reflexively. “Léon Bonnat?”