Reuniting With the Rancher Read online

  Chapter Seven

  Mercifully, Lisa had not put in another appearance last night. Holly had still had trouble sleeping, wrestling with her own mixed-up desires, all of them complicated by the time she had spent with Cliff. Sitting on his lap had felt like a dream come true, a need so deep that she hadn’t realized how much she had been missing it all this time.

  It had brought back other memories, too, of what it had felt like to lie naked with him under the sky, surrounded by nature, free of inhibition. The way the breeze had felt on secret parts of her that hadn’t ever been exposed that way. The slightly tickly sensation as it had ruffled the curls between her thighs. The huge aching sensation when his hot mouth had followed it, teaching her that pleasure could approach pain. The way she had spent most of the summer in a half-orgasmic state, constant anticipation of the next time, the next moment, the next touch. Riding a horse had transformed from a delight to a promise of pleasure. With every movement in the saddle the ache had deepened.

  Damn, she had had it bad. And to judge by what she had felt tonight, she still had it bad.

  Was that behind her urge to cut out on her job? Or was she just worn-out? And could she be truly serious about throwing away all she had worked for? Had she reached that point?

  It was possible. She knew plenty of social workers who simply couldn’t do the kind of work she was doing anymore. They moved to desk jobs. They moved to doing social work in other settings, where the emotional strain wasn’t as overwhelming. Anywhere but the streets and the impoverished kids who grew up with the sounds of gunfire and the violence they could hear through paper-thin walls, even if it wasn’t happening within their own homes.

  It took a toll. Maybe eight years was enough. Maybe she had reached the point where she wasn’t helping as much as a fresher person might. How would she know?

  But morning came, dripping sunshine everywhere, with a sky as blue as an unflawed sapphire. She dressed eagerly, excited about riding with Cliff in an hour. It had been so long since she’d ridden a horse, not since her last time with Cliff, in fact. She loved riding, and that summer, with Cliff, it had become both magical and sensual.

  She headed downstairs with some minor trepidation, wondering how Lisa would greet her and whether she’d be a little more pleasant this morning. Much to her relief, there was no Lisa in sight. She found a note on the table.

  Gone to town for some shopping. Back in a few hours. Don’t lock me out. L

  Really? She couldn’t afford a place to stay but had gone shopping? Well, maybe she needed some shampoo or feminine products. Something essential. As Holly remembered, there wasn’t a whole lot to shop for in Conard City anyway. And hadn’t Cliff mentioned that Lisa went on shopping trips to Denver? That would take more than a couple of hours.

  Regardless, it was enough she could have her breakfast in peace, enjoy anticipating the ride with Cliff and maybe try to sort through some of her internal confusion.

  It had occurred to her somewhere between waking and sleeping that building some kind of youth ranch or camp here might be the perfect compromise for her. If she really had grown reluctant to go back, then she needed to find another way to contribute, one that wouldn’t feel like a cop-out. The idea energized her, and had from the moment Cliff had mentioned it, so that was a good thing. Whether she could bring it to fruition remained to be seen, but she doubted she would have time to work on getting a camp rolling once she was back at her job.

  Excitement carried her outside once more, however. She had made a thermos of coffee for them to take along, but she knew from experience Cliff would arrive with saddlebags full of food and drink from Jean. She needed to make a point of going over there just to spend some time visiting with Jean.

  Standing there, looking around the space she still had, envisioning the bunkhouses, the kids, the garden, all of it, lifted her spirits the rest of the way. Martha would approve and she would enjoy it. So would the kids. It was time to stop thinking about it and talk to someone who could clarify the task so that she’d know where to begin. Somehow she suspected building the bunkhouses would be the very last thing on the list.

  She turned around, taking in the vista, feeling the peace of the prairie and mountains settling over her. Something about these wide-open spaces suffused her with a calm it was impossible to feel at home in the city. She wasn’t going to blame the city for that, though. No, it was something deep within her that seemed to be answered by the endless vista, the infinity of the blue sky, the gentle whisper of the morning breeze.

  Martha could have deeded this place to Cliff, but she hadn’t. Maybe her aunt had guessed how much she needed these spaces. She wouldn’t put anything past her aunt. She’d learned over the years how canny Martha could be. She never pushed for anything, she never criticized anyone, but when she saw a need she found a way to do something about it.

  Here at the base of the mountains, the prairie rolled gently. She saw Cliff appear at the top of one of those small slopes astride his mount and leading a horse for her. She lifted her hand and waved and suddenly felt twenty again.

  He answered the way he always had, lifting the cowboy hat from his head and waving it in a wide arc.

  Time rolled back ten years in an instant. She ran toward him as she had done all those years ago, her heart lightening with sheer gladness. By the time she opened the gate for him, Cliff was only a few feet away and smiling broadly.

  “It’s a beautiful morning,” he said.

  “It most certainly is. I’ve got a thermos of coffee for us.”

  “Jean loaded me up as usual. Are you warm enough? Then grab the coffee and let’s go. I feel like I’m on a prison break.”

  The laugh that escaped her was as carefree as any she’d given voice to in a long, long time. Everything seemed to have fallen away except Cliff, the horses and the beautiful day.

  She mounted without help, although she realized certain muscles weren’t quite what they used to be, and soon they were letting the horses pick their lazy way along.

  “No Lisa?” he asked.

  “She left a note that she’d gone shopping and I should leave the house unlocked for her if I went out.”

  “Did you?”

  She glanced at him. “Heck, no.”

  He tipped back his head and laughed, and once again the years seemed to vanish. There had been so much laughter that summer. So much fun, so many tender moments. He was right; regardless of how it had ended, it was an experience to be treasured.

  She urged her mount to a slightly faster pace. She wasn’t ready yet to attempt a gallop, but she wanted to be moving, away from the house, away from everything. Seconds later Cliff caught up and rode beside her. He shifted his reins to his other hand and reached out to clasp hers. Now they rode so closely together that their knees brushed occasionally.

  Just as they had back then. She felt a moment of resistance, fear of opening an old can of worms all over again, then ignored it. The time limit was set, and he knew it as well as she did. This was just a chance to have fun.

  And she was so ready for fun. It wasn’t long, though, before Cliff encouraged her to slow down. “I bet you haven’t been riding recently. You don’t want to get saddle sore.”

  He had a good point, but she still sighed as she reined in. “It’s been ten years,” she admitted. Since she had last seen him, but she didn’t want to go there.

  “All the more reason to take it easy. So do you want to go to the creek or somewhere else?”

  The creek, of course. She didn’t know why that flat rock had come to mean so much more than most of the other places they had visited. Hell, they’d made love everywhere, from a barn loft to the bed of his truck to an open field and a cave in the mountain. But somehow that place stuck with her—the sound of the water, the overarching trees that had made it feel as if they were in a room provided by
nature. And the rock. She’d always loved big boulders and rocks.

  “Did I ever tell you about my thing for big rocks?” she asked. “How much I love them?”

  “I guess that tells me where we’re going.” He flashed a smile her way. “You mentioned it. How else would I know that you like them?”

  “I think they’re beautiful, but I could never put it in words as to why. They just grab my attention, maybe even my imagination. Sounds silly, I guess. It’s not as if they do anything but sit there.”

  “Maybe that’s what gets to us, their endurance.”

  He released her hand as the horses pulled farther apart, needing to pick their own way over the uneven ground. She tossed her head, drinking the beauty of the chilly morning and the bright greens that had begun to emerge from winter. Most of all she savored the sense of freedom that came over her, cutting her free of the detritus of the past, temporarily removing her from her grief for Martha. All of that would return soon enough. For now, just as she had ten years ago, she embraced an experience out of time, an experience so far removed from the burdens of reality that it felt like a sojourn in Eden.

  “I’ve missed this!”

  He glanced at her, his turquoise eyes smiling. “So have I.”

  The phrase seemed so weighted with the desires of the past that uneasiness touched her briefly. Was she making a mistake? But truthfully, she was past caring. So many things had begun to trouble her since Martha’s passing that she couldn’t deny herself this break. She needed it.

  So she gave herself up to every relaxing and exhilarating moment. Going back to the rock could be a big mistake. It might also prove to be the answer to questions she had evaded for ten years. It might even help her, by its endurance and peace, to sort through the mess she seemed to have been falling into since Martha’s death.

  A half hour later, they arrived at the creek. Towering trees arched over it, leaves feathering out in stunning contrast to the deep green of pines farther up the slope. The creek itself rushed happily, filled with meltwater that had been steadily journeying down from the peaks as the seasons changed.

  It was every bit as magical and beautiful as she had remembered it.

  The last time she had been here, in early August, the stream had been shrunken, still lively but nothing like the rush and bubble she saw now. She wondered if they were going to be able to reach the flat rock in the middle when the stepping stones they had used before were under water.

  Cliff had no such qualms. He just led her to a point where the bank was gentle and guided them down it on horseback. The horses didn’t seem to mind at all. They picked their way carefully, but brought them to the huge flat rock that seemed to have patiently awaited their return for all these years.

  “You dismount onto the rock,” Cliff said. “I’ll hand you the picnic things Jean sent, then take the horses back to dry ground.”

  “But you’ll get wet,” she protested, even as she swung down and found stable footing.

  “I can dry out. The horses can’t stand in this water for long. It can’t be much above freezing.”

  She accepted the carefully wrapped bundles and a blanket from him and put them in the center of the rock, well away from the creek’s splashing. When she turned, he had already tethered the horses within sight and was sitting on the bank, pulling off his boots and socks. Then he rolled up his jeans to his knees, probably a useless gesture, she thought with amusement.

  Holding his boots and socks under one arm, he stepped into the water and let out a yelp she could hear even over the rush of the creek.

  She laughed.

  “Yup, it’s cold,” he called. She watched him pick his way as carefully as the horses had, holding her breath once when he nearly lost his balance. Then he stepped onto the rock, spread his arms and said, “Voilà!”

  She laughed again.

  “Am I good or what?” he asked, a twinkle in his amazing eyes.

  “You’re good,” she acknowledged.

  “I knew you’d agree.” He dropped his boots and reached for the blanket. Together they spread it out, then sat.

  Propping herself on her hands, Holly leaned back and looked up at the fantastic canopy growing over their heads. “I think this is my favorite place in the world.”

  “Then stay.”

  He couldn’t have said anything better calculated to dash the moment. She sat upright and looked at him. “Cliff...”

  He held up a hand. “I get it. You’re going back. You’re doing important work. You’ll be leaving and that’s that. But I keep wondering.”

  “Wondering what?”

  “Why the hell you can’t just do good work here. I mentioned bringing your kids out here. I bet you’ve thrown up a million mental roadblocks. Hell, you were talking about how this might make it more difficult for them to go home. Maybe you’re right. On the other hand...”

  When he didn’t complete the thought, her initial stubbornness faded. And that had been the real basis of her reaction: stubbornness. Nobody told her what to do except at work. She made her own decisions, her own plans.

  She tore her gaze from him and looked up at the trees again. On the other hand, there could be more than one road to the same end. She was getting burned-out. She was running from something so hard that she was in danger of making herself ill.

  Maybe blaming it on that attack last year was just an easy excuse, a way to conceal something else in her that was dying.

  Sighing, she closed her eyes and let her head fall to her chest.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to ruin this for you. It just seems to me that you’re burning your candle at both ends, and the woman who came back here for a funeral has burned to a mere stub of what she used to be.”

  “Why should you care?” she asked wearily.

  “Maybe for old times’ sake. Maybe because I just care. I’m worried about you, Holly. I’ve been trying to ignore it, telling myself it’s none of my business. You made that clear a long time ago. But seeing the way you were on our ride out here, and comparing it to the woman you’ve been since you got back here... Holly, you need something more than your job. I don’t know what it is. I just know in my gut that you’re killing yourself.”

  The old stubbornness tried to rear up, tried to tell her she could do anything she put her mind to, but since coming here she had begun to realize that wasn’t true. She had limits just like every other person in the world. Physical limits, emotional limits.

  Her friends at work, Carla and Laurie and Sharon, had been trying to tell her that for the last few months. Rotate, they kept telling her. They could see what Cliff was seeing, too, and given how close they were to her, it was even more surprising that they’d noticed it. He, after all, was seeing her after an absence of ten years. They saw her every day, and the contrast shouldn’t have been as obvious to them.

  Unless it was so blatantly true that the whole world could see it.

  She lowered her head again, listening to the voice of the rushing creek, seeking some kind of answer within herself. Did she just need a vacation? Did she need to take a break from the streets? Or did she need a major life change?

  That latter idea scared her half to death. Yet wasn’t that exactly what she was considering by thinking about a youth ranch here?

  Maybe that scared her as much as anything. Not just the change, but the size of the task. She couldn’t imagine where to even begin. She’d need advice from all kinds of professionals at the very start, and she wasn’t even sure which ones. A lawyer? Probably. Psychologists, probably. And then what? What steps in which order?

  “I don’t know how to start,” she mumbled.

  “I’m sorry?”

  She lifted her head, feeling the fear and hollowness that must be showing on her face. “I don’t know how to start. Where to
begin. I’d need so much help, there’d be so many hurdles. I’d need people who’d actually be willing to work with the kids when they come here. How can I afford that?”

  “I don’t know about affording, but you might find plenty of volunteers.”

  “Who?”

  “Me, for starters. I could help you build what you need. I could teach kids about animal husbandry. Jean would probably love to teach gardening. Then we’ve got a whole slew of good teachers here, both at the community college and in the public schools. I bet they’d be willing to volunteer time to help. But that’s not the immediate issue. Is it?”

  No, it wasn’t, she admitted to herself. There was the whole part about jumping off a cliff into the unknown. The possibility of having it all blow up in her face. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t get another job just like the one you already have.”

  He had a point. What with budget cutbacks, jobs weren’t as available as they once had been, but on the other hand a lot of people quit for the very same reason she was facing: burnout. So there were always new openings, and finding an experienced social worker wasn’t easy. When most quit, they quit the streets for good.

  “Do you think it would work?” she asked finally.

  “Well, I’m not the biggest authority on youth ranches for inner-city kids, but I’d be surprised if there aren’t enough needy kids in this state to keep you going.”

  She hadn’t thought about that, either. It didn’t just have to be inner-city kids.

  “Do you know,” she said slowly, “that one of the reasons poor kids don’t do as well in school is because they don’t enjoy enrichment opportunities over school breaks?”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “It’s like the spigot gets turned off during the breaks, and when they come back they have to make up lost ground, unlike the children of better-off families, who get to the library or visit museums or take trips. It’s like their learning turns off every summer. But once they get back up to speed, they do every bit as well. And when there are summer enrichment programs, they never lose ground at all. We’ve been working on that, but funding is hard to come by.”