The Pines Of Winder Ranch

He stared at Easton, trying to make the jaggedly formed pieces of the puzzle fit together. Tess had stuck around Pine Gulch for years to deal with her husband’s brain injury? He couldn’t believe it, not of her.

“She cared for him tirelessly, all that time,” Easton said quietly. “From what I understand, he required total care. She had to feed him, dress him, bathe him. He was almost more like her kid than her husband, you know.”

“He never recovered from the brain injury?”

“A little but not completely. He was in a wheelchair and lost the ability to talk from the injury. It was so sad. I just remember how nice he used to be to us younger kids. I don’t know how much was going on inside his head but Tess talked to him just like normal and she seemed to understand what sounded like grunts and moans to me.”

The girl he had known in high school had been only interested in wearing her makeup just so and buying the latest fashion accessories. And making his life miserable, of course.

He couldn’t quite make sense of what Easton was telling him.

“I saw them once at the grocery store when he had a seizure, right there in frozen foods,” Easton went on. “It scared the daylights out of me, let me tell you, but Tess just acted like it was a normal thing. She was so calm and collected through the whole thing.”

“That’s rough.”

She nodded. “A lot of women might have shoved away from the table when they saw the lousy hand they’d been dealt, would have just walked away right then. Tess was young, just out of nursing school. She had enough medical experience that I have to think she could guess perfectly well what was ahead for them, but she stuck it out all those years.”

He didn’t like the compassion trickling through him for her. Somehow things seemed more safe, more ordered, before he had learned that perhaps she hadn’t spent the past dozen years figuring out more ways to make him loathe her.

“People in town grew to respect and admire her for the loving care she gave Scott, even up to the end. When she moves to Portland in a few weeks, she’s going to leave a real void in Pine Gulch. I’m not the only one who will miss her.”

“She’s leaving?”

He again tried to be casual with the question, but Easton had known him since he was fourteen. She sent him a quick, sidelong look.

“She’s selling her house and taking a job at a hospital there. I can’t blame her. Around here, she’ll always be the sweet girl who took care of her sick husband for so long. Saint Tess. That’s what people call her.”

He nearly fell off his chair at that one. Tess Jamison Claybourne was a saint like he played center field for the Mariners.

Easton pushed back from the table. “I’d better check on Jo one more time, then get back to work.” She paused. “You know, if you have more questions about Tess, you could ask her. She should be back tonight.”

He didn’t want to know more about Tess. He didn’t want anything to do with her. He wanted to go back to the safety of ignorance. Despising her was much easier when he could keep her frozen in his mind as the manipulative little witch she had been at seventeen.

CHAPTER FIVE

“YOU HAVEN’T HEARD a single word I’ve said for the past ten minutes, have you?”

Tess jerked her attention back to her mother as they worked side by side in Ed Hardy’s yard. Her mother knelt in the mulchy layer of fallen leaves, snipping and digging to ready Dorothy Hardy’s flower garden for the winter, while Tess was theoretically supposed to be raking leaves. Her pile hadn’t grown much, she had to admit.

“I heard some of it.” She managed a rueful smile. “The occasional word here and there.”

Maura Jamison raised one delicately shaped eyebrow beneath her floppy gardening hat. “I’m sorry my stories are so dull. I can go back to telling them to the cat, when he’ll deign to listen.”

She winced. “It’s not your story that’s to blame. I’m just...distracted today. But I’ll listen now. Sorry about that.”

Her mother gave her a careful look. “I think it’s my turn to listen. What’s on your mind, honey? Scott?”

Tess blinked at the realization that except for those few moments when Quinn had asked her about Scott the night before, she hadn’t thought about her husband in several days.

A tiny measure of guilt niggled at her but she pushed it away. She refused to feel guilty for that. Scott would have wanted her to move on with her life and she had no guilt for her dealings with her husband.

Still, she didn’t think she could tell her mother she was obsessing about Quinn Southerland.

“Mom, was I a terrible person in high school?” she asked instead.

Maura’s eyes widened with surprise and Tess sent a tiny prayer to heaven, not for the first time, that she could age as gracefully as her mother. At sixty-five, Maura was active and vibrant and still as lovely as ever, even in gardening clothes and her floppy hat. The auburn curls Tess had inherited were shot through with gray but it didn’t make Maura look old, only exotic and interesting, somehow.

Maura pursed her lips. “As I remember, you were a very good person. Not perfect, certainly, but who is, at that age?”

“I thought I was. Perfect, I mean. I thought I was doing everything right. Why wouldn’t I? I had 4.0 grades, I was the head cheerleader, the student body president. I volunteered at the hospital in Idaho Falls and went to church on Sundays and was generally kind to children and small pets.”

“What’s happened to make you think about those days?”

She sighed, remembering the antipathy in a certain pair of silvery blue eyes. “Quinn Southerland is back in town.”

Her mother’s brow furrowed for a moment, then smoothed again. “Oh, right. He was one of Jo and Guff’s foster boys, wasn’t he? Which one is he?”

“Not the army officer or the adventurer. He’s the businessman. The one who runs a shipping company out of Seattle.”

“Oh, yes. I remember him. He was the dark, brooding, cute one, right?”

“Mother!”

Maura gave her an innocent sort of look. “What did I say? He was cute, wasn’t he? I always thought he looked a little like James Dean around the eyes. Something in that smoldering look of his.”

Oh, yes, Tess remembered it well.

After leaning the rake against a tree, she knelt beside her mother and began pulling up the dead stalks of cosmos. Every time she worked with her hands in the dirt, she couldn’t help thinking how very much her existence the past eight years was like a flower garden in winter, waiting, waiting, for life to spring forth.

“I was horrible to him, Mom. Really awful.”

“You? I can’t believe that.”

“Believe it. He just... He brought out the absolute worst in me.”

Her mother sat back on her heels, the gardening forgotten. “Whatever did you do to the poor boy?”

She didn’t want to correct her mother, but to her mind Quinn had never seemed like a boy. At least not like the other boys in Pine Gulch.

“I don’t even like to think about it all,” she admitted. “Basically I did whatever I could to set him down a peg or two. I did my best to turn people against him. I would make snide comments to him and about him and started unsubstantiated rumors about him. I played devil’s advocate, just for the sake of argument, whenever he would express any kind of opinion in a class.”

Her mother looked baffled. “What on earth did he do to you to make you act in such a way?”

“Nothing. That’s the worst part. I thought he was arrogant and disrespectful and I didn’t like him but I was...fascinated by him.”

Which quite accurately summed up her interaction with him in the early hours of the morning, but she decided not to tell her mother that.

“He was a handsome boy,” Maura said. “I imagine many of the girls at school had the same fascination.”

“They did.” She grabbed the garden shears and started cutting back Dorothy’s day lily foliage. “You know how it is whenever someone new moves into town. He seems infinitely better-looking, more interesting, more everything than the boys around town that you’ve grown up with since kindergarten.”

She had been just as intrigued as the other girls, fascinated by this surly, angry, rough-edged boy. Rumors had swirled around when he first arrived that he had been involved in some kind of murder investigation. She still didn’t know if any of them were true—she really couldn’t credit Jo and Guff bringing someone with that kind of a past into their home.

But back then, that hint of danger only made him seem more appealing. She just knew Quinn made her feel different than any other boy in town.

Tess had tried to charm him, as she had been effortlessly doing with every male who entered her orbit since she was old enough to bat her eyelashes. He had at first ignored her efforts and then actively rebuffed them.

She hadn’t taken with grace and dignity his rejection or his grim amusement at her continued efforts to draw his attention. She flushed, remembering.

“He wasn’t interested in any of us, especially not me. I couldn’t understand why he had to be so contrary. I hated it. You know how I was. I wanted everything in my life to go exactly how I arranged it.”

“You’re like your father that way,” Maura said with a soft smile for her husband of thirty-five years whom they both missed dearly.

“I guess. I just know I was petty and spiteful to Quinn when he wouldn’t fall into line with the way I wanted things to go. I was awful to him. Really awful. Whenever I was around him, I felt like this alien life force had invaded my body, this manipulative, conniving witch. Scarlett O’Hara with pom-poms.”

Her mother laughed. “You’re much prettier than that Vivien Leigh ever was.”

“But every bit as vindictive and self-absorbed as her character in the movie.”

For several moments, she busied herself with garden shears. Maura seemed content with the silence and her introspection, which had always been one of the things Tess loved best about her mother.

“I don’t even want to tell you all the things I did,” she finally said. “The worst thing is, I got him kicked off the baseball team when he was a senior and I was a junior.”

“Tessa Marie. What on earth did you do?”

She burned with shame at the memory. “We had advanced placement history together. Amaryllis Wentworth.”

“Oh, I remember her,” her mother exclaimed. “Bitter and mean and suspicious old bat. I don’t know why the school board didn’t fire her twenty-five years before you were even in school. You would think someone who chooses teaching as an avocation would at least enjoy the company of young people.”

“Right. And the only thing she hated worse than teenage girls was teenage boys.”

“What happened?”

She wished she could block the memory out but it was depressingly clear, from the chalkboard smell in Wentworth’s room to the afternoon spring sunlight filtering through the tall school windows.

“We both happened to have missed school on the same day, which happened to be one of her brutal pop quizzes, so we had to take a makeup. We were the only ones in the classroom except for Miss Wentworth.”

Careful to avoid her mother’s gaze, she picked up an armload of garden refuse and carried it to the wheelbarrow. “I knew the material but I was curious about whether Quinn did so I looked at his test answers. He got everything right except a question about the Teapot Dome scandal. I don’t know why I did it. Pure maliciousness on my part. But I changed my answer, which I knew was right, to the same wrong one he had put down.”

“Honey!”

“I know, right? It was awful of me. One of the worst things I’ve ever done. Of course, Miss Wentworth accused him of cheating. It was his word against mine. The juvenile delinquent with the questionable attitude or the student body president, a junior who already had offers of a full-ride scholarship to nursing school. Who do you think everybody wanted to believe?”

“Oh, Tess.”

“My only defense is that I never expected things to go that far. I thought maybe Miss Wentworth would just yell at him, but when she went right to the principal, I didn’t know how to make it right. I should have stepped forward when he was kicked off the baseball team but I...was too much of a coward.”

She couldn’t tell her mother the worst of it. Even she couldn’t quite believe the depths to which she had sunk in her teenage narcissism, but she remembered it all vividly.

A few days later, prompted by guilt and shame, she had tried to talk to him and managed to corner him in an empty classroom. They had argued and he had called her a few bad names, justifiably so.

She still didn’t know what she’d been thinking—why this time would be any different—but she thought she saw a little spark of attraction in his eyes when they were arguing. She had been hopelessly, mortifyingly foolish enough to try to kiss him and he had pushed her away, so hard she knocked over a couple of chairs as she stumbled backward.

Humiliated and outraged, she had then made things much, much worse and twisted the story, telling her boyfriend Scott that Quinn had come on to her, that he had been so angry at being kicked off the baseball team that he had come for revenge and tried to force himself on her.

She screwed her eyes shut. Scott had reacted just as she had expected, with teenage bluster and bravado and his own twisted sense of chivalry. He and several friends from the basketball team had somehow separated Quinn from Brant and Cisco and taken him beneath the football bleachers, then proceeded to beat the tar out of him.

No wonder he despised her. She loathed that selfish, manipulative girl just as much.

“So he’s back,” Maura said. “Is he staying at the ranch?”

She nodded. “I hate seeing him. He makes me feel sixteen and stupid all over again. If I didn’t love Jo so much, I would try to assign her to another hospice nurse.”

Maura sat back on her heels, showing her surprise at her daughter’s vehemence. “Our Saint Tess making a selfish decision? That doesn’t sound like you.”

Tess made a face. “You know I hate that nickname.”

Her mother touched her arm, leaving a little spot of dirt on her work shirt. “I know you do, dear. And I’ll be honest, as a mother who is nothing but proud of the woman you’ve become and what you have done with your life, it’s a bit refreshing to find out you’re subject to the occasional human folly just like the rest of us.”

Everyone in town saw her as some kind of martyr for staying with Scott all those years, but they didn’t know the real her. The woman who had indulged in bouts of self-pity, who had cried out her fear and frustration, who had felt trapped in a marriage that never even had a chance to start.

She had stayed with Scott because she loved him and because he needed her, not because she was some saintly, perfect, flawless angel.

No one knew her. Not her mother or her friends or the morning crowd at The Gulch.

She didn’t like to think that Quinn Southerland might just have the most honest perspective around of the real Tess Jamison Claybourne.

* * *

THAT EVENING, TESS kept her fingers crossed the entire drive to Winder Ranch, praying she wouldn’t encounter him.

She had fretted about him all day, worrying what she might say when she saw him again. She considered it a huge advantage, at least in this case, that she worked the graveyard shift. Most of her visits were in the dead of night, when Quinn by rights should be sleeping. She would have a much better chance of avoiding him than if she stopped by during daylight hours.

The greatest risk she faced of bumping into him was probably now at the start of her shift than, say, 4:00 a.m.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if he were away from the ranch or busy helping Easton with something or tied up with some kind of conference call to Seattle?

She could only dream, she supposed. More than likely, he would be right there waiting for her, ready to impale her with that suspicious, bad-tempered glare the moment she stepped out of the car.

She let out a breath as she turned onto the long Winder Ranch access drive and headed up toward the house. She could at least be calm and collected, even if he tried to goad her or made any derogatory comments. He certainly didn’t need to discover he possessed such power to upset her.

He wasn’t waiting for her on the porch, but it was a near thing. The instant she rang the doorbell of Winder Ranch, the door jerked open and Quinn stood inside looking frazzled, his dark hair disheveled slightly, his navy blue twill shirt untucked, a hint of afternoon shadow on his cheeks.

He looked a little disreputable and entirely yummy.

“It’s about time!” he exclaimed, an odd note of relief in his voice. “I’ve been watching for you for the past half hour.”

“You...have?”

She almost looked behind her to see if someone a little more sure of a welcome had wandered in behind her.

“I thought you were supposed to be here at eight.”

She checked her watch and saw it was only eight-thirty. “I made another stop first. What’s wrong?”

He raked a hand through his hair, messing it further. “I don’t know the hell I’m supposed to do. Easton had to run to Idaho Falls to meet with the ranch accountant. She was supposed to be back an hour ago but she just called and said she’d been delayed and won’t be back for another couple of hours.”

“What’s going on? Is Jo having another of her breathing episodes? Or is it the coughing?”

Tess hurried out of her jacket and started to rush toward her patient’s room but Quinn grabbed her arm at the elbow.

Despite her worry for Jo, heat scorched her nerve endings at the contact, at the feel of his warm hand against her skin.

“She’s not there. She’s in the kitchen.”

At her alarmed look, he shook his head. “It’s none of those things. She’s fine, physically, anyway. But she won’t listen to reason. I never realized the woman could be so blasted stubborn.”

“A trait she obviously does not share with anyone else here,” she murmured.

He gave her a dark look. “She’s being completely ridiculous. She suddenly has this harebrained idea. Absolute insanity. She wants to go out for a moonlight ride on one of the horses and it’s suddenly all she can talk about.”

She stared, nonplussed. “A horseback ride?”

“Yeah. Do you think the cancer has affected her rational thinking? I mean, what’s gotten into her? It’s after eight, for heaven’s sake.”

“It’s a bit difficult to go on a moonlit ride in the middle of the afternoon,” she pointed out.

“Don’t you take her side!” He sounded frustrated and on edge and more than a little frazzled.

She hid her smile that the urbane, sophisticated executive could change so dramatically over one simple request. “I’m not taking anyone’s side. Why does she suddenly want to go tonight?”

“Her window faces east.”

That was all he said, as if everything was now crystal clear. “And?” she finally prompted.

“And she happened to see that huge full moon coming up an hour or so ago. She says it’s her favorite kind of night. She and Guff used to ride up to Windy Lake during the full moon whenever they could. It can be clear as day up in the mountains on full moons like this.”

“Windy Lake?”

“It’s above the ranch, about half a mile into the forest service land. Takes about forty minutes to ride there.”

“And Tess is determined to go?”

“She says she can’t miss the chance, since it’s her last harvest moon.”

The sudden bleakness in the silver-blue of his eyes tugged at her sympathy and she was astonished by the impulse to touch his arm and offer whatever small comfort she could.

She curled her fingers into a fist, knowing he wouldn’t welcome the gesture. Not from her.

“She’s not strong enough for that,” he went on. “I know she’s not. We were sitting out in the garden today and she lasted less than an hour before she had to lie down, and then she slept for the rest of the day. I can’t see any way in hell she has the strength to sit on a horse, even for ten minutes.”

Her job as a hospice nurse often required using a little creative problem-solving. Clients who were dying could have some very tricky wishes toward the end. But her philosophy was that if what they wanted was at all within reach, it was up to her and their family members to make it happen.

“What if you rode together on horseback?” she suggested. “You could help her. Support her weight, make sure she’s not overdoing.”

He stared at her as if she’d suddenly stepped into her old cheerleader skirt and started yelling, “We’ve got spirit, yes we do.”

“Tell me you’re not honestly thinking she could handle this!” he exclaimed. “It’s completely insane.”

“Not completely, Quinn. Not if she wants to do it. Jo is right. This is her last harvest moon and if she wants to enjoy it from Windy Lake, I think she ought to have that opportunity. It seems a small enough thing to give her.”

He opened his mouth to object, then closed it again. In his eyes, she saw worry and sorrow for the woman who had taken him in, given him a home, loved him.

“It might be good for her,” Tess said gently.

“And it might finish her off.” He said the words tightly, as if he didn’t want to let them out.

“That’s her choice, though, isn’t it?”

He took several deep breaths and she could see his struggle, something she faced often providing end-of-life care. On the one hand, he loved his foster mother and wanted to do everything he could to make her happy and comfortable and fulfill all her last wishes.

On the other, he wanted to protect her and keep her around as long as he could.

The effort to hold back her fierce urge to touch him, console him, almost overwhelmed her. She supposed she shouldn’t find it so surprising. She was a nurturer, which was why she went into nursing in the first place, long before she ever knew that Scott’s accident would test her caregiving skills and instincts to the limit.

“You don’t have to take her, though, especially if you don’t feel it’s the right thing for her. I’ll see if I can talk her out of it,” she offered. She took a step toward the kitchen, but his voice stopped her.

“Wait.”

She turned back to find him pinching the skin at the bridge of his nose.

“You’re right,” he said after a long moment, dropping his hand. “It’s her choice. She’s a grown woman, not a child. I can’t treat her like one, even if I do want to protect her from...the inevitable. If she wants this, I’ll find a way to make it happen.”

The determination in his voice arrowed right to her heart and she smiled. “You’re a good son, Quinn. You’re just what Jo needs right now.”

“You’re coming with us, to make sure she’s not overdoing things.”

“Me?”

“The only way I can agree to this insanity is if we have a medical expert close at hand, just in case.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not? Can’t your other patients spare you?”

That would have been a convenient excuse, but unfortunately in this case, she faced a slow night, with only Tess and two other patients, one who only required one quick check in the night, several hours away.

“That’s not the issue,” she admitted.

“What is it, then? Don’t you think she would be better off to have a nurse along?”

“Maybe. Probably. But not necessarily this particular nurse.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not really much of a rider,” she confessed, with the same sense of shame as if she were admitting stealing heart medicine from little old ladies. Around Pine Gulch, she supposed the two crimes were roughly parallel in magnitude.

“Really?”

“My family lived in town and we never had horses,” she said, despising the defensive note in her voice. “I haven’t had a lot of experience.”

She didn’t add that she had an irrational fear of them after being bucked off at a cousin’s house when she was seven, then later that summer she had seen a cowboy badly injured in a fall at an Independence Day rodeo. Since then, she had done her best to avoid equines whenever possible.