The Rancher's Homecoming

“I didn’t.” Turning abruptly, she started toward her SUV.

“Annie, wait.” He hurried after her.

She didn’t stop until she was almost to the driver’s door, and then not because of him. She’d spotted Lyndsey, who emerged from behind the house.

“Daddy,” she called.

Sam could have kicked himself. He usually watched his daughter like a hawk. Today, he’d forgotten all about her. “Over here, sweetie.”

“Look what I found in a hollow log behind the barn.” She held the hem of her pink T-shirt out in front of her, the weight of whatever she carried making it dip in the middle.

Annie stood there frozen, observing Lyndsey’s approach. He tried to imagine what she was thinking. Despite his daughter’s girlish features, she resembled Sam, enough that most everyone who saw them together commented on it.

Not only had he married soon after that final parting with Annie, he’d fathered a child almost immediately. He wouldn’t blame her if she hated him.

“What have you got?” Sam asked when Lyndsey neared.

The young girl eyed Annie with caution. Once outgoing and at ease with adults, she’d withdrawn since her mother’s death. Leaving her home and friends and beloved grandfather behind for the summer hadn’t helped, either. She’d been determined not to like Sweetheart from the moment Sam had announced they were going there.

“Lyndsey, this is Annie Hennessy,” he said. “She’s an old friend of mine from when I lived here.”

Annie sent him a cool look, and he could almost hear her saying, Old friend?

When she focused her attention on his daughter, however, her expression melted. Annie did love children.

“Nice to meet you, Lyndsey.”

Sam vowed in that moment he wouldn’t leave Nevada until Annie looked at him with that same warmth.

Lyndsey responded with a shy “Hello.”

“What have you got there?” Sam crossed the few steps separating them. When he saw what his daughter had cradled in her T-shirt, his heart sank. Lyndsey was going to be disappointed again, and he couldn’t prevent it. “Oh, sweetie, I think they’re dead.”

“No, they’re alive. See, they’re moving.” Gathering the hem of her shirt in a small fist, she tentatively touched one of the baby raccoons with her other hand. It moved slightly and gave a pitiful mew, rousing its littermate, which also mewed. “There were two other ones in the log, but they weren’t...” She continued when she was more composed. “I left them there.”

“I think you should put these two back in the log.”

“But they’ll die, too!”

“The mother can take care of them.”

“The mother’s gone.” Lindsey’s cheeks flushed the same pink shade as her T-shirt. “Something must have happened to her. Why else would she leave her babies?”

Sam wanted to drop to his knees and pull her into his arms. She was projecting her own unresolved emotions onto the situation. Wasn’t that how the grief counselor had described her behavior during one of their sessions?

It was hardly the first time and wouldn’t be the last. They both had a lot of healing left to do.

“Daddy.” Her voice warbled. “We can’t let them die.”

“What would we do with two baby raccoons?”

“We can raise them. Until they’re big enough to live by themselves. We read a story in school about this family that rescued baby animals after Hurricane Katrina.”

“They’re so tiny. I doubt they can even walk yet. We don’t know the first thing about raising—”

“Kitten formula.”

Sam glanced over at Annie. While he’d been talking to his daughter, she’d edged closer.

“Dr. Murry in town can help you. He’ll set you up with bottles and formula. You’ll need a box and a blanket and a lamp to keep them warm. He’ll tell you more about that, too.” She gently stroked the head of one baby raccoon with her index finger. “They’re severely dehydrated. If you don’t get fluids in them soon, they won’t last.”

“Have you raised baby raccoons before?” Lyndsey asked.

“A few. Along with kittens, puppies, squirrels, rabbits, snakes, a crow, you name it. There was even a fox once.”

Sam knew the fox hadn’t survived from the stories Annie told him.

“Wow.” Lyndsey gaped at Annie with awe.

“My guess is these little fellows are about eight or nine weeks old. And they would be walking if they weren’t so weak. The mother might have had trouble finding food since the fire and wandered too far. If you’re going to save them, you’d better get them to Doc Murry’s right away. Anyone in town can direct you to his office.”

“Lyndsey.” Sam hated letting his daughter down, but he had to be realistic. “We’re leaving in a month. Those raccoons won’t be old enough to live on their own by then.”

“Will you take care of them after that?” Lyndsey ignored Sam in favor of Annie.

“That’s a lot to ask of Ms. Hennessy—”

“I’ll figure something out,” Annie assured Lindsey with a tender smile.

“You don’t have to,” Sam said.

“There’s the wildlife refuge outside of Lake Tahoe. We’re on a first-name basis. But you’re going to have to save them first.” She brushed Lyndsey’s tousled hair from her face. “Better hurry. Keep them as quiet as possible during the ride.”

“Come on, Daddy.” Lyndsey started for the truck, wrapping an arm protectively around her precious cargo.

“Where are you staying?” Annie asked Sam.

“At the Mountainside Motel.” The only one in Sweetheart open for business after the fire. “But we check out tomorrow. I have some furniture arriving. A few basics. Enough for Lyndsey and me to stay at the ranch.”

“I’ll try and stop by after work if I don’t have to stay late. Just to check on the raccoons,” she clarified when he raised his brows.

“Of course.” He studied her closed-off expression. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t do it for you.” She walked away then.

Sam watched her go. Same proud, stubborn Annie.

“Daddy! Hurry.”

“Coming.”

As they traveled the winding drive to the main road, a smile spread across his face. Annie might refuse his assistance at every step, but together they were going to rebuild her inn.

He owed her that much at least.

Chapter Two

Sam Wyler was back!

Annie still hadn’t come to grips with that fact twenty minutes later when she pulled into the parking space beside the Hennessy half of the duplex they rented in town.

She’d kept one eye glued to her rearview mirror during the entire drive from the Gold Nugget, hoping he hadn’t followed her. The last thing she wanted was for him to see where she lived.

Not that the two-bedroom apartment was exactly trashy. Just small and modest and nothing compared with the lovely and charming suite of rooms she’d occupied at the inn. The rooms Sam had seen when they’d sneak off to be alone and make love.

She’d assumed those nights spent together would last forever. Then, he’d left, returned, left again and married—because the daughter of the rancher who hired him was carrying his child—and become a father.

Annie stayed behind in Sweetheart, hoping for the same future every couple who eloped here did. Only that happy ending had eluded her.

Mostly. As Sam had pointed out, she did have her beautiful little girl. For now, at least.

Her ex-husband had recently started hinting that he and his new wife could provide a better environment for Nessa than an eight-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot apartment shared by four individuals. What next? Would he go so far as to sue Annie for primary custody? She didn’t think so, but everyone and everything had changed of late.

It was true, now that the inn had burned, that Gary could provide better for their daughter. And, marital differences aside, he’d always been a good father.

That made no difference to Annie. If he tried to obtain primary custody of their daughter, he and his new wife—Annie would lay odds Linda Lee was behind this—were in for the fight of their lives.

If only Sam hadn’t suddenly reappeared, knocking Annie for an emotional loop. She didn’t need anything distracting her from what mattered the most: rebuilding the inn and safeguarding her family.

She swung open the apartment door and stepped inside.

“Mommy! You’re home.” Nessa ran at her from across the living room like a miniature missile, her face smeared with some unidentifiable food remains and a Barbie doll with chopped-off hair clutched in her hand.

Annie scooped up her daughter and let herself feel truly good for the first time since leaving the apartment that morning.

“Hey, sweetums. How was your day?”

“Good. Grandma and I made biscuits. I ate two whole ones by myself. With jelly.”

That explained the smeared food on Nessa’s face. She tickled the girl’s tummy. “How on earth did you put that much in there?”

“I’m big now.”

“Yes, you are.”

“You wanna play Barbies with me?”

“Maybe later. Mommy’s a little tired.”

“You’re always tired,” Nessa complained. “Ever since the fire. Grandma, too. And Great-granny Orla.”

From the mouths of babes.

“I feel much better now that I’m home.” She set Nessa down and kissed the tip of her nose, which was the only clean spot on her entire face.

“You want a biscuit and jelly? I can fix it for you.”

“That’d be wonderful.”

Annie sat on the couch and slowly removed her heavy hiking boots. By the end of the day, they felt as if they were lined with cement. She sighed when the first boot hit the floor, almost cried with relief when the second one followed.

Leaning back, she closed her eyes and relaxed for just a minute, listening to her mother patiently caution Nessa to be careful and not spill any jelly, in much the same way she’d cautioned Annie when she was growing up.

No one knew their way around the kitchen better than Fiona Hennessy. For almost her entire life, she’d overseen meals and housekeeping for the inn’s twenty or thirty guests. Her small, compact stature belied the iron fist with which she’d ruled her domain.

These past six weeks, Fiona had continued the tradition of spending most of her time in the kitchen. Only now she was hiding from the world and desperately missing all that had been taken from her.

No more lion’s claw bathtubs in the upstairs bedrooms, large enough to hold two. No more handmade, valentine-patterned quilts on which were strewn dried rose petals for arriving honeymooners. Or carved wooden trays that had held champagne breakfasts, discreetly delivered with a soft knock on the door. No more do-not-disturb signs, often hanging on doorknobs all the day long.

Annie hoped her mother’s depression was temporary. More than that, she hoped her ex-husband, Gary, didn’t notice Fiona’s detachment when he picked up Nessa for “his days.” That would only strengthen his argument that the apartment wasn’t a good place to raise their daughter.

She would never wish him harm but often caught herself wondering why fate had chosen the inn to burn and left Gary’s house and place of business intact.

“Here you go, Mommy.”

Opening her eyes, Annie was greeted by Nessa holding a paper plate with two jelly-laden biscuit halves.

“That looks good.” Annie pushed tiredly to her feet. “Maybe I should eat it in the kitchen.” She took the plate from Nessa, amazed the biscuit halves hadn’t already landed on the carpet. “What else is for dinner?”

“Nothing,” Nessa singsonged. “Just biscuits.”

Uh-oh. Annie walked to the kitchen, her steps slow and her stomach sinking. Nessa danced in circles beside her. Fiona stood at the sink, staring vacantly out the window. Definitely not good.

Her mother watched Nessa during the day while Annie worked for the NDF. Her paycheck and Granny Orla’s social security, which she’d started collecting just this month, were their only sources of income. Without them, they wouldn’t be able to afford even this lowly apartment.

Lately, Annie had begun to question if her mother was up to the task of caring for an active child. More and more often, Fiona would disappear into her own world. For minutes on end. Five, ten, twenty. Long enough for an unsupervised Nessa to find trouble.

What Fiona should be doing while Nessa played was dealing with the insurance company, finalizing their settlement and obtaining quotes from contractors for rebuilding the inn. That was their agreement.

Hard to do when she could barely drag herself out of bed in the mornings.

“Where’s Granny Orla?” Annie asked Nessa, hoping her question would rouse her mother. “Taking a nap?”

“I dunno.”

“At the Rutherfords,” Fiona answered without looking away from the window. “They called.”

“How long has she been there?”

“Most of the afternoon, I guess.”

The Rutherfords and the Hennessys’ other neighbors were a godsend. Annie’s grandmother, sharp as a tack until the fire, had started taking walkabouts during the day, easily escaping Fiona’s less-than-diligent guard. She mostly wound up on some neighbor’s doorstep—one whose house hadn’t been lost to the fire. The neighbor would invite her inside until Annie came by later to fetch her.

Last week, Annie had found Granny Orla at the inn ruins and was shocked she’d managed the two-mile trek alone.

Annie doubted Alzheimer’s or senility was responsible for her grandmother’s increasing confusion. Like all of them, she’d suffered a great loss. And, also like them, she’d chosen a means of coping. Fiona emotionally retreated, Annie buried herself in work and Granny Orla chose to forget.

“I’ll go get her.” Annie set her plate of biscuits on the table, the little appetite she’d had now gone. “You want to come with me, sweetums?”

“Yes, yes!” Nessa swung her Barbie in an arc.

“Okay. But you have to pick up your toys and finish your milk first.” Annie cringed inwardly. Biscuits and milk wasn’t the most nutritious meal. Then again, Nessa wouldn’t starve.

Annie should eat, too, if only to keep up her strength. Seeing Sam had drained the last of it.

Why had he chosen now to return, and why buy the Gold Nugget? She still couldn’t believe he’d asked for her help.

While Nessa gathered the many toys strewn throughout the house and returned them to the plastic crate stored in the bedroom she and Annie shared, Annie changed into more-comfortable clothes.

“We shouldn’t be long,” she said upon returning to the kitchen.

Fiona, who hadn’t moved from the window, suddenly turned and stared at Annie with more intensity than she’d shown in weeks. “Sam Wyler’s in town. He bought the Gold Nugget.”

That took Annie by surprise. “I know,” she said. “How did you hear?”

“Everyone’s talking about it.”

“I ran into him. On my way home. I stopped by the Gold Nugget, and he was there.”

“I suppose if someone had to buy the ranch, I’d rather it be him.”

“Mom! How can you say that?”

Fiona went slowly to the table, pulled a chair out for herself and dropped into it. “He’s one of our own.”

“Because he lived here two years?” Annie was aghast at her mother’s calm acceptance. “He’s going to turn it into a working guest ranch.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

Finally! Reason had returned. “I agree. A bed-and-breakfast makes more sense.” Like her own plans for the place.

“I like the idea of a working guest ranch. Not sure why someone didn’t think of that before.”

“But you said—”

“What I meant was the fire’s discouraged people from coming to Sweetheart. Bed-and-breakfast or working guest ranch, both need customers.”

“Fine with me. When he flops, we’ll buy the ranch from him.”

“Sam was always a hard worker. If anyone can pull it off, he can.” Fiona talked as if she hadn’t heard Annie.

“He’ll be in competition with us. Once we rebuild.”

“If we rebuild,” Fiona said tiredly.

Annie didn’t listen to her mother when she got this way. “Did you have a chance to make Nessa’s immunization appointment at the clinic?”

Fiona shook her head. “I was busy.”

Biscuit making? Annie thought grouchily. Did that take all afternoon?

She tried to be patient and understanding with her mother. Really she did. Fiona’s fragile emotional state made the task of rebuilding too overwhelming for her to bear. But once they broke ground, she and Annie’s grandmother would be their old selves and life would return to normal.

Annie had to believe that. If not, she’d be overwhelmed herself, and she couldn’t afford to let that happen.

Long before they finished rebuilding, however, Sam’s working guest ranch would be up and running. Damn him! Annie wanted their inn and not Sam’s ranch bringing the honeymooners and tourists back to Sweetheart.

“Mrs. Rutherford mentioned Sam has a little girl.”

“He does.” Annie made herself eat a biscuit half in case Nessa noticed.

Normally, her daughter would be pestering her to leave. Instead, she’d become interested in a puzzle she was supposed to be putting away.

“I heard she looks like him,” Fiona said.

The food stuck in Annie’s throat. “No need for DNA testing. She’s Sam’s child through and through.”

Except for the sorrow in her eyes.

Annie was no psychiatrist, she didn’t have to be. The girl was obviously troubled—which might not be Sam’s fault. Her mother had died and, as Annie could attest, life-altering events changed a person.

“I bet he’s a good dad.”

She rose from the table, not wanting to talk about Sam or his daughter. “Come on, Nessa. Find your shoes so we can go get Granny Orla.”

Nessa abandoned the puzzle and went on the hunt for her shoes.

“It was a shame things didn’t work out for you and him,” Fiona said from the table. “You must have really broken his heart.”

“Let’s not forget, he left me.”

Fiona sighed. “Bound to happen. Can’t fight the inevitable.”

Her mother’s words stayed with Annie as she and Nessa walked hand in hand to the Rutherfords’.

Ask anyone in town, and they’d say the Hennessy women were cursed. All of them, grandmother, mother and daughter, had loved their men, only to be abandoned by them. In Granny Orla and her mother’s cases, they’d been left with a child to raise alone. Not Annie. Sam had simply taken off—which was practically unheard of in a town renowned for couples marrying.

Rather than be thought of as the third Hennessy woman to suffer unrequited love, Annie had rushed out and wed the first man to show an interest in her.

Can’t fight the inevitable.

It hadn’t made a difference. The Hennessy curse had continued with Annie. For here she was today, abandoned by not one but two men.

She squeezed Nessa’s hand.

Please, please, she silently prayed, don’t let my baby be as unlucky in love as the rest of my family.

* * *

SAM GAZED OVER AT LYNDSEY and mentally kicked himself. She—and he by default—were now foster parents to Porky Pig and Daffy Duck. Lyndsey had named their new charges while in Dr. Murry’s office, after he informed her the pair were both males.

“Did you know baby raccoons are called kits?” Lyndsey struggled to buckle her seat belt while balancing the cardboard boot box containing the kits on her lap. Tube-fed, hydrated and vaccinated, they’d fallen into a deep sleep atop an old towel. “And when they get older, some people call them cubs.”

“Is that so?”

Sam hadn’t heard everything Dr. Murry told them and listened intently as Lindsey repeated the instructions. He’d received not one but two phone calls while at the vet’s. The first from the moving company confirming the arrival of their furniture tomorrow. The second call was from a cattle broker regarding a shipment of calves.

Sam added hiring a livestock manager and locating a string of sound trail horses to his growing task list.

“Chicken’s one of their favorite foods,” Lyndsey said. “And sunflower seeds.”

“Well, we should get along just fine as chicken and sunflower seeds are some of my favorite foods, too.”

She giggled.

Giggled! Sam almost swerved off the road. He hadn’t seen his daughter this happy since before her mother’s accident.

Trisha Wyler had been pronounced dead upon arrival at the hospital after a drunk driver ran a stop sign and T-boned her Buick. Her passenger, on the other hand, lived long enough to confess Trisha’s secret.

Sam didn’t just lose his wife that day—his entire belief system was destroyed in one fell swoop.

His father-in-law was responsible for Sam keeping it together, reminding him daily of Lyndsey and the twenty employees at their three-thousand-acre cattle ranch who depended on him.

Sam went through the motions for six months, a huge, empty hole inside him that no amount of whiskey, angry rages, sympathy from friends and a seven-figure settlement could fill. Then, over a year ago, he returned to the Redding California Hotshots, a seasonal volunteer job he’d loved during the early years of his marriage. Within a few months, he was promoted to crew leader, then captain.

Long, grueling, sweat-filled days battling fires on the front line returned him to the world of the living.

Until the day the fire they were fighting in the Sierra Nevada Mountains jumped the ravine and bore down on the town of Sweetheart.

It was his fault. Had he disobeyed his commanding officer’s orders like he wanted to, he might have saved the town. Saved Annie’s family’s inn. His superiors didn’t hold him responsible but Sam did. Enough for ten people.

He quit the Hotshots a week later and found a real estate agent in Lake Tahoe who knew the Sweetheart area, his plan to return temporarily and assess how he could best help the town recover already in motion.

During one of their phone conversations, the agent mentioned the Gold Nugget Ranch. Sam made the offer the next day sight unseen and paid the full asking price without quibbling. As of tomorrow, he was officially in the hospitality business.

And, apparently, in the baby raccoon business, too. He’d foster a hundred of them if Lyndsey would only giggle again.

While Sam had immersed himself in wilderness firefighting as a means to conquer his grief, his daughter grew further and further apart from him. He hoped their time together in Sweetheart would remedy that. Still, one summer of being an attentive father couldn’t wipe out eighteen months of neglect.

“We need to buy canned cat food,” Lyndsey insisted. Her hand lay protectively on Porky and Daffy. “Dr. Murry said they’re old enough for solid food.”

Did baby raccoons bite? Sam couldn’t remember the vet’s advice. “We will.”

“Tomorrow?”

He thought of his lengthening task list. What was one more item?

“Tomorrow. After the furniture arrives.” He eased onto the main road from the parking lot. It had grown dark outside while they were with the vet.

“How will we warm the milk?” Lyndsey asked.

“The stove works.” If the propane tank was full and if he could locate a pan.

“Where will we get a cage?”

“The feed store might have one.”

“What if they don’t?”

“We’ll figure something out. Don’t worry.” He could see his words had no effect. Worry lines creased his daughter’s small brow.

Maybe he should call the grief counselor, get some advice on how to handle Lyndsey and her quickly forming attachment to the kits. Heaven knew he hadn’t done well when left to his own devices.

“Ms. Hennessy might have a cage we can use.” Was that still Annie’s name or had she kept her ex-husband’s?

Lyndsey’s face lit up. “Do you think so?”

“Maybe.”

Seriously? Who was he kidding? The inn had burned down to the ground. From what the real estate agent told him, Annie, her mother and grandmother were left with no more than a few hastily gathered personal possessions.

“Or, she might know someone who does,” he suggested, thinking that possibility more likely.

“I want to take Porky and Daffy home to California with us,” Lyndsey promptly announced.