The Rancher Needs A Wife

“A theatrical production of the sort you have in mind is going to take a lot of work. Especially on the tight schedule you’ve planned.”

“I have plenty of experience with extracurricular projects. I know what I’m getting into. And there are several reasons for choosing an early performance date.”

“Yes,” said Thea. “I can see that it would be good to have a project like this in motion before the next board meeting.”

Maggie’s smile widened. “That’s one of the reasons.”

“It’s going to be expensive.”

Maggie pulled one of her mother’s molasses cookies from a brown lunch sack. “I’ve developed quite a talent for soliciting community business donations.”

“This isn’t Chicago.” Thea set aside the proposal and picked up her plastic fork. “Folks here don’t have as much money to spare.”

“And because this isn’t Chicago, they’re going to be more generous with what they’ve got.”

The principal poked at a piece of limp salad lettuce in a small plastic container. “Tucker hasn’t been your community for a number of years.”

Thea’s matter-of-fact tone soothed the sting of her words. And Maggie was finished with feeling defensive about her long absence from her hometown. “This project will provide me with an excellent opportunity to get involved again.”

Thea glanced up. “You sound very certain of yourself.”

“I was hoping I sounded convincing.”

“That, too.” Thea pressed her thin, colorless lips together in a slight frown. “What is it you hope to gain from your time here at Tucker High, Maggie?”

“Besides a few paychecks?” Maggie broke off a bite-size piece of the cookie. “Precisely that—time. Time to decide what to do next. Where to go.”

“There’s no secret agenda here? No ulterior motives?”

“I’m planning a theater revue, Thea,” Maggie said with a reassuring smile, “not a coup.”

“It might be seen as one and the same.”

“And by some of the same members of the community I’m hoping to tap for donations and assistance.” Maggie washed the cookie down with a sip of milk. “It’s going to be quite a challenge. One I’m looking forward to.”

“At least you’re aware of the complications.” Thea finished her salad and reached for the container’s lid. “I see you’ve thought things through.”

“I always think things through. I like to know what I’m getting into before I take the first step.” Maggie brushed a few stray cookie crumbs from her slim black wool skirt. “Things may not always work out quite the way I’d planned, but at least I’m prepared to deal with any problems that might arise.”

“I appreciate the fact that you’ve already outlined several you may encounter.” Thea glanced again at Maggie’s preliminary paperwork. “And I don’t think those problems would have any negative impacts.”

“So…do I have your permission to proceed with my plans?”

“Yes, you have my permission.” Thea swept the papers into the folder Maggie had provided and set it aside. “But give me until the end of the week to get back to you on the budget items.”

“All right. And thank you.”

Maggie helped herself to another cookie and offered the last one to the principal. “What I’d really like, Thea, in addition to your permission, is your blessing.”

Thea lifted one thin, grey brow above the rim of her glasses as she accepted the cookie. “Wouldn’t they be one and the same?”

“Not necessarily.”

There was a long pause as Thea studied her again. Maggie tried not to squirm beneath that cool, assessing gaze.

“No, they wouldn’t be the same thing,” Thea said.

Maggie folded her hands on the table and leaned forward. “I’d like to secure as much faculty support as possible, or at least build a consensus before I start this project. I’ll begin meeting one-on-one with the other staff members this afternoon.”

“Ah, yes. The all-important communal consensus.” Thea smiled her wintry smile. “You may go through the motions of doing things the way we do them here—the way you must have learned things are done when you lived here before—but you still manage to put your own spin on them.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“No.” Thea slowly shook her head. “Just different.”

“It might even be a good thing.”

“It just might be.”

Maggie sensed a slight thaw in the woman across the table and tipped forward a bit more. “There is one last favor you could do for me.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a small part in one of the skits you’d be perfect for.”

“Really.” Thea’s eyes sharpened on hers. “How small?”

Maggie sat back with a laugh. “Oh, this is going to be fun.”

“Yes,” said Thea with a slightly wider smile, “I think it will.”

JODY SQUEEZED INTO her usual spot beside her best friend, Chrissy Fowler, at the sixth grade girls’ lunch table. Down at the other end, one of their classmates gave her a nasty stare and made a show of whispering something to another girl.

“Don’t let that stupid ol’ Rachel Dotson get to you,” said Chrissy. “She’s just jealous. I think your new jacket is beautiful.”

“I didn’t pick it out, Fitz did,” said Jody for the third time that day. “And I didn’t want to say ‘no thank you’ and hurt his feelings.”

She smoothed a hand over the brightly colored nylon of her expensive ski parka, secretly delighted to have something so special. Most of the time she forgot her new stepfather was a movie star and a millionaire. He was simply Fitz, the fun and affectionate guy who’d married her mom. That was one of the reasons she loved him so much—he had a way of making everyone around him feel happy and included. Not because he could buy her things like the portable video player she kept in her room or the delicate, diamond-studded chain hidden beneath her sweater.

She laid her lunch bag on its side and pulled out her ham-and-Swiss-cheese sandwich, thick with extra lettuce, drizzled with wine vinegar and sprinkled with oregano, exactly the way she liked it. Gran’s fussy touches reminded her how lucky she was and helped erase the lingering unease of Rachel’s whispers.

“What kind of cookies did your gran give you today?” Chrissy leaned over the lunch table and peered into Jody’s bag.

“Molasses.” She spread a napkin over the table and set an apple to one side.

“The ones with the sugar glaze?” Chrissy grabbed the edge of the sack and dragged it a few inches in her direction. “Do you have any extras?”

“Enough to give you one, but that’s all.” Jody fingered her jacket’s zipper tag and darted a glance toward the seventh grade boys’ table. “I want to set a couple aside. For later.”

“For Lu-cas.” Chrissy tilted her head from side to side with her singsong chant. “Lu-cas Gu-thrie.”

“Shh.” Jody snuck a peek down the length of the table, but Rachel was busy sticking her big nose into someone else’s business. “I don’t want anyone else to know I like him.”

“I still think if you told Tanya in the seventh grade, and then if she told Kevin Turley—”

“Then he’d know for sure I like him,” said Jody, “and I’d be embarrassed if he didn’t like me back.”

“But he does,” Chrissy whispered, leaning closer. “You know he does.”

“No, I don’t.” Jody tried really hard not to get her hopes up, but it was too late. Her insides were tickling over Chrissy’s opinion—even if she was probably just sticking up for a friend.

There was always a chance.

“He says ‘hi’ to you all the time,” said Chrissy.

Jody shrugged. “He’s just being nice.”

“And Maryanne in the eighth grade said Kevin told her brother that Lucas said he thought one of the girls in the sixth grade class is real cute.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s me.”

“Maryanne thinks so.”

Jody absorbed a new wave of tingly pleasure over this latest bit of news as Chrissy helped herself to one of Gran’s cookies. She froze with it halfway to her mouth. “Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Here he comes.”

Jody pasted on a bright smile as Lucas sauntered their way. Tall and gorgeous, and the best athlete in the seventh grade, he’d already crossed the cafeteria’s invisible boundaries to speak to her three times in the past ten days. Her heart pounded beneath her sweater and the blood swished in her ears like ocean waves.

“Hey, Jody,” he said with a toss of his chin. “How’s it going?”

“Hey, Lucas.” She swiveled on the narrow bench to give him a better view of her new jacket. “Want a cookie?”

“Sure.” He shifted the football he carried under one arm and held out his hand. “Thanks.”

Jody sat in agony while he took a bite and nodded approval. She racked her brain for something brilliant to say, something that would start a real conversation. Something that would entice him to sit down and talk back.

Except then she’d have to keep talking, too, and she’d never be able to eat, because her stomach would be too jittery.

But she had to say something. “When’s your next game?”

“Sunday.” He lifted what was left of the cookie in a vague farewell and headed back to junior high territory.

“God, he is so cute,” said Chrissy with a sigh.

“He really is, isn’t he?” Jody tried not to stare as he walked away, but it was terribly hard. She picked up the apple and took a bite, but she didn’t taste a thing while she chewed.

“And he likes you. I can tell.”

“He likes Gran’s cookies.” Jody breathed deeply and tried to quiet the butterflies in her stomach, relieved the encounter had gone so well. “But I don’t care. It’s a start.”

“Are you going to go to his game?”

“If I can get someone to take me into town.”

“I bet your aunt Maggie will, if you tell her why you need to be there.” Chrissy bit into her cookie and mumbled around the crumbs. “She’s so cool.”

“Yeah,” Jody agreed with a smile, “she sure is.”

“Are you talking about Mrs. Sinclair?” asked Rachel Dotson from the end of the table. “Not everyone thinks she’s so cool, you know.”

“Lots of people do,” said Chrissy. “Besides, you don’t know everything.”

“Maybe.” She shrugged it off. “But I do know what the junior high boys are saying about her. They’re ticked off that she won’t let Mr. Guthrie get started on the football bleachers in time for homecoming.”

“She’s not doing it all by herself,” said Jody.

Rachel ignored the comment and continued to stare at Chrissy. “They’re saying it’s all the Harrisons’ fault. Kevin’s sister heard Lucas tell Ronnie Wolf that he thinks all the Harrisons are losers.”

“Did not,” said Chrissy.

“Were you there?” asked Rachel. She gave Jody a pitying glance and whispered something to the other girls, leaving Jody and Chrissy cut out of the conversation.

“Don’t pay any attention,” said Chrissy. “Like I said, she’s just jealous. Lucas wouldn’t come over here if he was mad at you.”

“I should have been expecting this, I s’pose.” Jody sighed and began to pack up her lunch, too upset to consider eating Gran’s beautiful sandwich. “I’ve read in magazines about guys playing this game with girls.”

“What game?”

Jody sighed again. “Sending mixed signals.”

WAYNE LINGERED over the remains of his chili lunch special in a wide diner booth at the Beaverhead Bar & Grill on Monday afternoon, shaking his head over Ed Meager’s latest letter to the editor of the Tucker Tribune. Some people simply couldn’t let go of a bone, even after the dog on the other end had given up the tug-of-war and gone off to find something with a little more meat on it.

In Ed’s world, the sky was always falling. And if his current diatribe was on target, the atmosphere was going to be missing a whole lot of ozone when it hit the ground.

At the moment, the sky over Tucker was shedding the kind of rain that fell in soft, fat drops and sank deep into the soil—the kind of rain that would have been appreciated back in July, before a monstrous midsummer wildfire had wiped out hundreds of acres of pasture and timber land on the west side of the range. Out on Main Street, truck tires kicked up jets of spray over the glistening street pavement and passersby hunched inside their jackets. The temperature was dropping, and snow would surely follow, drifting to lower elevations in another month or so.

Inside the Beaverhead, the overheated air filmed the window beside him and tempted him to strip off his jacket. The peppery tang of Max’s chili hung in the air along with the odor of the chopped onions that had gone into it. On the kitchen radio, Clint Black wailed over the hissing grill and the chugging dishwasher. Milo Evers, in town to fetch supplies for Granite Ridge, leaned over his coffee at the counter, and across the room Susie Dotson scrubbed at a chocolate pudding smear on her youngest girl’s face, murmuring stern mother’s warnings in counterpoint to her daughter’s fussy whine.

Cute little thing—Amanda, that was her name. Always done up in neat pigtails with tiny plastic clips and bright ribbons, and shoes that looked like something NASA had designed for moon-walking Lilliputians. Today Amanda’s shoes flashed with pink lights when she moved, the way she was moving now, kicking in frustration against the edge of the vinyl seat as she arched and slid toward the floor in a slow-motion getaway.

He wondered what it would be like to slip a glowing pink shoe onto a foot that small, or to tie a ribbon on the end of a thin, silky braid. He longed to find out.

Loretta Olmstead, the lone waitress on duty, shuffled over with a fresh pot of coffee. “Sure is quiet in here for a Monday. More Rotarians usually stick around for lunch.”

“The meeting dragged on a bit longer than usual.” Wayne lifted his cup for a refill. “Most of the cattle got brought down from the high country over the last week or so. Folks have their hands full getting the herds settled in for the winter.”

Loretta stared out the window at the soggy street. “Still, I thought the weather might tempt them to stay inside. And Max made an extra batch of his berry cobbler.”

“Maybe I should perform a kindness and have seconds,” said Wayne with a smile. “Wouldn’t want to see Max get his feelings hurt.”

“You don’t need an excuse to have a second helping of something sweet,” said the waitress. “Could use a little fattening up, in my opinion.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment, darlin’. Even if it sounds a bit underhanded, coming as it does from someone in the food service industry.” He grinned and ducked out of range as she flapped a hand at him.

“When are you going to get yourself a wife,” she asked, “or someone to make your berry cobbler for you?”

“I’ve got Benita.”

“Housekeepers don’t count. Besides, Benita’s got a husband of her own.”

“I like the way she cooks. And the way she keeps my house. She’d be a hard act for any wife to follow.”

“There’s more to tending to a man than picking up after him and filling his stomach.”

“You got someone in mind?” He fell into the familiar rhythm of the game he’d been playing with Loretta for years, a game that had been suspended for one short season during the months he’d spent with Alicia.

“What about that sweet Mary Wilcox, the Presbyterian Church secretary?”

“The one who plays the organ and sings like a tortured cat?” He shook his head. “She’s sweet enough, I s’pose, but I don’t think I could tolerate the sound of her clearing her throat at my bathroom sink in the morning.”

“You’re too damn picky,” Loretta said with a shake of her head. “Someone with your good looks and that big spread shouldn’t have this much trouble finding a replacement for the girl who ran out on you.”

“If my good looks and big spread weren’t good enough to keep one wife, why would they be good enough to catch another?”

“Nothing wrong with the bait, hon.” Loretta patted his shoulder. “You just gotta build up your confidence. Get in some dating practice. Get out there and do a little fishing.”

She pulled her pad out of her pocket and added another serving of Max’s cobbler to his tab. “Speaking of fishing, what are you up to with that Maggie Sinclair? Heard you two were getting a little too close for comfort out on the dance floor Friday night.”

“I don’t know that I’d agree it was all that close,” said Wayne, “but I will admit it was plenty comfortable.”

“Well, don’t go getting too cozy.” Loretta tucked her pad back into her chili-stained apron. “Everyone says she’s getting out of Tucker the first chance she gets.”

Even though he shared her opinion, Wayne found himself wishing he wouldn’t be subjected to these constant reminders of Maggie’s imminent departure. “Wonder why she took that job at the high school if she didn’t plan on sticking around a while?”

“Jobs don’t hold people in place when they want to be someplace else.”

Neither does a marriage, Wayne added silently. He took a sip of his coffee. Cooling already.

Loretta leaned over his shoulder and stared down at the paper. “Is that another of Ed’s letters?”

“Yep.”

“The ozone again?” She sighed when he nodded. “Gotta give the man credit for trying, I s’pose.”

“That’s a fine and generous thing to say.” Wayne winked at her. “Care to put it in writing and send it to the editor?”

The little bell over the main diner door jounced and jingled. Trace Bardett, Frank Guthrie and Jasper Harlan entered and crowded around Max’s specials slate, examining the day’s offerings while they stomped and shook the wet off like three big dogs.

Loretta wandered behind the counter. “Hey, boys.”

“Hey, Loretta.” Trace leaned over the plastic pie dome. “Is that Max’s cobbler?”

“Yep.”

“Think I’ll have me some of that.”

“Be right there.”

Wayne watched the men shift and hesitate before migrating toward his booth. He folded the paper and shoved it aside, bracing himself for the discussion of the donation that he knew was heading his way with them.

“Hey, Wayne.”

“Hey, Trace,” he answered with a nod. “Frank, Jasper.”

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