The Cowboy's Homecoming

But at least he had gotten it out in the open. They wouldn’t have to pretend the pain and uncertainty weren’t there.

“I’ll take my backpack, please,” Abby said as Lee slipped the one strap over his shoulder.

“I don’t mind carrying it. I’m afraid it will throw you off balance in this high grass.”

“Those cameras and lenses in there are my livelihood,” she informed him, her hand still out. “I have never entrusted that backpack to anyone before.”

He wanted to protest, not sure he should risk helping her again if she stumbled, but she seemed adamant, so he reluctantly handed the bag over to her. He shoved his hands in his back pocket so he wouldn’t be tempted to rush to her rescue again.

That moment, when he had held her arms, it was as if something electric surged between them. He blamed his reaction to the heightened feelings she created in him all across the board. It was just their history that made him so aware of her, but for both their sakes, he knew he had to find a way to keep a tight lid on his emotions. Otherwise this whole arrangement could become untenable.

Lee slowed his steps to match her pace and when they came to a depression in the ground, he stopped.

“Don’t know if you can make it out from here, but that’s what’s left of the first foundation of the house that my great-great-grandfather Cecil Bannister built.”

“Is it a darker color?” she asked, pointing to the mounded rectangle in the grass.

“It is. My grandfather used sod from a field closer to the river for the foundation. Different grass type, that’s why it shows up.”

“A soddy house, I’m guessing?”

“When Grandpa Cecil and his wife came here in 1865, they stayed with a single man who lived a ways down the road. Apparently he was a head case, so Cecil decided he needed to get out as soon as possible. So he built the sod house. It was a quick shelter for them.” He spared her a look. “When I was growing up we would come up here for a picnic at least once a year, as if to remind us of the ranch’s humble beginnings. When Heather came into the family, this was one of the first places we took her.”

“Heather was adopted, wasn’t she?”

He nodded slowly. “She was ten when she came into our family.”

“I vaguely remember that. Must have been hard for her.”

“It was. But she had come from a bad situation. Her mother pretty much neglected her. But she loved the horses...and me and Keira and John took her riding whenever we could. It was the best therapy for her, apparently. It helped her settle in here.”

“There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of a man,” Abby said quietly.

He shot her a quick glance. “You know that quote?”

“I know lots of quotes. They rattle around in my brain, taking up space, waiting for the right opportunity to get hauled out,” Abby quipped.

“Well, my dad would say it whenever we were out riding the hills, checking cows and pasture, and he was right.” In fact, Lee had hoped to go riding this morning, to reconnect with the land and his legacy, but then he heard Abby was coming. This afternoon, he thought, turning to look at the valley below. The hills called to him and seemed to soothe the restless wandering that defined his life the past couple of years.

“I can see why your great-great-grandfather built up here. It’s a beautiful view,” Abby murmured as she looked in the same direction.

“It gets windy up here. And when those sod walls dried out, not so good for the relationship between Cecil and Betty, apparently.”

“Betty being your many times great-grandmother?”

Lee nodded, drawing in a cleansing breath of the fresh mountain air.

He heard the distinctive click of Abby’s camera and glanced over his shoulder to see her with her crutch under her one arm as she took pictures of the foundation. She looped the camera around her neck and made her way to the far side of the old foundation and lifted her camera again.

Lee stepped aside to get out of the picture.

“No, stay there,” she said. “But with your back to me.”

He did so reluctantly, hands on his hips, feeling suddenly self-conscious. Though he was looking out at the view that he had so missed while he was gone, his attention was focused on the woman behind him, taking picture after picture, her camera beeping, clicking and whirring.

“Are you done yet?”

“Just keep looking away,” she ordered.

“You’ve gotten bossy,” he grumbled, but he did what she told him to.

“I’ve learned a few lessons while traveling overseas,” she said. “Dealing with reluctant clients and shy subjects. And some belligerent ones.”

He allowed her a few more photographs, her comment about belligerent subjects making him stay where he was. After a while, however, he was done with this.

“So I thought I could show you the current yard site now.” He turned and walked toward her.

She took a few more photos, then paused, her camera still in front of her face. A cloud passed over the sun and her camera click-clicked again. “That’s perfect,” she breathed. “Just perfect.”

She unlooped her camera from around her neck, snapped the lens cap on and slipped the camera in her bag.

“Can we stop halfway down?” she asked. “I’d like to get some different angles of the yard.”

“Your wish is my command.” He gave her a mocking salute, pleased to see a faint smile tease her lips as he started up the quad. He hadn’t seen her smile since she discovered who he was. For a brief moment up at the lookout point, he’d seen her natural and unreserved. He wished he could see that part of her again.

He stopped halfway down the hill as she asked, but this time he stayed on the vehicle while she walked to a hummock, sat down and took a bunch more photos.

Then she looked at the back screen of the camera, adjusted a few settings, took a few more.

The only sounds were from Abby’s camera and the occasional lowing of cows from one of the pastures closer to the ranch. John, his father and Nick had moved the cattle a couple of months ago and had figured on moving them to the next pasture when Burt was here to do the anniversary piece.

Lee glanced over at Abby, wondering if she would be willing and/or able to come along on a cattle drive. His mouth quirked. Somehow he couldn’t imagine her on the back of a horse.

He was about to look away when she glanced over at him. Their eyes met and it took mere seconds to return to that breathless place of a few moments ago when he had steadied her. Then Abby averted her gaze and Lee gave himself a mental smack.

She’s here to do a job and you’re here to help her, he reminded himself, folding his arms over his chest. After that you’re both heading back to whatever it was you have to head back to.

* * *

“And how was your day at the Bannister place?” Abby’s mother asked, setting a plate of spaghetti in front of her.

Ivy Newton had always been slender, but the past few years had not been kind to Abby’s mom. Though her makeup was still impeccable, and her steel-gray hair fashionably styled in a trim pageboy, it wasn’t hard to see how time and the events of the past few years had taken their toll. Her cheeks were gaunt and her eyes dull, and once again Abby felt the guilt that always nagged at her when she thought of all her mother had lost after her father’s accident. Instead of spending her days taking care of the lovely home they had built up on the hill, puttering in their extensive gardens, her mother now held a job as the manager of the produce department of Saddlebank Market Goods.

“It was okay” was all she could say. Truth was, she wasn’t sure herself what to think of the day.

After Lee had brought her down from the original homestead, he showed her the house, yard and barns, giving her background information at each site. It had been a lot to absorb.

And from Lee’s account, it was evident he had shown her only a small portion of the Bannister wealth. Hard not to compare the palatial house she had only seen from the outside with the modest apartment her mother now lived in. Though the table and chairs she and her mother sat at were the same elegant set Ivy had been so proud to purchase, and the leather couch, love seat and hand-hooked rug were remnants of a more prosperous life, they looked out of place crammed in the small and somewhat dingy rooms.

Her mother sat down across from her, unfolding her napkin and setting it on her lap. “Spending the afternoon out there probably gave you enough for your piece?”

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