DWIGHT RODE WITH Brenda to his family’s ranch west of town. He wasn’t going to risk her wrath by coming right out and saying he didn’t want her alone on the road, so he made an excuse about having to get his personal pickup truck and bring it into town for an oil change. He wasn’t sure if she bought the explanation, but she didn’t object when he left his SUV parked in front of her house and slid into the passenger seat of her Subaru. She had packed up her laptop and a small suitcase of clothes—enough for a few days at the ranch. “Do you remember visiting the ranch when we were in high school?” he asked as she headed out of town and into the more open country at the foot of the mountains.
“I remember,” she said. “Your parents threw a party for the senior class. I remember being in awe of the place—it seemed so big compared to my parents’ little house in town.”
“As ranches go, it’s not that big,” Dwight said. “To me, it’s just home.” The ranch had been the place for him and his brothers and sister to ride horses, swim in the pond, fish in the creek and work hard alongside their parents. For a kid who liked the outdoors and didn’t enjoy sitting still for long, it was the perfect place to grow up. He had acres of territory to roam, and there was always something to do or see.
Brenda turned onto the gravel road that wound past his parents’ property, the fields full of freshly mown hay drying in the sun. Other pastures were dotted with fat round bales, wrapped in plastic to protect them from the elements and looking like giant marshmallows scattered across the landscape. She turned in at the open gate, a wrought iron arch overhead identifying this as the Boot Heel Ranch.
“The house looks the same as I remember it,” Brenda said. “I love that porch.” The porch stretched all across the front of the two-story log home, honeysuckle vines twining up the posts, pots of red geraniums flanking the steps. Dwight’s parents, Sharon and Bud, were waiting at the top of the steps to greet them. Smiling, his mother held out both hands to Brenda. “Dwight didn’t give any details, just said you needed to stay with us a few days while he investigates someone who’s been harassing you,” Sharon said. “I’m sorry you’re having to go through that, dear.”
“Thank you for taking me in,” Brenda said.
“I’m sure your mother would have done the same for Dwight, if the shoe had been on the other foot,” Sharon said. “I remember her as the kind of woman who would go out of her way to help everyone.”
Dwight remembered now that Brenda’s mother had died of cancer while Brenda was in college. Her father had moved away—to Florida or Arizona or someplace like that.
“Thank you,” Brenda said again. “Your place is so beautiful.”
“I give Sharon all the credit for the house.” Bud stepped forward and offered a hand. “I see to the cows and horses—though she has her say with them, too. Frankly, we’d probably all be lost without her.”
Sharon beamed at this praise, though Dwight knew she had heard it before—not that it wasn’t true. His mother was the epitome of the iron fist in the velvet glove—gently guiding them all, but not afraid to give them a kick in the rear if they needed it.
“Let me show you to your room,” Sharon said.
“I can do that, Mom,” Dwight said. He had retrieved Brenda’s laptop bag and suitcase from the car and now led the way into the house and up the stairs to the guest suite on the north side of the house. The door to the room was open, and he saw that someone—probably his mother—had put fresh flowers in a cut-glass vase on the bureau opposite the bed. The bright pink and yellow and white blossoms reflected in the mirror over the bureau, and echoed the colors in the quilt on the cherry sleigh bed that had belonged to Dwight’s great-grandmother.
“This is beautiful.” Brenda did a full turn in the middle of the room, taking it all in.
“You should be comfortable up here.” He set both her bags on the rug by the bed. “And you’ll have plenty of privacy. My parents added a master suite downstairs after us kids moved out.”
“Where do you live?” she asked.
“My cabin is on another part of the property. You can see it from the window over here.” He motioned, and she went to the window. He moved in behind her and pointed to the modest cedar cabin he had taken as his bachelor quarters. “Years ago, we had a ranch foreman who lived there, but he moved to a bigger place on another part of the ranch, so I claimed it.”
“Nice.”
The subtle floral fragrance of her perfume tickled his nostrils. It was all he could do not to lean down and inhale the scent of her—a gesture that would no doubt make her think he was a freak.
“I hope you didn’t take what I said wrong—about not wanting to move in with you,” she said. “It’s just—”
He touched her arm. “I know.” She had been the center of so much town gossip over the years, first with her husband’s murder, then with the revelations that he had been blackmailing prominent citizens, that she shied away from that sort of attention.
“I had the biggest crush on you when I was a kid,” he said. “That party here at the ranch—I wanted to ask you to dance so badly, but I could never work up the nerve.”
She searched his face. “Why were you afraid to ask?”
“You were so beautiful, and popular—you were a cheerleader—the prom queen.”
“You were popular, too.”
“I had friends, but not like you. Everyone liked you.”
She turned to look out the window once more. “All that seems so long ago,” she said.
He moved away. “I’ll let you get settled. We usually eat dinner around six.”
He was almost to the door when she called his name. “Dwight?”
“Yes?”
“You should have asked me to dance. I would have said yes.”
* * *
SEEING THE ADULT Dwight with his parents at dinner that evening gave Brenda a new perspective on the solemn, thoughtful sheriff’s deputy she thought she knew. With Bud and Sharon, Dwight was affectionate and teasing, laughing at the story Bud told about a ten-year-old Dwight getting cornered in a pasture by an ornery cow, offering a thoughtful opinion when Sharon asked if they should call in a new vet to look at a horse who was lame, and discussing plans to repair irrigation dikes before spring. Clearly, he still played an important role on the ranch despite his law enforcement duties.
Watching the interaction, Brenda missed her own parents—especially her mother. Her mother’s cancer had been diagnosed the summer before Brenda’s senior year of college. Her parents had insisted she continue her education, so Brenda saw the toll the disease took only on brief visits home.
She had met Andrew Stenson during that awful time, and he had been her strongest supporter and biggest help, a shoulder for her to cry on and someone for her to lean on in the aftermath of her mother’s death. No matter his flaws, she knew Andy had loved her, though she could see now that he had assumed the role of caretaker in their relationship. By the time they married, she had grown used to depending on him and letting him make the decisions.
But she wasn’t that grieving girl anymore. And she didn’t want a man to take care of her. She wanted someone to stand beside her—a partner, not just a protector.
After dinner, she insisted on helping Sharon with the dishes. “That’s my job, you know,” Dwight said as he stacked plates while Brenda collected silverware.
“The two of you can see to cleanup,” Sharon said. “I think I’ll sit out on the porch with your father. It’s such a nice evening.”
“You don’t have to work for your room and board,” Dwight said as he led the way into the kitchen. “I could get this myself.”