the herd.
“Garrett?”
Garrett turned to his brother. “Are you going to jaw at me all day, Tate?” he joked. Of the three McKettrick brothers, Tate was normally the one least likely to run off at the mouth.
Tate grinned. “No,” he said. “But I’ve got one more thing to say.” He paused, adjusted the angle of his hat, pulling the brim down low over his forehead. “It’s good to have you back.”
With that, Tate nudged Stranger’s flanks with his boot heels, and the horse bounded ahead, leaving Garrett to catch up.
And since Garrett was out of practice when it came to cowboying, he was pretty much catching up all morning long.
WITH A FEW MINUTES TO GO before she had to be at school, Julie followed an impulse and drove by the cottage she’d been renting since her return to Blue River, when Calvin was just a baby. The exterminator’s giant tent still billowed around it like a big, putty-colored blob.
Watching the thing undulate from within, Julie didn’t immediately notice Suzanne Hillbrand, of Hillbrand Real Estate. Her Mercedes was parked nearby.
Wearing high heels, a pencil skirt and very big hair, Suzanne was examining the spiffy new For Sale sign out by the curb.
The shock of seeing that sign struck Julie like a slap across the face. She cranked the Caddie into Park and got out, slamming the door hard behind her.
“Well,” Suzanne trilled, beaming, “hello, Julie Remington!”
Suzanne’s outgoing personality wasn’t an affectation designed to sell properties; she’d always been that way. Even in kindergarten. The big hair only went back as far as high school, though.
“Hello, Suzanne,” Julie responded, not smiling. She indicated the sign with a motion of one hand. “Are you sure this isn’t a mistake?”
“Why, of course I’m sure, darlin’!” Suzanne replied, with exhausting ebullience, shading her perfectly made-up eyes with one perfectly manicured hand. “It isn’t as if there’s a real estate boom on here in Blue River, after all. I’ve got this cottage and the old Arnette farm on the books, and that’s it.”
The flash of adrenaline-fueled annoyance that had propelled Julie from behind the wheel of her Cadillac dissipated in an instant. She bit down on her lower lip.
“I take it Louise didn’t tell you she was putting the place on the market?” Suzanne asked quietly.
“She might have tried,” Julie admitted, picturing her very efficient and quite elderly landlady. “I’m not sure she has my cell number, and I keep forgetting to check my voice mail.”
Suzanne’s smile came back full force. “We all know you and Libby and Paige came into some money a while back,” she said. “Things like that get around, of course. Well, here’s the perfect investment for you. Your very own cottage. Think how easy it would be. You wouldn’t even have to pack up and move!”
In spite of herself, Julie smiled. She’d always liked Suzanne, and the woman’s enthusiasm was catching. Plus, she’d often dreamed of buying the cottage—back when she didn’t have the means, especially.
“What’s the asking price?”
Suzanne named a figure that would nearly wipe out Julie’s considerable nest egg.
So much for enthusiasm.
“No way,” Julie said, backing up a step.
Suzanne stayed happy. “Louise is firm on the price,” she said. “I told her she wouldn’t get that much, considering the state the market’s in right now, but she’s not about to budge. The place is paid for, and she doesn’t need the money. All that works in your favor, of course, because you’ll probably have all kinds of time before it actually sells—to find somewhere else to live, I mean.”
All kinds of time to find somewhere else to live.
Oh, right.
There weren’t a lot of housing options in towns the size of Blue River.
Let’s see. She could move in with Paige, who was in the process of renovating the small house they’d all grown up in, rent by the week at the seedy Amble On Inn on the edge of town, or make an offer on the Arnette farm, which was almost as much of an eyesore as the Wilkes’s junkyard.
A fixer-upper, Suzanne would call it.
In Julie’s opinion, the only hope of making that old dump look better was a bulldozer.
For the time being, she’d have to stay on at the Silver Spur.
Darn.
Remembering the time, Julie checked her watch and turned to head back to her car. Calvin was in another mood, and she’d had to cajole him into getting out of bed, eating his breakfast, finding his backpack.
By the time she’d dropped him off at Libby’s, so he could ride to school with the twins, Julie had been working on a mood of her own.
“You think about making an offer, now!” Suzanne called after her.
Julie waved, got back into her car and headed for Blue River High.
Okay, so the day was definitely going in the downhill direction, she thought, as she pulled into the teachers’ lot and spotted a shiny blue SUV over in visitors’ parking. Things could still turn around, if she just looked on the bright side, counted her blessings.
She had a wonderful, healthy son.
She had a job she loved, even if it was a bummer sometimes.
And, yeah, someone might come along and buy the cottage right out from under her and Calvin, but given the economic slowdown, selling would probably take a while. In the meantime, she and her little boy had a roof over their heads, and for the first time in Julie’s life, thanks to a fluke, she had money in the bank.
A person didn’t have to look far to see that a lot of other people weren’t so fortunate. The Strivens family, for instance.
Julie parked the Cadillac, grabbed her tote bag and her lunch, and got out.
While she was locking up, she saw the driver’s-side door of the strange blue SUV swing open.
Gordon Pruett got out.
She barely recognized him, with his short haircut, chinos and polo shirt. A commercial fisherman by trade, Calvin’s father had always been a raggedy-jeans-and-muscle-shirt kind of guy.
Julie’s stomach seemed to take a bungee jump as she watched the man she’d once loved—or believed she loved—strolling toward her as though they both had all the time in the world.
Like Calvin’s, Gordon’s eyes were a piercing ice-blue, and both father and son had light blond hair that paled to near silver in bright sunshine.
“Hello, Julie,” Gordon said. He was tanned, and a diamond stud sparkled in the lobe of his right ear, making him look something like a pirate.
“Gordon,” Julie managed, aware that she hadn’t moved since spotting him moments before. “What are you doing here? Why didn’t you call?”
“I did call,” Gordon answered mildly, keeping his distance, squinting a little in the dazzle of a fall morning. “I’ve e-mailed, too. Multiple times, in fact. You’ve been putting me off for a couple of months now, Jules, so I figured we’d better talk in person.”
Julie sighed. Her throat felt dry and raw, and her knees were wobbly, insubstantial. “Calvin isn’t ready to see you,” she said.
“If that’s true,” Gordon responded, “I’m more than willing to wait until he is ready. But are you sure our son is the reluctant one, Julie? Or is it you?”
Tears of frustration and worry burned in her eyes. She blinked them away, at the same time squaring