The Rancher's Homecoming

“He can go through a case of beer but won’t touch the lasagna.” Katie’s mutter echoed in the kitchen. Part of her knew she should ask the manager at White Buffalo Grocers to stop making the deliveries, but was that a battle with her father she wanted to wage? She’d given up cursing long ago. What was the point of turning the air blue when it didn’t change anything?

Hip, done with her dinner, wandered over to her plush bed by the sliding door and settled in to watch the sunset. Ah, the life of a dog, Katie mused. Must be nice.

“Dad?” she called louder this time and headed into the living room.

The large-screen TV Big E had given Lochlan last year for Christmas was on but muted. The shopping channel displayed some gaudy jewelry set that made the Blackwell house look tame by comparison. Newspapers going back a week were strewn on the floor and crinkled under her feet as she approached where her father slept in his easy chair. A half-dozen empty beer bottles were lined up like soul-sucking soldiers on the coffee table that years ago had displayed family photo albums and certificates of merit.

Years ago. A lifetime ago. Losing their mom had started Lochlan on his rapid descent into depression and alcoholism. Maura leaving had shifted him into warp speed.

She dropped down and gripped the arm of the leather chair. “Oh, Dad.”

Tears burned the back of her throat. Lochlan Montgomery, fourth-generation ranch foreman, the biggest and—once upon a time—the best man she knew, sat slumped and snoring in his chair like a shell of a human. Snicklefrits, all tufted orange fur and big black eyes, blinked lazily at her before rolling over and going back to sleep.

Lochlan’s onetime hefty frame appeared more skeletal now thanks to the diagnosed heart condition that had landed him in the hospital more than a dozen times in the past three years. He cursed his doctors, insulted his nurses, threw any sympathy Katie or anyone offered him back in their faces and raised holy hell if Katie even mentioned bringing in a home-care worker to help keep the house and watch over him.

Katie rubbed her fingers against her temple and tried to center herself. Why was it that the harder she tried to hold on, the more things slipped through her fingers? She was so tired. Tired of worrying about her father. Worrying about the ranch. Worrying about whether Big E was going to put an end to these plans of his and finally get back to where he belonged. Yet all that paled in comparison over being trapped in a mounting pile of secrets and lies.

Secrets she had to keep, lies she had to tell if she had any hope of keeping her job and home.

Lies like Lachlan had gone to visit friends rather than admit he’d become a reclusive alcoholic unable or unwilling to leave his own home.

She was one person and with only twenty-four hours in a day, something had to give. Cracks had begun to form in the foundation of her life: in the knowledge she’d always have a roof over her head, friends to laugh with. A ranch to run.

The ranch. That odd bubble of pride and responsibility bounced inside her chest, like a level searching for balance. The Blackwell Ranch had been her first love for as long as she could remember. Since she’d first placed a booted foot in the dirt; since she’d first sat astride a horse. It might not be hers by blood or ownership, but all the sweat and blood she’d shed in her twenty-seven years had soaked into the ground, connecting them forever.

Once upon a time, her father had felt the same way. Before he’d let anger and grief overtake every emotion living inside what had at one time been a full heart.

Nights like this, Katie couldn’t help but wonder if it was her will alone keeping her father alive. Nights like this, she was glad her mother and sister weren’t around to see him.

“Dad.” Katie dropped a gentle hand on Lochlan’s flannel-covered arm and squeezed. “Dad, hey, I’m home. How about we get you something to eat?”

Lochlan mumbled and moaned and turned his head toward her. Katie’s stomach roiled against the stench of beer and his growing disdain for hygiene.

“Dad, come on. Wake up, please.” She shoved a bit harder to jolt him awake. “Hey, there you go. Hi there.” She blinked through the tears and smiled. For an instant, familiar, fatherly gray eyes looked back at her from sunken sockets. His weathered, wrinkled skin shone a bit more brightly as he opened his mouth to speak. “Yeah, it’s me. It’s Katie. You awake now?” She tugged his hand and he pushed his legs down to close the chair. “Come on, Dad. Let’s—”

“Leave me be!” Lochlan roared as his other hand shot out. The smack caught Katie hard against the side of her face. Snicklefrits hissed and leaped off the sofa to disappear into the back bedroom.

Hip’s bark split the air as pain exploded across Katie’s cheek and shock jolted her system. She tasted blood in her mouth and swiped a hand at her lips before she caught Hip by the collar and pulled her back. Even as her heart broke into a million pieces, Katie whipped her head around as anger overcame sympathy. “Dad, stop it! Stop!”

As Hip growled, Katie scrambled toward Lochlan as he struggled out of his chair. “You’re going to hurt yourself, Dad. Please.” She crouched in front of him and locked her hands around his wrists, keeping him in place. She couldn’t stop the sob from escaping her lips. “Daddy, please.”

The haze clouding his eyes seemed to clear. He sat up straighter, blinked rapidly and stared into her eyes. “Katie-girl? That you?”

“Yes, Dad, it’s me.” She ran her tongue across her teeth as relief sank into her. “You were asleep.” There was no telling what he might have been dreaming. “Are you awake now?”

“Course I am. I know when I’m sleeping. What happened to you, girl?” He pushed out his chin. “One of those bulls get the better of you? Ferdinand on the loose again?”

“Something like that.” She couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. Not when he wouldn’t remember it in the morning. Not when he might not care. Hip came up behind her and pushed her nose into Katie’s arm. The small, concerned whimper from her loyal friend was like a balm to her bruised heart. “Are you hungry, Dad? You want me to heat you up some pasta?”

“I want a steak,” Lochlan grumbled. “Not that that doctor of mine will let me have one.”

“I can fix you one, Dad. The doctor won’t know.” Katie kept a stash of rib eyes in the cold storage for nights like this: when she knew it was the only thing he’d eat. What harm could it do him now when there was so little that made him happy? “It’ll be our secret.”

“You’re a good girl, Katie.”

Katie eased her hold and pushed to her feet. There wasn’t any point in being angry. Not when her father was living in his own personal hell. “How about you go in and get cleaned up. Meet me in the kitchen in a few minutes and we’ll have dinner together.” Not that she was hungry now.

She watched closely as he pushed himself to his feet. He’d always been larger than life, towering over her for as long as she could remember. Even now that she was grown, he still did. But only as a shadow of his former self. Sometimes she missed her father so much she ached.

“Go in and change your shirt, okay? You’ve spilled beer on it.”

“I have?” Lochlan plucked the material with his finger. “Sorry about that, girl. Makes for a right mess of laundry, I know.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Laundry. Right. “Just put it in the hamper in your bathroom, okay?” She kept an eye on him as he regained his balance and wandered into his bedroom, just off the living room. The room had been his office at one time, back when he ran the Blackwell Family Ranch with the precision of an army general. But Katie realized soon after taking over the majority of his tasks at the ranch that it made more sense to move his bedroom here. Now, rather than move everything upstairs, her office was crammed into a corner of her smaller bedroom down the hall. And if she needed to do more extensive work, she used Big E’s office.

And that was an office she had to tread carefully in now that the Blackwell brothers and some of their significant others used it for paperwork. Katie’s mind buzzed. She’d come to hate that office. With the phone calls she’d endured, the orders she’d taken. Big E’s plotting and planning against his own grandsons had moved through that place like a virus, infecting Katie as an accessory. When had everything gotten so complicated?

Katie stood stone-still until she heard the running water in her father’s bathroom sink. Only when she was in the kitchen did she press a hand against the side of her face. She rotated her jaw. “Ow.” She grabbed a bag of frozen peas from the freezer along with her father’s steak.

She threw the meat into the microwave to defrost—an act of sacrilege as far as she was concerned—and went about cleaning up the kitchen. Only when the microwave buzzed and the butter sizzled beneath the raw steak she set in the cast-iron skillet did she duck into her own bathroom to examine the damage.

“Well, you have had worse.” She pressed tentative fingers onto the red welt stretching from her eye all the way down to her lip, which had split open. “That’s gonna bruise big-time.” Katie took a deep breath. Maybe no one would notice.

Bruises, cuts and scrapes were part of ranch life. She’d been kicked and smacked and thrown off more horses than she could count. She’d had busted ribs, a broken wrist and sunburns bad enough to send her to the ER. But this bruise? That was a first. She rubbed a hand against her chest. “Oh, Daddy.”

Hip whined from the doorway. Like Pavlov’s dog, Katie dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the dog, much like Rosie had done earlier that day. Burying her tearstained face in Hip’s fur, she held on.

What was she going to do about her father? Put him in a home? That was out of the question. He’d lived on the Blackwell Ranch ever since he was a boy. He was one of the reasons she’d agreed to Big E’s plan in the first place. Being officially named foreman of the Blackwell Ranch meant more than job security and achievement. It meant she wouldn’t have to worry about breaking her father’s heart. She’d do whatever she had to in order to ensure he drew his final breath on this land. He’d lost so much else in his life. This was the least she could do for him.

An odd sentiment for sure, but when all was said and done, Lochlan Montgomery was the only family she had left.