Ms. Calculation

Was that why he had agreed to take on the assignment of telling them about Bianca’s death? She wiped the rest of the wetness from her face and stomped down the steps of the porch and into the driveway.

She just needed fresh air—anything to pull her into a different reality, where none of this was really happening.

“Gwen?” Wyatt called after her.

She stopped but she didn’t turn around. She couldn’t look at him and his ridiculously sexy features. Not right now. Right now she’d like to look at anything but him...the oh-so-confusing him.

“What, Wyatt? What do you want? You gave me the news you came here to give. Now I’ve got to go to work. This ranch and the cows on it are all we have—if I don’t turn a profit this year, it’s over.” Her knees felt weak, but she refused to let herself to succumb to the feeling. She had to be strong. She had to fake it...at least until he was gone, and then she could turn into a big mess for as long as she needed.

If there was any silver lining to what was happening, it was that her mother had drunk enough whiskey to pass out for at least the rest of the day. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with that train wreck before she had everything figured out—she could only handle one major catastrophe at a time.

“Don’t run off, Gwen. I need to ask you a few more questions.” He rushed to walk by her side, so she sped up.

“Ask away, but you’re going to have to walk because I’ve got to feed the horses.” She motioned toward the red barn that sat in the distance.

“In your nightgown?” he asked, motioning toward the red plaid thing she’d forgotten she was wearing. “And you do know you’re wearing slippers, right?”

She stopped and spun to face him, but carefully pulled her nightgown over her moccasins. He was wearing a stupid, charming grin—a grin she wanted to slap right off his face. How dare he, at a time like this?

“What do you want to know?” As she thought about the things he’d want to ask—Bianca’s favorite restaurant, where she’d liked to spend her time, her love life—she choked up and had to take a long breath. She couldn’t cry again.

He reached up, so slowly that she watched his motion and thought about moving out of the radius of his touch, but she stayed put. He took her shoulder gently and stroked her arm with his thumb. It made her think of her favorite mare, Dancer. The mustang was fifteen, yet anytime she was stressed or acting out, all Gwen had to do to calm her was rub her hands down her flanks and make those same circles with her thumbs.

No matter how much Wyatt might have liked her to be, she wasn’t a damned horse that would turn soft under his touch and bend to his wants. He should have known better. It hadn’t worked in the two years they had dated in high school either. In fact, it only infuriated her.

She pulled away from his touch. The place his hand had been chilled and she covered it with her own hand, trapping some of the leftover heat.

“Gwen, it’s okay to be upset about this. If you want, I can take care of the livestock. Why don’t you go inside and lie down? I can come back and talk to you another time if you’d like.”

Some of her anger at the world slipped with the kindness in his voice. He wasn’t here to hurt her. He was here to do his job. And maybe, just maybe, he was here because he was still her friend and he could look past how she had treated him when they were younger—not that it had been unjustified, her anger toward him, but she should have been kinder. His heart had been just as much on the line as her own.

She ran her hand down her nightgown and started to move back toward the house. Maybe she should lie down, take a break, have a cup of coffee and collect her thoughts. She thought about sending him away, but it made her heart shift in her chest.

“The last thing I want is to be alone right now.” She was surprised by her blunt honesty. It was unlike her, but, then again, nothing about this morning was in the realm of normal. “If you don’t have anywhere else to be, maybe you can wait while I get dressed and then take care of the animals. Then we can head up to Bianca’s cabin.”

Wyatt frowned. “She had a cabin?”

Gwen sighed as she walked back into the house and motioned to her mother’s bedroom door as a loud snore escaped from under the door. “We each adopted one of the hands’ cabins at the edge of the property. Having a place of your own comes in handy when she gets a little too out of hand.”

“How often does that kind of thing happen?” His face twisted with concern but not judgment, and it softened some of the hard edges of her feelings toward him.

Most of the time, when people talked to her about her mother’s problem, it was with a mixture of pity and judgment. Then again, few people wanted to bring it up. It was like the worst-kept secret of Mystery, Montana, that her mother and her family were one hot mess. In fact, it would probably be only a matter of time before the news of her sister’s death would hit the airwaves. She would know as soon as it did because within the hour casseroles would start showing up on their doorstep.

She looked toward her mother’s bedroom. At least it was unlikely Carla would get up to answer the door in the condition she was in. Gwen glanced up at the clock. On days like this, when her mother had been drinking all night, Carla normally wouldn’t get up until it was time to go to the bar again. Tonight, she’d probably be in hog heaven—getting free drinks from the other lushes and lechers who frequented the bar, all in honor of her daughter’s death.

Hate reverberated through her—but the hate wasn’t just for her mother, or their situation, or even her sister’s death. It was hate for everything.

Her life was such a disaster. And there was nothing she could do about it. No way to control all the emotions that flooded through her. All she could do was feel. She glanced back at Wyatt, staring at him for a moment too long.

“Do you want me to get you something?” he asked, motioning toward her upstairs bedroom. “You can just sit down. I’ll grab your gear.” His face turned slightly red, as though he’d suddenly realized that “gear” may involve her panties.

She shook her head and walked to the stairs, his embarrassment pulling her back to reality. “I’ll be right back.”

When she reached her room, it took all her strength not to collapse onto the bed and bury her face into the pillows and scream—yell at the world, tell it of her hate, tell it of her pain, tell it about the injustices that filled her life.

* * *

BEING ALONE IN the Johansens’ house felt surreal, like somehow he was reliving moments of his past—moments he had fought hard to forget. He walked to the fireplace and looked at the collection of pictures that rested on the mantel. All were covered with a thick layer of dust, forgotten or perhaps intentionally ignored by the women of the house. He rubbed the dust off the closest one. The picture was of a man, whom he recognized as Mr. Johansen, wearing a Hypercolor shirt and drinking a Miller Lite beside a small, white, inflatable kiddie pool. A young blonde girl was splashing water and laughing. The man wasn’t smiling, rather he was looking off into the distance as a cigarette trembled on his lip, almost as if he were looking into a future where only tragedy waited.

Carla’s snoring sounded from the other room, reminding him of why he’d always hated coming into this house.

He glanced at all the other pictures. None were from any time within the last fifteen years. It was like life had stopped the moment that Mr. Johansen died. He could only imagine what would happen to their lives now that Bianca was gone as well.

Wyatt had to get out. He couldn’t let himself get sucked back into this world. Not when it was clear that Gwen could barely tolerate him. He couldn’t carry her through this like he used to carry her through the nights her mother had left her alone when Gwen was younger. He couldn’t save her—he’d already tried.

He rushed outside to the barn. Horses he could understand. Women, on the other hand... Women were an entirely different issue.

One of the barn cats sauntered over to him as he made his way inside. It wrapped itself around his legs, rubbing against him. He picked it up and scratched under its chin as it purred and kneaded the front of his shirt. As he stood there stroking the long gray hair of the cat, he glanced up at the hayloft. They had spent so many hours up there, just him and Gwen. They had been able to talk for hours; it had always seemed like they would never run out of things to discuss. They’d had this wonderful bond with each other that, no matter how many women he’d dated since, he was never able to re-create. Maybe it was the one thing he missed most about her—their deep bond, so strong that he could feel it even when no words were spoken.

Putting the cat down, he moved over to the bales of hay. He pulled off flakes and dropped them into the stalls for each of the horses. Though it was cold, in an effort to keep the hay from digging into his uniform, he stripped off his uniform shirt and his ballistics vest, leaving only his tank top. It felt good, the chill of the winter air, the scratching of the hay against his arms and the smell of horses on his skin.

He wasn’t involved with the business of his family’s ranch enough anymore to really help in the everyday comings and goings, and sometimes, when he caught a whiff of fresh hay or the heady fragrance of sweet oats, he missed being more available.

There was a thin cough, and he turned around. Gwen stood in the barn’s doorway, looking at him in a way that made him wonder if it was attraction or revulsion. He moved to grab his shirt and vest, but she stopped him with a wave of the hand.

“It’s fine. Just be comfortable. There’s not going to be anyone up at the cabin who’s going to care if you’re wearing your uniform. At least not since...” She trailed off, as though she couldn’t bring herself to talk about Bianca.

He grabbed his shirt and slipped it over his tank top anyway. It felt strange to be standing in front of her even semi undressed. In all their time together, they hadn’t taken things to a deeply physical level.

He stared at her for a moment, wondering if she was still the same girl he had known before, or if she had given up on her quest to wait until marriage. He’d always appreciated, or at least respected, the effort it took to restrict oneself from pleasures of the flesh, but it wasn’t a dogma that he had been able to follow.

She looked disappointed when he put on the shirt—or was she relieved? It would have been so much easier if he could just read minds.

The drive to the cabin was short, but the entire time he had been glancing over at her, wondering what she was thinking and trying to hold back from asking her the million questions running through his mind. Most were stupid, insipid... Whether or not she liked her job at the ranch, what it was like to still be living with her mother or, for that matter, why she was still choosing to live with Carla. No matter if Gwen stayed or went, her mother would continue her self-destructive behavior. It was only a matter of time...

He pulled to a stop in front of the cabin that Gwen had directed them to. There was a small chicken coop outside it, and there was a bevy of hens clucking inside, waiting to be fed.

Gwen nearly jumped out of the patrol unit and ran to the chickens. She grabbed the bucket out of the galvanized can beside the coop and poured the cracked corn into the trough. The hens came running in a flurry of feathers and clucks.

He stood and watched her, taking in the sight of her body flexing as she moved around the coop. She seemed nervous, but he could have her all wrong. Most people he could read at a glance. The ability to tell whether someone was lying, hiding something or telling the truth came with the job. Yet he didn’t have the same innate gift when it came to Gwen. She was his enigma.

“I’m going to go inside. Feel free to take your time out here, okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. That’s fine. I’ll be out here if you need me.” She didn’t bother to look back at him, fully consumed with opening the henhouse to collect this morning’s eggs. This late in the year, without a light in the henhouse, they both knew that there wouldn’t be many, if any, eggs, but he didn’t say anything.

He walked to the front of the cabin. Its walls were made of the aged, gray logs like those from the pioneering days when the town had been founded. The wooden door sat crooked in the frame, listing like Bianca’s drunk mother. For a moment, he wondered if Bianca had left it like that on purpose as a reminder of what she had to move past in order to live her own life.

He pushed the door open. His breath caught in his throat. Papers were strewn around the room, every drawer was open and the couch cushions had been thrown from their places, one precariously close to the woodstove. Either Bianca was the kind who never cleaned, or someone had turned the place over.