True Love Ranch

“It seemed best at the time.” She didn’t add that she’d tried to telephone Kenneth Beckett about fifty times in those first couple of years, but that he’d never taken her calls. She also didn’t add that her Christmas cards had come back unopened. She couldn’t bear to admit she hadn’t even known her grandfather was ill, and she also didn’t add that she’d hesitated even to come to the reading of the will for fear he’d left her a bag of coal as his final I-told-you-so.

Joe raised an eyebrow. “So where’s your husband now?”

“My ex-husband, you mean.”

She could have sworn a look of mild surprise came into his eyes.

“The divorce just recently became final.” Though she had known Brandon wasn’t Prince Charming when she had married him, she had hoped that fact would protect her. If she didn’t love him, how could he hurt her? She now knew how foolish that idea was. “And as for where he is, I don’t know.” Though she wished she did. Or, more specifically, she wished she knew where her money—which he had helped himself to upon his exit—was.

Joe regarded her for a moment, then with a very small inclination of the head, he said, “I’m sorry to hear it.”

She shrugged. “It’s almost time for the meeting.” She gestured at her watch. “We don’t want to be late.”

“Right. Sure.” After one final moment’s perusal, he turned and headed back toward the truck. Darcy wondered if he could be completely unaware of how attractive he was viewed from the back, in his faded jeans and scuffed boots. Her heart flipped stupidly, just as it had so many times that summer when she was seventeen. The cool breeze lifted, carrying the familiar scent of the woods—like a ghost from her memory.

Darcy watched Joe for a moment, feeling a deep purple melancholy settle over her like a cloud. Tears pricked at her eyes and she blinked them away. Then she picked up the carefully folded lawyer’s letter that was on the seat next to her and tried to concentrate. As if anything would stop the memories and the longing now that she was going to have to see Joe again. She unfolded the letter and glanced at the hand-drawn map on the back. She should remember the way, but it had been so long.

She could follow Joe, but pride compelled her to find the way for herself. She continued to look at the map. There was a broken-down shack somewhere up here or the right, but she couldn’t recall such a thing. It was just one more reminder of how long it had been since she’d been at the ranch.

She looked back at the blue pickup, which had resumed its pitiful gait. It was deliberate, she knew. Joe hadn’t changed much at all, now that she thought about it. He’d always been able to goad her more effectively than anyone.

The trick was to ignore him.

She thought about the ranch and wondered what would become of it. The lawyer’s letter certainly made it sound as though it was her inheritance, but she couldn’t believe that, given her grandfather’s attitude toward her. She sighed. At least the letter said she could stay on for a while. That would give her a few days to regroup and plan the rest of her trip to California. Maybe she could even find a mechanic who would give her car the once-over without charging too much.

But then she’d be moving on. She’d spent too long in Chicago as it was—nearly five years. It was the longest Darcy had ever spent in one city. After the divorce, her friend Melanie, in San Diego, had said Darcy could share her place until she got on her feet. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but Darcy was running out of options.

She’d spend a few days here—maybe a week—then move on. Forever. This wasn’t home. That was just an illusion she’d created because it was out of her grasp. As long as the T.L. Ranch remained the single great bastion of home and safety in her mind, she would never be able to move forward. Once she’d spent a little time here, worked out some of her inner demons, she would be free of Colorado, the ranch, and memories of that summer with Joe Tyler... forever.

Then she’d be free to work on the Menger’s grant scholarship program in San Diego. Louis Menger had been trying to get her on the project, which provided scholarships for inner-city teenagers, for three years. He was getting older now, and Darcy feared the scholarship program might falter if Louis stopped heading it and left the reins to someone else. It had been her father’s pet project before he died, and Louis had long wanted Darcy to take it over.

The idea had always appealed to her, too. But her husband hadn’t had much respect for any kind of nonprofit organization so she put it off. Now it sounded like the perfect project to sink her energies into. Darcy liked the idea of being responsible for helping to educate bright, worthy kids who might otherwise get lost in the system.

She wanted to make a difference in people’s lives.

But she was going to do it by herself. Louis Menger might be offering her a job, but she was going to have to start her life on her own, without help. She was going to make a home for herself, without a man.

And she wouldn’t let Joe Tyler—or her former, perhaps unresolved, feelings for him—get in the way.

She took a deep breath and felt the energy of possibility surge through her. For the first time in years she felt as though things really were going to work out for her. She had a purpose, a goal—and she was heading for it full speed.

There was only one thing standing between her and her dream.

Darcy looked at the truck in front of her and sighed heavily. She’d spent a lot of money on therapy trying to work out those lingering feelings for Joe. And she’d succeeded, she reminded herself. Years ago. Now he was a temporary obstacle. Not even an obstacle—just a distraction, that was all.

She had to remember that.

Joe looked in his rearview mirror at Darcy in her car. He sure hadn’t thought he’d see her today, or any other time, come to think of it. Sure, she was getting the ranch and whatever other assets Ken had to be distributed, but from what Joe understood, Darcy was busy living the high life in Chicago. For her, this would be just one more asset to liquidate. At the most he would have expected her to send a representative. Joe felt he could have dealt with a representative. He wasn’t so sure about Darcy. Somehow he was going to have to try not to let her get to him.

He’d just concentrate on his other business. There certainly was enough of it to keep him occupied. He pressed harder on the accelerator and the truck lurched forward.

Of course, the news of her divorce was a surprise. Maybe that was it—maybe she just wanted a change of scenery, something to help her forget the heartbreak.

Joe could have told her some things just can’t be forgotten. Or ignored.

Her car drew up a little too close to his back bumper, and he found himself smiling. Typical Darcy, he thought, always in a hurry. Somehow, that bulldozer quality had always endeared her to him.

Watching her in his rearview mirror, he studied her, marveling at her beauty. The finely arched eyebrows, determined chin, curved mouth. He looked back at the road, but her image stayed with him. Dark blond hair, evenly cut at the shoulder. If the stories that had circulated about her at the ranch were true, she’d probably paid a fortune for that haircut back in Chicago.

She sure had changed since he’d known her. Way back then, money hadn’t mattered to her one whit. At first he hadn’t believed the stories about her lifestyle after she’d left the ranch, but eventually he’d admitted to himself that he hadn’t wanted to believe them. The stories just made him feel that much more foolish for ever thinking they could make a go of it together.

Darcy Beckett, his wife, sharing ranch life with him—that had just been a stupid, immature dream.

He’d woken up a long time ago.

He looked back at her. Fancy car, fancy haircut. According to her grandfather, Darcy lived high off the hog. Drank champagne as though it were water. She probably even rinsed her mouth with it when she brushed her teeth. Or used fancy bottled water from France.

He glanced at the road to keep on course, then back at the mirror. Darcy was framed in its confines like a picture. For a moment, he saw her as she used to be. Her hair, which had been much lighter then, was long and straight. She used to live in jeans and T-shirts, not the kind of fancy clothes she was wearing now.

She’d grown up, and done a damn good job of it. He’d grant her that.

Her face... how many times had he seen that face in his dreams? She’d barely changed, he’d realized when he’d gotten up close. For a moment he’d gone dumb at the sight of those strong cheekbones and the stubborn chin he used to love to kiss. Her skin was as smooth-looking as ever. In memory, he could just reach out and touch her. In memory.

Hell, it wasn’t easy to forget Darcy Beckett.

She used to come to the ranch every summer, though he hadn’t met her until she was fifteen. He was seventeen then, and far too old for such a child. But the summer she was sixteen, she was looking not so much like a child anymore. And by her seventeenth summer she was so beautiful that he ached every time he saw her.

Fortunately or unfortunately—he’d never been able to decide which—Darcy had wanted him, too. They’d spent the entire summer watching each other sideways during the day when other people were around, and drawing together like magnets in the dark shadows of night. Sharing their inner selves, their dreams, planning a life together... and ultimately, making slow, sweet, incredible love. Until they’d gotten caught, that is.

Then she left and never came back. He never forgot her, never stopped comparing other women to her. For a long time he’d kept to himself, avoiding all romantic entanglements. But the glow of that summer romance had worn off eventually, and when he’d met a town girl named Maura Kinney, who was available and willing, he hadn’t bothered to resist.

When Maura had told him she was pregnant, he’d done the right thing and married her. Why not? Maybe he was still thinking of Darcy, but Darcy had married some high rider in the East and was, presumably, going to live happily ever after with him.

He took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to relax his tense shoulders and neck. He still remembered the long months of wishing Darcy would come back, but not daring to ask Ken about her. He should have asked anyway, he realized now. But the boy he’d been was so cowed by the powerful R. Kenneth Beckett that he hadn’t dared let anyone know the depth of his feelings for the great man’s granddaughter. Hell, he’d been lucky to be able to hold on to his job. In those days, it wasn’t so easy to find good work that paid a fair wage; he couldn’t risk it.

Instead, he’d hidden his feelings. After all, he was young and he knew it. He thought surely his crush on Darcy would fade. It did, to an extent, when he wrote to her and didn’t get an answer. He even wrote a second time, just in case the first letter had been lost. Then a third time. Then he gave up. And he’d gone to so much trouble to get the address from Kenneth’s book without the old man knowing it, too.

Joe sighed, remembering. Eventually he’d started a life with another woman and his unborn child. He’d never truly been in love with Maura, but she’d been his friend. When she’d died after a short illness a couple of years ago, it had been a blow. Together they’d worked to build a life. When she died he’d had to start all over again.

He fastened his eyes on the route ahead. The old Watson place, a broken ruin of a house, was up there on the right. Almost home. The T.L. Ranch. He did this drive every day, but today, with the lawyer’s meeting pending, it felt completely different—different because when he arrived at the ranch he’d get out of the car and be face to face again with Darcy Beckett.

He’d been waiting for this day for a long time. Rosanna Kinney, his late wife’s sister, had been hounding him for the past eight months to get on out to her Oklahoma ranch and take over as foreman.

He would have refused flat out except that Rosanna had paid a large balance of Maura’s hospital bills, and now Joe felt indebted to her. If Maura had told him about the loan before it was too late—heck, if she’d told him about the necessity of getting the loan—he would have done something else, anything else, to get the money.

But Maura hadn’t told him, and so he didn’t find out until after the funeral.

Rosanna proposed that he pay back the twenty-thousand dollars in sweat equity. Besides, she pointed out, Ricky and Joe needed a home, not just a place to live and work. Joe said he’d come after his ailing employer no longer needed him. Well, Kenneth Beckett no longer needed Joe or anyone else.