The Rancher's Dream

He was just kidding about the girlfriend thing. For a brief second, Crimson wondered why. Why hadn’t she ever let herself fall for this amazing specimen of male magnificence? Why was she dating his single-dad friend Kevin instead?

But then she remembered. First of all, Grant was a very satisfactory friend, and it was much easier to find dates than friends. Secondly, it was almost impossible to catch Grant between girlfriends, anyhow. He was like a thousand-dollar bill...if any woman was dumb enough to let him slip through her fingers, he wouldn’t hit the ground before another woman grabbed him up.

“Red’s not your girl, Campbell.” Pete sounded cranky. “And she’s not mine anymore, either. She just got fired, so you better be buying lunch, big shot.”

Grant glanced at Crimson, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah, he’s serious,” she said. “I’m unemployed. But don’t worry. I’m buying lunch. I feel like celebrating.”

With a final, teasing smile at Pete, she took custody of the diaper bag and nudged Grant into motion. They needed to hustle before they got drenched.

Marianne’s restaurant, Donovan’s Dream, was a couple of blocks down, on the chichi end of Elk Avenue, the main downtown street of Silverdell. As the rain intensified, they started to run. By the time they ducked into the café, sweeping in on the familiar notes of “Danny Boy,” which played whenever the door opened or shut, Molly was red-faced and crying.

Immediately Grant handed her to Crimson. Crimson took over without complaint—this pattern had been established a couple of months ago, when Kevin and Molly had first come to stay with him. Grant was fine with Molly most of the time. He changed diapers like a champ, and he could play peekaboo for hours. He was even unfazed by spit-up milk and slobber.

But if Molly started to cry...that was different.

Then he just withdrew, somehow. Emotionally, a door slammed shut, and he was no comfort at all to the poor little thing.

“Red! Thank goodness you’re here!” Marianne Donovan came rushing to their table, her hair stuck to her damp forehead and a spatula in her hand. “Come quick. The meringue is weeping. It’s a mess.”

It wasn’t unusual for Marianne to consult with Crimson about her menu. At a potluck dinner a few months ago, a small get-together hosted by the Silverdell Outreach group, Marianne had discovered that Crimson wasn’t your average store-bought cookies kind of gal.

Crimson never advertised her history with cooking—and she certainly never mentioned she’d been to cooking school, or that she’d been this close to opening her own restaurant when her world fell apart. But it was hard to completely squelch your most primal interests, and gradually the two women had bonded over their mutual love of herbs and spices, pots and pans.

So. She considered the problem. Weeping meringue.

She ought to take a look. But...

Crimson glanced at Grant, who was already studying the menu. She jiggled Molly a few times, making soft noises and wiping the chilly raindrops from the baby’s fine hair. Molly seemed to be settling down, but she wasn’t calm enough yet to leave her with Grant.

“It’s probably just the humidity,” Crimson assured Marianne. She wouldn’t even have attempted meringue with such a bad storm coming, especially in an older building that wasn’t exactly airtight. Donovan’s Dream had been renovated enough to look delightful, but not enough to eliminate all the old windows and doors, which always let the outside in. Marianne had explained that she’d left those features partly to maintain the original feel—and partly to keep from going broke.

“Can you just lower the oven and cook a little longer? Or you could start over and add a little cornstarch.”

“Okay. I’ll try starting over, unless you’d like to...”

Crimson shook her head, looking down at the baby.

Marianne sighed. “Fine. I’ll do it. But I’m not a dessert chef. I make a fabulous Irish stew, but...” She held out her hand, spatula and all. “Quit that other job, darn it, and come work for me. Please. I clearly need you more than Pete does.”

Grant glanced up from the menu, his half smile back in place. “Funny you should mention that—” he began.

“Hush.” Crimson stopped the sentence in its tracks. She sat, and then she began arranging Molly in her baby seat. “Go fix your meringue, Mari. And when you get a minute I’ll take some of that stew.”

“Me, too.” Grant tossed his menu onto the table. “Gloomy days like this call for hot stew.”

Soon they were alone again, and Molly cooed contentedly. He leaned back in his chair and yawned, eyeing Crimson curiously. “Why don’t you take the job, Red? Unless you’re secretly loaded, you could use a new source of income.”

Crimson felt herself flushing. Secretly loaded? He was just kidding, of course. He couldn’t possibly know...

Her thoughts shot immediately to the life insurance check she always carried in her purse. It was hers, fair and square, made out to her, but she couldn’t have felt any guiltier if she’d acquired it at gunpoint.

“Oh, well.” She shrugged. “Sometimes, when you start doing the work you love for a paycheck, it ruins your pleasure.”

He frowned. “Baloney.”

He was right. It was nonsense. She would have adored working as a pastry chef—if she’d been able to do it with Clover. The two of them had dreamed of opening their own restaurant since they were toddlers making mud pies in the backyard. Even back then, Crimson had been the “sweet” cook. She’d decorated her mud pies with violets and rose petals and sprinkled her mother’s white beads of vermiculite over them for “sugar.”

But now that Clover was dead, Crimson had no desire to pursue the dream alone.

She had no right to.

“Come on—you know that’s absurd,” he went on, watching her as if he were trying to figure something out. “I still love the ranch. I might even love it more, actually, now that it’s a reality instead of a dream. Why on earth would getting paid to cook spoil your fun?”

“Never mind,” she said, bending over Molly with her napkin, though the baby was fine and didn’t need tending. “Maybe it wouldn’t. It’s just—don’t listen to everything Marianne says. She’s exaggerating. I’m nothing special in the kitchen.”

She began cooing to the baby, hoping to prevent Grant from pursuing the subject. And he got the message, of course. He was one of those rare men who could read nonverbal cues.

He dropped the topic. And he was kind enough not to discuss her getting fired, either. When the stew was served, they talked about his horses. He was in the early stages of building an Arabian breeding program, and one of his young fillies was turning out to be special. A three-year-old copper-colored beauty, her name was Cawdor’s Golden Dawn, though Grant called her Dawn.

It was kind of cute, how crazy he was about this horse. Even Crimson could see how beautiful Dawn was, and how elegant, but the bond between her and Grant was adorable. Grant obviously thought she’d hung the moon, and the feeling appeared to be mutual.

And of course Crimson wanted to hear about the foaling schedule. His main mare had delivered a promising little colt in April, which had been exciting for everyone at the ranch.

“So have you decided what to name the new colt?” Crimson knew he’d been trying to come up with the perfect name for days. She and Kevin had offered about a hundred suggestions, but nothing had hit the spot.

“Not yet. Kevin’s most recent suggestion is Kevimol, which he said was a brilliant combination of his name and Molly’s. But I think it sounds like a periodontal disease.”

He smiled, popping the last piece of bread into his mouth with gusto. He worked hard, and he could eat all day without putting an ounce of fat onto that lean, muscular frame, lucky devil. “Besides, what kind of egotist thinks I’m going to name my horse for him? Talk to Kevin about that, would you?”

Crimson laughed, but something about Grant’s easy assumption that she was the one who could make Kevin see reason left her uncomfortable.

She’d known Kevin almost two months now, ever since he’d shown up at Campbell Ranch, his four-month-old motherless baby in tow, asking Grant, his old college buddy, if he could crash there temporarily. Because Crimson and Grant were friends, Crimson had of course met Kevin, too.

They’d begun to date maybe a month ago—if dating was even the right word for this oddly platonic relationship they seemed to have forged.

She, at least, knew full well that the friendship would never be more than that. She’d known it almost from the start. She was half in love with Kevin’s baby, but she’d never be in love with Kevin himself.

She’d always assumed Kevin understood that. After all, he’d clearly just embarked on single parenthood. Though he never seemed to want to discuss the details of Molly’s mother, she deduced that the two had never married, and somehow he’d ended up with custody.

A daunting prospect, and a situation in which you wouldn’t want to take any new risks with lovers lightly. Crimson had assumed he couldn’t possibly be ready to start something serious.

Lately, though, she’d seen a look on his face...heard a tone in his voice...

She wondered whether Grant had seen and heard those things, too.

Well, bottom line, it was time to break it off before Kevin got the wrong idea. And if she was moving away from Silverdell, which she obviously should, that would be the easiest out, wouldn’t it?