Return to Homecoming Ranch (Pine River) (3 page)

For reasons that completely eluded Sam, Ryan was one of those guys who could charm the pants off women. Way back when, Ryan had married Gwen, had two cute kids, got a good job at the propane shop, and had a nice little house on the edge of Pine River. Most men would be happy that they’d done something right, that they had a pretty wife and two great kids to come home to every day after work. Sam didn’t know what went wrong between Ryan and Gwen, but something did. Gwen seemed solid; she didn’t strike him as the type to walk out on a marriage. But that she did, walking all the way to Colorado Springs to get her dental hygiene license because there wasn’t much work in Pine River. She had to leave her babies at home with their grandmas and their schools and their dad in order to get that marketable skill. Sam figured that was a tough thing for Gwen to do, no matter what Libby thought of it. The way he saw it, Gwen had done what she had to do to provide for her kids.

That was when Ryan met Libby.

Sam actually remembered it—Libby had been working as a clerk at the sheriff’s office in Pine River at the time. Sam had worked there, too, before his life had spiraled out of control and he’d had to leave. He remembered Libby’s fresh face, and how she’d bring cookies to the office. He remembered how she’d appear at his side with a cup of coffee when he showed up to work hungover. “Get some
sleep,
Sam,” she’d whisper. She organized the office parties, too, and was the one person who could get grown men to do a Secret Santa gift exchange. Sam remembered that holiday season—after everyone had agreed, which had taken some doing, they’d drawn names. But the names were unfamiliar to them. It turned out that Libby had given them the names of the kids at the children’s home in Corita City. She explained that she’d feared if she’d asked them to give a gift to the home, the deputies gladly would have done it, but would have handed off the task to their wives. She’d wanted them to connect to the kids, so she’d devised the Secret Santa.

The holiday party that year, with the kids from the home, was one of the best holiday parties Sam had ever attended. And there hadn’t been a drop of booze . . . except in the flask in his patrol car.

Sam also remembered the starry look Libby had when she’d met Ryan. She’d been completely smitten by him, and had really taken to his two little kids. Danielle Boxer, who owned the Grizzly Lodge and Café, had once told Sam that Libby threw herself body and soul into Ryan’s life and taking care of his children.

“She’d bring them down to Main Street on Saturday mornings, and they’d come into the café. Oh, she dressed those kids, Alice with a big bow in her hair, Max with his little high-tops. She’d take them down to the library for story hour, or over to the park to the new playscape they have over there. I’ll tell you, Sam, she loved those kids as if she’d birthed them herself.”

No one could ever fault Libby Tyler for effort.

Sam hadn’t seen much of Libby around that time—he’d had his problems at home and a daily cat and mouse game of keeping his addiction a secret.

Gwen came back to town about the same time as Sam, with a new hairdo and a new figure and a new job that paid pretty well, and apparently, Ryan got the idea things would be better with Gwen. But Ryan wasn’t the kind of man who could own up to his sorry truth; he kept his affair with Gwen under wraps, and told Libby it wasn’t going to work out. Sam didn’t know what Ryan had eventually said to Libby, exactly, but Dani said it was a coldhearted rejection, a shove right out the door without explanation. As far as Libby knew, everything was golden between her and Ryan. She thought she was going to be stepmom to those kids until they had their own families. She thought she and Ryan would be adding to the brood. She thought Ryan truly loved her.

After that, Sam would see Libby around town with a yoga mat on her back, or having lunch with her mother at the local tea shop. She seemed the same bubbly young woman, still volunteering her time to help others, but Sam had noticed something different about her. The light was not the same in her blue eyes.

The sad thing was, Libby didn’t know what everyone else knew—that Ryan had been having an affair with Gwen. When Libby found out about it a few weeks ago—months after their split, after trying to make sense of things—she’d lost it and picked up the golf club.

At the present moment, Libby was practically scrubbing that head of lettuce, then ripping the leaves and throwing them like grenades into the salad spinner.

“I told the Pine River cop that I’d handle today’s incident,” he said. “I asked Gwen not to make a bigger deal out of it. But Libby, you can’t violate a restraining order and expect that you won’t end up in jail.”

Libby stopped ripping leaves from the head of lettuce and looked out the window over the kitchen sink.

“Look, I know it’s been hard,” he continued. “But if you want to see those kids, you’re going to have to make nice. People don’t want women who bash truck windows coming around their little ones, you know?”

Libby snorted. “So I hear.”

Sam pushed a hand through his hair, tried to think of the best way to frame his thoughts. “You can’t let your emotions get the best of you. This restraining order is temporary. You don’t want to give Ryan any reason to make it permanent, do you?”

Libby didn’t respond.

The headlights from a car swept through the kitchen as someone pulled into the drive.

“So . . . you’re going to obey the order, right?”

“Right,” Libby said, and wiped her hands on her apron. She turned around and walked to the bar, standing beside the seat he had taken, and picked up his hat, clearly meaning to show him out. “Thanks for coming by, always great to see you, etc. But don’t call me, Sam, I’ll call you.”

She grinned as if she were teasing him, but Sam knew she wasn’t. Still, he smiled at her. He stood up, and stood so close to her that he could smell her perfume. It teased his nose and his thoughts, stirring something deep inside him as he took his hat from her. “That’s Deputy Winters to you. And no one is hoping more than me that we can stop meeting like this.” He meant that sincerely as he sat his hat on his head.

Libby’s smile softened. “Really? Because I was beginning to think you kind of liked it.” She gave him a friendly shove toward the door.

“I’ll see you around town, Libby.”

“Good-bye
Deputy Winters!” she said in a singsong voice, and wiggled her fingers at him in a little wave.

“Good-bye, Libby.”

Sam emerged from the house just as Madeline Pruett, one of Libby’s half sisters, was coming up the steps. Four dogs were shadowing her, their snouts on the grocery bags she was carrying. She paused, her eyes widening when she saw him. “Oh no,” she said. “What’s happened?”

“How are you, Madeline? Nothing has happened. Just checking in.” He jogged down the steps, pausing to pet the dogs. “Have a good evening,” he said, and walked on to his patrol car, aware that Madeline was staring at his back.

Libby Tyler, he thought as he turned the ignition. A little nutty, a lot cute, and a truckload of trouble. Wasn’t this the way it always went? He was always drawn to the best-looking ones who caused the most trouble.

FOUR

Libby could hear Madeline banging through the front door and kicking it shut with her foot. The dogs raced into the kitchen before her, crowding Libby, sniffing her, looking for a treat.

“
Hey,
you mutts!” Madeline shouted after them. All four dogs reversed course and scrambled out of the kitchen, presumably to where Libby could hear Madeline putting things down in the hallway. That was a remarkable turnaround from five months ago, when Madeline had first come to Homecoming Ranch. She’d been petrified of dogs and of sisters she’d never met. Honestly, Madeline had been petrified of
life
.

When Libby’s father had died and left this run-down ranch to her and her sisters—meaning Madeline, whom she had never heard of until his death, and Emma, whom she definitely knew, but did not consider much of a sister if you got right down to it—Libby had been excited. After what she’d gone through with Ryan, and then her father’s death, she’d had hope that somehow she’d spin right into a new reality, one with sisters and meaningful relationships. She’d even said as much to her mother.

Libby should know by now not to say hopeful things to her mother, because her mother, God bless her, thought it was her purpose in life to make sure that Libby was, at all times, completely grounded.

“I don’t like to see you get your hopes up, honey,” her mother had said one day as she treated Libby to lunch at the Silver Leaf Teashop. “They may be sisters by blood, but these are grown women with their own lives. You can’t just throw three grown women together and expect that it will all be perfect and rosy.”

“Thanks for the encouragement,” Libby had said. “Who says a sisterly bond is only formed at the beginning of life?”

Her mother had shrugged as she’d nibbled on a carrot. “You lived with Emma, what, two years? What kind of bond did you form with her?”

“I was seven or eight then, Mom. I’m twenty-six now.”

“It’s just that you always have such high expectations, and when those expectations aren’t met, you are so disappointed. I don’t want to see you disappointed, Libby. I tried to warn you about Ryan, but you—”

“Okay, all right,” Libby had said curtly, not wanting to hear the
I Told You So
chorus again.

But her mom was right, Libby had carried high expectations for her new family.
Too
high. When it fell apart, disappearing like the smoke and mirrors trick it apparently was, the emergence of sisters felt like a gift from God, tied up in a bow and given to Libby after losing her job and her family. She’d believed she deserved some happiness. Only Madeline and Emma hadn’t been as excited by the prospect of instant family and a run-down ranch as Libby had been.

But Libby, reeling from the loss of Ryan and Alice and Max, had desperately needed something to
work.
So she’d doggedly insisted that they go ahead with staging the ranch for a big family reunion—their father had rented the ranch out for that purpose before he’d died—and Madeline had grudgingly stayed to help.

And then, as if to add salt to Libby’s open wound, Madeline fell in love with Luke Kendrick. Big, gooey, hands-all-over-him love. Pretty Madeline with her long, dark hair and thick bangs, and big, rock-star handsome, rugged Luke, had fallen into the sort of love that burned a person up. Libby would see Madeline and Luke share a private joke and know they had a good thing, the real thing.

They had the sort of thing Libby had believed she’d had with Ryan.

That it had all been a lie had begun to weigh on Libby. It rooted into her thoughts, knitted into her days, sank into her heart. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. She had stopped living her life, had let things begin to slip and slither away.

It was Sam who had taken the golf club from Libby’s hand the afternoon she bashed the windows of Ryan’s truck, but it was Madeline who had called Libby’s mother.

Her mother, in turn, had taken Libby to the Mountain View Behavioral Health Center. “What you need is rest, honey,” she’d said as they drove to the facility on the edge of an industrial park near Colorado Springs. “The not eating or sleeping, the moping about, and now
this.
” She shook her head. “I am worried about you.”

Libby had been too exhausted, too far past the point of caring to argue with her mother.

Now, a little more than a month since she’d come home, Libby still wasn’t certain if she was grateful for Madeline’s intervention or terribly resentful. But then again, everything still felt a little gray and fuzzy to Libby these days. Sometimes, she felt as if there was something between her and the entire world, and if she just tried hard enough, it would all come together. Now, five months since Ryan first asked her to move out, Libby still couldn’t wrap her mind around it.

And then again, judging by what Ryan had said recently, maybe it hadn’t been a lie so much as a huge mistake on his part—

Can’t think about that now,
not with Madeline in the living room.

Libby closed her eyes and took a series of deep breaths, a coping mechanism Dr. Huber had taught her at Mountain View. She reminded herself there were much more important things to think about, such as what they would do with this ranch they’d inherited from their dad.

Libby, Emma, and Madeline still hadn’t decided what they would do with the ranch in the long run. Sell it, keep it, abandon it—who knew? For now, they were focused on what would be the third event at Homecoming Ranch in the six months they’d owned it. The first had been a family reunion. The second a wedding. The third event, scheduled to occur in two weeks, would be a civil union between Austin and Gary.

Gary—or more precisely, Gary’s mother, Martha—had some very specific ideas for the ceremony, and that is what Libby made herself think about now. The event was tangible and imminent. Flowers, candles, wind chimes, a string quartet—if Libby concentrated on those things, she didn’t think about things that made her so blessedly angry.

Madeline clomped into the kitchen, carrying groceries and eyeing Libby warily, as if she expected Libby to do something crazy, like pick up a knife and start stabbing the faded curtains over the kitchen sink. “Hey,” she said, depositing her groceries on the counter. “Sam Winters was here again?”

“Yep,” Libby said, sliding immediately into Friendly, Upbeat Libby. “I’m going to make some enchiladas. I love enchiladas, don’t you? Cheese especially.”

“What’d he want?” Madeline asked as she began to take items out of the paper bag. Bananas, coffee, paper towels.

“Just to chat. Hey, did you happen to get tortillas?”

Madeline slid a package of them across the kitchen counter to Libby. “So what did he want to chat about?”

It was obvious that Madeline spent her days waiting for the next thing that would send Libby back to Mountain View. She walked on tiptoes and then pretended she wasn’t doing exactly that. It was annoying. The one time Libby had tried to explain, as best she could, why she’d lost herself that day, why depression had steamrolled over her, flattening her into a pancake with tunnel-vision anger, she’d come away thinking that Madeline didn’t really understand what betrayal could do to a person.

To be perfectly honest, Libby didn’t understand it either. She never once had any inkling that she was a person to resort to violence, not until the day she’d tried to speak to Ryan about seeing Alice and Max, and he’d exploded, telling her that she’d been too lenient with his kids and had turned them into little entitled monsters, and that it was best if she didn’t come around them anymore, and didn’t she get it, he and Gwen had been seeing each other behind her back for months?

That announcement had caught Libby completely off guard and sent her into a flaming tailspin. It was one thing to lose Ryan. It was an entirely different matter to lose Max and Alice. But it was another stratosphere of anger altogether when she realized that when Ryan had suddenly ended things, it was because he’d been cheating on her, and Libby
hadn’t figured that out
.

She’d been overcome with a rage so intense that she really could not stop herself. Libby couldn’t even describe that moment to Dr. Huber. She remembered feeling like the world around her had fallen away. She didn’t know she was shaking until she tried to stop her purse from sliding off her shoulder and couldn’t grab it. She remembered picking up the club from the bed of Ryan’s truck, and how Ryan was almost frozen with shock. She remembered the squishy feel of the club’s grip, and how she had been pleased she could get such a good grip on it.

Libby could remember taking the first whack and realizing she needed more muscle. She took another whack and the glass shattered, and she had felt adrenaline-fueled elation. Pure elation, like she’d just jumped from the top of a building and landed on her feet.

She could not remember how she kept Ryan at bay. She just remembered that when Sam took the club from her hand, Ryan had been standing there, his whole body quivering with fury. Libby hadn’t cared, obviously, and soon after that, she’d been on her way to Mountain View. Days later, with some medicine to calm her down and some sleep to rest her mind, Libby understood that Ryan had a right to be angry, but the resulting restraining order was a huge blow—Ryan knew how much Alice and Max meant to her, and how much she meant to them. He knew the kids called Libby, still wanted to tell her about dance, about soccer, about the movie they watched that morning. They wanted just to talk to
her
, to the woman who had cared for them for the last four years.

“Libby, what did he want?” Madeline asked again, shaking Libby back to the present.

She blinked. “Not much. He was just checking on things. Gary and Austin’s ceremony.” Libby didn’t even wince at that lie, which, on some level, was alarming to her. But the guilt would have to get in line behind a mess of other feelings that had been swirling around her since running into Gwen today.

Madeline frowned into her grocery bag. “What about it?” she asked, and put a jar of spaghetti sauce on the counter.

“He’d heard about it in town.”
God, shut up, Libby.
She was not going to tell Madeline the true reason for his call. How could she? Madeline would flip out—restraining orders in general flipped her out. Madeline liked order and everything in its place, and everyone obeying the rules, and she did not like it when Libby did not obey the rules.

Libby could feel Madeline’s eyes on her. She took some chicken breasts out of the fridge, some tomatoes and peppers. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I’ll make a big batch.”

“Aah . . . well, Luke and I are going into town for dinner tonight. Want to come with us?”

The only thing worse than having Sam Winters remind Libby she was violating a restraining order was being the third wheel on a date with the lovebirds. “Thanks, but I’ve got a lot of work to do,” Libby said. “Did you get the glass bowls?”

“They’re in my trunk,” Madeline said. “I’ll get them.” She started out of the kitchen, but she hesitated, brushed her bangs from her eyes and said, “Libby? You know you can talk to me if something is wrong, right?”

Madeline probably believed that. But there was so much wrong in Libby’s life right now and Madeline Pruett felt like the last person Libby could talk to about it. If Libby told her half of what she was thinking, she guessed Madeline would hyperventilate herself right into a coma. “Thanks, Madeline,” she said. “But nothing is wrong. I’m just . . . I am worried about the ranch, that’s all.” She tossed a smile over her shoulder that hopefully was reassuring.

“Yeah,” Madeline said, nodding as if she was worried, too. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it.”

Libby did not like it when Madeline had been thinking. Usually it meant she was thinking about why things wouldn’t work, as opposed to how to make them work. “I think we should get a loan,” Libby blurted before Madeline could suggest something she did not want to hear.

“Huh?” Madeline said, startled.

The thought sort of startled Libby, too. “A loan. You know, to spruce things up and tide us over until we can get some events booked.”

Madeline was already shaking her head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. You have to have a way to pay them back—”

“We could get a business loan,” Libby said quickly. She knew that’s what Leslie Brown had done when she opened up her salon in town. If Leslie could do it, so could they.

But Madeline looked shocked by the suggestion.

“I’m just saying we should at least talk to the bank, Madeline. We can’t make any gains without a little risk. Or without fixing the place up. Or without marketing ourselves, right?”

“But we’re leaking money, Libby. It seems to me the last thing we want to do is leak
more
money. How would we pay it back? And Emma would never sign off—”

“Don’t worry about Emma,” Libby said. She did enough worrying about Emma for the both of them, and besides, that was a bridge she would cross when she came to it.

“Okay, sure, we won’t worry about Emma,” Madeline said, calling her bluff. “She owns as much of this ranch as we do, but we won’t worry about that because she’s
sooo
predictable.”

That was true—Emma was a loose cannon, a chess piece that had fallen off the board. “Look, all I’m saying is that if we had some money to advertise our place, and to make it so people will
want
to come here, we might get enough business so that we aren’t leaking money. I figure we need at least six events a year just to break even.”

“I don’t know,” Madeline said with a shake of her head. “We have no tangible reason to borrow.”

“Right now, we’re just talking about it.”

Madeline bit her lower lip. “Okay,” she said. “As long as we’re just talking about it. I’m going to go get the bowls.” She walked out of the kitchen, ending the conversation.

Madeline didn’t say more about it. She came back to the kitchen with the bowls and talked about what she’d done in town that day, glossing over the conversation about the ranch. In Libby’s mind, Madeline was always glossing over things. She wondered if Madeline truly feared setting her off into some manic explosion.