A Longtime (and at one point Illegal) Crush

A warning voice might have come in handy for Elsie Clark
, but as she turned her ancient Civic onto Windham Road, she didn’t hear that type of voice. She looked out across the sloping hills that lay in front of the snow-covered mountains, and the voices she heard whispered, “Come back and stay where you belong. This is home.”

Elsie
had been ignoring those voices since she left Lark Field, Montana, nearly three years ago. She’d moved on, she reminded herself, outgrown the small-town life. If she moved back here, everyone would see her as the same Elsie Clark she’d been in high school. Kye McBride would see her that way too.

She
didn’t want to think about Kye, but it was hard not to while she drove across his ranch. Whenever she made this drive back—Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now for her brother’s wedding—she was afraid Kye would pop up somewhere along the road. It was a stupid worry, really. The Windham Ranch consisted of twenty-thousand acres. It wasn’t as if the McBrides would be strolling around the road looking for familiar cars. Still, if there had been another way to get to Lark Field, Elsie would have taken it.

She
drove around a curve that followed the contours of a riverbed and saw the cows. Two of them stood idly in the road, each poking through the snow on the shoulder as though something tasty might be buried underneath.

Elsie
slowed down, and when the cows didn’t move, she idled and gave her horn a short tap. Neither cow moved. In fact, both turned and looked at her placidly. She waited a few moments, then hit the horn harder. It let out a scolding blare.

One of the cows turned and strolled
up to the hood of her car. Its soft brown eyes stared at her while it breathed out frosty puffs. It had moved, but there still wasn’t a way to pass the cows without hitting them. Elsie waited for one of them to saunter off somewhere, to shuffle by her car so she could scoot around them. A minute went by, then two, then three. The cows only stared at her expectantly and mooed.

This was great. With
Elsie’s luck, if she drove off the road to go around them, she’d either get stuck in the snow or end up puncturing a tire. And that would be just what she needed—to get stuck on Kye’s ranch.

Elsie noticed movement in her rearview mirror. She turned around
and saw that another cow had wandered onto the road behind her car.

It was then Elsie
felt the first inklings of panic. She was boxed in. If she moved her car in either direction, she’d hit a cow. And she knew the price of beef. The only thing that would be worse than getting stuck on Kye’s ranch would be having to tell him she’d killed one of his cows. Elsie laid on the horn again, this time long and hard.

Nothing happened. She didn’t
even get a reaction from the cows—unless you counted the way they were looking at her curiously and sniffing the car’s headlights. Off to her right, she spotted two more cows ambling her way, ready to join the others for this impromptu cow party.

What the . . .
? Why had her car suddenly become a cattle magnet?

Elsie
put the car in reverse and twisted in her seat. She would find a way around the cow behind her. At this point, she wouldn’t mind backing up the entire way to the main road.

Unfortunately
, while she’d been honking at the cows in front of her, another cow had wandered up behind the car. They blocked the road that way too. She stared at them in disbelief. This was beginning to feel like the Alfred Hitchcock movie
The Birds
. She’d wound up in a cattle sequel. Elsie honked the horn in a staccato rhythm and glared at the wet nose now eye level with her window. “Don’t you know that people eat you?” she told it. “Where is your fear of predators?”

None of
the cows responded to that comment either.

It figured that
Kye’s cattle would go out of their way to trap her on his property. She might as well turn off the car and wait them out. Only she didn’t dare turn off her car for fear it wouldn’t restart.

That was the thing about b
eing a college student. She couldn’t afford a new car, and lately her Civic had a temperamental way of pretending its battery had died. It hadn’t. Elsie had replaced the battery a month ago when it had first started acting up. Now sitting here staring at Kye’s cows, she could read her future as well as if a fortune teller were slapping down the cards in front of her. Elsie would turn off her car, the cows would eventually go away, and then her Civic would go on strike and ignore all attempts to coax it into life by fervent key twisting.

When
Elsie called home to report the problem, her parents would ring up the McBrides to have them give her a jump. Even if it wasn’t Kye who showed up with jumper cables, he would hear about the event. And he would think it was some pathetic attempt on her part to see him again.

He wouldn’t
believe she’d been waylaid on the road by a small but insistent herd of cattle. He wouldn’t believe she’d had a real reason to turn off her car in the middle of his ranch. Elsie could hardly believe it herself, and she was staring at said cattle.

Elsie pulled out her cell phone
but couldn’t think of anyone to call for help. Did 911 handle this sort of thing? It didn’t matter. Anyone she called in Lark Field would call the McBrides and have them deal with it. Worse still, anyone she called would ask her why she hadn’t just called the McBrides in the first place.

Elsie shov
ed her phone back in her purse. Well, this is what she got for going out of her way to avoid Kye McBride for the last three years. Fate was having a joke at her expense.

Elsie
honked the horn again, not expecting it to do any good, but the blare sounded like the car was swearing, so it was appropriate.

Then things got worse.
Up until that moment there had been a chance this cow traffic jam would clear up on its own and Kye would never know she’d been trapped here. If things had gone the way they were supposed to, Elsie wouldn’t have to see him until tomorrow night at the wedding rehearsal where she would be flawlessly made up. She had planned to graciously ignore Kye while she was busy being stunning.

Now that
scenario was shot. Elsie glanced in her rearview mirror and saw him coming over a rise on his horse. Even in his thick jean coat and cowboy hat, she knew it was Kye and not one of the ranch hands. She recognized his height and shape, tall and thin enough that you didn’t notice how muscular he was at first. Elsie could tell it was him by the way he held himself, self-assured but casual.

Kye
had seen her, had undoubtedly recognized her car. It was the same one she’d had in high school. Instead of looking stunning, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt, had done nothing with her hair except run a brush through it several hours ago, and she barely wore any makeup. Now Kye was coming over to see why she was planted on the middle of his ranch surrounded by an entourage of cows.

* *
*

The first time
Elsie had ever seen Kye, she had been eight and he’d been fourteen. He’d come home from school with her older brother, Carson, to do math homework. Before long the guys had ended up outside on the driveway shooting hoops. Back then, Kye had looked years younger than Carson. He’d been short and wiry with arms and legs that seemed too long for his body. Even at that, he’d still been cute. He had thick brown hair and dark blue eyes the same shade as the Montana sky right after sunset.

Later on, when
Elsie was old enough to look back on all the times Kye came over to help Carson study, she realized why the two of them had always ended their study sessions playing basketball. Kye was years ahead of her brother when it came to math. Carson must have hated that—being outdone by someone who looked like he still belonged in junior high. Carson could only take being tutored for so long before he had to prove he was better than Kye when it came to sports.

B
ut back when Elsie was eight, she’d only seen that her brother was outside playing, and she wanted in on the action. She had two other brothers between her and Carson, and neither of them ever had much time for her, even though she tried to be one of the guys whenever she could.

Elsie
took her basketball outside, the one with her name written in purple marker across it. She made a shot from the edge of the lawn. It didn’t even manage to hit the basket.

“Go away,”
Carson told her in the cuttingly impatient way big brothers had. “You’re bugging us.”

Elsie
hurried after her ball before it rolled into the street. “Three people can play,” she said. “Lucas and Mason play with you all the time.”

“Yeah,”
Carson said, dribbling the ball with such ease it looked like his hands were magnets the ball was drawn to, “but you’re no good. Go play dolls or something.”

Even though
Elsie didn’t know who Kye was, she felt the extra sting of being insulted in front of him. She clutched her ball, tears welling in her eyes. Her name, so proudly written on her ball, blurred in her vision until the letters melted together.

“It’s okay,” Kye said, coming toward her. “She can be on my team.” He effortlessly hoisted her up on his shoulders.
Ranch work had made him stronger than he looked. “Now we’re taller than Carson,” Kye said, “so it’s almost fair.”

She had giggled and beamed
and cheerfully missed shot after shot. Kye didn’t seem to mind. He kept saying things like, “Dang—the basket ducked out of the way. That should have been a three-pointer.”

He
probably had only recruited her on his team so he had a reason to lose. Maybe he didn’t like being reminded of his deficiencies in basketball any more than Carson liked being reminded of his shortcomings in math.

It didn’t matter. After that
Elsie adored Kye, worshipping him with a dedication only an eight-year-old could sustain. Elsie renamed all of her Ken dolls Kye. Her family went to the same church as Kye’s, and while the congregation bowed their heads in prayer, Elsie would peek open her eyes and blow Kye furtive kisses. She looked for him at every one of Carson’s school events and ballgames—Kye did eventually get taller and better at not only basketball, but baseball too. She cheered for him louder than she cheered for her brother.

Every time Kye came over during
the next four years of high school, she hung around like a stray puppy waiting to be noticed.
I am going to marry you
, she told him silently. She basked in those unsaid words, felt the power of them lifting her.

Kye
never did notice her, though. Not really. Not in the way she wanted to be noticed. He grew even taller and more muscular. His glasses disappeared in favor of contacts. His boyish features sharpened into the crisp handsome lines of a young man.

On
the night of their senior prom, Carson, Kye, and several of their friends brought their dates to the house. Elsie sat sulking on the stairs while her mother cooed over everyone, snapping pictures and throwing out compliments like they were confetti. Not once did Kye look in Elsie’s direction or smile at her. She was twelve and in braces, completely inadequate in the face of the glittering girls who glided around Kye and the others.