“I wouldn’t do that.” He’d folded
his
arms in a gesture Austin knew well. This was usually his final word stance.
Not this time.
“Like you wouldn’t fall outside Ryan’s and my office?”
Thunderclouds moved across his face, which had reddened to the hue of a roasted beet. “That was a damn accident. There was a crack in the curb.”
“Of course it was an accident,” she said, swinging back to the good nurse/best friend. She did not, Austin noted, state that everyone knew that there wasn’t a crack in the curb. “But, as Heather’s and Tom’s deaths proves so tragically, accidents do happen.
“You’ve had a raw deal. It’s not fair, and I’m sorry as hell about it. But you’re no longer stable on those canes.” She told him what Austin suspected he knew himself but hadn’t yet accepted. “This chair will not only be more comfortable for you, it’ll prevent you from creating a spectacle.”
Austin could see that sinking in.
“There’s another thing,” Layla said, jumping in with yet another argument while the wheels in the stubborn rancher’s head were turning. “It’ll get you out and about meeting with folks again instead of acting like a hermit.”
“I’ll look like a damn cripple,” he muttered.
“Buck Merrill.” Layla’s hands were back on her hips. “I am not going to let you wallow in some self-indulgent pity party. You know Dalton Osborne, don’t you?”
“Sure. He worked some roundups for me during high school. Before he went off to West Point. He was a good kid. Even lasted seven seconds on Desperado, which is more than most guys ever did.”
“Well, he’s not a kid anymore. He’s a grown man who returned from Iraq with two legs and half an arm blown off from an IED.”
“I know that.” The chin jutted out again. “I used to see him down at the VFW all the time.”
“
He’s
still there. You’re the one who quit dropping in. And for your information, Dalton has a chair just like this one. Do you think when he drops in for a beer the guys think of him as a cripple? For that matter, is that how you’d define him?”
“Hell, no. He’s a hometown hero.”
“Who went back to Modoc Community College for a degree in computer programing, got married, has a couple of kids, one whom I just happen to have delivered myself at their home six months ago. Thanks to the G.I. bill paying for his education, he’s making a nice living creating websites for businesses all around Oregon. He’s even branched out into Northern California and Idaho. And if you ask him, he’d be the first to tell you that he doesn’t think of himself as a hero. Just a regular guy.
“But although life gave him a hell of a blow, he picked himself up, dusted himself off, same as he did when he’d fall off those bulls he was crazy enough to ride when he was young and foolish, and has moved on with his life.”
“He’s young. He’s got a lot more life to get on with.”
“Like you’re so old.” Austin checked her watch and decided she had five more minutes, tops, before she had to leave for Medford. “You’ve got a lot of good years ahead of you, Dad. Years filled with things like walking me down the aisle—”
“Wheeling you down the damn aisle, you mean.”
“Better than not being there at all because you can’t safely make it on your own two legs,” she shot back. “And then hopefully there will be grandchildren. Do you want to be stuck in here while they’re out learning to ride and rope? When you could be teaching them the way you did me?”
“That Murphy boy going to be their daddy?”
“I don’t know,” Austin said. Then decided that not being honest with her feelings had gotten her into fixes in the past, so went for the truth. “I hope so,” she said. “I want that, and I think he does, too. But right now we have to concentrate on being there for Jack and Sophie. And since I don’t have a clue how to be a parent, I really, really need you to help me.”
She didn’t know if it was Layla’s very sound arguments and persuasion, the idea of future Merrills growing up on this ranch, or the tears she felt over-brimming her eyes, but Buck suddenly folded like a cheap tent.
“I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try it out,” he mumbled.
Layla had already locked the wheels, but as soon as he’d sat down, she unlocked them, put his hand on the joystick, and said, “Go for it.”
Austin and Layla exchanged a look as he took a spin around the room. “It’s not bad,” he said when he came to a stop again.
“It’s the Cadillac of personal mobility cruisers,” Layla said.
“Which brings up another thing.” He might be down, but he wasn’t out. “What does it cost and how am I going to pay for it? In case you haven’t heard, we had to let the stock business go.”
“Don’t you worry that handsome head about a thing. It’s all taken care of.”
“I’m not taking charity.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Haven’t you seen all those commercials on cable TV for various stuff Medicare pays for? It’s like that.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Winema entered the conversation. “And now, when you go out, you’ll be able to be sociable again because people will be able to talk to you.”
“They haven’t talked to me because they feel sorry for me and don’t know what to say.”
“Wrong. They haven’t talked with you because you’re so busy looking down at the ground, trying not to trip, they don’t want to come up and distract you.” She waved a hand toward the chair. “Now no one will have to worry about that. And with that basket on the back, you can even come grocery shopping with me.”
“Or I could just be drug behind a wild horse.”
“Think of it as hunting. You go out into the wilds of the mercantile, bag your meal, and bring it back here, where, may I point out, you don’t even have to cook it.”
“Well, this has been exciting,” Austin said as the two began arguing about male and female roles. “I’ve got to run upstairs for a sec before I head off to the airport. Layla, can you come up for a minute? I have something to ask you. About the kids.”
“Sure.”
“Okay,” Austin said, as soon as she was in her room, grabbing a shirt off a hanger. “No way is that covered by Medicare.”
“I didn’t say it was. I said it was ‘like that.’ Don’t worry, Ryan and I had a good winter, what with the sudden population explosion. We decided we’d rather spend a little bit of the profits to help a patient than buy new couches for the waiting room. Especially since, I swear, every kid who comes into the place has sticky hands. The vinyl we’ve got now is more practical, anyway.”
Damn. As she pulled on the shirt, her fingers fumbling as she buttoned it, Austin could feel the tears welling up again. She’d sworn she wasn’t going to cry during all this, but what with the accident and the deaths and the kids and that incredible night with Sawyer and now this, her emotions felt as if they were on a Tilt-a-Whirl.
“Thank you.” She hugged the woman who’d once been Ellen’s bestie and had become a close friend to her.
“Just go pick up Lexi,” Layla said. “I’m dying to see what color hair she has these days.”
26
B
EFORE GOING TO
Cooper and Rachel’s, Sawyer dropped by the Campbells’ house, where he found Brody installing a quartz countertop.
“Looks great,” he said.
“Thanks.” Brody took off his hat. “I’m feeling guilty about it, though.”
“Why? It’s perfect.”
“Yeah. It is. And carefree. Because it’s a composite, it doesn’t need to be sealed like granite or marble. But here’s the thing . . . Heather didn’t pick it out. She wanted butcher block. But to keep to the sub schedule, I decided to go with this, because I called a real estate agent I know, who agreed that because quartz is tougher than wood, and everyone’s asking for it these days, it’d be better for resale.”
“Then you made the right decision. Because Heather would want her kids to get top dollar.”
“Yeah.” Brody picked up a rag and ran it over the top of the hunter-green countertop. “She was going to buy a new dining set on craigslist and paint it this color. So, I figured she wouldn’t mind it for the countertop. She was going for country cozy, and the realtor said this would be a good fit.”
“It works for me.”
Brody shook his head and dragged a hand down his face. “This is turning out to be harder than I’d thought.”
“Yeah.” And didn’t Sawyer know that all too well?
“But hell, here I am complaining about remodeling a house, and you’re about to be a surrogate dad. How does that feel?”
“Terrifying. But Austin’s got more of the responsibility, and being a woman, she probably knows more about kids.”
“Maybe.” Brody looked doubtful.
“You don’t think so?”
“I haven’t a clue about kids, either. But I do remember stuff my dad did. The same way you remember yours growing up. But Austin’s mom took off when she was pretty young. And Buck, as great a guy as he is, in his own way, isn’t exactly the nurturing type.”
And wasn’t that the overstatement of the decade?
“Coincidentally, Buck is who I came by to talk about.”
“Is something wrong with him?”
“He seems the same. But I was talking with Ryan, who said that exercise is tough for his muscles.”
“Yeah. It wears them out.”
“But he also said swimming is good because there isn’t any pressure.”
“Makes sense. My grandmother takes pool aerobics at her seniors’ community.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
Brody looked at him as if he’d suggested they both take Desperado out for a Sunday ride. “You’re going to suggest Buck Merrill, River’s Bend’s own John Wayne, move into senior housing?”
“No. I’m thinking he take up swimming.”
“We’re at nearly a mile high here. The lake’s cold enough to send a guy’s balls up into his throat in July.”
“I was thinking of having you build an indoor pool.”
“Ah.” Brody took off the cap again, scratched his head. “That could work. There’s room to extend the family room into the backyard. You’d lose some of the porch, but it could be done.”
“Good.” That settled, Sawyer decided he’d better pick up the kids. “Work up a price, let me know, and we’ll get started.”
“Sure. Uh, did you happen to talk with either Buck or Austin about this?”
“Nope.”
“O-kay. I’m not going to get shot, am I?”
“Nah. I’m going to use the kids as an excuse. They’ll need a diversion their first summer without their folks.”
“That could work,” Brody decided. “The average size of an indoor pool is about eight by fifteen. I built one a while back for some Hollywood director that topped a hundred thou, but if you’re looking utilitarian—”
“I am.” Since he wasn’t married and the military had taken care of most of his expenses over the years, he’d saved up a pretty hefty nest egg.
“If I were doing it for a client, it’d probably come in around twenty. But I’ll do it for cost, which should cut it significantly. Your major expense is going to be expanding the room, but I figure we can round up a lot of volunteers to do framing and other stuff.”
“Like Coop said everyone did for Rachel after the New Chance had to be gutted because of the fire.”
“Exactly like that. Buck’s an institution around here, and there’s not a family in the basin the Merrills haven’t helped out at one time or another. That’s not going to be a problem.”
“Great. Gotta go pick up the kids.”
“Good luck with that,” Brody said. He did not sound encouraging.
“Thanks.” As he left the house only to see Sophie walking up the sidewalk, Sawyer figured he was going to need all the help he could get.
“Hey, Sophie,” he said with what he hoped would sound like a casual tone. “What are you doing here?” And what the hell had happened to her hair?
“I never got to say good-bye to my house.” A challenging defensiveness surrounded her like an electric barbed-wire fence.
“We should have thought of that,” he admitted. “Maybe Austin thought it would be better if we waited until the remodel was done.”
“Then it wouldn’t be
my
house,” she said. “It’d be someone else’s.”
“Good point.” He put an arm around her shoulder, encouraged when she didn’t pull away until he remembered what Austin said about her crushing on him. Which, since he must seem really old to her, he doubted was possible, but just in case, he eased away a bit.
“Hey, Sophie,” Brody said as she made a beeline for the kitchen. “It’s good to see you. I’m really sorry about your mom and dad.”
“Yeah. So am I,” she said with acid teen sarcasm. Not that she was a teen yet. Sawyer wondered if all the horror stories he’d heard married guys on deployment talking about were even halfway true. She ran a hand over the countertop, just as Brody had done. “You didn’t do the butcher block.”
Sawyer saw fear in the look Brody shot him. “Uh, no. But—”
“This is the color Mom wanted for the table.”
“Yeah. That’s why I picked it.”
“I have this friend. Madison. Her mom wants to redo their kitchen, and she has all these Pinterest inspiration pictures. She says quartz is really trending.”
“So I was told,” Brody said carefully. “Which is why I thought it might be a good idea.”
She pulled open a cabinet drawer beneath the hunter-green counter. Let go of it and watched it slide closed again. “Because we have to sell the house.”
“Because you’re going to be living with Austin at the ranch,” Sawyer reminded her.
“Why can’t she move in here with us when it’s done?”
“I guess because she has to take care of her dad. And the stock.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t sound convinced. Or at all happy. “I’m going to go upstairs.”
“Take your time,” Sawyer said. He decided she probably didn’t want his company. Damn, this was one of those cases where he knew a woman would be better suited to handle it. Speaking of women, a thought belatedly occurred to him. “Does Rachel know you’re here?”
Before she could answer, his phone rang. With Rachel’s photo on the screen.
“Hey, Rach,” he said as Sophie made a quick exit toward the stairs.
“Have you seen Sophie? I called Austin, but she’s on the way to Medford to pick up Lexi.”
“She’s here. At the house. Her old house,” he qualified.
“Thank God. I was worried sick. I don’t know how she sneaked out without me seeing her. It must have been when Jack broke the window.”