Stranded Ranch : A Sweet Cowboy Romance (A Pride and Pranks Romance)

Chapter 1

With frozen fingertips, I gave the trough one final blast of the hammer before the ice finally gave way to the liquid beneath. The white cows, who had been eyeing me with great impatience, moved forward greedily, trying to beat each other to the water. I jumped out of their way and meandered back through the corral, climbing over the fence to where Grandpa was waiting.

“Pop quiz, Lou,” Grandpa yelled. He drew closer to me, his tan winter coat wrapped snugly around his body and a large beanie on his head, expertly pitching chunks of hay into the manger.

“What?” I asked, shielding my face as the Wyoming wind blew Texas-sized snowflakes directly at me.

He went to say something again but was stopped by a big, hacking cough that overtook him. Finally, lifting his arms out in the wind, he asked, “What does it take to convince a granddaughter to move to Wyoming permanently? More wind or less wind?”

I laughed, squinting to see him through my wet and fogged glasses. “Definitely more wind. Maybe add in some crazy amounts of snow.”

He chuckled, stabbing his pitchfork into a hay bale, giving the corral one last sweeping glance. “That’s good enough, Lou. They’re not going to eat much in this storm. We’ll be back out early in the morning.”

“Awww, I was just starting to have some fun.” I grinned at Grandpa.

He elbowed me as we walked toward the house. “Don’t worry, fun starts again tomorrow at first light.” Another cough. Swirling snow. Howling wind. I concentrated on the warm, yellow window light up ahead, spilling out into the darkness and beckoning us closer.

“Man, I’m glad I didn’t go to the Bahamas for the week with my friends, like I was originally thinking. Bleh. What a nightmare that would have been.”

“A beach? During Wyoming’s winter season? You dodged a bullet there, girl.”

It was the first week of January. I had beat the impending storm by arriving yesterday for my week-long visit. Today had been my first day back on the job on my grandpa’s ranch, the ominous snow warnings all over the news beginning to prove truthful. The snow had been pelting down since early morning, sticking to the road, mangers, doorways, and freezing my nose hairs. It was nearly 7 pm now and the water troughs, supplying water to my grandpa’s prized Piedmontese cattle out back of the horse/cow motel, had frozen twice already. This unfortunate discovery had me chipping away at the ice with a hammer while looking like a stuffed raccoon in a parka, wild eyes and black hair spilling out from my beanie, while trying hard not to freeze my lily-white lady bits off.

And they were lily-white. It had been years since I had done any physical labor, much less used a pitchfork, unless you count Teacher Appreciation week at the local Cafe Fiesta in Billings, Montana, where their Mexican platters were half-off.

Grandpa elbowed me. “If we’re lucky, Grandma saved me the last piece of chocolate pie.”

“You? I’m the guest. And my body loves gluten. You shouldn’t even be eating it!” We eyed each other for a moment before we suddenly dashed forward, weighed down completely by heavy coats, boots, the weather, and drifting snow—pulling each other’s arms back before calling a truce, laughing.

We made our way up the front steps of the white, two-story farmhouse with a large porch sprawled across the front of the home. I had always loved this house since I was a little girl coming to visit every summer with my family. The smell of cinnamon and spices greeted us inside. We kicked off our boots and draped our wet clothing over the old wooden bench sitting in the entryway. A glow of familiarity washed over me as I repeated the action I had seen my grandpa do a hundred times before.

“Nice day for a picnic,” Grandma said, peeking out from the kitchen.

Even in the middle of the worst projected winter storm Wyoming had seen in years, my grandma was an oasis. She wore a bright coral shirt, white slacks, and bold red lipstick. Her white hair had been permed recently and her earrings and bracelets dangled off her body.

Where my grandpa was a classic, quiet, live-off-the-land introvert, my grandma was Carol Burnett. Loud, fun, and with a rollicking laugh you could hear for miles. It had been a love match between her and my grandpa from the first moment they met. But it hadn’t been without a few tears and grit, as my grandma called it, to take what can only be thought of as an extreme extrovert and move her to the isolated wild that was Wyoming. She had learned to be a great cook, more for survival than anything (the McDonalds in the neighborhood were slim). She had been the one to convince Grandpa to build a few small motel cabins in front of the house, which would bring her guests and people to talk to. The ranch was located in the northeastern corner of Wyoming, only a few miles off highway 90, so it quickly made a name for itself among ranchers as a valuable pit stop between South Dakota and western Wyoming. Mostly cowboys passing through the long stretch of Wyoming with a load of cattle or horses, but occasionally their wives would be with them. Thanks to her influence, the motel patrons had a corral for their stock and a piping hot breakfast included in their stay, and my grandma had people to talk to. She gave up a lot to live in Nowhere, Wyoming, but by the look of her, you’d never know it.

Five minutes later, my hands were washed and my bright red cheeks had died down to a flushed rose. I sat at the table along with both of them, eating the last few pieces of chocolate pie washed down by a tall glass of milk. My grandpa had been diagnosed with Celiac disease a year ago. Grandma had immediately cut out all gluten in the household, with my grandpa’s stubborn exception of the small amounts in his favorite pie crust a few times a year.

When I asked her why he was so stubborn about the pie crust when he had switched everything else over to gluten-free, she said, “He insisted he needed a cheat meal and it would be my chocolate pie.”

“Cause those pie crusts taste like crumbled up cardboard plastered together,” He interjected, stabbing another bite with his fork.

“Doesn’t it hurt your stomach?” I asked.

“Claims it doesn”t,” Grandma said, giving me a wry smile.

“It doesn”t hurt a bit for me. Doc says it just messes with my blood cells, but a little pie crust once or twice a year won’t kill me.”

“Or anytime we have a visitor,” Grandma retorted.

“Did the chores come back to you like you remember?” Grandpa asked me, clearly changing the subject while taking a second to cough into his napkin. “It’s been so long since you’ve been here.”

“Oh leave her alone, Bob. She’s a busy woman, teaching school. She’s not a kid anymore.”

“I’m just saying, don’t you teachers get all summer off?” Grandpa’s eyes twinkled toward me as he took a bite, a smudge of chocolate smearing onto his lower lip. Without skipping a beat, Grandma licked her finger and wiped it off of him.

He twitched away. “Quit yer slobbering on me, woman.”

“If I don’t keep you clean, nobody else will.”

“Can’t a man save a snack for later?” He looked at me again. “Now, what do you say? Can I depend on a few more visits from you come summertime? I can already tell one week in January isn’t going to be enough to fill my Lucy bucket.”

I laughed. “I’ll put you in my calendar, Grandpa. But if a good-looking Chris Hemsworth type comes my way before then, I may have to take a rain check.”

Grandma clapped her hands. “Oh, that is one fine piece of man right there. You just bring him on by to the house when you come visit.”

“Chris who?” Grandpa began coughing again. I met Grandma’s concerned gaze over the table.

“Chris Hemsworth. He played Thor in that movie you slept through.”

“Did I like the movie?”

“You didn’t watch it, you slept through it.”

“What?”

“You didn’t watch it, you slept through!” Grandma’s voice grew slower and louder while I hid a smile.

“Right after the part where Thor brought out his hammer.”

“Oh, the magic hammer.” He made a face. “I don’t like magic in movies. Too much of it these days. What’s so wrong with something real? Like the old days?”

“Like the fists fights from those John Wayne movies you love?” I asked, remembering all those nights visiting this very house with cousins, being forced to watch hours of the old classics and making fun of every one of them.

A rueful smile broke across his face. “Exactly.”

The table was lulled to silence when Grandpa turned on the TV to get the weather report.

While my grandparents” faces were arrested by the news anchor, surely delivering more bad news, I watched them both with love nearly bursting from my heart. I couldn’t explain it—the pull that brought me here. A trip to the Bahamas with some teacher friends sounded nice, but for some reason, relaxing on a beach didn’t feel right to me. But a call to my grandparents to check in had brought on such a deep sense of longing I couldn’t fight. I didn’t want to fight. I readied my classroom in an afternoon before dropping everything else, cramming my duffle bag full of work clothes and jumping in my car, driving the 300 miles for a visit.

I hadn’t stayed overnight at my grandparents’ home by myself in years, much less a whole week. Now, after just one day back on the ranch, I already realized how much I had been missing. Which seemed crazy. I had a home. My home. I had a career I enjoyed. My weeknights were spent grading papers. I had friends to go out with on the weekends. I had a full and enjoyable life. So it surprised me how, in a matter of hours after my arrival, I had begun to take notice of several small empty cracks in the center of my chest. Individually, the crevices were so small they were hardly noticeable, but feeling them together as a whole sent pangs of uncomfortable awareness throughout my body.

Something was missing in my life, and back at home I didn’t have time to let myself feel it. I didn’t even understand what was missing. Then I pulled up to a weathered farmhouse twenty miles from the nearest town to two people with an arm around each other standing on the porch, grinning at me. It hit me like a wave. I was missing love. The kind of love where you could use your own saliva to clean a human adult male like a cat. The kind of love that moves in a comfortable rhythm. Shuffling together, nudging and brushing in the kitchen, putting away dishes, washing up at the sink, patting bums. The kind of love that had seen a houseful of children, a handful of sorrow, and buckets of laughter. The kind of love that radiates safety and brings with it a sense of belonging that takes years to build in a comfortable house. I liked my life in Billings, but I knew now that it was only a placeholder for me until I get where I’m going.

Wherever that is.

Grandpa’s coughing fit ended with my grandma fussing over him until he broke, his voice scratchy and cantankerous.

“Susan, I’ll go to bed just as soon as you stop trying to plug me full of these damned drugs. It’s just a cough.”

“It’s settling in your lungs. Remember last year, you had pneumonia about this same time. You need to be careful. I’ll call Doctor Joe and schedule you an appointment, just to be safe.”

Grandpa threw up a pair of exasperated arms. “Call the doctor? Didn’t you listen to the news? The roads will be closed any minute.”

“Well, I can still call him and see what he says. Maybe you can cough into the phone.”

“Pish.” Grandpa looked at me for moral support.

I smiled. “You better listen to Grandma. She’s your pie supplier, after all.”

A rare contrite grin he always saved just for me etched itself onto Grandpa’s face. “You’re not wrong.”

“Lou, are you going to be up for a while?” Grandma asked, as she and Grandpa stood from the table and shuffled toward the stairs.

Nodding, I stood and grabbed our empty pie plates and took them to the sink. “Yes, I’ll probably read for a bit.” Although it was pitch dark outside, it was only 8 pm and after years of grading papers late into the evening, I was a certified night owl.

“And Grandpa, just plan on me feeding the cows tomorrow morning.”

He protested every step of the way to the stairs, claiming he’d be out in the morning, much to my grandmother’s whines.

Finally, stopping at the first step, she sighed and turned to me. “The stubborn oaf. Alright dear, if you wouldn’t mind turning out the lights before you head up. I need to get Bob to bed. He settles better with me right by him.”

I assured her I would turn out the lights before watching them trudge and lovingly bicker up the stairs.

Once my grandparents left, the news station, which had been turned up twenty notches too loud, trumpeted itself into my brain. “This is gonna be a big one, folks. A projected 10 inches will fall tonight and probably twice that for tomorrow. Winds should hit 40 mph. Stay off the roads, batten down your hatches, and break out your emergency food supply if needed. Check on your neighbors. It could be a doozy for a few days.” The weatherman paused in his speech, putting one hand up to his ear as if listening to something. “I am just getting word that highway 90 is now shut down, they are directing most cars to go back the way they came.”

Cue anxiety levels.

I grabbed the remote off of the counter in the kitchen and turned off the TV. Out of habit, I picked up the landline phone on the wall and checked for a dial tone. The loud hum sounded in my ears. Did I forget to mention? No cell service here. Once the landline goes, we would be completely on our own. I wasn’t going to allow myself to get nervous. I was a grown twenty-four-year-old working woman who could handle feeding cows and keeping the fire burning. While I knew I wasn’t alone, I had begun to see just how frail my grandparents had become in the past year. I had been my grandpa’s right-hand ranch woman most summers growing up. He had always been strong as an ox. My grandma had been the loud socialite. Things were changing, they were slowing down, and I couldn’t bear the thought of them not being here one day. If my grandpa was getting sick, I may have discovered the exact reason I felt I needed to be here.

Needing something to keep my mind occupied, I set a kettle of milk on the stove to heat. Grandma had served us cold milk instead of hot chocolate and it hadn’t been enough to satisfy me. I wanted the liquid heat that soothed my nerves. I skipped right past the coffee maker on the counter, making a beeline for the hot chocolate powder Grandma kept out for me. Caffeine, in addition to my jittery nature, did not a pleasant combination make.

I poured hot milk into my mug and added a few heaping spoonfuls of cocoa powder. And then a few more spoonfuls. My grandmother’s cheery presence was everywhere in the room. The kitchen cabinets were painted a sunny yellow, with red and lime green accents by way of red hand towels and lime green porcelain roosters nestled by the stove. Across from the open kitchen was the cozy living room, filled with two couches facing each other and a coffee table in between. Two rockers flanked the third side of the room, pointed toward a television sitting above the fireplace mantle. To the left of the kitchen was a small breakfast nook, surrounded by windows.

Because of the timing of this impromptu trip, between semesters, I had nothing to grade. My fingers felt like they should be working in some capacity, so I grabbed a book from my grandma’s bookshelf and moved to the table.The wooden chair squeaked as I sat down too hard, spilling hot chocolate all over my sweatshirt. I set the cup on the table before grabbing a napkin to wipe myself. Ignoring the stain, I grabbed my book, propped my fuzzy socked feet on the table, and sipped my drink while pretending to read.

The house shook with the force of the wind hurling past, the roof creaking and groaning. I peered out the window—the snow hadn’t let up. I gulped down the rest of my drink and moved into the living room, settling onto the couch with a blanket.

Pop quiz, Lucy: What if the power goes off? What do you do?

Answer: Start a fire in the fireplace. Grab flashlights from the closet. Bring up wood and start a fire in Grandma and Grandpa’s room. Since my room had no fireplace, I would sleep on the couch downstairs. Eat a lot of cereal.

Pop quiz: What if the water line breaks or the pipes freeze?

Answer: There is lots of water in the storage room downstairs. You’ll have plenty to drink. You have definitely gone longer than two days without showering.

A loud bang sounded at the door. I squealed, jumping a mile out of my skin. Like a cat in the cartoons, where it’s hair stands up at the end, claws out, rounded back—that was me.

Pop quiz: What happens when there’s someone at the door when there should definitely not be someone at the door?

My first super mature instinct was to run upstairs, lock the door, and crawl into the bed with my grandparents like I used to do twenty years ago, and just pretend I didn’t hear anything. I sat there for a moment, stunned to inaction until my brain could form a cohesive thought.

I stood up and did a half run, skip and jump thing toward the back door and grabbed for the rifle tucked behind the coat rack. A loaded rifle. Ever since all of his grandkids were old enough to know not to touch it, my grandpa had kept it at an easy reach and had often used it to shoot at coyotes or foxes intent on mischief. It had been very normal to be playing Barbies with Grandma one moment and the next, hear a blast of a rifle off the side of the house. This week, I was a girl in the middle of nowhere with two elderly grandparents probably snoring in bed already and no other help around for at least twenty miles in either direction. It wasn’t lost on me that my grandpa had left the gun within easy reach. Another loud pounding on the front door.

So I guess it wasn’t the wind. I took a deep breath, my heart in my throat, gun in my hand, and crept toward the door like the grownup I was. But only because the other grownups had gone to bed.

Let me reiterate. Nobody should be here. My grandparents had no neighbors close by. Somebody was either in trouble or…trouble. And both of those thoughts terrified me.

The rounded glass at the top of the doorway was the smudged kind, where you could see shapes and shadows but nothing clearly. But clearly, there was something on the other side of that door. Something tall and bulky.

Knowing they wouldn’t be able to hear me calling out “Who is it?” with the wind outside, I braced myself, held the rifle slightly behind me, and opened the door a crack with my left hand.

My eye first took in a bulky tan coat and gloves. A glance downward showed jeans and a worn pair of cowboy boots. So far, our surprise visitor seemed normal for these parts. Although to be fair, serial killers wore jeans all the time. My eyes lifted higher, past his coat to see a man, maybe mid-twenties, football player build, with dark brown hair peeking out underneath a black cowboy hat tipped slightly downward as if to keep the snow off his face. He wore a scarf tied around his face and neck, like a masked bandit, which made it difficult for me to gain any sort of idea as to who he might be.

He lifted his face upward, meeting my gaze, and immediately his eyes crinkled as if he was smiling widely underneath his covered face.