Chapter Seven
Brett had spent another restless night tossing and turning in his bed. He awoke early the next morning with his head pounding from stress, sleeplessness and all the thoughts that had kept him awake the night before.
Trish.
All his thoughts had revolved around her and what she was going to do. She hadn’t told anyone yet. When he’d suggested Trish get some sleep the day before, he’d figured she would just take a nap. Maybe sleep for an hour or two. But he hadn’t seen her again after she’d left the barn.
Not that he’d been around that much. He’d spent the entire afternoon riding around the pastures, checking on the cattle, making sure the other calves were doing well.
He should probably call the veterinarian to check on them again.
The vet he’d been using the past five years was now his stepcousin.
Dr. Cash had become more than just his vet, though; they were good friends.
Cash had let his fees slide for a while when the ranch was struggling.
Brett was glad that he could pay him back for that.
What if Trish wanted to use a different vet? What if she wanted to change everything about the ranch? Maybe not even focus on the cattle that Brett and his brothers had worked so hard to turn into a healthier, organic beef business?
The only thing Brett knew for certain was that Trish intended to start some kind of daycare at the ranch.
Or just a summer camp? He understood the appeal of such a place.
As a kid stuck in the city against his will, he would have loved spending his summers at a ranch out west. But adding a camp to the ranch would increase the workload and liability.
Hopefully, she would understand that while it sounded fun, camps and petting zoos wouldn’t be practical.
But in order for her to understand, someone would need to talk to her about it. No one else at the house had seen her again yesterday. She’d stayed in her room. Maybe sleeping. Or maybe she’d just been avoiding them.
Brett wanted to avoid her now, too. Maybe he couldn’t sleep because of her presence, her closeness to the room where he’d tossed and turned.
Clearly she didn’t think that he and his brothers, as ranch hands, should even be in the house.
And if she decided not to respect her father’s wishes, she might want them to move out.
Brett would fight her over the ranch, but he didn’t really care where he slept.
So after tending to the livestock that morning, he walked from the barn to the two-story bunkhouse with its weathered clapboard siding.
The long building was on the other side of the barn from the house.
When he pushed open the door, something scurried across the room, tiny claws scraping across the bare hardwood floor.
A startled scream escaped the lips of the woman who was already standing in the bunkhouse. Trish jumped at the sight of the mouse that raced across the floor in front of her, and her scream echoed off the high ceiling.
“Not going to have mice in your petting zoo?” Brett couldn’t resist the urge to tease her.
She shuddered. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Maybe we should put the kittens in here,” he remarked. “Have them handle the mice.”
She shuddered again. “No. This place needs a lot of work before it’ll be safe for anyone.”
Brett wanted to ask who anyone was. Him?
But he focused instead on the building. The big open space was all wood, floor, walls and open raftered ceiling.
Cobwebs hung from the ceiling beams, illuminated by the sunlight streaking through the dirty windows.
There was a long table near the small kitchenette and then a couple of couches with stuffing sticking out of some holes in the worn fabric.
Trish was looking around, too. “Looks like this hasn’t been used for a long time.”
“It hasn’t,” Brett confirmed. “The last ranch hands we had didn’t live on site. They commuted from their homes to the Four Corners because they lived close.”
“You don’t have them anymore?” she asked.
He shook his head. “My brothers and I can usually handle everything. We just hired extra help during calving season or when one of us was going to be gone. Not that the young guys we hired were much help.” If they had been, Frank Dempsey might not have lost his life.
He’d been out checking pastures alone when he’d fallen off his horse.
“What?” Trish asked as she studied his face. “Was there a problem with them?”
He sighed. “One of them is the reason that baby Lucy was abandoned in the barn.”
“Oh my gosh,” she said, her hand going to her heart like it had yesterday when they’d talked about her father. “Someone abandoned her?”
He nodded. “The mother didn’t realize that the ranch hand had lied to her about his name.
She thought he was really Liam Lemmon, and that’s what she put on the baby’s birth certificate.
The child protective services investigator believed he was the father even though a rodeo accident made it impossible for Liam to ever have biological children. ”
She gasped again. “That’s sad.”
Brett shook his head. “No. He has Lucy, and I’m sure he and Elise will adopt more children. Elise is the CPS investigator who helped make sure that Lucy stayed where she belongs, here on the ranch.”
Trish’s lips curved into a slight smile. “Are you worried that I’m going to throw Lucy out of the house?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “We’ve all worried about that during the limbo we feel like we’ve been living in while the estate stays unsettled.”
She sighed. “I understand the frustration of that. I’ve been living in limbo for a while myself.”
“So?” he asked. “What have you decided?”
“Is that why you followed me out here?” she asked. “To find out my decision?”
“I didn’t follow you out here,” he said. “I was checking out the bunkhouse for myself. Clearly you’re not comfortable with strangers in your father’s house.”
“So you’re considering moving in here?” she asked. She glanced around and shuddered again.
“What about you?” he asked. “Why are you out here? Are you considering moving into the bunkhouse?”
She shook her head. “I was just checking it out.” She headed toward the stairwell on the inside wall of the long room. As she started up the steps, she reached for the railing. It wobbled, then creaked as it gave way, falling off the stairs onto the floor below.
Trish wobbled on the steps, as if she was about to fall, too. Then she let out another little scream like she had over the mouse.
Brett raced toward her, desperate to catch her before she tumbled down the stairs and hurt herself or the babies she carried.
* * *
The second the railing gave way beneath her hand, Trish struggled for balance. Her arms flailed as she searched for something to grab on to, for something to stop her fall, but then her feet slipped and she floundered in open air, bracing herself for the crash to the ground.
Thankfully, strong arms wrapped around her, catching her. Holding her. “I’ve got you,” Brett said. “You’re not going to fall.”
But she already had. She just hadn’t hit the ground because of him. Because he’d rescued her.
Her breath shuddered out in a ragged sigh of relief. She found his shoulders with her hands, holding on to him as she regained her footing on the floor. “Thank you.”
He hadn’t only rescued her; he’d rescued her babies, too. They kicked now and moved around in her belly, and she couldn’t imagine what might have happened had she fallen to the ground. She wouldn’t let herself imagine. But still a tear trickled out as her fears overwhelmed her.
Brett tightened his grasp on her for a moment. “You’re fine,” he said. “You didn’t get hurt.”
“Scared,” she admitted in a shaky voice. “That scared me.” And she was even more frightened of the feelings coursing through her as he held her. She forced herself to push back from his shoulders until his arms loosened around her and she slipped free of his embrace.
“You need to be more careful,” he said. “This place is in bad shape. Why in the world are you checking it out?”
“For the camps,” she explained. “It’s a great open space for kids to play and has a kitchen and a couple of bathrooms.”
“They’re in bad shape,” he said.
“It can be fixed up,” she said. She wasn’t thinking about anyone living there full-time.
Clearly her father had wanted the Lemmon brothers to live in the house.
So she imagined instead all the possibilities for the bunkhouse.
She could envision the space as it had once looked, years ago.
It could be that fun open area again that had once housed a pool table and ping-pong table.
She and Frankie and Maci had had so much fun here, and the kids who would come for the camps would, too.
“It would take a lot of money just to get the electrical and plumbing up to code,” he said. “Let alone fix the structural things.”
“Does the ranch have that money?” she wondered aloud. Or would she need to use her divorce settlement?
“Didn’t Blake show you the books?” he asked.
“He offered,” she said. “But then I went out to find you and Frankie.”
“To find out if we can respect you,” he said.
“And you never told me if you could,” she said.
“I don’t know you, Trish,” he said.
“And I don’t know you,” she pointed out. Yet, when he’d held her, his arms had almost felt familiar to her. Or maybe they’d just felt safe, like she was home.
But Brett Lemmon wasn’t home. The Four Corners was.
“So you still haven’t made a decision about the will,” he said.
She had made her decision, but she intended to keep the promise she’d made to Nolan Stokes. “I want to talk to my lawyer again before I make any rash decisions.”
“Like packing up everything you own in a truck and trailer and driving for hours to move into a house with strangers?” he asked, his mouth curving into a slight grin.
She laughed. “Yeah, like that.”
“Why did you do that, Trish?” Brett asked her, his head tilted as he studied her face.