Second Chance Ranch Chapter 4

Chapter FOUR:

“Squire?” Kelly’s voice came from the doorway of his office just before lunch. He turned from the window, where he’d been standing, staring into the openness of the ranch and wishing he could be out there instead of in here. His right leg almost gave out from the shift in weight, and he clenched his teeth against the pain shooting through his hip and into his back.

“What happened to Hector Ford?” She didn’t enter the office.

Squire wasn’t surprised at the question. He’d want to know about the person who’d made the mess he now had to clean up.

“He died,” he said, drinking in the compassion in her eyes. Could she care about the ranch after only a few hours of work? “About four months ago.”

Kelly’s mouth opened in a round O. “And you’re just now replacing him?”

Squire shifted his weight to his good leg and folded his arms, determined to remain passive despite her presence.

“It took a while to go through his disjointed system,” he said. “I studied the files, but it took me several weeks to figure out the discrepancies between my dad’s finances and the reports Hector provided.”

“Where’s the money that’s missing?”

Squire abandoned his post at the window as he shushed her. He waved her into the office, glancing toward the cowhand’s space—he saw no one—before he closed the door behind him. “No one knows about the missing money except for me. Even my dad doesn’t know. It needs to stay that way.”

“Okay,” Kelly said, her eyebrows puckering together in a pinch that Squire felt in his gut. “But your dad knows something’s wrong.”

Squire scrubbed a hand along the back of his neck. “Yeah, I told him his savings weren’t as much as he’d thought. That he wouldn’t be able to retire as soon as we’d hoped.” He exhaled. “I don’t know where the money is. Hector doesn’t have it where I can find it. His widow moved to Dallas after his death. She’s living with their daughter. If she has access to the money, she doesn’t spend it.”

Kelly chewed her thumbnail as concern radiated from her expression. Anger fumed beneath Squire’s skin. He didn’t need her pity now, just like he hadn’t needed it in high school. Somehow, even with her staring right at him, he felt as see-through as freshly Windexed glass.

“How do you know all that?” she asked.

“I hired a private investigator,” he said. “There’s a lot of money missing. I don’t think it’s been spent, and I want to find it if possible. Naturally.”

“Naturally,” she repeated. She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, drawing Squire’s attention to her mouth. He turned away from her in favor of the window.

“Okay, thanks.” She moved to leave.

“Wait,” Squire said, facing her.

“Yes?” She cocked one hip, her expression full of challenge.

Familiar bitterness coated his mouth, making it difficult to swallow. So she didn’t like being in a position of non-power. Too bad.

“What have you found?” he asked.

“I’m only about a third of the way through the files.”

Squire squinted at her. “I have more for you in my office at home. So you’re not as far as you think.”

“Do you live here on the ranch?” she asked. “Can we go get them now?”

“I live in one of the cowhand cabins, but the files are in my office at the house. We can go get them if you’d like.” He shrugged. He was having a hard time caring about the ranch today. More than usual.

“I wore boots.” She glanced down at her feet, and Squire followed her gaze. “I can go myself.”

He almost groaned at the sight of her knee-high, thick-heeled boots. What was with this woman and heels? “I’ll help you carry them.”

She moved down the hallway and out the door, Squire behind her. She navigated the stairs successfully, even if she did grip the handrail like it was her life support.

He whistled at Benson as he descended the steps. The dog bounded to his side, and pushed his nose into Squire’s palm, somehow sensing that Squire needed to release some tension.

He had to walk slowly to stay by her side as they navigated their way to the house, which suited him fine because it allowed him to even out his stride. “Does every shoe you own have a heel?”

She rolled her eyes. “I needed something cute for my interview.”

Squire paused and cleared his throat as embarrassment rose through his face. “I’m real sorry I didn’t help you out of those steps yesterday, darlin’.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to make it up to me,” she said.

Squire almost tripped over his own feet, his injured leg further complicating how quickly he could right his footing. “I’ll try,” he said when he found his voice. “Assuming you keep wearing shoes unfit for a ranch.”

“Assumptions aren’t nice,” she said, an extra twang in her voice as she repeated something his mother—hers too, probably—had said countless times.

He’d made a lot of assumptions about her, especially after she’d ignored his invitation and gone to her prom alone. Even a rejection would’ve been better than the silence she’d given him.

He’d assumed she thought him too young. Too unpopular. Too inferior.

He wondered what her real reasons were, but the wounded pride lodged in his throat kept him from asking.

A gentle breeze brushed them as they walked, but it couldn’t drive away the inadequacy cascading through Squire. He smelled lunch about a hundred yards away, and Kelly’s stomach roared again.

“You should eat lunch with the cowhands.” He really didn’t want her eating with the boys, especially Ethan. He also didn’t want her to know that he cared who she spent her time with.

“Right,” she said. “And have them all make comments about my heels like you have? I don’t think so.”

He pulled his grin like he’d pull a punch, the way he did so his true emotion didn’t seep out. But happiness trickled down to his fingertips that she didn’t want to eat with the cowhands.

“I haven’t told anyone about the whole step thing,” he said. “Some of the boys would be downright devastated to know you couldn’t even make it into the building.”

She slugged him. “I can make it anywhere.”

“Yeah, like to California and back.” The words left his mouth before he could assess what kind of damage they’d do. He wanted to suck them back in, or have the wind wisp them into silence. But they hung there between them, the easy camaraderie they’d had now gone.

Spiders writhed in his gut, but he didn’t know how to un-say something. He mentally kicked himself for a few steps as he frantically searched for something to smooth things over.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wondering how many times he was going to have to apologize today. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

She waved her hand like it was no big deal, but Squire saw the heavy lump she swallowed and the reflective quality of her eyes before she focused on the row of cabins lining the backyard.

“Mom could make you up a plate, and you could eat in your office,” he said.

“I’ll be fine. If I can handle you, I can handle a few cowboys.” She didn’t sound two shakes from crying, and relief sighed through him like sand over bare toes.

She tottered, her ankle twisting as she came down on a dust-covered rock, and Squire lunged for her. Her right arm flailed as he caught her left. Her ankle gave out, and suddenly he held all her weight by just her elbow. He managed to right her, and she leaned into him for a moment, her breath staggered. He wrapped both arms around her and took a deep drag of her cocoa butter scent. “You okay?” His voice betrayed him by coming out like he’d gargled with glass.

Good one, Major Obvious, he chastised himself. Way to keep things neutral.

He quickly released her, noting her nervous laugh and matching hers with one of his own.

“Maybe I’ll need to invest in a whole new line of footwear.” She frowned down at her boots like they were snakes.

Squire straightened his shirt and took a deep breath to steady his increased heart rate. He reminded himself that Kelly was his employee, someone he had once crushed on, someone who’d stomped on his soul. Nothing more. She had absolutely no experience in accounting. He had to keep an eye on her, not because he liked what he saw, but because he needed her to solve the financial problems of the ranch.

“You coming?”

He glanced up and found her several paces down the road. He hurried to catch her, reminding himself of the way his heart had clenched like he’d tried to stuff it into a too-small boot when he’d taken Kelly’s advice and asked someone to the prom. She’d encouraged him for weeks before he got up the nerve. He’d been walking and running and fighting in those too-tight boots ever since. At least with her.

“Hey, Ma,” he said upon entering the house. She stood in the cavernous kitchen, the scent of baking bread and roasting meat filling the space. “You remember Kelly Armstrong?”

His mother put down her rubber spatula and came around the counter, her face beaming like the moon. “Kelly, of course. How are you, dear?”

Kelly laughed as she embraced his mother. “I’m great, Heidi. How are you? I can see that you haven’t lost your touch in the kitchen.” Her stomach gave another loud growl.

They chatted for a few minutes, while Squire watched. Kelly seemed more at ease in his mother’s presence. She had a natural ability to make small talk; her smile was quick and her questions sincere. He didn’t have to think very hard or go back very far to remember why he’d liked her so much.

Something new and strange flooded him. Something tipped with forgiveness, made of acceptance, and coated with confusion. Something like letting his heart out of the cage he’d locked it in.

He cleared his throat, much the same way he wished he could dislodge his thoughts. “The files are in my old bedroom.” He motioned down the hall, and Kelly excused herself from her conversation. Even though Squire was a full-fledged adult, he still felt the laser gaze from his mother as he followed Kelly further into the house.

“You remember where it is?” he asked.

“Your bedroom?” She glanced over her shoulder. “Yeah, end of the hall, take the stairs up, turn right. You hated us coming in there.”

His defenses rose. “You guys were always making fun of my posters.”

“You liked weird stuff,” she said. “Rugby or something.”

“Cricket,” he said. “My uncle went to Australia and brought me back all the equipment.” He touched her arm to get her to stop. “And those posters might still be up. Try not to laugh.”

He moved past her, went up the seven steps, turned right, and continued down the hall to his old bedroom. The door stood open, and he went inside. He’d transformed his room into a comfortable office with a long, leather sofa, more masculine paint color, and a professional desk.

But the cricket posters still covered the entire wall behind the couch. His dad had built a bookshelf where Squire displayed his football trophies and a few pictures from high school.

Squire didn’t want to live in his parent’s house, so he’d adopted a cowhand cabin. He kept his room here, though, and he sometimes slept in the house if he was feeling particularly lonely. Not that he felt that way very often. There was something about being alone that straightened the crooked thoughts in his head.

Alone, he could rely on himself. Trust himself, the way the Army had taught him.

Kelly took in the posters. “Fun,” she said, but it didn’t sound like she really thought so. “You could take them down, you know.”

“Right.” He opened the filing drawer in his desk. Several dozen files sat inside, and he hefted them out. “Like how you said I should ask someone to prom.” His muscles turned into boards. His pulse slammed against the roof of his mouth. His own courage surprised him.

“You never did take my advice.” She picked up a picture frame while Squire’s fingers turned numb and he forgot to breathe or blink or blink or breathe.

He had taken her advice. He’d asked her to prom. Did she not remember? How was that possible?

“I’ve never seen this picture,” Kelly said, drawing his attention from his stampeding thoughts.

He set down the files and joined her at the bookcase. She held a framed picture of Squire in between Chelsea and Kelly, both in their full dance performance make-up. Her light green eyes mesmerized him in this picture, and he remembered staring at it as he fell asleep at night. “That’s from one of your competitions. You guys were seniors, I think.”

She peered closer at it. “We’re wearing a green costume. That was Save Me.”

“I can’t believe you remember that,” he said, especially if she couldn’t recall a bedroom full of balloons—his name printed on a slip of paper in one of them.

“I can’t either.” She replaced the picture on the bookshelf and moved on to the next one. This one portrayed Squire and his father, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, before one of his football games. “I also didn’t know you played football.”

“I made varsity my junior year,” he said. “Started all of my senior year.”

“Oh, I’m sorry I missed all that.” She shot him a rueful smile. “I would’ve liked to have seen you play.”

A swell of pride inflated Squire’s chest, but he simply clasped his hands behind his back. If she’d known he’d go on to varsity fame, would she have gone out with him?

“I don’t play anymore,” he said. “Not much use for football in Afghanistan, and the cowhands don’t have time.” He didn’t mention that he couldn’t run very well.

She ran her fingers down the golden football figure on one trophy. “Bet you could still throw the ball around, though.”

Squire watched her fingers for a moment and moved back to his desk before he said or did something foolish. Acceptance of her rejection—or whatever that feeling in the kitchen had been—didn’t erase everything between them.

He lifted the files and headed for the door just as the lunch bell rang. By the time he could lug the paperwork back to Kelly’s office in the admin trailer and return to the house, the cowhands would be served and eating on the deck.

Perfect, he thought. He’d patterned his behavior after his father’s, who often arrived late to lunch so as to avoid socializing in the kitchen. He’d noticed that his father did the same.

Kelly padded after him, but she didn’t make it out of the kitchen. Squire’s mother hooked her elbow through Kelly’s and steered her toward the bar. “Come eat lunch with us,” she said. “You too, Squire, after you drop those off.”

Squire nodded and headed outside. With the administration trailer empty, Squire didn’t encounter anyone as he limped into Kelly’s office. He deposited the files on the corner of her desk and hesitated before leaving.

Kelly had been in this office for all of a few hours, and yet it smelled like her perfume. He breathed in deeply, allowing himself this moment to enjoy the scent in the air.

She’d placed a framed picture on her desk, and upon stepping around the corner, he examined it. Kelly smiled back at him, her hair lighter and her skin tanner in this picture than it was currently. She held a toddler on her lap, and Squire picked out the similarities and differences of Kelly in him. He had the tint of green in his eyes, like hers. But he sported a square face and a rounded nose, with a head full of nearly black hair that curled at the ends.

Squire knew Kelly’s hair didn’t curl. She’d complained about it enough to Chelsea for the whole county to know. He let his gaze wander along her desk, finding a list of things to do, all of them focused on her job. The files he’d brought from his father’s office sat in two neat piles, one still taller than the other. A notebook lay in front of the piles, with notes scribbled in green pen.

The door to the trailer slammed, and Squire scampered out of her office with his head down, like another bomb had been dropped on him. He definitely didn’t want to get caught somewhere he shouldn’t be, moony-eyed and slack-jawed over a few pens and notebooks.

Because that was all this tide of unease in his stomach meant. She was organized and she’d help the ranch find the missing money. He needed that, and he also suddenly wanted time to get to know her again, find out what had happened in high school, discover if his white-dress-black-tux fantasies could come true.

Fear reared against his thoughts, as he’d never let them roam so freely—at least not where Kelly was concerned.

* * *

“Hey, girl.” Squire ran his hand down the nose of Juniper, the black mare who’d taken a shine to him. She nickered and tossed her head gently, nudging his shoulder.

“I know,” he said, the anxiety and helplessness draining from him with the presence of the horse. Juniper dropped her head, sniffing Squire’s pockets for a treat. He pulled out the apple he’d grabbed from his office and offered it to her. She crunched through it, her long lashes half-closed over her enormous black eyes.

Hank ambled closer, a bay stallion that Squire’s father had purchased two years ago. He lifted his head over the fence and snuffed at Squire.

“Yeah, me too,” Squire said, not really sure what conversations he was having with the horses, only knowing that they eased the river of pain in his mind—and his leg.

The bay showed his teeth before pulling his head back over the fence. He wanted an apple too, but he was too proud to ask.

“I didn’t forget about you, boy.” Squire reached in his other pocket and produced a second apple. Hank nudged Squire’s right leg, in the exact area where his femur had been crushed under the weight of the tank. No one had seen that bomb coming, but Squire had driven right into it.

Four men in Squire’s company had died. Two more had burns over half their bodies. He pressed his eyes closed as the smell of fire and metal and blood flooded his nose. The pops of machine guns and flames and screams, the eerie quiet that followed. The brush of desert wind, carrying sand and moans and death.

Juniper whinnied, somehow knowing that Squire had disappeared into the memories. He yanked his eyes open to find himself thousands of miles from Kandahar. Touching the horse’s neck, the sounds and smells from that fateful day evaporated.

Hank nudged his knee one last time before taking the apple. Though Squire’s femur had been completely pulverized and the doctors couldn’t repair it, he knew others had been sent home with complications he couldn’t imagine, and still others had returned to their loved ones in boxes. Steel rods, pins, and plates kept his body together now, and sometimes the ache in his leg brought Squire’s teeth together in agony.

“Yeah, still broken,” he told Hank, though this time he wasn’t sure if he meant his leg, his mind—or his heart.