Kathleen O'Brien - The Ranch She Left Behind

He looked for a safe place to set it down. Flushing, she tilted her legal pad toward her chest to hide it, then felt ridiculous. Why did she care whether he saw it?

“Nothing, really,” she said awkwardly. “I just wrote the wrong thing... You know... I mean I spelled it all wrong.”

Argh. Why did she always feel nervous if she did anything remotely unconventional? She was unconventional, darn it. She was an artist at heart, not a banker. She wanted to dress in flamboyant colors and patterns, and laugh loudly, and lie down on the sidewalk to get the best angle on a snail. She wanted to sing and dance and go to parties—and make love in a sailboat.

Ruth wasn’t here to reproach her. Her father wasn’t here to mock. No one cared. No one.

She could simply have laughed and said, “I wrote ‘sex on a sailboat’ on my wish list, though until this very minute I had no idea it was a fantasy of mine.”

Danny was probably no more than twenty-three, fresh out of college—he’d probably be a lot more embarrassed than she was.

New Number One: Stop Being Such a Doormat.

Oh, well. Baby steps, remember? She gave him a warm smile to offset any insult he might have taken from the snatched-away list. She complimented his gorgeous creation, stuck a finger—sorry, Ruth—into the whipped cream, then stuck the finger into her mouth and sighed. Real whipped cream. Sinfully delicious.

“It’s fantastic,” she said. “I’ve moved back to town, and you can be sure I’ll be a regular customer!”

But it was too late. Obviously offended, he’d dialed his friendliness down about three notches. He wandered toward the ice-cream cases and began stacking and restacking prepackaged tubs—though they’d been perfectly aligned already.

Darn it. She sighed, annoyed with herself all over again. That was three strikes. Afraid to pull into Bell River. Afraid to pull into her own new duplex. Afraid to let this nice man see that she was making a list of dreams.

She’d better stiffen up, and fast, or the ego boost of banishing her intruder would disappear into a cloud of self-doubt. Her life might slide right back into the gray, conformist soup of the past seventeen years.

No. Darn it. No.

She couldn’t stand that. She wouldn’t let it happen. One way or another, she’d find the courage to—

The bell rang out as the door opened. She kept her legal pad against her chest as two people walked in. A little girl, maybe ten? Sulky, angry about something.

As she did with everyone she saw, Penny mentally began to sketch the child. A duckling still, but with definite traces of swan showing up around the edges. Her chubby cheeks were out of proportion to her longish, narrow chin. Someday, in the next year or two, her contours would lengthen, and she’d have the sweetest heart-shaped face....

Her hair was a glorious mess—shining, thick, brown, glossy curls that she had no idea what to do with now. And her figure obviously was hard to fit. A thick waist over too-long, too-skinny legs that made her look a little like a candy apple on toothpicks today. But when she got her teenage growth spurt, and that torso stretched out to match the limbs....well, watch out, Dad.

Ohhhh. When Penny’s gaze finally shifted to Dad, she felt a small kick beneath her ribs. What a wonderful face...and the rest of him wasn’t bad, either.

His coloring wasn’t dramatic—the daughter must have inherited that from Mom. He was brown-haired, with hints of honey in the strands, and a similar honeyed stubble on his cheeks and chin. His eyes, too, were brown—they caught the light through the window, and glowed amber, rich, a lot like the caramel sliding down her ice cream right now.

But he didn’t need to be painted with bold colors to be memorable. He oozed power—it was in the jut of his cheekbones, the knife-edge of his jaw, the full sensuality of his lips. And in that body. If he didn’t work outdoors, he must work out indoors...about twenty hours a day.

Something else made her lower her legal pad, uncap her pen and start to sketch, though. Not the power. She wasn’t impressed by power—in fact, it repelled her. No, what her pen flew across the page trying to capture was something less easily defined. Something in the curve of his neck, or maybe it was the elegant slide of light across his cheek, twinkling like a hint of magic in those tiny, unshaven shadows.

She bit her lower lip, frustrated. The pen wasn’t subtle enough; she needed charcoals, or watercolor. Or was watercolor too insipid? Pen and ink, maybe, would find the tightrope balance between sweetness and strength.

Suddenly, the sweetness took the upper hand. Oh, he was smiling, and that changed everything! A hint of rascal in the slight overbite, but a rush of kindness and harmony in the open lips, a torrent of sensuality in the wide expanse of...

Her pen froze. He wasn’t just smiling. He was smiling at her.

He was watching her watch him.

Which, she realized as she stared at her pad, she must have been doing for quite a while. The drawing was taking shape, filling in with detail. It wouldn’t be mistaken for anyone or anything but him.

Her cheeks burned as she realized his daughter was watching her, too. How long had she been in her trance, drawing while the rest of the world disappeared? Father and daughter had already ordered, and the little girl was even now sucking absently on the straw of an ice-cream float while she stared at Penny.

Nervously, Penny set down the pad and pulled the top pages over to cover her sketch. She tried to make the movement look natural, but she knew it was hopeless.

“Why were you drawing my dad?” The girl frowned, pointing her float toward the notebook, as if to prevent Penny from denying it.

“Ellen. Don’t be rude,” the man said, still smiling. He reached out to pull back his daughter’s outthrust glass, but she made a petulant sound and lurched clear of him in one willful, rebellious motion.

Her father’s grip had obviously been gentle, so the force was twice what she needed to break free. The results were disastrous. Ice cream and root beer and whipped cream flew everywhere.

Everywhere. Across the girl’s hand, onto the floor, onto her shoes—and even onto her dad’s crisp white shirt and golden suede jacket.

Her cheeks flamed red. “Now look what you did,” the girl said, obviously covering her embarrassment with aggression.

Oh, no, don’t make him look a fool—especially not with strangers to witness the disrespect! Penny’s chest tightened, and her stomach did a dizzy swooping thing. She didn’t dare look at the father. Though the girl was bratty, Penny’s heart ached for her, and she wished she could prevent what must be coming.

But several seconds passed, and she heard nothing. No yelling, no curses, not even a cold, scathing reprimand. Penny glanced up. To her surprise the child was disappearing into the ladies’ room, and the father calmly tugged napkins out of the dispenser.

“Ah, man, I’m sorry,” Danny said, running a dishrag under some water. “I’ll make her another one. No charge.”

Yeah, right. Penny tightened again, thinking how unlikely it was that the father would reward such rudeness with a second chance at ice cream.

“Don’t be silly,” the man said in a pleasant tone, surprising Penny so completely she felt her lower jaw sag. “Of course we’ll pay for it. But make it a double, okay? And what the heck. I’ll have one, too.”

And just like that, Penny’s tension drained away, as if someone had pulled the stopper out. She felt a wave of irrational happiness wash in after it. The happiness was irrational because logically, just one nice man, one patient father—that didn’t change anything, not for her. She had grown up with a terrifying father, and she still had the emotional scars to prove it.