Roxanne Rustand - High Country Homecoming

“Thanks, Chloe.”

“He melted at the sight of a carrot. I think he was having second thoughts about missing his dinner.”

“From the looks of him, he hasn’t missed many.” Devlin slipped the halter onto him and gave Chloe her belt back. “I owe you one. You’ve made the twins very happy.”

She said something he couldn’t hear, so he looked over at her to watch her lips as she spoke. “What?”

“Who is this little guy, by the way?” she repeated.

Dev started leading the pony toward home, with Chloe on his other side. Only then did he notice two remaining carrots still sticking up from the back pocket of her jeans. “His name is Lollipops.”

She laughed. “I’ll have to say, those girls are certainly original.”

At the top of the hill, Devlin stopped in front of his cabin. “Hang on to him a minute, would you? I need to grab my cell phone.”

When he came out with his phone, Chloe was cradling the pony’s head in the crook of her arm, his thick, long white mane flowing over her arm like a waterfall. The tender pose and the soft glow of her beautiful complexion nudged at his heart, and once again he wished he could capture the scene with oils or watercolors.

“So, is this where you live?” she asked, staring up at the dilapidated cabin. “In that ?”

He nodded. “For now.”

“It looks...rustic,” she said tactfully. “Is it better inside?”

He snorted. “Nope.”

“If I hadn’t shown up, then you’d be in the nicer cabin, right?” She bit her lower lip. “I’m sorry—though not quite sorry enough to switch. This one is scary.”

After some of the places he’d been in the Middle East, it was a palace. “It’ll do.”

“I could break down that door with a sneeze. Does it even lock?”

“Not yet.”

She raised her gaze to the mossy, swaybacked roof. “And does it leak?”

“I’m sure it does, given the water stains on the floor. But it hasn’t rained since I got here, so I’m good.”

“So far.” She rolled her eyes. “I’d guess varmints moved inside long ago. Right?”

“Just the mice and chipmunks that aren’t giving up their territory without a fight. I need to borrow a barn cat from the horse barn.”

She visibly shuddered. “Really, this cabin would make a nice bonfire. Then a new one could be built in its place. Why did Jess give you this sorry mess? Even a corner in the horse barn would be better. Maybe the tack room?”

When she turned away to study the cabin, he could only guess at half of the words she was saying, but he certainly caught her drift.

“Well?” Now she looked exasperated, and a warrior’s gleam lit her eyes as she propped her hands on her hips and glared at him. “When Jess gets back, I’m going to talk to him.”

This was the Chloe he remembered, ready to go toe-to-toe with anyone, in righteous defense of her latest cause. Usually in his defense, to tell the truth, though Dad had never been impressed. He’d told her father to “keep that kid out of my way” more than once.

But Devlin didn’t need anyone—especially Chloe—standing up for him now. Especially against a brother who had welcomed him home with open arms, despite how he’d failed the family three years ago. He was the prodigal son...only worse.

“Jess wanted me to stay in the main house, but I prefer my privacy. This works.”

“But—”

“And I’m starting renovations on it, so it’ll be convenient to stay up here. Once everyone gets home, I’ll get to work. Then I’ll reno the middle cabin next. I want to get both done before I leave. As...as a favor.”

Penance was the right word, but that would open up all sorts of questions he had no intention of answering, and some that he couldn’t.

He wondered what Chloe would think if she knew the truth about the kind of man he really was. But then again, maybe she’d known all along.

With the windows wide-open to the crisp, clean mountain air, Chloe had slept better than she had in years. Funny how she hadn’t been back since she was eleven, yet this still seemed like home.

She’d put all of her perishable foods in the fridge as soon as she had arrived yesterday. This morning she’d unpacked her clothes and scrubbed the kitchen cupboards. Then she’d put away the rest of the groceries she’d picked up on her way to the ranch, as well as the more unusual canned and dry items she’d brought from Minneapolis.

Now, with the early-morning sun beaming through the windows, she searched through the stack of cardboard boxes on the floor until she found her electric breadmaker. She then collected the necessary ingredients and opened up the file labeled Experiments in her laptop.

Cinnamon pecan bread. Version 12.

Versions one through six had risen to glorious heights and then stuck to the inside lid of the breadmaker like wet plaster. Seven through eleven had been too dense, collapsed or had the tenderness of shoe leather. But eleven had been sooo close.

Who knew it would be so difficult to replicate her late Grandma Lydia’s family-famous recipes for modern appliances? At this rate, it was going to take a decade to get everything right.

But then...she smiled as she carefully measured the ingredients into the machine according to her latest notes, this time adding honey instead of brown sugar and adding a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten. Once she’d retested and photographed every recipe, she could finish her final revision of her cookbook manuscript.

While the breadmaker was chugging through its Knead Cycle, she thumbed through the yellowed, tattered index cards under the cookies tab in Lydia’s wooden recipe box until she found one bearing Lydia’s silent, high praise—so stained and worn that the ink was barely legible.

My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies had to be a keeper, even if it needed tweaking to appeal to modern tastes.

First time through, exactly as written. The following efforts would be when the fun of experimenting began.

The wonderful scents of real butter, vanilla and brown sugar filled the air as she creamed the first ingredients, already hinting that Lydia had been onto something with the exact ratios in this recipe.

By the time Chloe pulled the second cookie sheet out of the oven, she’d polished off two cookies from the first pan and couldn’t help but nab a melty-soft treasure from the pan just out of the oven. Enough.

She usually tried to be careful about eating sweets, and certainly knew better than to indulge like this. Still...these cookies weren’t only wonderful; they felt like a connection to the loving grandmother she’d lost years ago.

She closed her eyes, savoring the rich, perfect confection. Imagining her grandmother measuring the same ingredients, enjoying this same flavor and aroma decades ago.

She opened her eyes with a start. Had she just moaned with pure enjoyment? Really?

Then she heard it again. But it wasn’t the sound of enjoyment. It was a low, agonized moan, and it was coming from outside the cabin’s screen door.

Definitely not human.

Too quiet to be a bear.

For all she knew, Devlin still loved warm cookies, but it would take more imagination than she possessed to envision him with his face pressed against the screen in hopes that she would share. He’d made it more than clear that he planned to keep his distance.

She warily circled the end of the kitchen counter and sidestepped along the wall until she could peek out of the screen door, ready to grab the heavier exterior door, slam it shut and lock the dead bolt against anything big and scary.

But nothing was there.

Just the soft rustling of the pines buffeted by a gentle breeze. A carpet of rusty pine needles and the empty, narrow path leading down to the trail.