Patricia Johns - A Rancher To Remember

Olivia pulled out her phone, glanced down at the screen, and then pocketed it again. She looked distracted, and he felt a wave of misgiving.

“Are you putting off plans for me?” Sawyer asked.

“Hmm?”

“You’re checking your phone,” he said. “If you have stuff to do, I don’t want to keep you here. I know my uncle is worried about me, but I can handle the girls for a while—”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

He didn’t believe that. He might not remember Olivia, but he knew what tension looked like, and she had tension written all over her. It was brought out by baseball and phone calls, apparently.

“I’m not as helpless as I look,” he said, and he made a point of not touching the bandage on his head.

“I don’t think you’re helpless,” she said.

“Sure, you do.” He fixed her with a direct look. “And I might not have my memory, but I’m okay. I don’t want to be your obligation here.”

“Sawyer, you have a brain injury. You might have all the best of intentions, but you need a little looking after. Sorry to break it to you.”

A faint smile tickled at the corners of her lips, and he thought he saw some friendly teasing in that gaze. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible to be spending a few days with this woman. They’d been friends once, apparently, and he could tell what he must have seen in her before. She was likeable.

When she looked at him like that, he was reminded again of that fragment of memory—the woman in the black coat, how he had put his hand out to touch her. She turned...and he couldn’t remember more than that. Except this time, he recalled snow on the ground—mucky, wet, dirty snow on the edge of a sidewalk. Nothing else. It was frustrating having these little shards of memory that didn’t connect. He needed to find where they fit in.

And he had already tried doing that sitting inside.

“Okay, so even if I am recovering here, it doesn’t mean we have to sit in the house and stare at each other. You want to get out for a bit? I have a feeling Lloyd is going to be a while.”

“I have that same feeling,” she agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, my uncle doesn’t want me helping out on the ranch until my memory’s back. So maybe we could start out where I used to work—at the barn maybe.” He looked down at his rough, calloused hands. “You said I used to work a lot, right?”

“You did,” she agreed. “It might jog a few memories.”

Bella and Lizzie looked up at them, and Olivia glanced around the kitchen. “We should bring something for the girls. What do they snack on?”

“Um...” Yeah, and he’d just been saying he could take care of things on his own. “I’m not sure.”

Olivia opened a cupboard, looked through the contents and then moved on to the next.

“Yesterday they each had a sippy cup around this time of day. Lloyd got it for them,” he added.

Olivia went to the fridge and opened it. “Ta-da.” She pulled out two cups, both filled with milk. The toddlers beelined toward her, holding their hands out for the milk, and she gave them the cups. The girls started to drink. Bella spun in a circle as she slurped on the rubber mouthpiece, and Lizzie sat down to drink.

“Cereal?” Sawyer asked, pulling a box of Cheerios out of a bottom cupboard.

“Put some into a baggie,” Olivia said.

“I don’t know where to find those...”

The next few minutes were spent putting a toddler-friendly snack together and piling everything into a diaper bag that Sawyer did know the location of. It turned out that there weren’t baggies, but there were plastic containers, and soon enough they were heading out the side door, each of them carrying a child in their arms, and the diaper bag slung over Sawyer’s shoulder. He glanced back at Olivia, and shot her a smile. It felt good having her here with him—a little less lonely. Or was he just responding to being with a beautiful woman? Here’s hoping he wasn’t that shallow.

They headed down the gravel drive toward a winding road. It was downhill from there toward the barn—Sawyer had stared at it all morning, trying to tease some memories free. A young blue jay squawked at them from high in a tree.

“Birdie,” Bella said.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He smiled down at his daughter, then glanced over at Olivia. “So, tell me about you and me. What should I remember?”

“You’re older than me by about two years, so we didn’t run in the same circles,” she said. “But you liked to eat in the diner where I was working, and one night you were the only guy in there. And we started talking. Turned out, we both liked the same movies.”

“And rest is history?” he said wryly.

“I guess so. We got along. I mean, we didn’t have a lot in common. You were a ranch hand, and I was a recent high school grad, saving up to go to college for nursing. You were ready to spend the rest of your life here while I was pretty determined to get out of town. Your girlfriend had already graduated a year before, and after she worked for a year, she left for college. I think she was going to travel a bit first. Anyway, before she left, she dumped you. That was at the same time I was graduating. So when we met, you were a bit heartbroken.”

“Ouch...” he murmured, but he didn’t feel it. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to say. This was like listening to a story about other people. He couldn’t remember any of it.

“We just...clicked,” she said. “We cheered each other up.”

“So, what did we do together?” he asked.

“Oh, we went to movies, ate out, went to the local fair...that kind of thing. I was your date at some family event, but that was just because your great aunt had been overly attached to your ex-girlfriend, so you needed some distraction.” She laughed softly. “She wasn’t overly attached to me ...”

“So I have a great aunt?” he asked.

“You did. She passed away, I think.”

Their boots crunched over the gravel, and Bella started to wriggle in his arms, so he set her down and let her walk. Olivia followed his lead and put Lizzie down, too.

“And you came back to see me...” He looked over at her, and some color tinted Olivia’s cheeks.

“I came back for my own reasons. Seeing you was...a bonus.”

“Ah.” Sawyer pushed his hands into his pockets. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”

“Tell you what?” Her gaze flickered toward him.

“What was really between us,” he said.

Olivia sighed. “I’m being honest. We were friends. All friendships have different balances between them, I suppose.”

“And ours?” he prodded.

“Like I said, your girlfriend left you for college,” she said. “And I was going to do the same thing. I had plans to get my education and I didn’t want a life here in Beaut. We both knew that a romantic relationship between us couldn’t go anywhere.”

“So there was some history between us...something more than just friendship,” he clarified.

“You ended up marrying my best friend,” she replied. “That’s the history that matters.”

“I agree, but you and I stayed in touch, it seems.”

“I came to the wedding,” Olivia replied. “I was the maid of honor. But after that, I...gave you two space.”

“So, we didn’t manage to hold on to that friendship after all,” he said. Why was she being evasive here? He could sense that there was something more she didn’t want to tell him.

“No,” she said.

He nodded. Apparently, he’d had his own life with his wife. It seemed strange that they’d just lose touch like that, and a little sad they’d lost a friendship that had mattered to them very much. What wasn’t she telling him? “So, why did you come back? Why did you show up here?”