Justine Davis - His Personal Mission

She didn’t like the thought of them second-guessing their entire lives.

“I’ll talk to them. Maybe I can help them see that’s not true.”

He seemed relieved at that idea. So he did care, she thought.

“Will they be home tonight?”

He nodded. “Dad gets home about six, and mom’s always home in the afternoons.”

“Is she still working for that doctor?”

“Yeah. And Dad’s still crunching numbers at the bank.”

She remembered suddenly how he’d once told her his dad had to be the most boring guy on the planet. Same boring work, at the same boring place, for over twenty years. That had been, she realized in retrospect, the beginning of the end. The dismissive assessment had angered her. She couldn’t be with someone who didn’t realize the value of that, who didn’t make the connection between that kind of steadiness and his own comfortable, carefree life.

And she’d told him so, in no uncertain terms.

“Almost as boring as sitting at a computer all day,” she said, not bothering to keep the snap out of her voice. And then wondering why; it wasn’t like it mattered anymore.

“Computers aren’t boring!” His defensiveness was quick, instinctive. “They’ve changed the world, made amazing things possible.” He gestured at the GPS screen set into the dash of her car. “You’d be fumbling with maps if you didn’t have that thing to give you turn-by-turns right to Safe Haven’s front door.”

“True enough,” she had to admit.

“They’re not boring at all.”

As they pulled to a stop at a red light, she turned slightly to look at him.

“Did you ever think that maybe numbers aren’t boring to your father? That maybe he likes the…the logic of them, the symmetry, the balance? Did you ever think that your blessed computers are based on numbers, and that you probably inherited some of your father’s knack with them, and that that’s the reason you’re good with them?”

She could see by his expression that he hadn’t.

The light changed. As she turned her attention back to driving, she was inwardly chiding herself for coming down so hard. This was, after all, none of her business anymore. It probably never had been. But it had been a measure of how much she liked the guy that she’d even tried to change his attitude about some things that were very basic to her.

Teach you to be a foolish female, try to change a male who doesn’t want to change, she thought, and not for the first time.

“Sorry,” she said into the silence of the car, “you came to me for help, not criticism.”

She heard him let out a compressed breath before he said levelly, “If one’s the price for the other, I’ll take it.”

Now that was a change, she thought, surprised anew.

“Besides,” he went on, “I realize now how you could spend twenty years in the same place. I never want to leave Redstone. I still don’t get the accounting thing, but what you said about the numbers…that makes sense.”

My God, Sasha thought. He really has changed.

The old Ryan would have either laughed her off, or gotten even more defensive.

Had he finally grown up? Had the boy who had wanted only to slide along smoothly, the only challenges he enjoyed coming from his beloved computers, finally realized that people were what really mattered?

She didn’t know. Couldn’t be sure, at least, not yet. Maybe he was just putting on a front of connecting with real people, knowing—because she’d told him so bluntly—that she thought him lacking that skill.

And there you go again, making it all about you. When did you get so stuck on yourself?

She lectured herself for another moment, ending with the truth that there was only one thing she could be sure of at the moment: that her own, deep-down reaction to the possibility was unsettling. She shouldn’t care, it shouldn’t matter, she’d left Ryan Barton long behind.

Hadn’t she?

Sasha was still pondering the changes in Ryan, wondering just how deep they went, when the GPS he’d been so enamored of announced their destination was one mile ahead on the right. She slowed, looking, and saw a long, low, red-barn-style building set back from the road. A smaller one was off to one side, and what had apparently once been a small house sat at the end of a long driveway behind a secured gate.

The traditional rail fencing was high, and screened on the inside to make it secure, but painted pristinely white so that the first thing you thought of was charm rather than serious function. The grounds were tidy and well kept, and the small pack of five dogs who raced along the fence to greet them, tails up and tongues lolling, gave a homey air to it all.

“They look happy,” Sasha said as she pushed the button on the gate beneath the small plaque with those instructions.

“Yeah. And healthy.”

The little house was clearly the office, and was surrounded with plants, trees and flowers that looked as happy and healthy as the dogs. Beside the house Sasha saw a path that led through a big, open field toward a thick grove of trees, where it disappeared invitingly into the deep shade.

They went up two steps to the broad front porch, and stopped at the bright red front door.

“This is quite a place,” she said as she looked around.

“We like it,” came a female voice from inside the door where they’d stopped. “Come on in.”

The interior of the office was as tidy as the grounds. Sasha couldn’t help smiling at the photos on the walls, images of animals captioned imaginatively in the vein of a popular Web site that she’d come across recently, the funny spelling contributing to the humor.

“Very nice place,” Sasha said. “I’m Sasha Tereschenko,” she added, offering her hand to the young woman coming toward them.

“I’m Sheila McKay,” the woman said, drying her hands on a bright blue towel before she held out a hand first to Sasha, then Ryan. “I sort of run this place, when the real boss is away.”

“Mrs. McClaren?”

Sheila blinked at Ryan. “Yes. You know her?”

“Of her. I work for Redstone.”

The smile that lit the woman’s face made Sasha reassess her looks; she’d thought her a bit plain at first, although her shoulderlength hair had a lovely reddish tint that went well with her fair skin and the faint sprinkling of freckles across a pert nose. But that smile could light up a city block, Sasha thought now.

“Bless Redstone,” Sheila said fervently. “We were nearly going under, a few years back. The rent kept going up, the county was threatening to rezone us, we could barely keep up with the maintenance.”

Sasha looked around. “Obviously that’s not a problem now. This place is perfect.”

“Well, not quite. But we own the land now—it was Emma’s wedding present from her husband—and Emma’s got big plans. An aviary, so the birds we get have room to fly, if they can. And her husband’s building a corral for us out back, because Emma wants to take on a couple of abused horses the county shelter doesn’t have room for.”

“He’s building it? Himself?” Sasha asked, startled at the idea of a man like Mac McClaren doing something so mundane.

“Yep. For a rich guy, he’s pretty handy,” Sheila said with a grin. “And we love him around here. He’s made it all possible. Anything Emma wants for this place, she gets. Including the county off our back, since they surely don’t want to make Redstone mad. Or have Mac McClaren, famous treasure hunter, talking to the press about their interference in our innocent, benevolent enterprise.”

“Wise,” Ryan said with a crooked grin back at her.

“Yes. Now, what brings you here? Do you need us to take an animal?”