Pamela Tracy - Finally a Hero

Eva looked up just as he stepped aside to let the new hire in.

“I thought we’d come here first,” Dad said. “We can show the little one the playground and game room.”

The little one had a name, and Eva knew it.

Timmy.

She didn’t know the big one’s name. She knew only that he came with more problems than their little ranch could afford.

* * *

“Don’t touch,” Jesse warned as Timmy finally showed an interest in something and headed toward a large glass pane that showcased a dirt wall. Before Jesse could stop the little boy, he’d touched the wall and then fingered a woven wall hanging.

“That’s okay,” Jacob said. “Glass cleans, and that wall hanging is so dusty, it makes me sneeze.”

Jesse didn’t miss Eva’s glare.

Jacob was oblivious. “This is my daughter Eva. She’ll get you started on the paperwork.”

“That wall hanging is more than a hundred years old,” Eva muttered.

While Jacob bent down next to Timmy and explained that the wall hanging had been handmade by his wife’s grandmother, Jesse stared at the blonde from the restaurant.

He should have seen the resemblance.

She was her father’s daughter, all right. Jacob was a good two inches over six feet; Eva was close to that, maybe just under six foot, equal in height with Jesse. Her blond hair was as full and rich as her father’s, though Jacob’s hair was light brown. And unlike Jacob, Eva had dark brown eyes. They reminded Jesse of a stone he’d kept in his pocket when he was about Timmy’s age. He couldn’t remember the name, but he’d loved it for the color and texture.

Eva looked at her father as if he’d lost his mind. Jesse half expected her to refuse to help him. Instead, she took a breath, looked to him as if she silently counted to ten, and brought out some documents. “I put this packet together last Friday. But I’ll need to add a couple more. We didn’t know you were coming with...”

“A son,” Jesse filled in for her.

She nodded. “Dad, you’re not going to put them in bunkhouse. I don’t think Mitch and the other wrangler would appreciate it.”

Jacob straightened, saying, “Do we have an empty cabin?”

“Noooo,” Eva said, aghast.

“Yes.” There was another woman in the room, one Jesse’d almost missed. She, too, was tall, but unlike the Hubrechts he’d already met, she had red hair. Right now she was giving Eva a bewildered stare. She’d been watching the exchange between the three with keen interest.

“The Baker wedding party canceled, Dad,” Eva explained.

He whistled. “That will cost us a pretty penny. What happened?”

The redhead answered, “The bride reunited with her ex-boyfriend when he came home from Afghanistan.” To Jesse, she said, “I’m Patti de la Rosa, I help run the place.”

Eva interjected, “I already put all the cabins up on the website as a special.”

“We don’t need a cabin.” Jesse just wanted out of this room and this debate so he could be alone—or at least, as alone as he could be with a five-year-old. “The bunkhouse you told me about is fine.”

Eva raised an eyebrow.

“He can use the guest apartment,” Jacob decided.

“That’s for family,” Eva said.

“The family hasn’t used it in a good long time. It’s just sitting there, wasted space.”

Eva looked aghast. “But what if Elise decides to come home and—”

“She won’t.”

Something in Jacob’s tone made Jesse believe him. Whoever Elise was.

“A single room is fine,” he insisted.

“No, Dad’s right. You’ll need a bathroom.” For all her indignation and huffiness, there was something about her expression as she looked at Timmy. Jesse saw then something he’d missed earlier when dealing with her: a hint of compassion. Not for him, but for Timmy, whose yellow T-shirt was torn and threadbare, who had stick arms poking from the sleeves, and who sported the kind of grime that came not from one afternoon spent in the dirt, but many. The kid’s ears were almost black.

The kid?

His kid.

“We’ll appreciate anything you can do for us tonight,” Jesse said.

Timmy wasn’t paying attention. It was almost as if when Eva started talking, he stopped listening.

“Come on, then,” Jacob said. “I’ll take you to the guest apartment. It’s not been cleaned or aired out in a while.”

“I know how to clean and open windows.” Jesse fell in step behind Jacob. Glancing back, he felt relieved to see Timmy coming along, too—although clearly “speed” wasn’t a word in the boy’s vocabulary.

“This is the Lost Dutchman Ranch,” Jacob said, as if Jesse didn’t know. “I purchased her more than thirty years ago. I was just off the rodeo circuit, settling down, thinking of starting a family. She started life as a one-room cabin. You saw one of the original walls in there. I left it and put it behind glass.”

If this was the desert, Jesse thought, it was the oasis of deserts. There were plenty of green plants and cacti. Every few yards, there was a swing with a canopy. An empty tennis court was to his left, and what looked like a one-room schoolhouse was to his right.

“Man I bought her from had built two more rooms, but neither was up to code.”

Jesse wasn’t sure what that meant.

“I added electricity, running water and furniture. A few years later, when my wife got pregnant with Eva, she insisted on a bigger house. I built her this when she had my third daughter, Emily.”

“Is your wife the redheaded woman back at the main house?”

“Patti?” Jacob’s laugh sounded more like a bark. “Patti de la Rosa works for me. She helps Eva run the business side of things. She’s been a blessing since my wife died. More than once her advice on how to raise my three daughters kept me from falling on my face.”

“No sons?”

“No, but my daughters can do just about anything that sons could do. Eva’s the only one who stuck around, though. She was just a little thing when I started expanding the main house. I’ve got pictures of her mixing mud mortar. She thought she was making pancakes, I’m pretty sure.”

“You built the main house?”

“Designed it, built it, maintain it.”

Before Jacob could say anything else, they arrived at the barn.

“I’ll introduce you to Harold Mull. He’s the head wrangler and foreman. When I’m not telling you what to do, he’ll be telling you. The vet’s here, too.”

Timmy had been keeping up, but now that they’d reached the barn, he hesitated.

“Come on,” Jesse urged him. “Nothing’s going to hurt you.”

“Ever seen a horse before?” Jacob asked.

Timmy shook his head.

“Well,” said Jacob, “they’re my favorite animal in the whole world. Next to dogs, of course.”

Timmy nodded as if he agreed.

Next thing Jesse knew, Jacob had both of them in the barn, standing next to a stall, as the vet took care of a horse named Harry Potter.

“My youngest daughter named quite a few of the horses,” Jacob explained. “She always had her head in a book. Consequently, we’ve got some very literary horses.”

An hour later, after introducing Timmy and Jesse to more horses and to the two wranglers, Jacob led them to a set of stairs in the back of the barn. The top of the stairs had a storage alcove on one side and the apartment on the other.

“We call this the loft and don’t lock the door. You can if you want. I’ll need to find the key.”

The front door opened to a living room with an ugly green couch, a mud-brown easy chair, a scratched coffee table and an old-fashioned television. Timmy, uninterested in the tour, immediately settled onto the couch. The kitchen was behind it. A door to the right led to a bathroom and bedroom big enough for only a bed, no dresser.