Allie Pleiter - The Texas Rancher's Return

“What is that?”

Gran pshawed at him and swatted his shoulder. “It’s a drawing of Daisy. Anyone could see that.”

Gunner squinted at the brown blob and noticed it had horns and feet. And a wide cartoon smile with pink hearts around its head. “Never seen a smile like that on our Daisy.”

“You’d think you were never eight the way you talk. I changed your diapers, cowboy. Don’t you ever forget it.” Gran touched the screen. “This is a thank-you picture from Audie.”

Brooke Calder now had their email addresses? That woman was even slicker than he’d thought.

“I gave Audie my email address when she was here so she could get in touch if she had more questions. I like that girl’s gumption. She had her mother send over this picture this afternoon.” She pointed to the little girl in the drawing, who had a cartoon-style dialogue balloon over her head, reading “Thank You, Blue Thorn!” in scrawling third-grade letters. With the period on the exclamation mark made from a blue heart bearing a smiley face. “At least some young people today still remember their manners. And look, she even drew you.”

Gran scrolled the screen and pointed to a tall figure wearing a cowboy hat—and a frown. The figure representing Gran was all smiles, holding a cane in one hand and a plate of cookies in the other. “Mom” and “Me” looked happy, too, with Brooke’s curls depicted as a halo of squiggly yellow lines.

“She’s got you pegged, I’ll give her that.” Gran chuckled.

“I was nice to her,” Gunner protested. “I didn’t frown...did I?”

Gran looked up at him. “You didn’t smile, either. You mostly looked as if the whole thing hurt like a toothache.” She put a hand on Gunner’s shoulder. “You went from wild child to serious man. I think you ought to settle yourself somewhere in between, don’t you?”

“This serious man has serious work to do. I can’t go around playing host to field trips.”

“Oh, then you’re in trouble now.” Gran pursed her lips and then scrolled up to the email that topped the drawing. “Audie’s teacher is asking if the class can come visit.”

The email included a message thanking Gunner, Gran and Billy for their hospitality and the contact information for Audie’s teacher, saying a Mrs. Cleydon was very interested in bringing the class out for a visit.

He pinched the bridge of his nose where a headache was just now starting. “I knew this would happen.”

Gran got that look in her eyes. The relentless one Gunner knew all too well. “You are going to say yes. I’m going to write her back right now and tell her we’d be delighted to host the class for an afternoon.”

Gunner crossed his arms over his chest. “Didn’t you say if I’m head of Blue Thorn I have to do the inviting?”

“Yes. The invitation should absolutely come from you.” Gran put her fingers on the keyboard. “Show me how to forward the email and you can reply.”

“I don’t want to be exchanging emails with Brooke Calder.”

“Really, though, wouldn’t you be exchanging emails with Audie and her teacher?”

“Through Brooke. I tell you, Gran, that woman is up to no good.”

She pointed to the frowning Gunner in Audie’s drawing. “That’s just your grumpy side talking. She seemed very nice to me. Sweet, even. I give a lot of credit to a young widow like her making her way in the world.”

Gran’s talent for getting everyone’s life story out of them in twenty minutes or less could be a real annoyance. “Gran...”

“You should help her. You should let those children come see how the ranch works. I’ve heard you go on and on about conservation and preservation. Well, here’s a chance to share those ideas with the next generation. Show these young’uns why they need to care about bison and land and ranches. Show them firsthand, not on that silly Yube-Tube.”

“YouTube, Gran. And as for conservation and preservation, have you forgotten Brooke works for DelTex? The Ramble Acres company that wants to shave off the back of our property so they can build a shopping mall?”

“Since when can’t you be nice to people you disagree with? It’s what’s wrong with the world, I tell you. That woman has to make a living somewhere—it’s not her fault, nor is it Audie’s, that her employer happens to be DelTex.”

His grandmother’s face took on the legendary Buckton stubbornness, a narrow-eyed I will not back down set of features Gunner knew spelled his surrender.

“You’d better bake a lot of cookies.”

She smiled. “Actually, I was thinking brownies. And ice cream. A regular ice-cream social out on the lawn.”

Two dozen sticky, squirmy, sugared-up third graders tearing up his front lawn. The thought was enough to make him want to move to the city and take up accounting. Blue Thorn was taking a lot more than he was prepared to give these days.

As if she’d heard his thoughts, Gran’s hand came up to cover his. “Your father would be proud of what you’ve done. Of what you’re doing.”

That struck a raw nerve. Gunner and his father hadn’t seen eye to eye on anything in the years before his death. Not that Gunner had been around much to test that. He’d put Blue Thorn in his rearview mirror shortly after college, sick of Dad looking down his nose at the wild life Gunner loved. Dad’s expectations had smothered Gunner, and even Gran’s compassionate spirit hadn’t been enough to keep him on the ranch. With his mom gone when he was seventeen, Gunner saw no point in staying where he wasn’t understood. One by one his siblings had followed suit, heading off the ranch and out from underneath Gunner Senior’s judgmental glare until the old man had died years later practically alone and nearly bankrupt.

Gran had written Gunner then, pleading for him to return to the ranch and save Blue Thorn. He’d come for Gran. Gunner had come to prove Dad wrong about the kind of man he was, and to overhaul Blue Thorn with his own stamp. He wasn’t sure Dad would ever be proud of what he was doing here, but the sentiment raised an unwanted lump in Gunner’s throat anyway.

“Click on that green arrow there,” he said, not looking her in the eye. “That’s how you forward an email. I’ll invite them to come out, and you can stuff them full of whatever goodies you want.”

He felt, rather than saw, her smile. “You’ll have such fun, you wait and see.”

There’s where you’re wrong, he thought to himself, regretting the whole thing already.

Chapter Five

Brooke scanned the rolling pastures of Blue Thorn Ranch as she drove down the road leading to Ramble Acres for another meeting Thursday. She’d never paid much attention to the landscape before in her frequent trips out to the development. Now she found herself watching the land roll by, looking for signs of the bison herd.

And, if she was honest with herself, she was watching for Gunner Buckton. After his email the other day, she had nearly picked up the phone twice to talk to him. She knew better than to judge someone by their emails, but even someone who wasn’t a specialist in communications could see the man was a mix of annoyed, cornered and reluctant. But he was at least trying to be cordial—even though it seemed to physically pain him. At least it was a start. Perhaps she could really be the key to paving a useful resolution to the tensions between the Bucktons and DelTex. If she could foster some understanding that would make Gunner feel less under attack, as well as be a face of compassion for DelTex, then everyone would win. Including her—for Mr. Markham had gone out of his way to say that a victory here would boost her career.

They were crafting a relationship with the Bucktons, she and Audie—that much wasn’t manufactured. Brooke genuinely liked the Bucktons, especially Adele. She enjoyed Audie’s enthusiasm, how she’d come up with the idea for a thank-you drawing and how Audie talked to anyone who would listen about “Daisy the mama bison and how my mom got me to meet her.”