Kathleen O'Brien - The Rancher's Dream

He smiled. “Deal.”

From her perch on Crimson’s shoulder, Molly wailed, suddenly at the end of her rope. Standing quickly, Grant leaned over and planted a firm kiss on Crimson’s cheek.

“Thanks, Red,” he said. “You’re the best. Be good to Auntie Red, kiddo.”

He patted Molly’s head perfunctorily as he moved away. He had paid and disappeared to the notes of “Danny Boy” before Crimson could even get the baby reinstalled in her carrier. Molly definitely wasn’t happy to be strapped in again, but she had found her fingers and begun to suck on them.

Crimson watched as Grant’s silhouette dashed past the front windows, his head ducked against the rain. He appeared in one window, then another, then the third, and then he finally disappeared.

“Interesting, isn’t it, sweetheart?” She bent low to rub Molly’s pink button nose with her own. “I’m pretty sure our friend Mr. Campbell is allergic to crying babies. What I can’t quite figure out...”

She glanced back at the windows, but no one else was walking past, not in this weather. All she could see was a thick sheet of silver rain that sparkled as it caught the reflected brilliance of streetlights that had blinked on, fooled into believing it was night.

“What I can’t quite figure out is why.”

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER SHE LEFT the tattoo parlor, Becky drove around Silverdell for a long time.

Even when the storm broke, she didn’t stop driving. She cruised down Elk Avenue, around the square and over to Callahan Circle, which Dellians always just called Mansion Street. She didn’t stop when she got to the blue French château with the mansard roof, even though she’d called that particular mansion home for twenty-one years.

She didn’t even look at it. Didn’t make any difference whether her dad was home or not—she wasn’t going to stop. She just kept driving. North, and then west onto Cimarron Street. After that, she went back into town to start the figure eight all over again.

Truth was, she really, really didn’t want to go back to Rory’s apartment. He was going to be mad about the tattoo...or the lack of a tattoo. And when he was mad, it was awful.

It was actually more awful than it ought to be, considering he didn’t scream or yell or break things. She almost wished he would. At least that kind of anger made sense.

Her dad was a yeller. He blew up like the storm that was turning Silverdell black as an eclipse right now, flooding the streets and shaking the traffic lights as if it wanted to yank them from their wires. But, like this storm, his anger blew over. Things might be damp and uncomfortable for a while, but the sun always came out again eventually.

Rory was different. He didn’t ever let loose. He got snake-eyed and sarcastic, but behind those curled lips and cold eyes, you could tell the same storm was raging. It just didn’t have an outlet, so it never blew itself out. It kept building, and it spit out in little scalding spurts, like when you overheated grease in a pan. It shot out in small, oddly painful insults, in little unexpected cruelties.

As her car sped through a pool of water so deep it sprayed out like a white fan from her tires, she realized she was going too fast. She had a headache from peering through the rain, and she’d been gripping her steering wheel so tightly her hands hurt.

Consciously flexing her fingers, she took several deliberate deep breaths. She should go home. So what if Rory was mad? She lifted her chin. She wasn’t afraid of him. That wasn’t why she didn’t want to go back. She wasn’t afraid of anybody.

It was just that, when Rory was mean, she didn’t like him very much. And when you loved somebody, it hurt to discover you didn’t like them. It hurt a lot.

Still...the later she showed up, the madder he’d be. And besides, where else did she have to go?

Half-consciously, she slid her hand into her jacket pocket, where she’d put the card that nice woman at the tattoo parlor had given her. But she almost had to laugh at how naive that was. Crimson Slash couldn’t be her real name. But anyone who chose a name like that for herself wasn’t likely to be Mother Teresa.

Which proved that, however nice she seemed, Crimson Slash hadn’t been serious when she said Becky should call her if she needed help.

If Becky were stupid enough to take the offer seriously, the woman probably wouldn’t even remember who the heck Becky Hampton was.

Suddenly, a traffic light swam at her out of the turbulent black ocean of the sky. The light was red. Her heart jumped, hot and huge, and tried to explode in her throat.

She stood on her brakes...belatedly hearing her father’s voice warning her never, never to stop too fast in the rain.

With a sickening awareness that her tires were only barely connected to the tarmac, Becky felt her car fishtail, as if it were hinged in the middle—and not under her control at all.

Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God ...

She’d barely had time to register fear when, like a miracle, her tires gripped the road again, and the car shuddered to a stop.

Her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, and she prayed she wouldn’t see headlights barreling toward her like white bullets. One second...two seconds...

Nothing. She raked her hands through her hair and made a strange, gulping sound. She was going to be okay.

For several seconds, she sat there, thanking God and trying to stop her hands from shaking.

When the light turned green, she didn’t want to take her foot off the brake, but she had to. She’d be a sitting duck if she waited there, immobile and invisible, for some unsuspecting car to smash into. She probably was almost as dumb as her father always said she was...but she wasn’t that dumb.

Somehow she reached Cimarron Street. Apartment Alley was this one’s nickname, because one anonymous building after another was lined up there, shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face. Instead of circling through, this time she turned onto Coyote Lane, where Rory lived.

Where she lived, too, she reminded herself. This was home now—not Mansion Street. And that was okay. Compared to splatting herself all over a rain-drenched road, Rory and Coyote Lane had started to look pretty good.

* * *

MOLLY FELL ASLEEP on the way back to Grant’s ranch, probably lulled by the rain pounding against the truck’s roof and the rhythmic swishing of the windshield wipers.

Crimson, who needed to concentrate on maneuvering the flooding streets, was relieved. If she’d had a choice, she would have pulled over and waited out the storm, but Molly was hungry and uncomfortable, and Kevin hadn’t packed enough bottles to see her through such a long afternoon.

She drove no more than ten miles an hour the whole way, aware of her priceless cargo and the treacherous nature of slippery roads. Luckily, Grant’s truck rode high on its big tires, and its bright red paint would be fairly easy for other drivers to spot, even in this monochromatic, underwater gray world.

Once Crimson crawled out of Silverdell and onto the winding rural road that led to the ranches west of town, the traffic thinned out nicely, and the wild rain eased to a simple downpour. Way up ahead, just above the horizon, she could even glimpse a sliver of blue sky.

It felt symbolic, somehow. She might be caught in a storm, but there was light up ahead. Hope still existed. All she had to do was get there. For some inexplicable reason, for the first time since Clover died, Crimson believed she might make it.

As she neared the last real intersection with a traffic light before everything turned to rolling acres of pasture, she began to hum under her breath, choosing a sweet old lullaby her mother used to sing. It had been Clover’s favorite.