Jackie Merritt - Wind River Ranch

“I’ll do it for you. When do you want to leave?”

“Tonight, if possible.” She and Gail were friendly enough for Gail to know that she was from Wyoming. But she hadn’t told anyone about the heartrending break with her father, or the details of her unhappy and truly ludicrous marriage. Dena sometimes wondered why she had rebelled against her only living parent to the point of hurting herself, but it wasn’t a subject that she could discuss with even her closest friends.

“Seattle to Casper, right?” Gail asked.

Dena nodded. “Then Casper to Lander.”

“You just sit there and get yourself together. I’ll call the airlines right now.” With an air of efficiency—which was completely sincere as Gail Anderson was an extremely competent woman—the receptionist returned to her desk and began looking through the phone book.

Dena still felt numb, and maybe it was best, she reasoned. If her emotions started running wild, she might not have the strength to see this through.

And strength, both physical and emotional, was going to be crucial in the next few days. As dull-witted as her mind seemed to be at the present, she at least knew that much.

One

Returning to Wyoming was traumatic for Dena. It was something she had wanted to do for so long, and to be going now under these conditions was almost incomprehensible. Anxiety ate at her during the flight from Seattle to Casper, and again on the much smaller plane bound for Lander. For some reason, she couldn’t picture the ranch without her father. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe Ryson Hardin—no one would be so cruel as to call a woman with a lie of that nature—but envisioning the place without Simon was next to impossible.

At the same time, sitting stiffly in her seat, Dena wondered why she wasn’t weeping. Her throat had felt tight and achy since Mr. Hardin’s call, but she had not shed one tear. Unquestionably she suffered the sorrow one would expect to feel from such news, and yet she wasn’t able to release the tight grip she had on her emotions. In truth, she felt as though she were trapped in some sort of terrible nightmare, and in the back of her mind was the childlike knowledge that nightmares lasted only a short while. It was such an inane sensation—she was an intelligent woman and fully cognizant of the difference between a nightmare and reality—and yet she couldn’t eradicate it.

The plane landed at the Lander airport at three in the morning. She should have been exhausted and wasn’t; obviously she was running on adrenaline.

Deplaning with the handful of other passengers arriving in Lander at this unholy hour, Dena walked through the gate and glanced around, ardently hoping to see Nettie. She had called the ranch, once she’d known her flight schedule, and Ry Hardin had answered almost immediately, as though he’d been sitting near the phone waiting for it to ring. Dena had been hoping to hear Nettie’s voice, but when she’d asked about the older woman, Hardin had said she was in her room, ostensibly lying down.

“This has hit her pretty hard, Miss Colby,” he’d said.

“Maybe...maybe she will feel up to meeting my plane,” Dena had said unsteadily. But then she’d told Ry Hardin her arrival time, and he had said that he would be at the terminal.

Nevertheless, the hope that she would see Nettie instead of a stranger waiting for her was still with her. That hope faded away as she saw a man walking toward her. Without a dram of genuine interest in Hardin himself, she took in his physical appearance. He was a tall, rugged-looking man with dark hair and eyes. His clothing was jeans, boots and a hat that he removed and held in his right hand as he approached her. He looked as much like a rancher as any man she’d ever seen.

“Dena Colby?”

“Yes.”

“I’m Ry Hardin. Do you have luggage?”

“One bag.”

“We’ll collect it and be on our way. You must be tired.”

“No...no, I’m fine.”

Ry looked at her curiously. She was an attractive woman, small and slender, dressed in navy slacks, a white blouse and a navy cardigan sweater, unbuttoned. She did not appear to be devastated, as he’d thought nught be the case, although her eyes were a little too bright. Feverishly bright, he amended in his private assessment of Simon’s daughter.

They walked to the baggage department, and Dena’s one suitcase appeared almost at once. Ry carried it and escorted her outdoors to his vehicle. Rather, it was a ranch vehicle, Dena realized when she read the sign on the door: Wind River Ranch. It was then she remembered that all of the ranch’s vehicles bore that same sign.

She also realized there were many details about her home that she hadn’t thought of in years. Her concentration regarding anything in Wyoming had been focused almost entirely on her father. She bit down on her bottom lip painfully hard. She didn’t want to do this. She didn’t want to walk into the house she’d grown up in and feel its emptiness.

They were well under way before either said anything. Ry spoke first. “Nettie said you’re a nurse.”

Dena jumped and turned her gaze to the man behind the wheel. She had actually forgotten he was there. “Pardon?” she said.

Ry repeated himself and added, “Nursing is an admirable profession. One of my sisters in Texas is a nurse.”

Dena tried to think of a response. She liked making new friends, and Ry Hardin seemed like a nice guy. But these were not ordinary circumstances, and there was no way she could concentrate on small talk.

She quietly murmured, “That’s nice,” and then unconsciously turned her face to the side window, again immersed in the agony of why she was in Wyoming in the middle of this dark night.

Her spiritless reply relayed her state of mind to Ry, who decided to say no more. If she instigated a conversation during the drive, he would, of course, participate. But he didn’t expect that would occur, and he drove with his gaze straight ahead on the road.

After a few miles, however, he did say something else. He’d gone through the same shock and grief that Dena Colby was suffering right now with each of his own parents, and he wanted to let her know that he, too, was affected by Simon’s sudden death. “I’m very sorry about your father, Miss Colby. I liked working for him. And I respected him.”

Drawing a breath, Dena pulled herself out of the doldrums enough to answer. “Thank you. And call me Dena,” she said. Colby was her legal name again, as she had petitioned the court for resumption of her maiden name at the tune of her divorce, which had further infuriated the Hogans, who had already been incensed over the divorce. That was when she’d started hearing some of the completely groundless lies they had been spreading around town about her, and it was also when she’d made her decision to leave Wyoming. There’d been no chance of a career in any field in Wmston, and she had wanted to make something of her life. She remembered now that she had also hoped that her leaving the area would shake her father’s determination to disown her.

It hadn’t worked.

As for Ry Hardin liking and respecting Simon, she didn’t doubt it. If memory served her correctly, Simon had usually gotten along with his hired hands. In fact, he had gotten along with most people. It was only with her, his daughter, his only child, that he’d been so hard and unyielding.

Dena released a long sigh of utter anguish and stared through the window again. The countryside was familiar even in the dark, and she attempted to force herself to concentrate on landmarks. Anything was better than thinking of her reason for at long last coming home.

But thoughts of home and the past would not be squelched, and she finally stopped fighting them. Besides, not all of her memories were painful. Her mother, for instance, had been completely kind and loving. While Opal Colby had been alive, Dena had been a happy child.