Carol Arens - A Ranch To Call Home

She plopped down in the chair with a great sigh, loosened her hair and fluffed it out behind her.

The dog pressed his face close, licked a lingering teardrop from her cheek. With a soft woof, he sat on the floor. The weight of his head settled on her thigh. For as much as he resembled an extra-large wolf, he seemed to have a sweet and loyal spirit.

“You need a name of your own,” she said while twining her fingers in the thicket of gray-brown hair on his neck. “From now on, your name is Chisel because you chiseled your way into my house...and into my heart, you great hairy beast.”

He sighed, as though he was happy to finally be worthy of a name of his own. Actually, he might have sighed for many reasons, but she hoped it was that one. Shifting his weight, he lay down upon her feet. The warmth was welcome since it was shivering cold, even inside.

With everything the previous owners had left behind, they’d no doubt left firewood as well. Still, in the moment, she was too weary to go exploring.

Shrugging deeply into her coat, she felt her eyes grow heavy. As she did every night, she carried a vision of Johnny’s handsome face off to sleep with her.

Drifting on a sleepy daze, she imagined the sigh of his breath upon her cheek, the brush of his lips lightly grazing hers. He whispered her name and his voice sounded different. More tender and less demanding. The pitch was different, too, deeper. Compelling. She had to admit she liked the difference. Ordinarily, Johnny was bold, taking—or trying to take—what he wanted. In this dream, he wanted to give.

In her slumbering vision, she lifted her hand, trailed her fingers through the short whorls of his dark blond hair. Which was odd since Johnny had long dark hair. He smiled, and she felt a yearning for him to her very soul. His olive green eyes gazed at her with more love than she’d ever felt before.

Olive green eyes! Laura Lee sat upright with a start. Johnny had deep brown eyes.

Could she have been...? No, she absolutely could not have been dreaming of the stranger from town whom she had met for one brief moment. Why would she?

What a faithless creature she was! Johnny had bought her a house! He was out...somewhere...working hard to pay off the mortgage.

She owed Johnny everything. And yet...the yearning for a stranger lingered in her heart.

How wicked she was. She deserved to shiver the night away wide awake. Ah, but the dog’s warmth crept up her ankles to her calves, then her knees.

She drifted back to sleep barely aware of wind hitting the window and making it rattle in its frame.

* * *

Could it truly be morning? It was hard to remember when she had slept so soundly, even at the Lucky Clover, where she’d felt safe for the first time in her life.

The ranch had been her first home really. She’d been given a small room of her own in the main house, the same as the rest of the unmarried girls. For many years, it had been her sanctuary.

Even though she had been happy, it had never been her dream to live at the Lucky Clover forever. Here, within her own walls, was where her heart always longed to be.

Like a veil being drawn from her eyes, the fog of sleep cleared from her brain. She bounded up from the chair she had slept in.

Everything she had not been able to see in the dark was now visible.

The chair was deep blue and the only piece of furniture in the room. As she’d suspected, there was a bedroom flanking each end of the main room. Behind the fireplace, she thought there might be a kitchen. If she was very lucky, and it appeared that so far she was, there would be a stove so that she could cook her pastries for Friday.

Skipping because there was no one to witness her acting like a loon, she passed through the main room to the area behind the fireplace.

To the right was a table with one chair and to the right of the table was a stairway that led to... She lifted up onto her toes trying to see. There was no way of knowing without climbing the steep stairs, but she thought the space might be a loft.

When she and Johnny had children, the boys could sleep up there. She could nearly see them peeking over the edge, their eyes green and—no, no, no! Brown eyes, warm and happy like their father, peering over the edge.

She shook herself. Perhaps she was still more sleepy than she realized. When she was wide awake, she would no longer recall the dream or how the man had made her feel so cherished.

Spinning left, she was grateful to see a kitchen with a wood-burning stove. As though in a deliriously happy fog, she moved toward the black-iron beauty that had six burners and an oven.

“Hurry home, Johnny! I need to give you a kiss.” And after they’d been to the preacher... Well, she blushed right there in her own sweet kitchen just imagining the kisses they would share.

Chisel, whining at the front door, snapped her to the here and now, which was a wonderful place to be.

“It looks like rain,” she announced, opening the front door. He bunched his legs, then leaped from the porch without touching the stairs. He raced across the yard, over the bridge and through an autumn-brown meadow.

He must be claiming the land as his, the same as she was claiming the house.

And what better way to do it than to explore the loft, then to clean the grime off the windows? After that, with a fire crackling in the fireplace, she would sit in her chair and sew her curtains.

If life could be any better, she could not imagine how.

* * *

If life could be any better, Jesse Creed could not imagine how. Sitting beside the campfire, he could smell his horses, hear them snorting and shuffling their hooves in the dirt.

After a week and a half on the homeward-bound trail, they would soon be grazing in their home pastures. It would take until after dark to get there. They might even encounter some rain. Where he was, it was clear overheard, but far off to the west, clouds were massing.

Rain or not, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to be home.

During the time he’d been gone, he’d seen more of the outside world than he wanted to. There had been no way to ignore tainted reality since he’d been constantly dragging Bingham away from this or that “adventure,” lecturing him on how a horse was better company than the Underwood brothers.

But he was a kid and curious. There was only so much Jesse could do to set the boy’s feet on the right path.

“You anxious to get home?” Jesse asked.

Bingham, lounging against his saddle beside the campfire, didn’t answer at first. An owl hooted in a branch overhead and a distant coyote yipped while the boy seemed to consider what to say.

“I’ll be right glad to see my pa. The thing is, I’m worried I’ll dry up with boredom. Next time you buy horses, I’d like to go along. You don’t even have to pay me.”

“You deserve to be paid. You’re a hard worker.”

There was a matter Jesse had been considering, going over it in his mind all during the journey home. Bingham was at a point in his life where his future might go one of two ways. He could work hard and become a man, or he could take up with the Underwoods and remain a boy for the rest of his life.

Jesse owed society recompense for the wrong he’d done. If he could keep this good-hearted boy from going astray...prevent Thomas Teal from having a broken heart, he would do it.

“With all these horses, I’ve got more work than one man can do alone,” Jesse began. “I’ll pay fair wage if you’d work for me when your father doesn’t need you at the store. You’ve shown what a good hand you’ve got with the herd, that you’re willing to work hard.”

Bingham leaped to his feet and crossed to Jesse’s side of the campfire with his hand extended. The kid stood tall with the star-studded sky behind him. It looked for all the world that he wore a sparkling crown.