Homecoming Ranch (15 page)

“Anyone else there tonight?” Leo asked.

“As a matter of fact, Julie Daugherty showed up.”

“Ho! There’s a blast from the past!”

“Not a good one,” Dad muttered.

“So? Did you check her hands?” Leo asked.

“What?”

“Her hands,” Leo said again, and waved his lobster claw of a hand at Luke. “Her
ring
finger.”

“No, I didn’t check it—why?”

“Dude.” Leo waggled his brows. “You mean you haven’t heard? Word is that she and Brandon are on the skids.”

Luke snorted. Brandon would have to be a complete moron to mess that up. “You are my sole source of information, Leo. So where’d you hear that? From Dani?”

“No, actually, from Marisol,” Leo said, pausing to sip from his straw. “She says Brandon is a prick and was hitting on her at her son’s Little League game. I want to withhold judgment, because every guy wants to hit on Marisol, right? But she seemed pretty adamant that he is a player and has something going on the side. And Julie isn’t putting up with that. I hear she kicked him out.”

Julie, free again? Luke’s head began to spin with just the idea.

His father heaved himself off the couch, frowned down at Leo and said, “On that note, I’m going out to the shed.”

“Thanks for the totally nutritious but boring dinner, Dad!” Leo called out after his father.

Dad muttered something under his breath; a moment later they heard the back door slam.

“We’ll come back to Julie. What about the ranch?” Leo asked, his joviality suddenly gone.

Luke sighed and shook his head. “It’s a huge mess, Leo. I think we might have to face the fact that it’s a lost cause and move on. We haven’t any legal leg to stand on.”

“Move
on?
Who are you and what have you done with my brother?” Leo demanded. “You can’t give up, Luke. What about Dad?”

“What do you mean, what about Dad?”

Leo groaned as Heidi Klum’s face danced across the television screen. “Look, I’m eventually going to get sick of this house and
Project Runway
and the Denver Broncos, and that’s it, man, I’m outta here. Dad can’t live here, no way. He’d go nuts. You have to try again.”

Luke’s chest constricted at Leo’s way of stating that he would not live as long as his father. He could scarcely bear to think of that day. “I’m doing the best I know to do,” he said.

“You gotta mix it up then.”

Luke rolled his eyes. “I want to mix it up all right.”

Leo nodded in that crooked way of his. He turned his attention to the television. “Hey, do you remember that classic Super Bowl between the Cowboys and the Dolphins?”

“No,” Luke said.

“The seventies,” Leo reminded him.

“No, I don’t remember a Super Bowl from the seventies. I wasn’t alive in the seventies.”

“Okay, so the Dolphins lost,” Leo blithely continued. “You know what happened to the Dolphins after they lost that one, right?”

Leo had an annoying habit of changing directions midstream. He was also fond of reliving great moments in sports in minute detail. Luke shook his head.

“Okay, well, they had a decent running game, but the passing game sucked. They made it to the Super Bowl on the strength of their defense.”

“That’s great,” Luke muttered.

“No, no, you don’t get it. They were playing these teams that had sucky offenses and their defense was kick-ass. But then they got to the Super Bowl and went up against the Cowboys, and they found out what a really good offense was like. I mean, Roger Staubach, anyone? And when the Cowboy offense shut down the Dolphin defense, all they had left was this Mickey Mouse offense that wasn’t working. So the next year, they said, wait, we’re going about this all wrong! We have to do what
those
guys are doing and build an offense! We have to bow to a superior defense and learn to win with a new offense.”

“Are we going somewhere with this?” Luke asked.

Leo sighed as if Luke were taxing him with limited intelligence. “Dude, they had to change their game plan if they were going to win the big one. They had to go on offense instead of defense. Hello—Homecoming Ranch? Now do you get it?”

“Did they win?”

“No!” Leo said. “But they had the right idea.”

A slow grin spread across Luke’s face. “You’re bat-shit crazy, you know that?” he asked. “Yeah, I get it. In your own ridiculous way, you
are telling me I need to change the way I am approaching the heirs. Why couldn’t you just say that?”

“That’s no fun,” Leo said, grinning again. “Glad to see some sunlight got down in the weeds growing in your head. Okay, now shut up—Heidi’s going to tell us who is on the chopping block.”

As Heidi Klum announced someone would be out, Luke looked at his little brother.

Man, he loved that guy.

The ringtone of Madeline’s phone went off so loudly and so close to her ear that her heart almost went through her chest. She fumbled with her black sleeping mask, tearing it off her head so quickly that she took what felt like a hank of hair along with it. She found the offending phone on the pillow next to her head, where she must have dropped it last night when she’d collapsed like a rag doll into bed.

“Hello,” she said, her voice hoarse with sleep.

“
Mad
!” Trudi shouted. “What are you doing?”

“Sleeping,” Madeline croaked, and sat up. She’d pulled the lodge draperies shut last night, and only a thin beam of light was breaking through the dark. She leaned over and flipped on the bedside light. “How did you get through? I couldn’t get a signal all day yesterday.”

“I dunno. I have you on speed dial,” Trudi said, as if that explained the technology behind cell phones. “Are you still in
bed
?”

“Yes. Why do you say it like that?”

“It’s
noon,
Madeline!”

Madeline gasped and threw the covers back. “It’s
noon?
” They were supposed to meet at one o’clock at the ranch to pick up where they’d left off yesterday.

“Not where you are, silly! It’s ten in Colorado. Why are you so out of it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been so tired.”

“Stress, obviously!
Well
? I am
dying
to know—did you meet your sisters?”

“Yes, God yes,” Madeline said, yawning.

“
And
?”

“And…” She absently scratched her thigh. “And they are nothing like what I thought they would be.”

“Okay. Tell me everything,” Trudi said.

“I’m not sure what there is to say. Libby is cute. She has this really curly dark hair, and she’s nice. But she’s kind of unrealistic. And Emma is… well, she’s beautiful. She has long blond hair and dresses like a fashionista. And she’s so thin.” She paused, thinking about how thin Emma was. “I think she might be an alcoholic.”

“Wow, really? Did you smell it on her?”

“No,” Madeline said. “I actually never saw her take a drink. But she kept talking about wanting one.”

“No offense, but I think I might want more than one in that situation. So what did you guys do? Did they bring pictures? Are they married? Kids?”

“I don’t know, really,” Madeline said. “We met and then basically, we argued about what to do with the ranch.”

“No way! Why would you do that? Why didn’t you
talk
first?”

Now Madeline wished she had. “There was a lot going on. It’s really weird doing the get-to-know-you thing when you’re sitting on a huge ranch you’ve supposedly inherited. My mind was elsewhere.” Madeline closed her eyes. The moment she did, an image of Luke’s gray eyes and slightly lopsided smile began to swim in her mind’s eye. She quickly opened her eyes. “It’s so damn complicated, Trudi,” Madeline said wearily, and told her best friend everything she could remember about the meeting at the ranch—with Trudi interrupting often, demanding details of what the ranch looked like, a description of the house, the details of the women she insisted on calling Madeline’s sisters, down to what they were wearing.

When Madeline had filled her in on everything she could possibly think of, including running into Luke at the Stakeout the night
before, Trudi let out a low whistle. “Wow. What are you going to do?”

What
was
she going to do? That was the million-dollar question. Madeline didn’t like this feeling of not knowing what to do, or whom to do it with. She wanted to be somewhere where she knew the rules and what the day would hold. Where she dined on chicken, not buffalo, and her shoes were perfect for running around town. “Come home, I guess.”

The words had fallen off her tongue the moment they’d popped into her head.

“Are you
crazy?
” Trudi shouted. “What’s the matter with you? Madeline, it is an
enormous
opportunity for you. First, it’s the closest thing to paternal heritage as you’ve ever had. Second, has it occurred to you that they might need someone just like you to sort it all out?”

“Third, have you forgotten that I have a job?”

“You have a job where others can fill in for you for
days
. You have a savings account that could float the national debt. When’s the last time you took a vacation, anyway?” Trudi demanded. “Don’t think, I’ll tell you—it’s been three years. Three
years,
Madeline. What is one week going to do to your life? What is one week going to do to the DiNapoli listing, which I promise you isn’t moving any quicker than when you left? What’s one week to your mother, for Chrissakes? If you aren’t there next week she’ll find a new boyfriend and move on.”

“Hey!” Madeline said. “Thanks a lot! You make it sound as if I’m not necessary for anyone or anything.”

“You are very necessary to
me.
You are necessary to your office and to a couple of other people. But you are also someone who lives in a bubble—”

“God, not the bubble again,” Madeline groaned.

“Yes, the bubble!” Trudi snapped. “You live in it, and you will die in it if you’re not careful! You’ve had something really extraordinary happen and you ought to at least hang around for more than twenty-four hours before you run. Promise me you will stay outside that goddamn bubble for one week, Madeline. Stay long enough to at least know if your sister is an alcoholic or if the other one is as young and dumb as she sounds.”

“You aren’t giving me any credit, Trudi,” Madeline snapped back. “I’ve checked it out. There is nothing for me here but a phantom dad, two women I don’t know, and a huge mess of an inheritance. That’s not something you can box up and put on the shelf in a couple of days. No,” she said quickly when Trudi tried to argue. “I know what I’m doing.”

Trudi sighed with resignation. “You always do this, Mad. You always run away.”

“I am
not
running away!”

“Yeah, you are. You would rather let something like that ranch—which sounds gorgeous by the way—slip through your fingers than deal with the people involved because you are so afraid of rejection.”

“
Ohmigod
!” Madeline cried. “Will you please stop psychoanalyzing me? I am
not
afraid of rejection. I am being practical!”

“Whatever,” Trudi said dismissively. “I have to go. I don’t have time to fix your life, I’ve got my own. Oh, before I forget—Stephen called Rick to talk about you. He really likes you, Madeline, and he doesn’t understand why you stopped liking him. He said he’s been talking to that lawyer friend in Denver and has some information for you. Call him!”

“Leave it alone, Trudi.”

“No, I will not leave it alone. I love you that much, Madeline Pruett, I love you like a sister, and I am
not
afraid of rejection. I’ll talk to you later.” She hung up.

Madeline stared at her phone and muttered a few choice words about Trudi Feinstein’s bossiness under her breath. She was not afraid of rejection, for Pete’s sake. She was seventy-five percent sure she wasn’t.

She called her mother to report in. Her mother was probably on pins and needles wanting to know what had happened.…

No one answered.

She frowned; she could hear Trudi’s voice in her head saying,
I told you so.

Madeline tossed the cell phone onto the bed and padded across the bearskin rug to the drapes. She opened them to a bright, clear day.
She had to admit, the sky was a different, richer shade of blue than in Orlando.

Below her, people were milling about on the main street, and Madeline’s stomach growled. She would grab a bite in the café downstairs and then head out to the ranch to try and come to some agreement with Libby and Emma.

When Madeline made her way downstairs, she was surprised to see that Dani was not wearing a Guayabera shirt today, but rather, a sweatshirt that said
Pine River Eagles.

“Hello!” Dani sang out as Madeline entered the small café. “I’d about given you up for dead. How’s your head?”

“Better, thanks.”

“You keep taking those aspirin and drink lots of water. You’ll adjust to the altitude in a couple of days. Want something to eat before you head back out to Homecoming today?”

Madeline had been about to say she wouldn’t be here in a couple of days, but was drawn up short by the fact that Dani knew where she was going. Dani laughed at her look of surprise. “I’ll just bet you think I’m one of those small-town busybodies you read about in beach novels. Well, I’m not. It so happens that Jackson Crane was in for breakfast.”