The Ranch She Left Behind (24 page)

That was probably because Rowena had asked him. He liked Rowena, she could tell. Rowena had explained that there would be story time and art and games and the Geezers were coming to do a talent contest.

It was going to be awesome, and with that ahead of her, she was willing to leave without complaining.

She had thought about taking some pictures of the wedding and putting them on Facebook so that Stephanie and Becky and everybody back in Chicago could see how cool it was in Colorado.

But she never got around to it. People had always been coming up, asking her for something, as if she were part of the family, as if they really needed her. They asked her to dance with old Mr. Harper, who shocked her by being awesome, in spite of the cane. They asked her to get some coffee from the tent for the lady who had started crying because the flowers were so beautiful. They asked her to talk Alec into singing “Red River Valley” with the Geezers. Dallas, Gray, old Mr. Harper and at least two of the boys from day camp had all asked her to dance slow dances.

Even Dad danced with her. He was a pretty good dancer, too. And of course, she and Alec got up for every single line dance, but that wasn’t like a couples thing, so it didn’t mean anything. He was too young to dance with, like that, and besides he kind of felt like a brother.

“Penny is a really good dancer, isn’t she?”

She and her dad were driving home. They were about halfway there, and she’d started to get sleepy. She had her eyes shut, and her head was resting against the window. She almost felt as if she were talking to herself.

But her dad clearly heard her.

“Yeah.” He sounded surprised, almost as surprised as Ellen had been. She’d never seen Penny dance even once, and yet their landlady was clearly the best dancer in the room.

“I could hardly stop watching her,” Ellen admitted. She probably wouldn’t have said it, except that she was tired and so strangely happy. “Her bridesmaid’s dress was pretty. And she doesn’t really look exactly like anybody else, does she?”

Her dad hesitated a minute. “No,” he said, finally. “She doesn’t.”

“But it’s more than that.” Ellen tried to think it through. “She’s not show-offy when she dances, but it’s like…it is like she dances the way she paints.”

Though her eyes were still closed, she heard Dad turn toward her. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’m not sure.” Ellen wondered if this would make sense to anyone who didn’t paint. He just drew blueprints, which were different, all hard lines and no color or swooshing. “It’s like…like she’s really paying attention to what’s beautiful about music, and what’s beautiful about people dancing.”

Her father was quite a minute.

“Yes,” he said, then. “That’s a good way to put it.”

Penny’s dancing had been so special, in fact, that Ellen had secretly begun trying to imitate it.

But she didn’t want to tell her dad that part.

Penny’s dancing had been really feminine, but not in a fake or trashy way. Her mom had been feminine; Ellen had always known that. When Lydia Thorpe walked down the street, men turned around to stare at her, and they didn’t even try to hide it. But there was something about their stares… They always made Ellen uncomfortable, as if they were thinking things they shouldn’t be thinking about somebody’s mom. Behind their eyes, their thoughts looked hot and dirty.

Men looked at Penny, too. But they didn’t look hot or dirty when they did it. They looked the way puppies looked when they watched their owners drive up, and they sat at attention, tails thumping on the ground in excitement. Or else they looked kind of happy-stunned, like maybe they’d just seen a fairy, or a ghost, or something else they’d only read about in books.

Only a few of the men who watched Penny didn’t look happy. They just looked quietly sad, as if she made them homesick. As if she made them think about something that was gone forever, but they were still glad for the chance to think about it.

She felt herself drifting toward sleep. She couldn’t remember quite how she’d gotten on to this subject…

Oh, yeah. The Facebook pictures. The ones still locked in her camera. With one thing and another, she’d never gotten around to posting any pictures.

And suddenly she realized that was probably a very good thing.

Stephanie wouldn’t think a bunch of old cowboys line dancing outside under a string of lights and a garland of wildflowers looked like fun at all.

“Oh, well,” Ellen said, yawning as she opened her eyes heavily, and briefly glimpsed the moonlight pouring by in creamy white streams. “That just shows how stupid Stephanie is.”

“What?” Her dad glanced over toward her side of the car.

She smiled and shut her eyes again. “Nothing.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE
T
HURSDAY
AFTER
the wedding, Barton James pulled up in front of a tattoo parlor. He scowled at the storefront, then transferred his scowl to Penny. Though it was only three in the afternoon, on a beautiful fall day in a safe little city like Silverdell, he obviously didn’t approve.

“You sure you don’t want me to wait for you?”

“I’ll be fine,” Penny said. “I could walk home, if I had to. It isn’t two miles back to the duplex.”

The tattoo studio was on the far side of Elk Avenue, but in a town the size of Silverdell nothing was very far from anything else. She was telling the literal truth. If her car wasn’t out of the mechanic’s by the time she needed to leave, she really could walk home.

It wasn’t as if getting a tattoo left you laid up, like getting your appendix removed.

She patted his shoulder and opened her car door.

“Well,
I
think I should wait,” he grumbled. “You know what kind of people hang out in places like that.”

Penny laughed. “People like me?”

“No.” He lowered his tangled white eyebrows over his sharp blue eyes. “You don’t
hang out
in places like that. You may go in there, this one time, but that’s not the same thing. No sir. Whatever bumblebee has itself stuck under your saddle, I have no idea. But I’d be willing to bet you haven’t talked to Rowena about this. Or Bree, for that matter.”

There wasn’t much he could have said that would have been as irritating as that particular comment. She got out, shut the door behind her, then leaned in through his open window, giving him a scowl that was every bit the match of the one he’d given her.

“I don’t need my sisters’ permission to get a tattoo. I’m twenty-seven. I can get drunk, join the Blue Angels and have ‘Johnny Depp’ tattooed on my rear end if I want to, and neither Ro nor Bree has anything to say in the matter.”

He grinned, though he tried to bite it back by chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Nobody said anything about getting permission, Spitfire. You go to your family to talk things over because nobody’s head is right every single time. Now and then, you’ve got mud in your eyes, and you need somebody else to help you see what’s what.”

Yeah, Barton James was the best. She knew he had called her
Spitfire
the way people called a shy girl
Chatty
or a giant man
Tiny,
but she liked the sound of it anyhow. Maybe that’s what she’d ask the guy to give her—a tattoo that said
Spitfire.

“I know what’s what.” She touched her purse with a smile. “I’ve got a numbered list of what’s what.”

“Whatever that means.” Though he rolled his eyes, he moved the gearshift to Drive. “But I’ve said my piece. My momma always told me, say what you’ve gotta say, but then let it be. Cornering ain’t the same as convincing.”

“Smart lady, your mom.” Penny extended her arm a little farther and wiggled her fingers, indicating that she wanted a goodbye hug.

He took her hand. “Oh, well. At least get a good one. No Johnny Depp. I’m begging you, Spitfire. No Johnny Depp.”

She shook her head, gave him one last squeeze, then pulled her hand back. “Bye, Barton.”

As he drove away, she turned toward the tattoo studio. It definitely wasn’t trying to blend in. Its signage was all yellow letters on red background, big letters in some font she subliminally associated with the circus. Needles ‘N’ Pins, it said, and under that, in the same font, only slightly smaller, Art Tattoos and Body Piercing.

You couldn’t see into the shop. Every inch of the plate-glass windows was covered with examples of the artist’s work. Mermaids, guns, barbells, hearts, American flags, dragons, Celtic knots, fairies, about fifty different scripts of the word
Mom.
She moved to the window to the right of the door.

She wondered how they managed to make the tattoo look exactly like these samples. Did it matter whether the artist was…well, an artist? Did tattoos ever go horribly wrong? She was pretty sure she’d heard of misspelled words. And then, of course, there was the dreaded “I thought I’d love you forever, but it’s only been six months, and already I hate you” problem.

Her stomach fluttered, and she realized that she probably should have done some more research. She hadn’t, because every time she did an internet search on the word
tattoo
the pictures scared her to death. People lying on their stomachs while being drawn on with needles by men who appeared to be wearing elbow gloves made of starbursts and skulls with rainbows and roses growing out of the eyeholes.

But she probably should at least have looked into which of the employees here was the best. And when he would be on duty.

She walked on beyond the studio, trying to get her stomach to settle down before she went in. This stupid fear—this was why she
had
to go through with it. If she was ever going to master her fears, she had to start somewhere.

Easier to start here, than, for instance, on the white-water rafting trip, where every minute would feel like imminent death by drowning.

Or in the front foyer of her childhood home. Or at her father’s graveside.

She had almost reached the ice-cream shop when she squared her shoulders and turned around.

She retraced her steps. Bookstore, diner, drug store, ski shop. Tattoo studio. But she kept going, down the other end, the less chi-chi end. Payday loan, dollar store, thrift store, do-it-yourself pest control. U-turn, and back again.

Maybe she should just quickly stop in at the bookstore and see if there were any books about tattoos. There might be a checklist, things to watch out for.

She probably would run into someone she knew. At least Fanny Bronson, who had taken over for her father some years ago. Penny liked the woman, who was Rowena’s age, just a few years older than Penny herself. Fanny was a little odd, but smart. She had to be, in this new world of digital book-buying, to continue to defy the odds and make a profit.

But she also had discretion. She probably had guessed a thousand Dellian secrets, based on who ordered a copy of
Bankruptcy Law
and who spent hours in the self-help section, then purchased
Winning Back Your Wife.
But she’d never been known as a gossip.

So she wasn’t likely to broadcast that Penny Wright had been leafing through a book about tattoos. Not that it mattered, Penny told herself sternly as she pushed open the door and marched in. She was getting a tattoo, for pity’s sake, not robbing a bank.

As it turned out, Fanny wasn’t even there. But Max was.

He stood in the children’s section with a large stack of books under his arm. Penny tilted her head to catch a glimpse of the titles. Art books. How-tos as well as big, colorful coffee table volumes on Monet, Renoir, Sargent, Picasso. The expensive kind with gorgeous color plates.

The sight made her feel warm inside. What a super dad he was! She remembered asking her own father for a sketchbook once. He had swiveled his desk chair, reached across his ledgers and handed her a stack of printer paper.

She wondered if Ellen had any idea how lucky she was. Probably not. And maybe that was as it should be. Maybe a little girl should be able to take her father’s love for granted.

“Hi, Max,” she said, quietly enough that she didn’t draw a lot of attention from the other customers. Bronson’s Books had been a fixture on Elk Avenue for three generations, and people tended to hang out there whenever they had time to kill. Waiting for car repairs, as Penny was. When their table at Donovan’s wasn’t quite ready. While a spouse played around at Miller’s Hardware.

Today, there were at least half a dozen customers in the store. Max was the only one in the children’s section, though.

“Hi, there,” he said, looking pleased to see her. They had both studiously avoided the back deck, especially at night, so in spite of the fact that they technically lived under the same roof they hardly ever met. “Everyone at the ranch recovered from the wedding?”

“Absolutely. Actually, we’re a bit bored without all the excitement.”

“How are the newlyweds?”

She grinned. “Disgustingly blissful. It really shows you why people take honeymoons. It’s not for the married couple. It’s to spare everyone else the embarrassment of watching them drool all over each other.”

In the week since the wedding, the drooling showed no signs of abating. Bree and Gray’s honeymoon had to be put off because he had a prize mare within a few days of foaling, but they didn’t seem to mind a bit. In fact, Penny wasn’t sure they’d even noticed.

They’d more or less been holed up in the cute little three-room apartment he’d built at the new Gray Stables facility, emerging every now and then, with swollen lips and glazed eyes, to check on the horses, or to go out for Chinese.

Gray’s horse-breeding business was on Bell River land, technically. They’d given him a ninety-nine year lease for a hundred acres out on the western slope. Rowena and Penny had agreed to rent it for a song, because when he fell in love with Bree, he knew that meant he’d have to relocate here, instead of taking her to his ranch in California.

She’d only just found her way home, to Silverdell, to Rowena, and to making peace with her past. Gray saw that he couldn’t ask her to pull up roots, even for him. So he’d done the pulling, and started over with her.