The Wrangler. Lindsay McKenna

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      Val couldn’t help but smile. As she walked around the table and sat opposite her silver-haired grandmother with her sparkling, lively blue eyes, a tiny part of her felt happy. The burden of the years living at the Bar H had overwhelmed any optimistic feelings. Picking up the creamer, Val said, “This is nice. Thanks for having coffee ready for me.”

      “God’s lifeline.” Gus picked up her mug of black coffee. She raised it in a toast and then took a sip. “Westerners and their coffee are one and the same.” Sliding her work-worn fingers around the white mug, Gus watched Val as she poured the cream and sugar into her coffee. “I’m really sorry that I had to ask you to leave your career in the Air Force and come back home. I know what kind of courage it took to walk away from something you loved in order to help me.”

      Val tasted the strong coffee and set the mug down. She reached across the table and brushed her grandmother’s hand. “I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else,” she said in a whisper, a catch in her tone. “You know that.”

      Gus puckered her thin lips and nodded gravely. “You know, honey, when your mama died last year and you came home for the funeral, I knew…”

      “Knew what?”

      Gus shrugged and smiled a little. “I had this feeling you were coming home for good. Oh, I know you swore never to return.” Her silver brows fell and she scowled. “What I didn’t know is three months after your ma’s passin’, I’d fall out there at the corral and bust my femur.” She touched her right hip in memory of the accident.

      “I know you’re giving up your career as an intelligence officer for this ranch.”

      “I’m not doing it for the ranch. I’m doing it for you.”

      Gus was truly a savior in Val’s life. Shortly after Cheryl had been released from the hospital that time Buck had laid into her, Gus had suddenly lost her husband to a massive stroke. After the funeral, Gus had sold her husband’s ranch and moved into the Bar H house. Val soon discovered Buck wouldn’t beat up her and her mother with Gus around. From that time forward, she remembered Gus as a guardian angel.

      The tough woman rancher might have been only five foot tall and a weighed a mere hundred pounds, but Buck wasn’t about to push the envelope on her fierce protectiveness. And that’s exactly what Val and her mother had needed: protection from Buck. Gus had been a shield against her father for Val’s last two years spent in this house and for that she was forever grateful to her grandmother.

      Reaching out, Val took Gus’s hand and squeezed it. “You saved us from harm and that’s why I came back. I wanted to pay you back for what you did for Mom and me.”

      Gus sighed and her blue eyes teared up as she squeezed Val’s fingers. She gave Val a trembling smile and released her hand. “I didn’t know what Buck was doing until he landed your mother in the hospital. Cheryl never let on, not until I visited her in the hospital that time. Lord knows, I wished I’d known sooner.”

      “My father was so careful to bruise me where no one would see it,” Val muttered. “He knew what he was doing. But my mother didn’t have the guts to call the sheriff. I still can’t believe she’d let my father beat the hell out of me.” Val shook her head, anger bubbling up within her as it always did when she thought about that time in her life. “Why didn’t my mother ever protect us, Gus?”

      “Honey,” Gus said gently, “your ma was so beaten down by that bastard that she didn’t know she could ask for help and get it.”

      “Why didn’t you take that information to the sheriff, Gus? I could never understand.”

      “Because your ma pleaded with me not to. She wanted to go back to Buck. She said she loved him. And when Pete suddenly died, I knew I had to get over here. I felt Buck would leave you two alone if I was in the house, and I was right. So while I couldn’t go to the authorities, I did the next best thing.”

      “You have no idea how grateful I was that you moved here, Gus.” Val gave her a look of admiration. “You gave up your whole way of life in order to protect us. I’ll never forget what you did.”

      Giving her a gentle look, Gus said, “Honey, I’d do it all over again. I have no regrets about any of my decisions. My gut told me that Buck would stop if I was around. He was the kind of man who was so wounded, so scarred by life, that all he knew how to do was take his anger out on others. Truth be told, I had a baseball bat hidden in the closet and I swore to myself that if he ever lifted a pinkie against either of you, I was going to beat the hell outta him.” Gus gave her a wicked smile.

      Val knew she meant it. Even Buck knew it. “You’re a force of nature, Gus. You always have been.” Val managed a slight smile toward her plucky grandmother.

      Val unconsciously rubbed her tightened stomach. Looking around the warm, bright kitchen, she uttered, “This place is nothing but a vat of lousy memories for me, Gus.”

      Gus reached out and patted her hand. “Honey, I know how much I was asking of you when I made that phone call to you in Bahrain. I knew you hated Buck and hated this house.”

      Val slipped her hands around the mug of hot coffee. Warmth against the iciness inhabiting her knotted gut. “Like I said, I’m here because of you, Gus. If you hadn’t broken your hip, I couldn’t have gotten out of the Air Force. Because of the situation, I was able to get what they call a hardship discharge.”

      “I’m so glad you’re here. An elder like me with a cranky hip can’t run this place alone.”

      “Gus, why save the Bar H at all?” Val drilled a look into her grandmother’s wrinkled, darkly tanned features.

      “Why not?” The elder perked up, feisty now. “This is your home, Val. It doesn’t have to always be the terrible place it was for you as a child. You can create happy memories here, too. I had to sell our ranch in Cheyenne and it was the last thing I wanted to do. Pete’s family started that ranch a hundred and twenty years ago. It broke my heart to have to leave it in order to come back here. But I did it. Sometimes, life puts huge demands on us we don’t want to face. But we must sacrifice for a greater good.”

      Guiltily, Val said, “You gave up so much. I knew you were grieving for Grandpa Pete’s passing. And I know you two spent your sixty years together building that spread into a profitable ranch. You walked away from all of it for us, Gus. Even at sixteen I realized the terrible sacrifice you made for us.”

      “I did it,” Gus said, her voice firm, “because you two were far more important than our ranch. Family comes first. Always. You’re my granddaughter and all I ever wanted for you was happiness.”

      “That didn’t happen,” Val said in a rasp, fighting back rising emotions. She held her grandmother’s teary blue gaze.

      “I just wanted to put this whole damn thing behind me, Gus. I never wanted to be here again.”

      “Then,” Gus said gently, “maybe it’s time to start healing up from it? Everyone deserves to have a home. A place where they came from. A place where they can come back to and call their own. Us Westerners believe in family, home and loyalty. Maybe between you and me some healing and good might come from this.”

      “You’re such an optimist, Gus.”

      Perking up, she grinned. “Yes, I hold out hope for hopeless, that’s for sure. Pete СКАЧАТЬ