A Rancher To Remember. Patricia Johns

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      While he didn’t remember anything about them, being their father still mattered. In fact, as confused as he was, focusing on being their father had been what had held him together so far.

      Sawyer pulled off the cap and took Lizzie’s hand. He wrote a small L on the back of her hand, and then blew on it to dry the ink. Lizzie looked down at her hand in curiosity, and he put her down on the kitchen floor, then reached for Bella’s hand. She held hers out happily, and he wrote a small B.

      Bella pursed her lips to try and blow, and he laughed, then blew on her hand to make sure the ink was dry.

      “There,” he said. “That’s one problem solved.”

      It felt good—a victory. Olivia put Bella down, and the girls scampered off to a bucket of toys in the corner and dumped it out. He watched them for a moment... It still felt unreal that he was a father and that these little girls were actually his.

      “What was I like?” he asked, glancing toward Olivia.

      “You were serious,” Olivia said. “And stubborn. Really stubborn. You knew what you wanted and you didn’t let anything get in your way. You wanted to help your uncle grow this ranch—you thought you could double the herd size with the right support.”

      “Hmm.” A goal. He liked the sound of that. “How did you and I know each other?”

      “We met at the diner where I was working. We just kind of...clicked. It went from there.”

      “And you live in town still?” he asked.

      “No, I moved for college,” she said. “Right after you got married. I live in Billings now. I work at the hospital there.”

      He frowned slightly, taking her in—the tangled curls, the soft brown eyes, the pink in her cheeks. “What was my wife like?”

      Olivia’s expression froze, and then she glanced away.

      “Perfect for you,” she replied. “Mia loved horses and cattle. She wanted a ranch life. And she was quiet enough to balance you out.”

      “I take it you didn’t want the ranch life like we did,” he said. “Since you moved.”

      “I wanted...” She looked around the kitchen, her gaze turning inward. “I didn’t want to stick around Beaut. I guess I just wanted more.” She winced. “That sounds insulting. I don’t mean it to be. I just didn’t want a rural life. I wanted a new start. I wanted...streetlights and a nightlife, and more people. I was tired of living in a place where everyone knew my personal business, or thought they did.”

      She was beautiful, but it wasn’t her looks that kept his eyes riveted to her. There was something there, just beneath the surface, that he could almost remember. He hadn’t felt that about any of the other people from his forgotten life that he’d met so far. But he had a foggy memory—a black coat and a woman facing away from him. He put out his hand and touched her. She turned—

      Then nothing. He couldn’t get any more of it, but it felt connected to her. Or was the memory of his wife and talking to a woman bringing it back? He couldn’t tell. Not remembering was a strange weight. He was sad—or was that sadness some part of a memory that he couldn’t place, like the woman in the black coat? He wished he knew. It was confusing and frustrating. All he had was these shards of memory that didn’t fit anywhere, and sadness so deep that it made his chest sore.

      “Will you help me to remember it?” he asked quietly. “That life with my wife. My daughters.”

      “I wasn’t here for most of that part,” she said with a quick shake of her head.

      “Right...” So she might not be able to help with that as much as he’d hoped, but still, when he looked at her, that memory of the coat kept brushing so close that he could almost touch it. “What about our friendship? I have a feeling that you mattered to me, too.”

      Olivia blinked up at him and she opened her mouth to say something, then stopped.

      “Did you matter to me?” he asked. He needed to know that much.

      She nodded. “Yes. But Mia was the one who deserved you.”

      What did that mean? He was about to ask, but then one of the toddlers threw a plastic cup across the kitchen and it clattered into a corner, breaking the moment. Sawyer and Olivia both looked in that direction, and Sawyer cleared his throat.

      “It’s a lot to ask to help a man get his memory back, I know...but I need help.”

      “I’ll do what I can,” she agreed.

      “Thank you.” And he meant it from the bottom of his aching heart. For the first time in his limited memory, he felt something close to comfort.

       Chapter Two

      It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d known for so long, talking like virtual strangers. Sawyer wasn’t quite the same as Olivia remembered him. She figured that would still be true even if his mind was fully intact. He might not have his memory, but these last hard years hadn’t been erased; she could see that in the lines on his face and the strands of premature gray around his temples.

      Sawyer crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and reached for a stack of filters. Olivia watched him work for a moment. He’d bulked up a bit since the last time she’d seen him, making him move with more confidence. His hands—she noticed them as he fiddled with a coffee filter—looked tougher, more calloused. He glanced instinctively toward the toddlers, who sat in the middle of a plastic minefield of toys.

      “You used to like baseball,” Olivia said.

      “Did I?” Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “Playing it or watching it?”

      “Both,” she replied. “You played in high school, at least, but that was before I was in high school, and before we properly met. You’re older than me by a couple of years, by the way.”

      “Right.” He smiled.

      “We used to play catch in the park, you and me. When you weren’t working. You worked a lot.”

      “Did you play baseball, too?” he asked.

      Olivia would have...but there had been some women who’d liked to play with the local team who’d been part of spreading those rumors about her, and avoiding them had been simpler and less painful than standing her ground and facing them down. At that point she’d been so tired from the constant badgering around town, that she’d just let people believe what they wanted to about her. If they wanted to think she was sleeping around, then so be it, because no one was listening to her anyway. It was easier in the moment, at least. But it had confirmed that getting out of Beaut was the only option she had.

      “No, I wasn’t into baseball,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true—but it wasn’t really a lie. Joining the team would have been fun under different circumstances, but all she had was reality, not a fairy tale. And in her reality, baseball hadn’t been right for her at all.

      “Huh.” СКАЧАТЬ