A Rancher To Remember. Patricia Johns

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СКАЧАТЬ up when you said you weren’t into baseball,” he replied. “What’s up with that?”

      “Stuff I’d rather forget,” she said, forcing a smile, then nodded toward the coffee maker. “You remember how to make coffee.”

      Sawyer nodded. “I realized that yesterday. How did I take my coffee when you knew me?”

      “How have you been taking it so far?” she asked.

      He screwed the lid back onto the coffee canister. “Lloyd has been handing it to me black.” He flicked the button on the coffee maker and turned back toward her. “I’ve been following suit when I make it myself. Is that how I liked it?”

      Olivia shrugged. “When I knew you, you used to take a dribble of cream and about five spoons of sugar.”

      He frowned slightly. “That sounds gross. Are you sure?”

      “Maybe you changed how you took it,” she suggested. “I mean, maybe you started worrying about your health.”

      Or maybe Mia had started worrying about it. Olivia couldn’t speak for what had happened in his marriage.

      “I’ll try it both ways,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you’re right.”

      And maybe she wasn’t... She’d adored Sawyer, but had she known him as well as she thought?

      “How much did you and I hang out?” Sawyer asked.

      Was he thinking the same thing?

      “Quite a bit, back in the day,” she said. “After you graduated, a lot of your friends had left for the city, and I didn’t have a lot of friends anymore, besides Mia. So you and I kind of bonded over the lack of other options.”

      “That doesn’t sound like a great foundation.” But a smile tugged up the corner of his lips. “What do you mean, anymore? What happened to your friends?”

      “I wasn’t terribly popular,” she hedged. “I was quiet. Kind of boring. And senior year, everyone decided to pick on me.”

      “Oh...” His gaze filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

      “It was a good thing, in a roundabout way,” she countered. “For us, at least. We might not have given each other much of a chance if we’d had other options. We wanted opposite things out of life, so we were a bit of an odd couple.”

      “Did we date?” he asked. “You called us a couple.”

      “No, I meant that in the most platonic way possible.” She felt her smile slip.

      “But you were friends with my wife,” he said. “I’m just trying to piece it all together here.”

      “Before you two started dating, Mia hung out with us a lot, too, and she was crazy about you. She harbored this huge crush, and it took you a while to clue in.”

      Sawyer met her gaze, but didn’t answer.

      “So, maybe you had more options than I did,” Olivia conceded. “But Mia was beautiful and fun, and she could ride better than you.”

      “I don’t know why, but I feel mildly insulted with that,” he said with a soft laugh. “How well do I ride?”

      “Better than you play baseball,” she joked. But then she remembered that he didn’t know, and she sobered. “You’re a really good rider. You always have been. You go on the cattle drives to move the herd, and you come back with all these stories about hungry wolves and belligerent cows.” She paused, remembering the way his eyes would sparkle when he embellished his tales. “You taught me to ride.”

      “Am I a good teacher?” he asked.

      “No.” She crossed her arms, as if she needed to defend her position on that. But he really hadn’t been. He expected his students to function on instinct, like he did.

      “No?” He laughed softly. “But you said I taught you. That’s something.”

      “You’re bossy,” she countered. “You yell a lot when you’re teaching. After that first ride, I wouldn’t take your calls for a week.”

      “Oh. Sorry. Obviously, we made up.”

      “Just barely.” Olivia chuckled. “We had fun, mostly. When you weren’t bossing me around and telling me I’d get myself killed. We were good friends.”

      “So, this is your chance to turn the tables, I guess,” he said, sobering. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

      “I’m a nicer teacher,” she said with a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll take my revenge.”

      The coffee maker burbled as it dribbled fresh brew into the pot, and Bella toddled up to her father and held a plastic toy up for his inspection. Sawyer bent down, looked at the toy seriously, then said, “Very nice. I like it.”

      Bella looked at the plastic block in her fingers as if seeing it again for the first time. Then she smiled up at Sawyer, her blue eyes glittering.

      The girls remembered their father just fine, and they obviously recognized their daddy in this broken version of him. Olivia recognized the old Sawyer in him, too. She always had been able to get him to relax. But there was something different there, as well...something foreign around the edges. When you stripped away someone’s memories, maybe it loosened up other parts of their personality that had been held down.

      Or maybe there had been sides to him that she’d never known...that he’d never opened to her. That was possible, too.

      But she had been his friend, even if she’d kept her distance in the last few years.

      Olivia pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and glanced down at the screen. No missed calls. That meant that despite all the messages she’d left for her brother, telling him she was going to be in Beaut, Brian hadn’t called her. She’d come back to town for Brian...to try and mend this rift between them. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have returned. Her life here was over—this town couldn’t be home for her again.

      “Sawyer, I’m going to go make a call,” she said.

      Sawyer looked up from where he crouched next to his daughters. “Sure.”

      Olivia slipped out the side door and walked a few paces away from the house. She could hear the growl of a tractor’s engine somewhere in the distance, and the sunlight warmed her shoulders. There was no breeze right now, just sunny warmth, and she dialed her brother’s number once more.

      It rang four times, then the voice mail kicked in: “Hi, it’s Brian. You know what to do.”

      She hung up. She’d already left three messages.

      Lord, what do I do? she prayed. He won’t talk to me, and I’m kind of intimidated here. He’s my little brother, and he can’t stand me. Do I deserve this?

      Olivia had said she was leaving Beaut in order to go to school, but there was СКАЧАТЬ