Last Chance Llama Ranch (27 page)

He didn't back down. If anything, he puffed up to meet her belligerence. “Just giving her majesty her due, Miss Manning.”

Not “Merry.” Not “City Girl.” Not even “Wookiee.”
Ruh roh
. Merry's buzz—and the fact that he was stealing the first real moment of acceptance she'd felt in far too long—made her bold. “What did I say? Did I put too much Studly Sam in my latest article?”

“You put too much of
something
in there, all right. I think we call it Rich Girl Privilege.”

Merry's jaw dropped. “Did you really just say what I think you said?”

“Damn right,” he snarled. “You think you can just swan into our town and make fun of everyone in it for your own amusement? Make us look like jackasses—or worse, charity cases—for ratings?”

“I wouldn't…I'd never!”

“You
did
,” Sam said savagely. “And the worst of it is, you used my kids to do it.”

“What are you
talking
about?”

“Sam, maybe you should dial it back a notch,” Jane advised, coming to stand at Merry's side. “Here, have a brewski, take a break.” She tried to hand Sam a longneck.

He ignored her and the other Happy Hookers, who were staring at him, mouths agape. He was laser-focused on Merry.

“What am I talking about? How about using a bunch of kids who've already got it harder than most for your own selfish purposes. You know, I actually believed you cared for them. The way you were with them…you really seemed to give a damn. I guess I should congratulate you on your acting skills.” He shook his head in disgust. “Exploiting those kids was beyond anything I could have expected, even from a woman like you.”

“Wait, what?” Merry gasped. “‘
Exploiting
' them? And what the hell do you mean, ‘a woman like me'?”

“A selfish, thoughtless prima donna who cares for nothing but her own fame.” Sam's eyes were incandescent blue. “I want you off the ranch by morning. If you need help packing I'll be more than happy to help—by tossing your shit in the creek!”

“Samuel Cassidy!” Dolly snapped. “First of all, it ain't your ranch to go tossing folks off of. You may be my heir and my blood, but as long as I'm still kicking, the Last Chance is my place, and in my place my rules go. Number one being, ‘don't be an asshole.'” She pointed her crochet hook at him like she might shove it up his nose. “I got rid of the last asshole when I sent my husband packing, and I'll be damned if I let 'em start sprouting up like mushrooms, even if they are my own kin. And second, you better explain why you're throwing out accusations like a crazy person all of a sudden, because not even a whole
pitcher
of Bob's margaritas could account for your ill-mannered behavior right now.” Dolly crossed her arms and glared at her nephew.

Sam gritted his teeth, obviously trying to rein in his fury out of respect for his aunt. “Because of
her
, they're treating the kids like charity cases!”

“Who is?”

“They! The Internet!” Several sets of brows rose, and Sam gestured impatiently, flapping his hand into the ether. “Merry's macchiato-sipping hipster audience. The ‘Don't Do What I Did' fans. They started up some kind of fund drive for the kids, to buy them
camping gear
.”

They did?
This was news to Merry. Maybe that was what Zelda had meant a few minutes ago, and why the kids had been so excited looking over Zel's tablet earlier. Merry hadn't had time to check her comments since she'd posted the column this afternoon. She whipped out her phone and started the app that took her to her page on
Pulse
, squinting booze-blurred eyes to bring it into focus. Sure enough, there it was in the comments. Someone had started a crowd fund campaign for the kids. She clicked the link provided.

Ho-ly
…

It already had something like three thousand dollars in it. And REI had promised to match the funds, plus provide tents and sleeping bags with each of their names monogrammed on them. Merry blew out a breath. She'd never expected this, never imagined her column could provoke such an instantaneous reaction. Never dreamed people's lives could be affected in any real way. It was sobering. But also exhilarating. “Damn,” she breathed, and Jane grabbed her phone to look.

The vet whistled. “That's a lot of camping gear.”

“So they got some tents and such. What's wrong with that?” Dolly wanted to know.

Sam clenched his hands into Hulk-like fists. The veins in his neck bulged. “The whole point of what I teach is
self-reliance
!”

A tiny, margarita-induced laugh escaped Merry's lips.

“You think it's funny? You think embarrassing those kids in front of the whole world is some big
joke
?”

“No, of course not! I would never…I don't think they're embarrassed, are they?” She looked over to the booth where Thad and Zel were still canoodling. Joey was engrossed in Zel's tablet, ignoring the two. None of them looked upset to Merry.

“They'd hardly tell you, would they? You're the ‘famous athlete.' The ‘visiting writer.' They're half in awe of you. But that doesn't mean they aren't being exploited and objectified for your own glorification.”

Merry had had enough. Liquor stoked her bravado and she got in his face, enjoying her height advantage for once. “Oh, come on, Sam. It's camping gear! It's not as if I started a telethon for ‘Sammy's Kids.' One of my readers started a Kickstarter campaign, is all, and I guess it took off. I had no way of knowing it would happen. I didn't suggest it, or even have anything to do with it! I wasn't deliberately trying to make them look hard up. But sometimes…” She shrugged. “The Internet has a life of its own.”

“So you're saying you bear no responsibility for what happens as a result of your writing?” If he'd seemed angry before, now Sam was apoplectic.

“Sam, they got
camping gear
. And maybe couple of girls friended Thaddeus on Facebook. It's not like I put their pictures on milk cartons.”

“You really don't get it, do you? You can't even see your own entitlement, you're so far up your own ass!”

Now, in the course of any given social occasion, there will be times when a natural hush just happens to fall. Total silence will simply settle over a crowd, at random, as if everyone's train of thought had been interrupted at the same time. And no matter how crowded the venue, during such a moment, one can hear a flea sneeze.

That moment occurred just as Sam hollered “
up your own ass!
”

Sixty pairs of eyes swiveled toward them, and Merry went beet red, then blanched so white her freckles stood out sickly, even in the cozy lighting of the café. She took a step back from Sam. People were whispering, pointing, staring agog. It was every nightmare moment of rejection and public humiliation she'd ever feared, rolled into one.

No, it was one particular humiliation. One she'd never forget as long as she lived.

Merry was sixteen years old.
Exactly
sixteen, as a matter of fact. She was also, to her chagrin, dressed in the tea-length Oscar de la Renta cocktail dress her mother had picked out, in a soft peach hue that was, admittedly, fairly flattering to her skin. It was less flattering to the bruises and abrasions all over her body, and the knee brace that encased her left leg.

The whispers of her peers made this all too apparent to Merry. The gaggle of girls from the UN school, with their shiny, swinging locks curled just so, their designer dresses and expertly applied makeup, were all staring and whispering behind their hands. She could feel their eyes on her, raking her from stem to stern and seeing every flaw. The broad shoulders that made mockery of the dress's dainty straps. The sturdy legs, strong from years of near-constant skiing; the bulky brace; the flats she'd worn because, even if she could have negotiated the waxed marble floors of the chateau's ballroom with her bad knee, she'd have looked like a transvestite in any kind of heels. The scrapes, bruises, cuts from her recent encounter with the barrier wall of the course she'd crashed.

“She's a
freak
,” Merry heard one girl titter to another.

“So pathetic,” her friend agreed, rolling her eyes. “Why does she
bother
?”

Merry bothered because her mother made her. This whole party, this excruciating, naked-in-the-schoolyard nightmare of a party—had been Gwendolyn's brainchild. She'd been planning it for months, and none of Merry's pleas, threats, and tantrums had had the slightest impact. She was stuck with a sweet sixteen, whether she liked it or not.

Merry did not.

She could see Gwendolyn, glittering in a vintage Yves Saint Laurent gown, standing beside her husband and son, Pierce the picture of dignity as he chatted with some of the other dignitaries whose offspring attended the school, Marcus effortlessly sporting black tie and looking like the budding god he was already well on his way to becoming. The girls weren't giggling over
him
, Merry thought, except perhaps over who might score with the gorgeous twenty-four-year-old. His clutch of friends, home from college or starting careers in their family's footsteps, were eyeing the nubile girls and nudging one another. None of them was looking at Merry, of course.

Which was fine with her. She preferred being invisible to being mocked.

Then Merry saw her mother whispering to one of Marcus's friends, her hand on the arm of his dinner jacket. The young man looked dazzled, nodding at whatever she'd said. He started across the dance floor, headed straight for Merry.

Oh no. It was Paolo. Paolo, who Merry had been crushing on since she was thirteen, and who had never so much as deigned to notice she was alive before tonight. He was bearing down on her now with a look of resignation that Merry knew all too well. Her mother had coerced him into partnering her.
You'd think she'd have given up after the fiasco at my junior debutante presentation last year
, Merry thought.

Paolo arrived at her side, a pleasant expression tacked on his face. He looked up, and up, and up into her eyes. He was probably a good six inches shorter than she was.
Mother couldn't find a taller sacrificial lamb?
Merry thought bitterly. Paolo took a deep breath, obviously steeling himself. “Would you care to dance, Meredith?” he asked, his Italian accent utterly sexy.

“No!” Merry blurted.

Loudly.

One of those awkward silences fell. The band had just finished one song with a swoop and a flourish, and the next had yet to begin. The ballroom was suddenly as quiet as the grave. Except for the sound of Merry's humiliation.

She couldn't take the hypocrisy, the pitying look in his eyes. “No, Paolo. You don't want to, and I don't want to, so let's just skip it and you can ask someone you
really
want to dance with!” She turned and clomped off the dance floor, tears blurring her eyes. Still, she could
feel
the scandalized delight of her peers as she fled for the ladies' room as fast as her knee brace would allow.

She shut the door and collapsed onto the brocade-covered couch in the lounge of the ornate restroom. She breathed heavily, trying not to cry. The flounce of her dress had caught in the hinge of her knee brace, and she yanked it out, not caring as stitches popped.

The door swung open. Merry didn't look up. She knew who it was; she could smell the Chanel No. 5. A cool hand alighted on her shoulder, stayed there in silence. Finally, Merry found the courage to look up, seeing her mother's face reflected in the gold-framed vanity mirror, her perfect lips pursed in a way Merry knew all too well. “Why can you not just
fit in
, Meredith?” her mother sighed.

“Why can't you just let me
not
fit in?” Merry cried. Her fists clenched and tears spilled from her eyes. “I never wanted this stupid party. I never
asked
for it. I wanted out of it so badly I crashed on
purpose
, Mother!”

Gwendolyn went ashen. “What did you say?” Her hand dropped away from Merry's shoulder.

Merry gestured to her bruises, the knee brace. “I wanted out, Mother. And you wouldn't listen. It seemed like the only way. But I guess I didn't crash hard enough to get you off my back.”

Little did she know how, twelve years later, the universe would mock her for tempting fate.

And how two years after
that
, she'd find herself once again failing to fit in.

Merry felt the tears start as she stared at Sam, who quite clearly thought she had no place in Aguas Milagros.

The patrons at Bob's café suddenly became extremely interested in their beers and burritos, but Merry could still feel eyes glancing surreptitiously at them. She found herself trembling. She was beyond embarrassed, she was
mortified
. The look of disgust in Sam's eyes was more than she ever wanted to see. Maybe he was right. Maybe she
was
thoughtless, entitled. Maybe she
had
swanned into this town and used its inhabitants for her own ends.

“I…I don't know what to say…”

“You didn't have that problem when you were writing that column, did you?”

“Sam,” Jane warned. “Cool it.”

Dolly stood up next to her. “You're out of line, boy. And you're embarrassing me and Merry both.”

Bob wafted up to the group. “Sam. Buddy. I'm all for self-expression. It
is
open-mic night after all. But if you're going to be a dick about it, I'll ask you to do your expressing outside.”

“You're taking her side on this? All of you?” Sam's eyes darted from one to another, taking in the disapproving expressions of his friends and family. He looked wounded, betrayed.

Bob patted his arm. “As Christopher Hitchens once said, ‘There can be no progress without head-on confrontation.' And in the interest of philosophy and truth, I'm down with a little contention now and again. I just like to maintain a certain vibe in my place of business. And, frankly, my friend, you're harshing everybody's mellow.”