The Rancher's Prospect (14 page)

Tara was tempted to ask Sarah about her parents' marriage but worried it would be intrusive and might make her sad. Even now her expression shifted between pleasure and reflection, with hints of sorrow.

A man Tara remembered seeing at the hospital waved from across the tent, and Sarah waved back. “That's Parker reminding me that I've got to go out to the softball field,” she explained. “I'm going to cuddle my grandbabies while their parents play ball.”

“Have a good time.” Tara snagged a cookie and started back to the barn. To her surprise, Josh stopped her on the way.

“Tara, I want to apologize.”

“For what?” she asked. They'd barely crossed paths over the past week. “You didn't step on my toe while we were dancing and haven't insulted me in days.”

His jaw tensed then relaxed. “I deserve that, but I'm talking about the way I reacted when I learned about the party. I was frustrated because something else was happening on the ranch and no one had consulted me about it. It wasn't fair to put that on you.”

Josh was exhibiting something Tara admired—the ability to admit when he was wrong and apologize sincerely—but it made her uncomfortable. She was reluctant to see his better side, although she didn't want to examine her reasons for that reluctance too closely.

She was, however, able to understand his frustration.

“That's all right. It must be difficult in these circumstances.”

“Even so, I'd like to think I haven't been acting completely in character since the, um...accident.”

His voice had become choked, and Tara sympathized. The loss of his grandmother had obviously been hard on the whole family, especially the way it had happened. Having to then face the situation on the ranch must have made it more of a struggle. Even she knew that life had to continue after a painful loss, however difficult it might be.

“Are you claiming you've never lost your temper before?” she asked with a teasing smile, hoping to lighten the atmosphere. She was good at idle chitchat and quick repartee; it was when things got emotional that she struggled.

“Of course not,” he replied in a similar tone. “I'm a veritable saint.”

“Doesn't sainthood get boring?”

“Not at all. When I'm bored, I just polish my halo.”

“It's nice to know you keep yourself occupied.”

“Uncle Josh,” a voice called. “Can I talk to you?”

“On my way,” he called back.

Tara slipped past him into the barn, only to run into Andrew Whitlan. The young ranch hand's black eye had nearly disappeared, and he sported a red scar where Belle's hoof had struck his forehead.

“Hi, Andrew. You're looking better.”

“I'm doing great. Come with me a second, I want to introduce you to my girlfriend.”

Andrew steered her over to a young girl standing next to an older couple. “This is Ellie. Ellie, this is Tara.”

“Hi, Ellie,” Tara said. “Now I have a face to go with your voice.”

Ellie grinned. “Thanks for helping take care of Andrew. He says you helped lift him into the truck and everything. And you were so nice when you called to tell me about him being hurt.”

Tara smiled back. “I was happy to do whatever I could.”

“I saw you earlier, with Josh McGregor. Jeez, you're a good dancer.”

After they chatted a few minutes, Tara circled the edge of the dance floor to find Walt. He was seated in the same place as before, leaning forward.

“I was wondering if you were going to ignore me for the rest of the evening,” he said gruffly.

“Only half of it,” she returned.

He sat back in his chair and sighed. “In days past, Evelyn and I got applause on the dance floor, too. Guess my dancing days are over.”

“Hey, don't be so pessimistic,” she chided. “It's a slow number right now. Why don't we give it a shot?”

His face brightened, and he pushed himself to his feet. “Why not?”

As they joined the others in a waltz, Tara saw Josh come back inside and watch them. His expression was impossible to read.

* * *

C
ARL
MADE
SURE
he partnered with a wide variety of women—young, old, in between, married and single. All the while he was mentally kicking himself for giving in to temptation.

He had deeper feelings for Lauren than he'd ever experienced in the past, but he couldn't push her into something that would make them both miserable.

His father's job had ultimately driven his parents apart, his mother unable to deal with the stress of being married to a cop. He understood, in a way. It had to be hard to know the person you loved could leave for work and never come home again.

Ironically, now that his father was retired, they'd remarried. Yet they would never get back the lost years. Nor was his mother thrilled that her son had chosen law enforcement as a career instead of medicine like his sister.

He still remembered his mother's expression when she'd talked to him after his graduation from the police academy. Her words were practically burned into his brain.

You've made your decision, and I'm trying to respect it. But when you choose a wife, make sure she can accept your career. Your dad and I married right out of high school, and he decided during college to become a police officer. In a way, I never forgave him for it.

Curiously, when his father had been shot after the divorce, his mother had rushed to the hospital, staying at his bedside until the danger had passed. It had been surreal to see her skillfully manage the physicians and nurses, refusing to let them get away with vague answers or comforting platitudes. She'd dealt with it so well that he'd always wondered why she hadn't been able to handle the marriage.

Whatever the explanation for his parents' divorce, Carl knew all too well that it took a particular kind of personality to handle being a law enforcement wife.

Of course, it didn't mean Lauren couldn't work it out. She'd warned him off, but it was possible she would change her mind. He'd had more than one colleague whose girlfriend was initially resistant and then came to understand and be willing to accept the challenge.

On the other hand, he didn't want to hurt Lauren and had told her they could just be friends. He'd fudged on the note sent with the pansies. It had been an unconscious duplicity that he regretted, so now it would be up to her to change the conditions of their relationship. Of course,
she'd
kissed
him
...mixed signals again, and he wasn't sure what he was supposed to do.

* * *

J
OSH
WAS
RESTLESS
.
The Boxing N community party had always been his favorite social occasion, but his feelings were still mixed about having the event less than a year after losing Grandma Evelyn.

He'd danced, eaten, played softball on a family team formed by his nephew, but memories of his grandmother still filled his head.

When he returned to the barn after the game, the sight of Tara and his grandfather instantly grabbed his attention. They were waltzing. Slowly, to be sure, but dancing. Why did she
do
things like that? She had to realize how much pain it caused Grandpa.

More than that, it was a reminder of how everything had changed. The dance floor was a place where Walt and Evelyn had seemed to connect, and it had always been a treat to see them out there. Now Grandma was gone and Walt was dragging his leg where only a year before, he'd danced the night away.

Going over to them, Josh tapped his grandfather's shoulder. “May I cut in?”

A speculative gleam entered Walt's eyes before he nodded and relinquished Tara.

“People are going to talk,” she said when Walt was seated again. “Doesn't more than one dance with the same woman constitute a long-term commitment in your book?”

“Very amusing.”

“You didn't need to rescue your grandfather,” Tara continued, showing she'd understood his motives for cutting in. “Walt is capable of making up his own mind.”

“He shouldn't be dancing,” Josh gritted through his teeth.

“Right. He shouldn't be dancing, he shouldn't be riding and he shouldn't be making any decisions. In other words, he shouldn't be living.”

Josh was appalled. “I never thought that.”

“I didn't mean you wanted him to stop breathing,” she returned. “In fact, you're desperate to protect him from physical harm so he'll
keep
breathing. But Walt is obviously the kind of man who needs a reason to live.”

“You barely know him. He has a family who loves him and needs him. He knows that.”

She turned her copper-flecked eyes up to him. “I'm talking about quality of life.”

“Do we have to go over this again? Walt's life has always been about the ranch,” Josh murmured. “But he can't run it alone or do a fraction of the work needed to keep the place afloat. He just won't accept it.”

“Now we're back to whether
you
run the ranch or not.”

“Everything is connected.”

“No doubt.”

The song ended, with Josh ensuring they were on the opposite side of the barn from where his grandfather was sitting.

They muttered polite, insincere platitudes, and Tara walked away, the soft fabric of her dress shifting and flowing around her figure.

Josh sighed, wondering if his nephew wanted to play another softball game. That was one option. The other was running to his house for a cold shower.

CHAPTER TWELVE

A
FEW
DAYS
AFTER
the Boxing N party, Tara blinked at the yellowed sheaf of papers she'd unearthed from an old bureau in the back room of the office. She'd planned to put it with the rest of the historical records for future review, but something had caught her attention—the word
sapphires
.

The pages were loose, but had once been part of an ancient record book. They'd fallen behind one of the drawers and must have gone unnoticed for an undetermined length of time.

Sapphires found on south ridge.

Following the notation was a series of numbers and letters that didn't mean anything to Tara but were probably intended as directions or coordinates.

Weeks earlier she'd searched the internet for
sapphires
and
Montana
. Sapphires had been found in Montana during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The various articles were full of descriptions about alluvial deposits and other things that didn't mean much to her.

Trembling with excitement, Tara typed everything from the yellowed pages into the computer and emailed it to the address she'd set up for Walt. Next she scanned the pages and printed additional copies. That way she could be sure the information would be preserved.

Walt was at another doctor's appointment, or she would have gone to tell him immediately.

As she returned to her other work, she couldn't stop thinking about all the questions that had occupied her since she'd first learned there could be sapphires on the Boxing N. Could those be the mysterious source of cash that Walt had mentioned? Yet the Nelsons had arrived in Montana before sapphires had been found in the state.

And would the average rancher of the 1800s have recognized a raw sapphire if he found one? The pictures on the internet didn't look impressive, and it would be hard to determine gemstone quality without proper training.

With the self-discipline she'd learned over the years, Tara forced herself to focus on her work and was startled when Walt came through the door a short while later.

“Walt,” she exclaimed, excitement flooding back, “look at what I found today.”

She picked up the pages inside their protective sleeves and brought them to him.

Walt sat reading and rereading for several minutes. “Holy cow,” he murmured. “You found it. My great-grandfather claimed he'd found sapphires, but he was an old man by then and nobody believed him. Granddad said his father had written it all down, but he thought the records were lost when the old homestead burned.”

“Instead they were stuffed behind the bottom drawer of the old bureau in the back room.”

As she'd hoped, there was a sparkle of boyish enthusiasm in Walt's eyes. He pored over the papers again and again.

“I wasn't sure what all those numbers and letters and so on meant,” Tara said.

“I'll have to study the old deeds and plat maps.” He glanced at her. “Let's go through the rest of that stuff right now.”

She collected the two boxes of records from more than a century ago and sat next to Walt. She slipped a page into a protective sleeve, handed it to Walt, did the same with another and started reading.

Hours later, Tara glanced at her watch. “I hate to say it, but I have to leave. It's past seven and I promised Lauren I'd come over.”

“Can we pick this up first thing in the morning?”

“Absolutely.” She grinned. “This is much more fun than payroll records.”

Walt headed for his house while Tara locked up the office. She half waved at Josh when she saw him on his porch, and he half waved back at her. They'd been on stiffly polite terms since the party. She thought about stopping to tell him about the journal but decided it was Walt's news to share. Josh had resisted the sapphire story before, but now they had evidence.

* * *

J
OSH
WATCHED
T
ARA
'
S
Toyota Camry leave. She'd stayed later than usual, probably because she and his grandfather had been talking together in the office. Tara and Walt had formed an inexplicable friendship and he couldn't understand how a globe-trotting princess had connected with an elderly, self-contained Montana rancher.

Then realization suddenly struck.

Tara had grown up in foster homes without anyone to count on. She was probably looking at Walt as a sort of father or grandfather figure.

The humor was hard to escape. Walt had hardly been a grandfather to his own grandchildren.

Josh shook himself. He was being ungrateful. The old guy was hard to know, but there had been plenty of good times on the Boxing N when Josh was growing up.

The next morning he worked near the office, keeping watch, and was able to meet Tara when she arrived. Her eyes were sparkling.

“Hi,” he greeted her. “I guess yesterday was a full day.”

“Yes.” She seemed to be brimming with some sort of inner delight. “What did you think when Walt told you the news?”

For the first time in ages Josh had gone to bed early. He hadn't spoken to his grandfather the previous evening.

“We didn't talk last night,” Josh explained. “What's up?”

“No, it's his baby.” Her face brightened as she glanced at the main house. “Oh, good, here he is.”

Josh was surprised his grandfather was already up and around. In days past, he'd begun work by 5:00 a.m., but things had changed since the accident. There must have been something he found exciting to get him out so early.

They waited as Walt slowly made his way from the house to the office. Josh was impatient, wondering what was coming next. Did his grandfather have an idea that would further derail his plans for the ranch? Hell, what if it was something about that sapphire myth?

It didn't help that a fresh, sweet scent was coming from Tara, a faint combination of floral and mint, as though she'd just stepped from the shower with her teeth freshly brushed and her hair wrapped in a towel. It wasn't the most comfortable image for a man who'd been celibate for so long.

Somehow, the thought made Josh feel better. Tara had simply shown up in his life at the moment his libido was waking up and asserting itself again. It explained why he sometimes thought about her in the middle of the night or out riding fences.

“Morning, Josh.” Walt flashed a smile at Tara. “Did Tara tell you what she found?”

“She's saving it for you,” Josh told him, deciding that staying calm and disinterested was the best approach.

They all stepped inside.

To avoid Tara, Josh hadn't been in the office since signing checks for the last payroll. Now he glanced around in reluctant appreciation. Rather than the familiar magpie's nest of papers and miscellaneous junk, it was clean and organized, clearly a working office. It might even be the first time it had ever looked that way.

Walt settled into an easy chair with a grunt of relief, and Josh sat opposite.

“There's coffee?” Josh asked in surprise, catching the scent of a freshly brewed pot.

“I started setting the timer,” Tara explained. She filled three mugs, handing one to Walt and another to Josh. “There's cream and sugar,” she told him.

Josh hesitated. The truth was, in the morning he preferred his coffee both sweet and creamy. Walt had always given him a hard time about drinking it that way. But he was an adult now, not a teenager looking for approval.

“Thanks,” he said, fixing his mug the way he liked it.

“Tara makes darned good coffee,” Walt told him.

Josh took a swallow and had to agree. It was considerably better than the crap
he
brewed each morning.

“Take a look at this,” said his grandfather, pulling a sheet of paper from the envelope Tara had removed from a locked file drawer.

It was a photocopy, and Josh read the old-fashioned writing in silence. So it
was
about the sapphire goose chase. “Interesting.”

“It's astounding,” Walt exclaimed. “We might have sapphires on the Boxing N, just the way my great-grandfather claimed.”

“Unlikely. He wrote this after gems were found in other parts of Montana. I'm sure he believed he'd found them, but it was probably wishful thinking. No sapphires have ever been discovered around Schuyler.”

Josh didn't repeat that he'd looked into it as a kid, and when he'd gotten old enough to go off on his own, he'd searched the Boxing N from one end to the other. After that he'd focused on collecting less valuable specimens, such as Montana agates and smoky quartz. It would be great to share Walt's excitement, but the chance of there being gems on the ranch was exceptionally slim.

“Just because none have been found, that doesn't mean they don't exist,” Walt insisted.

“Sure,” Josh agreed, not wanting to argue the point; he didn't want Walt to get his hopes up. “I'll order another geological survey if we ever figure out where your great-grandfather thought he found them. But there's absolutely nothing to go on in the survey from ten years ago.”

He glanced at Tara; it wasn't hard to see her anger on Walt's behalf. A thread of amusement went through Josh. When he got right down to it, her staunch defense of the old man was admirable.

“Believe what you want, which is nothing. I'll believe Granddad's stories about his dad,” Walt declared stubbornly.

Tara stood abruptly.

“Do you have something else to show me?” Josh asked.

She regarded him coolly. “It's just time to get my day started. I'm sure you're eager to do the same.”

“Yeah.” He swallowed the last of his coffee and looked at his grandfather. “We can get geologists to check it out again. Perhaps someone from the university might be interested when classes start this fall.”

Walt simply nodded.

Josh thought about Tara and Walt's excitement, and was uneasily aware that he'd been the one to puncture the balloon.

When had he turned into a dull grown-up?

* * *

T
ARA
DROVE
TO
Lauren's apartment that evening, hoping her sister would understand what she wanted to do.

Once Josh had left that morning, Walt had spent hours poring over the old maps and records.

“Let's not wait,” she'd said in the midafternoon. “Let's look for the sapphires. Just the two of us.”

His face brightened. “I'd like that. I'm sure the spot my great-grandfather described is near where Evelyn and I used to camp. We can bring supplies on pack horses and stay as long as it takes.”

Although Tara had suggested the idea weeks earlier, she'd thought they'd go out and look for an afternoon, not take an extended camping trip. But why not? Ultimately, it was no different than exploring the Australian outback or mountain climbing in Switzerland, and she'd enthusiastically pursued
those
undertakings.

Besides, Walt's face had been eager, energized by the prospect, and Tara wanted to support his new interest in life. He'd quickly assured her that he felt able and willing to take on the discomfort of camping.

“I'll go alone, if you can't,” he said. “There's no one else I'd want to take.”

Having a friend was new to Tara, but she had the feeling this could be the difference between remaining a pleasant companion and something deeper. Even so, she hadn't given him a final agreement, explaining that she needed to discuss it with her sister since the search would be longer than she'd anticipated. After all, getting to know Lauren was the reason she'd come to Schuyler in the first place.

So after dinner, she sat and told the story to Lauren, whose eyes grew wide with amazement and a touch of wonder.

“He says he's going regardless,” Tara finished, “but I'm afraid to let him be out there alone.”

“You have to go,” her sister agreed. “For his sake and yours. It's the kind of thing you love.” She laughed. “Actually, I wish I could go with you.”

“Walt wouldn't mind. Can you get some time off?”

“Not on such short notice,” Lauren said regretfully.

“That's too bad. I'm going to stay in Schuyler longer, to make up for my absence. That way we'll have the full three months together that we'd originally planned.”

Lauren looked pleased, but also wistful. “That's nice. I just hate to think of you leaving at all.”

“Emily is here,” Tara reminded her. “Besides, it's easy to stay in touch these days. And there's all my frequent flyer miles. We can both use them.”

The assurances seemed to cheer Lauren, and Tara went home to pull out her rough-terrain clothing, assessing what else she might need for a horseback camping trip into the mountains. Walt wanted to leave in four or five days, so there wasn't much time to get ready.

Josh crossed her mind. There was no question he'd disapprove of what they were doing. But since it would get his grandfather out of the way for a while, maybe he'd take the opportunity to make a few of the changes that were so important to him.

Tara conditioned the leather on her boots. Admittedly, she was starting to sympathize with Josh. He cared about Walt and worried about him. Even so, this trip was Walt's decision, and Josh's potential reaction shouldn't bother her...except it did.

* * *

“W
HAT
DO
YOU
WANT
, an invitation?” Carl snapped at the cat he'd recently adopted.

Samson sat on the floor, tail flicking in disapproval. He couldn't have said it more plainly:
You're lousy company and I'm not sure I want to be near you.

Carl released a heavy breath. “Okay, buddy, I'm sorry.” His temper was wearing thin, mostly because he hadn't slept well since the Boxing N party. He held out a handful of cat treats. “Come on, you deserve 'em, fella.”