Buch lesen: «Rodeo Family»

Chapter One

Zachary Brandt wasn’t a coward.

Not usually.

He hovered behind a curtain at the picture window that looked out onto his front yard as Nadine Campbell drove her sporty little black car onto his ranch.

In rural Montana on the outskirts of small-town Rodeo, home of dusty, domestic, practical pickup trucks, Nadine scooted around the countryside in her spotless, foreign car.

He should be out on his porch in full view to greet her, not hiding here inside, building up his resolve.

She parked, adjusted her rearview mirror and fiddled with her makeup, the gesture speaking of insecurity he’d noted in the past.

Even way back in high school, before she’d left town for those eight or so years, she’d been self-conscious about her looks. Zach couldn’t imagine why, or what she was doing to makeup that was never less than perfect.

She smoothed her long, red hair, as glossy as glass. Nadine belonged in Rodeo about as much as a racehorse might, an elegant, refined filly among a bunch of stolid workhorses.

“Whatcha doin’, Dad?”

Zach startled. No wonder. He’d just been caught spying on a visitor rather than stepping outside to welcome her. He glanced over his shoulder. His twin sons stood in the living room doorway. They weren’t the only ones who’d caught him; Zach’s father had, too.

Dad raised an eyebrow. Ryan and Aiden watched him with Maria’s deep brown eyes and wide, full-lipped mouths. She might not have left Zach with much, but she’d given him these two treasures and for that he would always be grateful.

They stepped forward and crowded him at the window. Staring out at Nadine, Aiden whispered, “Pretty.”

Understatement. Nadine could give lessons in pretty to the Montana countryside, and Zach thought that was damned stunning.

“Who is she, Dad?” Ryan asked.

“Her name is Nadine Campbell, and she’s a reporter for the newspaper.”

“I saw her before in town,” Aiden said. “She’s got red hair.”

As red as red could be.

“What’s she doing here?” That was Ryan, as curious as ever.

“She’s going to interview me.”

Ryan looked up, not as far as he used to. His kids were growing too fast. Seven years old already. “What about? Our ranch?”

“Partly. She wants to talk about my paintings, but they wouldn’t exist without the ranch. Right?”

“Right,” Ryan answered. He’d heard it all from his dad before, about how his paintings were an outward expression of his love of his land. Then a knowing smile lit his face. “But you’re gonna get her to talk about the ranch!”

Zach ruffled his hair. “You’re too smart to be a kid. Are you an adult in disguise?”

Ryan pressed into his hand.

Zach’s quiet son, Aiden, stood in front of him, leaning back against his legs. Zach settled a hand on his shoulder.

Nadine’s car door opened. He didn’t want to be caught staring. “Come away from the window.” He tried to herd them from the room, but Dad stepped brazenly in front of the window with a mischievous smile hovering on his lips.

“Nadine Campbell.” Zach’s father pretended to think, but his eyes sparkled. “Hmm. Name sounds familiar.”

“Of course it’s familiar,” Zach snapped. “You know everyone in town.” His dad’s feigned ignorance didn’t fool him. The man knew who Nadine was. Did he realize what she used to mean to Zach?

Did he realize what she could still mean to him if Zach had his way?

Second chances rarely happened in real life. Sometimes a man had to grasp that second chance with both hands before it slipped away. A determined man did, at any rate. Zach had managed to spend years, long swathes of time, forgetting about Nadine, but here she was back on his ranch.

“I remember her from years ago before she left town,” Dad said.

Maybe Dad had known how Zach had felt. He could be intuitive...when it suited him.

“She stood out, back then,” Dad said.

“Pop, let’s go,” Zach insisted, trying to get his father to step away from the window. “Get away from there.”

Aiden shrugged off Zach’s hand on his shoulder and joined his grandfather at the window. Ryan did the same thing.

“She’s getting out of the car!” Ryan shouted.

“Modulate, Ryan,” Zach said.

“She’s got pretty shoes on,” Aiden whispered.

Aiden spoke too low. Ryan lived at full volume. If only Zach could even them out. On second thought, no. Each was perfect in his own way.

“Those shoes will get wrecked,” Pop said.

A thought occurred to Zach. “How come you remember her from when she was a teenager?”

His father pretended to look surprised. What game was he playing? “She came out here once with a bunch of kids when you were in high school, for some project or other.”

“Yes, she did.” Zach remembered that visit with vivid discomfort.

“She didn’t like the ranch,” Pop said, bringing back Zach’s disappointment.

It had hurt his teenage ego. The ranch had been, and still was, his world. His pride and joy.

Aiden tugged on his sleeve. “They’ll get wrecked, Dad.”

“Those shoes? Sure will. You two,” he said, touching their heads, “root through the rubber boots in the back porch and see if you can find a pair that might fit our guest.”

Maria’s would still be back there. She sure wouldn’t have taken reminders of the ranch with her, and Zach hadn’t cleared out the porch in the three years since she’d left.

The boys ran off toward the back of the house.

Pop turned from the window. “Didn’t she used to have a mess of curly hair to her waist?”

Yes, her hair had been a mass of long, red curls. Her face had sported more freckles than Zach could ever hope to count. Where had those gone, both the curls and the freckles? How did a person change her appearance so drastically?

Zach eyed his father. “I don’t remember you having a photographic memory.”

“She stood out,” he said, “’cause I knew you liked her. I paid attention. Wanted to make sure she was worthy of my son. She didn’t like the ranch. End of story.”

Pop had known he’d liked her? And he’d worried about Zach? It warmed him.

Nadine still stood out, just in a different shell than the one she used to wear. And hadn’t he always wanted to get a good long look inside that shell?

Dad watched him altogether too carefully before raising that pesky eyebrow again and murmuring, “Well.”

Yes. Well. Some feelings died over time, but some only pretended to, living underground and flaring back to the surface the second a woman came back to town after years away. When she had returned a year ago, he’d been shocked. After high school, she’d told anyone who would listen that she was heading off to New York City to meet her destiny. To forge a career on television.

Now she was back and no one knew why. She didn’t seem to have plans to leave. Zach hoped that would work in his favor. But obviously too much showed on his face if Dad, in his oblique way, was commenting on it. Zach wiped his expression clear of emotion and stepped out onto the veranda.

Lee Beeton, owner of the Rodeo Wrangler, had pestered Zach for an interview for years. Zach had said no. Then Nadine had come back to Rodeo. A year later, she’d asked for an interview. Zach had said yes.

A second chance...

Would she like the ranch any better this time? Would she like him?

She stretched her slim legs, her pretty high heels emphasizing their length while she rummaged in her purse. She didn’t belong here. Their differences struck him anew. I am a sturdy Clydesdale and she is an exquisite Arabian.

He crossed his arms. Why was it taking her so long to get out of one small car?

And what’s the rush, Zach? You aren’t usually this impatient.

Yeah, but Nadine had come back to his ranch.

* * *

NADINE CAMPBELL COULDN’T delay her meeting with Zach Brandt any longer. She had to get out of this car. She had to face him down.

What had started as a simple story about Zach’s love of the landscape and painting it, a story she had looked forward to writing, had turned into a snafu of huge proportions just this morning.

Nadine did not want to be here. There was no way out. Trapped, panic clogged her throat. Could a person suffocate on anger?

Her nerves rattled like a pair of castanets. She shouldn’t have stopped in at the newspaper office before coming out for the interview. Then she wouldn’t have seen her boss, Lee Beeton, who wouldn’t have put her into this awful, awful bind.

Find out that family’s secrets.

No. That wasn’t Nadine’s job. Her job was to talk to Zach about his artwork. That’s it. Nothing else. No digging up dirt. What was Lee’s purpose in needing to know secrets anyway? He didn’t publish a gossip rag.

But he’d issued an ultimatum—do it or you’re fired—and now she had no choice but to write the story he wanted.

In the brilliant sunshine bathing Zach’s ranch, Nadine felt clunky and awkward, an old feeling she’d thought she’d outgrown. With this awful new directive from Lee, any smooth confidence she might have possessed had deserted her this morning. She ran a hand over her twitchy stomach.

From the car, she retrieved the canvas bag that contained the tools of her trade: notepad, laptop, recording device, pencils and pens. The bag was her raison d’être. Her security blanket, its very existence reminded her that, yes indeed, she was a bona fide journalist who deserved to be writing.

She sensed Zach’s presence on his veranda. She couldn’t avoid him any longer, so she turned and walked toward the house.

He stood on his porch steps and watched her approach with his unnerving steady regard. Did the man never blink?

The ranch hadn’t changed since her tour here in high school for a project about local cattle ranching. The sturdy white brick house with blue shutters might be considered by some to be pretty. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t to her taste. She liked modern and sleek. Not that she found much of either here in Rodeo, but back in New York City—oh, heavenly, perfect New York—there’d been plenty of it.

Well, the Big Apple was history, wasn’t it? No sense wishing for the unattainable. No sense chasing down a past that hadn’t turned out the way it was supposed to.

Shake it off, Nadine.

Zach still hadn’t moved, but his intensity snagged her attention. What went on in the man’s mind when he gazed about with such deep, earnest interest?

She reached the bottom stair. He stepped down and loomed over her. She was tall. He was taller. He smelled nice, like soap.

“Zach.”

“Nadine.”

She held out one hand to shake. He took it in his, calluses rubbing roughly against her palm, but released it when two kids, a pair of identical twins, came running out of the house.

She guessed them to be about seven years old, but what did she know? She didn’t have a lot of exposure to children. They each carried a single rubber boot. Two different boots.

“I wanted to get just plain black,” one boy shouted, “but Aiden wouldn’t.”

“The lady is pretty,” the other boy said. Oh, sweet. “She might want flowers.”

Zach grasped Nadine by the arms and spun her around.

“Oh!” Whoa.

“Sit,” he said, “and we’ll get you into those boots.”

She sat on a step. He grasped her leg, not quite what she expected.

For a moment, he looked sheepish, as though he’d made a mistake. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be bossy. Can I take off your shoes?”

“Okay,” she said. At her nod, he wrapped long fingers around one of her bare ankles to take off her shoe. Soda pop bubbles fizzed in her bloodstream. The twin who had called her pretty handed him a yellow boot with turquoise flowers on it. When Zach squatted on his haunches in front of Nadine, his face hovered close enough for her to detect flecks of yellow in his hazel eyes.

One of the boys, the flower boot one, distracted her by staring at her pink toenails. He grinned and said, “Nice color.”

Nadine didn’t know how to react. The only children she’d spent any time with were her friends’ kids—the kids they insisted on having as they married and started families.

Zach gripped Nadine’s other ankle in his warm hand and pulled off her second shoe. The soda pop bubbles went electric.

Double whoa. Heat suffused her.

“Can I sit here?” The first boy cuddled close to her on the step. The second boy copied him on her other side. Like a pair of bookends, they nestled against her.

These males overwhelmed her, even the young ones. “Sure you can sit,” she said. “It’s your house. But—”

Zach finished sliding the black boot onto her other foot and stood up. He stepped away with a satisfied smile on his face. Worn jeans hung low on his narrow hips. Biceps filled out his white T-shirt.

“There,” he said. “Now you’re ready for walking on the ranch. Can’t walk it in high heels.”

Nadine stared at the mismatched boots on her feet, the flowered one spotless. Straw and muck clung to the dark one. Oh, God, she hoped it was only muck. The rubber boots mocked all the care she’d taken with her choice of dress and the meticulous application of her makeup this morning.

She might no longer work in New York, but she maintained standards.

Glancing up at Zach, she said, “I brought a pair of boots. They’re in the car.”

He stared at her. “Really? I—” A blush crept up his neck, darkening the tanned skin and spreading into his cheeks. “You did?” Wonder of wonders, the guy looked awkward and not at all his usual assured self. She’d never seen him less than together before.

It kind of charmed her.

She bit back a smile. “Yes. You said we’d be walking so I came prepared.”

“Oh...” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I thought you’d forgotten.”

Was he as shy as he looked? Shy wasn’t a word Nadine had ever applied to Zach Brandt. Intense, quiet, self-contained, certain of his place in the world, yes. But shy? No.

Also, masculine. Let’s not forget that, Nadine.

“Do you want to change into your own boots?” he asked.

“Perhaps after we do the first part of the interview,” she said.

“The first part?”

“Yes. I hoped to see your studio. Maybe take a look at your current work.” She wanted to ease into that other story. Lee’s story. The real one, he’d said. The longer she could put off Lee’s agenda, the better.

Her stomach threatened to send up her breakfast. Wouldn’t that be the epitome of embarrassing?

If she could concentrate on Zach’s paintings first, maybe it would become possible to segue into questions about his family’s past. Her problem lay in how to ask those uncomfortable questions.

“No,” Zach said and he didn’t look happy.

“No?” Immersed in her own troubling thoughts, she’d lost track of the conversation.

“This interview is not about my paintings alone. There are no paintings without the land.”

“Yes, we’ll cover everything. But your painting is a big part of who you are.”

“This ranch—” he flung an arm toward the fields “—is a big part of who I am. That’s what the readers will relate to. The land, not paintings.”

Nadine could have argued that point, but too much of her energy today had been taken up by the conversation she’d had with her boss just before driving here. She should ignore it and try to forget, just do her job as she should, but that one misbegotten discussion had rocked her world in the worst possible way.

Pushing up her metaphorical sleeves, she opened her mouth to get this show on the road, but Zach pointed behind her.

“You know my dad, Rick Brandt.”

She turned around on the step to peer up. Nadine smiled. She liked Rick and the perpetual twinkle in his eyes. Where Zach was reserved, his father was gregarious and friendly. Where Zach was long and muscular, Rick was short and spare.

“These are my boys, Ryan and Aiden.” Zach gestured toward the twins, pointing to each one as he said his name. No way would Nadine be able to tell them apart.

They were vaguely familiar to her. She’d probably seen them around town, of course, but hadn’t paid them much attention. Kids weren’t on her radar, probably because there weren’t stories attached to them. She could talk to anyone on any subject, but foreign little creatures called children stumped her. She liked kids, in theory. She just didn’t know what to say to them, or how to entertain them.

Judging by expressions as watchful as their father’s, she didn’t think the twins would go in for fist bumps, or that lamest of lame adult gestures—high fives.

So she smiled, wiggled her fingers hello and turned her attention back to Zach.

“I thought we could start with a look at your studio while you tell me about your inspiration. I have a list of questions for you. Things like when did you start painting, how young were you when you realized you had talent, did you—?”

“Dad,” Zach interrupted, directing his attention to Rick, “we’ll be gone for a while. Can you have lunch ready in an hour and a half?”

Nadine stared. People did not interrupt her so rudely.

Rick grinned and said, “Sure thing. Come on back when you’re done and I’ll have food on the table.”

Zach nodded and strode away toward an outbuilding without another word for her.

Rick said, “You’d better hurry and join him or you’ll have to run to catch up. Zach waits for nobody.” He herded the boys into the house, leaving Nadine alone to stare at Zachary Brandt’s retreating back.

She was not, and never had been, nobody. Certain people had tried to make her believe so, but she’d fought back. Oh, how she had fought. And she’d won. For a while.

Nadine Campbell was somebody, even if she had hit a bump in the road recently.

She crossed her arms and waited to see how long it would take Zach to realize she wasn’t following like a meek little lamb. But when he entered the barn, he didn’t turn back to check her progress.

Five minutes later, he still hadn’t come out.

It seemed to her that he didn’t much care whether she followed. She didn’t like the way he planned to conduct her interview.

She could leave. She wanted to.

Who was she kidding? After the things Lee had said this morning, Nadine was trapped here until she got the full story that Lee wanted. It was either that or lose her job, which she could not afford to do.

She picked up her high heels and carried them to the car, one boot too big and clunking as she crossed the hard-packed earth of the driveway. She set her shoes side by side neatly on the floor mat behind the driver’s seat. For a moment, she considered changing into her own boots, but glanced back at the house. There in the middle of a big picture window were two small figures watching her.

If she changed out of the boots the boys had brought her, she might hurt their feelings. So she didn’t.

Folding her arms, she leaned back against the car. Still no sign of Zach coming back out of the stable.

This morning’s meeting with Lee ran through her mind again. If she could, if it were the least bit possible, she would have quit on the spot, not only because of the orders he gave her, but most especially because of his tone. She’d gone down to the office only to pick up a notebook she’d left on her desk. Lee had ambushed her.

“I was talking to my mother yesterday at the nursing home,” he’d said apropos of nothing, seated at his desk and not looking up from his computer.

With a patience often needed in conversations with her boss, she waited out the ensuing silence.

He finished checking his email and said, “She told me some interesting things about the Brandt family. Some intriguing history.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a big secret the family has never disclosed.” He left it at that and stared at her.

What did that have to do with her and the interview? “And?”

“And you have to find out what that secret is.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know. If it’s super juicy, the rest of the town will want to know, too.”

“But why would it be anyone’s business but the family’s? Everyone in town respects them.”

“Not everyone.”

Nadine cocked her head and Lee continued, “There’s been no love lost between them and their neighbors for a long time.”

Their neighbors were the Broomes. Nadine remembered Tommy Broome from high school. Like Zach, he’d been two years ahead of her. Her memories of him weren’t all good. He’d been aggressive. A bit of a bully.

“There’s a rivalry between them, that’s for sure,” Lee said.

“Why? About what?”

“A feud of some sort.”

“A feud? That’s implies more than a rivalry.”

“Yep.”

“What was the source of the rivalry?”

“Don’t honestly know. Usually these kinds of fights start because of one of three things.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Greed. Love. Sex.”

“What does that have to do with Zach’s paintings?”

Lee shrugged. “Nothing.”

And then she knew. “You used the excuse of Zach’s artistic abilities to get me out on that ranch to interview him.”

“Yep.” That one word, unapologetic, fueled Nadine’s anger. It had been Lee who had urged her to write an article about the Cowboy Painter.

When had Lee changed so much from when she’d worked for him in high school? And why? He didn’t used to be...nasty.

“You used me,” she said, betrayal scooting along her nerves.

“Yep.” Lee threaded his fingers together across his stomach and leaned back in his chair. He didn’t used to be smug, either. “You need to find out what the old secret is.”

“How on earth am I supposed to do that?”

“That’s your problem. You’re the reporter.” Lee’s tone, a mix between order and dismissal, was exactly the problem with working for him.

“Can you give me a hint?” she asked. “What’s the secret about?”

“My mom’s being coy. Said she’ll only talk to Zach about it. It’s going to be your job to get him out to her nursing home.”

“Why don’t you just phone him and talk to him?”

Lee turned away. “We don’t exactly get along.”

See, this was where Nadine and Lee differed. Sure, she was a reporter and liked scoping out stories, but she wasn’t a gossip. She often missed the more salacious stuff going on around town because she wasn’t interested. Rumors and titillation didn’t appeal to her. The truth did.

“Why don’t you and Zach get along?” she asked, because even if this devolved into gossip, it seemed it would have something to do with her getting a story about Zach.

“We had a run-in a couple of years ago.”

“About what?”

“It doesn’t matter.” For a man who usually talked about anything and everything, Lee was being awfully cagey.

Nadine was twenty-nine, which meant Zach must be thirty-one and Lee past retirement age at well over sixty. So whatever the fallout was about, Zach and Lee likely weren’t fighting about a woman. As far as Nadine knew, they had no business dealings, so it wasn’t about money.