“Doing good. Better off where she is, with a grandbaby to spoil, another coming. We’re selling off the rest of the old place to your daddy.”
Bodine picked at the salad. “I don’t know if I should say I’m sorry.”
“No need. It doesn’t mean anything to me. Hasn’t for a long time.”
That might be true, she thought, but it had still been his birthright. “We’ll make good use of it.”
“I reckon you will.” He got up, took her plate out of the oven. “And look at you, Bodine,” he said as he set the plate in front of her. “Running the whole damn resort.”
Since Clementine wasn’t there to give her the beady eye, Bodine added a few good grinds from the pepper mill.
She liked the heat.
“I don’t do it by myself.”
“From what I hear, you all but could. I did some work for you today,” he added. “Chase figured it’d be best if I went over and worked with Abe, since it’s been some years, and get a feel for the operation.”
She’d known—only because Chase had thought to text her, after the fact. “Did you get a feel?”
“Got a start of one. So I’ll tell you, if you want to hear it.”
He waited a beat. She shrugged and ate lasagna.
“I agree with Abe on how you should hire another horseman. It’s true enough you can pull from the ranch, but you’d be better with somebody over there who sticks over there. I can take over for Abe easy enough by the time he leaves next month, but you’re still one short.”
Since she agreed with the logic, couldn’t argue with the advice, she nodded. “I’m working on it. I just haven’t found anybody yet.”
“It’s Montana, Bodine. You’ll find your cowboy.”
“I’m not just looking for a pair of boots.” She gestured with her fork, and on that stood her ground. “If I didn’t know you, you wouldn’t be filling in for Abe.”
“Fair enough.”
“But I do know you. Maybe you know somebody back in California who’s after a change of scene.”
He shook his head, studied his beer. “Change of scene’s built in, as you go where they need you. And the money’s too good if you are. I could call in a favor, but I wouldn’t feel right about it, asking somebody to give up that pay to do some trail rides and lessons, muck and groom.”
His gaze lifted to hers. “Why did I?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Yeah, you did. It was time to come home.” Then the lightning grin flashed again. “And maybe I missed you and your long legs, Bodine.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The sound was both amused and sarcastic.
“I might’ve, if I’d known you’d gotten prettier.”
“I might’ve missed you back if I’d known you’d filled out that skinny build.”
He let out a laugh. “You know what I realize right now? I did miss you. I missed this kitchen, too. Though, boy, it’s got some fancier touches since I was in it last. Barn doors on a pantry big enough to rate them. A big-ass shiny stove, and that faucet coming out of the wall. Clementine says it’s to fill the pots that go on it.”
“The grannies got Mom hooked on those home improvement shows. She all but drove Dad crazy until she talked him into redoing it.”
“There’s more I missed. I’d like to go by and see Nana and Miss Fancy.”
“They’d like that. You got all you need in the shack?”
“More than. It’s fancier, too, than it was back when Chase and I would sneak in there to plot our adventures.”
“And locked me out.” Still just a little bitter about that, she realized.
“Well, you were a female.”
She laughed at that, at his cleverly horrified tone. Maybe she’d missed him a little, too.
“I could ride as well as both of you.”
“You could. It annoyed the hell right out of me. Chase said you lost Wonder a couple winters back.”
Bodine had ridden, loved, and groomed the sweet-going mare since they’d both been two. “Just about broke my heart. Six months before I could pick another for mine.”
“You picked well. Your Leo’s got brains, and spirit. Want another glass of that wine?”
She considered. “Half.”
“What’s the point in half of anything?”
“It’s more than none.”
“Sounds like settling.” But he rose, got the bottle, set it on the table. “Looks like you’ve about cleared your plate, so I’ve done my duty by Clementine. I should get on.”
“You want that pie?”
“No. If I took it, it’d be sitting there, trying to seduce me into eating it, and I’d never get any sleep. It’s good seeing you, Bo.”
“You, too.”
When he left, she sat a moment, taking stock, absently rubbing the penknife she carried in her front pocket—always. The one he’d given her for her twelfth birthday.
Maybe, just maybe, she still felt a little of that crush. Just a light flicker of it.
Nothing she needed to worry about, nothing she wanted to act on. Just a little flicker at seeing the man he had become from the boy for whom she’d had teenage heart flutters.
It was good to know it, acknowledge it, and set it neatly aside.
She picked up the wine bottle, poured precisely half a glass.
It was more than none.
— 1991 —
He ordered her to call him Sir. Alice memorized every line of his face, the exact timbre of his voice. When she escaped, she’d tell the police he was about forty, white, around five-feet-nine, maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. Sort of sinewy and very strong. He had brown eyes, brown hair.
He had a puckered scar on his left hip, about an inch long, and a splotchy brown birthmark on his right outer thigh.
He often smelled of leather, beer, and gun oil.
She’d work with a police artist.
She’d had more than a month to curse herself for not paying more attention to the pickup. Even the color didn’t stick in her memory, though she thought—mostly thought—faded, rusty blue.
She couldn’t give them his license plate, and maybe he’d stolen the truck anyway. But she could describe him from his cattleman’s hat right down to his scarred Durango boots.
If she didn’t manage to kill him first.
She dreamed about that, about somehow getting her hands on a knife or a gun or a rope, using it to kill him the next time she heard that cellar door open, the next time she heard those boots come heavy down the steps to her prison.
She had no idea where she was, whether she was still in Montana, or if he’d driven her to Idaho or Wyoming. He could have flown her to the moon for all she knew.
Her prison had a concrete floor, walls covered in cheap paneling. It had no window, and only the single door up a shaky flight of open steps.
She had a toilet, a wall-hung sink, a skinny shower with a handheld sprayer. Like the air in the room, the water in the shower never approached warm.