“HOW WAS SHE?” Leah asked as Vick kicked off her snow boots in the mudroom and hung her coat on an antler rack by the kitchen door.
“About how you’d expect,” Vick replied. “A hot mess.”
Leah chewed a hangnail as she contemplated whether she should call Taylor. “This is all my fault.”
“Brian’s the one who left her high and dry. How is it your fault?”
“I’m the one who talked King into having the Flynns come to Christmas dinner.”
“I’m the one who made the snarky remark about Brian that caused Taylor to spill the beans. If we’re placing blame, that makes this all my fault.”
Leah crossed to Vick and hugged her, rocking back and forth to comfort both herself and her sister. “I suppose we should put the shoe on the foot it really fits. King should have settled this grudge with Angus a long time ago.”
Vick freed herself and asked, “How could he, if Angus wasn’t willing to let it go? I’m just grateful we Brats aren’t still fighting with ‘those awful Flynn boys.’ It’s a relief not to have to worry about getting marooned in the middle of nowhere with four flat tires or finding my Dodge Ram swathed in a thousand layers of plastic wrap.”
Leah laughed and shook her head, recalling the “good old days” when the war between their fathers had resulted in skirmishes between their teenage kids. It was nothing short of amazing that every one of the Brats, except Vick, had ended up falling in love with a Flynn.
Including herself.
Unfortunately, the course of true love hadn’t exactly run smoothly for any of them. It was downright rocky right now for Taylor, and Leah’s own path had taken some surprising twists and turns.
Vick had been the only one to escape unscathed. But she’d been gone from the ranch a great deal over the past five years, working to maintain habitats for grizzlies and gray wolves.
Vick yawned and said, “I’m going to bed.” She smirked and added, “Holidays with family are soooo exhausting.”
Leah laughed in agreement. Even though it was nearly midnight, her day wasn’t over yet. As Vick headed upstairs, Leah made her way to King’s office. He’d been in there since their company had left. He hadn’t come out for supper, and when she’d thumped the door and asked if he was hungry, he’d said, “Go away and leave me alone.”
She opened the door without knocking to ask permission to enter. She had a feeling it wouldn’t be given.
King jerked upright in the chair behind his desk when he heard the snick of the door closing. “Oh. It’s you.”
“Who were you expecting?”
“Most people know better than to knock when that door’s closed.”
“I didn’t knock. I came right in,” she said with a tentative smile. She had mixed feelings about her stepfather. He was a hard man to love, gruff and undemonstrative. He’d risked everything that should have been hers in a bid to regain a lost son, but she could hardly blame him for that. And she would always be grateful to him for giving her a home and a family.
King’s face looked like a stone monument that was beginning to crumble at the edges. She was worried about him. His heart wasn’t in the best shape. He’d also suffered a cancer scare recently. The disease hadn’t been in remission for long, and she was afraid that all the stress he was under would bring it back. The silver wings that used to make him look so distinguished had disappeared into a head of hair that had gone completely white, or gray, or silver, depending on the light.
King made a disgruntled sound, but he didn’t send her away.
“Have you figured out a way to stave off disaster?” she asked.
“No.”
No explanation, no apology, no excuses. Just an admission that Angus had finally won.
She’d never seen King look so defeated. “You should go to bed.”
“Sleep isn’t going to solve my problem.”
“No, but exhaustion isn’t going to help, either.” She walked around the desk and laid a hand on his shoulder. It was the first time she’d ever touched him in an effort to offer comfort. It felt strange. Awkward. She didn’t know what to do next.
King put a hand up and patted hers. Then he stood, and her hand fell away. “We’ll manage, girl. Something always comes along to save the day.”
She took a step back to let him edge past her. “I’ve got a call to make. I’d like to do it in here, if that’s all right.”
He raised a curious brow but didn’t question her. “Make yourself comfortable. Won’t be much longer you’ll have a chance to sit in that chair or make decisions about this ranch.”
A moment later he was gone, closing the door behind him.
Leah had never been so aware of the fragility of her hold on the life she loved. She’d wanted family around her at Christmas, so she’d finagled and cajoled until she’d talked Eve into bringing her husband and children to dinner. Leah had mentioned to Matt what she was trying to arrange, and he’d done the heavy lifting to get Pippa and her husband to the table. She’d had no idea Taylor was pregnant. That revelation had been an unexpected result of her machinations.
In the end, King had been surrounded by his children and grandchildren—perhaps for the last time—at the hundred-and-fifty-year-old table in the dining room. And she’d had the comfort and joy, however brief and fleeting, of having her family together at Christmas, in the home where they’d all grown up.
Leah didn’t underestimate the looming disaster. The deceptive friendliness evidenced at the dinner table between Grayhawks and Flynns might dissipate as quickly as smoke in the Wyoming wind if Angus managed to tighten the noose he’d slipped over King’s head.
If King defaulted on the note he’d signed for the 250,000 acres of land in Argentina, and the bank foreclosed on the assets he’d pledged as security for the loan, she would lose the one thing that gave her life purpose—the ranch. Taylor would lose the corporate plane that provided much of her income. Vick would lose the home base that gave her the freedom to roam the world saving endangered species. And Eve would lose a family that was likely to scatter to the four winds, once the ranch was no longer the center of their lives.
It was hard to sympathize with Matt’s situation, when he was doing his best to steal Kingdom Come out from under her, but if King lost everything, so did Matt. And if Matt lost his bid for the ranch, Pippa might lose her father, who could very well head back to Australia.
The solution then, to avoid all this calamity, was to save King.
Leah had only one play to rescue her father, and she’d decided to make it. It might not work, but she had to try.
She pulled her cellphone out of her jeans pocket and dialed a number she’d deleted from her phone, but which she knew by heart. It took several rings to be answered.
“Leah? Is that you? Is everything all right?” Aiden asked in a sleep-husky voice.
“I need to see you.”
She heard the sheets rustle and something thump on the carpet before he said, “It’s nearly midnight.”
“I know. I need to see you. Can you meet me?”
“Where?”
“The usual place.” When they’d been seeing each other clandestinely, they’d met near an isolated stock tank halfway between their two ranches.
“The road to the ‘usual place’ must have a foot of new snow and drifts a lot higher than that,” he said. “It’ll be damn near impossible to get there.”
She wanted to meet on neutral ground. She wanted to meet somewhere freezing cold, where the air would cloud with each breath, so there’d be no chance of intimacy. She knew as well as he did that getting to that stock tank was going to be a pain in the ass. She was testing him. If Aiden didn’t love her enough to get up in the middle of the night and meet her somewhere inconvenient, he didn’t love her enough to do what she was going to ask him to do.
She waited to see what he would say.
After a ten-second silence he said, “Dress warm. I’ll be there in half an hour.”