Since she died. Rachel would be the first. A woman he didn’t want on his ranch, a woman he certainly didn’t want sleeping in his wife’s dollhouse.
Rachel wanted to say “I’m sorry” but in light of why she was here, the words felt phony. Story be damned, this cottage was exactly what her son needed. “Charlie,” she said, “wait for me at the main house, okay?”
“Why?”
“Because I need to speak with Mr. Ash a moment.”
Her son darted a look at the man, worry in his blue eyes. “You gonna be long?”
“No.” She fiddled with his wool hat, tucked the tiny ’Vette into his pocket. “A minute. Now go on. I’ll be right behind you.”
She waited until her son slipped out the door, then turned to the man with his hands on his hips. “I don’t know what happened in the accident that took your wife’s life and I can only imagine the loss you suffered. But I assure you I won’t change or damage anything in this building or on your ranch. And I will continue looking in town for a more permanent place. As soon as I find one, we’ll be gone.”
“Don’t you mean once you’ve finished interviewing Tom?”
For a moment, silence. “Why didn’t you warn him?”
“That you’re here because of a Vietnam kick?”
“I’m here because my son needs a decent place to live.”
One brow rose slowly. “You going maternal on me, Ms. Brant?”
“It’s the truth.”
He laughed softly. “Now there’s an interesting word coming from a reporter.”
She wouldn’t back down. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Tom handles his own battles.”
In other words, handicaps did not make a man less a man.
She sighed. “I’m unsure why you dislike me so much. Is it because I work for a newspaper, or is it me personally?”
“Who said I dislike you?”
His hot tea eyes speared her heart, ran a current down her thighs. She saw his desire, saw him fight the emotion.
Her nerves smoothed. Whether he liked it or not, his attraction to her was as true as the air they breathed.
Linear brows lowering, he moved closer. “Cat got your tongue?”
She stepped back. “I think I should go.”
Remaining alone with him hadn’t been a good idea. Rough Montana terrain, fifteen-hundred-pound horses and thousand-pound cows had crafted his body.
But she had observed his expression with his daughter, when he thought of his wife.
Something in her eyes had him suddenly turning for the door. “Inez, our housekeeper, will clean the place over the next few days. I’ll call you when it’s ready.”
“Ash…”
Head down, back to her, he waited. In that second, she wanted to touch him. Just a touch. A palm to his spine, easing the stress she sensed churning under his skin.
“You’re a kind man. I’m very—Thank you. For everything.”
His shoulders heaved a sigh. “Best get back to your boy.” Opening the door, he strode into a thick, lazy snowfall.
Tom was at the kitchen table with Daisy and Charlie, drinking hot cocoa, when Ash returned from the cottage, Rachel in tow. Seeing his stepfather in that chair, so mangled…and then for her to head back to town without a hint, without honesty…. Ash frowned. It wasn’t right.
He shot Rachel a look. Honesty is best up front.
Clever woman read his thoughts. Directly to Tom, she said, “Mr. McKee, as I mentioned on the phone the other day, renting the guesthouse isn’t the only reason I’m here.”
On her forehead sweat poked from her skin as if she’d sat for an hour in a sauna. “I’m freelancing for a magazine on the East Coast, as well as working at the town paper.”
“A magazine?”
“Yes, American Pie. It’s like The New Yorker. I’m doing a series. It’s about…”
She was nervous, Ash realized. A journalist nervous about a story. Interesting.
“It’s about survivors. From Hells Field.”
Tom scrutinized the woman for a long moment, eyes and face rigid as stone. Deep in the house, the cuckoo clock chimed the half hour. “What for?”
She leveled her shoulders. “Because it was one of the most controversial battles in that war. And you—you were the leader of a platoon of nineteen Marines of which only seven survived.”
A hush fell. Ash imagined angsty commotion in her mind as she waited: Tom would tell her to leave. He’d sic those cattle dogs on her the minute she and Charlie stepped outside. And Ash, family defender, would chase her car on his horse all the way down the road.
Tom’s lips pulled tight. “Old news. Fact is, the more years between, the more people forget. Better that way.”
She glanced at Ash, looking, he suspected, for support. For a split second his heart skipped and he almost stepped beside her. Then he saw Daisy, transfixed at the table, and he moved, instead, within reach of his daughter. Damn straight he was the defender of his family.
His positioning wasn’t lost on Rachel. Her gaze wove from one to the next, finally settling on Tom. “Wouldn’t you like something good to come out of all you’ve lost, Mr. McKee?”
The old man snorted. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, Missy. Ain’t got nothing to say about Nam.” The chair hummed backward before he spun around and headed toward the hallway that led to his private rooms.
“Grandpa, wait!” Daisy jumped up from the table. “I want to know about Hells Field.”
Ash moved around Rachel, blocking her view with his back. “Daisy, let it be.”
“No,” she cried. “God. You’d think that war was garbage we should throw out. People died, Dad. Over fifty thousand of them. Grandpa was there and he was wounded, and I don’t even know why or how. This isn’t just our country’s history, it’s our history. Mine!” Her tiny nostrils flared. “Just like Mom is.”
Tom wheeled down the hall. Conversation over.
“Argh,” Daisy muttered. “Stubborn old man.”
“Daisy.” Ash gentled his voice, touched her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. “You’re as bad as him. You don’t want to talk about Mom any more than he does about Vietnam. It’s like every time something bad happens, we put a lid on it. Like that’s gonna make it go away. It’s not. And neither is Mom’s death no matter how many pictures you hang.”
“Daisy Anne—” Dammit to hell.
“It’s the truth.” Tears shone in her eyes and his heart broke. “Thanks for trying, Ms. Brant. At least you got them to admit there was a Hells Field.”
Ash glared at Rachel. You hurt my family. For that, he could not forgive her.
But she surprised him again. “Sometimes—” she turned to his daughter “—it’s better to let history and the past fade. It softens the pain.”
Not an hour here and she was peering into places he’d nailed shut for years. He started for the door. “I think you should take your son and go.”
“Why this war?” Tom spoke from the hallway, surprising Ash. Though his stepfather had returned, severity thinned