Twenty minutes later, Guy sat across the table and watched red curls bob up and down in rhythm to the forkfuls of pancakes being shoveled into the child’s mouth.
“I called Kelly,” Guy said of Lexie’s stepmother. “She told me to tell you she’s sorry you were unhappy.”
She nodded and continued to fork in the fuel.
Her stepmother’s exact words had been, “With the baby here I can’t do this anymore. Keep her with you. Even I’m not uncaring enough to send her to your parents.” Poor kid, if he was her last hope.
The whistle and choo-choo chugging of the ludicrous clock above the stove told him he was late for the startup of this morning’s executive training program. “Leap of Faith,” Henry had named crossing a small canyon on a zip wire.
“I’ve got people to see. Will you be all right by yourself for a while?”
“I’m a kid, not an idiot.” She forked in the last bite.
He smiled. So like her father.
She sat in front of the plate pooled with syrup, empty orange juice glass in her hand, and stared out the window at the sun-sprayed shadows in the pine trees behind the house.
“I wish I had more than a couple of years with him.”
“I wish you did, too. Sleep might be a good idea right now. Your room is still there.”
“I guess I could sleep a little.” Her voice trembled as she spoke. She turned her big blue eyes, pooled with unshed tears, on him. “Kelly said you restarted Dad’s business.”
He gave her a grim nod. “Bessie and her daughter’ll be back from shopping soon, so you won’t be alone long.”
She swiped the back of her hand at the tears and smiled. “I hope she got Twinkies.”
He frowned.
“What? I already had two apples today. No, wait, that was yesterday, sometime.” She did her shoulder thing. “I’ll go up and sleep for a little while, and then you can tell me whether or not you’re going to keep me.”
“Lexie, this is your home anytime you want it to be.”
“Yeah.” She turned away.
Guy watched her bounce off as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Her home. She’d had many in her short life.
“I’ll be back by noon,” he called after her.
UP ON A RIDGE a half mile away from the ranch house at the edge of a small canyon, Guy snugged the strap of the aerial-runway seat across Cynthia Stone’s flabby abdomen.
“I don’t want to be hurled across that damn canyon in this—this thing.” Her voice scratched at his eardrums.
He crouched down beside her. “It’ll be over soon.”
“Let me out!” Little fat bulges stuck out here and there as she squirmed in her pale aqua warm-up suit.
“You won’t go across unless you want to.” He wasn’t sure how his brother did this job, but right now it beat trying to practice medicine.
“Come on, Cynthia. Don’t be a chicken. The fox won’t bite,” one of the executives called from the other side of the canyon.
“Fox? What fox? I wasn’t told about any foxes.” She jerked around to glare at Guy.
He checked a reply. He knew her well enough to know the “fox” distress was a delay tactic.
“An aerial-conveyance system like this is sometimes called a flying fox.” Or death slide. “Aerial runway works for the purposes of Mountain High Executive Services. It’s a kind of pathway from your old self to your new leader-conqueror self.”
“My old self is just fine.” She yanked on the harness. “How do I know this is safe?”
“Aircraft-grade wire.” He pointed up to the wire above her head spanning the canyon. “Safety harness and a hand-activated braking system. You can’t fall unless you try really hard, and you don’t have to go fast.” She’d be a piece of work on the high ropes tomorrow.
“What if it doesn’t have one more crossing left in it?”
“Ms. Stone—”
She gave him a tired look, so he leaned in. “Cynthia—” He lowered his voice to just above a whisper.
She studied him as if seeing him for the first time.
“There are times when we have to take a leap, or we’ll never know how far we can go.” Guy tried to make the words sound sincere. He knew Henry would have.
“I didn’t want to come here.” Her tone was almost timid now. Apologizing. “My father made me.”
“Where do you want to go in your company?”
“I’ll be president and CEO one day.”
“Because you’re the owner’s daughter.”
She nodded.
“Is it enough for you to have the job because your blood type is Stone, or do you want to be able to wield the authority you’ll be given?”
When she didn’t answer, Guy tugged hard on her harness to show her it was safe. “The others crossed. And some of them may deserve to be president or CEO one day. You only need to recognize that in yourself.”
She grabbed the harness and held on for a ten-mile ride. Too bad she was only going a few hundred feet.
But, he might be getting through to her…
“Just shove me across the damn thing and get it over with. And that man at the other end had better catch me because I don’t trust that flimsy-looking net, either.”
Maybe not…
“Use the hand brake if you have to, but it’s a gutsier experience if you let the net catch you.”
“Just do it.” She kicked up a puff of light brown dust.
Guy took hold of the harness and signaled Jake Hancock, the man who had been Henry’s friend and right-hand man, and who now stood waiting at the other end of the runway.
“Are you sure?” he asked the woman in the harness.
She lifted her feet from the ground and glared at him.
He smiled and gave her a small push.
After a few seconds, she glided out over the rim of the canyon filled with jagged rocks and a few hardy plants. When she scanned the distance to the bottom, she let out a shriek so piercing Guy expected birds to fall from the sky.
“I got you, Ms. Stone,” Jake shouted as he gestured to show her he was waiting on the far side to help her.
Hang in there a few more seconds, Guy thought as she picked up speed and hurtled toward the other side.
“Stop me! Stop—ME!” The closer she got to the end, the harder she kicked and squirmed.
“Use the hand brake, Ms. Stone,” Guy called.
“Nooooo, I can’t!” She began to flail her legs wildly.
As Jake reached out for her, she jerked backward and snapped her legs straight out; a blink later she landed with the thud of both feet in the middle of Jake’s chest.
Guy watched in horror as Jake flew backward, landed, bounced and lay still in the dust. Guy grabbed a spare harness and attached it to the aerial runway.
“Get her off.” He waved at the others as Cynthia sat sagging in the rig, her head resting against the safety netting.
Instead of assisting Cynthia, the other five executives rushed up to Jake’s unmoving form.