Callie knew exactly what she was doing. Neither of his sisters could hold a candle to her in the kitchen. Even his mother might have had her work cut out for her. Gloria Billings had been fun, loving and more than a little scatterbrained. Callie proved efficient, quick and affable, not to mention easy on the eyes. Wes certainly seemed happy with what was on his plate, and Rex hadn’t seen that in many months, even before they’d figured out what was wrong with his dad.
Eventually Wes wiped his mouth with a napkin, saying, “Wish I could do better by this, Callie. Sure is good. Any chance you can put it up for my lunch tomorrow?”
Callie turned from the big, old stove that had been Rex’s mother’s pride and joy. Gloria had loved everything about the rustic, sprawling, sixty-year-old cedar-sided ranch house, wrapped in deep porches and steep, metal roofing that Rex’s grandfather had built. She’d even loved the drafty, smoky, fieldstone fireplace that took up one whole wall in the L-shaped living and formal dining area. Smiling, Callie walked to the rectangular kitchen table and picked up Wes’s plate.
“I think there’s enough left over for your lunch tomorrow, if that’s what you want. I was planning on Gloria’s chicken and dumplings for supper.”
Wes sat back with a happy smile. “It’s been an age since I last had that.”
“Gloria was generous with her recipes,” Callie said. “I use them all the time.”
As she carried the plate back to the sink, Wes looked to Rex. “You did good, son.”
Rex just smiled and gobbled down the last of his thick sandwich, as a thin wail rose from upstairs.
Callie calmly moved toward the back stairs. A back hallway provided access to the stairs, a laundry room, mudroom, a small bath and what his mother had used to call her craft room. His dad had taken over the latter as his bedroom to spare himself a trip up the stairs after he’d taken ill. What had once been six small bedrooms upstairs had been remodeled into four bedrooms and two roomy baths, all with sloping ceilings.
“If you need me, I’ll be in the barn,” Rex announced as Callie climbed the stairs.
“Okay,” Callie called. “We’ll be fine.”
“That baler still giving you trouble?” Wes asked with a shake of his head. “Wish I was up to helping you fix it.”
“It’s okay, Dad.” Rex got to his feet. “Let’s get you back to your room.”
His father sighed but laboriously pushed into a standing position. At sixty-two years of age and six foot four inches in height, Wes still stood a couple inches taller than Rex, but he felt perilously thin when Rex wrapped his arm lightly about Wes’s waist.
He walked his dad down the hall into his bedroom, which now contained a rented hospital bed. His sisters had draped a sheer curtain over the window, but Wes preferred to keep that pushed to one side. Rex thought it was so his father could see his mother’s peonies. Even now, four years after her unexpected death, they bloomed in the shade of the old hackberry tree at the side of the house, though the flowerbeds badly needed weeding.
Rex made a mental note to see to the flowerbeds—just as soon as he got the baler operating and the early hay harvest under way. He had to get the hay in or the cattle wouldn’t have the fodder they’d need to get through winter. The Straight Arrow covered 1,280 acres of prime ranchland, and a good portion of it had been sowed in sturdy grasses, but after several years of drought, even the good rains of the past year hadn’t allowed the range to fully recover. With Dad’s medical bills piling up—the insurance carried high deductibles and co-pays—the ranch couldn’t afford to buy more fodder than usual and still stay on a sound financial footing, which was why Rex would be paying Callie’s wages, though he intended for neither her nor his father to realize that fact. After all, he could afford it. Besides, he’d be practicing law again soon enough.
Ranching had never been Rex’s chosen career path, but without the ranch, Rex and his sisters feared that their dad would simply give up. He’d taken their mother’s death hard, and they feared that his cancer would become an excuse for him simply to let go and join her in the next life, especially if the ranch faltered. Rex couldn’t let that happen. Though not as prosperous as in years past, the ranch remained on solid fiscal footing, and Rex intended to see to it that it stayed that way. As much as he disliked the physical labor of ranching, he could, would, do this.
Besides, Callie wouldn’t be here for long. They’d only need her until Meredith could get a leave of absence from her nursing job and Ann’s company sent a temporary manager to take over for her so she could use some of those many vacation days she had stacked up. Anyway, it was worth double Callie’s wages to see Wes smiling, dressed and sitting at the table for meals again.
Meanwhile, having a pretty woman around the house, good meals on the table and clean clothes would go a long way toward helping Rex swallow his frustration and dismay with the work and do this thing for his dad. It was the least he could do for the man who had never pushed him to give up his own dreams to take over the family legacy.
* * *
After changing her daughter’s diaper, Callie nursed her in the rocking chair in front of the empty fireplace. She watched through the window as Rex walked across the yard, past an enormous bur oak, over the hard-packed red dirt road to the big red barn on the other side. The old barn sagged a bit, its white roof beaten to gray in places by the Oklahoma weather, but it still stood proudly beside a maze of corrals and a conglomeration of newer metal outbuildings.
Rex pulled on a pair of leather work gloves as he walked, his big, booted feet kicking up little dust clouds along the well-worn path. She respected him for taking time out of his law practice to come here and care for his ailing father, but she had to wonder just how much he knew about balers and livestock.
Wes obviously needed the help. His gauntness had shocked Callie more than the sudden graying of his hair, and in order to tempt his appetite she’d instantly started sorting through her mental store of Gloria Billings’s recipes and what she recalled the Billings girls had bought in her father’s grocery.
Gloria had always been very kind to Callie and widely generous with her recipes. As a motherless girl who had always known she was a disappointment to her father—Stuart Crowsen obviously would have much preferred a son to take over his many businesses—Callie had deeply admired Gloria and envied Ann and Meredith.
She barely remembered Rex. He’d been away at college by the time she’d started to take notice of boys. She hadn’t given the largely absent Rex a passing thought. She couldn’t help doing so now, though.
He was a fine-looking man, and he so obviously loved his father.
“Thank You, Lord,” she whispered, cradling Bodie against her. “Thank You for sending him into the café this morning. Thank You for this chance. Thank You for giving me a way to help Wes. Please show me how to make the most of it. I hope Gloria knows that I’ll do my best by him.”
Bodie pulled away and sat up then, giving Callie a milky smile. Callie hugged her, feeling for the first time since her husband, Bo, had died that they were truly going to be okay.
“We’re on our way now, baby girl. Soon we’ll be on our own.”
The money that she would earn here with the Billings family would take her and Bodie to a new life, someplace where Callie could find a decent-paying job and make a home for the two of them. Far away from her father. Meanwhile, she would do her best to get Wes Billings back on his feet and Straight Arrow Ranch running smoothly.
She carried Bodie