Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) (12 page)

“I know,” Miranda began, putting her hands up in defeat. “I know what you’re thinking, but we have to do something.”

“Miranda, I love your compassion but those two are nothing but trouble. They’re drug addicts and prostitutes and even worse, if word got out that they’re here, Mack is going to raise all kinds of commotion trying to get them to come back. Plus the fact that probably half the guys on this ranch have had some ‘business’ with them…we don’t want to open our own brothel on the ranch,” Casey explained, trying not to raise Miranda’s ire over his judgment of the girls, but still trying to get her to see that having them on the property for even a minute was dangerous.

“I understand. But Casey…they
walked
from Hale.” Bernard’s eyebrows went up in surprise as she continued. “They did that because…well, I’m sorry to create even more drama around here…they think my ex-boyfriend came all this way to find me and made some really threatening comments.
Really
threatening.”

She could see on their faces that the gravity of the situation wasn’t sinking in. This went beyond some pining ex-boyfriend who showed up on her doorstep from a hundred miles away to beg her to come back. She had hoped to keep most of the details to herself but instead, she found herself having to explain about the abuse, both physical and emotional, about the times it had been so bad that she’d even had to go to the hospital.

“I just can’t picture it,” Casey said, shaking his head. “You’re so strong, so out there. I can’t imagine you letting some man treat you that way, and then coming back for more.”

“That’s because you know the person who won’t let it happen ever again. But when someone treats you so badly for so long, you start to think the things he says are true and that the things he does are justified. ‘If I had only been prettier, if only I hadn’t forgotten to pick up laundry or pay his cell phone bill, then none of this would have happened’. After it happens for so long and you spend so much energy trying not to do things that will set him off, you start to believe you deserve it.”

“But the night I found him on top of Gracie, it clicked. I knew this wasn’t about me doing things that made him angry. This was just about him being a monster. Gracie was just lying there asleep, not bothering anyone. I knew then that this was just about how he treats women, how he does what he wants, takes what he wants, and hurts who he wants.”

“But what are we to do about him now?” Bernard asked. “I can ask the county judge to help us file charges of domestic violence back in New Jersey so at least he will have charges against him on record, and then issue a restraining order to keep him off my property. But if he’s really come all this way because he thinks he owns you, a piece of paper won’t be enough to stop him.”

“No,” Casey interrupted, “but a piece of paper will go a long way toward justifying why one of us had to shoot him if he does come out here.” Miranda was shocked by what he said and by the look in his eye, but knew that his overreaction was only born out of fear for her, and for Gracie. “From now on, at least until we get this all sorted out, you and Gracie stay close to the house and make sure you’re never alone. If that means baking cookies all day in the kitchen, then so be it. Dad’ll get that order and I’ll see what I can find out in town.” He kissed Miranda urgently on the lips, oblivious to the pleased expression on his father’s face.

“But what about our new guests?” Bernard asked. “That has to be settled, too.”

“Well, I can’t speak for you or your family because I’m a newcomer here myself. But I feel like those two girls just earned those beds upstairs. I say we let them earn their keep around here until they’ve built up enough credit from us to get plane tickets to wherever they need to go.”

“Earn their keep?” Bernard asked suspiciously, raising one eyebrow.

“
Not
like that! You know, doing actual chores, things that need to be done.”

“Miranda, that’s a really noble idea and I would never turn away someone in need but this isn’t as simple letting a stray dog come in out of the rain. If those girls are on drugs, it’s going to get ugly when it leaves their systems.”

“And what better place for that to happen than out in the middle of nowhere on over a thousand miles of property? Better yet, let’s put them up at the house you bought me. It’s small, it’s isolated, Mack will never find them, and they can scream, cry, throw up, whatever,…all away from the prying eyes of the ranch.” Miranda seemed pleased with the solution, but Casey still looked skeptical until Bernard interceded.

“You know, the teacher who stays out here and tutors all the kids used to work in a rehab facility. That’s why she came out here, she’d spent too many years trying to get through to kids who were determined to ruin their lives. What if she stayed out there with the girls for a few weeks? When the girls are ready, we’ll send them on their way with a fresh start. We’ll get the doctor out here to look at them as soon as he can come and as soon as they’re ready and have spent a week or two getting fresh air and plenty of food, we’ll set them up at Miranda’s farm.”

Miranda smiled at the old man and hugged him, knowing now he had a soft spot for people in need, especially young people. After all, it’s the reason he never questioned Gracie’s presence with Miranda. It was decided, so Miranda went upstairs to talk to Dee and Emma and tell Gracie the good news: she was going camping tonight.

“I can’t believe you gave away our beds to some total strangers,” Gracie complained, shaking out the blanket and pillow and arranging it next to the roaring fire going in the fire ring. After telling Dee and Emma that they would sleep in their room, Miranda arranged for Gracie and her to sleep outside, as practice for the cattle drive. “And I thought you said it was all modern on the drive.”

“It is, but we’ll still be sleeping under the stars some nights.” Miranda positioned her own blanket near enough to Gracie’s that she could reach out and put a hand on her in the night, to feel that she was safely there. “Consider this good training for the ride.”

Gracie humphed dejectedly, knowing this was a done deal. She crawled in her blanket and made a big show of trying to get comfortable over and over. Finally, she settled into a position, and Miranda stifled a laugh.

“Are those girls really in trouble?” Gracie asked quietly after they’d both become still.

“Yes, I think so,” Miranda answered, waiting to see where this conversation was going and letting Gracie steer the talk.

“You mean with drugs?” she asked.

“Well, yes. And with some other behaviors.” Miranda was ready to explain what those behaviors were to her inquisitive sister, but only if she asked. “How did you know they were on drugs?”

“You can tell by their skin. There’s a lot of kids who looked like that at my high school back home. Everyone just knew to stay away from them.”

“Yeah, but if everyone stays away from them, who’s going to help them?”

“Don’t people kind of have to want help before you can give it to them? Like you with Mike?”

Miranda stayed perfectly still, knowing that her answer would mean the difference in the entire conversation. “You’re absolutely right. People can’t see their own problems when they’re living them, they have to have something that makes them step back and see the situation like an outsider would.”

“And what Mike tried to do to me was that situation?” she asked, speaking of that night for the first time.

“Absolutely. It made me see him for what he truly is, a monster who doesn’t deserve to be around people.”

“Oh,” Gracie answered, waiting for a long time before speaking again. “Then I’m glad he did it. If that’s what it took to make you finally dump him, I guess there’s some good that came from it after all.”

Miranda sobbed silently at the wisdom from a teenager, but also that she had let it get to that point. “I’m so sorry, Gracie. Both for what happened that day, and for all the times you had to see the way he treated me. I never realized you were learning how to be a girlfriend or a wife by watching me let him get by with that. For your sake, if not for mine, I should have put a stop to it a long time ago.”

“Well, if you had, you would never have met Casey,” Gracie whispered in the dark.

“I suppose that’s true. And I’m really glad I did. You know, I never did thank you for butting into my business and trying to play Internet match maker!” Gracie giggled at Miranda’s tone of voice. “I didn’t even know there were dating sites for cowboys, let alone think of setting up my profile on one!”

“Oh, there’s all kinds of specific dating sites for different kinds of people. I happen to think it’s really romantic,” Gracie said. “People all over the world who like the same things can meet someone with the touch of a button. It’s far better than imagining people wandering around for their whole lives trying to find someone, when that person could be right next door and they wouldn’t even know it.”

“You are one really cool kid, Gracie. How did you get to be so smart?” Miranda asked drowsily.

“The Internet,” she said with a soft laugh, trailing off at the end of her last word as she grew sleepy.

Sometime during the night, when their fire had turned to a bright orange glow, Miranda felt something on her shoulder. She sat up, worried she wasn’t alone in her sleeping bag and jumped when that something turned out to be a hand.

“Shhhh!” Casey insisted in a whisper. “It’s just me!”

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Well, I’ve been sleeping way over there where I could keep an eye on you two. You woke me up because you were having a nightmare. What was it?”

“Oh, I don’t even remember,” Miranda replied in a sleepy voice. “It couldn’t have been too bad if I can’t remember it.”

“I’m not sure I agree. You were yelling ‘stop’ over and over.” Casey threw one arm across Miranda’s front and pulled her to his chest, warming her back as he did.

“That could have been anything,” she reassured him. “Maybe I was about to get sick on the merry-go-round like I did when I was four.” She laughed quietly as she snuggled into Casey’s chest, warm and content. “But why were you asleep out here in the first place?”

“Because you were,” he answered dreamily, kissing her ear and squeezing her with his strong arms. Miranda turned her face toward for a real kiss, then settled back to sleep.

When the sunlight and the sound of ranch work woke her the next morning, Miranda was alone, a good thing considering Gracie snored softly nearby. She reached out a hand and shook Gracie on the shoulder, waking the girl so they could go inside. She then stood up and stretched, rubbing her neck to ease the soreness that had planted itself there during the night on the hard ground.

As the two sleep-weary campers entered the warm kitchen, Seamus and Jacob greeted them from the breakfast table, asking if they were ready to spend the next two weeks doing just that. Miranda and Gracie answered simultaneously but their answers were opposites, making both of the younger twins laugh. Gracie went over and sat down by Jacob as Miranda grabbed their plates.

“Are you guys really coming on the drive with us?” Jacob asked, eyeing Gracie’s sleep deprived face warily.

“Yup! And we’re going to have tons of fun, I know it,” Miranda answered for both of them.

“Good! You’re really going to like it, you’ll see,” Seamus answered. “Of course, just so you know, on the actual drive you’d get up about an hour earlier and get straight to work. Fair warning!” The three laughed when Gracie groaned and let her head fall to the table.

“Dad’s looking for you when you’re done with breakfast, something about the plans for the vacation people,” Jacob said to Miranda, smiling especially for Gracie as the two boys got up to get to work. Miranda had seen the look that passed between the two of them and had to wonder if he might be part of the reason Gracie had quit complaining so much about the upcoming drive. The chance to spend two weeks away from the ranch with her own cowboy might have something to do with her attitude, causing Miranda to smile to herself.

She met with Bernard and came away with more questions than she had thought to ask, but at least had a good plan in mind of the kinds of activities the newcomers could engage in, as well as the ones they had to be careful to avoid. Miranda was given a series of signals to learn, little noises and code words the cowboys used to mean different things, both to each other and to the cows.

Then, there was the plan for Dee and Emma to arrange. Bernard had called in the teacher, Cyndy, and they spoke at length about what could be done from the isolation of the little cabin. Cyndy took a little convincing as dealing with this kind of hurting in young people was something she had put behind her, but she had remembered seeing the two girls in town and wondering about how they had come to be in that situation. She agreed to suspend her own ranch classroom for as long as it took to do what she could for the poor girls.

Finally, that just left packing for the drive as the group would leave in three days.  All of the activity on the ranch had shifted into preparations for that event, and it would be no different for Miranda. She had already decided to take Casey’s advice and stick close to the kitchen with Gracie, because there was so much food prep that had to be done for the trip. Not just baked goods, like he’d only half-jokingly suggested, but the staff did as much pre-meal preparation as could be done, with various ingredients being stored in vacuum sealed food bags then frozen, things like salt, sugar, and coffee being rationed into premeasured containers for each leg of the trip. Luckily, on a modern-era drive, someone could always be sent to the nearest store if they ran out of something, but the main problem was making sure the truck—which had to stick to major highways and paved roads—was able to meet up with the group who was herding mostly through the edges of towns to avoid holding up traffic.

The hard thing about the kitchen was the meals still had to get done, four meals a day with three rotations each. That left Miranda and Gracie to work in a tiny corner of the giant cook area, staying out of the way of the staff preparing meals even as they sliced potatoes or shredded giant blocks of cheddar cheese for the drive. They measured out portions of complete ingredients like the dry stuffs for cornbread to be individually bagged, labeling each bag with the ingredient and the amount.

Bernard came in while Miranda was elbow deep in portioning out small containers of vegetable shortening, her hands and forearms slick with the goopy white mess. “I have everything sorted out with the charges and the restraining order,” he began quietly, looking pointedly at Gracie because he wasn’t sure what Miranda had shared with her. “You’ll need to speak to the prosecutor in New Jersey as soon as you can get free in here, but they have hospital records to prove the incidents so there isn’t much to do other than give your statement. Fortunately, domestic violence laws have adapted so much to protect the victims, you don’t have to return to the state to file the complaint. Come to my office as soon as you get the chance.”

Miranda cleaned up and joined him by his desk, taking the receiver as he dialed the number from his notepad. All Miranda had to do was give an official statement with as many dates as she could remember, and otherwise, just confirm what the prosecutors had already uncovered. She returned the handset to Bernard, who thanked them and hung up.

“I’ve done some asking around in Hale and other people have seen this guy around. Unfortunately, no one has seen him for the last two days, so he might be already on his way here. I let Sheriff Matthews know, and he confirmed that we can take whatever steps are necessary to protect you if Mike tries to come inside. I know that thought might not be very comforting, but it’s really all we can do,” Bernard explained.

“You’ve done more than enough already,” Miranda replied. “Maybe instead of coming here, he’s realized how stupid and pointless this is and he’s gone back home.”

“We can hope for that, but one thing I’ve learned about jerks like him over the years is once they set their mind to what they think they’re entitled to, they don’t often back down until they’re forced to. I just hope he’s able to see reason before he sees the business end of any of my cowboys’ fists.”

Miranda shuddered at the thought, fully aware of what kind of pain Mike’s fists were able to inflict. She nodded and thanked Bernard, then headed back to the kitchen to finish sorting supplies. Casey was waiting in the hallway with a pained expression.

“Do you have a few minutes to get away?” he asked darkly.

“Sure!” Miranda said, brightening at the thought of stealing some time with Casey, only to feel her smile fade as she watched his face. He took her by the hand and pulled her quickly toward the front door. Outside, he led her to a waiting gator truck and jumped in, revving the engine as she buckled up for what must be a bouncy ride. Casey tore out of the yard and flew across the pastures toward one of the outbuildings. Talk would have been impossible over the noise of the engine and the wind rushing past the completely open vehicle, but something about Casey’s expression told her he wouldn’t have been in the mood for talking anyway.

About twenty minutes later, Casey pulled up beside a cedar shack used for storing tools. A group of ranch hands milled about outside, guilty looks on their faces, some with their hands shoved in their pockets. As Casey took Miranda’s hand and helped her out of the vehicle, they parted and made a wide path for the couple to reach the door. Casey stopped with one hand on the leather strap that held it shut.

“I brought you out here to see if this was your guy,” he said, “and I’m sorry about the way he looks. If this is him, one of the guys found him holed up out on the ranch, armed with a gun, some duct tape, and a bag of zip ties. He took off but some things about ranch life never change from the olden days, because these guys formed a posse and went after him. When they tracked him down, they tried to talk to him, but things got…ugly.” Casey swung open the door and Michelle gasped when she saw Mike, or what was left of him, bruised and bleeding. The only part that was more shocking was that he was hog-tied in a letter C, his arms tied behind him and meeting the tethers on his ankles near the middle of his back.

Mike opened his eyes when the light came through the open door, and it was about two seconds before he spewed out a string of profanities that would have embarrassed the devil himself. By the time Casey had heard enough and shut the door again, all that could be heard of his muffled voice were the words, “You’re mine, bitch! You belong to me! You’re mine!” repeated over and over.

“I guess that answers that question,” one of the hands said with a snicker. “Good to know we had the right guy. We haven’t gotten to round up the boys in a while, and I was afraid we were getting rusty.”

Casey shot him an amused look that was at least supposed to be a reprimand, but even Casey couldn’t stay angry, not with the feeling of relief from catching Miranda’s ex-boyfriend coming over him. Miranda just stood there, bemused by the whole event.