When she opened her eyes, there was a break in the flurries and a wide-open valley spread out in front of her, covered with snow. Beyond the snaking river, through the trees, more of the ranch came into view. A smattering of log-cabin-style buildings, a barn and stable stretched along the riverside. The pastures were marked with a patchwork of wire fences and wooden posts. She spotted a few trucks parked at the far end of a large house and another one next to a smaller cabin. None of them white. The driveway snaked out of sight behind the hill. The place wasn’t setting off alarm bells in her head, but all the open space made her uneasy. As the horse approached, she could see the stable was an older building, freshly painted red with new planks smoothly inserted between aging beams. Above the double doors hung a small plaque with an expertly carved symbol of a horse.
Ellie climbed down from Dusty gingerly, her icy feet stinging with each step. She brushed her hand along the carved details alongside the door. “Someone put their heart into restoring this building,” she said half to herself. She glanced up at Michael. “It’s beautiful.”
Was that a trace of red flooding his high cheekbones? “I’ve done some work on it to turn it into a guest ranch. The place means a lot for my family.”
She could have sworn she heard a note of regret in his voice.
“Are you selling?” she asked.
He shook his head. “My parents and grandparents are staying, but maintaining a working ranch is hard. The guest ranch means they can keep living here as they age.”
There were emotions in his voice she couldn’t identify and Ellie opened her mouth to ask more, but the openness she’d detected in his expression shuttered closed. It was none of her business.
Michael led Dusty into the stables, and she followed him as the warm, pungent scent of horses surrounded her. A wave of nostalgia hit her as a flash of memory came back: Mucking the narrow stall as she talked to Buster, a palomino. Her palomino. She tried to probe that memory, bring it into focus, but it faded behind the hazy veil in her mind, leaving her heart thumping. Why couldn’t she remember?
Ellie wasn’t sure how long she had been standing there, staring at the empty stall in front of her, but when she looked up, Michael was watching her.
“Ready?”
She knew that following him to a place with dry clothes and food was her best option, but the unfamiliar property felt like a field full of land mines. She had no way to know which step would explode on her. Still, she followed him out into the unknown.
Michael trudged through the snow, toward the large, log-cabin-style house. The storm had let up a little, but new clouds were building to the west and coming in fast. Ellie’s teeth were chattering uncontrollably, and her frozen feet felt like they’d shatter if she stepped too hard. They rounded the side of the house, finally out of sight of the driveway. The greenhouse was fairly large, not far from the back door of the house, and the windows were streaked with condensation. Michael kicked through the drifts that had gathered on the steps and opened the door.
Ellie stepped inside the little glass building. The air was warmer than outside and damp, imbued with the dank scent of soil. Much of the place was filled with long rows of raised beds in various stages of growth, and the ground was paved with stone. Along one wall was a kitchenette, with a stainless-steel counter and a sink, and in the middle there was a long, wooden table. Ellie hobbled over the bench next to the table and sank down on the one closest to the door.
“We keep the building warm enough so the pipes don’t freeze, but it’s not enough to warm you.” Michael pulled a small heater out of one of the cabinets, plugged it in and set it next to her. Warm air rushed out, so warm, it made her want to cry. The cold had dulled her fear of attack, making her reckless with the need to get out of the storm. He passed her a small towel, and she wiped her face, smudging the cloth with makeup. Michael grabbed a tub from the cabinet under the sink then turned on the hot water tap, adjusting the temperature, testing it with the inside of his wrist.
As she watched him fill the tub, she probed experimentally at the bump on the back of her head. The area was still a little sticky, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore. Her headache had receded and the second bag of almonds seemed to be keeping the nausea at bay. Should she mention the injury to Michael? No. If she did, it would probably lead to more questions, questions she wasn’t ready to answer yet.
“This is my grandma’s way of warming us up,” he said over his shoulder as he lifted the tub out of the sink. “It works faster than anything else I’ve tried.”
“I’m willing to try anything,” she said.
She cupped her hands and blew on them, then held them in front of the heater. Little bursts of heat stung her fingers, which she supposed was a good sign. At least they weren’t numb.
Michael set the tub next to her feet on the floor. “Can you take off your boots by yourself?” he asked, his gaze on her hands.
“Of course,” she said, but her fingers were stiff enough to make her wonder if she could.
Ellie reached down and untied the laces with shaky hands then pulled off one boot and the other. As she peeled off her socks, Michael slid the tub of warm water closer. She dipped her left foot in and winced as the warm water burned her frozen skin.
He frowned. “Too hot?”
She shook her head as the pain dulled and threads of warmth made their way up her legs. “Perfect.”
She plunged her right foot in, winced again, then let out a sigh of relief.
“I’ll bring back some warmer clothes from the house,” he said.
“Won’t they be missed?”
Michael shook his head. “We have extras. You okay alone for a few minutes?”
Alone. The word shuddered through her. She glanced around at the windows that surrounded her, but all she could see was snow. If someone came to the door right now...
“Isabel probably has some soup on the stove,” he added.
Hunger warred with fear inside her. Ellie took a deep breath and tamped down the anxiety. “That would be wonderful. Thank you.”
Michael nodded, exited, and disappeared into the house.
Ellie was definitely in trouble, and Michael hadn’t the faintest clue what was wrong. If Ellie was even her name. She had sounded unsure of that most basic piece of information.
Her fashionable pants and thin leather boots looked both expensive and completely inappropriate for wandering in the mountains, so she likely hadn’t planned to be out in the weather. His first guess had been domestic violence, sadly too common in the world. Maybe that was the case, but the more time he’d spent with her, the more he’d seen something extra: hints of confusion woven into her fear. This concerned him the most, the moments when she’d seemed to forget about everything and get lost in her thoughts. At times, she’d seemed eager to rid herself of his company, and as much as he respected that she was the best judge of her situation, he was still wary of turning her out on her own. Especially considering the incoming storm and the hungry animals that roamed the territory this time of the year. When she’d heard the sound of the truck coming down the road, the look she’d given him was a plea that had hit him straight in the gut. Even though he wasn’t the right kind of man to answer pleas anymore.
But as Michael made his way down the hallway toward the kitchen, he was startled with another thought. On the ride down the mountain, into the stables and into the greenhouse, his focus on Ellie had pulled him from the depths of his grief. He’d felt a kind of purpose, a pull to action that he hadn’t felt since before his life had crumbled.
The warm scent of some sort of chicken soup wafted out the doorway to the kitchen. Isabel Rodriguez stood by the counter, her hair pinned neatly off her face and plaited into a long braid down her back. She was scraping dough from the sides of the bowl of the standing mixer.
Before they’d hired Isabel, Michael’s grandmother and his mother had alternated as head chefs of the ranch, but it had worn on them during the summers when the giant wooden dining table was packed with ranch hands. Now, with plans to expand, there was no way they could handle it all. Isabel had been a few years out of San Francisco Culinary Institute with an eclectic mix of prestigious restaurant experiences on her résumé. Her ties to the Tahoe area were strong, and she’d said in her interview that she’d been looking for a way to move to the region. His mother loved Isabel’s experience in a high-end Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, and Michael liked her easygoing manner enough that she was one of the only people outside his family he regularly spoke with these days.
Isabel gave him a quick smile and set her spatula on the counter. “What’s up?”
“I have a favor, and for right now it needs to stay between the two of us,” he said then added, “That includes my parents.”
Isabel looked at him with a seriousness that made him feel like she was reading this jumble of emotions that stirred inside him, maybe better than he was. She hadn’t been there through Sunny’s battle with cancer, but she seemed to understand the depths of his lowest moments.
“What’s the favor?”
