Lost and Found Groom by McLinn, Patricia (most difficult books to read .TXT) 📗

flying weather, and that might not last – they’re calling for rain by the end of the week. You have to know I’d never take chances with Matthew.”

“No. Absolutely not.”

His dark eyes considered her. She broke the connection, only to discover the adults in the room were all watching them.

“Then you come, Kendra. Let me prove how safe it is.”

She recrossed the straps. “I have too many things to do. After we leave here, I have to make calls for a story and I have errands.”

“A couple hours. That’s all. I can show you what Far Hills looks like from the air. Have you ever seen the ranch from an entirely different angle? Have you ever seen the sky from a new angle? Let me show you what it’s like, Kendra. I’ll prove to you it’s not dangerous.”

“No.”

“Kendra–”

“No. The answer is no. I’m not going flying with you.”

“I’ll go.”

All eyes turned to Marti. But Kendra’s gaze quickly shifted to Daniel. He was as stunned as she was.

“I’ll go flying with you this afternoon, Daniel. If Kendra will take care of Emily. And if it’s okay with you.”

“Okay,” he said slowly, then the corners of his mouth lifted. “This should be interesting.”

*

Marti Susland let out a long, uneven breath.

She hadn’t said much since she’d followed him from town to the airport, except to pass a few pleasantries with Rufus. The lack of conversation suited Daniel. He was wrestling with a problem.

Talk about the chicken and egg. How could he get Kendra to change her mind about flying if he couldn’t get her to change her mind about flying?

Marti had watched Daniel’s preflight check–first outside the plane, then inside–without comment, but with great attention. He’d heard one sharp drawn-in breath on takeoff, but otherwise, nothing.

Maybe discomfort about flying in small planes ran in the family. So why had Marti asked to come?

“This is . . . magical.”

He felt his smile stretching across his face, and when she turned toward him, he saw an answering smile creasing her face.

“Kendra once told me the only way to see Far Hills was on horseback,” he said, “but I think this is pretty good.”

She nodded. “She should see it like this. I’ve flown over on flights out of Billings, but it was no more than a speck. On the ground, I know every foot, but up there I couldn’t tell what was where. But this . . . Oh–there’s the home ranch.”

He banked the plane to the right to give her a better view of the cluster of trees and buildings forming an oasis in the contoured sweeps of range and fields.

“Oh, I like that!” She said of his turn. “It feels like the way the hills look from up here, smooth but curvy. See that pasture, over there, Daniel? Beyond that line of trees? That’s where I met my first rattlesnake.”

She told him other stories, in between spotting landmarks.

“There’s Ridge House–see Ellyn’s car? And there’s Kendra’s house, with the fence–I told Luke that fence wasn’t straight.”

He chuckled. “You’re a tough taskmaster. I sure hope you don’t take surveyor tools to the section I helped him fix.”

“You’re a novice. You’re allowed some leeway.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He wondered about this change of attitude. She’d clearly mistrusted him at the start. Maybe his dealings with Matthew and Kendra had persuaded her he wasn’t a threat to them. If so, that was more than he’d managed with Kendra.

“I hear you’ve been doing some volunteer spotting for the firefighters on the west slope.”

Somehow he wasn’t surprised she knew. Would she tell Kendra?

“A little. Filling in for Rufus.”

He took her down close enough to see the stubble from a recently hayed field. Then climbed toward the mountains. Threads of streams sewed the patches of land into a mosaic that swept part way up the mountains before giving way to the textured green of pines.

Marti pointed past him, out his side window. “See that rock outcropping? There, beyond those fir trees, two-thirds of the way up that mountain with the uneven peak. That’s Crooked Mountain, the western edge of Far Hills Ranch. And you can get almost as good a view of the spread from that outcropping as you do from up here. Almost.”

Marti didn’t speak again until they’d landed, he’d shut down the engine and unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Did Kendra tell you about the founding of Far Hills Ranch?”

“Not that I remember.” And he remembered it all.

“It happened right here, in 1878,” Marti said in a dreamy voice. “The campfire burned for four days and four nights on that outcropping on Crooked Mountain, until my great-grandfather Charles Susland rode up there to see an Indian woman named Leaping Star.”

Daniel listened to a story of Kendra’s family five generations old. He didn’t even know who his mother was. Was that Marti’s point?

Marti ended with, “Kendra used to want to hear that story all the time when she came here for summers. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you about Charles Susland. She seems to feel she told you everything there was to tell during that hurricane.”

“She told me some.”

“And you told her nothing. It’s going to take some doing to get her to forgive that you know her so much better than she knows you–or so she thinks.”

*

“Daniel?”

At the sound of Kendra’s voice on the phone, Daniel pushed aside the sectional charts he’d been studying, acquainting himself with mountains he’d be flying over to spot the fires’ progress.

“ ’Morning, Kendra.”

“Daniel, I wondered–if you can’t do it, it’s all right–but I wondered if you’d be free to take care of Matthew for a couple hours today.”

“Sure.”

“I wouldn’t ask you, but–”

“You can quit explaining, Kendra, I said yes. What time?”

“Oh. Twelve-thirty? It’s the yearly meeting with the ranch accountant, Marti likes me to be there. I’ll be back by three. But you should know–Matthew was up all night with a sore throat and fever. That’s why he can’t go to the co-op. He’s better, but . . .”

“I’ll come now.” He heard the beginnings of her protest and talked over it. “He was up all night, so you