CHAPTER 4

C HAPTER 4

Essa lay awake a long time, wondering what Duke knew about Dean. He was obviously not happy with the idea of Mellie going anywhere with him. There must be a reason.

He was a private detective. He'd been an FBI agent. They had ways of ferreting out information that nobody else could get. What had he found out that he couldn't share?

She scoffed at that idea. Dean was such a smart, kind person. He couldn't have a mean bone in his body. He'd obviously been put down most of his life, but it hadn't turned him bad. He was polite and patient even when he shouldn't have been. He was kind to everyone he met.

So why didn't Duke want not only Mellie but Essa, too, not to go anywhere with him? And why did he want Essa to help him make sure of it?

She worried the idea until she saw the time. She had to get up early to start the breakfast menu with her helpers. She turned off the light and went to sleep.

Only to have dark and scary dreams. There was a house where a small boy was beaten with a small shovel, beaten bloody, while a woman yelled at him over and over again. There was a little boy who was wrapped in a white sheet and put into a hole in the ground.

She rolled over restlessly as the nightmare continued. Now there was a young woman with a man. She stripped the clothes off the little boy and held him down in a tub of cold water with ice in it. She laughed while she did it.

She wore a blue bow in her dark hair, and she had on a pin of some sort, a colorful pin with a fist.

The boy was dressed now and shivering. The woman had on some sort of silky black pajamas. She was teasing the boy with her feet, with kicks and feints, and laughing wildly.

Then she was wearing a dress again. She looked funny, like a little girl dressing up, with a blue bow in her hair and a short skirt. But when Essa looked closer, it wasn't the woman in the skirt, it was the little boy. He had the blue bow in his own hair now. There was a man, slight and older than the woman, who cowered as the woman struck him. He was crying.

He turned and his face was a skeleton. And then, suddenly, the face was her own!

Essa awoke with a stark cry of alarm. She was sweating. What a horrible dream. She'd never had any like it. She sat up in bed, holding her head. If that was what she could expect tonight, she'd sit up and watch old movies, she thought.

* * *

The relief cook showed up on time, thank goodness, so she was free to go with Duke and Mellie to ride horses Sunday.

"Have you ever been on a horse?" Duke asked as they drove toward the ranch outside Benton.

"Once or twice," she lied.

"Good. Maybe you won't fall off going down the trail," he added in what she thought of as his mocking tone.

"Oh, I'll do my best," she promised from the comfort of the back seat. "Not to fall off, I mean," she added.

"I can ride really well," Mellie told her. "Daddy taught me. We used to live on a ranch."

Nobody said anything. It was obvious that it was a painful subject, because talking ceased for a few poignant seconds.

"Where did you go riding?" Mellie asked her friend.

"Around here," Essa said. "I grew up in Benton. Well, near Benton."

"It's pretty rural," Duke replied.

"Yes, and small towns are like big families," she said, smiling. "I've always loved living here."

"No inclination to go to Denver and find some great fancy restaurant with a name nobody can pronounce?"

"None at all. I don't want to live in a city. Not ever."

"Why?" he wondered aloud.

She sighed. "I watch television occasionally. Detective shows, CSI, stuff like that. It seems to me that the best of the cities these days is the worst of humanity."

Duke's pale eyebrows lifted.

"I'm just one opinion," she pointed out. "Everybody's entitled to one."

"Why aren't you married?" he shot back.

She drew in a breath. "I'm not the sort of woman who attracts men," she said with a shrug. "I don't move with the times. I don't watch much television, the subjects I'm interested in aren't exactly party talk, and there's a real limit to single men around here," she finished.

"The streets are full of men," he retorted.

"Sure. But most of them are married. The divorced ones run if you even look in their direction. The single ones mostly have two or three obliging friends, and the rest are gay." She smiled. "I adore gay men."

"They won't marry you."

She shrugged. "Big deal. They're good company, and I don't have to fight them off at my front door. Figuratively speaking. And should we be discussing this in front of you know who?" she added, jerking her head toward a fascinated Mellie.

"Are you kidding me?" Mellie burst out. "You should come to school with me. We got into a vivid discussion of sex right in my classroom until the teacher came back in and called the police! Daddy came and got me, and I got transferred to another school!"

Essa's mouth was open. "You have got to be kidding me!"

"I wish she was," Duke muttered. "Before that happened, one teacher corrected a student and wound up in the hospital fighting for her life."

"This is not how things happen in Benton," Essa said on a harsh breath.

"Not when I went to school, either." He laughed. "My teacher kissed her boyfriend outside the classroom and my dad called a conference with the teacher and the principal. She was disciplined. That's how school worked when I was in grammar school. These days, it's unreal what kids go through to get an education."

"He tried to put me in a private school, but I wouldn't go," Mellie said with a grin. "I need to be street smart to live in the modern world!"

"Not that street smart," he muttered, glaring at her.

"I don't blame you," Essa told him. She shook her head. "I still can hardly believe what's going on in the world today."

"My grandfather said that people born at the turn of the last century would run for their lives in any modern city. I guess he was right. It's not the world that generation grew up in."

"Times are just a lot harder," Essa ventured. "It's because we're so connected. I mean, look at the tables next time you're in our restaurant. Half the people there are staring transfixed into their cell phones. They come in with other people and never speak to them."

"I have to agree," Duke said. "The internet and social media have been both a blessing and a curse."

"Mostly curse," she replied.

"Now, now, could we really live without our video games?" Mellie interrupted. "Daddy?" she added with a pointed glare.

"It's just a couple of video games, and I have to relax somehow." He glanced at her. "We both remember when I tried dating."

Mellie rolled her eyes. "We should forget that."

"Hell, yes, we should," he agreed at once.

Essa was all ears, her eyebrows almost meeting her hairline. Waiting.

Mellie glanced at her and laughed. "He brought home this lady who worked for the agency."

"Yes, and she took one look at my daughter, muttered something about excess baggage, and ran for her life," he said, his tone dripping sarcasm. "My baby! Excess baggage!"

Essa chuckled. "I think she's amazing excess baggage," she said, with a big grin at Mellie. "She's precocious, but she's smart, and she has manners. You've done a good job," she told Duke.

"The lady said she wasn't raising somebody else's brat." Mellie sighed.

"You're both well rid of her, then, aren't you?" Essa replied. "She showed her true colors before any real damage was done. I mean, imagine if your dad had just dated her at work and didn't bring her home until . . ." She swallowed hard at Duke's glare. "Sorry. Not my business. Shutting up now." She sat back in her seat.

They both burst out laughing.

"Yes, just imagine," Duke said, shaking his head. "To be fair, most people don't want anything to do with single parents." He glanced at his daughter with obvious pride. "And my baby will never be excess baggage to me."

"Thanks, Dad," Mellie said, smiling at him.

"Somebody who doesn't want a child in their lives isn't somebody I'd want to be around," Essa added. "Benton is full of families. They come in here on Sunday after church." Her eyes were dreamy. "The kids spill stuff and have fights, and get called down, and drop stuff—and our manager just laughs and calls one of the maids to help clean it up. He helps, too. This place is tailor-made for kids. Nobody fusses." She grinned. "Try that in some fancy restaurant in Denver."

"I don't have the insurance." Duke chuckled.

"And I don't have the inclination. I'll take Benton anytime."

"So would I." Mellie sighed. "Isn't it just beautiful here?" she asked, looking around at the lodgepole pines and aspens, at the long wide pastures and the sharp-peaked, snow-capped mountains in the distance. "It's heaven."

"I've always thought so," Essa agreed.

Duke pulled off onto a dirt road with shale stones. The car slid like mad until he got the handle on driving on it. "Damn," he muttered. "We could go skating!"

"Shale is awful, isn't it? I used to live on a road like this when I was a little girl. I learned a lot of new words when Daddy drove on it in the rain," Essa told them.

He grinned. "I don't doubt it. And we're here." He pulled into a long dirt driveway with, thank goodness, no shale, and stopped in front of a huge log cabin. Out back were lodgepole pines, outbuildings and fences.

Over the driveway, coming in, was "Circle Bar E Rally Ranch."

An elderly man came out to meet them, shaking hands with Duke. "I'm glad you could make it. I don't do a lot of business here. Place is going to rack and ruin," he added on a sigh.

"It's hard to make ranching pay," Duke agreed.

"Come along. I'll take you back to the stable. Only have about six saddle horses now. With the fuel situation what it is, I've had to sell off a lot of livestock. It's like they're trying to kill agriculture these days."

"It's hard everywhere," Duke said. "All over the world."

"Too many groups trying to save the planet and killing people to do it," the old man muttered. "But, hey, don't pay any attention to me. I'm headed for the big sleep in the not-too-distant future. This will all be the problem of the next generation, and good luck to them. They'll need it."

Duke just nodded.

* * *

The horses were beautifully groomed, healthy, and tame. The saddles were hand-tooled leather with all the bells and whistles.

"Wow," Mellie exclaimed.

The old man grinned. "Pretty, aren't they? I had a leather smith working here for a few years. He made me some of the best regalia I've ever seen. Got two dress saddles in the barn that I use when we have parades in Benton."

"Parades?" Mellie was all eyes.

"Of course! We have a spring festival, when we have floats and show off our horses. Then there's the Christmas parade, with more floats and more horses. You missed that one; it's just before Thanksgiving."

"That's the beauty of small towns," Duke said with a sigh. "Parades in big cities are a little more lively, and not in a way I like."

"I get that," the elderly man said. "Well, they're all yours for as long as you want to ride them today," he said, indicating the saddled mounts. "Might not be here much longer. I'm going to talk to a Realtor tomorrow. I'm too old to run this place, and I can't afford the help I need," he added. He shook his head. "Lived here all my life. Going to be rough, giving it up. See you later."

He left them to it.

"That's so sad," Essa said as she watched him walk away.

"We used to be a nation defined by agriculture. Now it's all going to corporate farms and ranches," Duke said. "That's not a step up, in my opinion."

"Mine, either, but they've got the money to buy people out. Family farms and ranches are going to be extinct in a few years. I hate to see it," she said.

He nodded.

* * *

Duke helped Mellie get on the smaller of the three horses and turned to Essa.

"Need a hand?" he offered.

She shrugged. "Thanks for the help," she said, taking the reins. "But I think I can manage."

She vaulted into the saddle, patting the horse gently on the neck. "We should have asked their names."

"Oh, do you think they have names?" Mellie wondered as her dad mounted his own horse.

"Of course they do." Essa laughed. "Anybody who pays this much attention to his horses surely names them. We'll have to ask when we get back."

"You know how to handle a horse," Duke mentioned as they went through two gates, indicated by signs, one threatening sudden death if the gates weren't closed after people went through them.

"I used to do rodeo," Essa said as they rode. "I grew up on a ranch. My parents had horses and a few cattle, lots of cats and dogs," she recalled, smiling sadly. "It was the most wonderful kind of life. Mom was a great cook. She taught me everything I know. They were good people, both of them. It was hard to lose them both at once." She said it matter-of-factly, not fishing for sympathy.

"That's rough."

"It was. But I have friends here in Benton and around the area, and I know just about everybody." She laughed. "Small towns are like big families. Everybody knows everything about you, but it's because they care. They're not nosey, they're . . . well . . . family."

He chuckled. "Exactly." He felt her eyes and turned his head. There was a long look that made her uncomfortable. She quickly shifted her gaze, feeling her heart go wild in her chest.

"I grew up on a ranch, too," Duke said, surprisingly. "Down in Texas. I married a local girl who'd been away at university. We dated for two weeks, got married, and nine months later I was a father."

"Yeah, I was unex . . . unexpected," Mellie said, laughing.

"Boy, were you ever," Duke said, wincing.

"Daddy was over the moon, but Mom wasn't happy about it, not ever," Mellie said sadly. "She used to call me names and . . ."

"Not cool," Duke said, glancing at his daughter.

She grimaced. "Sorry."

"We don't air our dirty linen in front of guests."

"But she's not a guest!" Mellie protested, pointing at Essa. "She's like, well, like . . . family, sort of."

Essa melted inside at the compliment. But before she could open her mouth to speak, Duke did.

"She's company," he replied tersely.

"Oh." Mellie sighed and didn't speak anymore.

Essa was confused and felt shut out, all at once. Well, at least Mellie liked her, she thought. And then she wondered why it should bother her that Duke didn't.

* * *

They rode around the property until the heat and thirst got the better of them. They went back to the corral, left the horses with one of the cowboys, and stopped at the front porch to pay the bill.

"Your horses are in great shape," Duke said. "It's obvious that you love them."

The old man smiled. "Always have."

"Do they have names?" Mellie asked.

"Yes, all six," he said, smiling.

"What are they?" she asked. "Please?"

He chuckled. "You ever see Snow White , that old cartoon movie?"

"Yes," Mellie replied.

"There used to be seven of them, but I lost Dopey last year." He chuckled. "You can probably figure out the rest of their names from that."

"Wow," Essa said. "That's just way cool!"

He grinned. "I loved that movie. The cartoon girl looked like my Velza. She was beautiful, too." His smile was wistful. "Lost her four years ago. But I'll see her again before too long."

"Can I speak to you for a minute?" Duke asked the man.

"Sure. Come inside."

"No, out here's fine. Essa, can you walk Mellie around the yard?"

"Sure," she said, confused.

Mellie laughed. "I'm a horse. You need a bridle for me," she teased.

"No, I don't. I can catch you!" Essa said, making a feint at her.

"Want to bet?" Mellie took off at a dead run, with Essa right behind her.

* * *

By the time they got back, Duke and the man had finished their conversation apparently. They were both smiling.

Duke watched Essa, not running so fast now, still trying to catch the young girl, who ran like quicksilver.

"I yield!" Essa called out in a breathless whisper. "I just hope my life never depends on having to catch you!"

"You're old!" Mellie teased.

"Am not," Essa protested, leaning over to catch her breath, hands propped on her thighs. "Gosh, you can run!"

"She can," Duke agreed. "If it helps, I can't catch her, either," he added, and gave Essa an odd look that she didn't see.

He turned back toward the car. "Let's go, females."

"Females!" Essa huffed.

"Well, if I call you a girl, I'll insult you. If I call you a woman . . ."

"Let's just leave it right there so nobody gets offended," Essa said with a wicked grin. "And I won't call you a toxic male. Deal?"

He chuckled. "Deal. I'll be in touch," he called to the old man, who threw up a hand.

He pulled out onto the road. "Who wants lunch?"

Two hands shot up.

He checked his watch. "Make that supper." He glanced at Essa. "When do you have to be back?"

"I'm off all day and tonight," she said, grinning. "The manager thought I needed a day off. He's such a nice guy. His wife and two kids are every bit as nice as he is, too," she added without guile.

"Do you like everybody?" he asked her.

"Well of course I do," she said, faltering. "I mean, we have rude customers sometimes who want to yell at me for seasoning a steak or something, but most people are nice."

"Seasoning?" he asked.

"It's like this," she explained. "There are people who have all sorts of health issues, and they can't have seasoning, or salt, or anything cooked with or around peanuts. So I always have the wait staff ask first. This one waiter had an attitude problem and didn't ask. So the man had heart problems, and I'd salted his steak pretty nicely. He didn't actually yell, but he did protest rather unpleasantly. We cooked him another steak, minus salt, and the manager gave him his steak free."

"That was nice of him. What about the waiter?"

She wiggled her eyebrows. "Fired that same night. We all went into the kitchen, broke out the cake, and had a celebration. He was nasty to all of us, and one girl threatened to have him arrested for harassment. Nobody cried when he was gone."

"He didn't bother you?" He couldn't imagine how that slipped out.

"Me?" She sounded surprised. "He liked pretty girls," she said.

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. He didn't speak. His eyes did.

"You are so, so pretty," Mellie said firmly. "And you're pretty inside, where it really counts!"

Essa had to bite down hard on tears. It was the kindest thing she'd been told since losing her parents. "Thanks," she managed in a husky tone.

Mellie just grinned at her.

* * *

They stopped at a small tea shop in the middle of nowhere between the ranch and Benton. Amazingly, for such a small, out-of-the-way place, it was crowded with people.

"The food must be wonderful here," Essa remarked. "Look at that parking lot . . . no! No! You can't get a parking spot right in front, nobody ever can . . . !"

Duke turned to her and grinned.

"Dad always gets one," Mellie replied. "Even in the pouring rain. He says it's magic."

Essa shook her head. "It must be!"

They got a table to themselves in back after a ten-minute wait.

"So sorry," the woman, obviously the owner, apologized breathlessly. "We're just inundated with customers today!"

Duke chuckled. "My companion says any place with a full parking lot must have terrific food," he said, nodding toward Essa. "She's a chef."

"Well!" the woman said, impressed. "Where do you work?"

Essa told her. "We're not big, but we do a big business on weekends," she added with a smile. "I wish we had someplace like this! It's amazing!"

"Thanks. My husband and I drove through here and had lunch one day, and the owner said it was a shame he'd have to close because his cook quit. We had both just retired, and we had our bonuses. So we bought it, hired a cook who wanted to live here, and the rest is history. We're always full! It's such a blessing! You try living on what you get for retirement," she added firmly.

They all laughed with her.

* * *

The menu was incredible. It was New York City-type dishes, very high class, with homemade bread and specialty homemade ice cream and pies and cakes.

"This is incredible," Essa remarked as she took the first bite of her steak. "Perfectly cooked, beautifully marbled, perfect seasoning!"

Duke laughed. "I can't comment on the cooking, but the food is lovely."

"Oh, yes!" Mellie enthused, chowing down on a hamburger and homemade fries.

"Peasant," Duke muttered at her. "I raised you to appreciate good food!"

"Hamburgers are wonderful food," she shot back, with catsup staining her cheek.

Essa laughed, taking her own napkin to dab at the child's cheek. "You look like you're wearing war paint," she teased.

Mellie grinned back at her and took another bite.

Duke, watching and listening to the conversation, felt his heart jump. His wife had never liked Mellie. She would never have done something like Essa just had. And it was so natural, not a contrived thing, not with any ulterior motives. Essa really liked the child, and it was obvious. Mellie returned that affection. It delighted him even as it unnerved him. He did not want to get mixed up with a woman. He'd had the cure. Or so he thought . . .