like a candy box, and Gemma came out of the bathroom carrying a large pink plastic poodle and saw her sister.
“What do you think?” She looked enormously pleased with herself.
“It’s fantastic! I love it! Where did you find all this great stuff?” It was feminine and modern and young, and Gemma looked a little sheepish.
“I had it staged. I called them yesterday. It was so depressing the way it was. I’ve used them for parties before. I picked everything online. It’s all rented. And when I get tired of it, I can change it, or send it all back. Or buy it if I make some money.”
“Does it cost a fortune?” Kate had never seen anything like it before, but you had to have Gemma’s eye to pick the right things and make it work.
“It’s not cheap, but it’s worth it. Instant happiness, instead of dreary old furniture, or buying things you’ll get tired of anyway.” Kate looked around, admiring the effect, and they went to sit in the kitchen, which was all red and white now, and there was a small red lacquer table big enough for the two of them. They’d even put in a small red refrigerator, which fit the space perfectly.
“Forget acting. You should be a decorator. I should have you stage my place, but I wouldn’t know what to do with all my grungy old furniture.” She’d used the leftovers from the ranch hands’ bunkhouse and it looked it. Gemma was delighted with her new décor, and the two of them sat and talked while Kate ate her sandwich before she went back to the office.
Caroline loved it too when she arrived that afternoon, and Gemma suggested she do the same in her cottage, which was bigger than Gemma’s and had three bedrooms.
“Actually, the kids and I are going to Ikea tomorrow to see what we can do.” None of the cottages had ever been fully furnished or decorated, because neither of the girls had ever used them except for a night once every year or two, or less often in Caroline’s case. But suddenly the cottages had become useful, and they wanted to make them livable. Caroline had promised to let Morgan pick the furniture for her bedroom, and at Ikea they couldn’t go too far wrong or do too much damage.
It was beginning to feel like home, or a fun second home for all of them. Juliette came to take a look too when Kate told her about it, and she loved the effect. She knew that Jimmy wouldn’t have liked it. It wouldn’t have looked like a ranch to him, but it was what the place needed, and what they needed to feel at home there, a youthful feminine touch, which expressed their personalities. Juliette smiled all the way back to her house after she saw it. She liked having the girls there, and the children. She was almost sorry she was going to France for the summer. She liked being there with them. And Jimmy would have liked seeing his girls there too. It was Kate who was bringing them together, and getting them back to the ranch, and that was the whole point. It was a family operation and they owned it jointly now, with Kate running it, and the benefit of everything her father had taught her.
“Change is in the air,” Thad said as he walked past her house, after helping Gemma install a light fixture she had bought at the hardware store.
“My father would have hated it,” Kate said to Thad and they both laughed.
“Leave it to Gemma to have the cottage ‘staged,’ and have it looking like a feature in a decorating magazine. She’s got an eye, though,” he said admiringly.
“She painted our room purple and orange once. Our father almost killed us. He made her repaint it white. She looked like a snowman when she finished. He wouldn’t let me help her.”
“He’s not here anymore,” Thad said gently. “You can paint the place any color you want.” It was good to be reminded, and she nodded, as he walked back to his own tiny house behind the barn.
Her sisters had brought light into her life, and Kate realized that she needed it. They all did. It was a new regime, and she was going to have fun with it, just like Gemma had done with the cottage. It was exactly what they needed, a woman’s touch, because she was running the ranch now,