a loving mother and a wonderful wife. The rare times he called her a cowgirl now were meant only to ruffle her feathers, not to wound her, although sometimes it still did anyway. She wasn’t proud of her origins and still sorely felt the opportunities she had missed in Santa Ynez, with a father and two sisters who thought intellectual pursuits were a waste of time. She had more than made up for it as an adult.
* * *
—
Gemma didn’t go home much more often than Caroline did. She had gone to L.A. as soon as she’d graduated from high school, without bothering with college. She was a striking, tall, beautiful, exotic-looking woman with dark hair and blue eyes. She’d done some modeling, paid for acting lessons herself, and started out with small parts on TV. At thirty-one, she had landed the starring role in a successful TV series, and was still firmly ensconced there. Now forty-one, she had had her eyes done, and enough Botox shots and fillers to look ten years younger than she was, with makeup and good lighting. She never seemed to age on the show or in real life. She was very decidedly a star, and lived that way, with a gorgeous house and pool in the Hollywood Hills, and a glamorous life. She had dated some of the best-known Hollywood bachelors, and fallen seriously in love once. Her romances were usually brief and tumultuous, and were reported in the tabloids. Her one serious love had left her for a more famous actress and broken her heart. She had kept things light ever since, never caring deeply for the men in her life. She was more dedicated to her career than to anything else. Her father loved reading about her, no matter what the papers said. Gemma could do no wrong in JT’s eyes, though their battles were legendary and fierce. They were too much alike to get along, headstrong, stubborn, and determined to have their own way. Neither Gemma nor Kate had ever married, and Gemma claimed she didn’t care. She was having too much fun to get tied down, once she got over her one and only broken heart. Kate worked too hard to meet a man and spend time with him. She was at her father’s beck and call on the ranch day and night. If anything went wrong, he called her, at any hour.
Their father liked to say that he had a workhorse in Kate, Gemma was his star, and Caroline was the brain and suburban housewife, once she grew up. He never understood her life or her interests, and didn’t try, but he was impressed by her husband’s success, and he thought his grandchildren were great. They were smart and inquisitive and loved his stories when he occasionally saw them. He never went to San Francisco. He never left the Valley. He was always working. He loved it.
JT Tucker was a cowboy to the depths of his soul, and so was Kate. She worked hard to be the son he’d never had. She had lived up to all his expectations, even if he didn’t acknowledge it often. She lived for one thing, to please him. Her life in the Santa Ynez Valley suited her to perfection. When she was younger, she assumed she’d marry, but as time went on, the men she dated fell by the wayside. They wanted more than she had to give. Her father and the ranch consumed all her energy and time. She was always canceling dates or standing men up to tend to a sick horse, help deliver a calf, or because her father insisted he needed her help with a project only she could do. It got harder and harder to explain, and eventually she stopped trying. She was married to the ranch now. Her father expected it and didn’t realize what a sacrifice she’d made for him. It was what he expected of her. And she loved her father, the ranch, and the valley where they lived, with her whole heart and soul, more than she’d ever loved any man. The men in her life had gone on to marry other women, while her father continued to depend on her.
By six o’clock in the morning, she would be on a horse and stay there for most of the day, checking on their fences, watching what went on at the breeding barn, riding across the fields, helping to plan their livestock