to it on holidays and her birthday. Next best thing to a grave.”
“Not a bad solution.”
“Not the best, either.” Her eyes had a faraway look. “I kept thinking, maybe she washed ashore somewhere and lost her memory. Maybe she was still alive and didn’t know who she was.” She smiled. “There was this movie I always loved, about a female CIA agent who was shot and lost her memory. She ended up in a small town with a baby, and years later, her memory came back.”
He chuckled. “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” he quoted.
She gasped. “Yes!”
He grinned. “I have it on Prime video,” he mused. “Samuel L. Jackson’s finest performance, until Captain Marvel,” he amended. “He’s one of my favorite actors.”
“Mine, too,” she said. “And I loved Geena Davis in the role of the schoolteacher mother who turned out to be an assassin.”
He glanced at her. “You have an adventurous nature.”
“I can’t do adventurous things, so I’m an armchair pirate and superheroine and explorer and mercenary.”
“Pirate?” he mused, and his pale silver eyes twinkled.
“I’d love to have a pirate ship and sail it on the local lake. It would have black sails and a skull-and-crossbones flag, and I’d hire men to sail it dressed up like Blackbeard.”
“Why not do it?”
“Oh, I’ve given Catelow plenty of reasons to talk about me. No need to add even more,” she added and regretted saying it when she saw the amusement leave his handsome face. It closed up. She grimaced. She had a knack for alienating people.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Oh! Sorry!” she blurted out and gave him directions.
* * *
HER HOUSE WAS OLD. It had been a bigger ranch in earlier days. It had belonged to a great-uncle who’d left it to her father. The family had lived there, barely scratching out a living, before her father had been offered employment in Denver at the same graphics firm whose owner Ida later married. It had been sold, but Ida’s first husband bought it back and put in a ranch manager. Ida should keep the place for her heirs, he’d said gently, before she knew that there wouldn’t be any with him. It had been a kind gesture, from a kind man.
Now it was a horse ranch. Ida kept a small herd of palominos and two part-time cowboys who did nothing but look after them.
“My dad worked as a typesetter for the local newspaper,” she commented. “But we lived here. It was a hard life. We had a cow for milk and butter, and chickens for eggs.”
“No beef?”
She shook her head. “It was hard enough providing for a milk cow and the chickens. We couldn’t afford fencing for beef.”
He frowned. He hadn’t considered that her people had been poor. So had his. He was in his midthirties, over ten years her senior. It was probably why he didn’t remember her from school.
“I grew up poor, too,” he said quietly. “I mostly lived with my mother and her parents. We had a ranch only a little more prosperous than yours. Plenty to eat, but no luxuries. My grandfather drove a ten-year-old car with eighty thousand miles on it.” He chuckled. “He used to say that any car that had less than eighty thousand miles would be as good as a new one to him.”
“We had a twelve-year-old pickup truck with brakes that needed constant relining. My dad had a heavy foot.”
“How old were you when he died?”
“Ten,” she said softly. “He was the best dad in the world. I loved him so much. So did my mother. I almost lost her when he was gone so suddenly. She grieved until she died. She never even looked at another man.”
“My mother was like that.”
She glanced at him, curious. She wanted to know what sort of man his father was. But she was wary of asking. There was a look on his face that was puzzling.
He was aware of that curiosity. He didn’t indulge it.
He pulled into the long driveway that led to the Victorian house in a grove of lodgepole pines, with the Tetons sharp and snowcapped in the distance. “Nice view,” he commented.
“It is, isn’t it? I sculpt, for a hobby. But I’ve always wished I could paint.”
“I can see why.” He frowned. “It’s pretty remote.”
“I like it that way,” she said. She drew in a breath. “I don’t...mix well.”
“I have to,” he said. “Business requires it.”
“I suppose so. Watch for Butler,” she said quickly as he pulled up close to the steps.
“Butler?”
In response, a