He started the truck and adjusted the heater. “Want to go to the theater in Burlington?”
She shook her head. “What have you got at the farmhouse?”
He swung toward her, his surprise easy to see through the dimming light. “You want to come out to Steeple Ridge and watch a movie at my house?”
“Will the other cowboys mind?”
“I don’t care if they do.”
A smile spread her lips. “Darren.”
“I don’t know what Cody and Wade are doin’. And Shiloh moved in too.”
“We could get a movie and take it to my house.”
He backed out of the parking space. “No, let’s go see what’s going on at Steeple Ridge.” He drove away from the lake, the Adirondack Mountains black now against the navy blue sky. She felt spent, so tired her brain seemed to be sloshing from one side of her skull to the other. But she didn’t want to be alone, and as Darren drove through the old town feel of Island Park and along the winding highway to Steeple Ridge, she felt like she was going home.
Lights shone in the farmhouse windows, and a memory surged forward. She’d come out to Steeple Ridge after a fight with her mother, the homey feel of the farmhouse a welcome beacon in that dark night.
Jamie had received her with concern, even though she’d already gone to bed. She’d made chocolate milk from powder and pulled out her secret stash of gingerbread cookies. She’d let Farrah cry, and she hadn’t asked a single question.
In the end, she’d told her she needed to go home and make things right with her mother.
“When things went bad in Los Angeles, I thought about Steeple Ridge.” She spoke to the darkness beyond her window.
Darren put the truck in park but didn’t get out. “Oh?”
“Jamie, the woman who used to own the farm before Tucker, was like a second mother to me. She was my riding instructor, and she taught me a lot more than how to jump and care for horses.”
Darren said nothing, and Farrah found she didn’t need him to. She could feel his attentiveness, and it was one of his most attractive qualities. That, and his dark, delicious eyes.
“Did you ever know Jamie?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said so quietly she could barely hear him.
Farrah sighed, her breath fogging the window the slightest bit. “She was great. She made Steeple Ridge feel like home, and she helped me through some hard times when I was a teenager and didn’t get along with my mom.”
Darren shifted on the seat. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah, she told me once that I needed to go home and make things right. So when I lost everything in LA, I thought of what she said. It was almost like she was there, whispering in my ear. Leading me. Guiding me. And I came home.”
But not to Steeple Ridge. She’d been back in Island Park for over a year before she’d come out to this farm, and even then, she’d only come under duress. She wasn’t sure why she thought she needed to abandon everything she’d been before leaving Vermont. She realized now that her childhood was part of her—a vital part—and that just because she had stranger’s blood flowing in her veins that didn’t mean she was different.
“I’m glad you came home,” he said. And he genuinely sounded like he was.
“I tracked my dad down in California. That’s why I went there.” Her voice sounded somewhat alien, almost like she’d lost control of herself. “He was a producer, but he didn’t want me in any of his productions.” Her chest pinched. Her throat narrowed. “He asked me a lot of questions about my life and myself. But he didn’t really care. In the end, he asked me to leave and never come back.”
“He’s why you left LA?”
“No. Yes. Not really.” She finally turned toward Darren, whose cowboy hat kept his face bathed in darkness. “He just meant not to contact him again. I was so….” Angry. Scared. Devastated.
She cleared her throat. “It was a hard time. I decided to leave LA because I wasn’t happy there. All I could think about wasSteeple Ridge.” Her gaze drifted back to the farmhouse, where a dog waited with his tongue panting out of his mouth.
Steeple Ridge, with its dogs and horses. Miles of pastures. Green rolling hills and bright blue skies. A cheery farmhouse with yellow lights shining in the windows. She’d held this idyllic picture of the farm in her mind, and she hadn’t wanted to ruin it by coming back and seeing that it had changed.
But the spirit of the farm hadn’t changed. The charm and magic of it remained, even if Tucker had painted the house a brighter white and Missy had expanded the show arena.
“A few days after I got here,” Farrah continued. “Someone called to tell me my father had died, and he had no one. No family. Nowhere to be buried. No will. Nothing. So I brought him here. I had my original birth certificate, and I got his estate.”
