Loe raamatut: «Their Wander Canyon Wish»

Chapter One

Out of order?

Seriously?

Marilyn Sofitel couldn’t believe the sign hanging from the large closed door in front of her. In all the years she’d grown up in Wander Canyon, the carousel had never been out of order. The whimsical, dollar-a-ride merry-go-round was the town’s pride and joy, the unofficial symbol of the tiny Colorado community. Housed in a big red round barn in the center of town, it was the one thing she could always count on to be there.

Not today. How could the carousel be broken? And on today of all days, when her girls had been clamoring for a ride and she’d finally made the time to give them one?

Her daughter Maddie scowled at the closed door. “Aw. Why’s it shut, Mom?”

Margie, Maddie’s twin, squinted at the handwritten words inked messily onto a scrap of wood. She tugged on Marilyn’s sleeve and looked up. “What’s that say?” At six and a half, the girls were starting to read, constantly pointing out and asking about words. Usually she took joy in their eagerness to read. Not this particular moment.

Marilyn tried to keep the frustration out of her voice as she pointed to each of the words. “It says ‘Out of Order.’”

“What’s that mean?” Maddie said, her jutting lower lip telling Marilyn she’d already guessed.

Marilyn’s chest sank at the idea of disappointing her girls. “It means the carousel is broken.” After a sad second she added, “Today, at least,” as an attempt at optimism.

She’d been an optimist once. A starry-eyed young woman who chose to see the best in everyone and every situation. And now, here she was, back in Wander Canyon with no idea of her future and two daughters who wouldn’t get to ride the carousel today.

She fought the urge to groan. Or cry. Or both. Today was a beautiful June Thursday, the day she’d chosen to be her first day of a new start. The day she was dropping off her first resumé to start the search for a part-time job. What did it say that she couldn’t get even this tiny little thing to go her way? She was bone tired of everything in life feeling—and being—broken.

Suddenly the big double doors pushed open, sending the sign swinging from its twine on a single nail.

“It’s fixed!” Maddie cried. “It’s...”

“Hold your horses there, little lady. It’s not quite fixed...yet.” A tall man with messy hair and dirty hands lugged a bag of tools through the doors. The man’s glance took in Maddie, then Margie, and finally raised his eyes to see Marilyn. “Ladies,” he corrected to the plural. “Little and—” he added a silky touch of flirtation to his tone “—not so little.”

Marilyn couldn’t quite place the face, but it was familiar. Wander Canyon wasn’t so big that the familiarity surprised her. Growing up here, she recognized most faces around town, even after having lived in Denver since her marriage. “We were hoping to ride today,” she told him, even though it felt like stating the obvious.

“Well, I was hoping to have it fixed today. As it is, I’m waiting on a part from New York. I can’t exactly duck down the street to the hardware store on something like this. So no rides yet. Sorry ’bout that.”

Maddie’s pout filled her face and pinched Marilyn’s heart. “No rides.”

The man set down his bag and crouched down to Maddie’s level. “Afraid not. Which is too bad, because you look like just the little girl to look perfect riding the bluebird.” He turned to Margie, making a show of considering her. “And you, well, you look to me like a zebra kind of girl.”

“I like the rooster best,” Maddie said with great importance. The Wander Carousel was famous for sporting a full collection of unusual animals—fish, grasshoppers, lambs, birds, mice—but not a single pony among them. Every Wander child had a favorite, and they got to ride for free on their birthday. Marilyn’s twins, who’d been coming here to visit since they were toddlers, were no exception. It wasn’t their birthday, thank goodness, but the disappointment still stung.

The carousel mechanic’s sky-blue eyes looked an amused sort of pained, if that made any sense. “Well, what do you know. I’m usually good with picking people’s favorites.” Looking at Margie, he scrunched up his face in mock thought. “Am I wrong about you, too?”

“The zebra’s okay,” Margie said, always eager to please. “But I like the seahorse best.”

He sat back on his haunches. “Wrong about both,” the man said. “Seems I’m off my game.”

“Guess Mom’s!” Maddie said, somehow thinking this guessing game would rectify things.

“Maybe I should.” The man straightened up slowly, scratching his chin in dramatic consideration as he rose. Marilyn felt as if he was giving every inch of her a once-over.

Which was how she recognized him. Just as he reached his full height—almost a head above her—she knew he was Wyatt Walker.

Wyatt had been a year or two ahead of her in high school. Too handsome and nowhere near enough well behaved, he’d been one of those boys mothers warned their daughters against. Charm and trouble wrapped up in a package that too many girls found irresistible. Not that she’d ever been one of them. They didn’t travel in anywhere near the same social circles, and Marilyn doubted they’d said three words to each other in high school. But she knew who he was, because everyone knew who Wyatt Walker was.

If she recognized him, he didn’t seem to recognize her. “Hmm,” he said, still staring at her. Those mesmerizing eyes were a Wander High legend. “I’m going with...the owl.”

She was relieved he’d guessed wrong. The gleam in his eyes told her he’d read too much into being right. “Actually, I’ve always been partial to the ostrich.”

The moment she said it, the fact struck her as telling. An ostrich. The perfect choice for a woman who’d had her head in the sand for the last year and a half. Ouch.

He rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Wrong on all counts? I don’t know quite what to do about that. Except maybe introduce myself. I’m Wyatt Walker.” He pulled a bandanna from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped his hand before extending it for a shake.

Marilyn wanted to say, “I know,” but instead shook his hand and said “Marilyn Sofitel. These are my daughters.” She touched each of their shoulders as she named them. “Margie and Maddie.”

“Hi,” said Maddie, holding up her hand for a shake. Landon had always said his daughter would grow up to be president of something, given her outgoing nature.

“Hello, Miss Maddie. Nice to meet you.” He gave Maddie’s hand a formal shake, then held out his hand to Margie. “That makes you Miss Margie, does it?”

Margie, a bit of a tomboy, wrinkled her nose at the title. “Just Margie.” Landon had touted this daughter as the one who would invent something amazing.

“Well, just Margie, my name is Wyatt. Nice to meet you. Sorry about the carousel. Are you staying for the summer? Will you be here long enough to come back when it’s fixed?”

“We live here now,” Maddie said. “At Gram and Gramps’s house.”

“Till we get settled on our own,” said Margie. Marilyn gulped at how her daughter parroted the words of a recent conversation. A conversation Marilyn had had with her parents the other night when the girls were supposed to be in bed. She raised an eyebrow at Margie, who responded with a too-innocent who me? shrug.

Wyatt considered her again, thoughtfully this time. “Sofitel. Do I...know you?”

Marilyn wasn’t quite sure if she should be glad or annoyed that she’d changed so much since high school. Those days felt a world away, and she certainly felt like a different woman from the cheerleader who had steered well clear of a boy like Wyatt. “Actually, we went to the same high school. I was Mari Ralton back then.”

“Mari Ralton.” She watched recognition light his eyes. Those bright blue eyes and sandy blond hair—rebel long back then but cut shorter now—had been his hallmark back in the day. He still was an attractive man, if one went in for the “misunderstood” type. “I think I remember you.” He squinted his eyes in thought. “Cheerleader. Debate club, maybe? Not my class, though. One year behind?”

“Two, actually. I moved to Denver when I got married.” She tried not to sigh. “And now we’re back.” She gave Wyatt a pointed look that she hoped told him she didn’t want to get into why she was back.

He caught her meaning—sort of. “Well, then,” he said to Margie, “bring your dad with you when you come back and I’ll say hello to him, too. Maybe I can get his animal right.”

Marilyn felt her chest tighten just as Margie’s chin tilted down and she said, “You can’t.”

Wyatt offered her a questioning look, as if to say, care to respond to that?

“My husband passed away last September.” She was still waiting for the world to stop turning for a handful of seconds every time she had to tell someone that.

It was to Wyatt’s credit that he addressed his response to her daughters. “I’m mighty sorry to hear that. It’s a very sad thing to lose your daddy.” He raised his eyes to Marilyn. “I’m sorry for your loss. Glad your folks are here to help. Ralton—Ed and Katie, isn’t it? Down on the south side of the canyon?”

That was Wander. Everyone knew everyone else. “Yes, that’s them.” The small-town friendliness was a good thing, mostly, only in her situation it made Marilyn feel a bit trapped. She hadn’t counted on the closeness rubbing so raw here. People had been nice, but she still felt too exposed. It was an uncomfortably tight squeeze to poke back into town salvaging the pieces of a once-pretty life. The promising girl who married well and moved away only to have to crawl back home.

Stuck and broken. A bit too much like the pretty carousel that sat immobile behind those big doors.

Nice one, Wyatt. Bad enough you haven’t fixed the carousel yet, now you bring up two poor little girls’ dead father? Today was proving a nonstop tour of coming up short on things. Not quite sure what else to do, Wyatt offered Mari—Marilyn—as much of an “I’m so sorry” look as he could manage with the little girls staring straight at him.

“You still on the ranch?” Marilyn’s question held a “let’s please change the subject” tone. He couldn’t really blame her, given the sad subject he’d raised.

Oh, if she only knew her deflecting question raised an awkward topic of its own. “Um...no.”

She, of course, looked surprised. “Really?”

Wyatt shifted his weight to buy himself a scrap of time. By now he’d hoped to be done explaining why he’d moved off the family land and into the apartment above Manny’s Garage. Not many people—make that almost no one—in Wander could understand why a Walker would step away from Wander Canyon Ranch like he had. Most people scowled at him as if it was a genetic fluke—or at least a phenomenal disappointment—to bear that last name and not have ranching in his blood. Reaching for what you want in life shouldn’t have to feel like letting everyone else down. He tried to keep his tone conversational rather than irritated. “Chaz runs the ranch now. Or most of it, now that Dad’s trying to be retired. And married.”

“Oh,” she said, nodding. “Mom said something about your dad’s new marriage. And Chaz, too, right?”

Dad and Chaz’s recent marriages had indeed been the talk of Wander’s wagging tongues. It had been a relief when the Wander gossip mill focused on Dad’s fast marriage to Pauline. And then his stepbrother Chaz’s taking over the ranch. And then Chaz’s surprising marriage to Pauline’s niece, Yvonne. A little Wander Canyon soap opera tailor-made to shift the spotlight off him. The cascade of those three dramatic events had made it easy—well, easier—to slip out of his son-and-heir status when it came to the ranch.

Of course, it hadn’t been anything close to easy. He’d wrenched himself out from under that yoke with pure brute force and open rebellion. Chaz was over it, Dad was trying to get over it, but the rest of the town hadn’t been so gracious. After all, it wasn’t hard to pin a new underachievement on Wander’s established bad boy. He was actually surprised Marilyn didn’t already know—but then again, she’d been living in Denver. Most days he sloughed the scorn off, but the sideways glances and disapproving tones were evidently getting to him. How else could he explain the sudden, uncharacteristic offer to not only help Manny out, but to step in and fix the carousel when it broke?

“The ranch was never really my thing,” he admitted, using his now-standard explanation. Wyatt nudged his tool bag with one boot. “I’m covering Manny Stewart’s auto shop for him for a while.”

“And fixing merry-go-rounds,” one of her girls added. Which one? He couldn’t hope to tell the girls apart. Two sets of big brown eyes—three, if you counted their mother’s—with two bouncy sets of pigtails to match. Marilyn’s hair was a tumble of brunette waves, so the girls’ straight hair must have come from their father. He didn’t remember much about Mari, just that she was part of the popular crowd he steered well clear of. The kind of girl who got awards and good grades and stacks of teacher recommendations on her college applications.

“I’m trying,” he replied. An unexpected sour spot grew in his stomach from disappointing the little girls. He still hadn’t quite figured out what made him step up to play the hero and fix the famous Wander Carousel when it broke down right before Memorial Day weekend. The loyal good-guy bit was his stepbrother Chaz’s thing.

It certainly wasn’t turning out to be his thing. So far Wyatt had only found multiple ways to fail. Finicky mechanisms, obscure parts he couldn’t quite figure out how to order—the carousel felt like a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve. It lacked the straightforward functionality of the car engine he knew well. Every day those carousel animals stood still bugged him a little bit more.

He pulled out the small notebook he always kept in the back pocket of his jeans. “Tell you what. If you give me your phone number, I can call you to come have the first ride when it works.”

Marilyn gave him a look. Ah, so she hadn’t forgotten him. There was a time when collecting women’s phone numbers had been a spectacular talent of his. Still was, if the filled pages of that little notebook were any indication. The right kind of woman always had a soft spot for the wrong kind of man.

“For the girls,” he emphasized, adding his best contrite look. If she did remember him like her current scowl implied, she should know dating widowed mothers was definitely not in his wheelhouse. “For disappointing them today.”

She did not look convinced, nor did she offer a phone number. He flipped the book closed and slipped it back into his pocket. “I’ve got another idea, then.” He pulled out his wallet and produced a small red tag with his signature on the back. Holding it up, he said “Go on over there to the Wander Bakery.” He pointed to the shop down the block his new sister-in-law purchased this past winter. “Give this to Ms. Yvonne inside. She’ll know it means I said you could have any cupcakes you wanted. On my tab.”

“Cupcakes!” the girls shouted in perfect unison. “Mom, can we?” asked one while the other tugged insistently on her mama’s sleeve.

“And whatever you want, too,” he added to Marilyn, handing her the ticket. “I figure it’s the least I can do until I get things up and running in there.”

She took the ticket with a reluctant smile. Marilyn was pretty, elegant even, with delicate features and the creamy skin of a well-to-do woman. And while that chin tilted up a bit too much for his taste, she also had a tired, scraped-thin kind of look. She held herself too erect—like someone afraid of toppling over. She forced up the corners of her mouth in a way that told him she hadn’t had too many genuine reasons to smile of late. The stance of a soul just barely holding it together. Given the sad news she’d told him, it was likely true. “That’s very kind of you.” Her tone was overly formal.

Kind? Maybe. Mostly just opportunistic. In his experience, only the rare female turned down free baked goods. Especially ones as good as Yvonne made. Dates who’d been canceled on, disappointed garage customers, moms of customers, most anyone could be easily appeased with something from Yvonne’s bakery. Running his “red ticket tab” at Yvonne’s had been one of the smartest ideas he’d ever had. His new sister-in-law might give him grief over it, but it had come in handy for a whole host of reasons, business and otherwise.

“Which one do you like?” a tiny voice asked.

“Cupcakes? I go for the double chocolate,” he replied. “And Yvonne makes them with a whole pile of frosting, just the way I like it.”

A set of pigtails bobbed in giggles as one girl pointed to the building behind him. “No, silly, I meant the animals. In there. You tried to guess our favorites. You didn’t tell us yours.”

Wyatt told the truth as he flashed his most charming smile. “Me, I like ’em all.”

Over the top of the girls’ heads, Marilyn gave him a look that said some things never change. Clearly, she wasn’t referring to cupcakes.

Yep, she remembered him all right.