Winter at Mustang Ridge Page 2

  Funny, wasn’t it, how families worked? She could spar with her grandfather all day long, but five minutes with her mother in hobby mode put her seriously on edge. Krista, on the other hand, would bend over sideways to keep the peace with their mom, but did the duck-and-shuffle with Big Skye.

  Gran patted her cheek. “You’re a good girl. Sit and relax. I’ll be right out with the food.”

  Knowing it was no use offering to help—the kitchen was Gran’s domain—Jenny sat. Warmer now, thawed out by family and the heat of the wood stove, she pulled off her hat.

  Krista froze with her mug suspended midair. “Ohmigod, did you dye your hair?” She might as well have said “You got a face tattoo?” or “You ate a puppy?” There was that much horror in her voice.

  Resisting the urge to put the hat back on, Jenny gave a no biggie shrug. “Why? Don’t you like it?”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . Wow, it’s so dark! And short!” Krista reached over and rubbed a couple of strands between her fingers. “It makes you look so different. Like, I don’t know. A movie star or something.”

  Jenny batted her hand away. “Knock it off. It’s no big deal.” Or maybe it was; she hadn’t decided yet. She’d only had the new hairdo for a couple of days, and the brunette color was a far cry from their natural blond. Maybe it had been a last act of defiance before coming home . . . or maybe self-defense. Either way, she hoped it would make the locals stop and think before confusing her with her sister.

  “Hello. It’s a big deal to me.” Krista’s eyes lit. “Did you do it for the show?”

  “No way.” Jenny almost laughed at the idea. “As long as I’m more or less presentable, they don’t care what I look like. I’m behind the camera, remember?”

  “You don’t need to be. I bet they’d take you as a contestant in a heartbeat. Especially looking like this! It’s got total wow factor.” Krista made another grab for her hair.

  Jenny waved a fork to fend her off. “I’d let parrots peck my eyes out before I signed on for Jungle Love.” It was one thing being a cameraman for the exotic reality dating show. It was quite another being a contestant—she didn’t know which would be worse, dealing with the people or being on the wrong side of the camera.

  “Then why’d you change your hair?”

  “Because I felt like it. And stop touching me.”

  “Am I going to have to separate you two?” their father asked mildly over his coffee.

  “Nope, because here’s the food.” Jenny sniffed appreciatively as Gran appeared pushing a server loaded with berry pancakes, scrambled eggs, and crispy bacon. “Mmm. I’m starving.”

  “Come on,” Krista said. “What have you got against going on the show? I mean, Mike and Niki from season two are engaged. It can happen.”

  As far as Jenny was concerned, Mike Neils was a jerk, Niki French had more mileage on her than the average commercial Boeing, and their engagement was as fake as Niki’s boobs. But her contract was very clear on what would happen if she leaked, so she went with a noncommittal: “I’m not interested in dating on national TV.” And it wasn’t like her occasional hookups would be good fodder, anyway.

  “But it could be fun. You’d get to go cave diving, treasure hunting, riding in the rain forest . . .” Krista ticked off the made-for-ratings group dates on her fingers, sounding dreamy.

  “Live with eleven other women who want me dead,” Jenny added. “That’s assuming, of course, that I didn’t get kicked off in the first episode.”

  “With that haircut? You’d totally score.”

  “We could take a swing by Harry’s later, get you one to match.”

  “I—” Krista lifted a hand to her ponytail. “Um.”

  “Didn’t think so.” Jenny grinned as Gran took the seat opposite her, and added, “Besides, I’m not here to talk about the show. Rumor has it that I’m in charge of the guest stuff for the next six weeks. So . . . what do you guys say? You ready to bring me up to speed?”

  2

  “Morning, Ruth,” Nick said as he hip-checked the door open and let himself into the clinic’s waiting area, carrying coffee for two. “How was your weekend? Did you and BillyBobScott hit it off?”

  From her seat behind the reception desk, his assistant—aka Queen of All Things Important at the Three Rivers Veterinary Clinic—made a face. “Not really. The pictures he posted had to be a good ten years old, and if he’s six feet tall, then I’m a Labrador. All of which might’ve been okay if he hadn’t also been boring and a bad tipper. Oh, and his real name was Doug.”

  Ruth had purple hair, thick tortoise shell reading glasses, a sweater set for every day of the week, and a clause in her contract that said she got to leave at four thirty on Wednesdays for Bingo. Nick had thought he had her pegged when he took over the office a few months earlier . . . but, boy, had he been wrong. It hadn’t taken him long to discover that Wednesday night Bingo was the local seniors’ equivalent of a pickup joint, and Ruth approached dating with the verve and dedication of an Olympic athlete.

  He handed over her coffee and took a healthy swig of his own. “Then why did he have BillyBobScott as his user name on the dating site?”

  “Redneck schizophrenia?”

  Chuckling, he picked up the list she had printed out of his morning rounds. “And that’s a turnoff?” Ruth might be pushing AARP eligibility, but her views on men were pretty liberal.

  “Not necessarily. Could make for some interesting role-playing. No, it was the boring thing. And his breath. Day-old egg salad just isn’t something a girl can get past, not even with wasabi on the table.”

  Trying not to think about Ruth and role-playing in the same sentence, Nick focused on the call sheet. It looked like he’d be doing a follow-up on that gelding surgery over at Mustang Ridge Ranch, shooting another set of digital rads on Missy Simms’s laminitic pony to see if the corrective shoeing had helped, and checking out a half-dozen sheep at the Plunkett place. And, of course, whatever emergency calls the day might bring, along with small-animal office hours this afternoon. “Maybe he was just nervous,” he suggested. “Trying to impress you.”

  “That might account for the fifteen-minute monologue on his new shoelaces, but not the egg breath.”

  “Which could just be a onetime thing, too.” Nick folded the call sheet and stuck it in his pocket. Ruth would’ve sent the info to his phone, but the local cell service was spotty and there were places where even his GPS got confused, so he had learned the value of keeping a hard copy on hand. “Maybe you should give him another chance.”

  “Hello, pot? This is the kettle. If anyone in this room is too picky, it’s you.”

  Translation: He had ducked all of her efforts to set him up. “Well, anyway. I’m sorry BillyBobScottDoug was a dud.”

  She shrugged. “I’ll keep looking. Mr. Right is out there somewhere.”

  “Not Mr. Right Now?”

  That got a sly grin. “I’ve found plenty of them, thanks.” But then her smile got crooked. “My Charlie is going to be a hard act to follow, but I know that one of these times it’s going to click.”

  “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you. Meanwhile, do me a favor and manage things while I’m out.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  Yes, she did. Ruth ran his office, triaged the calls, made sure he got where he was going more or less on time, soothed ruffled feathers when he couldn’t, and gave him the lowdown on his clients, which was crucial in an area like Three Ridges, Wyoming. But more than that, she had a huge heart and a wicked sense of humor, and when she was in the mood she made blissfully sweet poppy-seed muffins the size of his head. And she had loved her Charlie dearly.

  Knowing it would make her laugh, he leaned over her desk and wiggled his eyebrows. “Forget about trying to hook me up with other women. You know I’m just waiting for you to give me a chance.”

  She put her hand to her heart and sighed with the drama of a soap opera diva. “Alas, our love is doomed before it even gets s
tarted. I don’t have many rules when it comes to men, but not dating the boss is one of them.”

  “I could fire you.”

  “You won’t. But I keep telling you, Doc”—Ruth wagged a finger at him—“you should give the ladies around here a chance.”

  • • •

  After breakfast, Krista and Jenny adjourned to the office at the back of the house.

  “I consider myself lucky that Dude Ranch 101 is only offered in the dead of winter,” Jenny said, snuggling into her coat. She had put her hat back on, but with her system busy digesting a short stack of pancakes and too many cheesy scrambled eggs, she was feeling the cold.

  Krista shot her an amused look. “Was that sarcasm?”

  “Nope, I’m serious. I’d rather freeze my butt off than get dropped into the deep end come summer, with forty dudes who don’t know which way the saddle horn goes.”

  “We max out at around twenty-five guests. Thirty if we push it and have multiples bunking together in the bigger cabins.”

  “Still.” Jenny faked a shudder. “I know you love meeting new people and thinking up ways to entertain a new rotation every week, but it’s not for me.”

  “How is riding herd on two dozen guests any worse than chasing desperate, fame-hungry singles through the rain forest with a camera? Seems to me like our jobs are pretty similar.”

  “Not even close,” Jenny said firmly. “I’m trying to get my people into trouble and film what happens, with bonus points for tears and drama. You’re trying to keep yours out of trouble and minimize the drama. That’s way harder.”

  “Lucky for me, the location does most of the keep-’em-happy work, and the horses do the rest.” Krista spun away from the big, messy desk. Tipping back in the battered chair, she put her feet on the windowsill with a contented sigh. “Isn’t it incredible?”

  Beyond the double-hung glass stretched a panorama that looked like it couldn’t possibly be real, a huge expanse of unbroken snow rising up to the ridgeline, with jagged, iced-over mountains in the distance and a colorless sky that made it hard to tell where the snow ended and the atmosphere began. But although it made Jenny’s fingers itch for a camera, it was also very big, very monochrome, and very cold looking.

  She’d take bugs, butterflies, and greenery any day, thankyouverymuch . . . but she wasn’t going to whine about that, or how it’d been eighty-five and sunny a day and a half and several thousand miles ago. Not when she owed her sister big-time for keeping the family business alive and kicking. And not now, when Krista needed her to pitch in, if only temporarily. Sure, she had tried to duck the chore—Can’t Foster do it, or Shelby?—but now that she was stuck here for the next six weeks, she was determined to handle everything and let Krista have some fun.

  Plopping down in a chair on the other side of the desk, Jenny whipped out her app-laden phone. If it kept her organized in the midst of a brutal shoot, with a half dozen voices yapping in her headset while the singles scattered like deranged sheep, it would be more than sufficient for the day-to-day at Mustang Ridge. “Okay, let’s hear it. What do you need me to do?”

  Krista spun back from the window and let her flip-flops hit the floor. “Let’s start with the reservation database. If we’re not booking cabins for the summer—or, better yet, next summer—then we’re not paying the bills.”

  They spent the next couple of hours going over the nuts and bolts of Krista’s usual winter workday, which was a mix of advertising, customer relations, and supplier negotiations, plus a sprinkling of ranch chores.

  “Foster is going to handle all the outdoor stuff,” she assured Jenny. “I just need you to keep up with the office work.”

  “And come up with photos and videos for Shelby to use in her new grand plan.” Jenny hadn’t met Foster’s fiancée yet, but she’d heard all about the former Boston advertising exec, who had started her own advertising firm out here in the middle of nowhere and had big plans for taking things up a notch at Mustang Ridge.

  “Well, yeah.” That got her a rueful grin. “Noticed how I slipped that in, did you? It’s just that she’s got all these great ideas for branding and advertising, and you’re here, and—”

  “Stop right there. You think I don’t want to play with my cameras? Hello, this is me we’re talking about.”

  “I don’t want you to feel obligated. You get paid a ton for your work, and—”

  “And you can shut up anytime now. I’d love to do it.” In fact, Jenny already had a flock of ideas zinging through her head. “I’ll go through the pictures I took during my last couple of visits for spring and summer shots, and right now is perfect for winter landscapes. What are you guys looking for, specifically?”

  They spent the next ten minutes going over the ranch’s new advertising strategy, which would include a Web site overhaul, updated brochures, and a series of short videos.

  “At first I was thinking of doing a longer overview piece,” Krista said, “but given how fast the world moves these days, Shelby suggested that we break up the video clips and sprinkle them through the Web site, post them on public sites, and promote them via social media.”

  “She’s right. It’s all about making content bite-size these days.” Jenny finished keying the topic list into her phone and hit the Save key with a flourish. “I shot a little video of the Fourth of July Roundup the summer before last, and I can take care of the local interviews and historical stuff now, keeping the winter backdrops to a minimum. That should give you a bunch of clips to start posting now, and then next summer I’ll come back for a week or two and get the rest of the pretty-pretty.”

  “Or if that would be too much for you, we could fill in the gaps with phone videos.”

  “You didn’t just say that.” Jenny stuck her fingers in her ears. “I can’t hear you. La-la-la-la.”

  Krista laughed. “Okay, okay. No camera phones. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to go nuts with this, either.”

  “What, me go overboard on a film? Never.” Okay, so maybe she had gone a little crazy with a few of her film school projects, but that had been part of the fun. Besides, it had been years since she’d had full creative freedom. “Anyway, we don’t have to nail down all the details right now. I’ll pull some stuff together and then hook up with Shelby and see what she’d like tweaked.” In her experience, that was generally easier than starting with a totally blank slate. Besides, she wanted to meet the woman who had snagged Mustang Ridge’s famously solitary head wrangler.

  “That sounds like a plan, if you’re sure this isn’t going to be too much.”

  “Are you kidding me? This is going to make the next six weeks bearable.” The moment she said it, she wished she hadn’t. She hated seeing Krista’s face fall. “I didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

  “I know this is an imposition—”

  Jenny held up a hand. “Don’t. Seriously. Thanks to you, I’ve got someplace to come home to when I’m not working. Maybe the idea of being a full-timer gives me hives, but I love knowing that the ranch is still in the family. And, better yet, it’s flourishing. If keeping it that way means that I need to put in some time now and then, so be it. Seems to me that this is long overdue.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. I’m staying, you’re leaving, and you’re going to have an awesome time. And when you get back, I’ll have lots of pics and video for you to wade through.”

  Krista drew breath to argue, but then hesitated and let it out again. “Okay, but I owe you one.”

  “Nope. Not even close.”

  “Still, thanks.”

  Jenny waved that off. “What else do I need to know?”

  “Businesswise? I think that’s about it, though I’m sure I’ll think of a dozen other things between now and when I leave. And, of course, you can always call me with questions, or ask one of the others. Gran knows all about the special services we’re starting to offer, Foster is the man when it comes to the horses and other animals, and Dad is our handyman
for the winter, since they’re not traveling.”

  “Speaking of the Rambling Rose . . .” That was what Ed and Rose Skye had dubbed their RV, but it fit their mother all too well these days, both in geography and interests. “What’s with the Antiques Roadshow routine?”

  Krista hesitated. Then, apparently deciding not to tell Jenny to lighten up on their mom—a familiar refrain—she said, “The battle over kitchen space died down once the guests left.”

  “Once the audience was gone, you mean.”

  “Be nice—she’s a good cook.”

  “They both are, but Gran cooks ranch food, which is what this place is all about. People don’t come to a dude ranch to eat fondue and frogs’ legs.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but lately I’ve been reconsidering. It might be fun to add Foodie Week to the roster, or have Mom do a few meals per week as a change of pace. Or . . .” Krista trailed off, shrugging. “Regardless, you shouldn’t have to deal with any kitchen issues. She’s redoing her and Dad’s suite. Last I heard, she was rabid to find some forties perfume bottles and a spindle-leg dressing table.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Thus, the buying trip.”

  “Would you rather be mediating a kitchen turf war?”

  “No, it’s just . . .” She sighed. “I miss the old Mom. You know, the pre-midlife crisis version that didn’t make you feel like you’d gotten in the way of a fluffy bulldozer.”

  “She’s not that bad,” Krista protested, not quite hiding her grin. “Look at it this way—at least she’s out of Gran’s hair.”

  “There is that.” A beep-beep from the front of the house brought Jenny’s attention around. “Are we expecting someone?”

  “I . . .” Krista checked the time. “Wow, is it that late already? That’ll be Doc, here to look at Lucky’s man parts . . . or what used to be man parts, anyway. He got gelded last week. Lucky, I mean, not Doc. You want to come on out and say hi?”