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“Where are you taking that?” She extended the toe of her boot toward the hay.
“To the late calves and mommas in the brooding shed.”
She bobbed her head. “How many calves will we have when they’re all born?”
“About seventy.”
“A lot.” Good money too, once they were old enough for auction. Problem was what her father would do with that money if given control of it. And how could he not be in charge? He owned the ranch.
“Do you happen to know where Hunter is?”
Her question made Zack’s dark eyebrows draw together over the frames of his sunglasses. “Be careful, Ivy.”
She bristled. “What’s that mean?”
“Your dad would want you to be cautious.”
“Dad’s not here.”
“But he’s coming home soon, right?”
“Yeah. He is.” She tilted her jaw up in defiance. When he did, then what? She would stand up to him and demand to know exactly what was going on with the finances. She would confront him about his gambling.
“Hunter’s busy working on the fence with some of the guys.” Zack’s statement distracted her from the flow of her agitated thoughts.
She gave him a nod. “Okay, thanks.”
Zack picked up the bale again and continued toward the hungry momma cows. Ivy set off toward the training pen.
Her sister was off to one side, working with a young pony. The horse pranced around, tugging against the rope that Meadow used to guide it. When it tossed its head like a defiant toddler, a smile spread over Ivy’s face.
Meadow was too busy to take notice of Ivy. She leaned on the fence rail, watching, for another minute or two. Then a thought struck.
She’d done her mother’s walk through the house and extended her gratitude for the comforts she had. She would show her appreciation to everyone on the ranch by delivering another nice lunch to them all.
She would place an order at Badlands and go pick it up herself. It also gave her a chance to ask Livia if she’d noticed Hunter there the previous night. More than anything, Ivy wanted in on the secret of why Hunter went to the saloon.
She wasn’t one of those women who stalked their man to make sure he didn’t cheat. She trusted Hunter not to pick up another woman. She only worried what he was hiding from her—and he definitely knew more than he was letting on.
While Hunter and Colton took their roles of protectors seriously, Ivy and Meadow deserved to know if there was more unseen danger.
The memory of that dead man floating in the pond filtered into her mind. Nobody knew who killed him—or if it was the same man who attacked Meadow in the barn.
Despite the warmth of the sun beating down on her, her body broke out in goosebumps. She didn’t know much about the attack, but she didn’t want to either. No more than she wanted all the harsh details of what happened to her mother when her car careened off that mountainside…or how Forest fell.
She just couldn’t handle it. In this case, she would take the advice to go be Ivy and stick her head in the sand.
All these heavy thoughts were erasing the good that her cleansing cry had done. She checked to see if Meadow had noticed her. Her sister was still absorbed with the pony, so Ivy moved away from the training pen.
In the front entry of the house, she grabbed the keys to Meadow’s truck and hopped behind the wheel. She paused before backing out, waiting for Hunter to jump in and stop her. But she’d be fine. She’d done this a hundred times. She’d go directly to Badlands and come straight home.
With the window down and the breeze trickling through the strands of her hair, and the radio playing top forty country songs, she took every advantage offered by her drive through the countryside to the small town of Eden.
On the way, she called Badlands and placed an order for all the barbecue and sides on the menu for her ranch family. It wasn’t much, but she wanted to step up and show her appreciation. If not for the workers, the ranch would have been run into the ground long ago.
It still might be if they couldn’t find a way to get her father out of his gambling debt.
Rolling past the grocery store and three churches the town had to offer, she set her sights on the big saloon at the end of the block.
