Thankful for Love

Chapter 1

Jack Richardson knew what was coming as soon as Anne Salazar said, We need to talk. He even felt a sense of relief that it was finally happening.

I’m listening, Anne, he said.

She put on her jacket as she spoke, avoiding looking directly at him, paying more attention to buttoning it up than she needed to. I can’t do this anymore. I’m so, so sorry, but I can’t. When she finally looked up at him, he saw regret in her eyes. He was sure she saw the same in his.

I’m not surprised. I’ve been wearing you out with what I’ve needed from you, he said. He reached for her hand, but she didn’t respond to his gesture.

I’ve been only too happy to help. I love you. You know I do. But I’m…

Done with it?

I’d stay if I could. But this body of mine isn’t what it used to be. I’m seventy. I need to have my hip replaced. I can’t take care of two active boys while I’m in the hospital and at PT appointments.

You don’t need to apologize. I understand. You’ve been the best grandmother and mother-in-law anyone could ask for. I don’t know what the boys and I would have done without you after Paula died.

Tears appeared at the mention of the death of her daughter—Jack’s wife—from ovarian cancer two and a half years ago. I wanted to help. Had to help or I’d have gone crazy. I hate to leave you in the lurch like this, but the doc says I shouldn’t put it off any longer.

Jack hugged her. We’ll be fine. I’ll start looking tomorrow for someone to help. When’s the surgery?

Not for a month, so you have a little time. She patted her son-in-law on the arm. I’m not sure what I’ll miss the most—feeling like I’m helping you out or being a part of my grandsons’ lives.

You make it sound like you’re moving to Timbuktu. You’ll still be part of their lives.

But not every day the way I’ve been since ... well, for the past couple years.

Anxious to assure her she wouldn’t be losing touch with her grandsons, Jack said, When you’re back on your feet, we’ll work something out so you see them regularly. Don’t worry about it. Get yourself taken care of.

Anne gathered up her purse and several containers, now empty of the food she’d brought over to feed the three Richardson males. Shall I tell the boys, or do you want to?

How about we both do it? When I’ve got someone else lined up, we’ll tell them together. Fair enough?

More than fair. She put her arms around his waist in a farewell hug. I wish I didn’t have to do this.

We can’t have you working so hard you end up on the DL. Don would shoot me. Don was Anne’s husband, the kids’ grandfather.

He wouldn’t shoot you, although he might make your life a living hell at family dinners. She gave him a kiss on his cheek and released him. You’ve looked out for everyone else for so long you haven’t had a chance to do anything for yourself. And now I’ve made it even harder for you.

You haven’t. I’ll be fine. Jack accompanied her to the door then watched her walk slowly to her car. The limp he’d begun to notice a few months back was more pronounced. Either it was worse or she was no longer trying to hide the pain. Whichever it was, it was why he hadn’t been surprised at her announcement.

He was glad she was getting her hip taken care of, but he had to admit it did make his life more complicated. It was spring. The wheat on his Eastern Oregon ranch was beginning to produce heads of grain and needed attention. He had to get the rest of the alfalfa he’d use to feed his small herd of cattle over the winter planted. The same herd of cattle that had begun calving. Then there was the foal due from the mare his late wife had loved.

Now he had to add finding someone to help with kid wrangling. At the rate things were going, he’d be an old, old man before he’d have a chance to do what Anne suggested—find time for himself.

• • •

Any extra shifts for me this week? Quanna Morales asked her supervisor. I’ll even work a double.

Sorry, kiddo, but unless someone calls in sick, I’ve got all the slots filled. Will you be around if I need you at the last minute?

I’m working the breakfast and lunch shift at the resort this weekend, but I’m available otherwise. You know how to find me.

Believe me, if I need you, I’ll find you. You’re the most dependable part-timer on staff.

Her shift as an aide at the Golden Years Retirement Community over, Quanna headed for home with nothing to do for the rest of the day except fret about money. And how, if she didn’t make more soon, she’d have to move back to the Umatilla Reservation where she’d grown up.

When she’d left for Portland so she could follow her dream of being a teacher, she had assumed that by the time she was in her late twenties, she’d be back on the rez in another way—teaching kids who needed to see that they, too, could have their dreams come true. But her life had unfolded a little differently than she had planned. The cost of living in the city and paying tuition was more than she’d imagined, so she’d had to recalculate how long it would take to get her degree. Then, about three years ago, her father died of a sudden heart attack, leaving her mother with few resources to take care of Miguel, her brother who’d been born with Down syndrome and several heart problems. She and her siblings had to pitch in. Quanna was the only unmarried one. So she volunteered to move back over the mountains to help financially and to be available to stay with her brother to give her mother some respite.

The two part-time jobs she’d patched together since coming back—her job at the retirement home as well as a shift every now and then at the restaurant in the resort on the rez—made it almost possible to afford her tiny apartment, a class at the local community college, and her contribution to her brother’s care. The operative word being almost. If something didn’t change, she would have to move back in with her mother if she had any shot at achieving her goal of finishing her degree so she could teach.

With everything on her mind, the sunny day and the sweet, sage-y smells of spring in the high plains didn’t lift her spirits the way they usually did. She was merely reminded by what was around her that another season had arrived with little progress toward her goals.

• • •

I was glad to see you were working today, Quanna’s friend Rita said when Quanna got to work in the middle of the following week. I was afraid you’d miss out on the hot cowboy’s usual visit to Joan Anthony. Rita was almost drooling as she glanced up and down the hall.

Of course Quanna knew who Rita meant. Every woman in the place knew the guy. Mrs. Anthony had once described him as a nephew who was more like a son. Most of the female staff described him as yummy.

He was older, probably in his mid-forties, and he was a real deal cowboy, not the big hat, no cattle kind. His boots were made for work not show, and for the clincher, he sported a Stetson tan in the summer—pale forehead, where his hat rode low, the rest of his face dark from the sun. His jeans, which fit like they’d been tailored for him, were what the staff appreciated most. Well, his tight Wrangler butt the jeans showed off.

 His sandy brown hair always looked a little shaggy, and his deep chocolate eyes looked sad until he smiled and crinkles appeared around them to complement the dimples in his cheeks. He looked like he was in great shape and walked with the assurance of a man who was comfortable in his skin.

But there was something a little mysterious in the expression on his face, like he was holding something back. It was sexy and made all the women who drooled over him want to comfort him. Or something.

During his visits to Joan Anthony, some of the aides had been known to drop by her apartment to she if she needed anything just to get into a conversation with him. He was charming and funny, and they hoped by talking to him, they could uncover his secret, whatever it was. Quanna hadn’t resorted to such an extreme. But she had asked Mrs. Anthony about him.

His name was Jack Richardson, and he ran a wheat operation twenty-five miles outside Pendleton. His late father was Mrs. Anthony’s brother.

Today, however, instead of going directly to his aunt’s apartment, Richardson went to the director’s office. The staff gossip was hot and heavy about whether this meant Mrs. Anthony was about to be moved out of the facility or, if she stayed, transferred from independent to assisted living. She had, after all, been showing signs of slowing down recently, beginning to have trouble with some of the activities of daily living. Maybe her family had decided it was time to upgrade her level of care. The women all hoped she would be staying. She was one of the nicest people they cared for, and they would miss her. Not to mention miss seeing the hot cowboy.

Turned out, what he was apparently doing was asking permission to put a flier on the staff bulletin board before he went to see his aunt. Curious, Quanna took a look at what he posted the first chance she could. It was an advertisement for a job at the Richardson ranch, a kid wrangler, as it was described, for two young boys, with additional light housekeeping and cooking duties. The job was full time. The pay worked out to be double the hourly rate she was making at the retirement facility. Although she had no childcare experience other than babysitting when she was a teenager, Quanna was sure she could craft her résumé to show she had the skills needed. This could be the answer to her money problems. If only there were some way to ensure she had the inside track for the job.

Maybe there was. At the bottom of the flier were tear-off bits of paper with a phone number and e-mail address on each piece. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, she carefully tore off all but two of the pieces. She wanted the job. If it took cheating to get it, she was willing to do it.

Instead of going home at the end of her shift that day, Quanna waited in the parking lot for the cowboy to appear. Feeling like she was stalking him—because, face it, she was—she followed him and watched where he posted more fliers. When he headed out of town, she returned to each place and removed most of the tear-off tags from the fliers. She didn’t think it was smart to remove them all. He’d think it odd if she was the only person who contacted him about the job.

But she would make sure she was one of only a handful. That would lower the odds of someone more qualified getting the job she already thought of as hers. At least, she hoped it would.

Chapter 2

Panic didn’t set in until Quanna was on her way to the Richardson Ranch for her interview. She’d been calm all through her preparations—choosing from her very limited wardrobe the nicest clothes she owned, taking pains to make sure she looked neat and tidy, carefully putting the hard copies of her references in a file folder so they wouldn’t get crumpled, organizing the sample menus highlighting her meal planning and cooking skills. Armed with enough paperwork to apply for a job with Homeland Security and ready to nail the interview, she left Pendleton in plenty of time to make her two-thirty appointment.

Then, about halfway there, the doubts she’d had off and on since she’d applied for the job reemerged. She’d barely hung up from the phone call arranging the interview when she had begun to wonder if her excitement about the salary and stability of the position had clouded her judgment. After all, what did she know about this man or his situation? Maybe in spite of his good manners, he didn’t like Indians. She’d known more than one local rancher who didn’t. Maybe he was a misogynistic jerk who’d treat her badly. She’d be alone in his home, isolated on a ranch miles away from Pendleton, with only two kids as company. Or witnesses.

In her panic, she had turned to the only person she knew who might have some answers—Joan Anthony—and asked about him, explaining why she wanted to know. What she got in response was a long hymn of praise for Jack Richardson.

Mrs. Anthony said her nephew was the most responsible and levelheaded member of a family with deep roots in the community. When his parents were killed in a plane crash, it was Jack who had sacrificed his college career to finish raising his younger brother and run the family ranch. He’d lost his wife to cancer two years ago and was now raising the two sons they’d struggled to have through years of fertility problems. The job he was trying to fill had until recently been done by his mother-in-law who had been helping out since the death of his wife.

The Richardson Ranch was not one of the biggest in the county, Joan Anthony had said, although it was one of the oldest land grants. She bragged that the current generation of Richardsons was the fourth to work the land, with the fifth already living there. Quanna had held her tongue and didn’t say some of her ancestors had been there centuries before there was a county.

Jack’s backstory helped explain the sadness in his eyes, although the image of sainthood Mrs. Anthony had painted sounded a bit overblown. On the other hand, he did seem a decent enough guy when he visited his aunt. He was attentive and polite, all yes, ma’am and no, ma’am. All please and if you have time with everyone. He was respectful to staff, never treating Quanna or anyone else who was an underling or a minority differently than he treated the director. He didn’t seem to be the kind of person who’d make snide comments about her Indian/Latina blood, the way some of her coworkers did. The same coworkers who routinely hit on her. He didn’t seem like the sort who’d do that either.

Even if he wasn’t as saintly as Joan Anthony described, he was obviously someone who had earned the respect of a woman Quanna knew was a savvy judge of people. Still, her level of anxiety had risen and fallen like the tide the closer she got to the day of her interview.

It was now at full flood as she drove to the Richardson Ranch. Finally, her head was calmed by what she saw outside her car—the seemingly endless expanse of the Eastern Oregon high plains she was driving through. She loved the landscape, even the scrubland where nothing would ever thrive except the ubiquitous tumbleweed. The land, her homeland, had always soothed her, even when she was a kid, and it did now. She lowered the window in her car and inhaled the smells of sage and warm earth and growing wheat.

The year’s crop wasn’t even hip-high yet, but it looked healthy. Green stalks, which were beginning to produce heads of grain, moved with the slightest breeze, making it seem they were waving to her in a friendly and welcoming way.

In the distance, she could see a dozen head of cattle. Hardly anyone in Umatilla County made a living on cattle anymore, but some ranchers still ran a small herd. Mostly it was for their own consumption, although some sold designer beef to white tablecloth restaurants in the trendy neighborhoods of Portland or to the upscale markets that liked to advertise who raised their ribs and roasts.

The more likely source of income for the ranches and farms she was passing were the wind turbines occasionally seen on the hills, slowly turning, generating power for California. The huge white generators kept a number of family operations in the black with rental payments for the land on which they were built.

The directions to the ranch were easy to follow—right after the milepost twenty-five marker was a two story high, whitewashed gate composed of huge side logs and a cross beam from which hung two Rs, one reversed so the letters were back to back. The place was called simply the Richardson Ranch. No phony Spanish or fancy, cutesy name. A straightforward explanation of where you were.

The dirt road off the main highway went for a number of miles before dipping down into a small hollow where three hills came close to intersecting. On the crest of the hills, wind turbines presided over the scene below.

As Quanna drove down the hill, she saw the darker green of trees interspersed with buildings. One, a big red building, was obviously a barn, big enough to hold quite a few horses or head of cattle. There were several smaller red structures grouped around it where farm equipment was probably stored.

Set at some distance from the barn complex was the ranch house. Joan Anthony had told her it had been built over time by succeeding generations of Richardsons who renovated, rebuilt, and added to the small one-room cabin put up by the original rancher. After all those years, it had morphed into a two-story, stately looking residence with a deep-set porch running the entire front of the house. Painted white with sage green shutters on the upstairs windows, the house was protected from the weather by large junipers, cottonwoods, and pine trees, which, judging from their size, had been planted decades ago.

Parked outside the house was a dusty, white Ford pickup truck with an extended cab, the kind her brother had always wanted to own but could never afford. It didn’t look brand new, but it looked well cared for. Next to it was a Toyota sedan. Quanna parked the old Honda her brother had loaned her on a more or less permanent basis beside the sedan, steadied herself with a couple deep breaths, and went to meet what she hoped was her future.

An older woman answered her knock. Oh, you’re early. I didn’t expect you yet.

It wasn’t exactly the welcome she’d