The Rancher Next Door Read Free Page A

real any longer—like Mary leaving, for example. He must be preoccupied to have left his daughter with a near stranger, but everything about Caley rang sincere and honest. Maybe it’d be good for Ava to make friends with a woman.
    Besides, he’d told his daughter “no” so many times lately, Brady didn’t think he could handle one more disappointed flash of her blue eyes.
    He urged Nugget into a lope and rocked along with the familiar, comforting gait. He might be calloused from life, but he wasn’t totally hard-hearted.
    Yet, anyway.

Chapter Two
    “T his box is marked bath towels, but it’s full of Christmas ornaments.” Ava held up a giant cupcake ornament. The pink-and-green icing sparkled under the light from the dusty ceiling fan overhead as it twirled from her finger.
    Caley propped her favorite—and only—painting against the living room wall and strode across the matted carpet to peer inside Ava’s box. “You’re right. I must have mixed them up last time I packed. So I guess the box marked ornaments is full of—”
    “Dish towels?” Ava supplied.
    Caley grinned. “I was going to guess silverware.”
    Ava snorted. “How often do you move, anyway?” She held a smaller box up for Caley to see how worn the bottom was. “Some of these boxes look...tired.”
    That was putting it nicely. “Pretty often. I like to travel, keep things interesting.” More like keep from feeling too much, remembering. Regretting.
    “That sounds like fun.” Ava nestled the cupcake ornament back into the tissue paper, and folded the box shut. “We hardly ever leave the ranch. I know Dad would never move anywhere.”
    “What about vacations?” Caley found a box marked cleaning supplies and dug inside for a duster to clean the fan. She came up with a hammer instead, which she laid on the floor beside her beloved picture of a firefighter. She’d hang it later. “Do you and your dad ever take trips together?”
    “We went to Dallas last year for a weekend, and he bought me some new shoes.” Ava closed the ornament box and set it gently against the far wall, out of the way.
    Dallas? That was maybe four hours away. Not much of a vacation—especially considering Brady could get Ava shoes at Walmart one county over. No wonder Ava and her dad seemed so strained. Did he ever take time away from the ranch to just hang out with her?
    But it really wasn’t Caley’s business—however much she wanted to make it so. Don’t get involved. You’re not going to be here long enough to make it count. Story of her life. But it was safer that way. The fewer people whose lives she impacted personally, the better off they were. She’d stick to saving lives via the anonymity of the fire department. The emotional connections she’d leave up to someone else.
    “I’ve been asking for a trip to Disney World for my birthday next year, but Dad says he can’t leave the ranch for that long. Not even with Uncle Max here to help.” Ava tossed a red throw pillow onto the worn blue love seat and shrugged as though it didn’t matter.
    But Caley knew from experience it did. Would things have been different between her and her own father growing up if he’d invested time in the little things after Mom left? Into the fun stuff that made memories? Instead, Caley grew up and had to go make her own memories alone. The first time she skydived, she’d been about ready to lose her breakfast inside the plane, but the thrill of the adventure to come pressed her forward. Why couldn’t her father have ever taken the opportunity to be spontaneous? To trust? To live?
    He couldn’t do any of those things now, not from the Broken Bend graveyard twelve miles up the road. Regret rolled over in its familiar spot in her stomach. Her childhood might not have been ideal, but she still wished she had been given one more chance to redeem it.
    Hopefully it wasn’t too late for her and Nonie.
    “You must really like firefighters.” Ava lifted a decorative