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“George has high blood pressure, and I have arthritis in my spine. If Liam finds out, our gooses are cooked. You and I both know the only way he’ll stay and finish out his residency is if he trusts the ranch and farm are in good hands.”
I’d been at Fort Bragg in North Carolina at the time, and had clamped my jaw shut while my brain whirred through options. The call from Stan hadn’t been much of a surprise. I’d called to check on him about once a month anyway.
“Major,” Stan had said quietly, “you’re the only person besides my son I trust to take over. And if you weren’t up for retirement from the army, I wouldn’t even ask. But it’s still got to be your decision, son. You know I’ll respect you either way and you’ll always be family to us, no matter what.”
That sweet son of a bitch, I’d thought. “I’ll be there in two weeks. Tell Marsha I’ll clean out the chicken coop for her for a week if she’ll make the chocolate chess pie,” I’d grumbled.
Stan had laughed. “You’d do that anyway.”
“Yes, sir, but at least I’d like some pie out of the deal.”
“Roger that, Major,” he’d teased.
After I’d hung up the phone, I’d thought about how warm it made my heart to hear him call me Major. I’d been lieutenant colonel in the army already for several years. Now when the Wildes called me Major, it felt like a term of endearment instead of my rank, and it made me feel loved, almost as much as the olive-green scarf Betsy had knit me for my birthday with silver maple leaves on it. In my thank-you note to her, I told her she’d have to teach me how to knit one day, but her response had been to point out that I never sat still long enough. Whenever I was on the ranch, I was outside working.
But tonight, as I watched Doc slowly accept that things were changing, I realized I’d finally be at the ranch long enough to have downtime. Betsy had been over the moon at my decision to accept the job, and it hadn’t been easy convincing her not to tell the kids until we told Doc.
I could tell by watching him that Doc’s annoyance was because he’d been the last to know and hadn’t had any say in the matter. But George, Stan, Betsy, and I had all agreed that if we didn’t have our plan in place by the time we brought Doc in, he’d abandon his residency and move home out of a sense of obligation.
The man was loyal and stubborn.
We explained to him that I was retiring and moving into the foreman’s house on the Wilde ranch. Jay Mason, the current ranch foreman, was getting married, and his wife had convinced him to move back to Wichita Falls to set up house. His plan had been to commute until Stan could find his replacement.
They’d made him a deal to keep coming three days a week to help train me through calving season when he could earn a bonus that would help him with his new house. Win-win. Meanwhile, with me and Jay both at the ranch, Stan could help George at the farm. Between the four of us and all the hands, I expected we’d be able to keep things running just fine. And when I was fully up to speed, maybe I could help remove some more of the load from George and Stan’s shoulders.
It wasn’t until much later that night, after everyone had retired to their beds, that Doc came and found me to ask the tougher questions. I was expecting him—had, in fact, bumped up the heat a little bit on the oil heater in my tiny bunk room. But when he came in with only his thin cotton pajamas on, I cursed and reached for the extra wool blanket on the shelf to wrap around him.
“Get in the bed,” I snapped. “You crazy? It’s below freezing out there. Where are your socks?”
He shivered and jumped under the covers where I’d already warmed up the narrow bed with my own body heat.
“You sound like my mom,” he said with his adorable crooked grin.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I griped. “Your mother is a good woman.”
Doc paused and studied me for a few beats. “I’m glad you’re here. Full-time, I mean. I’m… it’s good. Good for everyone. Thank you, Major.”
I turned around to find another sweatshirt to pull on, grunting some kind of wordless acknowledgment to his gratitude.
“Don’t feel like you have to do this,” he began. I turned and glared at him.
“Since when do I do things I don’t want to do?” I asked.
He held up his hands in surrender. “Don’t bite my head off. I just… you never said you were getting out when you got your twenty.”
