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“So do I,” Abby said. “We spent a lot of weekends on the ice. Not that we’ll ever be a threat to any medal winners,” she added with a grin.
Don chuckled. He finished his coffee. “If you need any help moving, the boys and I can drive down to Denver in a U-Haul and pack you up.”
“You’d do that?” Abby asked, surprised, because people in big cities didn’t warm up to other people, or so it seemed to her. Nobody she knew would have offered to help her move.
“Sure, we would,” he said, and seemed shocked.
“In that case, how about next Saturday? And I’ll buy pizzas for the whole crew!” She frowned. “Do we have a pizza joint?”
“You bet we do,” he said. “And the boys love those meat-lover ones with extra cheese.”
“I’ll remember,” she said. “Thanks, Mr. Blalock.”
“Just Don.” He tipped his hat. “Nice to meet you. Now I’ll go tell the boys they can stop worrying.”
She just smiled.
“Made his day, I’ll bet,” Hannah said as she warmed Abby’s coffee. “They were all scared to death that some city person with dollar signs in her eyes was going to sell up the whole outfit.”
“Not me. I was born here.”
“Don wasn’t. But Maisie was. Her mother was a Wiley.”
“Goodness, not the Wileys who used to live on Long Bridge Road?”
“The very same.”
“Mr. Wiley helped out at our place when we got snowed in one winter.” She grimaced. “My dad was too drunk to care if we froze and starved, but Mr. Wiley came with a plow and cleared our driveway and brought us food. Mama cried. It was so kind.”
“Maisie’s like that, too,” she said.
“I think she was in one of my classes. I didn’t know her well.” Abby sighed. “I didn’t like to get close to people. I couldn’t invite anybody home, you see, and Dad was unpredictable about other people.”
“No need to explain. I remember your dad all too well,” Hannah said. “But you’re here now, and he isn’t, and you’re going to love living on a ranch. There are kittens in the barn,” she added, and laughed at the way Lucy’s eyes lit up.
“So we were told at the funeral home, before Bart joined us. He’s such a sweet man. Why isn’t he married?”
“There was this stupid woman who took him for a ride and then married somebody else,” Hannah said. “Then he got mixed up with a couple of other women who tossed him over. He’s gun-shy.”
“I guess I would be, too.” Abby grimaced. “Well, I am.” She drew in a long breath, thinking about Cody Banks. “I don’t want anything to do with men. My only concern now is Lucy,” she said, smiling at the little girl. “I just want her to be happy.”
“I’m very happy, Aunt Abby!” she replied, bright-eyed. “And I’ll be ever so happy if we can just go out to the barn and look at the kittens!”
Abby sighed. “Okay, sprout. But finish your sandwich first!”
THEBOYSCAMEand moved them from Denver back to Catelow. It took the better part of a whole day, beginning at dawn, but after everything was in the ranch house, and old Charlie’s things moved into the attic to make room for Abby’s stuff, she ordered pizzas all around. They all sprawled in the living room, on the chairs and over onto the floor, eating pizza and drinking the beer Abby had bought on the way home.
It was like being part of a huge family. Abby had never felt anything like it since her brother and Mary died. She was going to love living in Catelow, she decided. She only had to come to grips with her irrational fear of Cody Banks.
IRONICALLY,HERFIRSTday on the job, Cody Banks walked in the door with a second man, wearing a nice and expensive suit.
They walked up to the receptionist, Marie. Cody didn’t even look toward Abby, who had her desk next to the front window.
“We need to see Mr. Owens in reference to the Blakely case,” Cody said quietly, and he smiled.
“Let me see if he’s at his desk,” Marie said, smiling back. She buzzed the boss and announced his visitors. She listened, said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. “He’ll be right out,” she told them.
She barely had time to get through the announcement before Mr. Owens was down the hall to meet the two men.
