Smiling now, she leaned against Wrangler’s foreleg, checked his hoof when he lifted it.
“I have a daughter who’s a light in my life, a son-in-law who’s the best man I know. And three beautiful grandchildren who make me proud every single, solitary day. I have a full life, Bodine, because I chose to live it. I have sorrows. No life is full without them. I miss my husband. It doesn’t matter how many years have passed since I’ve seen his face, heard his voice. I still see him, I still hear him, and it comforts me. I miss my daughter—the sweet and the sour of her. I can wish for another chance to be her mother without making all I have, all my blessings, less for that wish.”
“You have a full life because you chose to live it, and you worked to make it.”
“I did, but don’t think less of that poor girl’s mother, Bodine, because her grief overwhelmed her. Despair is a powerful, living thing.”
“I won’t. I don’t think less of her. But I can think more of you, Nana, for being stronger than despair and braver than grief.”
“My sweet girl,” Cora murmured.
“I see how strong you are, Nana. Strong and smart, and loving with it. I see those things in Grammy, and in Mom. It’s not taking anything away from the men in our family for me to say I’m proud to be the next one holding the Riley, Bateau, Bodine, Longbow line. And for you, I’ll hope that wherever Alice is, she’s made a good life for herself.”
“You’re a treasure to me, Bodine. A shining bright, rich treasure.”
When Cora came around the horses to hug her, Bodine squeezed tight.
But, she thought, while she could hope, for her grandmother’s sake, she couldn’t believe anyone could make a good life by ignoring her own line, and all who’d loved her.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Information, straight gossip, sly innuendo, and wild speculation all bore fruit on the grapevine that extended from ranch to resort. How plump the fruit might depend, but you could always squeeze out a little juice.
As Bodine wasn’t sure of the size and ripeness of the fruit she’d come across that day, she felt it her job to find out.
She had a two-pronged reason for knocking on the door of the shack after the evening meal. The timing took it out of the business day—something she thought important, just as she felt it fair and just to hold this discussion on what was, essentially, more Callen’s turf than her own.
He called out a “Come in.”
She found him on the couch, his laptop in his lap as he slouched with a beer on the table beside him, and a basketball game on TV.
He’d gotten some winter sun along the way, she noted, as the lamp caught some lighter tones in that deer-hide mop of hair. “Hey.” He continued to tap his keyboard—not the two-finger style both her father and Chase employed, but as competently as anyone in her offices.
Where had he learned that?
“Grab a beer and a chair,” he invited.
“I’ll pass on the beer.” But she took a seat.
“Give me one second, I just need to … Okay, that should work.”
She waited while he saved the file, put the computer aside. He looked comfortable, relaxed, she thought, and a little scruffy, which always struck her as oddly appealing on him.
She could understand the appealing, even the comfortable if the juice squeezed true and clear, but damned if she could balance in the relaxed.
He stretched out his legs, boosted his boots onto the coffee table. “How’s it going?”
“Actually, that’s something I want to ask you.”
He nodded, picked up his beer. “Can’t complain. Got the advance bookings for the next couple weeks laid out, and the schedule done. Worked out the rotation on the horses. Got your spreadsheet and numbers on expenses. Projecting that to go up some as bookings increase in the spring. And I’m going to want to talk to you about replacing some tack. We’re inventorying now whenever we’ve got the chance.”
He’d learned a lot more, she realized, than how to type with all ten digits.
“Send me a memo on that when you’re done. I meant, how’s it going on a more personal level.”
He raised his eyebrows and his beer. “Again, can’t complain.”
“I’m puzzled why you can’t complain about Garrett Clintok coming back on you. And coming back on you, additionally, while you were standing on resort property working for us. I think that warrants a complaint.”
Though he shrugged, sipped his beer, Bodine saw annoyance flick in and out of his eyes. “Maybe because Clintok doesn’t worry me.”
As intrigued as she was frustrated, Bodine crossed an ankle over her knee. “You’ve become an awfully mellow bastard, Skinner, if that’s the truth. He came to the BAC while you were working and accused you of murder.”
“Not in so many words.”
Whether or not the mellow ran all the way through, she had become a woman who knew how to hold back her own frustrations to get to the meat.
“Why don’t you give me the words so I don’t have to hear the variety of them that trickle down to me from other sources?”
“First place, Easy shouldn’t have said anything to you.”
“I completely disagree, but he, in fact, didn’t. He said something to Ben. If I have the chain of speculation right, Ben saw Clintok drive up, saw you in what he viewed as an altercation, saw Clintok drive away, spitting gravel. Then Ben asked Easy about it, got some details, related those details to others, and so on, until a damn convoluted version of those details came to me.”
She had to take a breath—found herself annoyed Callen continued to stretch out, say nothing, and damn near radiate relaxed. “I don’t like getting trickle downs, Skinner. And especially on something as incendiary as this. You should have come to me.”
He gave her a thoughtful nod, an easy shrug as if considering her point of view.
“I don’t see it that way. It was personal, and I handled it. It didn’t have anything to do with the work or you or the resort.”
“It happened—again—on resort property.” She held up a hand before he could argue that one. “I have an absolute right to complain to the sheriff when one of his deputies harasses one of our people on our property. I don’t care if you don’t see it that way because that’s the way it damn well is. And if you’re going to sit there and tell me he didn’t bring the Bodine or the Longbow names into it, at least by insinuation, I’m going to have to call you something you’ve never been. That would be a liar.”
Now, at last, the mellow dropped away. He shoved up, paced around the limited space. This time she cocked an eyebrow, waited. Apparently it took more to rile him than it once had, but she recognized the impressive temper cooking up.
So she’d wait and see.
“You know damn well, Bo, you know good and damn well this business with Clintok goes back way before any of this. He’s just using this as an excuse to start something with me. I’m not going to accommodate him, and I’m damn well not going to go running to you when he gets in my face. Fuck that, and fuck him. That’s the way it damn well is.”
She smiled, put all the sweetness of a strawberry parfait into it. “Well, golly, Callen, you don’t appear so awfully mellow about it after all.”