Home on the Range: A Novel (Double S Ranch, Band 2) - Softcover

Logan Herne, Ruth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0735290660 ISBN 13: 9780735290662

Verlag: Multnomah, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Can the brother left behind and a woman without hope work together for the good of two precious children?

Nick Stafford stayed in central Washington, working his family’s large ranch after his brothers left to pursue other passions—but his toughest job is being a single dad. As a child he watched his father fail at marriage and parenting, so Nick was determined to show him up. He’d be a better husband, father, and ranch manager than Sam Stafford ever was. Despite that commitment, three years after Nick’s wife left him, he has a daughter in trouble at school and both of his girls are facing issues that force him to rethink his stubborn plans.

For Dr. Elsa Andreas, life fell apart when tragedy caused her to abandon her family therapy practice and retreat to the backwoods of Gray’s Glen. Her school principal sister believes Elsa can guide the Stafford girls and that working with kids will draw Elsa out of her protective bubble.

Summer on the Double S teems with life and adventure. Amid the bounty of God and land, will Nick and Elsa find the courage to build futures based on faith rather than fear?

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Ruth Logan Herne has more than a million books in print, including eighteen Love Inspired contemporary novels and Back in the Saddle, Book 1 in the Double S Ranch series. Ruth is a founding member of Seekerville, a popular writing-collective blog. A country girl who loves the big city, Ruth and her husband live on a farm in upstate New York.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Nick Stafford stared at the half-buried, round-roofed dwelling and realized he couldn’t go through with the elementary school principal’s edict. Not if it meant meeting with a hermit who lived in a toadstool shack tucked so deep in the forest that woodland mice couldn’t find it.
 
A hobbit house. No way on God’s green earth was Nick Stafford about to risk his daughters’ mental health by having them counseled by a recluse who lived halfway to a mole hole. No matter what the girls’ principal said.
 
What was next? A hollow tree?
 
He did an about-face, ready to stride away, and came face to face with a dryad.
 
Cool gray-green eyes appraised him from beneath a hooded cloak, Celtic friendly, except they weren’t in the lush green hills of Ireland. They were in the forestland of central Washington, and the thin spring leaves did little to protect him from today’s chill drizzle. Which made her hooded wrap more sensible than his bare head.
 
A dark dog moved their way, darting furtively through the shadowed edges of the small, rounded property.
 
“Achilles. Stay.”
 
The dog paused, peering at them through the dense undergrowth edging the rain-soaked clearing.
 
“Dr. Andreas?”
 
The rain and shadows shifted. An oblique ray of sun made quivering raindrops sparkle along the mostly bare branches framing her. The quick change to filtered light forced his pupils to adjust.
 
He thought she winced when he said her name, but maybe it was the dance of light. With the shadows bobbing and weaving, he couldn’t be sure, and when the sun broke through, brighter and stronger, nothing but a mild, placid expression stared back at him. “Elsa, please. And you are Nicholas Stafford?”
 
“Yes. Mrs. Willingham recommended you, and just so we start on the same page, I’m not here by choice.”
 
“Then leave.”
 
She didn’t blink, didn’t move, and for a moment he was caught up, staring into Monet-like watercolor eyes, absolutely gorgeous if you liked whimsical characters in a fairy-tale setting.
 
He’d tried for a fairy-tale ending once. But he’d crashed and burned because no matter what he did to make his princess wife happy, Whitney Stafford hadn’t been ready to take the role of queen seriously. She ended their marriage after abdicating the throne to run off with the court jester, a.k.a. one of the ranch’s rodeo-riding hired hands. She’d abandoned her husband, her vows, and, worst of all, two beautiful daughters to become a rodeo cowboy–chasing buckle bunny.
 
But he couldn’t possibly have heard correctly. Did the wood nymph just tell him to go? What kind of therapist did that?
 
She moved toward the door, reached out, and twisted the handle. The door opened easily, no key needed. Of course if you were this far off the grid, maybe no key was ever needed. He started to follow her, but she turned, effectively blocking the entrance. “You’re still here.”
 
“We had an appointment.” He stretched out the last word, miffed by her mandate, his life, his lack of choices, and pretty much everything known to man, and despite what his older brother, Colt, said, he was not one bit depressed. He was simply mad about everything, and that was his God-given right.
 
 “Mr. Stafford — ”
 
“Nick is fine.”
 
“Mr. Stafford,” she continued in a cool, clear voice. “I don’t want to be here either. Which means our sessions are doomed, so why waste time? You have a life, dysfunctional, of course”— an easy shrug and her matter-of-fact expression said that was a given— “but you haven’t done irreparable harm, so you’re free as a bird. I have a life as well, and I appreciate my privacy more than most these days, so let me save us both from a dead-end path we needn’t take. Go home. And if things continue to spiral downward and out of control, take my sister’s advice and find a therapist you do want to see. I’m closed.”
 
She took one step back and shut the door in his face.
 
She couldn’t do that, could she? They had an appointment. He’d even set up a reminder on his phone! He’d scheduled time to see her, against his will, and he’d followed through.
 
You followed through because Angelina and your brother hounded you until you walked out the door. Left on your own, you’ d have conveniently forgotten the whole thing. Do you want to make the same mistakes your father made thirty years ago? Or try to fix things for the girls by expending some kind of sincere effort? Cheyenne nearly got killed earlier this spring because you refused to compromise. But of course—the voice of reason paused as if resigned to being brushed off—the choice is yours. Again.
 
Well, he was here. He’d shown up as promised, and finding her little hut in the woods hadn’t exactly been a cakewalk.
 
He glared at the door and lifted his hand to knock.
 
A long, low growl from behind him said the dog wasn’t all that enamored by his presence either.
 
Nick was pretty sure this couldn’t get worse, but then a brightly colored bird winged its way to the tree alongside the house, squawked, flapped its wings, and screeched, “You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk! You’re a jerk!”
 
The dog sank back on his haunches and barked twice in agreement.
 
Nick conceded defeat. The bird was right. He dropped his hand and started to back away from the door, hoping to escape before the dog attacked while the bird pecked his face off. Where was his trusty Remington long barrel when he needed it? Sixty feet away, in the rack behind the seat of his extended-cab ranch pickup truck.
 
The dog barked again, but this bark didn’t sound threatening. It sounded sad, if such a thing was possible, and the croon in the bark said the mutt was either looking forward to hand-to-paw combat or he wanted someone to pet him.
 
Nick crouched and tapped the path beneath him. The dog ambled over. He sank onto the stones and flipped to his back, waiting for a good scratch.
 
“You’re no watch dog, that’s for sure,” Nick said as he rubbed the dog’s belly. “As far as protection goes, you’re on the low end of the scale, my friend.”
 
“Dumb dog! Dumb dog! Dumb dog!”
 
Nick glared up at the raucous bird. “Listen you rude, loud pile of feathers. No one needs your guff, okay? And you’re so stinking ugly, no one more than twenty miles north or south of the equator would even use your feathers to decorate their hats. So there.”
 
“You’re arguing with a macaw.” He hadn’t heard the door open but was kind of glad it had.
 
“Just having my say,” he returned, not looking up. “The bird’s obnoxious and it poops when it roosts.” He shrugged a shoulder toward the offending pile to the dog’s left. “Reason enough to make pie out of it right there.”
 
He’d figured to tick her off, because she had animal-loving, tree-hugging, far-left liberal written all over her eccentric outfit, but she surprised him by laughing. Only her laugh sounded rusty, like his.
 
“I can’t deny I’ve been...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multnomah
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0735290660
• ISBN 13: 9780735290662
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar