Page 40 of Snowed in with the Rancher

He didn't reply, and they made the rest of the fifteen-minute drive in silence. When they reached the cabin, Tate parked, got out, and set about covering the truck bed under a tarp. Olivia went inside and put on a cheerful smile for Vince and Marjory, who'd been nice enough to come out to stay with the girls and put them to bed. After they left, she waited for over an hour for Tate to come inside, but he didn't. Finally, exhausted, angry, and sad, she went to bed. By the time she woke up the next morning, he was gone as usual.

SIXTEEN

Tate shoved his emptied plate away and stared into a mug of beer at the town tavern. He listened to Vince and the other rescue squad members joking as they passed around the duty signup sheet for the next month. Yesterday had been a long day, and this morning's ranch chores had kept him hustling until Thomas had come to find him in the barn to remind him of the search and rescue meeting in town. If it hadn't been for the fact he didn't want to face Olivia again, Tate might have simply told Vince to sign him up for whatever shifts were open. As it was, meeting up with the team at the tavern for a festive lunch and planning meeting provided a great excuse to avoid his problems at home.

When the sheet reached Tate, he looked it over and then began to write his name down in the spaces for weekend after weekend.

“No one expects you be available as much as you've been in the past,” Vince said quietly, placing a hand on Tate's shoulder as he leaned over and watched the younger man writing.

Tate raised an eyebrow and kept jotting his name in every open space on the sheet. “Why's that?” he asked.

Vince withdrew his hand, shook his head, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling before fixing Tate with a firm stare. “You're a hard one to get a handle on, Tate McConnell.”

Tate snorted and handed the signup sheet to Becky on his other side. He took a long drink of his beer and waited for Vince to elaborate.

“Did I ever tell you about my sister, Jean?” Vince asked, seemingly out of the blue.

“Nope,” Tate answered, his eyes on the big-screen television showing rodeo over the bar. “Didn't know you had a sister.”

Vince smiled, his gaze softening. “She was two years older than me, but you would have thought she was my mother, the way she bossed me around.”

Something in Vince's tone had Tate turning his attention to the older man.

“I was sixteen when she died.”

Tate's stomach turned over.

“Thrown from her horse. Broke her neck, died pretty near instantly. It was during a big rainstorm, and she got caught up north of the place my parents owned near the Red Creek trail. Jean was a barrel racer, as natural on a horse as anyone I've ever seen.” He shook his head, smiling at the bittersweet memory. “But we figured there must've been a lightning strike and the horse bolted. Threw her, and she landed just wrong.”

He shrugged before taking a sip of his own beer. Tate waited, his heart tender and achy.

“I finished out high school, and then I joined the Marines,” Vince said. “I wouldn't admit it to myself at the time, but I had a death wish. Jean was bossy as hell, but she was also my whole world growing up. When I lost her, I didn't think there was a lot worth doing in life anymore.”

“I'm sorry,” Tate murmured. “How'd you pull out of it?”

Vince shifted on his seat and looked Tate straight in the eyes. “I realized what a selfish bastard I was being. Jean didn't get the chance to do all the things she wanted in life. She never got to fall in love. She never got to win the state barrel racing championships. She never got to have her own kids to boss around.” He smiled warmly. “I was standing on a field in the Congo, listening to a Frenchie soldier tell me about his girl back home when I realized that I wanted a girl, too. I wanted to see my parents again. I wanted to own a house and be a father and have alife. Because what I had then sure didn't count.”

“Just like that?” Tate asked, disbelieving. “You realized it all in a flash like that?”

“I realized that all those things I'd always figured I'd do when I grew up didn't change when Jean died.” He took a sip of his beer while his eyes bored into Tate's. “I'd changed. I'd decided that somehow, if Jean didn't get to do them, then I shouldn't either. But what a damned waste. Jean would have been so angry with me for that.”

Vince set his beer bottle down on the tabletop with enough force to get the attention of a couple of nearby team members. He waved in dismissal and waited for them to get back to talking before he resumed. “Every day you get on this earth is a damned blessing, son. But life is a gift that's so much better when it's shared. You've been closing yourself off from everyone for years, and we've all let you. But there are innocent kids involved now. It's time for you to pull your head out of your ass and realize what an extraordinary opportunity you've been given.”

Tate's eyes widened in shock. Mild-mannered Vince had never snapped at anyone. Steady and fatherly, he ran the search and rescue squad efficiently, but he never spoke harshly to anyone, even when they messed up.

Vince's voice lowered so only Tate could hear him. “Your mother died, son, and it was tragic. But that doesn't give you the right to spit in the eye of her memory and the good fortune you've been handed.”

He grabbed the signup schedule from the middle of the table where it had wound up after making the rounds. Using the pen that dangled from a string on the clipboard, he drew a line through every date Tate had signed up for.

“You're not allowed to work again until you stop using this team to avoid your life.”

Tate swallowed, a lump crawling up his throat.

Tapping the page with the pen, he stared at Tate, making him want to squirm like a schoolboy. “Show me you don't need to be rescued, and I'll let you come back to rescuing others.”

Then Vince nodded a goodbye to the rest of the team, taking the signup sheet with him as he walked out of the bar.

Tate sat without moving and stared after him, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do when everything that he'd defined himself by for years got turned upside down.

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