Page 2 of Point of Mercy

Heather’s cheeks had burned as she’d heard the wagging tongues in the checkout line at the Safeway store, in the dining area of the Buckeye Restaurant and Lounge, and even on the porch of the church after services. There was no way she was going to spend the rest of her life trapped in Gold Creek!

But ranch life? It wasn’t a lot better. Though she planned on staying only for the summer.Only until she had enough money to enroll in art school. Only so that she didn’t turn out to be one of those weak women who marry a man for his money, to get what she wanted. Only so she didn’t feel compelled to marry Dennis Leonetti, son of one of the wealthiest bankers in Northern California.

Heather tossed the old rag rug over the top rail of the fence and stared across the vast acres of the Lazy K. Horses gathered in the shade of one lone pine tree, their tails switching at bothersome flies, their coats dull from rolling in the dusty corral. Sorrels, bays, chestnuts and one single white gelding huddled together, picking at a few dry blades of grass or stomping clouds of dust.

A hazy sun hovered over the ridge of mountains to the west, and she spied a lone rider upon the ridge—one of the ranch hands, no doubt. Squinting and shading her eyes with her hand, she tried to figure out which of the hands had chosen a solitary ride along Devil’s Ridge. He was tall and wide-shouldered, though his broad chest angled to a slim waist. Against the blaze of a Western sunset, he sat comfortably in the saddle—as if he’d been born to ride a horse. She could see only his silhouette, and try as she would, she couldn’t recognize him. Her mind clicked off the cowboys she’d met, but none of them seemed as natural in the saddle as this man.

A breath of wind tugged at her hair and caused goose bumps to rise on her skin as the stranger twisted in the saddle and seemed to look straight down at her. But that was impossible. He was much too far away. Nonetheless, her heart leapt to her throat and she couldn’t help wondering who he was.

He kicked his mount and disappeared into the forest, leaving Heather with the impression that he hadn’t even existed, that he was just a figment of her healthy and romantic imagination.

Her palms had begun to sweat. Nervously she wiped her hands down the front of her apron.

“Heather—you about ready to help clean this kitchen?” Mazie’s crowlike voice cawed through the open window of the ranch house.

Heather jumped. Guiltily she yanked the rug off the fence and shook the blasted thing frantically, as if the fabric were infested with snakes. Dust swirled upward and caught in her throat. She coughed and sputtered and beat the life out of the rug.

“You hear me, girl?”

“In a minute….” Heather called over her shoulder. “I’ll be right there.”

“Well, mind that you git in here afore midnight, y’hear?” Mazie insisted, mumbling something about city girls more interested in cowboys than in hard work. She slammed the window shut so hard the panes rattled.

Swiping at her sweaty forehead, Heather hauled the dusty rug back to the ranch house. She hurried up the steps, through the long back porch and into the kitchen where other girls were scouring pots and pans, washing down the floor and scrubbing the counters with disinfectant. No dirt dared linger in Mazie Fenn’s kitchen!

“’Bout time you got back here. Why don’t you take care of the leftovers—take those pails onto the back porch for Seth’s pigs,” Mazie suggested. Seth Lassiter was one of the cowboys who worked at the Lazy K during the day, but lived on his own place where he raised pigs and his own small herd of cattle.

Jill, a redheaded waitress who was one of Heather’s roommates, smothered a smile as she glanced at the two heaping buckets of slop. Carrying out the heavy pails was one of the worst jobs on the ranch, and it tickled her that Heather seemed to always inherit the job. Jill bit her lip to keep from giggling, then threw her shoulders into her own work of mopping the yellowed linoleum until it gleamed.

Heather gathered the heavy buckets of milk, corn bread, potatoes and anything else that was edible but for one reason or the other hadn’t been consumed by the guests and staff of the ranch. Without spilling a drop, she hoisted both pails to the porch and told herself not to linger, though she couldn’t help staring at the ridge where she’d seen the lone rider.

All her life her mother had accused her of dreaming romantic fantasies, of being “boy crazy,” of living in an unreal world of heroes and heroines and everlasting love. Her older sister, Rachelle, had been the practical nose-to-the-grindstone type, and time and time again their mother had shaken her head at Heather’s belief in true love.

“If you want to fall in love, then why don’t you let yourself fall for Dennis Leonetti?” Ellen had asked her often enough. “He’s cute and smart and rich. What more could you want?”

Heather sometimes wondered herself. But there was something about Dennis—something calculating and cold that made her mistrust him. Why he wanted to marry her, she didn’t know; she only knew that deep in her heart she didn’t love him and never would.Marrying him seemed like admitting defeat or becoming a fraud or, at the very least, taking the easy way out. Heather, despite her fantasies, didn’t believe that there were any free rides on this earth. She had only to look at her mother’s hard life to see the truth.

“Heather?”

Drat! Mazie again. Heather couldn’t afford to look lazy; she needed this job. She dashed back to the kitchen.

“I thought we lost you again,” Mazie said as she lit a cigarette at the little table near the windows. “Mercy, I’ve never seen anyone whose head is higher in the clouds than yours!”

“I’m sorry,” Heather said as she wiped the top of the stove to look busy. Most of the polishing and cleaning was done, and three girls were huddled together near the swinging doors that separated the kitchen from the dining room.

“It’s all right. Your shift’s over.” Mazie honored Heather with a rare smile. “Besides, you’re missin’ all the fun.” Taking a puff on her cigarette, she motioned to the girls crowded around the swinging door. “The boys are back.”

“The what?”

“… I told you he was gorgeous,” Jill whispered loudly.

Mazie chuckled.

“They all are,” another girl, Maggie, said, her eye to the crack between the two doors. She let out a contented sigh. “Hunks. Every one of them.”

“But they’re trouble,” Sheryl added. She was a tall,thin girl, who, for the past six summers, had worked at the Lazy K. “Especially that one—” She pointed, and Jill shook her head.

“What’s going on?” Heather couldn’t hide her curiosity.

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