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eyes. “Life teaches hard lessons, little one.”
    He hadn’t called her that, ever. She’d never heard him use such endearments to anyone in normal conversation. There was a new tenderness in the way he treated her, a poignant difference in his whole manner.
    She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t trust it.
    A movement caught his eye. “Here comes Rodge,” he murmured, nodding toward the ranch road, where a station wagon was hurtling toward the airstrip. “Ten to one he’s got Corlie with him.”
    She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”
    “Not since my father’s funeral,” he agreed curtly. He left the cockpit and lowered the steps. He went down them first and waited to see if she needed help. But she’d worn sneakers and jeans, not high heels. She went down as if she were a mountain goat. She’d barely gotten onto the tarmac when the station wagon stopped and both doors opened. Corlie, small and wiry and gray-haired, held her arms out. Barrie ran into them, hungry for the older woman’s warm affection.
    Beside her, Rodge shook Dawson’s hand and then waited his turn to give Barrie a hug. He was at least ten years older than Corlie, and still dark-headed with a few silver streaks. He was dark-eyed and lean. When he wasn’t managing the ranch in Dawson’s absence, he kept busy as Dawson’s secretary, making appointments and handling minor business problems.
    The two of them had been with the Rutherfords for so long that they were more like family than paid help. Barrie clung to Corlie. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the woman.
    “Child, you’ve lost weight,” Corlie accused. “Too many missed meals and too much fast food.”
    “You can feed me while I’m here,” she said.
    “How long are you staying?” Corlie wanted to know.
    Before Barrie could answer her and spill the beans, Dawson caught her left hand and held it under Corlie’s nose. “This is the main reason she came back,” he said. “We’re engaged.”
    “Oh, my goodness,” Corlie exclaimed before a shocked Barrie could utter a single word. The older woman’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s what Mr. Rutherford always prayed would happen, and me and Rodge, too,” she added, hugging Barrie all over again. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. Now maybe he’ll stop brooding so much and smile once in a while,” she added with a grimace at Dawson.
    Barrie didn’t know what to say. She got lost in the enthusiasm of Rodge’s congratulations and Dawson’s intimidating presence. He must have had a reason for telling them about the false engagement, perhaps to set the stage for Mrs. Holton’s arrival. She could ask him later.
    Meanwhile, it was exciting to look around and enjoy being back in Sheridan. The ranch wasn’t in town, of course, it was several miles outside the city limits. But it had been Dawson’s home when she came here, and she loved it because he did. So many memories had hurt her here. She wondered why it was so dear to her in spite of them.
    She found herself installed in the backseat of the station wagon with Corlie while Dawson got in under the wheel and talked business with Rodge all the way up to the house.
    The Rutherford home was Victorian. This house had been built at the turn of the century, and it replaced a much earlier structure that Dawson’s great-grandfather had built. There had been Rutherfords in Sheridan for three generations.
    Barrie often wished that she knew as much about her own background as she knew about Dawson’s. Her father had died when she was ten, too young to be very curious about heritage. Then when her mother married George Rutherford, who had been widowed since Dawson was very young, she was so much in love with him that she had no time for her daughter. Dawson had been in the same boat. She’d learned a bit at a time that he and his father had a respectful but very strained relationship. George had expected a lot from his son, and