TRACY STOOD AT HER kitchen window, chopping carrots for the soup. Outside, the ranch looked more beautiful than ever. Fall had bathed Colorado in a warm amber glow. The leaves on the trees shimmered in every shade of brown and gold and ocher, contrasting beautifully with the vivid green pastures and white wooden fences, which Blake had lovingly repainted.
Since Tracy had come home from Bulgaria, emotionally exhausted and physically weak—she’d barely noticed, but she’d lost fifteen pounds during those grueling two weeks and was badly bruised after her encounter with Daniel Cooper—Blake Carter had taken care of everything. He drove Nicholas to school while Tracy slept. He cooked meals and made sure Tracy ate them. He’d done laundry and booked doctors’ appointments and kept the rhythms of life on the ranch going when Tracy could not. He’d held Tracy when she wept, racked with sobs that confused him deeply. Blake could see that her tears were only part sadness. There was also some sort of deep release going on, a necessary reaction to post-traumatic stress of some kind, like a soldier returning from battle. Most important of all, from Tracy’s perspective, Blake Carter hadn’t asked her a single question about what had happened on her “cooking trip” to Europe. He simply assumed that she would tell him when she was ready. Or perhaps, he thought, she might never be ready. Blake could accept either scenario, as long as she was home safe and staying home.
“You won’t leave again, will you, Mom?” Nicholas asked on Tracy’s first night back.
His tone was light but Tracy could hear the anxiety underlying it. She’d explained away her injuries as the result of a minor car crash, but her appearance when she’d first walked through the door had clearly frightened him.
“No, my darling. I won’t leave again.”
“Good. You’re so thin. Was the food in Europe really disgusting?”
Tracy grinned. “Yeah. It was pretty gross.”
“We should go to McDonald’s tomorrow.”
“We should.”
That was three months ago. Today, Tracy felt like a different person. Not her old self exactly, but a new self. Content. At peace. Reborn. It was Nicholas, more so even than Blake’s kindness, that had brought her back to life. She watched him now, horsing around in the yard with Blake on their way in for lunch. The two had become inseparable recently, and Tracy noticed that Nick was starting to take after Blake more and more. The thought made her happy.
“Something smells good.”
Strong male arms snaked around Tracy’s waist from behind. She turned around, unable to stop a broad smile from lighting up her face.
Jeff Stevens smiled back. “When’s lunch? I’m starving.”
