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AFTER A QUICK BREAKFAST, Bob and Tessa headed toward Yellowstone again. “What exactly do you want to see in Yellowstone?” he asked.
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t even know. Hiking could be fun. I want to see the geysers. Old Faithful sounds amazing. I want to see the Upper Falls. I saw a picture of it from a friend who had gone, and it looked incredible. I just want to experience the wonder that is Yellowstone, and see real live bison running around like they did once in our country. I just want to experience what I can, and it sounds like a perfect place to get to know one another better.”
Bob nodded. “All right.” He was still trying to figure out why she wanted to work, but he wasn’t about to bring it up again. It made her all prickly for some crazy reason. “We’re going to stay in West Yellowstone, Montana, which is a short drive from the park. It’s also very touristy. If you want to buy something that says Yellowstone on it, you’ll find it for sure.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” she said. “Growing up in the middle of Illinois, I saw a lot of wheat fields, corn fields, and cows. I need some variety in my life. Bring on the bison!”
He grinned. “You’re really excited about Yellowstone, aren’t you?” Her enthusiasm was contagious, and he was excited to go with her, even though he’d had no desire at all to go on a honeymoon.
“Yes! This is something new for me. I’m sure you’ve been a million times, but I’ve never been, and I really want to go.” She was practically bouncing in her seat she was so excited to see all the things she’d read about.
“I haven’t been a million times. I think we went four or five times growing up. Kind of like how you never do the tourist stuff in your own town. I feel bad that we haven’t, but someone had to run the ranch. Now with so many of us working together, we have time we can take off to do other things.”
“I’ll help you make up for it. I want to do all of the tourist stuff.” She forgot to be annoyed with him for a moment as she thought about how exciting it was to live in Montana. “I hope I never look at a mountain and forget to be in awe of its grandeur.”
He grinned at her, pleased that she was so happy to be there. “So, you’re a teacher, right?”
She shook her head. “Not really. I’m a speech therapist. I work with kids who are having a hard time learning to talk. Sometimes it’s just children with lisps or who pronounce their Rs as Ws. Sometimes it’s kids who don’t speak at all because of some sort of trauma they’ve been through.” She shrugged. “I work with kids who are autistic, who might never speak, but I find a way for them to communicate, usually with a machine that they can tap the right word on, so they can tell you what they want. It’s challenging work, but I love it.”
“It sounds like it would be a real challenge.” He didn’t tell her again that she didn’t have to work anymore, because it seemed to annoy her, but he hoped she’d understand soon. He wasn’t willing to talk about it on their honeymoon, though. This was a time for them to get to know one another and simply enjoy each other’s company.
“I can’t wait to see Old Faithful,” Tessa said. “I’ve seen photos, and it looks absolutely amazing.”
“It’s like all the other geysers,” he said. “The best thing about Old Faithful is that it goes off regularly. The others aren’t as easy to predict. The scientists at Yellowstone always know within a few minutes when Old Faithful will erupt.”
“You’re willing to go there with me, right?” Tessa asked.
“Of course! I haven’t been to the park as an adult, and I can’t wait to see everything all over again. I’m sure I’ll see it all through fresh eyes and enjoy it even more than I did as a kid.”
“Do you know your way around?”
Bob shook his head. “Not at all. I seriously remember very little about it, and it’ll be like I’m going for the first time again. We’ll have to pick up a map.” He was sure there were maps of all the amazing things to see there.
“I can follow a map,” Tessa said gleefully.
It was after noon by the time they got to West Yellowstone, and they immediately checked into their hotel. He’d booked a loft room, and he was lucky to have gotten it. They had to climb a flight of stairs to get into their room, and Tessa carried her own suitcases up without thinking about it. She was used to doing for herself.
Bob frowned at her. “I’d have gotten those for you.”
She shrugged. “I know, but I don’t need help with them. I am perfectly capable of carrying my own possessions.” She wouldn’t mind letting him help, as long as he knew she didn’t need him to. It was all about being strong enough to do things on her own.
“Are you always going to be this independent?” he asked.
“Probably.” She grinned at him, looking through the first room, which had a queen-sized bed, a loft bed, and then in the second room was another queen bed and a kitchen. “This is a nice little place. I don’t want to cook a lot on my honeymoon, though.” She could of course, but she couldn’t see a need when there were restaurants all around them. She’d be cooking enough when they got back if what he’d been talking about had been any indication.
“I promise not to expect you to cook until after the honeymoon,” he said with a grin, expecting her to be thankful that she was getting a break from cooking so early on.
“I’m sure we’ll be sharing the cooking as soon as we’re back on the ranch. For now, we can both take a break from it.”
He shrugged. “It’s not a man’s place to cook.” He sat down on the bed, stretching his arms above his head. “I’ll nap while you get everything unpacked and then we can have a quick lunch out somewhere. Does that work for you?”
“Sure,” Tessa said with a tight smile. She’d unpack her own things, but she wasn’t going to do double work and unpack for him simply because he thought she should. She wanted to get her hands on his Grams for teaching him that it was a woman’s job to do everything around the house.
When she finished doing all of her own unpacking, she walked to the window and looked out at the people walking around. This was obviously a big tourist destination. She walked into the main room, seeing Bob sound asleep, but instead of stopping there, she took the stairs down and left, wanting to explore the quaint little town. It seemed like a good place to visit, but she wasn’t sure she’d want to live there. It was a little too crowded at the moment. And to have an economy based on tourists? She wouldn’t like that at all.
As she walked down the main street of town, she wandered in and out of several tourist shops, buying herself some t-shirts and crystals. As she left the third shop, she glanced at the time on her phone, and realized she’d been gone for more than three hours. She hadn’t meant to wander quite so much, but she hadn’t wanted to disturb Bob’s nap either. She realized only then that Bob didn’t even have her phone number, so he couldn’t get in touch with her if he’d wanted to. Oops.
Well, she hadn’t wanted to deal with Bob after he’d told her to unpack. That was the truth. Walking as quickly as she could through the crowds, she hurried back to their room and used her key to get in. Climbing the stairs, she found Bob sitting on his bed, phone in hand. “You were gone for hours!” he said, glaring at her. “I was worried.”
“Sorry, I lost track of time. I love tourist shops, and I got involved in what I was doing.”
“Why didn’t you wake me to go with you?” he asked, looking hurt.
“If you were too tired to unpack your things, I thought you were too tired to explore with me,” she said, trying to look innocent. “Was I wrong?”
He frowned. “You didn’t get my things put away. You only did your own.”
“Well, of course I only did my own. We’re not even sleeping together yet. I don’t want to embarrass you by handling your underwear.” She smiled sweetly.
He shook his head. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
Tessa grinned. “Usually.”
“Have you eaten?” he asked. “I’m hungry.”
“Not yet. Why don’t we go see if there’s a place that sounds good near here? There’s a lot of stuff open, and we could just walk until we find something.” She liked to walk and explore, and she was glad she’d done it without him. Men could be pains about shopping.
“All right.” He stood up, grabbing his wallet and keys from the nightstand. “Let’s go.”
Together the two of them walked down the street the way Tessa had just been, stopping at a quaint little restaurant that looked like it was decorated in an old west theme. “This look good?” he asked.
She nodded. “Food sounds really good at the moment.”
After choosing their meals, they talked, the conversation stilted. It was hard to sit with a stranger you were married to and act like everything was just fine.
“So, you went to school to be a geneticist?”
“Yes, but I did my best to focus on the blood lines of animals and particularly horses. I have a doctorate. I still do a lot of research on each of the animals I choose, wanting our bloodline to be the best.”
“Are there horses and cattle on your ranch?”
“There are a few cattle. My brother, Jim, trains the horses to be able to work with cattle as well as just for racing, so we have to keep a few around for those purposes. We don’t make much on the cattle, because that’s not our focus.”
She nodded. “How long has the ranch been in your family?”
“Since 1852. My great great great something grandparents went west on the Oregon Trail, and they settled here. They knew some old neighbors who had come out the year before, and they decided this was where they wanted to settle to be close to them. I’m not even sure which family it was.”
“It’s a nice area. Or seems to be anyway.” She took a sip of the water that had been put in front of her. “Did you ever think about breaking away from the ranch and doing something on your own?”
He shook his head. “Nope. I never did. I love being able to work with my family the way I do, and we can all take turns watching out for Pops this way. Griselda is going to faint dead away at his feet one of these days and expect him to sweep her away on a white stallion.”
She laughed softly. “How long have you known Griselda?”
“My entire life. She’s really a nice lady, but she never married, and I think she had a crush on Pops even when Grams was alive, but I can’t prove it.” The very idea bothered him.
“Did she start working for him right after your grandmother’s death?”
“She worked there for a few months before Grams died. Grams had breast cancer, and we all knew she was not going to survive, so she hired Griselda and taught her how she did things around the house. Grams thought it would help Pops transition to life without her better, but I don’t think it worked. He still misses her something fierce.”
“Didn’t you say they were married for over fifty years? Of course, he misses her! She was a permanent part of his life, and it would be devastating to lose someone after so many years together.”
Bob nodded. “It was for him. We all try to be around and let him know we’re thinking of him and still love him and stuff, but it’s still really hard. We do Sunday dinners with the whole family usually, and you’ll get to know my brothers and cousins there.”
“Which brother are you closest to? And which cousin?”
He shrugged. “We’re all pretty tight. Cade and I work closest together, because he does the feed for the horses. He actually grows his own feed, and he makes sure it’s just right for our horses.” He grinned at her. “Grams always said there was something in the water, because no matter what one of us decided to do, we were great at it. A few years ago, Cade opened up a company called Magic Meals as a joke with Grams. He intended to just sell his horse feed to other ranchers in the area, but it’s become a huge success and now he sells it nationwide.”
“What’s so special about it?” Tessa asked. She’d had no idea there were different feeds for horses. Didn’t they just eat grass?
“I’m not really sure, but it makes the horses grow bigger and stronger. They have no health issues at all. There’s just something almost magical about it.”
“What do your brothers do?” she asked. “I think you told me, but let’s face it, we’ve talked about a lot in the past twenty-four hours.”
He nodded. “And my family is a little stranger and more complicated than most. Jim trains the horses. He’s dyslexic and never did well with school, but I swear to you he’s a horse whisperer. It’s like they know what he wants them to do and so they do it. It’s that simple.”
She smiled. “Maybe he can teach me to ride then. I’ve always wanted to learn.”
Bob frowned. “I’ll teach you to ride. I’m not a horse whisperer, but I sure know which end is which.”
Tessa shrugged. “I don’t care who teaches me as long as I get to learn to ride a horse.”
“No problem. Ted does the books. He can stretch a dollar in a way no one else in this world can. He’ll come up with an idea for income for the ranch, and the next thing I know, we’re making a ton of money from nothing. It’s crazy!”
“Sounds like you all have your strengths. Have you ever bred two horses that didn’t do well?” she asked. He seemed to be very confident in what he did, but most professionals had some failures.
He shook his head. “Never. Every mare and stallion I’ve put together have rendered a champion colt. And my mares never fail to get pregnant either. We don’t keep any stallions on property, but I always bring one in for breeding purposes. I don’t want bloodlines mixing, so I make sure all of our male horses end up as geldings. It helps us keep things straight.”
“Do you have a favorite horse?” she asked. “I’ve never really spent much time around horses, but I am fascinated by them. I was one of those girls who went horse crazy while other girls were going boy crazy.”
“Favorite horse? I think it’s Moonbeam. She’s currently pregnant with twins, which is not super safe for a horse. We’re having to monitor her really closely, and Cade is working on a feed specifically for her.”
“That’s really cool. I’m glad you all work together so well and make things happen. I couldn’t work with my sister for all the tea in China.”
“You have a sister? What’s her name?”
“Lindsay, and I don’t want to talk about her.” Tessa wasn’t sure she could talk about her sister without spewing all the negative feelings she had for her all over Bob. She still couldn’t believe her own sister would steal her husband from her. Of course, it didn’t matter now that she was out of Illinois.
Bob frowned. It was the first subject she hadn’t been willing to talk about with him. “All right.”
Tessa smiled. “My friend Joy came with me for the wedding yesterday. Joy is a lot of fun, and she’s the one who will be driving my car back after school is out.”
“I look forward to getting to know her then.”
She made a face. “Do you think it would be okay if she stayed with your grandfather when she comes back? I don’t feel like our house is big enough for a guest at this point, but I’d love to have a little more time with her, if you don’t mind.”
“Pops would love that. And you should call him Pops too. Everyone does.”
“I’d like that. My grandparents all died before I was born, so it will be nice to have a grandfather.”
“Don’t call him Grandpa or Granddad or anything though. He only likes to be called Pops, because to him, Pops is a much cooler grandfather.”
Tessa laughed. “He sounds like a good man.”
“Oh, he is the best man I’ve ever known. After my dad and uncle were killed by cannibals in Africa while they were there for the Peace Corps, he became more serious. He never planned to raise six boys on top of the two he’d already raised. Grams told us to never talk about it with him, and we never did.”
“Wait...your parents were killed by cannibals? Didn’t you tell me they died in a car crash?”
Bob frowned. “Well, my grandparents were never willing to talk about how they died, really, so the six of us have always made up different ways they died. It’s our way of coping. Every time I talk about my parents dying, I say how I think they died at that moment. Today feels like they were killed by cannibals on a peace keeping mission.”
“Don’t you want to know the truth?” Tessa asked.
“The truth is my parents died when I was five. I have very few memories of them. Knowing how they died won’t change anything. Talking to Pops about how they died will just make him sad, and he’s sad enough now that Grams died. I’ll just keep making stuff up, and all will be fine.”
“Okay.” Tessa didn’t really understand why he didn’t want to know the truth, but he did seem content making stuff up whenever he was asked. She was sure Joy would have a field day with him. “What do you want to do tonight?”
He shrugged. “You know what I really like to do when I have down time?” She shook her head. “I like to work on a jigsaw puzzle. There’s a decent sized table in our room, so why don’t we get a puzzle from one of the shops and go back and work on it. It’s too late to go to Yellowstone tonight, anyway.”
“All right. I enjoy puzzles too, and I saw a few that had Yellowstone scenery in the shops. That would be a lot of fun, and we could talk or not...get to know each other while quiet and while talking. Sometimes you learn more about someone when you don’t talk to them, than you do when you are talking.”
“I guess.” Bob shrugged. “I just feel like doing a puzzle.” She was making things way too complicated for him.
“Then let’s go get a puzzle.” She watched as he paid the bill for their meal, and the two of them walked back toward the hotel, along the way stepping into one of the shops and buying a puzzle. She couldn’t wait to get started.