The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River #3)

“Nope, no way. You’re not going to turn a very simple question into philosophical bullshit and avoid answering. It’s very simple, Emma. Anyone famous, yes or no?”


“Yes,” Emma said. “Val Kilmer.”

Madeline and Libby gasped at the same time. “The actor?” Libby asked in a bit of a squeal.

“No, the pizza delivery guy,” Emma said. “Of course the actor.”

“You slept with him?” Madeline whispered.

“Wasn’t that the question?”

Madeline and Libby looked at each other and simultaneously burst into laughter. “Emma! You’ve been holding out on us!” Madeline cried.

“I have not! I didn’t even know you until this spring, remember? I didn’t realize I was supposed to arrive with my sexual dossier all typed up and ready to be handed out.”

“That would have been awesome,” Madeline said.

“You definitely should have told us if you slept with Val Kilmer!” Libby cried, and punched Emma in the shoulder. “That’s big news! So? What was he like?”

Emma smiled. “Like all the rest of them,” she said, and picked up her menu. Except that he wasn’t fat. But he was older. “Nothing to write home about. What are you eating?”

Libby pressed for more details, but Emma stubbornly ignored her. She really didn’t remember much about that night. She’d drunk too much at a party, and had ended up in his hotel room. Unfortunately, he’d had an early flight and was gone by the time she awoke the next day, taking a little piece of her with him in exchange for nothing but a raging headache.

When Libby and Madeline realized they’d get no more information from her, the talk turned to Madeline’s wedding. It was to be held New Year’s Eve in the barn at the ranch, the same place they’d hosted Thanksgiving. Emma didn’t understand Libby’s and Madeline’s fascination with that barn, but she supposed it was at least something useful to come out of Homecoming Ranch.

To Emma’s thinking, they had inherited Grant’s problem—a run-down ranch that owed more than it took in. Thanks again, Dad. At first, Emma had been so angry about it. That was his dying apology to her? To give her another problem she didn’t need? But Libby had seen that ranch as a new beginning and had desperately clung to it, even when Madeline and Emma wanted nothing to do with it.

So Emma did what she was apparently good at doing—she left. She left the problem with Libby, figuring if Libby wanted that ranch so badly, she could have it. She’d disappeared into her life in LA and had assumed Madeline would go back to hers in Orlando. She’d assumed everything would go back to the way it was before Grant had died. But then Madeline had begun to see something in that ranch, too, and had left Orlando behind for it.

Emma still had wanted nothing to do with the ranch, and God knew she wouldn’t be here now had the candlestick thing not happened. But here she was, and she had to admit to herself, she was impressed with Libby’s vision for it. Libby had smartly started a reintegration program for armed forces veterans who were struggling with PTSD and needed help learning how to reenter their lives after the wars of the last decade. She’d secured some grant funding, and they’d renovated the bunkhouse for them. Ernest Delgado, Homecoming Ranch’s longtime ranch hand, was something of a den mother to the five men who were currently in the program. In addition to participating in some donated therapy programs, the men did odd jobs around the ranch.

Unfortunately, in the winter, there was not enough to keep five grown men occupied.

Moreover, the opportunities to grow Libby’s vision were not great. The ranch was too remote, so far removed from services and medical facilities that no one wanted to come. Libby was working tirelessly to shore up the program, and Emma was truly in awe of her tenacity—she would have given up long ago.

Of all of them, Libby made life look so . . . effortless. After her bad meltdown last summer, the result of a relationship gone way south, she’d bounced right back. Now she took a little pill each morning and she was happy in love, full of big ideas and smiles.

Emma wished she could be more like that, but really, she was more like Madeline. It would probably kill Madeline if Emma ever said that aloud, but it was true. Like Madeline, Emma was straightforward, never afraid to say what was on her mind. That is where their similarities ended. Madeline had more tact and a surprisingly big heart. She could learn to love anything, like dogs and damaged veterans and widows. Emma couldn’t seem to love anything.

Madeline wasn’t ready to give up on Homecoming Ranch yet, either, it was apparent. She was going to marry here, maybe even start a family here. She was starting her life over here.