Daddy's Girls (31)

“Thad said he’d be willing to buy it if it comes to that,” Kate reminded her.

“How do you feel about that?” Gemma asked her.

“I’d rather not,” Kate said, “but I probably wouldn’t have the money fast enough to help you out. We don’t have that much liquidity. As Dad said, land rich and cash poor. If you want to cash out, I’d have to sell off some land to someone. It might as well be Thad, who has the best interests of the ranch at heart, and won’t encroach on us, or try to steal more.”

    “I hate to do that to you.” Gemma felt badly about it but she had no choice. “We’ll see how things look in September. There’s almost no work in summer. Everything’s pretty dead.”

“Good, then you can relax here.” Kate smiled at her. They had finished cleaning up the kitchen by then. “I like having you here, Gem,” she said warmly and Gemma hugged her. “I’ll pick you up at ten tomorrow, and we’ll head out.”

“Too bad Caroline doesn’t want to come too.”

“She doesn’t need to,” Kate said easily. “You and I should be able to handle one mother between us.” Kate grinned and Gemma laughed.

“Hell, yeah. We handled Dad, didn’t we? The human tornado. Shit, our mother will be a piece of cake,” she said, and Kate laughed, as Gemma left. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day, meeting the mother who had supposedly been dead for thirty-nine years. And now she was alive.





Chapter 7


Kate got all her morning chores done, and spent an hour in the office, returning calls, sending emails, and signing expense reports, before she got in her truck to pick Gemma up. When Kate got there, Gemma was standing on her porch in black designer shorts, a white T-shirt, and Italian sandals that laced up to her knee. She looked ten feet tall and very stylish, as she slung a white bag over her shoulder and ran down her porch steps and got in the truck. Her shining dark brown hair was tied in a neat knot, and her blue eyes were the color of the summer sky, as she put on dark glasses that Kate suspected cost more than the bag on her shoulder. Gemma always looked fabulous and spent a fortune to do it, which was part of why she was in debt now.

Kate was wearing jeans and a plaid work shirt. She’d ridden for two hours that morning with Thad, while they talked ranch business and checked the livestock. She had on battered cowboy boots she’d had for at least fifteen years, and one of her father’s straw Stetsons she’d grabbed from a peg in the barn, since she’d forgotten her own at home.

    “Do we look like stereotypes or what?” Gemma laughed, looking them both over. “The cowgirl and the Hollywood slut.”

“Not slut, ‘star,’?” Kate corrected her. “Can I have your autograph?”

“I charge for that nowadays,” Gemma said, as they both saw Caroline run out of her house, waving her arms. She was wearing a denim skirt and espadrilles and a crisp white shirt. Kate stopped the truck to talk to her.

“Something wrong?”

“No, I decided to come. Thad said he’d watch the kids,” she said, as she opened the door and hopped into the backseat of the truck. Kate and Gemma exchanged a glance and didn’t comment. They were both trying not to smile. But at least Caroline had come out of hiding to get a glimpse of their mother. Gemma was amused to see that she looked like the suburban housewife she was, all prim and proper and squeaky clean, with her blond hair in a ponytail. Kate was wearing her hair in the familiar braid down her back, so it didn’t get in her way.

Kate turned the radio on to ease the tension. She chose a country music station, and Gemma flipped the dial to rap. Caroline groaned from the backseat.

“God, Gemma, you’re as bad as my kids. They listen to that crap all the time. Peter yells at me about it, but I can’t stop them. It’s all kids listen to these days.” Gemma mimicked it and knew the words to the song, and did such a good imitation of it that she had them laughing for the next several songs, as she got more and more outrageous, and then turned the music down. It had helped to relax all three of them. Gemma was a born clown.

    When they got to Santa Barbara, they took the Montecito exit, which was the posh part of Santa Barbara where the expensive homes were, and some very famous people lived. Hollywood types who bought houses in Santa Barbara usually lived there.

“Shit, I hope she’s rich,” Gemma said to break the tension. “Maybe we can blackmail her or something. I wonder if she has a husband and other kids who don’t know about us.”

“We weren’t illegitimate, for heaven’s sake,” Caroline said to her. “We’re not like those people who show up on someone’s doorstep and say ‘Hi, I’m your daughter. You gave me away when you were fourteen. Remember me?’ And then the mother drops dead from the shock, right after the husband says ‘Who’s that, honey?’?” Her sisters grinned. All three of them were nervous, and had no idea what they were getting into, whether they’d even see her, or what kind of reception they’d get if they did. She might refuse to speak to them, throw them out, or call the police. “Maybe she has Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember us,” Caroline offered as an alternative. Kate slowed the truck. They were on a street of handsome homes, not the fanciest in Montecito, but pretty houses of human scale, the right size for a family, with neat landscaping and attractive gardens. Then she stopped.