Last Chance Llama Ranch Read Online Free Page A

her visor and shut her mother out.
    “Your uncle was quite the cricketer,”Gwendolyn reminisced while Merry fidgeted,eager to join her teammates,“and your grandfather was captain of the royal dressage team for years before he got himself thrown by that blasted mare. I myself gave up a promising future as a figure skater to marry your father—but of course, all the men were after me in those days; I had my pick. It wasn’t as though I had to excel at sports.”
    Merry’s eyes stung, but she told herself it was just the sharp wind whipping off the slopes. Focus on the course , she told herself. Crush the competition . And get as far away from Mother as possible, as fast as these fucking fiberglass slats can take me.
    “It’s unfortunate you got more of the sportsman than the sophisticate from my side of the family, Meredith. But you’ve found your niche now, and I know you’ll make us proud.” Gwendolyn removed a glove, one finger at a time, and reached up on tiptoe to fuss with Merry’s wayward locks. Pursing her lips with motherly concern, she tucked hanks of hair under Merry’s helmet—and then, as Merry flinched, wet her thumb with spit and ran it over her daughter’s unsatisfactorily tamed brows. (Gwendolyn had a thing about unkempt “accessory hair,” as she so delicately dubbed it.) “We must always put our best face forward, darling,” she said. Unspoken was, even if that face is homely, at best. “One never knows who may be watching. And please, dear, dash on a little lipstick before the cameras catch you. Otherwise people might think you’re one of those girls.”
    A fate worse than death , Merry thought now, tossing her mail on the bedside table and shaking her head to clear out the memory.
    “ Do you wish to accept the call? ”the tablet asked again—a little impatiently, Merry thought.
    Do I have to? she silently asked it.
    But she knew the answer. She’d been ducking the Manning clan longer than was wise. Their emails, texts, and tweets (in Marcus’s case) had been dogging her since well before she’d headed to Turkey. If she didn’t talk to them now, they’d only become more insistent until she finally caved, and by then they wouldn’t be best pleased.
    Not that they were ever very pleased where Merry was concerned.
    Flopping down on her bed with a sigh, she put Cleese on her tummy (he liked the warmth), gave him a bit of lettuce from the sandwich she’d grabbed at the corner deli, and settled the scratched and duct-taped tablet atop her bent knees. She tapped “Accept” and cringed.
    “Happy birthday, darling!” trilled Gwendolyn, arriving on the screen poreless, lineless, and timelessly glamorous beside her equally attractive husband. A second later, up popped Marcus, thrusting his handsome face into frame and waving spastically.
    “Hey, Sis, happy birthday!”
    “It’s not my birthday for another week,” Merry muttered, trying to minimize the part of the chat screen where she had to see her own face. Compared to their movie-star sheen, she was a walking war wound—with jet lag, no less. She resisted the urge to smooth her eyebrows.
    “We know it’s not really your birthday, sweetheart,” Pierce intoned. “We thought we’d try to catch up with you a bit early this year.”
    Oh, joy.
    “Yes, darling. We were rather hoping to schedule our annual family détente to coincide with your big day,” said Gwendolyn, pinching off the small smile that was all her Botox would permit.
    Merry smothered a smile of her own, and across several time zones, she saw her brother do the same. Détente was more accurate than Gwendolyn, not known for her interest in wordplay, probably intended.
    “Your father’s just wrapped up that treaty in Ukraine,” she went on, “and I’ve got some time off from the foundation, so we thought now would be a good time…”
    “I’m free too,” Marcus interjected. “I always make time for my little sis. Let the runways of Milan pine for my