Emily stared at him. “I’m sorry…”

“That’s just a delicate way of saying the parents weren’t hitched.”

“Oh.” Emily didn’t know what to say. Such a thing would be cause for scandal in Boston. If Cookie’s hushed voice was any indication, it was here too. No wonder Peggy Sue was so reticent. “Do you know who Ginny’s father is?”

“His name is Joe Turner, and he worked here on the ranch. Peggy Sue tracked him down to break the news. She marched into the bunkhouse like nobody’s business and hauled him out of his cot. You never heard such a row in your life. The boss heard the commotion and was fit to be tied. He don’t take kindly to a man shirking his responsibilities, so he gave Joe an ultimatum. Either he had to do what’s right and take care of his family or lose his job.”

“Chase did that?”

“He sure enough did. Unfortunately, by then, Ginny was already a couple of months old. When Joe found out his daughter was blind, he wanted to put her away in an asylum. He said that was the only way he’d marry Peggy Sue. When she refused to part with her daughter, he vanished quicker than a keg o’ cider at a barn raisin’.”

Emily felt bad for Peggy Sue and her daughter. “What kind of man would desert his family like that?”

Cookie shook his head. “No man I’d want to know, that’s for sure. Fortunately, when the boss found out what Joe had done, he insisted Peggy Sue come work for him. That was nine years ago, and she’s been here ever since.”

“That was a nice thing Mr.…my husband did.”

Cookie leaned his back against the counter, arms folded across his chest. “That’s just the way he is. He takes care of people. Most ranchers send all their good beef to market and feed their cowhands meat from their oldest cows. The boss don’t think like that. He makes sure his men have only the best.”

Cookie wasn’t the only one who thought highly of Chase. She’d noticed that all the cowhands seemed to have the highest regard for him.

“Chase told me about his brother,” she said. “How he died.”

Cookie’s gaze faded as if traveling back in time. “That was a sad day. Old Man McKnight was never the same after his son’s death. Neither was his wife. If you ask me, grief hastened both their deaths. As for the boss…” He heaved a sigh.

“What about him?” Emily asked, surprised to find herself wanting to learn everything she could about the man she had accidentally married.

“He took it bad. Real bad. He left the ranch and went off on a yearlong bender. Spent more time in jail than not. That didn’t sit right with his pa.”

“The ranch means everything to Chase,” she said. “I can’t imagine him leaving it. Even for a short time.”

Cookie shrugged. “Like I said, the boss took his brother’s death hard. After that, Ole Man McKnight didn’t trust him to do the right thing. That’s why he wrote his will the way he done. He wanted to make sure that whoever inherited the ranch would stick around when the chips were down. Not run off like Chase done that one year.”