“I could spare a day or two,” Jed said.
“I couldn’t,” Taggart muttered. “New twins. No time. It’s the new equation of my life. I’d be obliged,” he told Mace.
“Guess I would, too, on second thought,” Jed said with a grin. “Be nice to stay home in bed with Brenna and think about you up there playin’ nursemaid to all them cows.”
“Enjoy yourself,” Mace said through his teeth.
Taggart and Jed looked at him warily, then at each other.
“You sure about this?” Taggart said after a moment, and Mace was pretty certain that he wasn’t just talking about spending time on the summer range.
“I’m sure,” he said. “I like it there.”
And if Anthony called or wrote to tell him when the court date was while he was gone, well, that was too bad. They’d just have to reschedule.
A guy had his priorities. To a cowboy, the herd always came first.
Mace told himself that a hundred times a day over the next five days as he rode the high country, checking on his herd. It was true. But it didn’t make it any easier.
It was having all that time alone. He had the most beautiful scenery on earth—and no one to share it with.
Many summers Jenny came with him. It was their “vacation,” since they never had the time or the money to go anywhere else.
“Why should we?” she would say when he apologized. “People come to Montana for their vacations, don’t they?” She grinned. “We just have a head start on them.”
It always was a vacation of sorts. They brought a small tent and used it on the rainy nights. But on the bright clear ones, they slept out under the stars. She would snuggle against his side and they would watch the constellations as they moved through the night.
And then their attention would be caught closer to hand. She would touch her hand to his rough stubbled cheek and wonder how his scratchy beard would feel against her skin.
And he would show her.
And she would kiss him.
And he would touch her.
And—
And that’s why now he was going quietly out of his mind.
It didn’t help that a bear scared some of his cattle and he found a half a dozen in a field with larkspur, which was deadly poison to them. By the time he found them, there was nothing he could do—except count the cost.
And then there was the rain.
Montana, any cowboy could tell you, was a pretty dry land, especially in August. They got rain, sure. In a good year they didn’t have to irrigate much.
This year they might be building an ark not digging irrigation ditches, Mace thought.
The first day he got a normal short rain shower. He ignored it and went on with his work. The second was lovely, bright and cold, with a wind coming down from the northwest. There was, now that it was August, a hint of fall in the air.
And then, the third morning, he was awakened by rain in his face. He hadn’t brought a tent. That had always been a concession to Jenny. When he was alone, he made do with a fly.
The fly didn’t help him here. Grumbling, he made himself a fire using the last of the dry wood. If Jenny had been with him, she’d have cooked breakfast while he wrangled more wood.
But Jenny wasn’t there.
Never would be.
He was on his own now.
On his own. It was like a refrain banging around his head.
He kicked the fire out. There wasn’t time for coffee this morning. He’d get to work. He could eat when the rain stopped, and he was done.
He was done long before the rain stopped. Cold, wet and bone-weary, he made camp near a stand of pines, scavenged up as much dry wood as he could, and set about making a fire.
His shoulders ached, his head throbbed, and his nose ran.
If Jenny had been there, she’d have had a fire going and supper ready.
If Jenny had been there . . .
“Damn it!”
It was the mildest of the things he said. He had to stop this, had to quit remembering, had to get on with his life.
He ate his dinner cold, not waiting to heat it. Then he rigged the fly, opened his bed roll and turned in. The rain would stop, and he would feel better in the morning.
By morning the rain had turned to snow. The ache had moved from his shoulders to the rest of his body. His head still throbbed. His nose still ran. And he started to cough.
It was hell.
The prettiest damn hell on earth. The snow made everything a wonderland. Jenny would have loved it. It would have been a pain to work in, but she would have pointed out the beauty of it and made it all right.
It wasn’t all right now.
It wasn’t all right at all.
He kept working. He got sicker. The snow turned back into rain.
Three more days the rain kept up. He couldn’t believe it.
Finally he gave up and headed back down. His eyes were streaming, his nose was running. He was coughing and aching. His teeth were chattering, and his body was burning.
He needed a warm fire, a hot meal, and about a hundred cups of coffee. He needed a heavy blanket, a dry bed and about twenty-four hours’ uninterrupted sleep.
He was cowboy enough to see to his horse before he stumbled up the steps to the cabin.
Then he opened the door.
And found a man he didn’t know.
Chapter Twelve
Mace stopped, still shivering, only his hand on the doorknob keeping him upright.
“What the—? Who the hell are you?” he croaked.
The man, an older guy, seventy or so, with graying hair that might once have been red—looked just as startled as Mace. He was sitting in the chair by the fireplace with a book in his lap.
He shut it, then he said mildly, “You must be Mace.”
Mace straightened slightly, his eyes narrowing a bit. “That’s right.”
“My name’s Ian MacLeod.” The man set his book on the small table and got to his feet, then held out his hand.
Mace let go of the doorknob unwillingly, wondering if he would manage to stay upright long enough to shake it. He was still trying to figure out who the hell Ian MacLeod was. The name was vaguely familiar, but the man was not.
“Taggart told me you’d be up on the summer range another week or so,” Ian MacLeod went on. “That’s why he said you wouldn’t mind if I used the cabin.”
“Use the cabin?” Mace coughed to clear his throat.
Ian smiled. “He obviously wasn’t figuring on the weather we’ve had. I didn’t intend to disturb you. I’ve been staying with Noah and Tess for a little while—sort of regrouping—and I thought I might give them a break and myself a little space. So I asked if they knew a place I could do a retreat, and Taggart suggested here.”
“Retreat?” Mace echoed. He was confused, light-headed. The fever was getting to him. The only kind of retreat he could think of was the kind he’d seen in old western movies. “As in . . . cavalry?”
“As in ‘spiritual,’” Ian MacLeod corrected with a gentle smile. “I’m Maggie Tanner’s father.”
It took Mace a moment to put it together. Maggie Tanner. . . the oldest Tanner brother’s wife . . . Noah’s sister-in-law’s . . . father. The grieving uncle of Susannah’s that Becky had mentioned.
“I’m a minister,” Ian MacLeod said.
Mace’s teeth came together with a snap, certain Taggart was meddling. How dare he send up some minister to poke around in his life and tell him what to do!
And then, a bit of common sense returned and he remembered that Taggart had thought he was gone. Taggart was simply doing Maggie’s dad a favor. They’d all used the cabin at various times. Once it had belonged to Taggart’s dad, but Jed had lived here, then Jenny and he had bought it, but still they all used it. And even though Taggart knew he was living here now, he quite rightly had believed Mace was gone.
The vision that had kept him going, the promise that had sustained him through the bone-chil
ling, rain-soaked ride back this afternoon—the fire, the warmth, the bed—rose up one last time, then vanished beneath the wave of knowledge that Ian MacLeod, who had just lost his wife to death, needed the cabin far more than he did.
He cleared his throat and backed toward the door. “I’ll go.”
“Of course you won’t go,” Ian said. “You’re living here.”
“Not now. I’m not supposed to be here now.” Mace shook his head, reaching to open the door.
But before he did, Ian reached out and caught his arm. “There’s plenty of room at this inn. We’ll share.”
“No,” Mace said. It seemed abrupt. Rude, Jenny would have said. “I mean, you’ll want to be alone.”
“I’ve been alone for the past five days here,” Ian said easily. “I’m going to be alone the rest of my life. I think I can stand a little company.”
But Mace didn’t think he could. Once more he said, “No.”
“We can talk about it later. Over a bowl of chili. How about it?” he tempted. “I made it scratch this morning.”
Mace could smell it. The delicious aroma was making him weak. His stomach was growling. “Maybe a bowl.”
Ian dished it up.
Mace barely ate half before he fell asleep.
*
It was the oddest thing Jenny had ever done—apartment hunting.
She felt like a fraud. Yet it was the most realistic thing she’d done since Mace had walked out on her. As much as it hurt, she needed to do what she told Travis, her lawyer, she was going to do when she told him to agree with Mace’s petition. She would move out. She would move on. She had to.
There came a time when you had to face the truth.
Still, looking at apartments felt almost like an out-of-body experience. Well, not quite out-of-body. More as if she was in someone else’s body.
After her initial burst of bravado when she had suggested it to Tom, Jenny shrank from actually getting out the classifieds and seeing what was available.
The very thought terrified her. Like nothing else she’d done since Mace left her, it made life after divorce seem real.
She knew she should, but she hated the thought. She considered moving into Elmer. It wouldn’t be such a big step. Surely she could find something closer. She might even be able to rent a room from Alice Benn. Alice had a big house.
She would have called her, except by the time she thought of it, Tom had arrived with the classifieds in hand.
“I found four apartments near the campus and two farther away.”
“I don’t know about this,” Jenny began hesitantly.
“It’s a big step. I know.” He did know. He’d done it. And he’d survived. Jenny took heart from that.
“Come on,” he said. “You’ve just got to dive in. You might not float, but I guarantee, you’ll learn to swim.”
Jenny desperately hoped so.
All the apartments were small and expensive and jammed together. Jenny, not used to having people living right on top of her, rejected every one of them.
“Hey,” Tom chided her when they got back in the car after Jenny had turned everything down in less than an hour. “Give ’em a chance.”
“But I don’t like all these people around. I like space.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be looking for an apartment at all, then,” he said. “Maybe you ought to look for a house.” He opened the classifieds again and spread the paper out against the steering wheel.
“I can’t afford a house.” Even the cost of the apartments seemed prohibitive.
“How about a room in a house?”
“I was thinking about Alice’s.”
Tom frowned. “Who’s Alice?”
“A retired teacher. She lives in Elmer in that great big green two-story house behind the laundromat.”
“You don’t want to live in Elmer,” Tom said firmly. “Not if you want a fresh start. If you stay in Elmer, you’ll always be looking over your shoulder wondering where Mace is. Is that what you want?”
Jenny shook her head. No, she didn’t want that.
He scanned the paper. “Here’s one. ‘One room in older home close to downtown. Ideal for single. Kitchen facilities available.’ Want to look?”
Jenny made herself nod. “Let’s look.”
They looked. They looked at three others Tom suggested. Only one, a room in a two-story brick near the post office, was a possibility. It was small, but clean, and Jenny liked the older woman who would be her landlady.
Still, she couldn’t bring herself to say yes. It was so small, and the only view was of the house next door. She told the woman she would think about it.
“You’ll have to let me know this week,” the woman said. “I’ll have students calling, wanting to rent.”
“I know I’m being picky,” Jenny told Tom when they were in the car again and heading home. “I can’t help it.”
Tom shrugged. “You’re going to have to live there. Be as picky as you want. It’s another two weeks until school starts. Maybe there will be others tomorrow or later in the week.”
“Maybe,” Jenny said. But she was sure she would never find anything that came close to the house she and Mace had built with their own hands.
“We can check the paper again tomorrow.”
“Yes,” she said with as much determination as she could muster. “All right.”
*
After Mace fell asleep in the chili, he couldn’t argue any more about leaving and letting Ian have the cabin. The warm fire, dry clothes and good food all conspired against him. And the few feeble protests he managed, Ian simply ignored and fetched a blanket from the bedroom.
“I will only make one concession to my venerable age.” The older man smiled. “You can take the cot.” He nodded toward the cot across the room, the one Mace and Jenny had dubbed “the couch” because they had never really had one here, but they’d piled pillows on it and pretended.
Mace could have slept on the plank floor and never known the difference. He coughed most of the night, but the next morning his fever was down, and the aching was gone. He felt more rested than he had in days. And breakfast was on the table.
He stared, dazed, at the bowl of oatmeal, the plate of eggs and bacon. A small part of him wondered if he’d died and gone to heaven. Given his track record, it didn’t seem likely.
“Reckon you’re spoiling me,” he said to Ian through a mouthful of bacon.
“Sometimes,” Ian said easily, “a guy needs a little spoiling.”
It should have been the other way around, Mace thought as he dug into the meal. Ian was the grieving widower, the one who should be looked after. But when he said as much, Ian just went on dishing up his own bowl of oatmeal and shook his head.
“I’ve been fussed over enough. Thought Maggie’d smother me when I was with her and Tanner. That’s why I left.” He smiled wryly. “It’s not that I didn’t appreciate it. I did. And she needed to do it,” he added. “But after a while, well, I needed some time on my own.”
“I’m here,” Mace pointed out.
Ian lifted one brow. “I trust you’re not planning to fuss and smother.”
Mace shook his head. “No.”
“Then I think we’ll get along just fine.”
To Mace’s surprise, they did.
At first he trod carefully, not starting conversations, answering in monosyllables whenever Ian did, expecting Maggie’s father to bring up Mace’s impending divorce. Surely a minister would have plenty to say about a marriage falling apart.
But Ian said nothing. He didn’t mention Jenny. In fact he didn’t seem to know that Mace was married at all.
He spent a fair amount of time reading and writing and just staring off into space with a faraway look in his eyes. But he was also eager to help Mace with the everyday work.
“I don’t know much about cowboying,” he admitted. “But I’m willing to learn.”
And because he was still feeling a little weak from his co
ld, Mace was glad of the help. They worked together, riding fence, chopping wood, moving cattle, in companionable silence a good part of the time. Sometimes, though, Ian’s faraway look prompted him to apologize for his lack of attentiveness. Sometimes in the evenings, he would explain what he’d been thinking about.
He reminisced. He told Mace stories. The stories invariably were told on himself. They were funny and wise and self-deprecating, and very easy to listen to. Many had to do with his wife, Fiona, a woman Mace grew to know and respect through Ian’s tales.
It was easy to see how much Ian missed her. She was the reason for the faraway look. She—as much as his faith, Ian told Mace—was the rudder of his existence. He hadn’t been able to face staying in the South American town where she died.
“Had to get out of there. I couldn’t face it,” Ian said, staring into the fireplace, then turning his head to watch as Mace braided a horsehair bridle. “It wasn’t the same without her. It hurt too much. And I was angry, too.”
“Angry?” Mace couldn’t see that.
“I told her she should go home when we found out about her heart problem. She’d have had better care here.”
“Why didn’t she?”
“Because she said our work was there, our lives were there. She said she wouldn’t leave me. I said we could both come back, but she said, no, we were needed there. We talked about it. Talked, hell!” Ian shook his head. “We argued about it for days. She said it was what we’d decided on together—the mission work, our life down there. So we stayed. And she died . . . and—” he drew a harsh breath “—now I’m here.” His pain was almost palpable.
Mace could feel it the way he felt his own. He didn’t know what to say, how to help.
“God, I miss her,” Ian sighed. “You can’t imagine how much.”
“I think I can,” Mace answered. Then for the first time, he mentioned Jenny.
If Ian was surprised Mace had a wife, he never said so. If he wondered where she was now, he never asked.
There was actually a sense of release in being able to talk about her. He’d tried not to for so long that now he couldn’t seem to stop. Over the next few days saying her name became easier. Ian’s gentle smile and attentive ear were all Mace needed. He didn’t ask questions, he shared stories and he listened to the ones Mace shared with him.
The Cowboy Finds a Family Page 18