She was referring to the condition of the ground on which the competitions were run. Deep meant there was ample depth of lightly packed dirt in the arena. Loose would indicate it was less than ideally packed, but still workable. Slick, well, that added an entirely different level of complexity to an already tough sport. If the surface was slippery, it made it difficult for the horses to successfully complete the kind of hard, abrupt turns and quick, explosive accelerations necessary to compete at the national level in the timed event of barrel racing.
She continued, “He went down on two and the dang horn gave me a whack.” Her fingers dug into the muscles above her knee again. When her horse fell on the second barrel in the cloverleaf pattern, the hard, leather-covered wooden horn of the saddle must have gouged her leg, which would usually just result in a bruise or some sore muscles, but this seemed different.
“Breezy okay?” Summer Breeze was her go-to horse for competition. He knew from conversations with Molly that Essa had been in the stall the day the colt first dropped to the straw, and the two had grown up side-by-side. Molly competed professionally for several years, too, but now lived in Chicago with her son, Tomas, and her husband, J.J. Rupert.
“He went all the way down.” He saw her mouth twist sideways. “Pulled tendon,” she said and shook her head, and he didn’t know if it meant she didn’t agree with the veterinarian’s opinion, or something else.
"How long ago was Boscol?" If it had just happened, then her apparent soreness made sense.
She huffed out a heavy sigh, blowing her bangs back off her face. "Three weeks," she finally said, quietly, face turned to the window.
"Oh, man," he muttered, turning the wheel to steer the truck onto the heavily rutted road leading to the ranch. Three weeks was a long time for her horse to still be injured. Suddenly aware of where they were, he blew out a breath, frustrated because he wasn’t prepared for what was coming next. Their conversation had made the trip go by much faster than he would have liked, a distraction which meant he wasn’t ready to deal with Brenda at the end of the drive.
Essa didn’t respond and he allowed the conversation to die, focusing instead on the state of the road, which looked as if it hadn’t been graded for some time. The pothole craters combined with the washboard surface made the driveway a challenge to navigate, even in the sturdy pickup. He knew it would be worse with a semi, and worse still on any stock transported in the big trailers they pulled.
Up ahead, the main homestead slowly came into view and he saw the house, too, had not been maintained as well as it should have been. Even from the distance, he could see the eaves and window frames needed sanding and painting, and there was a sag to the porch roof over the front door that made him frown. There were several trucks parked between the buildings, all but one just as beat-up as the vehicle he was currently driving. He suspected the newest truck belonged to Essa, which meant the rest belonged to the stock company. Fuck. At least the barns, corrals, and catch pens looked to be in good shape.
Okay, first order of business will be to look at the books, see where we are financially. He could pull in the Rebels’ money guy to look things over if needed. He shook his head, thinking, I’m glad Myron is always up for a challenge.
Parking the truck, he stepped out and stretched, hearing Essa move around inside the vehicle. There was shouting from the house, and taking the three steps up to the back porch in a single stride, he pulled open the screen door exactly as he had a thousand times each summer of his youth and stepped into the kitchen.
State of things
Brenda ducked her head, wincing as heavy thumps sounded from the second floor. “Elias Calloway,” she yelled in the direction of the stairs, “you wanna take a little more care with my walls, honey?”
“Sorry, Mom.” She got a muffled yell in response, and grinned, turning back to the task at hand, putting up the bags and boxes of groceries scattered across the floor. Thank goodness the ranch house had a huge pantry, because that amenity, paired with the gigantic refrigerator and freezer, meant she didn’t have to go shopping more than once every few weeks, even when feeding a dozen men three meals a day.
She had just sunk to a squat in the middle of the kitchen floor, efficiently sorting canned goods into one of the boxes when she heard the door behind her open without a knock. Shaking her head because there was only one person on the place who would just waltz in without announcing themselves, she put the last can in the box and called, “Essa, honey, can you help me carry this box over to the pantry? I find myself overambitious in packaging, but lazy in execution, and now it’s too heavy.”
From outside, she heard Essa’s answering voice, and startled, she spun in place, putting a knee on the floor as she looked up into the face of someone she never really expected to see again. Without a word, he stalked towards her—no other descriptive phrase came to mind, the man was definitely stalking—bent over, and picked up the box. He strode to the pantry, put it on the small table in the middle of the room and glanced around for a moment.
All of this action was conducted in complete silence. Closing the pantry door behind him, he turned and looked at her, still without saying anything. Not saying anything with his mouth, at least, because his eyes and the expression on his face were shouting at her, and they didn’t have anything nice to say. Not at all. He was pissed as hell to be here.
Tall. Dark. Gorgeous. Broad shoulders filled out his shirt in a way more than hinting at the muscles she knew were hiding underneath the fabric. Reuben Nelms was all of that. Then again, he always had been, for as long as she had known him, and she had known him a long time. Nearly all her life. At least since she moved to Lamesa as a child. So many years ago.
“You came.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded small and frightened in the stillness of the room, but he didn’t respond or react to her words, just stood there and stared at her. It was as if she never spoke at all, almost as if she didn’t exist, didn’t ripple the fabric of his world or register in any way. Small and disposable, forgettable. Just as she had felt around him all the time while growing up. All the time, except for one night. Oh well, she thought, there’s my confirmation nothing ever actually changes.
It was at that moment she heard booted feet galloping down the stairs, sounding far larger than their decade of years warranted. Her eyes flicked anxiously towards the doorway. Crap. Elias hit the bottom of the stairs at a run, rounded the kitchen counter and slid to a stop in front of her. Excited eyes bright, hat in hand, his dark hair was sticking up all over his head. Holy crap. “I finished. I swear. So, General? Please, Mom. General? Can I?”
Impatient eyes only for her, he hadn’t noticed the man standing across the room.
“General still kicking around then?” When Reuben spoke, Eli jumped at the strange voice, turning around quickly to face him.
She reached out for Eli’s shoulders, pulling him to stand in front of her as she straightened to her full height, not even aware she was using her son to shield her from their visitor. “Elias Calloway, I’d like you to meet Reuben…Mister Nelms.”
With good manners drilled into him from the time he could form words, her son stepped forwards, pulling out from under her hold. He reached out one hand, head tilted back so he could look the tall man in the face. “Pleasedtameetcha, Mister Nelms.” His words were jammed together as Reuben’s hand engulfed his, because he was trying to get the required politeness out of the way so he could again make his plea.
Hand still locked in Reuben’s grip, her son turned back to her, hat dangling from his fingers. The way they stood caused her breath to hitch in her chest. Because like this, connected as they were, the stance seemed familiar instead of a required greeting, and the two faces, bearing more than a passing resemblance, stared at her with nearly identical questioning expressions.
How did I never see this? she thought in despair. That was followed quickly by, How will I ever tell Reuben? Her ill-conceived plan to get Reuben to come home in the hopes
he would see Elias and simply know seemed to have fallen apart, and right now, she couldn’t say she was sorry. As angry as he looked to simply be here, she couldn’t imagine the eruption of rage which was going to follow the revelations she knew she couldn’t put off for long.
Pushing aside her thoughts, she took a breath and told her son, “Yes, you can ride General, but you watch out. Just because he’s old doesn’t mean he can’t scrape you off on a fence if he wanted to. That gelding has tricks you’ve never had to learn. You pay attention, and make sure you’re back home in time for chores, okay?” Those words were for Eli, whose face broke into a broad grin at the words granting him permission to engage in an entire afternoon of his favorite activity: ride his beloved horse. Lifting her gaze to Reuben, she confirmed, “Yeah, General’s still around. Still teaching kids to ride and the dang beast is still opening gates.”
Because her gaze was fixed on him, she saw what she thought was a moment when Reuben might have begun to question things, when he looked down at the smile on her son’s face, frowning. Then the expression was buried because Essa breezed into the room, distracting him from whatever he had been about to ask. “I ain’t carrying your bag in, Reuben.” She huffed as she flung herself into one of the kitchen chairs. “Elly-belly, come gimme a hug. I’m in desperate need of a kiddy hug today.”
Dutifully, Elias moved towards her, dropping his hand from Reuben’s as he did, breaking the tableau. Brenda took in a relieved breath, hoping she had dodged the bullet on any questions, at least while they had an audience. She needed to tell Reuben; that was the plan all along. Get him back here, tell him, and figure out how they moved forward. But because of Eli, she needed to be careful. She allowed herself a long, furtive look at Reuben, marking the changes his life had produced in him over the years. Eleven years. That’s how long it had been since she'd seen him last. His face held more lines, but they seemed formed by laughter, not anger, and added astounding character to an already striking countenance. God, I hope he’s had a good life, she thought.
Standing motionless as he was now, he seemed relaxed. At ease. His complexion a rich olive, of course that gift from his Mexican mother wouldn’t change. His hair still raven dark, untouched by gray, at least what she could see of it underneath his baseball cap. The damned goatee still on his chin. Sexy and strong, he was, as he had always been, all man.
His eyes were still dark, too, liquid and warm, and she felt the full weight of his stare when she walked across the kitchen towards the countertop. “Thank you, Reuben,” she said, feeling suddenly clumsy and stiff. Her face heated as she thought about the last time they had been in a room together. There hadn’t been anything awkward between them that night. Glancing over at him, she reached up to grab two mugs from the cabinet, and asked, “Coffee?” He nodded. “You take it the same way?” He nodded again. Silence, his go-to buffer to keep people at bay.
She watched him, mesmerized when he reached up, took off his cap to ruffle his hair, and then replaced it on his head. Everything about him seemed so familiar, the same boy she had known all her life, but then when she took him in…he was so different, foreign. This man was hard in ways she hadn’t expected, beautiful in ways her body would never forget.
Vaguely, she heard Essa and Eli chatting in the background but jumped, startled when Essa called out, “I’m going to take one of the boarded horses out for a ride with Eli and General. Blow the cobwebs out of my head.” Brenda nodded with a jerk, dragging her gaze away from Reuben with some effort, staring down at the mugs as she filled them with hot, black coffee. The kitchen door closed and she startled again as the door slammed shut.
She jolted yet again, spilling hot coffee on her hand when the heat of Reuben hit her back, his arm appearing beside her, reaching out for his own mug. “Crap,” she muttered, moving sideways towards the sink and away from him, putting space between them as she turned on the cold water and plunged her hand underneath the flow.
“Sorry,” he said, appearing beside her again and gripping her wrist with one big palm. The feel and sight of his hand against her skin stirred long-suppressed memories, and she struggled not to react to his nearness. Clearly he didn’t have the same thoughts, because he was all business when he pulled her hand from under the water, looked at it a second and then placed it back into the stream. “First aid box still in the mudroom?”
She nodded and opened her mouth to tell him not to bother, but before she could get the words out he had already moved away. Rolling her eyes at his reaction to a little burn, she pulled her hand out of the water to look at it just as she heard him call, “Leave it under the water, Bee.” With a slanted grin at his bossy use of her childhood nickname, she rolled her eyes at him again, placing the rapidly numbing appendage back beneath the cold flow of water.
“Let’s see it,” he said, startling her for the fourth time as he showed up right beside her.
“How the hell do you do that?” The question was rhetorical because for all his size, Reuben had always been light on his feet, nimble on the football field as well as in the rodeo arena. Some of his records in both venues still stood in this county, and a couple of the ones for calf roping were even at the state level.
“Do what?” He turned off the faucet and used a clean, soft dishtowel to blot the dampness from her skin. The reddened patch had grown and she glanced back over at her mug, realizing she had managed to spill about half of it on her hand. “I think some salve will do for you.” He released her, pressing the cloth into her other hand as he turned towards the first aid kit on the counter. Rummaging around in it, he came up with the burn ointment. Opening the tube, he carefully rubbed a generous amount onto the burn. “How do I do what?” He reminded her of the question and she waved it off with her other hand.
“Nothing.” Biting her lip, she stood in silence for a moment, lost in the feel of his hands on hers, pleasurable even in this clinical fashion, and then blurted, “I didn’t think you’d actually come.”
“You didn’t give me much of a choice, did you?” His immediate response held a note of accusation, and she winced at the implication that she had forced his hand. Which she had, but it was for a good reason. Now she just had to find the right way to explain everything to him. Explain something she was still struggling to wrap her own head around. Right. Like that’ll go well, she thought.
“You wouldn’t pick up the freakin’ phone when I called. What was I supposed to do? Even the registered letters got signed for and accepted, but you never responded. Fell off the face of the freakin’ earth where this place was concerned.” Her breathing hitched. Where I was concerned. That thought nearly did her in, and she tried without success to hide her emotional reaction. Turning her head away, her voice dropped to a whisper, a betraying tremble in her tone as she asked, “What was I supposed to do?”
She glanced back to find Reuben had straightened from where he had leaned against the countertop, a tension running through him that hadn’t been there before. Motionless, he stared at her for a long minute before he shook his head slowly, side to side. “I don’t know, Brenda.” He sighed as he asked, “Are you set on doing this right now, or can it wait until after I shower? I stink from the plane.”
“It can wait,” she said instantly, her soft words latching onto the opportunity to delay, even for another few minutes. She didn’t know what his reaction would be, couldn’t predict how angry he would be at the news. She didn’t know him anymore, and wasn’t sure she would survive if he... “Of course it can.”
An hour later, he had finished with his shower, but the conversation she planned would have to be postponed, as the ranch foreman and hands crowded into the house to meet Reuben and welcome him home.
Caught off guard
“What’s on the agenda for today, boss?” Brenda heard Gill ask the question, knowing without looking up it was directed at Reuben. After only three days, everyone except her seemed to have fallen into a comfortable routine of having him around the ranch. Even the
men, like Gill, who hadn’t met or worked with him before. Last week this particular question would have been directed at her, and she and Gill would have been standing comfortably in the kitchen, having the conversation over mugs of hot coffee instead of hat in hand, stuck in the official office out in the barn.
Her entire routine was askew and in the days since Reuben walked through the kitchen door, she hadn’t found a private opportunity to talk to him. Hadn’t talked to him at all except in passing. She tried in vain, every day.
Beginning each morning in the bathroom, she stood staring into the mirror, giving herself a pep talk. With no idea how long he would be in town, she knew she had to move it along, but he had proven himself adept at avoiding her. Every morning he rose early and then isolated himself in the office for the remainder of the day. Knowing where he was didn’t matter, because he was never alone. She’d stood on the porch for the past three days and watched a never-ending stream of visitors in the form of ranch hands, suppliers, and vendors head into the barn, all eager to meet the Nelms behind the name.
At Reuben’s request, Brenda had provided his accountant access to the business’ bookkeeping software. She filled that man’s inbox with information and records for the past few years, and then found he left her pretty much alone, too.
Reuben was definitely avoiding her, burying himself in the tedium of an everyday routine completely unfamiliar to him. Something he had never really been involved in, and all, it seemed, so he didn’t have to see or talk to her. She wasn’t sure where his head was, if he had been struck with a sudden desire to understand the business, or—and this thought cut her to the quick—if he didn’t trust her to run things anymore.
Gill wasn’t making things easier by going around her, and she decided to attack this issue head on. Making a scoffing noise in the back of her throat so both men’s eyes swung to her, she saw Reuben’s dark ones assessing and Gill’s light blue ones questioning.
Rebel Wayfarers MC Boxset 3 Page 37