Cowboy on the Run

by Anne McAllister

  Josh turned his back. "Mom already did."

  "I know she did. But … it's not enough. I'm your father and—"

  "You're not my father!" Josh whirled around, eyes flashing. "You're not!"

  "Biologically, I am," Rance said. "Maybe not in any other way."

  "Definitely not in any other way." Josh glared.

  Rance sucked in a breath. "I didn't know about you, Josh."

  "Wish you'd never found out."

  Me, too, Rance thought wearily. But he took off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair. "I owe you an explanation. Will you listen?"

  He shouldn't have put it like that. If Josh said no, was he planning on walking away?

  Apparently Josh realized the same thing and came to the same conclusion. His narrow shoulders lifted. "Don't s'pose you'd go away if I said no," he said resignedly.

  "No, I wouldn't."

  So Josh leaned against the wall, staring off into space, refusing to look at Rance at all, his arms folded across his chest.

  It was no invitation to bare his soul, but Rance knew it was the most he could expect. He started to talk.

  For a man accustomed to delivering some of the most solid legal arguments in the state of Montana, Rance felt as if he was standing on quicksand then.

  Desperately, in a few thousand words or less, he tried to explain to Josh about his life at age twenty-two and his relationship with Ellie that first year he'd been in college. He tried to make Josh understand how demanding his father had been and how determined he'd been to make it on his own.

  "Your mother understood that," he said, and he watched the boy's face for a similar glimmer of understanding. He saw none.

  Josh's arms remained folded; his face remained impassive. Rance talked on.

  He told Josh that he'd loved Ellie. He was honest and said he hadn't wanted to get married. He tried to explain how he'd felt the need to resist being a part of some relentless Phillips machine. "I thought getting married and having kids would make me part of it," he said. "Your mother knew that, too. So she didn't tell me about you."

  Josh didn't say anything to that for at least a minute. Then he said, "Did she want to marry you?"

  Rance swallowed. "Yes."

  Josh nodded almost imperceptibly. He didn't say anything else.

  So, desperately, Rance talked on. He let the past go and talked about now, talked about what he was doing now, firm and confident about the man he'd become. He tried to convey that to Josh. Then he told the boy about his love for Ellie and his hopes for the future.

  He was blunt and starkly honest. He said, "I love your mother. I would like to make a life with her—and with all of you."

  He never claimed to love Josh. He wished he could, but he couldn't lie about it. He owed the boy honesty now at least.

  "I want to marry her," he said in the end.

  And in the silence that followed, Josh finally looked straight at him. "You had your chance, didn't you?"

  Josh seemed determined not to give him another.

  Rance was equally determined not to give up.

  He wasn't going to bribe the kid, though. His father could make a splash by buying Josh a four-year-old paint gelding and promising the other kids their own horses to train when they got older. Rance would do no such thing.

  He felt a faint bitterness that Josh was so thrilled with the horse—and with his father—and still wanted nothing to do with him. But then, the boy didn't know his grandfather like Rance knew him. And warning him that Trey always had his own agenda would do no good at all.

  Besides, in this case, the old man's agenda was the same as his. He wanted Ellie to marry Rance.

  But no one wanted that more than Rance did.

  So he tried. When it was time to move the herd to summer pasture, he thought that he and Josh could work together and develop some rapport. He knew that Josh had done it every year with Spike. He'd missed out last year when Ellie had hired a couple of cowboys to do the work.

  "He'll be delighted," Ellie assured him. "Ask. Invite him."

  Rance did.

  Josh said no.

  "But you always went—" Ellie began to argue.

  Josh cut her off. "I said no!" He almost shouted the words, then seemed to get a grip on himself. He shook his head. "I got to train Spirit. I can't go."

  It was an excuse and they all knew it. Spirit, the new gelding, could wait a few days. Spirit would have waited a few days if Spike had been the one asking Josh to come along.

  "Fine." Rance shrugged. "If that's what you want."

  He moved the cattle alone.

  It rained for three solid days. The wind was so high one night that he had to spend all of it on horseback, moving around the herd, trying to soothe and settle them. It was probably better Josh wasn't with him, he told himself. Be a lot of trouble having a kid along.

  But he knew the kind of kid Josh was—the kind of son he'd been to Spike. Josh and Spike would have forged an even deeper bond after a drive like this one.

  Would he and Josh ever have that?

  He got back to a raft of phone messages from Jodi and Lydia, who had taken to describing herself as, "Remember me, your overworked partner?"

  He knew he hadn't been quite fair dumping so much of the workload on her, but he hadn't thought it would be forever. Now he wasn't so sure.

  "I need your help," she told him when he called her the night he got back from moving the cattle. He was dog-tired, filthy and ready to sleep the clock around, but Ellie said Lydia had sounded pretty desperate, so he'd made the call.

  "Sure," he said, "I'll be there in a couple of days—"

  "We don't have a couple of days, Rance. Sweeney's bringing in the big guns. I can't do this alone."

  "But—"

  "Are you in or are you out? I thought we were partners, Rance. I need you now."

  Rance shut his eyes and rocked back on his heels. Then his feet hit the floor flat again. "Right," Rance said heavily. "Now."

  He hung up to see Ellie standing in the doorway watching him. He sighed and flexed his shoulders. "I gotta go to Helena. I don't want to, but—"

  "I know," Ellie said. She put her arms around him. He pressed his face into her hair and breathed in the sweet scent of her, wanting nothing more than to just stand there holding her.

  Then, "Mom!" Josh banged in the door, saw them with their arms around each other and froze.

  Carefully, as if she was afraid she would break something, Ellie eased out of Rance's arms and turned to face their son. "What is it, Josh?"

  "Nothing." The word was flat and hard, and the resentment in his tone kindled a matching resentment in Rance.

  He did his best to squelch it. Then he had an idea. If Josh wouldn't go with him to the summer range because it was something he'd always done with Spike that he didn't want Rance replacing, maybe he should get the boy on his own, away from the ranch and get to know him there.

  "Hey, Josh," he said as casually as he could. "How about coming to Helena with me?"

  The boy blinked. "Why?"

  "Why not? I've got to go to a trial there. I'll be gone a few days." He shrugged. "Just thought maybe you'd like to come."

  "No." There was a pause, a look at his mother, then a quick look back at Rance. "No, thanks," Josh said.

  Rance went alone.

  He worked his butt off. Lydia was right: Sweeney had dragged in the big guns—and Rance wasn't as prepared as he ought to have been.

  He hadn't had time, he told himself. He'd been thinking about Ellie, worrying about Josh, working Ellie's ranch, consulting by phone with J.D. about the Phillips's spread.

  J.D. could handle most of the decisions, and did. But as he pointed out often enough, he wasn't the "real boss."

  "Anything I do, you can contradict," he said.

  "Why would I want to do that?" Rance asked.

  "You wouldn't," J.D. said. "But the old man would."

  Rance didn't even respond to that. It was the truth, and
he didn't understand it. And he had enough trouble in his life without tackling that. He would have liked to hand the whole spread over to J.D. at this point.

  But when he suggested it, Trey wouldn't hear of it.

  "Only a Phillips can run the J Bar R," Trey said flatly.

  Well, this particular Phillips was running his tail off. He worked like a dog by day. He burned midnight oil with Lydia every night. He fended off half a dozen willing women whose middle names ought to have been Perseverance. He was less tempted than ever.

  Every night he called Ellie to tell her he missed her.

  "Miss you, too," she said. "We all miss you."

  "Not Josh."

  "Well, maybe not Josh," Ellie agreed. "But I think he's coming around, Rance. I really do. He's working so hard. You'd be proud of him. And he's been spending every evening with your dad. They're working hard on Spirit."

  "My dad, huh?" Rance wasn't sure whether or not to be glad about that.

  "It's a good thing," Ellie assured him. "If he accepts Trey, he'll certainly come around to accepting you."

  "Uh-huh." All Rance could do was hope.

  Caleb and Daniel were yakking about him again.

  "Rance says…"

  "Rance knows…"

  "Rance can do…"

  They did it every day and every night. You'd think the world revolved around stupid Rance Phillips. Well, it didn't. The ranch didn't even revolve around him—and him being gone was giving Josh a chance to prove it. He worked from dawn until dusk every day, determined to show his mom they didn't need Rance at all.

  At least his mom didn't say Rance's name twenty times a minute, like some morons he could think of.

  "Rance thinks…"

  "Rance wants…"

  Josh kept his mouth shut, shutting his ears and trying to read his book while they chattered like magpies in the bottom bunks. Then one of them said, "When Rance and Mom get married…"

  And then he'd had enough.

  "Don't say that!" he yelled at them. He sat up in bed and glowered down at them.

  The two of them blinked up at him, like an astonished pair of owls. "Say what?" Caleb asked.

  "Say things like them gettin' married! They aren't! It isn't going to happen!"

  Both his brothers' eyes got round as the moon. "It's not?" Daniel looked shocked.

  "No!"

  But then Caleb, ever practical, said, "Then how come Gran'pa Phillips is hangin' around?"

  And Daniel added, "And how come he said we should call him Gran'pa if they're not gettin' married? He's not our gran'pa … yet."

  Not yours! Josh wanted to yell. But he didn't because he hadn't told them. He'd never said a word about what had happened that night. He'd never told anyone that he was Rance Phillips's son.

  "I'll tell them if you want," his mother had offered. "I'm the one who should explain."

  But Josh had shaken his head fervently. "No." Nobody was going to tell them, if he could prevent it. If he refused to acknowledge it, maybe—just maybe—Rance would give up and go away.

  Josh didn't want him there trying to be nice, trying to be helpful, trying to worm his way in and cut Dad out. If Rance married his mom it would be like his dad had never even existed.

  It wasn't fair!

  Josh knew that Gran'pa Phillips knew who he was. Neither of them had ever mentioned it. But there was something in the way Gran'pa Phillips looked at him that said he was seeing more in Josh than was really there.

  At first Josh hadn't wanted to like him, either. He'd thought Gran'pa was just there to help Rance get what he wanted.

  But in fact Gran'pa Phillips seemed to find fault with Rance more than he favored him. He thought Rance was stubborn and hardheaded and had always been determined to get his own way, and he didn't hesitate to say so.

  The words were music to Josh's ears. Anything negative about Rance was music to Josh's ears these days.

  "Was he really a stubborn kid?" he'd ask Gran'pa.

  "Stubborn? Let me tell you," Gran'pa would say and he'd settle back in the rocker or lean on the corral fence and start reminiscing away.

  Some of the things Rance had done as a kid Josh didn't think were so bad. Sometimes he thought he might even have liked Rance … if he wasn't determined to horn in and cut Josh's father out.

  The very thought of that hardened Josh's resolve against him again.

  Hearing Gran'pa's "Rance stories" started Josh spending time with the older man. But hearing Gran'pa's compliments about Josh's own knowledge and skills kept him there.

  They talked ranching, and once he discovered that Gran'pa listened, Josh was eager to tell him everything he knew. He'd listened to his dad enough to know a fair bit about cattle and crops and land. It made him proud to share that knowledge with Gran'pa and hear Gran'pa tell his mother that Josh was "one smart feller."

  He couldn't believe it when Gran'pa suggested getting him his own horse. He'd dreamed about it, of course. Training his own horse, the way his dad had done when he was a boy, had always been one of Josh's goals. But he knew they didn't have the money to get a good horse for a boy to work with. Ruckus and the other two his mom had been able to afford were too green for her to let him try training them.

  Spirit was the horse of his dreams.

  Josh wondered if he'd have been able to resist if Rance had offered him a horse like Spirit. He was glad he hadn't had to find out.

  "He wouldn'ta bought you Spirit if he wasn't figurin' on bein' our Gran'pa," Caleb said now.

  "He bought him because he says talent ought to be encouraged, and he thinks I'm good enough to train him," Josh replied. Then to bolster that quotation, he added, "He says I'm as good a horseman as his foreman. He says I might even be able to teach J.D. some things."

  "Huh," Caleb said.

  "I dunno…" Daniel murmured.

  "Well, I do," Josh said forcefully. "They are not gettin' married. Gran'pa is just our friend. He is visiting 'cause he doesn't have to work now. But it isn't gonna last. He'll go away and so will Rance. Then I will run the ranch."

  They won the case—which had more to do with Lydia's competence and hard work than his own.

  Rance worked hard, but there was no denying he was distracted. It seemed like all he was doing was waiting for it to be over so he could get back to what really mattered to him.

  And when he finally got there, Trey announced, "Just in time to say goodbye."

  Rance blinked. He looked at his father, then at Ellie to see if she knew what he was talking about. But she looked as surprised as Rance did. "Goodbye?" he ventured, hoping against hope.

  "Yep," Trey said cheerfully. "I'm goin' home. Leavin' in the morning. 'Bout time, I reckon," he added. "Can't let J.D. think he's runnin' the show."

  "I doubt he thinks that, Dad," Rance said drily. "Besides, I was just there."

  "You're not runnin' the show yet, either. Not completely. A feller's gotta keep his hand in. So I'm goin'. I got things I need to do and—" he paused "—I figured I'd take Josh with me."

  One look told Rance that this was as much of a surprise to Josh as it was to him and Ellie. The boy's eyes widened eagerly one second, and the next his expression turned to a look of wary concern. He gave Rance a quick glance, then shot another at his mother. Rance could see the wheels turning in his head.

  "Boy's a natural with horses," Trey went on cheerfully. "I figured J.D. might learn a few things from him."

  No one knew more about horses than J.D., and no one knew it better than Trey. Not that he would ever admit it.

  He did his best to find fault with most of what J.D. did. If Rance had been J.D.—not a Phillips and not obliged to put up with the old man—he'd have left long ago. The two of them scraped at each other constantly. This was undoubtedly another of the old man's ways of tweaking his foreman—and extending his influence a little more deeply into Josh's life.

  "What do you say?" Trey looked at Ellie, not at Rance. "We could take Spirit and let Josh show J.D. what h
e can do. I can show him around the J Bar R. I been tellin' him so much about it, I figured he oughta see for himself." There was pride and determination in the old man's voice.

  Rance knew what he wanted—to let Josh see the extent of the Phillips spread, to impress the boy with the vastness of its land and the number of its cattle, to whet his appetite for the legacy that would one day be his.

  "I'd bring him back middle of next week," Trey said. "Not long." He looked hopefully, expectantly at Ellie.

  Ellie looked at Rance. He didn't know what to say. In fact he knew if he said anything, chances were that Josh would do the opposite. "Reckon it's up to Josh," he said at last.

  "Well, then, no question. You'd like to come, wouldn't you, son?" Trey beamed at his grandson. "And the sooner, the better. There's so much for you to see and to learn. If we start now, by next summer—"

  Rance could see it coming—the suggestions that became orders, the expectations that somehow got translated into goals. "Don't push him, Dad."

  "He ain't pushing," Josh blurted. He grinned at his grandfather. "Sounds good to me. I'd like to go."

  The next few days were like paradise.

  As far as Rance was concerned, they were life the way it was meant to be. He and Ellie were together—a couple. Caleb and Daniel and Carrie were their children. The ranch was their ranch. Dealing with it was no more than he could handle. Dealing with the twins and Carrie was a joy. Loving Ellie was the greatest thing on earth.

  They were just one big happy family.

  He actually felt a little guilty for enjoying it so much.

  "Do you reckon I owe the old man one?" he asked Ellie. They had spent the past three days together, day and night. Rance had once thought that such togetherness would slake his desire. It seemed to have the opposite effect

  They were in her bed this time, wrapped in each other's arms. They had loved each other, then slept and now they were awake again, touching, kissing, beginning to stoke the fires of their passion once more.

  "I don't know," Ellie whispered. "Josh sounded happy when I talked to him on the phone tonight. He said he'd been working with J.D. on the horses and driving the truck all over the place. Your dad even let him ride Ranger, which I gather is a great privilege."