by Lori Wilde
She didn’t call him Dad, because he hadn’t been much of a father. The last time she’d seen Dutch, he’d been hovering outside her ninth grade algebra class, battered Stetson in his hands, his sandy blond hair threaded through with gray, his blue eyes full of nervousness, remorse, and hope. Horse poop clung to his boots and he wore spurs— yes, spurs— against the polished maple hardwood floors of her Hyde Park high school. His Wrangler jeans had been stained and tattered, his legs bowed, his belt buckle big. He’d smelled of hay, leather, and horses.
The other students had stared, snickered, pointed.
“Where’s the rodeo?”
“Who’s the hick?”
“How’d the cowboy pass security?”
“He smells like horseshit.”
“Hillbilly freak.”
Dutch had stretched out a hand nicked with numerous scars, beseeching Mariah to come closer. “Flaxey? It’s me. Your pa.”
How many times had she fantasized that he would come back to her? Be a real dad? Love her the way she’d always loved him? But now that he was here, she didn’t want him. Not in her high school. Not among her friends. Not dressed like that.
Shame flushed through her. She’d walked right past Dutch as if she hadn’t seen him, and when he called her name, she started running in the opposite direction as fast as she could, schoolbooks clutched tight to her chest, heart pounding.
Not only was she ashamed of him, but also she was still mad because he had disappeared a week before her seventh birthday. He told Mariah’s mother, Cassie, he was going to see a man about a horse, and he just never came back.
They’d been living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, at the time, and Cassie waited three months for him to return while she cleaned rooms at the Holiday Inn and cried herself to sleep every night. When one of the wealthy Thoroughbred owners in town for a race offered Cassie a job as his family’s live-in housekeeper, her mother snatched the opportunity with desperate hands. They packed up their meager belongings, moved to Illinois, and didn’t look back.
Dutch never missed a child support payment and he phoned a few times over the years, usually when he was drunk and feeling maudlin; the conversation generally ended with Cassie hanging up on him. Once in a while he sent Mariah gifts at Christmas or for her birthday, but they were always inappropriate. One year, a lasso. The next year, a lucky horseshoe engraved with the words “Make Your Own Luck.” Another year, a pair of purple Justin boots, two sizes too small, as if he thought she stayed forever seven.
As she waited in line, Mariah’s cell phone rang playing Wagner’s Bridal Chorus. She fished it from her purse at the unemployment line and checked the caller ID.
Randolph Callahan.
A strange mix of anxiety, hostility, and gratitude lumped up in her throat. Why was Dutch calling her after all these years? If he was broke and looking for money, he’d certainly picked the wrong time to call. On the other hand, it would be good to hear his voice again.
The weary woman in line behind her, holding a runny-nosed kid cocked on her hip, nudged Mariah, and then pointed at the poster on the wall. It was a symbol of a cell phone with a heavy red line drawn through it.
“Hang on a minute,” Mariah said into the phone, and then smiled beseechingly to the woman, “This’ll just take a sec.”
The woman shook her head, pointed toward the door.
“Fine.” She sighed, never one to ruffle feathers, and got out of line.
A blast of cold air hit her in the face and sucked her lungs dry as she stepped outside. It was the first of October, but already cold as a Popsicle. She liked Chicago in the spring and summer, but the other six months of the year she could do without.
“Hello?” Head down, hand held over her other ear, she scuttled around the side of the building to escape the relentless wind.
No answer.
“Dutch?”
He must have hung up. Great. She’d gotten out of line for nothing. Huddling deeper into the warmth of her coat, she hit the call back button.
“Hello?” a man answered in a curt Texas accent. It didn’t sound like her father.
“Dutch?”
“Who’s this?” he asked contentiously.
“Who is this?” she echoed on the defensive.
“You called me.”
“I was calling my father.”
A hostile silence filled the airwaves between them.
“Mariah?” the man asked, an edge of uncertainty creeping in.
“You have the upper hand. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. Why are you answering Dutch’s cell phone?”
He hauled in a breath so heavy it sounded as if he was standing right beside her. “My name’s Joe Daniels.”
“Hello, Joe,” she said, completely devoid of warmth. “May I speak to Dutch please?”
“I wish— ” His voice cracked. “I wish I could let you do that.”
A sudden chill that had nothing to do with the wind rushed over her. She leaned hard against the side of the building, the bricks poking into her back. “Has something happened?”
“Are you sitting down?”
“No.”
“Sit down,” Joe commanded.
“Just tell me,” Mariah said, bracing for the worst.
“Dutch is dead,” he blurted.
Mariah blinked, nibbled on her bottom lip, felt . . . hollow. Hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
Joe’s breathing was harsh in her ear.
So her father was dead. She should feel something, shouldn’t she? Her heartbeat was steady. A strange calmness settled over her, but she didn’t realize that she’d slowly been sliding down the brick wall until her butt hit the cold cement sidewalk.
All she could think of was how she’d cruelly run away from Dutch that afternoon fourteen years ago.
“Mariah?” A whisper of sympathy tinged Joe’s voice.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. It’s not like my life is going to change,” she said quickly.
“I know you weren’t close. But he was your father.” Joe’s tone shifted, barely masking anger.
Oh, who was Mr. High-and-Mighty Joe Daniels to judge her? He didn’t know her. “How did it happen?” she asked, ignoring her own shove of anger.
“He’d had pneumonia for weeks. We tried to get him— ”
Jealousy ambushed her. “We?” she interrupted.
“The cutters in Jubilee.”
Cutters.
She’d almost forgotten the slang term for people involved in the training and raising of cutting horses.
“We tried to get him to go to the doctor, but you know Dutch, mule stubborn and set in his ways,” Joe continued.
No, she didn’t know Dutch. Not really.
“He just kept working. Workaholic, your dad.”
That Mariah knew. Dutch lived and breathed horses.
“We were at an event, Dutch swung off his horse, staggered, coughed. I could tell he was suffering. His face was pale and sweaty. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Don’t call Mariah until after the funeral.’ Then he just dropped dead.” Joe’s voice cracked again. “He died with his boots on, doin’ what he loved.”
A long pause stretched out between them. Chicago and Texas in an uneasy marriage over the airwaves.
“Joe,” she murmured, “Are you okay?”
“No,” he said. “Dutch was my closest friend.”
Joe’s words finally hit her, a hard punch to the gut. Her head throbbed, and she felt as if a full-grown quarter horse had squatted on her chest. Dutch was dead, and the last thing he said was Don’t call Mariah until after the funeral. Her father hadn’t wanted her there.
“You’ve already buried him?” A soft whimper escaped her lips.
“At Oak Hill Cemetery in Jubilee. It’s what he wanted.”
She turned to stone inside. Iced up. Shut down completely. “I see. Well th
en, thank you for calling to let me know.”
“Wait,” he said. “Don’t hang up.”
Her hand tensed around the cell phone. “What is it?”
“Dutch left you his ranch.”
Dutch left you his ranch.
The words echoed in her head, breaking the thin thread of memory and bringing Mariah back to the present.
The morning sun pushed free of the horizon, bathing the ranch in a butter-and-egg-yolk glow. The joyous twitter of birds greeting the dawn, filling the air with song. How long had it been since she actually paid attention to birds singing? She blinked, seeing Stone Creek Ranch clearly for the first time in full daylight.
It was a country-and-western palace.
The main house sprawled over acres and acres of rolling grassland. On the drive up in the predawn, it had looked like a fat dragon sleeping peacefully after a heavy meal of virgins and villagers. In the daylight, it appeared more like a lazy but handsome king lounging on his throne. Not unlike the lazy cowboy draped insouciantly over the horse trough.
Constructed from limestone and accented with wood finishes, the cowboy mansion boasted a Ludowici clay tile roof, an elevated stone porch, and an accepting veranda. It had to have at least five bedrooms, but probably more like six or seven. A circular flagstone driveway swept impulsively up to the house.
Mariah had parked just short of the main entrance, pulling her rental sedan to a stop by a planter box filled with rusty red chrysanthemums. Numerous other buildings flanked the house. Horse barns, sheds, garages, all well maintained.
Dutch owned this?
She now owned this?
All these years her father had been living in luxury while she and her mother scrimped every penny. The emotions she kept dammed up flooded her— hurt, anger, sorrow, regret, frustration.
Yes, frustration. She had no idea how to run a ranch. She was a wedding planner’s assistant, for crying out loud.
Correction. She used to be a wedding planner’s assistant. “Used to” being the operative phrase.
What was she going to do with the place? And on a more immediate note, what was she going to do with the man in the horse trough?
Tentatively, she inched closer.
He didn’t move.
The shy part of her held back, but the part of her that had learned how to slip into the role of whatever she needed to be in order to get the job done— and right now that was assertive— cleared her throat. “Hey, mister.”
No response. Clearly, it was going to take cannon fire to get through his stupor.
You’ve got to do something more to get his attention. Hanging back and being shy has always put you in hot water. Take the bull by the horns and—
Okay, okay stop nagging.
She reached out and poked his bare shoulder with a finger. Solid as granite.
No response.
Come on. Put some muscle into it.
She poked again. Harder this time.
Not a whisper, not a flinch.
What if he was dead?
Alarmed, Mariah gasped, jumped back, and plastered a palm across her mouth. Dread swamped her. She peered at his chest. Was he breathing? She thought he was breathing, but the movements were so shallow she couldn’t really tell.
Please don’t be dead.
In that moment, the possibly deceased naked cowboy was the cherry on top of the dung cake that was her life. Three months ago, she’d lost her dream job working for the number one wedding planner in Chicago, and then her vindictive boss had black-balled her in the industry. And now Dutch was gone too and she’d been left a ranch complete with a dead naked cowboy.
Be rational. He’s probably not dead.
Maybe not, but clearly he was trespassing, and she couldn’t have him thinking that it was okay for him to go around stripping off his clothes and falling into other people’s horse troughs during his drunken stupors.
Be bold, do something about this.
Bolstered by her internal pep talk, she stepped up to flick his Stetson with a thump of her middle finger. “Yo, cowboy, snap out of it.”
She was just about to thump the Stetson again when one of those sinewy arms snapped up and his steely hand manacled her wrist. The tequila bottle made a dull pinging sound as it fell against the ground. Big fingers imprinted into her skin.
“Eep!” Oxygen fled her lungs. Panic mushroomed inside her. So much for being bold.
“Never thump a man’s Stetson,” he drawled without moving another muscle, his voice as rich and luxurious as polished mahogany. “Unless you’ve got a death wish. You got a death wish?”
“N-n-no.” Mariah stammered.
She tried to pull away from the Clint Eastwood clone, but pushing against his grip was like trying to bully marble. In fact, struggling only seemed to ensnare her more tightly.
With a lazy index finger, he slowly tipped the brim of his cowboy hat upward, revealing eyes as black as obsidian, and he studied her with a speculative scowl, like he was the big bad wolf just aching for a reason to eat her alive.
Oh man, oh wow, oh just kill me now.
He was one hundred percent alpha male, the kind who staked a claim on a woman with one hard sultry stare and who would fight to the death to hold on to her. The kind of man whose self-confident arrogance had always unsettled her.
She shivered.
His gaze lasered into her as if he could see exactly what she looked like with no clothes on, his intelligent eyes full of mysterious secrets. He didn’t seem embarrassed in the least. In fact, he had an air of entitlement about him. As if he had every right to sleep off a berserk bender in her fancy horse trough.
Strangely enough, he made her feel as if she were the naked one.
Who was this man? Did he live here? Was he one of Dutch’s cowhands?
Even though he was sitting up and she was standing, he seemed to tower over her. He would tower over her when he was on his feet. Of that she was certain. Almost everyone towered over her.
The steady pressure from his strong fingers stirred a bizarre fluttering inside her. Her stomach quivered. Unnerved, Mariah marshaled her courage, gritted her teeth. “Please let go.”
His smile exploded, exposing straight white teeth. This cowboy possessed serious star quality. “What if I don’t?”
“I’ll dunk your Stetson in the water.”
His devilish eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare.”
Her knees wobbled. She was scared witless, but she learned a long time ago to hide her fears behind bluff and bravado and act brave whether she felt it or not. Ignoring her sprinting pulse, she swept the cowboy hat off his head with her free hand. A thick tumble of inky black hair, two months past the point of needing a trim, spilled out.
“Try me,” she said as tough as she could, hoping her voice belied her trembling legs.
His hard laugh clubbed her ears as he slowly released her. Mariah slapped his hat down on his head and snatched her arm back, held it across her chest. He hadn’t hurt her at all, but his sizzling body heat had branded her.
“What’s the deal?” She glared. “You don’t have indoor plumbing?”
“You’re funny,” he said. “And I don’t mean ha-ha. Who are you?”
His ebony voice unnerved her. That and his big, lean, bare body. It occurred to Mariah that she was completely alone here with this stranger. If this were a slasher flick, she’d be in deep trouble.
She swallowed hard, notched up her chin, and silently repeated the mantra her mentor and former boss, Destiny Simon, had taught her. Never let ’em see you sweat. Then again, Destiny had been the one to put her in the sweatbox, so what did she know? “I should be asking you that question.”
“Oh yeah?” An amused smile played at the corner of his mouth. “Why’s that?”
She drew herself up to her full five-foot-one. “Because my name is Mariah Callahan and this”—she swept a hand at the land around them— “is my ranch.”
“Oh yeah?” he repeated.
“Am I?” He lowered his eyes half-mast. Bedroom eyes the exact color of the cup of strong coffee she’d snagged at the Starbucks drive-through in the last big town she’d passed.
“You are.”
He studied her as if she was the most comical thing he’d ever seen. As if he wasn’t lying naked in a gold-plated horse trough looking as sexy as three kinds of misdemeanors.
Not that she cared. Not really. She had no room in her life for men— especially those of the cowboy persuasion. She knew just enough about cowboys to know she never wanted one.
“You sure about that?”
His words gave her pause, but, determined not to let him intimidate her, she plunged ahead. “I just inherited this ranch from my father, Dutch Callahan, and I’d appreciate it if you’d remove yourself from the premises immediately.”
“Okay.” He made a move to hoist himself up.
“No wait.” She shielded her eyes with her hands. “I don’t need to see that.”
He chuckled, clearly finding her amusing, and sank back in the trough. But beneath the incongruous smile, she spotted the shadows that dug into the hollows beneath the angular blades of his cheekbones.
“Your father, huh?” he said.
“Yes.”
“That’s funny. I don’t ever recall you coming to visit him.”
Was that an intentional dig? Or just an innocent observation? Mariah glanced over at him. There was nothing innocent about this guy. “You knew my father?”
He crossed his middle finger over his index finger. “We were like that.”
She felt envious, melancholy, and irritated. “We were estranged.”
“And yet he left you this impressive ranch. I wonder why?”
Sarcasm. From a naked cowboy. The guy was cocky.
Mariah shifted her weight, feeling like she was being indicted or mocked. “I didn’t say it made any sense.”
“That’s because it doesn’t.”
“Look,” she said. “Could you just go?”
He shook his head. “I’m just not buying it.”