In tandem, they left the comfort of the dry barn. Brady stopped at the cowboy gate that opened into the pasture beside the cattle guard, the easiest place to try to pen the bulls—that is, if they got far enough to need penning. He dismounted, unhooked the wire latch and laid the wire gate back, leaving a ten-foot opening. Then he loped behind Jude through the slop of the 6-0's quarter-mile caliche driveway to the highway. The gale from the west drove the chilling rain like needles against his cheeks.
They walked the horses across the slick highway in a walk, then slipped and slid on the rain-slicked grassy side of the ditch, but neither Tuffy nor Poncho balked. Water ran like a fast stream through the narrow ditch bottom. They trotted through it. Brady heard the mournful bellows from the bulls before he saw the vague outline of the trailer through the rain's haze. Thank God they were approaching it from the back. If the truck and trailer had been facing the opposite direction, he didn't know how he would have gotten around them in the deep ditch with its muddy, slick sides.
At the trailer gate, he dismounted and shined the flashlight beam into it. A wind gust pushed him off balance, but he was able to see that the bulls were penned by a partition inside the trailer. They glared into the light and bellowed long and loud. They were soaked and pissed off, but both were on their feet, a good sign.
Then he saw the problem. On the side of the trailer that lay against the ditch bank, their feet were thrust through the trailer's open side rails. Trying to force them out could cause a broken leg. Or two. Or at the very least, cut their feet and legs severely. "Aw, shit," he mumbled.
He tramped back to where Jude sat astride Poncho, covered neck to ankle by his yellow slicker, water sluicing off the brim of her hat.
"I'll go inside and get loops on ’em, then open the gate,” he yelled. “If they blow up, at least we'll have some control.
Maybe, he thought. Cattle functioned more from instinct than intelligence, but sometimes they surprised him.
“When they see the opening,” he added, “let’s see if they'll come out on their own. But don't force ’em."
He lifted the the lariats off his saddle horn, sloshed to the trailer and unlatched the divided steel trailer gate. He stepped inside gingerly, unlocked and dropped the partition. The first bull backed up and swung his wet, woolly head left and right. Brady shook out a small loop, tossed it over the behemoth's horns and snugged it tight. He carried the other end of the lariat back to Jude and handed it up to her. "Keep the tension on your rope," he yelled, making a circular motion with his fist. "Don't let 'em fight it."
She nodded that she understood, stayed her horse and dallyed the end of the rope.
He grabbed the second lariat and tramped back into the trailer. He looped the second bull's horns. The first bull bellowed, then stood motionless as if assessing the new situation. The bulls were huge and in their prime. If this plan didn't work, things could turn ugly in a hurry.
Jude's rope was the one tied to the first bull's horns. Brady tugged on it, but the bull didn’t budge. He backed out of the trailer. "Just give him a little tug," he yelled to Jude. “Use your horse's strength, but not too much. See if he'll find his way out."
Mentally, Brady crossed his fingers. If the first bull came out on his own, the second would follow if his legs weren't caught.
He watched, holding his breath, as the rain beat all of them without mercy. After a few seconds, like a woman in high heels, and as if he didn't weigh fifteen hundred pounds, the first bull slowly and delicately stepped through the trailer's steel side rails to freedom and the second one came behind him. The balloon of fear Brady had been holding inside his chest deflated. Before this minute, he hadn't even noticed it was there. He tightened and dallyed his own rope, then positioned himself beside Jude, their stirrups touching.
She was grinning. "I can't believe they did that so easy," she yelled.
He couldn’t believe it, either. If the bulls were not relatively tame or used to horses, the whole episode could have had a sorry end. The worst part was over. He grinned, too. "We'll go up the ditch until we find a place where the bank isn't so steep, where we can get out without slipping in the mud and grass. When we're out, you keep to the rear and I'll ride flank. We'll drive 'em along the fence and turn 'em into that gate I opened."
He trotted ahead to take the lead, holding his bull close behind him. Jude added enough slack to her rope for the second bull to follow on the tail of the first. They moved single file along the ditch bottom that had turned into red gumbo.
A few feet past the 6-0's driveway, the ditch became shallower and he was able to lead his little column in an angle up onto the highway. They traveled up the wet pavement until they reached the 6-0's driveway and the barbed-wire fence along the left side.
He yelled back at her, "Keep 'em against the fence."
They herded the two bulls into the pasture without incident, then released their loops. Brady dismounted and closed the gate behind them. "In the morning, I'll check 'em to see if they're hurt," he yelled up at her.
Back inside the barn, he helped her strip off her wet gear. He couldn't see clearly in the flashlight's dim glow, but her lips looked as if they had turned blue. He was chilled to the bone himself.
"Go inside and get warm. I'll take care of the horses." She nodded and started away, but he stopped her. "Hey." Her head turned in his direction. "You did all right, Jude."
Without a word, she left him and dashed through the storm toward his back door.
In Brady's house, shivering almost to the point of being in pain, Jude spotted the robe he had offered her earlier. She had thrown it across the back of a chair in the kitchen. Now she grabbed it and headed for the bathroom.
She stripped to her skin and wrapped herself in the robe's warmth and Brady's scent. The thick garment swallowed her. The hem dragged on the floor, and the sleeves hung to her fingertips. As she belted it tightly around her waist, she shuddered from the release of the tension that had held her chilled muscles rigid for so long.
She carried her wet clothing and a towel back to the kitchen. She was met by a powerful wind gust slamming the old frame house and rattling the kitchen window above the sink. She shivered and hung her wet clothing over the backs of the two chairs at the table.
The cook stove was gas, so she rolled the robe's sleeves back and turned on all four burners. It wasn't enough. She had to have warmth inside. A sparkling-clean coffeepot sat on the kitchen counter. She searched the cabinets for coffee. Finding none, she turned on the hot-water tap and ran it until steam rose up to her face. With shaking hands, she filled a mug with the hot water, but it still wasn't warm enough. Still shivering, she rummaged in the cabinets again until she located a pan that would hold at least a quart of water. She filled it from the faucet and set it on a burner to boil. She might not be able to cook, but she could boil water.
While she waited for the water to heat, she sank into a chair at the table and began to towel dry her hair. She was colder than she had ever been in her life. She felt as if every nerve in her body had knotted into one giant ball between her shoulder blades. Adrenaline had her jumpy and anxious and full of energy, yet she was exhausted. When the water began to rustle in the pan, she poured herself a mug of boiling water and burned her lip trying to sip it.
Brady came in the back door that opened directly into the kitchen from the outside, his face red from the cold wind and rain. He was as wet as she had been. He stamped water and clumps of gumbo mud off his boots onto a mat at the door, then bent and pried them off. Shivering, he rubbed his palms together. "Son of a bitch! I can't believe it's this friggin' cold in July."
"Welcome to the Panhandle," Jude said, managing to laugh.
As he detached his pistol holster from his belt and laid it on the table, she said a prayer of thanksgiving that he hadn't had to use it.
"I'll light the fire in the living room," he said.
When Jude had passed through the living room, she hadn't even noticed a stove
. But of course this house would have a space heater. In most of the older dwellings in Willard County, space heaters were the only source of heat.
"I boiled some water,” she said. “I saw the coffeepot, but I couldn't find any coffee."
He smiled. "Don't have any. I never drink coffee at home. Don’t know why I even own a coffeepot." He picked up the towel she had used to dry her hair, roughed it over his own wet hair, then dropped it back on the table. "I'm gonna get some dry clothes on."
Walking toward the living room, he squeezed her shoulder with one hand as he passed her. A frisson of indefinable emotion passed through her chest.
He was gone a long time. Just as she began to wonder if she should check on him, he came back into the kitchen wearing sweatpants, a long-sleeve snap-button shirt and a pair of old fabric house shoes. Pulling a pinch of knit fabric out from his thigh, he smiled almost apologetically. "I don't have a lot of these jogging kind of clothes. But since I don't jog, I guess I don't need ’em."
Jog. From what Jude had seen of Brady, a jogger couldn't keep up with him. She forced a smile, too, thinking how out-of-costume he looked.
Though the sweatpants were loose-fitting, the soft fabric vaguely outlined his genitals. A visual of the poster from those weeks ago in Stephenville slid through her memory. She thought of the night in bed with him and experiencing things she had never known before. They had touched each other everywhere in every way, even shared secrets.
A profound sense of intimacy coursed through her, along with awareness that underneath his robe, she was naked. She couldn't make herself stop staring below his waist. Sensing his eyes on her, too, she looked up. Their gazes met and an edgy silence stretched between them—the same unbearable tension as that night in the Stephenville mobile home’s living room.
"Sweatpants don't suit you,” she murmured. “I see you as a Wranglers kind of man."
"I've got other clothes besides Wranglers."
He broke the spell and scuffed toward the cupboard nearest the sink. "How about some hot chocolate?" Before she could answer, he dragged out a box of instant hot chocolate mix and used the hot water remaining in the pan on the stovetop to make two mugs. "You hungry?"
She should be starved. She hadn’t eaten since dinner at the Dickerson ranch. But food was the last thing that came to her mind. "Not really. Can I ask you something?”
He chuckled. "Have I ever tried to stop you?"
“What did you wear other clothes for?"
"My other life."
"Would you tell me about your other life? When you lived in Fort Worth?"
He didn’t reply, just stirred the chocolate. "Not much to tell. I owned a land development and construction company. Fallon Ranches. Medium to upscale homes on five to twenty acres outside the city. Country living."
He lifted a fifth of some kind of whiskey from the top shelf of the cupboard and poured a dollop into each mug. "The homesites weren't really ranches, obviously. More like big lots, but they were what a lot of people wanted. The homes we built sold as fast as my crews could stand ’em up. I was doing pretty well for somebody who started with nothing."
Jude suspected he had done better than "pretty well."
He came to the table and smiled as he handed her a steaming mug. The sharp smell of whiskey touched her nostrils. Their eyes locked again and that now-familiar longing rushed into her. The power he held over her emotions was stunning.
"Thanks," she said softly, and took the warm mug.
He sat down adjacent to her, leaving no more than two feet between them. As it had before, that heady current swirled up between them, as powerful as the storm she had just driven through and just as unnerving.
"I can't imagine you not doing well." She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm, ready to listen all night if he was willing to talk. "I suppose getting a divorce ruined everything."
"It was sort of the beginning of the end," he said in his soft, deep voice. She loved his voice.
He fiddled with his mug handle as he talked. "But there was more to it than that. It took me a while to work my way through it, but living all by myself on that ridge in Stephenville, I finally came to terms with all that I did wrong.”
“You mean with your marriage?”
“No. The business. I was too hungry. Tried to move too fast. I was stretched way too thin and had been for a long time. I knew it, but I kept thinking I’d eventually get on top of it. I owed a lot of money to banks. To keep things on an even keel, I needed to give the business all my attention, all the time."
"Then why get a divorce? I mean, you must've known a divorce—"
"My ex pushed for the divorce." He paused again, his beautiful blue eyes locked on hers. "If she hadn't, I probably would've just kept fighting the battle. I didn’t love my homelife, but I didn’t hate it. She didn’t love it either. She'd found somebody else and wanted out. I was so wrapped up in the business and in trying to be a good father, I didn't even suspect she had a boyfriend."
"Oh," Jude almost whispered. A thousand new questions sprang into her head, but she restrained herself from asking them. "That must have been painful."
A weak smile tipped one side of his mouth and he shrugged. "Actually, the divorce itself wasn't a big trauma. Marvalee and I never did have a love story like you see in the movies. I was okay with ending the marriage. But I wasn't okay with giving up Andy."
"Your son?"
"Yeah. He's a pistol. He needs me. Marvalee had already started ignoring him before we ever split up. I figured she wouldn't be that upset about giving him up, so I asked for full custody. She said no, so I hired a lawyer and sued. That's when her dad got involved. He's got a lot of money, a lot of influence and a lot of friends. He didn't spend much time with his grandson, but he didn't want to let go of him, either."
My father was the same way, Jude thought.
"After her dad entered the picture, things went downhill for me in a hurry. Fighting for custody of Andy is what finally broke me. Lawyers are expensive. Lawsuits use up your mental energy and keep you upset all the time. In plain words, with all that was going on in my personal life, I took my eye off the ball in the business."
He picked up his mug and sipped, then gave her another long look across his shoulder. "But it isn't over. I'm looking for things to go in a different direction. That's why I'm trying to hang on to this place."
Jude felt a thud in her stomach. She had to say something. "Brady, I—"
"Feeling better now?"
"Yes," she said and pulled the robe tighter around herself. She was still cold, but she no longer feared she might die from it. And she really didn't want to confess what she had started to.
"So what happened today?” he asked. “Last I heard this morning, you were planning to get home ahead of the storm."
She told him about succumbing to the Dickersons' hospitality because she didn't want to be rude to friends of her father. When she stopped talking, except for the wind whistling around the corners of the old house and rattling the window over the sink, silence filled the; room.
"This storm's supposed to be gone by daylight," Brady said finally.
"Unusual weather for this time of year," she said.
His beautiful mouth widened into a slight smile. "That's the nature of these tempests that blow in from the mountains."
Discussing the weather. God, how lame could we get?
But discussing the weather was easier than saying what was going on in her head or voicing what she thought she saw in his eyes.
Her father's words from the night he had told her he intended to install Brady as the ranch's general manager echoed through her memory: Caring for livestock is a physical, outdoor job. The years of hard work in the sun and weather have taken their toll on Louelle.
For the first time ever, an inkling of the point her father had been trying to make for years seeped into her obstinacy, and she said, "I don’t know if I’ll ever be willing to admit this to Daddy, bu
t I couldn't have gotten those bulls out of that trailer all by myself."
"Lucky you didn't have to."
"But if you had been in my shoes, you could’ve done it."
His shoulder lifted in a careless shrug. "I'm bigger and stronger. Despite what the PC crowd wants us to believe, men are just more physically able. That’s a simple fact."
"There’s something else. Those bulls might have been injured to the point of uselessness or even died. If—if they'd had to be shot..." She looked away, hating to admit she might have difficulty doing what would have had to be done. "In all the years I've lived at the Circle C, I've never put down an animal? When it's been necessary, it's always been done by someone else. Shooting a cow or a horse would be extremely traumatic for me. It’s hard enough just knowing about it when it has to happen."
"It’s traumatic for anyone who works around animals, Jude. It’s hard not to get attached. The responsibility of taking care of them never relents, rain or shine, day or night. They become kind of like your kids."
"I know. Of course I know that. I've lived with it since the day I was born. A thousand times I’ve heard Daddy and Grandpa and even Clary and Windy say, ‘It’s man’s work, Jude.’”
He was looking back at her intently, listening to her confront her shortcomings and try to work past her guilt.
“And I’ve always been satisfied to let certain aspects of ranching be man's work,” she said. “I’ve been the spoiled daughter. But if you’re in charge, you can’t separate it, can you? You can’t pick and choose which tasks you like and ignore those you find unpleasant, can you?”
“That’s how it is in all of life, Jude. Not just ranching.”
She looked into the eyes of the man who had snatched away her plans. No wonder her father had put his faith in Brady. He was much more than a pretty face and magnificent body. He was smart and capable and caring. “I don’t know what made me think I was mentally and physically prepared to take on the job that was given to you.”
“But there’s something left for you, darlin’. Your dad is a visionary. He really wants you to work with your grandpa and learn about the ranch’s investments and money management. That might be the most important job of all. You need to do that. At some point in time, the whole operation will fall into your lap.”
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