by Raeann Blake
“What’s on your mind, Hailey?” Clay asked softly.
She had to scramble for something to say and finally said, “Nothing. I just wondered if the two of you realize just how easy it is to see how big an impact Shack had on your life. That’s all.”
She let her eyes touch Shack’s only briefly, just in time to see them drift closed as a small breath came out that she had to wonder if it held a little relief.
“I know that he did. But I don’t guess I realized that it actually showed.”
“He had a pretty big impact on mine, too. Almost as big a one as that old bull they called Outlaw did the day he decided I’d make a nice comfy pillow for him,” Shack said as he tried to turn it all into a joke. When the others laughed he breathed out one more sigh of relief until Clay looked up at him with a little frown.
“Old man, what ever happened to all those pictures you had over your bunk from your rodeo days?”
Hailey glanced at Laine and found a frown there when Shack visibly paled and he shrugged his shoulders. “I stashed ‘em somewhere. Can’t remember where right off hand. Just old baggage anyway.”
“Baggage? That was a big part of your life. You didn’t throw ‘em away did you? Hailey, you should see some of those pictures. I used to sit on his bunk and look at ‘em. I don’t know if I’d remember them now, but back then I could tell you the name of every animal he was on in each one of them. I could even tell you the year, the town and what the trophy was for in each one where it was a picture of him when he’d won some event. I probably asked him a thousand questions about those pictures and it never failed that he’d sit down and answer every one of them. It’s a wonder he didn’t just throw me out of the bunkhouse,” Clay said as he looked back up at Shack.
Shack shrugged his shoulders and smiled as Clay painted the memory so clearly. “He was full of questions, that’s for sure. But I didn’t mind. I enjoyed spending time with him and he was always so damn sharp and so inquisitive. He wasn’t one of these kids that would see something and just shrug his shoulders and accept it. He always wanted to know why. That was his favorite word between the ages of about four and ten. Why?”
“And after ten?” Hailey asked.
Shack laughed a little and looked back at Clay as he answered her. “After ten it was…’why not’?”
The laughter had died and they had all grown tired. Shack and Laine had already turned in and Clay and Hailey were headed upstairs when Clay stopped and let his gaze linger on Shack’s door.
“It’s great having him here, isn’t it?” Hailey asked softly.
“Yes, it is. Laine was right. He and Shack are my family. Shack always has been. And Laine has been since the minute he stepped on this ranch. But I’ll tell you something I’ve never told to anyone else. Back when I was kid, real little and didn’t know how things worked, I laid down every night and prayed one prayer. I prayed that God would switch places with the bastard I was living with and Shack. I thought if I prayed hard enough that He’d hear me and He’d just be able to reach down and swap things around. Then Shack would be my daddy. I didn’t know any better. I just knew that I wanted to live with Shack. Even when Mama was here, I wanted to be with Shack. I mean I didn’t wanna leave Mama, but…if God could have just switched places with them then…it just would have been better, that’s all,” he whispered.
Hailey gazed up at him with the tears in her eyes. If only…
Clay sighed slightly and pulled her close then smiled down at her. “Come upstairs. It’s late. We’ve had a few hard days and we’ve got a big one tomorrow. Don’t plan on getting a lot of sleep. I intend to spend a good part of tonight showing you how much I love you. But would you promise me something?”
“Yes. What?”
Clay finally let his eyes drift closed and he leaned his forehead against hers. “Please, please don’t ever do what you did earlier again. Don’t ever walk into a situation like that without thinking about what you’re doing again. I was so damn scared when I couldn’t find you.”
“I promise,” she whispered and tightened her arms around his waist.
* * *
“Good morning, guys. Where’s Hailey?” Isobell asked as she immediately started pouring coffee into three cups.
“She’ll be right here,” Clay said and settled at the bar as Isobell brought the coffee to them.
“Breakfast is almost ready. There you are. Good morning, Hailey. Sit, I’ll get you some coffee.”
“Good morning, Isobell. Good morning, guys,” Hailey said as she slid tiredly onto the stool.
“Oh, honey. You look so tired. You didn’t sleep well I guess. Drink this coffee. It’ll fix you up,” Isobell said then shot a frown towards Clay.
Neither Laine nor Shack could hide the grin when Clay kept a perfectly straight face in the wake of the frown.
“Hailey, did you ever check and see if we could afford that extra bump in Isobell’s salary?”
Hailey tried her best to look serious when Isobell turned back to them with a frown. “Yeah. We’re fine. I’ll take care of it before next payroll.”
“You just gave me a raise, Clay,” Isobell said quietly.
“Well, yeah. But that was before we talked Shack and Laine into moving in. I figure you need another one.”
Before Isobell could say anything Laine cut in and said, “Oh, Clay. I didn’t get a chance to tell you yesterday. You know that big ranch down near West Yellowstone, the Caldwell place? Well, he’s sellin’ out and movin’ to Florida. He’s got twelve hundred head. Wanna buy ‘em?”
Clay lifted his head and hesitated for just a second as he glanced at Shack then nodded. “Buy ‘em. We’ll split ‘em up like we talked about. Not a drive every week, but at least two or three as many as we have now. What do you think, old man?”
Shack laughed and said, “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”
Isobell frowned at them a few more seconds then turned back to the stove. Clay pointed a finger at Hailey in warning when he looked up and found the grin on her face. He waited until she hid it before he spoke again.
“Isobell, I wanted to ask you…have you ever made a wedding cake?”
The only sound in the room was the sizzling on the stove as she turned slowly back to face them with a frown again.
“A wedding cake? Well…no, I can’t say that I have, but I’m sure I could if I had to. Why do you ask?”
“Because we need one and I thought you might like to make it.”
“We…we need one,” she said as she frowned then finally shifted her eyes to Shack. “Jean Ann? You finally popped the question?”
Every person in the room burst out laughing when Shack strangled on the swallow of coffee he’d taken then finally managed, “You watch your mouth, girl. I did no such thing and I don’t intend to, either.”
“Well, then…” Her words trailed off when she shifted her gaze to Laine then Hailey and finally back to Clay. When she found the still serious frown on his face as he obviously waited for an answer she looked back at Hailey. Her face was straight, but her eyes were lit with delight.
“You’re kidding. You’re not kidding? Really?” she exclaimed then rushed to the bar and pulled Hailey close then hugged Clay.
“See I knew you were smarter than you pretended to be. You just wait. This will be the prettiest cake you’ve ever seen. Oh, when? I need to get ingredients and…”
They all laughed at her as Clay caught her hands that were going in all different directions as she talked.
“Slow down. We’re going in to get the rings today. Hailey’s going to call her brother and I have to talk to Kathy and see when she and Gage are both free. Plus I have to actually get divorced first. You have time. Now…you’re burning our breakfast,” he said then laughed when she jumped and rushed back to the stove.
“I’ll work. You talk. Tell me everything. What happened after I left yesterday?”
Laine blew out a quick breath and said it before anybody else could. �
��Well for starters, we damn near didn’t get here after Hailey decided to chase Ken Anderson down in the woods last night and wound up getting caught. And then Lynn pointed a rifle at him to keep him from telling us that she was the one calling the Andersons and the Andersons were calling Yates to let him know when Hailey was leaving the ranch. Clay nearly beat Ken to death. Hailey decked Lynn. And a little birdie told me that Ben Anderson mysteriously wound up with four flat tires…make that five flat tires countin’ his spare, while he was sitting out at the road waitin’ on his brother. And…
“Isobell, you’re burnin’ our breakfast again,” he said then laughed when Shack rose and pushed Isobell towards the bar and he went to the stove.
“I think that was the high points, wasn’t it? Oh…Clay asked Hailey to marry him and she said yes,” Laine finally finished with a broad smile.
Isobell shook her head in amazement then turned her gaze to Hailey. “You chased after him in the woods after what happened the last time?”
The men all laughed but Hailey grumbled, “Dang, Isobell. Out of all of that…that’s the one thing you want to talk about?”
* * *
Clay looked up then took one quick step towards her before Shack laid a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t do it, son. Trust her.”
Clay swallowed hard and looked at him then right back to where Hailey was standing at the front of the shop as they waited for the man to ring up the belt buckles he had just finished making. The smile on her face was wide, and Clay had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t the same smile. That wasn’t the smile she used to smile at him.
“Well, good morning. How are you today?”
“Hello, Mitch. I’m well. How are you?” Hailey asked. She quickly glanced inside and caught her breath when she found Clay watching her steadily but saw him nod just slightly to her. Only then did she turn back to face the man.
“I’m very well. Do you mind if I ask you a question? It’s probably a little out of line and certainly not something I’ve asked in my whole life, but…”
Hailey frowned slightly and nodded. “Go ahead.”
“Ummm…Ms. Garcia. Is she, uh…is she seeing anybody?” Mitch asked quietly.
Hailey’s eyebrows shot up and the smile went across her face immediately. “As a matter of fact she’s not. Why don’t you call the ranch sometime and talk to her?”
Mitch smiled broadly and nodded. “I might do that. It’s kind of hard to meet women that are the type you’d actually like to go out with in my job. I’ve seen her around town a few times, but it just never seemed to be the right thing to just walk up and ask her if she’d like to go out. But now that I’ve actually met her, it would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
Hailey immediately nodded and said, “It would absolutely be okay. Sure it would. I can tell you that she likes to go to the movies, she likes to read, and she loves coming down here to browse the shops.”
Mitch nodded and said, “Yeah, I knew that about the shops. I mean not that I’m following her around or anything, but I patrol down here so, uh…” He finally stopped and shook his head when Hailey burst out laughing. When she realized Clay was behind her she turned enough to slip an arm around his waist.
“Mitch, you haven’t been introduced properly to these men. Guys, this is Officer Mitch York. Mitch, this one over here is Shack. He really runs the ranch but tries not to let any of us know it. This is Laine, the ranch foreman. And this is Clay Cardell, my boss and soon to be husband,” she said as she smiled up at Clay.
She felt the tension go completely out of his body when he smiled back at her then looked up to see the wide grin on the officer’s face as he extended his hand.
“Really? Congratulations. It’s nice to meet each of you,” Mitch said as he shook each man’s hand.
“Thank you. Our pleasure,” Clay said easily.
“Mitch was just…hmmm.”
“Uh-oh,” Laine muttered.
“Hush. You know, Mitch…being fairly new in town, you probably don’t get out much…other than your job I mean. I might be able to wrangle an invitation to this wedding for you. I mean, you might run into, oh…just anybody at an event like that. Did I tell you Isobell’s making the cake for us?” she said innocently.
Mitch blushed just slightly but held her gaze for several seconds before he lifted his eyes to meet Clay’s directly.
“If she ever gets in trouble, take some advice. Hire a lawyer before you ever let her open her mouth. That was absolutely pathetic,” he said honestly then grinned when all three men burst out laughing and Hailey stomped her foot.
“Dang it. Why can’t I get this right?” she mumbled.
“I wouldn’t be opposed to a nice wedding. I look forward to hearing from you. You folks have a nice day,” he said then waved a hand as he walked away laughing.
“What was that?” Laine asked still laughing.
“He wanted to know if Isobell was seeing anybody. I thought it might be a good opportunity for them to sort of get to know each other.”
Clay shook his head and said, “Here’s some more advice. Do not tell Isobell that you’re trying to set her up. Look who I’m talking to. She’ll know as soon as you walk in the door and she takes one look at your face.”
Hailey stuck her tongue out at him but then had to laugh with them until she looked at Laine and found him frowning as he watched Mitch’s back.
“Uh-oh,” she whispered.
Clay looked down at her then followed her gaze to Laine. He slowly turned his head to look down the street then back to Laine and over to Shack in surprise.
“Huh,” he said under his breath then nudged Laine’s shoulder. “Let’s go get some rings. Never know. You might see something you wanna buy for some pretty little girl.”
Laine glanced back at him then back to Mitch again before he turned away with a slight nod. “Yeah. Maybe. Let’s go.”
“Hey, Hailey.”
They stopped to turn back and found Mitch walking back to them again without the smile that had been on his face.
“Can I talk to you folks for a few seconds. Let’s…” He stopped and glanced around then motioned to a spot a few stores down where there weren’t too many people around.
“Let’s go down here. I wasn’t going to tell you this and I probably shouldn’t. I’d consider it a favor if you didn’t let it be known it came from me,” he said as he led them to the spot then stopped and turned back to face them after he glanced around them one more time.
“Heard a funny story from one of the County boys this morning about something that happened last night. Keep in mind that this is secondhand so…seems they happened up on this truck out north of town with all of its tires flat. Two guys and a girl…young woman. The deputy started talking to them and trying to figure out what happened. He said one of the guys was beat up pretty bad and the girl had a bruise on her face, too. He thought maybe one of the men had hit her and they couldn’t give him anything that sounded logical about what they were doing off out there, so he called for some back-up. They separated the three of them and started talking to them. The longer it went on, the more suspicious they got until they finally just carried them all into the Sheriff’s office.
“They put ’em in three different rooms and got three different stories about what they were doing there. The girl said that she worked out at your place and that she was seeing the guy who got beat up. You got wind of it and beat him up because you were jealous. She claimed that you were the one who hit her, too.
“Now that guy claimed he’d been in a bar fight and his brother had come to pick him up and they brought the girl with them because he felt bad that she’d gotten in the middle of the fight and caught one of the punches.
“His brother said that he was the one who beat his brother up because he punched the girl and he didn’t abide hitting women, and that his brother had slashed his tires in retaliation when he stopped to use the bathroom on the side of the road,” he said as he looked directly at C
lay while he was relating all of this.
“None of that is the truth,” Clay said quietly.
“I know. Let me finish. See a lot of people think the County boys work for the County because they’re not smart enough or good enough to work for a real police force like the State or a city one. That’s a misconception that quite often works in their favor. Those three people they had in there last night probably fall into that category because the longer the night went on, the more their stories changed. It was the one who was all beat up that finally broke.