“What did you come up with?” Katie asked.
Dusty looked over at her and said, “Are you willing to let me live the way I was living out there in California?”
“It’s not my place to tell you how to live,” Katie said, “but if you mean have a little house of your own and run the show if you think the land will support the vines, yes. We’ve practically got ourselves a damned compound out at the Rocking L anyway.”
Dusty looked at her appraisingly. “You’re more than capable of learning everything about a vineyard for yourself, Katie,” she said. “Why do you want me to manage it for you?”
“I won’t lie to you, Dusty,” she said. “It’s not just the vineyard. I need a right hand . . . well, left one I guess,” she grinned. “There’s a hell of a lot to keep up with out there on the Rocking L now and I can’t keep relying on Josh Baxter to be my manager. Since he’s been working with Jake and the Institute doing all the official photography, I’ve never seen him happier. He pitched in after I was hurt like a top hand, but helping me run the ranch isn’t what he really wants to do. You’ll see what I mean. The damn place is working alive with people half the time and they all come to me because . . .”
“You’re the boss of the Rocking L,” Dusty finished.
“Right,” Kate said. “And the boss would like to have somebody around other than her sisters who is willing to tell her she’s wrong or being a bitch or just being dog stubborn. I can’t think of a better candidate than you, Dusty. What do you say?”
Dusty finished off the last bite of her pie and downed the rest of her coffee. “I say let’s take a ride out to the Rocking L and you show me around the place . . . Boss Lady.”
95
When Kate and Dusty pulled through the front gate at the Rocking L, Jake waved to them from the Institute building, motioning for them to join him.
“He must have found something interesting this morning in the cave,” Kate said, as the two women climbed out of the pickup.
“I thought you told me the cave collapsed,” Dusty said, falling in beside Kate for the short walk across the yard.
“It did,” she replied, “so they’re working through the back door. The cave has another opening that comes out on the river bank due south of here.”
As they drew closer to the Institute, Dusty dropped her voice. “That’s your professor?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Kate said, almost shyly. “That’s him. What do you think?”
Dusty took in Jake’s tall frame, aquiline good looks, and thick, sandy hair. “Does that man actually have dimples?” she whispered.
“He does,” Kate answered.
“What color are his eyes?”
“Kinda blue green.”
“Damn,” Dusty whispered. “I even like those John Lennon glasses he’s wearing.”
“So do I,” Kate said. “Now hush and be nice.”
As they came within a few feet of where Jake was standing, Kate said warmly, “Hello, Professor.”
Jake smiled. “Hi, honey,” he said. “You’re not going to believe what we found today! We’re working our way back toward what we thought of as the . . .”
Kate held up her hand. “Slow down,” she laughed. “Let me introduce you to the new manager of the Rocking L. Jake Martin, meet Dusty Jackson.”
Coloring slightly, Jake held out his hand. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I get carried away about my work.”
“Nothing wrong with that,” Dusty grinned, shaking his hand. “A man ought to do something for a living that he loves, and then he’ll never work a day in his life.”
From her position slightly behind and to the side of the two of them, Kate quietly watched Jake’s reaction to Dusty. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would try to cut in on a friend’s relationship, but Kate had never really had a chance to observe Jake around any women other than her own sisters.
Dusty was still the same beautiful, confident, sexy woman she’d always been. There was no denying the effect she had on men even when she wasn’t trying to get their attention, which was actually most of the time.
Dusty liked to play with men, but she’d never shown the slightest interest in being committed to one. It was a good bet that anytime she set her sights on hooking a member of the opposite sex, she was about half drunk or just plain bored.
Through the years Kate had wondered if the man existed who could really capture Dusty Jackson’s attention and keep it. What Kate had not stopped to consider was that she was also a handsome woman. She didn’t realize that men followed her with their eyes as well, or that her calm self-assurance was every bit as alluring as Dusty’s forthright flirting.
Even as girls, they’d been an odd pair. Dusty, audacious and fearless; Kate, serious and studious. Yet they’d been friends since the first grade. Just as they entered middle school, both girls shot up in height, towering over all the boys in their class in group photo after group photo.
Their height might have allowed them to look men in the eye, but it was their ability to play the games men played that let them move through the world mostly unhindered by the rules that applied to other girls. But life wasn’t as easy for either of them as it might have appeared to the casual observer.
Kate suffered under Langston’s constant criticism, and at 15 took on the job of raising her sisters. Dusty chafed against her mother’s overt favoritism toward Rafe, Dusty’s older brother by two years. There was no love lost between the siblings and only Frank Jackson’s moderating hand prevented Mildred Jackson from pitting her children against one another to an even greater extent.
As Dusty and Kate grew into their later teen years, Dusty took to drinking a little too much, running with a crowd that was a little too fast, and taking foolish chances. Kate knew her friend was only trying to get attention, and on more than one occasion, with a few quiet words, Kate pulled Dusty out of some bad situations.
That had been what happened the infamous night at the Bloody Bucket their senior year. Dusty wasn’t old enough to be drinking legally, but at 18 she looked like a woman in her 30s, especially when she was leaning over a pool table with a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth and more than enough cleavage on display. The trouble started when some old gal decided Dusty was after her man.
Kate was on her way home from a rare night at the movies, a privilege Langston had granted unexpectedly. As she drove by the Bucket, she saw Dusty’s pickup out front, and then she saw three drunks come flying out the door like they were running for their lives.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Kate wheeled the truck into the parking lot. When she went through the door, Dusty had a pool cue reversed in her hands, holding it like a bat confronting a woman brandishing a broken beer bottle. Dusty caught sight of Kate out of the corner of her eye and said, “Get out of here, Katie. This is no place for you.”
“It’s no place for you either,” Kate shot back. She turned toward the woman with the beer bottle and asked, “What did she do to you?”
The woman looked Kate up and down, blinked through the alcohol fogging her brain, and said, “Slut made a move on my man.”
Kate laughed. “No, she didn’t,” she said.
“You calling me a liar, bitch?” the woman asked, taking a step forward.
Dusty drew back the pool cue, but Kate held up her hand. “No, I’m not calling you a liar,” she said, “but she doesn’t pick up men. They pick her up. You want to get pissed at someone, get pissed at your boyfriend.”
The woman seemed to consider that possibility for a minute and then turned to a cowboy who was now swiveling his head nervously from her to Kate and back again. “Did you come on to her?” the woman demanded.
“B . . . b . . . baby,” he stammered. “I would never . . .”
“You son of a bitch,” she declared. “You only call me ‘baby’ when you’re guilty.”
Kate looked at Dusty. “We’re leaving,” she said. “Now.”
“Fine by
me,” Dusty said, still holding the pool cue and edging toward the door.
At just that moment, Kate turned slightly and over her shoulder she heard the cowboy say, “I’m telling you, she had her hand on my . . .”
The woman with the beer bottle let out a stream of profanity and lunged at Dusty, but Kate was in the way. Dusty took a step to the left and broke the pool cue over the woman’s head just as she raked the broken beer bottle across the sleeve of Kate’s shirt, ripping the fabric and leaving a thin line of blood on the exposed skin.
The woman went down in a crumpled heap as a voice at the door said, “What in the hell is going on here, Dusty?”
Sheriff Lester Harper stood at the entrance to the bar, a scowl of displeasure plastered on his florid face.
“Why in the hell do you have to assume it was me that started it, Lester?” Dusty said, her temper flaring more from fear than anything else.
Kate put a hand on her friend’s shoulder. Dusty was trembling. “Simmer down, Dusty,” she said. “I’m fine. Don’t go poking rattlesnakes.”
“Even fat ones?” Dusty said.
Kate rolled her eyes and thought, “Here we go.”
Harper’s face got even redder at the reference to his ample gut. “Maybe the reason I think you started it is because you’re standing there with a busted pool cue in your hand looking guilty as hell,” he snapped. “Your parents are good Christians, and you’re nothing but a disgrace. I’m hauling your ass in.”
It took Kate the better part of an hour to talk Lester down and explain what really happened. Dusty didn’t go to jail, but by morning, it was all over town that she started a fight in the Bloody Bucket.
When Langston found out that Kate was there that night, he was livid with rage and pointed in his judgment of Dusty Jackson’s character. In one of her first acts of overt defiance against her father, Kate’s own temper rose to the surface.
“Goddamn it, Daddy,” she said hotly. “Dusty didn’t start that fight. She didn’t come on to that cowboy, but she sure as hell kept me from getting stabbed with a broken beer bottle. You shut your damned mouth about her. She’s my friend.”
An odd look came over Langston Lockwood’s face; equal parts amusement, pride, and understanding. He regarded his daughter silently for a moment and then, to her utter astonishment, said, “Alright, Sister. I had a friend like that once. But if I ever hear you’ve set foot in the Bucket again, I’ll tan your hide.”
Still stunned by his abrupt about-face, Kate could do little more than manage a choked, “Yes, sir.”
Langston put on his hat, marched out the door, and the matter was never discussed again. But the week after graduation Dusty left town, and in the years since, she and Kate had only seen one another sporadically. The odd postcard came in, generally from some town on the rodeo circuit, but never with more information than a breezy line or two.
When Frank Jackson died, Kate went to the funeral, moving to stand beside her friend when Dusty looked at her in a mute appeal for companionship.
That night the two of them sat alone beside a fire on the riverbank and Dusty wept inconsolably into Kate’s shoulder for the loss of the only person who had ever loved her without reservation.
So as Kate watched Dusty shake Jake Martin’s hand, she wasn’t afraid that her friend would try to steal this man that Kate had so uncharacteristically let into her heart. But she did find herself a little uneasy about what Jake’s reaction to Dusty might be.
But all Kate saw playing out before her was a friendly greeting to a stranger before Jake’s blue-green eyes turned toward her and came alive with love. In that boyish way of his that always melted her heart, Jake said, “Hey, can a happy archaeologist get a hug?”
The sudden tightening of her throat made Kate’s voice deeper than usual when she said, “I’ll go you one better that that.” Without warning, she leaned in and kissed Jake, only drawing back slightly when their lips parted to ask in the same low tone, “That suit you, Professor?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Kate saw Dusty grin and suddenly get very interested in the windmill. Jake’s face flushed and his eyebrows shot up in surprise and pleasure. Kate was not a woman to engage in public displays of affection.
“Wow,” he said, a little breathlessly. “Can you tell me what I did to deserve that so I can do more of it?”
He was rewarded with a throaty chuckle. “Just keep being yourself,” Kate said softly.
“I can do that,” Jake said earnestly, still grinning.
“Well,” Kate said in a louder tone, “are you going to tell us what’s got you so excited?”
Jake’s eyes lit up even more. “Come on,” he said, turning on his heel and heading straight toward the door. “I’ll show you. It’s in here.”
As the two women moved to follow him, Dusty gave Kate the thumbs-up sign and mouthed, “Keep this one.”
Kate mouthed back, “I plan to.”
Jake went into the main lab and over to a work table that held a single artifact, an elaborate sculpture of a double-headed serpent. The snakes’ mouths were open and displayed jagged teeth, while the single body was folded onto itself to form five loops. The piece was roughly a foot and a half in length and maybe 8 inches tall.
“It’s inlaid with turquoise, crab shells, and conch shells,” Jake said. “There’s one just like it in the British Museum in London, but there are only 25 similar pieces in all of Europe. It’s believed some of them were given to Cortes by the Aztec emperor Montezuma in 1519.”
“If I remember correctly, those gifts didn’t get Montezuma much leverage with the Spanish,” Dusty said, bending down to get a closer look.
“They didn’t,” Jake agreed, “but this piece definitely ties the contents of the cave here on the ranch to Montezuma. It’s a huge find.”
Glancing around the room, Dusty saw a series of work tables, all covered with artifacts in various stages of examination and conservation. “How much stuff is in that cave anyway?” she asked.
“We really don’t know,” Jake answered, “but I’d say we have years of work ahead of us.” He looked at Kate. “Think you can stand me that long?” he asked.
She smiled back at him and said, “If we start getting bored with each other, we can always get trapped in another treasure cave.”
Dusty shook her head. “I gotta tell you, Katie, I’ve had some pretty unusual starts to relationships, but you got me beat with that story.”
All three of them laughed. “It wasn’t planned,” Jake assured her. “But frankly, it almost took dropping a mountain on her head to get her to look at me twice.”
“Not true, Professor,” Kate teased, “dropping the mountain on my head just got me to mention that I had taken the second look.”
“She’s always been a little hard headed,” Dusty said. “I remember this one time . . .”
“Alright, that’s enough of that,” Kate interrupted. “We’re going to leave you to your work, Professor, and I’m going to get Dusty settled and have a little talk with her about the rules regarding classified information.”
“Who, me?” Dusty asked, feigning innocence.
Kate cocked an eyebrow in her direction and then said to Jake, “See you for supper?”
“I’ll be there,” he said, picking up a large magnifying glass to resume his examination of the artifact. Then he paused, thought for a second, and said, “Text me if I’m late?”
As the two women stepped outside, Dusty said, “Absent-minded academic type?”
“He gets completely absorbed in what he’s doing,” Kate said. “I swear to God a bomb could go off right outside the building and he’d never notice.”
“You have to admit that artifact was gorgeous,” Dusty said, reaching into the bed of the truck and pulling out the first of two duffel bags. “He must be in hog heaven.”
“He is indeed,” Kate agreed. “Okay. Now, you have two choices. Guest room at the main house or the hunting cabin. We don’t lease the place anymo
re during the season.”
Without hesitation, Dusty said, “I’ll take the cabin.
“I figured you would,” Kate grinned. “It’s right over there.” She pointed to a small building not much larger than a storage shed, set well away from the house in a grove of live oaks.
Dusty’s eyes brightened. “That is my kind of place,” she said.
“You’re welcome to make it your own,” Kate said, “or we can build you something that will suit you better. That seems to be what we do around here these days, build houses.”
“Mandy’s living in the old house?” Dusty asked.
“Yep. And you won’t recognize it,” Kate said. “She renovated the whole place. And just before the accident, they finished a new pool. Jenny’s living over there by the barn in those two converted shipping containers. The first one is her studio, and she and Josh live in the second one.”
“Those things are cool,” Dusty said. “I’ve thought about doing that myself. You’re in the main ranch house?”
“Yes.”
“And the professor?”
Kate cut her a look. “Nosy, much?” she said flatly.
“Well?” Dusty prodded. “You know you’re gonna tell me.”
Kate made a grumbling noise in the back of her throat. “I’m set in my ways,” she said, “but let’s just say we co-habitate a few nights a week. There’s an apartment behind the Institute where he officially lives.”
“A little ‘cohabitation’ can be good for the soul, darling,” Dusty grinned. Then, growing more serious, she added, “Langston never let you take a second look at a man. It has to feel good to make your own choices in life.”
Kate kicked at a rock with the toe of her boot. “It does and it doesn’t,” she admitted uncomfortably.
“What do you mean?” Dusty asked, frowning.
“Any man who wants to be with me is going to have to give me a lot of room,” Kate said. “I really am set in my ways. I get crowded pretty easy and go to slinging my head.”
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