To Love A Cowboy

by Barbara Ankrum

  As the evening progressed, the tension that had been with them for the past few days seemed to melt away. This was the most relaxed she’d seen Rafe in days. He told awful jokes, and Evan did his best to outdo him. They all laughed and laughed.

  Once or twice, as Evan was amusing them with the story of exactly how he and Macky had come back covered head to toe in mud this afternoon, she’d caught Rafe watching her. When their eyes met for the second time, he didn’t look away. Instead, he held her gaze with his for a long, bittersweet moment that left them both shaken.

  Just as Evan took a breath, Rafe spotted an older woman with fire-engine-red hair coming toward their table. Her smile was as bright as her hair. “Well, it’s about time you gave your friend here time off for good behavior from that ranch of yours, Rafe. Hi,” she said to Carly, offering her hand. “I’m Chicky Green. I run the feed store, and me and Rafe go way back. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Carly couldn’t help but smile. “Hi, I’m Carly Jamison. And the pleasure’s mine.”

  Chicky tsked at the cast on Carly’s leg. “I heard about that accident you had in Nevada. Why, Rafe went tearing out of here like nobody’s business in the middle of the night on Jim Noble’s cargo pl—”

  “Hey, Chicky.” Rafe bussed her on the cheek, cutting her off. “In for pizza tonight?”

  Chicky touched her cheek and grinned. “Yes, and it was quite tasty, thank you. Now, Jamison...Jamison... That name sounds awfully familiar. You from around here?”

  “Years ago. I was a student at Fort Lewis College.”

  As if the pieces had just fallen into place, Chicky exclaimed, “Jamison! Carly Jamison? You’re a lawyer, aren’t you? I remember now. You became a big-time public-defender lawyer in Los Angeles, didn’t you? There was a write-up in our local newspaper about you a few years back, after that case you won for that movie star’s son. What was his name?”

  “Garrison,” she said, glancing at Rafe and wondering if he’d read that story, too. She found him watching her with a wary sense of pride. “Tim Garrison.”

  It was one of the cases she was most proud of. For reasons of his own, Tim had refused his mother’s expensive personal attorney in favor of Carly’s experience and personal conviction about his innocence. She’d sweated blood over that case, and in the end she’d cleared his name and uncovered evidence to convict another man. For once, she thought, justice had prevailed.

  “That’s right,” Chicky said. “Letta Garrison’s son. And they caught the real killer only a month or so later, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” Carly said, the memory of that victory still fresh in her memory. “Yes, they did. A full confession.”

  “Right,” Chicky said, pleased that she’d gotten it straight. “There was a ‘local student makes good’ kind of personal-interest story in the paper about it.”

  Carly vaguely remembered the phone call she’d gotten in the middle of a harried week from an overeager reporter from Durango. It had taken her by surprise, but she’d never imagined anything had really come of the brief conversation they had.

  “You know how those newspaper reporters exaggerate things,” she told Chicky. “I just did my job.”

  Chicky wasn’t buying. “Sure you did.” She turned to Rafe teasingly. “And your taste is certainly improving.”

  “Oh,” he said watching Carly, “it hasn’t changed that much over the years.”

  Heat shot through Carly at his look.

  “So,” Chicky went on, “tell me you’re stayin’. We could use a good lawyer in this town. One who didn’t slither out from under some rock.”

  “Actually...” Carly began.

  “Carly’s got a job waiting for her in Cincinnati,” Rafe put in. “A partnership.”

  Chicky didn’t try to hide her disappointment, and she and Rafe exchanged some uninterpretable look. “Well, that’s a shame. A pure shame. I—I should say congratulations. I was just hopin’ you might’ve found somethin’ here to keep you.” Her gaze slid back to Rafe.

  Oh, she’d found something, Carly thought, toying with the straw in her soda. “I love this place,” she said, staring at her drink. “I always have.”

  “Well, that’s—” Chicky began.

  Rafe touched Evan’s shoulder and said, “Evan, this is Ms. Green, an old friend of mine. Chicky, I’d like you to meet Evan, My son.”

  Chicky didn’t appear to be the sort of woman who was easy to surprise, but shock flickered across her expression. “Well, dust my jingle bobs.” She held out her hand formally to Evan. “It’s a real pleasure to meet you, Evan. A real pleasure.”

  Evan shook her hand gravely. “You’ve got pretty hair.” He grinned at her blush. His smile had never reminded Carly more of Rafe’s than it did now. Not even Chicky could miss it.

  “I can see you’ve inherited your daddy’s wicked charm. You know, he can charm those freckles right off your nose—” she slid a meaningful look to Rafe “—if he puts his mind to it.”

  “Now, Chicky,” Rafe drawled mildly, “you know I reserve all my charm for you.”

  “That’s your first mistake, Rafe Kellard,” she said, jabbing him in the chest with her finger. “Carly, don’t be a stranger. Rafe’s friends are special to me. If you ever need anything, you just holler, you hear?”

  “Thanks, Chicky.” When Carly took the other woman’s hand, she couldn’t miss the covert squeeze of emphasis. “I will.”

  “Evan. You come see me, you hear? I keep a candy jar full of licorice just for boys like you.”

  Evan’s face lit up and Chicky turned to Rafe. “And you—I’ll talk to you later.”

  Properly chastened, Rafe watched Chicky’s regal exit with resignation. First Gus, now Chicky. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, without battling the town’s matchmakers. Chicky practically ran the whole damn town, knew everybody and everything about them. It was killing her that she didn’t know what was going on with him and Carly.

  But more than that, he knew that Chicky really cared about him and that she held out a faint hope that someday he’d find someone to settle down with. Well, she’d be waiting until the cows came home for that, he thought, because Carly Jamison was already as good as gone.

  Chapter 11

  Smoke from the branding fire curled lazily against the indigo sky and mingled with the sharp tang of singed hair and the baleful lowing of cattle. From the edge of the fire, Rafe looked out over the operation with a bittersweet sense of pride, wondering if this was the last time he’d be branding. They’d been at it all morning, and they were nearly done with the first batch of spring calves.

  In the distance, he saw Gus, riding Rafe’s cutting horse, Bogus, and Evan—aboard Tampico—cutting calves from the herd. Macky was hard at their heels, doing his part as the cow dog he thought he was.

  Evan, whom Rafe had outfitted in miniature leather chaps and a serious hat, looked the part, but had yet to successfully drop his loop over a calf. He seemed content, however, to help Gus as one of the men. They’d gone over the rules a dozen times this morning before riding out: no wandering off, no getting near the irons and no arguing about the rules. Carly had stayed behind, giving her best impression of calm.

  Rafe’s thoughts had drifted to her this morning more often than he wanted to admit. He’d recalled the way she looked last night at J.J.’s, her silvery-blond hair ruffled by the evening breeze, every bit the lady he knew she was. They’d looked like a family, and for a few moments, he’d indulged himself in what-if fantasies. What if she wanted to stay? What if his ranch was solid? What if nine years hadn’t come between them?

  But none of that mattered. Reality was what mattered. His truth was right here on this ranch—struggling to make ends meet and holding all the fragile strands together. It was what he was—who he was. But his truth and Carly’s were worlds apart. If he was going to fail, he couldn’t do it in front of Carly. He knew that much about himself. She meant too much to him for him to let that happen.


  Rafe had hired three extra hands for the day of branding. All of them worked together like an efficient machine—roping calves, doping wounds, castrating bulls and marking them with the Rocking K brand.

  Pedro’s savvy around branding irons was legendary, and he rarely botched a branding. With the steady hand of an artist, he burned the hide just enough to peel, but not sear—leaving a clear, readable brand.

  Ben Yeager, one of the men Rafe had hired, expertly cropped the ears of each calf to match its mother’s crop. And the other two, Sam Thurston and Cal Baker, stretched the calf out by its legs. After Rafe had vaccinated the calf and doped it for screwworms, Cal removed his knee from the neck of the poor, put-upon creature and unheeled it. It bolted upright, bawling for its mama.

  Rafe looked up to find Gus and Evan riding toward him, a cloud of dust swirling in their wake. Gus handed over the calf to Ben.

  “Drop-split the right, and over-slope-split the left,” he called, specifying the earmarks.

  Ben repeated it, then threw the calf to the ground, and he and Cal stretched it out for Pedro.

  “Doesn’t it hurt ’em?” Evan asked Rafe as he pulled up beside him.

  “A little,” he said honestly, “but it also protects them. They’d be easy prey for rustlers and disease if we didn’t do this.”

  Even after a morning of it, the city boy in Evan still flinched as he watched Pedro do his job. He was working hard to be one of the men. But Rafe knew the adjustment had only just begun. Still, it pleased him immensely that Evan wanted to fit in.

  Gus dismounted nearby as Rafe filled a syringe with vaccine. The older man groaned as his feet hit the dirt. “Lordy, these bones are gettin’ too old for this type of work.”

  “That’ll be the day.” Rafe sent liquid squirting out of the tip of the needle. “Couldn’t have anything to do with it being close to noon, or that food basket Laurie sent over for the crew, could it?”

  Gus’s eyebrows went up innocently. “Basket?”

  Evan laughed. “You know, the one you were sniffing earlier in the back of Rafe’s truck.”

  Gus reddened with a grin. “Oh, you mean that basket! Well, come to think of it, my stomach is nearly ticklin’ my backbone. Whattaya say we break for some grub? I’ll even do the fixin’.”

  Cal released the calf Rafe had just injected. He straightened. “I say, since that’s the last calf in this group, let’s eat.”

  They did so standing around the tail of Rafe’s pickup, feasting on gourmet sandwiches Laurie had concocted of turkey, roasted peppers and some kind of unbelievably good sauce. As always when Laurie packed a basket, she’d included a pie—this time cherry. Rafe knew she was experimenting with new recipes for her catering business and this basket was, in a way, test marketing. Nobody complained about their guinea-pig status, least of all, Gus.

  Half an hour later, they were mounted and ready to herd up a new bunch of calves into the makeshift pen. Gus stayed behind to clean up, while Rafe took Bogus and followed the others toward the scattered herd.

  The land here swelled and dipped in ancient furrows born of the fisting San Juans millions of years ago. Arroyos, cut from long-ago streams, angled sharply across the landscape, then vanished under a canopy of fragrant chaparral and sage, whose shade the cattle sought out.

  It was only at times like this, that Rafe begrudged them that small comfort, because it made rounding up calves twice as difficult. But his men were experienced, and the whole procedure made Macky feel wildly self-important.

  They’d been working for nearly a half hour when Rafe dropped his rope around a cow’s horns, enticing her from a thicket of chaparral. Her calf, like the others, followed unsuspectingly. Lost in thought, Rafe made his way to the summit of the arroyo.

  Once there, he spotted Ben a few dozen feet away, hauling his own find toward the branding corral. In the distance, he could see Cal and Pedro heading for the rapidly filling pen.

  It took a moment to notice what was missing from this picture.

  Evan.

  It struck him like a sickening jolt of cold that the boy was nowhere in sight and that Rafe had seen him last right before he headed down into the arroyo. He’d been thinking about Carly and the ranch and everything else but what he was supposed to be thinking about.

  Panic edged through him as he searched the horizon.

  Nothing.

  “Evan!” he shouted, cupping his hands around his mouth.

  Nothing.

  He dropped his rope and kicked Bogus toward the pen at a lope. He pulled up sharply near the truck.

  “Where’s Evan?” he shouted at Gus.

  Gus’s hand stopped halfway to the syringe bottle he was reaching for. “I thought he was with you.” The same awful dread crept into Gus’s expression. There were a hundred places for a boy to get lost out here. A hundred places to fall.

  “Dammit!” Rafe swore. “He was right there. I lost track of him somehow.” How could he have lost him?

  Cal edged his horse toward them. “I thought I saw him go that way,” he said, pointing west. “I thought he was followin’ you, Rafe.”

  The direction he was pointing was fifty yards beyond the arroyo Rafe had descended into.

  “Ben, Cal, Pedro!” he shouted. “Drop what you’re doing and spread out. He can’t be far. I saw him not fifteen minutes ago. But he doesn’t know this country.”

  Pedro mounted up, yanked his rifle from the boot of his saddle and checked the load. Rafe watched him, feeling his chest go tight.

  Pedro slid a dark look over at him. “El gato. The cat—he is still out here somewhere, jefe.”

  The weight of the situation descended on Rafe full force. The cat. Of course. The goddamn cat who’d been slaughtering his livestock like they were sitting ducks at a carnival.

  He tore his own rifle from his boot and spurred Bogus back in the direction from which he’d come. What were the odds of that cat coming down here now, in daylight?

  The answer sent a chill down his spine. The last two calves he found had still been warm by three in the afternoon.

  The thought of telling Carly he’d lost her son flashed through his mind with sickening dread. What had he been thinking, losing track of Evan that way? What the hell kind of father misplaced his son in the middle of a field?

  He pulled up short, listening. He heard nothing but the gentle breeze pushing the air to the east, and the sound of the nearby cows chewing their cuds.

  He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted Evan’s name.

  Evan had gone farther than he intended. It was the sound of the calf bawling that had drawn him here, in this thicket of chaparral and some thorny bush that kept plucking at his new leather chaps. In fact, he’d thought Rafe was right behind him, but when he turned around, he couldn’t see him anywhere. Besides, he was so close to the cow, he didn’t think Rafe would mind, once he saw how he’d rescued it from the tangle it was caught in.

  After all, Evan reasoned, he hadn’t been able to rope a single cow all morning. He was afraid Rafe might be sorry he’d brought him if he didn’t do something to help the roundup.

  He ran a hand down the hide of the bawling calf. “It’s okay,” he told it, plucking gingerly at the nasty prickered branch that had wound around its legs and back. “I’ll get you out of here. Rafe’ll be so proud of me, maybe he won’t even brand you. Maybe.” he said, ripping the branch aside with the toe of his boot, “he’ll let me take you home and put you in the barn. I could call you—”

  Evan frowned at the prickly tug on his back. The branch he’d just released from the calf had caught him across the flannel of his shirt and held tight. He twisted, trying to untangle himself, but only managed to make it worse. Another bit at the back of his jeans.

  “Ow!” Evan bit out in frustration. But the more he struggled, the worse it got. Humiliation stung his eyes. He was stuck, just like the stupid cow! He’d never be a cowboy at this rate.

  Calf and boy stared at one another in unique empa
thy. The sound of a breaking branch drew Evan’s gaze behind him. He couldn’t see anything, but bushes. “Rafe?” he called, half hoping it wasn’t, so that he couldn’t see what a mess he’d made of things.

  No one answered, but Tampico shied and took off running past him, down the gulch.

  “Hey!” he called after him. “Where’re you going, you stupid horse? You can’t just leave me here!”

  The sound came again.

  “Gus?”

  A low rumbling sound, like an L.A. car with a bad engine, came from just beyond the brush. Evan’s mouth went dry.

  “P-Pedro?” The word was barely a whisper.

  The huge cat appeared like a ghost through the curtain of green twenty-five feet away. Evan’s mouth fell open, and his eyes went round. He tried to scream, but no sound came out. He tugged at his trapped shirt, trying to rip it from the thorns without taking his eyes off the cat, but it was hopelessly tangled. His fingers fumbled stiffly for the buttons on the front of his shirt.

  Pop went the first. Then the second. He ripped off the third and fourth as the cat started toward him.. “N-nice kitty,” he whispered hoarsely as he yanked his hands out of the sleeves. “Go away. G-go away!”

  The cat snarled loudly and started for Evan at the same moment he screamed and bolted for the exit to the canyon. Pumping his legs as hard as he could, he waited for the feel of the sharp claws digging into his back.

  What he heard was a gunshot, so close it made his ears ache, and the heavy thud of something falling behind him.

  Breathing hard, Evan kept running blindly through the thicket. Branches slapped at him, and tore at his bare skin, but he didn’t stop until he heard Rafe’s voice close behind him.

  “Evan!” On foot, Rafe plunged through the underbrush toward him, throwing his rifle aside to kneel down and grab him hard in his arms. Evan pressed his face against Rafe’s shirt and clung tight. He felt like a baby, crying the way he was.