“How is Isabelle?” Bret asked.
“The same as ever,” Zeke said. “She’d like to see you.”
Bret knew she would, and that made him feel guilty. He knew she felt all of the orphans were as much her children as her daughter, Eden.
“I’d like to see her, too, but there are some things I have to do first.”
All three were silent for a few minutes.
“How do you want us to set about finding these rustlers?” Zeke asked. “If it’s one of the cowhands, he’s not going to do anything while we’re here.”
“I’ve been thinking about having Sam say he doesn’t want you to work for him,” Bret said. “That way you could disappear, I could make myself scarce for a few days, and the informer would think the coast was clear to start again.”
“Do you think Sam would agree to that?”
“He’ll agree to anything he thinks will make things safe for his daughter.”
“And how do we find out if Sam has confidence in us?” Zeke asked.
“We’ll talk to him tonight. Maybe you should hang out with the rest of the crew. Make yourselves unpopular without going too far. That will give Lonnie a reason to tell Sam not to hire you.”
“We can do that easy enough,” Zeke said, looking at Hawk. “Just get him started acting like an Indian.”
“You mean you expect me to put up with something like that in my kitchen?” Bertie said to Emily as she looked at Jinx as if he were some kind of rodent that had invaded her domain. “He’s not even clean.”
“I can wash up,” Jinx said.
“He won’t be here for long,” Emily said. “Bret plans to take him to his parents’ ranch when he goes back to Fort Worth.”
“What would a respectable woman want with a creature like that?” Bertie demanded.
Emily had been afraid Bertie wouldn’t be happy. She stood over her stove like she was protecting it from attack and glared at Jinx. “If you want him so much, you take him,” Bertie said. “He ought to fit right into the stables.”
“He’s too young to work with the men.” Emily was so stunned by Bertie’s reaction, she was tempted to say something very sharp until she noticed that neither Bertie nor Jinx was looking at her. They were glaring at each other.
“You’re a mean old woman,” Jinx said.
“You’re a dirty varmint,” Bertie replied.
“I wouldn’t tote your wood if you was to beg me.”
“You’d keep the wood box filled or I’d take the skin off your backside.”
“You’d never catch me.”
Emily watched in amazement as they traded insults. It took a few minutes before she realized they weren’t getting ready to kill each other. Instead, in a manner that was totally foreign to her, they were setting up the parameters of their relationship.
“You’re too skinny to be worth anything,” Bertie said.
“I don’t have to be bigger than a market steer to tote wood.”
Bertie wasn’t fat, but she was big-boned and taller than every man on the ranch except Bret. Apparently, size didn’t impress Jinx.
“It’d be a waste of food to feed a scoundrel like you,” Bertie said.
“How do I know anything you cook is decent enough to eat?”
“You won’t see nobody pushing away anything I cook.”
“I’ll leave you two to settle things between you,” Emily said.
She had no idea how such an exchange could be the start of a working relationship, but it was obvious Bertie was beginning to unbend toward Jinx. She had stopped waving her big knife, and Jinx no longer stood with the table between them. The volume of their shouting had diminished to a growl; their gazes were no longer locked in mortal combat. Emily figured if she left them to it, they would manage to work something out. She was still shaking her head when Bret entered the house.
“Are your brothers settled in the bunkhouse?” she asked.
“Not yet. I’ve been thinking about the best way to find the rustlers, and I think I need to change my plans.”
“How?”
He explained his reason for her father saying he didn’t want Zeke and Hawk to work for him.
“Do you think the rustlers will believe it?”
“I don’t know, but we have to catch them in the act.”
When they went to his office to speak to him about it, Sam understood almost immediately. “All you want out of me is an acting job?”
“You can act as querulous and ill-tempered as you want,” Bret said.
“Do I get to meet your brothers?”
“Have Lonnie bring them. It’ll be better if I’m not in the room. That way I won’t have to pretend to defend them.”
Later that evening, an angry Zeke and Hawk stormed out of Sam’s office, followed by a confused Lonnie.
“Sam doesn’t want them to work for him,” Lonnie said to Bret. “He’s not having a black man or an Indian on his crew.”
“They’re my brothers,” Bret said. “I can vouch for them.”
“Sam said they were to leave first thing in the morning. He said if any cows were missing after they left, he’d hunt them down.”
Bret wished he could have been in the room. Apparently, Sam had put on quite an act.
“I’ve got to go,” Lonnie said. “Sam said I wasn’t to let them out of my sight.”
Bret waited until Lonnie had left the house before going into Sam’s office. “It looks like you should have been an actor.” Bret’s feeling of satisfaction at the way his plan was going turned to concern when he saw Sam. The old man looked faded and lethargic.
“I guess all that blustering was too much for him,” Emily said, looking worried. “As soon as Lonnie left, he seemed to collapse.”
“I’m just tired,” Sam said.
He was leaning against a bank of pillows, his full head of dark brown hair in stark contrast to the white pillowcases. The lack of gray in his hair accentuated his pallor. Even his lips had lost their color.
“Let me help you lie down,” Bret said.
It took only a few minutes for Bret and Emily to make him comfortable, but Bret could tell that Sam’s condition was getting worse each day. He wouldn’t last much longer. Even after he relaxed, he still struggled to get his breath.
“They look like good men, those brothers of yours,” Sam said.
“They are. I was lucky they were free to come.”
“I can’t imagine the three of you growing up together. Must have had some interesting times.”
“A few,” Bret said. “But our parents taught us to believe our differences were less important than the things we had in common.”
“You make sure those boys have everything they need before they leave tomorrow. I told Lonnie to give them enough supplies to get off my land without having to stop, so you won’t have any trouble with him.”
Sam’s eyes had closed before he finished his last sentence. Bret waited while Emily adjusted the bedspread, and then they left the room together. “I wouldn’t have asked him to do this if I’d known it would take so much out of him.”
“I tried to get him to let me do it, but he said as long as he owned the ranch, he’d be the one to make the decisions.” Emily looked so worried, Bret put his arm around her shoulder to comfort her. She leaned against him. “It makes him feel better to have some part in running the ranch. Being confined to bed is hard on him.”
“It’s hard on you, too.”
A wan smile was all Emily could muster. “Having you here has made it easier.”
“How?” He would have expected her to feel he was in the way.
“I wouldn’t have known what to do about the rustlers. And you worked out a compromise about Galveston I think both of us can live with.”
Bret dropped a kiss on her forehead, wished he’d kissed her lips instead.
“Of course, I may not forgive you for setting Jinx on me.” She told him about the unaccountable exchange between Bertie and Jinx. “When sh
e let Jinx help her bring the food to the table, I knew she’d taken a liking to him. It’s your doing, of course.”
“How do you figure that?”
“She adores you. You could have brought a monster in here, and she’d have taken him in.”
“I never figured Jinx would follow me across half of Texas,” Bret said, laughing.
“He believes in you. It seems a lot of people do.”
That stopped him in his tracks. Nobody had ever said that to him.
She pulled him down so she could give him a light kiss on his mouth. “I really don’t know what I’d have done without you.”
Bret would have liked nothing better than to continue doing what Emily had started. Her kiss was stretching the limits of his control to the danger point. He really wanted to make love to her. It had taken him a while to admit it, but he knew that was exactly what he wanted to do. And he knew it was the one thing he absolutely could not do.
“I’d love to stay here and listen to how wonderful I am,” he said, trying to achieve a lightness he didn’t feel, “but I have to confer with my brothers.”
“I’m sorry I won’t get a chance to get to know them.”
Bret wasn’t. He’d already seen the question in their eyes about his relationship with Emily. He didn’t have an answer for himself. What could he possibly say to them?
Chapter Fifteen
“Once you’ve found a place to camp, let me know,” Bret told his brothers in an undertone. “We need to keep in touch with each other.”
They were standing by the corral again, a safe distance from the bunkhouse and anyone who might be listening. The way Sam had acted, the things he’d said, had caused the cowhands to feel a little sorry for Zeke and Hawk. Lonnie had been so sympathetic, he made no objection when Bret offered to see to their supplies.
“What do we do when we catch them?” Hawk asked.
“Bring them here. I’ll let Sam decide what he wants to do.”
“Surely he wants them to hang,” Zeke said.
“If it’s Lonnie, he’s not really planning to steal any cows. You boys take care of yourselves. Isabelle would never forgive me if I got you hurt.”
Zeke looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “You’re the one who’s been sitting behind a desk for six years. We ought to be making sure you don’t get hurt.”
“I’m not sure anybody cares too much what happens to me.”
“Either those people in Boston taught you to lie or you’ve gone stupid,” Hawk growled. “I might not worry about your snotty ass, but you know Isabelle does.”
Bret had been sorry the moment the words left his mouth. He knew the feelings of his adopted family for each other hadn’t changed. Otherwise he wouldn’t have felt he could call on Zeke and Hawk to help him. And they wouldn’t have come.
“I didn’t mean that,” Bret said. “I’ve got some big decisions to make. I think I know what I want to do. The only problem is, I can’t.”
“It’s not like you to give up,” Zeke said.
Hawk nodded toward the ranch house. “Has it got anything to do with a certain young woman?”
“Yes,” Bret admitted with an embarrassed grin, “but she’s off limits.”
“Who says?” Hawk asked.
“I do.”
“Good,” Hawk said, his intent expression relaxing. “Then you won’t have any trouble changing your mind when you get the rest figured out.”
“It’s like a half dozen dominoes all set to fall,” Bret explained. “Everything depends on which domino falls first and how it affects the rest of them. The number of possible outcomes are astronomical.”
“Leave it to a businessman to turn everything into a bunch of numbers,” Zeke said shaking his head. “It isn’t that complicated. Decide what you want to do, then everything will fall into place.”
“Has it for you?”
“We haven’t decided what we want to do,” Hawk said.
“So you’re running around catching crooks and putting off the decision.”
“Something like that,” Zeke admitted.
“You’re as bad as I am.”
“Not yet,” Hawk said. “We haven’t fallen in love and are afraid to take the plunge and see if we pass.”
“You don’t understand,” Bret said. “The problem is, I’m afraid I do pass.”
Hawk and Zeke looked at each other. “It’s time for us to go to bed,” Zeke said. “This conversation is making no sense.”
“Now you know how I feel,” Bret said.
“Thank goodness I don’t,” Hawk said. “Being half Comanche and half white is problem enough.”
Bret watched the two men head over to the bunkhouse. He envied the close friendship that had developed between Hawk and Zeke over the years. He was sure that when they married—if they ever did—their relationship would remain just as strong as ever.
He wondered why he’d never been able to form such a friendship. Was he too unlikable, or had he been too focused on his goal to take the time to get to know the people around him and let them know him? He supposed it didn’t matter right now. He had a lot to do before he had to be back in Galveston for the winter. He hated to think of leaving Boston before the changes to the company were firmly in place, but at least staying there until December ought to give him time to get over Emily.
He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her.
He didn’t know when it had happened, but he knew when he’d first realized it: when she practically forced him to kiss her. He knew he was making a mistake, but not until it was too late did he realize just how monumental his mistake was. He had another chance to pull back the night she joined him on the hillside, but he’d only gotten in deeper by kissing her again. Now every time he saw her, he wanted to touch her hand, put his arms around her, kiss her.
He’d spent his whole life on the outside trying to get in. Why hadn’t the acceptance of the family Jake and Isabelle had cobbled together made him feel like he belonged? Why had he thought the acceptance of his Boston family would be any different? Jake had told him a real family wasn’t defined by blood, but he hadn’t believed it. He was so obsessed with going back to Boston and forcing his family to accept him, forcing them to admit they’d made a mistake by disowning his mother and abandoning him, that he couldn’t see anything else. He couldn’t value what he had because it wasn’t what he thought he wanted, what was owed him.
Now he could finally admit he’d been wrong. You may be able to force a person to do a particular thing, but you can’t force him to feel a particular emotion. And whether he liked it or not, most of his blood family wanted nothing to do with him. Why couldn’t he see what was real and what was just a fantasy? Without even thinking, he’d promised Jinx that Jake and Isabelle would give him a home. Without hesitation, he’d turned to Hawk and Zeke when he needed someone he could trust. His first thought when he realized Emily would need a chaperon in Galveston had been to ask Isabelle. His real family was right here in Texas, and he’d been too stupid to see it. He’d written several letters to Isabelle over the years, but letters were a poor exchange for what he’d been given by her and Jake. He didn’t like his Abbott relatives, yet he’d spent six years trying to make them accept him. What a fool he’d been!
He would have to visit the Broken Circle. It would be difficult to swallow his pride and admit he’d been blind and ungrateful, but it was the least he could do before he headed back to Boston. He’d lost his enthusiasm for the changes he wanted to make there, but he knew they were important to the future of the Abbotts.
Emily was another reason he had to return to Boston: It was the only way he could forget her. Or at least get his feelings under control. It was also the only way he could forget how much he’d enjoyed being back in Texas, on a ranch, on horseback, doing the things he’d said he never wanted to do again.
He looked at the horses in the corral. A couple were lying down, but the rest had bunched along the far side of the corral, looking ov
er the fence like they expected something to come from that direction. He wondered what they heard or smelled. Coyotes, foxes, maybe even a wolf? The piebald broke away from the group and ambled over to him, shoved his head between the rails. Bret obliged by rubbing his forehead. He would miss the cantankerous beast. Unexpectedly, he’d developed a real affection for the horse, who was turning into a good cow pony. Bret thought the piebald’s strength and size made him an even better choice for a general mount. More than once, Bret had found himself thinking he’d like to buy the piebald, but it would be cruel to take such a horse to Boston.
Giving the piebald one last affectionate pat on the neck, Bret straightened away from the fence. He was beginning to find answers to his questions, but he didn’t like any of them.
Emily couldn’t decide where to direct her attention—to Bret, who was deep in thought over something, or to the incomprehensible relationship that had sprung up between Jinx and Bertie. While clearing up in the kitchen after breakfast, Bertie and Jinx were arguing over where he should sleep. Bertie had made up a temporary bed for him last night on the couch in the great room, but Jinx wanted to sleep in the bunkhouse with the cowhands. Emily sat quietly at the table and watched. Bret sat across from her, drinking coffee, a hint of amusement in his eyes.
“You’re not sleeping in that dirty bunkhouse and then helping me in my kitchen,” Bertie told Jinx.
“I can wash,” Jinx protested.
“You could, but boys like you are allergic to soap and water.”
“I’m not,” Jinx announced with a show of outrage. “I worked in a bathhouse.”
“Did you ever use your own soap and water?” Bertie asked.
“Lugo wouldn’t let me,” Jinx replied. “He said if I wanted to take a bath, I could use the horse trough.”
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