Lone Star Woman

by CALLAHAN, SADIE

  “Jude, I don’t blame you for being upset. If I were in your shoes—”

  She raised her hand again and stopped his words. “Don’t say that. You can’t possibly know anything about being in my shoes.”

  He straightened to his full height, propping his hands on his hips and looking down at her with those laser eyes. “Then let me put it this way, Jude. If I thought your family was really going to give you what you want, I wouldn’t have taken the job. I damn near turned J.D. down on the spot until he told me he would hire somebody from the outside if I didn’t take his offer. And I think he was as serious as a man can be. You need to believe me on that. I guess you could look at it as better me than a total stranger.”

  She did believe him. She knew her father, for all his gentleness at times, was capable of being as ruthless as he felt he had to be. She felt an involuntary wry smile crawl to the corner of her mouth, and she fastened her eyes on his. “And you think you’re not a stranger?”

  His hand rose as if he might touch her, but then it quickly fell. Instead, he touched her with his eyes. “No. To some people I’m a stranger, but not to you. You’ve already trusted me with . . . You know you can trust me.”

  What had he almost said? Trusted him with her virtue?

  Emotions she didn’t understand filled her chest like a great balloon, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. Surely she was too young to be having a heart attack. “None of that is what I came here to discuss.”

  “Then speak your piece.”

  “You’ve got fifteen sections here, right? More than enough dry land to run a couple hundred cows.”

  He gave her a look.

  She refused to let the glint of caution she saw in his eye deter her. In for a penny, in for a pound, as Grammy Pen would say. “I want to lease it from you at the going rate. I’ll put my cows on it and some bulls. If more cross-fencing is needed, I’ll do it out of my pocket. And I’ll be responsible for removing the brush.”

  “Why would you want to do that, Jude? J.D. and Jeff—”

  “I have some ideas about crossbreeding and finishing out calves that Daddy and Grandpa won’t let me try. I told you that in Stephenville.”

  He ducked his chin and looked down. Obviously he didn’t want to discuss Stephenville any more than she did.

  “Part of the deal is we don’t talk about my father or grandfather. And when you’re with them, you don’t discuss me and what I’m doing here.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and just kept looking at her.

  “There’s one more part. If the day comes you decide to sell, you don’t let my grandfather be the buyer. If you sell, you sell to me.”

  His laser-sharp eyes bored into her as if he had read her mind. “I know you’re hurt. I know that right now, you think you want to hurt them back. But going off on your own like this isn’t the answer. I think you’ll be sorry.”

  She didn’t need to be told that what she was doing would affect her father and grandfather. And she didn’t intend to be told how she might feel later. “You need the money,” she said. “It’s a good deal. The brush cleanup alone makes it a good deal.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  Brady watched Jude drive away. She had brass balls. He had to give her that. But that wasn’t a new discovery.

  One of the hardest things he’d had to do lately was keep his mind from wandering to the hours they had spent together.

  Now he had even more to think about. Jude’s offer had more positives than negatives. Though he and J.D. hadn’t yet sat down for a serious talk about money, Brady knew that even with good pay, he could still be years away from getting enough money together to stock the 6-0 with a cattle herd. A short-term land lease could help him toward that end. He didn’t really expect Jude to pay for removing the brush. On the other hand, he couldn’t afford to do it himself, and if she wanted good graze, it had to be done.

  Of course she knew that. She was too smart not to.

  He had only her word that she knew a damn thing about cattle raising. But his instinct told him not to doubt her. He had questioned what she knew about horse training, but she was doing an outstanding job with his horses. Hell, she had almost turned Sal into a disciplined animal.

  But if he took her up on her offer, what would he be stepping into? How would the Strayhorn men feel about his making a side deal with Jude?

  He stared out across the pasture where his two geldings had sought shade under a shed roof attached to one side of the corral. Not even noon, and the day was already scorching. Given the circumstances, he doubted Jude would return to ride the geldings, and he knew he wouldn’t have time to do it himself. They were good horses. He probably should sell them while they were young enough to bring top prices. He had hung on to them, believing the time would come when Andy would be with him, but with every visit to Fort Worth, his hopes for that grew weaker. He was starting to notice more distance between himself and his son.

  Horses as pets made no sense. If the day ever came when he had the time and need for them, Texas was full of good horses. If he started working as the Circle C’s manager, he would sell the geldings for sure.

  Then it dawned on him. He had told Jude no decisions had been made, but had she been right? Had he already unconsciously agreed to J.D.’s offer before the trial period even began?

  19

  A few days later Jude sat at the computer in her office at one end of the ranch’s veterinary clinic. The original intent for the spacious room was for it to be the ranch’s business office. But Daddy conducted most of his business from his office in the house, so Jude had appropriated the space in the veterinary clinic for her bull-management tasks.

  She liked being in the veterinary building, close enough to Doc Barrett to know what was current with the ranch’s various studs and the broodmares. She liked the idea of walking into the clinic when she wanted to, checking things out and talking to Doc about which studs to breed with which mares. She liked being included in the insemination process. In the past few days, being around the horses and the ongoing breeding operation had helped her gain control of her emotions. The certainty of science had a way of bringing her back down to earth and reminding her of the insignificance of her problems in the scheme of things.

  Today she was pleased with the online transaction she had just completed. She had bought a handsome, square-built, beefy Black Angus goliath from an Angus farm in Minnesota. He had a long formal name, but she called him Batman. He had a pedigree even longer than his name, and his stats were impressive. Going outside to buy pedigreed bulls was too expensive to do it often. Most of the time, the ranch raised its own bulls. But she wanted to establish a high-quality Angus strain in the Circle C’s herd. So far, the ranch had few Angus cows, but Batman would produce good, solid, black baldies out of the Herefords.

  Staying busy with something that interested her profoundly helped keep her mind off Brady and the bruising her psyche had absorbed this week. At least she felt she was making a valuable contribution, and inch by inch, she was adding diversity to the Circle C’s stock.

  She heard familiar voices from the hallway and looked up and out the door. Her father was standing in front of the reception desk with Brady Fallon, talking to Amanda Brown, who manned the desk. Jude had known it was only a matter of time before Daddy brought Brady into her office. She closed her computer program, logged off and started gathering her things, hoping to escape while her father gave Brady the cook’s tour of the rest of the facility.

  But the tour didn’t happen. Daddy made a beeline for her office, with Brady behind him.

  “Jude,” he said with exaggerated enthusiasm, coming around to her side of the desk and placing an arm around her shoulder. “I know you’re acquainted with Brady Fallon.”

  “Yes, I am.” She directed her gaze at Brady, but he played it cool, standing there holding his hat on his fingers and smiling in a noncommittal way. “Morning, Jude,” he said.

  Daddy looked d
own at the picture she had printed of Batman and picked it up. “What’s this?”

  “That’s Batman. I just bought him.”

  Daddy chuckled and looked across the desk at Brady. “Jude has her own names for the bulls. Sometimes I have a hard time keeping up.”

  Brady gave her that knee-buckling grin that had become way too familiar. “Sounds like fun.”

  “Sweetheart, we’ve got this little problem,” Daddy said. “Brady needs an office.”

  He almost said the whole string of words in one breath. Instantly she knew what would come next. She felt the heat of anger creep to her cheeks, but she tamped down her urge to scream. An outburst would be childish, and her protest would be meaningless. “Oh,” she said with exaggerated cheeriness. “Well, he can have this one. I’ll just move my things into the house.”

  “Do you mind?” Her father gave her a smile that displayed more relief than joy.

  Since she had scarcely spoken to him in several days, hadn’t eaten dinner with him and hadn’t dropped into his office for a drink at the end of the day, he had been tiptoeing around her. He might be expecting a tantrum, but apparently he didn’t even know her well enough to notice that invective wasn’t her style.

  “That house has ten extra bedrooms,” she said. “Surely there’s one that will suit my needs.” She began stacking items from the top of her desk into a neat pile. Her arms felt as if they were as disconnected from her shoulders as her mouth was from her feelings. Her hands moved in little jerks.

  “Okay, then,” Daddy said. “That’ll work out great. Look, I’ll leave you two to handle this. I’ve got to get to Abilene. I’m already late.”

  And just like that, he walked out, leaving Brady looking sheepish and standing in front of her desk. For a few seconds, she, too, stood there in stunned silence. It wasn’t enough that Daddy had denied her the thing she wanted most. He also expected her to be his assistant in compounding her own wretchedness? Dear God, could he be any more unconscious?

  “Jude, I don’t expect you to move,” Brady said. “There must be some other place I can find around here for what little space I need. I told J.D.—”

  “Nonsense. I’m only in here because Daddy isn’t. No, this room was built to be the ranch manager’s office, so you should take it. I assure you, this will be much easier on everyone than having your office in the house.” Oh, damn. She sounded like a shit. She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips between her brows. “That is, I didn’t mean—”

  “I know what you meant,” he said. “And you’re right. I would be uncomfortable going and coming in your house.”

  “Fine. I’ll just go get some boxes.” She moved from behind the desk and walked out to the receptionist’s desk on shaky knees, not looking at him and putting on a front of nonchalance. But inside she was trembling. She couldn’t tell if she was upset over her office being hijacked or because Brady Fallon, doused with his sexy cologne and wearing his starched and creased Wranglers and his Cinch button-down, was standing within feet of her. “Amanda, would you do me a favor and see if you can find some boxes for me to pack some things in?”

  Of course Amanda Brown knew Brady had been given the job as general manager. Amanda’s husband, Travis, worked as a ranch hand. Brady was now his boss.

  When Jude returned to the office, Brady had laid his hat on a lamp table in the corner of the room and was holding a stack of framed photographs in his hands. “Good-looking bull,” he said, looking down at a profile picture of a curried and combed champion Hereford in all of his male glory.

  Jude glanced at the enlarged snapshot, then turned her attention to removing pictures from the wall. “Yeah, he was. That picture was taken just before he went to the sale. He was a great bull, but he got too big. His weight was hard on the cows.”

  “I can see it would be,” Brady mumbled. “Not to mention his own back legs.”

  A memory shot through her mind: Brady hovering high over her, braced on his hands, his hips pumping and pumping, the thrust and drag deep inside her, driving her toward an elusive need . . .

  She shook herself mentally and jerked her head toward him. His expression was solemn. His glacial blue eyes were focused on hers, but she couldn’t tell what was going on behind them.

  Amanda broke the spell by coming in and setting four cardboard boxes on the floor.

  “Great. Thanks,” Jude said airily and picked up a box. Her stomach was tied in knots.

  Brady’s hand gripped the other side of the box. “I’ll help you,” he said softly. Her chin lifted and she saw a flicker of gentleness in those orbs of blue ice. She considered saying “no, thanks,” but she couldn’t hear herself being so petty. Instead she jerked the box to wrench it back from him, but he held it tightly. “I said I’ll help you,” he said.

  She heaved a great breath, closed her eyes and released her hold on the box. Damn. She was a wreck. She picked up another box and turned her attention back to the pictures on the wall. “With a little help, at least I’ll be able to get out of here faster.”

  While he placed the items from the desk in the box, she began to pack her personal gallery—portraits of special bulls, a picture of her mounted on Patch, a picture of a younger Jake and Cable laughing together, an eight-by-ten of Daddy that had been made when he appeared on the cover of a magazine. She and Brady worked in silence until awkwardness, like a rampaging fire, sucked the last bit of air from the room.

  Brady, too, must have felt the need for some kind of communication because he said, “I took a peek at Sal before your dad and I came in here”

  “She’s looking good,” Jude replied curtly. “She’s very smart.”

  “I checked out your paint, too,” he said without emotion.

  Jude’s suggestion to breed Patch to Sal had taken such a backseat to everything else going on, she had given it little thought. She stopped her busy hands and looked up. “Oh?”

  “I’ve never paid a lot of attention to paint horses, but Patch is one of the prettier ones I’ve seen. I like that his eyes are brown.”

  Jude liked that about Patch, too. With his solid black head, she thought he would look odd if his eyes were blue like some paints’ were. She felt a tiny surge of excitement. “So you’ve decided to breed Sal, then?”

  “Maybe next year. When things get a little more settled and I’ve gotten a chance to get ready for it.”

  “If you don’t intend to do it, why even bring it up?” she snapped.

  He opened his palms defensively. “I wanted to let you know I’m not ignoring you.”

  She chastised herself for being a bitch. At the core of things, none of this was Brady’s fault. “Well, whatever. I suppose waiting makes sense. I’d still be willing to buy the foal. For that matter, I’m sure Daddy would buy Sal for a broodmare if I asked him to.”

  Brady shook his head. “I’m not ready to sell her.”

  Jude hadn’t intended to bring up the offer to lease his land, having decided the next move was his. But the opportunity seemed golden. She gave him a direct look. “What about the other offer I made you?”

  “I’m still thinking about it.”

  “Now’s the time to be breeding for spring calves. That window’s almost closed.”

  “I know.”

  Her cell phone trilled from the top of the desk. She walked over and picked it up. The caller was Windy. She listened for a few seconds, then turned to Brady. “Windy almost has dinner ready, but there’s no one to eat. Daddy’s gone to Abilene, and Grandpa says he wants to stay in his room.”

  Brady said nothing, only looked at her expectantly. Tension hovered in the air around him, and she sensed he was a dam holding back a torrent of words.

  “Would you like to eat dinner in the house?” she asked. “The food’s cooked. It would be wasteful not to eat it.” Okay, so it was only a halfhearted invitation to dine.

  He must have sensed her lack of keenness, because he didn’t reply immediately.

  What the hell, sh
e thought. This whole thing was stupid. She turned back to the phone. “I’ll come, Windy. And I’ll bring our new GM with me.”

  Brady had mixed emotions about eating lunch in the Circle C house. If Jude hadn’t committed him, he would have begged off. That uncomfortable feeling of being an interloper she was only patiently tolerating stuck in his craw.

  Then again, maybe he was wrong. After all, she was the one who had invited him to eat. She didn’t have to.

  And he was the one who hadn’t said no. Just like he hadn’t said no that night in Stephenville. Christ, would that one mistake keep on picking at him for the rest of his life?

  They walked side by side across the grounds to the house. Jude looked especially pretty today, he thought. She had on tight jeans, a Western-cut formfitting shirt and boots made of something exotic and, no doubt, expensive. And silver hoop earrings as big around as beer cans. She looked much better than the last time he had seen her, when her eyes were swollen from crying and she had spoken to him from soul-deep bitterness about her plans to start her own herd.

  On the one hand, he was pleased for the opportunity to talk to her without the flurry of activity in the veterinary building, though she was touchy as a rattler and he didn’t blame her. He couldn’t believe how tactless her father was about her feelings. When J.D. had suggested that he take her office in the veterinary building, Brady had feared it might be the proverbial last straw.

  They went into the house through the back door. He had been in the ranch house several times by now. Every time, he’d had to fend off a profoundly lonely feeling that hung in the air like a heavy drape, though he knew there had been a time when the place was alive. A president had actually slept here and hunted the Circle C acres. Brady couldn’t imagine what it must be like—two old men and a young woman—trying to fill up this much space. The builder in him calculated a minimum of fifteen thousand square feet.

  Jude directed him to a seat opposite hers at the long, rustic oak table in the middle of the dining room. He angled a glance toward the end of it, counting the chairs—five on each side of the table and one on each end. There must have been a time when every chair’s leather seat had had a butt on it, but he would bet that had been long ago.