by Janet Dailey
During the next two days Cat was amazed by how easily they went from being two people sharing the same house, careful to give the other plenty of space, to a man and wife doing things together and doing their best to take up the same space every chance they had. With Quint around, that wasn’t often.
With her hat pulled low to block the sun’s strong and slanting rays, Cat held one end of the board while Logan hammered the other end to a corral post. Quint stood to one side of Logan, ready to hand him the next nail. Cat smiled when she considered that even something as simple as replacing a rotting board had become a family affair.
How had it happened? she wondered. When had it changed from physical attraction to love? Why hadn’t she recognized it before that night? Abruptly she threw away all the questions. The how, when, and why of it didn’t matter. This was love, deeply rooted and in full flower.
Finished with his side, Logan moved to her end. She shifted position to make room for him and held the board until he had the first nail hammered in place. She stepped back to watch when he took a second nail from Quint.
After he was done, Logan gave the board a hard shake to test its solidness, then nodded in satisfaction. “That should do it.” He tipped his head toward Quint. “Take a look at that. I think we did a good job, don’t you?”
“We sure did,” Quint agreed. “Do we got another board to fix?”
“Nope. They all look sturdy enough to hold a tall boy or a stout horse,” he replied, then glanced at Cat. “Which reminds me—a rancher over by Lewiston has a pair of draft horses for sale—Clydesdales. I was planning on taking a look at them on Saturday. Would you and Quint like to ride along? We could make a day of it.”
“It sounds great, but—what do you want with a draft horse team?” Cat asked, a little puzzled.
“What’s a draft horse?” Quint wanted to know.
“It’s like the kind you see pulling the wagon in the beer commercials,” Logan answered his question first, then hers. “I don’t have enough acres in hay to warrant the cost of a tractor—even a used one. Horses will be practical and economical. It may take a little more time to mow and windrow and load it, but I kinda like the idea of doing it the old way.”
She pretended to give his argument careful thought. “The upkeep on them would be cheaper. They certainly won’t be as noisy as a tractor, either.”
“My thinking exactly.” He smiled, then turned a little serious. “You may as well know now that you married a man without any great ambition to build the next ranching empire. I don’t want the Circle Six to get so large that I can’t work it myself. I want to pull my own calves and mend my own fences. I don’t want to pay somebody to do the work for me. I’m not saying the other way is wrong; it just isn’t right for me. This keeps me sane, gives me the balance I need to—”
“You don’t have to explain,” Cat told him, touched that he seemed concerned about her reaction to this, as if it might somehow affect her opinion of him. If anything, it reinforced the feeling that Logan was a man who didn’t feel the need to prove anything to anyone, not even himself. At the same time, she was certain she had never met anyone more capable of stepping in and taking charge of a ranch the size of the Triple C.
“I’m not explaining exactly,” he said with a trace of impatience at the interruption. “I’m not saying we’ll be poor, either. We’ll make a good living here. It’s just that I don’t want you thinking that someday we’ll be building us a great big house to live in.”
Hiding a smile, Cat turned to look at their home. “No, but I do think it might need to be larger.”
“Why? We have plenty of room.”
Shrugging, she said, “You’re the one who said you wanted more children.”
He stared at her for a stunned second, then threw back his head and laughed.
The two draft horses, Jake and Angel, were all Quint wanted to talk about when they went to The Homestead for dinner on Sunday. “You should see them, Grandpa. They’re really big,” Quint declared with emphasis. “And they’re tall, too. About as tall as this room.”
Chase glanced at the dining room’s ten-foot ceiling and contained his skepticism. “That’s really tall.”
“Yeah, and Dad’s got harnesses for ’em to hitch ’em to things,” he stumbled a bit over the new terms, but it was his use of the word “dad” that had Chase glancing at his son-in-law, only to have his eye drawn to Cat, noting the glow in her eyes when she looked at Logan.
“What’s that thing you put over their heads, Dad?”
“A collar,” Logan supplied.
“You should see how big it is, Grandpa. If you try to put it on me, it falls to the ground—without even touching me.”
“You are pretty skinny,” Ty observed.
“Yeah, but it’s gigantic.” Quint made a big circle of his arms to show him.
“I think it’s time you did less talking and more eating,” Cat suggested.
Obligingly Quint picked up his fork and scooped it into his mashed potatoes. Chase filled the silence he left. “What do you have in the way of horse-drawn implements, Logan?”
“Right now, just a hayrack. I’ve got a line on a mower. I thought I’d check it out this next week.”
“We still have a sledge and an old buck rake stored in shed three,” Jessy recalled.
“Now that you mention it, we do.” Chase nodded. “I remember dragging all that stuff in there. I couldn’t have been much more than fourteen or fifteen.”
“Any idea about what kind of shape they’re in?” Logan asked. “I might be interested in buying them from you.”
“They were in working condition when we put them in there,” Chase replied. “After dinner, you and Ty can take a look at them. If you’re still interested, I’ll make them a wedding present to you.”
When Logan started to say something, Cat laid a silencing hand on his arm. “Thank you, Dad. It’s the best gift you could give us.”
Logan was clearly amused by her quick assertion. “I have the feeling your daughter thought I might object. I don’t. I accept it as a wedding gift.” Somewhere within his answer was the inference that he wouldn’t be so quick to accept future “gifts.”
Chase nodded. “I’m glad we agree on that.”
“What’s a buck rake?” Quint frowned.
“It gathers up hay,” Logan explained.
“How?”
“It’s easier to show you than to tell you. As soon as you finish eating, we’ll go look at it.”
When the meal was over, Ty, Logan, and Quint did just that while Cat stayed to help Jessy with the dishes. Chase pitched in, carrying a stack of dessert plates to the kitchen, then lingered to have another cup of coffee, his glance running over Cat in quiet speculation, noting the new vibrancy, the shining ease.
“I guess I don’t have to ask how you and Logan are getting along,” he remarked.
A little startled, she stopped, then laughed softly. “No, you don’t.” She paused and looked thoughtfully at the kitchen with its dark cherry cupboards and huge, brick-fronted fireplace, a room that was as big and solid and lived-in as the rest of the house. “It’s funny, but I thought I would never be happy living anywhere else but right here. But I am.”
“It shows,” Jessy told her with an approving smile.
“I guess it does.” Cat was glad that it did, and proud, too. Sighing, she admitted, “I’m so happy it scares me sometimes. In a way, it’s like waiting for a shoe to drop.”
“Don’t borrow trouble, Cat.” Chase was sharp with her. “It’ll find you soon enough. When it does, it won’t be when or from where you expect it.”
“I know.” But his words only reinforced the feeling that a menacing black cloud loomed on the horizon.
PART 5
Danger now surrounds you.
There’s nowhere that you can hide.
Fighting back is your only answer.
Go armed with that bold Calder pride.
TWENTY-FOUR
Comfortably cradled on Logan’s lap, Cat felt only the heat radiating from his body as they shared one of the rocking chairs on the front porch. Quint was in his room, sound asleep, giving them some rare time to themselves.
“Dad’s flying to Miles City at the end of the week to attend a livestock association meeting.” Cat idly ran her fingers through Logan’s hair, disturbing its smoothness. “I thought I might ride along, and do some shopping, maybe pick up a couple of chairs for the living room and get rid of that old platform rocker.”
He drew his head back, raising one eyebrow. “What’s wrong with the rocker?”
Cat looked him straight in the eye. “It’s ugly.”
“It’s a little nicked and worn.”
“A little?” she scoffed.
“All right, more than a little. Just the same, you’d better hold off replacing it for a while. After buying the mower, we can’t really afford to get anything else right now.” He rubbed a hand over the curve of her hip.
“That’s not a problem.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I’ll buy it myself. I do have some money of my own.”
“Good. You can save it to pay for our kids to go to college.”
This time it was Cat who drew back to look at him, more amused than annoyed by his attitude. “For your information, Logan, I happen to have more than enough money in my trust fund to do just that. There is absolutely no reason not to use the income from it to buy some of the things we need.”
“And there is absolutely no reason you can’t wait a couple months until we can afford it.” His tone of voice was just a little too firm for her liking.
“Let me see if I have this straight.” Falsely calm, she sat upright. “It’s all right for me to buy something as long as it’s with your money.”
“That isn’t what I said.”
“That’s what it sounded like to me.” Eluding the hands that tried to hold her, Cat swung off his lap and moved away.
“There is nothing wrong with that rocker, Cat. It’s solid and well-built.” He stood up.
She wheeled to face him. “It’s ugly.”
“Then throw a damned blanket over it.”
“Now, wouldn’t that look lovely.”
Reining in his anger, Logan strove for patience. “Cat, I don’t want to get into a fight over this.”
“That’s too bad, because it’s exactly what we’re going to do.” She folded her arms high and tight across her breasts.
“Damn it, I didn’t marry you for your money.”
“Well, you’ve got it. In case it hasn’t sunk in yet, when you married Cat Calder, you didn’t get just me—you got my family, my friends, and my money. You can’t take what you want and throw the rest away.”
“I’m not throwing it away.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“You want me, but you don’t want anything to do with my money. Therefore, you don’t want me to have anything to do with it, either. Don’t you know how archaic that sounds?”
“I wouldn’t call it that,” he said tightly.
Cat widened her eyes. “Oh? What would you call it? A little too much pride, maybe?”
“Look who’s talking about pride,” Logan countered as the sharp jangle of the telephone cut across his words. “I’ll get that,” he muttered, spinning on his heel and striding into the house.
In less than three minutes, he was back, his hat pushed squarely on his head and car keys in his hand. “There’s a grass fire ten miles south of Blue Moon. The wind’s whipping it straight toward town. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
The news pushed aside their unresolved argument. “A fire. Logan, I—” She took a step toward him.
He turned, catching her by the arms. “Buy the damned chair. Buy fifty chairs if that’s what you want.”
“You’re too late. I’ve already decided to look at samples of upholstery fabric, maybe try my hand at refinishing the wooden arms on the platform chair. There really isn’t anything wrong with the way it’s constructed.”
“It’s just ugly.” His smile was quick and warm.
“Very ugly. But I am buying the fabric to recover it—maybe even a coffee table,” Cat warned.
“I can live with that,” he told her. “But I’m not sure I could live without you.” He kissed her once, lightly, thought about kissing her again, but it was difficult enough stopping with one. He ran down the steps to the patrol car.
Cat watched until the headlights stabbed into the darkness of the ranch lane. Looking to the southeast, she noticed a black smudge staining the starred sky, possibly smoke from the fire. But the ranch was too far away for any glow from the flames to be seen. It seemed an odd time of year to have a prairie fire. The spring rains had been scarce, but Cat hadn’t realized conditions had gotten that dry.
With a slightly confused sigh, she went back inside the house and turned a critical eye on the platform rocker, trying to visualize it covered in different colors and patterns. For a few moments, she toyed wickedly with the idea of lacquering the wooden arm a vivid scarlet and upholstering the rest of it in royal purple, with hot orange accents. Logan might not like it so well then.
Ideas about redoing it floated through her mind even after she picked up a Michener epic she had started a couple weeks ago. It was almost midnight before Cat put the book down and accepted that Logan wouldn’t be home any time soon. She reached up to turn out the lamp. The instant her fingers touched the knob, the lights went out—both the one in the hallway and the overhead light in the living room.
“Great,” Cat muttered to herself.
The fuse box, she knew, was in the utility room. The location of the spare fuses was another matter entirely. Moving cautiously across the pitch black room, Cat groped her way toward the kitchen. She flipped the wall switch for the kitchen light, only to find it wouldn’t come on, either.
Then it hit her. The tall outside yard light was out as well. That’s why it was so black. Had the fire caused a power failure? Changing directions, Cat felt her way to the front door and looked out, half expecting to see the red glow of flames in the distance.
There was nothing, not even the smell of smoke in the air. Frowning, she scanned the yard, faintly suffused by pale starlight. Something moved along the lane. Cat stared into the pooled shadows, half-convinced she had imagined it.
She froze as a dark figure moved out of the blackness onto open ground where the dim light of the stars could outline him. A second figure joined him, both running toward the house with a hunched-over stealth. She couldn’t see their faces, then she realized why—something dark covered them.
Logan’s advice came back to her, the advice he had given her the night he had shown her various ways to break an attacker’s hold. “When you get loose, you run. Don’t try to fight. Don’t grab something and try to hit him with it. You run—and you run like hell.”
Cat lingered only long enough to close and lock the door, then raced to Quint’s room and snatched him out of bed. He protested sleepily, then sagged against her. As she reached the living room, a flashlight beam played over the front of the house. Taking a chance, Cat tightened her hold on Quint and ran across the intervening space to the kitchen, almost knocking over a chair before reaching the door to the utility room. She paused long enough to check the phone. As she expected, the line was dead.
After the jostling from the run, Quint was awake. “Mom, where—”
“Sssh.” She pressed a hand to his mouth and whispered, “There’s two men outside, trying to break into the house. We’re going to sneak out before they can catch us. Okay?”
“Where’s Dad?” he whispered back.
“He had to leave.” Cat glanced out the back door. Seeing not
hing, she slipped out as quietly as she could, and eased the door shut.
The instant her foot left the last step, she broke into a run and didn’t slow down until she reached the stand of firs twenty feet from the house. Needles brushed her face as she pushed her way between the outreaching branches of two trees.
She had no idea whether they had been seen. She couldn’t hear anything but the frantic pounding of her own heart. Already her arms ached from holding Quint, but she knew she didn’t dare put him down. Without shoes, he’d never be able to run over the rough ground. There was no choice; she had to carry him.
Run, she thought again. But where? And how? Both vehicles—hers and Logan’s—were parked in front of the house. If she tried to reach them, there was too much risk of being seen.
A snort and a shuffling of hooves came from the corral. Cat briefly considered saddling their horses, but that meant going into the barn, trying to find the tack in the dark. It would take too much time. Then she remembered Molly. Dear, sweet, reliable Molly. A halter and a lead rope were all she needed with that gentle, biddable mare. And both were just inside the rear barn door within easy reach.
Kneeling, she whispered to Quint, “Climb on my back.”
While he did, Cat measured the distance to the barn area and chose a route that gave them the most concealment. When Quint’s skinny arms and legs were securely clamped around her, she set out at a jogging trot.
Her fingers closed around the halter and lead rope with the first groping try. She threw a glance toward the house as a spear of light flashed over the back of it, then winked off. Fighting panic, she took a quick steadying breath and moved quietly among the horses.
The bay mare, as always, was easy to catch. Holding the lead rope looped around Molly’s neck, Cat led the horse out of the corral and halted deep in the barn’s soot-black shadows. There, she transferred Quint to Molly’s back, then buckled on the halter.
“Where are we going, Mom?” Quint whispered.