They reached the stone entrance into Wild Horse, and a man held up a hand to stop them from crossing the cattle guard. Russell and Quaid both rolled down their driver’s side windows and leaned out.
“Mama has come to talk to Naomi,” Russell shouted.
“Brennans don’t come no closer, and they do not cross onto Wild Horse. Read the sign.” He pointed.
“Trespassers will be prosecuted. Brennans will be shot,” Jill read aloud. “Do they mean it?”
“We’ve got one on our fences, only it says that Gallaghers will be shot,” Quaid said. “We mean it. We assume they do.”
“We just want Naomi to tell Mama that she had nothing to do with her hogs going missing this mornin’,” Russell said.
“Granny is entertaining dinner guests. Y’all go on back home.”
“Did the Gallaghers steal our hogs?” Russell asked.
“You call the sheriff. He can come onto Wild Horse and check every square inch of our property. You won’t find a single hog here. We don’t raise those filthy things, and we damn sure don’t want them on our place. They stink worse than Brennans.”
The passenger side door opened, and Mavis crawled out. She marched right up to the stone entryway, but she didn’t put a foot on the cattle guard. “I know Naomi is behind this, and those hogs were worth enough that this will draw someone some jail time when I find them. You tell her that she’s going to wish she’d never been born.”
“Get on out of here, you crazy old woman,” the man said.
Russell pushed out of the truck and marched right up to the man. “You don’t talk to my mama like that.”
“Well, you don’t accuse my granny of thievery,” the man yelled back in his face.
“You better hope she didn’t instigate this, or she’ll spend the rest of her years behind bars. I don’t give a shit if she’s an old dingbat who steals pigs,” Russell yelled.
The man threw the first punch.
Jill sat there in stunned silence.
Quaid groaned and slung open his door, left it hanging in the cold wind, and ran onto Wild Horse property to separate the two men rolling around on the ground in their Sunday best. The first person he had to get control of was Mavis. She was kicking, hitting, and slapping the Gallagher grandson like a madwoman.
Since she was his date, Jill thought that she really should go help Quaid, but she didn’t want to be accused of fighting for either side. She heard him yell her name, and she bailed out of the truck.
“Sit with Granny in the truck while I get a handle on Daddy. I swear he will be in the hospital with chest pains over this,” Quaid said.
“Damn rotten Gallaghers. Lower than chicken shit. I swear they should be wiped off the face of the earth,” Mavis cussed as she strapped her seat belt. “Dammit to hell!” Mavis hit the dashboard hard enough to wince. “Now I’ll have a bruise on my hand, and that’s her fault too. Next time I see her outside of church, I’m going to scratch her old eyes out and feed them to the coyotes.”
Russell was huffing and puffing when Quaid finally pulled the two men apart and guided his father back to the truck. The grandson had taken his phone from his pocket and was making a call as they drove away.
Jill checked the clock on the dashboard. The whole thing hadn’t lasted fifteen minutes, but when it was going on, it seemed like a month. Maybe she should have kept right on driving to Wyoming or Montana instead of coming to Burnt Boot. There were ranches there that could always use help.
* * *
Betsy sat on one side of Sawyer with one of the Gallagher cousins, Eli, on Sawyer’s other side. Naomi Gallagher, the queen of the Gallagher clan, was on the other side of Betsy. It was easy to see where Betsy got her red hair and her spiciness. When she was seventy years old, she’d probably look and act just like Naomi. It wouldn’t surprise Sawyer if Betsy didn’t grow up to be the next Gallagher matriarch who carried the feud flag for the family.
The salad was crisp. The potato soup scrumptious. The steaks out-of-this-world tender. Then there was dessert, which was turtle cheesecake served with good dark coffee. He’d barely gotten the first bite into his mouth when Betsy’s hand slipped under the floor-length tablecloth and started at his knee and made a slow journey to his thigh.
He cut his eyes over at her to see that she had turned to say something to her grandmother. Evidently she caught him looking at her from her peripheral vision, because she gave his thigh a gentle squeeze and moved on up to start massaging what lay beneath his zipper.
He inhaled deeply, and she patted his thigh before she turned with a smile and whispered, “Just a taste of what is to come later when we take a tour of the ranch.”
The steak didn’t taste nearly as good after that as he tried desperately to think of an excuse to go home early. “Pardon me,” he said. “My phone is buzzing. I’m so sorry. I have the sound turned off, but…”
He removed the phone from his pocket and took a look at it. “I’m sorry, Betsy, but I have to take this. I’ll step outside. Y’all excuse me.”
Putting the phone to his ear, he laid the white linen napkin on the table and nodded a couple of times on his way through the door out onto the patio. “Yes, I’ll be right there,” he said in case anyone was watching and could read lips.
“What is it?” Betsy said so close behind him that he jumped.
“It’s Gladys. She’s gone to the hospital to be with Polly, and there’s a cow down having trouble. I need to go pull a calf. Sorry to cut this short,” he said.
“How’d she know that if she’s at the hospital?” Betsy asked.
“A kid on a four-wheeler called her. Don’t know who it was.”
“Well, darlin’, good things come to those who wait, and you are worth waiting for. Next weekend, we’ll give it another whirl.” Betsy plastered herself to his body, tangled her fist into his hair, and rolled up on her toes to kiss him. He’d never felt less passion, heat, or feeling in a kiss before in his entire life. It was more like his mouth had been attacked than kissed.
“I’m not making promises for anything,” he said when he could break away. “What with Gladys and Polly both busy, Jill and I are going to have our hands full. Give my apologies to your grandmother for leaving early, and I’ll see you around,” he said as he made a hasty retreat to his truck.
A couple of men waved him through the cattle guard, and he could have sworn he saw a redhead in the back of a truck barreling down the highway at breakneck speed on his way back to the main road. But Betsy was in the house with her family, and there was no way Jill Cleary would be headed for Wild Horse.
* * *
Quaid drove right up in front of the bunkhouse, held the truck door open for her, and walked her up to the porch.
“Again, I’m sorry for all this,” he said.
“Not a problem. Stuff happens in all families,” she said.
She had two hours to change clothes and get ready for supper on the Gallagher side of Fiddle Creek. What she really wanted was a long, long nap and a big thick book to read until she fell asleep, but a promise was a promise. And once she’d done her duty at Wild Horse, then she’d never set foot on either ranch again.
He removed his hat and held it in one hand while he ran the back of his other one down her cheek from temple to chin. “I want to spend more time with you, Jill. Next time we’ll take a drive around all of River Bend, and I’ll show you where Kinsey and I call home. We’ll steer clear of the feuding business.”
His green eyes went all soft and dreamy. She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue a moment before the kiss. It was a good kiss, a man’s kiss who’d honed his craft to an art; one that left no doubt that Declan wasn’t the only black sheep on River Bend. One hand had tangled itself into her hair for leverage. The other had slid down below belt level on her slim-cut denim skirt to cup her butt. Her hormones should have b
een humming, but there wasn’t a peep out of them.
“Until next time. I’ll be by the store tomorrow,” he whispered seductively.
“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.” She took a step back and opened the door.
He brushed a sweet kiss across her lips and settled his hat back on his blond hair.
The second one didn’t stir up anything more than the first one did. Not even one little hitch in her heartbeat. Maybe there was something drastically wrong with her.
Chapter 6
“Cinderella made it home, did she?” Sawyer peeked over the back of the sofa. His dark eyes still had sleep in them, and his face showed slight amusement. “Did poor old Quaid get a good-bye kiss, or was the afternoon so good that it was a see-you-later kiss? I heard that you had to cut your dinner short, since there was a pig incident.”
She pushed his legs off the sofa and melted into the corner. “You should have been there, Sawyer, instead of up there in the big house, eating dinner with the Gallaghers. The Brennans figured out that the pigs had been stolen, and Mavis tried to kick the shit out of one of Naomi Gallagher’s grandsons.”
Sawyer’s skin turned scarlet. “You’re shittin’ me, and I missed it all for a damn steak that wasn’t even good.”
“How’d you get home before me, anyway?”
“I made the excuse that I needed to do the evening chores early. Hey, did I see you in a truck headed toward the Gallagher place?”
She pushed him on the shoulder. “You probably did, because I was.”
He grabbed his shoulder and faked injury. “Don’t be mean to me.”
“I wouldn’t do that to a man I’m livin’ with,” she said. “If you can get me out of this next date, I’ll clean the whole bunkhouse next week.”
“Sorry, sweetheart. You gave your word. Tyrell will be here with roses in his hand in fifty-five minutes, but I do make this promise. I’ll do my damnedest to run interference, so you won’t have to go out with them again, if you’ll do the same for me. Looks like we are going to have to watch each other’s backs, or we’ll both go down as collateral damage in this war. Now tell me more about this pig thing.”
“I’m tired. I don’t want to go. I don’t want roses. I’d rather stay here and tell you what happened when they fired the first shot of the pig war,” she whined.
“You’ve got enough time to do both.” He grinned. “So start talking. Gladys laughed when she called me and said the same thing, that it would be known as the pig war.”
Jill told the story from start to finish, omitting the kiss at the end. “Now tell me how it looked from the other end.”
“I wouldn’t know. I must’ve left just before the fireworks. Betsy felt me up under the tablecloth, so I faked a phone call. I’m supposed to be pulling a calf right now, but I don’t think God will lay the sin of lying to my charge when it comes to Betsy. Lord, that woman is brazen.”
Jill gasped. “You are kiddin’ me. She actually did that?”
“Yes, she did. Right up my knee to…”
She slapped her hands over her ears. “Hush! That goes beyond brazen. Did she kiss you too?”
“If you call that grinding of two lips against mine, then I guess she did. You didn’t answer me about Quaid. Kiss or no kiss?”
“Kiss. Not bad. Not good. Generic, I guess. Rub my feet, and tell me that you’ll call the Gallaghers and tell them I have an intestinal flu and can’t go to their place.”
“Nope. I have to go listen to the Brennans bitch because their hogs have been stolen, so you have to go to the Gallaghers. Take off your high heels and throw those feet up here. Poor little things. The way you women punish them with those kinds of shoes should be a sin.”
Chapter 7
Sawyer rubbed her feet until her eyes grew heavy, and she was almost asleep before he set them on the cold floor. “Get your cute little ass up off this sofa and go do whatever it is you women do to be gorgeous for a date. Next Sunday, I’m figuring that we need to go to Gainesville right after church to pick up supplies. We could get them at the store, and we will, but we will forget milk or eggs or even sugar, and Lord knows we can’t live without whatever the hell we forgot until Monday morning.”
“That won’t take all afternoon,” she groaned.
“They’ve got motels. We’ll split the price of a room with two beds. You can read, and I’ll take my earphones and watch television all afternoon.”
“Isn’t that running from our problems?” she asked.
“Hell, no! It’s well-spent money on hours of peace and quiet. You bring the cookies, and I’ll bring a case of beer. We’d spend that much on dinner and a movie if we were dating, which we sure as hell aren’t,” he said.
She sat up slowly. “Aunt Gladys says that you can endure anything as long as there’s an end in sight. I’m tough. I can do this. But why the hell aren’t we dating?”
“You’re not my type. I don’t date women who point shotguns at me. I don’t date women who can’t cook, even though you make a hell of an apple pie. There’s only one little bitty piece left in there.”
She flipped around to face him. “You ate half a pie after a dinner at the Gallaghers?”
“Nope, I ate half a pie after I didn’t finish my dinner at the Gallaghers.” He grinned. “Shoo!” He flipped his hands out to motion her away. “Go change clothes six times and stand in front of the mirror. I’ll tell you if your jeans make your butt look fat.” He flopped back down on the sofa, shut his eyes, and stretched out his long legs until his feet rested in her lap.
She shoved them off and stood up. “You are horrible.”
“I’m your roommate, darlin’, not your relationship. Roommates are honest with each other.”
“In that case, darlin’,” she said, “your soup needs a little more picante sauce to make it good.”
“Ouch!” He opened one eye. “You don’t have to talk mean about my soup because your butt looks fat in them low-ridin’ jeans.”
She flounced off to her room. He made her mad, but at the same time he kept her from thinking about another long evening, trying to remember people’s names that she had no intention of ever seeing again outside of the store and the bar.
She changed four times, not six, and she looked at her rear end every time. He was right—the low-riding jeans did make her butt look bigger than the ones that sat a little higher.
At five o’clock on the button, a loud, demanding knock sent her out of her room and across the floor. “Why didn’t you let him in? It’s cold out there,” she fussed at Sawyer.
“Ain’t my boyfriend or my roses. I don’t give a shit if he freezes and the roses have ice on them,” Sawyer mumbled as he flipped over so his back was to the room.
She slapped him on the shoulder when she passed by. “You are horrible.”
“Maybe so, but my soup is fine the way it is, and your butt looks almighty fantastic in them jeans. If you shoot a game of pool, at least the top of your thong underbritches won’t show. Have a good time. I’ll wait up for you.”
“Don’t bother. I know how to get inside. And right back at you on the good-time shit. We’ll compare notes when I get home.”
“Alone? Remember our pact.”
“Hush,” she hissed and then put on her best fake smile as she opened the door. “Hello, Tyrell. You are right on time.”
“One perfect red rose for one perfect red-haired beauty.” He held out a long-stemmed rose wrapped in cellophane. “Each time we go out, I will add a rose to the ones I bring you, but none will ever be as important as this one.”
“Why is that?”
“Because today is the first day of a perfect relationship that will last forever,” he said as he put the rose in her hands.
“Sawyer, I’m putting my rose on the table right inside the door. Will you please put it in water?”
One thumb shot up over the back of the sofa.
“Thank you, Sawyer. And thank you, Tyrell. It’s truly beautiful.”
“I see you already have your coat on and, darlin’, that rose can’t compare to your beauty. I’m going to be the envy of all the Gallaghers at the party tonight.” He crooked his arm, and she slipped hers through it.
Wild Horse Ranch’s setup was a lot like the one for River Bend. Different families had their own acreage, but the whole thing combined to make Wild Horse. It all bordered on Fiddle Creek. He drove down his lane and showed her where his long, low ranch house, with a sweeping porch around three sides, sat in a pecan copse before he took her to the main house.
There wasn’t a valet at the Gallagher place, and they were one of the last ones to arrive, so they had to walk from the truck to the house. He laced his fingers in hers and didn’t let go until they were inside the warm house. He helped her remove her coat and whistled under his breath, “Whew! Darlin’, you really are a knockout in that getup. You look like you should be modeling for a Western-wear company.”
She wore a black shirt with long, billowy sleeves caught up at the wrists with white pearl snaps on the cuffs. A gold scarf pendant with crossed six-guns over angel wings hung from the center of a black lace scarf, and a matching belt buckle cinched in a pair of black jeans.
“Well, thank you. I hope I’m not overdressed.”
“Honey, you could have worn a burlap bag with a rope around your waist, and I would have thought I’d brought the princess to the ball, but, wow,” he said.
“Well, look at you!” Betsy met them at the door into the oversized great room. “Tyrell, you lucky dog. I believe she’s gotten all dolled up for you. You did leave the pitcher of beer at home, I hope. I’m here to steal you away and introduce you to my grandmother, Naomi. Sorry, Tyrell.”
“I’ll be around to collect her in a few minutes, so don’t let Granny get started on her long stories,” Tyrell said.
Naomi Gallagher spun around on a bar stool and motioned toward Betsy. She was a short woman with delicate features, few wrinkles, and dark green eyes.
The Trouble with Texas Cowboys Page 7