She’d barely gotten her jeans and shirt pulled on when she heard the crunch of tires out front. That put her into fast mode as she started to worry. Martin had gotten sick and they’d been away from the house phone, so Tamara had driven him home. Or, worse yet, that damn convict had connections on the outside and he’d sent someone to make sure Martin did not testify. She opened the top drawer in the dresser and pulled out a small locked safe. Two minutes later she was shoving a clip into a Glock Gen4 pistol and heading out toward the door.
The front door was wide open, and Finn was nowhere around. If someone was bringing Martin home, then the door wouldn’t be hanging open. She pressed the gun against her leg. Then the screaming began and she put on the speed.
“You damn bitch. You’ve ruined my pie.”
Holy shit! That was Betsy and she’d really brought Finn an apple pie. Where in the hell was he, anyway?
Callie threw open the storm door to see Finn, arms crossed over his chest, standing there like a statue in his thermal shirt, jeans, and boots while Honey and Betsy squared off for another match. Only this time it damn sure didn’t look like it was going to be words only.
Good, she thought. Maybe they’ll snatch each other baldheaded and scratch each other’s eyes plumb out.
“Well, look what you did to my cookies!” Honey yelled.
Shotgun was making short order of the pie, and Pistol was gobbling down the cookies. Joe had set up a howl in the dining room squawking, “Cat. Cat. Run. Run,” over and over.
Betsy threw the first punch, landing it square in Honey’s right eye, and the fight was on. They pulled hair, screamed obscenities, and slapped or punched wherever they could find a place to hit.
“You going to put a stop to this?” she asked Finn.
He shook his head. “I’m going in the house. They can roll around in the snow until they freeze for all I care. I didn’t know that Shotgun liked apple pie. Guess he does.”
Pistol picked up the final cookie and carried it in the house. Shotgun slurped up the last bit of pie and paraded past them to his warm spot in front of the fire. Now Joe was screaming that he wanted a cracker.
“I don’t want to deal with the undertaker or frozen dead bodies,” she said. She aimed the gun at the mesquite tree nearest to the women and fired off six shots, sending bark flying everywhere.
They both jumped up and covered their heads with their hands. “Why in the hell are you shooting at us?” Honey screamed.
“If I was shooting at you, you’d be graveyard dead, woman. Get your sorry asses off this ranch, and don’t come back or I might miss that ’squite tree next time and put a bullet in your boobs. I mean it, get out of here.” She brought the gun up to aim right at Honey’s big breasts.
“You going to let her talk like that to me?” Honey asked Finn.
“I’m not crossin’ her,” he answered.
“This ain’t over,” Betsy declared on her way to her truck.
Callie fired one more shot that landed two feet from the front tire of the truck. “You want to fight among yourselves, then get on with your sorry-assed feud, but when you step on Salt Draw, you leave your fightin’ behind.”
They spun out of the driveway and slipped and slid all the way out to the road in their hurry to get away. She jacked the magazine out of her gun and carried it to the kitchen table. Damned old bitches, anyway. Now she’d have to tear it down and clean it before she put it away.
“I’ve got to make a fast run to Gainesville for a load of feed. You want to go or stay here and calm down?” Finn asked.
“I’d best stay here. You’ll be back in time for dinner, right?”
“Joe wants a cracker,” the bird yelled.
Pistol picked up the cookie he’d brought inside and carried it to the newspaper under Joe’s makeshift tree house.
“I’ll be damned. That dog saved a cookie for his buddy. Guess I’d best help him get it up to the bird. I’ll run by Walmart for some parrot food. Anything you need?” Finn said.
Leave it to a man to act like nothing had just happened. She’d fired her gun seven times and taken care of the catfight over him. A thank-you would be nice; a hug would be even better.
“Not a damned thing.” She laid the gun down with the clip right beside it.
He spun her around, wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her tightly. “That was some fancy target practice out there, Brewster. But I got to admit, I was wonderin’ just where we were going to bury two bodies in this kind of weather and if the feud wouldn’t get worse when both sides thought the other one had killed one of their own.”
“Well, shit fire! If I’d thought of that, I wouldn’t have shot the tree, I’d have stopped them from sniffing around you for good. And I’d have gotten away with murder, Finn.” She laughed. “But I don’t reckon we’ll have any more problems with their damned old feud, not on Salt Draw.”
His lips found hers at the same time she uttered the last word. The feud, the shooting, and all thought of the two feuding women left her mind immediately. She pressed her body tightly to his, wanting to keep the heat going, to take it further, but it ended and gave her something more to be angry about.
“I’ll see you at dinnertime,” he said.
All she could do was shake her head and then he was gone.
Leaving the gun on the table, she plopped down on the sofa, and Angel hopped up into her lap. Pistol was too chubby to get from floor to sofa so she had to help him, and soon he and Angel were both sound asleep. She rubbed Pistol’s ears and then Angel’s, giving them equal time.
Her phone rang and she pushed the two animals to the side, hurrying to the kitchen table, where she’d set her purse. Thousands of images ran through her head. Martin had a broken nose and two black eyes from fighting with some kid like Keith. Or Finn had fallen and broken a leg out there on the slippery grass.
She grabbed it and answered without even looking at the caller ID, only to hear it still ringing. “Well, shit!” she said.
The house phone and her cell phone had the same tone. She trotted across the kitchen and picked up the receiver from the old land line hanging on the wall in the utility room.
“Hello,” she said.
“I just heard that you tried to kill Honey and Betsy.” Gladys laughed.
“Like I told Honey, if I’d have wanted her dead, she would be stretched out on the undertaker’s table. They were going at it in the front yard, and I gave them a little frozen tree bark bath is all,” Callie said.
“Well, you might be interested to know that the sheriff is on the way to talk to you. Honey called him,” Gladys said. “Looks like it’s going to be a good day in the store. Nothing like the feud firin’ up to bring in customers. Talk to you later.”
The phone went dead and the doorbell rang at the same time.
She sighed as she padded to answer it. Sure enough there stood an officer with a box of doughnuts in his hand.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
“Mind if I come inside?” he asked. “It’s pretty cold out here.”
His voice was high-pitched, but it matched him to a tee. His round baby face was red from the cold and probably a dose of high blood pressure. There was definitely a spare tire around his middle, probably from too many sweets, too little exercise, and way too much sitting behind a desk.
She stood back and opened the door wide for him. He quickly removed his hat, revealing a narrow rim of light brown hair circling a bald head above it. His green eyes darted around the room when Joe yelled, “Cat. Cat. Run.”
“It’s the parrot,” she said.
He unzipped his jacket and said, “Birds and me don’t get along too good, and I’m allergic to cats.”
“There’s one of them around here, too, but she’s skittish around strangers,” she said. “Would you like a cup of coffee? There’s some made.”
“I’d love one. I got two doughnuts left in this box. We can share.”
“No, thanks, but you’re welco
me to have one.”
“Gun?” he said.
“It’s registered and I have a permit to carry,” she said quickly.
“Then I guess you really did shoot at them women?”
“No, I shot at a tree to scare them. They were rolling around in my front yard acting like a couple of idiots. I didn’t feel like going out there in my bare feet and pulling them apart.”
He grinned. “Last time I got in the middle of the feud, I got a bullet in my leg. So nowadays when I get a call to come up here, I take my time and have a few doughnuts before I leave Gainesville. If they kill each other, well, they shouldn’t be feudin’. Let’s have a cup of coffee and visit a spell and then I’ll be on my way.”
“And your report?”
“What report?” He grinned.
Chapter 8
“Hey, Callie.” Finn pushed his way inside the house. “Is that kidney bean soup I smell? It’s my favorite.”
She turned around at the sink and nodded. “It’s ready to dip up a bowl, and we’ve got hot biscuits to go with it.”
“Now that’s a treat. Give me two minutes to wash up. It’s blowing like crazy out there and supposed to get worse. Could I get you to help me feed this afternoon? I promise we’ll be finished by the time Martin gets home. Where did that box of doughnuts come from?”
“It’s an empty box, so don’t get your hopes up,” she said.
“But where did it come from?”
“Remember the fight this morning?”
Joe chose that moment to imitate the noises he’d heard when Callie fired at the tree. “Cops! Cops! Hide!” he yelled in a deep voice.
He hung his coat on the back of a chair. “How could I forget it? Are you telling me that Honey or Betsy brought a peace offering?”
“No. Honey called the sheriff after the shooting. My gun was on the table, but we just moved it aside so he could eat his last two doughnuts. I think he was flirting with me.” She laughed.
“He’d have to be stone-cold blind or crazy as bat shit not to flirt with you,” Finn said. “Now about helping me feed?”
“I hired on to do whatever you needed,” she said.
“Whatever?” He wiggled his eyebrows. Even that silly gesture put her mind into the gutter. Need and want were two different things for both of them, and she still wasn’t over being angry at having her morning ruined or by him stopping at one red-hot, scorching kiss either.
“Needed, not wanted. Wash your hands and let’s eat dinner.”
***
Feeding cows, driving a truck, and cutting loose hay bales all came back to Callie like riding a bicycle, but that didn’t mean she enjoyed it. The wind got harsher as the day went on, and the skies got darker. If she was going to stay on the ranch, she’d have to buy a warmer coat next time they got into a bigger place than Burnt Boot because her jacket didn’t do much to keep the warmth in or the cold out. Running in the snow in nothing more than a sweatshirt was one thing; working in it was quite another.
She had located a fairly new pair of broken-in work gloves in the console of the old truck, and they fit just fine so her fingers didn’t go numb as she helped Finn toss hay out to the cattle. She’d worked on ranches from the time she was old enough to stick her hand under a hen’s feathers and get the eggs until she signed on the dotted line and became the property of the U.S. Army for six years. She had dreamed every night of getting away from the smell of cow manure back then, and now here she was right back in the middle of it.
“Let me help with that,” Finn yelled over the noise of bawling cows, wind, and the engine of the truck. He pulled a pair of clippers from his back pocket, snapped the wire loose, and kicked the hay bale away from the rusted tailgate.
A bit of a red flannel shirt peeked out from the mustard-colored work coat. Under that shirt was a broad chest of tight muscles, probably covered with a crop of soft chest hair. She fought back the desire to reach up under there and warm her cold hands.
“What are you thinking about? You look like you’re in another world.” He started around the truck with her right behind him.
“I guess I was.” She got into the pickup quickly so that all the warm air wouldn’t escape.
“One where there’s no cows or hay to deal with?”
“I didn’t like ranchin’ when I was a kid, and my opinions about cows and hay haven’t changed since I left it,” she said.
“You go there to that other world very often?” he asked as Shotgun jumped into the truck from the driver’s side and settled between them.
She wasn’t about to confess that the world she’d been visiting had to do with chest hair and not with sand and broiling-hot sun or even cows and hay.
“More than I should,” she answered honestly.
“At least Christmas on a ranch is a lot different than Afghanistan at Christmas, isn’t it?”
“Here, it’s really Christmas. Over there, it was like we were playacting, but we did have a pretty tree,” she said.
He reached around Shotgun and squeezed her knee. Denim and leather gloves separated skin from skin, or she was sure it would have left a red hand print on her leg. “That, honey, was the ugliest damn thing ever put up and called a Christmas tree. But I still smile every Christmas when I think about it.”
“Yellow light,” she said softly.
“Don’t start that shit on me now, Callie.”
“So you remember?”
“Of course, I remember. We all had to take those damn classes on sexual harassment. Red light meant back off six feet. Yellow light meant don’t come any closer, and green light meant lock the door because we’re about to start shucking out of our clothes.”
“I don’t think that’s the way the instructor really explained it,” she told him.
“It’s the way I heard it. So why did you say yellow light right then?”
She gathered her thoughts as she looked straight ahead, knowing if she looked at his jawline, his lips, or even that damn black hat, she wouldn’t be able to explain. “You know about my sister and the way she went from one boyfriend to another, each one not worth a damn. I’m afraid I’ll turn out to be like her.”
“Callie, you can kick that shit out of your head. You aren’t anything like that. You are raisin’ Martin, and you’re a damn good mother to that kid.”
“Maybe I just cover it up real good,” she said.
“Bullshit. Whatever you think is written all over your face. You couldn’t cover up anything,” he said.
She damn sure had him buffaloed, but she wasn’t going to ’fess up about the blistering-hot thoughts she’d had all afternoon.
***
Finn liked everything that had happened in his world since Callie showed up. He liked the way they worked together, her damn fine cooking, and the comfortable feeling between them. It had always been like that, from the first day they were sent out on a mission together. He’d about gone AWOL when they told him he’d be working with a female spotter, but she’d shown him that first time that she was solid as a rock.
A month ago, when he had driven through the cattle guard out by the road and through the arch onto Salt Draw Ranch, he knew that his soul had come home to roost. And now that Callie was there, he was more at peace than he’d been in two years, and he’d do anything to keep her around.
They finished up the chores and had just settled into the sofa with a cup of piping-hot coffee when Martin burst through the front door. Shotgun raised his head, jumped to his feet, and put his paws on Martin’s chest. Pistol opened his big, bulging brown eyes and ambled over to Martin. Angel darted from under the sofa and sniffed the backpack on the floor as if a strange critter had come to threaten her position.
Joe said, “Cat. Cat. Run, dog, run.”
“He doesn’t need a bit of coaxing to talk, does he?” Callie asked.
“Well, dammit, Mary! Joe wants apples!” He rattled on as he pranced back and forth.
“Hey, Joe, how you doin’, old man? I think t
hey all missed me, Callie. Poor things had to stay home all day and wonder if I was comin’ back.” He kissed Shotgun right on the nose and got a big slurpy kiss up his cheek for his efforts. “I’ll change out the newspaper soon as I get something to eat. I’m starving.”
“So I don’t see black eyes or a bloody nose. You must’ve got along all right.” Finn patted Callie on the back as he talked.
“And I see your old work shoes on your feet,” Callie fussed.
“Ahh, Callie, I couldn’t wear them others to the first day of school. I like my teacher, but I don’t like all them girls except for Olivia. She’s okay because she’s real smart, and me and her tied for the math test today. We was the only ones who made a hundred.”
“Sounds to me like you had a pretty good day,” Finn said.
“I did, and tomorrow I get to ride the bus with Adam and Ricky and Olivia. They’re my new best friends. I’m going to put on my old jeans so me and Shotgun can go outside and play.” Martin ran off to his room to change.
“Shotgun! Hit the dirt, scumbag,” Joe yelled.
Chapter 9
Callie grabbed the blanket from her bed and trailed it behind her on the way to the porch. She wasn’t in Afghanistan. She was on a ranch in north Texas. But it wouldn’t be real until she was out of the house and could feel the cold against her skin, know that she was for sure on Finn’s ranch, and discern the difference between nightmare and reality.
She tiptoed past Joe. His head was tucked under his wing, and for once he didn’t start yelling or making gun noises. She’d gone for weeks without the dreams, and this was the second night of them in less than a week. Martin was doing well in school, making friends, and she and Finn settled into their routine. He was constantly hugging her or touching her hand or her shoulder, and there’d been a few more kisses, but mostly it was workouts in the morning, work on the ranch in the afternoon, entertain Martin in the evening. So why tonight?
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