“That explains a lot. Now we know where they came from and that no one is coming to claim them. And, Verdie, I meant it when I said for you to come visit us,” Callie said.
“Honey, I’d love to come for a visit, but when I do, we’ll leave the sweet tea in the icebox and bust out some bourbon. You can go on and make cookies, though. My favorite is gingersnaps. I’ve got to go now. The damned old buzzer will ring in a few minutes, and we’ll all shuffle down to the dining room to eat shit that is good for us. I don’t know why in the hell I thought I’d be happy in a place like this. There’s a real good recipe for gingersnaps up in the cabinet in a little wood box. And I’m guessin’ that Angel is the cat and Shotgun is a dog?”
“I’ll look for the recipe, and, yes, ma’am. Angel is the cat I found at the store, and Shotgun came to the ranch with Finn.”
“I figured that’s the way it is. Now you go on and make them cookies. Finn likes them.”
“He does?”
“Oh, yes. We sat right over there at the table and had them when I sold him the ranch. Bye now, and you have a good day. We’ll talk about that damned feud another day,” Verdie said.
Callie put the receiver back on the wall base and rolled her neck to get the kinks out. “Poor old darlin’ is lonely. She lived in this house or on this ranch her whole life, and now she has nothing but a buzzer to regulate her life. I wonder if she ever had a cat in the house, Angel. What do you think? Do you smell the ghosts of cats past in here somewhere?”
***
Finn fished his cell phone out of his pocket and answered on the third ring. “Hello, Miz Verdie. How are things in the big city?”
“Boring as hell. I hear y’all got a couple of inches of snow up there and that there’s more on the way toward the end of the week and it ain’t goin’ to melt off before the big one hits,” she said.
“That’s what they say. I’m working on this old John Deere tractor. How old is this sucker, anyway?”
“Well, let me think. My oldest son was still in diapers when we bought it, and I mean them kind of diapers that you wash and put on the line, not the kind you ball up and throw in the trash. He was born in 1954, so I’d say it’s a 1955. Lord, we thought we’d died and gone straight to heaven when we got that thing with its double-barreled carburetor. It would fire right up in the wintertime no matter how cold it got. You get that live power shaft fixed, and she’ll run another fifty years.”
“I’m working on it.” Finn backed up and sat down on a bale of hay. “The old mama barn cat has a litter. I just saw one peeking out at me.”
“Crazy old cat ain’t got a lick of sense. She’ll throw a litter in the winter every year, and the funny thing is they usually survive better than the spring litter does. So tell me about this woman I hear you got in the house. Gladys says she’s pretty sassy,” Verdie said.
Poor old girl not only missed the ranch but Burnt Boot. Finn could well understand the way she must feel. If someone jerked him up by the roots and tried to plant him in a place as big as Dallas, he’d be climbing the walls within a week. He leaned back on the stack of hay and got ready for a long conversation.
“She was my spotter over in the war.” He went on to explain the situation with WITSEC.
“They let women do that?”
“It don’t happen real often, but she was very good at it,” he answered.
“Well, shit! I knew I was born in the wrong time. I’d have made a damn fine sniper or spotter, either one. I can shoot the hair out of a billy goat’s beard at a hundred yards.” Verdie laughed.
“The way you ran this ranch single-handed, I don’t doubt it,” Finn said.
“Got a confession. The last ten years I leased most of the ranch, and I just took care of the hundred acres around the house there. Grew a few acres of hay and a big garden but only ran twenty head of cattle most of the time. I didn’t have no idea how bad I’d miss them cantankerous old cows, but I guess in time I’ll get used to this place. There’s the buzzer that tells me they’re puttin’ our dinner on the table in the dining room, so I’ll go on down there.”
“You makin’ friends?” Finn asked.
“Oh, sure I am. I sleep with a different man every night,” she cackled.
“Verdie!”
“Don’t fuss at me. I ain’t got no cows, and they damn sure wouldn’t let me haul my mama cat into this fancy-smancy place. A woman has to have an imagination, or she’d go crazy.”
Finn laughed with her. “You take care of yourself, and you know that you’re welcome here on Salt Draw anytime you want to come for a visit.”
“Thank you, Finn. I might take you up on that sometime. I’d like to meet your Callie,” she said. “Now the lady is knocking on my door, which means all those old worn-out cowboys who can’t remember how to put their boots on will be waiting for me at my table. Bye now.”
Finn put the phone back in his pocket and headed out across the pasture toward the house. “Hey, is that chili I smell?” He kicked off his boots at the back door, picked Callie up, and swung her in circles. “I’m so glad you’re here, Callie. That sounds wonderful on a day like today. The heater can’t keep up out there in the barn.”
Callie set the whole pot on a trivet in the middle of the table while he removed his coat, gloves, and hat. “I told you I could help you with that tractor. I’ve worked on lots of old machinery. Betcha it’s the power shaft. That might be the first year they came out with that feature so they didn’t have it down as well as they did later on. One of my sister’s boyfriends was a crackerjack mechanic, and he taught me a little about it.”
Finn sat down at the table. “Did he teach you to shoot?”
“No, that I learned from my first boyfriend. His idea of a perfect date was target shooting.” She dipped up a bowl of chili and handed it to him and scooted the bowl of saltines and the plate of corn bread his way.
“Callie, you are not like your sister,” Finn said.
“What made you say that?”
“I can read your mind.”
“What makes you think part of me isn’t like her?”
“The cats,” he answered.
She brought her head up, her aqua eyes locking with his blue ones. “What does that have to do with anything? And why is she in the barn during this weather? She might get cold. Bring her into the utility room, and I’ll make her a bed in an old laundry basket.”
“She has kittens out there, and they’re too wild to catch.” Finn’s eyes twinkled.
“I can catch them with a bowl of warm milk. I’ll set it down, and they’ll come up to drink it,” she said.
“Point proven,” he said.
She went back to eating. “What are you talking about?”
“You take in strays.”
“Lacy said it was a good thing elephants didn’t grow in Texas, or I’d want to bring them inside during the winter.” She smiled.
“Lacy was your sister? I don’t think I ever heard her name before now.”
“Yes, she was, and taking in strays isn’t settling down, Finn,” Callie said seriously.
“Folks who take in strays are putting down roots. Did your sister ever bring home homeless cats and dogs?”
Callie shook her head slowly. “And she didn’t like it when I did. Said it just made leaving harder to do. When Mama died, I was sixteen. I lived with Lacy two years before I enlisted.”
“Well, there you have it. You are a settler, not a runner. Plain and simple. Verdie called me this morning,” Finn said.
“She called me too,” Callie said.
“Maybe when it clears off, she’ll come up to visit with Gladys and Polly, and we’ll invite her for supper,” he said.
Callie refilled his tea glass. “I bet she’d like that a lot.”
Finn reached out and cupped Callie’s cheeks in his hands. “I meant it, Callie. You are a settler.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
He pushed the chair back after the second bowl of
chili and a piece of chocolate cake. “Want to come out to the barn with me and see the mama cat and the kittens after dinner? I could sure use your opinion on that driveshaft, too.”
“No! No! Cats in the house, dog,” Joe said.
She grabbed his hand and held it against her cheek. “I swear he’s going to show up on the table in alfredo sauce some night. I would love to go see the kittens, but I’ll have more fun doing mechanic work. It’s been a long time since I got to tear into a tractor.”
He bookcased her cheeks in his calloused hands again and bent at the waist to fall into her gorgeous eyes gazing up into his. Not even Lala had captured his soul the way Callie had since she’d arrived at Salt Draw. No woman had ever made him feel so protective, yet so protected at the same time.
He shifted his gaze to her lips. He had to taste them, had to claim them for his own right then, or his heart was going to jump right out of his chest and die on the floor at the ends of her cute little toes.
Green light, please let it be a green light, he thought as her eyelids slid shut, heavy black lashes fanning out on slightly toasted skin, and her lips parted.
Chapter 12
“Well, shoot!” Martin said when the anchorman on television said that Burnt Boot would be having school that morning. “Oh, man, I wanted to build a snowman.”
“The snow isn’t going anywhere, and the bus will be here in ten minutes, so go put on your coat,” Callie said.
“Finn, will you help me build one over the weekend?” Martin asked.
“We’re supposed to get at least three more inches tonight, and the temperature isn’t supposed to raise enough to melt it off, so I expect we’ll have enough by the weekend to build a decent one. If we built one today, it wouldn’t hold together anyway, as dry as that stuff out there is,” Finn said.
“Can we have snow ice cream?” Martin looked at Callie.
“You, young man, are procrastinating in hopes of missing the bus, but it’s not happening. Coat. Hat. Gloves, and not those new ones that Finn bought you to work in either. The ones inside your coat pocket.”
He looked at the floor and exhaled loudly. “Okay, I have to do it, but I don’t have to like it. I could be a big help on the ranch today.”
“You’ll be a big help at school today. If they closed, then you’d just have to make it up later in the year. You might even have to go to school on Christmas day,” Callie told him.
Martin slapped his hands over his eyes and headed toward his room. “Don’t even talk like that.”
Finn turned to Callie. “So what have you got in mind for after we do our workout?”
Joe made kissy noises and turned around to look out the window.
“I guess he watched something other than cop shows a few times.” Finn laughed.
“I wish he would have listened to country music instead of watching anything. To answer your question, there’s a ranch to be run and cookies to be made after our workout. I heard through the Verdie grapevine yesterday that the sexy cowboy who lives in this house likes gingersnaps.”
“Sexy?” One dark eyebrow shot up.
“That’s according to the grapevine,” she said.
“I kind of like the grapevine then. You reckon you could put off the cookies until after lunch? I could sure use a driver this morning. Feeding would go a lot faster if you drove for me,” he said.
“If you’d rather have a driver than cookies, that’s what I’ll do. I’ve got a new warm coat and gloves, remember?”
Martin dragged his backpack up the hallway, books clumping along the hardwood floor. “It’s not fair that you get to go outside and help, Callie. I heard you talking about wearing your new coat. I’ll be stuck inside that old school all day, and you get to go help feed. It’s just not fair.”
“He’s a rancher for sure,” Finn said.
“I bet Adam and Ricky won’t even be there,” Martin continued to fuss as he headed toward the door.
“And who are Adam and Ricky?” Callie asked. “I thought Harry was your best friend.”
“He is when we’re in class. But out on the playground, we join up with Adam and Ricky. They’re both in second grade, but Ricky is a little bit older. They’re Olivia’s brothers, and if she ain’t there, then math ain’t no fun, because she and me, we’re the team leaders because we always have the good grades. And if she ain’t there, then the other team leader is Mindy, and she’s just mean.” Martin sighed.
“I’m not sure I understood all that,” Callie said.
“Olivia and Ricky and Adam all live in the same house. If they don’t have to come to school, then she don’t either. They have foster parents,” Martin explained.
Finn laid a hand on Martin’s shoulder. “The bus is pulling up in the yard. Maybe your friends will all be there. What’d you say their names are? Amos and Raymond?”
Martin mumbled as he left, “Yesterday Olivia got called to the office, and she came back with her eyes all red and puffy like she’d been crying. I hope there ain’t nothing wrong.”
Callie changed into work jeans and her heaviest sweatshirt, then checked Martin’s room before she put her coat on. The bed was made tightly, just like she’d shown him. He’d always liked to draw, and his newest creations drew her to the desk. There was a fair rendition of the ranch house with a Christmas tree shining through the window, snow on the ground, and those two four-legged things on the porch had to be Shotgun and Pistol. Another yellow figure was sitting in the window.
“Evidently animals aren’t going to be as easy for you as houses and snow.” She smiled.
She was toting her coat into the kitchen when Finn came out of his part of the house.
“Workout or feed first?” she asked.
“This first just to get me going for a workout.” He bent her backward and gave her a Hollywood kiss.
“Well, I reckon that heated me up enough,” she mumbled.
***
The cows were lined up around the feed trough like it was a Sunday buffet at the local café. Callie kept the truck running, but the heater only worked at about half speed. He was doubly lucky to have her in his life. Not only was the house in good shape, the meals on the table, and the laundry kept up, she was always ready to do real ranching work even if she didn’t like it.
He swung the ax one final time, and an old bull lumbered toward the edge of the creek for a drink. He nodded at the bull and jogged back to the truck, tossed the ax into the back, and got inside in a hurry.
“Maybe we should have Christmas this week. Then we’d be guaranteed to get our white Christmas.” He removed his gloves and stuck his hands on the heater vent. “This thing isn’t throwing hardly any heat.”
“You need to buy a new thermostat next time you’re in town, and I’ll put it on for you.”
“Is there anything you don’t do?”
“Define ‘do.’” She put the truck in reverse, and the tires spun twice before she got turned around. “While you’re thinking of a definition, I don’t knit or crochet or do any of that needlework stuff, and although I don’t mind gardening, I’ve got a black thumb when it comes to raisin’ flowers. Roses wilt and die when I pass by them, and if you’re depending on me to keep those flower beds all pretty next spring, you can fire me right now.”
“I reckon I can do without flowers for a decent mechanic,” he said.
The truck hit a hole and she yelped. “Holy shit! Looks like this thing needs shocks, too.”
She’d barely gotten the words out when a hissing noise and a long, greasy slide send them straight into a grove of mesquite trees. “Dammit! We’ve got a flat.”
“It don’t require knitting or none of that crochet shit, so you can fix it,” Finn teased.
She shook her head from side to side. “I don’t think so, cowboy! Not even if you fire me. I can fix a tire but not when there’s a big, strong handsome man who can do it.”
He pulled on his gloves. “Flattery is the only thing that would make me get out in
this cold wind.”
***
Callie expected the rear passenger side of the truck to rise as he jacked it up to change the tire. At that point she’d planned to get out and help him take the blown tire off and put the new one on. The front end probably had another dent or two, but there wasn’t any steam coming out, so they probably hadn’t busted the radiator.
He tapped on her window, and she rolled it down an inch.
“Spare is flat. Shut it down. We’ll have to walk to the house and come fix it later, or if you’d rather, I’ll bring my truck back and get you. Either way, it’s going to get cold.”
“How far?” she asked.
“Half a mile at most. Maybe a little less. We should have saved our PT until after we’d done chores. You up for a second run?” he asked.
“I’m not going to just sit here and wait.” She looked down at the shoes on her feet and wished to hell she hadn’t been so stubborn about a pair of boots. Now she had to walk half a mile and maybe get frostbite on her toes by the time she got home.
He opened the door. “How about a nice little Thursday afternoon stroll, darlin’?”
She looped her arm in his and said in a sarcastic Southern twang, “Are you asking me on a date, Finn O’Donnell?”
“Can’t fraternize with the partner, but it’s a lovely day for a walk.” He grinned.
“Walk, nothing, soldier. I’m going to jog.”
As if on cue, the heavens opened up and snow began falling so hard that visibility was limited to five feet. By the time they’d gone twenty feet, Callie couldn’t even see the truck when she looked over her shoulder.
“I could give you a piggyback ride,” he said.
“If we can live through a sandstorm, I reckon we’ll make it through a blizzard,” she told him.
“Just follow the ruts.”
“They’re filling up fast,” she said.
When they reached the backyard fence, her feet were numb and her fingers tingled. The glow of the lights coming from the kitchen window was the most beautiful sight she’d seen in years. Finn tried the gate, but it was frozen shut, so he climbed over and then reached up to help her when she made it to the top of the rails.
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