Renegade Father

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Just her imagination. That's all it had been. One of the men had played a cruel, senseless prank on her and she had let herself get entirely too carried away by it.

  Nothing else out of the ordinary had happened since then. If she sometimes seemed to feel icy fingers glide down her spine with the sensation of someone watching her, well, that too was just her imagination working overtime.

  "Hey, quit loafing over here. We got work to do." Manny Santiago rode up to them, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight as a grin split his dark, handsome face.

  She pushed the thoughts of that eerie photograph out of her mind and looked up at him, forcing a smile. "Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say. You've got the best part."

  Manny had won the coin toss and drew out the en-viable task of rounding up the calves, with the help of the dogs.

  "Any time you want to trade, let me know," she went on. "I could use some time on the back of a horse."

  "How many more?" Manny asked.

  "I don't know. Let me check." Annie picked up the computerized printout, grateful again for technology that helped her easily track each calf through every stage of its life on the Double C.

  In the old days, her father would have pages and pages of data about the herd. Now everything was on computer, from the moment the calf came into the world until he met his inevitable end.

  "We're about halfway there," she answered. "About a hundred more. We still might beat the others."

  "I hope so, boss. I could really use that twenty bucks."

  She sent him a teasing grin. "Quit stalling, then. Get out there and bring us some more calves. I think it's fair to say the other team isn't just going to hand it to us. They all want the prize, too."

  Joe had turned the drudgery of vaccinating the new calves into a contest—the first team to take care of its allotted calves would each earn an Andrew Jackson.

  He was so good at getting the most out of the men. He always seemed to know exactly what they needed to spur them to work harder and faster. Annie sighed, depressed again at the idea of trying to find someone to replace him.

  While she waited for Luke to set up the next calf, she watched Manny go to work, with help from her best cow dog. Dolly's black and white belly brushed the snow as she effortlessly separated another calf from its mother. Together the border collie and the cowboy drove the calf into the overflow chute, without Dolly even having to nip at the animal.

  "That sure is one fine dog." Following her gaze, Luke shook his head in admiration.

  Annie couldn't agree more. Although Dolly was nearly fourteen, the border collie still could outwork any of the other three dogs on the ranch, all half her age or younger.

  Her father had prided himself on the quality of his herders and he used to spend hours training them. As far as Annie was concerned, Dolly was better than any of them had been.

  "Should have named her Shadow, though." Luke flashed her a grin just as Annie slid the a needle under the hide of the next bawling calf.

  "Why's that?" she asked, only half-listening to him.

  "The way she follows you around and all."

  Annie smiled as she pulled the needle out. "She always has, I suppose because I trained her from a pup. We've been through a lot together."

  Now there was an understatement. Dolly had been one of her best protectors during her marriage. She had hated Charlie fiercely—a sentiment he returned whole-heartedly—and she instinctively seemed to sense when he'd been drinking and was at his most dangerous.

  She would always bark like crazy, giving Annie enough advance warning so she could retreat somewhere he wouldn't dare bother her, either her own room or one of the children's.

  Ah, the joys of matrimony.

  She blew out a breath and forced herself to turn back to the job at hand. "Okay, that one's done. Ninety-nine more."

  "Have you given any more thought to hiring me to take over for Joe?" Luke asked suddenly.

  At the completely unexpected question, she fumbled with the hypodermic and would have dropped it into the mud they'd churned up through the snow if her instincts hadn't kicked in at the last minute. She ended up catching it in midair.

  "What…What did you say?"

  "You know. What we talked about the other night. About hiring me to be foreman after Joe leaves."

  Dumbfounded, for a moment she could do nothing but stare at him. She thought she had made it abundantly clear he wasn't even in the running for the foreman position. Good grief. Did he need to be knocked over the head with it?

  She sat back on her heels, fumbling for words just like she had just fumbled the syringe. "Luke, I told you I wanted someone with a little more experience," she finally said. "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to change my mind about it."

  He didn't seem at all fazed by her answer, just gave her a smile brimming with cockiness. "You will. Just wait."

  The complete conviction in his voice astounded her but before she could answer, the muffled thud of horse hooves on snow sounded in the clear, cold air.

  Joe rode across the pasture toward them on Quixote, his big bay gelding. He wore jeans, a lined denim jacket, his customary black Stetson and leather gloves—the standard winter attire of all the cowboys who worked the Double C. Manny and Luke deviated only in the color of their hats.

  But somehow Joe made the clothes look far different than either of the other men. He seemed so perfectly right on the back of the muscular horse—so wholly, ruggedly male—that her stomach quivered in reaction.

  He always made her feel completely feminine by comparison, even when she was grubbing around in the snow and the mud in her ratty old ranch coat and beat-up ropers.

  Joe was the kind of man who turned heads wherever he went, just by his sheer physical presence. He always had been. Even as a boy he had been strikingly beautiful, and all the girls at school used to have crushes on him. Joe ignored all of them except for Annie, which didn't exactly win her points with the other girls. Not that she cared much. She hadn't had much patience for other girls her age.

  If anything, age and life had only improved Joe's looks, had hardened his sculpted features to masculine perfection. With that exotic copper skin, his piercing dark eyes and that full, sensuous mouth—not to mention the air of barely leashed danger surrounding him in an almost visible aura—it was no wonder women still acted like fluttery idiots around him.

  Including her.

  Annie jolted back to earth and to the calf bawling in the pen in front of her, suddenly remembering the bet.

  "Your team can't be done yet!" she exclaimed. "No way!"

  Joe's grin nearly stopped her heart. "Scared, are you?"

  She took a deep, fortifying breath, relieved to find her blood still pumping, her lungs still working. "Not at all. We're gonna kick your butts. Aren't we, boys?"

  "Hell, yeah." Luke's chest puffed with bravado and Manny's grin flashed in his dark face.

  "Right into next week, boss," he said.

  Joe rested both hands on the saddle horn as Quixote stamped a few times in the snow and puffed out a cloudy breath, eager for action.

  Like most modern ranches, the Double C had a couple of snowmobiles and two four-wheelers but she and Joe both preferred to do things the time-honored way whenever possible. A snowmobile could never take the place of a good cutting horse, and Qui was one of the best she'd ever seen.

  She gave the big bay a pat, then turned to Joe with a smirk. "We're especially going to kick your butts if you spend all day checking up on us. Worry about your own calves, why don't you?"

  "Well, you know, I'd like to do that but for some reason we didn't have enough needles to finish the job. You wouldn't have shortchanged us on purpose, would you?"

  "Why on earth would I do that?"

  He shrugged. "Maybe you were trying to sabotage our chances at winning the contest."

  You stupid bitch. Can't you do anything right? You're always trying to ruin everything for me.

  His words sparked another of those
damn flashbacks. It took her completely by surprise. She hadn't had one for months, but for a moment she froze.

  Locked in the past, she felt herself respond—felt her head bow, her shoulders hunch in foreboding—and she could think of nothing else but escaping.

  Eventually through the old haze of misery and fear, reality intruded. Joe would never hurt her. Her mind knew it even if her instincts had been conditioned to cower.

  She looked up and found him watching her with a smile in his eyes. Teasing. He was teasing her.

  Calming breaths. Deep, calming breaths. With effort, she made her muscles relax and when the fear finally fled she forced herself to play along, raising a haughty eyebrow as if nothing had happened. "Why would I have to resort to sabotage? We were going to win anyway."

  "Just hedging your bets, maybe. Our team mysteriously ran out of sharps halfway through our calves and last I checked, you were the one handing out the supplies."

  No wonder she'd been thrown off balance. She wasn't used to Joe in this teasing mood. Even when he was younger, he'd always been far too serious and his time in prison had only made him more somber.

  Apparently the men weren't used to it either. Manny watched the exchange avidly from his saddle and even Luke had dropped what he was doing to lean his elbows on the rail of the chute.

  She tried to ignore them both.

  "I had nothing to do with it." She gave a small, prim smile, vastly relieved that the flashback hadn't been a bad one. "What I gave you should have been more than enough. You probably dropped them in the snow somewhere."

  "That's what I would have suspected too, except you do have a reputation to uphold."

  "What are you talking about? I always play fair!"

  "Do the words 'letter jacket' mean anything to you?"

  The memory surprised a laugh out of her, conjuring up a long-forgotten memory. She'd been about eleven, Joe and Colt fifteen. The three of them had been moving irrigation pipes on the Broken Spur one summer day and Joe had boasted that he could ride any horse on either of their ranches. She had bet him his brand-new football letter jacket that she could find a horse he couldn't ride.

  She laughed again, remembering the completely baffled look on his face when he had hit the dirt. "You just can't let it go, can you? Twenty years later and you can't forget."

  "You cheated, Annie. You never told me you had a ringer, a wild mustang your dad had just brought to the ranch. It was a dirty trick. Can you blame me for being suspicious now?"

  "I gave you back your stupid jacket."

  "Only because your dad forced you to."

  She grinned at him, relishing their banter. She had a sudden, fierce wish that they could travel back in time to the days when their friendship was pure and uncomplicated. Before the terrible summer when their world had changed forever.

  Her smile faded. They couldn't go back, any more than they could change the past. And soon all she would have left of him would be those memories.

  She picked up a handful of wrapped needles from the box in front of her and held them out. "Here. Take as many as you need," she said, her voice short. "Want us to take some of your calves to make it fair?"

  His own smile slid away and he didn't say anything for a moment, as if sensing her mood. Finally he took the needles from her. "No. Wouldn't want to give you any reason to say we didn't win fair and square."

  He wheeled Quixote around, then the horse cantered off across the pasture, leaving her watching after him.

  * * *

  Joe poked at the cedar log in the fireplace, sending sparks fluttering up the chimney. Outside the wood-frame foreman's cottage, snowflakes drifted softly to earth. But inside the four-room cottage was warm and cozy.

  He watched the fire for a few moments, lost in the hypnotic dance and sway of the flames and the hiss and chatter of wood being consumed, then he returned to the easy chair facing it.

  This is what he had missed so desperately in prison—this satisfying ache in his muscles from knowing he'd put in a good, honest day's work, the calm assurance that he'd left no chores undone, a warm, comfortable chair, and a good book to come home to at the end of the day.

  Other inmates filled the endless hours in the joint talking of what they missed most on the outside—their friends or their women or their whiskey. But Joe had dreamed of only simple, pure moments like this.

  And of Annie.

  He picked up his book, angry at himself for always coming back to her. He'd had no business dreaming of her then and he had even less business dreaming of her now.

  Besides, the laughing, gutsy girl that had sustained him through those grim years when he thought he would shatter apart if he had to endure one more day was just a memory. That girl didn't exist anymore.

  In her place was a sad-eyed, skittish woman who jumped at shadows and trusted no one.

  Occasionally the girl he had known reappeared, though. This afternoon, for instance. He set the book down and gazed once more at the flames as if he could conjure her there.

  It had been so good to see Annie laughing and joking with him, to see that flush on her cheeks again and that sassy spark in her eyes.

  He missed the old Annie, the one who used to see the world as one big challenge for her to conquer. The Annie who found joy in the simplest of things and who was willing to take on a bully twice her size on the school bus when Joe stoically refused to respond to his taunts.

  He hadn't realized how much he missed her until he caught that rare, fleeting glimpse today.

  He had loved that girl. It had been his guilty secret through most of his life. Annie had represented everything he didn't have in his life—sweetness, laughter, joy—and he had craved her like an addict desperate for his next fix.

  He'd tried to hide it and thought he had succeeded pretty well until the day he had found her grieving for her father up at the lake. He had kissed her only in comfort, but that one embrace had sent all his bottled-up feelings—some he hadn't even admitted to himself—exploding out of him like Roman candles.

  The memory was etched in his mind, right alongside the day he learned she had married his brother.

  He found out the same day he had been transferred from the county jail to Deer Lodge. He didn't know what he remembered more, his first official day as a convicted murderer or that solemn, devastating letter from Colt.

  Annie and Charlie.

  He had thought it was a joke at first. When he finally realized Colt was serious, he thought he was suffocating, being buried alive.

  She hadn't even bothered to write to him herself. He was amazed at how much that still hurt, even though he admitted he was probably to blame for that. She had tried to come visit him before his sentencing and he wouldn't even see her. He had been too ashamed to let her see him.

  Maybe if he hadn't been so stubborn, maybe if he could have swallowed his pride, he might have been able to talk some sense into her before she did something so disastrous as marry his brother.

  It was the past, he reminded himself, picking up his book with determination. It was over and done with. Dredging it all up again was pointless—not to mention masochistic.

  Despite his best efforts to concentrate on the mystery, he still hadn't turned a single page twenty minutes later when a knock sounded through the cottage.

  He sighed and balanced the book on the padded arm of the chair. So much for his quiet night in front of the fire. Trouble was the only thing to come knocking on the foreman's door this late at night.

  It was probably Mitchell. At dinner the rest of the men said they were going into Lulu's in town to waste the bonus he'd ended up having to give all of them.

  Just his luck that his brainy idea for a vaccination contest would end in a dead tie between both teams—they'd all ridden back to the barn at exactly the same moment. He'd been obligated to fork over eighty bucks, twenty each to the four hands.

  He had planned to pay out of his own pocket—it was his idea, after all—but Annie wouldn't let h
im. She'd insisted on using ranch reserves. The men deserved it, she said, and she only wished she'd thought of it first.

  She was a good boss, even though she still didn't have much confidence in herself.

  And how could he blame her for that? When she was a child she'd had to deal with her father's harsh expectations and vocal disappointment that she hadn't been a son. Then as an adult she'd had to deal with Charlie.

  He put the thought away and swung open the door.

  To his surprise, it wasn't Luke standing on his step but Annie, hands shoved into the pockets of a thin jacket and her shoulders bowed against the cold night.

  Chapter 6

  "What's wrong?" he asked instantly, taking in the worry in her eyes and the lines bracketing her mouth.

  "I'm being stupid. Probably nothing. It's just…" She chewed on her lip. "I saw your light on and thought I'd ask. Did you see Dolly by any chance when you were doing the evening feeding?"

  He frowned, trying to remember. "No. I think the last time I saw her was this afternoon when we all came back after finishing up the shots. Why? What's the matter?"

  "Probably nothing." She blew out a breath. "I just can't find her anywhere. I've looked in all her usual hideouts but she's not in any of them. I don't know where else to look."

  As the surprise at finding her knocking on his door this late at night began to wear off, he started to notice other details about her appearance. Huge white flakes of snow stood out in stark relief against the auburn of her hair, her face was pale and set, and her lips had an ominous blue tinge to them.

  Didn't the woman have more sense than to wander outside in the middle of the night during a Montana February wearing only a thin jacket? She colored at his scrutiny and reached a hand—a bare hand, he noted with aggravation—and swiped at the snow in her hair.

  "Where are your gloves?" he snapped. "What were you thinking to go outside in the middle of the night without a good coat on? Do you want to freeze to death?"