He hadn't come far in the room before he caught sight of Joe and immediately stopped in his tracks. "What is he doing here again?"
Annie frowned at his belligerent tone of voice.
"We've talked about this," she answered sternly. "Your uncle is welcome here any time he wants."
C.J. glared back at both of them. She met him glare for glare, not willing to tolerate rudeness from him even though she knew it stemmed from pain. Her son lowered his eyes first and his gaze landed on the blanket-covered dog lying as still as death beside the woodstove.
"What's the matter with Dolly?"
She didn't want to frighten him by telling him Dolly might have been poisoned. He had seen more than enough ugliness in his young life and he certainly didn't need to be exposed to more, especially when she could hardly believe Dr. Thacker's suspicions herself.
She cleared her throat. "She's sick. That's why Joe was here, he helped me with her after the veterinarian came last night."
Fear widened his eyes. "Is she going to—"
"She'll be fine." Joe stepped forward and laid a hand on the boy's shoulder. To Annie's surprise and relief, C.J. didn't shrug off the comforting touch.
Maybe he might be able to find it in his heart to forgive his uncle's desertion after all. She dearly hoped so. These last eighteen months had been wonderful for C.J., finally having a decent, caring male in his life. She would hate for Joe's chance at a new life to cost him the little boy's love.
"She'll be just fine," Joe repeated. "Doc Thacker is the best vet around and he and your mom will take good care of her. Matter of fact, your mom's got a lot to do. Maybe you could help her and the doc out. Sort of be the veterinarian's assistant."
C.J. narrowed his gaze at Joe, intrigued but wary. "How?"
"When you're sick, it can be real real nice for someone to sit beside you and talk to you in a low, soothing voice. Maybe tell you stories or sing you songs."
Her heart squeezed painfully in her chest at his words. Had anyone ever done such a thing for Joe, even when he was a little boy? She seriously doubted it. Albert Redhawk would have considered such tender concern coddling, something he wouldn't have tolerated toward his boys.
"My mom does that when I'm sick." C.J. blurted out the words, then blushed as if afraid it might not be manly to admit it.
Joe shifted his dark eyes from her son to Annie, the expression on his face unreadable. "You're a lucky kid to have such a good mom," he said in a low voice, still looking at her.
After a few beats, he turned back to C.J. "You think you could do that with Dolly when you come home from school?"
C.J. didn't even take time to answer, just dropped immediately to the oatmeal-colored carpet next to the dog. Dolly opened her eyes and weakly brushed her tail against the floor, then rubbed her head against the leg of C.J.'s pajamas.
A smile caught her mouth when her little boy laid a comforting hand on the dog's side. He then proceeded to recite his favorite story—The Tin Soldier— in a quiet, soothing voice.
He was a good boy. She had screwed up a lot of things in her life but at least she had done this right. Despite the occasional problems—like Leah's recent run of bad grades and bad attitude—both of her children were sweet and caring at heart.
Things could have been, much, much different. If she hadn't finally summoned the strength and will to escape from Charlie, she cringed to think how they might have turned out.
She glanced at Joe and found him watching the boy and the dog, tenderness softening his normally remote features. Her smile widened. He was so good with both of the children, always treating them with patience and respect even when they didn't deserve it.
He would have been a wonderful father.
The thought slithered into her mind and she drew in a quick breath, pushing away the familiar prick of guilt. She had wanted to tell him, had wanted desperately to let him know he had left her with more than just a broken heart that day on the banks of Butterfly Lake. She had never had the chance.
If she hadn't been so stupid and naive, she might have found a way. Things might have been so very different. But before she could explore her options, before she could gather the courage to find him and let him know about the child she carried, Joe ended up in jail for killing his father and she had ended up his brother's wife.
"You should have told me," Joe said suddenly. For one terrified second, she thought he had guessed the truth.
"T…told you?"
"That we had our own qualified veterinarian already on staff." He grinned at C.J. "Why have we been paying Doc Thacker so much when C.J. here obviously could have done the job?"
The boy snickered. "I'm not a veterinarian."
"No? Well, you seem to be giving that little border collie just the help she needs."
Through her sudden angst, Annie forced a smile of agreement. The dog's tail-wagging did seem to be a little stronger and she had even found the energy to stick out her tongue so she could lick his hand.
"Can I stay home from school and take care of her? She likes it when I tell her stories."
She gave Joe a "now look what you've started" look and shook her head. "You have a spelling test today you can't miss, honey. I'll watch her while you're in school, I promise. As soon as you come home you can take over. Deal?"
C.J. nodded happily, just as Joe shoved on his Stetson. "You want to tell her a story, too?" he asked, with more enthusiasm toward his uncle than he'd shown since the day he announced he was leaving. "You could tell her a story. I bet she'd like that."
"Maybe later. Right now I have to get out and feed some cattle or they're gonna start eating the fences."
With one last long, searching look at Annie that told her he was thinking of that brief, stolen kiss they had shared, he shoved on his Stetson and walked out of the house.
* * *
He just couldn't forget.
Joe thrust the pitchfork into another bale of hay and twisted it apart with quick, hard movements while the cattle milling around the wagon bawled with hunger.
The late February cold seared his throat and his lungs but left his thoughts as clear as the icy day. And as always, they went back to that morning a week earlier when he had made the huge—no, gargantuan—mistake of kissing Annie.
To his immense chagrin, he hadn't been able to think of another damn thing since then. Didn't matter what he was doing, his thoughts would inevitably travel back to that incredible mistake of a kiss.
He'd even taken to eating all his meals at his own place just so he didn't have to watch her mouth curve around a fork and remember just how those lips had felt beneath his.
He was pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.
What in hell possessed him to kiss her like that? he asked himself for at least the thousandth time. One moment he'd been standing in her family room, minding his own business, the next he'd completely lost it and hadn't been able to stop himself from reaching her.
What had he been thinking? Hours after reminding himself of all the reasons they couldn't be together, he practically jumps her.
Well, not quite. He had at least had the sensibility to bite down hard on the need that had exploded to life inside him when she looked at him with want in her big green eyes. But his control had been slipping fast. If C.J. hadn't come down the stairs and interrupted them, he probably would have lost it completely.
Since their kiss, things had been awkward between him and Annie, to say the least. She acted about as skittish around him as a bunch of cows around a family of skunks.
At least C.J. seemed to have forgiven him. The kid had once again taken to following him around every day after school. He didn't know if he felt better or worse to have C.J. talking to him again. It was almost easier when he was still mad; then Joe could let himself forget how much he was going to miss the little rascal.
Miss all of them.
With more force than strictly necessary, he forked the last alfalfa bale apart for the cattle then climbed back ont
o the tractor and headed toward the barn.
The ranch seemed strangely quiet when he reached it. No dogs came running out to bark at him as the tractor rumbled in and nothing moved in the cold air but a couple of magpies fighting over something they'd probably scavenged out of the garbage.
He was just starting to get a weird itch between his shoulder blades when Patch stepped out of the barn. The cowboy sent him a friendly wave as Joe stepped down from the tractor.
"Where is everybody?" he asked.
Patch shrugged. "We were running low on vitamins so Miz Annie sent Ruben and Manny into the feed store in town for more. They ought to be back any time now."
"What about Mitchell?"
"He went with the boss gal to ride the fence line between here and the Broken Spur."
Joe frowned at that bit of information. "We just checked that line three days ago. Why is she checking it again?"
"She got a call from McKendrick an hour or so ago. Said a couple of his men saw some Double C stock up by the lake yesterday."
"The lake? Butterfly?"
Patch nodded. "That's what the man said."
They had spent more time rounding up strays these past few weeks than he ever remembered having to do.
Sometimes he could swear the blasted cattle were reincarnated escape artists, the way they could find the tiniest holes to sneak through. And the ranch did seem to be having more than its fair share of fence trouble this winter.
"I guess we can kiss those cattle goodbye until the snow melts."
"Not if the boss has anything to say about it. She was worried they would starve to death up there."
"There's no way she's going to get up the High Lonesome trail with this much snow."
"Never say never to that gal. You ought to know better than that."
"Why didn't you go with them?"
Patch spat a wad of chew on the ground. "Annie won't let me ride until next week. She's been talking to the doc again."
His hip must be bothering him again, Joe realized with a guilty pang. It was the only reason Annie would have made the old cowboy stay behind while they looked for strays.
He should have been paying more attention. Maggie—Colt's physician wife who had a family practice in Ennis—wanted the old cowboy to see a specialist about a hip replacement. But he was being as stubborn as a one-eyed donkey about it.
Joe should have noticed. It was his job to notice. Maybe if he hadn't been so damn distracted by that fateful kiss the other day he might have seen something besides his own problems.
"You need to listen to her," he said now.
"Which one? Annie or the doc?"
"Both of them. You know they're both just trying to look out for you. They both care about you and just want to help."
Patch spat again. "Let me give you a little advice, son. Don't go gettin' old. And if you do, try not to do it around a couple of busybodies like those two."
Joe laughed, but before he could answer, Annie's collie came trotting around the side of the barn. She gave two short barks in greeting, her tail wagging happily.
"Where have you been?" Joe asked. "Up to more trouble?"
The dog barked again as if agreeing with him and Joe smiled, happy to see her this energetic. Dolly was almost completely recovered from her slug bait ordeal but she still tired easily and spent much of her time indoors.
Now she sidled up to Patch flirtatiously and nuzzled the old cowboy's leg. Patch patted her head absently. "Miz Annie won't let you go along either, will she, girl? We both have to stay here together like a couple of lumps and do nothing all day."
"You can keep each other company."
Patch rolled his eyes at that, then gave the dog another pat. "Any news from the sheriff about who might have given her that slug bait?"
Joe shook his head. The day after the poisoning, they found a half-eaten package of doctored hamburger inside the tack room. Given that evidence, Annie had gone to the sheriff but so far John Douglas had no leads. The whole thing scared him to death.
"Fella ought to be strung up," Patch muttered darkly. "Who'd want to do such a thing?"
"I don't know," Joe answered. He didn't want to think about it. Between worrying over the dog and stressing over that kiss, he hadn't slept much the last week.
"If you ask me, which nobody ever does, it sounds like just the sort of thing her sumbitch of an ex-husband might have done."
The old cowboy suddenly flushed crimson above his white handlebar, slow to the realization that Annie's sumbitch ex-husband just happened to be the foreman's brother. "Sorry."
Joe sighed. Did Patch really think he cared what anyone had to say about his brother? "You won't find me defending Charlie to you or to anyone else, Patch. You ought to know that by now."
"I suppose not. Hard to even remember sometimes the two of you are blood."
Not to him. He remembered it every damn time he looked at Annie and thought about kissing her, touching her. He had no right. Not when he was just another no-good Redhawk.
"Guess I'd better get going. The kids will be home from school soon. Wouldn't like 'em to come back to an empty house."
Another pang of guilt hit him while he watched the old cowboy carefully hobble toward the house. It was his job to watch out for his men and he had been so preoccupied with his own life that he'd completely missed the signs that Patch's hip was acting up again.
Annie always saw things like that. What she went through with Charlie would have made many women more self-absorbed, more protective of their own feelings. But not Annie. She showed as much compassion and empathy as she always had.
Maybe even more. Even with running a big operation like the Double C, with all the headaches and stress that entailed, she still found time to watch out for those around her.
She'd always been that way, even when she was a little girl. She had always had this sweet, giving spirit that drew people to her.
When he was a kid and things were particularly bad at home, he used to be lured toward her like she was the only calm port in a world fierce with storms.
Sometimes in the middle of the night whenever Al was on a rampage or he was hurting too bad to sleep, Joe would climb out the window and take off on one of the Broken Spur horses. He wouldn't even bother to saddle it, would just ride the mile and a half between the two ranches, not sure why he was doing it, just knowing he had to.
He would ride as far as the edge of the south pasture, then walk up the rest of the way and sit propped against the tree outside her window, his spirit calmed in some way he couldn't explain just by knowing she was near.
Sometimes he would even sleep there, with the chirp of crickets to lull him and the warm night air surrounding him like a blanket. But he would always awake in time to ride back to the Double C before anyone figured out he was gone.
The memory made him flush. What kind of stupid kid rides out in the middle of the night just to sit and gaze up at a girl's window?
She would have completely freaked out if she'd known. No, he amended the thought. Maybe her dad would have, since he'd made no secret of the fact he disapproved of any friendship between his daughter and a big, dumb Shoshone, but not Annie.
If she had known about his midnight visits, she would have welcomed him inside, would have held him close and wept silent tears for him. And she would have tried her damnedest to do everything she could think of to make him feel better.
But he hadn't let her. He couldn't let her.
He gave a mental shake to push away the memory. He had work to do, work that wasn't getting done while he stood here rehashing a past that couldn't be changed. He turned to go back into the barn when the low growl of an engine sounded in the clear, cold air.
He glanced toward the sound and thought he saw a flash of silver in the trees about a quarter-mile up the mountain, just at the mouth of the High Lonesome trail.
Damn snowmobilers. He frowned. The mystery of the wandering cattle suddenly became not so curious at all. Th
ey spent half the winter replacing fences knocked down by snowmobilers who wandered off national forest land onto the Double C.
Most of them were responsible and truly didn't realize they were on private property, but a small percentage ignored No Trespassing signs, determined to go anywhere they felt they had a right to go and plenty of places they didn't.
Someone who wanted to cause trouble on the Double C could easily access the house by snowmobile.
The thought set him back on his heels. Why hadn't he thought of that before? One of the most puzzling things about Dolly's poisoning was how someone had accessed the ranch without anybody seeing a strange vehicle from the road.
But if somebody rode a snowmobile in and left it on the other side of the creek to hide the telltale engine sounds, he could have walked the rest of the way to the barn, done whatever mischief he set his mind to, then rode away without anybody being the wiser.
Even if somebody saw the tracks in the snow, they wouldn't be suspicious, would just assume the tracks were made by one of the Double C snowmobiles.
That mysterious snowmobiler was probably just somebody out for a pleasure ride. But he didn't like the fact that it was heading toward the same area where Annie and the boy were hunting strays.
He would just check it out. If nothing else, he could help the two of them bring down the stray cattle and make sure Luke Mitchell didn't fall off the mountainside in the process.
Chapter 9
"That's it. That's it. Almost there. Darn!"
As the loop of the lariat landed with a splash in the icy water yet again, Annie blew out a frustrated breath. At the end of her patience, she held a hand out for the rope Luke was ineptly trying to swing. "Why don't you let me have a go at it?"
Luke held tight to the rope, exactly like C.J. used to do when she was trying to help him tie his shoes. "I can do it," he muttered. "I just need a minute."
While you're here monkeying around, the cow is going to drown or freeze to death out there. She clamped her teeth against the words, knowing they wouldn't accomplish anything but hurt a young man's pride.
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