Callie's Cowboy

by Karen Leabo

  “Exactly. It had to be a mistake.”

  “You think he might have intended … oh. A suicide note.”

  “If you could find one, it might explain a lot of things.”

  “I’ll get on it right away.”

  “Find someone who can sort files by date. Whatever he might have been doing that day would be the most recent file created. I don’t think anyone has touched the computer since he died.”

  “Great. Thanks, Callie. Maybe we can wrap this thing up today.”

  “Yeah.” She mumbled a closing pleasantry and hung up. She would like nothing better than to put all the questions behind them so she and Sam could get on with healing the rift between them her confounded reporter’s instincts had caused.

  Since the men were working closer to the house today, they returned for lunch. Rena served them huge helpings of ham and cheese for sandwiches, along with a hearty bean soup, lemonade, and coffee. Callie found herself playing hostess along with Rena, a role she didn’t feel very comfortable with. It was hard to ignore Sam when she was serving him lunch.

  “Sit down and eat, Callie,” Sam said somewhat testily. “You don’t need to wait on us hand and foot. We’re big boys.”

  “You’ve been working hard.” And I haven’t. Again she was seized with that useless feeling, like she didn’t belong.

  “It’s what we do best,” Sam said. “Sit down.”

  She did, but she only nibbled on her sandwich, spending most of her time persuading Deana to eat and avoiding Sam’s gaze.

  Looking around, she noticed that the number of cowboys around the table seemed small. “Where’s Mr. Cornelius?” she asked, recalling an older man who’d been there yesterday. “And the other guy, Travis?”

  “They went up the road to help Lon Salem.” Sam answered her question grudgingly. “He’s the one who’s got the pleuropneumonia outbreak. He stands to lose more than I do right now if he can’t get it under control. I figured I could get by with a short crew today.”

  “That was before we knew how fast the weather was gonna come up on us,” Dalton commented.

  “Oh, is it getting cold?” Callie glanced out the window, surprised to see snow flurries.

  “We’ll get by.” Sam stared down into his soup.

  Callie wished there was something she could do, at the same time realizing she was completely helpless. Even if she could perform some useful function here, she doubted Sam wanted her help. Still, she felt compelled to offer.

  “If there’s anything I can do—”

  “Just pray that we beat the snow,” he said curtly. “I know waiting around isn’t what you do best, but …” He shrugged, looking like he wanted to say more, but then he glanced around at the other men and apparently decided to hold his tongue. He turned his attention toward his daughter. “Deana? Doesn’t look like you’ve eaten much of that soup.”

  “Too hot.” She made a fanning motion with her hand.

  “Try it again,” Sam instructed patiently. She did, reluctantly sucking up a spoonful of the thick soup, managing to get more on her face than in her mouth. She made a face and dropped her spoon on the floor, daring anyone to reprimand her for it.

  Sam rolled his eyes. “When roundup is over, young lady, we’re going to work on mealtime manners.”

  “Oh, Sam, she’s just a baby.” Beverly wiped Deana’s mouth with a napkin.

  “Growing up too fast, if you ask me, and not learning a thing about how to be a lady.” He added under his breath, “She’s around too many rough cowboys.”

  “That could be remedied.” Beverly gave Callie an oblique look.

  Horrified, Callie pretended she didn’t understand. She would have to have a talk with Beverly and tell her to please stop matchmaking.

  There was only one other thing she had to do before Sam went back to work. “Will you walk outside with me?” she asked him.

  He looked surprised by her request, but he didn’t deny her. “I have about five minutes before I need to get back.”

  She nodded. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t take her even that long to let him know she would be leaving Roundrock as soon as she could catch a ride to Salt Lake.

  She grabbed the first jacket she could find in the mudroom and rejoined Sam at the kitchen door. Wordlessly he held it open for her. A keen north wind met her as she stepped outside. The snow had stopped, but she had a feeling it would be back with a vengeance.

  “Is there a problem?” Sam asked without preamble.

  She halted midstride and turned to face him. “Yes. It’s me … us. This isn’t working out like either of us thought it would. I’m digging for the truth about your father’s death—not for headlines, or public recognition, but because it needs to be done. I can’t stop, just because you don’t approve.”

  “Obviously not.”

  She noticed for the first time the raw, scraped knuckles on his right hand. She felt an incongruous urge to reach for him, to soothe the small hurt. Of course she didn’t.

  “I’m done trying to make you understand,” she said. “I only wanted to let you know that I’ll be leaving here at the first opportunity. I shouldn’t have come.”

  She had succeeded in surprising him. His eyebrows shot up, and for an instant she thought she glimpsed a flash of pain in his eyes. But if she had seen it, it was quickly masked.

  “Aren’t you being a little hasty?” he asked.

  “No. Sam, if you can’t accept the fact that I can’t sit by and do nothing when I believe a crime has been committed, then we have nothing on which to base a relationship.”

  “Nothing? What about all those years we had together?”

  “We were children.”

  “And what we shared the other day—”

  “Was lust, pure and simple.” She didn’t really believe that. Their lovemaking had been special, transcending the mere satisfaction of physical desire. But they couldn’t base a lasting relationship—and that was what they were talking about, talking around—on sexual compatibility alone.

  Sam looked genuinely perplexed. “If you really want to leave, I won’t stop you.”

  “Yes, I really do.” It was too painful for her to stay, facing head-on the dream she’d denied herself, the dream she still couldn’t have.

  “It’ll be a couple of days—”

  “I know. Whenever you can spare someone to drive me to the airport. When you’re done with roundup.”

  He nodded. “I’ll drive you.” He turned on his heel and walked swiftly toward his truck.

  The real snow hit about three o’clock. Sam was out with Clyde and Punky, rounding up the last few stragglers, including a mean white-faced cow that was determined not to be rounded up.

  “Git her, Punky,” Sam called, watching with satisfaction as his dog nipped the old cow in the heels, showing her he wouldn’t put up with any nonsense. She bellowed and tried to cut back toward the trees, but Sam headed her off.

  Resigned, she eventually set off in the right direction, her calf following docilely behind.

  Normally Sam assigned one of his men for this job, preferring to oversee the branding and whatnot. But today he’d craved solitude. He needed to think seriously about what his intentions were toward Callie, and whether he wanted to talk her into sticking around.

  The question should have been easy. She wouldn’t be happy here—not even for a couple of weeks—without hot stories to pursue and a new intrigue around every corner. He’d never had what it took to hold her, not eight years ago and not now. Nothing had really changed.

  Then again, she hadn’t even given Roundrock a chance. He’d practically forced her to bail out with the temper tantrum he’d thrown the night before.

  Hell, maybe he’d overreacted to that phone call from Sloan Bennett. He’d been exhausted and had responded on pure instinct. But the whole idea of Callie dragging out his father’s death really pushed a hot button. He hadn’t handled the situation well at all. If only he could make Callie understand his position �
� Or maybe if you tried to understand hers, an inner voice whispered.

  Sam pulled his hat down over his forehead to block the falling snow, then urged Clyde and the cow into a faster pace. He needed to get done here today and go back to the house. He needed to be with Callie. To what purpose, he didn’t know. But he had to do something.

  An hour later, cold and sore and bone-tired, he made it back to the house. He didn’t even bother stopping by his room to shower or change clothes. He went looking for Callie.

  He found her in her room, sitting cross-legged on the bed, typing furiously on her laptop computer. “Oh, hi, Sam,” she said in answer to his soft knock on her half-open door, sounding surprised to see him. The way she slapped the laptop closed made him wonder if she was writing something she didn’t want him to see. “Are you finished working for the day?” she asked.

  “Almost. I thought you might like to come down to the barn and see the horses. You said you wanted to see more of the ranch,” he added.

  By the expression on her face, she thought it an odd request. Sam wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d turned him down flat. But she didn’t.

  “Oh, um, sure. Can I go dressed like this?” She was wearing a thigh-length sweater and leggings. “I don’t have any boots.”

  “You’ll do fine.”

  She cracked the computer open enough that she could shut it down, hopped off the bed, and put on her tennis shoes.

  “What are you working on?”

  His question made Callie decidedly nervous. “Oh, nothing important. I was just making some notes.”

  Callie’s face was tight with tension as they walked together down the stairs. She was ominously silent as she donned her jacket and a pair of gloves he’d dug up for her. But the minute she stepped outside, her whole demeanor changed.

  “Wow, it’s snowing hard!” She zipped her jacket up to the neck. “I didn’t realize. Will it stick? Can we make a snowman later?”

  Sam found himself smiling at Callie’s delight. To him, snow was just a pain in the butt. But to her, it was a novelty. Destiny saw maybe half an inch of snow every five years or so.

  She twirled around, as if trying to take it all in.

  “The weatherman said it wouldn’t stick,” Sam said, “but who knows? The temperature’s already close to freezing.” The ground might be warm, but the white stuff was already clinging to trees, brush, and fences.

  After a few moments, though, Callie’s delight seemed to fade. She hugged herself against the brisk wind. “Sam, there’s something I have to tell you. It’s kind of important—pretty amazing, actually.”

  “I’m listening.” And dreading.

  “The Washington Post wants to interview me. I almost fainted when I listened to the message on my answering machine.”

  Whoa. Sam almost tripped over his own feet. “Did you call them back?”

  “Uh-huh. We set up an interview for Monday. They’ll fly me in. Think you can spare someone by then to drive me to Salt Lake?”

  “This Monday?”

  “Uh-huh. I never imagined they would consider some little upstart from Destiny, Texas. They’d start me out on features, but I could work my way up to a city beat.”

  “Sounds like they’re really serious.” Sam tried to smile. This was Callie’s dream job, and she was closer than she’d ever been. But he felt a little dismal. Had he thought to catch her on the rebound from being fired and snag her into falling in love with his ranch? That was crazy. Just the same, he quietly resented the hell out of The Washington Post for calling her away.

  “I think they really are serious,” Callie said.

  Sam wondered why she didn’t say that with more enthusiasm.

  NINE

  They walked the rest of the way to the barn in silence. Callie’s news had gone over like a bag of wet cement, and she didn’t know quite what to say. She’d been dreaming of such a step up since her college days. Certainly she could understand Sam’s lukewarm reaction, but why wasn’t she more excited?

  It was because of Sam. By all outward appearances, they didn’t stand a chance as a couple. But there was always that small glimmer of hope—unless she took a job in Washington, D.C., worlds apart from Babcock, Nevada. That would lend a finality to their breakup that she wasn’t yet ready to face.

  For now, though, she pushed the matter out of her mind. Silly to agonize over it when the job was a long way from hers. Besides, she was curious about Roundrock’s horses.

  The barn was huge, much larger than it appeared from a distance, and it smelled not unpleasantly of hay and manure and a smell Callie vaguely identified as horseflesh. “There must be twenty stalls in here,” she observed.

  “Twenty-four. Back when Roundrock was over a hundred thousand acres and it had a bunkhouse full of cowboys, the stalls were filled. Now we have only eight horses, plus a couple of foals we might or might not keep.”

  She hesitated by the door. Sam literally had to pull her farther in. “The horses are locked in their stalls. They can’t hurt you, even if they wanted to,” he said, only slightly impatient.

  She knew she was being silly. She was a grown woman, and she would have to get over her fear if she ever hoped to … Good Lord, hope to what? What dangerous ideas were bouncing around in her subconscious, anyway?

  A month ago she hadn’t given a flip about horses. Something odd was going on inside her.

  Sam paused by a stall that housed a huge brown horse. “This is Stryker, our stud. He’s no champion, and he’s too mean to ride, but he produces decent quarter-horse stock. He’s the only horse in this barn you need to be extra careful of.” Just the same, Sam patted the stallion’s nose.

  One by one he introduced Callie to the rest of the herd, mostly mares and a few geldings. Nearly all of them were brown in color with black manes. She was frankly charmed by the foals, still kept with their mothers. One was different—a black filly with white stockings.

  “I like this one.” Callie bravely reached over the stall door to pet the filly’s velvety nose while its mother looked on suspiciously. “Will you keep her?”

  “Mmm, doubtful. White stockings mean her hooves are weaker. She’d be better off as a pleasure mount. But she does have a nice disposition.”

  With one backward glance toward the sweet little horse, Callie followed Sam down the row of stalls. Dalton had his mount in the first stall, where he was rubbing the animal down with a foul-smelling liniment and cooing softly like the horse was a child.

  “I have to rub down Clyde and see that he has enough bedding for the night,” Sam said to Callie. “Want to help?”

  She tried to squelch the panicky feeling that sprang up. He wanted her to actually go into a stall? “Um, I’d rather watch.”

  “Fine,” he said, but Callie wasn’t fooled by the feigned easiness of his answer. For whatever reason, he was anxious that she learn to like horses. And for whatever reason, she wanted to please him. A parting gesture, perhaps.

  She would try. She promised herself that, at least. After all, the foal had won her over. No reason she couldn’t convince herself to like big ol’ Clyde too.

  “After a hard day like today,” Sam said, “this is what we rub ’em down with.” He showed her a can, the same type of stuff Dalton was using, and a soft cotton rag. “But first we look for any cuts or saddle sores, and we treat it with this other stuff. Clyde, here, got a scratch on his foreleg when we were chasing down a real ornery cow and her calf today.” Sam sprayed the small cut with something that turned it purple. “Keeps the flies off and helps prevent an infection.”

  Sam proceeded with the rubdown while Callie watched, fascinated—not because she had suddenly grown enamored of Clyde, but because the sight of Sam’s strong hands moving with such sensitivity over the quivering horseflesh made her own flesh tremble. He did have magic in his hands. Even the horse could tell. With his eyes half-closed, and only the tip of his tail twitching, he was obviously enjoying his massage. He’d lost interest in the oats
in his feeding trough.

  Callie felt her own eyelids drooping as the sensual trance took hold. Then Dalton’s strident voice broke the spell.

  “You gonna fondle that horse all night or put him to bed?” the foreman asked, nudging his hat up with one forefinger. A corner of his mouth quirked up.

  “He deserves a good rubdown.” Sam’s serious tone did not match Dalton’s good-natured ribbing.

  Dalton was quiet for a moment. “Well, unless you can think of something that needs doing, I’m heading up to the house for some supper. Seems to me I heard Rena say something about chicken and dumplings.”

  “Chicken?” Callie said with mock astonishment. “On a beef cattle ranch?”

  “Hey, we have to watch our cholesterol like everyone else,” Dalton said.

  “I think we’re done for the day.” Sam capped the bottle of liniment. “I just want to put some more straw down, and we’ll join you.”

  Dalton left with a tip of his hat, and suddenly the barn seemed a very quiet place. Callie became intensely aware of the isolation, made even more obvious by the cocoon of falling snow outside. “I’ll help you with the straw,” she piped up. The sooner they got the chores done, the sooner they could join the others at the house.

  “Okay,” Sam said. “In the fourth stall down you’ll find a bunch of bails of straw and a pitchfork. Break off a chunk of straw with the pitchfork and bring it here.”

  “Um, okay.” Callie had her doubts about her pitchfork-wielding abilities, but she was game to give it a try. She found the straw and the pitchfork. She even managed to skewer a chunk about the size of a spare tire and carry it precariously to Clyde’s stall.

  Sam looked up from fastening a blanket over the gelding’s back. “That’s it. Only I need about five times that much.”

  Callie sighed. “It’ll take me five more trips, then.”

  “Hold on, I’ll help. Just need to wash this stuff off my hands.” He swung the stall door open and strode to a big utility sink at one end of the barn. He’d already removed his jacket. Now he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeves up to the elbow.