The winter wreath over the back door hung, stiff and green, its blue-and-gold velvet bow laced with a dusting of snow. The chilled air bit at his ears as he squatted before Maggy, touching her softly on the arm. “Mags, what’s the matter?”
Somehow he had known, as she lifted her face, as he traced the tracks of tears, that Nick was to blame. Deep inside, he’d expected this moment.
Maggy shook her head, wiped her tears with her knitted mittens. “I can’t—”
“Whatever it is, you can tell me.” He sat beside her, put his arm around her, drawing her close. “Remember, I’m supposed to look after you.” He alone knew how those words twisted his chest.
She sighed. “You can’t fix this.”
He brushed her tear away with his thumb, wrestling the sudden desire to kiss her. Softly, just enough to make her forget Nick and how he hurt her. Her auburn hair tumbled out of her knit cap in soft curls, and when she shivered slightly, he tightened her against him. “Let me try.”
She leaned her head against his chest, relaxing into him.
Cole closed his eyes, wrapped his other arm around her. If this was all he could have of Maggy, then he’d be happy.
A shard of fury divided his thoughts. Nick didn’t deserve her, had dallied with her for years, taking her love for granted. Cole knew all about Nick’s exploits at college—Nick wasn’t the only one of his classmates who attended Montana State.
Yet Nick had returned home for Christmas break, showing up at Maggy’s place and trotting her out on his arm for the annual pie social and New Year’s Eve dance. Cole had watched them from across the community center social room, watched Maggy laugh, nearly glowing, and tried to feel happy for them. They seemed even closer than before. Apparently Prince Noble had her completely snowed.
“Is it about Nick?” Cole asked, hating the tremor, even the hope in his voice. Had she found out about Nick’s shenanigans with other girls on campus? Even if she had, well, Nick was still his best friend. Despite Nick’s deceptions, Cole believed in the cowboy code—a cowboy never goes back on his word. He’d never actually promised not to woo Maggy, but it had been implied in his word to watch over her for Nick. And a cowboy never takes unfair advantage, especially of his best friend’s gal. Cole blew out a long breath and loosened his hold on her.
Maggy nodded, and her sobs started again.
What was he supposed to do? Cole held her, soothing. “Don’t cry, Mags.”
She sniffed, wiped her eyes again. “I’m sorry, Cole. I just don’t know what to do.”
He ran his thumb across her wet cheek, wishing he had words for her. But Nick would always be Nick, a charming cowboy, a conqueror of hearts. “I know,” he said feebly.
She looked up at him, her mouth opened slightly. “You do? Can you tell? How?”
“Nick hasn’t ever been very discreet.”
He watched as Maggy’s face drained of color. “He told you.”
Cole held very still. “No . . . I just heard it.”
She gasped and her face crumpled, a low moan issuing from her body.
“Mags, I’m sorry.” Her tears turned him inside out, and for a moment, all he wanted to do was bury his fist in Nick’s face.
She broke free of Cole’s embrace, stood, and stalked out into the icy parking lot, shaking her head as if engaged in some inner argument. Then she whirled, and her expression scared him with its ferocity. “I suppose you think I’m some sort of tramp.”
What?
“I wasn’t planning . . . I mean, we . . . it just happened.” She covered her face with her hands. “Don’t look at me like that. It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
Her words froze him. Oh no. Oh no. He felt as if he’d been belly punched, all the wind sucked out of him. “What do you mean?”
She didn’t look at him. “My mother is going to kill me.”
Although he hadn’t gone to college, Cole had been at the top of his class, and it didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. “Mags . . . are you pregnant?”
She lifted her head, and the tortured look on her face made his throat tight.
Somehow he found his feet. “Oh, Mags.” He took a step toward her.
She held out her hands, stopping him. “If I tell him, he’ll hate me. He’ll think I planned it or something.”
Cole ignored her gesture and gripped her shoulders.
She hung her hands on his arms, as if for support. “You can’t tell him, Cole. Okay? Please don’t tell him.”
He ground his teeth, wanting with everything inside him to track down Nick and . . . and . . . but what good would it do? Nick would come home, marry Maggy, and they’d live happily ever after. Just as fate had planned.
“No, I won’t tell, Mags.”
He’d been silent then and for all the years that followed.
Even now, as Cole watched his wife standing barefoot in her worn jeans and one of his old flannel shirts, dolling herself up for the prince of the Silver Buckle, he knew he had to stay silent again.
Nick Noble had finally returned. And if Cole cared for Maggy at all, he couldn’t stand in her way. Nick might be able to give her the future she deserved. At the least, his rekindled feelings for Maggy would keep him from contesting Bishop’s bequest until the land became theirs.
And if . . . if Nick still loved Maggy . . . then at least Maggy and CJ would be provided for, wouldn’t they? And CJ would have a father.
Cole actually thought he might stop breathing.
Maggy finished the second braid and turned to him. “I’ll be back by suppertime.”
He forced a smile. He loved her more than this, more than his insecure dreams, more than his fears and broken heart. “No, I’ll be fine. Stay for supper. Stay as long as you want.”
Nick couldn’t believe how much he enjoyed spending time with their new cook. As he sat beside Piper on the bench seat of the chuck wagon, feeling her arm brush against his now and again, he began to relax. Something about sitting next to her, listening to her hum, as if she might be looking forward to the blistering work of roundup, made the tensions inside him loosen.
“The ribs look good, George. You must have been baking them all night.”
Piper glanced at him, a slight smile on her pretty face. She wore her blonde hair pulled back and up, and it only accentuated her high cheekbones, her perfectly shaped lips, those big blue eyes. The wind stole the wisps from her hair clip and played them around her face. It was all he could do not to push the errant strands back. She didn’t seem to mind the interference and kept her hands folded between her knees, looking about seventeen in her black T-shirt with a buffalo-head imprint and slim-fitting, low-cut jeans.
Nick tore his attention away from her, disturbed at how often she filled his mind these days. It didn’t help that every time he turned around, he seemed to be rescuing her—from stopping the bull from turning her to mincemeat to the near fire in the dining hall yesterday. It had taken him half the night to dislodge her image—shapely in a charcoal-stained apron and a hint of mascara staining her cheeks—from his thoughts. And her grateful smile only made her seem sweet.
Yes, somehow Piper had gotten under his skin, enough to keep him awake and relish the idea of helping her cook today’s meal.
The barbeque sauce on those ribs smelled like heaven. He couldn’t wait to taste them. Apparently, despite her fiasco with the cast-iron pots, the woman could cook.
“Do you do roundup every year, or is this for my benefit?” Piper asked.
Give her silence and the woman would fill it with questions. Curious George. “We’ve done it every year I can remember. Ages ago, before the ranches had fences dissecting the land, cowhands rounded up the cattle, divided them by brands, and worked on the cattle together. Now it’s a way to bear one another’s burdens.”
He couldn’t help but think of all the roundups he’d missed over the past decade. Yeah, he’d been great about bearing his family’s burdens. Guilt tasted fresh and acrid in his throat.
�
�Who else will be there?”
“The hands from the two other ranches and a few day hands Stef hired from town yesterday. And of course Dutch and Old Pete.”
“I met those two hands Stefanie hired. Quint and Andy? They’re cowboys in every sense of the word.”
Nick nodded. Tall and lanky, the pair looked as if they’d been dragged a hundred miles behind a mustang. But they were willing and cheap and knew how to throw a rope. Right now, the Silver Buckle couldn’t afford better. “Yeah, I saw their gear. And their truck. They’re probably fresh from the amateur rodeo circuit, looking for some solid work for the summer.”
“The one looks rough around the edges. He’s got a barbed-wire tattoo.” Piper clamped her upper arm to indicate where.
Nick had seen it too, and it had all his instincts firing. Not that he judged Quint based on a tattoo—good people the world over wore tattoos these days. No, it was his demeanor, his swagger, the way he’d studied Piper as she walked to the lodge last night. Nick had sat on the porch, watching, and made a mental note to keep one eye on blond and shifty Quint Fadden. “If he gives you any trouble, let me know.”
When Piper glanced at him, he couldn’t read her eyes. “Okay. But I can take care of myself. I know self-defense.”
The way she said it, like Tweety rolling up her sleeves, made him smirk.
Her expression darkened. “I can. I’m working on my purple belt.” She looked away from him, apparently piqued.
He tried to stifle a chuckle, but it burst through his teeth.
Piper glared at him.
He forced the smile from his face. “Sorry, George. I can’t imagine you going toe to toe—or rather chin to forehead—with Quint, regardless of what color belt you’re wearing.”
Her glare didn’t ease.
“Fine. If they get in your way, I’ll be looking forward to your roundhouse kick,” Nick said.
That earned him the smallest of smiles. “Good.”
“But seriously, Piper, don’t be a hero.”
“Because you’ll be one for me?”
Her accusation startled him. “No . . . I mean . . . well, if you need one—”
This time she laughed. “I promise, Nick, after I flatten him, I’ll come running straight to you for help.”
“Deal.” He held out his hand and grinned as she shook it.
She stared off at the horizon. “I wish all cowboys thought like you.”
The comment made him pause. He looked at her and wondered if she’d actually said it.
Especially when she turned as if they hadn’t had that segue in their conversation and asked, “Where are we having this roundup?”
“Uh . . . a central pasture between the winter pasture and one of the fields. Stefanie hopes to get a few hundred head branded and tagged today. They’ll also vaccinate them and castrate the steers.”
“But don’t you have three thousand head?”
“Yeah. Pete, Quint, and Andy will spend the next couple of weeks rounding up and branding the rest of the cattle.” He’d probably be out there helping too. When he wasn’t helping CJ throw a rope. He’d been surprised at how much he’d enjoyed getting to know the kid yesterday and had hated himself a little for his agenda. But he’d discovered some interesting information.
Like CJ was ten years old. If Nick did the math right, he would have been conceived right about the time Nick left. Cole had certainly wasted no time moving in on Nick’s girl.
But the gem of information—the one he’d been plowing for—had surfaced just as CJ was leaving. He’d stopped in the living room, staring at the picture of Bishop. “I miss him,” he said softly.
Nick knelt beside him. “You knew my father?”
“Uh-huh.” CJ started again for the door, picking up his hat from the hook. “He let me call him Pops. Probably ’cause my mom was here all the time, taking care of him.”
Nick watched him go, but the questions burned at him until Stefanie returned home. He probably hadn’t picked the best time to pounce on his sister—he should have waited until she’d showered and cleaned off the dirt of the day. But his emotions had played havoc with his thoughts, and he’d followed her upstairs, nearly into her room, asking questions.
Wearily, she’d told him only that Maggy had worked for them, cleaning and cooking and taking care of Bishop until the end.
That didn’t answer the question of why she’d married Cole only two months after they broke up—and according to his recollection, they hadn’t broken up, not officially.
He guessed that now it could be deemed official.
Nick glanced at Piper beside him, watched her scanning the scenery, and remembered the days when Maggy would ride beside him or on her mare while he rode Pecos. Maggy had worn the same look of appreciation for the land under the big sky as Piper did now. Maggy loved the life—training her horses, working alongside her father at the Kincaid ranch, riding fence with Nick. She belonged here, as if she made up the very breath that caressed the bluffs and draws.
Cole had also loved the land.
Perhaps that was what drew Cole and Maggy together. That and their common hatred for Nick.
The thought stabbed at him. Although he hadn’t had a real girlfriend since Maggy, he thought that wound had scarred over. Evidently not. With Piper sitting beside him, however, it suddenly seemed easier to bear.
“I can’t imagine growing up out here so far from the city and pop culture. Was it lonely?” Piper turned, a slight smile playing on her face. “Or did you spend every moment with your cattle?”
“I was a regular kid. Played football, went to prom, hung out at the local diner on the weekends. But I loved ranch life. Loved roundup and branding and working alongside my father’s ranch hands. I even dabbled in the rodeo circuit for a while—won a roping championship.”
Her eyebrows raised at that. “I saw you roping with a kid yesterday. You looked like you knew what you were doing.”
He shrugged but liked the shine in her eyes. He had to wonder if she saw in him a shade of the old cowboys, the heroes of the Old West.
After all the years of being an outlaw, he didn’t mind that idea at all.
CHAPTER 11
ROUNDUP WASN’T ANYTHING like the glamorous events on television. Acrid smoke and the smell of burning hide hung in the air, and the sound of calves bawling for their mamas made Piper want to cry. She’d finally tied a handkerchief around her nose, not only to keep out the smells but to keep herself from coughing at the smoke that watered her eyes as she prepared lunch—or dinner, as they called it in cow country—for the thirty or so workers who’d shown up.
Everywhere she looked there were cowboys in chaps and hats swinging ropes. If it weren’t for Nick’s focus on helping her prepare the food, her journalistic instincts would have taken hold and she’d have been swept up in fascination, dictating into the recorder tucked into her pocket.
It took her about fifteen seconds to figure out that the skills cowboys displayed on the rodeo circuit were honed out here on the range. First, they separated the cows from the babies, moving the calves into a separate pen. Their cries sounded so much like children hollering for their mothers, it pricked the latent nurturer inside Piper. Then some cowpoke would free a calf, and a header would rope the head while a heeler netted the two hind legs. The calf would fall, and a third cowboy would twist its head into a submissive position while another hand took an iron from the furnace and applied the Silver Buckle brand, an oval with one line passing through it. Piper stood too close the first few times—so close she heard the skin sizzle. That turned her stomach enough to make her back away and watch from afar. After branding, yet another hand would pop the poor animal with a vaccination.
Then, to her horror, came the worst part. Castration. Piper forced herself to watch the first time, her face surely betraying her emotions as a cowboy’s hand turned the bull into a steer. The poor animal struggled to its feet and ran to its mother, crying.
Piper sorta felt like
doing the same thing. The entire process took less than five minutes. Stefanie Noble presided over the entire event, separating the cowboys into teams, even pitching in to wrestle a calf into the dirt. Piper would bet that cowboys like Quint didn’t give Stefanie any sass.
“Rocky Mountain oysters,” Nick said, coming up beside Piper as she turned away from the bawling, hot, bloody mess. “Yum.”
Nick looked so tall beside her. With a red handkerchief tied at his neck and wearing gloves and a hat, he looked pure cowboy. Especially with the two-day-old dark beard growth and those look-through-her eyes. Earlier, sitting next to him on the chuck wagon, she’d felt . . . well . . . safe. Like he would step between her and Quint or whoever tried to harass her, regardless of her roundhouse kick.
It had felt so much like Jimmy that she’d had a hard time speaking.
It didn’t help that Nick had spent the last hour helping her build the giant cook fire and hanging the kettles of ribs over the flames.
“I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said. “Oysters?”
Nick gestured toward the growing pile in the pot near the branding center. He couldn’t mean . . .
“That is so disgusting!” Piper put her hand over her mouth, then made a face. “Yuck!”
Nick grinned, clearly enjoying her revulsion. “I guess I’m in charge of that entrée.”
She gaped at him. “Gross. We are not making that!”
He raised one eyebrow in amusement. “Yes we are. It’s a tradition.”
“Not over my fire.” Piper shook her head for emphasis.
“Yes, over your fire.” He stared at her a long time, frowning as if not believing that she’d hold her ground. “All right, fine. I’ll build a new fire.” He shook his head, but his grin didn’t vanish. “But trust me, you’ll like them.”
She made a gagging noise and gripped her throat as if she were choking.
Behind her, a truck pulled up towing a horse trailer and parked next to the assembly of other trucks and trailers. As Piper watched, CJ climbed out of the cab and lifted a hand to Nick.
Reclaiming Nick Page 14