The Cowboy's Lady

by Carolyne Aarsen

As he straightened, he glanced over and their eyes met again.

  But this time he looked away, walking to the front of the horse. He caught it by the halter rope and stroked its head, murmuring softly to it.

  Then he led it away without a backward glance.

  Disappointment lashed at her. Maybe she should just go. Cody would think of her what he wanted regardless of what she was about to tell him.

  Then the Clayton stubbornness kicked in. She had come out to talk to Cody to set the record straight, and she would. That was all there was to it.

  So she waited, watching as he unbuckled the halter, scratched the horse between the ears and with a light pat sent it on its way.

  The other horses had gathered around and Cody rubbed this one, then that one, then took the halter he had just taken off the one horse and slowly approached a tall, brown horse. He held his hand up and then pressed his palm on the horse’s head. Then he slid his hand around the horse’s neck and slipped the rope around.

  The horse tried to pull away, but Cody put his hand on the horse’s nose again and the horse calmed down. “Easy, Amarillo. It’s okay,” he said, and the pitch and timbre of his voice made Vivienne feel as if everything was, indeed, okay.

  A minute later, Cody had the halter on Amarillo and was leading him into the corral.

  “Can’t believe you got him,” Bryce said. “He’s always so skittish.”

  “Just got to make it easy for him to do what you want him to, hard for him to do what you don’t want him to,” was all Cody said. As he spoke he looked over at Vivienne, acknowledging her presence with a tight nod of his head.

  Vivienne gave him a smile, but he was already looking away.

  So she stayed and watched as Cody put shoes on this horse, as well. But by the fourth shoe, the horse grew restive and kept shifting and kicking away with his hoof.

  One time Vivienne thought the horse would kick Cody, but he moved out of the way in time. But he could not get the horse to settle down.

  “Open the gate to the round pen,” he told Bryce, wiping a slick of sweat off his face with his forearm. He straightened, caught his breath and led the horse inside.

  For the next few minutes, Cody made the horse run around and around him. Cody stood in the middle of the pen, flicking the horse occasionally with the end of a rope whenever he slowed the pace. The horse went around and around, then slowed down.

  “You want to talk now?” Cody asked, flicking the rope at the horse again. “You ready to pay attention and listen?”

  To Vivienne’s amazement, the horse seemed to nod and Cody let it slow, then the horse came to him. Cody waited a moment, then clipped a rope to his halter and led the horse back.

  Five minutes later Cody lowered the hoof, complete with shoe, and let Bryce lead him away to the pasture.

  “Wow, that was interesting,” Vivienne said aloud, trying to catch Cody’s attention, ignoring her first desire to leave.

  Cody glanced her way, took a breath and to her relief, walked over to her.

  “So why did you make him run around the pen?” she asked, pressing her advantage now that she caught his attention.

  “It’s a way of showing him I’m the boss. Of showing him I’m in control of his situation.” Cody rolled the sleeves of his shirt down and glanced back at the horse.

  “How did you know when to stop making him run around?” Vivienne felt foolish, hanging around the corral, but she wanted to clear things up with Cody.

  “When they start making those chewing motions with their mouth, it means they’re ready to communicate. To submit.”

  Cody pushed his hat back on his head, his eyes on her.

  Vivienne held his gaze, wishing she could find a way to say what she wanted to say and not sound foolish. One thing was certain: she wasn’t about to make chewing motions with her mouth.

  “About what you heard me say to Bonnie…” She paused. “I wasn’t trying to make her dissatisfied with her life on the ranch. I wasn’t trying to convince her that life in the city was better than life on the ranch.” She stopped there, still not sure what she could say to erase the frown on Cody’s face.

  “So why did you tell her that? Encourage her to ‘keep her eye on the prize,’ in your words?” Cody’s voice held a disturbing edge. As if something else she had said made him angry.

  She caught her lower lip between her teeth, leaning forward so Bryce couldn’t hear her.

  “Over the past few of days, I’ve realized a couple of things, and I want to apologize. When I did the makeover with Bonnie, it was just good fun. But when I saw her flirting with Bryce and how Bryce seems attracted to her, I got nervous. And I didn’t know how else to get her to stop or think about something else.” Vivienne paused a moment, wishing that she dared to pray. Because right about now, as she looked into Cody’s eyes, she felt she could use some divine intervention. “So I latched on to the one thing she’s talked about over and over again. If she wants to move to the city, she shouldn’t let Bryce be a distraction.”

  Cody held her gaze an extra beat, as if testing her sincerity.

  “I was just using what she wanted to get her to do what I wanted. Kind of like you did with that horse. Made it easy for her to do what I wanted and hard for her to do what she thought she wanted. Kind of.” She gave him a wry smile.

  “So it wasn’t about how much better city life is than country life?”

  There it was again. That faint edge she couldn’t identify. But she shook her head. “No…of course not. I keep telling her how lucky she is to live out here, though she thinks I’m kidding her.”

  Cody leaned his elbow on the rail of the fence, bringing him closer. “Is that the only reason you came out here? To tell me that?”

  She shrugged, feeling a little bit silly, hanging on to the fence, Cody’s arm inches from hers. But she didn’t want to move away. Not yet.

  “I’m heading out for a walk anyway, but thought I’d leave earlier.” She chanced a quick sidelong glance, disconcerted to see him looking at her. “I wanted to catch you before you head out for the day. I just wanted to make sure there wasn’t any misunderstanding. About what I said.”

  Cody’s nod was accompanied by a slow grin. “I’m glad you came to talk to me. Glad we’re on the same page where Bonnie is concerned.” He pushed his hat back on his head with his gloved knuckle. “So you like going for a walk?”

  She didn’t want to look at him, but her gaze drifted to his and she was pleased to see him smiling at her.

  “As long as I stay away from the horse pen.”

  “That wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice low and quiet. “Just a mistake.”

  His assurance smoothed away her shame of that moment. “Thanks for that. And as for your other question, I really enjoy my walks around the ranch. Yesterday I saw a bald eagle. Haven’t seen them for a while.”

  “I don’t imagine they hang around the skyscrapers of Manhattan.”

  “Brooklyn, actually, but no. Not there either.”

  His light laugh encouraged her.

  “It looked so majestic soaring above the mountains.”

  “What’s really cool is riding up on some mountain trail and seeing an eagle or a hawk soaring above the trees, but below you. It makes a person feel pretty small.”

  She caught peace in his voice as he spoke. Contentment. He really was one with this place.

  “That would be wonderful to see,” she said quietly, suddenly jealous of his attachment to his roots.

  She had grown up in Clayton, but for as long as she lived here, especially after her father died, all she could think of was leaving. Heading to a place where possibilities seemed endless. Where excitement seemed to linger around every corner.

  She’d lived in Paris. She’d lived in New York.

  But she never experienced the sense of home she heard in Cody’s voice whenever he spoke of the ranch. As he told her the other day, what she saw is what she got.

  And more and more she was
liking what she saw.

  She looked his way, their gazes locking, and once again hesitation trembled behind her realization. Then, to her consternation, Cody’s gloved hand rested on hers. Leather lay between their hands, but the deliberate touch was oddly intimate.

  “Maybe you’ll have to come up into the hills sometime.”

  She tested the idea as a smile lingered on her lips. “I think I’d like that.”

  “Hey, Cody, what should I do with Amarillo?” Bryce called out, his voice breaking the moment.

  Cody pulled away, and Vivienne stepped down from the rail. As she moved away from him, doubts and misgivings slipped back into her mind.

  What was she doing? She had to follow her own advice. Keep her eye on the prize.

  And how was she supposed to do that as long as she worked here? As long as she saw Cody every day?

  Chapter Nine

  Cody guided his horse down the trail, squinting in the dark. A trickle of water worked its way down his chilled neck and back. The drizzle that ended yesterday after he was done shoeing up the horses had turned into rain on his way down the mountain trail to the ranch.

  He and the men had spent most of the day moving cows in the upper pasture in readiness to bring them down to the ranch. While they were riding through and gathering them up, he’d found a calf on its own. He’d told the men to go ahead, he’d go and find the mother. He didn’t think it would take him long. He worked his way through some shin-tangle, then up into a gully where he finally found the cow. Somehow she’d gotten her front feet wound up in the scrub brush and couldn’t get free.

  By the time he got her cut loose and reunited with the calf, it was dark and the men were long gone. And because he had left his slicker behind, he was soaked to the skin.

  Yet, in spite of the general lousiness of the day and how damp he was, as he saw the lights of the ranch through the rain, anticipation stirred within him.

  Vivienne was down there.

  He tried to dismiss the thought, but since yesterday, when she’d come to the corral to talk to him about what he’d heard her say to Bonnie, he felt as if things had shifted between them.

  It was as if his opinion of her mattered to her.

  He had gone back and forth all day on that, trying to keep his mind on his work. Usually he didn’t feel so scattered. Usually he could focus on the job at hand.

  He tried to dismiss Vivienne simply as a distraction. The same thing she had warned Bonnie that Bryce was.

  Trouble was, deep inside, he knew Vivienne was more than that. They say you never forget your first love. And Vivienne was the kind of person you didn’t forget.

  Even after she turned him down flat that day in high school, he couldn’t put her completely out of his mind. She was always that elusive golden girl.

  Once in a while, he even wondered if she was the reason he was attracted to Tabitha. Because, on one level, she was a lot like Vivienne.

  Tabitha had hurt him, too, he reminded himself as he guided his weary horse back to the corral. Tabitha had caused him pain and sorrow in so many ways. When she died, so much died with her.

  He pushed the negative memories aside, recognizing them as unfair to a woman he had loved at one time. But they didn’t disappear completely.

  As he dismounted, water squished out of his drenched socks in his boots as he stepped onto the muddy ground of the corral.

  He loosened the strap holding the cinch snug, the wet leather unyielding as the rain came down in a relentless sheet. His horse, Tango, stamped and snorted, splashing mud with his hooves, impatient to be free of the saddle and bridle.

  By the time Cody had the strap loose, his hands were stiff and ice cold, his neck and back soaking wet.

  “Hey, boss, you okay?” Cade called out from the darkness.

  Cody looked up to see the young man clambering over the fence, illuminated by the light in the eave of the horse barn. What was he doing here?

  “Yeah. I’m okay,” Cody replied, pulling up the cinch and hooking it to the saddle horn. “Just got to get Tango’s bridle and halter off and he can go out into the pasture.”

  “Let me do that,” Cade said, taking the saddle from Cody. “You look frozen. Did you get that cow and calf mothered up again?”

  Cody nodded, tugging off his wet gloves. “We’ll have to wait until this rain lets up to move the cows. Trail’s too muddy right now.”

  “I’m sure the guys don’t mind a day of hanging around the ranch,” Cade said with a grin as Cody took the halter off his horse.

  “I doubt you’ll be hanging out here,” Cody said, walking through the mud and rain to the horse barn. “Imagine you’ll be wanting to see Jasmine.”

  “Yes, I will,” Cade said with a laugh as he hefted the saddle onto the saddle tree in the tack room. The odor of wet horse rose up and filled the small room.

  “She’s a great gal,” Cody said, stringing up the halter beside the others, banging his head against the single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. It sent their shadows dancing eerily along the wall. “Pretty, too.”

  “Inside and out,” Cade replied, hanging the blanket on another rack. “Sometimes I don’t feel like I deserve her.”

  Cody paused a moment, taking the young boy’s measure. “You been getting any grief from Vivienne’s family about marrying her?”

  Cade shrugged, resting his hand on a saddle. “It’s been kind of a Romeo and Juliet thing. Jasmine’s family has been great.”

  “And your family?” Cody slapped his hat against his thigh then dropped it on his head, his growling stomach reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since breakfast this morning.

  “Vincent is being a jerk, but that’s cousin Vincent,” Cade said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Marsha and Billy Dean keep reminding me that the George Claytons are selfish and greedy, which is pretty rich coming from them.” He gave Cody a quick grin, as if to ease away the sting of his comments. “Les is pretty apathetic about it all. My brother Jack doesn’t say much. He’s had his own troubles with both sides of the family, so he’s kept his opinions to himself.”

  “Stick with it, Cade. You and Jasmine are lucky to have each other. It’s not often you find someone you connect with.” As soon as he spoke, Cody felt foolish. He sounded like the boy’s uncle instead of his boss.

  “You’re right,” Cade said with a shy smile. “We’ve both been blessed by each other, and I know people think we’re a bit young to get married. I am thankful that the Lord brought us together.”

  “Any future plans?” Cody asked.

  Cade gave a self-conscious shrug. “I’d like to go to medical school after Jasmine and I get married.”

  Cody clapped his hand on Cade’s shoulder. “You’re ambitious.” And for a moment he was jealous of the young boy’s conviction and his obvious love for his future wife.

  Had he felt like that about Tabitha? He pushed the thoughts aside. Tabitha was gone, and it wasn’t fair to go back and dissect that relationship.

  “I better get out of these clothes,” Cody said, heading out the door. “Try to scrounge something to eat at my house. I imagine everyone else is finished.” His stomach growled again, wondering what treats Vivienne had cooked up that he had missed out on. Though he had told her over and over that he wanted her to serve simple food, she always found a way to make things extra tasty.

  “Vivienne told us that if any of us saw you, she had supper waiting,” Cade said as he closed the door.

  “You ate already?”

  Cade nodded.

  “So what were you doing coming from the other side of the yard?”

  “Thought I saw something and I was going to check it out when you came. Figured I better pass Vivienne’s message on first. She’s in the cookhouse now, cleaning up,” Cade said, pulling up his collar against the rain as they walked across the yard. “Everyone else is gone, but she’s still there, and I know she said she was keeping some food warm for you. Supper was really good, so it’s worth taking time to g
et it.”

  Cody just nodded, thankful that the watery beam of the yard light was behind him, throwing his face into shadow. That way Cade couldn’t see his anticipation.

  The cookhouse was eerily quiet as Cody stepped inside. The tables were cleaned off and the floor swept. A single light glowed at one end, creating shadows. He paused a moment to take his wet coat off and hang it up. He glanced at the clean floor and toed his boots off. But as he walked across the floor to wash his hands, his wet socks left damp footprints on the wood. When he was done, he paused at the door to the kitchen, wishing he didn’t feel this thrum of expectation. The sound of Vivienne’s humming only increased it.

  For a moment, he was tempted to turn around and leave. Spending time with Vivienne one-on-one maybe wasn’t the best idea. But then his stomach rumbled and he heard Vivienne call out, “Anybody there?”

  Busted.

  So he squared his shoulders, told himself he was just hungry, nothing more, and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  Warmth and light greeted him, and he shivered. Then Vivienne was walking toward him, the overhead lights of the kitchen burnishing her hair into spun gold. Her smile was as bright as the sun, and the thrum became a steady beat.

  “Cade told me…about dinner…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Cade said you had dinner waiting for me.”

  Vivienne nodded. “I’m glad you came. You must be starving.” She waggled her hand as if to motion him to follow her. “I’ve got your dinner in the oven, and I’ve set a place for you at the table in the corner.”

  Cody walked toward the table, set with a plate and cutlery, and when Vivienne opened the oven, the aroma of chicken almost made him faint.

  “Here’s your first course,” she said, setting a large plate heaped with food in front of him.

  Cody glanced down at the plate, the scent of chicken and stuffing and potatoes and beans filling his nostrils. Ordinary food, but the chicken looked like it had been breaded with something and the potatoes had been cubed, seasoned and baked. The beans glistened and were sprinkled with almonds, and the stuffing looked and smelled better than any stuffing his mother had made.