by Diana Palmer
“We do,” Leo agreed. “But we still bale it the old-fashioned way and stack it in the barn. You lose some of the round bales through weathering by sun and rain. The hay that’s kept dry in the barn has less deterioration and better nutrition.”
“But you feed more than hay?”
Leo chuckled. He buttered a second biscuit. “You are sharp. Yes, we have a man who mixes feeds for better nutrition. No animal proteins, either,” he added. “We’re reactionaries when it comes to ranching. No artificial hormones, no pesticides, nothing except natural methods of pest control and growth. We’re marketing our beef under the Hart Ranch label, as well, certifying it organic. We’ve already got several chain supermarkets carrying our product, and we’ve just moved onto the internet to extend our distribution.”
“That’s amazing,” Meredith said with genuine interest. “It’s like having custom beef,” she added, nodding.
“It is custom beef,” Leo told her. “We’re capitalizing on the move toward healthier beef. Quick profit methods are going to fail producers in the long run, especially with the current attitude toward hormones and antibiotics and animal-product proteins for feed. We think that once organic beef catches on, the market will justify the added expense.”
“Word of mouth will take you far, too,” Meredith said. “Hospitals teach nutrition these days, not only to patients but to the community. Tailored beef will find a market among consumers with heart problems, who’ll pay the extra cost for healthier cuts of meat grown organically.”
Rey was listening. He finished his biscuit and poured himself another cup of coffee from the carafe on the table. “J.D. Langley pioneered that organic approach locally,” he remarked. “He and the Tremayne boys got into terrific fights with other producers at seminars for a while. Then we saw the disasters overseas and suddenly everybody else was jumping on the bandwagon.”
“They’ll be glad they did, I think,” Meredith said.
“Which reminds me,” Leo said, eyeing her. “Mrs. Lewis said her larder hadn’t been opened since you came here. So…what are you making these biscuits with?”
She gave them a wary glance. “Light olive oil,” she said slowly.
Rey gaped at his biscuit as if it had suddenly sprouted hair. “Olive oil?” he gasped.
“Listen,” she said quickly, aware of horrified stares, “olive oil is so healthy that people who live on a Mediterranean diet have only a fraction of the vascular problems we have in abundance in this country. The fat content is still there, but it’s a vegetable fat, and it’s actually good for you. Until I told you, you didn’t even know you’d given up great gobs of animal fat in those biscuits!”
The brothers looked at each other. “Well,” Leo had to admit, “they taste just as good as the others did.”
“That’s true,” Rey agreed reluctantly.
“And we’re getting older,” Leo continued. “We don’t want clogged arteries giving us heart attacks and strokes.”
“Or bypass surgery,” Rey sighed.
“So I guess olive oil isn’t so bad, after all,” Leo concluded, with a grin at Meredith.
She grinned back. “Thank goodness. I had visions of being tarred and feathered,” she confessed.
“I’m not giving up butter, though,” Rey told her firmly, dipping his knife into the tub next to the biscuit basket. “Nothing tastes like real butter on a biscuit.”
Meredith didn’t look at him. She couldn’t confess that what he was eating was not butter, but rather a light margarine that actually lowered cholesterol levels. She only smiled and poured herself another cup of coffee.
* * *
Leo and Rey had started moving bulls into the lower pasture, where new forage grasses were thriving even in autumn, when a mangy old longhorn bull suddenly jerked his head and hooked Leo in the shoulder.
Leo yelled and threw a kick at him, but the aggravating animal was already trotting nonchalantly into the new pasture without a backward glance.
“How bad is it?” Rey asked, leaving the cowboys to work the cattle alone while he looked at his brother’s shoulder.
“Probably needs stitches,” Leo said through his teeth. “Drive me to the house and let me change shirts, then you can take me to Lou Coltrain.”
“Damned bull,” Rey muttered as he put his brother into the ranch truck and took off home.
Meredith was sweeping off the back steps when they drove up. She gave Leo’s bloodstained shirt a quick glance.
“Come on in here, let me have a look,” she said gently.
Disconcerted, Leo let her remove the shirt from his shoulder and bathe the blood away with a clean cloth.
She probed around the edges of the cut and nodded. “You’ll need stitches. Here. Hold this tight against the cut until you get to town.”
“I need to change shirts,” he began.
“You need to get to the doctor. Which one do you use?” she persisted, picking up the mobile phone she kept on the table.
“Dr. Lou Coltrain,” he said.
“I’ll phone and tell them you’re on the way,” she said firmly.
Rey gave her a curious glance, but he hustled Leo out the door and into the truck again.
When they got to the office, Dr. Lou Coltrain’s nurse, Betty, came right out to meet them and guide them back into a cubicle.
Lou walked in, took a professional look at the cut, and grinned. “Stitches,” she said. “How about a tetanus jab?”
Leo grimaced. “Well…”
She patted him on the shoulder that wasn’t injured. “We’ll have you fixed up and out of here in no time.”
He sighed, glancing at his brother. “I hate shots.”
Rey shrugged. “You’d hate tetanus more,” he told Leo. “Besides,” he added, “I hear she gives sugarless gum to the good patients.”
Leo made a face at him.
* * *
When Leo was stitched up and given his tetanus shot, Rey drove him back to the house, where Meredith made him a cup of coffee and cut him a slice of cherry pie, making sure he had a cushion for his back in the straight chair at the table.
Rey glared at the special treatment his brother was getting. “Maybe I should get gored,” he commented drolly.
Meredith stared at him, and she didn’t smile. “You’d get a vinegar dressing and a cup of cold coffee,” she said.
He glared at her, too. He felt as if he’d been put in the corner without supper. It wasn’t a feeling he liked. He gave them both a hard look and went back out the door, smoldering with bad temper.
CHAPTER SIX
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Meredith said wryly when Rey was gone. “I set him off again.”
“It won’t hurt him to have one woman who doesn’t fall all over herself when he’s around,” Leo told her flatly. “Sometimes too much success can ruin a good man.”
She toyed with her coffee cup. “Women like him, I guess,” she said.
He gave her a quick glance that she didn’t see before he started on his pie. “He’s had girlfriends since he was in grammar school. But there was only one serious one. She turned out to be a real loser,” he added quietly. “She soured him on women.”
She sipped coffee. “You can’t judge an entire sex by one woman,” she pointed out.
“Well, we had our mother as an example, too,” he continued. “She left Dad with five young boys and never looked back. We haven’t been overawed with sterling examples of womanhood, although Simon and Corrigan and Cag have made good marriages in spite of that.”
She smiled absently as she looked at him. “I had a brother of my own,” she said without thinking.
“Yes, I know,” Leo replied, surprising her into silence. “His name was Michael Johns. He worked for Houston PD.”
Her gasp was audible. “How…do you know about him?”
“Remember Colter Banks?”
“Yes. Colter was Mike’s best friend.”
“Well, Colter’s our second cousin,” h
e told her. “I knew Mike, too. I’m sorry.”
She clenched one fist in her lap and tried not to give way to tears. “Do the others…know?”
“No, they don’t,” he replied. “They weren’t that close to Colter, and they never met Mike. I haven’t told them, and I’m not planning to.”
She searched his dark eyes. “What else do you know about me, Leo?” she asked, because of the way he was watching her.
He shrugged. “Everything.”
She let out a long breath. “And you haven’t shared it with Rey.”
“You wouldn’t want me to,” he murmured dryly. “He’s having too much fun being condescending. When the time comes, he’s got a few shocks coming, hasn’t he?”
She laughed softly. “I hadn’t meant to be cloak-and daggerish. It’s just that it still hurts too much to talk about,” she said honestly.
“Colter told me the circumstances. It wasn’t your fault,” he replied. “Or your father’s. I gather that he drinks because he feels responsible?”
She nodded. “We both dined out on ‘what-if’ just after it happened,” she confessed. “I know that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference, but you can’t help wondering.”
“It doesn’t do any good to torment yourself over things that are history,” Leo said gently.
“I don’t do it intentionally,” she murmured.
“The first step was getting your father into treatment,” he said. “Getting you out of your rut was the second. You don’t have any memories to contend with here. I’ve noticed the difference in you just in the past week.” He smiled. “You’re changing already.”
“I suppose so.” She smiled back. “I’ve never even been on a ranch before. I could love it here. It’s such a change of pace.”
“When you’re back to normal, we’ve got plenty of opportunity around here for your sort of job,” he pointed out.
She chuckled. “Don’t rush me. It’s far too soon to think about leaving Houston.” She didn’t add that she didn’t want to be that close to Rey, considering his opinion of her at the moment. “I’ve only been down here a week.”
“Okay. I’ll let it drop, for now.” He leaned back in his chair and winced, favoring the arm he’d had stitched. “Damned bull,” he muttered.
“Did they give you something for the pain?”
“No, and I didn’t ask for anything. I have over-the-counter painkillers if it gets really bad. So far, it hasn’t.”
“You know, of course, that statistically farm and ranch work have the highest ratio of accidents,” she said.
“Any job can be dangerous,” he said easily.
She pursed her lips and lifted her coffee cup to them. “Your brother’s a walking job hazard,” she said thoughtfully.
“Oh? In what way, exactly?” he asked.
She wouldn’t have touched that line with a pole. She laughed. “He’s abrasive. I don’t think he wants me here.”
“I’ve noticed his attitude. I hope you haven’t let it get to you?”
“I haven’t. Anyway, he’ll mellow one of these days,” she said.
“He could use some mellowing. He’s a disillusioned man.”
She smoothed the lip of the cup. “Did he love her very much?”
He knew she was talking about Carlie. He sighed. “He thought he did. His pride suffered more than his heart.” He hesitated. “I didn’t help matters. I made a play for her deliberately, to show him what she was. That was a miscalculation. A bad one. He’s never forgiven me for it. Now, if I pay any attention to a woman, he tries to compete with me…”
She noticed the way his voice trailed off, and she averted her eyes. “I get the picture,” she said.
“It’s not like that, not with you,” he began.
She forced a smile. “He’s not interested in me,” she said bluntly. “And just in case you’re worried that I might be falling all over him, there’s no danger of that, either. I was outside the door when he was talking to you. I wasn’t eavesdropping, but he was speaking rather loudly. I heard what he said. I’d have to be certifiable to lose my heart over a man like that.”
He grimaced as he read the faint pain that lingered in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have had you hear what he said for the world,” he said deeply.
She managed a smile. “It’s just as well. It will keep me from taking him seriously. Besides, I’m not really down here looking for a soul mate.”
“Just as well, because Rey isn’t any woman’s idea of the perfect partner, not the way he is right now. I love him dearly, but I can afford to. It’s another story for any woman who loses her heart to him.” He studied her warily. “Just don’t let him play you for a fool.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said. “Even if I got the chance.”
He nodded. He finished his pie and coffee and got to his feet. “I’d better change and get back to work. Thanks for running interference, by the way. You’re a cool head in an emergency,” he remarked with a smile.
“I’ve had lots of practice,” she said modestly and grinned. “But try to stay away from horned things for a while.”
“Especially my brother, the minor devil,” he said, tongue-in-cheek, and grinned back when she got the reference and started laughing.
* * *
After Leo went back to work, Meredith went out to gather eggs. It seemed very straightforward. You walked into the henhouse, reached in the nest, and pulled out a dozen or so big brown eggs, some still warm from the chicken’s feathered body.
But that wasn’t what happened. She paused just inside the henhouse to let her eyes adjust to the reduced light, and when she moved toward the row of straw-laced nests, she saw something wrapped around one nest that wasn’t feathered. It had scales and a flickering long tongue. It peered at her through the darkness and tightened its coils around its prey, three big brown eggs.
Meredith, a city girl with very little experience of scaly things, did something predictable. She screamed, threw the basket in the general direction of the snake, and left skid marks getting out of the fenced lot.
Annie Lewis, who was doing the laundry, came to the back door as fast as her arthritis would allow, to see what all the commotion was about.
“There’s a…big black and white snnnnnakkkkkke…in there!” Meredith screamed, shaking all over from the close encounter.
“After the eggs, I reckon,” Annie said with a sigh. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Let me get a stick and I’ll deal with it.”
“You can’t go in there alone with the horrible thing and try to kill it! It must be five feet long!”
“It’s a king snake, not a rattler,” Annie said gently, recognizing the description. “And I’m not planning to kill it. I’m going to get it on a stick and put in the barn. It can eat its fill of rats and poisonous snakes and do some good out there.”
“You aren’t going to kill it?” Meredith exclaimed, horrified.
“It’s a king snake, dear,” came the gentle reply. “We don’t like to kill them. They’re very useful. They eat rattlesnakes, you know.”
“I didn’t know.” Meredith shivered again. “I’ve never seen a snake except in a zoo, and it was a python.”
“You’ll see lots of them out here in the country. Just remember that if one rattles at you, it means business and it will strike. Rattlesnakes are venomous.”
Meredith looked around as if she expected to be mobbed just at the mention of them.
“You can finish the washing,” Annie said, trying not to grin. “I’ll take care of the snake.”
“Please be careful!”
“I will. After all, you get used to things like…”
Rey drove up and stopped the truck just short of the two women, exiting it with his usual graceful speed.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he pulled a box of assorted bovine medicines out of the boot of the truck.
“There’s a snake in the henhouse!” Meredith exclaimed.
He
stopped with the supplies in his arms and stared at her curiously. “So?” he asked.
“I’m just going to move it for her, Rey,” Mrs. Lewis said with a grin. “It sounds like a king snake. I thought I’d put him in the barn.”
“I’ll get him for you.” He put the box on the hood of the truck. “Scared of snakes, are you?” he scoffed.
“I’d never seen one until a few minutes ago,” she said huffily, and flushed. He was looking at her as if she were a child.
“There’s a first time for everything,” he said, and his eyes made a very explicit remark as they lingered on her breasts.
She gave him a glare hot enough to fry bacon, which he ignored. He walked right into the chicken lot and, then, into the henhouse.
Barely a minute later, he came back out with the snake coiled around one arm, its neck gently held in his other hand.
“Would you look at this, it’s Bandit!” he exclaimed, showing it to a fascinated Mrs. Lewis. “See the scar on his back where he got caught in the corn sheller that time?”
“So it is!” she said. “Hello, old fella!” She actually petted the vile thing under the chin.
“How can you touch that thing?” Meredith groaned. “It’s a snake!”
Mrs. Lewis glanced at Rey. “Reckon we should tell her that he used to live in the house?”
“Probably not,” Rey suggested, aware of her white face. “I’ll just stick him up in the loft. Come on, Bandit, I’ll put you in a safe place.”
Meredith was holding both chill-bump laden arms with her hands and shivering.
“There, there,” Annie said gently. “He wouldn’t bite you unless you provoked him. He’s very gentle.”
“If you say so.”
“I do. Now you go back in there and get the eggs. Don’t let Rey see how frightened you are. Trust me, he’ll take advantage of it. You’ll find rubber snakes in the refrigerator, the blender, the washer…”
“No!” Meredith exclaimed, horrified.
“Just grit your teeth and go back in the henhouse,” Annie suggested. “Quick, before he comes back out.”
Meredith took a quick breath and gave Annie a miserable glance, but she did as she was told.