by Diana Palmer
“I always liked this place,” he remarked.
“It’s very pretty,” she agreed. She grimaced. “Look, I’m sorry about the picket sign. . . .”
“I’ll tear a strip off Cary and we’ll be even. Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks. And thanks for the coffee and the ride.” She opened the door and jumped down, pausing to get her wet, faded sign off the floorboard in the back seat.
“Stay warm,” he said.
She smiled. “Drive safely,” she replied, and closed the passenger door before she saw his bemused expression.
He waved and drove off.
She propped her sign against the wall and opened the door.
Her father, tall and thin and graying, looked up from the sofa, where he was reading a book. “Back so soon?”
She grimaced. “He doesn’t have a single chicken house,” she said with a long sigh.
His eyebrows rose. “Then why were you picketing him?”
“It’s a long story,” she replied, shedding her wet coat. She hung it up and plopped down into the easy chair across from the sofa. “He owns this run-down ranch,” she began.
Chapter Two
“A run-down ranch, an owner who drinks, and purebred cattle?” he mused. “I think he was having you on, Cassie,” he chuckled. “A poor man can’t afford to run purebreds. They cost thousands of dollars. A good herd bull alone sometimes goes for half a million.”
“Oh. I see. Well, he was nice about it, anyway. He gave me coffee and dried my jeans and . . . Oh, my gosh, my clothes are still there!” she exclaimed. “I forgot all about them!”
He was watching her with wide, stunned eyes.
“These clothes belonged to his housekeeper’s daughter,” she explained. “He handed them to me in the bathroom. I put them on and he put my things in the dryer. My outer things,” she added. “I wasn’t about to take off my underthings in a strange man’s house.”
He smiled gently. “You’re so like your mother,” he said with a sad smile. “She was straitlaced, too, very Victorian in her attitudes. I guess we didn’t do you any favors, giving you such an old-fashioned upbringing when the rest of the world is so permissive.”
“I like me just the way I am, thanks,” she laughed. “I like being out of step with the world. I stay healthier, for one thing,” she added, tongue-in-cheek.
He sighed. “Yes, but you don’t date anybody.”
“I dated Jackson Hill,” she pointed out.
“Sweetheart, Jackson Hill was gay,” he reminded her.
“He was great company, too,” she replied, smiling reminiscently. “His parents were so conventional, and he loved them so much, that he didn’t want them to know. We went out together so we could both hide. I didn’t want a loose relationship with some career-minded man, and he didn’t want notoriety. We suited each other.” She sighed. “I miss him. He was so much fun!”
He nodded. “Well, I guess we settle for what we can get in life. I would have liked grandchildren, though,” he added with a smile.
She had a sudden picture of the reclusive rancher with a baby in his arms and swatted it away. “Maybe someday,” she said. “Right now, I’m busy learning how to balance a plateful of food on a tray without dropping it while I set up the tripod.”
He laughed out loud. “And I’m busy learning how to persuade ranchers to buy equipment they may not know they need.”
“I daresay we’ll both do well, once we learn the ropes,” she replied.
He sighed. “I keep hoping. I miss my crew.”
She knew it was hard for him. To be such a celebrity, with his own television show, loved by millions. And with one unfounded accusation by a vengeful woman, it was all gone and he was in hiding. The damage had been far-reaching. His attorneys had done their best, but social media had destroyed him. It was suggested that if he got away for a few months, things might calm down and they could reassess his position. The fact that he was innocent seemed to count for nothing. The woman who accused him, however, now had her own television show—his former one—and she was raking in cash and ratings, thanks to several special interest groups that had funded her. His attorneys knew this and they’d hired one of the best investigators in the business to do some discreet snooping. There was still hope.
“I miss my job, too, although it wasn’t a patch on yours,” she said with a wistful sigh. “The series is still on TV, and there were some terrific other writers on staff. But I liked to interject humor and they didn’t.”
“Maybe one day, we can both go back to what we love,” he replied sadly. “But for the time being, we’re in camouflage, pretending to be normal middle-class Americans. That’s not a bad thing, either,” he added. “You can get too addicted to five-star restaurants and expensive quarters. You can lose sight of the things that are really important.”
“Yes, like no reporters trying to knock down the doors, hiding in the trees, parachuting onto the roof . . .”
He chuckled. “It wasn’t quite that bad, although I couldn’t eat out or be seen in public. I was too recognizable.” He shook his head. “Growing a beard and wearing glasses does seem to have put them off, for the time being.”
“Yes. You look quite judicial,” she teased.
He smiled. “At least you didn’t have to modify your looks. Writers aren’t quite as noticeable as television personalities with weekly shows.”
“That was my good luck,” she agreed. She stretched. “I’m using muscles I didn’t even know I had. I got lazy. I spent my life at a keyboard, living in a fantasy world. I’m looking at the world in a totally new way.”
“So am I,” he said. He drew in a long breath. “And I hope we’re far enough away that they won’t come looking for us here.”
“Who would?” she mused. “Honestly, working in equipment sales has to be the last place reporters would expect to find you!”
“We can hope,” he said. He shook his head and his face tautened. “That woman,” he bit off. “Stabbed in the back by my own executive producer, accused of sexual harassment and assault, the media flooded with lies and opinions and gossip. Journalism in this country has sunk to a whole new low.”
“The major media outlets are owned by a handful of people with agendas,” she said simply.
“Well, there’s nothing we can do about that,” he told her. “Millionaires make policy, and corporations own everything of worth. It will take a disaster of some kind to provide a reset. And I hope I’m long gone when it happens.”
“You’re practically immortal,” she teased. “And we don’t need a reset. We just need people to demand objective reporting. If enough do, things will change.”
“Optimist.” Her father put down his book. “Speaking of news, which we never watched anyway until my sudden notoriety, I suppose we should buy a television set.”
“What for?” she asked. “We hardly watched TV even when we had one.”
“I was thinking about all the movies we had on the Cloud,” he replied.
“Now, that, I wouldn’t mind at all!” she agreed, laughing. “How about we buy one tomorrow? Something cheap.”
“A used gaming system would be nice, too, so you can play those games you’ve also got on the Cloud,” he teased. Her gaming habit amused him. She loved console games on XBox One and had several that were her hobby.
“I miss my games,” she confessed. She frowned. “But I’d better play off the Internet for now. A few people knew my gamer tag,” she added. “Best not to advertise that I’m still around.”
He nodded solemnly. “I’ll keep on my attorneys,” he said. “If their investigator turns up something on Trudy Blaise, things may start to look up.”
“They may. But meantime, I have a nice job and I’m happy to get a check every two weeks,” she said. “We could have landed in a worse place.”
“Yes, we could.” He frowned as she sneezed. “You need to push your friend Cary into a thorny bush. You’re sneezing. It was cold and wet,
and you have bad lungs. . . .”
She shook her head. “I’m fine,” she said firmly. “Nothing to worry about. I’ve been much better with the new inhaler.”
He sighed. “If you say so.”
She got up, smiling. “I’ll start some rolls rising, so we can have them for supper,” she said. “How about coq au vin?”
He gave her a droll look. “How about chicken and mashed potatoes?” he countered.
She sighed. “Ah, poverty,” she laughed. “I guess it will be good for our characters.”
“Everybody has hard times, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Everybody gets through them.”
She just smiled on her way to the kitchen.
* * *
JL pulled up in front of his house and studied it with a frown. He hadn’t noticed how dilapidated it was getting. Honestly, since he’d broken his engagement, things hadn’t mattered much to him. Not even the ranch, which was his pride and joy.
But now it was falling apart. He’d been having a whiskey after dinner every night. Sometimes, it was two whiskeys. He hated what his life had become. He was alone and tired of his own company. His big romance had turned into a disaster. He was afraid to trust another woman, because of what his “fiancée” had done to him. The experience had turned him inside out. He was so depressed that he paid no attention to broken fences, to equipment that stopped working, to employees who pleaded for money to repair infrastructure. Now, it was all catching up with him.
He walked out to the big barn where his foreman, Isaiah Drummond, was staring under the hood of the truck they used to haul feed to the cattle in the near pastures. He had the physique of a range rider, much as JL himself did, but Drum, as most people called him, was a few years younger and had a temper that the cowboys tried to avoid. He looked up as the boss approached, his black eyes flashing in a lean, tanned face under a thick head of black hair.
“Damned thing’s on the blink again,” he muttered. “And the Bobcat has a flat tire.”
“Horrors and wonders, the world’s ending,” JL drawled sarcastically.
Drum’s chiseled mouth pulled down on one side. “It will, if you don’t get on the ball, boss,” he said curtly. “If things go downhill fast enough, you could end up with a wheat farm instead of a ranch.”
JL shrugged. “Not likely. Beef’s at a premium since all the flooding down in Texas last summer.”
“Yes, well, growing cattle need food, and to have food, you need working equipment to plant things with.”
JL sighed. “Okay, call that repairman from the equipment company and let him come out here and fix it.”
Drum managed a smile. “Okay.”
“Any other little headaches . . . ?”
Drum pushed back the beat-up old black Stetson he wore. “I hear you’ve taken up chicken farming.”
JL’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
Drum grinned. “You had a picketer out front, accusing you of abusing hens.”
“Oh, that.” He smiled reminiscently. “Cary told her I had chicken houses. She was soaking wet and sneezing. Funny little thing. Red-gold hair. Blue eyes. Thin as a rail. Repressed as all hell. Works as a waitress in town. I drove her home.”
Drum waited, curious.
JL gave him a droll look. “I don’t have any inclination to let a woman back in my life. Not in the near future. Maybe never.” His face darkened. “I’ve got enough trouble as it is.”
“I can understand your viewpoint,” came the reply. “But you have to understand that some women are as mercenary as some men. They have ways of hiding it. You have to look deeper than surface things, like beauty.”
“You ever been married?”
“Never. I came close once.” Drum shook his head. “She didn’t want to live with a man who worked around cattle and smelled like fertilizer, she said.” He shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a sacrifice, at that. She couldn’t cook and she wanted a life of leisure. I told her she’d have to look for a richer man than me. So she found one.” He laughed. “I saw her once, when I took that trip to Denver to check out some cattle at auction for you. She said she wished she could go back in time and make a different choice. I guess she was paying a price for that wealth.”
“People mostly do,” JL sighed. “I don’t understand greed.”
“Me, neither,” Drum replied. “Well, I’ll go call that equipment repairman and see when he can get out here.”
“The chicken picketer’s father works there, she said.”
“That must be the new fellow.” He shook his head. “Owner says he sits and reads equipment manuals all the time so he can understand what he sells.” He frowned. “Odd man. New York accent, and he doesn’t have the hands of a man who does any sort of physical labor. I’d have pegged him as a businessman. He seems out of place.”
“Curious.”
“It is. But it’s not my business.”
“Nor mine,” JL told him. “I’ve been taking a look around the place. We have lots of things that need to be repaired and painted. I’ve been living in a blue funk, whatever that is. Time I snapped out of it and got some things done. And don’t agree with me,” he said suddenly when Drum opened his mouth. “I’ll call a contractor first thing in the morning and get the ball rolling. Another thing, the chicken picketer left her clothes here. I put them in the dryer, but she went home wearing Bessie’s daughter’s jeans and shirt. I guess I’ll have to make time to take them to her.”
“Is she pretty—the chicken picketer?” Drum teased.
JL chuckled. “She was pretty bedraggled while she was here. Not much to look at, but a tender heart and plenty of compassion. I used to think looks were the most important thing. Now I’m convinced that a good heart’s better.”
“I’ll take pretty, thanks,” came the amused reply.
“You’re welcome to all the pretty women you can find. I’m off women for life,” he added. “I’m never being taken for a ride again.”
“Where have I heard that before?”
“Never you mind. Get busy. I’m going to ride out to the line cabin and see how Parker’s doing with the new horses.”
“Why won’t you let him work them here, close to the house?”
JL raised both eyebrows. “You ever heard him cuss?”
“Oh.”
“I’m not having him around when visitors come to look at our new crop of cattle. He’ll put everybody’s back up and I’ll have to sell my calves at a loss.”
“We could rope him, tie him to a post, and gag him.”
JL pursed his lips and chuckled. “What a thought. But, no, it’s just as well to leave him where he is. If I have to call him down about his behavior, he’ll quit, and he’s the best man with horses I’ve ever had.”
“I’ll echo that. The man has a gift.”
“It’s that Crow in him,” JL replied. “He said his people have a way with animals that runs all the way back through his lineage, all the way to his great-grandfather. He can gentle horses without any rough treatment. Horses love him. I mean they really love him. They follow him around the fence when he’s outside.”
“Imagine a guy with a talent like that,” Drum said. He made a face. “And a mouth like that.”
“He was in the military. He said he learned to cuss dodging bullets in Iraq.” He shook his head. “I’ve dodged my share, but I’m not his equal in a cussing contest,” he added, chuckling. “I guess we all have a few rough edges.”
“His are sharper than knives. But he is good with the horses.”
“Yes. Okay, you call the equipment people, I’ll go talk to Parker.”
“Sure thing, boss.”
* * *
The line cabin was about a mile from the main ranch house, set back in the lodgepole pines, with majestic mountains making an exquisite backdrop for the long, open pasture, cross-fenced, that stretched to the horizon. The cabin was efficient, but small. With its rustic timbers, it looked like part of the landscape.
JL dismounted
at the front porch and tied his horse to the rail. There was nobody around. He rapped on the door, but there was no answer. Odd, he thought. Parker was certainly here, somewhere. He wondered what was going on.
He opened the door and walked in. There was a fire in the fireplace. A hot, fresh pot of coffee sat on the counter with an empty cup by it. Wherever Parker was, he must not have expected to be gone long.
JL went back outside and looked around. “Hey, Parker!” he called.
No answer. He walked around the house and saw hoofprints headed down the road. He got back in the saddle and followed them.
He hadn’t gone far when he heard a rifle shot. Heart racing, he turned his horse in the direction of the shot and urged him forward.
“Nothing to worry about, Hardy,” he told the horse, patting him gently on the mane to calm him. The horse was nervous enough without loud noises. “Come on, fellow. Just a little way to go.”
The horse moved forward, but not quickly. In the distance, JL caught sight of a red plaid shirt. Closer, he could tell that it was Parker by his tall, lean body and the white Stetson he wore. But he could tell better by the language that was audible even this far away. Parker was eloquent.
He rode down to the pasture. Parker had left his horse on this side of the fence. He was on the other side, standing over the carcass of a calf.
He looked up at JL with narrowed blue eyes in a face as hard as stone. “Wolf,” he said angrily. He indicated the calf.
JL grimaced. The calf had been savaged, while it was still alive, from the look of it. Parker had obviously put it out of its misery.
“I wish all those damned bleeding-heart liberals living in apartments in cities could come out here and see what we have to deal with because of their blankety-blank legislation!” Parker said angrily. “In fact, I wish we could shove a few starving wolves into the apartments with them. My, my, what a change of heart the survivors would have!”
“Bad cowboy,” JL said, shaking a finger at him.
Parker sighed. “Yeah, I know. I just get tired of seeing little things like this in such agony.”
“Was it Two Toes?” JL asked, referring to an old and wily wolf who was known to the ranchers locally. The wolf was past his prime and couldn’t find a pack that would let him join, so he went hunting for game he could catch. That meant helpless calves that wandered too far from the herd.