by Arlene James
“Ladies first, ma’am.”
Kara stuck out one hand. “In this outfit we’re all equals, Mr. Wagner. You are Jesse Wagner?”
He swept off his silver-gray Stetson, displaying an impressive head of wavy chestnut hair. It was hard to tell without a matching mustache, but he didn’t strike Kara as particularly resembling his brother. Besides being clean shaven, he was taller by a couple of inches, and his hair bore no trace of premature gray. His sparkling eyes were almost as blue as they were silver, and his well-sculpted mouth tended to quick, easy smiles that displayed strong, white teeth.
“He takes after our mother,” he explained cheekily, as though having read her mind, as his big, broad hand enveloped hers.
“I see.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Detmeyer.”
“It’s Kara.”
“And Jess.”
Frowning, Champ tugged hard on his uncle’s arm. Jess immediately dropped his gaze to his nephew’s face, going from affability to rock-hard sternness in the blink of an eye. “Your father may tolerate that behavior, young man, but I won’t Now mind your manners. I’m talking to the lady, so you just bear up.”
Champ bowed his head abjectly. Kara immediately sought to lessen the blow. “He didn’t mean anything.”
“The heck he didn’t,” Jesse Wagner said baldly. “He and his father have a problem with good-looking young women, and you qualify in spades.”
Kara’s brows went up. “Er, thank you.”
He grinned, switching on the charm again with disarming abruptness. “Just telling it like it is, one of my many virtues.”
Kara laughed. She couldn’t help it. Jess Wagner was about as different from his careful, aloof brother as a man could be. “Generosity must be another, then. I haven’t thanked you for the horses and the feed yet. You’ve saved my life.”
Wagner shrugged his broad, thick shoulders. “Frankly, I’d have done more to get an early look at the only woman I’ve heard my brother praise in years.”
Kara had to work to keep her jaw from dropping. That left no space or time for subtlety. “Praised how?”
Jess chuckled. “Isn’t that just like a woman, always wanting the details. Let me tell you something about men, Kara, they see the big picture. Details sometimes get lost. That’s what we need women for.... Well, one of the things we need women for.” He winked. As they’d been shuffling forward in line, they now found themselves at the serving table. Dayna was there with a big smile and a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs. Jess split a look between the two women and said, “My, my, you Detmeyer women sure dress a place up!”
Kara hid a smile. “Jess, allow me to introduce my mother.”
He drew back in overdone disbelief. “No, surely she’s your sister!”
Dayna rolled her eyes. “Now that’s just what we need around here, more hot air.” Just then, Pogo appeared at her side, an arm sliding possessively about her trim waist. Dayna slung an elbow halfheartedly at his ribs, saying, “This one could launch dirigibles.”
Jess laughed and stuck out his hand, which Pogo gripped heartily. “I should have known, you sneaky old buzzard.” He turned his smile on Dayna again. “What do you women see in him?”
Dayna smiled secretively. “Trust me, it’s not visible to the eye.”
Kara felt herself blush while Jess Wagner laughed delightedly. For the first time she truly understood the innuendo. For one bleak moment she felt such intense jealousy that her stomach turned over, but then her heart swelled and she let herself be glad for her mother. If what Dayna felt with Pogo Smith was anything like what she’d felt with Rye, then Kara rejoiced. She couldn’t help wondering, though, if it had been like that with her mother and father. If it had, how had Dayna borne it when he’d died?
Rye arrived before she could ponder that question further, slapping his brother on the back. “I see you’ve met the Detmeyers.”
“Oh, indeed, I have, and a real pleasure, too.”
Rye addressed Kara then. “Bord and I got the fresh horses settled and the feed out. Jess has brought us some fine mounts.”
Kara kept her gaze on the older brother, afraid she would betray her own personal misery if she looked at Rye just then. “I’ve already told Jess how grateful I am. Guess I’ll have to up the ante now.”
Jess chuckled and picked up the plate Dayna had filled with spaghetti. Passing it to Kara, he took her empty one and put it on the table for Dayna to serve. Champ added his, splitting avid looks between Kara and his uncle. Jess treated Kara to a particularly charming smile. “Your company through dinner is more than ample compensation.” Suddenly he looked up, first at his brother, then Pogo, adding, “Er, unless someone else has staked another claim I ought to know about....”
Kara caught her breath, torn between the need to look at Rye and the desire to run. Long seconds ticked by, during which no one said a word. Finally Jess Wagner picked up his plate, placed a hand in the small of Kara’s back and gently pressed, saying mildly, “Tell me all about this trail drive. Rye said something about a codicil to a will.”
Kara nodded and latched on to the subject gratefully, doing her best to ignore the ache spreading throughout her chest.
The reporter showed up the next morning just as they were mounting up. Rye did his best to tamp down his temper, but watching his brother fawn all over Kara the evening before had just about exhausted his control. It didn’t help that Jess had actually seemed able to put the roses back in Kara’s cheeks and the flash in her eyes. She had relaxed with Jess, laughed with him, even glowed beneath the constant shower of flirtatious charm. Rye couldn’t help feeling invisible, forgotten. Now here was Jess pulling Kara down off her horse—as if she couldn’t dismount on her own—to introduce her to a drugstore cowboy more comfortable with pen and paper than horse and rope.
He walked his horse over to the trio shaking hands and making introductions. Drawing rein, he leaned a forearm on his saddle horn and said, “Anybody around here remember that we’ve got work to do?”
Kara lifted a hand in his direction. “Chad, this is Jesse’s brother Rye. You might call him my good right hand. Rye, I’d like you to meet Chad Bevery. He’s a reporter.”
He looked more like a kid playing reporter to Rye, a blond, pretty kid. And he was staring at Kara’s chest as if taking her measurements. Rye put on a false smile.
“Do tell. Well, Chad, your timing’s bad, son. We’re just about to move these cattle down the trail. Schedule’s to keep and all that.”
Chad flipped open his pad and busily scribbled as if trying to get down every word. Jess laid a hand on Rye’s arm. “This is important, Rye. Get someone else to fill in for Kara this morning.”
Rye ground his teeth. “You seem to forget who’s giving the orders around here, bro. Besides, Kara can’t be replaced. I need her on point.”
The reporter shook his ink pen at Rye, saying excitedly, “This is so good. Two centuries collide! Sabotage on the trail. Liberated female holding her own in a man’s world. Fortune at stake!” The fool was talking in headlines. Rye rolled his eyes. Jess, meanwhile, seemed intent on playing the hero.
“Tell you what,” he said to Kara, placing his hands familiarly on her shoulders. “I’ll take your place until the noon rendezvous. You give our boy Chad here everything he needs. All right?”
Kara nodded and patted one of his hands where it rested on her shoulder. Rye fought down the urge to kick his brother off his feet, choosing instead to wheel his horse and gallop away, barking orders left and right. Damn Jess! What the hell did he think he was doing, mauling Kara like that, countermanding his own orders, sticking his nose in where it just didn’t belong! He rode to point himself, shouting, “Head’s up out there! New man on the wing!” Without waiting for Jess to fall into place, he cut out Number One from the milling herd and started her down the trail at a trot. “Let’s move ’em!”
The herd gave a satisfying surge forward, the drovers hawing them and slapping leather. Th
ey moved out like a gigantic, welloiled machine, throwing up dust in their wake. Rye realized suddenly that he was going to miss this moment in the future. He was going to miss giving the order to move, miss looking forward and seeing Kara driving out the leaders, miss the sounds of his men calling and ropes snapping. Miss her. Oh, God. He’d tried not to notice where she’d laid her bedroll last night, but he knew—knew—that she’d slept next to Jess. What had he done, bringing the two of them together?
He concentrated on moving the herd over some rough terrain. Some of it was so rough that they had no choice but to move out into the roadway in places. Rye prepared himself for confrontation with the locals and possibly even the constabulary. To his surprise people tended to pull over to the side of the road, roll down their windows or get out of their cars, wave their hats and shout questions.
“Where you headed?”
“New Mexico!”
“Where you from?”
“Utah!”
“How many head?”
“Better’n three hundred!”
“Who-ee!”
When Kara finally joined the drive at lunch, she was full of big news. “Chad says we can drive ’em right through Cahone, says he’ll take care of everything as soon as he gets back to his office.”
“Is that so? And what happens if somebody decides to throw us in jail for disturbing the peace or some such?”
“I told you, he’ll take care of it. If some problem should crop up, he’ll call.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” Rye crabbed.
Kara just shook her head and rode out to point, Jess falling in beside her. Before long they drew up, and Jess leaned out of the saddle like some circus rider to buss her on the cheek. Kara laughed and waved him off as he rode away. Rye swallowed gall and yelled at George to get off the blankety-blank phone and mind his business. “That Wanda’s got him on a short tether,” he grumbled, referring to George’s intended wife.
Jess laughed, catching him off guard. Rye wheeled his horse around to face him. “What’s so funny?”
“You.”
“Yeah, I’m a laugh riot, especially when I’m moving three hundred head on a public roadway with an inexperienced hand.”
“We did okay, seems to me. Everybody says Kara’s a surprisingly good hand—”
Rye snorted. “Kara’s the best hand on the crew.”
Jess grinned. “Next to you, you mean.”
Rye shrugged, sensing that he was being led somewhere he didn’t necessarily want to go. “Guess you’ll be shoving off now all the rescuing’s done.”
Jess grinned and said, “I like her.”
“I noticed.”
Jess heaved a long-suffering sigh and crossed his hands over the saddle horn. “She’s not a whit like Di’wana.”
Rye turned his horse. “Tell Dad I look forward to seeing him in a few days.”
Jess spurred forward and grabbed Rye’s reins. “Sit still, damn it! I’ll let you know when I’m through with you.”
Rye actually cocked his fist. “I’m not ten years old and still taking orders from you!”
“Then stop acting like it!”
It took a few moments for that to sink in, fortunately his hand got the message before his brain did and was hanging at his side by the time he realized what he’d almost done. He tugged his reins from Jesse’s grasp and made a show of relaxing. “All right, I’m listening.”
“I want to take Champ home with me.”
“Champ?”
“Living on the trail is exciting, but it’s also hard. He needs a break, and you need some slack. Besides, I’m worried about all the stuff that’s been going on.”
Rye nodded. What Jess said was true. He hadn’t been able to spend as much time with the boy as he’d intended, anyway. Seemed there was always something needing his attention. And he had another reason for liking the idea. Jess had a way with Champ, for making him see reason. “Okay. But there’s something you ought to know, something I haven’t been able to prepare him for myself.”
“Seeing his mother. He told me.”
Rye lifted a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s time.”
“Past time, if you ask me.”
“Which I didn’t.”
Jess reached across the distance between them and laid a hand on Rye’s shoulder. “You’re doing the right thing, Rye. I know it’s hard, but if the two of you are ever going to put this behind you, you have to make your peace. Champ doesn’t understand that right now, but I intend to tell him how proud I am of you for taking this step.”
Rye blinked, surprised at how his brother’s approval still had the power to warm him. “Thanks. I’ll ride back to the lunch wagon with you to tell Champ so long.”
Jess nodded. “You’ll see him again in a few days.”
“Yeah. Meanwhile, he can have a good time with his grandparents and Uncle Jess.”
“And you can have a good time with that hot number riding point.”
Rye jerked his horse to a halt. “What the hell do you mean by that crack?”
“Give it up, Rye. She’s wild about you, and you’re behaving like a bad-tempered stud with his first whiff of scent. I know you’ve been wanting to put out my lights just for looking at her.”
“You’ve got some nerve, you know that?”
“I just want to see you happy, Rye, for once. Even if it’s only for the next week or so.”
Rye was startled. “I’m happy.”
Jess shook his head. “Rye, you’re the unhappiest fellow I know. Just this once, take a little time for yourself. Enjoy some of the good life has to offer. Let that little gal do everything she’s aching to do for you. Take it and be grateful. Please. I guarantee you, the world will seem a new place after.”
Rye was speechless. Was this his big brother begging him to cut loose? After all those lectures on responsibility and sobriety? Had Kara told him something about the two of them? If so, he wanted to hear it from Kara herself.
“Think about it,” Jess said, kicking his horse into a canter.
He was thinking about it. He was thinking that he could walk into any drugstore in any town along the way, buy a box of condoms and walk out again without answering to anybody. He could have Kara in his arms every night until Durango. And maybe the world would seem a new place afterward. He closed his eyes. Could he do this? Could he love Kara for now and walk away later? Would she come to him, knowing he wouldn’t, couldn’t stay with her beyond Durango? He only knew that he was going to find out.
Chapter Eleven
“Care if I join you?”
Kara looked up, frankly amazed, and inclined her head as Rye sat down on the ground next to her and folded his legs, depositing his plate atop his crossed ankles. He scooted closer, until their knees touched. Kara shook her head and said rather caustically, “Finally managed to place my face, did you? And only two days after the fact.”
“I’m sorry.” He spread his hands and fixed her with a direct look. “I didn’t know how to act that next morning. I was afraid everyone would know, and I wasn’t ready for that, not with Champ around.”
“You made me feel ashamed, Rye,” she told him softly.
“Oh, Lord, honey, I never intended that.” He sighed and swept his hands through his hair. It was damp still from a recent shower, and the firelight and lanterns picked out the silver threads against the darker hues. “Kara,” he said finally, “I’ve never experienced anything before like that night. I can’t just write it off as a one-night stand because, even if it never happens again, I know those feelings will always be with me—and I’m hoping it will happen again. But I don’t have much to offer you, sweetheart, not everything you deserve, for sure, just now, a few days.”
Painfully aware of his meaning, she stalled for time, looking around them. They were not alone. Her mother and Pogo were washing dishes over by the old truck, laughing together and bumping hips from time to time. George was eating his dinner in the back seat of the double ca
b, his beloved Wanda on the telephone. Shoes had finished his meal and was working lanolin into a piece of leather from atop a five-gallon bucket placed end up beside his farrier’s wagon. Dean was on the computer at the table, his dinner as yet untouched, while Bord watched over his shoulder and forked pork and beans into his mouth. No one was paying the least attention to the two of them, and yet Kara felt exposed. She pretended an intense interest in her dinner plate as she asked, “What brought this on now?”
Rye covered his knees with his hands and leaned forward, saying in a voice barely above a whisper, “I just don’t know how to stay away anymore, not since I let Champ go to Durango with my brother.”
Kara looked up abruptly. She’d known, of course, that Jess had headed back to the Wagner ranch, but Champ kept so carefully out of her path that she hadn’t even missed him. “I just assumed he was inside the motor home or something.”
“Jess asked me to let him take the boy back to the ranch with him.” Rye licked his lips and brushed his mustache with his fingertips. “Did you maybe say something to him, about us, I mean?”
Kara thought carefully. Had she said something to give them away? Finally she shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, certainly not intentionally.”
Rye nodded. “I guess he knows me well enough to figure my moods by now.”
“He talked to you about us?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She turned her fork over in her hand. He picked his up and speared a piece of pork. They ate silently for several minutes. Finally, she couldn’t keep quiet anymore. “What did he say?”