All for a Cowboy

by Jeannie Watt

  “Don’t worry, I’m not hanging around,” she said. “I have a message from Miranda. She wants to talk to you.”

  “When hell freezes over.”

  “If you don’t see her, then she’s coming here.”

  “Fine. She can see me here.”

  Shae shrugged. The message was delivered, her job was done.

  “Why?” She turned back, tilting her head at him. “Why does she want to see me?” he asked. The mare impatiently pawed the earth with a front foot and Jordan moved her forward a couple of steps.

  “I don’t know,” Shae said truthfully. “Wish I did.” With that she turned and headed to the bunkhouse, where she sank down on the cot she didn’t use, resting her elbows on her knees. She’d put together such a decent package. Why was Miranda being so difficult about it?

  Because Jordan was still on the ranch. That wasn’t Shae’s fault. He did own the place, after all, and she’d worked around him as ordered, but apparently that wasn’t good enough. Shae closed her eyes, pressing her fingers into her temples. Footsteps sounded on the porch and Shae instantly jumped to her feet, not wanting to look as if she were teetering on the edge of depression, even if she was. Jordan knocked, then came inside.

  “The meeting didn’t go well?”

  Shae studied her hands for a moment before saying, “There are a lot of variables to consider before Miranda can make a decision on which way to go here.”

  “She’s only interested in going the way that will make me the most unhappy. If you want to sell your idea, just tell her that it’ll make me miserable.”

  “I think she wants you to be more than miserable.”

  Jordan’s eyes met hers with a startling intensity. “Are you going to help her?”

  Shae didn’t have an answer for that. She wanted this project to be a go and to have it on her résumé. And she wanted to have a steady paycheck. “I don’t want you miserable,” Shae finally said, “but I think there’s room for compromise here. I just need some time to convince her.”

  “There’s no middle ground. Not for her.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Shae said.

  He simply shook his head. “I’m not.”

  * * *

  JORDAN WALKED BACK to the round pen, where he’d left the buckskin tied, Clyde tagging along at his heels. It appeared that Shae finally understood that Miranda was out to cause him pain—and she didn’t seem to be in favor. That surprised him...and also made him feel oddly unsettled, as if facts had suddenly shifted and he no longer knew what was true. Not that long ago he’d thought Shae and Miranda were soul mates, caring only about themselves and no one else. Now...now he wasn’t so sure about that. There was more to Shae than he’d first assumed. Who would have guessed that she had a vulnerable side? Because if there was anyone he’d met that he would have pegged as bulletproof, it was Shae.

  Yet she’d tried to connect with him concerning the nightmares and of course he hadn’t let her because he felt too vulnerable in that regard. No heart-to-hearts there. And then she’d tried to make peace by making her proposed guest ranch more palatable to him. A lost cause, but she’d made an effort.

  Okay...he’d concede that the jury was still out on Shae. But what about Miranda and her recent maneuverings?

  Did he force her to come here? Or did he meet her on her turf?

  Her turf, because then he could leave.

  * * *

  THE RECEPTIONIST IN the bolo tie and crisp white shirt was behind her desk when Jordan walked into what had at one time been his own living room, but the burly cowboy wasn’t around. Miranda either had him on call or she’d decided that Jordan wasn’t going to go off on her.

  And he wasn’t. He’d promised himself that.

  “I’m here to see Miranda.”

  “Is she expecting you?”

  “In a way.”

  It was obvious that the girl found his answer disturbing—perhaps something to do with the last time he’d visited, but she reached for the phone and punched in a number, keeping her eyes on Jordan the entire time. “Your stepson is here to see you...Yes...All right, I’ll tell him.” She hung up and fake smiled at Jordan. “You can go up.”

  “Lucky me,” he said. The girl’s mouth twisted as if she didn’t comprehend his irony. “And don’t call me her stepson, all right? The name is Jordan.” He started for the stairs, feeling as though he was stepping into a trap-door spider’s lair.

  “Jordan, welcome.” Miranda smiled broadly and waved him to a seat—the same one he’d sat in the last time she’d attempted to screw him over.

  “Thank you,” he said instead of Cut the bullshit and get to the point.

  Miranda smiled slightly, then perched on the edge of her desk. “I’m going to get to the heart of the matter. I’d like to make an offer on the High Camp.”

  As he’d suspected. “We’ve already covered this territory.”

  “But I don’t believe you thought I was serious about developing it.” Jordan said nothing and Miranda went on. “I am very serious about operations there. The ranch will be receiving guests before the year is out.”

  Jordan still said nothing, but he kept his eyes on Miranda, doing his damnedest to keep his expression neutral, not to let her punch his buttons, which she was clearly expecting to do. It was how she always controlled him—trying to get him to lose it.

  “I’m prepared to offer you an adequate price, which would allow you to buy elsewhere.” Jordan tilted the injured side of his face toward her, watched her eyes slide away. “You may not find a place with as much acreage as the High Camp, but you’d have the solitude I know you crave.” Miranda sucked in a breath. “Well?”

  Jordan smiled a little, glad that she’d been the first to blink, because he was having one hell of a time hanging on to his temper. “Go screw yourself, Miranda.” The exact same words he’d uttered when she’d tried to get him to screw her. And from the look on her face, she remembered. He got to his feet. “Anything else?”

  “Sit down.”

  Jordan gave a short laugh. “I don’t think so.”

  “I promise that you’re going to be sorry if you stay on that ranch.”

  He wanted to answer her threat, but bit his tongue. Every word he said gave her a chance to find a point of weakness.

  “I know this is difficult for you. I know that you have issues from the accident. Things you’re still dealing with...nightmares and the like. I commiserate, but you can see where having someone with post-traumatic stress on the premises could be a liability and interfere with operations—which the lease contract specifically prohibits.” The muscles in Jordan’s face tightened and he swore he saw a brief glimmer of satisfaction in Miranda’s pale green eyes. “I understand why you seek solitude, but you need to do that in a place where you can make a fresh start, Jordan. Not a place full of memories of a past you’ll never see again. You need to move on so that you can heal.”

  Jordan started for the stairs. He’d had enough. He was at the brass chain barrier by the time she’d said the last word and instead of bending down to unlatch it, he put his foot on top of it and snapped the end off the wall.

  “Violence,” Miranda said softly from the top of the stairs, “never solved anything.”

  By the time he reached his car, his breath was coming in short huffs and his head was pounding. He jammed the key into the ignition and turned. The engine sputtered and for one hellish moment he thought the car was going to fail him, but then it came to life and he jerked the gearshift into Reverse.

  She’d won again. Instead of doing the smart thing and telling her he’d think about it, he’d snapped. Not as badly as before, until he reached the stupid chain, but he’d snapped.

  Issues from the accident. Nightmares.

  There was only one way she could have k
nown about those.

  Shae. Shae had been discussing him with Miranda.

  * * *

  SHAE WAS WARMING soup on the hot plate she’d bought for the bunkhouse on her last trip to Missoula when she heard Jordan drive in. She turned off the burner and went to meet him, along with the pig and the poodle. But for once Jordan ignored the dog when he got out of the truck.

  “What happened?” Shae asked as he closed the truck door harder than necessary.

  Jordan turned angry eyes toward her. “What the hell do you think happened? She played the mental-health card. Next she’ll be trying to prove me incompetent or something and take the ranch away from me.”

  “What?”

  “‘I know you still have issues from the accident,’” he mimicked, his expression so fierce that Shae started to move away from him before she realized what she was doing and stopped. “Nightmares, to be exact.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Give me a break,” he said. “How did Miranda happen to know about the nightmares?”

  “I...” Shae stopped, realizing that she’d essentially told Miranda about the nightmares.

  “You told her.”

  “Not maliciously.”

  “But you told her.”

  Yes, she had. And it was obvious that Jordan wasn’t buying any excuses, so she did the only thing she could. “Guilty,” she said softly.

  “Why?” There was a note of pain beneath the anger. “Why couldn’t you have just kept that one thing quiet? What the hell happened to all of your talk about finding the middle ground and making peace?”

  “You aren’t interested in a middle ground, Jordan, any more than she is.”

  “But you had to give her more ammo.”

  “There’s no ammo in nightmares, Jordan. None. You’re just sensitive about them because it’s one more thing in your life that you can’t control.”

  “So sayeth the queen of control.”

  “Meaning?” she asked coldly.

  “Have you ever encountered anything you haven’t been able to control, manipulate and turn your way? Has anyone ever told you no in your life and had it stick?”

  “You mean like my fiancé telling me no, he didn’t want to marry me, just before the invitations went out? You mean something like that?” Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll admit that I’ve had my way more times than not, but you know what? It didn’t do me any favors. So don’t you dare start flinging judgments at me.” She pulled herself up and said, “I didn’t judge you.”

  “Not much, anyway.”

  “Not any more than you deserved.”

  “All right. I’m judgmental. I call things the way I see them. I can’t apologize for that.”

  “Is that all?” Shae asked, ice dripping from her voice even though she felt tears starting to sting the corners of her eyes.

  He looked as if he wasn’t through, as if he wanted to say more, but as Shae held his eyes, willing herself not to give in to the stupid tears, he finally said, “I’m done,” before heading toward his house, the dog trotting behind him.

  And once he was gone, the threat of tears seemed to have passed, too. Shae rubbed the back of her wrist under her eyes. She wasn’t a crier by nature—never had been until Reed had broken off the wedding, and then she had discovered tears in a big way. She swallowed and walked back down to the bunkhouse, where her dinner was growing cold. Screw it. She yanked the pan off the burner and walked outside to dump it. Food seemed like a very bad idea with her stomach knotted up as it was. Then on second thought, she turned around and poured the lukewarm broth into a coffee mug. She hadn’t eaten all day and had been ravenous before Jordan had come back.

  Mechanically she sipped the soup, swallowing without tasting. She made it through half the mug before she set it aside.

  Where did he come off judging her?

  And why did it hurt so freaking much? He was just the guy living here. The guy making her job harder than it needed to be. The guy she was supposed to be easing off the property, according to Miranda.

  He wasn’t supposed to be the guy who made her feel something.

  It had to be the result of too much going on in too short a time period. She’d spent more than a year centering her existence around a wedding that never happened, only to wake up to find her life a wreck because of everything she’d let slide. She’d always had difficulty with focus—as in she tended to ignore everything except what she was focused on—and trouble with knowing when to stop.

  Well, things had stopped. Stopped and left her reeling.

  Had anything not gone her way prior to the wedding cancellation?

  Nothing major. She’d always gotten what she wanted and she’d wanted a lot. She asked, and received, and that had pushed people away.

  Shae put a hand to her head and squeezed her forehead. It had pushed a lot of people away. She remembered once trying to tell Mel that she wished people didn’t hate her for what she had and the uncomprehending blink she’d gotten in return—and this was from Mel, who was brilliant and understood everything.

  She’d felt pretty damned alone after that conversation. Just as she felt pretty damned alone now. But this was her life and she was going to make it a success despite the roadblocks popping up. And Jordan could go to hell—or rather, back to hell.

  * * *

  THE EARLY-EVENING HIKE had become a sanity saver for Jordan, helping him fall asleep, though there was no guarantee against nightmares. He explored trails he hadn’t been on since he was a kid, scouted out new places to take the horses. And he worked out frustrations. Many frustrations.

  Clyde hadn’t been too sure what to think of the wilderness the first few hikes, but after that he’d become an enthusiastic chaser of squirrels and chipmunks and anything else small that would run from him. He started venturing out far enough that Jordan had taken to tying neon flagging to his collar so that he could spot him more easily. But tonight Clyde seemed to sense that Jordan wasn’t himself and stuck close to him, offering moral support—right up until the red squirrel scampered down a tree to sit on a rock close to the trail and chatter at the dog. Clyde instantly challenged the squirrel, which flipped its tail before scampering off across the rocks, and the chase was on.

  Despite his foul mood, Jordan smiled a little as the poodle appeared, then disappeared, his whitish head popping up out of the brush as he followed the squirrel through the undergrowth and around the granite boulders, yipping excitedly. The squirrel would stop, taunt the dog, then scurry on. Jordan sat on a rock and waited for Clyde to exhaust himself.

  The sun was getting low, but Jordan wasn’t ready to go back. He was pissed at Shae, pissed at himself. Needless to say he was most pissed at Miranda, but she, at least, hadn’t changed. Shae...he’d started to trust. To think that maybe his read on her had been wrong, and it was more than just his dick talking.

  And it bugged him. He used to be pretty good at reading people, at looking through the layers, but now...now he had trouble looking through his own layers. Why wasn’t he getting better?

  Another squirrel ran across the trail close by and Jordan got to his feet, whistling for Clyde. He waited, then whistled again. All he heard was the chattering of the squirrel that had now climbed a tree and was scolding him from the branch just above his head.

  “Clyde!”

  The dog had never gone so far that he didn’t instantly respond to Jordan’s call.

  Jordan started over the rocks in the direction Clyde had been running the last time he’d seen him. Now that he thought about it, he’d never let Clyde go this long without calling him back. Maybe the dog had figured he was good to go until he heard the signal to come back.

  Jordan called again, then stopped to listen. Nothing.

  Heart beating harder, he made his way through the brush and
around the boulders. What if Clyde had run into a coyote or bear or wolf? He’d never forgive himself for taking a city dog out into the woods and letting him fall prey to—

  A faint yapping caught his ear.

  “Clyde?”

  Again, the yapping, distant and hollow sounding. Jordan started climbing over the granite rubble, calling Clyde’s name then stopping to listen. The barking grew louder, echoing off the rocks. Jordan stopped climbing, trying to home in on the direction the sound was coming from. It wasn’t until he was almost on top of it that he saw where Clyde had fallen into a deep narrow crevice. Too deep for him to reach down into.

  Jordan tried anyway, first lying on his belly and reaching down with his good hand in an attempt to snag Clyde’s collar. He wasn’t even close. He scrambled around and, getting as good a handhold as possible on one of the larger boulders at the edge of the opening, eased himself down as far as he could fit, reaching for Clyde again with his injured hand. He was still a good ten inches shy.

  Jordan let his forehead rest against the rock. He couldn’t leave the dog there, yipping and yapping alone, ringing the dinner bell for some hungry predator. And, other than spending the night out there, keeping his eyes on his dog, he could think of only one solution.

  * * *

  SHAE DECIDED THAT as long as things were in limbo, she had no reason to stay at the ranch, making both herself and Jordan crazy. Okay, she didn’t mind driving Jordan crazy, especially after his verbal attack, but she was drawing the line at herself. When she’d proposed this project, her only goal had been to save herself professionally. She hadn’t counted on getting sucked into this family mess and she hadn’t planned on doing battle with a guy who had no qualms about openly insulting her to her face.

  The battle wasn’t over, but she could at least retreat for a bit, enjoy a hot bath, a dinner out. Call Mel and see how she was doing.

  No. Scratch that. If she called Mel, then she’d have to say how she was doing, and she didn’t have a ready answer for that.