Lost in Cottonwood Canyon & How to Train a Cowboy--Lost in Cottonwood Canyon

by RaeAnne Thayne

  Chapter Sixteen

  Graham followed.

  He didn’t interrupt her silent thoughts. He didn’t try to touch her, but he walked beside her. She’d been his lover just hours ago. He wasn’t going to leave her when she was grappling with the wouldn’t.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she said too calmly.

  “I know. You don’t have to.”

  She walked up to the split rail fence of the horse pasture and allowed herself to deflate a little, hugging the top rail and setting one boot on the bottom rail.

  Graham put his boot on the bottom rail, too.

  That seemed to annoy her. “What are you doing?”

  It was an excellent question. He wasn’t doing anything he’d expected to be doing this morning. He wasn’t doing anything he could have predicted while sitting in a classroom, or at an office desk, or in a sandbag bunker. But ever since he’d seen Emily’s face in the light at that bar, his own life had started to take shape. He was breathing again, waking up, seeing in color.

  It wasn’t the type of answer she was looking for, but Graham rested against the fence and spoke the truth. “You know how you never want to leave this ranch? I never want to leave you.”

  She sucked in a breath, short and sharp, like he’d pricked her with a needle again.

  “I didn’t steal your job,” he said. “It was offered to me just after Christmas. You decided to apply last night, but it had already been filled for weeks.”

  She was silent. She wouldn’t look at him, but she must have felt him looking at her, because she did give him a regal nod worthy of ranching royalty.

  “Regardless, Gus wouldn’t have hired you because of the family connection.”

  “That’s what he said, but we’ll never know what would have happened if the position was empty.” Then she ducked between the fence rails and started walking away from him—or maybe, he hoped, it was less that she was walking away from him and more that she was walking toward the horses. He’d thought of the horses as being untouchable, isolated on their side of the fence like exotic animals in a zoo, but Emily strolled among them, putting out her hand to pat one or two as she passed them. Old friends.

  One horse seemed particularly alert to her presence, lifting his head in her direction, twitching his ears. She stopped and petted his nose, stroked his neck, combed her fingers through his mane. As Graham watched, she simply gripped a handful of the horse’s mane, gave the smallest hop and a kick, and vaulted onto the back of the horse. She landed so lightly, it looked like the most natural, easy thing to do.

  He didn’t see her tap her boot heels into the horse’s side or give any kind of verbal command, but the horse started walking directly to a gate on the far side of the pasture. Emily leaned down to open it, ride through, close it. Graham missed the command again, but the horse broke into a run as Emily bent close to its neck, riding bareback, just that handful of mane in her hand as she disappeared down the rise.

  Gus spoke from close behind him. “She’s quite a horsewoman.”

  It was beautiful. It was humbling. Emily had a whole way of life Graham knew nothing about. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

  “You rarely do.”

  “Where’s she going?”

  “She won’t go too far, not without a bridle. Let her go. It’ll be good for her.”

  Let her go? Graham had no choice. How did his uncle think he’d follow her? Emily called her own shots, as Graham had told Mr. Schumer just last night, but she lived in a world where men seemed to think they were allowing her to do things—allowing her to buy beer when they knew she was of legal age, allowing her to ride a horse when she was already its master, allowing her to work for free during every college break, when they probably relied on her. As an outsider, Graham could see it. In this ranching world, he suspected the men did not. But Emily did, and it was wearing her down.

  His uncle took her place at the railing. “Now, would you care to explain to me if you were under some covers at a hotel with a heated swimming pool before you met her at Keller’s Bar, or after?”

  Graham ran the pad of his thumb over his bottom lip. Emily had only told Gus about the bar. The pond, the dock and the rope, those were secrets between them, and always would be. Graham and Emily, down by the lake that night.

  “She’s the boss’s sister,” Gus said.

  “Cousin.”

  “Either way, it’s asking for trouble. How much trouble there’s already been is what I’d like to know.”

  Graham kept his eye on the spot where she’d disappeared. “I meant what I said in there about being grateful you brought me on board at this ranch, but I’ve been on my own for too long. I don’t account for my whereabouts or my covers or anything else to anyone. Not even to the uncle I owe this job to.”

  “I’ve known her since she was yea-high in pink cowgirl boots. It would be a sin to break that girl’s heart.”

  “I didn’t. This ranch did.”

  Graham pushed off the fence and turned back to the barn. It was time to go shovel out stalls.

  * * *

  Graham’s shoulder withstood the shoveling well enough. He didn’t have to lift the pitchfork high to toss manure into a wheelbarrow, and the constant motion of sifting through hay from one stall to another, stall after stall, kept the joint too warm to freeze up. He was going to feel it tomorrow morning, though. Sleep made his shoulder stiff.

  Sid was useless once more after another attempt to haze him. He’d tried to make Graham use a garden hoe, then a snow shovel to clean out the first stall, but both tools failed the common sense test. Graham had needed to set Sid straight again before he’d been handed the right pitchfork. Sid had the lazier, easier job of watching Graham clean out the stall, then coming after him and tossing in some fresh hay apathetically.

  “Fancy.”

  Graham stopped what he was doing.

  Sid wolf whistled, but being the sad sack he was, he kept it low enough for only Graham to catch. He didn’t have the guts to actually whistle at the boss’s cousin.

  “Mm, mm, mm…”

  Graham smacked the pitchfork into Sid’s hands. “Finish up.”

  “Hey, man.” But that was the extent of Sid’s objection this time. He was learning.

  Graham went to the open barn door to see Emily returning, riding her horse at a gentle walk. Uncle Gus was waiting for her, rope in his hand. He looped the rope over the horse’s neck as Emily neatly dismounted. Graham couldn’t hear what was said, not really, but if his lip reading was good enough, Gus had said, “He’s waiting for you.”

  Emily turned to look for…him. Graham knew it in his bones. He was the man on her mind.

  But Gus had been talking about Trey, who’d been leaning against the side of a building, watching his cousin ride in from the land beyond the pasture. No doubt, Gus had filled Trey in on the situation when he’d returned from Austin. Emily dusted her hands off, Gus took the horse away, and Trey simply walked up to his cousin, put his arm over her shoulders and started walking her back to the house, the Waterson house, where the ranch royalty lived.

  Graham didn’t give in to the heartache. He knew what he’d seen. Emily had looked for him.

  It kept him going long enough to finish the work for the day, to return to the barracks—the bunkhouse—to take a shower after being awake for thirty-six hours. When he would have fallen into bed, instead he dressed with some care, a collared shirt and fresh jeans, and he brush-shined his black boots, because military men didn’t walk around with dusty boots, not even on a ranch.

  He walked a mile to the main house in the last of the twilight. Trey answered his knock.

  “May I speak to Emily?”

  “She’s not here. She went back to her mother’s house.”

  Graham let that
sink in a moment. It was possible Emily had just felt like a third wheel with Trey and someone new named Rebecca, so she’d gone back to her home to sleep tonight.

  That wasn’t why she’d gone, and he knew it.

  She’d gone back to confront her mother about the master’s degree. Emily didn’t know how to not fight for what she wanted. She had so much heart. She had his heart, too, whether she needed it or wanted it, and he didn’t like not knowing where it was.

  “Is there any chance you’ll give me that address?”

  “I don’t have it.”

  Trey wasn’t lying. He was too straightforward, too much like Emily. Graham should have seen the resemblance right away. He just hadn’t been ready to.

  “If this is the part where you warn me off dating your cousin, it’s unnecessary. I know I’m wrong for her.” There were too many gaps between what he should have done, what he had done, what he wanted to do. “I’m still going to check on her.”

  “Nothing’s a secret on this ranch for long, but if you haven’t been informed, I’ll tell you that I haven’t seen Emily in ten years. The Emily I knew had braces on her teeth and tried to play some god-awful boy band music in the barn. Looks like she’s all grown up now to me, so what one grown-up does with another is none of my business, as long as the ranch runs smoothly.”

  Graham nodded.

  “As long as you’re not cruel. Or careless.” Trey sized him up. “Then it would get interesting.”

  Graham wasn’t cocky enough to predict an easy victory over Trey in a fistfight. Interesting meant Trey felt the same about him.

  Graham had no intention of letting anything get to that point. He wasn’t cruel. He knew what cruelty looked like, bloody and merciless and sick. Combat had, once more, stolen his ability to claim anything else was cruel for the rest of his life. Intentionally breaking a heart was low, but it wasn’t inhuman cruelty.

  When it came to being careless with a lover’s emotions, Graham couldn’t get out of his own head long enough to be careless. He’d been too intentional every step with Emily, but he was glad Emily had a cousin like Trey in her corner, if there were another man in her future.

  The possibility of future men, fumbling idiots, made him angry.

  “All right,” Graham said. “Good night.”

  “Work should be light tomorrow. Good time for you to get up on a horse.”

  Emily had promised him his first ride.

  But Emily didn’t work here. Graham did, and Trey owned the place, so Graham just nodded, repeated his good-night and walked back to his new home, alone.

  Twenty-four hours ago, it had been all he wanted. Now, it was all wrong.

  * * *

  Emily knew she was a failure.

  She hated it.

  Worse, she hated that Graham was the one person in the world who would know exactly how far short of her goals she’d fallen. She returned to the James Hill in the morning wanting only to saddle up a horse and disappear. Instead, she’d found Graham in the barn’s center aisle, along with Sid and Bonner. The two hands were snorting and laughing up their sleeves, taking the saddle off an impatient, young gelding.

  “Okay, now let’s see you do it.” They hopped up onto stall doors, ready to enjoy themselves at the greenhorn’s expense.

  Emily tried to be invisible as she kept her favorite mare in her stall and began brushing her quickly. Then Emily smoothed a saddle pad over the horse’s back and turned to her saddle. She laid the stirrup and straps over one side of the saddle and hefted it—swung it with some momentum, really, for saddles were heavy—over her horse’s back, then rocked it a bit, making sure it was seated correctly.

  She stole a look down the aisle. Graham had plopped a saddle on the gelding and was tightening the girth, but he’d forgotten the pad. Sid and Bonner were loving it. “Yeah, good job. Go ahead and mount up, see how it feels.”

  The gelding would be confused that someone was mounting him in the building, a stranger at that. He’d be confused why he was being mounted while wearing a halter instead of a bridle, and he’d be unhappy with the saddle rubbing directly on him without a pad. He might even buck to get the saddle and rider off. Graham wouldn’t know how to keep a seat on a bucking horse. It was a huge challenge for Emily, and she was a top rider with a lifetime of experience.

  They were standing on the concrete center aisle. If Graham were bucked off…man versus concrete…

  She could hardly look at Graham, as embarrassed as she was that he’d witnessed her humiliation at being turned down for the job she’d bragged she was perfect for, but she had no problem glaring at the idiots messing with the horse. She left her mare in the stall and walked into the aisle.

  “Sid! Bonner.”

  They both looked her way, surprised.

  “You two don’t know how to train a cowboy to save your lives.”

  They tried to splutter some weak objections—not a cowboy, he’s a greenhorn; meant no harm. She spoke right over their excuses. “If you had any sense, you wouldn’t let the horse learn to hate that saddle, not one single time, not for your own entertainment.” She was truly angry; horses weren’t for entertainment. “I get that you want to get your jollies at the greenhorn’s expense, but you can’t do it at the horse’s expense. It’s not your horse to screw around with, is it?”

  They wouldn’t meet her eye. They just sat sullenly, awkwardly, on their perch on the stable doors.

  It was, she realized, her horse, as far as they were concerned. Just as Gus had said, she was part of the family, the owners’ family. The two ranch hands were as embarrassed at being busted by her as they would have been getting caught by Luke—or Trey, now.

  “This horse is part of the James Hill. If you don’t respect that, you don’t need to be part of the James Hill. You’re more easily replaced than the horse.”

  “We wouldn’t have let the greenhorn mount up on a bad saddle,” Bonner muttered, his halfhearted attempt to defend himself.

  “Bull.” Emily had been raised here. She knew when a cowboy was full of it. “Go see Gus. Tell him you’re available to do something else.”

  While they were still in earshot, she snapped at Graham. “Get that saddle off. You’re not riding this horse today.”

  He started loosening the cinch, but he winked at her. He winked.

  “Don’t w—” She had to stop. Sid and Bonner were still in hearing distance. She settled for a scowl. Don’t wink at me.

  “Well done,” he said quietly, so only she could hear. Then he went to lift the saddle. She didn’t imagine that flash of pain on his face and the way his left hand slipped.

  “Are you hurt?” Dumb question. Obviously, he was. She was going to kill Sid and Bonner.

  “No, fine.” He lifted the saddle barely high enough to clear the gelding’s backbone and pulled it to his chest. “What’s next?”

  “That all depends on how badly you’re hurt.”

  He was surprised at that. “I’m not.”

  She was just as surprised that he’d lie. “Your left shoulder or hand or something.”

  “It’s fine.” He shook his left arm out, keeping the saddle over only his right arm—she couldn’t do that, because the saddles were heavy enough that she needed both arms to carry them.

  A sexual memory hit her, Graham’s bare chest and arms, muscles that flexed in the moonlight. Of course he could hold the saddle with one arm—but he was human, and it was heavy.

  “Set the saddle down.” She waited until he did, and she watched how he didn’t use his left arm much at all. “Listen, I can guess that your military background means you keep going when you’re injured, but you’re on a ranch now. The goal around here is to keep everything healthy. If a horse was favoring his left leg, I wouldn’t work him until I knew what was going on. I’m not going to w
ork you if you’re hurt.”

  He was silent.

  Suddenly, it was just Graham and Emily, talking all night long, and she had standards when it came to conversation.

  “Silence isn’t an answer, Graham.”

  He sighed, extra loud. “If you’re waiting until my left shoulder improves, you’ll never get a day’s work out of me. It’s an old injury.”

  “How bad?”

  He put his left arm around her waist and pulled her closer. “It works well enough to do the important things.”

  He bent his head, paused over her parted lips and then he kissed her. Nothing else mattered. It felt like she was kissing him for the first time in a year, finally, oh finally, welcome home.

  She felt herself melt into him, felt that sexual pull, but it was all mixed up in a roller coaster of emotions. The kiss brought back all the elation she’d felt by the lake, all her high hopes—all the hopes that had been dashed. She clung to him harder as he kissed her, but she still felt some of the shock that Graham had the job she wanted. She couldn’t forget the humiliation of Gus lecturing her or her mother’s ultimatums last night. She had to go back to college.

  Graham was going to be so disappointed in her. She wasn’t anything like the woman she’d thought she was at the lake.

  She ended the kiss and backed into the horse, then automatically apologized as if she’d backed into a person in a crowded bar. “Oh, sorry.”

  She tried to laugh it off. “I suppose you would advise me not to apologize to the horse.”

  Graham didn’t laugh.

  Emily concentrated fiercely on the saddle at his feet. His shoulder—this had all started with his shoulder. “Let me see you put the saddle on him.”

  “Emily.”

  Oh, she hated that be sensible tone of voice. It was all she’d heard last night from her mother and stepfather. “I want to see you put the saddle on the horse. I’m not just looking at how your shoulder works. I’m looking to see how many bad habits Sid and Bonner managed to instill in a short amount of time.”

  “Ah, Emily.”

  Well, that was a little better. Less paternal. More like a lover.