by BJ James
His mind reeling, perplexed yet strangely gratified, Steve watched the retreating back of the foreman of the Rafter B. His coming made no sense, until one understood the man. Sandy Gannon rode for the brand, but his principles were his own.
Sandy was unrolling a wickedly coiling strand of wire when Steve went to attend to Gitano. As he grained and watered the stallion, his thoughts turned to Jake Benedict. He wondered curiously what qualities there were about him that he commanded the loyalties of a man the caliber of Sandy Gannon for more than thirty years.
A mystery, he concluded as he went to join Sandy. One time would unravel.
The sun was hovering over the western rim before Sandy Gannon swung into the saddle and sat looking down at Steve. They were worn and dehydrated, but the holding pen was complete, the wire taut and secure. Its barbs gleaming in the light. “A good day’s work.”
“Would’ve been longer working alone,” Steve admitted. “I’m not sure how I can repay you.”
“Dealing fair with the girl will be payment enough. Fair,” Sandy emphasized. “No more, no less. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Steve answered.
“Your word on it?”
“That and more.” Steve stepped closer, his hand extended.
“Good enough.” Sandy leaned down, callused palm touched callused palm briefly but firmly.
Steve stepped away, feeling the pull of tired muscles, the sting of countless salt encrusted cuts. “Thanks, Sandy.”
“One more thing.” Reins dangled from a lax hand, the horse shifted its weight impatiently but stood in place. Sandy’s riveting gaze didn’t stray from Steve. “I ride for the brand. When there’s trouble, that’s where I stand.”
“I know.”
“Just so we’re clear on it.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
Sandy nodded, the matter was settled. “There’s a sale up toward Sedona. Private. Fancier shindig than Silverton’s, nothing near as big, but good.” Taking a sweat dampened fold of fine vellum from his shirt pocket, he tossed it to Steve. Pulling the reins tighter, he straightened in the saddle. “Several good fillies offered, one worth a look-see. A sleeper, like the Spanish stallion. Good match for him. My guess is he’d sire mighty fine colts out of her.”
A tap of his heel sent his mount dancing, ready to run, waiting the final signal. “Look to see you there.”
A two fingered tip of his hat and a grin, and he let the horse go, leaving Steve in a boil of dust turned to haze in the canted light of the setting sun. The paper clutched in his fist was an engraved invitation. A simple map had been sketched on the back, beneath the map the name of the filly.
Lorelei.
There was a festive atmosphere about the ranch. Sales at the J Bar R were always as much reflection of Jubal Redmond’s celebration of life as business.
Tables were scattered in random order over the tiled terrace and an immaculate lawn. Champagne flowed as liberally as the fountain in a small courtyard. A chef in a white coat and tall hat tended a massive spit turning over a smoldering pit. The scent of roasting meat and piquant spices was everywhere. Blending with the balm of newly clipped grass drying in the sun, mingling with the perfume of masses of imported flowers arranged in immense urns.
White fences, more fitting for Jubal’s native Kentucky than Arizona, were immaculate with a fresh coat of whitewash. The lawn, a product of an extravagant sprinkler system and an astonishing supply of water, was as lush as bluegrass in spring.
Above the strumming guitars of strolling musicians, Jubal’s hearty laughter rose, rich and deep, and often. He was laughing as he bent to greet his oldest friend in Arizona.
“Jake, you old horse thief!” A beefy hand rested on Jake’s frail shoulder. A flicker of concern flitted over Jubal’s face at the moment of contact but was hidden by his jovial tone. “Have you come to snatch up all my fine pretties to improve the equine bloodline of the Rafter B?”
Unbearably pale in the formal Western attire Jubal’s galas required, Jake scowled and gripped the arms of his motorized chair. “The day a Benedict needs a fancy Redmond nag will be a sad day. I came because Hank insisted.” Allowing his ramrod posture to relax a fraction, he chuckled. “And for some of that French perfume you call champagne.”
Jubal laughed, but the look slanted at Sandy was tinged with sadness at the fragility he saw and heard. The enduring friendship had always thrived on a little bristle; over the years of rare contact, both reveled in the haggling immensely. “You called it something a little less kind in the past. But I’ll have you know,” Jubal bellowed in a tone the uninitiated would think rude and angry, “this perfume cost every cent of three dollars a bottle.”
Spinning his massive weight lightly on the balls of his feet, in a deft move and with as much aplomb as he’d lied, he snagged three brimming glasses from a tray carried by a passing waiter. Without spilling a drop, he presented one to Jake, one to Sandy, keeping the last for himself.
“To life, to love and three dollar wine.” Touching his glass to Jake’s, he chuckled his own joke. Anyone who knew Jubal knew his tastes ran to expensive wines, expensive women and expensive horses. In reverse order.
Sipping heartily from his glass, he looked out over the small, select crowd groomed to the hilt and ready to charm or be charmed. “The lovely Savannah is here? And she didn’t come to kiss me hello?”
Before either Jake or Sandy could answer, he waved a hand impatiently. “I know. Or I should after all these years. She went straight to the stables. More interested in my pretties than in me.”
“The day she ain’t more interested in a horse than a Redmond will be a sad day for the Benedicts.” A half glass of wine, quaffed without proper reverence for its superb quality, and the sheer joy of the verbal jousting put a spot of color in Jake’s face, the hint of an old irascibility in his voice.
Sandy drank from a fragile glass, as always, content to listen to the repartee that would escalate as the day progressed.
“There’s a young man here, a rather quiet and intriguing new guest, as intensely interested in this crop as she.” A black brow inged with gray lifted as Jubal turned his attention in Sandy’s direction. “The young man who arrived with your invitation, as a matter of fact.”
“What young man would that be?” Hank’s voice drifted over Jubal’s shoulder.
“Savannah, my love!” As he turned, Jubal’s great arms were enveloping her, sending her hat tumbling over the grass. From his great height of nearly seven feet, he bent to kiss her gustily on the top of her head. Holding her at arm’s length, he looked her up and down as critically as he would one of his pretties. Appreciating as always, as only a connoisseur of women could, her sense of style.
With unabashed joy, his vivid blue-gray gaze roamed over her, noting the perfect fit of a creamy leather jacket bound in brown, the demure blouse revealing only a seductive ruffle of silky cream at her throat and wrists. And a riding skirt of matching brown that clung with tantalizing faith to her hips before falling away into the full split that stopped just inches below the tops of polished brown boots. A neutral palette enhancing a stunning, virginal beauty.
With her hair coiled in a heavy knot at her nape, Savannah Benedict was the epitome of sophisticated perfection. Artless, aloof perfection that warned, Don’t touch, even as it filled every randy young buck in sight with the smoldering urge to disobey.
Some not so young, Jubal mused as he smiled and wished he were thirty years younger. “Lord! It’s been too long since I’ve seen you.” Exercising his prerogative as old friend and ersatz uncle, he kissed her again. “How long has it been?”
“A year,” Hank said dryly. “You missed Silverton in the spring, remember?” Refusing to be deterred, she asked again, “What young man?”
“You look more and more like your mother.” Jubal realized all over again that she hadn’t a clue of the effect she had on men. The respect she commanded that held them at arm’s length even as they ach
ed for her. Cocking his head, he regarded her closer, recognizing her mother’s influence. Softly, he murmured, “Maybe prettier.”
“Thank you, Jubal.” Returning to the point of interest as she was released from another bearish embrace, she insisted, “What young man?”
“Why this young man, of course.” Jubal pointed inelegantly over her shoulder. “I assume you know him.”
Hank turned, harboring not one single doubt of the identity of the mysterious guest. Her cold silver gaze collided with one dark as a moonless sky.
Steve smiled, tugged the brim of his hat in classic Western greeting and with a gallant half bow, offered her fallen hat. “Miss Benedict.” As she snatched it from him, he added softly, “Ma’am.”
Jubal regarded the exchange thoughtfully, cognizant of the crackling tension in Hank’s unexpected response. A very recognizable and familiar tension. After all, he couldn’t have spent the first quarter of his adult life pursuing and seducing women, and the latter quarter being pursued in hopes of seduction, without firsthand knowledge. Silver winged brows, as much his trademark as his size and gusto, lifted in speculation. “I see...ahh...” The suggestive pause ended in a wicked drawl. “I see you two know each other.”
“We’ve met.” Without turning her glacial stare to Sandy, she said pointedly, “But I didn’t realize some of us knew him so well.”
Sandy said nothing. There would be time later for explanations.
“I wonder if someone could enlighten me,” Jake groused irritably. “What the devil is the problem?”
“Not what, Jake,” Hank responded tersely. “Who.”
“All right, who the devil, then?”
“Jubal’s interesting guest.” A flick of her wrist directed her father’s attention to Steve. “Steve Cody.”
“Cody?” The slump lifted from Jake’s shoulders, the tremor left his voice. A gaze dulled by boredom sparkled with angry fire. He was Jake Benedict, as he hadn’t been in a long time. “Cody!” He barked the name. “The squatter in Sunrise Canyon.”
Steve offered his hand. “Steve Cody,” he corrected, standing tall, perfectly in tune in dress and manner with his surroundings. “Legal and rightful owner of Sunrise Canyon.”
“Legal and rightful aren’t always the same, young man.” A heated flush spread over Jake’s neck and face. Eyes as cold with silvery disdain as his daughter’s stared back at Steve. Pointedly he tightened his grip of the arms of his chair. “We made a good offer.”
“No, sir,” Steve interrupted, not unkindly. As if the slight had gone unnoticed, he tucked his fingers in the pocket of his narrow trousers. “No offer was made.”
Jake’s head swiveled toward Hank with an accusing scowl. “You said you had a discussion.”
“We did,” she answered levelly.
“Then what the hell did you discuss? The time of day? The weather? Silver-plated buckles and the ro-day-o?” The last was thick with sarcasm. “You going soft on me, girl?”
Even as he bit back an oath, Sandy shot Jubal a look. A nearly indiscernible shake of his head warned the massive Redmond to stay out of the fray.
“I’m not going soft.” Hank stood her ground, making no excuses.
“What, then?” Jake demanded.
Before she could defend herself, Steve spoke in a low voice. “She tried.”
Jake didn’t look away from Hank. “From the day she could walk, she’s been taught to get done what she tried.”
“Yeah, well,” Steve shrugged negligently, the shoulders of his short, fitted jacket pulled tautly over newly added breadth. “So was I, but it doesn’t always work that way. Your daughter didn’t make your offer, because I wouldn’t listen. Before you go off half-cocked again, there’s something else you’d better understand. I wouldn’t have listened if it had been you, or anyone else.”
Jake made a derogatory sound.
“I wouldn’t listen because there’s no need. The canyon and its land has no price tag. It isn’t for sale.” Steve’s pleasantly conversational tone only made his resolve more unquestionable. “I’ve told your daughter, now I’m telling you. I see no reason we can’t coexist on friendly terms.”
“There’s one.” Twirling the glass in his long-fingered grasp, Jake watched the rise and fall of the pale liquid. After a moment he looked up, smiling smugly into Steve’s narrowed gaze. “You have to be in the canyon to coexist, and you’ll be gone before snow flies over the mountains.”
Steve laughed in amusement. As a waiter walked by he took two glasses from a tray as easily as Jubal had. One he handed to a startled Hank, the other he lifted to his lips. After one small sip he held the glass casually before him, his gaze ranging to the horizon. “It’s easy for a man to learn to like this country. The space, the sky, the land itself.” Shifting only slightly, he included Sandy in his evaluation. “The men.” His glass lifted in a silent toast to Jubal. “The hospitality.”
Jubal nodded his acknowledgment.
Silence spun out, Steve stared into his glass much as Jake had done. When he lifted his head and his glass again, it was to continue his tribute. “To the men, the hospitality. The women, the extraordinary women.”
His gaze touched Hank’s briefly. “I’ll be here when the snow flies.” He made a promise, to Hank and to himself. “Before I’m through, the Broken Spur will have the best horses in the Southwest.” He faced Jake, addressing him squarely, shoulders back, stance wide and confident. “I’ll still be here when they carry you feetfirst from the Rafter B. Because some things are without price.
“I have one such thing, Jake Benedict. You have another.” Draining his glass, he set it on a small table. “Sandy, thank you for the invitation. And you, Mr. Redmond, for allowing me to stay. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like another look at the horses. Gentlemen.” The farewell was accompanied by a brief nod as he turned to Hank. “Miss Benedict, ma’am, would you like to join me? To argue the finer points of Mr. Redmond’s pretties?”
Taking her glass from her he set it on the table by his own. Giving her no chance to demur, he led her from the small group.
“Well, hell!” Jubal Redmond blew out an explosive breath. “The kid has guts.”
“More than he has sense,” Jake drawled. Flashing an angry look and a promise of more to come, he spun his chair, giving his back to Sandy. “I need fresh air. That stinking stuff Maeve Montgomery calls perfume would smell better than present company.”
Scorn hovered in his wake as he wheeled away, the chair rolling over the smooth lawn as if it were fine wood. Jubal waited until Jake was surrounded by a crowd before turning to regard Sandy critically. “You’ve stirred a can of worms.”
“Could be.” Sandy set his glass aside and tucked his thumbs in his belt. “You saw how he was when he got here.”
Jubal nodded. “Defeated. Old. My God! I never thought I would see either in Jake Benedict.”
“Look at him now.”
“I know. You’ve given him another battle. One he understands.” Jubal looked away from Jake, who spoke with Maeve Montgomery with more animation than he had since the strokes made an invalid of him. “You think that while he’s fighting one, he’ll inadvertently win the most important one?”
“Who knows?” Sandy jerked a shoulder.
“He needed a cause, a reason to live,” Jubal surmised astutely. “You created it.”
“Charlie created it, by sending the boy to the canyon. I just helped the inevitable along.”
“He isn’t really a boy, you know.”
“Better than most.”
“He knows horses. I heard gossip about the Spanish stallion. Sounds like the best stud to come into these parts in a while.”
“He is.” Sandy scuffed a heel in the grass, catching himself short of leaving a divot in the perfect lawn. “I’ve seen him.”
Jubal snagged another glass of champagne, but Sandy waved the waiter away. “In Silverton, then again when you were stringing wire in the canyon?”
“Yep
. Cody told you about the wire, I take it.”
“He did. Said he didn’t suppose it was a secret. What does Jake say about your helping Cody?”
“Ain’t said nothing yet.”
“But he will, as soon as he hears it. What then?”
“He asks, I’ll answer.”
“You’re going to be fired again,” Jubal predicted.
“More than likely,” Sandy agreed.
“How many times have you been fired over the years?”
Sandy grinned, squinting at the sun as if the answer lay in the sky. “Never counted, but I’d put it near a hundred. Twice some years, three times in others. Once a half-dozen.”
“One day it’s going to take and be for real. The Rafter B has been your life for too long, what would you do without it?”
“Hadn’t thought much on it,” the foreman admitted. “Mosey on to another ranch, I guess. Or start my own.”
“There’s a job here for you, anytime you want it.”
“Thanks.”
Leaning back against a terrace balustrade, they watched the crowd in companionable silence. An aging multimillionaire playboy who had come to the desert to die and lived instead; a rawboned cowhand who’d never had much more than the fabled cowboy salary: “forty and found.” Friends.
“What about the other two?” Jubal asked after a while.
Sandy chuckled and scratched his chin. “Imagine they’re fighting about now. Why else do you think she’d go so agreeably, but for the opportunity to tear a strip off him?”
“And later?”
“I’d say later is in the making now.”
Jubal nodded, and returned to watching the crowd. “Out of war, peace and love.” Then, in an abrupt change of subject, he asked, “Heard from Camilla lately?”
“Couple of weeks ago.”
“She planning to marry the duke?”
“He was a count, but naw, she won’t marry him.”
“Think she’ll come back?”