“We have to make sure this is the only bad part of the road.” Davey sounded more like an adult than a nine-or ten-year-old. “Come on.” He urged his small horse into the cut, through the stream and up the other side. Davey slowed his horse and waited for Shane to follow.
The good news was there were no humongous hoofprints.
The bad news was he couldn’t let the kid go it alone. He stared down the steep slope.
So much for learning anything about riding on the polo field.
Oh, he’d learned something, all right. He’d vowed never to ride again.
He eased up on the reins and Pandora took off, eager to catch up to Davey and Yoda. Shane managed to stay on her, heeding some of the advice Franny had given his nephews yesterday—heels down, hands on the reins, sit back.
They followed the switchbacks down to the highway. Luckily, they were muddy from the deluge of water, but there was only the one section that had been washed out completely.
Davey stopped near the ranch gate and cattle guard. “See that?” He gestured with his wrist to a lake and a cluster of small cabins. “That used to be a kids’ camp. I’m pretty sure it closed before I was born. Still, my dad used to take us down here in the summer to skip rocks.”
There was a faded sign on the side of one cabin with what looked like an insignia of a tent among some trees and a river.
“That’s a shame that you never got to camp here,” he said.
“I go to a different camp.” Davey straightened in the saddle, eager to talk. “I go with other missing kids.”
Shane frowned, trying to process Davey’s words. Missing kids? Kids who’d been kidnapped? That didn’t seem right. “I don’t follow.”
Davey held up his wrist. “Kids who are missing pieces, like me.”
“Oh.” Shane caught on. “The title threw me. I don’t consider you missing anything.”
Beaming, Davey sat taller in the saddle.
“You know...” Shane wracked his tired brain. “I think my family owns that camp.”
“What are you gonna do with it?” Davey stared at Shane.
“I don’t know.” Shane leaned his forearm on the saddle horn the way he’d seen Emily do. “Maybe skip some rocks.”
“I can teach you,” Davey said solemnly.
A branch snapped in the brush behind them.
Shane swung around in his saddle but saw nothing. “We should get back. I need to ask your mother something.”
“Like what?” Davey led the way.
“Like when she’ll get the driveway fixed,” Shane said, peering into the brush.
Or how sure she was that feral bulls couldn’t reach the road.
* * *
EMILY HAD ALWAYS been envious of folks who lived in the heart of town.
They had the option of gathering for a cup of coffee in the Bent Nickel Diner, where they could hear the latest news or see their favorite people before work. Emily’s visits to the diner were limited to specific opportunities created when she dropped off and picked up her nephews from their independent studies with Eli Garland, the education coordinator for their rural county. On those trips, she was usually in a hurry, fitting a visit to the grocery store into her time in town, rather than lingering over coffee or a meal.
Emily sat at the diner’s counter, cradling a mug of coffee in her hands. She watched Bo in a booth near the front window. He put away a breakfast of steak and eggs as if he hadn’t eaten in days.
“Don’t make it so obvious.” Jonah sat down next to her on a bar stool and ordered hot tea from Ivy, who ran the Bent Nickel.
“I beg your pardon?” Emily made a show of selecting a sugar packet and tapping it against her fingers to loosen its contents. Not that she put sugar in her coffee.
“Bo is like a tomcat.” Jonah stroked his red goatee and gave Emily a sideways glance. “He only likes women who play hard to get. Don’t chase after him.”
Emily’s spine stiffened. She returned the sugar packet to its small basket. “I’m not chasing after him.”
“Chasing, mooning... Same thing.” Jonah turned his stool so that he faced Emily. He seemed to be studying her. “I hear you were stranded in town because of the rain. But I didn’t see you here for dinner last night.”
“I ate at the inn.” Laurel had invited her. “Not that it’s any of your business.” Not that she’d admit she’d been too nervous to hang out in the common room with the Monroes after being tongue-tied with Laurel. What if she couldn’t think of anything to say to Bo?
“I’m a writer,” Jonah said. “Everything is my business.” He continued to stare at her with those brilliant blue eyes of his. “Why are you working in Sophie’s store?”
“Seriously. It’s none of your business,” Emily snapped, unable to keep from sneaking a glance at Bo.
“Let me explain why I disagree.” He leaned closer. “Shane wants Bo and me to contribute to town. You know, help out wherever we can. Be a good citizen and so forth. Sophie and Laurel have been doing it, too.”
A strange feeling came over Emily. A strange cold feeling. It closed around her as if she was a goose caught napping in a rapidly freezing winter pond. “You think Sophie asked me to work in her store because I needed the job? Like I’m penniless? A charity case?”
There was too big a pause between her question and his answer.
“No,” he said unconvincingly.
“My family—the Clarks—didn’t sell to your grandfather.” Emily tossed the words at him with as much venom as was possible, given she was whispering. “I’m not like them.” She gestured to the residents who had sold.
“This is interesting.” Jonah leaned closer. Those eyes. They were hypnotic, inviting her to spill her most intimate secrets. “Do you figure they sold their souls to the devil when they took my grandfather’s money?”
“That would work for your horror-story script.” She mentally shoved him back into his space. Physically, she didn’t back down. “You read too much into things.”
“It’s my overactive imagination.” He was unrepentant. “Are you sure there’s no bad will in town? No...envy?”
“Shouldn’t you be sitting with Bo?” He was so annoying.
“Nah. Anything he’s got to say, I’ve heard before.”
Ivy delivered Emily’s breakfast—eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, a slim orange garnish—and Jonah’s tea, and then disappeared into the kitchen once more.
“Wow, that’s quite a breakfast.” Jonah stole the orange slice from Emily’s plate. “Are you headed back to that ranch of yours to rope and ride before returning to open Sophie’s shop?”
She was heading back for a clean change of clothes. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Emily shifted her plate as far away from Jonah as she could without moving to another seat. “Are you counting your calories?” She nodded toward his tea.
Nothing like a man with no appetite to make a healthy gal feel cranky.
“And now I’ve hurt your feelings.” Jonah grinned, an expression that highlighted his blue eyes. “I’ll let you in on a secret. Writers—” he tapped his chest “—sit too much. We burn less fuel than cowgirls—” he tapped her shoulder, grinning broader when she shrugged away from him “—who are more than welcome to eat what they need to in order to do all the things cowgirls do. Writers—” he tapped his chest again “—are prone to writer’s butt. Cowgirls are not.”
Emily shoved a bite of eggs into her mouth to stop herself from gaping. She’d had some odd conversations with men over the years, everything from best practices for bull-semen collection to proper tack for headstrong horses—a product of her being just one of the guys—but this had to be the oddest. Where did the conversation go after a writer’s butt?
Across the room, Bo got to his feet. He wore a blue checked shirt, blue jeans and cowboy boots. Jo
nah wore sneakers, white cigar jeans and a red T-shirt featuring an eighties rock band. Bo walked out the door with purpose. Jonah sat next to her for no reason.
Emily felt like she was on a blind date that was going poorly. She prayed for Franny to call her and let her know the road to the Bucking Bull hadn’t been washed out.
“Did you hear the coyotes yipping last night?” Jonah didn’t seem to notice or care that Emily was shoveling food into her mouth too quickly. “Scary, right?”
“Second Chance isn’t frightening.” Emily set down her fork and tried to set aside her annoyance with this man. “Don’t tell me. Let me guess. The only creature you hear at night in Hollywood is the occasional stray alley cat.”
“Hey, I’ve been camping.” His eyes flashed with an emotion she couldn’t immediately identify.
“In a motorhome, I bet.”
“I’ve slept under the stars.” The emotion revealed itself—amusement. His face blossomed into a grin.
I’m his entertainment.
Emily picked up her fork and stabbed a chunk of egg. “There’s an abandoned camp by the entrance to the Bucking Bull. I bet you’d find plenty of inspiration by sleeping in one of the cabins.” If he accepted her challenge, she’d sneak into the grove of trees bordering the camp during the night and make ghostly noises, rustle branches and toss pebbles onto the roof of his cabin.
His smile never wavered. “A research opportunity. I love it. You’ll have to show me where it is.”
She chewed her egg and nodded.
Oh, she’d show him, all right.
CHAPTER TEN
“YOU DIDN’T HAVE to c-ome with me,” Franny shouted over the ATV’s engine as she gunned it along the fence line.
“Oh, yes. I did.” With his pulse pounding in his temples, Shane held on to Franny’s hips from his spot behind her as he searched the wooded terrain ahead for large moving objects, like bulls who sneaked down to the barn in the middle of the night.
By the time he’d gotten back to the Bucking Bull, helped Davey put up the horses and found Franny, what he’d thought had been a bull’s hoofprints by the barn had been obliterated by five young boys playing hide-and-seek.
“Here.” Franny brought the ATV to a stop next to a set of fence poles that had been pushed over. “The ferals are coming in here.” Pieces of short, dark fur clung to wire barbs like feathers tied to fly hooks. “At least the wire didn’t snap this time.”
There were rocks surrounding the base of each metal pole. They’d tumbled several feet downhill.
“I’m guessing from the rock piles that they’ve come in this way before?” Shane pointed at the potato-sized stones. It was the first he’d seen of their use.
“Yes.” Franny unstrapped the cargo hold and removed a shovel. “There’s a trail they take down the mountain.” She pointed toward a wide, trampled track disappearing into the trees, and then she gestured down the hill. “You can see the pasture from here.”
And no doubt smell the green grass.
“I don’t see tracks.” Shane gave the ground a quick perusal, hoping to see something dissimilar to what he’d seen around the barn this morning. He wanted to disprove the nagging suspicion that he’d seen a bull last night.
“They’d have been washed out by the rain.”
Shane took the shovel from Franny. “Hold the post up while I fill in the dirt.” So they could reposition the post vertically and shore it up with those rocks.
Franny righted the pole and cocked her head. “Do you hear any birds?”
“No.” He planted his feet and began digging. His leather loafers sunk in the mud. His spade cut through soupy earth. “Should I?” He was reminded of Gertie telling him to listen. “Do you want me to whistle?”
“No on both counts.” Franny stared toward the trail above them, and then over her shoulder, eyes darting nervously.
Shane spared the trees a glance. A pair of eyes stared back at him. He stopped shoveling. “Look.”
“What? Where?” Franny let go of the post and rushed to the cargo hold, grabbing a shotgun.
“Stand down.” Shane pointed. “That’s one of those tree pictures your grandmother was talking about.” He stepped carefully over the wire and climbed the ten feet or so over to the tree.
“What are you doing? Get back here.” Franny’s voice was filled with fear.
Curiosity and quiet overrode Shane’s apprehension. “I want to see who’s in this picture.” The one framed in the tree trunk. Shane expected the photo to be of Percy and Gertie. He was surprised to recognize his grandfather’s young face staring out at him. Harlan was flanked by Percy and a man who was the mirror image of Harlan. “What the...?”
His grandfather had no siblings.
“Shane, I think you should get back on my side of the fence.”
“Agree, but...” He tugged his cell phone from his pocket and snapped a photo of the picture. “Do you know anything about my grandfather’s family?”
“No, and I don’t care. Shane, I don’t hear any birds.”
“That’s probably because you scared them with the booming engine of that ATV.” With his back to Franny, Shane stared at the yellowed photograph. The three men stood leaning on shovel handles. Had they been digging for Merciless Mike’s gold or...? “Did my grandfather help Percy build this fence?”
“I don’t know.” Franny’s voice was high-pitched, stressed-out. “Shane, the birds go silent when there are ferals nearby.”
A twig snapped behind him.
Shane spun.
Franny had her gun raised.
A hulking bull stood twenty feet away on Franny’s side of the fence. His long horns were caught in the branches of the trees he stood between. He moved his head slightly, cracking the thin branches. But his gaze never wavered from Franny.
“Don’t move,” Franny said just as Shane picked up his foot to rejoin her.
“Is he feral?” Shane asked as quietly as he could above the roaring in his ears. “Are you going to shoot him?” Were they going to have steak for dinner?
“It’s no big deal,” Franny said in a half whisper. “Just stay still.”
Shane went cold. He had to get to Franny. To protect her. “Shoot him.” There was no way he could reach Franny and get her to safety. Thanks in part to the slick slope. Not to mention the barbed wire. While the bull had a clear path to her.
“He’s on the Bucking Bull side of the fence,” she said, still in that hypnotic half whisper. “It’s no big deal, fella. I’m no big deal.”
Shane begged to differ. She was a big deal. To him. To those boys back at the ranch. To Gertie and Emily. He didn’t know how that could be. He’d met her twice before yesterday, albeit it hadn’t been a run-of-the-mill twenty-four hours. Now, death was staring them down.
And he was helpless.
He’d never shot a gun before and, standing there, he regretted it, more than he regretted not learning how to ride a horse properly. Why hadn’t his past prepared him for this? He was going to fail Franny.
Shane lifted his foot again just as the bull huffed and turned away to amble down the hill, breaking branches as he went.
A flock of birds took to the air in his wake, silent in their escape.
“Get on the ATV, Franny.” While the bull’s back was to them. Shane picked his way carefully down the slope, over the wire, and made it to her side.
Franny hadn’t moved.
The sound of cracking branches receded until, finally, there was silence.
“I need you to fix that fence.” Franny rested the gun in the crook of her elbow and pushed up the fence post with a hand that trembled.
“You can’t be serious. We need to leave.” Race down to the ranch house and move everyone into town. Shane clenched his hands into fists, sucked in air, tried to tamp down the adrenaline. “Tha
t thing is in your pasture. He pushed over the fence posts like they were candy canes in the snow.”
“That’s not the biggest of the bulls, Shane. He’s workable. I need him to stay in my pasture. You can go back to the house if you want, but I’m not leaving until this fence is fixed.” There was no fear in her voice. She was sounding more like her competent, determined self. “He’s worth more than Merciless Mike’s gold to me.”
“I’m lodging a formal protest.” Because Shane couldn’t leave her. He started to dig, listening for birdsong and formulating all kinds of contingency plans.
* * *
FRANNY COULDN’T STOP SHAKING.
Not even when she and Shane closed the pasture gate behind them.
Not when she parked the ATV in the shed.
Not when Shane got off the ATV and stood berating her while she put away fencing tools and the other supplies.
“I can’t believe you made us go the entire circuit,” Shane ranted. “All around the pasture.”
“There was more fence down.” Details. She had to focus on details, or the shaking might get worse. Might make her realize feral bulls were a big deal. A very big, dangerous deal.
“You knew there would be.”
Franny shook her head.
“Everything we fixed had been fixed before, shored up with rocks.” Wow, he sounded angry.
“I didn’t know.” Franny couldn’t remember the last time she’d repaired the fence. She finished putting everything back where it belonged and faced Shane squarely. “But Shane... It’s okay to be scared. A healthy dose of fear makes you careful.” That was her father talking.
“What we did out there was anything but careful.” Shane stood his ground, muddied, red-faced, upset. “That was too much of a gamble.”
“Were you calculating the odds?” She attempted a smile, but her lips quivered just as unsteadily as her knees. “Haven’t you ever just gone with your gut and taken a chance?” He was from Vegas, after all.
“I’ve played hunches.” He stared across the ranch yard at his SUV. “That hasn’t always ended well.”
Lassoed by the Would-Be Rancher--A Clean Romance Page 10