Cowgirl, Unexpectedly

by Vicki Tharp

  “How many we lose, amigo?” Santos asked Hank.

  “Not sure. Haven’t had a chance to check.”

  “I’ll go,” Link said.

  He rode over to Jeffery and after a brief conversation, Jeffery nodded and waved to one of his officers, who passed Link one of the rifles. He was going in armed in case any of the horses was suffering and needed to be put down.

  I didn’t want any of these men to have to shoot one of their own horses. “Give me your horse. I’ll go with him,” I said.

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Dale said, his tone even, though I doubt he’d put up with much of an argument. Still…

  I turned my gaze to Hank, hoping I had more sway with him. Surely, the sex gave me a modicum of leverage. “I’ve seen worse.” Done worse too.

  “I don’t doubt that, Army. But there’s no need for you to see that. Let Link do his job.”

  Link trotted into the canyon. I glanced back at Hank. “But—”

  “Let him go,” he murmured.

  My eyes narrowed and I flashed him a pissy look that threatened a takedown if he didn’t back off. The corners of his lips twitched upward, and his eyes lit with the challenge. My stomach rolled and twisted like a pretzel.

  I loved that man.

  The crack of Link’s rifle rent the air and I jumped. Heat sizzled in my veins as if I’d mainlined fine whiskey. Then another shot. My heart sank. My nerves twitched, anticipating another shot—another horse dead, but the rapport rolled out of the canyon all alone.

  The shots were far enough away they didn’t spook the herd. Dale wiped the back of his hand over his brow and resettled his hat low on his head. His horse took him within twenty feet of Tate as the four of them pushed the herd toward the canyon.

  Tate stepped toward him. “Dale, I-I…” The words withered on his tongue under Dale’s scorching gaze.

  “Nothing you got to say means a damn thing to me.” With that, Dale whistled sharply and waved his coiled rope at the horses, edging them into a trot.

  Boomer and I followed on foot after them. If nothing else, we could help them with the fencing. Anything to keep the blood flowing and to bleed off the bitter dregs of adrenaline.

  * * * *

  Boomer and I and the rest of the Lazy S men managed to cobble together enough of what was left of the fencing to keep the horses in the canyon as long as they didn’t breathe too hard on it or look at it funny. Otherwise, it would crumble.

  Besides the two horses Link had put down, four other horses were dead. The minor wounds on the others would heal with treatment. The carcasses of the dead horses still lay in the canyon. Nothing we could do about that right now, and while the coppery tang of blood kept the horses restless, in general, they grazed calmly.

  Dale ordered everyone back to camp to change into dry clothes and get a mug of coffee in them to chip the frost from the inside of their veins. Jeffery’s men somehow found pockets of dry wood and had a small fire burning. They’d thrown blankets around Tate and the brothers to keep them from going hypothermic.

  We weren’t in camp but a few minutes when the familiar beat of the helicopter buffeted my ears.

  “About fucking time,” Trevor groused.

  Tate kicked the sole of his boot. He looked tempted to kick him in other places as well.

  “The other two I left trussed up on the rim,” Boomer informed Jeffery. “Should be easy to spot, but I can show you where I left them if that would help.”

  Jeffery counted heads. “Would appreciate it,” he said. “We’ll need to drop you at the rim so we won’t be overweight.”

  “We left a truck a couple miles up from the rim. I can walk out.”

  “You sure?” The words spilled from my mouth before I could stop them. I knew his leg was sore and the climb back down from the rim would be tortuous for him.

  Instead of getting mad, his infectious grin spread over his face. He slapped Hank, on the back. “I told you she loved me.”

  Before Hank could reply, Jeffery said to me, “Got room for one more to the rim if you want out of here anytime soon.”

  Hank cast Boomer an appraising look—Boomer just smiled wider—and said to me, “You should go. We don’t even have a horse for you.”

  “We could ride double if someone took your packs.”

  “Not much to hang on to back there.”

  “I’m sure I can find something.” His gaze met mine and the heat in them made my core smolder.

  “One guest then,” Boomer said to Jeffery as they turned to gather their prisoners. Jeffery couldn’t look me in the eye and the tips of Boomer’s ears looked flushed, but it could have just been the cold.

  * * * *

  The men’s packs were waterproof, so they each had a change of dry clothes. I was out of luck, but Hank had an extra T-shirt so I’d stripped my wet clothes off, put on his T-shirt, and wrapped myself up in a blanket with one of the tarps beneath me to keep the wet from seeping through.

  Hank stoked the fire, throwing on deadfall until the heat and flames threatened to melt the polar ice caps. Hank handed me a mug of fire-brewed coffee. “Take this. Should help warm you up.”

  Steam rose from the black surface, thick with the aroma of scorched coffee beans. I blew a few times then sipped and swallowed, the liquid so thick I fought the urge to chew, but thankfully that also meant the caffeine content was so high it grabbed hold and shook me awake.

  My body was cold, and goose bumps had permanently colonized my skin but my chill had nothing to do with the cold outside. My shivers emanated from a more frigid and harsher place deep inside me.

  “Open up,” Hank said with a nod to my blanket. I was sitting cross-legged with the blanket wrapped around me. I lifted one blanketed arm like a bat wing and invited him in. He eased in behind me, settled me between his legs, leaned against a large rock, and rewrapped us. His skin was cool, but our combined body heat worked overtime.

  Still I shivered.

  Because this primal chill was so deep in my marrow, so deep in my psyche, so deep in my soul, I feared nothing could warm it or chase it away.

  My teeth chattered and Hank tightened his arms around my waist and planted a warm kiss at the base of my neck. “Christ, Army, you’re gonna shake a kidney loose.”

  My frozen, chapped lips cracked a smile. “Maybe so.”

  He was quiet for several minutes and I listened to the hubbub of the men talking, not focusing so much on their words, but letting the drone and cadence of their voices act as white noise. Then Hank whispered in my ear, “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  I stilled. My breath, my heart, my mind. Then my heart lurched, like those first few strokes of a train’s wheels as it chugs and slips on the slick rail until it finally catches and gains traction. Before my mind could completely engage and consider what I was saying, I blurted, “I almost shot Link.”

  When Hank didn’t say anything, I kept going. My momentum building with each word until my control failed, as I headed too fast for a tight curve that would derail me. “I might have killed that kid with my bare hands if Dale hadn’t pulled me off him. And God help me, if I’d had a clean shot, I would’ve put a bullet in Tate’s brain. So you can take it back, what you’d told me. Before you left yesterday morning. You can take it all back. No harm, no foul. Because I understand. I get it. I’m damaged, I’m broken, I’m not safe to have around. Not around you, or Dale or Jenna. Jesus, Hank, I don’t want Jenna getting h-hurt.”

  “Hey, hey, hey,” he said. Though his voice was low, there was no mistaking that he expected me to shut the fuck up and listen. “Back that train up a minute.”

  My lips twitched, more rueful and ironic than humorous. He nipped the tender skin where my neck joins my shoulder. A jolt of awareness zapped the thought from my brain. “You play dirty.”

  “‘All’s fair’ and all that.�
� He let the end of the famous proverb dangle between us though I heard the completion in my head. In love and war. He sucked in a breath, the tiny rush of air was cool against my ear. “We all have our demons, a few we can slay, and others we have to learn to live with.”

  “The bull. Is that your demon?”

  “No.” Hank splayed his hands across my belly and bumped his fingers over the ridges of my ribs as if he were taking stock of me. “That bull, he was mean and nasty, and he may have even wanted me dead, but he isn’t what keeps me up at night. I can live with him. What keeps me up, the demon that stays with me, that pulls me down when I’m feeling good, the one that has one fist on my balls and the other at my throat is that bastard of all bastards, regret.”

  He paused long enough to clear his throat. When his spoke again, he couldn’t manage more than a gruff whisper. “I should have kept Jenna with me. I should have listened to my heart and not my head, not my friends, not Lottie and not Dale. Leaving her behind was the biggest mistake of my life.”

  “You love her. She loves you. You’ll earn her forgiveness.”

  “Maybe. Not sure I deserve it.”

  “Everyone deserves forgiveness.” The words tumbled from my heart and out of my mouth.

  He let my words hang there between us, echoing back and forth. “Yes, Army. Maybe they do. Even if it’s from themselves.”

  We were no longer talking about him.

  “It’s not the same,” I said. “What I did—”

  “What you did in Iraq was protect your people. It was what you were trained to do. What you did tonight, was more of the same. You and Boomer helped protect us. Without you two, more people could have been more seriously hurt or killed. You prevented that. You. You didn’t shoot when you had the chance. When there were other options. You are not dangerous, Mackenzie. You are not damaged. You may have a couple dings in your armor, but you are not broken. You have the heart of a warrior. You do what you do because you have to, not because you want to. Not because you revel in the blood, but despite it. You take the hits to your soul to shield others from evil. You are good and you are brave and you amaze me each and every day.”

  I opened my mouth. He covered it with his hand and said, “Shush. I’m not finished.”

  I nipped him on the meaty part of his middle finger. It should have hurt, at least, a little, but he chuckled. Then he leaned forward, his lips near my ear. I smelled the coffee he’d drunk and heard the scrape of his whiskers on my skin, but my cheeks were still too numb to feel it. “I can’t take back what I told you yesterday morning because there’s no taking back the truth.”

  My breath snagged in my lungs, all jagged and painful like rose thorns. Hank shifted me across his lap. The blanket opened, letting heat dissipate and a cool breeze in, but it hardly registered. With a forefinger under my chin, he lifted until our eyes met. The sun inched higher, second by second. His eyes were pale and blue and soft and genuine. Guileless and giving. “I love you, Mackenzie.”

  He didn’t take his eyes off mine. He looked hard and he looked deep. I knew he could see everything that I was. The good as well as the bad. It should have scared the hell out of him. It should have made him run screaming for the hills without a backward glance. It was then I knew how courageous he was because he didn’t do that. In fact, his eyes narrowed as if saying “Bring it on, Army, because I got this.’

  The thorns in my chest dissolved and the air rushed out as my heart grew too big for my chest. Dread plopped down and covered his eyes with his hand as if he knew what was coming and was too embarrassed to witness this part of my life. Then Hank cupped my cheek, his fingers lightly grazing the back of my head and brought his lips to mine. They were dry and cracked from the wind like my own, but they’d never felt better, tasted better.

  He deepened the kiss until he touched my soul. In the background the fire popped, the thick, acrid smoke from the wet wood blew in our direction but I didn’t care. Quinn and Santos were laughing and telling stories, Dale and Link talked amongst themselves. I didn’t care about that either. All I cared about was this man, who held my body in his arms and my soul with his heart. Then came that sound. That schnick, schnick, schnick, as more pieces of my life, my soul came back to me. Now there wasn’t a minefield of shattered pieces before me. Instead, a few stray shards remained for me to eventually bend over, pick up, and put back in place.

  I broke the kiss and set my coffee mug down so it wouldn’t spill. I ran my hand over the rough stubble on his cheek and into his hair that was coarse and stiff with dried mud. “I love you too, Hank.”

  * * * *

  I came out of the bathroom, fresh from a long hot shower. My hair was wet, but everything else on me was dry and warm. My fingers had even lost most of the ripples on the pads after being waterlogged so long. Boomer had his guns laid out on the table in a one-man assembly line stripping them down, cleaning, and oiling them. I sat and grabbed one of the Berettas and quickly field stripped it.

  “So when you heading out?” I asked him.

  “Probably later this afternoon.” He ran a cleaning patch through the barrel of one of the rifles. “I’ll spend the night in Rock Springs and give my statement to the police office first thing in the morning then head on home.”

  He didn’t sound enthusiastic at the concept. At least not the going back part.

  “You know,” he said. “You got a good thing going on here.”

  “How so?”

  “This ranch, this life. Something about being out here that breaks it down to what’s important. All the little shit falls away. I kinda needed that change of perspective I think.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  “How long are you staying?”

  Not so long ago, I dreaded the idea of getting off the road, of staying in one place for longer than a day or so. The urge to see what was around the next corner, the next town, the next state was this constant hum in my bloodstream that I couldn’t ignore. Now…now a light buzz zinged in my veins when I was stressed, more of a need to clear my head than run for the fences.

  Despite all of the Lazy S’s problems, this place gave me peace. I didn’t have to go anywhere yet. I still had my job. Now I had a horse. Hank. I didn’t know if I had a future here, but at least, I had a future. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  “What about Hank. You figure that out?” He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye as he reassembled the gun.

  I chewed on his meaty question. I loved Hank. He said he loved me. I didn’t know exactly what that meant going forward. I shrugged but met his gaze head on. “Not really. I guess there’s no rush.”

  Boomer stuffed the newly cleaned rifle into his tactical bag and came back to start on the other one. Then Hank came through the door on a hefty gust of wind that snatched the door out of his hand and slammed it against the wall.

  “Get all the horses settled?” I asked him. It had taken three trips with two stock trailers to get all the horses back to the ranch. Hank and Quinn had volunteered to turn the last of the horses out into the paddocks while the rest of us cleaned up.

  He fought the door and latched it closed behind him. It shuddered in the doorframe with a new gust of air. “Yeah.” The cabin grew darker as a cloud grayed out the sun and the first hits of rain splatted against the windows. “Just in time, too.”

  “Coffee’s hot,” I told him with a toss of my head toward the kitchen counter.

  He didn’t head to the pot. He came straight to me, bent down, and pressed his lips to mine. He lingered longer than what was appropriate considering Boomer was two feet away, but Hank didn’t seem to care, but maybe he did, because when he came up for air, he caught Boomer’s gaze over my shoulder and said, “When did you say you were leaving again?” There was a glint in Hank’s eye and I didn’t think he really meant it.

  Mostly.

  Boomer chuc
kled. “Apparently not soon enough.”

  Hank turned around and headed to the coffee pot. Over his shoulder, he said to Boomer. “Five minutes ago isn’t soon enough, friend.”

  “Roger that,” Boomer said, amusement on his face.

  I was reaching for the stack of cleaning patches when one of the horses called out. It sounded all wrong. This wasn’t a whinny to locate a friend or a trumpet of excitement. This was all panic and pain.

  “What was that?” Boomer asked, his eyes wide.

  I shot a worried look at Hank. The only horses close to the cabins was my horse Ford and the new gelding. Of the two, mine was the most likely to have problems. “The foal?” I asked.

  “That would be my guess.” Hank dropped the pot and his mug back on the counter.

  He hadn’t even taken his coat off so he was ready to go. I threw on my bomber jacket since the coat Lottie had lent me was in a pile at the big house waiting to be washed. Hank tossed me a yellow rain slicker and he threw one on himself. Boomer and I hadn’t brought them last night because we were afraid the bright color would stand out, but that wasn’t a concern now.

  “You don’t have to come,” I told Hank as he slipped into the slicker.

  His features hardened and his eyes narrowed. His hands went to his hips and he sawed his jaw from side to side as if he were chewing on what he’d say. He sighed and dropped his head. “I’d thought we’d gotten past this Rambo-gotta-take-on-the-world-myself mentality.” His voice was low and coarse as if abraded by sixty-grit sandpaper.

  “I don’t need—”

  “What don’t you need? Me? Him?” Hank tossed a hand toward Boomer. “Anybody? Jesus fucking Christ, Army. You’re a piece of work.”

  The verbal blow knocked me in the gut and stole the wind out of my lungs and the thoughts from my head. The fact that I really couldn’t dispute anything he’d said frightened me and frayed the edges of my composure. Then Major Ford called out again, her cries sending ripples of goose bumps up my spine.

  He stalked to the door and threw it open. The wind blew in sideways bringing a spray of rain in with it. “You coming?”