Untamed Cowboy (C Bar C Ranch Book 1)

by Pam Crooks

  “A child who is not allowed to be lazy,” Carina shot back. “She’s accustomed to chores for her age and abilities, and she’s well aware they must be done.”

  “It breaks my heart to see her toil so. Pulling weeds, Carina. Really.” Mavis clucked her tongue in disapproval. “She’s a Webb, after all.”

  “She’s a Lockett more.” Carina clenched her fists. “A Lockett, Mavis.”

  Clearly loath to quarrel about the subject which had embittered their relationship from the time Carina refused to marry her conniving son, Mavis pinched her lips closed. Carina gave her credit for it. Callie Mae was listening wide-eyed to their every word.

  And from the time she’d been born, Carina wanted to spare her the ugliness. She smiled down at her daughter and hoped her effort looked genuine. “Go on to your room, sweet. Change your dress, like I said.”

  A pout formed on her heart-shaped mouth. “I don’t want to.”

  “Callie Mae,” she said in warning.

  “I’ll do it later. I promise.”

  Carina was determined to quell the rebellion her child showed more and more often. “You’ll do it now. And for being disobedient, you’ll not ride Daisy anymore today or tomorrow. Do you understand?”

  “Carina.”

  Mavis stepped forward and slipped a thin arm about Callie Mae’s shoulders. Sensing the ally she had in her, Callie Mae flung her arms around her grandmother’s waist and buried her face against the olive-green bosom.

  Hurt rippled through Carina. Her daughter didn’t appear concerned with wrinkling her dress now. And the way she was clinging, as if she’d never let go…

  Mavis lovingly smoothed the shiny red-brown ringlets. “Carina, please.” Her cultured voice turned cajoling. “Let her wear the dress. We’ve spent the morning curling her hair and dressing her up. She’s enjoyed it immensely.”

  “She has, has she?”

  “She looks beautiful, too.” Mavis beamed proudly down at Callie Mae.

  Carina swallowed. Yes. As beautiful as a princess with her eyes the color of a summer sky, and her hair streaked from the sun. She looked as rich as one, too.

  But she wasn’t a princess, Carina reminded herself firmly. She was a young girl who lived on a ranch, who wore plain cotton dresses with boots and braids, and she could get as dirty as any boy when she put her mind to it.

  While Carina was gone, Mavis had shrewdly targeted Callie Mae’s feminine side, the woman in her just beginning to develop. She’d filled Callie Mae’s head with foolish ideas of being pampered, tantalized her with gifts sinfully expensive, and just what did the old witch hope to gain by all of it?

  “Can I wear my dress a little longer?” Callie Mae asked, peeping at her from beneath long lashes, her cheek still pressed against Mavis. “Grandmother brought it all the way from New Orleans. It’d be rude of you not to let me.”

  Carina remained unmoved by the accusation. She pointed to the couch and the book still lying on the cushion. “I’d like you to read quietly for a few minutes while I speak to your grandmother.”

  Callie Mae drew back and glanced upward at Mavis, as if to seek her permission. Carina glared at both of them.

  “Go on, darling. We’ll be right here.” Mavis smiled gently.

  Callie Mae released her then. Skirt hems swishing, she headed for the couch, settled herself primly on the cushion and opened the book.

  Carina grasped Mavis’s bony elbow and pulled her firmly to the far side of the room. Her nostrils flared. “Get out.”

  “Believe me, Carina. There’s nothing I’d like more.”

  “You’ve no right to sway her against me. You’ve manipulated her to play favorites between us by bribing her with things she doesn’t need and will never have.”

  “And isn’t that a shame.” Mavis drew herself up and gave Carina a contemptuous once-over, from the top of her wide-brimmed hat down to her mud-caked boots. “Look at you. You’re filthy. You smell of manure. You’ve left your daughter alone for nine full days with a teetering old man while you ride off into the middle of nowhere to work with your precious outfit. All men, of course.” Her lips tightened. “What kind of mother are you?”

  As boss of the C Bar C, she’d had her share of criticism. Rebukes. Disdain. She’d heard language at its foulest, threats at their blackest, but this, this stinging slew of insults cut deep.

  Mavis Webb had struck a raw chord, stirred up a heap of guilt, but damned if Carina would allow her to see her bleed.

  “Callie Mae is mine,” she hissed. “I’ll raise her in the best way I know how. And until you learn to respect my way of doing it, I forbid you from seeing her again.”

  “Don’t be naive, Carina.”

  “Ever,” she added vehemently, thinking of the men on her payroll who would help her enforce the order.

  “Callie Mae is an intelligent child. She deserves more than you can give her out here.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “She deserves the finest education. The privileges of being a Webb.”

  Carina clenched her teeth. The Webb bloodline was her daughter’s one flaw, the single worst thing Carina could have given her.

  Mavis fastened a cold, hard gaze over Carina, like a hawk homing in for the kill. “I’ll be leaving soon for a trip to Europe. I want to take Callie Mae with me.”

  Carina drew back in shock.

  “By the time we return, it’ll be time for her to start her studies,” she continued. “New Orleans has an excellent finishing school for young girls. I insist she be enrolled. I’ll see to the costs of her tuition, of course.”

  “No.” Carina gave a vehement shake of her head. “Absolutely not.”

  “We’ve talked of it at length while you were gone, Carina. She wants to go.”

  The little schoolroom where her daughter went with the rest of the C Bar C children flashed through Carina’s mind. Callie Mae enjoyed school. Excelled at it. She came home every afternoon, every single one, and if Mavis assumed she could just whisk Callie Mae hundreds of miles away to another state and keep her for months without a care to what Callie Mae would leave behind, her mother most of all…

  “The C Bar C is her home,” Carina grated. “Damn you for trying to convince her otherwise.”

  “I didn’t expect you to agree readily.” For the first time, something like desperation appeared in the woman’s expression. “Callie Mae is my only grandchild. She’s like the daughter I never had. She means the world to me, and I assure you she’ll have the best attention and care possible.”

  “Get out.” Carina had been a fool to listen to the witch. She should’ve sent her packing the minute she saw her sitting on the couch with Callie Mae. “Get out now.”

  “You don’t have time to raise a child. Admit it. You’re so consumed with this blamed ranch that she’s only a diversion for you at the end of your day. You’re not being fair to her. Or to me.”

  Mavis would never understand why Carina worked so hard to give her daughter a legacy to be proud of. The Lockett legacy. Her inheritance. The snooty woman had probably never worked a day for anything in her life.

  “You don’t believe I’m serious, do you?” Mavis taunted coolly.

  “I don’t care if you are.”

  Carina refused to continue the discussion. She’d given an order. Mavis was too stubborn to obey it. She’d overstayed her welcome, and it was long past time to throw her out.

  She pivoted away to grab the woman’s feathered hat—and noticed the suitcase sitting near the door. A rag doll lay on top, along with a new coat Carina had never seen before.

  Callie Mae stood beside the heap, her book clutched in one arm. By the set to her jaw, she’d heard everything. By the tempest brewing in her expression, she was fired up plenty from it.

  “I want to go with her, Mother,” she said. “Why won’t you let me?”

  Carina glowered. “That’s a ridiculous question.”

  “But it’s boring here.” She stomped her foot, her te
mper building. “We never go anywhere, just stay on this stupid ranch all the time. Grandmother showed me lots of beautiful pictures of Europe, and I want to see those places for real!”

  “Another time, Callie Mae,” she gritted. “Maybe when you’re older. Grown-up.”

  “I want to go now! And I won’t be gone that long. Please, Mother.” She took a pleading step closer. “I’ll write you every day, I promise, and I’ll buy you something really special. Grandmother says I can.”

  When had her daughter turned so shallow? So self-centered? Had she always been that way, and had Carina been too busy to notice? Or had Mavis been grooming her during each of her visits, turning her into a younger version of herself?

  Pain burned with frustration and a good dose of anger, too. Callie Mae needed to know there were things far more important in life than travel and money, like her home and family, and—

  Her thoughts came to a screeching halt.

  “Where’s Grandpa, Callie Mae?” she asked. “Or Juanita?”

  Stormy blue eyes rolled. “How would I know? I haven’t seen them for a while.”

  The first stirrings of alarm prickled. Juanita had left chili simmering. And it wasn’t like Wesley Lockett to be far from his great-granddaughter, not with Mavis in the house.

  Reckon you’ll want to know you got visitors, Miss Lockett. TJ’s words thudded in her memory. Callie Mae’s grandmother, for one.

  Someone else was here. Someone she hadn’t yet realized.

  The alarm pounded. She thought of Woollie, not yet back from the roundup. Her men, all of them too far away to help.

  Footsteps sounded in the hall near the bedrooms. Callie Mae’s gaze shifted, her pout disappeared, and a bright smile creased her face. “Hi, Daddy.”

  Carina’s heart stopped.

  She swung toward the male shape filling the doorway. The man who had fathered her baby, who had caused her enough pain and heartache and hate to last a lifetime.

  Rogan Webb.

  “Hello, Carina,” he said.

  His voice, drawling and amused, yanked her backward in time to when she was an impressionable young woman, swept off her feet by his devilish charm and big-city ways. She’d met him at a dark time in her life, when she was struggling through the grief of her parents’ death, when Grandpa’s love and affection wasn’t enough. She’d turned a little wild, hungry for distraction, something—or someone—to help her forget…

  Rogan had been in Dallas that year she’d gone with her grandfather to buy horses. Son of a New Orleans businessman who’d made his fortune in cotton, Rogan was looking for a little distraction, too. Of the female type.

  Carina had been an easy conquest.

  Not anymore.

  She was smarter, tougher, now. And it rankled he’d taken her by surprise, that it showed, clear as rain, on her face.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I’ve come to see you and my dear Callie Mae, of course.” His gaze tumbled leisurely over her body, making her forget her argument with her daughter and become acutely aware of how dirty and disheveled she looked. His amusement deepened. “Too bad we meet again under less than flattering circumstances. At least for one of us.”

  She stiffened. Refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing his slur pricked her pride, especially when he was as well dressed and handsome as ever. Maybe more so, considering the confidence and maturity the years had given him. Years when he’d stayed away, leaving his mother to love his daughter in his place, as if he refused to acknowledge she existed.

  Until now.

  No doubt Mavis brought him along as her weapon to convince Carina to let Callie Mae leave the C Bar C with her. A clever ploy to dangle her son’s fatherly rights in front of Carina’s defiant nose.

  Rights he didn’t deserve.

  They’d both learn she wouldn’t be maneuvered so easily. Carina wasn’t young and vulnerable anymore, and she had a few weapons of her own to dangle.

  She laid her hands on two of them, strapped to her hips.

  “You should’ve saved yourself the trouble of coming, Rogan,” she said coldly. “You’re wasting your time, same as your mother is.”

  He leaned against the portal and crossed his arms over his chest. Unfazed, his arrogant glance touched briefly on her holster.

  “Now, Carina, dear. You’re not going to do anything rash, are you?” he murmured. “You might upset our daughter if you did.”

  She fought to hold her rage in check. Our daughter? As if he’d been a part of her life and had a hand in raising her the past ten years?

  Her finger curled over the trigger. Much as she itched to pull it, she couldn’t let Callie Mae see her shoot the bastard in cold blood, no matter how sorely she was tempted.

  “Are you mad at Daddy for coming to see us?” Callie Mae asked.

  Carina strove for composure. If there was one thing she’d valiantly accomplished from the day her daughter had been born, it was keeping her contempt for Rogan to herself.

  But Callie Mae had to know things were serious right now. Carina didn’t like that Grandpa wasn’t around. And she didn’t like the way Rogan had been keeping himself hidden in the bedroom part of the house, either. Her instincts warned he was up to no good, and she could use a little help in throwing both him and his mother out before trouble set in.

  “Go outside, Callie Mae,” she ordered. “If you see Grandpa, tell him to come up to the house as fast as he can. Stay outside until I tell you different, understand?”

  “She’s not going to find him,” Rogan said amiably.

  The certainty in the words raised the hair on the back of Carina’s neck.

  “Where is he?” she asked past growing fear.

  A man appeared at his side, then. From the bedroom hallway shadows. Blond-haired, dressed in a dark suit and well-heeled.

  A gunslinger.

  “He’s sleeping,” he said.

  “Peacefully,” Rogan added.

  Carina’s heart stopped. “What?”

  “I’ll take Callie Mae outside.” Mavis already had her feathered hat pinned to her head. She reached for the child’s hand.

  Callie Mae took it willingly. She didn’t seem surprised at the stranger’s presence, which meant he, too, had been there a while, and oh, God, what had gone on while Carina was at the roundup?

  Mavis headed with Callie Mae toward the door, and Carina took a frantic step after them, the dread in her building, the gut-wrenching conviction that if she didn’t go after her daughter now, they’d take her away for a long time, maybe forever, and a part of her died, knowing it.

  “No!” she cried. “Callie Mae, wait!”

  Her daughter’s stride faltered, but Mavis kept her moving out the door. Carina bolted in their direction. A long arm hooked around her waist and jerked her back with enough force that her booted feet kicked up from the floor. A revolver’s barrel pressed into her back.

  “Shut up, Carina!” Rogan snarled in her ear. “You’ll have to listen to me if you want to see her again, y’hear?”

  She stilled instantly. A moment passed. His arm tentatively loosened, and she swung around, her hand yanking out a pearl-handled Colt, but too quick, his hand gripped her wrist and tightened. Hard. Hard enough to break each fragile bone if he wanted, and she cried out from the pain. Unable to keep her hold on the gun, it fell from her grasp with a loud thud.

  Rogan flung her away with an oath; she stumbled backward into the side table and knocked it over. A lamp crashed to the floor. She scrambled to keep her balance.

  “Take off your hardware.” He aimed the revolver square at her heaving chest. “And don’t try anything stupid when you do.”

  Her mind raced. She considered her chances of defying him. A quick glance toward the door confirmed Mavis was gone, her precious child with her, and dear God, the suitcase, too.

  But the blurred shape of the carriage through the front room window curtains assured her Callie Mae wasn’t gone—yet. With bo
th men’s weapons trained on her, Carina had no choice but to comply, but she had to find some way to stop her daughter from leaving.

  Her fingers shaking, she managed to unbuckle her holster and toss it onto the couch cushion. Unfettered hate burned through her.

  “What do you want from me, Rogan?” she grated.

  He dragged his attention off her long enough to gesture to the blond-haired stranger.

  “The door, Durant. Don’t let anyone in,” he commanded.

  “You’ll never get Callie Mae.” The desperation built in Carina like a range fire out of control. “Not without fighting me and the entire C Bar C outfit.”

  His eyes, as blue as Callie Mae’s, swung back toward her. With the gunfighter standing guard, Rogan seemed to grow calmer. More in control. “Funny you should mention the C Bar C.”

  She’d been so sure he’d threaten her with kidnapping her daughter that his mention of the ranch threw her off-kilter.

  “Word around here is you’re making a name for yourself. Carina Lockett, Texas cattle queen.” He regarded her, his gaze unwavering. “Every year, you buy a little more land, and your herd gets a little bigger.”

  “My affairs are none of your business,” she snapped.

  “Just coming off your roundup, your herd bigger than the last… well, when you take them to market, you’ll make a very nice profit, won’t you?”

  She stilled.

  But her heart speeded up…

  “You think I haven’t been keeping an eye on you and my daughter all these years, Carina? You think I don’t know how much all that cattle is worth?”

  The horror speeded up, too. Deep in her veins.

  “Mother’s got Callie Mae.” His expression turned hard. Cold. “She’ll take her so far away, you’ll never find her again.”

  Carina could hardly breathe.

  “You know that, don’t you, Carina?”

  She knew. Oh, God, she knew Mavis could go anywhere she wanted. She had the money, the determination, the absolute devotion to Callie Mae to steal her away, and oh, God, oh, God.

  “Your cattle will get her back,” he said, his voice like ice. “Ransom for Callie Mae.”