To the Studs

by Roxanne Smith

“And I hope you sleep better. Now, get out of my way. I have somewhere important to be.” She stepped around him. She’d wasted enough time caring about Duke, and more than enough wishing he was straight, only to have it come true and mean nothing, anyway.

  He followed with an apparent death wish. “Where are you going?”

  “Well, Chief, I figure since you’re so goddamned smart, you can take care of things here while I find me a rancher to chew up and spit out. Timothy Hux should be back from his well-timed hiatus, and he’s going to answer for that trap. If he won’t talk to me, he can talk to Red Hill’s sheriff.”

  “You shouldn’t go alone. I’ll come with you.”

  She stopped and turned on Duke. “I’m glad you got your feelings about me off your chest. But even horrible people like to feel wanted every now and then. Oddly, Yosemite actually seems to enjoy my company. Maybe he’s horrible, too, and it takes one to appreciate one. Either way, it’s the sort of change in scenery I need at the moment. And you have a wall to build.”

  The metaphor wasn’t lost on her, but she wouldn’t prolong the conversation with a pointless show of wit. This time, when she walked away, Duke stayed put. She ignored the tiny niggle of disappointment and focused instead on her new target.

  Tim Hux had a surprise coming, and not the good kind.

  * * * *

  Yosemite proved easy to find, lounging in a rocker on the front porch when she arrived. High noon. Cowboy lunch hour. He tipped his hat toward her and grinned before biting into a green apple. He took his time chewing, his eyes only landing on her when she crossed the path of his gaze.

  She joined him, taking the rocker to his right. “Afternoon, cowboy.”

  He nodded but didn’t turn his gaze from the view of his land in front of him. “Ma’am.”

  “We need to have a little chat, you and I.”

  “Sure do. I need to know what you want for supper tonight.”

  “Tonight, huh?” She was pretty sure she’d been given power over when their dinner date was to occur.

  “Well, sure. You’re here in the middle of the day. Can’t be too much going on at the cabin. I hear your plumbing and electricity is all primed to go.”

  “You hear a lot.”

  “Wise choice, the propane generator. But maybe I ought to look into some of them sun panels. Gets hot down here in the valley.”

  “Actually, I think we should discuss property lines before we start planning a menu. Yours and mine.”

  Finally, he turned his head and peered at her through eyes squinted against the bright sun. “Is this one of them ‘personal space’ talks? I’m not the type to force myself on a woman, so’s you know.” The gleam in his hazel eyes beneath the wide brim of his ten-gallon hat gave him away. He knew what she meant.

  But she could spell the situation out for him, too. “I’m talking about the steel trap Vince walked into last week. A brand-spanking-new steel trap. Now, if you want, you can deny the thing belongs to you. I can go into town and come back with the sheriff.”

  Was it her imagination, or did the rancher blanch? Nope, definitely not her imagination. He went as pale as the moon in full daylight. Interesting. Far from evidence, but it fit in nicely with her theory something shady was going on at Lady Killer Ranch. The rancher was hiding something. Maybe a marijuana grove on the property somewhere. Not totally unheard of in these climes.

  She continued with an air of benevolence. “Or you can explain to me why the trap was on Gavin’s property, and we can sort this out ourselves.”

  Tim rocked forward and spit a chunk of apple over the porch rail. “I hunt the property. No one’s lived in that cabin for decades. I’ve been hunting the land so long I’ve forgotten it ain’t mine to hunt.”

  “Not hunting. Poaching.”

  He lifted a shoulder, nonchalant. “I’ll go over the property lines with my crew. Won’t happen again. Tell your man I’m sorry and to send his bills my way.”

  Neve nodded. Seemed fair enough to her. “I’ll do that. As for that dinner, I think we can forget about it and call ourselves square.”

  “Ha.” He grinned. “Don’t go getting your bargains confused, girly. Less you want to bring me back every last piece of the hayloft you carted off my ranch, dinner’s still on. And it’s tonight.”

  Damn it. Well, it’d been worth a shot.

  Besides, any man who got away with calling her girly with his balls still attached to his body was probably someone she should spend more time with. Neve relaxed into the rocker. “In that case, I want steak. And lobster. And cake for dessert. I won’t eat if there isn’t cake.”

  This time, Tim laughed out loud. He rested back in his rocker until they reclined side by side. “I’m glad you like fried chicken and blackberry pie. They’re my favorites, too.”

  Chapter 9

  For six days, Duke worked on constructing the secondary walls, a thin layer of log profile boarding to cover the insulation they put in, one board at a time. Over the dry insulation, he hung up sheets of plastic and nailed them down taut to create a barrier. Then each board was measured and nailed to the braces in a brickwork pattern Neve preferred over the straight horizontal alignment. It meant more work, as Vince had to put a team on cutting the sanded wood slats to size to fit the design as Duke measured and marked, but he agreed the design looked better in the space.

  The cement in the bathroom had cured and awaited the shower stall. Neve’s surprise Jacuzzi had come in, and she’d talked Hux into letting her stash the bulky surprise at the ranch in case Gavin visited the cabin, which he’d threatened once or twice, but hadn’t made any hard and fast plans to come check up on them. Duke assumed he’d wait until they were closer to completion.

  Most of the interior had been sanded and awaited the final step, a refinishing with varnish to protect and beautify the wood. They remained miraculously ahead of schedule. Even Finn’s custom built-ins were stained to match the natural wood inside the cabin and ready for installation. The glass and frame for the front window had arrived and been fitted into place, replacing the tarp material they’d covered the hole with. The window had a darker oak grain than the rest of the cabin, but Neve said she liked the contrast.

  Everyone else, including Vince, worked to complete sanding the deck and cutting down the rest of the wood supply from the ranch into baseboards and trim for the interior. They were a purely aesthetic feature to cover the unsightly gaps left between the floor and the wall to allow for seasonal expansion of the wood.

  So far, they were a day or two ahead of schedule, despite everything—Vince’s injury, Neve and Duke’s inability to speak more than two words to each other at a time, and even Neve’s new penchant for disappearing nightly to visit Tim Hux at Lady Killer Ranch.

  Maybe that was what had kept Duke from showing Neve the French doors. Then again, maybe it had been the mounting depression dragging him into a hole of despair.

  Candice refused to sign the papers. His heart grew heavier every time he thought about it. There was nothing he could do. He had no leverage, no means to force her hand.

  He hammered the last board into place and stroked his beard as he stood back and studied the final product. A clean job, looked just about the same as it had before, less the few inches the insulation had taken up in the floorplan. Slight enough not to endanger space, and well worth if it Gavin ever used the cabin during the winter.

  Neve would be pleased with his work.

  Duke ran a hand through his loose hair and sighed. Guilt oozed from his pores every time he looked at her.

  She’d warned him. In no uncertain terms, she told him, before the job even began, exactly how she felt about liars. Taking this into account, he knew Neve would never extend an olive branch. If they were ever going to move past this, he’d have to be the one to do the work.

  Was she worth the abuse to make it up to her?

  Duke tugged the heavy work gloves from his hands and went outside, whe
re the sky had purpled with twilight. In the eastern clearing, Kay, Finn, and a handful of Vince’s men continued to work. They chatted and laughed.

  A pinprick of envy found its mark as Duke turned away from them and headed up the path toward the road. He wished he had nothing more than the completion of the cabin weighing on him. Hell, or even just a friend, someone to laugh at his stupidity alongside him.

  Realizing Neve had provided his only companionship up to this point, he made up his mind. He strode up the path with renewed determination.

  Inside their trailer, Neve had her boots on and bent over to nuzzle Darcy the Pit’s face.

  Saying good-bye, he surmised. “You headed to the ranch?”

  Her gaze sprang to his from the sheer force of her surprise. He hadn’t said a single word to her in nearly a week, so the reaction was warranted. She stood up straight and moved as though to go right by him without an answer.

  He took a step to the side, blocking her path. “Can I have a minute before you go? It’s work-related, if that eases the abrasiveness of my request.” A hint of bitterness seeped into his voice. Her avoidance was worse than her cutting remarks. “Come with me to the storage trailer. I never showed you what I found.” Come to think of it, he hadn’t told her about Krandall Beels, either. “Or who I met,” he added, watching her carefully for a spark of interest.

  Neve had on her poker face. “Hurry up.”

  Despite the command, he took the time to drop his work gloves on Neve’s desk and take a heavy-duty flashlight from one of the drawers.

  She waited by the door without comment.

  He led her outside, around the three other location trailers parked at the road’s end. Two housed Vince and his team, and Kay had solo possession of the last one. For whatever reason, no one had suggested Neve move in with Kay. Judging by Kay’s hyperactive tendencies, the arrangement wouldn’t have gone over smoothly.

  The storage trailer sat where the men had unhitched it the day of Vince’s injury. Duke held out a hand for the key to the padlock, which Neve kept in her pocket.

  She fished it out, handed the silver key over. Still expressionless.

  Where was the angry impatience? The snappy rebukes? Duke checked a sigh and undid the latch. He pulled the heavy door open to reveal the purchases from Thrift House. The door had been placed flat and wrapped in travel blankets for protection. He yanked back the blankets and stepped away for Neve to inspect his offering, shining the beam of the flashlight down on the glass-paned French doors.

  She inched closer. Duke didn’t have a view of her inspection nor could he see her expression. Several minutes crawled by before she stepped back and stared at him in the near dark. He kept the flashlight’s beam pointed downward, even though he was dying to know what her face might give away. He had to force the muscles in his back and shoulders to relax.

  “The wood is white.” She said it with all the emotion of a toaster.

  “I realize it’s exactly what you didn’t want, but something about the style, the age.” He shrugged. He couldn’t explain it. “It seems like they belong. I don’t know if you’ve ordered another set of doors—”

  “I haven’t.”

  “Okay. Well, if you don’t want them, I’ll find some use for them. For what it’s worth, Kay agreed with me. I probably wouldn’t have bought them if she hadn’t approved.”

  “Duke, I almost hate to say this, but they’re perfect. The white will add the touch of contrast I’ve been searching for. The countertops I ordered are a local stone. They’re a burnished gray color that will probably blend seamlessly into the cabin. I’m still mad as hell, and I don’t consider you a friend, but I guess you’re an okay designer. Good call.”

  Duke grinned into the darkness. He’d take it. At least they were speaking. Sure, her tone was monotonous and devoid of any emotion despite her praise, but they were talking. She was talking. And he wasn’t done yet. “Interested in who I met?”

  She sighed. “I can’t imagine it’s anyone too special.”

  “His name is Krandall Beels. The proprietor of Thrift House.”

  Silence met him. Neve’s feet shuffled, and gravel scuffed beneath her boots. “Beels, huh? That’s strange.”

  “I thought so. Krandall doesn’t have any family, and he doesn’t seem to know much about Florrie, but he recalls she supposedly owned Beels Cabin at some point. He’s not the social type, so the conversation was short and to the point.” Duke stuck his head in the storage unit and pulled the protective blanket back over the French doors. He closed the trailer door and shined the flashlight on the lock while Neve re-latched it.

  He thought she’d leave then. He didn’t have anything to add, but Neve surprised him. When she spoke, they might not have been fighting at all. He could almost pretend things were back to normal.

  “Think about it, Duke. Florrie died in that cabin at the hands of Lulu Hux. What are the odds she met another man and had his child? If Florrie had a baby before her death while living at the cabin, the kid had to have been Ben’s.”

  Duke scratched his cheek. “Makes sense. Why suddenly move his mistress onto his property, build her a house, and deed the place over to her unless an heir was involved? It’d be the only way his illegitimate kid would inherit part of the ranch. Sort of puts events in a different light.”

  “Not only Ben’s actions.” Neve’s breath caught on her realization. “Lulu Hux. She must not have known about the pregnancy.”

  “I kind of thought that must be the case, too. Krandall’s existence suggests Lulu didn’t know about the pregnancy. I mean, if Lulu was going to go nuts and murder Florrie, why not kill her before she gave birth?”

  Neve’s voice lowered. “Maybe infanticide was going too far? Could explain what pushed Lulu over the edge. Maybe she caught sight of Florrie with her baby and puzzled things out. Either way, she’d have easily discovered the land and cabin had been cut from the inheritance due her legitimate kids. That could’ve been the catalyst.”

  Her theory made perfect sense but left one burning question. “So, what happened to the baby? Obviously, the baby lived, or Krandall Beels wouldn’t exist. It’s got to be a succession of boys, or the name would’ve changed by now. Krandall’s grandfather or great-grandfather would have to be the missing baby, right?”

  “The baby who lived.” Neve snorted. “What in the hell have we stumbled into, Duke? And why do I feel like the locked chest has something to do with all this?”

  The chest. He’d forgotten about it. “I still have a meeting scheduled with Cherish Rancourt from the Historical Society. We may learn something yet.”

  Neve was quiet for a moment. “Do you think it has something to do with the land? Yosemite says the ranch has been sold off in bits and pieces, but the land the cabin sits on belonged to Florrie. So, how did the cabin even end up in circulation? Shouldn’t it belong to Krandall?”

  “Not if his grandfather sold it.”

  Her voice went flat with sarcasm. “You think Florrie’s baby returned as a grown man to the cabin where his mother was murdered and demanded the deed from Tim’s granddaddy so he could sell the place?”

  “You got me there.” Duke had no clue how land titles and deeds worked. His experience ended with buying his loft, which the realtor had pretty much handled. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  “We might if we get that box open.”

  A tiny spool of excitement unfurled in Duke’s chest. Neve was talking like they were a team again. And the chest might do more than unlock some old, small town mystery—it might bridge the gap he’d put between himself and Neve with his mistake.

  Neve sniffed, cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, the dry, emotionless tone returned. “Yosemite is expecting me. If I don’t hurry, he’ll send Owen up the road on a four-wheeler to check on me.” She paused, a hitched breath caught on unsaid words, but released the air without uttering a thing.

  Duke wanted to say that sui
ted him fine. They were in a rocky place, but he’d made some headway. Besides, he had plans for the night that had everything and nothing to do with Neve. But what he really wanted was for her to give him something. Throw him a bone. Tell him they’d talk more later. Tell him he was the one liar she’d give another chance. If he were tougher, or more confident he could talk her into it, he might’ve tried to get her to go back to the trailer with him, and lay all their cards on the table. He couldn’t stand how she’d dusted him off her hands like dirt.

  But he wasn’t confident. Not even a little. He couldn’t explain why she brought him so low with her dismissal, or why it mattered that they fixed whatever broke between them. “I don’t know how good your night vision is, but the rental car is parked about eight yards south from here. See you later, Neve.”

  She might’ve raised a hand in farewell. Maybe not. The darkness gave nothing away.

  Duke turned back toward the trailers and tried not to rub his hands together. The bottle of whiskey he normally reserved for a completed renovation beckoned like a sultry dancer, promising things it wouldn’t deliver. When he awoke tomorrow, his ex-wife would still be refusing to sign the papers, and Neve would still hate him, but at least he’d have a hangover to excuse his misery.

  * * * *

  Neve returned from the ranch late that night, stuffed like a primo sausage. Not once in her life, not even as a child, had she had pie made from scratch set before her by the same hands that had produced it.

  Her mother was the head of the Psychology Department at Colorado State University in Denver. She didn’t bake pies, nor do much of anything else in the kitchen besides reach for the silverware when Dad came home with takeout. Ever since Neve’s first taste of Timothy’s homemade blackberry pie, she couldn’t seem to quit the habit. Tonight, Laurel had made blueberry cobbler from their very own blueberry patch. Neve had almost cried into her dish.

  Sobbing delicious, the latest in culinary descriptive terms.

  Despite the distinctly shady side to her little rancher buddy, Neve had a hard time saying no to Hux’s invitations. Being wanted somewhere felt good, and spending time with a man who appeared to enjoy her company and liked to ask her questions about her job, like what inspired her and what drove her creative process, felt even better. He laughed off her snarky, barb-wired tongue like a fly buzzing in his ear. She’d have to dig pretty damn deep to offend Yosemite, and that knowledge set her at ease.