Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1)

by Rose, Amelia

  Casey shook off the thought and returned to the tack room to saddle his horse. He had fifty miles to cover before lunch break, and he was doing it on only a couple hours’ sleep, thanks to that frilly girl and her stupid suitcases. Casey couldn’t believe his father actually made him go back out in the dark and retrieve them, like they wouldn’t have still been sitting there in the morning. It was no concern of his if she had to wear the same clothes two days in a row. Hell, half the men out here only owned two shirts and they wore them for a solid week at a time.

  “Well, look who’s able to walk around today,” Jack called out with a leer in Casey’s direction. “I’d a thought you wouldn’t be able to get outta bed today, what with that pretty little woman of yours keepin’ you up all night.”

  “Close your mouth, Jack. You and I don’t have anything to say about that. Besides, she’s not my wife and I didn’t sleep with her.” Casey kept walking toward his horse, reaching down the brush from where it hung on a nail inside the barn. He began scrubbing down his horse’s flanks, readying it for the saddle for the long morning ride.

  “Well, hell, if you ain’t got her in the bed her yet, I’m happy to step in, get her all ready for ya,” Jack offered spitefully, laughing with some of the other men working among the stalls.

  Casey balled both fists and stomped in Jack’s direction, suddenly not too proud to beat a man who had to be at least fifty years old. For his part, Jack threw both hands in the air in surrender and took a step back.

  “Don’t go gettin’ defensive now, young ‘un, I’d hate to have to put you in your place in front of all these men. Remember, you might be up for ownin’ this ranch one day, and when that day comes, you’re gonna need ranch hands who are loyal to you. You don’t wanna go pissin’ on the men who are gonna care for your cattle and drive your herd, or accidents could happen,” Jack hinted through clenched teeth.

  “Any ‘accident’ that happens around here is going to involve your head under some stampeding hooves. You’re not the only man who knows how to spook a horse until it throws its rider,” Casey whispered in Jack’s face, reminding the foreman of the suspicious death of a new ranch hand last year, his accusation thick in his words. “And ‘that woman’ is my future wife. You don’t touch her, you don’t look at her, and you sure as hell don’t talk about her, to me or to any other man. If you can’t remember that order, you’re going to find yourself about one hundred miles out into the desert without so much a hat to swat the flies with. I swear to God, I will leave your carcass out there for the coyotes to tear in two.”

  Casey shoved Jack backward onto a hay bale with both hands and turned in the other direction, picking up his brush and resuming his animal’s care while watching Jack through squinted eyes. Jack slunk away to lick his ego’s wounds, glaring at Casey the entire time.

  “I told you before, that one’s dangerous,” Carey said, coming up behind Casey. “Don’t go making an enemy of him, or there’s no telling what could happen out on the range one day.”

  “I’m going to speak to Dad tonight. That man has to go. He does nothing around here except cause trouble. He may have been a big help to Dad a few decades ago, but now…I’m not so sure.”

  “You’re right. And by the way, when did you suddenly take such a liking to the little missus Dad picked out? I heard you call her your ‘future wife.’ So does that mean you’re going through with it?” Carey asked, turning away from the group of men lingering among the horses to avoid embarrassing Casey.

  “It doesn’t seem like I have a whole lot of choice in the matter,” Casey answered, sighing angrily as he cinched the girth on his saddle and buckled it, looping the long leather strap to keep it from dragging beneath his horse. “She’s here, isn’t she? And even if it’s not my plan, I guess even I have to admit the thought of someone spending her day sitting around on the computer or playing on Facebook or whatever the hell it is girls like her do all day, is less than ideal. But spending it inside with Dad and keeping him company…I guess I can sort of admit that it wouldn’t be a horrible thing.”

  “Whew, I’m glad you see it that way. Watching Dad get up on a horse and try to ride with the herd is enough to stop my heart. If he had someone in the house to keep him company and play Scrabble or something with him, maybe he’d leave this work to us. And besides, I’m sure you could have done worse.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Casey demanded.

  “Well, she seems smart, and polite, and she sure isn’t ugly. Maybe it’s like Dad said, you get to know each other and you treat each other nice, then next thing you know, you’re in love. Or something like that.”

  “Oh, really? Well, let’s see if you’re singing that same tune when it’s your turn!” Casey argued, punching Carey in the shoulder. “Maybe I found the only good looking, good smelling woman in the whole country! I bet the next online ad Dad runs brings us a whole horde of one-legged, cross-eyed girls, who smell like turnips and fart during meals!” He ducked Carey’s playful swat at his head, and succeeded in losing his hat in the scuffle. The brothers tugged and shoved like they had when they were children, stopping only at the sound of static and a scratchy voice coming through the walkie-talkie attached to Carey’s belt. It was followed only a minute or two later by hoof beats tearing into the dirt pen surrounding the barn.

  “Hey guys! C’mon, there’s a whole pack of coyotes heading toward the creek bed, and we have the Aubrac herd grazing down there now!” The hand who’d ridden in to tell them the news wheeled his horse around and headed back in the direction he’d come from, kicking up a cloud of dust behind him in his haste. Carey and Casey mounted their horses after pulling their shotguns down from the pegs inside the barn door.

  The brothers and several other hands tore out across the ranch in the direction of the creek bed, quickly overtaking the hand who’d reported the sighting. It wasn’t long before the stench of coyote urine, where the villains had marked their claim, rose up and filled their nostrils, agitating the horses with the accompanying scent of danger. The four-legged murderers came into view, some of the pack driving straight toward the herd, others circling around to come in at the cows from the other side.

  “We can’t head them off. We’re gonna have to take them down,” one of the ranch hands said, coming up beside Carey and Casey and leaning over his saddle to catch his breath.

  “He’s right, Casey,” Carey agreed. “They’re in too far. If we go charging in there after them, we’re just as likely to cause the herd to stampede. They’ll already be panicked because of the coyotes, and six horses barreling in there will be too much for them to handle.”

  “We can’t go firing into the herd, either. You guys take out the ones heading toward them on this side, Thomas and I will ride around the other flank and try to reach the ones heading for the far bank.” Casey nodded at one of their crew and together, they took off to the left, parallel to the creek, where the herd obliviously stood grazing and drinking from the gently moving water. Casey spurred his horse on, letting his hat fly off and hang from around his neck by its leather chord. They cut through the water, sending a wall of spray from their horses’ hooves up on either side, cutting off their view of the aggressive scavengers for a moment.

  When they emerged from the creek, several of the coyotes were already underfoot and yelping, scrambling to get away from the thick, deadly hooves coming down around on either side of them. At this range, Casey’s shotgun would be no use, so he drew his revolver and took aim at the closest pack member, firing off a round that caught the animal right behind its front shoulder and directly into its rib cage. For his part, Thomas took out two of the larger animals as they lunged at the creek, directly in front of a heifer that startled at their sudden movement and swam toward the middle of the creek.

  After shooting another coyote as it attempted to intercept a calf, Casey felt an odd tug at his boot and looked down to see a tan and grey coyote nipping at his boot, jumping at horse’s flank. The sudden s
crape of teeth against hide sent Casey’s horse rearing up, throwing him to the ground, knocking the breath from his burning lungs. His head connected with the rocks lining the creek bed, sending a throbbing ache through his skull that nearly blinded him. A sickening crunch sounded as pain shot up Casey’s leg, his horse having stomped on his booted ankle.

  As Casey writhed on the ground, a low moan escaping his parched mouth, he was blinded by the light of the sun directly overhead. He was startled when a face came into view, blocking out the light but backlit so as to almost be unrecognizable.

  Almost.

  But there was no mistaking the ugly, scarred face of Jack, the ranch foreman.

  He leaned over Casey and said, “I told you accidents happen.” Just then, the sound of a gunshot sounded so close to Casey, that for a moment, he couldn’t find the source of it. An unfamiliar scream sounded, then went silent. Jack laughed over Casey’s twisted, agonized face once more, then a boot kick to Casey’s head made everything go dark.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  An unseen hand pressed a rag against Casey’s face, blocking out what little light worked its way into the room. Heavy, dark quilts had been hung on the windows to bar the sunlight, with only a strip of yellow light peeking through at the edge of the blanket. Casey’s hand shot out and grabbed the arm, ready to snap it in two. Only the feel of his long fingers closing together over the thin arm stopped him. He snatched the thick cover off his face and stared into the near-darkness, ready to do battle with this unseen assailant.

  “Casey, stop. It’s me,” Miranda cautioned. Casey’s tense shoulders relaxed, but she noticed his firm grip on her thin wrist didn’t ease. He breathed heavily for a moment, trying to get his bearings, trying to remember how he had ended up in this room.

  “Where am I?” Casey demanded.

  “You’re back in the house. In my room,” she answered quietly, certain that his injuries must have left him with a horrible pain in his head.

  “Why am I in your room?” he asked, still confused by the events.

  “Well, it was that, or nurse your wounds in front of your brothers’ snoring bodies,” Miranda said, smiling a little. “I, for one, had no desire to sit by anyone’s bedside, let alone with a crowd like those boys create. Besides, this room already had two beds because they brought one in for my sister. I could keep watch over you better this way.”

  Casey didn’t say anything for a long moment, so long that Miranda wondered if he had slipped into unconsciousness again. Finally, she asked, “Do you remember what happened?”

  He nodded a little bit, surprised by how much even that small motion hurt. “I was thrown from my horse this morning, chasing the coyotes away from the Aubrac herd.”

  “Well, you’re only partly right. Only it didn’t happen this morning. It happened two days ago.”

  “Two days!” Casey nearly shouted, starting to sit up but then thinking better of it when a wave of nausea hit him full force. “I’ve been asleep for two days?”

  “Yes and no. You were in and out a good bit, but we had to keep you calm until the doctor could come set your collarbone. It’s broken, I’m afraid. You’ve been asleep from the pain pills he left. They knock you out cold.”

  “I remember that. I felt a sharp pain after I fell off my horse.”

  “What else do you remember?” Miranda asked, concern creeping into her voice.

  “Why? What’s so important about falling off a horse?” he demanded, not very kindly.

  “Maybe I should let your father speak to you,” she suggested. Casey grabbed her arm again and pulled her by the wrist until she was close to his face.

  “No. Tell me what’s wrong. I can tell that something’s wrong.”

  “Um…it would seem that maybe there was an accident,” Miranda began hesitantly.

  “What kind of accident? Where’s Carey?!” Casey demanded, remembering that his brother had gone with him to protect the cattle.

  “Oh, Carey’s fine, don’t worry. He actually helped bring you back here. No, it’s the ranch hand who went around the creek with you…Thomas, I think they said?” she asked for clarification.

  “What about Thomas?”

  “I’m afraid he was killed.” Miranda waited for Casey to explode but even in the darkened room, she could see that his face was concentrating, processing what she’d said. He shook his head for a moment before remembering how badly that motion hurt.

  “That can’t be right. Did he fall too?” Casey asked, sadness evident in his voice at the loss of the young hand.

  “I really should get your father, and let him know you’re awake.” She started to rise up off the bed and turn to the door but Casey grabbed her once again, the intensity in the gesture frightening her more than anything she’d seen since coming west.

  “NO! Tell me what happened!” Casey roared. Miranda stared, not sure she should say anything else when Casey was so upset.

  “He was shot. In the back.”

  In a blinding flash, Casey remembered. He remembered seeing Jack’s face leaning over his, and hearing the gunshot that must have been Thomas’ death blow. He remembered the laughter just before everything went dark.

  “Jack. Jack shot him,” Casey whispered. Miranda leaned closer, telling him to repeat himself. “Jack was there, he shot Thomas. He’d argued with me just that morning and made some kind of a threat and when I fell, Jack leaned over me and laughed. I heard it, he shot Thomas.”

  “Unfortunately, that’s not the explanation Jack has given. He claims Thomas made some inappropriate remark to you that morning, and that you lured him away from the group with the excuse of cutting off the pack of coyotes, but that you used that as a way to get Thomas alone instead, and that you shot him in the back.”

  “No, that’s not true. Jack wasn’t even with us when we set out to chase down the pack. How would he even know? Except he was there, waiting. He shot Thomas, and I can prove it. Where are my clothes?”

  “They’re over here, where I…”

  “Where you what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Where you undressed me?” Casey asked sarcastically, fully realizing for the first time that he was covered only by the bed quilt.

  “Someone had to,” Miranda answered primly, answering Casey’s sarcasm with her own. “It seems that mending broken cowboys who fall off their horses is also on the list of things I was ‘hired’ to do around here, besides breed, of course.”

  “Go to my belt and bring me my gun. I shot two coyotes. That means there should still be four cartridges in the cylinder.” Miranda crossed the room and fished out the gun Carey had carefully replaced in Casey’s belt holster before carrying him over on his own horse back to the house. She carried it with one tiny finger looped through the trigger guard, wanting as much distance as possible between her and the deadly device. Casey took it from her hand and spun open the cylinder, counting out the four bullets that remained. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “See? All four. And I bet the mangy bodies of those two coyotes are still out there on the creek bed, if the buzzards haven’t cleaned the whole mess away by now. I knew there was no way I shot Thomas. That poor man…” With the situation resolved, at least in his mind, Casey had a chance to mourn the loss of an eager, energetic cowboy, gone for good because of one horrid monster’s need for revenge. “You have to fetch my father. We have to tell him what happened before Jack skips the ranch and heads out.”

  “I believe you,” Miranda said. “I’ll let your father know you need to speak with him. But for now, you have to rest. You’ve got more thread than skin on your face, and you lost enough blood through the cut to the back of your head to sink a small ship. It took me a few hours just to get all your skin back where it goes.”

  Casey reached up and touched the stitch work, pulling his fingers back as pain shot out from around the cut. “You stitched this? Are you kidding me? Who let you take a needle to my head?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact,
I did. And it’s quite nice needlework, if I do say so myself. I actually know how to sew, and since it was looking like a good hour before a doctor could get here, I did it myself with the supplies in the medical kit. I was all for embroidering a lovely floral pattern, and I would have gotten away with it too, if your brothers had their way. But your father thought it might upset you to have a scar in the shape of a hyacinth.” She smiled down at Casey in the dark, and he relaxed somewhat.

  “So why are you out here in Texas instead of embroidering hyacinths to wear to your fancy office somewhere back east?” Casey asked, his voice dropping again. Miranda looked at him for a moment, gauging whether or not that question was actually intended to ask, “Why don’t you go home?”. Deciding that it was borne out of genuine interest in what brought her here, she answered.

  “If you must know, I wasn’t actually all that happy in my office back in Newark,” she began. “It was...not the best life, for me or for my sister. I...I told your father some of this, but I didn’t tell him everything. I didn’t want to worry him, but more importantly, I didn’t want to be here because he felt the need to take on a charity case.”

  Miranda proceeded to tell Casey only the most important parts of the story where Mike was concerned. She told him how she heard Gracie crying and went into the living room to find him on top of her, trying to pull her nightgown up.

  “And I snapped. I had taken every bit of abuse and anger he had dished out but when I saw him trying to hurt Gracie, I went for the baseball bat he kept in the closet.”