Children and diminutive adults soon learned not to risk a power struggle with such a large animal, and instead became the equestrian equivalent of good listeners. When the horse felt respected, a dialogue could ensue, rather than a lecture from rider to mount.
Shiloh was on her way to becoming a very good listener.
"How are things on the Malloy Ranch?" Claudia asked as Shiloh finished up her lesson.
"It's different, without Abby,"Shiloh said, patting the mare. Bluebell was a love—on the flat. She could get hotter than a three-dollar pistol over fences, but Shiloh wasn't yet ready to start jumping. "Abby was the most determined of us three sisters to stay on the property, and then she met Cooper…She's right across the fence line, I know, but it's funny how I miss somebody I never knew existed."
"Green-up's right around the corner," Claudia said. "You'll be too busy to miss her, though there's a lot of sharing of work at this end of the Canyon in spring. Roundup, making hay, spring shots, mending fences…We cooperate as much as we can. You're getting more confident in the saddle too. Soon you'll be able to ride over to see Abby and Cooper."
Shiloh chattered on, about a cake recipe her sister Bonnie had made for Sunday dinner, and the joys of fixing a fence in the middle of a downpour, but Claudia only half-heard her. Shiloh's comment about missing somebody she'd never known before stuck in Claudia's mind, because it fit her feelings for Declan.
Why did he, of all people, have to be wearing a black hat?
"Bluebell is pretty much cooled out," Claudia said. "You can put her up now."
Shiloh brought the mare to a halt, but didn't get off. "Claudia, I know you have paying guests here from time to time, so maybe you know this guy. There's some kind of tall, dark, and handsome walking along down by your creek. He doesn't seem to be in any hurry."
From Bluebell's back, Shiloh had a little more height than Claudia, and thus a better line of sight down to the creek.
"That's Declan MacLeod, my guest for the week, and every rancher's worst nightmare short of hoof and mouth disease. Let's put the mare up."
Shiloh swung down, brought the reins over the mare's head, and led the horse to the gate. "If he's a nightmare, then I'd like to see your sweet dreams, girlfriend."
Shiloh was new to the Canyon, but her late father had owned the Malloy Ranch since before Claudia had been born. Shiloh was a neighbor, and deserved to know what was going on in her backyard.
"Declan MacLeod works for a big oil company, and his boss bought the mortgage on my property. They want to get their hands on the deed so they can turn this place into some sort of corporate training center or wilderness retreat."
Shiloh led Bluebell to her stall and slipped off the bridle. "What do you want?"
Claudia took the bridle while Shiloh unbuckled the girth. "Besides to cry?"
"Cry, get drunk, cuss a blue streak—but that won't solve the problem. Don't suppose you can pay off the mortgage?"
"Not this year, that's for danged sure." They traded the halter for the girth. "I'm not behind on the mortgage, but I haven't paid for all of my seed yet either."
The seed and feed store was sort of an auxiliary bank for most ranches, especially in lean years. A line of credit on reasonable terms could be the salvation of a ranch, but Claudia hated to owe anybody anything.
"I don't think folk around here will take too kindly to a corporate-anything setting up shop in the Canyon," Shiloh said, handing Claudia the saddle and pad. "That's assuming the zoning authorities would allow such a thing. You might ask a few questions in the county office, do a little Web surfing."
"I'll be doing a lot of Web surfing." Also some crying. "Declan is here as a guest, and I don't think he likes what he's being paid to do, but he'll get my ranch away from me any legal way he can."
The mare shook, sending a cascade of blue roan hair into the straw.
"Gotta love spring," Shiloh said. "I despise a man who hides behind that old line about just following orders. If the price of his honor is merely a paycheck, then he's not much of a man. If he sneaked onto the Bar J pretending to be a guest just so he could spy on you, he's not even a very good weasel."
"Lord help the man who crosses you, Shiloh Malloy."
"Lord help anybody who crosses me or my sisters. C'mon, Blue. Time to get out the curry comb and treat you like the princess you are."
Shiloh led the mare to the crossties, where the horse would be thoroughly groomed, and the resulting mess cleaned up before Shiloh turned Bluebell out with her buddies. Claudia put the saddle back on its rack in the tack room, washed off the bit, tied up the bridle, and tossed the sweaty plaid saddle pad over the clothesline to dry.
Declan was making his way up from the creek, his progress visible from the barnyard. He stopped halfway to the ranch house, turned, and took a picture.
Claudia wanted to snatch his phone away and toss it into the nearest horse trough. Tell your thieving bastard boss this is my ranch, she wanted to shout. Mine and Kara's.
She took a seat at the bottom of the porch steps, and already, even at midmorning, the sun had some heat to it. Declan neither hurried nor hung back, and then he took the place beside her.
"Are we still speaking?" he asked.
"Barely. You're not a weasel, though. You at least told me what you're up to." Which mattered, some.
"I was looking for potential hazards on the property—sinkholes, old trash heaps, evidence of distressed vegetation that suggests you've been dumping paint or pesticides where you oughtn't. Environmental liability might force Brewster to change his mind."
Claudia would never have come up with that angle. "And?"
"From what I could see, every acre of this ranch is beautiful. You not only have access to the river, you have your own spring-fed creek, and that makes this property…"
"Paradise, also valuable as hell. Not to mention I share a property line with state land, which makes for great trail rides, and I have some of the nicest neighbors I could ask for. Why would I want to sell this?"
Declan unlaced his hiking boots. "You won't want to, but you'll do it in the end, unless I can think of another solution."
"I don't think the zoning folks will go for turning this place into a corporate spa, Declan. They're Canyon folks from way back, and they won't—"
"You're grandfathered," Declan said. "I already checked."
Despite the warmth in the morning sun, cold slithered through Claudia's guts. "What does that mean? I'm grandfathered?"
"Your family has been operating a B&B on this property for decades, since long before there were any zoning or use restrictions. That creates a prior exception to any agricultural or residential use requirements. To expand the B&B to a boutique corporate retreat facility will be all too easy with the resources Brewster has. Your brochure says you can accommodate groups of up to forty, and Brewster won't need more than that, on paper."
Well, damn. In more years than Claudia cared to admit, the B&B income had made a significant difference to the bottom line. To have guests on the property produced income as well as deductible expenses that would have been simple home maintenance otherwise, and it made more of the horse operation revenue-generating.
Then too, if she ever added the entire bunkhouse to the bed count—not just the fancier rooms—she could accommodate more than forty guests, easily.
"You're telling me my great-grandma's B&B will be used to get Brewster's cowboy boot through my front door?"
"Aye."
"So why don't you just bring in the bulldozers now, Declan? Give me a few minutes to load up the horses, and then you can wreck my life—about which I'm upset—and wreck Kara's too, for which I ought to kill you dead forever."
He slipped off his boots and set them on the steps, the same as Claudia's daddy had done for years, the same as Kara did now, if her footwear was muddy.
"We never finished our discussion this morning," Declan said. "The larger context is that Brewster has played fast and loose with his inhe
ritance, and if he can't find an investor, or a significant partner, he'll be a casualty of the readjustment going on throughout the energy industry."
Declan wore thick gray wool socks that looked like they'd hold up to North Sea blizzards. What did his feet look like?
"What in the Sam-damn hell do I care about Thad Brewster's little kingdom falling apart? You can get another job, and he'll probably land on his feet too."
Declan scooped up a handful of dirt, which was more like sand at the bottom of the steps. He let the fine grains trickle through his fingers.
"What about the two thousand people who work for Brewster Energy, Claudia? A lot of them are young, trying to start families on the decent pay they can make on a rig. Many are trying to pay off the hellacious college loans you Americans saddle your young people with. The managers tend to be older, many of them hoping to hang on long enough that they have something substantial to retire on. Brewster doesn't care about them half as much as he should, and if he goes down, he takes thousands of people with him."
Well, hell. This was why Declan would steal her ranch, for those people whose well-being Brewster had so casually imperiled.
"Let those employees choose more wisely the next time they're job hunting," Claudia said, "because it sounds like sooner or later, Thad Brewster is going to piss away his inheritance and their livelihoods."
More sand trickled away on the morning breeze. "I vote for later, and I have the rest of this week to change later to possibly never, if you'll give me that time to try to come up with a solution."
"You're asking a lot, Declan." To see him at meals, around the property. To know he was sleeping under the roof his boss wanted to take from her. Putting his boots under the table Claudia's great-grandmother had made with her own hands.
"A lot is at stake. I'm asking for a few days, Claudia, and if you send me packing, Brewster's next emissary won't play by any recognizable rules."
Ranches were vulnerable, in part because they were isolated, and in part because ranching successfully required a lot of luck. Herds could stampede, wells go dry, windmills break when parts at the nearest hardware store were out of stock.
"Your reservation is paid up," Claudia said, getting to her feet, "and I'll listen to what you have to say up to a point, but I'm not helping you steal Kara's heritage."
"Thank you," Declan said, rising. "A fair hearing is a start, and more than many a Scot has been given in the past. If that's what I can get, I'll take it."
"That's all you'll get,"Claudia said, meaning it. The part of her that had admitted to lonely wishes where Declan was concerned would just have to deal with the disappointment of not having what she longed for from him—not having it ever.
***
For most of three days, Declan had studied land records, looking for a cloud on the Bar J title, but the Jensens had handed the ranch down from father to son to daughter in a short, clean line. No odd easements interfered with the land use, no liens complicated the transfer. From an environmental standpoint, few properties were more pristine, and—worse yet, from Declan's perspective—outside every window of the Bar J ranch house lay a postcard vista of the Canyon.
Worst of all, Declan was falling in love with the woman whose life he was supposed to wreck.
Claudia was unfailingly patient with her riding students and had a genius for figuring out how to explain a situation so a rider could get the desired result from the horse. Claudia was equally conscientious in the care of her land and livestock, and a tireless worker when it came to the endless chores necessary to keep a ranch operation moving forward.
By Thursday afternoon, Declan had had enough.
"We're getting off the property," he announced as he and Claudia scrubbed out a stock tank under brilliantly sunny skies.
"I beg your pardon?"
Declan tossed his scrub brush into a bucket. "I'm thinking myself in circles, and I need a change of scene. I think you do too."
Claudia turned a stopcock and let the murky water in the bottom of the tank drain away into the red earth.
"You think I should leave the Bar J now, with you, when you're trying to steal it out from under me?"
Declan had come to loathe the verb to steal, while Claudia tucked it into every other sentence.
"Whether you go out for a beer with me tonight, or stay home and fret won't make any difference. I have only two more days to come up with a reason for Brewster to flash some other property under Miranda Davis's nose, and all I'm doing is traveling the same ground—"
"Don't you be insulting Andy Davis's nose," Claudia said, taking a drink from her water bottle. "But what does she have to do with all of this?"
"She's the competitor Brewster's trying to get in bed with—probably literally. Her family saw the sustainable-energy initiative coming, while Brewster is pretending we'll run out of sunshine, wind, wood, tide, and geothermal sources next week."
"Miranda Davis is a smart gal," Claudia said. "You should hydrate, Declan."
He got a water bottle out of the cooler in the back of the dually. "How well do you know Miranda Davis?"
"I knew her. We ended up in the same freshman English class, and if that's not trial by ordeal, I don't know what is. We also played on the same intramural volleyball team, and she likes horses, or she did eight years ago. I need to get back to the house. Kara will be home soon."
No matter how hard Claudia worked, or what chores needed tending to, she was always at the ranch house when Kara got home from school. Declan's mum had observed the same priority.
"What do you think Miranda Davis will make of my boss?" he asked, gathering up the buckets and rags they'd used to clean the tank.
"I hope Andy Davis makes mincemeat of him, and leaves his remains for the buzzards, meaning no disrespect to the buzzards. My friendly neighborhood banker deserves the same fate for flipping my mortgage paper without asking enough questions of the party who bought it."
Declan climbed into the truck and buckled in. "Brewster combines charm, threats, and money in whatever way he thinks will accomplish his aims. I'm waiting for the situation where it all comes back to bite him in the ass, but then he'll expect me to fix everything."
Claudia started the engine. The truck ran like a top—a diesel top. "Brewster can steal my ranch, Declan, and I'll walk off this property after a good, hard fight, knowing I did my best, and all he got was my land. I'll take the money and rebuild, and my neighbors will support me every step of the way. That's bad, but Jensens have survived worse. Brewster holds your dreams in his greedy, wealthy hands, and when you're done sorting out how to save my ranch, you ought to see what you can do about saving your dreams."
The truck bumped along through the chaparral, while the significance of Claudia's observation sank into Declan's already grim mood.
If Declan failed to deliver for Brewster, the dream of a life under blue Texas skies was over. That was bad, as Claudia had said, but given enough time and determination, Declan could probably parlay his unique qualifications into a job with another Texas oil company.
Texas alone though, was no longer enough. Declan's dreams had expanded to include a future where he was welcome on Claudia's property too, if not in her arms.
Chapter Five
"I love this place," Claudia said, hopping out of the truck and enjoying the feel of her skirt fluffing around her knees. "You will not find an uglier shade of pink this side of the laxative section at the five-and-dime."
"It's…unique," Declan said. "I wonder if they've ever seen a man in a kilt before."
The Sugar Shack, in all its hot-pink glory, sat under the parking lot lights. The night was cold, but the sound of fiddles and a concertina from within promised heat to go with the music.
"C'mon," Claudia said, grabbing Declan by the hand. "If we stand out here much longer, I'll get to frettin' about Kara, and then next thing you know, we'll be in that truck, heading back to the Bar J."
Claudia's nerves had only a little bit to do with
Kara being home alone. Kara was certainly old enough and had spent plenty of time at the ranch house by herself. The problem was Declan—or rather, Claudia's feelings toward Declan.
Over the past few days, he'd pitched in everywhere, without being asked. No job was beneath him, from mucking stalls to changing Hotay's litter box. When he wasn't helping out with the chores, he was researching land records and zoning ordinances, reading the fine print on Claudia's mortgage documents, or joining her for rides that took them over every acre of ground she owned.
He rode with the natural seat of a guy who'd been put in the saddle early and allowed to figure out the basics for himself, and—why couldn't a gal catch a break?—he looked damned good in the saddle.
He held hands well too. Nothing wimpy or tentative about the way his fingers linked with Claudia's, and that was…that was pure torment, and she'd brought it on herself.
"You're the angel of doom," Claudia said as they reached the door. "Why can't I at least resent the hell out of you?"
The parking lot was about half full, this being a weeknight. Declan glanced around, then pulled Claudia into the shadow of the overhang. He kissed her cheek, his breath a warm breeze on a cold night.
"I've been thinking," he said. "You know Miranda Davis. We're going to talk more about that when we get home."
Claudia did not want to talk. She wanted to gobble him whole, which made no sense. "Aren't your knees cold, Declan?"
He rested his forehead against Claudia's. "When I'm with you, no part of me could ever be cold."
Warmth blossomed inside Claudia. If she was going to be a complete idiot, at least she'd be in good company.
"Don't start any fights," she said, letting Declan hold the door.
The Cowboy Wore A Kilt Page 6