Cattleman's Courtship

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Cara bit back a sigh and chanced a look at Nicholas, who was rolling his eyes again. Then their gazes caught and she let slip a smile of commiseration.

  “We live a ways out of town for a caterer to come,” Nicholas said. “We could get one of those people with a portable barbecue thing.”

  “Sounds good.” Lorne looked relieved.

  “It’s a bit casual,” Nicholas warned.

  “Casual is what we’re going for, right, babe?” Lorne said, with a wink in Trista’s direction.

  She smiled back, nodding. “Yeah. But I still want it nice.”

  “It will be nice,” Lorne said. “Nice and easy.” He glanced from Cara to Nicholas. “So what else do we need to talk about?”

  “The ceremony?” Cara asked.

  “We’re meeting with the minister on Tuesday.”

  “Sound system?” Nicholas put in.

  “My brother has one. From his band days.”

  Lorne seemed to have an answer for everything, Cara thought, but his remarks were so glib and offhand. As if he were simply going through the motions of planning this wedding so he could get on to other things. “And photographer?”

  “That’s why I wanted to go riding,” Lorne said. “So we could find a place to take pictures. I don’t want the usual studio stuff.”

  “But you’d have to bring the photographer out there, too,” Cara said, puzzled at his insistence that they go out on horses to find the perfect spot, when there were some equally lovely places here on the ranch.

  “That’s fine,” Trista added, seemingly okay with the plan. “The photographer suggested it himself when he found out where we were having the wedding.”

  “So you’re good with all of this?” Cara asked.

  Trista nodded, but Cara could see faint lines of tension around her mouth.

  “Then I think we got everything we need,” Cara said, sensing her friend needed a break. “I guess you guys can go look for your picture spot.”

  “I want you to come, too,” Trista said to Cara.

  “Why?” Cara hadn’t figured on that.

  “I need your advice. Maid of honor, remember?” Trista tossed Cara a pleading look.

  Cara remembered another time she had gone riding with Nicholas. They had ridden up into the mountains and had a picnic overlooking a lake nestled in the valley. And had shared numerous kisses, which had more than made up for the slight fear she had felt while riding. She loved working with horses on the ground, not so much in the saddle.

  “I don’t think—”

  Trista cut of her protest. “Please come. Please?”

  Cara pushed down the memory of the kisses, avoiding looking at Nicholas for fear he would notice the flush in her cheeks.

  “Okay. I guess I can come,” she conceded, sensing Trista needed the emotional support.

  “Are you sure we got everything covered?” Nicholas asked.

  “We can talk a bit more on the ride if we need to,” Cara said.

  “Lorne and I will get the horses ready then,” Nicholas said, getting up from the table. “So you’re coming riding?” Nicholas glanced at Cara.

  She nodded, wondering if she would regret doing this.

  “That’s great. I’ll saddle up Two Bits,” he said, a smile teasing one corner of his mouth. “You’ll be okay on him.”

  “I hope so,” she said.

  “You can trust him.”

  She knew he was talking about the horse, yet sensed an underlying meaning that created a tiny frisson of expectation.

  “You coming, Chapman?” Lorne called out from the porch.

  “Trista and I will clean up,” Cara said, gathering up the mugs.

  Nicholas held her gaze a split second longer than necessary and then left.

  Trista was already filling the sink with water, staring out the window overlooking the yard. Cara could see Lorne and Nicholas walking toward the corral, Nicholas’s long strides easily catching up to Lorne. It looked as if he could be talking to Lorne and Cara hoped, for Trista’s sake, he was asking him about his offhand treatment of this wedding.

  Because the frown on Trista’s face ignited Cara’s concern.

  “Is everything okay?” Cara gently asked.

  Trista tugged her gaze away from the men and gave Cara a quick smile. “Yeah. Just feeling a bit confused.”

  “Over the wedding?”

  Trista turned off the taps and dropped the mugs into the soapy water. “A bit.”

  “And how about Lorne. How does he feel about it all?”

  “He’s just…well…he doesn’t like all this planning stuff.”

  “Does he like all this marrying stuff?” Cara slowly wiped a mug, wishing she knew how to proceed.

  “Of course he does. Lorne loves me.”

  Cara didn’t imagine the tone of indignation in Trista’s voice, but behind that she also heard a hint of fear.

  “I’m sure he does.” Cara fought her own urge to caution her friend. But she knew she had to talk to Nicholas later. Find out if he knew what was going on with Lorne.

  “And if you’re insinuating he’s only marrying me because I’m pregnant—”

  “No. I’m not.” Cara caught Trista by the shoulder, concerned by the sparkle of tears in Trista’s eyes. “I just…I just want to make sure everything is okay with you two.”

  Trista swiped her eyes and gave Cara a trembling smile. “This pregnancy is making me really weepy and emotional and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel overwhelmed.”

  “Let me take care of some of this,” Cara urged.

  Trista sniffed. “I can’t do that. You’ve got enough going on—”

  “Tell me what still needs to be done,” Cara urged. “I want to help.”

  Trista sighed. “The cake needs to be done. Mom’s sister was going to bake it, but she’s not feeling well and begged off. I loved your idea about the buckets of flowers, and the nursery is clearing out their stock this week but I don’t have time to go get the plants and take care of them. And I need to figure out if I want to put something on the tables.” Then she sniffed again. “I just feel like it’s all getting to be too big and too much.”

  Cara thought of her own busy schedule, but then looked at Trista’s face and made a quick decision. “Tell you what. Aunt Lori and I will take care of the cake. I’ll go to the nursery this week and pick up the plants.”

  “That’s too much—”

  “No. It isn’t. Things are getting a bit quieter at the clinic and I know Aunt Lori would love to help out.” Cara gave her friend a quick smile. “And if we get Uncle Alan to water the flowers every day he’ll have something to do, as well.”

  Trista looked down at the soap bubbles clinging to her hands. “That would be great.”

  Cara wiped the last mug and set it on the counter. “We’re done here, so let’s go outside and enjoy this beautiful day,” Cara said, hanging the dish towel on the bar of the oven, glancing around the tidy kitchen with the smallest flicker of envy. This place seemed more like a home in some ways than her own uncle and aunt’s place.

  By the time Cara and Trista joined the men, the horses were saddled and ready.

  The sun’s warmth surrounded them, the air held a soft breeze and as Cara looked up, a flock of sparrows swooped and played on the wind. A perfect day for a ride.

  “You should shoot those things,” Lorne was saying, looking up at the sparrows. “You’ve got tons of them.”

  “They don’t bother me, I don’t bother them.” Nicholas laughed.

  Lorne saw the girls and grinned. “Let’s get going,” Lorne said, looking and sounding a lot more cheerful than he had inside the house.

  He helped Trista into the saddle and as he adjusted her stirrups, he was laughing up at her and smiling as if everything were fine.

  And maybe it was, Cara thought.

  Nicholas stood holding Two Bits, another horse tied up to the fence behind him.

  “So you ready to go?” he asked, leading Two
Bits toward her.

  Cara looked at the huge chestnut with some trepidation. The one time she had gone riding with Nicholas, she had been on a much smaller horse, a mare named Blossom. Nicholas had ridden Two Bits and his horse had dwarfed Cara and her mount. But she’d felt quite at ease not being so far from the ground.

  “He’s a great horse. I trust him with my life,” Nicholas said by way of encouragement. “And, more important, I trust him with yours.”

  Thus assured she stretched up to grasp the pommel but couldn’t lift her leg high enough to reach the stirrup. Then before she could think of how to solve this, Nicholas had her foot in his hand, his other hand on her waist and he lifted her easily up.

  Cara fussed needlessly with the reins, hiding the twinge of pleasure his touch gave her.

  “Looks like Lorne and Trista are eager to be off,” Nicholas said, untying the other horse and swinging easily into the saddle.

  “Do they know where to go?” Cara asked, as they disappeared into the trees crowding the trail they were following.

  “Lorne knows the place.” Nicholas glanced her way, frowning. “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.” But as she chanced a look down, fine was replaced by a quiver of apprehension. Two Bits stood about sixteen hands high and the ground looked too far away.

  “He’s a good horse,” Nicholas assured her. “He’ll be fine.”

  “Fine is good. Let’s go then,” she said, trying to project calm into her voice.

  “Okay.” Nicholas clucked to his horse and turned its head. “Let’s go, Bud.”

  His horse gave a tiny jump, but then settled down and started a steady walk in the direction Trista and Lorne had gone.

  Two Bits obediently followed Bud, his movement causing her to sway lightly in the saddle. Cara tried not to grab the pommel and forced herself to keep from squeezing Two Bits with her legs.

  The saddle will keep you on, she reminded herself. Just relax. You’re not running a horse race.

  She took a few calming breaths. The warm summer air, the faint buzzing of insects and the regular footfalls of the horse’s hooves on the packed ground lulled her into a sense of security.

  She chanced a look ahead, watching Nicholas from behind.

  Nicholas glanced sideways at the fields they rode beside, a smile curving his lips.

  This is where he belongs, Cara thought, looking at him now silhouetted against the mountains. This is his natural setting.

  Pain twisted Cara’s heart.

  And where do you belong?

  Before she met Nicholas, the question had resonated through her life. Then, for those few, magical months with Nicholas she thought she had found her place. And now?

  Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

  The passage from the Bible leaped into her mind, as if to underline her resolve. She was expending too much energy wondering how to react to Nicholas and thinking of how to behave around him.

  They were outside on this beautiful day and were headed out into the hills. Just enjoy it. Don’t put extra burdens on it.

  Nicholas sat easily on his horse, his one hand on his thigh, the other loosely holding the reins. He had rolled his shirtsleeves up over his forearms, and as he rode, she could see his broad shoulders moving ever so slightly in response to the movement of the horse.

  He’s an extremely good-looking man, she thought with a touch of wistfulness.

  And he doesn’t belong to you anymore.

  Chapter Seven

  Cara and Nicholas reached the end of the field and turned on the trail where Trista and Lorne had gone moments before.

  The trail started climbing almost immediately, winding through the dusky coolness of towering spruce and pine trees. In the light-strewn openings between the foliage, Cara caught glimpses of hayfields below them. The swaths Nicholas had cut were green and lush, thanks to recent rains. She knew, from talking to other farmers and ranchers, that this year would be productive.

  “How much of this belongs to you and your father?” Cara asked, raising her voice so Nicholas could hear.

  Nicholas glanced back and pushed his cowboy hat farther up on his head. “What you see below you is ours up to the river. Beyond that is Olsen’s land.” He pointed with one gloved hand.

  Cara leaned to one side to see better, squinting a little until she saw the river.

  “That’s quite a lot of property.”

  “That’s the hay land. We have pasture farther up the trail and we lease a bunch of land, as well.”

  Cara easily heard the pride in his voice as her eyes followed the contours of the land.

  She knew, oh, how well she knew, how much this land meant to him. Hadn’t he chosen this over her?

  She tried to look at it through his eyes, to understand why she had been second choice.

  The land was beautiful, the setting almost postcard perfect.

  “Are your other cows up there?” she asked, thinking of the herd she saw close to the ranch.

  “The purebred herd is in the pasture by the barn and the commercial herd is farther up,” Nicholas explained. “I like to keep them separate as much as possible. And because I’m shipping heifers from the purebred herd, I wanted to keep them closer to the house so I could monitor their feed better.”

  “Did you buy this land or did it come with the ranch when your father took it over?”

  Nicholas stopped his horse and Two Bits kept going until the two horses were side by side.

  “My great-grandfather proved one quarter and bought a few more from the neighbors who were struggling. He started there, by the river, using a horse and his own manpower.” Nicholas pointed to a small peninsula of land. “My grandfather expanded on that using an old tractor and my dad used a bulldozer to clear it all the way up to the fence line you see.”

  She nodded, still looking at the land. For the first time since Nicholas chose the ranch over her, she got a tiny inkling of why this meant so much to him.

  “My great-great-grandfather started with a small herd of cattle and a horse-drawn plow for the grain land, and it’s been growing since. My grandfather thought he’d try exotics and dabbled in Charolais and Simmental, but my dad and I went back to Angus. And now I’m breaking into purebreds. And we’ve always grown grain and canola on the river-bottom lands.”

  Cara didn’t imagine the note of pride in his voice as he spoke of the ranch and she envied him the history. Her grandmother was also a single mom and had moved around as much as her mother had. She had passed away before Cara moved in with Uncle Alan and Aunt Lori. She didn’t know who her father was—her mother had told her repeatedly that he died working overseas and that was all she needed to know.

  All she had was her uncle and aunt, a few faded photographs and some stories that Uncle Alan would dredge up if pressed. Nicholas had a ranch steeped in history and generations of ancestors who were buried in a local churchyard.

  “With each generation the ranch got a bit bigger,” Nicholas said. “And with each generation it got easier to find a way to feed more cows and farm more land without hiring a whole bunch of people.”

  “And now it’s just you and your dad.”

  “Yup.”

  She knew his history but because of Nicholas’s work and because of his father’s antagonism toward her, she’d caught only glimpses of the rest of the ranch. They had started dating in September, then Nicholas went away to work for a couple of months. When he came back, winter had arrived.

  During his time off, their dates consisted of going out to movies, going out for coffee, some ski trips to Banff and visits with Uncle Alan and Aunt Lori. When Nicholas left again for work and returned with a broken leg, Cara thought he would quit.

  But when the leg healed and spring came, he got a call for another job and took it.

  As a result, she had never seen the ranch like this.

  Would things have been different between them if she’d seen this earlier?


  She pushed the question aside. What was done was done. Nicholas’s choices were still difficult for her. That much hadn’t changed.

  “Did any of your ancestors ever think about moving somewhere else?” She knew the answer to this one, too, but she liked hearing him talk about his ranch. When he did, his voice softened and he became the Nicholas she remembered, the Nicholas she had fallen in love with.

  “I’ve told you about Lily, my dad’s sister who lives in Idaho,” Nicholas said. “And my great-grandfather had a brother who moved back to England, but the rest of us stayed here.”

  “You told me once about your grandfather building a house somewhere else.”

  Nicholas stopped his horse and pointed through the trees to a small building tucked in some trees and edged with lilac bushes.

  “Can you see that?” he asked. “That’s it, right there.”

  “So why did he abandon it?” She knew his great-grandfather had moved the main residence to where it stood now, overlooking the valley.

  “Too close to the river,” he said. “They got drowned out once and my great-grandmother insisted on the move. She was a feisty one. I never knew her, but my grandfather and dad had a bunch of stories to tell about her.”

  “Like what?” Cara asked, intrigued by this unexpected chapter in the Chapman family history.

  “I guess a porcupine was hanging around the yard one day chewing on some apple trees she had just planted. So she was going to get out the gun and kill it, but when she saw it looking at her, she couldn’t. So she shot over its head to chase it away. Had to do that for the rest of the summer. She went through a lot of bullets chasing it away. Claimed she missed seeing it when it didn’t show up one day.” He smiled at the memory and Cara’s heart hitched at the sight. Nicholas looked more relaxed than he had since she had come to Cochrane. The ranch agreed with him. It was where he belonged.

  She shifted in the saddle, forcing her attention back to the land below them. “It’s beautiful. I can see why it means so much to you.”