FOR SOME REASON, Cord couldn’t get Brooke Hollister out of his mind. He lay awake staring at the ceiling for hours, unable to sleep. Not until he woke up the next morning did he realize what the problem was, and when it finally occurred to him, he rolled out of bed with a curse and went into the kitchen to start the coffeemaker.
His mother might have been just like her. Like Brooke Hollister. And the thought gave him chills.
Not that he’d ever known his mother. She’d borne him in secret and turned him over to his father shortly thereafter. She’d been unmarried, like Brooke. She’d had a profession, like Brooke. Only, his mother’s profession was something he didn’t like to think about much.
The coffee slid down his throat, thick and hot. It made him feel better, or at least more alert. He was preparing to ride out to check on the cattle in the far pasture, when the phone rang. He yanked the receiver from its cradle, annoyed with the interruption. “Yeah?”
“Bucky?”
“You got him.” Not too many people called him Bucky anymore; that name was part of his past.
“Bucky, I thought I’d better check with you. We’ve got a kid who needs a home real quick. You any closer to opening that place of yours?”
He recognized the person now. It was Ted Petty, the judge who had given him a chance all those years ago.
“Ted, good to hear your voice. I’ve been working as hard as I can, but Jornada Ranch is still weeks away from licensing.”
“That’s too bad. This kid could be a winner, but he’s in a bad home situation and I’m worried about him.”
Cord sat down, his forehead furrowing in concern. “Is he in physical danger?”
A pause. “I don’t believe so, but there are other problems in his home. Brandon has an alcoholic father, a mother who keeps running off with various men, and his sister was recently sent to juvenile detention. So far he’s okay, but he’d benefit from the kind of place you’re going to have—I’m sure of it.”
Cord passed a hand over his eyes and blew out a long breath. “I hate to hear of these things, Ted. Believe me, I’d do anything I could for Brandon. But the ranch isn’t ready yet.”
“Listen, Bucky, you call me if you need any help with the licensing. I can rush things through the proper authorities.”
“I appreciate that. Look, how about if I let you know when I have an opening date?”
“Fine. That would be good.”
“Ted, I’m sorry I can’t help you yet.”
“It’s okay, Bucky.”
But was it really okay? Cord knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay as long as that boy had to live with a father who drank too much and a mother who was worse than none.
After they hung up, Cord thought about the kid this judge wanted to help. He pictured him as a scrawny boy with straggly hair and eyes that reflected a whole lot of painful memories. How did he know what this boy would look like? Because he himself had been like that once. He had been that kid.
He tossed the dregs of his coffee into the sink. Long ago, he had learned that the best thing to make him forget present wrongs and old wounds was work. Fortunately, that was what his life was about these days.
He clapped his hat on his head and strode out into the stable, angry at the world right now and not afraid to show it.
THAT MORNING, Brooke was up early. She threw on some clothes and let herself out into the stable. It was very early, and no one was around. The dry air was cool and crisp; she felt invigorated by it. She went to say hello to Stilts, wishing that she had an apple or a carrot or a sugar cube to give him.
At the sound of Cord’s door closing, she turned quickly. He had stepped out of his apartment and was walking toward her through the slanting rays of the early-morning sun.
“Good morning, Cord,” she said. “Do you keep any sugar cubes around? I’d like to give one to Stilts. It might make us friends.”
“In the tack room,” he said. He walked past her and yanked a saddle down from its perch. Without saying another word, he strode into Tabasco’s stall and led him out to be saddled.
His curtness surprised her. She thought they had parted friends last night. “Mr. Congeniality,” she muttered, but Cord heard her.
“What’s that?” he asked sharply.
“Nothing,” she said. She let herself into the tack room, found the sugar and put a couple of extra cubes in her jacket pocket before she went back to Stilts’s stall.
After she’d fed Stilts the sugar, she walked to where Cord was saddling his horse. His eyebrows were set in a surly line and the corners of his mouth turned downward.
“Cord, do you want to check me out on Stilts, or should I ask someone else to do it?” she called to him as he swung into the saddle. She thought she saw him wince when he mounted, as though as he was in pain.
“Sal will arrive here in a few minutes. Talk to him.” His abrupt tone irked her, and just for the heck of it, she stepped out into the sunlight and squinted up at him, shading her eyes with one hand. In the eucalyptus trees a bird sang cheerfully, the mellow notes a stunning counterpoint to Cord’s expression.
“Have I done something to offend you?” she asked.
He stared down at her for a long moment. “Nope,” he said.
“I mean, you’ve been awfully cross with me. I know I was a lot of trouble last night. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to bother you again.”
His expression hardened. “Look, everything isn’t about you.” Tabasco danced toward the corral gate, and Cord reined him in.
Hurt, Brooke stepped back from the dust cloud the horse’s hooves had stirred up. “I don’t think everything is about me,” she said. She wished she hadn’t pursued this conversation.
“I guess I didn’t mean that the way it sounded,” he said. “I’ve got a lot of stuff on my mind right now, that’s all.”
“Well, so do I,” she retorted.
“Right. You do. Look, this isn’t a good time to talk about all this. I’ve got to go, Brooke. There’s work to do.”
She bit down hard on her lower lip in order not to say something she’d be sorry for later. She watched him as he rode out of the corral, lost in a blur of dust before he reached the curving road leading to the working part of the ranch.
That was what she got for thinking they were friends, she thought to herself as she went back to Stilts’s stall. She could use a good friend right now, but clearly Cord McCall didn’t intend to be one.
“So maybe you and I will be buddies, huh, fella?” she said as she stroked the horse’s soft nose. He nudged her shoulder, undoubtedly hoping for another sugar lump. At least, Brooke thought as she dug one out of her shirt pocket, Stilts wasn’t as grumpy as the redoubtable Cord McCall.
CORD TRIED HIS BEST not to worry about Brandon. It wasn’t easy, though. The kid was on his mind as Dusty, his second-in-command, briefed him on ranch business for the day, and he couldn’t stop thinking about the boy as he rode over to the shed where they kept the pregnant cows. Brandon was still on his mind when he dismounted and looked inside.
There was one cow who seemed edgy, and Cord identified her as one of those that could go a little crazy giving birth. She lowered her head and snorted at him, backing away as he approached.
Cord eyed the recalcitrant heifer with a baleful eye, almost as baleful as the look she was giving him. Cows, he reflected as he hauled the calf-puller out of the storage room, were the stupidest animals on the face of the earth. This one was even stupider than that.
March was the beginning of calving season, and the pregnant cows had to be checked every two hours around the clock. Justine had a considerable investment in this herd, and she didn’t want to lose any mothers or babies. Of course, he assigned the hands to keep tabs on the pregnant cows, but on certain occasions, whoever was delegated the task had other things to do. Cord, being the working ranch’s manager, was where the buck stopped.
The heifer made a distrustful hoomphing sound, and a couple of the cows that had calved las
t night stopped chewing their cud and turned their heads to take in the situation. Then they turned away again, apparently satisfied that whatever was going on, it was no threat to them or their babies.
Cord wished he’d called in one of the other guys for help. This heifer was now swaying frantically, in labor and furious with someone, anyone. It was her first calf, and she obviously didn’t know what to expect or whom to blame.
“Don’t glare at me,” Cord told her. “I didn’t get you into this.”
The heifer bawled at him, nervously eyeing the coiled-up lasso in his right hand.
“Easy, Daisy,” he said. Cord had no idea whether this cow’s name was Daisy or not. More than likely she didn’t have a name. He called all female cattle Daisy; it made things simpler.
He studied her for a moment, deciding that he might as well get this over with. He sent the rope zinging through the air, and Daisy shied away as the loop fell neatly over her head. She rolled her eyes wildly and continued to bawl. A scuffle ensued, and he almost couldn’t hold her. The exercise played havoc with his back, and he felt something wrench. That wasn’t good, but he shut the pain out of his mind. That was all he could do sometimes: shut the pain out.
Finally, he managed to snub the line around a post, and when he wasn’t sure that one would hold her, he lapped it around a second post. Meanwhile, Daisy fought.
“I want to help you,” he told her between gasps for air. “We’re gonna get this over with, and you’re gonna be fine.”
Daisy gave no sign that she believed this. Instead, she pulled so hard against the rope that her eyes bulged and her tongue stuck out like a sausage. Finally, without warning, the cow collapsed onto the hay.
He played out the rope, and her eyes and tongue returned to normal. No sooner had he regained his breath than she leaped up and he had to tighten the rope again. This wasn’t cruel, in his mind. Letting Daisy give birth all alone with no one to help her in case of trouble, at the mercy of coyotes, which preyed on newborn calves, would be crueler. Finally, Daisy fell down upon the hay again, he loosened the rope and she gave him a look that could be interpreted as one of gratefulness. He smoothed her face for a minute, and she was as docile as could be.
He sometimes grew impatient with the length of the cows’ labor, but on the other hand, gestation for a cow was nine months, just as for a human. He figured he could wait around as long as it took for the calves to be born.
Daisy set about giving birth as energetically as he’d ever seen, and when the calf finally appeared, he was able to pull it in no time. It was a beautiful little animal, black like its mother. He wiped mucus from its nose and dipped the navel in iodine, and when one of the guys looked in to see how things were going, he gave him the job of making sure the calf began to nurse within the next couple of hours.
Because of his back injury, tending to Daisy had made him ache all over. He kind of liked caring for the pregnant cows and appreciated the miracle of birth, but he’d never told anyone. It might make him seem like a sissy.
When he was finished at the calving shed, he rode over to the barn and went inside to find out if the group he’d sent up to Dragon Canyon had returned from rounding up stray cows. As he strode into the barn, a random thought hit him: Brooke was going to give birth to that baby she was carrying, and no wonder she was apprehensive about the pregnancy. He had never before related what cows went through to the ordeal that women experienced, but wasn’t it the same thing? Pain? Misery?
For a woman to give birth to a baby that she wanted might be one thing, but if she didn’t want the baby, it must be a lot harder.
“Hey, boss, you know anything about that load of hay that was supposed to be delivered?”
He was forced to turn his attention to management matters, but he couldn’t get the thought of Brooke’s pregnancy out of his mind for the rest of the afternoon. No wonder she was upset. She had a lot to deal with and, from the looks of it, no one to help her through it.
Still, birth was a miracle. Maybe she needed someone to remind her of that.
He’d been a little hard on her this morning. He hadn’t meant to be. It was as he told her, he had a lot on his mind and didn’t feel like commiserating or relating or whatever.
Anyway, he was going on vacation next week. Keeping his distance from Brooke Hollister was probably a good idea. Ending whatever was between them before it had begun was an even better one.
LATER THAT DAY, Brooke treated herself to a self-guided tour of Rancho Encantado, courtesy of the guidebook provided at check-in. The grove of date palms, planted in the 1920s as a commercial venture that hadn’t panned out, sheltered a number of pools that gave the Seven Springs area its name.
Beyond the palm grove was the building that housed the recreation and dining halls, and up the hill in the distance, she could make out the old borax mine, closed now. She could barely spot the tamarisk trees that screened the hacienda, the original homesteaders’ house, from the road.
She scrawled a reminder to ask Justine if she was welcome to poke around in some of the old outbuildings and hurried to lunch, where she joined a group at a table in the dining hall. From across the room, Joanna Traywick, the woman she’d disturbed when she’d walked into her suite in Desert Rose, gave her a friendly nod. No hard feelings, apparently. Maybe Brooke would chat with her later and tell her that she’d ended up in the apartment and liked it.
Most people in the dining hall seemed to be eating rabbit food. Brooke was no exception; she ordered a salad, thinking about the inevitable weight gain that went along with pregnancy. Leo didn’t approve of overweight people. He—But why did she care what Leo thought? He was out of her life.
The women in the group were Dolores, the talkative woman from the check-in line at registration, and her friend Tracey, who had informed Brooke about the true nature of the Sonoco establishment known as Miss Kitti-Kat’s Teahouse. The other two at the table were Linda and Kate, sisters from Texas, who said they vacationed at Rancho Encantado every year.
“And do you find it to be true that you not only get a makeover here, you get a life?” Brooke asked.
Kate, who was eating something resembling a slice of lentil loaf, spoke up. “Last year, Linda got a makeover and a life for a while. One of the cowboys visited her in Dallas.”
“He was there to visit his brother, and we only went out three times,” Linda explained quickly.
“Still, it was more than you expected when you met him at the square dance,” Kate reminded her.
“Yes, well, he married someone else six months later.” Linda sighed and prodded her meager salad as though this might produce something more substantial—shrimp, or perhaps a bit of chicken.
“Is that common? Romance between the ranch hands and the guests?” The wedding of Hank and Erica was still on Brooke’s mind. They’d looked so happy, and she’d overheard in the ladies’ room that Erica had been a guest at the ranch; Hank worked here.
“The hands are encouraged to give the guests a good time, but I don’t think they’re supposed to follow them home. Too bad, because I’ve seen one I’d like to lure back to Texas,” said Linda.
“Who’s that?” asked Dolores.
“The mysterious Cord McCall,” Linda said with an air of intrigue.
“Oh, don’t bother,” Kate told her. “He shows up at the dances because he has to, and we’ve never noticed him taking an interest in anyone.”
Dolores and Tracey exchanged glances. “We’ve heard all sorts of gossip about him,” Dolores said.
“Oh, great,” said Linda with a groan. “Maybe I’d better set my sights on someone else.”
“You might want to take a look at the guy called Stumpy,” said Tracey. “He’s almost as good-looking, and he doesn’t have a scar.”
“I like Cord McCall’s scar,” said Linda defensively. “It lends character to his face.”
Brooke, who had followed the exchange with much interest, dug into her salad without enthusiasm. She hadn�
�t expected an instant rundown on Cord McCall. She’d put him out of her mind after their brusque encounter that morning.
Yet now, even though she didn’t want to, she was thinking about him again, and the idea of his paying visits to a brothel made her distinctly uncomfortable.
It’s not like that, said a voice in her ear, and she quickly turned to Kate to see if she had spoken the words. But Kate had her mouth full of lettuce and celery and was crunching audibly. For a moment, Brooke saw the chubby figure of a priest shaking his forefinger at her in admonition, but when she blinked it went away. What she had thought was the priest was only one of the waitstaff hurrying across the room with a pitcher of water.
“Are you quite all right?” someone asked her, and Brooke glanced up to see Joanna Traywick standing beside her. She stared as if the woman were an apparition, as well.
“Why—um, I think so,” she said unsteadily.
“I was passing by, and you looked so pale. I’m a medical doctor. If you need any help, let me know.”
“You’re very kind,” Brooke said.
Joanna touched her shoulder. “Call anytime.”
Does pregnancy make you see things that aren’t there? Does it make you hear things that no one said? She would have liked to ask those questions, but Joanna had already headed for the door, and the others were now discussing their makeovers.
Brooke turned her attention back to the conversation, but she discovered that she wasn’t nearly as interested in the colors of nail enamel the manicurist offered as she was in other aspects of Rancho Encantado. Such as visions of priests that came and went. And a cowboy named Cord McCall.
AFTER LUNCH, Brooke stopped by the Registration building for a hurried conference with Justine, who gave her unlimited access to all records, outbuildings and personnel at the ranch.
“No problem,” Justine said. “Go anywhere. Look at anything.” She went to a file cabinet and pulled out a folder full of newspaper clippings. “I don’t know what’s in here,” she said. “It’s a jumble of things someone collected. I found the folder when I took over the ranch. You might come across something of interest in it. If you’ll stop by the Big House tomorrow morning, I’ll let you borrow some books that might help, too.”
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