by Linda Berry
“Sure.” He didn’t want to be alone with her.
“Ever been married?” She laughed. “No, of course not. You’re too young. How old are you?”
“Twenty.”
“That all? You look twenty-five. It’s the way you carry yourself. Real confident.”
“I guess.”
Sarah rambled all the way up to the bluff, sharing personal details about the ranch hands that he didn’t want to know, and then detouring back to her sister. “You notice how Cody treated me, Alex? Cold, huh?”
He shrugged.
“That’s how she’s been since moving back home four months ago. We used to be close. Now she’s angry all the time. Claws out in seconds. Granted, she went through hell, but she doesn’t have to take it out on me.”
Justin listened with detachment. Gossip made him uneasy, and he didn’t want to be Sarah’s confidante. He planned on leaving this ranch soon enough, collecting nothing for his trouble but a few paychecks.
At the top of the cliff, the view was breathtaking. Untamed earth stretching out for hundreds of miles, spotted with lakes. Spires of pine trees cleaving the blue dome of sky, white tailed hawks lazily riding the thermals. The quiet peace of the place filled him. He made an obligatory comment about the view but Sarah was looking blindly into space, oblivious. With a brooding expression, she revved the engine and headed back down the hill, picking up her harangue where she left off. “Cody ruined the peace around here, that’s for sure. Dad was thrilled to have her back, though. Even though I do all the bookkeeping and administration. I keep this place running like clockwork, but Cody is his pet. Always has been. Next best thing to the son he always wanted.” Sarah wore a deep scowl as she parked the car in the driveway. “We were tomboys for Dad. She and I gave it up when we discovered boys in high school, but now she’s back, looking and acting like a man.”
Justin wondered if Cody was gay. He hoped so. He didn’t need two pretty girls distracting him. Sarah was going to be a handful as it was. “That why he named her Cody?”
“Hell, he didn’t name her Cody. Her name’s Katie. I don’t know what her game is. She doesn’t talk to me. I’m alone in the office all day. She’s out here with the guys.” Her mind seemed to come into sudden focus, and she gave him her full attention, features softening, her knee pressing against his. “Come have coffee with me sometime, Alex.”
“Sure thing,” he said, finding her abrupt personality changes unsettling. He climbed out, feeling safer with the Cruiser between them.
“Well, I better get you working or Cody will take my head off later. Can you drive a tractor?”
“I can drive anything with wheels.”
She looked at him with appreciation. “Follow me.”
Sarah started him out on a tractor mounted with a harrow. He went to work churning manure clods into the fields. Best fertilizer in the world. It’d push up a fertile crop of new grass. For the next few hours, he was content to work alone, breathing in the smell of upturned earth, listening to the gentle sounds of livestock braying, watching the sun travel across the sky. This was his Holy Grail. He knew his soul was tied to land and animals. It’s how he intended to live his life until the day he dropped dead out of the saddle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
By twilight, Justin had loaded the flatbed truck half a dozen times and dropped hay bales in pastures and paddocks across the property. The sky had clouded over and an icy wind came out of the west, cutting through his flannel shirt. Chilled and feeling soreness in muscles not used in a while, he drove back to the barn. By the time the dinner bell echoed across the fields, he was starving, having worked all day without eating. Sarah had told him to enter the dining room through the back door.
On the porch, he slapped dust and hay from his clothes and wiped dirt from the soles of his boots. His hands were numb and he felt light-headed with hunger. Footsteps came up behind him. He turned and saw Cody, her face flushed from the cold. A tangle of straw-colored hair fell loose around her shoulders. Up close, he saw that her slate-blue eyes were fringed with dark lashes, and her full mouth looked soft and sensitive. Somehow, she looked familiar. “I think we’ve met somewhere before.”
“We never met,” she said, eyeing him critically. “But we went to the same high school. I was two years ahead of you.” Her face tightened, a faint movement of muscles around her jaw.
“Sorry, don’t recall …”
“That’s not surprising. You hung out with jocks. A pretty conceited bunch.”
Her words stung him, catching him off guard. True, he had hung out with his track mates, but they were mostly shy, not conceited.
“Back then you went by your real name, Justin Powell. You like starting off a new job lying about who you are? You got something to hide, Justin?” Looking at him as though he had just climbed out of a manhole, Cody brushed past him, opened the door, and made her way across the floor of a spacious dining room to the head of a long oak table.
He entered the room feeling disoriented, accused of some nebulous crime. The four dogs rushed past him and settled themselves by the big stone hearth where a bright fire roared. Sarah and three rugged cowhands were already seated at the table passing around steaming platters of food. The aroma made his mouth water. Sarah flashed a big smile, the bangles jingling on her wrists as she patted the chair next to her own. Justin moved into her cinnamon scented sphere, grateful for a friendly face, even Sarah’s.
“Hi, I’m Justin,” he said hurriedly to the men before Sarah could introduce him as Alex. “Justin Powell.” He glanced at Cody, saw the merest flicker of expression in her eyes.
Sarah shot him a questioning look. “Justin …” she said, going with it. “This is Roth, Billy, and Nelson, our hard-working ranch hands.”
The three tough-looking, sun-baked men staring back at him looked as though they lived in the saddle. They greeted Justin in a friendly manner.
“Sarah says Hank pulled you off the rodeo circuit,” Roth said out of the side of his mouth, chewing. Middle-aged with thinning gray hair. Wind burned into his deeply creased face and neck, chapped lips.
“Yep,” Justin said.
“Bull rider?” Roth’s knife sawed smoothly through a thick juicy steak.
“Yep.” Justin took a bowl of mashed potatoes from Sarah and heaped a good portion on his plate, followed by a grilled steak and roasted asparagus. He wasted no time cutting up the beef, stabbing a piece, and getting it into his mouth.
“I rodeoed when I was your age.” Without putting down his flatware, Roth pushed back his left sleeve, revealing long raised scars on his muscled forearm. “Compound fracture. Here and my femur. Got tossed off a maniac bronc. We were miles from a hospital. Nearly bled to death bouncing around in the back of a pickup.”
“My uncle rode bulls, too,” Billy piped up with a subtle Mexican accent. He was around Justin’s age, lean with chiseled features, eyes black as obsidian, a sheath of shaggy hair hanging low on his brow. “Ain’t a bone in his body ain’t been broke. Now he’s held together with nuts and bolts. Walks like Robocop.”
All three men laughed, watching Justin’s face, waiting for a reaction.
He kept eating.
“My cousin got throwed a coupla years back,” Nelson said, tearing off half a crescent roll with his teeth. Thirtyish, stocky build, bull neck, oversized ears poking out of curly red hair, thick red mustache that bobbed when he spoke. “Bull stomped on his head. Squished it like a grape. Now he works for the Salvation Army.”
Justin couldn’t help but smile at their antics. “Gotta be tough to make it in rodeo. Cowboys compete all the time with injuries that sideline athletes in other sports.”
“We’ve sure seen it all,” Roth said. “Busted bones, concussions, torn rotator cuffs, smashed faces …”
“That’s enough with the war stories,” Sarah interrupted. “I’m eating here.”
“Doesn’t say much for the intelligence of those cowboys,” Cody said dryly. “Considering ro
deo doesn’t provide health insurance.”
“Can’t let fear stop you from competing,” Justin said.
“Didn’t stop you from getting on Cyclone.” She looked at him with an expression he interpreted as disapproval.
“Justin rode Cyclone in Arizona,” Sarah explained to the men, who were looking bewildered. “For eight seconds.”
There was a hushed silence around the table. Eyes widened.
“Fuck that. Cyclone’s never been ridden,” Roth said. “Who’s bullshitting who?”
“Watch your mouth,” Cody said.
“It’s not bullshit,” Sarah said, ignoring her sister. “Tell ’em, Justin.”
All eyes turned to Justin. He shrugged. “Dumb luck is all.”
“Nothing to do with luck,” Nelson said, tone indignant. “You ruined our bull’s perfect record. He’s thrown thirty riders right outta the chute.”
Roth and Billy were looking at Justin with new appreciation.
“All riders want the same thing,” Roth said, holding a fork laden with mashed potatoes midway to his mouth. “To ride the rankest bulls in the world. The badder the bull, the higher the rider scores, and the better his paycheck. If the rider gets tossed, the bull scores, and the better our paycheck. Around here, we root for the bull.”
“I respect that,” Justin said, spreading butter on a crescent roll.
“Our bulls are stars. They know their job,” Cody said in a heated tone, gesturing with her knife. “When that chute opens, they’re gonna drop a cowboy in the dirt in seconds flat. You’re the enemy in our camp.”
“Cut him some slack,” Sarah said. She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and smiled sweetly at Justin.
“I know the reputation of your bulls,” Justin said. “World class. Apache’s buck-off rate is eighty-four percent. Dumps a rider in three seconds, or less.”
“Crash-Course has thrown seventy cowboys out of a hundred rides,” Roth said with unmistakable pride.
“Crash-Course is a terror for such a compact bull,” Justin said. “He’s younger and more aggressive.”
“Cyclone has now been ridden once, by you, out of thirty-one tries,” Nelson said, wiping his mustache with his napkin, still indignant.
“A damn good percentage, if he hangs on to it,” Justin said, taking a bite of the warm, buttery roll.
Roth cleared his throat, studied Justin with narrowed eyes. “I don’t get why you’re here. You gotta be good. Why leave rodeo?”
“Taking a break.” Justin kept chewing, satisfying the rumbling in his stomach.
“I saw you on the tractor this afternoon, and later dropping feed,” Roth said. “You know what you’re doing. You here to do ranch work?”
Justin shrugged. “Whatever needs to be done, I guess. I grew up working spreads around here. Blue Moon, Dickerson, Big T cattle …”
“Know ’em all,” Roth said. “Good people.”
Good people unless you were a ward of the state, Justin thought with bitterness. Then it was slave labor and poor living conditions. He didn’t like being the center of attention. “This Sterling beef we’re eating?”
“Damn straight,” Nelson said. “Won’t taste nothing finer.”
“Most tender steak I’ve ever had.” Justin jabbed another bite into his mouth.
“Grass fed, free range,” Sarah said. “No antibiotics. No hormones.”
“Just meat the way God made it,” Roth said.
Everyone was quiet for a moment, forks and knifes clicking on plates. The fire crackled in the hearth, burning low and sending long flickering shadows up the walls and ceiling. The dogs had rolled over on their sides and were soaking up heat. Roth placed another log on the flames and stoked the embers with a poker, shooting a constellation of sparks up the chimney.
“Wonder where Hank and Bear are,” Nelson said. “Bear never misses a meal.”
“Looking at bulls in Culver.” Cody poured coffee from a carafe into her cup.
“He called,” Sarah said. “They’re running late. Should be flying back in a couple hours.”
It occurred to Justin that the huge building he’d seen down in the flats was a hanger. Hank had a private plane and airstrip. Sweet.
“Where’s Justin bunking?” Roth asked, pushing his empty plate away. “It’s crowded in the bunkhouse, but we can make room.”
“No problem.” Justin assumed the biggest cottage he’d seen was the bunkhouse. No doubt, each hand had his own room but he had no desire to be forced into close quarters with strangers. “I’m used to sleeping in my truck.”
“That ain’t gonna happen,” Cody said. “Can’t have you whizzing on Dad’s daffodils in the middle of the night.”
The hands got some chuckles out of that.
“You can sleep here in one of the guest rooms for now.” Cody leaned back into the shadows, her eyes as gray as a wolf’s and just as unfriendly. “Sarah can get you settled.”
He nodded his thanks.
“Anyone for poker?” Roth asked. “You owe me, Cody.”
“Count me out.” Cradling her cup, she glanced at Justin and he felt a crackle of toughness coming out of her. She emptied her cup, pushed herself away from the table, and left the room.
“Not much of a talker, is she?” Justin asked.
“Used to be,” Nelson said. “Before she married Buddy Jack.”
“Jack the Ripper.” Sarah said the name as though the words burned her tongue. “Did you know him?”
“No. He graduated two years ahead of me.” But Justin knew of the Jack family—big ranch, big money, politically connected. Buddy, he recalled, had a badass reputation; flirted with everything that had ovaries, smashed up a brand new BMW sports car. His DUI got thrown out in court. Family clout, the rumor went. Cody ended up with him?
“Psycho bastard,” Sarah muttered, unaware of the sudden cool temperature at the table. No one caught Justin’s eyes. Clearly, the topic of Cody’s marriage made the hands uncomfortable.
“Nelson, Billy, poker?” Roth’s words cut through the taut silence.
“Hell no,” Billy said. “Last time, you took me for everything but my whitey tighties.”
“Me neither. I’m tired of being skinned. You never lose.” Nelson looked at Justin. “You’ve been warned. He don’t take prisoners.”
Roth looked at Justin.
Justin put up his hands. “I’ve been warned.”
“Well, if we ain’t doing poker, I’m done.” Roth stood up and stretched. The three hands left the table together with a loud scraping of chairs and boots scuffing the floor. Then the room fell silent except for the fire popping and hissing in the grate.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Sully parked his truck in Maggie’s driveway and sat for a moment, his mind jumping from the violent images of Eric’s death to the beautiful custom home nestled in the forested hills above Bend. Here it was easy to imagine Eric as he once had been: a carefree teenager in baggy shorts and sneakers rushing from the house with golf clubs or tennis racket. He could almost hear the wheels of Eric’s skateboard coursing down the driveway. Then he pictured Eric as he had known him, dressed in cammies and combat helmet, riding shotgun in an armored Humvee, a grin ever ready on his face. The sensation of Eric sitting next to him suddenly felt so real the hair rose on his forearms. The setting sun streaming through the windshield felt warm on his skin, as near a touch from a ghost as he could imagine. Sully fingered the St. Christopher medal hanging from his neck. Hope you’re at peace, lil’ Bro.
He grabbed the grocery bag and strode up to Maggie’s door, feeling Eric’s presence shadowing him. The wind was kicking up and cumulous clouds the size of schooners raced across the darkening sky. Snow melting from the eaves of the roof pattered a melodic rhythm on the saturated earth. He rang the bell, removed his hat.
Maggie opened the door, a chef apron tied around her waist and a smudge of flour whitening one cheek. The dimming sunlight caught her eyes just right and they sparkled like opal
s. He was taken by how pretty she looked.
“Hey, Sully,” she smiled. “Come on in.”
He matched her smile, not sure whether to give her a hug or a hand shake. He did neither. An awkward moment passed between them. He tapped the bag. “I brought dessert.”
“Great. Just about time to eat.” She turned and he followed, his eyes taking in her shapely figure. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt with her hair in a ponytail, she looked as lithe as a teenager.
“I’m trying something new,” she said as they entered the kitchen. “Hope you’re hungry.”
“I can always eat.”
Bowls, canisters, and measuring cups were strewn across the counters and a shapeless mound of dough was plunked on a cutting board. Something cooking in a pot on the stove smelled delicious. Suddenly he was starving. “I thought you didn’t cook.”
“This isn’t cooking, Sully,” she said. “It’s following a recipe. It’s not creative but I’m tired of frozen dinners.”
“Beef stew in Burgundy sauce,” he read from the open cookbook. “Fancy.”
“And buttermilk biscuits, I hope.” Blowing a loose wisp of hair from her face, she assaulted the dough on the board with the rolling pin. The gluey mixture stuck to both the roller and her fingers.
With amusement, Sully watched her struggle. “My mom always puts flour on the rolling pin first, and sprinkles some on the dough.” His attention was diverted to the stove, where the contents of the pot began to bubble over and hiss into the burner.
Maggie gasped. “Oh, my stew.”
She and Sully reached for the pot at the same time. Their hands met, shooting off a little spark between them. “Allow me,” he mused, lifting the lid with a potholder and turning down the flame. “Crisis over. Hmmm. Smells good.”
“Thanks. As you can see, I’m a bit of a terror in the kitchen.”
“The terrorist chef. Catchy. Maybe fodder for a new TV show. Let me help with those biscuits.” He rolled up his sleeves, washed and dried his hands, and held them up like a surgeon. “Step aside, Madam. Watch and learn.”