Cowboy Tough

by Joanne Kennedy

  “Thought you were going to help with the horses,” he said. He knew Dora was delicate, knew she was mourning her mother, but it still ticked him off to see the way she hurt her aunt. Cat was a good person—maybe too good. It seemed like the two of them didn’t have much family left. So why was Dora trying to alienate the one relative she had left?

  “I was. You should have had Charles whistle,” Dora said. “You didn’t have to send her to get me.”

  “I didn’t send her. She was worried about you.” He watched Cat scramble up onto Rembrandt’s back, then mounted his own horse. “And Charles was busy. He was the one who ended up helping with the horses.”

  The trip back passed mostly in silence. The older folks were obviously tired, but Mack knew they also felt the strain between Cat and her niece. Even the cool coming of twilight and its accompanying breeze couldn’t dissipate the tension between them.

  He reined his horse off to the side of the trail. “Charles, you want to take the lead?”

  Without a word, Charles edged out of the line and trotted his horse up to the front. Mack watched the slouching figures of the riders pass, hoping nobody fell asleep and tipped off their horse. Cat was last in line, and he fell into step beside her.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She tightened her lips and shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Yeah, right. Talk to me, Cat.”

  “We don’t have time for that. We have to take care of them.” She nodded toward the line ahead. “We can’t just leave Charles to lead them.”

  “I’m sure Charles is capable of following the trail back to the barn,” he said. “And the horses know it’s dinnertime. You couldn’t get them to go anywhere else. So tell me what happened. Maybe I can help.”

  She sighed. “I’m not sure anybody can help. She did a painting—a really good one, maybe a great one.”

  “That’s good, right?” He gave her an encouraging smile. Maybe he’d misread the situation. If Dora had done a painting, she might be coming out of her shell. Maybe Cat was just tired.

  “It was terrific. Beyond terrific. But when I said so she tore it up.” Cat stared straight ahead, blinking fast. “She said she doesn’t care about art. That she didn’t want to be like her mother.”

  “She tore it up?”

  Cat nodded.

  He thought back to the night before—what they’d found in the fire. “She tore up that photo, too.”

  Cat nodded again. “I know.”

  “Does Dora look like her mother?”

  “Some,” she said. “Not a lot. They have the same eyes, the same chin. But Dora’s paler, and her mother had darker hair. Not brunette, but more brown.”

  Mack rode a while in silence, wondering if he dared offer advice. He wanted to help, but Alex had always gotten mad when he tried to solve her problems. She always said he should just listen.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Cat said.

  Okay, that was asking for help.

  “Is she eating?”

  “What?”

  “Is she eating? Because tearing up the picture, tearing up the painting—it seems like self-hate. Viv—my daughter—she had some problems with an eating disorder. That’s why we took her to counseling. The shrink said she didn’t like the girl she saw in the mirror.”

  Cat looked dubious. “I haven’t noticed her not eating. But I haven’t been paying that much attention to it. I’ll watch. Thanks.”

  Maybe Cat was different from Alex. Maybe she didn’t mind taking a man’s advice. “On the art thing, maybe you shouldn’t push her,” he said. “Maybe she really doesn’t want to do it.”

  “But she’s meant to.” Cat straightened in the saddle and adjusted her hands. She was turning into a halfway decent rider. “You didn’t see it, Mack. It was amazing.” She patted her pocket as if to assure herself something precious was stored there. “She’s gifted. She has to use that talent.”

  Mack knew he was treading on dangerous ground. Cat cared deeply about the art thing. It was tied to herself, to her sister. He should bite his tongue and stay out of it. But despite her sour attitude, he liked Dora. He could see a spark of sunshine in that pretty face clouded by grief.

  “You can’t make her do it,” he said as gently as he could.

  “No. But I have to encourage her,” she said. “If you have that kind of talent—and I’m talking a lot of talent, genius-level talent—you have to use it.”

  He cleared his throat, finding it suddenly swollen. He hated talking about himself, or his family problems. But he wanted to help.

  “I wanted Viv to do sports,” he said.

  She nodded almost dismissively. “You’re a man.”

  “It wasn’t just that.” He stared down at the saddle horn, remembering his daughter at ten, at twelve. “She was made for it—all long legs and high energy. But to her, athletics just emphasized the things she thought were flaws. I saw that cute adolescent awkwardness—like a colt with legs too long for its body, you know? But she felt clumsy.”

  “I guess that’s normal for teenagers.”

  “Up to a point. But she blamed herself for every point the other team scored, every game her team lost. It fed that eating disorder, made her miserable. I couldn’t make her into what I thought she should be.”

  He looked ahead, watching the riders bunch, then string out around a turn. “Everything got better once I quit insisting she go out for sports. She started eating again. We could talk. It took a while, but we’re better now. She’s better.” He paused. “I’m better.”

  Cat bit her lip. “Creative people—people like Dora—get eaten up inside if they don’t follow the urge.”

  He looked over at her. “And you know this because…”

  “Because I feel it myself.” She continued quickly, as if she was worried he’d get the wrong idea. “I’m not saying I’m a genius. Not by any means.”

  “But you’re an artist. You’re following the urge, right?”

  “Not really. Not the way I want to.” She snorted, a surprisingly unladylike noise. “My job is in advertising. Mostly graphic design. That’s part of the reason I’m here—because this lets me do more painting. More real art.”

  The wind picked up as they emerged from the woods, sending dry leaves skittering down the path in front of the horses’ hooves. A slip of white paper danced up from behind them, fluttering between the horses’ legs. Mack’s horse shied and pranced a little before he tightened the reins. Rembrandt, true to form, took the surprise right in stride.

  The paper caught on a clump of sagebrush just ahead. As they passed, Mack let Cat ride ahead, then slipped from the saddle and grabbed the paper.

  He looked down at it, trying to assess what he saw. It was only a part of a painting, but there was no mistaking the subject. Dora had been up on Battleship Rock, looking down at the Little Fork River. The painting caught the dark mystery of the pines, the ribbon of bright water winding through them like a silvered path.

  Even he knew, from just this scrap of the painting, that she was good.

  He caught up to Cat and handed it to her, pulling his horse to a stop at an angle so the mule would stop too. She set the scrap of paper on her thigh and smoothed it out, then took another from her pocket and matched them up. Her gaze flicked up to his and he nodded.

  “It’s good,” he said. “I see what you mean. But…”

  “But you’re right,” she finished. “She has to decide for herself.”

  She slid the two scraps of paper carefully into her shirt pocket. “It’s just that I feel like I’m losing her and Edie too. Losing my sister all over again.” She patted the pocket as if putting a blessing on the torn scraps of paper, and turned haunted eyes to meet his. “I know it’s selfish. But I just can’t let them go.”

  Chapter 20

  Cat trailed behind M
ack, chewing the bitter remnants of her ambitions for Dora like a tough bite of jerky. Maybe she was transferring her own ambitions to Dora, trying to live vicariously through her niece. But she didn’t think so. She really did see a creative spirit in Dora, and the girl’s resistance to it couldn’t be healthy.

  I’m nothing like my mother. I don’t care if things are pretty or not. I don’t care how things look.

  Maybe Mack was right, and Dora’s resistance had something to do with self-hate. That would be easy to believe if Edie had been the kind of mother who dressed up her daughter and tried to make her into a mini-me. But Edie had always celebrated her daughter’s uniqueness and encouraged her to be herself. She’d never been critical of Dora’s appearance. She’d barely been critical of her behavior, even though Dora had been rude and defiant at times even when her mother was alive.

  And she hadn’t pushed her when it came to art. If anything, she’d done the opposite, encouraging Dora to open herself to new experiences, new hobbies.

  So why would Dora be so hostile to her mother now? Sure, she was mad at her mom for dying, but her reaction seemed so extreme.

  As the ranch house came into view, welcoming lights winked on and streamed from the windows. She and Mack had fallen far behind the group, and he gave his horse a poke with his heels, sat up straight, and made a quick kissing sound. His mount broke into a smooth trot, and Rembrandt pricked up his ears.

  Copying Mack, she urged Rembrandt to keep up and enjoyed, briefly, the feeling of control as the mule obeyed her commands. But they caught up to the others quickly and the sight of Dora, riding ramrod straight in the saddle, looking neither left nor right, reminded her that the mule was about the only thing she could control.

  ***

  Night fell fast on the high plains. Cat felt like she’d barely had time to put her gear away before Maddie clanged the old-fashioned triangle that called the hands to dinner at the wagon.

  It was a creaky, crippled group that answered the call. Though they were clearly uncomfortable, Emma and Abby lowered themselves onto their respective benches with smothered grunts and groans. Ed opted to hold onto his dignity by pretending he preferred to stand until Charles, holding out the lizard-bedecked hand like a peace offering, helped the older man lower himself down without too much strain on his knees.

  Only Dora seemed unaffected by the day’s exertions. She watched the fire with the same absorption the average teen girl would have given to the latest installment of the Twilight saga. The only thing that diverted her attention was Mack. When he laughed, which he did often, her gaze flicked from the fire to his face and echoed his good humor. Right now, it was just nice to see the girl having a good time. Though Cat hadn’t known Mack long, and her own interactions with him had been decidedly inappropriate for a couple of virtual strangers, she felt surprisingly willing to trust him around Dora. He was a father, after all. And his easy humor was charming the kid out of her funk.

  Trevor Maines had apparently recovered from his encounter with Mack and was dominating the conversation with tales of his career in fashion photography.

  “Oh, Rebecca Romijn is lovely.” He flailed a careless hand in the air as if supermodels were a species he dealt with every day. “Difficult, of course, but aren’t they all?”

  Emma murmured pitying assent, as if she too had dealt with famous folks on a regular basis. Charles, on the other hand, was watching Trevor from under lowered brows, his eyes flat and lifeless, yet somehow threatening. Clearly Trevor had hit some kind of nerve with the big guy. Cat didn’t know if the tattooed man had seen the portrait. She hoped not.

  “But Heidi Klum—now she’s a sweetheart.”

  Cat glanced at Mack. He looked like he was in pain, and his fingers were curled as if he was just waiting for an opportunity to strangle the other man. Dora caught Cat’s eye, then flashed her gaze toward Trevor and rolled her eyes. Cat echoed the gesture and felt a warm flush beyond what the fire provided. There. They’d shared a moment. Maybe things were going to work out.

  They had to. Dora needed some sort of female role model now that her mother was gone. Ross might eventually remarry, and hopefully he’d choose someone Dora could love too. But though she wasn’t a big fan of her brother-in-law, Cat had to admit he had loved his wife deeply. So the only adult woman in Dora’s life for the foreseeable future was Cat.

  She thought of the burned photo they’d found the night before and worry clenched her heart like a fist. She needed to ask about it. Find out why she’d done that.

  She drained her Coors—Coors for courage—and got up to toss it into the box Maddie had set out for recyclables. Casually, she strolled over and joined Mack and Dora.

  “He’s obsessed with models, isn’t he?” She nodded toward Trevor.

  “Sure is. It’s ridiculous. I mean, what’s their big talent? Making dumb faces and showing off.” Dora tossed her hair, tilted her chin, and gave Mack the heavy-lidded, tight-lipped moue of a supermodel.

  Cat laughed. “I think you’ve got it. Maybe that’s your future career.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Cat clenched her fists in her lap, telling herself to tread carefully. This was the perfect opportunity to get to the bottom of the burned photo incident, but if she said the wrong thing she had no doubt Dora would shut her down.

  “Don’t you like the way you look?” she asked. She flashed a look at Mack, hoping he’d catch on to what she was doing.

  Dora tilted her chin up and glared at Cat. “Why? Don’t you?”

  Well, that didn’t take long. The storm clouds were lowering already.

  “Of course I like the way you look.”

  “Oh, yeah, because I look like my mom. So you can keep on thinking I’m just like her, right?”

  “No.” Cat was trying to be understanding, but she couldn’t help bristling a little at the accusation. “That’s not it at all. For one thing, I don’t think you look like your mother.”

  “You don’t?” Dora sounded hurt now, and Cat thought maybe she should just give up. She couldn’t do anything right when it came to her niece.

  But this mattered too much. If Dora was disturbed enough to burn a photo of herself, who knew how deep her scars might be?

  “I think you’re a lot like your mother in the ways that matter,” Cat said.

  “But you don’t like the way I look.”

  Cat braced herself against the drama. Soon they’d be hollering “Did too!” and “Did not!” at each other and stamping their feet like kids in a schoolyard.

  “I’m just asking because girls your age sometimes don’t have good self-esteem,” she said patiently. “I just want to make sure you know you’re beautiful.”

  Dora shrugged and stared moodily into the fire. In this light, she really was beautiful—or she would be if she’d smile.

  “Whatever,” she mumbled.

  Cat edged closer. “I found your picture in the fire the other night,” she said. “I was wondering why you’d burn a picture of yourself.”

  “My picture?” Dora gave her an incredulous stare.

  “The one you burned,” Mack said.

  Cat shot him a grateful smile. She needed all the help she could get.

  Dora glanced from Mack to Cat and back again. “I didn’t burn anything. You guys are crazy.” She hopped to her feet and practically raced around the ring to where Ed was sitting. “Hey, Mr. Delaney. Do you need help getting up?”

  The old man grinned. “You trying to get rid of me?”

  “No.” Dora shrugged. “I just thought, well, these benches are kind of low.”

  Ed accepted her help. It seemed like there were two Doras—the sweet, helpful child and the troubled teen.

  “So tell me, Mr. Boyd,” Ed said. “What time are we heading out in the morning?”

  “I thought we’d do breakfast at seven.” Mac
k glanced at his mother, who nodded approvingly. “I’ll load up while you folks eat, and we’ll hit the trail around eight.”

  “Need some help?”

  Ed had been an eager assistant on every trip, loading easels and art supplies under Mack’s supervision. At first Cat figured he was just trying to escape the nagging of his wife and daughter, but he seemed to revel in the male bonding. And Mack had been touchingly solicitous of the older man’s limitations, finding light tasks Ed could perform without too much strain.

  “I could help you load up,” Ed said.

  “Sure.” Mack grinned. “I could use a sidekick.”

  Cat smiled to herself. Ed was probably more trouble than help, but Mack wouldn’t say so. He really was a nice guy. If things were different…

  But they weren’t.

  No stargazing, she reminded herself. And no shirt-cleaning either. Emma asked her a question about mixing colors and she refocused on her students, explaining the virtues of sap green versus Hooker’s green.

  Trevor shoved himself to his feet and stretched with a great deal of chest-thrusting and shoulder-rolling, as if he had muscles to show off. He let out a long, theatrical yawn, interrupting Cat and Emma’s conversation.

  “Well,” he said. “I’m about ready to turn in.”

  “Carry this for me?” Maddie handed him a teetering stack of tin plates. Judging from the way he lusted for the lead role in every conversation, Trevor was hardly the sidekick type—but like everyone else, he seemed unable to resist Maddie’s friendly but firm leadership.

  “Me too.” Emma rose from her bench with gallant assistance from Ed and turned to Dora. “Good night, sweetie. And good night to you, young man.”

  “See you tomorrow, Aunt Cat.” Dora’s lips tightened into a scheming smile. “I guess you and Mack need to finish up out here. Take your time, okay?” She grinned. “I feel like I’m going to sleep soundly. Really soundly. No getting up in the middle of the night for me—no matter what sounds I hear outside.”

  “Oh, me too,” Emma said. “I sleep like the dead. So does Abby.”