by Nora Roberts
All right, guilt was going to work. A little. “I’m sorry about that. But it doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
He took a slow drag on his cigarette, then crushed it out carefully as he rose. “It has everything to do with you.” He studied her, and his eyes were suddenly cool and detached and uncomfortably lawyerlike. “If you don’t understand that, you’ve got too much of Jack Mercy in you. I’ll be going.” He touched the brim of his hat in farewell and walked out.
For a long time, Tess stood where she was, staring up at the portrait of the man who’d been her father.
M ILES AWAY ON THREE ROCKS LAND, JESSE COOKE whistled between his teeth as he changed the points and plugs in an old Ford pickup. He was feeling fine, pumped up from the conversation over breakfast about the animal mutilations at Mercy. What was more rewarding, what was so damn perfect, was that Lily had come across that headless cat.
He only wished he could have seen it.
But Legs Monroe had it straight from Wood Book over at Mercy that the little city woman with the black eye had screamed her head off.
Oh, that was sweet.
Jesse whistled a country tune as his clever fingers made adjustments. He’d always hated country music, the whiny women sobbing over their men, dickless men moaning over their women. But he was adjusting. Every damn one of his bunkhouse mates was a fan, and it was all anyone listened to. He could handle it. In fact, he was beginning to think Montana was the place for him.
It was a land for real men, he’d decided. Men who knew how to handle themselves and keep their women in line. After he’d taught Lily a proper lesson, they’d settle down here. She was going to be rich.
The thought of that had him chuckling and tapping his foot to his own tune. Imagine dumb-ass Lily inheriting a third of one of the top ranches in the state. Worth a fucking fortune, too. All it was going to take was a year.
Jesse pulled his head out from under the hood and looked around. The mountains, the land, the sky—they were all hard. Hard and strong, like him. So this was his place, and Lily was going to learn that her place was with him. Divorce didn’t mean shit in Jesse Cooke’s book. The woman belonged to him, and if he had to use his fists to remind her of that from time to time, well, that was his right.
All he had to do was be patient. That was the hard part, he admitted, wiping a greasy hand over his cheek. If she found out he was close, she’d run. He couldn’t afford to let her run until the year was up.
That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep his eye on her, no, indeedy. He was going to keep watch over his useless stick of a wife.
It was easy enough to make friends with a couple of the asshole hands over at Mercy. Drink a few beers, play some cards, and pump them for information. He could wander over to the neighboring ranch at will, as long as he didn’t let Lily see him.
And the day Jesse Cooke, ex-Marine, let a woman outwit him was the day they’d eat cherry Popsicles in hell.
Ducking under the hood again, he got back to work. And reviewed his plans for his next visit to Mercy.
SEVEN
S ARAH MCKINNON FLIPPED FLAPJACKS ON THE GRIDDLE and enjoyed the fact that her older son was sitting at her kitchen table drinking her coffee. More often than not these days, he brewed his own in his quarters over the garage.
She missed him.
Fact was, she missed having both of her boys underfoot, squabbling and picking on each other. God knew there’d been times she’d thought they would set her crazy, that she would never have a moment’s peace again.
Now that they were grown and she had that peace, she found herself yearning for the noise, the work, the tempers.
She’d wanted more children. With all her heart she’d wanted a little girl to fuss over in her houseful of men. But she and Stu had never had any luck making a third baby. She’d comforted herself that they’d made two healthy, beautiful boys, and that was that.
Now she had a daughter-in-law she loved, and a granddaughter to dote on. She would have more grandchildren, too. If she could ever push Ben toward the right woman.
The boy was damn particular, she mused, slanting a look toward him as he frowned over the morning paper. He wasn’t still single at thirty for lack of opportunity. Lord knew there’d been women in and out of his life—and his bed too, but she didn’t care to dwell on that.
But he’d never stumbled over a woman, and Sarah supposed it was just as well. You had to stumble before you could fall, and falling in love was a serious business. When a man chose carefully, he usually chose well.
But, damn it, she wanted those grandchildren.
With a plate heaped with flapjacks in her hand, she paused a moment by the kitchen window. Dawn had broken through the eastern sky, and she watched it bloom, going rosy with light and low-lying clouds.
In the bunkhouse the men would be up and at their own breakfast. Within moments, she would hear her husband’s feet hit the floor above her head. She’d always risen before him, hoarding these first cozy moments to herself in the core of the house. Then he would come down, all fresh-shaven and smelling of soap, his hair damp. He’d give her a big morning kiss, pat her bottom, and slurp up that first cup of coffee as if his life depended on it.
She loved him for his predictability.
And she loved the land for its lack of it.
She loved her son, this man who had somehow come from her, for his combination of both.
As she set the plate on the table, she ran her hand over the thick mop of Ben’s hair. Remembered, with odd and sudden clarity, his first paid-for haircut, at the age of seven.
How proud he’d been. And how foolishly she’d wept at those gilded curls hitting the barbershop floor.
“What’s on your mind, fella?”
“Hmm?” He set the paper aside. Reading at the table was allowed, until the food was on it. “Nothing much, beautiful. What’s on yours?”
She sat, cradled her coffee cup. “I know you, Benjamin McKinnon. The gears are turning in there.”
“Ranch business mostly.” To buy time, he started on his breakfast. The flapjacks were so light they should have been floating an inch off his plate, and the bacon was crisp enough to crack. “Nobody cooks like my ma,” he said, and grinned at her.
“Nobody eats like my Ben.” She settled back and waited.
He said nothing for a while, enjoying the food, the smells, the light glowing through the window as morning spread. Enjoying her. She was as dependable as the sunrise, he thought. Sarah McKinnon, with her pretty green eyes and her shiny strawberry blond hair. She had the milky-white Irish complexion that defied the sun. There were lines on it, he mused, but they were so soft, so natural, you didn’t even see them. Instead you saw that smile, warm and confident.
She was a slip of a woman, slim in her jeans and plaid shirt. But he knew the strength in her. Not just the physical, though she had lifted him off his feet with her hand on his rump many a time, could ride tirelessly on horse or tractor through the bitter cold or the merciless heat, and could heft a fifty-pound bag of feed on her shoulder like a woman lifting a cooing baby.
But what was inside, where it counted most, was iron. She never faltered. In all his life, he’d never seen her turn her back on a challenge, or a friend.
If he couldn’t find a woman as strong, as kind, as generous, he’d live his life a bachelor.
The idea of that would have rocked Sarah’s heart.
“I’ve been thinking about Willa Mercy.”
Sarah’s brows lifted, perked by a kernel of hope. “Oh? Have you?”
“Not that way, Ma.” Though he had. He very much had. “She’s in a bad spot.”
The dancing light in her eyes faded. “I’m sorry for that. She’s a good girl, doesn’t deserve this heartache. I’ve been thinking of riding over, paying a call. But I know how busy she is just now.” Sarah’s lips curved. “And I’m dying of curiosity about the others. I didn’t get much time to look them over at the funeral.”
> “I think Will would appreciate a visit.” Biding his time, he forked up more flapjacks. “We’ve got things under control around here. I think I could spare a little extra time over at Mercy. Not that Will would like it, but having an extra man around there, now and again, might smooth things out some.”
“If you wouldn’t poke at her so much, you’d get along better.”
“Maybe.” He lifted a shoulder. “The fact is, I don’t know how much of the managing she did before the old man died. You have to figure she can handle it, but with Mercy dead, they’re a man short. I haven’t heard anything about her hiring another hand.”
“There was some speculation she’d hire someone out of the university as foreman.” That was how gossip ran from ranch to ranch—speculations over the phone wires. “A nice young man with experience in animal husbandry. Not that Ham doesn’t know his business, but he’s getting on in years.”
“She won’t do it. She’s got too much to prove, and too much fondness for Ham. I can give her a hand,” he continued. “Not that she thinks much of my college degree. I thought I’d ride over later this morning, feel her out.”
“I think that’s very kind of you, Ben.”
“I’m not doing it to be kind.” He grinned over the rim of his cup, and it was the same wicked devil of a grin he’d had since childhood. “It’ll give me the chance to poke at her again.”
She chuckled and rose to fetch the coffeepot. She’d heard her husband’s feet hit the floor. “Well, that’ll help keep her mind off her troubles.”
S HE COULD HAVE USED A DISTRACTION. WOOD’S BOYS HAD snuck into the bull pasture to play matador with their mother’s red Christmas apron. They’d escaped with their lives, and only one sprained ankle between them. She’d rescued them herself, hauling a dazed and clammy-faced Pete over the fence and leaving an angry, fire-eyed bull behind.
The ensuing lecture she’d delivered to two hanging heads had given her no pleasure—nor had the bone-shaking fear that the incident had shot through her. She ended up playing accessory after the fact by taking the red apron and agreeing to launder it herself before Nell could notice it was missing.
This earned her undying and desperate admiration from the culprits. And, Willa hoped, instilled enough fear in them to keep them from shouting “Toro” at a snorting black Angus bull again anytime in the near future.
One of the tractors had thrown a rod, and she’d had to ship Billy off to town for parts. Elk had broken through a portion of the northwest fence again, and now there were cattle to round up.
Bess was down with a cold, Tess had broken most of the eggs for the third time this week, and Lily the mouse was in temporary charge of the kitchen.
To top it all off, her men were bickering.
“A man plays poker and has a run of luck, I say he sticks around to give the rest of the table a chance to even the score.” Pickles adjusted the annoyed calf’s horns in the squeeze shoot and popped them off to the tune of Tammy Wynette backed up by insulted moos.
“You can’t afford to lose,” Jim shot back, “you don’t play.”
“A man’s got a right to get back his own.”
“And a man’s got a right to turn in when he wants. Ain’t that right, Will?”
She medicated the cow, plunging the needle in swiftly and efficiently. It was cooler today, autumn coming in strong. But the jacket she’d started out with was now slung over a rail as she sweated through her shirt. “I’m not getting in the middle of your petty feuds.”
Pickles’s frown carved vertical lines between his brows and set his moustache quivering. “Between Jim and that cardsharp over to Three Rocks, they took me for two hundred.”
“J C’s not a cardsharp.” More to spite Pickles than anything else, Jim flew to his new friend’s defense. “He just played better than you. You couldn’t bluff a blind man on a galloping horse. And you’re just pissed off because he fixed Ham’s rig and had it purring like a kitten.”
Because it was true, down to the ground, Pickles’s chin jutted like a lance. “I don’t need some a-hole from over to Three Rocks coming ’round and fixing our rigs and taking my money at cards. I’da fixed the rig when I had the chance.”
“You’ve been saying that for a week.”
“I’da got to it.” Grinding his teeth, Pickles got to his feet. “I don’t need somebody coming around taking over. I don’t need somebody changing the way things are. I’ve been working this ranch for eighteen years come next May. I don’t need no Johnny-come-lately a-holes telling me what’s what.”
“Who’re you calling an a-hole?” Eyes hot, Jim sprang to his feet, pushed his face into Pickles’s. “You want to take me on, old man? Come ahead.”
“That’s enough.” Even as fists raised, white-knuckled, Willa stepped between them. “I said enough.” Using both hands she shoved the men apart. One sweeping glance dared either one to take a punch. “As far as I can see, there are two assholes right here who don’t have the sense to keep their minds on their work when they’re hip-deep in it.”
“I can do my work.” Pickles’s jaw clenched as he glared down at her. “I don’t need him, or you, to tell me what has to be done.”
“That’s fine, then. And I don’t need you to start a pissing contest when we’re hip-deep in balls and horns. You go cool off. And when you’ve cooled off, you ride out and check on the fence crew.”
“Ham doesn’t need anybody checking on him, and I’ve got work right here.”
Willa stepped closer, bumped her temper against his. “I said go cool off. Then get your butt in your rig and check fences. You do it, and do it now, or you pack up your gear and pick up your last paycheck.”
His color rose high, as much in anger as at the humiliation of being ordered around by a woman half his age. “You think you can fire me?”
“I know I can, and so do you.” She jerked her head toward the gate. “Now get moving. You’re in my way here.”
They stared at each other for ten humming seconds. Then he stepped aside, spat on the ground, and stalked toward the gate. Beside Willa, Jim blew out a breath between his teeth.
“You don’t want to lose him, Will. He’s ornery, Christ knows, but he’s a hell of a cowboy.”
“He’s not going anywhere.” If she had been alone, she could have pressed a hand against her jittery stomach. Instead, she crouched and prepared the next hypo. “Once he clears the mad out, he’ll be all right. He didn’t mean to swipe at you, Jim. He likes you as well as he likes anybody.”
Grinning now, Jim hauled a cow toward the squeeze shoot. “That ain’t saying much.”
“I guess not.” She smiled herself. “Prickly old bastard. How much you win off him last night?”
“About seventy. Got my eye on some pretty snakeskin boots.”
“You’re such a dude, Brewster.”
“I like to look sharp for the ladies.” He winked at her and the routine fell back into place. “Maybe you’ll come dancing with me sometime, Will.”
It was an old joke, and cleared more tension. Willa Mercy didn’t dance. “And maybe you’ll lose the seventy back to him tonight.” She wiped sweat off her forehead and kept her voice causal. “This guy from Three Rocks?”
“J C. He’s okay.”
“Did he have any news from over there?”
“Not much.” As Jim worked he recalled that J C had been more interested in the workings of Mercy. “He said how John Conner’s girl broke things off, and John got himself shit-faced drunk and passed out in the toilet.”
It was easier now, and again routine. Old gossip, familiar names. “Sissy breaks up with Conner every other week, and he always gets shit-faced.”
“Just so you know things are as usual.”
They grinned at each other, two people hunkered down in blood and manure with the cool breeze blowing the stink everywhere. “Twenty says he’ll buy her a bauble and she’ll take him back by Monday.”
“No bet. I ain’t no greenhorn.”
“I know.” She ignored the nagging ache in her heart as she squinted her eyes. The line of dust coming down the road meant Billy was back. She thought she’d go hunt down Pickles, soothe his ruffled feathers, and give him the tractor to repair. “Go on and get your dinner, Jim.”
“My favorite words.”
She took her own meal with her, climbing into the cab of her Land Rover and eating the roast beef sandwich one-handed as she negotiated the dirt road, crisscrossed with tire tracks and hoofprints. The path cut through pastures, toward hillocks, then rose, and gave her a breathless view of autumn color.
It was passing its peak, she mused, going soft as it faded and leaves were stripped from the trees. But she could hear a meadowlark’s high, insistent call as she left the window down to the play of the wind. It should have soothed her, that familiar music. She wanted it to soothe her, and she couldn’t understand why it didn’t.
With a careful eye she studied the fencing she passed, satisfied that it was, for now, in good repair. Cattle grazed placidly, a cow occasionally raised its head to stare with marked disinterest at the passing rig and driver.
To the west the sky was growing dark and bad-tempered, casting shadow and eerie light on the peaks. She imagined there’d be snow in the mountains and rain here in the valley before evening. God knew they could use the rain, she thought, but she had little hope it would be the slow, serene soaker that the land would absorb. Likely as not, it would come in hard, brittle drops that would batter the crops and bounce like bullets off the ground.
Already she yearned to hear it pound on the roof like angry fists, to be alone with that violent sound and her own thoughts for a few hours. And to look out her window, she thought, at a wall of mean rain that masked everything and everyone.