Single In The Saddle

by Vicki Lewis Thompson

  “You didn’t give it time.”

  “I don’t have any more time! My love life is a wreck, my career in Rio Verde is probably over, and I couldn’t even end the stupid drought!”

  Jasper put her suitcase in the back of the pickup next to her box of decorating materials. “So you ain’t gonna redecorate Agnes’s house and the others?”

  Daphne climbed into the cab of the truck. “I called all three of them this morning and explained that I’d be working out of San Antonio now, and that I had serious doubts about the value of feng shui. Agnes wants to keep me on, but the other two sounded as if they’d probably back out.”

  Jasper didn’t say anything more until they were headed down the ranch road toward the highway. That was probably just as well, because as they drove away, Daphne caught a glimpse of Big Clyde standing by the corral. He lifted his hat in a silent farewell that Daphne found so touching she had to swallow several times and blink back tears.

  “I think you should call those ladies again and tell’em feng shui works just fine,” Jasper said.

  “How can I do that? I have absolutely no proof that it does.”

  “Look out the window.”

  And that was the first time Daphne peeked out from behind her personal misery long enough to notice the dark clouds boiling up over the hills. They were coming in fast and hard, and they looked heavy and swollen with water.

  “How soon?” she asked.

  “The way they’re movin’, could be here in another hour. We’re going toward it, so we’ll hit it in less time than that.”

  “It could be coincidence, you know.”

  Jasper nodded. “Or your waterfall. And it seems to me you ended your own career by tellin’ those ladies you don’t believe in feng shui no more.”

  “That still leaves my love life, which is a total disaster.”

  Jasper sighed. “I knowed he was scared, but I didn’t know how scared. I’m plumb sorry about how that worked out, Daphne. All along I’ve been promisin’ you that things would get better, but now...well, I’m just not sure anymore.”

  His words ended any lingering hope she might have had regarding Stony. If even Jasper was giving up on him, then Stony must be really and truly lost to her. There was nothing more to say.

  She watched the glowering clouds and thought how perfectly they matched her mood. A streak of lightning connected two dark thunderheads, creating an ominously deep rumble. As they traveled toward the storm, the next lightning flash brought an even louder crack of thunder. Jasper stopped the truck long enough to secure a tarp over her belongings. Soon afterward, the first big drops hit the windshield, and the thunder became deafening as lightning struck all around them.

  “It’s a noisy one,” Jasper said. “Too bad you didn’t ask for a quiet rain, but well take whatever we can get.”

  “It is noisy,” Daphne agreed. “I—oh, my God, Jasper. We left Chi alone in the house! Did you close the front door?”

  “Didn’t think of it. Didn’t see the clouds until we got outside, and then I was mostly thinkin’ about you, not the dog.”

  “Turn around, Jasper. We have to go back.”

  “Stony’ll probably ride in and take care of her.”

  Daphne shook her head. “I’m not counting on him. Besides, we’re the only ones who know she’s in there and can just push through the screen door if she gets scared. And she will get scared. I haven’t had time to retrain her like I’d hoped. Turn around, Jasper.”

  “Okay, but Stony ain’t gonna like it if I don’t get you to San Antonio by dark.”

  “Too bad.”

  “You see, Stony, he gave me a direct order.” Jasper pulled over to the shoulder and waited for traffic to clear before making a sharp U-turn. The tires skidded on the slick pavement, but Jasper straightened the truck out and stepped on the gas.

  “Well, you can blame it all on me.”

  Jasper looked at her and grinned. “Nope. Not gonna do that. That boy oughta know better than to give me an order in the first place. I used t’change his danged diapers.”

  16

  ONTHETOPOF Lookout Hill, Stony sat on a rock and wrestled with his demons. For the first time in his life, he couldn’t see a way out. Whether he blamed it on Daphne, feng shui, Jasper or his own damn stupidity, he was in love with the woman. Desperately in love with her.

  And that was after only a few days of contact. How bad would it be after five years, ten years? By that time she’d make the sun rise and the moon glow. He couldn’t imagine becoming that dependent on a living thing. Living things died.

  So he was better off to let her go and try to forget all about her. Eventually he wouldn’t remember the way her eyes crinkled up when she laughed, or the pattern of freckles across her cute little nose, or the shape of her mouth, or the joyful way she cried out when he made love to her.

  The hell he wouldn’t.

  Cursing under his breath, he stood and paced back and forth, wearing a path in the dry grass. Having Daphne by his side would mean facing every day with the knowledge she could be taken away from him. He wouldn’t be able to stand that. Yet not having her meant facing every day alone, haunted by her smile, her voice, the memory of her touch. And that would be hell.

  He wanted to blame all this on Jasper and the men, but he couldn’t. A grown man had the power to make his own decisions, no matter what others threw in his path. He could have refused Daphne that first night, but he’d needed her so. He could have ignored Jasper and sent her away the next day. Somehow he could have scraped together enough money that it wouldn’t have seemed a completely heartless thing to do. He’d told himself that he’d asked her to stay out of guilt, but that wasn’t true. He’d asked because he’d needed her, even more than he’d needed her the night before.

  Loving her that first night had put a hole in the dam, a hole that had widened with every hour, every day they’d spent together. Now his emotions were in full flood. Despair closed over him. He had no idea what to do to save himself from complete destruction. It seemed to him that either path led to ruin.

  Sometime during his endless pacing he paused long enough to notice the clouds on the horizon. He stared at them in disbelief. Surely her waterfall hadn’t ended the drought. Feng shui was just a stupid superstition. And yet...just yesterday he’d noticed that beef prices were rebounding. He’d put it down to coincidence. This morning he’d finally faced the fact that he was in love with a woman, an event he’d never expected to happen in his life.

  A chill traveled up his spine.

  Then he saw the rooster tail of dust from Jasper’s truck as the foreman drove Daphne away from the ranch. Feng shui or no feng shui, she was gone. If this stuff was supposed to be so powerful, something would have kept her from leaving, but there she went, down the highway and out of his life.

  He stared at the truck until he couldn’t see it anymore. The wind picked up, making his damp cheeks sting. There was something he should remember, he thought, but he didn’t seem to have the power to move, much less think of what he should do next. He just stood there staring at the spot where the truck had gone over the rise and disappeared.

  Lightning zigzagged between the dark storm clouds, and when he closed his eyes the imprint of the jagged flash remained. That was how his memories of Daphne would be, he thought. All he’d have to do was close his eyes and he’d see her. His cry of frustration mingled with the rumble of thunder, and in that moment he knew what he should remember. The dog. Thunder would scare the dog.

  Sunshine wasn’t trained well enough to ground-tie, so he’d looped the reins around a low branch of a nearby tree. Hurrying back to the horse, he quickly untied the reins and started to vault into the saddle. In the middle of his vault he wondered if he’d just made a really dumb move considering how green this horse was. As he landed on his rear in the dirt and Sunshine galloped away, he knew for sure.

  Sunshine would run back to the pasture gate they’d come through on their way up here, so Stony
wasn’t afraid of losing him, but now he was on foot, and it was a long walk. He wasn’t sure he could beat the storm home, and if the dog wasn’t locked up, she’d spook at the first crack of thunder. He glanced over at the advancing clouds and headed out.

  DAPHNE GRIPPED THE DOOR handle as Jasper pushed the truck as fast as he dared on the slippery road. She prayed that they could outrun the storm and get back to the ranch before the thunder became loud enough to frighten Chi. Her prayers went unanswered. By the time they turned down the dirt road, the storm was crashing all around them and rain fell in sheets that quickly turned the road to mud.

  “Stony’s most likely at the house with her,” Jasper said.

  “I hope so.” Daphne had no desire to see Stony again, but if it meant Chi had someone to comfort her, Daphne would suffer through another encounter.

  “You’re gonna hafta stay another night, y’know. It makes no sense to turn right around and head back for San Antonio in this gully-washer.”

  Daphne had figured that out, too, but she couldn’t imagine sleeping another night under the same roof as Stony. “Maybe you can have him sleep down at the bunkhouse with y’all,” she said.

  “Might not be safe. I reckon the boys are ready to strangle him.”

  “Well, he’s not safe with me, either.”

  He glanced at her, a gleam in his eye. “Gonna use some of your feng shui moves on him? The boys was hopin’ you would. Said it would serve him right.”

  “Jasper, I have a confession to make. I don’t know any moves. There’s nothing about feng shui that involves self-defense. I let you and the boys keep thinking that because everybody seemed to enjoy the idea. I’m just a decorator.”

  “Now, that’s where you’re barkin’ up the wrong tree. You ain’t just anythin’. You’re the finest lady I’ve had the privilege to know since... well, since Stony’s mama was alive.”

  Daphne’s throat tightened with grief. She’d miss Jasper. She’d miss them all, when it came to that, except for Stony. She couldn’t describe the loss of Stony with such a simple word. “Thanks, Jasper. That’s a wonderful compli—” She forgot whatever it was she’d meant to say as they drove around to the front of the ranch house. “Oh, no.”

  The wind whistled across the front porch, catching the screen door and slamming it back on its hinges. Inside, the house was still and dark. Stony wasn’t home.

  STONY CURSED HIS BOOTS as he ran. They weren’t made for cross-country running, and that was a fact. He was soaked through from the driving rain, and a bolt of lightning had split a tree not thirty feet from him. The impact had thrown him to the ground and raised every hair on his body to full alert, but he was okay.

  He hoped to God that Jasper was driving carefully and would get Daphne to San Antonio without skidding into a ditch or worse. He topped a hill where he could look down on the ranch house. Sure enough, there was Sunshine standing at the pasture gate, waiting for someone to show up and take him to the barn. Stony quickly scanned the area to see if the dog was anywhere around. But dammit to hell, the screen door was flapping in the wind.

  The dog was gone. Stony knew it as certainly as he knew Daphne was gone. The house stood empty and dead, all the life sucked right out of it. Once the ranch had been all he wanted—land was solid and dependable, land would never fail him. But it couldn’t love him.

  With a groan of despair, he started down the hill. She’d named the dog Chi. It was a word meaning the life force, she’d said. He had to find the dog. If he lost Chi, how could he ever hope to keep Daphne?

  Then he heard a truck on the road. It sounded like Jasper’s truck, but that couldn’t be right, unless.... He didn’t even form the thought, as if thinking such a thing would jinx it.

  The truck stopped in front of the house. Stony was concentrating so hard on the passenger door that when it opened he stumbled on the uneven ground and almost fell. She’d come back to him! He wanted to call out to her, but she’d never hear him over the storm.

  He reached Sunshine, and the gelding was so soaked and miserable he didn’t even shy when Stony grabbed the reins and opened the gate. He led the horse through and closed the gate, forcing himself to do all that needed to be done, despite the fact that all he wanted was to grab Daphne and never let go. She’d come back to him.

  She and Jasper hurried into the house. As he approached the house, leading Sunshine, they came out again.

  Daphne spied him and started to run, with Jasper fast on her heels. “Where’s Chi?” she called.

  So she hadn’t come back because of him, he thought grimly. She’d come back because she was worried about the dog. Well, so was he. And they’d find her. And then...he’d find the courage to say what had to be said, no matter how much it terrified him to lay his heart on the line.

  “I don’t know where she is,” he said as he drew nearer. “I started back to check on her and Sunshine threw me.”

  “Are you okay?” Seeming to ignore the rain pelting down on her, she glanced over him as if checking for injuries.

  His throat tightened. And he’d tried to throw away her love, her caring, her life-giving presence, out of fear. His voice was husky with regret. “I’m better now that you’re here.”

  “Well, I’ll be danged,” Jasper said. “Maybe this-here horse knocked some sense into you.”

  Daphne met his gaze, confusion in her dark eyes. “Stony, I—”

  “Let’s find Chi.”

  “I’ll take Sunshine to the barn and get the boys to help look for the dog,” Jasper said, sounding almost cheerful despite the stream of water cascading from the crease in his hat brim.

  “Thanks.” Stony handed him the reins. “I’ll cover the east pasture and over to the creek. You divide up the rest among yourselves according to who has four-wheel drive. We’ll meet back here in thirty minutes. Then if necessary we’ll head out again.”

  “I take it you don’t want to use horses,” Jasper said.

  “Not with the lightning. But we’ll find her.” He glanced at Daphne. “I’d like you to come with me.”

  She still looked very confused. “Okay.”

  RAIN DRUMMED ON THE ROOF of the cab. Daphne held on to the dashboard as Stony drove through mud holes and along paths that could barely be called roads. Every so often, he’d stop and they’d both get out, slipping in the mud, and call for Chi. As the minutes wore on, Daphne’s fears increased. The ranch was huge, and they had no idea which way Chi had run when the thunder started. She’d had a long head start.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll find her,” Stony said after their third try brought no results.

  “Right.”

  He fought the shimmying wheel and put the truck in a lower gear. “You don’t sound very sure about that.”

  “I want to be sure, but there’s so many places she could go, and so many things that could happen.”

  “But having her around is good feng shui, right?”

  “Don’t make fun of me now, Stony,” she begged. “I’ve made a terrible mess of things with my belief in that systern, and I admit it. I’ve thrown away all the books and I—”

  “You did what?”

  She winced. “I suppose that irritates you, after the way I insisted on the waterfall and painted the bunkhouse door, and—”

  “About that waterfall, have you noticed what’s happening outside?”

  “Well, sure, it might be raining, but—”

  “You rearranged the kitchen, and I noticed yesterday that beef prices are up.”

  “That’s probably coincidence.”

  “I thought so, too. But then you came back to me.”

  She stared at him, openmouthed.

  “I know you came back because of the dog, but it doesn’t matter. You’re here.” He veered around a puddle that looked more like a lake.

  Her chest grew tight, restricting her breathing. “You... really want that?”

  “Yes.” He gripped the wheel hard as the truck bounced over a deep rut and the wheels spu
n in the mud.

  His reply whirled in her brain, making her dizzy. “But—”

  “Your feng shui works great, Daphne. And that’s why we’re going to find Chi.”

  She tried to get her bearings. Stony was saying that he believed in feng shui, and that he wanted her here with him, but they would come to nothing if he couldn’t admit to his love. And love was the only thing that would carry them through.

  “There, through the trees! I think I saw her!” He slammed on the brakes and leaped from the truck. “Chi! Come here, Chi!”

  Daphne jumped from the cab and ran after Stony. Twice she nearly fell in the mud. “Chi!” she called, trying to see through the rain pelting her in the face.

  A bark echoed through the woods.

  Stony made a megaphone of his hands. “Chi! Come here, dog!”

  The retriever burst from the cover of the trees and headed straight for them.

  “Oh, Chi,” Daphne whispered as tears mingled with the rain. “Thank God.” She reached Stony just as Chi did, and the three of them got very muddy in the ensuing welcoming party.

  “Come on,” he said, laughing. “Let’s take this mutt home.”

  Home. Her heart ached with longing. But all he’d said was that he wanted her there. That wasn’t enough to build a dream on. She’d like to ask him some questions about that statement of his, but she wanted to look into his eyes when she asked them. Right now there was a very wet and happy dog between them, and Stony had to concentrate on his driving or they’d end up in a ditch.

  There was much rejoicing among the wranglers when Daphne and Stony returned to the bunkhouse with Chi in tow.

  “Now everythin’ can git back to normal,” Big Clyde said.

  “You know what we should have?” Andy said. “One of them potluck suppers. Daphne can make something, and a couple of us will make something, and we’ll all git together and eat it. What y’all say to that?”