by Leigh Riker
Suddenly, Bear, her big teddy of a horse, pricked up his ears and his muscles bunched beneath her. Sitting deeper in her saddle, Nell took a tighter grip on the reins. As dependable as he was, Bear was still a herd animal whose first instinct was to flee. Whatever had alerted him, she wouldn’t let him bolt.
At first, she didn’t believe her ears, but then the howling sound came again.
“Did you hear that?” she called out to the two cowboys who were trailing behind her.
Were they keeping a respectful distance or were they trying to avoid her supervision?
Several other men of the crew tended to keep away or respond to her requests, like Hadley, with deliberate slowness.
Clete, the more experienced hand who’d worked for PawPaw since Nell could remember, closed the gap between them. Small and stocky, Clete had fine pale hair and light gray-blue eyes. His muscular piebald quarter horse kept fighting the bit in its mouth, clearly frightened like Bear.
From farther off, along what had once been the boundary with the Ransom ranch, she picked up the panicked bellowing of the herd, then another long high-pitched howling cry.
“Dogs,” Clete said under his breath, but there were no dogs now on the Ransom property, unless they were feral ones. Clete must know that.
Nell remembered something from long ago. Once, on a spring day like this, she and Cooper had ridden to this same area for his father, searching for a lost calf, its mama frantic without him. They’d heard similar howls and yips that had curdled Nell’s blood. In a gully, they’d finally found the calf—half eaten by a coyote. Over the years since then, there’d been occasional, sporadic trouble, but not for a while.
“Sounds more like coyotes to me,” she said, a shiver running down her spine. She didn’t wait for Clete’s answer. “Just in case, we’d better move the rest of the herd closer to keep watch on them. At least half a dozen cows still have to drop their calves.”
“Easy pickings for coyotes,” Clete agreed.
His kindly tone didn’t quite reassure Nell. He’d tacked up her first pony long ago, a birthday gift from PawPaw and, years later, watched her ride her palomino mare when she’d graduated to a full-size horse. Clete had seen her turn from a chubby toddler to a thin girl, all legs and arms, to a young woman in her high school cap and gown. He’d been here when Nell returned from the agriculture college in Manhattan, the ink not yet dry on her brand-new degree in animal husbandry. She imagined he still thought of her as that little girl though. A hard role for her to outgrow, apparently.
And if she was wrong about this, Nell would be viewed as incompetent, out of her depth.
“You may be right,” Clete muttered, his gaze avoiding hers. “Hadley claims he spied a small pack a few days ago on the ridge.”
Nell dug her heels into the stirrups. “You didn’t see them?”
“He was alone.”
“He should have said something to me then.”
She nudged Bear’s sides. The other cowhand, Dex, had sharp bladelike cheekbones and blank dark eyes. He rode toward them on a loose rein as if he had all the time in the world.
Nell gave him a curt nod. “Head back to the barn. Tell Hadley to send some men over to the Ransom side.” Nell still referred to the far reaches of the NLS that way. “See if there are any injured cows, then round up the herd. Before sundown.” After dark, if there were coyotes, as she feared, they would begin circling the herd, hoping to pick off the weak and newborns. Predators were always a concern on the ranch.
I have some of my own on the NLS, the two-legged kind, thought Nell.
Clete hesitated. “Hadley’s not at the ranch.”
Nell looked at him, now riding beside her, their bridles jangling. “Not at the ranch,” she repeated. In fact, she hadn’t seen him this morning. “Where is he?”
Another pause. “In town, Miss Nell. On business.”
She took a breath. “His business should be right here. That’s what we—what I—pay him for.” If he’d gone into Barren to buy grain, he could have phoned in the order as usual.
“Court or something,” Clete muttered like a man condemned to the gallows.
“For what?”
“He didn’t say why.”
Several possibilities raced through her mind. Speeding. A DUI after some bar fight at Rowdy’s on Main Street. She didn’t think Hadley was a drinker, and Finn Donovan, the sheriff, hadn’t mentioned his getting into trouble, but there was always a first time. She remembered their confrontation at the barn. Lately, Hadley’s work hadn’t been up to par. Had being charged with some crime distracted him?
Nell said, “Okay, Dex, you go get the men to round up the herd.” The cowboys had their code of honor, which included not pressing a man about his personal life or spreading gossip, and Nell wasn’t about to break through that. She’d seen the motto more than once. If it’s not yours, don’t take it. If it’s not true, don’t say it. If it is not right, don’t do it. Honor God, family and country.
She watched Dex head back down the fence line at a lope toward the ranch buildings. His tight mouth had told her—if she’d had any doubts—he didn’t like taking orders from her either.
A few weeks ago, she’d had some daydream of running the NLS with one hand tied behind her. It wouldn’t be that easy, as last night’s conversation with PawPaw reminded her, and ever since she’d learned Cooper was home again, Nell had felt unsettled. Everyone, it seemed, must be watching, expecting her to fail in this definitely man’s world. Was that why Cooper had turned her down about becoming her foreman?
Think I’ll check in with Hadley, PawPaw had said.
Nell planned to prove them all wrong.
* * *
SHE RODE INTO the barnyard just as Hadley’s truck turned off the main road, then started up the long drive from the NLS gates. Staying on her horse, she watched him come from a vantage point that for a change let her look down on him as he climbed out of the pickup. Clete, who’d been beside her, went on by into the dark recesses of the barn where she heard him say a word to Dex, who was brushing his mount in the cross ties. The low murmur of their voices and an occasional whicker from a hungry horse drifted on the air. “I need to talk to you, Hadley.”
That familiar smile spread across his face as he tipped his hat. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned a shoulder against the driver’s door of his truck. The cooling engine ticked, sounding loud in the sudden silence. The men inside had stopped talking. Even the horses went quiet.
“You had some trouble in town today?”
“Trouble?” he repeated, as if he didn’t understand.
“A court appearance. Please don’t insult us both by pretending you had—”
“Business,” he said, shoving the hat back farther on his head.
“Hadley, this ranch needs a foreman who does his job. Someone I can rely on, and lately that’s not you.”
His long body uncoiled from his stance against the door. “Now, look here—”
Nell leaned on her saddle horn, meeting his eyes. “The NLS is my responsibility while my grandfather is gone and I won’t let him down. Whether or not you agree with how things are, I’m in charge—not you. I was born on this ranch and there’s not a thing I don’t know about the land I love.”
He smiled. “Now you sound like a song. ‘America the Beautiful’ or something. Maybe a country ballad. Patriotic.”
“You think this is a joke? It’s not.”
His mouth tightened. “I don’t work for you. I work for Ned. I answer to him, no one else. If you’re unhappy with my work, take it up with him. I doubt that will do you any good though. Ned trusts me.”
“Until you got in trouble with the law,” she said before she stopped to consider her words. “He won’t like hearing that.”
Hadley made a sound of disgust. “The trouble is with my wife. We’re getting a divorc
e and I had an appointment with my lawyer, that’s all.”
Nell straightened in her saddle. “I’m sorry you’re having personal issues.”
“I’ll work it out. If you want, I’ll be in this barn tomorrow morning before sunup, which I usually am anyway.”
“No,” Nell said, having made up her mind. The threat of coyotes on the ranch so near the herd had hardened her resolve.
Shading his eyes from the sun with one hand, Hadley blinked up at her.
“What’s sticking in your craw exactly? My not ordering some grain quick enough? I have calls in to the vet and the farrier, waiting for them to schedule. One of the boys will fix that section of fence—”
“Already done. We checked the lines while you were otherwise occupied,” she said, remembering the animal cries she’d heard earlier on the range. Was she supposed to wait until an attack happened?
He scowled. “But I—”
“Did you or did you not come across coyotes on Ransom land?”
“Didn’t actually see them.” Hadley hesitated. “I told Clete I heard something that sounded like—”
“And failed to tell me.”
“I didn’t want to stir you up,” he said, and Nell saw red. Bear shifted beneath her, muscles tight as he sensed danger again. “You know how you’ve been with Ned away.”
Nell ignored that. She didn’t have to think any longer. “The coyotes were the last straw, Hadley. I won’t jeopardize the herd, the NLS or my chance to inherit the place I love more than anything else in this world by trying to work with you one more minute. You’re fired.” She pointed toward the ranch-owned bungalow in the distance where Hadley lived. “Get your things and be out of that house by sundown.”
Which left Nell without a foreman. Had she acted rashly? Twice in two days? Well, it was done, and she wouldn’t take back what she’d said.
His frown even darker, Hadley took a step toward her. “This is the thanks I get for keeping this ranch running while Ned was laid up from his stroke, and again after the accident?”
Nell turned Bear, putting the gelding between her and Hadley. Her horse was about to shy when, to her surprise, Clete appeared in the barn doorway. “Miss Nell, you all right?”
“Right as rain.” She glanced at Hadley. “But we’re going to need a foreman.”
* * *
FOR THE FIRST time in fourteen years, Cooper drove through the open gates onto NLS land. His grip on the wheel of his rental car tensed. Seeing it become part of Ned Sutherland’s spread hadn’t been easy then, and it wasn’t easier now. But Cooper thought he’d found a way. He’d waited overnight in case he changed his mind, but Finn had been right.
He’d just reached the barn when a dark-haired man burst out into the sunlight carrying a saddle. Cooper heard a few words that sounded far from complimentary. About Nell? Cooper heard her name and got out of the car.
“Whoa,” he said, getting pushed aside as the cowboy headed for a nearby truck. He shouldn’t say anything but if this was about her... “What’s going on?”
“None of your business, whoever you are. But take my advice. Turn around and get off the NLS before that b—”
Cooper cut him off. “Watch it. Nell is a...friend of mine.”
He eyed Cooper for a long moment. “Didn’t think that woman had any friends.” He started toward the pickup again, heaved the saddle into the rear bed, then headed back to the barn. “I should call myself lucky to be out of here.”
Ah. So that was it. “Hadley Smith?” Cooper asked.
He shrugged. “Ned’s foreman, or I was until now. If I were you, I wouldn’t believe a word she says. Soon as I talk to her grandfather,” Hadley said, “he’ll set her straight. In the meantime, she’s bitten off more than she can chew with this ranch.”
Cooper doubted that. His mouth set but he didn’t correct Hadley Smith. His rant came from anger, justified or not, and now Cooper’s purpose seemed even clearer. He almost empathized with Smith; whether or not he was a good ranch manager, losing the job had obviously rattled him. Like Cooper, when he’d had to leave the place where he’d grown up. A sudden smile crossed his face. Now he was back, and this might be easier, his decision more right, than he’d first thought.
Hadley hopped into his truck, slammed the door and sped off down the driveway, leaving a rising cloud of dust behind. At the end, he braked, red lights glowing through the dust storm he’d created, then fishtailed onto the two-lane road that led into Barren.
Cooper heard approaching footsteps. Nell crossed the yard, smoke practically steaming from her ears. Her green eyes flashed. “He’s gone. Thank heaven.”
“You fired him,” he said.
She propped both hands on her hips. “Which should have happened long ago. He may have PawPaw bamboozled but not me. Those coyotes only clinched my decision.”
“Coyotes?”
“The boys and I heard them this morning. Clete—you remember him—admitted Hadley encountered them too a few days ago. Seems he forgot to tell me.”
“So did Clete then, apparently.”
“True,” she agreed, “and I’ve had words with him. But Hadley? He’s now a thing of the past—along with his attitude.” Her shoulders visibly relaxed. “I just have to convince Clete and the others this was a wise choice for me to make. Before PawPaw gets home, I will have their respect.”
“I admire your grit, Nell, but your grandfather won’t be happy to learn you got rid of his foreman.”
“I’ll deal with him.”
“And you’re going to be spread pretty thin.”
“I realize that.” She cocked an eyebrow, assessing him as if she were thinking about their quarrel. “What brings you here?”
“Figured I’d apply for the job.”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I appreciated your honesty the other day, but there’s no way I’d hire you now. Knowing what I know,” she added.
He shot a look toward the eastern boundary of the NLS. “I won’t lie to you. I haven’t changed my plan.” A part of his soul seemed to settle at the view of the blue sky, the land that rolled away to the horizon, the familiar scents of grass and cowhide that drifted on the breeze. “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t do a good job for you.”
“I don’t doubt your abilities, though they must be rusty. I doubt your intentions.”
“You said yourself. I’ve been upfront with you, Nell.”
“Then let me be just as plain. My grandfather will never sell that land. I’ll never let him—because the NLS, all of it, is going to be mine one day. You can buy as many acres as you want elsewhere.”
“Preferably—for you—in a different state,” he said under his breath.
“Anywhere you like. Just not here.”
But his family’s land was the only land he wanted, and not only for himself.
Cooper shook his head. “When my father lost our ranch, he lost more than that. It broke his health and killed him in the end, as far as I’m concerned.”
“I’m sorry but—”
“I won’t have it kill my mother too. Since he died, I worry about her as you do Ned. I’d hoped she was getting past the worst part of her grief, but then I got shot and she nearly lost me too. She hasn’t been herself.”
“Of course not. You’re her only child,” she said.
“The ambush certainly set her back. Her fondest wish, she keeps saying, is to spend her days in the place where she lived with my dad, where she raised me, where she could wake up each morning in that house—which I understand has been standing empty all this time—and watch the sun rise again over their land. She never dreamed they would lose that. I’m going to make her wish come true.”
Nell blinked. She followed Cooper’s gaze. “When PawPaw had his stroke, it was so hard to see him in the hospital, then later in rehab. He was like a shell of him
self until he got home again. I would have done anything to make that happen.”
So. She understood that much, even when she probably didn’t want to, and Cooper saw his opening. “Then we have a deal?”
Nell hesitated. “I always liked your mother and so did PawPaw. I’d want her to be happy too.” Yet, he could sense her thinking, was that a good enough reason to hire Cooper? To have him right here on the ranch every day?
Finally, she took a breath. “I may regret this but...yes. We do.” She paused again. “But be warned, I will protect PawPaw. I won’t have him stressed out and risk another stroke,” she said, then offered her hand. “Deal. As long as we stick to business.”
He grinned. “Then I guess you’ve got yourself a new foreman.”
CHAPTER FOUR
AMY SMITH COULD see that Hadley was not a happy cowboy. Her husband was not only out of a job—one he’d performed well for Ned Sutherland without a single complaint—but he had no immediate prospects for another, and very little cash to support them for the short-term until he spoke to Ned.
Amy preferred having nice things and Hadley had worked hard to provide what he could. She didn’t want to be a thorn in his side, especially right now, but that seemed inevitable. Fully aware that he’d also met with his lawyer today, she was going to have to make things even worse for him.
“You’d think Nell would give me notice,” he was saying, “or allow me to stay in the foreman’s house until I got hold of Ned. But no. She’s never liked me and vice versa. She was sure in a hurry to kick me off the NLS.” He sank down onto a chair in the living room of Amy’s small apartment and ran a hand through his hair. “I enjoy working for Ned. I like that house you and I shared when I still thought we could make things work. Go figure.”
“Why don’t you call Ned now?” It was equally important to Amy that he get his job back, but she liked Nell. She considered them to be casual friends, although there’d always been that line drawn between her as Ned’s granddaughter and Amy as an employee’s wife. But friendship wasn’t her reason for urging him to call.