by Leigh Riker
Cooper didn’t need the warning. He already told himself that at least ten times a day. His attraction to Nell could be problematic in such close proximity, but he could manage that. It was the prospect of having her hate him all over again for eventually buying back his land that troubled him. He knew that would hurt her, and that kept Cooper awake at night.
* * *
“YOU’RE FINE, LITTLE ONE,” Nell crooned a few days later to the Angus calf lying across her lap, spindly legs sprawled. She nudged the plastic bottle into his mouth again, but the wounded baby refused to nurse, and his pink tongue pushed out the nipple that contained life-saving milk. Hour by hour, she could see his strength fading. “Come on, now. Take a sip. You’ll like it, I promise.”
“Problem?” Cooper said from somewhere nearby.
Nell glanced up at the sound of his deep voice. She could feel her cheeks heat. She hadn’t forgotten how she’d fallen into his arms on the range after they’d found the calf and its mother, or how Cooper had taken over. “He won’t drink, not even water, and he’s dehydrated.”
“Where’s his mama?”
Nell sighed. “She rejected him. After following us all the way home—” Nell broke off, regretting that she’d referred to the NLS as Cooper’s home too “—so I finally released her to the herd.” Keeping her downward gaze focused on the calf, she heard her tone quaver. “I’m going to lose him after all.”
Cooper hunkered down in front of them, his gaze seeing right through Nell.
“You’re not a quitter. Keep trying.”
“I hate to give up but there’s nothing more to be done. I can hydrate him through an IV line, but if he won’t eat, he’ll die. I know,” she said before Cooper could speak, “that’s part of ranch life. I get that, but I’ll never be used to it.” She stroked the calf’s velvety head. “Losing a newborn like this one, having to put down a horse, a barn kitten getting stomped, sending a steer to slaughter...” Her voice caught on the last word.
Cooper started to cover her hand with his, then drew it back as if he too remembered holding her that other day and wouldn’t risk repeating the experience. Not that he probably wanted to. “Yes, you do know that. So do Ned, Logan Hunter and Sawyer McCord, Grey Wilson...and Hadley Smith, I imagine.” He half smiled. The other ranchers in the area had been his friends too long ago. “The natural cycle of life isn’t any easier to face for them either.” He hesitated. “How are the calf’s wounds?”
Nell couldn’t show him. All the cuts and scratches, and the real damage were on its other side, cushioned by the soft blanket she’d laid across her lap. “The stitches are good. No sign of infection. He seems comfortable enough. The vet says he’ll do okay if we can get him eating.”
Cooper moved closer. “Then let’s do that.”
Nell stiffened. She’d said we. She hadn’t meant to include Cooper. There was nothing he could do that she hadn’t already tried, and his closeness now was worse than letting him hold her on the range had been.
“I’ll manage,” she said, the bottle in her hand.
Losing the calf to a barbed-wire incident would have been awful, but she couldn’t bear to see him fail day by day. Nell still hoped to save him by the sheer force of her own will. “As if the calf’s decline isn’t bad enough, I’ve had a dozen calls from Hadley,” she said, hoping to redirect her own thoughts.
“Smith’s harassing you?”
“I wouldn’t say that, but according to the messages he left me, his situation has changed.”
“Maybe you should answer. Tell him there’s no chance about the job.”
Nell frowned. She shouldn’t have said anything, even to change the subject. Cooper laid a hand on her arm, and she jerked back from his warm touch. She wouldn’t give in to even that small comfort. “Maybe you should leave me to manage Hadley Smith—and this calf—and go do whatever it was you were doing.” Instantly, she regretted the sharp words. “Sorry, I’m a bit on edge today.”
He stayed silent for a moment. “I don’t imagine you’re all that happy to have Jesse here right now either. I’ve talked with him, Nell. I have to wonder. Why is he here now, exactly? It’s not as if Ned is on his deathbed.”
“Sibling rivalry, and he probably knows PawPaw’s planning to update his estate plan.”
“More than that, I’d guess. What do you know about his business dealings?”
“Very little, except he does seem to delve into one thing after another.”
“I think so too. I always thought Jesse had a short attention span. That fits, but he’d have me believe he’s practically Bill Gates—or some corporate raider. Something else must have brought him to the NLS. The question is, what?”
“I’ll get it out of him,” she said, her attention directed at the calf.
Cooper rose. “Let me know if you change your mind and want my help.”
He stood gazing down at her. “Am I supposed to apologize for the other day? For holding you? Because if we’re going to work together, Nell, and since you won’t talk about the past, we need to establish a few boundaries.”
“I said I was sorry I snapped at you. I am. You don’t need to apologize. I know why that happened.” Idly, she stroked the calf again. He’d drifted off to sleep, one ear twitching as if in a dream.
“It won’t happen again,” Cooper promised, then dropped back onto his haunches. “Let me give this a try.” But he didn’t reach for the bottle of formula. He teased the calf’s mouth open, then slipped his index finger inside, moved it across the baby’s tongue—and all at once the calf began to suck.
“I never thought of that,” Nell said, her gaze meeting his.
His gray eyes warmed. “My dad’s maneuver. It’s like offering a human baby a pacifier, he always said. Now see if he’ll take the nipple.”
Nell’s first attempt didn’t work, but to her relief the second succeeded. Cooper watched the calf latch onto the bottle, then eased his finger from the calf’s mouth, his touch grazing Nell’s hand, making her skin tingle. He stood again. “Guess I should get back to whatever I was doing.”
She froze, listening to the sounds from along the aisle, the whinny of a horse, the hiss of a barn cat that had come too close to a lethal hoof, the suckling calf.
“I think he may be okay now.” At least she had hope. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said. “Later this morning, we’ll get that delivery of grain. Then it’s branding, vaccinations, worming for the rest of my day. What do you want me to do about the farrier? He said he’d come this afternoon, then canceled, and Ned’s horse really does need shoes. If we wait much longer—”
“I’ll contact him myself.”
His gaze fell. “Whatever you say. Call me if Smith gives you trouble.”
She started to say, I’ll straighten him out, but something stopped her. The look in his eyes, maybe, as if he knew she’d never trust him. Didn’t really want him here or wouldn’t even let him do the job she’d hired him for. The look Nell had seen the day he’d left Barren with the moving truck.
“Cooper. I couldn’t ask for a better foreman.”
At least she would give him that.
* * *
COOPER STEPPED OUTSIDE and ran straight into Hadley Smith. Just what he needed. Cooper headed him off before Hadley could enter the barn. He didn’t want the ex-foreman to startle Nell or the nursing calf, and after their talk, he was in a mood to assert his authority. “You’re trespassing,” he said.
Smith shoved his black hat farther off his face. “I need my last two weeks’ pay. I’m here to talk to Nell.”
“If it’s about getting your job back too, that’s a no.”
“You speak for her now?” Hadley scoffed. “Nobody speaks for Nell Sutherland. She won’t answer my calls. I had to come get the money she owes me in person. I’ll talk to her, not y—”
�
�Keep your voice down. She’s caring for a sick calf.”
To Cooper’s surprise, he grinned. “The original bleeding heart, that one. Well, I have to admit with animals, she’s tenderhearted. People? That’s another thing.”
Cooper couldn’t disagree. “I’m not going to discuss Nell with you. She fired you and she won’t change her mind.” He turned away. “I’ll let her know you want your pay. Then you’re through here, Smith. A ranch can’t be run well with the kind of tension you created.”
“All in her mind,” he said. “Ned won’t agree.”
“To what?” Nell asked from the open doorway, the bottle still in her hand.
Cooper shot her a look. “Smith’s here for his last pay. Go write him his check. We’ll wait here. Then he’ll get in his truck and drive off the NLS. He won’t bother you again.”
“What’s your stake in this, Ransom—other than taking my job?” Hadley’s gaze moved to Nell. “Seems to me you had this guy lined up all along. Ever since Ned left—”
“Whether I did or not, you’ve been replaced, Hadley. Live with that.”
“Don’t think I can,” he said, his gaze falling, “and when I get hold of Ned, he’ll override you both.” Hadley scraped the toe of his boot in the dirt like a defiant horse pawing the ground.
Every muscle in Cooper’s body tensed. Smith’s blue eyes were like chips off an iceberg. “What’s this situation you mentioned in your messages to Nell?”
Hadley looked between them, then back to Nell.
“My wife is pregnant. Yeah,” he said when Nell’s eyes widened. “Surprise. I never wanted kids, after the way I grew up, but here we are.”
“I’m happy for Amy.” Nell’s cheeks flamed with color. She turned away. “I’ll get your check.”
Hadley took a step but Cooper blocked him. “Let it be.”
“I can’t” was all Hadley said again, his face crestfallen. He watched Nell stalk across the barnyard toward the ranch house.
For an instant, Cooper almost felt sorry for him. He’d never lost a job he wanted to keep, but he knew how hard it had been to lose his family’s land.
He also knew firsthand how tough it could be to win Nell over.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“COOPER! COOPER!”
Nell’s voice.
The pounding at his door woke him from a sound sleep, which wasn’t the norm for him these days. Lately, he’d had a hard time falling asleep because of Nell. He couldn’t forget that one moment on the range when, for the first time in so many years, he’d held her again, and later Cooper had called himself ten kinds of a fool.
The knock thudded against the door again as he hauled himself out of bed, pulled on the jeans he’d left on the floor, then went to answer. Nell stood there on the scrap of porch that was part of the foreman’s bungalow, her eyes wild.
“Coyotes.” She was gasping for breath. “I heard them—did you hear them?”
“No,” he said. Once he’d stopped pondering that afternoon with Nell, he’d slept like the dead.
Nell avoided looking at his bare chest. “They’ve attacked the herd—just as I feared they would. The cattle are going crazy. Hurry. Jesse is saddling horses.”
As she said the last word, Cooper heard the panicked herd bawling in the distance. Then a series of yips and howls sent a streak of ice down his spine. “Give me a minute.” He left Nell standing there while he dressed and grabbed a shotgun from the rack on the wall. By the time he reached the porch again, Nell was halfway to the barn.
In the aisle, Jesse struggled to heave a saddle onto a buckskin horse with a flaxen mane and tail. Cooper’s bay and the horse Nell called Bear were already tacked up, their hooves impatiently stomping the floor.
Cooper stepped around Jesse. “You don’t tighten these cinches, we’ll all end up on our rears in the dirt.” Swiftly, he redid them, including Jesse’s, checked the bridle fastenings, then mounted up. “Let’s ride.”
Nell dashed first out of the barn with Cooper right behind. Jesse followed at a distance. Staying safely out of whatever action they might encounter? As they neared the grazing land where Nell and Cooper had found the calf the other day, the sounds of terrified cattle grew ever louder until finally they crossed the old border onto Cooper’s ranch. He didn’t have time to appreciate being there once more as he’d yearned to do for years, not far from the house where he’d grown up.
The unmistakable howls of a coyote pack grew even louder until Cooper and Nell rode into the near edge of the herd. Then the yips grew gradually fainter as the predators ran off, alarmed by the horsemen. He could only hope they hadn’t done any real damage.
The cows and their spring calves milled about, bellowing, ever-moving, shifting as one in the dark, seeming to head by design toward the far side of the big pasture. Cooper gestured to Nell, but before long they came upon a scene of carnage that made Cooper’s pulse spike. Even with no light except for that of the half moon, he could see pooled blood on the ground and the still carcass of a cow.
Before Bear even stopped moving, Nell jumped off the horse. “Oh, no,” she cried, then knelt beside the body, the sheen of tears on her cheeks. She laid a hand against the cow’s side. “Nothing,” she said, having checked for a pulse. “She’s gone.”
Cooper climbed down from the bay, leaving his reins to trail in the grass. He squatted beside Nell, putting a brief hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Calling out as if he’d been a part of things, Jesse showed up at last, then pulled his horse to a stop among the herd but didn’t come closer. Some of the cattle had ceased moving, were standing in a bunch near their fallen comrade as if they knew what had happened and were in mourning. “Well,” Jesse said, peering at the cow, “looks like we’ll have prime rib and steak for a while.”
Nell gasped. She glanced up at her brother, the tears still coming. “Is that all you can say? That she was just an animal, a lost asset on the NLS balance sheet? I never want to lose a single cow—but this one—” She broke off, then tried again. “I know every head of cattle, their calves too. They’re not sides of beef to me or a fancy meal in the making!”
Nell didn’t go on. Cooper lightly touched her shoulder again, offered her the handkerchief his mother had always insisted he carry for just such an occasion, then stood. For a long moment, they stared at each other, Nell still kneeling by the cow.
“We’ll give her a good burial tomorrow,” Cooper said.
She waited, then finished with more tears in her husky voice, “The little calf we saved? She was its mama. Her name was Elsie.”
Cooper winced. Elsie’s baby was doing better since he and Nell had gotten him nursing, and Cooper made a silent vow to make sure the calf thrived. Might even make a good bull one day. He supposed Nell had already named him too as some ranchers did, including old Sam Hunter, Logan’s grandfather, on the Circle H with his bison. He spun away from the dead cow, approached Jesse’s horse with his blood boiling in his veins—and hauled Nell’s brother from the saddle.
Cooper felt tempted to hit him but dropped his fist to his side.
While in the hospital months ago, he’d missed out on the arrests of the Brothers gang that had shot him to pieces. He’d been itching for a fight ever since, as if he’d been deprived of the justice his friend Finn had gotten for him. But he’d settle now for a good tongue lashing for Jesse. “Listen to me and listen good. This ranch means everything to Nell. You hurt her again, in any way—and I mean any way—I’m still a cop inside and I know a dozen ways to take you out. Hear me?” For good measure, he shook Jesse hard.
“Cooper.” Nell held up a hand. He hadn’t heard her approach. “I don’t need you to defend me.”
“Right then you did,” he insisted, his jaw taut.
“Jesse is my brother. I can speak for myself—just like I can run this ran
ch.”
Cooper shook his head. “You’re welcome, Nell,” he said, then stalked off to tend to the dead cow. A minute later, he heard someone ride away. Glancing up, he spotted Jesse’s horse disappear over the ridge. When Cooper looked around, Nell was still there.
“I have half a mind to fire you, Cooper.”
He leveled his gaze at her. “Are you?”
“Not this time. I need you to stay here and keep watch on the...herd.” She meant the fallen cow too. She walked toward Bear, grazing on the rich spring grass nearby, then back again. “One more thing.”
Cooper’s mouth set. He was tired of Nell fighting him, making his job here all the harder. He had half a mind to quit. “Yeah?”
“Thank you.”
* * *
NELL’S MOTHER CAME to visit the next day. The fact that she’d driven from Kansas City to the ranch was a shock; she hadn’t been on the NLS in years.
They met on the front steps. “Mom, wow. This is more than a surprise—no, but actually it’s not.” She groaned. “Jesse must have called you.”
Judith Sutherland hugged her. Slim and fit from hours spent in the gym, she had skillfully colored ash-blond hair, which she wore in what she called a lob (or long bob) and the green eyes Nell had inherited. Good genes but not the kind Nell preferred. She glanced down at her dirty clothes. Today, her mother was all decked out in four-inch heels with red soles that had to be Christian Louboutin, formfitting jeans—obviously new—and a stylish coral silk blouse.
Money wasn’t a problem for Nell’s parents. Her father owned a chain of high-end tack stores in the area, and he also collected a share of the profits from the ranch.
“And why shouldn’t Jesse call me? You could have been killed last night. Riding over that rough terrain in the dark—he said there are holes everywhere for a horse to step in. He was right to intervene. You could have broken your neck, and for what? Cattle die all the time—”