Cowboys Don't Buy Their Bride at Auction

by Jessie Gussman

  Another thing he was pretty sure Roxane might have issues with. He could only picture her face if he led her son into the kitchen, dripping blood, and tried to explain it by saying he was “developing instincts.”

  Maybe he’d better make his spot in the barn a little more comfortable.

  He didn’t even want to think about that. He’d thought he was doing an okay job of talking to Roxane, but she’d left to take a nap yesterday, he hadn’t seen her the rest of the day, and she hadn’t been at breakfast this morning. Lunch had been quiet and strained.

  He pulled his focus back to Spencer who had finished making the small cut. He could pull the plastic off the bale from the cut Spencer had made, but he didn’t believe in working harder than he needed to. He also didn’t want to take the knife back after he’d given it.

  So he took his pointer finger and ran it from one side of the bale, through the small cut Spencer had made, and diagonally down to the opposite corner. Then he did the same thing from the other top side, making a much, much bigger X.

  He lifted a brow at Spencer who had his nose wrinkled and his eyes narrowed. Boone liked his attitude.

  The boy took the knife and followed, almost exactly, what Boone had shown him.

  “Now, put it away.” Boone had cut himself more than once from being in a hurry and not folding his knife back up before he started working, in this case, removing the plastic.

  Spencer twisted the knife over and end to end, trying to figure out how to close it. Boone waited patiently. As patiently as the cows were waiting for their hay. Funny that with the knife in his hand, Spencer had forgotten all about being scared of the placid bovines.

  Finally, the boy looked up, lines between his brows.

  Boone took his thumb and rubbed it over the lever that released the metal, showing the motion. Spencer smiled, understanding brightening his face.

  He took his own thumb and was about to push the lever when Boone stopped him. “Be careful with your fingers. You don’t want them here with the blade coming down.” He ran a finger along the bed where the blade would sink, protected, until the knife was opened again.

  Spencer nodded solemnly, a very serious look on his face, like Boone had just entrusted him with the first half of the nuclear code. He carefully kept his fingers on the side of the knife as he moved the lever and folded it.

  He handed it back to Boone.

  “You have one?” Boone asked.

  Spencer shook his head.

  “Keep it.” He let out a breath. “I took mine to school when I was your age, but it’s a tool for work. It’s not something to hurt people with, but you can use it for self-defense.”

  Spencer nodded, again solemnly. Boone hoped the boy always respected what he said as he was now doing, but he also hoped they could laugh and have fun together, too. It probably wasn’t Spencer’s fault that he didn’t seem to know how to act around a man who paid attention to him.

  Hopefully, Boone would have plenty of time to work on it.

  He grabbed an end of the plastic and pulled, ripping the protective cover, looking at Spencer. He saw that as an invitation and started pulling the white wrap as well.

  “Once I set it in the feeder, we’ll be able to get the rest off and also pull the strings.” He moved to get in the loader. “Stand back. I have to drop it, and sometimes it bounces. The bale’s a lot heavier than the feeder, and you can never be sure what direction it’s going to go.”

  Spencer looked around, his shoulders tensing as he saw the cattle towering over him. Boone watched until the boy lifted his head and balled his fists before running for the fence. There wasn’t enough room in the loader for the boy to sit with him, or he’d have put him in with him.

  He dropped the bale in and got out immediately, motioning for Spencer to come over. “Gonna need your knife.”

  After a brief hesitation and a look at the cows, Spencer ran straight to Boone, a happy grin on his face. The boy felt good to be needed. Roxane might be upset about Boone giving him a knife, especially without asking her first—after all, the kid was hers—but at that moment, Boone didn’t care.

  He showed him where the strings were and how to cut them. The cows were nosing in, hunger overcoming their natural inclination to stand back from the humans. Boone appreciated the people who had handled these cattle before. They weren’t pets, but they weren’t so wild as to be crazy and dangerous.

  “We have to make sure we get every string out. If one of these ladies gets one in her stomach, it’s gonna give her a bellyache.”

  Spencer laughed. “She’d get to stay home from school.”

  Boone chuckled. “I suppose.” He pulled plastic in one hand and string in another. “But it’s our job to take care of them. Not only does the righteous man regard the life of his beast, but they also represent our livelihood. It’s wrong and wasteful to not take as good care of them as we can.”

  Spencer nodded, like he actually understood. Whether he did or not, Boone wasn’t sure, but again, there should be plenty of time to teach life lessons as they worked together through the years. Years that would fly away as fast as the years of his own youth had. For some reason, the Lord had given him time with this boy, and he’d do the best he could to teach him while he had him.

  Hopefully Roxane would be okay with it.

  “I’ll take this junk,” Boone said, indicating the strings and plastic wrap, “if you want to bring the skid loader out of the corral.”

  Spencer’s eyes got huge, golf ball size.

  “I don’t know how to drive it,” he practically whispered.

  “You play video games, right?”

  Spencer nodded.

  “It’s probably about the same.” Except a wrong turn on a video game wouldn’t take down half the corral fence. “I’ll show you. Hop in.”

  The skid loader rumbled on a low idle. Spencer crawled in, pulling and tugging on the safety harness until he got it down over him.

  Boone draped the wrap and strings over the grippers and stood on the front of the loader. He could probably run it backward, but there was no need. The boy couldn’t hurt anything but the fence, and if he knocked that down, they’d move the cows and he and Boone would fix it. It’d be another good lesson.

  “When your safety harness goes up, everything stops.” Boone patted the bulky shoulder restraint that surrounded Spencer, who nodded. He pointed out the controls, moving them a little as he explained them to show what they did. “Give me a second to jump off and get the garbage, and I’ll open the gate for you. If you feel comfortable, you can take it the whole way over to the shed. I’d better park it for today, and I think we should go in and see your mom. Maybe you can practice driving later this evening.” Boone looked the boy in the eye. “You have homework?”

  Spencer nodded, a bit sheepishly.

  He laughed. “Let’s talk to your mom about what you’re allowed to do.” He hopped off, grabbing his junk, and started toward the gate. His step only faltered slightly when he realized Roxane was standing on the other side of it, her arms crossed over her chest. She wasn’t smiling.

  His heart stumbled just a bit. The wind caught her hair and blew it away from her face, showcasing her high cheekbones and the intelligence in her eyes. Eyes that were narrowed slightly as she looked at him. Then her gaze swept back to her son, and worry tightened her features. He thought she might be biting the insides of her cheeks, too.

  He turned, looking back over his shoulder. The skid loader bumped and jumped as Spencer jerked at the controls. Typical.

  He brushed a cow with the ends of the hay grippers as he turned. The large black animal barely noticed as she continued to burrow her nose in the hay. After a bunch more wobbles and bumps, the boy finally got the machine turned and started moving slowly toward the gate. With the machine still on a low idle, he wasn’t going anywhere fast.

  Boone turned back around to face Roxane and moved to the gate. She didn’t look angry, exactly. She did, however, look beauti
ful. Classy. With an aristocratic turn to her nose and a slight tilt to her head. It made him feel like she was every inch a socialite and he was exactly what he was, a dirt-poor cowboy who’d married into money and was playing at ranching.

  He didn’t resent her, not even a little, but he did feel like maybe he belonged in the barn.

  He also felt like he never wanted to take his eyes off her.

  Holding the trash with one hand and an elbow, he unhooked the gate and pushed it out. Roxane moved back.

  Boone held the gate so it didn’t swing and turned back to watch Spencer. “He’s doing fine,” he said to the woman glaring at his back.

  “He hasn’t died. Yet. I consider that a win.” Her voice held some frost, but he didn’t detect much anger.

  “I told him he could take it to the shed and I’d park it. We were coming in then, to talk to you.” He wasn’t afraid of her. But he didn’t turn to look at her, either.

  “Oh? I thought maybe you two were planning on staying out here all night.”

  “I’ll stay here, and you can meet him when he gets off. See what he says we were going to do.”

  “I believe you. I’m just not real happy to see such a little boy operating such a dangerous piece of equipment. Alone.”

  “There’s not enough room for both of us in there. The throttle’s down low, and it’ll stop as soon as he stops pressing forward.” He finally turned. It was always hard for him to look at her without wanting to touch her. And he hated that she wasn’t exactly happy with him. “When I first started driving our skid loader when I was a kid, I was so little I didn’t weigh enough to trip the safety switch on the seat and my dad had to hotwire it to keep the thing running while I drove.”

  “I stood on the auction block and allowed myself to be sold to the highest bidder. Just because it happened to me doesn’t mean that I want it for my kids. Or that they should have it.”

  The skid loader drove by them, Spencer in the seat with a smile that reached to the moon and back. Boone wasn’t in a big hurry to shut the gate behind him since all the cattle were crowded up around the feeder. He waited until he didn’t have to yell, his chest hurting.

  “I wasn’t saying that because I did it, he should too. I was saying it is a big machine, and he is young, but it won’t hurt him. As for you, it might be a little too early to draw a definite conclusion, but I think having the guts to keep your word and stand on that auction block showed a strength of character that most people don’t possess. As for how it turned out, I guess you’ll have to see about it.”

  He didn’t know what else to say. He was pretty darn pleased with how it turned out. Couldn’t be much happier, really.

  She blew out a breath and turned slightly away from him, watching her son as he moved the machine slowly across the yard toward the shed. “I’m sorry. My words were a little harsher than I intended. It scares me to see him in that thing.”

  Boone appreciated the apology. He supposed he ought to tell her so, but his insides still felt twisted and irritated by her insinuation that being married to him was a bad thing.

  Like she knew it, she turned. “The auction turned out better than I could have hoped. And I appreciate you spending time with my son.” She lifted her chin but didn’t meet his eyes. “I also trust you to make sure he doesn’t get hurt, and I’ll try to keep my mouth shut.”

  She made to turn, but he touched her arm. She stopped, staring at the line of the horizon in the distance.

  “I can’t guarantee that he won’t get hurt.”

  Her mouth pressed tight together.

  “This isn’t the city where we all walk around in our safe little bubbles with pillows strapped to our backsides, warning labels on matches telling us they’re hot, and lawsuits for broken fingernails and hot coffee flying around with abandon. You can’t survive out here without living the danger.”

  “There are no bubbles and pillows, and living in the city can be dangerous, too.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You’d be the expert on that, so I stand corrected. Seems to me the bad guys have the advantage in the city, so I try to stay away.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she didn’t seem to understand. He didn’t bother to explain that he would never be comfortable somewhere that didn’t allow a man to defend himself, his wife, and his children with whatever weaponry necessary. It was one more thing they disagreed on, and he’d already had enough disappointment for one day.

  He shoved his hat down farther on his head and pushed the gate closed. “I told Spencer I’d park it. We were planning on coming in and talking to you. That suit you?” Latching the gate as he spoke, he didn’t bother to turn around.

  “Yes.” She turned and walked gracefully to the house, her stride confident, her bearing proud. He felt incompetent and off-kilter around her. Not that she was better than him, just living in a different world. One where social graces mattered and money talked. Where men spent their days under artificial lights in boardrooms, punching buttons on keyboards and talking about the latest fashion trends.

  Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t him and never would be. It hurt to think that was what she wanted.

  Chapter 13

  Spencer and Boone walked into the kitchen five minutes later. Roxane finally had her heart and breathing back under control. Her heart had felt like it jumped up and grabbed her tonsils in a death grip when she saw her little boy in that machine. And Boone was walking away from him like it wasn’t dangerous at all. Like he couldn’t be hurt.

  Of course he’d been right. Spencer was fine.

  Boone had also been right about Spencer needing to do these things. And Roxane was thrilled that Boone was taking the time to work with him.

  But she hadn’t said that.

  Instead she got all haughty and started arguing about city life versus living on a ranch. Of course they were different. And from the way Boone looked, he’d gotten the impression she thought she was better than he was, like she was insulting him and his way of life.

  But she’d already apologized once. It hadn’t been enough to ease the sting from his features.

  Mrs. Sprouse had supper in the oven and had left for the day, but she’d set a plate of meat and cheese and veggies with dip in the fridge. Roxane got it out and uncovered it. She’d spent a good bit of her day planning the Thanksgiving meal that the ranch was hosting—something she loved. But she kind of wished she hadn’t felt so restless and...lonely. Maybe it was because she was now married, even if it hadn’t been a love match, but maybe she felt like she was missing out because it wasn’t.

  Or maybe she just didn’t like the tension that seemed to have settled between them. They’d had a nice conversation Sunday. She thought they’d cleared some things up, but lunch had been strained, and now...maybe she messed everything up by being upset.

  She loved that he was working with Spencer, and she wanted to be friends with Boone. More than friends, if she were honest.

  So, she was going to be nice. Maybe she could flirt.

  Boone and Spencer had washed their hands when she turned from the fridge with the tray, smiling as sweetly as she could.

  Boone’s eyes widened, then they narrowed, and he looked around the kitchen, finally settling his eyes on the tray she held, suspicion entering his expression.

  Great.

  She’d gotten to the point that when she smiled at him, he became suspicious.

  Lovely.

  What a mess she’d made of everything.

  Well, she didn’t know what to do about Boone, but she could talk to her son at least.

  “How was your day at school?” she asked, her voice pleasant.

  “Good.” Spencer eyed the tray as she set it on the bar.

  “Anything happen?” They had this same conversation every day.

  “No.”

  Boone hadn’t said anything, and she really didn’t expect him to. He hadn’t planted himself on a barstool like Spencer had, either. Like he wasn’t en
tirely sure he was welcome.

  She looked at him. “You can help yourself, too.”

  “Thanks,” he said, closing the distance between himself and the bar. “I might be a little late for supper if I’m gonna go get the tractor and bring the grain drill back.”

  “Can I go too? Can I help? I could drive the skid loader if you need it!” Spencer’s mouth was full. Roxane bit her tongue over the reprimand to not talk. She’d just been complaining that he didn’t.

  Boone put a hand on the bar. “We need to talk to your mother about what you’re allowed to do. She also asked you about your day, and she probably wants more than two words.”

  Spencer looked at him, chewing, like he couldn’t figure out what to say. Roxane opened her mouth, but Boone beat her to it.

  “Like this: after I fed the stock this morning, I worried a little about my wife because she wasn’t down for breakfast. I hit my thumb with a hammer while I was pounding in a nail in the tack room,” he flashed a grin at her, and she got a little distracted by his dimple, “and God was listening, so all I said was ‘ouch,’ only in a much, much louder voice.”

  Spencer was craning his head, trying to see the nail, so Boone held it up. Roxie’s stomach pinched.

  “Cracked the nail, but it’ll be as good as new next year this time.”

  “You’re not going to put anything on it?” Roxie shook her head and walked to the cupboard. “Never mind.”

  The bandages were right where they were supposed to be, so she got one out and went back over.

  “She wants to know about your day, bub. So you think of the highlights and give her a couple of sentences. It makes her happy.”

  “But she’s putting a bandage on you now, and she wouldn’t have if you hadn’t said anything.”