by Diana Palmer
He smiled. “I’ll tell your cousin.”
* * *
SHE SLEPT ON the request. But after a sleepless night, reliving old nightmares, she decided that Bill was wrong. She didn’t need to see her father. It was tempting, to tell him what he’d subjected her to by running off with another woman. That alone might help her to let go of the past. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The pain went too deep, even after fifteen years. She could hardly even remember what her father looked like. His job as a police officer had kept him away most of the time, and there were hard memories in the way after he left. She wasn’t sure she’d recognize him if she saw him on the street. But then, she didn’t want to, either.
So she called Cousin Rogan and told him about her decision.
“I understand how you feel,” he said, his deep voice soft and calming. “But people aren’t just good or bad, honey,” he added softly. “They make bad decisions and act on them. That’s what your father did. His fancy woman dropped him flat the second month he was with her. He tried to get custody of you, but your mother got a lawyer and threatened him with lies that made him into a monster. He could have gone to jail if he’d persisted. He deserted your mother. He never deserted you.”
She was quiet. She didn’t answer him.
He sighed. “Okay, honey. It’s your decision.” Rogan had always liked him, but he didn’t press it. “How are things going with you?”
“Jake McGuire is flying me up to Billings next Friday for a steak dinner,” she said.
“Well, how about that?” he asked, chuckling. “I wondered if he might try to see you. He loves your books. He’s got all three, and he was sure the newest one would be a bestseller. He’s your biggest fan.”
She laughed. “He’s a very nice man.”
“Oh dear.”
“I don’t like men. Well, most men,” she amended. “I like you and Jake and Bart.” Her voice cooled. “I don’t like Bart’s cousin.”
“What cousin?”
“Some cowboy from Texas,” she said. “He’s about the worst enemy I’ve ever had. He’s icy and hot-tempered and...impossible!”
Rogan was biting his tongue trying not to say what he thought. He’d never known mild-mannered Mina to get her dander up at any man.
“A cowboy?” he asked instead.
“A pain in the... Yes, a cowboy.” She hesitated. “He loves animals, at least.”
“That’s something.”
“But I don’t like him. Not at all. Maybe he’ll go home soon. Bart and I are going to have a joint production sale. We’ve got a really good calf crop. You should come and see it.”
“When the snow leaves,” he said shortly. “I hate snow. Australia is really nice. Hot and dry. Just like I like weather to be.”
She sighed. “I love snow.”
“You’re welcome to my share of it. You take care of yourself.”
“I will.”
“You’re still my favorite cousin,” he teased.
“And you’re still mine,” she said, and meant it.
* * *
SHE WENT RIDING fence the next afternoon, and there was Bart’s houseguest, bending over a cow that looked as if it had been dead for some time. He had a small calf in his arms. She pulled up her horse and sat, watching.
He cuddled the little thing in his arms and smiled. “You’ll be okay, little fellow,” he said softly. “We’ll put you in the barn and give you bottles until you’re ready to face the world.”
He turned and saw Mina. She couldn’t tell what his expression was, because the wide hat shaded the sun from his face.
“You going toward Bart’s?” he asked.
“I can, if I need to,” she replied.
“Okay. Can you take this little one with you? This may not be the only cow who was attacked. I need to track the killer.”
“Of course I can take him back for you.” She was worried. “Could it be a wolf?” she worried.
“It could. Or a coyote. Or even some fool shooting where he shouldn’t. I took a rifle away from one of my...our own men back home at the ranch where I work,” he said, correcting the slip so smoothly that she didn’t catch it. “He was shooting at a target that he’d put facing the house. He didn’t even know that a rifle bullet can travel for a mile before it hits something.”
“I’ve seen one or two people like that, myself. Here, hand him up.” She held out her arms and he put the little creature into them. The calf bawled for a minute, but then he relaxed in Mina’s warm arms and settled against her. She smoothed his little head and muzzle and smiled at him tenderly.
Cort felt his heart skip a beat as he looked up at her. She could have been a hundred years out of time, holding a calf on a horse, just as some pioneer woman might have done in the distant past.
He smiled. “You look right at home on a horse,” he said quietly.
She laughed. “I’ve been riding one since I was a child. But Sand—” she patted her palomino mount’s neck “—is my favorite, of all the horses I’ve ever had.”
“I have a coal-black Arabian that I ride,” he said. “I call him Valeroso.”
“Gallant,” she translated absently. “You speak Spanish?”
He nodded. “We have a lot of cowboys who come from Mexico or down in the Yucatán. Many are Mayan, but they also speak Spanish.” He chuckled. “Most of us have enough trouble trying to speak one language, but they come here speaking two already. English is their third.”
“Intelligent people,” she said, smiling.
“Indeed they are.”
The calf was getting restless on her lap. “I’d better get him to the barn. Can you tell what killed his mother by the way she died?”
“Not so much,” he replied. “It could have been a wolf or a big dog—maybe a pack of stray dogs. I don’t think it was a person. The flesh was torn, not cut.”
She nodded. She cocked her head. “Can you track?”
He chuckled. “I can track. I hunt deer every fall. I love venison stew.”
“Me, too. I go with Cousin Rogan, when he’s home. He’s a good tracker himself.”
His sensual lips pursed. There was an odd glint in his pale brown eyes. “Does McGuire hunt?” he asked abruptly.
CHAPTER FIVE
MINA WAS TAKEN by surprise. The question, out of the blue, was unexpected. She colored just slightly. Obviously he’d heard that she and McGuire had eaten at the Simpsons’ place.
“I, well, I don’t know if he hunts,” she stammered. “A lot of ranchers do.”
He nodded. “He’s a millionaire,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “Is that the draw?” he added in a soft, but icy cold, tone. “Your ranch needs a lot of work and you’re operating in the red. McGuire could fix that, couldn’t he?”
“You’re insinuating something very insulting, to both of us,” she said shortly. “And in case you’ve forgotten, my cousin Rogan is rich, too!”
“Not as rich as McGuire, from what I hear,” he returned, unruffled. “Cousin Rogan doesn’t own a private jet.”
Her face went red with mingled embarrassment and anger. “Lots of rich men do.”
“And you’d know that, how?” he wondered aloud.
She gave him a cold going-over with her eyes, noting his worn chaps and dirty boots, his battered hat. “How would you know what rich men do, either?” she asked sarcastically. “You don’t look as if you travel with the jet set.”
Oddly, he wasn’t insulted. He just smiled. She had no way of knowing that he had, when he was younger, traveled with the jet set. He was well-known among cattlemen. He had one of the biggest ranches in West Texas. Latigo was known far and wide, not only for Cort’s innovative breeding strategy, and its prize bulls, but also for its history. It was founded by the Culhanes, a father and three sons, who passed it down to their children and their
grandchildren. The grandchildren fought so hard over ownership that they lost it, running up litigation fees that finally led to the ranch being sold for money they no longer had.
Cort’s father, Vince Grier, had bought the property and moved in with his own family, his wife and four sons. Little by little, he’d built Latigo into the property it was today. Not only did the Griers have cattle, they had real estate holdings all over the world, and gas and oil stocks that were worth even more than the ranch. Cort often thought that the Culhanes would be proud to see that their legacy hadn’t been lost. Even if it continued under another family’s name.
“I travel the rodeo circuit from time to time,” he said. It wasn’t quite a lie. He’d done a lot of rodeo when he was in his teens, before he joined the Army and went to war. “Lots of rich ranchers come to watch.”
She could hardly argue that. She knew that Cousin Rogan loved rodeo and hardly ever missed one. Catelow had a weekly rodeo in the summer. Lots of other towns and cities hosted them as well.
“I guess so,” she replied. She wasn’t eager to go, despite the calf’s infrequent movements as he rested between her flat belly and the pommel. She patted the calf absently.
“You should go,” he said, because he wanted her to stay, too, and it was unwise. He was flying false colors. He didn’t want her to know the truth about his status. Not yet. Let her think he was a roaming cowboy.
“I should.” She gave him a last, wistful smile and rode on toward Bart’s barn. He watched her until she was out of sight. He wished he knew why.
* * *
BART CAME DOWN to the barn and took the calf from her arms. He carried it into a clean stall and placed it gently on the hay. There was feed and water already in place. Ranchers expected to find a few deserted calves during calving season. “What happened?” he called back to her.
“You’ll have to ask your guest,” she said as she dismounted and followed him into the huge barn. “He found the little thing. Its mother was dead. He thinks it might have been a wolf or a pack of dogs. He’s tracking them.”
He chuckled. “He can track like a champion,” he told her. “Once, he caught a rustler by following a track with a break in the horseshoe. Tracked the men all the way to their transfer truck, pulled his .45 Ruger Vaquero and shot out their tires.” He shook his head. “Shot the head rustler as well.”
Her eyes were like saucers. “He shot someone!”
“Well, the man shot at him first,” he said defensively.
Her heart almost stopped. The thought of Cort being shot down made her feel sick at her stomach. She couldn’t understand why. She hardly even knew him. She didn’t want to know him. He made her knees weak.
“He and the sheriff in his county back home in Texas are good friends,” he told her. “And he’s well thought of by the Special Rangers—those are the Texas Rangers assigned to investigate livestock and ranch-and farm-related cases of cattle theft. The man Cort shot got thirty years in prison for stealing sixty head of cattle.”
“Thirty years?” she exclaimed.
He nodded. “Texas is hard on cattle thieves. Here in Wyoming, it’s ten years, tops. But in Texas, it’s a third-degree felony, punishable by ten years in prison for stealing ten head of cattle. Sixty head, sixty years, it should have been—but the guy had a good lawyer so he only got thirty years.”
“I will never steal even one head of cattle in Texas as long as I live,” she said, putting her hand over her heart. “I swear!”
He laughed. “Me, too.”
“I guess I’d better get back home. I’m stuck in the middle of a chapter on the next book. I thought getting out in the clean air might help me think. It sure did.”
“You going to get serious about Jake?” he asked conversationally, and his eyes twinkled as he glanced at her. “You could do worse.”
“He’s really nice,” she began.
He grimaced. “Ouch. Nice!”
“Well, he is.”
He shook his head. “He’s got all his own teeth, mostly, and he owns a private jet. He’s filthy rich, got ranch holdings everywhere, and he’s good-looking to boot!”
“And he’s nice.”
He just shook his head.
She glanced at him as they left the barn. “Are you sure your cousin isn’t on some Wanted list somewhere?” she wondered.
“Not that I know of,” he promised, and burst out laughing. “He’s a good man. Temperamental, hot tempered, and he can be arrogant. But he’s steady and strong.”
“And if you’re offering him to me—no, thank you,” she said firmly.
“Could I ask why not?”
She turned and looked at him. “Because he’s a cowboy, Bart,” she replied. “I know about cowboys. I’ve been around them all my life. They carouse when they’ve got free time. They’ve got a girl in every little town who thinks she’s the only girl. A lot of them move from ranch to ranch because they get the wanderlust. They don’t settle down and they never love just one woman.” She looked out over the pasture to the snowcapped mountains beyond. “A man who works the land enjoys his own company,” she said after a minute. “He’s a loner. Men like that...” She smiled sadly. “Well, they don’t settle. Do they?”
He was caught between a rock and a hard place. What could he say that wouldn’t blow Cort’s cover?
“Some of them do,” he replied. “What about Joe Stamper? He was a rounder, and he settled down with Martha. They have three sons. He’s the foreman over at the McGuire Ranch.”
“I’d forgotten Joe.”
“I could name you two or three others who got married and made good husbands and fathers,” he added.
She sighed. “I guess so. But marriage isn’t something I want, Bart,” she said sadly. “I guess I’ve had a close look at the worst of it, and it warped something inside me. I don’t believe in happy endings anymore. Life,” she added, “is not a fairy tale.”
“That depends,” he said.
“On what?”
He looked beyond her to the mountains she’d been watching. “It depends on the people involved,” he replied. “Life is what you make of it.”
“I stand corrected.” She grinned at him. “But you’re not married.”
“She ran off with another man,” he reminded her.
“There was Sally...” she began.
“Married a Norwegian tourist and went home with him.”
She furrowed her brow. “Agatha.”
“Moved to California and said we’d see her on television one day.” His eyes twinkled. “And we did, I guess, when she got mixed up with that married actor who went on the news and said it was Agatha’s fault, that she seduced him against his will. I laughed so hard I almost busted a rib.”
“Poor Agatha,” she agreed. “No film studio would touch her after that.”
“She went to New York and got a job modeling,” he recalled.
“She was in a magazine I thumbed through just the other day at the drugstore. She looks very pretty. She wasn’t, you know,” she reminded him. “She was just average looking. It’s amazing what they can do with makeup.”
“Tell me about it.”
“She might come back here one day,” she said.
He sighed. “She might. But she said she didn’t want to spend her life on a ranch, smelling cow poop and alfalfa from dawn to dusk.” He glanced at her. “I like the smell of alfalfa.”
“Me, too, Bart.” She patted him on the shoulder. “Maybe we should form a club. And only people with lost loves could join.”
“Lost loves, huh?” he mused. “And where’s yours?”
She frowned. “That’s right. I don’t have one.”
“Yet,” he said, just as Cort Grier came riding up on the bay horse he’d appropriated for the length of his visit with his cousin.
“Did you find
what killed the cow?” Bart asked.
Cort nodded, leaning forward with his hands crossed over the pommel, holding the reins. “A wolf.”
“We need to track it...”
“No, we don’t.” Cort dismounted gracefully and joined them, with the reins threaded through his fingers. “The wolf was dead as well.”
Bart and Mina both stared at him.
“What?” He read the expressions well. “No, I didn’t do it,” he said. “Somebody with a high-powered rifle took him out. The shot blew out part of his rib cage. Had to be a hollow point, to do that much damage.”
“Who?” Bart wondered.
Cort shook his head. “No idea.”
“You’re sure it was the wolf that killed Bart’s cow?” she asked.
He nodded. “Still had blood on his muzzle. Probably separated from his pack, and too old and disabled to hunt anything that could run fast. He had a bad belly wound, almost as long as he was, and not healed. He was probably in terrible pain. The cow had just given birth and she was weak.”
Mina sighed. “Nature is cruel,” she said. “But that’s the way of things around a ranch. Some animals kill, some die.” She looked up. “God’s will.”
Cort chuckled.
“What’s funny?” she asked.
“I had a college professor in history who used to say that all the time. He’d been lecturing about deism in the past. He tried to put up a map on the blackboard to point out where deism had its beginnings. It kept falling down. Finally, the last time, it hit him right on the head. He turned to the class and said, ‘God’s will,’ with the straightest face you’ve ever seen. We all roared.”
She cocked her head, curious about him. “You went to college?”
“Just a couple of courses, when I was out of high school,” he lied. “I used to love history.”
She smiled. “Me, too. Napoleon. Scipio Africanus. Hannibal. Alexander.”
He frowned. “Conquerors,” he said. “Military history.”
“Oh yes. I take courses online. Those are my favorites. They were innovators as well as warriors. They used brilliant strategy and tactics to win battles.”