Chapter 1 #2
John grimaced as he thought about Stasia.
He’d been crazy about her for years. While Tanner had been overseas, he’d thought he had a chance to turn her heart toward himself.
It hadn’t happened. Stasia had loved Tanner from her teens upward and had never deviated.
She was a one-man woman. John had finally accepted it, but reluctantly.
Right up until Tanner and Stasia’s remarriage—the first marriage had been a tragedy for both of them—he’d hoped that he had a chance.
But when Tanner had come home for good, it had been quickly apparent that Stasia’s feelings had never changed. It would always
be Tanner.
John had agonized over her choice. But in the end, Tanner was his brother and he loved him. Even when Cole had refused to
let Tanner on the property, it had been John who met him off the ranch and kept him informed about the people and problems
Big Spur was facing. Tanner had never stopped loving Stasia—although she’d never known how he really felt. Once she did, John
was out of the running forever, especially when she announced that she and Tanner were going to be parents. The two were expecting
their first child the following summer. John went occasionally to visit, with all sorts of baby things, from mobiles to special
music. It didn’t heal his broken heart, but the coming baby helped him get his focus back where it belonged, on the ranch.
Odalie, his baby sister, was living in New York City taking voice lessons and preparing for an audition at the Metropolitan
Opera. It had been the dream of her life to sing there. Well, her mother had helped her to dream. Heather Everett had been
a nightclub singer, very famous, before she married Cole, and even now she wrote hit songs for the hard rock group Desperado.
They’d won two Grammys with her songs already. But Heather had wanted to sing opera. Odalie really had the voice for it. But
he wondered sometimes if Heather’s failed ambition hadn’t triggered Odalie’s.
She and Stasia had roomed together in New York, where Stasia worked for a former—maybe not-so former—New Jersey crime boss named Tony Garza.
Stasia loved the art gallery owner. Odalie was his blood enemy.
The two fought every time they saw each other.
It had amused Heather to see them together when Tony and Odalie were in the same room, when she’d gone to New York to visit her daughter.
Smoke and fire, she’d murmured. John had chuckled.
John and Odalie were the last unmarried children of the Everetts. While Odalie might secretly find Tony attractive, John had
never found anybody except Stasia that he’d ever wanted to settle down with.
“Well, I’ve still got you, haven’t I, old man?” he asked the still pillowcase beside him. “No thanks to Collins,” he added
under his breath. “I’m going to get Ralston to short-sheet Collins’s bed. That’ll fix him,” he muttered. “Better yet,” he
mused, “worms!” That was a standing family joke. He grinned, thinking of how the prank would look.
The cowboys came up with some really creative pranks when they set their minds to it. Short-sheeting each other’s beds. Filling
the salt shaker with sugar. Moving a sleeping cowboy outside on the ground and leaving him there until he woke. Setting off
firecrackers in the bunkhouse in the middle of the night. And, worst of all, cleaning several tubs of worms and sneaking them
into someone’s bed with the lights out when the unsuspecting victim went to bed. John had even done it to Odalie when both
were younger. Of course, she’d avenged herself by filling his bed full of frogs . . .
John had been both victim and perpetrator in those outbursts of fun.
When he and Odalie were kids, the two of them liked to carry John’s huge albino python out to the bunkhouse to liven things up.
Most of the men were terrified of snakes.
But sadly, nobody had been afraid of Charlie—the python—except the family’s blacksmith, who was kept on retainer because he was always needed to fix things around the ranch.
Poor Manolo spent a lot of time hiding when he saw the kids coming out of the house with Charlie in a big sack.
Once Cole realized what his two kids were doing, he put a stop to it. John shook his head. He and Odalie had done a lot of
wild stuff as kids, without realizing how much trouble they were making for their dad. Legendary for his temper and impatience,
Cole was the soul of patience with his three children. He never raged at them or hit them, preferring reason and taking away
video games as punishment. John said once that he’d much rather have had a paddle on his backside than lose access to his
favorite online games. And, of course, Cole knew that.
Now Tanner and Stasia were happily married and expecting their first child. Odalie planned a career at the Met, although nobody
knew how terrified she was to go on stage, or how physical that fear had become. Despite attempts by therapists to help assuage
the very real terror, she finally realized that she couldn’t face daily doses of it, regardless of her exquisite singing voice.
But she’d told only John. Nobody else.
And here was John, still on the Big Spur, and his only love was in a pillowcase on the seat beside him, zooming down a dirt
road in a pickup truck that had the ranch logo and enough perks to qualify as a spaceship. It had everything, including a
killer stereo system. John punched in his favorite music—which was Debussy’s La Mer, of all things—and drove on. Precious stretched out as much as the borrowed pillowcase would allow.
“There,” John mused as he glanced at the confined animal. “I knew you’d like classical music.”
He turned the truck down the dirt road toward a stand of very green trees, a good indication of water. It was almost winter,
but things hadn’t frozen. Not yet, at least.
The truck ran across an ancient wooden bridge over the stream, which only ran certain times of the year.
This time, it ran following a torrential downpour that had lasted three days.
Farmers and ranchers in the area had gone wild with joy, because it hadn’t even been predicted.
It had brought an ongoing drought to a temporary end and filled all the tanks, or cattle ponds, in the area.
There was a small lot of purebred yearling bulls destined for a private treaty sale before Christmas, in a pasture just up
the small rise to a stand of oak trees. John pulled the truck over on the wide dirt road.
“I’ll just be a minute, old fellow, so don’t go nuts, okay? I’ll leave the music and the heat on,” he added as he got out
and closed the door, because even in north Texas, it was cold in November.
As he approached the fence, he scowled. He smelled something sweet, and it wasn’t natural. In his childhood, one of their
ranch hands had been a Native American tracker. He’d taught young John a number of skills; not only how to recognize various
tracks, but also how not to draw attention on the run.
And here was the first lesson he’d learned. If you’re running for your life, make sure you aren’t wearing a scent, like perfume
or cologne. Whoever was in that pasture wasn’t one of his bulls. More than likely it was a rustler.
John wore a Colt .45 in a holster on his hip, under his leather jacket, for any rabid animals or dangers that could be found
in any natural setting. His hand went to the butt.
Not that he usually needed anything but his fists. John was big and husky, and it was all muscle. He’d done bull riding in
rodeos and bull wrestling; in fact, he still did it from time to time. He was a champion in both. Most rustlers didn’t like
to get dirty. They were mostly interested in herding cattle into semi trucks and getting paid.
He moved quietly, careful not to walk in a rhythmic pattern. The truck would divert whoever was in with his bulls, since he’d left the engine running. He went under the highest strand of barbed wire and moved stealthily toward the tree where the young bulls were resting.
Odd, they weren’t spooked by whoever was in there with them.
He moved closer. Then he spotted the intruder. Medium height, short, wavy reddish-gold hair, pretty figure. Definitely female.
He blinked. Female. And in the rustling business? He stood very still for a minute, but she didn’t turn in his direction.
She was talking to one of the bull calves. “Now, I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” she was cooing at it. “But I’m really hungry—”
she drew out the word hungry “—and a thick juicy steak is what I want most of all . . . !”
“Not off one of my prize damned bulls, you don’t,” John interrupted.
She whirled, but he already had the pistol out and aimed right at her. She threw up her hands, green eyes wide and frightened
in a face that was pleasant, although not really pretty. Her mouth was like a bow, perfect, and she had a lovely complexion,
though; and her figure left nothing to be denied, even dressed in rough denim pants and an oddly thick belt over a black shell
under a long-sleeved green flannel shirt.
“I’m just hungry,” she blurted out.
“You don’t eat a prize-winning bull,” he pointed out. “You go to a restaurant and order a steak.”
She was staring at the gun. “If you’re going to shoot me, not much point in trying to find a restaurant.”
He cocked his head. His pale blue, silvery eyes narrowed. “Who are you?”
She swallowed, hard. “Josie Blake,” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. “And what are you doing in my pasture, Josie Blake?” he added as he holstered the gun.
She put her hands down very slowly and suddenly her hand went to a cross-draw holster under the loose shirt and there was a 9 mm handgun in her own hand. It was pointing straight at John.
She smiled. “Never put up a gun until you’re certain that your adversary doesn’t have one as well,” she said sweetly.
He sighed. “Go ahead and shoot,” he said. “My girl married somebody else. I don’t really have a reason to keep living except