Chapter 4
Chapter Four
T .R. loved the first two hours of the trail ride. Despite the heat that baked his back and thighs, he enjoyed the rhythm of the horse beneath him, the acrid scent of sun-warmed bushes and blossom-studded cactus plants, the call of birds and the caress of an occasional cool breeze.
The hat shaded his face and the leather saddle cupped his groin in a pleasant grip.
Freddy had assigned him to Mikey, a brown horse with a black mane and tail.
Mikey’s head bobbed pleasantly as they clopped along the trail behind Freddy’s mount, a reddish mare named Maureen, after Maureen O’Hara, one of John Wayne’s leading ladies.
T.R. had never ridden horseback behind a woman before and hadn’t realized how sexy the view could be.
He felt vaguely guilty about his thoughts, but not guilty enough to censor them.
Freddy’s firm buttocks rested lightly in the saddle as they walked, but brief periods of trotting sent her into a graceful posting motion that was decidedly erotic.
His manhood tightened in response to the suggestive movement, but he didn’t plan to indulge in anything beyond innocent fantasy.
The True Love already had too much emotional baggage for his taste.
He wasn’t about to add another entanglement by becoming sexually involved with the foreman.
Freddy led him to the south boundary of the ranch, and from there they rode west, then north toward Whitlock’s property.
T.R. glimpsed clusters of cattle, but they were never close enough to get a really good look.
The sales brochure had mentioned a herd of about two hundred female Herefords, ten bulls and whatever calves had been born that spring.
Freddy pointed out a twenty-acre horse pasture fenced with barbed wire to separate the horses turned loose in the pasture from the cattle that roamed the rest of the property.
Farther on was another fenced pasture that held a scattered herd of approximately a hundred red-and-white Herefords.
“Those belong to Duane,” Freddy said over her shoulder. “They carry his brand, the D-Bar. He’s working on an experimental breeding project, so we keep his stock separated from ours and lease him the land. Ours forage on whatever they can find, but Duane has to feed this bunch.”
“Have you had a roundup yet?” he called ahead to her.
She turned in her saddle. “Three weeks ago. That’s the one time we’re booked solid because we let the guests help.”
T.R. nodded. He was sorry he’d missed that.
As they headed east, toward the mountains, T.R. began to feel discomfort. He checked his watch and realized he’d expected to be back at the ranch by now. Maybe he’d underestimated his endurance.
A short time later, Freddy gestured to her left. “That adobe building over there is the original homestead built by Thaddeus Singleton.”
T.R. stood in his stirrups, glad for a reason to stretch and get his behind out of the saddle.
He studied the squat, flat-roofed structure that wasn’t much bigger than a single-car garage.
A hundred years of sun and rain had battered and bleached the earthen blocks, strong winds and animals had knocked holes in the walls.
Yet the pioneer in T.R. admired the spirit of the man who had carved out this foothold in a hostile land.
“I can take you a little closer, if you’re interested,” Freddy said.
He probably shouldn’t agree to detours, considering the condition of his thighs, but he didn’t want to seem like a wuss, either. “Sure.”
As they drew closer, he noticed that a wooden lintel remained in place over the front door, and the ever-present heart with an arrow through it had been burned deep into the wood. In a far corner of the roofless building, the adobe was blackened, as if by fire.
“What caused that?” he asked, pointing.
“Hikers staying here for the night, most likely.” Freddy leaned her forearms on her saddle horn and gazed at the ruins.
“I’ve found all sorts of evidence of people camping here.
Leigh and I have talked about fencing the building off and eventually restoring it, but the corporation hasn’t been interested and Leigh and I don’t have the money.
My grandfather poured that concrete floor in the thirties, back when the roof was still intact and we used this place for temporary shelter if we were caught out here in bad weather.
That’s the last improvement the place had. ”
“I see.” He wasn’t interested in preservation. Attach too much sentimentality to the place by creating a shrine to the original homesteader, and future developers might run afoul of the historic preservation police. He wanted this prize parcel to be unencumbered when it went on the block.
“Thaddeus’s wife, Clara Singleton, once held off a raiding party of twenty Apaches from the roof of that house,” Freddy said.
“The parapet was about three feet high back then, and she used a ladder to climb up and pulled it after her. She had three guns there, and she crawled around firing them in succession, so the Apaches thought there were more people at the house. Thaddeus was off rounding up strays. She drove off those Apaches all by herself.”
“That’s quite a story.” T.R. had noticed the defiant tilt of her chin, the flash in her eyes as she told it.
No one could doubt that Freddy had inherited courage and determination from Clara Singleton.
Unfortunately, in this modern-day struggle for control of the True Love, he and his partners would be cast in the role of marauding Apaches, and this time the Singleton women were outgunned.
“Clara was quite a woman.” Freddy clicked her tongue and urged Maureen down the trail with a nudge of her heels. “There’s a dry wash up ahead,” she called over her shoulder. “Want to lope the horses a little?”
“Sure.” Maybe a good run would release some of the tension building in him.
He’d thought that after fifteen years of commodities trading, he’d be immune to attacks of conscience about making money from the misfortunes of others.
The free-enterprise system produced the healthiest economy in the world, but you had to play by the rules.
People made money or went broke according to the demands of the market, and woe to the investor who worried about the hindmost.
He eased Mikey down a rocky embankment into a wide sandy riverbed littered with tree branches rubbed smooth by rushing water. He’d heard about flash floods and imagined this was the sort of place one would happen. But the sky was an unrelenting blue.
With a whoop and a flick of her reins against Maureen’s polished rump, Freddy took off down the wash.
With no prompting, Mikey leaped after her, and T.R grabbed the saddle horn with one hand and his hat with the other.
After the first moment of surprise, he gripped the horse with his thighs, crammed the hat more firmly on his head, and grasped the reins as he leaned into the wind.
A fantasy created by years of Saturday-afternoon matinees came true in that moment — T.R. McGuinnes, famous gunslinger, galloped his cow pony under an endless sky, the hot wind flattening his Western shirt against his chest and whipping the horse’s mane against the backs of his hands.
As he drew alongside Freddy, he looked over at her.
She grinned at him, and in that pell-mell moment, with his heart pumping from the excitement of the run, he experienced a rush of emotion that scared the hell out of him.
Immediately, he began reining in his horse.
Within five seconds, T.R. McGuinnes, commodities trader and emotional conservative, was back in the saddle.
Freddy noticed signs of strain in T.R. by the time they reached the pond that served as a reservoir for the True Love. An earthen dam cradled the waters of Rogue Creek about a third of the way up Rogue Canyon, and it was one of Freddy’s favorite spots on the ranch.
T.R. winced as he dismounted and looked longingly at the cool water, as if he’d like nothing better than to strip and immerse himself in it. But to his credit, he didn’t complain. Freddy began to wonder what it would take to wring a protest out of him.
Choosing her favorite flat rock under the shade of a large cottonwood, she tethered Maureen to a low branch and dug in her saddlebag for the sandwiches Belinda had given her.
She’d also brought along some dehydrated stew that she’d brew up for their dinner, and each saddle had a bedroll tied to the cantle, but she didn’t want to announce their overnight plans yet.
She wanted to be far enough into the canyon that T.R.
wouldn’t consider finding his own way back to a Jacuzzi and a soft bed.
She sat down and watched him, wondering how he’d take the news.
T.R. tied Mikey’s reins to the same branch Freddy had used for Maureen and gingerly lowered himself to the rock. He’d obviously forgotten to bring his canteen when he’d dismounted, so she offered hers.
“Oh!” He started to get up. “I have a?—”
“Never mind.” She pulled on his arm to bring him back beside her. “We can share.”
“You first,” he said.
She took a sip, wiped the rim on her sleeve, and offered it to him. Funny, she’d shared a canteen with riding partners all her life, yet she’d never been so aware of the intimacy of the act. Maybe it was the way he’d glanced at her mouth before he accepted the container of water.
He started to drink, and paused. “Can we refill our canteens from the pond?”
“Yes.” She was impressed that he’d thought to ask. Some tenderfeet would have gulped the contents of the canteen and worried about their water supply after it was exhausted. “Besides, I have a couple more jugs in my saddlebag.”
“Good.” He tipped his head back and swallowed continuously until the canteen was empty.
Like a schoolgirl, she watched him, noticing the surprising length of his eyelashes as he closed his eyes and the generous curve of his lower lip as it cupped the mouth of the canteen.
A drop of moisture escaped and trickled down his chin.
She had the sudden urge to lean over and lick it off.
Good thing she’d planned this so he’d most likely be on a plane to New York by tomorrow, or no telling what stupid thing she might do.
Her commitment to the ranch allowed no time for romance.
Leigh had accused her of throwing herself into ranch work in order to compensate for not having a man in her life, but what did Leigh know?
By the time T.R. had finished drinking, Freddy was busy unwrapping a sandwich. She handed it to him with brisk efficiency and began eating her own.
“Where did the name of the ranch come from?” he asked. “The real estate broker didn’t seem to know.”
Freddy was offended. In her opinion, no one should be allowed to market her ranch without understanding its history. “When Thaddeus announced he was marrying Clara, the churchgoing people around here had a fit,” she began. “Clara was a dance-hall girl, and some said she sold her favors.”
“Sold her favors.” T.R. smiled. “Such a quaint way of putting it. Do you think she did?”
Freddy looked into his blue eyes and a curl of awareness snaked through her midsection.
They were, after all, talking about sex.
“Probably. Back then, a single girl could either teach school, take in laundry or entertain men for a living. Clara didn’t have any education, and from what I know of her, she wasn’t the type to wash other people’s dirty shirts. ”
“Sounds like a feisty woman.” There was a note of approval in his voice.
“She was. And Thaddeus was determined to have her, regardless of the wagging tongues. When they were married, he named the ranch the True Love to show those busybodies he didn’t give a hoot about their opinion.”
“Good for him.”
Freddy crumpled her sandwich wrapping. “He was true to her, and she to him, until the day she died, forty-three years later.”
“I’ll bet he was true to her even after that.”
She looked into his eyes and her heart stumbled.
Not many men would chance making such a sentimental remark.
“He probably was,” she said, a bit hypnotized by the depth of emotion in his gaze.
She gave herself a mental shake. “If you’ll fill the canteens, we can head up the canyon,” she said, starting to rise.
“Sure.” His slight groan as he pushed himself to his feet elicited sympathy from her instead of the satisfaction she’d hoped to feel.
He walked stiffly to his horse, retrieved his canteen and returned slowly to the water’s edge with their two containers.
He crouched, dipped the canteens in the water and clenched his jaw as he stood.
“This is a nice spot,” he said, his tone conversational as he glanced at the granite walls rising on either side of them.
She could imagine what it cost him to make pleasant comments when his thigh and groin muscles were very likely screaming in protest.
“How long has it been here?”
“Thirty years. My dad decided to dam up Rogue Creek and create a pond. He got sick of going to the mountains to fish, so he stocked it with bass.”
“Why is it called Rogue Creek?”
“Because it’s in Rogue Canyon.”
He rolled his eyes.
“The truth is, my great-grandfather had to come up here after a rogue cougar. He shot the cougar, but not before the cougar almost killed his horse.”
T.R. looked uneasy. “Are there any still living up here?”
“A few.” Her conscience prickled her. “But you’ll probably never see one. They usually keep away from people.”
“Fine with me.” He glanced back at the pond. “What if the ranch wanted to tap into this pond?”
“Why would we?”
“Say you wanted to put in more landscape plants, maybe a greater area in grass.”
Freddy gave herself a mental slap for softening toward this dude.
He was an Easterner, and the first thing most Easterners wanted to do was green up the desert and make it look like the Boston Common.
For all she knew, the guy had plans to build the True Love Golf Course out behind the corrals.
“We try to keep our watering needs low by using plants that don’t require much moisture,” she said.
“Ready to go? I want to show you the Forest Service land where we summer the cattle.”
“Lead on.” Only the faintest flicker of his eyelashes betrayed his pain as he settled himself in the saddle once more.