Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
R ed Devil tried a little crow-hopping and tossing of his head, but Ry felt in control as he walked the big chestnut horse away from the corrals.
Leigh had told him Red Devil had been “cut proud,” the cowboy way of describing a gelding who acted like a stallion.
Ry liked that. Once the ranch deal went through, he’d own a third of Red Devil, but he’d decided to buy out Chase’s and Joe’s shares of the horse.
He hadn’t made the decision lightly. The commodities market had taken some strange turns in the past few days, and he’d had to scramble to protect his assets.
Just before he’d walked out of his room and discovered Freddy embroiled with the German couple, he’d completed a telephone call getting him into the corn market and out of soybeans, both in the nick of time.
He’d burned the midnight oil figuring ways to hedge his bets on the gold and silver market so he wouldn’t have any trouble coming up with his share of the ranch down payment.
And through all that, he’d continued to take part in ranch life.
It was a test, to see if he could manage his investments from Arizona.
If he could do it without suffering significant losses, he’d be able to spend more time on the True Love, more time riding Red Devil, more time polishing his bronc-riding skills.
And more time with Freddy. She was resisting him, perhaps from some instinctive sense that he represented change in her life.
He wanted to find a way to make her welcome that change, because, try as he might to put her out of his mind, he wanted Freddy.
Just then, a white sedan came down the road toward him, driving fast and sending up a rooster tail of dust. Ry frowned and got a firmer grip on Red Devil’s reins. Damned city people. Then he smiled at himself. He was acclimating fast.
The car slowed as it came alongside Red Devil. The horse pranced sideways and arched his neck. Ry reined him in and gripped with his thighs. “Easy, Red. Easy,” he murmured.
The tinted window of the sedan buzzed down and a man in suit and tie stuck his head out. The cars air-conditioning wafted around Ry and he found himself thinking the guy was a wimp to need air-conditioning. It couldn’t be much over ninety.
The man took off his sunglasses and squinted up at Ry. “Say, cowboy, am I headed in the right direction for the True Love Guest Ranch?”
Being addressed as a cowboy made Ry’s day, even though the man’s attitude wasn’t particularly respectful. “Straight ahead and take a right at the fork,” he said, tightening the reins as Red Devil pranced some more.
“That’s quite a horse you have,” the man said.
“Yep.” Ry almost wished he chewed tobacco so he could spit in the dirt after that reply.
“Thanks for the directions.” The automatic window buzzed upward and the car took off, spewing fumes and leaving a billowing cloud of dust to settle over Ry and Red Devil.
Cursing and wiping grit from his face, Ry loped away from the dust and exhaust fumes.
Only later, as he traversed the now-familiar western end of the True Love, did he figure out who the guy might be.
An environmental engineer was due out any time, to check the water and make sure nothing toxic was buried under the True Love.
Ry longed for the necessary paperwork to be finished.
Chase had mentioned during his last phone call that he might make it out in time for the closing.
It wasn’t necessary — everything could be handled by mail — but Ry could understand Chase’s eagerness to be part of the process.
Besides, without a rig to drive someplace, the trucker seemed to be getting very bored.
Ry thought of the impact the ranch would have on a hot-blooded young rebel like Chase and laughed. If the Gutbuster incident got Freddy’s undies in a bunch, wait till she tried to control Lavette.
The couple who’d wanted the John Wayne Room wasn’t Freddy’s only problem that afternoon.
The environmental engineer arrived and she had to provide him with a map of the buildings and outbuildings.
Then several of the German guests announced they were vegetarians, precipitating a conference with Belinda on the menu, which was ordinarily built around beef.
A young woman started sneezing and insisted her room be cleaned again with damp cloths to pick up all the dust. Freddy suggested allergy medicine, but the woman claimed she never took pills.
“So she comes to a guest ranch in the desert in May,” Freddy mumbled to herself as she located Rosa, the housekeeper, and requested the second cleaning.
She’d just ducked into her office to call the bunkhouse and ask for six horses to be saddled for a sunset ride, when Dexter appeared in the doorway leaning on his walker, his best hat sitting jauntily on his head.
“Hi, Dex,” she said, picking up the phone and punching in the bunkhouse extension. “What can I do for you?”
“Ice cream.”
She’d forgotten. She glanced quickly at her calendar and sure enough, today was ice-cream day. One look into Dexter’s face alight with expectation and she ditched the idea of putting off the ice-cream trip until the next day. “Sure,” she said. “Right after this call.”
“Okay.” He pivoted his walker and stumped toward the double doors leading to the porch.
In ten minutes, she’d arranged for the sunset ride and had asked Leigh to handle any problems with the guests or the environmental engineer.
As Freddy pulled the van up to the arched entryway, Dexter had barely made it down the flagstone path.
She guided him in with as little fuss as possible, knowing he hated needing the help.
But these days, his ice-cream trip was more important than his vanity.
As they headed toward the main road, a lone rider stood on a rise about a mile to their left.
Even from that distance, Freddy recognized Ry on Red Devil.
Red Devil tossed his head but otherwise stood quietly.
Ry seemed to have perfect control of the big animal, she thought with a pang of resentment.
Why should this greenhorn be able to master a horse when some of her experienced hands had failed?
Yet Ry sat like a king in the saddle as he gazed out over the land.
Freddy returned her attention to the road, but the picture of Ry surveying the ranch stayed with her.
Her father used to do that, and so had she, on occasion.
She remembered the possessive feeling of those moments, and she grew uneasy.
The True Love belonged to the Singleton family, no matter who held the deed.
At least, that’s the way it had always been.
Dexter craned his head backward, still looking at Ry silhouetted on the promontory. “His mother—no—his girl died,” Dexter said.
“His wife died,” Freddy said. “I know. He told me.”
“May 24.”
Freddy felt as if someone had dropped ice cubes in her stomach. That was the date on the missing calendar page. But maybe Dexter’s comments weren’t related to each other. “What about May 24?” she asked.
“She died.”
Freddy swallowed. “How do you know that, Dexter?”
“He said.”
“He told you his wife died on May 24?”
“Yeр.”
Somehow Freddy made it through the rest of her duties that day.
Ry ate in the dining room, but he’d been appropriated by the couple now sleeping in the John Wayne Room, and Freddy spent most of the meal counseling the young woman with the allergies about not going outside during the early morning and late afternoon, when the pollen count was highest.
Then the sunset-ride crowd came in, and Freddy got caught up in their stories of seeing a pack of coyotes chasing down a rabbit.
Some of the riders seemed to think Freddy should do something about protecting the cute little bunnies, so she spent another hour convincing them that they were looking at real nature, not something created as a theme park.
It was almost nine before she broke free. She looked around for Ry, but he was gone. She checked the porch, even asked the couple who had spent most of the evening with him, but nobody could tell her where he was. At last, she decided to try the cottage.
The John Wayne Room couple had blown it, she thought as she approached the small building, which was a miniature of the main house, complete with red-tiled roof, whitewashed adobe and a front porch shaded with a sweet-smelling jasmine vine.
Freddy always gave the cottage to honeymooning couples, but none had presented themselves in the German group, so she’d picked at random, thinking she’d offered them a treat.
Ry wasn’t sitting on one of the Adirondack chairs occupying the front porch, but a light shone from the window. Freddy tapped on the door.
“Come in,” he called, and she opened the carved door, wondering why he hadn’t bothered to get up to answer the knock.
He was sitting on the bed talking on the phone, his briefcase open beside him and papers spread over the white comforter. He glanced up, his eyes widening. He covered the mouthpiece. “I’ll just be a minute.”
She half turned toward the door. “I could come back?—”
“No. I’ll be through soon.”
She pulled out one of the captain’s chairs next to a small table in the corner and sat down.
She hadn’t been in here for a while and had forgotten the charm of the decor.
She automatically checked for cobwebs in the beamed ceiling or any yellowing of the Battenburg lace trimming the white comforter and the curtains at the windows.
Like most of the beds at the ranch, the one in the cottage was an antique four-poster paired with a dark wood dresser and end table.
Ry’s hat hung on a post at the foot of the bed, in typical cowboy fashion.
His boots were propped in a corner, and his shirt was unsnapped almost to his waist. It was warm in the room, and Freddy wondered if the air conditioner was broken. She’d have to ask.