Chapter 20 #2
“Help!” she shouted, knowing it was no use, knowing she was absolutely alone. But she shouted, anyway. “Help me! Please help me!”
“Freddy!”
Someone was there. She squinted through the dust as the tree leaned closer to the trampling herd. “Over here!”
Then she saw him, riding low over Red Devil’s neck as the big horse plowed through the river of cattle. No, it should not be Ry. He wasn’t a good enough rider to make it through a stampede. He would die trying to save her. “Go back!” she screamed. “I’ll make it!”
She glimpsed the grim set of his mouth. He was coming for her.
Her heart swelled in response to this show of courage.
Foolish, foolish courage. Oh, Ry! Please go back, she begged silently, knowing it was no use.
If she allowed him to pick her off the tree, as he obviously intended, they’d probably both fall under the churning hooves and be killed.
But if she held back, he’d probably fall off trying to reach her and then they’d both die.
A no-win situation.
He veered toward the tree, his arm extended. She poised herself for the pickup.
“Now!” he shouted, grabbing her by the belt.
She landed facedown across the front of his saddle, the impact knocking the air from her lungs. She stared straight into the wild eyes of a Hereford running beside Red Devil as she started to slip forward headfirst into the herd.
“No, dammit!” Ry shouted, jerking her back by her belt. “No!”
Gradually, Red Devil’s pace slowed. The herd thinned, until Ry was able to rein the horse in. Red Devil stood snorting and shaking as Ry hauled Freddy upright and settled her facing him, her thighs resting across his.
Freddy gasped for breath. Ry’s face was a mask of dust, and his chest heaved. He picked up one of her blood-encrusted hands and examined her palm. Then he placed a soft kiss there.
Tears welled in her eyes, and she was about to blubber out her gratitude, when she recalled why she’d ridden out here in the first place. Taking an unsteady breath, she lifted her chin and looked him square in the eye. “I hate your guts,” she said.
“I know.” He smiled.
“Furthermore, you’re not getting away with this, you and your pack of thieves from the big city. I’m fighting you every inch of the way, buster. You haven’t seen the last of Freddy Singleton!”‘
His smile widened.
“What are you doing, sitting there grinning like an idiot? Don’t you realize what I’m saying? This is war!”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from you.”
“So what’s the big smile for, mister?”
“You’re alive.”
She stared at him, then cleared her throat. “Thank you for saving my life,” she said stiffly.
“No thanks necessary. You did me a favor.”
“I beg your pardon?”
He reined Red Devil in a circle and started toward the homestead. She was forced to grab hold of his waist to keep from falling off. Even worse, the movement of the horse, balanced as she was up against Ry’s crotch, awakened some potent memories she would rather forget.
He held her gently with one arm around her waist, his chin hovering just above the crown of her head.
“You see, Freddy, I came to Arizona feeling like a failure. Maybe I’d done well in the paper world of stocks and bonds, but I had no confidence I could make it in the nitty-gritty of real life.
Deep down I was afraid that if I’d been faced with those punks who killed Linda, I might not have known what to do.
It sounds corny, but my manhood had never been tested. ”
Ry was a lot harder to hate up close like this. She found herself hugging him tighter, and then she had to remember to relax her arms and back away as much as possible in this confining position.
“I think that’s part of what buying this ranch was all about,” he continued. “I wanted to come out here and test myself.”
That statement helped renew her fury. “So we were a proving ground for you? How nice. Now you can turn the True Love into a suburban housing development because it’s served your purpose.”
He tightened his grip around her waist. “We need to talk about that.”
“I’m not much in the mood for talking. I think I’d rather cut your heart out.”
He sighed. “You may get your chance at that, too. But I—” He paused and pulled back on Red Devil’s reins. “My God.”
“What?” Glancing up, she saw him staring over Red Devil’s head. She swiveled to follow the direction of his gaze, and her breath became trapped in her lungs.
Where the little homestead had once stood as a silent tribute to Clara and Thaddeus Singleton, nothing remained but a pile of rubble.
Only the concrete slab had survived in one piece.
A lump rising in her throat, Freddy held on to Ry as she wiggled her way out of the saddle and down to the ground.
Slowly, she approached the trampled ruins as tears made tracks through the dust caking her face.
She leaned over, picked up a piece of an adobe brick and held the fragment tight in her fist as she imagined Thaddeus building the wooden forms for the adobe, hauling the sand, mixing the straw and the mud.
Brick by brick he’d forged his place in the wilderness, built it for his beloved Clara.
Freddy searched the debris for the lintel and found it smashed beyond repair.
The heart with an arrow through it was in two pieces.
She picked them up and tried to fit them together, putting a splinter through her finger for her efforts.
She’d always meant to have the site stabilized, meant to erect some barrier around it.
Now it was too late. The home Thaddeus had built, the home Clara had risked her life fighting for, was gone.
“I’m sorry.” Ry put an arm around her shoulders.
She wrenched away and whirled to face him. “How dare you say you’re sorry? You want to bulldoze the whole place someday!”
Agony was etched on his face. “No, I don’t.”
“Really?” She saw him through a red film of rage. “Then where were you planning to put the subdivision? What about the golf course? Now I know why you were so interested in the water supply and landscaping. You, you rapist!”
He stepped forward and grabbed her. “Listen to me!”
“No!” She tried to twist away and the two pieces of wood fell from her grasp.
“Yes! I meant to do those things when I came here. I admit it! But I’ve changed, Freddy. You’ve changed me. Just now, I risked my life to save yours. And I succeeded.” He gave her a little shake. “I succeeded! Do you understand how that makes me feel?”
“No,” she said tightly.
His touch gentled. “For the first time in my life, I feel like a man. You gave me that. You and the True Love.” He released her. “I don’t want it to disappear any more than you do.”
She stepped away from him, away from the seductive pull of his touch. “Then let Eb Whitlock buy it.”
His eyes narrowed. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Something’s going on around here. I’m not convinced all the so-called accidents are accidents.”
Even in the heat, she felt a chill run over her. “You think somebody’s sabotaging the ranch?”
“Maybe. And Whitlock’s one of my candidates.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! That thing with the petroleum drums was a case of bad memory.”
“It could have been, but he seemed pretty focused to me. And then there’s the question of Duane.”
“Duane?”
“Did you see whose brand was on those cattle?”
She tried to remember, but the only thing that surfaced was a mass of heaving bodies with the power to kill her. “No, I didn’t.”
“I didn’t either until the last two ran by me. They both carried the D-Bar on their left hip, Freddy.”
“My God, Duane will be furious that his cattle got out and stampeded like that.”
“Unless he stampeded them.”
“What? You are paranoid, Ry McGuinnes!”
“Am I? When I got to the corrals, Duane was on the phone, and I think he was talking to Leigh. We can assume Leigh told him about the subdivision thing. When I saddled up, he came out and asked where I was headed, and I told him over by the old homestead.”
She gasped. “Just what are you implying?”
“You’re the one who said Duane would do anything to protect his own. He could have figured you could handle yourself in a stampede if you happened to be around, but he may have reckoned I might not.”
“No.” She shook her head. “You’re definitely wrong about this.”
“Then what’s the explanation for all the accidents? The True Love curse?”
“I’d accept that before I’d accuse anyone I’ve known and trusted most of my life.”
He sighed. “I can understand that, but deep in your heart you know something’s wrong around here, and you’ll have to agree that several people have a motive for devaluing the property with these accidents. Besides, you don’t strike me as the superstitious type.”
“I refuse to be the suspicious type, either.”
“Not even when you almost died?”
Freddy shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and gazed down at the ground.
A short distance away was the tree she’d climbed.
It lay broken at the base, toppled over, its leaves and branches crushed.
Nearby was a flat, grayish blob that was probably what remained of her hat.
She shivered. Was it possible that someone was sabotaging her beloved ranch?
If so, she needed an ally she could trust. She leveled a look at Ry.
“You’ve said you don’t want the ranch to disappear, but you haven’t said you’ll work to save it, either.
Looks like I don’t have any good options. ”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not an easy situation. I can’t buy it alone, and I’ve promised both partners we’ll sell to developers and make a huge profit. That’s why they’re coming in with me.”
Freddy’s first reaction was despair. But she took a deep breath and thought about the way Chase Lavette had arrived today, decked out in boots, jeans and hat, all dusty from a walk down the road.
And hadn’t Ry said something about the third partner wanting to bring his son out to the True Love, to give him the experience of being a cowboy?
She studied Ry and compared him to the man who had arrived in wing tips and tie.
“Are you sure that’s why they’re coming in with you on this deal?” she asked. “To make big money?”
“Sure. Why else?”
“You didn’t come here just for that. You’ve just confessed you wanted to test yourself.”
“Yeah, but?—”
“Ry, what if they’re both like you, needing the True Love for some personal reason but not quite ready to admit it? So they use an acceptable excuse, such as making money, to be a part of a ranch, to live a different sort of life.”
The corner of his mouth tilted up. “Are you saying we should get them out here and convert them to the idea of keeping the ranch?”
“It seems to have worked with you.”
“Yeah, but my case is a little different.”
“How?”
The smile left his face and he regarded her with an intensity that sent a quiver through her. “I fell in love.”
The earth seemed to drop away beneath her feet.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “she doesn’t feel the same way about me.”
She gazed at him and remembered the emotion that had gripped her when she saw him riding through the stampede to save her.
She’d been ready to give her life to save his.
Even knowing how he’d deceived her about the ranch, she’d loved him enough to sacrifice herself.
Even then. “Don’t be too sure,” she said unsteadily.
“Oh, I’m sure. You see, this lady’s already given her heart away, and that love will always be her first priority. I’d have to accept second place. I’m not satisfied with that.”
A pain sharper than she’d ever known knifed through her. “You would make me choose?” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t promise you that I’ll be able to keep the ranch as it is.
I can try, and we can hope my partners want to try, but the city could still grow around us, choking us out.
We could lose zoning fights. We could go bankrupt.
Even Thaddeus Singleton couldn’t promise Clara that they’d always have the ranch.
He could only promise his love. That’s the one sure thing, Freddy.
” His hands clenched at his sides. “And it has to be enough.”
A door swung open in her heart, a door rusty and unused.
“Let it be enough, Freddy,” he murmured.
Joy shouldered its way through the door, filling the space where fear had reigned for so long. Happiness made it almost impossible to speak. But she had to say the words, had to give him what he sought. “I love you, Ry.”
Intense emotion blazed in his eyes. Then he leaned down and picked up the two pieces of wood. “I think this can be fixed,” he said gently. “It’s more portable now,” he added with a soft smile. “It can go wherever we go.” He closed the distance between them. “Will you marry me, Frederica Singleton?”
“Yes.”
He pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her, dust and all. The pieces of wood in his hand imprinted themselves against her back as he tightened his hold. Clara would have approved of this moment, Freddy thought fleetingly. Then Ry’s kiss deepened, and she abandoned thought altogether.
Chase Lavette gets the surprise of his life when he reunites with Amanda Drake in THE DRIFTER , book two of the Urban Cowboys trilogy!
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