Chapter 1 #2
He and Carpenter had never been friends.
Now they were enemies. All because a few months back, someone had poisoned Sly’s cattle.
Two of his heifers had miscarried and lost any chance of future pregnancies, and three others had died.
As a grown man, he rarely felt powerless, but he had then.
He hated his inability to help his animals as they sickened and died and feared that others could, too.
Autopsies and tests had proved that his animals had been poisoned with arsenic.
Neither Sly nor his crew had any idea who’d do something so heinous.
Then by chance, Ace had spotted a small pile of white powder just inside the northernmost pasture fence off the private service road that ran between Pettit Ranch and the Lazy C.
He’d tested the powder and determined it to be arsenic.
Both ranches shared the road, and no one else had access.
Who else but Carpenter could have set the arsenic there?
Still, Sly had given his neighbor the benefit of the doubt. He’d driven to Carpenter’s and attempted to question him. The first time Carpenter had ordered him off his land. On the next try, he’d pulled out a rifle and aimed it at Sly’s chest.
Which sure made it seem as if the man had something to hide.
That was when Sly had quit trying to straighten things out himself and hired a lawyer.
Not with the intention of suing, but to get Carpenter to cough up information that could shed light on what’d happened.
That plan had also failed, and now he really was on the verge of suing.
“Sly?” Ace was waiting for him to say something.
“I need to get to the bottom of this poisoning.”
His foreman rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “You’re suing, then?”
Ollie and Bean looked down, as if the subject made them uncomfortable.
Join the crowd, Sly thought. “You all know how much those vet bills, tests and autopsies cost, and the cows we lost...” He shook his head. He wanted to be reimbursed for his losses.
The money he’d spent on those things had been earmarked for a badly needed new drainage system.
The existing one, installed some thirty years ago, functioned on a wing and a prayer.
The next big rain could result in heavy flooding and wreak havoc on valuable low-lying pastureland.
Sly and his men could do some of the grunt work, but they needed to bring in an expert.
He’d considered taking out a loan to cover the costs, but as it was, the monthly payment on his mortgage was a strain.
Any more debt and he’d be in over his head.
He wasn’t about to jeopardize everything he’d worked for by borrowing more.
“The way things stand,” he said, “I don’t see any other options.”
“He’s a tough nut to crack, all right.” Ace pulled off his baseball cap and scratched one of his sideburns. “The Bitter & Sweet always brings in a live band on Friday and Saturday nights. I hope you spent some of the evening dancing off your troubles with a pretty girl.”
Lana was no girl. She was all woman. “I danced a time or two,” he admitted.
Ace, who’d been married umpteen years, nodded approvingly. “Now and then a man’s got to cut loose and have some fun.”
Ollie, who knew his way around branding and according to him, around women, too, grinned. “Me and my girlfriend, Tiff? We sure put the f-u-n in our Friday night.” He made a lewd gesture with his hands. “But we’re doin’ that almost every night.”
Fun didn’t come close to describing Sly’s night with Lana, but he wasn’t about to talk about that.
“Let’s get this job done so Ace can take the rest of the weekend off,” he said.
When time and weather allowed, he and his foreman alternated weekends off.
This was Ace’s weekend, and he and his wife had planned a trip to Billings to visit their college-age son at Montana State.
“Ready with that iron?” Sly asked Ollie.
“Ready, boss.”
The four of them spent the next few hours herding the calves one by one to the calf table to get them vaccinated and marked with the Pettit Ranch brand. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, allowing Sly to replay the previous evening.
Over dinner, Dave had reluctantly agreed to prepare and file the lawsuit, but he was tying up loose ends for several other clients and needed ten days to put the suit together and file the papers. Shortly after the lawyer finished his coffee and dessert, he’d left to get home to his wife and kids.
Sly didn’t have a wife or kids, or anyone to hurry home to.
His life was uncomplicated, which was exactly how he liked it.
He spent his days working hard to keep his ranch profitable and successful, and enjoyed spending his evenings either going out or relaxing alone in his quiet house.
But the whole lawsuit business was unsettling, and last night he’d wanted to take his mind off his troubles and had hung around the Bitter & Sweet, waiting for the band to play.
As soon as the cute blonde and her friend had sat down at a table across the way, Sly had forgotten about his problems. He’d always enjoyed an attractive woman, and when the blonde had looked at him and smiled, interest sizzled between them. Suddenly, he had to meet her.
From the start, they’d hit it off. Lana was fun and easy to talk to, and her eyes had telegraphed that she was attracted to him. Best of all, she’d wanted a good time, just like he did. They’d agreed not to share their last names, and steered away from deep conversation.
A dozen dances and several drinks later, he’d kissed her. Her warmth and enthusiasm just about blew his socks off. Neither of them wanted to stop, and before Sly knew it, he was walking her to the Prosperity Inn and paying for a hotel room.
Under regular circumstances he wouldn’t have acted so rashly. He rarely picked up a woman he’d just met and taken her to bed. The decision turned out to be real pleasure—phenomenal sex.
His only regret was that he hadn’t gotten her number. He’d thought about waking her and asking for it before he left at the crack of dawn. But neither of them had gotten much rest, and she’d been sleeping so peacefully that he hadn’t had the heart to disturb her.
His thoughts were interrupted when, on the way to the calf table, one of the calves turned renegade and tried to run off. “Come back here, you,” he called, as he and Ace cut her off.
When they caught her and steered her back, Ace took up the conversation where they’d left off. “The gal you danced with—gonna see her again?”
“Probably not.”
The more important reason Sly hadn’t asked for her number was that getting involved with her would be a bad idea.
His last girlfriend had accused him of avoiding intimacy and then dumped him.
Not because she’d taken up with some other guy, but because she was fed up with his so-called emotional distance.
She wasn’t the first woman to accuse him of that, but he’d always been confused as to what “emotional distance” meant.
In bed, he demonstrated plenty of emotion.
Maybe it had something to do with the fact that he rarely brought the women he dated to his place.
All his former girlfriends had complained about that, but hell, his home was his sanctuary and the bedroom his private space, off-limits to all but his housekeeper, who cleaned it.
After his last breakup and a few months of self-imposed celibacy, he’d finally figured out what women meant by emotional distance.
He admitted to himself that outside of the physical stuff, he’d never had a truly intimate relationship with a woman.
Sure, he enjoyed giving and receiving pleasure, but he wasn’t about to put his heart on the line.
With good reason. People he cared deeply about tended not to stick around.
First his parents, then his brother, then the girl he’d wanted to marry.
Why take the risk of getting too close? He wasn’t about to set himself up for that kind of heartache again.
“Now that you sweated that hangover out of your system, you’re lookin’ a sight better,” Ace commented some hours later when they’d finished the branding.
“I suppose I’ll live,” Sly replied. “Go on now and have a nice weekend—all three of you.”
He headed for the house. Mrs. Rutland, his forty-something, part-time housekeeper—with just him to feed and clean up after, he didn’t need her full-time—left at noon on Thursdays and Fridays, but prepped enough food to last till Monday.
Not necessary, as he could cook when he needed to, but the housekeeper liked doing it, and he sure didn’t mind.
After showering and changing, he filled his belly, then headed back outside to tackle the late-afternoon chores.
He fed and watered the horses, giving Bee, his bay, her usual carrot.
After checking on the stock and noting additional chores that needed doing the following day, he went inside and flopped on the sofa with the remote.
Nothing on the tube interested him, and his mind kept wandering to last night.
As worn-out as he was, he felt oddly restless—too restless to hang around at home.
He considered grabbing a beer someplace, but after last night he needed a rest from alcohol.
He called his sister to ask if she wanted to catch a movie. Dani didn’t answer, which wasn’t surprising on a Saturday night. She was probably out with her boyfriend of the month or her friends.
Sly hung up without leaving a message. He almost wished he had Lana’s number...until he reminded himself that it was better he didn’t.
Moments later he grabbed his keys from the hook by the door and left through the mudroom. He wasn’t sure where he was headed, but anyplace was better than sitting around here, thinking about a woman he didn’t plan on ever seeing again.