Chapter 2 #2
“What do ranchers do for entertainment?” she wondered aloud.
“Sit up all night with dangerously pregnant heifers and pray for daylight and a good vet.”
“Why would that worry you? You’re just going to eat them, after all.”
“Are you nuts?” he exclaimed. “We don’t run a cow-calf operation. All our stock is purebred Santa Gertrudis, and we pamper
our stock.”
Her dad did have a cow-calf operation. She knew it in and out, but she wasn’t about to admit that.
“I see,” she said slowly. “Why is a pregnant heifer so important?”
“It’s a first-time mother. If there are complications, like a breech birth, we have to have the vet.”
“Can’t you just use a, what do you call it, a calf-pull?” she blurted out, having caught herself from betraying intimate knowledge
of ranching just in time.
“Too risky,” he said. “We invest a lot of time and love into our livestock. We raised most of our heifers, and bulls, from
babies.” He smiled to himself. “The bulls follow us around like dogs. Amazes people who don’t know anything about livestock.”
“That’s not in books,” she pointed out.
“It’s not,” he agreed. “Some things you only learn from experience.”
She was thinking, you got that right. Painful experience, at that.
“What do you do when you’re not trying to steal cattle?” he asked. “And by the way, just in case you’re not from Texas, cattle rustling here can land you in prison until you have gray hair. You might actually get a lesser sentence for murder.”
“Thanks for the tip,” she said.
“Are you?” he added.
“Am I what?”
“From Texas,” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Back East?”
She laughed. “From Wyoming originally. But not anymore. I live back East. I’m only down here working on a big real estate
sale with a couple of colleagues. They dropped me off at what they thought was the ranch property I had on my list. It wasn’t.”
“Real estate?” he asked.
“Yes. I have a license and everything.”
“Including a handgun,” he pointed out.
She sighed. “These days, a woman alone can be in a lot of trouble if she can’t protect herself. I don’t take chances.”
“Probably a good idea.” He glanced at her curiously. “You’re from Wyoming. Where do you live now, when you’re not trespassing
on ranches in Texas?” he added with a cold smile.
She averted her eyes. “I live back East mostly, like I said.” That was true. She’d taken courses at a famous Eastern university.
And though her headquarters were in Fort Worth, she spent some time occasionally at Quantico and the office in DC.
“No wonder you were out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but a pistol.”
“Is it dangerous, other than men you’re showing property to?” she wondered.
“Wild animals. Rattlesnakes. Vagrants. Drug runners. And my men,” he added with a glance. “They have orders to call the sheriff
if they spot any unauthorized visitors.”
“Then I’m glad I ran into you instead,” she said. She almost meant it. He was a very handsome man. She liked him. And didn’t want to. She had no room in her life for a man, any man, in her present circumstances.
“Are you really going to keep that rattlesnake in your bedroom?” she asked abruptly.
“Of course,” he replied. “It’s the only place he’ll be safe, considering the nervous disposition of everybody around me.”
He looked thunderous for a minute. “My own men were about to shoot him!”
“I can understand their misgivings,” she murmured.
“He’s old and blind and toothless. Fangless. He can’t even hunt. I put him out there where there were plenty of rabbits. I
figured he wouldn’t have to be fast to catch one.”
“A man with a rattlesnake for a pet.” She shook her head. “If I was into fiction writing, this would be a heck of a story.
Except nobody would believe it,” she added on a laugh.
“Were you always in real estate?” he persisted.
“No. I was a waitress, but I was made redundant,” she lied. “So then I took some courses and started selling property. I couldn’t
get another job waitressing,” she prevaricated.
“From what I understand, the problem is finding people to work, not jobs.”
“Yes, well, I also got tired of being pinched and propositioned twice a day,” she said curtly.
They were at a stop sign and now he did look at her. “Amazing,” he murmured.
“What is?”
“I guess some men need glasses,” he said.
She glared at him from green, glittery eyes.
He averted his eyes and pulled out again. “Sorry. Couldn’t help it. I guess you’re not so bad. In the right light.”
“So much for you as a marriage proposition,” she told him. “You’re right off my list of potentials!”
He looked upward. “Thank God.”
She made a huffing sound. After a minute she shifted in her seat. “There was a huge grand piano in your living room. Who plays?”
“All of us,” he said simply.
“All of you.”
“Well, except Dad. He just plays the radio. Hopelessly tone deaf.”
“Isn’t that a little unusual?” she wondered.
“No. Lots of men are tone deaf.”
“That all of you play,” she said.
“Oh.” He shrugged. “My mother used to be a recording artist, before she married Dad. Now she just sings in church and composes.
Desperado, the Wyoming rock group, uses her music. They’ve won two Grammys.”
“She mentioned that,” Josie said.
“Yes.”
“I love Desperado,” she said.
“So do a lot of other people.”
“Don’t you like hard rock?” she asked.
“Occasionally. I prefer Debussy.”
So did she, but she didn’t dare say it.
He glanced at her. “Do you have a favorite group?”
She nodded.
“What is it?”
She sighed. “I like the Zac Brown Band. And The Weeknd. And I love Jelly Roll.”
“Modern stuff,” he guessed.
“I like Def Leppard and Guns N’ Roses, too, though,” she laughed.
“Nothing classical?”
“Resphigi,” she returned.
He glanced at her.
“I know. Nobody in my whole circle of friends even knows who he was. But when I play ‘The Catacombs’ from The Pines of Rome, I can absolutely hear the Roman legions marching,” she said, her eyes out the window.
“I know who he is,” he said. He didn’t add that he had several recordings of it, by multiple orchestras.
“How about opera?” he added.
She would never admit that she had season tickets most years. “Opera?” she asked, and made a face.
“Figures,” he said.
“Well, we can’t all like the same things. Isn’t that Percell up ahead?” she added, naming a medium-size town between the Big
Spur and Fort Worth.
“Yes, it is.”
“That’s where my motel room is,” she said. She laughed. “I wasn’t sure you’d know where it was.”
“Everybody in this part of Texas knows Percell,” he replied. “It’s the main store for ranch supplies for folks who don’t want
to drive all the way to Fort Worth.”
“Fair enough,” she said, and laughed.
“Where’s your motel?”
She hesitated. She hoped company wouldn’t be waiting for her. After all, she hadn’t said she’d be back this late from her
foraging trip to Branntville.
“You could let me off anywhere in town,” she said.
He stopped the truck at a traffic light and turned toward her. His set features spoke for him. He wasn’t putting her down
like a stray animal. He gained points in her sight.
“Okay,” she said, and tried not to look as surprised and pleased as she was. “It’s down Lariat Drive. Just two blocks ahead and then right.”
The motel wasn’t bad, for a town that only had three. He stopped in front of the office. And, thank God, none of her contacts
had missed her and showed up pacing the sidewalk.
She hesitated. “I’m really sorry about your steer. Bull. Whatever it was. And very grateful for lunch and a ride back.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. His pale silvery blue eyes narrowed. “Just for the record, if I see you on Big Spur again, I won’t
be smiling. And badges will be involved.”
“I’d already figured that out,” she said, not taking offense. “Well . . . bye.”
She opened the door, hopped out and closed the door without meeting his eyes. What a pity, she thought, that she hadn’t met
him in a different place, under different circumstances. He was a dish. Intelligent, fearless and very handsome.
But she was here on a mission, with a job to do, and her line of work was nothing if not dangerous. Even her own father didn’t
know exactly what she did for a living, which was the only protection she could give him. He was safe enough on his Wyoming
ranch, though. Which was more than could be said for his only child.
John drove back home with conflicting emotions. Had he done the right thing? He probably should have called the sheriff and
had his erstwhile visitor arrested. She was on the ranch unannounced, about to kill a bull worth a small fortune. He hadn’t
turned her in. He’d taken her home and fed her instead.
He groaned. Maybe he was losing his mind since Stasia had married Tanner and gotten pregnant. He was still mourning her, trying
to carry on as if nothing tragic had happened in his life.
Tanner was married and getting settled. Odalie was in New York training for the Met if she got lucky and pretending that she wasn’t crazy over Tony Garza.
John was the only one of the three Everett kids still at home.
But then, he was the heir apparent to Big Spur.
His dad was counting on him to continue his breeding program and take over the reins.
In fact, he was doing that now. Cole had taken a backseat to the everyday running of the huge operation, right down to letting
John make decisions about traits to breed for and organizing the sales events. He’d even stepped back from the ranch’s huge
stock and bond portfolio and its real estate holdings and new ventures.
It was a load off his mind, he’d told John. He wasn’t old, not by modern standards, but his had been a hard life. Big Spur
hadn’t always been this prosperous. It had been Cole’s business sense and sweat and blood that had brought the operation into
the twenty-first century and made it a hallmark by which many other large Texas holdings were measured.
It had taken a toll on his health. He and Heather had moved into their third decade as husband and wife with all the passionate