Debra Holland (38 page)

Barbara turned to her granddaughter. “Caroline’ll go with you.”

Andy turned around and stared hard. “You? You think you can ride herd?”

“Darn right, I can ride. Won’t be the first herd I’ve ever brought in, but I…” She bit her tongue.

“But what?”

She forced a smile. “Let’s just say I always ride with a gun, and I know how to use it.”

“Good. So do I. We’ll leave at six. Make sure you’re saddled and ready to go.”

Hot anger boiled through Caroline. “I’ll be ready.”

She stormed out of the kitchen, grabbed her suitcase, and headed for her room.

***

“She’d better be able to ride. This isn’t going to be an easy cattle drive,” Andy said.

“That little thing knows every square inch of this ranch and this business. My husband used to say, ‘Let her go, and when she’s done, she’ll come back.’ I hope he was right.”

“Ma’am, I don’t need a prissy female. I need a man for this job or I’ll never get that herd back here.”

“Oh, she can do it. She and her grandfather moved herds all the time. She’s knows what she’s doing and she knows this land. Listen to her.”

Andy kissed his daughter’s nose and put her to the floor. “Are you sure you can handle her overnight?”

“I can handle your daughter overnight.” Barbara laughed. “Just don’t try to handle my granddaughter, or she’ll be bringing you back in a sack.”

“Miz Barbara, one female in my life is plenty. I don’t need anymore.”

***

Caroline cinched the saddle and adjusted the stirrups before tying on her pack. Her mind drifted over the stories of Jessie and Clare Coleman and the things that they endured to start this ranch in the 1840’s. She had vowed to write their story one day. Clare was barely fifteen when she married Jessie and went west with him. The handwriting in that diary was difficult to decipher, but Caroline managed to read it when she was a teen. Snowstorms were nothing new, and if Jessie and Clare could survive them, there was no reason why she couldn’t do it today. Except instead of doing it with her grandfather at her side, she had Andy Coyote. She grimaced as bile rose from her stomach.

“You ready to ride, Caroline?” Andy asked.

“Yes, I’m ready.” She pulled her scarf over her head and shoved her old felted Stetson over the hot pink angora.

“Don’t wimp out on me. I need another man for this job, not a fancy Washington, DC, TV news anchor.”

“Well, I have a job to do, and the idea of having you along for the ride has no appeal. As far as I’m concerned, you’re strictly brawn, and you’d better do as I say.”

“This is gonna be hell,” he mumbled as he yanked on his horse’s reins.

“That’s right, and don’t forget it.” Caroline put her foot into the stirrup.

Caroline pulled her scarf tighter around her face. An occasional snowflake floated down as they rode. She wasn’t going to let on that she was dead tired, but she was certain that if she’d blink her eyes, they wouldn’t open again. She had worked yesterday doing the six and eleven o’clock nightly news broadcasts, and then caught an early morning flight out of DC. Three hours of sleep was not enough.

“Caroline!”

She gasped and righted herself.

“You’re falling asleep.”

She looked over Andy and frowned.

“If you talked to me, you might stay awake,” he suggested.

“What would you like to discuss?” she snarled.

He chuckled. “You want my opinion on the Senate’s newest budget?”

“Oh, save your breath.”

“I didn’t think so. Why don’t you tell me what it’s like living in the big city and having a hotshot job?”

“Nothing to tell. I have a condo overlooking the Potomac River. I have a driver who takes me to and from work. The clothes I wear are chosen by someone else, even my hair is styled according to the network’s consultant, and I don’t have a say so in any of it.”

“I think you look mighty pretty. Miz Barbara and I always watch you while we eat our dinner.”

“Why are you living in the house with my grandmother?”

“And not living in the foreman’s apartment in the barn?”

“Yes.” The idea of a Coyote living under her grandmother’s roof bothered her. As far as she was concerned they were all filthy criminals.

The only sounds were theirs, the horses’ breaths, the soft slap of leather reins, and the clomping of hooves on the frozen earth. Finally he answered, “She didn’t want me out there in that small apartment with the baby. She thought it was easier on Sarah if I stayed in the house.”

“Where’s Sarah’s mom?”

“Don’t know and don’t care.” He nudged his horse to pick up the pace.

“Nice attitude.”

“Yours sucks, too.”

“I don’t have a child,” she retaliated.

“I have two. I’m not allowed near my son.”

She shook her head. “What did you do to prevent visitation?”

“Fathered the boy.”

“How old is he?”

“He’ll be fifteen in February.”

Her mind spun back in time to Andy and Katelyn as teens. They were inseparable. The image of the fun loving, petite female with wide set eyes had always been a fierce competitor in 4H and was an amazing trick rider. Then Katelyn vanished. “So the rumors were true?”

“Half true. I never raped her. We were kids and thought we were in love. When she found out she was pregnant…her dad came looking for me with a rifle in his hand. Three years later, the judge threw it all out. I was forced to sign an order to stay away from Katelyn and my son.”

Somehow she understood the wealthy family’s rage. She could also imagine Katelyn’s tears at being torn from the boy she loved. But Andy was a Coyote, and those boys were hellions. “She still here?”

“If you mean still in the county, no. According to a few friends, she’s living outside of Boulder, raising horses, and happily married to some hotshot lawyer.”

“And your son?”

“He’s with her. She’ll tell him the truth someday.”

“What about Sarah?”

“Another big mistake. Sarah’s not, but her mom was. I’ll be honest. My life was a mess. I was living in Casper when I meet Jessica. We went out a few times and then we started living together. She was hot. Then one day she tells me that she’s pregnant. Two weeks later, the warehouse where I’d been working closed. I started searching for any job I could find.”

Andy’s momentary silence hung in the cold air.

Caroline straightened her back and rolled her shoulders. Fatigue was robbing her body, but she wanted him to keep talking. He was right. Conversation kept her awake.

“It was a bad situation. I needed money and there were no jobs. Eventually, I found a job working back here for Double T. They needed a hand. But Jessica didn’t want to come. She wanted to live in the city. Had a big fight. I tried a half dozen times to patch things up. Then the phone quit working and my envelopes were returned with no forwarding address. When Margaret Simpson died her kids kicked everyone out and started selling everything off. I got lucky and got a part-time job working at Kalab’s Store.”

“Doing what?”

“Anything. Didn’t matter to me. It was a job. Had to cover the payment on my truck and put food in my belly. That’s where I found your grandmother. She was complaining to BillieJo Kalab about not being able to do everything. That evening I came out to her house. I begged for a job and a place to sleep.”

“My grandmother does not complain about anything.”

“Well, call it whatever you want, but those two women were commiserating about how hard life was.”

“Oh, big word.”

“Knock it off, Caroline. Just ’cause I didn’t run off to some big university in Virginia doesn’t make me an idiot.”

She nudged her horse. “You never were an A student.”

“No, I wasn’t. But you don’t have to get uppity with me.”

She looked over at him. “You calling me a snob?”

“I really don’t care what you are, as long as you can get this herd back to where I can take care of them. Your grandmother doesn’t need to lose her livestock because they’ve frozen to death.”

She hid her snarl. “So how did you wind up with Sarah?”

“I’d been here about three weeks when Miz Barbara got a phone call. Seems Social Services tracked me down. Sarah had been abandoned. She was in bad shape. If it weren’t for your grandmother…I don’t know what I’d do.”

“She’s adorable.”

“She is. I’ll do anything to make sure nothing ever happens to her again.”

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If you like spicy, read

TAKEN BY THE COWBOY

By

Julianne MacLean

TAKEN BY THE COWBOY

By Julianne MacLean

Copyright © 2012 Julianne MacLean

HERO AND PROTECTOR

 
Former bounty hunter, expert gunslinger, and the toughest sheriff Dodge City has ever known, Truman Wade is a real man from the tip of his black Stetson right down to his spurs and leather boots. He’s never met his match in a gunfight, but he’s never met a gorgeous, gutsy woman from the twenty-first century either…
 

TORN BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

 
Newly single after a rocky break-up with her self-absorbed fiancé, newspaper columnist Jessica Delaney crashes her car in a lightning storm and soon finds herself dodging bullets in the Wild West. Before the night is out, she’s tossed in jail for a murder she didn’t commit, and if things don’t seem complicated enough, the impossibly handsome sheriff in charge of her arrest has danger written all over him - and a sexy swagger to die for. Jessica knows she needs to get home, but when Sheriff Wade’s enticing touch sets her passions on fire, she begins to wonder if fate has other plans for her, and soon she must choose between the life she longs for in the future… and the greatest love she’s ever known.

Read an excerpt...

“What in God’s name happened?” someone asked.

“This man fell out of a window,” Jessica replied. “He needs help.”

The stranger ran toward her and together, they rolled the injured man onto his back. Jessica stared in horror at his face. A clean bullet hole gaped between his eyes, and blood trickled down his nose.

“Dear Lord,” the stranger said. He stood up and quickly backed away.

“Somebody call 911!” Jessica shouted. She pressed her ear to the man’s chest to listen for a heartbeat. When she heard nothing, she knew there was no hope, but she still wanted an ambulance. A cop car, too.

If there was such a thing in this backward place.

“Will somebody call an ambulance?” she shouted in frustration.

“Now...just be calm, miss,” the stranger said. “We don’t want any trouble.”

“What are you talking about?” she replied. “I don’t want to cause trouble. I’m trying to help him. Doesn’t anyone have a cell phone?”

That particular request was met with blank stares.

“I saw her wavin’ a gun around like some kind of lunatic!” someone offered.
 

 
“I wasn’t waving a gun,” she explained. “I was trying to kill a June bug.”

There was a series of ‘oohs’ and ‘ahs’ from the crowd as everyone backed away in unison.

Realizing she was quickly becoming a primary suspect in this man’s murder, Jessica raised both hands in the air and stood. “Look, everyone needs to stay calm. It wasn’t me. I was just trying to help him.”

“Do you know who this is?” the stranger asked.

Jessica shook her head. “No.”

“That’s Left Hand Lou!” someone called out from the crowd.

Before Jessica had a chance to comprehend what this meant, people rushed over to get a look at the corpse.

“He’s wanted in three states!” someone hollered. “You just killed the fastest draw this side of the Mississippi!”

What did they think she had done? She hadn’t shot him! And what did they mean—the fastest draw this side of the Mississippi? This wasn’t Gunsmoke, for pity’s sake.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “Seriously. There’s been a mistake.”

Just then, a deep voice cut through the commotion. “Can I ask what’s going on in this little gathering of yours?”

Unable to discern from where the voice had come, she looked all around through the darkness.

“Ma’am? I asked you a question.” The crowd parted, clearing a wide path for the inquiring man to approach. Jessica was finally able to get a glimpse at him, although the brim of his black hat shadowed his face from the dim lantern light spilling out of the saloon.