How to Wrangle a Cowboy (6 page)

“What makes you think they’re old?” he asked Cody.

“’Cause that’s what Mom says. That it’s time to put her out to pasture, ’cause she’s getting old.”

“Your mom’s not even
thirty
.”

“She says guys like Edward like younger girls.”

Shane’s stomach flopped over, sloshing like a fat man in a bathtub. He’d never met Edward, but he didn’t like him.

“So where’s this pasture?” The boy pointedly looked right, then left. “I don’t see any horses.”

“This ranch is forty thousand acres,” Shane said. “The horses can wander pretty far.”

“Oh.”

The boy watched the spider for a while. Shane tried to think of something to say, something they could bond over, but his mind was completely blank. So he watched the spider too.

He ought to talk about the spider. Teach his son something. But he didn’t know what kind it was or why it was weaving that web or anything else about it.

“That’s quite a web,” he said.

Lame.
The kid didn’t even respond, except to stop watching the spider and stare off into the distance, as if measuring the distance to the horizon.

“How big is forty thousand acres?” he asked.

“Big,” Shane said.

“So are you rich?” Cody looked up with a hopeful light in his dark eyes.

For the first time since he was a kid, Shane actually wished he
was
rich. He’d always felt like he had more than enough for himself—a place to live, a job to do—but he wanted more for Cody. “No,” he admitted. “This isn’t my ranch. It’s Mr. Ward’s. But I have a lot of money saved up.”

Cody looked disappointed, and Shane felt a mix of anger, helplessness, and sorrow swirling in his gut. Kids didn’t care about money in the bank. He ought to have more stuff, like other people. Knowing Cody was out there should have made him more ambitious, maybe, so he’d have something to offer his son besides a little cabin that wasn’t even his and a couple of good stock horses that were.

Cody stared out at the tree line that marked the edge of the hay field, lost in thought. Maybe he was comparing Shane to his mother’s rich boyfriend. Shane probably didn’t measure up in Cody’s eyes. Like his mother, Cody thought he was just an ordinary cowboy. And kids didn’t care about levels of responsibility or acreage or barons. When it came right down to it, Shane didn’t have much to offer a six-year-old boy.

The kid was studying Shane’s face now, as if he was grading his parenting potential. Shane the cowboy versus Edward the rich guy. Cody would probably pick the rich guy, and then what would Shane do? He’d have to tell Cody he didn’t have a choice. That he was stuck with his old dad, a workingman with calluses on his hands and dirt under his nails.

Finally, Cody spoke. “Can I ask you a question?”

Shane braced himself for the worst. The question was obviously an important one, since it was prefaced by the pooched out lower lip and the biggest, saddest eyes Shane had ever seen. “Sure, Son. You can ask me anything, anytime.”

Anything? Was he really ready for anything the boy asked? Cody might ask why Shane didn’t marry his mommy or why he wasn’t around when he was a baby. Worse yet, he might ask why his mom didn’t take him with her.

The kid leaned into him and looked earnestly into his face. “Okay,” he said. “So what I want to ask is…”

Cody took a deep breath, and Shane felt his throat constrict. How would he explain the situation to his son? What could he say? He looked down at this little miracle he’d resolved to protect and felt woefully unprepared. “Go on, Son,” he said. “What do you want to know?”

The big brown eyes grew even more mournful as the boy sucked in a deep breath. “Can I have a puppy?”

Chapter 7

Lindsey checked the ground around her feet as she walked away from her grandfather’s grave, hoping the pointy footprints would lead her to the mysterious stranger. But the ground was covered with a thick growth of prairie grass, and the dirt pathway was cluttered with the prints of so many mourners, she couldn’t make out any individual tracks.

The crowd was starting to break up as friends and relatives headed toward the ranch house for food. The usual potluck fare was spread out in the front room; hopefully the stranger would stick around for Swedish meatballs and seven-layer dip.

As she crossed the wide front porch, the hollow sound of her shoes on the old boards brought back memories of summer days long gone. Then she stepped into the front hall, and was instantly enveloped in the sweet scent of home. Even after all these years, the masculine, outdoorsy scents of sage, saddle leather, and dust combined with the more civilized odors of home-baked cookies, Lemon Pledge, and her grandmother’s perfume to overwhelm her with a rush of memories.

She swallowed hard. Sooner or later, a sob was going to escape. Hopefully it would be in private, as it was likely to be loud, ugly, and not at all ladylike.

As a girl, the ranch had been her sanctuary, a safe place where she’d always felt loved and protected. Even now, it was the “happy place” she fled to in her mind when the stress of her work piled up. She’d picture the porch with its white-painted swing, remembering how she’d whiled away summer days as a child with a good book and a bottle of Grace’s homemade root beer. The memory always made her feel at peace.

But today, the front room was filled with people balancing plates of cheese pinwheels, shrimp with cocktail sauce, and ambrosia salad. Edging past the door into the dark hallway that led to the back of the house, she dabbed at her eyes.

She’d never understood funerals. Grief, for her, was a private affair. Her sorrow over the loss of her grandfather was almost overwhelming, and she didn’t want to break down in front of this crowd. She’d had enough experience to know people only understood the soul-darkening misery of true mourning when death struck their own loved ones.

If she wept like she wanted to, they’d move away and whisper among themselves about her lack of self-control.

The hall beyond the parlor was dark, but Lindsey could have sworn she heard a rustling sound coming from its depths. Slipping off her beautiful but profoundly uncomfortable shoes, she padded down the hall and peered around the corner, toward the back entrance to her grandfather’s study.

An old oak china closet stood by the door, filled with rodeo trophies and mementos of his and Grace’s film careers. Lindsey had always loved to explore the contents, begging her grandfather to tell the stories connected with each object—a gold buckle, a pair of spurs, a costume necklace.

Apparently, she wasn’t the only one interested in the contents of the hutch. The tall stranger she’d spotted earlier stood before it with the doors wide open. He held a buckle in his hand and was tracing the raised image of a bucking horse with one finger.

The Pendleton buckle.
Lindsey held her breath. It would be so easy for him to slip the buckle into his pocket. What would Lindsey do if he turned out to be a thief?

Get Lockhart.

She gave her head a quick shake, annoyed that the foreman had come so quickly to mind. She didn’t need Shane Lockhart to help her. This man wasn’t going to attack her—especially not if she announced her presence before he’d taken anything.

She cleared her throat, and the man gave a guilty start. Replacing the buckle, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

“He was quite a guy, wasn’t he?” The man rocked back on his heels, obviously uneasy. “Quite a guy.”

“Yes, he was.” Lindsey cocked a hip and gave him a hard glare. “And who are you?”

“Oh, I’m nobody.” The stranger’s smile was tentative and unsteady. “Nobody at all. Not compared to Bud, you know.”

Lindsey remembered a poem she’d read in school.

I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody too?

It had always creeped her out.

“No, really,” she said. “Who…”

Rudely, the man shoved past her and disappeared down the hall.

She followed, determined to make sure he didn’t do any further exploring. It was clear he was checking the place for valuables. If he wasn’t actually stealing things, he was surely coveting Bud’s possessions.

She didn’t begrudge anyone a legacy if they deserved it. It wouldn’t surprise her if Bud had left generous chunks of his fortune to old friends, and that was fine with her. But something about this stranger’s surreptitious exploration and his sly smile made her wonder what he was up to.

She knew she should put aside her foolish pride and find Lockhart. He might be rude, but that could be a good thing. Maybe he’d eject the stranger from the premises.

She smiled to herself, picturing the foreman’s anger, his curt dismissal of the interloper, and a little shiver raced up and down her spine. He was cute when he was mad.

But where was he? He wasn’t in the room with the food, or in the kitchen where a group of men were drinking and reminiscing. He wasn’t with Grace, who was chatting with some women in the kitchen, or even with Cody, who had fallen asleep on a pile of black jackets in the library.

Pausing at the back door, she glanced through the screen at the graveyard and saw the man she was looking for standing tall and lonely beside her grandfather’s grave. The black hat was pressed against his chest, and his hawkish profile stood out against the sky as he bowed his head.

Slipping back into the torturous shoes, ankles aching from the unaccustomed exercise, Lindsey started the long walk back to the grave.

* * *

Shane stared down at Bud’s grave, wondering at the random cruelty of life. Bud had been a virile, vital man, despite a laundry list of injuries from jumping off moving stagecoaches, falling from fake saloon rooftops, and tumbling off running horses. He’d once told Shane he expected to die doing a stunt someday. He’d loved his work and had never expected to retire, but his body betrayed him as arthritis set in around his many broken bones. Nobody wanted a lame stuntman, so he’d become a rancher and, in his words, “enjoyed the hell out of being a real cowboy.”

And now he’d died falling off a horse, of all things. His best cow horse got spooked by a rambling porcupine. Bud hadn’t tightened the cinch properly, and the saddle twisted, flinging him sideways. His head had hit a rock, but he’d still made a flashy Hollywood landing, rolling away from the horse and jumping lightly to his feet. Then, without a sound, he’d keeled over and died. Shane wondered if the old man had actually died instantly. The stunt moves could have been pure muscle memory.

Shane had loved his boss like a father, and the loss hurt like hell. That was the problem with surviving a childhood like his; you never stopped looking for a dad, not even when you became one yourself. Shane needed somebody to teach him how to
be
a decent dad, and though he’d grown to manhood with Bill Decker, he had a lot left to learn.

He’d expected to learn it from Bud. At the thought, his breath shuddered and he had to close his eyes to stop the tears.

A touch on his forearm jerked him out of his reverie. He spun to see Lindsey Ward standing beside him, her forget-me-not blue eyes fixed on his.

Close. Too close. The last time she’d been that close…

He chased the memory from his mind and gave her a questioning glance.

“Did you notice that tall, thin man?” she asked. “The one who looked like Bud, only younger?”

Shane opened his mouth to speak, but his throat had closed up for some reason. He shook his head.

“He was skulking around in the hallway. He took Bud’s Pendleton buckle out of the cabinet. It was almost like he was going to steal it.”

It figured that this woman, who hadn’t valued the greatest treasure a person could have, would care about a gold buckle. Family—real family that loved you—meant far more to Shane than any trinket, and it always amazed him how people would throw away real treasure and hold on to trash.

It was sad if Grace’s granddaughter had become that kind of person, because Grace needed family. Since Bud’s death, she seemed to have lost her already-tenuous hold on reality. What had been charming eccentricity had become a worrying distance from the world around her, as she lived increasingly in the rich and storied land of her memory.

He cleared his throat and shot her a glare. “Wouldn’t want to lose anything, would you?”

“It’s not about me.” She shrugged one shoulder, a graceful gesture that made him think of Tara. “None of this is mine. It’s Grace’s. And she’s lost enough.”

He nodded absently, still focused on Bud’s grave. How could a man be so thoroughly gone in the blink of an eye? How could you live, knowing someone you loved could be gone before you could say good-bye?

“The man.” Lindsey gripped his arm with real urgency. “Who is he?”

Shane shook her off. “Don’t worry. I’m sure Bud didn’t leave him anything.”

She let out an exasperated sigh. “You’re just determined to believe I’m some kind of gold digger, aren’t you? Do you suspect all your dates of being after your money?”

He was starting to enjoy this. When she got mad, she reminded him of the hell-for-leather cowgirl she’d been before Rodger took the sass out of her.

“I don’t have any money, so I don’t have to worry,” he said.

“Well, I’m
so
happy for you.” Her faint Southern accent almost got Shane to smile. Folks here gave their words hard edges and flat vowels, but Lindsey’s words spilled out as thick and smooth as whipped butter. “But maybe Bud left you some. Would that
worry
you?”

“I don’t care about that.” He frowned, his bad mood reasserting itself. All this talk of money was just wrong, here at the site of Bud’s grave. “Money doesn’t mean much to me. Bud did, though.”

Her defensive posture relaxed and she seemed to deflate, along with her suspicions.

“You loved him, didn’t you?”

He nodded, surprised into telling the truth by her gentle directness. “Yes, I did.”

“Me too,” she said. “I know you don’t believe that. But he was a wonderful granddad. We fought, and I let my pride keep me away. I thought I had time. I mean, Grandpa Bud? He was immortal, I thought. How could he die, strong as he was? But…”