Rocky Mountain Cowboy (13 page)

During the
meal, while everyone was still at the table, Hawk asked about the number of cattle they had brought in so far. Hank’s report was dismally disappointing.

“We found some signs of what looked like a truck and stock trailer in that high northwest pasture by the old Miller mine,”
Hank informed him. “There were some deep tire grooves left in the mud after the rain. I couldn’t tell where they came from or where they went, though.” The veteran cowhand frowned at his boss and shook his partially balding head. “How would someone get a stock trailer up there? That’s pretty rugged country.”

“There’s an old logging road near that pasture,” Hawk told him. “The fire department keeps it in pretty decent shape. When I come up
next time, I’ll have a good look around there. It’s too late to ride that far today. We wouldn’t make it home by dark.”

“You two could spend the night,” Steve Walker suggested, giving Jenny a hopeful grin and
a wink.

It hadn’t escaped Hawk’s notice that Walker had been flirting with her since she’d sat down at the table. It irritated him to no end. Hank had gone into town with Steve on his days off a couple of times, and he’d mentioned that the wrangler was a real ladies man. Tom had hired Steve because they needed an extra man this year, but Hawk had never really approved of him. There was something sneaky about him. The man had trouble looking Hawk directly in the eye, and he never trusted a man that wouldn’t do that. If they didn’t need all the help they could get dealing with these missing cattle and their other recent problems, he’d fire the guy.

“We can’t stay right now,” he told everyone. “I’ve got too many things to take care of before we come up to bring the herd down.”

“You coming, too, Jenny?” Steve asked.

“Yes.”

“Maybe.”

She and Hawk both answered at the same time, but each had a different answer. Jenny surprised herself with her ‘yes’, and Hawk surprised her with his ‘maybe’. She wondered why he had said maybe.

Hawk turned to Scott. “I’ve got to get you back to your bride before the wedding, or she’ll come after me with a shot gun.”

“She’ll come after both of us,” Scott reminded him.

“The Cattlemen’s Association meeting is tomorrow night, isn’t it?” Hank checked. “You gonna bring up the missing cows?”

Hawk rolled his eyes in disgust. “Yeah, for all the good it will do me. Brad Caldwell is the new President of the Association,” he elaborated for Jenny’s sake. “I don’t expect him to do much more than laugh at me.”

“Can the Cattlemen’s Association do anything about the missing cattle?” she asked.

“I don’t know, but they need to know what I suspect.”

Hawk hated having to tell her about all the problems they’d had around the ranch the last six months. He didn’t want to worry her, and he didn’t want her to think he was incompetent. Maybe it was a male ego, but he wanted her to be p
leased with the ranch and the work he put into it. The look in her eyes today when they had sat on the bluff, looking out over the herd, was what he wanted to see reflected there— pride.

Tom
may have asked him to form a partnership with Jenny, but now that he’d met her, he found himself wanting to form one with her. She was smart and gutsy, and he suspected she was probably a good businesswoman, too. She had to be pretty sharp. She had a prospering career, and an emerging enterprise on the side she seemed to be handling successfully. But the more he had to tell her how things had fallen apart the last six months, the more it made him angry.

The Bar F/Bar L had made a
modest but decent profit for years, despite the fluctuations in cattle prices. He and Tom had always had lots of good, healthy stock to sell. They had a couple of prize bulls they bred out at good stud fees. They grew enough hay and alfalfa for themselves, and usually had plenty of extra to sell. Hawk ran a flight service on the side, and every fall, he usually took two or three groups of hunters into the mountains during deer and elk season. Most of the extra money he made at those endeavors he put back into the ranch.

He worked his butt off, damn it, but he’d been forced, since Tom’s death, to make a partial mortgage payment for the first time ever. The bank had been willing to accept it because of the hardship of Tom’s sudden death, but they’d made it clear one such arrangement was all they’d make with him. As Chairman of the Board, Brad wasn’t going to make any more concessions. If they ended up fifty or more head of cattle short, he wasn’t going to have the money when they were sold to cover his debts and meet his operating expenses for the year.

Tom’s death had left him to handle the crisis alone. He couldn’t pay off Jenny’s interest in Tom’s half of the ranch, now or in ninety days. The only thing he might be able to do was make deferred payments to her over a span of years, and that was based on the ranch even surviving this mess. It would help if she became a whole or limited partner, but he wasn’t going to force her into that arrangement. And he didn’t want her thinking she had to, in order to bail him out. Neither did he want to sell any part of the ranch. He’d never forgive himself if he had to do that to Tom, but he knew that, in the end, if things got worse and he couldn’t stop all this damage from happening, he might have to sell at least part of the land. For now, though, he was hoping he could handle these problems by himself.

CHAPTER 8

After the table was cleared and the dishes stacked in the sink to soak, everyone headed outside and departed in separate directions to resume what they had been doing before the mid-day break.

Hawk and Jenny headed toward a ridge in the distance. When they reached the top, Hawk
reined his horse to a halt. Jenny came up beside him and took a moment to look out over the sweeping vista beyond.

“We’ll be looking for strays this afternoon. We’re going to split up for a little bit if that’s okay with you,” he said.

“Sure.”

“I’ll be riding in and out of the trees, along that ridge,” he told her, pointing to the forested bluff on the other side of a long rocky gully. “I’d like you to ride down this wash. There’s a gentle descent about two miles from here. I won’t be too far away, just above you really. If you need me, holler.”

She could see he was a bit concerned. She reassured him with a smile. “No problem.”

Brave words, Jenny was later to reflect. She watched him ride off in the opposite direction, then disappear into the trees. Her mind drifted back to the wake-up kiss he had given her before lunch. The man had a side to him that was incredibly tender, romantic, and sensitive. And he
had
tasted good, just as she had suspected.

Lost in memories of his kiss, she wasn’t paying as much as attention as she should have when she began her descent down into the gully. Suddenly, Aspen reared up on her hind legs. Jenny barely had a second to register the fact that a hissing rattle snake had spooked her horse before she lost her seat and was thrown off the back end. She landed on her bottom, then immediately started to slide down the hill, unable to stop her momentum as she tumbled head over heels several times. Gravel tore into her back, and all she could do was protect her head.

By the time she hit the bottom, she was stunned and out of breath. For a few moments, she remained flat on her back, staring up at the deep blue sky as she tried to clear her head. Finally she rose onto her elbows, only to hear an ominous hissing at her feet. Peering down the length of her dusty jeans, to her red tooled boot tips, she saw that the snake that had spooked Aspen had also slid down the embankment with her. It was moving into a coil close to her feet. She froze, afraid to even breathe. Her eyes scanned the ridge for Hawk. She didn’t see him, so she screamed his name as loud as she could, hoping to God, he could hear her and that her voice would not spook the snake.

It seemed an eternity before she caught a glimpse of his horse emerg
ing from the trees. The snake was fully coiled, hissing and rattling its tail by the time Hawk rode into the gully. She watched him pull to a stop and jump off his horse several yards away.

“Don’t move, Jenny. Close your eyes.”

Close her eyes?
Why, she wondered as he pulled a knife from a sheath on his belt. Holding it by the tip of the long glinting blade, he hurled it at the snake.

At the last minute, s
he squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself to feel the knife sink into her leg or foot. When she dared to peek, she saw it had actually severed the snake’s head from its body. He’d killed it just as it had sprung at her. Good God! Shaken, she fell backwards and sucked in deep gulps of air.

When she opened her eyes again, Hawk was looming over her, blocking the glare of the sun
as he dropped to one knee and slipped an arm around her back to lift her into a sitting position.

She looked into his face. Beneath the shadowed brim of his hat, his features were etched with alarm. “What happened?”

The hand at her back was gentle, but she winced sharply. “I was coming down the slope when the snake spooked Aspen, and she threw me off. I did somersaults down the hill, and so did the snake.” It hurt to glance over her shoulder as she tried to see what had happened to her horse. “I guess Aspen took off.”

Hawk wasn’t concerned about the horse. “Someone will come across her
or she’ll wander home.”

He shifted to look at her back, and she sucked in a sharp a breath. The look on his face told her it was probably as bad as it felt. Without comment, he rose and walked back to his horse, then returned with a canteen of water and a small first aid kit.

“You do come prepared, don’t you?”

“Accidents happen.” He sank into a squat behind her.

“Especially to me.” Jenny grimaced in disgust. “Better get a bigger first aid kit.”

He chuckled and put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get your shirt off.” She swiveled around to face him, wondering if she had heard him correctly. “I need to clean and treat these cuts.”

She put a hand on his to stop him from opening the first aid kit. “Let’s go back to the line cabin. It’s not too far.”

“Yeah, maybe that would be better. I can clean out all those cuts better.” He put
a hand under her elbow and assisted her to her feet.

It was a slow and painful process. At his horse, he lifted her up onto the saddle.

“Do you know this is the third shirt I’ve ruined?” She looked up the hill from where she’d fallen. “And my new hat! It probably got stomped on and ruined.” She saw it lying on the slope. “Damn it!”

“I see it.” He guided Red Phantom up the hill as smoothly as he could. When he reached her hat, he swung down and retrieved it, slapped it against his chaps, then handed it to her. “Aspen didn’t step on it. Good as new.”

Jenny shifted gingerly behind him.

“Put your arms around me,” Hawk directed.

“It hurts,” she grumbled.

“I know. But I don’t want to lose you back there.”

“Yeah, falling off a horse twice in one day would be humiliating.”

With her chest pressed against Hawk’s back, she hung on as tightly as she could and concentrated on ignoring the pain. If she focused on mimicking his every motion, it eased the sharp ache to a dull throbbing. It did nothing, though, to stem her rising arousal at being pressed so closely and intimately to him. Her breasts rubbed against the hard muscled wall of his back so relentlessly that it didn’t take long for her nipples to harden and remain that way all the way back. She finally gave up wondering if he could feel her embarrassing condition and laid her head on his shoul
der blade with a defeated sigh.

Hawk covered the small hands clasped around his waist and smiled to himself at her surrender. She was a fighter.

The line cabin was empty. Hawk helped Jenny inside, sat her on the sofa, then went into the kitchen for water and towels.

“You tore up your back and arms pretty
badly,” he said after he sat down beside her and inspected her injuries once more. “We’re going to have to get that shirt off.” Without waiting for her approval, he moved onto the balls of his feet to squat in front of her and unbutton her shirt.

“I can do it.” When she had it unbuttoned, she yanked it off and stared at all the rips and tears in the material. “Yeah, another rag.”

Clad only in her jeans and a lacy white, underwire Victoria Secret bra, she balled up the ruined shirt and tossed it onto the floor. “Do your worst,” she murmured sullenly. “I certainly have.”

Hawk sat down next to her again and lifted her long hair aside, up over one shoulder, then soaked a small towel with water from the bowel on the end table. With gentle dabs, he cleaned the dirt from her cuts.

Jenny hissed at the sting. “Sorry,” he apologized as he gently slid the lacy strap of her bra off her shoulder to clean a cut underneath it. After doing the same to the other strap, he stopped.

He was still for so long, she turned to look over her shoulder at him. “You’re, um... bra,” he tried to explain. “It’s all ripped up.... The hooks— ah, are broken.” He sounded flustered. He face had turned ruddy.

“Well, what’s one more piece of clothing?” she replied contemptuously. “Just unhook it, and I’ll throw it away.” When he did, she held the cups of her bra in both hands to keep it somewhat in place.