Taking the Reins (Roped and Wrangled) (16 page)

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Authors: Kat Murray

BOOK: Taking the Reins (Roped and Wrangled)
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“You knew about the books Nylen was messing with, right?”
Peyton frowned and nodded. “I’ve got them in the safe up at the house. It’s just not something I’m going to bother with. He’s not in a position to abuse the trust any longer, so it seems pointless to go after him now. God only knows where he is, anyway. He never left a forwarding address.”
Red chose not to mention seeing him at the rodeo or that as of at least a few weeks ago, he’d been in the area. Not a worry Peyton needed.
She slapped her hands over her knees and pushed up to her feet. “So . . .”
“We’re good,” he answered her unspoken question. “You do your thing, I do mine. And stop worrying.”
But as she walked out the door and across the arena out of his sight, Red knew he was the one worrying. Because she might not want a repeat performance of the other night. He, on the other hand, was dying for one. And it could end up as nothing but trouble.
 
Peyton shook her hands out, erasing the tingling, numb sensation from them as she headed back to the house for some lunch. She hated confrontation, always had. Reminded her too much of her childhood, when she used to try playing peacemaker in the house before she wised up and realized nobody could help the Muldoon clan. Her best bet had always been to stay outside, away from Mama. And so her love of the land had begun.
A familiar rig parked by the house had her smiling. She jogged the last few yards and headed in through the front door, barely remembering to toe off her boots before scooting toward the kitchen.
“Morgan?”
“I’m feeding him,” Emma called out, then poked her head around the wall. “You come in here right now and get something to eat, or . . .”
“No need to finish that undoubtedly creative threat. I’m coming.” Stepping into the kitchen, her feet skidding a little on the newly-waxed floor, she reached for her nephew, who was riding shotgun on Emma’s hip. “Hey fella. How’s the cutest little boy in the whole world?”
“I’m doing great, thanks,” Morgan replied, a wide grin over his face.
“Har, har. So what brings you here?”
“Was driving past, thought I’d check up on the colt with the sprain.”
Peyton frowned. “Thought Arby said it wasn’t serious and he would treat it.”
“Yup. But I had some free time. Wanted to stop by and take a peek. Not to mention score some of Emma’s delicious cooking.” He leaned down—way down—and kissed the older woman’s cheek. “Best cooking in the county.”
“Ha. Tell your own mama that. See how long your backside is sore.”
“I’m smarter than that.”
“Emma? Have you started lunch yet?” The light, airy scent of her sister’s perfume preceded her into the kitchen. Bea leaned against the refrigerator in a practiced pose—though it almost seemed natural—and reached into the cabinet for a water glass. “I’m starving.”
“Wouldn’t be, if you would eat some breakfast,” Emma sniffed, but got down a few plates and started fixing sandwiches.
“Emma,” Bea said, tsking. “Eggs, sausage, bacon, grits? Cholesterol city. And there’s no treadmill in this house.”
Peyton snorted and pulled the end of her braid from Seth’s mouth where he gummed on it happily.
“Wanting to keep a decent figure isn’t a crime, you know. You could . . . oh.” Bea froze, water pitcher hovering over her glass, her eyes taking in Morgan. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
Peyton barely held back another snort. The man was six-foot-four. She hadn’t missed a damn thing.
Settling the water back in the fridge, Bea held out a hand. “Bea Muldoon.”
Morgan stared at the hand like he had no clue what to do with it. What in God’s name was wrong with him? Peyton kicked at his ankle and he jerked his hand forward, shaking Bea’s with a little more force than necessary. “Morgan Browning.”
“Morgan’s our vet,” Peyton added, jiggling Seth a little to hear him coo with laughter. “He went to school with Trace, but you two were never at school at the same time. His parents live just down the road.”
“Right, the Brownings. Of course. I just didn’t put two and two together. So.” Hands on hips, Bea surveyed him from head to heel. “That’s where you’ve been keeping the good-looking men.”
“I, uh . . . I . . .” Morgan blushed until Peyton thought his ears might burn off.
“Don’t play with him,” she warned Bea.
“Not playing. Just paying our fine vet a compliment. Anyway, do you mind if I borrow the Jeep, Peyton? I need to run some errands and my car’s almost out of gas.”
Peyton rolled her eyes. It was like they were teenagers again. Peyton, getting yelled at for letting the car go below half a tank. Bea, stranded halfway to school with no gas and not getting so much as a lecture. “Whatever. But bring it back in one piece.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How many cars have you had?”
“That second one was not my fault. Emma, never mind. I’ll get lunch in town.” Without a good-bye, Bea turned on her impractically high heel and flounced out of the kitchen, her short floral skirt snapping behind her.
“So that’s your sister,” Morgan said, his voice sounding like his collar was too tight.
“That’s my sister,” Peyton agreed. “For good and ill.”
“She seemed . . . nice.”
Emma barked with laughter and reached for Seth, pushing one of the sandwich plates Peyton’s way. “Nice. Here, eat this and scoot on out of my kitchen. I’ve got work to get done.”
Chapter Fourteen
R
ed was ready to call it a day well before he actually could. Though Arby was perfectly capable of treating a simple sprain, he’d seen to the colt’s injury himself again after work was done for the day, checking up. He knew it didn’t sit well with the older man, having his work double-checked. But Red wasn’t about to leave anything to chance. Not to mention, another mare was ready to foal. He’d have to catch some sleep when he could.
Just as he settled on the edge of his bed, ready to pull his boots off, his cell phone rang. Picking it up, assuming it was one of the hands announcing that another horse had gone into labor just as he’d left, he answered without looking.
“Son!” His father’s booming voice nearly knocked his tired ass off the bed. “Where you been?”
“Same place I was last time we talked, Dad.” Definitely not the night for this. “You know, now isn’t a good night to talk. Can we catch up some other time?”
“Well, maybe. But I’ve been meaning to talk to you for a while now. And I wanted to give you a fair warning about my visit. Though if you don’t have time now, I’ll just let it be a surprise. How about if we—”
“Stop.”
Fuck.
“Stop right there. Visit?”
“Well, ’course! I haven’t seen you in months.”
Over a year,
Red silently corrected.
“Dad, when were you planning on getting here?”
Silence greeted him.
“Dad?”
“I’m . . . close.”
Cryptic as always. Mac was good with word games when it suited him.
Red pinched the bridge of his nose.
I will not yell. I will not yell. I will not yell.
“And you were going to tell me . . . when?”
“What do you think this call is for?” his father huffed. “This isn’t exactly the warm welcome I imagined, you know. My own flesh and blood . . .”
Red put the phone on speaker and set it down on the bed, upside down to muffle the sound. He took his boots off, pushed them under the bed, then stripped down to his boxers. When the faint buzz of his father’s voice stopped, he picked the phone back up.
“This really isn’t a good time to visit. I’m sorry, but I can’t do this right now.”
“Ungrateful. That’s what you are, boy. I taught you everything you know about horses, which is how you make a living, if I might remind you, and this is how you treat your own father?”
This is how you treat your own son?
“I didn’t say you couldn’t come to visit ever. Just . . . not right now.” Not while so much was up in the air with Peyton. One crisis at a time.
“We’ll see if I ever call you again.” With that, his father hung up.
Red wasn’t concerned. Odds were, he’d receive a call in another week or two, asking for money to be wired to pay off yet another gambling debt, or to post bail, or to get Mac out of some other sort of trouble his father hadn’t yet come up with. His mind shuddered to contemplate . . .
When the phone rang again, Red could only think,
Really, Dad? That was fast
. But he saw it was the main house calling, not his father.
“Hello?”
“Red, it’s Peyton Muldoon.”
He smiled at the professional greeting. Like he wouldn’t recognize her voice—or her first name. “What’s up? Did Butterscotch go into labor?”
“What? No.” She sounded breathless, as if she’d been sprinting laps around the barn. Something in the background made a sort of high-pitched shriek that reminded him of a dolphin documentary he’d watched once.
“What the hell was that?” If that was a horse, something was very wrong.
“That,” she said through what he could imagine were clenched teeth, “was my nephew. Who won’t stop crying.”
“Ah.” He waited for her to get to the reason for the call, but she said nothing else. “Peyton?”
“What?”
He held back a laugh. “What’d you need?”
“Oh! Oh my God, I called you. Jesus.” He heard a thump. “I just . . . I don’t . . .” She broke off; then he heard something that sounded suspiciously like a watery sniffle. And finally, she whispered, “I need help.”
“Five minutes.” He hung up and reversed the disrobing process until he was taking off at a run for the main house. When he knocked on the front door and nobody answered, he waited a good three minutes, then tried the door. Unlocked.
“Peyton?”
Nothing. He took his boots off—just because Emma wasn’t staring right at him didn’t mean he was willing to face the woman’s wrath later—and wandered through the first floor. Not in her office, nor the kitchen or dining area. Hearing the wailing sound coming from upstairs, and someone walking around, he stood by the foot of the stairs and called her name out again, loudly. But she didn’t answer.
Okay then. Into the lioness’s den he went. Taking the stairs two at a time, he ignored the carved wood of the railing, the wrought iron that weaved in and out to create the banister, the oil paintings that stared at him like in some creepy haunted house. The entire effect of the first floor and the staircase, he realized, was bizarre and totally out of place for a working ranch. Too glitzy, too obvious. Trying too hard.
Sylvia Muldoon’s handiwork, no question about it. There was nothing about the decor that had even a hint of Peyton in it.
But when he stepped up to the second floor, he immediately relaxed. Nothing breakable or priceless there. It felt lived-in. Like a family could breathe there and not worry about spilling soda on the carpet or sitting on a crayon on the couch.
“Peyton?”
She stepped out of a doorway to what he assumed was a bedroom, Trace’s son—Seth—held against her shoulder, wailing pitifully.
Peyton’s eyes were wide. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I just panicked and Emma’s gone for the weekend and isn’t answering her phone and Bea isn’t here—not that she’d be useful anyway—and I refuse to call Trace and bother him and—”
“Slow down.” Taking a chance, he walked to her and smoothed a hand over her hair, now falling from some messy bun thing she’d pulled it back into. “Now breathe.”
She gulped in air like a fish on land, and he realized the kid was making her tense, which only made the kid more tense in response. Bad cycle. So he reached over and, as gently as he could, took the child from her. Not entirely sure of himself, he cradled the poor, sad baby against his shoulder, doing his best to mimic the pose she’d held him in. In response to the shift, the kid only screamed louder.
How in the hell did something no bigger than his boot make a sound that loud?
Peyton turned away from him, her hands on her head, and he watched as her shoulders rose and fell. He knew she was trying to compose herself so he walked across the living area with the child. The movement seemed to soothe him, though he didn’t stop crying. But at least the volume lowered a few notches.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw Peyton watching him, a little color back in her skin.
“Is he hurt? Or sick?”
She shook her head. “No fever, no injuries. He just won’t stop crying. For anything. None of the usual stuff is working.”
He jiggled the bundle a little in his arms. “Maybe he just misses his dad?”
“I’ve had him alone before. I’ve had him longer than this. I see him daily. I’m not exactly a stranger.” Peyton swiped under her eyes. “I would have called the doctor but I felt like an idiot doing that when there’s no fever, he’s not puking or anything else. He’s just pissed off. Which now makes two of us,” she ended with a mutter, kicking at the edge of the sofa with her bare foot.
Red gave himself a moment to follow the line of her leg up. She wore short shorts, the hem of which barely peeked out under an oversized Minnesota Twins sweatshirt that looked older than she was. With the sleeves hanging over her hands, her hair completely disheveled and her eyes looking exhausted, he thought she looked like a sleepy treat he wanted to nibble on for hours while they rolled around under the warm covers.
A high-pitched sound snapped his attention back to the fifteen-pound pile of anger in his arms. The kid stared up at him, almost pleading to make whatever was upsetting him stop. Though the trick was to figure out what that was.
“So where is Trace? Will he be back soon?” As soon as he asked, he remembered Trace was gone for a two-day event a few hours away. “Never mind. I remembered. Are you sure you shouldn’t call him though? It’s his kid, after all. He might know what’s wrong.”
“I refuse. Seth’s a baby. I should be smart enough to handle this.” Peyton’s mulish face made him smile.
“Yeah, but isn’t there that whole parental intuition thing? Maybe he’d have better ideas. You’re not a mother.”
“Thanks for stating that, Captain Obvious.” The simple truth seemed to piss her off even more. “I’m going down to get a bottle. He just ate, but I’ll offer another one, see if he’s going through a growth spurt or something.”
She disappeared down the stairs, and Red took the opportunity to sit down and hold the kid on his lap. He’d held Seth once in the barn, but the boy had slept through almost the whole thing. Did he realize he was being held by a stranger now? He wondered how much babies understood, and at what ages.
“Hey,” he said quietly, though with all the screaming, the kid might not have even heard him. “I’m Red, a friend of your dad’s. And your Aunt Peyton’s,” he added, though right now his thoughts on her weren’t friendly so much as, well, more than friendly. “You mind if I hang out with you a while?”
The child’s response was a lip wobble and another cry.
“Yeah, I know, I know.” He patted the diapered bottom gently, going on intuition and what little his mind remembered from seeing kids in movies or on TV. “Something’s wrong and nobody will listen.” He traced the tip of one finger down the boy’s nose, over his cheeks, around the pouting lips.
And got quite a shock when the child opened up and bit down. Something sharp poked his skin and he pulled back. When the child wailed at being denied the chance to chomp on Red’s finger, Red got a good look at one single white cap in his pink gums.
“You two bonding?” Peyton asked, a bottle in her hands, a more relaxed smile on her mouth. She reached for the child and Red gave him up easily. Maybe she’d just needed a break. Listening to that wailing for hours on end would drive him insane. If it was a moment of peace she needed, he was willing to lend a hand. Though it wasn’t his idea of a great night.
“Yeah. That tooth there caught me by surprise.”
“Tooth? He doesn’t have any teeth,” Peyton said, distracted while she attempted to offer Seth a bottle. The kid wasn’t having it.
“Then it might be brand new.” Red shrugged. “I just know he bit down and I got a poke. Looked inside and there it was.” He might not know much about kids, but he knew a tooth when he saw one.
Peyton stared at the baby. “Do you have a tooth?” She angled around until she smiled. “You do! When did that show up, huh?” She glanced at him. “Could that be what the problem is? Teething?”
Red shrugged. “Honey, I know horses, not humans. But it sounds logical. Does Trace have a baby book around here somewhere?”
“Yes!” She all but shoved the kid back in his arms and ran off.
“Well. Another round of manly bonding, then?” Red walked around the room, whispering in the child’s ear. Not that it helped. But it was better than nothing. The faintly pleading look Seth sent him, as if begging him to make the pain end, shot through him. “Sorry little guy. I’m not exactly good at this kid thing. If I could go through it for you, I would.” He’d do just about anything to wipe the desperate look from the baby’s eyes.
“Sweet offer,” Peyton said softly behind him.
He turned. “Any clues?”
She held up a book about as thick as a dictionary. “It suggests numbing gel for the gums, or a teething ring that we stick in the freezer for a little bit. Also, some baby Tylenol. I’ve only got the last one. The other two? I dunno. I guess he’s a little early on the teething front so we didn’t consider it before.”
Red continued walking while she administered a tiny dropper of pain medication to the child. Though it didn’t take effect immediately, Red hoped it would kick in soon. Then he had an idea.
“Care if I peek through your freezer for a minute?”
Peyton took Seth back as he held him out. “Uh, yeah, but if you want something to drink, I can go get it for you.”
“Not a drink. Just gimme a minute.” He hurried down the stairs and into the kitchen. After a quick search of the freezer, he found what he was looking for. Baggies were also easy to find, thanks to Emma’s militant organization. The woman was a treasure. Red quickly poked a few holes in one corner of the plastic bag, slipped a frozen slice of peach down there, and hustled back up the stairs.
Peyton glanced at his offering. “Late-night snack? Thanks, but I don’t really go for fruit so late at night. I’m more of a midnight ice cream binge eater.”
“For him, not you.” Not at all sure this would work, he waited for the boy to let out another wail, then took the frozen peach slice in the baggie and held it over his gum right where the tooth was. Seth, suddenly distracted by the new sensation, grabbed for the baggie and started to gum the offered snack. The small holes he’d poked allowed the taste and juices through but kept the fruit inside the bag, keeping the possibility of choking to—Red hoped—an impossibility.

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