Reunited with the Cowboy

by Claire McEwen

  They reached a field of long golden grass and tangled weeds that had once been neatly sheared pasture. Caleb pointed to the far side. “I see coyotes over there a fair amount, in the early mornings.”

  “If you’re not grazing this, mow it,” Maya said.

  “I know. It’s a fire hazard.” Caleb wasn’t going to mention that his tractor had been broken for weeks. Or that he was too broke to get it fixed.

  “Well, yes, though fire isn’t really my area of expertise.” She pointed to the field. “But all of this—the long grass, the bushes—has become wildlife habitat. Just walking over here, I spotted three different areas where you’ve got mule deer bedding down.”

  He glanced around, wondering if she was making it up. He hadn’t noticed anything. “You sure about that?”

  “One is just before that scrub oak back there.”

  Caleb looked at the stubby little oak he saw every day. Though clearly he hadn’t looked closely enough.

  Maya went on. “The problem is mule deer are mountain lions’ favorite food.”

  Caleb looked out over the golden grass, flowing gently in the rising breeze. “I didn’t realize.”

  Maya raised her hand to encompass the field. “This is a twenty-four-hour buffet. And not just for mountain lions. I’ll bet you this field is packed with rabbits and ground squirrels. Those coyotes you’ve been seeing love to eat them. Which isn’t a problem right now, but with all this great food available, your resident pack will grow and pretty soon they’ll be helping themselves to lamb for dessert.”

  He didn’t want to admit it, but she had a point. “So, you’re saying I need to mow.”

  “As soon as possible.”

  Now that Maya pointed it out, he could see that this abandoned pasture was alive. There were squeaks in the grass to his left. A family of quail was crossing the trail a few yards in front of them, the male leading the way with his fancy feather bobbing on top of his head. Lizards sunned themselves on the fence posts.

  He’d been so busy trying to keep this ranch, and himself, above water the past couple of months, he hadn’t seen the obvious problem right in front of him.

  Of course seeing the problem didn’t mean solving it. He was down to just a few bucks in his bank account. Maybe he could hit the junkyards in Santa Rosa tomorrow to try to find a tractor like his. Then he could pull the water pump. He hated to lose the day it would take to make the trip, but better to lose a day than any more livestock.

  Maya put a hand to his arm. Just a brief brush to his forearm but it was warm and unexpected. Like a quick visit from a bird.

  “Look, I know you don’t want to take my advice. But this is what I do. I have my PhD in wildlife biology. You don’t have to like me, but I wish you’d let me help you out.”

  “You have a PhD?” It was one small detail of what she’d said, but it stood out. Another symbol of how little he knew her.

  “Yeah.” Her chin jutted out defiantly. “I’m actually considered an expert on predator behavior. And here I am, offering my services for free, so you should take advantage of them.”

  “It’s not often a woman invites me to take advantage of them.” It was a stupid thing to say and he regretted it the instant it was out. An insecure fool’s effort to bring her down a peg, now that he knew just how smart and accomplished she really was.

  “If you’re going to act like an idiot, you won’t have my help.”

  “I never asked for your help,” he reminded her.

  “You clearly need it,” she shot back. Then she paused, like she was counting to ten before she said anything more. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and calm again. “Look, I know you hate me, Caleb. You made that very clear years ago. But that doesn’t mean you can’t listen to my advice. I do have expertise that could help you.”

  He stared, letting her words filter in. “I don’t hate you.”

  “Well, you told me you did, after the accident. And you certainly act like you do now.” He could see tears building in her eyes, the way she blinked them back, to stop them from falling.

  “It’s complicated.” He tried to find the words in his whiskey-blurred brain. But his lack of sleep, his hangover and all the memories she stirred up just by standing here in front of him knotted in his mind and left him with nothing.

  “We have a complicated past. But this is about helping your ranch and protecting your livestock. And preserving the local mountain lion population too. So why can’t we just keep those things separate from what happened between us?”

  He stared at her, fighting the urge to yell at her, chase her off his property and out of his life. Because she was flinging open doors he’d tried to keep shut for so long.

  “I don’t know.” It was one of the few honest things he could say. “I don’t know if I can work with you.”

  Her face paled and her small fists clenched. “You’re not the only one having a hard time with this situation. When I came to see you after I got out of the hospital, you said horrible things. You broke my heart. But I’m still trying to work with you.”

  Caleb recognized the sick feeling in his gut. He’d felt it that night she’d come to see him, after Julie died. He felt it now. Emotions, so many, so mixed up, it was impossible to untangle any of them into coherent thoughts or words.

  “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you.”

  Her short, harsh laugh startled him. One cynical beat of sound. “We both know that’s a lie. You blamed me. And I took it. I took all the blame, because how could I not? I was behind the wheel that night. I lost control of the car. And your sister died.

  “But I’ve had a lot of time to think about it, Caleb. And there are a couple of things about that night that you and your parents and half this town conveniently forgot when they all pointed their fingers at me.”

  He gaped. She’d dropped the professional demeanor and was pure emotion. Pure anger, pure sorrow and regret so profound he felt it in the air between them. “Maya, I—”

  “No. If you want to let our past get in the way, fine. That’s your choice. But I won’t let you label me a murderer again. I went to pick up Julie from that concert that night as a favor to you. Remember? Your sister called you for a ride, and you asked me to go instead because you wanted to hang out with Jace. And Julie was drunk and she would not listen to me. Do you even know that?”

  “Of course I know.” But he tried not to think about the horrific details of that night—only looked back in brief glances. Now here she was, the scientist with her microscope. Magnifying guilt.

  “You don’t know my view of what happened though. Because you wouldn’t listen. You just told me we were over. As if all of our years together meant nothing. As if I’d crashed that car on purpose. You acted like you believed those rumors around town. That I was drunk. And since you seemed to hate me, a lot of people assumed those rumors were true.”

  Tears were pouring down her face now and Caleb blinked back his own. “I was overwhelmed by it all.” He was overwhelmed now, by what he’d done wrong back then, and all that he should have done right.

  “What feels so unfair sometimes, is that Julie would have listened to you, if you’d gone to pick her up. She would have kept her seat belt on and she would never have tried to climb into the front seat. Has that ever occurred to you?”

  She backed a few steps away from him and swiped at her wet cheeks with her sleeve. “I’m not shying away from the blame. Believe me, I carry more guilt and regret than you can ever imagine, every single day of my life. But maybe it’s time you were honest about your part in it. And about Julie’s part. Her actions helped cause that car accident.”

  “Go.” It came out like a growl from somewhere deep and raw in Caleb’s chest. She was hacking at bone with her words, excavating pain he’d buried deep for a reason. “This isn’t going to work, you and me. It could never work. You want to l
eave me something to read about managing wildlife? Fine. But don’t come back here, trying to tell me how to run my ranch. Or how to remember my sister.”

  She stared at him, stunned and stricken, and he remembered that look. Because he’d put it there once before, on the night he’d accused her of killing Julie. The night he’d destroyed what was between them. And now, just as they’d been maybe making a few tentative repairs, he’d put it there again.

  But last time, she’d turned and run out of the room. This time she held her ground. “There you go again. Laying all the blame on me. Well, you know what? Blame me for the weather, for the mountain lions, for whatever you want, because there is one thing different from the last time you treated me this way. This time, I don’t care.”

  She turned so quickly, dust rose from the path beneath her feet.

  Caleb watched her walk away, across the field, past the barn, until she was just a speck getting into her truck and driving away. Good. They were fools to think that they could be around each other at all. She’d shown up here, unwelcome. She’d brought up the accident and so much he didn’t want to think about.

  As he started up the path, he saw Hobo sitting just a couple of yards away, staring at him reproachfully. “What?” He faced off with the animal as if it could speak.

  But Hobo didn’t need words. He just turned and stalked away, paws lifting high, as if the very ground that Caleb owned disgusted him.

  Shamed by a cat. Shamed because he’d had a chance to do the right thing. To give Maya the apology he’d owed her for years now. But instead he’d made it all much, much worse.

  Ever since Afghanistan, ever since his own terrible mistake there, he’d had a self-destructive streak in his soul a mile wide and just as deep. When there was something that mattered, he broke it.

  Maybe he felt like he didn’t deserve anything good. Maybe he felt like he’d ruin it anyway, so he might as well get it over with.

  Today, for a few minutes anyway, talking about predators and deer and Hobo the cat, it had felt like maybe he and Maya had built something. A small bit of trust, or at least an ability to be around each other and maybe solve the problems on his ranch.

  For a few minutes there, he’d envisioned what it would be like to have her help, to learn from her, to get to be around her again, after missing her so much, for so many years.

  For those few minutes, he’d felt hope. So unfamiliar, it startled him. So inspiring, it scared him.

  So he’d brought his angry words crashing down like fists, to shatter it into pieces. Because without hope, he had nothing to lose. And he’d lost enough to know that life was a whole lot safer that way.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE RATTLE OF Maya’s truck down Caleb’s rutted driveway was almost soothing. It jostled Maya’s bones, bounced her in her seat, forced her to hold tightly to the wheel and concentrate while she navigated the more cavernous potholes. She welcomed the effort. It forced her to stay alert, to push back the tears that kept sliding down her face, no matter how many times she wiped them away.

  She’d promised herself she’d stay professional. To ignore their past and focus on her work.

  It wasn’t just his anger and his obvious dislike that broke her resolve, though that had slowly and surely gotten under her skin the more time she’d spent at his ranch.

  It was the way he’d lain broken on that beat-up porch chair, his spirit shuttered by the whiskey. The shame on his face when he’d woken to find her there, and the desperate attempt to cover up, to pretend like that kind of drinking was no big deal. Her parents were addicts who’d lost everything, including her, to get their next fix. So she knew firsthand that being that drunk was a really big deal.

  He’d brought her back there. To those times as a tiny little kid, when she’d try to wake her parents up. They’d be passed out just like Caleb, and wake up angry and swearing. It was all too familiar, and the fact that he’d forced her back to that place and those memories had upped her anger to the boiling point.

  But it wasn’t just worry and anger that had her losing control. It was the way his ranch, so beautiful when they were young, had fallen to pieces. It felt like her fault. She might be angry, she might stand up to his blame, but she knew—of course she knew—that she’d been the only one behind the wheel the night Julie had died. And the demise of the Bar D, his parents’ divorce, his drinking—it could all be traced back to that accident eventually.

  Maybe that was why she’d lashed out. Tried to shove the blame for the accident on to him just as he’d done to her so many years ago.

  But it had been wrong to do, especially when she was supposed to be working. She was supposed to be helping him; she was supposed to be a professional.

  Maya slowed partway down the drive to calm herself before she hit the main road. Fields of dry grass ranged out on either side of her—all that open space giving her comfort. The Bar D had been one of the most beautiful ranches Maya had ever seen. Hundreds of acres of rolling hills, green and lush in winter and spring, bleached to gold in summer and fall. The property extended west toward the Pacific and the eastern edge connected to the open-space preserve, where Maya had run into Caleb the other night.

  But it was so different now. The Bar D that Maya remembered was neat as a pin, the house painted a cheery yellow, the barn a classic red. The fences, the outbuildings and the roads were constantly maintained by Caleb’s father and the many ranch hands he’d employed.

  Today Maya had barely recognized the place, with its leaning fences, rotting posts covered in lichen and barbed wire lying haphazardly and hazardously on the ground.

  The lambing shed, where she used to love to go with Caleb and greet the new arrivals, was propped up on one side by huge beams, and the roof was entirely gone. The main barn, though still standing, was patched and faded, the red paint almost gone, the doors barely hanging on to their hinges and the entire structure leaning inland, as if giving in to the winds that blew from the coast.

  It was as if the ranch had lost hope and was collapsing into the earth. Just like its owner.

  Maya scrubbed the last tears off her face with her sleeves. Enough. She’d learned to be strong in the years since Caleb had turned his back on her, and she’d rely on that strength to get her through these months in Shelter Creek. She’d focus on her work, just like she always had. She’d advocate for the predators who were so often blamed for what was not their fault.

  Killing a sheep wasn’t a decision for a puma; it was instinct. Hunger had to be satisfied, and a mountain lion made no distinction between a deer on one side of a fence and a sheep on the other. Surely there were other ranchers in Shelter Creek who would understand that. If Caleb wasn’t able to, well, there was still a lot she could do here.

  After a long, shaky breath, the tears seemed to be truly gone, so Maya turned onto the road toward town, the truck suddenly, oddly quiet on the smooth pavement. Caleb’s face rose in her mind, unwelcome and unbidden. That moment when his cat had jumped onto his shoulder, and his expression had gone from surprised to sheepish... It was as close to a smile as she might ever see on his face.

  She wished she could unsee it. Because Caleb was still so beautiful, with his startling dark brown eyes, his black hair, his tall, bulky frame carved with visible muscle. He’d always been handsome, but now he’d been honed into something raw and rugged, with a barely contained bitter energy that couldn’t be all about her and the ranch. What else had happened to him in the years between then and now? She’d heard from Grandma, at some point, that he’d joined the Marines. Maybe war had changed him. He certainly wouldn’t be the first to come home different.

  His seemed a hard life, a scarred life. She’d caught a glimpse of it on the porch when he’d shoved out of the chair only to reach for the wall. His story was imprinted on his forearms with black tattoos, the patterns mostly abstract, probably meaning something only to hi
m. Only one patch of ink was starkly clear. Julie’s name, scripted on his wrist.

  Her cell phone rang, jolting her out of her thoughts. The call was probably about work, or from Grandma Lillian. Maya slowed, put on her signal, waited for a turnout to pull off the narrow winding road. She hit the hazard lights so anyone coming up behind her would know she’d slowed down. She’d always been a pretty cautious driver. Since the accident, she made the slowest granny look like a daredevil.

  A wide gravel verge came into view, and Maya pulled her truck over and stopped under the arching branches of a bay tree. Craving fresh air, she stepped out of the cab, and answered.

  It was her boss here in California, Cooper Peyton, calling from the Sacramento office. When he asked her how she was, Maya had to cross her fingers before she answered. “Fine. Everything’s good.”

  Cooper didn’t waste time on small talk. “Listen, Maya, on a short assignment like this, it’s important to reach out to as many people as possible, as quickly as possible. We need to educate the community about living with predators and preventing predation.”

  “Okay,” Maya answered. “What do you suggest?”

  “I encourage you to take advantage of some of the summer events around the area. I know the local rodeo must be coming up soon. Can you get a table there? And see if you can attend a town meeting, the local rancher’s association, anything you can think of where you can make contact with a lot of community members at once.”

  Maya’s stomach did a few flips and flops at his words. Of course she’d known she’d be reaching out to ranchers in this position, but she’d assumed it would be one-on-one. She was an introvert, someone who’d spent most of the last decade on her own, in the wilderness, not talking at all. “Um...of course,” she answered, swallowing panic. “It makes sense.”

  “Great. Listen, email Barb, she’s our administrative assistant here in Sacramento. She’ll mail you a few boxes of information to distribute. We’ve got pamphlets, posters, all kinds of stuff you can use to connect with people.”