Cowboy Strong - Includes a bonus novella

by Carolyn Brown

  He headed straight to the refrigerator, took out a gallon of sweet tea, and drank at least a pint straight from the container. He could almost hear Ezra laughing and telling him that a woman wasn’t worth forgetting to take water or tea to the field with him. He put the voice out of his head while he made himself a ham and cheese sandwich. When he’d gotten out potato chips and pickles, he sat down at the table and bowed his head, but he was too agitated to pray.

  Finally, he looked up at the ceiling and said, “God, why did you make women so damned stubborn? Pardon the cuss word. And by the way, thanks for the food.”

  No booming voice came down to answer his question, but one of the dogs cold-nosed his hand and made him almost jump out of his chair. “Are you trying to tell me something, Vivien?” he asked the mutt.

  She whimpered and wagged her tail on the floor.

  “Is the woman you’re named after as bullheaded as her daughter?” He took another long drink of tea and then picked up his sandwich. “I’d rather be eating with her, you know. I’ve always looked forward to an hour in the middle of the day when we could talk about anything and everything. She’s always been the easiest one for me to visit with.”

  Vivien laid a paw on his foot and yipped.

  “Why is she bein’ so damned hard to get along with? Is it because she misses her sisters? Or maybe because she’s been havin’ to work so hard? Well, that’s ranchin’ in a nutshell, and if she don’t like it, maybe she should sell out,” he said between bites.

  He finished his meal and headed back to the field, driving slowly because all three dogs were running along beside the truck. Dust floated across and through the barbed wire fence from where Bonnie was already back at work. When he got out of his vehicle, he sneezed twice on the way to the tractor, but the dogs stayed right with him. He opened the cab door, and they all three got inside. Two shared the passenger’s seat, and Vivien curled up in the floorboard.

  “Hmmmph!” Rusty said as he started the engine. “She’s got rocks for brains if she thinks I’m leaving a single one of you behind. We’ll go to court if we have to.”

  Chapter Six

  Any other time, Bonnie would have suggested that she and Rusty ride over to the Wildflower Ranch together, but not that Tuesday evening. They hadn’t even spoken to each other since the day before, and she wasn’t going to take the first step toward reconciliation. Not when he threatened her with the dogs.

  She had spent a restless night, and that morning when she awoke, she had trouble separating reality from the visions she’d had in her sleep. Tears ran down her cheeks as she sat up in bed and wondered if she’d gotten the sign she’d asked for in the form of dreams. In the first one she’d crammed all her clothing into one big black garbage bag and the other small things she’d accumulated since she’d been on the Malloy Ranch into a box. She’d put them in the back of her truck and was driving past the cemetery when she saw Ezra sitting on the top of his tombstone. With a big grin on his face, a wicked mean look in his eyes, he waved goodbye to her.

  Ezra had won. All three girls had lost. Plain and simple.

  She couldn’t let him win. She just couldn’t.

  In the second dream, there was snow on the ground, and both sisters, Abby Joy and Shiloh, stood on the porch as she drove away. She watched them in the mirror and realized that they would grow closer and closer to each other, while she’d just be a stranger who dropped in every few months or years to say hello.

  Ezra had won a second time. He’d put the sisters together only to split them up again.

  Bonnie punched her pillow several times. She couldn’t let him win, and she damn sure couldn’t leave her sisters behind. What if they needed her? What if she needed them like she had several times in the past months?

  “Dammit!” she muttered as she wiped even more tears away with the edge of the bedsheet. “When did I put down such deep roots?”

  About half angry with herself for letting herself become so vulnerable that she’d let other people deep into her heart, she threw back the covers and crawled out of bed.

  She spent the entire day going back and forth from trying to convince herself that she was crazy for letting two dreams affect her whole life, to being honest with herself and admitting that they had been signs. She wasn’t a lot closer to making a final decision when the day ended, and she went back to the ranch house that evening. She took a long shower, dressed in clean jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and carried her baked beans out to the truck. The vehicle looked like crap on the outside, but it had new tires, bought with her first couple of weeks’ paychecks back in the winter. “You’ve been a faithful old friend. No way I’m goin’ to turn my back on you now.” She set her big bowl of baked beans on the seat beside her and put the pecan pie she’d whipped up the night before on the floorboard on the passenger side. “If you could talk, would you tell me to tell Rusty to get on down the road and not let the door hit him in the ass? Or would you tell me to settle down and call this place home.”

  She shot a dirty look through the gate of the small family cemetery where Ezra was buried and drove on across the road to her sister’s place. She discovered that she had a choice—park right beside Rusty’s truck or go all the way to the end of the line of cars and trucks. No way was she going to let him think that he’d intimidated her. She pulled in beside his vehicle, got out, and circled around behind the bed of her truck. She opened the passenger door, and suddenly both Waylon and Cooper were right there to help. One picked up the pie and the other the beans.

  She caught a quick glimpse of Rusty sitting in the shadows when she mounted the porch steps, but she didn’t acknowledge his presence. “Hello, everyone.”

  “Miz Bonnie.” A few of the hired hands tipped their hats.

  “Howdy.” A couple more raised a beer bottle.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Rusty didn’t do either one, which told her that he was still every bit as angry as she was. She passed Waylon and Cooper coming through the kitchen door on their way back out to the porch. Abby Joy and Shiloh were busy at the stove, so Bonnie grabbed an apron from a hook, slipped it over her head, and asked what she could do to help.

  “The corn bread should be done.” Shiloh pointed at the stove. “If you’ll get it out of the oven and cut it into squares, we should be ready to put it on the table and call everyone in for supper. The pie looks amazing. Thanks for bringing it. Abby Joy made a cobbler, and I whipped up a cream puff cake, so we should have plenty.”

  “I’ll get a few glasses of tea poured up,” Abby Joy said.

  “I assume we’re doing this buffet style?” Bonnie shoved her hands into two oven mitts and pulled the big pan of corn bread from the oven.

  “Yep, and before all those guys get in our way, tell me what’s going on with you and Rusty. He’s pouting and you’ve got that look on your face that you had right after Ezra’s funeral,” Abby Joy said.

  “Waylon said they’re fighting,” Shiloh informed her older sister.

  “Over what?” Abby Joy asked.

  “The dogs,” Bonnie answered.

  “Why would you fight over the dogs? Didn’t Ezra leave them to Rusty in his will?” Abby Joy clamped a hand over her mouth. “Is he moving off the ranch? Good God, girl, what will you do?”

  “She’s tough.” Shiloh picked up a knife and cut the pie into ten pieces. “She’ll hire a new foreman and keep runnin’ the place. Waylon said he offered him a job, so if he leaves, the dogs will just be across the road.”

  “That’s not why we’re really fighting.” Bonnie sighed. “I’ve been thinkin’ about it all day long while I sat in a tractor. It’s just something to fight about because neither of us will face our feelings.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Shiloh asked.

  “That we’re attracted to each other and have been for months,” Bonnie blurted out.

  Shiloh winked at Abby Joy.

  “What’s the winking all about?” Bonnie cut the corn
bread and made a pyramid of it on a platter with the squares.

  “We saw the attraction between the two of you the first week we were at the ranch,” Abby Joy told her.

  “We’ve just been waiting for y’all to figure it out for yourselves,” Shiloh added. “So, give us the short version of what caused the fight.” She carried a bowl of coleslaw to the dining room table.

  “We’ve been arguing about me selling the ranch for a week now. And now he’s saying that he might as well leave, since it’ll be hard to find a job on a ranch in the wintertime. Then he said he was taking the dogs. I don’t want him to leave, and I’m terrified about putting down roots. What if I got my mama’s genes and after six months me and Rusty got ourselves in a relationship, and then I decided that I wanted to sell out and leave. He was good to teach us and help us learn, and Ezra was a sumbitch for going back on his word about leavin’ the ranch to Rusty.”

  “Then why are you arguing with yourself about selling it to him?” Shiloh asked.

  “Hell, if I know.” Bonnie shrugged. “I’m so damned confused I don’t know whether to wind my butt or scratch my watch as my mama used to say.” She went on to tell them about the two dreams.

  “The dogs just gave you something to argue about when you’re really angry with yourselves because you can’t figure out what it is you want to do and why. And, honey, I believe in dreams. Mama used to tell me that God has visited folks in dreams since the beginning of time, and when He speaks, we should listen,” Abby Joy said.

  Cooper came into the kitchen, walked up behind Abby Joy, and slipped his arms around her. “It sure smells good in here. Is it about time to call in the hungry guys?”

  Abby Joy turned around and kissed him on the cheek. “Bonnie will have the corn bread on the table in about five seconds, so go on and tell them it’s ready.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Cooper bent and brushed a kiss across his wife’s lips. “And thanks to all three of you ladies for all you’ve done.”

  Bonnie had barely set the platter of corn bread on the table when the men started filing inside the house. Rusty was the last one in the line, and he stood back against the wall. Waylon removed his cowboy hat and bowed his head. The rest of the cowboys did the same.

  When he’d said “Amen” at the end of the very short grace, Shiloh kissed him on the cheek.

  In that moment, Bonnie began to doubt whether she really wanted to sell the ranch and travel or if she wanted what her sisters both had, roots and someone to love them.

  “We don’t have room for everyone to sit down in the house, but we’ve set up a couple of long tables out in the backyard,” Shiloh said. “The silverware and napkins are already out there.”

  “Man, this looks good,” Cooper said.

  “Smells good too. I haven’t had anything but sandwiches for two days.” Rusty stepped forward, picked up a plate, and began to load it.

  Bonnie shot a mean look across the table at him, but his eyes were on the food and the evil glare was wasted. Fixing her own plate, she wondered if he’d missed coming to the ranch house to eat with her as much as she’d missed having him there.

  How on earth Rusty got behind her was a mystery, but suddenly, he was there, and he whispered softly in her ear, “We need to talk, don’t you think?”

  His warm breath on the soft part of her neck sent shivers down her spine. “You’re not taking those dogs away from their home,” she said. “They were raised on the ranch, and they’d be miserable anywhere else. I’ll stay right there and never leave before you take them away. I won’t even sell it until they’ve all passed away, and then I’m going to bury them right on top of Ezra. That way he’ll have all three of his wives in the same grave with him.”

  “Let’s talk about all of this tomorrow.” Rusty set his plate down on the first table they came to.

  “Where and when?” she asked.

  “Neutral place,” he answered. “In the barn at six o’clock.”

  “I’ll be there.” With a curt nod, she walked on past him and sat down at the second table with Abby Joy, Cooper, and a handful of hired hands.

  “What was that all about?” Abby Joy whispered.

  “Just setting up a meeting so we can talk,” Bonnie answered.

  “You’ve got a job right here anytime you want to move,” Abby Joy said. “Just promise me you won’t get a wild hair and leave the canyon. Sisters should stick together, and besides, this baby”—she laid her hand on her bulging stomach—“needs his aunts. I don’t know a blessed thing about babies, so I’ll need all the help I can get too.”

  Bonnie made up her mind right then and there to stick around until the dogs had all died, and so that she could be an aunt to Abby Joy’s baby. Bonnie missed having family in her life, so she couldn’t very well deny her little niece the same. “I promise.”

  She glanced over at the other table, where Shiloh and Waylon were sitting with the rest of the hired hands. Her mind went back to that first day when Cooper had told them that they’d need more than one napkin because the chicken was greasy. She had been glad that her two older half-sisters weren’t bashful when it came to food. On first impression, Shiloh had seemed pretty prissy, and the older sister was without a doubt a force to be reckoned with, but when they all three gathered around in the kitchen that cold day, all three of them hadn’t had any qualms about food.

  Abby Joy bumped her on the arm. “What are you thinkin’ about? You’ve hardly touched your barbecue, and I know you like it a lot.”

  “I’ve been thinkin’ about our first day together a lot lately,” she answered.

  “You mean at Ezra’s funeral?” Cooper asked. “I couldn’t believe that all three of you showed up looking like you did at his graveside service.”

  “Oh?” Abby Joy raised an eyebrow.

  “Think about it,” Cooper chuckled. “You looked like you’d just come out of a war zone in all that camouflage and your combat boots. Shiloh, over there”—he nodded her way—“looked like she’d just left a rodeo, and I wasn’t sure if you were a biker or a punk rocker, Bonnie.”

  “I couldn’t believe those two were my sisters, either.” Bonnie giggled. “I figured that Abby Joy was like Ezra, and Shiloh had to take after her mother, and that neither of them would last two days on a ranch. Shiloh would be afraid she’d break a fingernail, and Abby Joy would be…”

  “I’d be what?” Abby Joy asked.

  “Bored to tears on a ranch after the life you’d led in the military,” Bonnie finished. “I didn’t even know Ezra, but from what Mama told me when she was drinking too much and bitchin’ about him, I figured you were the most like him.”

  “Hey, now, I’m the least like Ezra of all of us,” Abby Joy declared.

  Suddenly Bonnie had that antsy feeling that she only got when someone was staring at her. She glanced over at the other table and locked eyes with Rusty. She wished that she could fall into those sexy green eyes all the way to the bottom of his soul and find out what his real feelings were. Waylon nudged him with a shoulder, and he looked away just about the same time Abby Joy poked her on the arm with her forefinger.

  “You don’t have a smart-ass remark about me being the least like Ezra?” Abby Joy asked.

  “Nope, but I’ve got a question for Cooper. You liked Ezra, right?”

  Cooper nodded. “He was an eccentric old codger, but he was smart as a whip when it came to ranchin’. All of us around these parts could depend on him for advice—other than when it came to women.”

  “Guess that answers my question fairly well,” Bonnie said. “Thanks.”

  Cooper’s head bobbed in a quick nod, and then he changed the subject. “These beans are great. What’s your secret?”

  “A tablespoon of mustard,” Bonnie answered. “It cuts the sweet of the brown sugar and ketchup.”

  And a little argument is good for a relationship, like mustard is good for beans. Her mother’s voice popped into her head. It cuts all that sweetness of flirting and sex
. Every couple has to endure a few tests to see if the relationship will withstand the long journey.

  That just might be the smartest advice you have ever given me, Mama, Bonnie thought. Why don’t you apply it to your own relationships?

  Chapter Seven

  Bonnie was sitting on a bale of hay in the corner of the barn, ready for their talk, when Rusty arrived. Several strands of blond hair had escaped from her ponytail and were stuck to her sweaty face. Pieces of hay were still stuck to her clothing from hauling bales from the field to the barn all day. With no one else to help, and refusing to work together, they’d each loaded their own truck bed full, driven it to the barn, and then unloaded and stacked it there. They’d gotten in what they’d baled the day before, and tomorrow, they’d move to another field and start cutting what was ready there.

  “Why didn’t Ezra ever get the machinery to make those big round bales?” She removed her work gloves and laid them beside her.

  “He was old school.” Rusty sat down on the running board of her truck. “He said that ranchers wasted enough hay to make half a dozen small bales with what they lost on every one they left out in the weather. I think that once we were set up the waste would be worth it in the long run because we’d save a ton of money in the summer.” When Ezra was alive, Rusty wouldn’t have doubted anything the old man said.

  “How would that be saving money?” she asked.

  “We wouldn’t be payin’ the summer help wages,” he answered. “But we’re really not here to talk about hay, are we?”

  “No, but after loading and hauling this all day, I’m all for buying the new stuff for the big bales,” she said. “I’ll go first. The argument over the dogs was just so we didn’t have to face the real problem, which is the fact that I really do like you. One minute we’re arguing, and the next we get along pretty good. I don’t know if you’re just pretending to be nice so I’ll sell you the ranch, or if you feel the same sparks I do when you’re in the same room with me.” She pushed a strand of hair from her sweaty face.