Mae frowned. “Why should that make anyone laugh?” she demanded.
“Its iron content,” Rafe stated.
Mae stared at him in puzzlement, then waved him off. “Sometimes, boy, you just don’t make any sense. Gib, I was wondering...” She motioned the older man into the house, continuing to talk to him as he complied.
Shannon and Rafe were left outside, Shannon on the porch, Rafe with one booted foot on the bottom porch step. Shep had uncurled from his place beneath a living-room window to come over to Rafe and look up at him expectantly.
Shannon held the book close to her chest and glanced at the door. She wasn’t quite sure what to say. The situation seemed so awkward. Paramount in her mind was the mistaken reason he thought she was here at the ranch. Did he know that she knew that he thought...? Speculation tied her tongue.
His dark eyes flickered over her. “Are you enjoying that book?” he asked at last, as if he, too, had carried out a search for words.
Shannon glanced down at the book she was clutching. “Quite a bit,” she answered.
“I thought it was good,” he said. At her quick frown he added, “Yes, we do read out here. We’re not complete barbarians.”
“That wasn’t what I—”
“Yes, it was.”
He held her gaze until Shannon looked away. Truth to tell, she hadn’t expected him to be interested in a book about a London detective hot on the trail of a clever murderer.
“I—I didn’t think you’d have the time,” she stammered, attempting to redeem herself.
“I don’t work twenty-four hours a day.”
She lifted her chin. “I don’t know you well enough to be aware of that”
“Let’s keep it that way,” he said.
As if she wanted the situation to be otherwise. As if she cared. As if she in any way... Once again Shannon flushed.
He gave that hateful tip of his hat, his expression purposefully bland, and her flush only increased—but this time from anger.
He didn’t wait to see what she might say or do next. He turned and walked away, glancing back only long enough to call to Shep, who devotedly hurried after him.
Shannon ground her teeth. The absolute arrogance of the man!
~*~
“How’re things between you and your intended?” LeRoy drawled as Rafe joined the small group of men gathered at the side of the barn, Shep bringing up the rear.
“Yep, ol’ Rafe’s gonna be bulldogged ’fore he even knows what hit him,” came the pronouncement from a grizzled old cowboy who’d worked at the ranch for longer than Rafe had been alive.
“Mae’ll dangle the bait and whoomp! ol’ Rafe’s a goner,” his Uncle Thomas laughed. “Hook, line and sinker!”
“Better practice kickin’ your heels and duckin’ your head if you want to keep that rope from gettin’ ya!” LeRoy said, and the whole group erupted into laughter.
Rafe took the ribbing good-naturedly. “I’ve managed to stay free up to now,” he said.
“Yeah, but just like that ol’ sorrel stallion that kept gettin’ away from us the past three years,” Gene, the old cowboy said, “one day you’ll get caught just like he did!”
“Not if I can help it.”
“She’s a pretty little thing. Kinda skinny, but plenty strong underneath, where it counts.”
“Why don’t you come up to the house later on,” Rafe suggested, “and I’ll introduce you—since you seem so taken with her.”
“Oh, no! Whoa! Not me!” Gene exclaimed, jumping back. “I ain’t in the market for no woman!” He moved fast for someone who, when he was a young man, had had a wild steer drive a horn into the side of his knee. He was also missing the tips of two fingers on his right hand, a not unusual injury for someone who made his living roping cattle and horses.
“She’d have to like ’em old and slow, that’s for sure,” LeRoy drawled, transferring his teasing to the other man.
“And ornery!” Thomas put in.
“We’ll arrange to build you a house—maybe out in Big Spur,” Rafe said, referring to a remote division of the ranch where at present only a lone cowboy lived in a tiny trailer and tended stock.
“Don’t want no house,” Gene refused stoutly. “Don’t want no woman.”
The men chuckled at the old cowboy’s discomfort. Then LeRoy let him off the hook. “Y’know, your main problem’d be your looks. She might not like that sweet bump on the side of your nose or the delicate way your eyebrow has of jumpin’ up and down when you talk.”
“Yeah,” Thomas agreed with seeming reluctance, “you’re probably safe.”
“Damn straight!” Gene agreed, rubbing his nose, then stroking his eyebrow. “My looks always got me outta lotsa trouble.”
Rafe joined in the resulting round of laughter, then he asked, “Have any of you seen Dub?”
“Last time I saw him he was in the tack room,” LeRoy said. A few years younger than his cousin Rafe, LeRoy Dunn had inherited his father’s shorter stature and stocky build, but he retained the Parker dark hair and eyes.
Rafe walked toward the long low building set at odds with the bunkhouse and workshops. He exchanged greetings with a couple of his men he passed along the way, one mounting a horse, the other seated in the shade of a tree repairing a saddle.
“Dub around?” he asked the second man after finding the tack room empty.
The cowboy looked up. “He left about ten minutes ago. Said somethin’ about checking out that windmill needin’ fixin’ over at Red Canyon. Took Rio with him in his truck.”
Rafe’s lips thinned at mention of the younger cowboy’s name. The twenty-two-year-old was the newest full-time cowhand at the ranch. He’d been with them for less than a year and was as cocky as a bantam rooster, but he backed his cockiness with good solid work. Like all competent cowboys he seemed to have been born with a second sense about tending cattle. He could tell when one was about to break away from the herd being gathered and when one was hiding out in the scrub. The only problem Rafe had had with him was Jodie. Jodie thought she was in love—a thought Mae was hell-bent to change. And his aunt wasn’t above trying to use him to do her dirty work, which was something they’d just had an argument about.
Rafe’s lips thinned further. Even if he agreed with Mae about Jodie’s feelings for Rio, he couldn’t go along with her way of forcing a change. But then he rarely agreed with Mae’s penchant for controlling other people’s lives. Especially his.
He thumped a hand against a porch support before striding back across the open area toward the room set aside as the ranch’s business office. His steps slowed only when he realized that Shep was lagging behind.
Once inside the office, he patted the dog’s side and received an encouraging tail wag. Shep went immediately to the bowl of water on the floor, then to the dog bed filled with cedar chips where he stomped around in a circle a few times before flopping down with a huge sigh. His eyes were fixed on Rafe, who made himself comfortable at the desk.
Numerous pieces of paperwork awaited his attention. Contracts that had been filled during the recent roundup and now needed to be filed away, various unanswered correspondence. He picked up a contract, made a notation, then stopped, his concentration slipping back to the subject of his recent joshing.
If Mae was intent to push her newest choice for his bride at him, she was going about it a funny way. She was doing nothing to force them together. She’d held only one dinner party, which he’d avoided, and she had yet to repeat it.
Possibly the omission was due to their guest’s obvious weakness and need to recover. Not even Mae could rush something like that. Then again, considering the complicated way Mae’s mind worked, he might be assigned the role of knight in shining armor who was to rescue the fair damsel from her terrible ordeal. His aunt was probably relying on Shannon Bradley to fall into his arms in an outpouring of love and gratitude. The problem was, he was no knight and Shannon Bradley didn’t look the sort to fall gratefully into any ma
n’s arms. The fair-damsel part, though, seemed to apply. Even he had to admit that she was pretty in a fragile sort of way, with her white skin, heart-shaped face and wounded cornflower blue eyes that could still manage to flash with fire when she thought she’d been wronged.
It was that—if he’d been interested—he’d have found most engaging about her. The contradiction of form and spirit. Obviously weak, obviously despondent, yet there was an underlying strength of will, just as Gene, in his old cowboy wisdom, had spotted right away.
An unexpected tug at his senses caused Rafe to push sharply away from his desk. “Whoa!” he said aloud, as if the thought and its follow-up had somehow stung him.
Shep raised his head, his muscles tense, alert to any danger Rafe might have seen. When Rafe shook his head as a wild animal might to clear it, Shep’s chin fell back to his front paws. The danger, whatever it was, must have passed. For as long as he could, the animal kept his eyes open, watching. Then slowly they closed.
Rafe ran a hand through his hair, feeling slightly foolish at his reaction. But the image in his mind’s eye had seemed so real. Shannon Bradley had been reaching out to him, inviting him into her arms and, even more surprisingly, doing it from his bed!
Tiny beads of perspiration broke from his pores as the vivid image once again took shape in his mind.
~*~
Shannon opened her makeup pouch and poured the contents onto the bathroom counter. Lipsticks, mascara, eye shadow and liner, foundation, powder, blush. She sorted through them, remembering the last time they’d been used—at the airport in Lubbock. She’d gone into the bathroom there to freshen up, having very little time as usual. Her father, intent on never keeping a political crowd waiting, was a terror about the clock.
“Hurry up, Sparrow!” he’d called through the door of the ladies’ room. “’Time’s a’wastin’!”
She’d hurriedly applied some lipstick, ran outside and caught up with the others, already on their way to the plane. James had pulled her against his side and whispered in her ear that she was beautiful—an exaggeration, but it had made her feel loved.
She looked in the mirror in the Parker’s bathroom, saw the hollowness around her blue eyes and the mouth that was now reluctant to smile. At least she wasn’t as pale as she had been. Her daily session in the sun had taken care of that. And her hair had stopped looking quite so lifeless.
She picked up her brush and pulled it through the wheat-colored strands. It needed to be cut, but that would have to wait for her return to Austin—whenever that might be. The exact time frame of her visit here had never been discussed. Just “until you get well,” Mae had decreed. Whether that took three months or three years didn’t seem to matter.
Automatically she picked up a tube of lipstick and applied the color to her mouth. Then she unscrewed the mascara brush and drew it the length of her lashes. The difference was startling. Like most real blondes her lashes were naturally pale, and the darker hue made them stand out, intensifying the color of her eyes while at the same time magnifying them in her face. Where before she was lost, now she was found—the slightly altered words to an old hymn floated into her mind. Only she didn’t want to be found. She wiped the lipstick off with a tissue and bent to wash her face, intent upon removing the mascara. But she stopped herself.
Her heart still beat with stubborn regularity, her lungs still pulled air in and pushed air out, her stomach still digested food. She was alive, not dead, whether she wanted to be or not. Was it a rejection of her father or James if she applied a little color to her face? Should she feel self-conscious or guilty?
Her fingers fumbled with the lipstick tube and when she was done smoothing it on again, she stared at herself. Her lips might be bright, but the brightness didn’t reach her soul. The odds were high that it never would again.
~*~
Mae Parker covered her surprise when Shannon presented herself at dinner. To those who knew her well, on the surface Shannon looked more like her old self. Her makeup and choice of dress combined sophistication and restraint. She’d even taken time with her hair, doing what she could to make it look cared for. Only her personality remained subdued.
“You’re getting stronger,” Mae said as the meal progressed, the first time she’d touched upon anything personal in more than two weeks.
Shannon offered Marie a small smile as the housekeeper removed her dinner plate and returned moments later with a dessert plate of fresh fruit. Shannon selected several strawberries while Mae cut into a wedge of cantaloupe.
“Do you ride?” Mae’s question seemed to come from nowhere.
“I do, yes,” Shannon replied.
“Then sometime soon why don’t you ask Rafe to pick you out a horse? You can ride around in the holding pasture down by the pens if you don’t want to go far to begin with. Probably shouldn’t right away, at least, not without someone going with you.”
“Rafe?” Shannon murmured, seeking to catch Mae out.
“Or one of the boys,” she answered smoothly. “Dub or Gene.”
“Who are they?”
“Dub is our foreman and Gene—”
“They’re both in their sixties!” Jodie strolled into the room and settled at the table. She plucked a strawberry from the fruit plate and popped it into her mouth. “Can’t you think of someone with a little more blood in his veins?” She glanced at Shannon and gave a low whistle. “Wow! You are looking better. Daddy said you were.”
“Just who would you have me send with her?” Mae demanded, commanding a return of the girl’s attention. “Rio?”
“Well, with him she’d have some fun.”
“Wouldn’t that make you jealous?” Mae retorted.
“I trust Rio,” Jodie proclaimed.
“I’d sooner trust a rattlesnake!”
Jodie dug into her jeans pocket and brought out something small and white. She shook it, making it rattle. “I’ve removed his rattle,” she said, grinning.
“It’s not the rattle you have to watch out for,” Mae said sharply. “It’s the fangs. You know that.”
Jodie’s grin widened. “Give me some time and I’ll take care of his fangs, too.”
Mae’s fist hit the table, unsettling the dinnerware and making Shannon jump. “No, ma’am!” Mae said harshly. “That’s something I’m not going to do. I’ve told Rafe to fire him, and I’ll see to it that he does.”
Jodie sat forward. “Rafe won’t fire him! Rio’s too good a hand.”
“No cowboy is indispensable. They’re a dime a dozen.”
“Not good ones. Not ones you can rely on.”
Mae narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Have you been talking with Rafe?”
To Shannon’s surprise Jodie giggled. “Is that what he said when he told you he wouldn’t do it?”
Mae’s mouth clamped into a thin line. “You’re getting too big for your britches, young lady.”
“I’m seventeen, Aunt Mae.”
“And still dependent on this family.”
The thrust hit its target. A flush stole into Jodie’s cheeks, rivaling the brightness of her hair. She jerked out of her seat and leaned forward, palms spread on the table. “Well, maybe not for long. I don’t see why it’s such a big deal to be a Parker, anyway! We work just as hard as our hired help does. And for what? Money goes back into the ranch, then what’s left over is split between all the Parkers across the state. Even the oil money. Why don’t we have a plane like Jennifer Geary’s family does? Why don’t we have a swimming pool, tennis courts? Mr. Cleary doesn’t work on his ranch. He lets his help do that while he commutes to Austin and Houston and Dallas. He doesn’t get his hands dirty!”
“Jim Cleary runs his ranch the way he wants, and we Parkers run ours the way we always have,” Mae shot back. “Anyway, I don’t see your daddy getting his hands dirty. Is that the way you want everyone to be? Because nothing would ever get done, and the ranch would dry up and blow away.”
“Well, maybe it should!” Jodie c
ried, and after a quick glance at Shannon, who sat stunned by the explosive intensity of the argument, the girl ran from the table.
“Jodie! Jodie, you sit yourself back down. Don’t run off like—” The front door slammed shut.
Mae Parker sat very still, her body rigid. “I’m sorry you had to see that,” she apologized formally.
Shannon struggled for something to say. “I—” she began, only to stop when Mae rose.
“I’m going to bed early tonight,” Mae said with distant dignity. “That is...if you’ll excuse me.”
Shannon, too, stood up. “Of course,” she murmured, and watched as Mae walked slowly from the room.
Chapter Six
The full moon threw light on the courtyard, and Shannon could see Jodie pacing the ground beneath the trees. She slipped out of the house and approached her.
“Jodie?” she said quietly. “Is it all right if I join you? Do you mind?”
The girl ceased pacing, but her body still twitched with tension. “Yeah, sure, why not? The more the merrier.” Her laugh was like the crackle of dry leaves.
“I’m sorry we haven’t talked before now. You asked if we could when I first arrived and...I forgot.”
“It’s not a problem. Nothing’s a problem!”
Shannon took a step closer. “I think something is. What happened between you and your aunt just now—”
“Just forget it, okay?”
“Who’s Rio?” Shannon asked, although she already had a good idea from her conversation with Gib.
Jodie folded her arms across her chest and looked away. A moment later she sighed and looked back. “My boyfriend.”
Shannon smiled. “Do you really want to defang him?”
Jodie’s gaze swung back to hers, then she remembered what she’d said earlier, and she, too, smiled slightly. “No, I just said that to drive Aunt Mae crazy.”
“I think you succeeded.”
“Good! Because she drives us crazy. Getting a little back is only fair.”
West Texas Match (The West Texans Series #1) Page 7
