More of the ice inside Hope melted. She caught Mason’s eyes and smiled approvingly.
While Rio ate, Hope enjoyed the uncommon luxury of sitting and doing nothing more strenuous than drinking a cup of Mason’s potent coffee. As she sipped, she let her mind drift, dreaming lazily of a time when the ground would be green rather than hard as stone, and her cattle wouldn’t have to walk themselves thin just to get from food to water and back again.
Rio’s deep voice and Mason’s age-roughened tones wove in and out of her waking dreams. She didn’t really listen until the men began discussing beef and water.
“How many head are you going to sell?” Rio asked as he forked a juicy chunk of steak into his mouth.
“Not a single cow,” Mason said flatly.
Surprised, Rio looked up. In the artificial light his eyes were like midnight-blue crystal, startling against the tanned planes of his face and the rim of his jet-black lashes.
“Boss don’t want to sell,” Mason explained. He pointed toward Hope with the stem of the ghastly old pipe he loved and she refused to let him set fire to indoors.
Without another word, Rio went back to eating.
“Aren’t you going to tell me that the price of beef will only get lower and the cattle thinner?” Hope asked him, her voice tight with the echoes of old arguments and refusals.
“Waste of time,” Rio said. “You know your choices better than anyone in the room.”
For a moment her new dream slid away from her, leaving her suspended in a cold present that had few choices, none of them pleasant.
“When you decide to cull the herd,” Rio said matter-of-factly, “if I’m not here to help, use Dusk. She’ll cut your work in half.”
Hope nodded, unable to speak for the tears and the sudden fear squeezing her throat.
The more cattle she sold, the closer she came to the moment when she would have to auction off her beautiful Angus herd. They were the very soul of her dream of a new ranch, a new life, a future that held fat black cattle instead of the knife-lean Herefords of her nightmares.
In the water-rich future of her dream, the ranch house would ring with plans and laughter again. Maybe then she could dare to dream beyond the needs of the cattle to her own needs. Maybe then she could dream of a man who would love her, of having children who would grow up tall and straight on the land. . . .
Hope’s empty coffee mug hit the table with a solid thump as she stood up, slamming the door on her treacherous thoughts. Not since she had turned eighteen had she allowed herself to dream of love and children. There was no point in dreaming about it now. She had other dreams, possible dreams, dreams that depended only on her own strength and determination rather than on the unknowable, undependable mind of a man.
In her lifetime she had found few men to respect. She had found none whose children she wanted to have.
Seven
“THINK THE BATH water is hot yet?” Hope asked Mason.
“Not likely. But the buckets on the stove are near boiling. I’ll haul ’em up for you.”
“Don’t bother,” she said quickly. “Cook Rio another steak. He’s doing the work of two men.”
Before Mason could object, she went to the huge ranch stove. Two big buckets of water simmered over the hot flames. With them, plus some cool water from the faucet, she could have a lovely bath.
Hope picked some pot holders off a nail and reached for the wire handles that stood above the buckets. An instant later the pot holders vanished from her fingers and reappeared in Rio’s big hands. With the easy strength that she envied, he lifted the full buckets off the flames and turned toward her.
“After you, ma’am,” he drawled.
“Thank you,” she whispered too softly for Mason to hear.
Rio nodded slightly, understanding and admiring her desire to protect the old man’s pride.
While Rio followed her up the stairs, he admired something else. The womanly swing of her hips and the long, graceful line of her legs held his eye. The thought of sharing her bath teased his mind until he forced himself to think of something else.
Anything else.
Wanting a woman like Hope was at the top of his list of dumb things he could do. He was supposed to be smarter than to go looking for trouble.
He waited while she bent over and put the plug in the big, old-fashioned bathtub’s drain. The feminine lines of her back and hips were even more alluring than her walk had been. Beneath the frosted glass globes of the bathroom lights, her hair had a rich satin shimmer that cried out to be stroked by a man’s fingers.
She turned and looked over her shoulder at him with gold-flecked eyes and a generous mouth made for giving and receiving kisses.
“Ready?” she asked, wondering why Rio was watching her so intently.
Heat slammed out from the center of his body, hardening him in a rush of sensation that made his pulse beat heavily. He was more than ready. He was aching. His lips flattened into a line of disgust at his unexpected, unruly sexuality. He was acting like a kid with his first party girl—and God knew that he was no kid and Hope was no party girl.
Without a word he emptied buckets of scalding water into the tub, turned, and left the steamy room and the woman who watched him with too many dreams in her eyes.
Drugged by heat and physical exhaustion, Hope dozed in the bath long after she was clean. Her dreams were a tantalizing mixture of water in all its forms—hot, cold, calm, racing, deep, shallow. And through all of it wove a midnight-blue river, deep and sweet, gentle and dangerous, longer than forever and more powerful than any drought. It called to her in Rio’s voice, whispered to her the secrets of his midnight-blue eyes, caressed her flesh, and sank into her thirsty soul.
The sound of Behemoth rattling through the front yard startled her awake. The bathwater was still warm. She looked out the steamy window and saw the lights of the truck cutting through the night to the pasture where her Angus grazed in the darkness. The cattle bawled uneasily, then accepted the wheeled intruder. With only the moon’s thin, cold smile for company, Rio began filling the stock trough.
Eager to talk with him even though she had nothing new to say, Hope washed and dried her hair. As she pulled on a clean shirt, the truck grumbled to life again. Hurriedly she yanked on her jeans and stuffed her bare feet into her boots.
Too late. Rio was already heading off into the night. She didn’t have to ask or wonder where he was going. People and cattle alike needed more water in order to survive.
When she got downstairs, Mason had already gone to one of the ranch’s two bunkhouses. He and his wife had converted the smaller bunkhouse into a home. But Hope didn’t think Rio would be spending the night under Mason’s roof. It wasn’t that Mason was unfriendly. It was simply that the place was a cozy kind of mess.
Since Hazel’s death, Mason’s housekeeping had been of the lick-and-promise sort. He ignored Hope’s offers of help. A lot of the bunkhouse hadn’t been touched since the day Hazel had unexpectedly died. Mason had made it clear that he wanted it that way.
Hope hadn’t argued. It was little enough comfort for the man who was the only family she had left.
But the state of Mason’s bunkhouse meant that if Rio stayed at the Valley of the Sun, he would have to sleep in the other bunkhouse or in the house.
Hope rejected the possibility of the second bunkhouse as soon as she thought of it. It would take too long to clean out the pack rats, mice, spiders, and dust that had collected since the last of the ranch hands had left a year ago. Rio would have to use either the remaining upstairs bedroom in the ranch house or the daybed on the screened porch downstairs.
The thought of having him sleeping just down the hall from her upstairs room made a delicious sensation prickle over her body. Telling herself that she was being foolish, she made up the bed in the upstairs room and put out fresh towels. Then she made up the bed in the sunroom, shaking out the sheets and blankets with a brisk snap. To make the choice an even one, she set out
towels on that bed, too.
Then she wrote a note and stuck it on the back door, telling Rio to take his pick of beds.
The note didn’t say that she wanted him upstairs, that she wanted to fall asleep in his arms and wake up the same way. It certainly didn’t hint of her hungry curiosity about his taste, the resilience of his body, the feel of him in passion.
“Don’t be stupid,” Hope said under her breath as she slid into her own bed. “He’s here to find water, not to hammer me into a mattress.”
She shivered at the sound of her own words. After Turner’s bruising attack, she hadn’t wanted any man to touch her.
Yet she couldn’t think of Rio without wanting just that. To be touched by him.
The sound of the truck driving into the yard awakened Hope later in the night. The back door squeaked open. She held her breath and listened for the sound of a man’s footsteps climbing the stairway.
The downstairs shower sputtered to life, shaking and hammering as water shoved air out of the pipes. Rio was as fast and efficient at showering as he was at everything else, because the water ran for only a few minutes.
She held her breath again.
A door creaked. It was the door that opened from the kitchen to the screened-in porch that ran along the back of the house.
Hope told herself that she wasn’t disappointed. She was still telling herself when she fell asleep. She didn’t hear anything until her alarm went off in the small hours after midnight. Since she had worn her clean clothes to bed, it didn’t take long for her to dress. She pulled on boots, jacket, gloves, and hat, and headed out into the darkness.
The predawn chill bit into unprotected flesh. Despite the lack of rain, it was still November. Hope’s breath was a pale gust of steam that was absorbed instantly by the dry air, as though even the sky itself was thirsty for any bit of moisture.
The stars had a brittle brilliance that came only when there was almost no humidity in the air. A breeze stirred fitfully, bringing with it a cold promise. Winter was waiting to sweep down out of the north, riding on the back of the long, icy wind.
Hope rubbed her stinging nose, pulled her denim jacket closer around her body, and hurried into the barn. A rooster crowed like a rusty engine, then with greater force, although only an optimist would have said that dawn was near. Hens clucked and muttered as though resenting the rooster’s loud summons to another day of pecking the dust and each other.
After she scattered food for the chickens, she checked the nests for eggs while the hens were busying their sharp little beaks on grain. The drought hadn’t upset the chickens in the least. Fifteen eggs waited within straw nests like huge pearls within shapeless golden shells. She pulled a paper bag out of her jacket pocket, carefully put the eggs inside, and left the chickens to what they did best—eating and complaining.
When Hope went to check on Dusk, she saw that Rio had been up and in the barn. All the chores she usually did were already done. Fresh hay filled the mangers. All the horses were groomed, the stalls had been raked out. New straw gleamed on the floor of every stall.
Unexpectedly, her throat closed around tears or a protest or perhaps both. “Damn it, Rio. Didn’t you get any sleep at all?” she asked huskily.
Dusk rubbed her head against Hope’s chest. Automatically she petted the mare.
“Maybe he sleeps on his feet, like a horse.”
Dusk rubbed harder, nearly knocking Hope off her feet.
She checked the side yard, wondering if maybe Rio had taken care of everything before he went to bed instead of after he got up. The dusty pickup truck that she and Mason used was gone. Mason was up and about already, and off on some errands of his own, leaving her alone on the ranch. Or else Rio had taken the truck.
Not that it mattered to her either way. She had no reason to make a long ride into town. What did matter, and what she reluctantly admitted to herself, was that she had been looking forward to seeing Rio this morning, to sharing coffee and breakfast and conversation with a dark stranger who seemed more familiar to her than most people she had known for years.
Carrying the fresh eggs, Hope hurried across the dusty, gravel-strewn yard between the barn and the ranch house. She hesitated at the back-porch door. A quick glance told her what she already suspected. Rio was gone. He hadn’t even left a trace of his presence. The daybed was made up with military crispness and the braided rag rug lay smoothly in place on the uneven floor. Not only was the washbasin empty, it had been wiped dry until the old metal gleamed.
It was as though she had dreamed yesterday afternoon at the stock tank, the unexpected luxury of a hot bath, and the compelling man with night-black hair and gentle hands.
With an unconscious sigh she went into the kitchen. Normally Mason would have been up and making coffee strong enough to float horseshoes. But the kitchen was as clean and empty as the washbasin had been. A note on the scarred table explained that Mason had taken Rio to the Turner ranch to pick up his truck. Rio would come back after work. Mason would turn up sometime before noon.
Hope fixed breakfast and ate quickly, hardly taking the time to admire the color and freshness of the eggs. She poured coffee into a large thermos, tucked it under her arm, and hurried toward the water truck. She had three other stock tanks to fill, one of them even larger than the tank she had trucked water to yesterday. Twice.
She wouldn’t get every stock tank completely full. There simply wasn’t enough time. All she could do was haul enough water to each tank to keep the cattle from drifting off into wild country in a futile search for something to drink.
With a deep, unconscious sigh Hope opened the heavy truck door and swung up into the cab. The engine grumbled and coughed and backfired and grumbled some more, but finally ran. She let out the clutch, turned the wheel, and discovered that the truck was ungodly heavy. The only explanation was that its tank was already brimful of water.
Not only had Rio filled the trough in the Angus pasture, he had driven all the way back to the Turner well, filled up again, and driven all the way home. All that, after a full day of work with Turner’s horses, and another full day ahead of him.
Hope blinked rapidly, trying not to burst into tears at this new evidence of Rio’s thoughtfulness.
“Oh, wonderful,” she muttered to herself, swallowing hard. “You stand to lose everything you ever had or wanted and you don’t even sniffle. But let somebody be kind to you and you spring a leak. Get a grip, girl. You’re no good to anyone if you snivel.”
Despite the bracing lecture, she had to blink several times before she could see well enough to steer the awkward rig out of the yard and onto the dirt road. She drove as quickly as she could to the nearest well. It was the oldest one on the ranch, all but hidden in an unexpected hollow of the land.
The windmill was motionless when she got there, for it was too early in the day for the wind to blow. It wasn’t too early for the cattle to be thirsty, yet none were pressed around the trough, eager for water.
Fear squeezed Hope’s heart, making it beat harshly. Why aren’t the cattle crowding around to drink? Are they lost? Stolen?
Dead of thirst?
Then she caught the gunmetal gleam of water brimming in the trough and understood what had happened. This time she couldn’t stop the tears from spilling down her cheeks. Rio had filled this trough, let the cattle drink, and filled it again, until the cattle were full, all thirst slaked.
Then he had emptied the last of the truck’s water into the trough, gone to the Turner well, and filled up once more, working long hours while she relaxed in a hot bath and slept more soundly than she had in months.
Rio had done all of it without being asked, because he knew she was too stubborn—and too afraid—to admit that she had to cull her herd again, selling off the range cattle she didn’t have the time or strength to haul water to.
“Damn you, Rio,” she whispered, tasting her own tears on her lips. “You’re not fighting fair.”
Then she realized th
at he wasn’t fighting at all. He was simply doing what had to be done if she wanted to keep what was left of her range cattle.
And her dream.
“He worked most of the night to give you half a day’s start,” she told her reflection in the dusty windshield. “Are you going to use it or are you going to sit here and cry enough to fill the trough all over again?”
She wiped her eyes, took a fresh grip on Behemoth’s wheel, and drove toward a more distant well. When she got there, she was half-afraid to look. She didn’t know what she would do if Rio had somehow managed to be there before her.
He hadn’t. Cattle crowded around the useless windmill and the nearly empty stock tank.
She drove the truck in close, wrestled the hose into place, and sat in the cab while the trough filled and the sun climbed out of night’s deep well. She loved the pale tremors of peach and rose that preceded dawn, and the incandescent orange and scarlet that silently shouted the arrival of yet another day.
Despite the drought, despite her deep fear of losing everything, despite the exhaustion that would come before sunset, Hope counted each day spent on the ranch as a separate miracle. There was no place on earth for her like the Valley of the Sun.
She rolled down the window of the cab and listened to water rushing into the tank. Cattle bawled and shoved and thrust their dusty white faces eye-deep in the water, drinking lustily. Smiling at the sight, she settled back into Behemoth’s rump-sprung seat and dozed to the rich sounds of water pouring.
“I’ll expect you for dinner,” Mason said to Rio. “Six o’clock sharp. Earlier if you can make it.”
“If I’m not there at six, go ahead without me. I’ll eat mine cold when I get there.”
Mason looked up at the sky. The sun was about a hand’s width above the horizon, but he didn’t need light to know that today would be another day without a prayer of rain. He could taste the dryness in the air, feel it on his lips, hear it in the crackle of static electricity whenever he slid around on the pickup’s vinyl seat.
Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Page 7
