She didn’t see him again for three days.
Chapter 7
T he first morning of Chance’s absence was a mixed relief.
She’d spent most of the night pacing the floor and questioning her response to him, her desire for him and most of all what she might eventually want from him. The answers invariably tallied two for a confused present, zero for a future.
She filled that first early morning hour preparing breakfast and feeling a flush on her face that had nothing to do with cooking, anticipating his presence like a high-school girl after the first phone call from a boy, a combined excitement and stark terror. She burned the toast, overcooked the eggs, splattered bacon grease on the floor, then nearly slipped in the muck when she turned for the milk.
The very notion of having to meet his direct and oftentimes quizzical gaze had her quaking. The fact that she wanted to meet his eyes boldly and frankly made her feel more bewildered than ever.
At breakfast, when he didn’t show and when Pablo handed her a hand-scrawled note from Chance, she’d felt her heart perform a slow fillip, and took the short message with noticeably trembling hands. She read the note through twice, once because she couldn’t focus on the words, the second time without understanding. She looked at Pablo.
His expression let her know he wasn’t happy about his cousin’s departure. The way he waved at the note then pointed to his chest and emphatically at the floor, letting her know that he, at least, was staying there, made her believe he and Chance might have argued about Chance’s leaving.
She’d long since perceived that Pablo understood most English, just didn’t speak it, though she harbored a few doubts about that, as well. After he’d pointed to his chest and the floor, she asked, “You’re staying here, though?”
“Si, señora,” he said, and added something in Spanish that had to do with goats, but Jeannie didn’t have enough Spanish to know what he was talking about. However, since it made Dulce gasp before chuckling and José duck his head, Jeannie surmised it wasn’t anything complimentary.
The nearly illegible scrawl didn’t refer to the kiss they’d shared the night before. It merely stated he would be gone for a couple of days to collect her missing cattle and commanded her to have Pablo and Tomás ready the huge pasture behind the barn. She could make no inference of his use of only his first initial as a signature, though it rankled a little.
By the evening of that first day without him, she felt his loss acutely. Pablo managed to mitigate the loss slightly by showing up at the appointed hour for dinner with a mat and frame for Dulce’s cowboy drawing. Before the children went to bed, Pablo showed them how to set the mat, clean the glass and secure the drawing safely in the hand-hewn frame he must have spent several nights creating.
When they’d finished hanging the painting, though it was alone on the long dining room wall, even Dulce seemed impressed with the result. She stared at her work for a long, tense moment, then turned to Pablo. Her hand lightly touched his shoulder, almost as if she were about to hug him.
“You know, like…that was pretty cool of you. Like, thanks.”
“De nada, señorita.” For nothing, miss.
Long after the children were asleep, Jeannie sat up staring at the drawing, wondering how she could further Dulce’s interest in art, if she could manage to lure an artist to come to the ranch as a mentor or tutor, questioning why the lonely cowboy in the duster inevitably reminded her of Chance.
That first night passed, as had every lonely night for the past two years, with a good-night wish and prayer for Angela and David and, as it had for the past several nights, with thoughts of Chance. And those kept her awake through most of the night.
By afternoon the second day, it was all she could do to sit still over the children’s lessons or watch them ride. A restless ache like none she’d ever known gripped her hard and rode her every bit as skillfully as José managed the horses.
When José saddled Jezebel for her and pointed at the grassland surrounding the ranch, Jeannie decided he was right. She needed to get away from the place for a while, even if it was on a horse.
“You want me out of here for a while?” she asked him.
He grinned at her and nodded. Then he led Jezebel from the corral and made a cup of his hands to assist her to the saddle. She took the saddle horn and reins in her left hand as Chance had instructed and, stepping lightly onto the little boy’s laced hands, threw her leg up and over the horse’s broad back. She settled into the saddle more easily than she would have dreamed possible.
“I think you have magic in you, José,” she said. She almost felt she could really ride.
He held up his right hand in a classic thumbs-up sign and grinned at her.
She threaded the reins through her left hand and took a deep breath before nudging the horse forward with a slightly firm pressure of her legs. Jezebel lifted her head in a noble arch and walked briskly toward the faraway Guadalupe Mountains.
Her little friend had been right to send her out exploring. She found the experience a combination of peaceful reflection and pure exhilaration that she could ride all by herself.
Not knowing how far she should go or how to measure the distance by time spent on horseback, Jeannie was prepared to turn around when she crested a small rise and saw a large thicket of salt cedar she’d seen once before when she’d first come to the ranch. She couldn’t resist the urge to investigate.
She was glad she’d only been walking on the horse, for the salt cedar rimmed a deep chasm that seemed to plummet at least a hundred feet straight down sharp sandstone and rose-colored alabaster walls. Leaning over Jezebel’s shoulder, she could see that the chasm hid a deep pool of dark blue water. On the far side, natural striations in the rock formations created broad steps leading to the pool.
She knew the Pecos River snaked through a part of her ranch. By law, she wasn’t allowed use of the water. What about this ground water, however? In all the thousands of sheets of paperwork she’d signed when buying the ranch, she didn’t remember reading about a pool of water. It didn’t appear brackish or contaminated. It looked as inviting as heaven, and as peaceful.
Closing her eyes, she promised herself she’d return to this beautiful, almost mystical place one day soon. Why that made her think of Chance and wish he were there with her, she didn’t want to fathom. She turned toward the ranch and the responsibilities that waited there.
By the end of the second day, still feeling some of the peace her secret pool had inspired in her, she found she wasn’t annoyed when Tomás failed to appear for his evening assignments. She was more puzzled than irritated that he seemed to have abandoned all his tasks since Chance’s departure. The hacienda’s scraggly, dandelion-filled lawn needed mowing, the weeds tending. In a freakish windstorm the night after Chance left, a portion of the back hacienda deck roof had been torn down.
No matter how she and the children looked, Jeannie couldn’t find the groundskeeper. Juanita, when asked about him, only burst into tears and hid her face in a tea towel in the kitchen. Jeannie and José left swiftly, leaving Dulce to try to find out what was wrong.
Shortly before dinner, Dulce came into Jeannie’s office and plopped down in one of the chairs in front of Jeannie’s desk. “That woman can cry more tears than Sarah Bernadette.”
Jeannie forbade the smile that wanted to surface at the girl’s mix-up of Sarah Bernhardt and Saint Bernadette. “Did she tell you what’s wrong?”
“She kept apologizing, like she’s the evil one of the universe or something. There was a bunch about how much she loves children and loves you and stuff. She doesn’t mean to hurt you. You know, all that Catholic guilt stuff. And every time I tried to bring up the subject of Tomás she about went ballistic, wailing and crying all over the place.”
“Wow. You’re braver than I am,” Jeannie said honestly. “I ran at the first sight of the tea towel.”
To Jeannie’s intense pleasure, Dulce chuckled. “Yeah, you and José pr
actically beat each other up getting outta that kitchen.”
Jeannie grinned at her. “You’re right there. Did you manage to find out what happened to Tomás?”
“Only that he’s coming back soon. And that he’s in some kind of trouble with somebody he used to work for or still works for—she started crying a whole lot right about then. Something about his family down in Mexico. I don’t know. Personally, I think she’s nuts.”
“I can’t begin to thank you for handling that for me. I couldn’t understand a word she was saying.”
The girl was studying her chipped black nail polish. “You know, Spanish isn’t that tough, really. You’re doing pretty good already. I could probably help you if you want.”
Jeannie held her breath. She was afraid if she said yes too quickly, she’d put Dulce off with her eagerness. Finally, she said softly, “I’d like that, Dulce. I really would.”
“Cool. We’ll start now. You already know how to say goodbye, right? Adios. Only you say it with a d, and you should be saying it with a kind of th sound. Like this.” She demonstrated, making the word sound as much a prayer as the word implied. “And here’s another way, like a shorter way, like saying later…hasta. It’s spelled with an h but you don’t ever say the h in Spanish unless you see a j. Got it?”
“¿Hasta?”
“Bueno. See how I say that…not like you with the b on it. It’s just like saying no way backward. Wayno.”
Jeannie tried it. Dulce smiled at her, nodded and said, “Cool. Now…hasta.” And with that she stood up and abruptly left the office.
And Jeannie sat behind her desk, wishing Chance were there so she could meet his eyes and see his awareness of the miracle that had just transpired.
Dinner that night was a flat affair. Jeannie felt Chance’s absence with sharp consciousness, and she wasn’t the only one affected by the empty chair at the dinner table, the loss of his deep voice and his outrageous tall tales.
Despite their earlier rapport, Dulce appeared at the table with her chains and piercings once again in place and pouted throughout the meal. José, always silent, lost the sparkle that had been in his eyes since Chance’s arrival. Pablo, who’d spent most of the evening pacing the grounds like an angry sentry, jumped at every little sound and whirled several times to look out the dining room’s French doors.
And poor Juanita, after her flood of tears in the kitchen, who probably hadn’t spoken more than five words to anyone, seemed wholly indifferent to the meal she’d prepared, not as if she was worried about her husband’s absence but as though she prepared delectable food only for Chance’s enjoyment.
Jeannie irritably concluded that if Pablo hadn’t stayed on the ranch, she’d have thought she’d imagined Chance’s coming there at all, so complete was the reversion to the time before he’d come. Except for the magical spot she’d found that afternoon and that halcyon moment when Dulce talked with her, chuckled and taught her a couple of words in Spanish, all without swearing, anger or sullenness.
After dinner, Jeannie made copious notes in her pad, trying to focus on things to do around the ranch. Instead, she always went straight to random snippets about the man who wasn’t there. The way he walked, as if he and the very earth had worked out a partnership years ago so he need never look down. The way he could stand so still that even the wind couldn’t ruffle his hair. And the way he made the blood in her veins turn to champagne and her skin to liquid fire.
By the third day, she crossed a border from restless to angry with Chance for pulling such a fast fade. Finding her cattle was an excuse to light out, to disappear when she needed him most, she told herself. That she’d not given him any sign—other than an impassioned and wholly abandoned kiss—that she wanted him to stay on a more permanent basis was wholly irrelevant. That she’d never thanked him for pitching in with the children, helping her with the recalcitrant Tomás or praising Juanita didn’t matter in the wake of his abandonment of the ranch and its inhabitants, who needed him.
When her constant vigilance finally paid off and her ears picked up the smooth rattle of Chance’s truck, she was the only one of the household who didn’t run to greet him.
Dulce called to him, “Hey, Chance! It’s about time!”
Pablo yelled something in Spanish.
Juanita ran from the kitchen, pans clattering.
And Jeannie sank to the sofa in the living room and fought tears. As angry with herself as she was at him, she blinked at the vigas on the ceiling. She knew she was being ridiculous. He’d said he’d be gone three days. He came back in precisely that amount of time. It was simple. A complicated man he might be, hiding something from her he almost certainly was, but he did make things simple. And he was back.
Unlike David, who left taking baby Angela out for ice cream at seven o’clock in the morning—“Whoever heard of ice cream at such an hour? And taking the baby?” she’d heard someone asking at the reception following the funeral, not considering the fact that he might have taken a teething child out of the house to let a very tired mother catch a few seconds’ respite—and whose consideration had resulted in his never coming home again.
“Jeannie?”
She jerked her head down, not wanting him to know she’d been so worried about him, felt so abandoned by him she’d nearly cried in relief at his return. She didn’t turn. She closed her notebook. “Oh, hello. You’re back, then?”
“I’m back. I thought you might want to see what I brought with me.”
“Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s fine,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
A thousand things, she thought, and every one of them your fault. “Nothing,” she lied. “Why?”
“You’re not turning around, for one thing,” he said. “And for another, I can’t hold on to this much longer.”
She couldn’t help facing him at that, and stilled when she saw him.
He filled the hacienda living room with his solid silhouette. He stepped forward out of the shadows. She gasped.
He held a squirming fluffy red-brown puppy in his arms, tail beating Chance’s broad chest and huge paws scrambling to gain freedom. A pink tongue with one black dot on it lolled from the pup’s grinning mouth.
But it was Chance who had torn the gasp from her. He had a cut lip, a black eye, and his nose was at least two sizes larger than it had been before.
“What happened?” she asked, moving forward, hand out involuntarily.
“Doreen’s mama’s dog had eleven puppies. She sent some home with me.” Chance stepped closer to her. Before she could say anything, he deposited the puppy in her arms. “This one’s yours.”
The puppy wriggled up her chest and excitedly licked at her face and ears. Despite herself, she chuckled.
“It’s a boy,” Chance said. “Part chow chow, part Lab.”
She held the pup tightly against her breasts and raised her chin to avoid its avid tongue. She narrowed her eyes at Chance. “Did Doreen’s mama put up that much of a fight?” she asked.
Chance gave a grunt that might have passed as a laugh before his lip was mauled. “Took me out before the second round,” he said. He winced even as he grinned at her.
“How many puppies did she make you take?”
“Four.”
“Four!”
“One each for Dulce and José. That one there is for you.”
A strange sensation coursed through her, an odd feeling of thawing, as if some icy barrier deep inside her had been abruptly subjected to intense heat. “And the last one?” she asked through a constricted throat.
“For the other kids you’ll have coming here soon.”
Damn the man. He was secretive and open, complex and simple. How could a woman maintain defenses against the onslaught such contrasts presented?
“Now come outside,” he said.
“There’s more?”
“Isn’t there always?” he said and lightly touched a swollen hand to the small of her back to guide he
r out the door. She felt that touch to her very core.
Outside, in the high heat and blistering sun, Dulce and José were jumping up and down by the corral, each holding a squirming puppy. A grinning Pablo was manhandling another wriggling pup as he swung open the wide gate to the back pasture.
And the long, winding road leading into the ranch was filled to capacity with at least two hundred bawling cattle sauntering toward the ranch.
Jeannie felt the blood draining from her face as she stared at the cattle and the two strange cowboys herding them toward the corral. Chance had found the ranch’s cattle, and he’d brought them back to her.
As he’d promised.
She shifted her gaze to the battered man standing beside her on the porch. “You found the cattle,” she said unnecessarily.
“I did.”
She buried her face in the soft fur of the puppy’s neck. He’d come back. And he’d brought her cattle. And he looked as though he’d gone through hell to do both. “How does Doreen’s mama look?”
“What? Oh.” He gave a ragged chuckle. “Better than I do. But you’ll find out soon enough yourself. She’s one of the gals on the horses. The other one’s Doreen. They’ve been looking for an excuse to get out here. Flora was one of the rodeo queens back in her day, and Doreen’s one of the best on a horse I’ve ever met.”
Once Jeannie looked closer, she could see that the cowboys herding the cattle were indeed women. “You’re not going to tell me how you got that face, are you?” she asked softly.
“I reckon it has something to do with genetics,” he said blandly.
She choked back a laugh.
“I love it when you do that,” he said. “Try to hide a laugh. But I look forward to hearing you just up and laugh right out loud one of these days.”
Jeannie felt a shock wave of warmth course through her at his words. And the fact that he wasn’t looking at her, was watching the cattle being driven through the corral to the back pasture, made them seem offhand, unimportant. But she knew he meant what he said. And the quiet tone in which he’d spoken made the words carry greater import.
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