Lone Star Woman

by CALLAHAN, SADIE

  “No, I just . . . Well, I don’t know. Maybe I’m disappointed he isn’t a better person than that.”

  “Jude. You are so dumb. Which is ridiculous because you’re in the animal-fucking business.”

  “I am not!”

  “What do you call breeding cattle and horses for a living? You know your stallion, Patch, the one you were just talking about? Men are no different. They get a hard-on, and the pursuit of a hot female replaces every rational thought they ever had.”

  “That’s cold, Suzanne.”

  Suzanne shrugged and fluttered her eyelashes. “Voice of experience.”

  “Humph,” Jude said truculently, in such a bad mood, she wanted to break something. “Was that how it was with Mitch?”

  Suzanne chuckled. “All I’m gonna say is, Mitch was a champion at more than bull riding. And his reputation followed him.”

  “Well, I guess we can hope Pat will treat you better.”

  “I am one hundred percent certain Pat Garner will treat me better. But he will never shoot me to the moon like Mitch could.”

  “If you’ve decided to be with Pat, you should stop thinking about Mitch. And stop comparing.”

  “That is easier said than done. Trust me, my dear, if you ever find a man who does for you what Mitch did for me, you won’t have such a prissy attitude.”

  Jude feared she knew exactly what Suzanne was talking about. And to her horror, she feared she had found one. And she didn’t know what to do about it.

  “So what’s on your mind?” Suzanne asked. “Why do I feel like you came by to talk about something?”

  “Nothing. Can’t I just stop to say hello?”

  “I know how you are about getting home in time for supper. You never come to my house at this time of day unless something’s bothering you.”

  Jude shook her head. A need to talk had driven her to Suzanne’s house, all right, but she could no longer talk about Brady to Suzanne, knowing he had spent time with a woman she and Suzanne knew well. Or that it was only a matter of days before he would be doing the same thing with Joyce Harrison that he had done with Jude Strayhorn.

  16

  Jude raced home, breaking the speed limit as usual. Snippets of Suzanne’s conversation turned over in her mind, though one stood out more than the others.

  They’ve both got boys the same age.

  He hadn’t said much about his son, but she knew he had made three trips to Fort Worth to see him in the time he had worked at the Circle C. At dinner in Stephenville, he had avoided her questions about his son. But then he had discussed him with Joyce Harrison?

  She found Daddy and Grandpa still at the supper table with two guests she didn’t recognize. Not even the aroma of charbroiled steaks lured her to join them. She said a cursory hello, made small talk, then jogged upstairs to her room. She had to be alone so she could think.

  For all of the time Brady had waltzed through her head since the liaison with him a month ago, she hadn’t considered the possibility of his being interested in another woman. She had wondered about his relationship with Ginger a few times but dismissed those thoughts. Ginger was in another town. I wasn’t holding up a sign saying I was looking for a girlfriend, either. Was a convenience all Brady really wanted?

  She went to bed with a new quandary at the forefront of her thoughts. Before Brady, she had never met a man she wanted, hadn’t even considered that when the day came that she did, she might not be able to have him. The realization was as sharp as a spear through her heart. She didn’t know what to do. And now she wasn’t sure she could rely on Suzanne for help and advice.

  Her mind drifted to a deeper truth. When had she ever had a female friend or relative to rely on when she had questions that begged for answers or problems that called for solving? Suzanne had left Lockett after high school, and they’d had little contact until she returned three years ago. Though Grammy Pen had bestowed countless words of sagely advice through the years, really, she had been too old to help with many of Jude’s problems.

  Jude had floundered through her snags and obstacles alone. She made decisions alone. The strong are always alone, Grammy Pen had told her, because the weak have nothing to offer them. How many times had those words forced Jude to find the right path through her setbacks? She was strong; she knew she was. And she would be strong now. She would start over, ceasing to let Brady Fallon appeal to her baser urges. But at the same time, she wanted to maintain their acquaintance. They were friends. She was a smart, well-educated woman. She would figure out how to be friends with a man with whom she couldn’t be anything else.

  The next morning, after a restless night, she loaded up her working saddle and other miscellaneous horse gear. All the way to the 6-0 barn, she told herself she was doing this because she loved horses. The fact that they were Brady’s horses was of secondary importance. When she went inside the tack room, she saw the fine fix-up job Brady had done—new boards on the walls, new shelves. The area was small, but it was every bit as clean, neat and organized as the huge tack room at the Circle C.

  She rode all three horses, which consumed the morning. They were frisky and rebellious, and Sal threatened to buck, but Jude had no trouble gaining control. She had spent her life on horses. She knew them better than they knew themselves. Brady’s horses were healthy, strong animals under ten years old, and she liked all of them. At dinnertime she returned home.

  Only she and Daddy were at the table to eat. Grandpa didn’t eat the noon meal often anymore. Irene had made them chicken salad sandwiches. The opportunity was perfect to discuss Sal. She gathered her courage and told Daddy she had volunteered to ride Brady’s horses as a personal favor. To head off his questioning how she even knew Brady, she added, “He has a grullo mare that’s beautiful, so one day when I saw his pickup at home, I stopped and asked him about her.”

  It was frightening how easy it had become to lie to her father.

  “Huh. He hasn’t mentioned her.” Daddy bit into his sandwich as if he were starved. No doubt he had eaten breakfast with the hands at four forty-five that morning.

  “Oh. Well, I’ve been seeing her in the pasture every time I’ve gone to town. She goes back to a King Ranch stud and a mare that won on the track. A little high-spirited, but—”

  “Which stud?”

  “Peppy Sand Badger.”

  Daddy stopped the sandwich on the way to his mouth. “Hmm. Brady and I talked about horses just a few days ago. Wonder why he didn’t mention he owned a horse of that caliber.”

  She didn’t dare tell him she had taken it upon herself to learn the horse’s lineage. “I rode her this morning and—”

  “This morning? You’ve already started?”

  “I thought I should. In another few weeks, school will be starting. Since I’m going to be helping coach the girls’ teams, I need to do something to get in shape.”

  He nodded, returning to his sandwich.

  “Daddy, I was thinking about bringing the mare over here, to work in the big corral. She hasn’t had much training, but I think she’s got cow-horse potential.”

  He nodded, still more interested in his meal than Brady’s horse. “Clary would probably be glad to help you with that.”

  She nodded, too, at the same time breathing a sigh of relief. Her father would never have told her she couldn’t use the big corral, but she was glad he didn’t ask her more questions about the horse or Brady.

  Through the next week, she rode at least one of the horses every morning, but saw nothing of Brady, a deliberate plan on her part. After learning he was seeing a woman in town, she would feel even more awkward around him.

  Friday morning, instead of riding the horses, she attended a faculty meeting and tea at the high school. It was a social gathering for the new high school teachers to get acquainted and the old ones to get reacquainted before the fall. Willard County High School had three other single female teachers—one Jude’s age who had never been married and two divorcées. While the teachers
sipped some red punch, which was probably Kool-Aid, and nibbled homemade cookies, talk among the women turned to the new owner of the 6-0, Brady Fallon—how good-looking he was, how well built he was, naughty double entendres about how he filled out a pair of jeans. As Jude listened to the prattle, she thought it amazing how quickly word of a sexy eligible man got around. It was as if he gave off a scent, like a mare in heat.

  The last item of gossip concerned Joyce Harrison and how a woman who had been married three times and had three kids managed to be asked out by him. Jude clenched her jaw but said not a word.

  “Let’s go to my office so we can talk.”

  Brady had no idea what J. D. Strayhorn wanted to talk about. He couldn’t keep from wondering if he had learned about the weekend in Stephenville. He felt a tinge of guilt over having collaborated with Jude to lie to her father, his boss and a man he had no reason to disrespect. His heart beating a little faster than normal, Brady followed him.

  They entered the Circle C ranch house through the back door. Brady hadn’t been in this house since he was twelve. Back then, he thought it a palace. Today, through his builder’s eye, it seemed to be mostly big, old and outdated. No radio or TV in sight, no voices. He did smell food as they passed the entrance to the dining room. He tried to steal a glance into the long room to find the photograph of Jude’s distant relative and Quanah Parker, but keeping up with J.D.’s quick steps, he didn’t have an opportunity.

  Brady’s clinking spurs echoed off the stucco walls and high ceilings, but he’d had no chance to remove them before J.D. urged him into the house. He had barely had time to remove his chaps. Everywhere he looked, Western art hung on the walls or Western-themed sculpture filled corners. His childhood memories didn’t include seeing any of that.

  He followed J.D. into the office. Brady’s experienced eye took in the dark wood paneling, obviously real wood and old. Even the blinds on a tall window were made of wood. Hunting trophies were everywhere. Not even a hint of feminine influence showed in the surroundings. The older man strode toward slatted bifold doors and opened them to reveal a hidden wet bar. Brady had built many homes with the same concealed bar feature—in offices, dens, playrooms, living rooms, even bedrooms.

  “How was your weekend?” J.D. asked. “You drove over to Fort Worth?”

  How was his weekend? Truthfully, except for seeing his son, Brady’s weekend hadn’t been worth a damn. He felt as if he had been on the road for a solid three days. He left Lockett before daylight on Friday, drove six hours to the home he had once owned in Fort Worth and picked up Andy. With the nine-year-old distressed about leaving his older stepbrother behind, Brady picked up Jarrett, too. Andy always wanted Jarrett to be included. Brady didn’t mind. He was the closest thing to a real father Jarrett had. Marvalee had been glad to unload the two kids. She and her husband had planned an adult weekend, she called it, gambling in Shreveport. “Uh, yeah.”

  “Spent time with your boy, huh?”

  Brady had taken the two boys to his mom’s house in Weatherford. From there, they went to a calf-roping play day on Friday afternoon. The next day, he took the boys fishing at the local lake. On Sunday, before he returned them to Marvalee, they saw a movie in Fort Worth, and ate at a pizza joint afterward. Then he had made the six-hour drive back to Lockett.

  His visits with Andy were always like that, always hurried, as he rushed to cram as much nine-year-old “fun” as possible into a short time. There was usually a tearful good-bye. Leaving the boys behind on Sunday afternoon had been hard, but no harder than it ever was. “Yeah, it was my turn,” he told J.D.

  “He’s okay?”

  “Growing like a weed,” Brady answered, his hat hanging on the fingertips of one hand. J.D. was dropping ice cubes into two glasses. He couldn’t be too pissed off if he was making drinks.

  “What’s your poison?”

  “Whiskey’ll do,” Brady answered. “Any kind’s okay.”

  J.D. busied himself splashing Crown Royal into the two glasses. Brady didn’t often drink high-end whiskey.

  “Have a seat,” J.D. said.

  Covered in red dirt stuck to his sweaty clothing, Brady looked around. He chose a leather-covered chair he figured would be the easiest to clean after he left. He sat down, propping his left ankle across his right thigh, and hung his dirty hat on his knee. J.D. handed him the glass of whiskey and seated himself behind a huge antique desk. Brady recognized the wood as cherry.

  J.D. opened a drawer and brought out a wooden box of fragrant cigars. He leaned across the desk and offered them to Brady, but Brady declined with a lift of his hand. “No, thanks. I’m not a smoker.”

  J.D. took his time snipping the tip of a long cigar. “Nothing I enjoy more at the end of the day than a good cigar.” He lit up, and a pleasant, fruity scent filled the air. He picked up his glass, lifted it to Brady and sipped. Brady did likewise, shuddering as the whiskey burned all the way down his gullet.

  “I know your day has been as long as mine, so I’ll get right to the point,” J.D. said, a swirl of smoke rising from the cigar. He rested his forearms on the desktop, the cigar fitted between his thumb and finger. “I don’t know if you’ve been here long enough to know about the nuts and bolts of our operation. In a nutshell, the way it’s worked for years, and worked well, I might add, is my dad has handled the financial end of things. He’s been sort of the CEO, you might say, and I’ve run the ranch. A lot of the larger outfits have general managers, but we’ve never seen a need for that arrangement here. We’ve gotten along with me and a wagon boss who’s in charge when I can’t be around.”

  Brady had yet to see a day when J.D. had not been present. He started to feel a nervous twitch in his jaw. “I see.”

  “I believe you told me when you hired on you have a BBA?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brady said. “I thought for a while about going on for an MBA after I moved to Fort Worth, but never got around to it.” He had become a father instead, but he had no regrets about that.

  J.D. nodded. “So you’ve got some education in management. And you owned a business in Fort Worth.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My daughter’s got a business degree. Business ag. She’s also got a degree in biology and has a keen interest in genetics.” He drew on his cigar and exhaled, then let out a low laugh. “Sometimes I think that girl’s got more brains than her pretty head can hold. I rely on her to keep up with our bulls. Does a fine job, too.”

  By now Brady knew the Circle C owned around three hundred bulls that were constantly rotated. Small ranchers were lucky to own that many cows. Brady suspected that keeping up with so many bulls on a spread as big as the Circle C was a daunting challenge. He couldn’t figure out where J.D. was leading him in this conversation. His right leg wanted to bounce up and down, but he willed his heel to stay on the floor. He sipped another drink, hoping for the whiskey to calm his nerves. “Yes, sir,” he repeated.

  J.D. leaned forward, his chin thrust out. His eyes were friendly, but serious. “My dad will be eighty-five next month, Brady. He’s a sharp old guy, but he’s slipping. And I think he’s tired. He’s spending more than half his time in his room. The last year, I’ve been taking on the biggest part of his responsibilities on top of my own. To tell you the truth, I’m a little tired, too.”

  “I’ll bet,” Brady said.

  “I’ve seen you work, Brady. You’re low-key, but you get things done. I like that in a man. I’ve seen you with the men. I can tell they respect you and trust you. That’s important in an outfit like this. We have high regard for our hands. We try to take good care of them and keep them happy. It’s part of our philosophy and our reputation. Some of them have been with us their whole lives. A couple have brought their own sons into our employ.”

  “Yes, sir, I’m aware.” Brady could think of three father-son teams who worked as ranch hands. He swallowed another sip.

  “What I’m getting at is, I’d like to give Dad some relief, and I’m asking you to
give me some.”

  “In what way?” Brady sipped again.

  “I want you to take part of my job. In time, perhaps all of it.”

  Brady swallowed and sat straighter in his chair. “I see, sir.”

  “I’ve talked to Jack Durham. He told me he would’ve had no problem putting you in charge of his whole place.”

  Brady knew Jack liked him, but handing over responsibility for his whole ranch? That was a damn big exaggeration. Besides that, Jack’s operation didn’t come close to being as big and complex as the Circle C’s. “He did?”

  “As I said, we’ve never had a general manager, but if you’re not averse to trying it, I’m not, either.”

  Statistics zoomed through Brady’s head like lightning flashes—cows and bulls and mares and studs and unending acres of land and dollars. He might have a college degree in business administration, he might have owned his own business, but he had never had responsibility for something as vast as the Circle C ranch. And hadn’t expected to. But he had never suffered from a lack of self-confidence, either, and the very thought of the challenge set his pulse to racing. He threw back the remainder of his drink, the burn making his eyes water. “Well, sir, I don’t know,” he almost croaked.

  “The pay would be commensurate with the added responsibilities, of course. And we usually furnish our upper-tier folks with a house if they need it or want it.”

  “I see, sir.”

  “No need to call me ‘sir,’ Brady. I’m not my dad.”

  “No, sir. I mean yes, sir.”

  J.D. leaned back in his chair again and drew on his cigar. “Well, what do you think?”

  Brady didn’t answer immediately. He couldn’t. First, because he couldn’t believe what he had just heard. And second, because this was the job Jude wanted—the job Jude thought she was going to get. “I guess I have to say, J.D., it sounds like your daughter’s got the education to do the job. And the right. And I bet she’d want to.”

  “Oh, she thinks she does. She’s smart enough, for sure. But Jude doesn’t understand. She can’t ramrod the ranch hands and do day after day of man’s work. No woman could. That girl means everything to me. I don’t want to watch her turn into a weathered woman with a back broken by hard work. I have no doubt the day will come when she can oversee Strayhorn Corp, but that’s not the same as managing the hands and the day-to-day work. For now, Dad and I wish she would settle down and concentrate on getting married and having a family.”