The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3

by Jeffrey, Anna

  "Guess he never had any silly ideas, huh?"

  "His ideas couldn't have been called silly, but I could think of a lot of other words."

  "So tell me about training a horse to be a cutting champion. Where'd you learn how?"

  "There isn't much to tell. I've loved horses for as long as I can remember. I never wanted a dog, but I always wanted a horse. I was lucky enough to hang out with some of the outstanding handlers here and there. I watched and listened and it just came to me." She took a long swig of water. "It's a kind of communication, you know? Almost spiritual. An understanding of something greater than you are."

  "Uh-oh. I hope you're not gonna tell me you have one of those secret techniques shrouded in mystery."

  "Nothing secret about it. I just think you don't really train horses. They already know how to do the things we want them to. They just don't always know when they're supposed to do them. All I do is try to make their lives easier by helping them figure it out. You see, horses are prey animals and they know that. We're predators. As much as they fear us, they want to please us."

  She shook her head. "People and horses don't make sense. Owners pay a lot of money for a high-spirited horse. They take possession and control of an animal that would willingly give its life for them, then they don't go to the trouble to understand it. They blame the horse for their own stupidity."

  "Guess the horses are lucky to have someone like you."

  "I hope so. I'm on their side. I always made that clear to horse owners I worked for. I always told them up front, if it comes to a choice between you and the horse, I'll take the horse every time. I accept all horses as they are, including the ones people think are crazy. Even the knot-headed ones will do what you want if they just know what that is. Didn't you find that to be true with your rope horses?"

  "I guess. They were good and smart, but I bought them already trained. The extent of my work with them was trying not to let them pick up bad habits."

  "They can do that, but if they know you aren't pleased, they'll try to change. I can tell you this much. If there's a problem with a horse, it's usually on the people end of the relationship."

  He finished off his sandwich and wiped his hands on a napkin. "Want the other half of my sandwich?" she asked him. "I've had enough."

  "You don't want it?"

  "I ate breakfast." She grinned at him.

  He returned a sheepish grin, took the half-sandwich and complimented her again on the tuna salad. When there was nothing left to eat, he lay back, leaned on his elbow and crossed his ankles. Lulled by the warmth and the creek sound, she took off her cap and turned her face up to the sun, relishing the feel of the warmth on her eyelids and pooh-poohing the fact that five thousand new freckles would pop out on her face. She stretched out, too, and closed her eyes, letting her slutty side imagine how it might feel to lie close to her companion.

  "I've been wondering why you're not breeding those mares," he said. "Seems to me a foal out of either one of them and Dancer would be a good thing."

  She opened her eyes and looked at Trixie and Polly, now snoozing in the sunshine. "We sold a few of their foals."

  "What's wrong with doing it again?"

  Damn. She bit down on half her lower lip, debating how much to tell John about the registration dilemma and at the same time berating herself for not having resolved it. Lord, it had been over a year since Billy left. "A baby's a lot of trouble and expense. A long-term commitment. And if it doesn't sell right away, I've got another horse on my hands to train and feed. And three years before it can compete."

  He sighed, an indication that he knew full well the time, effort and money involved with a foal. "Yeah, I know. Horses make expensive pets. I was just trying to think of how you could get some return on your investment."

  "I don't think of them that way. Even if I did, I don't have that much invested. We got all three horses free. Polly was given to us as a filly in exchange for care and training. Trixie and Dancer came from horses we used to own, but later sold. Turns out, Polly's the one that's a champion."

  "Then she's the one to breed."

  "Easier said than done. She might be sterile."

  He gave her a look, now more alert. "The hell."

  "She's minus an ovary. Tumor. The last time we bred her, Billy wanted to show her that year, so we tried to flush the embryo to transplant in a surrogate. The vet couldn't find a zygote. Besides being expensive, it was traumatic for her and me both. Some horses aren't disturbed by flushing, but it was painful for Polly. I don't like seeing her in pain. Horses like these are our captives from the moment they're born. They have faith that we won't hurt them. I hate letting them down."

  "I know a little about horse breeding," he said, "but I don't know much about all this breeding and flushing embryos for money. I'm not sure I even like the sound of it."

  She laughed. "Now that the American Quarter Horse Association accepts registration of more than one foal per year from the same mare, it's common practice in highbred quarter horses. It doesn't happen in Thoroughbreds because they have to be bred with live cover."

  "What's wrong with live cover?" He sat up, braced on one hand. "Look, it doesn't have to be a big production. If you don't plan to be showing them this year, why don't you turn Dancer out in the pasture with Polly and Trixie and see what happens? Let nature take its course. If they're what you say they are, a good foal could heal up your bank account."

  She didn't know what she planned. Part of her frustration was changing her mind every day. Besides the problem with Billy, the horses hadn't worked a cow in months. She shook her head. "Nobody does live cover with horses like these. We tried it a long time ago. Dancer's hard on mares. Besides the risk of injury to the mare or to him, there's the possibility of infection.... No, if I decided to breed them, artificial insemination's the way I'd go. The mares have a better chance of getting pregnant."

  "Then, until you decide, stand Dancer at stud or sell his semen. I'm assuming you've done that before."

  She nodded.

  "So you've got a record of his potency and all that?"

  "Oh, yes. He's a super-stud. He could impregnate a dozen mares with one ejaculation. Maybe more, if I pastured him with them."

  "What's his fee?"

  She shrugged. "I don't know. In Texas it was five to eight thousand. Around here..." She shrugged again. "He's never won any big money. He just has the bloodlines that everybody wants right now." She smiled. "And he's so handsome."

  "You're missing the boat," he said. "I know it'd be hard for you to collect the semen by yourself, but I could help you."

  "I don't have a stall or a phantom horse. Or a place to handle and keep the ejaculate."

  "We've got a vet in town who's got that stuff. I know him pretty well. I could bring my small trailer from Mom and Dad's and we could haul Dancer over to the vet's barns. Luke McRae's sort of a horse breeder and he's got a string of good broodmares. I could talk to him. He might be interested in foals out of Dancer."

  Of course he would. Any sane breeder would jump at the chance to breed his mares to a sire like Dancer. She had to call Billy or at the very least write him a letter. Damn. She had to call Nan and ask for her help. No way did she want John, or anybody beyond family, to know how hard it was for her to compose a simple letter. "I'll think about it."

  She rose to her knees and began picking up the lunch leavings. "Dancer's a unique horse. He's intuitive. He seemed to know how upset I was when Billy left. I don't know what I would've done if it hadn't been for Ava and the horses. Having all of them to take care of every day was what kept me together. Besides that, teaching horses and taking care of them is the only thing I've ever been any good at."

  "That's not true. You're a good mom. Ava's a great little kid. That has to be because of you."

  "I wasn't fishing for compliments. I know my shortcomings as a mother. Ava's spent too much time alone, buried in books, and that's because Billy simply wasn't available, ever, and I was a
lways working with horses. That's why I'm trying to change."

  "Can I ask you something personal?"

  Oops. That question usually preceded something touchy. She smiled at him. "Sure. I don't guarantee I'll answer, but—"

  "What happened to Billy? I never heard."

  Isabelle doubted that. Callister citizens took to gossip like a shark to blood in the water. Still, the question came out of left field and startled her. Well, no point in trying to keep secret the facts everyone knew. She let out a bitter laugh, one she couldn't contain no matter how hard she tried. "Nothing happened to him." She averted her eyes, finding it painful even after all these months to admit that Billy had found someone whose company, and whose body, he preferred over hers. "He followed a blonde horse owner to Oklahoma. I guess he's still there."

  "So that's why you came back here? Because he left?"

  "Not entirely. I want to help my brother. I want Ava to grow up here, around what little family we have. I thought Billy's parents might be interested in knowing their grandchild, but it seems like they don't care about her any more than Billy did. Another one of my foolish ideas."

  "I don't understand that. Why didn't he care? And why didn't he marry you and give his kid a legal father?"

  She couldn't keep from laughing. "Billy's only capable of caring about this much about anything or anyone." She held up a thumb and finger, showing a distance of an inch. "He isn't the marrying kind. He lives for the moment. Me getting pregnant put him in a terrible bind. Now that I'm over his leaving so suddenly, I know it was for the best. Especially now that I see how much Paul needs someone. Without Sherry and the kids, he's so out there. I worry about him. If Billy hadn't pulled out, I probably wouldn't have come back here to help my brother."

  "I agree Paul needs a keeper. I've seen him whooping it up in town a few times."

  She would love to question what John had seen Paul do, but decided not to. "Yep, that's Paul."

  She got to her feet and carried the lunch trash to the saddlebags, wanting to quash the conversation about the problematic people, all men, in her life. John followed and they led the horses to the stream's edge to drink.

  "Speaking of horses," she said, as Polly drank her fill, "did you sell your rope horses?" A picture formed in her mind—John's big body springing off a horse, flanking and hog-tying a calf in seconds.

  "I sold two of them to get the money to settle up with Julie. Still got my old favorite, Rowdy. He's out at Mom and Dad's. They're using him to work cattle."

  "Ah. He probably likes that. Rope horses are so athletic."

  "Yep. He's bigger than these guys." He rubbed Trixie's neck. "He must outweigh Trixie here by a couple hundred pounds and he's stout. It's good he's got a job to do. Otherwise he'd be bored."

  "Oh, you're right. Boredom is not good for a smart horse."

  They mounted and reined toward home side by side. "So what about your rodeo career? You said you quit?"

  He didn't answer right away, as if he might be considering what to tell her. Soon they reached a long flat piece of the trail. "The last year I had my mind on what I was doing," he said, "I collected over a hundred thousand dollars. Had a couple of endorsements and some help from a couple of sponsors on the fees. I still went twenty thousand in the hole."

  "Wow," she murmured. "That's a lot."

  "From a business angle, it just didn't pay." He stared off at the horizon as if he might be imagining something. "That year I spent more time on the road than I did at home. Hauled my poor ol' horses over fifty thousand miles. Then everything went to hell with Julie. And so on and so forth."

  "Umm, yeah. Your personal life does have a way of interfering with all that fun you're having."

  He made a noise in his throat, revealing more bitterness than he probably intended to. "Amen."

  They rode in silence for a while longer and she waited for him to tell her more about the personal life that had been shattered, apparently by his determination to rodeo. He kept quiet, so she didn't press. The barn came into view. At the pasture fence, he dismounted and opened the gate. On the other side he looked up at her with a devilish grin. "Think you can beat me to the barn?"

  She laughed. "You're on, cowboy."

  Chapter 12

  Isabelle won the race. No surprise, given her lighter weight and familiarity with her horse. As they walked Polly and Trixie through the round paddock attached to the big barn, John praised both her and her well-behaved animals.

  They unsaddled inside the barn, turned the horses out to pasture and carried their gear into the tack room. "That was fun," John said. "Don't think I've ever done it before."

  "What, raced?"

  "Spent a day in the mountains with a good woman and a good horse."

  She turned and looked up at him, struck by the old-fashioned way he expressed himself. His hand was braced on the tack room doorjamb, his gaze fixed on her. Energy shimmered between them. Tongue-tied for a reply and hoping to turn off the tension thrumming inside her, she lowered her eyes to his chest and laughed a little, one of those silly female laughs.

  "Julie was scared of horses," he went on. "Scared of the outdoors. She went all to pieces if she saw a frog."

  Isabelle couldn't relate. She had ridden a horse as far back as she could remember and she and Paul had spent more time alone in the mountains than anywhere else.

  "Let's rest a minute." She ducked under his arm and took two of the partial bottles of water left from lunch to the waist-high stack of hay bales at the end of the barn. She levered herself onto a hay bale and he did, too. He removed his hat and laid it aside, then took the bottle of water she offered, tipped back his head and chugged.

  After he had emptied the bottle, he made a growling sound of satisfaction as he screwed the lid on. In the barn's quiet and soft light, they sat there for a time, thigh to thigh, neither his feet nor hers reaching to the ground, swinging their feet, taking in the barn smells and enjoying just being.

  "This is a good old barn," he said when he finally spoke. His eyes wandered in a wide circle overhead. "Not in too bad a shape for its age."

  "It's coming along." She looked around at the amateur paint job she had done with cheap white paint, the new lumber in the stalls still under construction, then up at the new rafters Paul had nailed up. "When I was a kid, I spent more time here than in the house. That's why I'm a bad housekeeper. I'd rather work in the barn." She braced her hands on the edge of the hay bale, scrunching up her shoulders and remembering slipping out of the house to meet Billy in the barn after her dad had passed out. "We used to sneak in here at night."

  A lariat hung within arm's reach over a stall post. John picked it up and deftly tied a crown knot in the end, then a slipknot and made a loop. She liked his able hands and nimble fingers. Both were a necessity for a competition calf roper.

  "We who? You and Billy?" He spun the loop over his head a couple of times, threw it out and quick as lightning caught a lone hay bale sitting beside a stall door.

  "My mom and dad didn't like him coming around," she said, "so he would park down on the county road after dark and come up on foot. I'd crawl out my bedroom window and meet him here."

  John chuckled, whipping the loop loose and pulling it back to him. "Gettin' it on in the haymow, huh?"

  She heard cynicism in the question and felt her cheeks flame. Indeed, she had given up her virginity not too many feet from where she now sat. "You know how it is with kids. Gotta experiment."

  He threw the loop again and she felt the movement of his thigh muscle against hers. This time he hooked a pitchfork handle. "It was always just Billy, wasn't it?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "In high school you never looked at any of us. Me and my buddies had it figured out that Billy was in your pants."

  She gasped, insulted and irritated. "That's all men think about, isn't it?"

  "At that age, pretty much."

  Who was she kidding, being coy or embarrassed over sex? They had just had a co
nversation about horse sex and she had been an animal breeder for over ten years. She had washed horse penises in the presence of men dozens of times. Still, trading sexy talk with a man who made her pulse race was an unnerving matter. She sniggered and leaned back, braced on her hands. "Didn't you ever make out in the barn?"

  His eyes glinted with mischief. "I would've if I'd ever got the chance. I never got any girls to go into the barn with me."

  He slid off the hay bale, walked over to the pitchfork and loosened the rope from around the handle, then came back, winding the lariat into a big loop. He hung it in its place on the stall gatepost, turned to her and traced a line with his forefinger along the top of her thigh, ending the trail with a hand on her knee. On a held breath she glanced down at his hand but didn't move her leg.

  "So what happens to Isabelle," he asked, "now that her mate's flown the coop?"

  The use of "mate" as opposed to "husband" made her wince inside and she didn't know why because it was no secret that she and Billy had never married. She looked away and swept back a sheaf of unruly curls. "She gets along just fine. And she depends on no one except the one person who's dependable."

  "Won't work, at least not permanently," John said. "Sooner or later everybody needs somebody."

  He took back his hand and hitched himself back onto the hay bale, so close their upper arms touched. They were quiet then, until the silence grew uncomfortable. She didn't want him to think he had sent her into a pout, so she sat up and opened another conversation. "Did you and your wife split before or after you quit rodeoing?"

  "Before. I roped another year or so after the divorce, but I didn't have much juice for it. I was broke most of the time. Hurt my knee and had doctor bills. Had a sick horse and vet bills. On top of that, with Dad calling me irresponsible every time we talked, following rodeos got to where it quit making sense."

  He cupped his hands around the edge of the hay bale and hunkered forward, poised like he might cut and run any minute. "That's partly a lie, Isabelle," he said at last, looking across the barn at the hay bale. "I drank too much. Couldn't keep my shit together. If you want to be a champion at anything, you gotta eat, breathe and live it. I'm sure you know that. I couldn't do it waking up hungover every day. Or singing the blues and chasing women in bars."