by B. J Daniels
Before she could move, Buck opened the cabin door. “Boss?” His face was pale and drawn as he motioned J.T. over. Worse, Buck only called him boss when there was trouble.
Now what?
“The truck won’t start,” Buck said. “When I looked under the hood—”
J.T. didn’t wait for the rest. He shoved past the foreman and headed down the hillside to the old stock truck. That truck had never let him down even when it was forty below zero and blizzarding outside. He could hear Buck behind him, muttering to himself.
Buck had left the hood up, a flashlight lay across the top of the radiator. J.T. picked it up and shone it at the engine and swore.
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Buck said. “Someone took the distributor cap.”
Was it possible someone had taken the part as a joke? This sort of thing was definitely not funny. Any fool knew there could be an emergency that would prevent one of them from riding out of here on horseback and they would need the truck to get out.
J.T. turned slowly to look at Buck. “You don’t know anything about this?”
Buck looked shocked by the question. “Why would I do something this stupid?”
To help that woman in my line shack. But he knew Buck was right. He wouldn’t do anything this dangerous. Not even for a beautiful woman.
“I was thinking about the last time something like this happened,” Buck said quietly, glancing toward the campfire. “The truck had been disabled that time too, right?” Buck hadn’t been on that roundup nine years ago. But like everyone else in four states, he’d heard about it.
“The tires were slashed,” J.T. said. The method used was different, but the end result was the same. “And the hands involved are all dead.” One crazy, two greedy fools. All dying horrible deaths. And for what? He glanced toward the line shack. “This has to be that woman’s doing. She’s the only one who benefits from this—and the only one who doesn’t realize how dangerous it is.” She’d already proved how low she would stoop to get what she wanted. She’d done this to prevent him from sending her packing.
“You’re right,” Buck said, sounding relieved.
This had to be her doing. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the cow Bob Humphries had found. Also Reggie didn’t look like the kind of woman who would know a distributor cap from a hubcap, he thought, remembering how she hadn’t even been able to change her own tire. But in hindsight, that had probably just been a ruse to get him to stop and help her.
Had to be Reggie’s doing, J.T. told himself as he slammed the hood. He refused to think something else was going on here and that she wasn’t the only one who didn’t want any of them leaving here.
But as he headed for the cabin, he felt his skin crawl as he glanced past the camp into the darkness of the pines and imagined someone hiding out there watching them, waiting to pick them off one by one. Just like last time.
Chapter Three
Buck caught up to him just before he reached the line shack and stopped him. “You won’t be too hard on her, will you?”
J.T. stared at the older man in astonishment. Either Buck Brannigan was getting soft in the head or that woman had gotten to him. Either was unbelievable having known Buck all his life.
“Did you just temporarily lose your mind or were you drunk when you hired her?” J.T. demanded, more upset than he would have been under normal circumstances. He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that had settled in his gut after seeing where the cow had been burned and dragged off into the woods. A missing distributor cap and a disabled truck. A crew he didn’t know—or necessarily trust. Hell, he had more than enough to worry about without having a woman in camp. Especially that woman.
“You said, find a cook,” Buck said stubbornly. “I found a cook. And let me tell you, I had one heck of a time but I knew better than to show up without one so when Regina walked into the Longhorn and begged me for the job…”
J.T. swore. There was only one way she had known about the job opening. J.T. had opened his big mouth and told her. But Buck still shouldn’t have hired her.
“Any man with even one good eye can see that that woman doesn’t belong off concrete sidewalks, let alone in a cow camp,” J.T. snapped.
Buck rubbed his grizzled jaw with a large paw of a hand, then grinned. “Heck, J.T., she was such a determined little thing and cuter than a white-faced heifer. She talked me into hiring her before I knew what had happened. She said she was desperate for the job and we do need a cook. I thought, what could it hurt?”
They both looked back toward the truck.
“Sorry, boss,” Buck said again.
J.T. just shook his head. “I want you to ride out at first light. Come back with the other four-wheel drive truck. When you get back, you take Ms. Holland to town and find us another cook if you can. Either way I want you back here by early afternoon.”
Buck nodded looking contrite. “You didn’t mention how you knew her.”
“No, I didn’t,” J.T. said and glanced toward the fire. The men were all pretending not to be watching—or listening—to what was going on. None of them had complained that they hadn’t had dinner yet. Under normal circumstances there would be some powerful bellyaching going on. Nothing about this roundup was normal.
He thought about the warm bunk beds waiting in the cabin as he glanced over at the wall tents where he would be sleeping instead. Damn this woman.
Reggie begged to be a camp cook? Well, J.T. would oblige. She could cook supper over the woodstove, then they’d see how she felt about being a camp cook.
He leveled his gaze at Buck. “You’d better hope she’s the best darned cook this side of Miles City, starting with supper tonight.”
“She was just so desperate,” Buck said again.
“Yeah,” J.T. said, “but desperate to do what?” He was wondering if her story about the TV commercial was even true. Maybe there was something else she was after. Something even worse than his perfect posterior.
Buck chewed at the end of his thick mustache. “I might be a fool but I can’t imagine that woman in there taking the truck part.”
“Might be a fool?” J.T. let out a snort. Buck was no pushover, quite the contrary, except somehow Reggie had the old cowboy wrapped around her finger. But he had to agree with Buck, even if she’d faked her incompetence when it came to tire changing, he still couldn’t see her stealing the truck’s distributor cap—not with seven men in camp watching her every move.
“If she’s really behind this,” Buck said, “then someone must be helping her. I suppose it could be someone who followed us up here and camped nearby. Or someone in camp.”
“My thought exactly,” J.T. said as he looked from the campfire back to Buck. “No one in this camp better be trying to help her, Buck. I’m warning you and you better warn the men.”
“I can’t believe the men wouldn’t know how dangerous this is,” Buck said. Without the truck, the only way off this mountain was on horseback. A twenty-mile ride to the ranch. If anyone got sick or hurt—
Maybe someone had followed them up here and was camped nearby. “I’ll ride out and take a look in the morning, if I can’t talk her out of the distributor cap tonight.” He glanced toward the cabin. “You have no idea what that woman is capable of.”
Buck lifted a heavy gray brow. “But you do?”
He ignored the question and Buck’s curiosity. “Let me handle this. If she’s behind taking that distributor cap—”
“Just don’t be too tough on her, okay?”
J.T. shot the foreman a warning look and stomped to the cabin.
Reggie had rolled her suitcase as far as the door.
“The truck doesn’t run,” he said.
She looked alarmed. “How do we get out of here?”
“I could have Buck saddle up a horse for you.”
Her eyes widened in even more alarm. “You would send me off this mountain in the dark on a horse?”
“In a heartbeat. All you h
ave to do is follow the trail fifteen miles down to the county road. From there just go east. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding the ranch. One of my brothers will give you a ride into town to your car from there.”
She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he was serious.
He wasn’t. He was angry and upset but there was no way this woman could find her way back to the ranch even in broad daylight with street signs to follow. She’d sooner fall off a cliff or stumble into the river and drown herself and one of his horses. For the horse’s sake, he couldn’t do it.
But it was tempting. Especially if she was responsible for the disabled truck. And if she wasn’t? Well, then he wanted to get her out of here and as quickly as possible because he didn’t have a clue what was going on.
“You can’t send me off this mountain on a horse,” she said again.
He thought he saw tears in her eyes. Had she finally realized that she’d gotten herself into something she couldn’t handle?
Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know how to ride a horse.”
J.T. looked at her. Of course she didn’t ride. Any fool could have guessed that. “You do know how to walk though, don’t you? It’s probably only twenty miles to the ranch as the crow flies.”
She practically gasped.
Fighting the urge to throttle the woman and Buck, he said, “You can stay here tonight.” As if he had a choice. He was tempted to throw her to the wolves. Not literally, but at least make her sleep in one of the wall tents tonight on a cot instead of the warm cabin where he should have been sleeping, he thought with a curse.
“Buck is riding down in the morning,” he said. “He’ll bring back a truck and take you to town. In the meantime, you’re the camp cook. Buck?” he called.
Buck was waiting outside the door listening, of course. “Yes, Boss?”
The words were almost impossible to get out, knowing that Buck and Reggie cooking together could be lethal. But he wasn’t going to stay in here with her. No way.
“Help Ms. Holland with dinner,” he ordered.
Buck grinned. “You got it, boss.”
“She can stay in the cabin. You and I will take one of the wall tents.”
“I’m sorry to put you out of your cabin,” Reggie said sweetly enough to give a man a toothache. “I can sleep in the tent.”
Like she had ever slept in a tent on a cot in her life, J.T. thought.
“I don’t mind staying in the tent,” Buck said quickly.
All J.T. could do was shake his head in wonder. There was nothing worse than a sentimental old fool.
Except for a young one, he thought with disgust as he left the cabin. Buck must be getting old. There’d been a time when even a woman like Reggie Holland couldn’t have conned a man like Buck Brannigan. What was the world coming to?
J.T. marched over to the fire, apologized that supper was running late and explained the new sleeping arrangements. He’d expected the men to complain and loudly.
“No problem, boss,” Cotton said grinning as he glanced toward the cabin. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help Ms. Holland.”
This was why women didn’t belong in a cow camp.
Slim and Luke quickly offered their assistance as well.
J.T. groaned under his breath and reminded himself that she would be gone by tomorrow. But he couldn’t help but worry that she hadn’t given up. What would she try next? He hated to think. Especially if she had an accomplice in one of his men.
Well, before the night was over, J.T. figured he could talk Reggie into handing over the distributor cap and the name of her accomplice. Both would be out of here at first light.
AS BUCK EXPLAINED cooking over a woodstove, Reggie tried to tell herself that she’d won round one.
So she had to cook supper. A slight drawback. Maybe she would wow J.T. McCall. True, she had never cooked anything in her life other than taking something out of a container and popping it into the microwave. She’d never had time to learn. But she was fearless. And determined not to leave this camp until she had McCall signed to the commercial. Her future depended on it.
Not just her future, she reminded herself. A lot of people were depending on her to pull this off. This entire advertising campaign was her idea, a desperate last-ditch effort to save the company—and her job.
If the campaign succeeded, Way Out West Jeans would go public and no longer just be a tiny obscure family-owned company. Regina’s future would be secure.
If it failed, the employees would be without jobs and Way Out West Jeans would have to close its doors, the hundred-year-old company bankrupt.
She was determined that wasn’t going to happen. No matter what she had to do.
She needed authenticity and J. T. McCall and his Sundown Ranch were it. She’d been flabbergasted when Buck had shown her the ranch before they’d come up the mountain. Thank goodness for Buck.
She’d overheard just enough of the conversation outside the cabin between McCall and Buck to know that without Buck she’d be on her way down the mountain in the dark either on the back of one of those horses in the corral or on foot.
How lucky that the truck hadn’t started. And how lucky that Buck Brannigan had been sympathetic to her story about needing this job. He’d probably heard the real desperation in her voice. She did need this. Just not the job she’d been hired on to do.
She felt a little guilty for putting Buck in what was obviously an awkward situation with his boss. But she got the feeling that Buck was one of the few people who wasn’t afraid of J. T. McCall.
She found Buck’s bashfulness cute, along with his “Aw shucks ma’am,” hat-in-hand protective politeness. For a moment, she wondered what her life would have been like if she’d had a father like Buck.
Shoving that thought away, she concentrated on the task at hand, cooking over the woodstove and assuring Buck she could handle this while he moved his stuff out of the cabin and into the tent.
“You can cook, right?” Buck had asked her earlier at the Longhorn Café.
She’d known all she had to do was answer the man’s question correctly. “I’m a woman, aren’t I?”
That seemed to appease him, just as she knew it would. A lot of men thought all women were born being able to cook and clean. Not in her family, that was for sure.
No, her talents lay somewhere else. That’s why, given time, she had no doubt that she could persuade even a man as mulish as J. T. McCall that he’d be a fool to just sit on his assets.
But she didn’t have much time. Only until tomorrow when Buck returned. Shoot, she’d closed impossible deals in a lot less time than that, she told herself. Whether she liked it or not, she was her mother’s daughter.
In the meantime, she would cook supper following the instructions Buck had given her. She just hoped cooking proved easier than changing a flat tire.
WHEN J.T. WALKED into the line shack cabin for supper, the air reeked of smoke even though all the windows were open and a stiff breeze was blowing through the place.
He didn’t have to ask how the new cook had done. As he settled into the chair at the head of the table, he spotted a large platter of incinerated steaks, black and shrunken and no longer resembling anything edible.
The cowhands who’d earlier seemed overjoyed to have a pretty female cook in camp were now eyeing the burnt steaks warily.
“You want to pass the steaks around?” Buck asked, sounding as if he had a sore throat.
J.T. noticed how Buck avoided his gaze as J.T. picked up the platter of cremated meat. Silence filled the cabin. He sensed the men around the table watching him as if waiting to see what his response would be. He knew if the cook had been a male, everyone in this room would be complaining, J.T. at the top of the list. Yet another reason a woman didn’t belong in a cow camp.
J.T. looked from the platter to Reggie. She stood in the corner not far from the woodstove, hanging back in the shadows as if trying to make herself smaller. Loose
hair hung in limp tendrils around her face, a large dark smudge of charcoal graced her cheek and her new duds looked as if she’d been in a mud wrestling match—and lost. So much for her signature color. All in all, she appeared exhausted. And close to tears.
But it was the expression on her face that was his undoing. She looked downright contrite. He watched her inspect a red, inflamed fingertip, then bring it to her mouth to suck on the burn, and he felt a rush of sympathy for her.
Earlier he’d threatened to throw her to the wolves, but he realized now that that’s exactly what he’d done by allowing her to pretend to be the camp cook. He doubted she’d ever cooked in her life, let alone over a woodstove.
Cursing himself, he looked down at the ruined meat on the platter. “Steaks huh, great,” he said between gritted teeth as he slid one of the charred chunks of once grade A beef onto his plate before passing the platter to the man next to him, Cotton Heywood.
Cotton quickly helped himself to a steak. “Looks good! Boy am I hungry.”
The spell broken, each man complimented Reggie as the meat made its way around the table, each man except for Will Jarvis. He stared at the steak remains, then let his gaze lift to J.T.’s for a long moment before finally stabbing one and dropping it to his plate.
J.T. watched him, still fighting the feeling that there was something familiar about the man.
When J.T. glanced up, he found Reggie’s gaze on him. While she still looked duly chastened, he glimpsed gratitude in her blue eyes. He wanted to tell her that he was only keeping peace in his camp, not saving her, but he doubted she’d believe it any more than he did.
He mentally shook his head. This woman had the ability to make a man want to wring her neck one minute and take her in his arms and comfort her the next. Women like her were damned dangerous.
“You are going to join us, aren’t you, Ms. Holland?” he asked, reminding himself that this was her doing. She’d gotten herself into this. And if she thought she was going to get out of eating what she’d cooked, she was sadly mistaken. He wouldn’t force his men to eat anything the cook wouldn’t also be required to eat.
