“They call it a relationship, Mama.” He laughed.
“I couldn’t think of the word. Is it?”
“I don’t know. We haven’t gone on a date. We hardly have time for anything but working from daylight to midnight.”
“That’s a crazy job you’ve taken on, Son.”
He shut his eyes and could visualize her sitting in her rocker, waiting for the time to go to church. Her black hair had a few gray streaks nowadays, and her round face was showing signs of raising four kids, but the way his father looked at her, well, he wanted that kind of relationship when he did find someone to trust his heart with forever.
“But the crazy thing, Mama, is I like it. Of course, I like ranchin’ best, but I like all of it,” he said.
“Here’s your father. You call me more often, or I’ll show up on your doorstep long before spring,” she said.
“Maybe I won’t call then,” he teased.
“Sawyer O’Donnell! It’s just that I miss you, Son. I know you are old enough to make your own decisions, but a mother is allowed to miss her son.”
“Love you, Mama. Tell Daddy I’ll talk to him this week.”
Jill’s bedroom door opened, and she flat-out took his breath away. Her hair was twisted up, showing off that long, slender neck he liked to bury his face in. She wore a denim skirt slit up the side and pointed-toed black boots with red stitching that matched the sweater that hugged her curves.
“Wow. Just plain old simple wow,” he said.
“Thank you.” She smiled and handed him a long denim duster with fancy red shiny stones scattered across the collar.
“You should model for Western-wear catalogs,” he said as he helped her into the coat.
“I’m way too short to be a model, but thank you again. Did Aunt Gladys call? I heard you talking to someone other than the cats.”
“It was my mama. She misses me,” he said.
“Do you miss her?”
“Sure, I do, and if you are askin’ if I’m a mama’s boy, the answer is probably yes.” He grinned. “Not so much that I have to talk to her every day, but…”
Jill touched him on the shoulder. “Never trust a man who doesn’t love his mama. My granny told me that.”
“Smart granny.” He slipped his arms into his Western-cut sports jacket. “Finn and Callie have been talkin’ about us to my folks.”
* * *
Seating was snug in church that morning. While the Brennans’ side and the Gallaghers’ side had several empty spaces on their pews, the center section was packed completely full.
With Sawyer’s and Jill’s sides plastered together all the way from shoulder to knees, Sawyer had a choice: scrunch up his shoulders or drape his arm over the back of the pew. He chose the latter to make a little more room. Quarters so close meant that all he had to do was tip his head slightly to see any part of her, and he liked that very much.
First he studied her profile. Pert little nose, big green eyes with lots of eyelashes, lips made for kissing, and a neck just right to nuzzle. A hint of thigh showing from the slit down to the top of her boots reminded him of the power in those legs the night before, when they were wrapped around his body. A stirring behind his zipper said he’d best be paying attention to the song they were singing from the hymnal they shared, or it was going to be a long, painful church service.
Finn turned slightly in the pew in front of him and whispered, “Y’all should come to Salt Draw for dinner.”
Sawyer’s head bobbed once. “I’d love to. I’ll ask Jill soon as church is over.”
“Verdie is going to Polly’s right after church, but she left a roast in the oven, and we’d love to have you.”
“Thank you,” Sawyer mouthed and went back to singing.
He was determined not to look at Jill’s lips or her eyes or those cute little freckles that makeup couldn’t quite cover, so he let his eyes drift on down. Big mistake!
The red sweater stretched across her chest and hugged her midriff to her waist. With no effort at all, he could visualize what was underneath that soft material. He blinked, but the picture didn’t fade, not even when he forced his gaze down farther to the slim denim skirt and boots. It grew more vivid when he thought of her bare feet dangling when she’d been thrown over his shoulder like a bag of chicken feed.
He shut his eyes and let his chin drop enough that Jill would think he was dozing, and replayed the night before in slow motion. Hindsight is twenty-twenty, and looking back, it wasn’t probably the best of ideas for them to have sex after knowing each other only a few weeks. But he’d be a complete jerk to tell her that they shouldn’t let it happen again because they worked together, because they were such good friends, because they lived in the same bunkhouse. Besides, he didn’t want to tell her that, because he wanted it to happen again, and the sooner the better.
In all of his thirty years, no one had ever made Sawyer feel the way Jill did. The chemistry was so hot and so real that it couldn’t be genuine. It might be a flash in the pan that would burn itself out quickly, but he didn’t want to miss a moment of the heat.
Jill shoved a knee against his, and he sat up straight, eyes wide open.
“Is it over?” he asked.
“No,” she whispered. “The preacher isn’t even winding down. I didn’t want you to start snoring.”
“Finn asked us all to dinner. Got a problem with that?”
She shook her head. “I’d love to spend the afternoon with them, long as we can go home in time to catch a nap.”
The preacher’s gaze started on the Brennan side of the church and moved across the center section to the Gallagher side. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord!” He raised his voice as he leaned closer to the microphone.
“Amen,” an old-timer yelled from the back of the church.
“There comes a time to let go of the past and move toward a bright new future,” he whispered.
Finn’s newly adopted son Ricky asked a little too loud, “What’s wrong with him, Granny Verdie? Is he yelling to wake us all up and then talking all soft to make us pay attention?”
Verdie nodded. “Something like that.”
* * *
Jill clamped her teeth shut to stifle the giggle. Out of the mouths of babes, she thought. Those kids were so cute all lined up on the pew. Finn sat on the end with Callie next to him, and then the kids, starting with Martin and ending with Sally, who sat right beside Verdie. Looking at them, no one would ever believe they hadn’t been a family since the children were born.
Callie and Finn had to have big hearts to take on the raising of four children and to let Verdie move in with them too. Jill examined her own heart and came up short. She wanted kids, but she wanted them to be her own. She glanced up at Sawyer, who was smiling at the comment too. He’d make a wonderful father.
Whoa, woman! One night of wild sex doesn’t give you the right to start thinking about babies with him.
She made herself concentrate on the kids sitting in front of her. She’d been to enough church services also to recognize the preacher’s tactics, and she wouldn’t want to be up there behind that pulpit. No, sir! With a congregation split into three parts, it couldn’t be easy to attempt to unify them, not even with scripture. And especially not when the two major factions had refused his offer of help that week.
In an attempt to keep her carnal thoughts at bay, she glanced across the room toward the Gallaghers’ side to see Naomi staring straight past her. She followed Naomi’s gaze to Mavis, who was firing daggers across the church. Evidently God did not hold the copyright on vengeance.
“When we forgive others, it brings peace to our own lives as much as it gives them peace for their wrongdoings,” the preacher said.
Forgiveness was not anywhere in the near future. It would take a lot more than a strong Sunday morning sermon for that to ha
ppen.
As long as they didn’t mess with her or with Sawyer anymore, it wasn’t her problem, so she wasn’t going to worry about it.
* * *
Sawyer’s phone made a buzzing noise that said a text was coming through, but he ignored it. It was probably his sister, Martina. She and her family attended a church that started earlier and ended before the customary twelve o’clock.
He loved his family, even his bossy sister and overprotective brothers. He’d really like to take Jill to Comfort to meet them, but to drive that far and back in one day wouldn’t work. They had promised to visit Fiddle Creek over Easter, so he could look forward to that. They would bring their RVs and park behind the bunkhouse, and he could show his brothers the ranch while his sister, his mother, and his brothers’ wives got to know Jill better.
You take your woman home to meet the mama only if things are getting serious, that smart-ass voice in his head said. And it might be a good thing to tell Jill that they are planning to visit. That means tell her before the weekend they are arriving.
Sawyer nodded when everyone around him was shaking their heads. Jill poked him on the thigh. “Are you listening to the preacher?”
He shook his head.
“It looked like you were disagreeing with the Bible, nodding like that,” she said.
“I was thinking about something else,” he admitted.
She blushed.
“Evidently you were too.”
The blush deepened, and his hand dropped from the back of the pew to her shoulder. He squeezed and leaned over to say softly, “After lunch with Finn and Callie, want a repeat of last night?”
She didn’t nod, but then she didn’t shake her head, but the slight upturn to her full mouth was a yes in his books.
The preacher wound down, making his final plea in veiled words to both families that the feud would consume them if they didn’t make peace. Sawyer didn’t see either side softening up a bit.
Jill suddenly jerked her cell phone from her purse, which was sitting on the floor right beside her foot. She read the text message, tapped Sawyer on the shoulder, and said, “We’ve got to go right now.”
Sawyer’s blood turned to ice. The only reason a person left the church was if a catastrophe had occurred. “Is it Polly?”
“No, but it was Aunt Gladys. She’ll meet us at the store. There’s a problem on the ranch.”
The congregation stopped listening and stared at them as they left the church. When Sawyer opened the squeaky double doors, suddenly a whole sea of Gallaghers hurried outside behind them.
“Damned Brennans,” Betsy said. “They’ve cut the fences between Wild Horse and Fiddle Creek. Our cattle is all mixed up with Fiddle Creek’s cows again. We’ve got to get this sorted out, or we’ll have mixed breeds on both ranches if they’ve let Granny’s Blonde d’Aquitaine in with your Angus.”
“Shit! I don’t want that breed mixed with our stock. They’ve messed with the wrong woman,” Jill declared.
If it was the truth that they’d involved her even more in this crappy pig-shit war, or if they used it as a ruse to try the kidnapping stunt again, she fully intended to join the war and wipe both families off the map. Now they’d spend the whole damned afternoon sorting out cattle, when she could be over on Salt Draw, having dinner with Callie and playing with those kids.
Gladys was fuming by the time they reached the ranch, cussing like a veteran sailor as she showed them the area where more than two hundred head of Wild Horse cattle roamed over a field of sprouting winter wheat. If it hadn’t been for the difference in the brands on the hips of the black cows, they wouldn’t have been able to tell them apart.
Betsy frowned and yelled at Tyrell. “Someone got it wrong. This isn’t our Blonde d’Aquitaine herd. This is just our regular Angus stock.”
“What are you doing with that breed?” Sawyer asked.
“It’s something Granny wanted to try. But these are our regular Angus cows. Not even a bull amongst them. It won’t take long to get them sorted out, and then we’ll take all three of you over to Wild Horse for dinner,” Betsy said.
Gladys checked the barbed wire. Yes, sir, it had been cut smooth right in the middle between the two metal fence posts. The Brennans had had her sympathies more than the Gallaghers down through the years, but now they’d lost every bit of it.
It took a lot longer than they thought it would. When the job was done and the fence fixed, it was well past two o’clock. Gladys refused to go to Wild Horse but did offer to take Jill and Sawyer down to Gainesville to a little café that made the best chicken-fried steak in North Texas.
“What about Polly?” Jill asked.
“She and Verdie decided to watch movies all afternoon. She’ll be fine,” Gladys said.
Chapter 21
While the Gallaghers were busy herding cattle and fixing fence on the south side of Wild Horse, four Brennan men simply opened the gate on Wild Horse Ranch, down next to the Red River and herded the light-colored, floppy-eared bull and his harem across the shallow stream and up over the bank on the Oklahoma side, where two cattle trucks waited.
The last cantankerous old heifer refused to get into the truck like her cohorts, so they shooed her back across the river and into the pasture before they shut the gate. Careful not to touch anything without gloves, they damn sure hoped the weatherman and the sky weren’t lying to them. They needed the driving, hard rain to wash away the hoofprints leading over into Oklahoma.
“Ready?” Russell Brennan asked when his nephew, Quaid, climbed up into the cab.
“Across to the bridge crossing back into Texas, through Gainesville, and to our destination. We should be there in an hour,” he answered.
“Maybe they’ll think twice before they steal any more of Mama’s hogs. The new stock are arriving this week. She’s buying Herefords this time.” Russell fired up the engine and drove toward the dirt road leading to Highway 32, which would take him to Marietta where he’d catch I-35 south into the outskirts of Gainesville.
“Herefords?”
“Looks just like a Hereford cow. White face, white feet, red body. They’re supposed to grow off quick and produce quality meat. But the important thing is no one within a hundred miles of Burnt Boot has them. No one would dare steal them,” Russell explained.
They listened to the country music countdown. Russell kept time with his thumb on the steering wheel. It was about time they did some serious damage to the Brennans after the hog-stealing business. He’d told his mother then that they should strike back and strike hard, but she wanted to wait a spell until a time came when they’d least expect it. He had to give it to the old girl, she flat-out knew her way around a feud. When it was his time to rule the family, though, he intended to do things different. He would retaliate immediately, and the Gallaghers would soon learn not to mess with him.
“What would you do, Uncle Russell, say if Leah got it in her head she wanted to get hitched to a Gallagher?” Quaid asked.
“There’d be one dead Gallagher. Do you know something I don’t?” Russell’s thumbs went still.
“No, sir. It’s just that it’s been all these years, and it’s going to happen someday.”
“Not on my watch, it’s not. And it damn sure won’t be my daughter,” Russell said.
An hour later he backed the first of two trucks up to the Salt Holler bridge. Wallace opened the gates, and cattle meandered out at a slow speed, wary of the old wooden bridge under their feet, eyes rolling at the deep ditch beneath them.
Wallace removed his hat and slapped a cow on the flank. She took off, and the rest followed her lead, bawling the whole way to the other side, where they split seven ways to Sunday. Some going to the left, some to the right, some in a hurry, some slowing down to taste what little grass they could find.
When they were all across, Russell pulled his truck forward
so the second one could park and do the same thing. Within half an hour, both trucks were on their way to Bonham, Texas, to pick up twenty new brood sows and one boar for River Bend ranch, and the fancy Blonde d’Aquitaine cattle were roaming all over Wallace Redding’s property in Salt Holler.
“You know we could have done this with them in church,” Quaid said to his driver.
“Yes, but the ones who were not in church were standing guard. When the church goin’ ones got the message about the fences, they put out calls for the guards to come help them herd the cattle. Granny had it all figured out, and it worked like a charm. Wonder if they’ve got the fence fixed and the cattle rounded up yet?”
Quaid chuckled. “I hope that Wallace Redding has a butcherin’ day down there in the holler.”
* * *
Lightning zigzagged through the sky, and thunder rolled so close to the top of Sawyer’s truck that Jill covered her eyes at one point. Dark clouds boiled up from the southwest, covering the blue sky like black smoke from a wildfire.
The rain hit with gale-force winds after Jill, Sawyer, and Gladys were seated in the small café on the outskirts of Gainesville, going toward Bonham. It completely obliterated any of the traffic on Highway 82 going east or west, but they weren’t interested in trucks and cars. They were too hungry to care who was going where that Sunday afternoon.
Gladys picked up the menu the waitress put before her. “We barely dodged gettin’ soaked to the skin before we got those cows all sorted out, didn’t we?”
“Looks like a toad strangler to me. I’ll have sweet tea,” Sawyer told the middle-aged waitress.
She looked at Jill, who nodded. “Me too.”
“Coffee. Hot and black,” Gladys said. “We all agreed on chicken-fried steaks?”
“Comes with mashed potatoes and sawmill gravy, two biscuits, and a side salad, and your choice of okra, black-eyed peas, or corn on the cob,” she said.
“Okra,” Sawyer said.
“Same,” Jill said.
The Trouble with Texas Cowboys Page 20
