Reclaiming Nick

by Susan May Warren

  Piper didn’t answer.

  “Piper?”

  “I guess so.” She cringed at her mealymouthed tone. “Yes, of course. You’ve got a good idea there, Carter. Nick’s been tight-lipped about why he left the ranch—and why he returned. But the townspeople might have a few insights.” Her mind went to Lolly . . . and the editor at The Phillips Journal.

  “That’s my girl. Thinking like a pro.”

  “I wonder if our cop keeps any pictures of Miss Jenny Butler. . . .” She shot a look toward the house.

  “Be careful, Piper.”

  “Careful is my middle name.”

  “No, I don’t think it is—”

  “Stop acting like my mother and tell me what to make for the shindig this Saturday.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m better than your mother. How about I call Joe’s BBQ and ship you eighty pounds of their special-order ribs, twenty- five pounds of potato salad, and enough homemade biscuits to feed a hundred?”

  “Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”

  “Don’t get my hopes up. I’ll call you later.”

  Piper closed her phone as she watched Nick disappear into the barn.

  Nick stood at the entrance to the barn, smelling the hay, dirt, and manure, a yeasty scent that brought back memories of Saturday mornings with a pitchfork in his hand. He tucked his hands into his jacket, advancing past the tack room and the few stalls occupied by laboring cows toward Dutch, who was milking a cow in the farthest stall.

  The big man’s hands worked the udder with practiced grace, white milk streaming into the bucket. The fact that Dutch had been relegated to hand work told Nick how far the Buckle had fallen from grace. Years past it had been Nick’s job, then Rafe’s and Stef’s, and finally the local teenage hands they hired to milk the cows and feed the bums. But on a ranch, especially one in financial straits, they all pulled their own weight.

  He couldn’t remember a time when Dutch hadn’t run the place, hadn’t been the eyes and ears for Nick’s father. Dutch had taught Nick how to rope, wrestle steers, wrangle horses, and fix balers, and he occasionally dished out straight shots of cowboy wisdom. Nick felt ten years old as he stood watching Dutch, hoping the man didn’t squeeze the life out of him with his huge gloved hands.

  Dutch didn’t acknowledge him as Nick leaned against the post separating the stalls, but Nick knew Dutch sensed his arrival. He’d been avoiding Dutch for nearly four days now, instead going over the ranch’s finances or running scenarios of Cole’s shenanigans through his head.

  Eventually most of his thoughts drifted back to Piper. And the way she’d withdrawn like a prairie dog back into her hole, only her big eyes showing, after he’d shown her the petrified forest. As if she were suddenly scared of him.

  She’d spent every hour since then in the kitchen. For some reason, Nick felt as if he’d driven her there, although he didn’t know why.

  “Saw your truck outside. When did you start driving Chevys?” Dutch didn’t turn as he spoke, and the cow’s tail hit him occasionally across the back.

  Nick shrugged. “Got a deal at an auction.”

  “Your father left his keys in his Ford. Said that someday you’d be back for it.”

  Nick reached to pick up a kitten that twined around his legs. “I can’t believe it still runs.”

  Dutch backed off the milk stool, took the bucket, and poured some of the milk into two saucers. Two gray kittens and a mama appeared from the shadows of a neighboring stall. Meanwhile, Dutch poured milk into two bottles, capped them with nipples, and handed one to Nick. “Your father took care of things, even when it seemed they were on their last legs. Took that Ford engine apart twice last year. Thing purrs like a kitten now.”

  Nick followed Dutch out to the corral, where a handful of bums frolicked in the yard. They saw Dutch and came toward him expectantly. He caught one between its legs, holding out the bottle. The calf latched on, sucking greedily. Nick caught his own bum and began to feed it.

  “I can’t get these to take a different mother. The mama in the barn lost her baby two nights ago, and the rest of these bums seem to like her okay. But these two are particular. They know they’re alone, I guess.” Dutch stroked the animal’s neck as it drank. “Remember that bum you raised your senior year?”

  Nick chuckled.

  “As I recall, you slept with that animal a few nights.”

  Nick also remembered someone creeping into the barn and covering him with a blanket. He’d spent all his time watching over that sick calf, hoping that if God deigned to save him, He might also save his mother. In the end, only one had lived.

  “You made a good rancher even then, Nick.” Dutch pulled the now-empty bottle from the calf’s mouth. “It’s good to see you back.”

  Nick let his calf go play, watched it romp with the other orphans. It struck him that he’d become a bum too. “Dutch, do you know anything about my father’s will?”

  Dutch opened the gate, waited silently for Nick to pass through. Then he set the empty bottle in the pail to be washed. “Why?”

  “Saul Lovell told me that Dad left half the Silver Buckle, the four pastures on the southwest end, to Cole St. John. I . . . can’t figure out why.”

  Dutch stared at him a moment, his wide face betraying nothing, his eyes hard on Nick’s. Then he slowly shook his head. “If you haven’t figured that out yet, then nothing I say is going to help.” He picked up the pail. “Your father was a good man. You soak on that for a while, and you’ll get it.”

  Dutch walked out of the barn toward the washhouse.

  CHAPTER 9

  PIPER PAUSED ON the porch of the house, holding her breath, one hand on the doorknob. She watched Dutch exit the barn, carrying a pail while Nick stood in the shadows of the barn watching him go, looking troubled. She’d seen Stefanie leave earlier in the morning in her pickup, and a brief survey of the road revealed the all clear.

  Improvisation. It’s what she did best. And for the first time in four days, she felt as if she might be finding her old footing. Opening the door, she slipped inside.

  The silence in the house felt thick as she tiptoed across the kitchen, through the living room, and up the stairs. She’d start with Nick’s belongings. She knew that he’d moved out of his apartment above the diner in Wellesley, and unless he had a storage unit somewhere, he had his personal possessions with him, probably in his bedroom.

  When she opened the first door, she immediately recognized a feminine touch in the room. From candles on the bedside table, to the bed neatly made with a pink-and-blue patchwork quilt, to pictures of family on the bureau, it spoke of Stefanie Noble.

  Piper closed the door and went to the next one. The floorboard creaked just outside the door and she stopped, her breath catching in her throat. Silently, she listened for reaction.

  Nothing except her heart drumming in her ears. She cracked open the door. The bull-riding posters layering one wall, blue ribbons, and a framed silver buckle over the bed told her that once upon a time some little boy had dreamed of rodeo. The other side of the room revealed tangled bedsheets and an open suitcase stacked with rumpled jeans and hastily folded shirts. It even smelled like Nick—leather and soap and a hint of cologne. Ridiculous how quickly his smell had crept into her awareness.

  The morning sun slanted through the windows, dust swirling in the rays. The old-fashioned digital clock next to his bed clicked as the time changed. The room wasn’t large and didn’t even contain a closet. But she saw mementos of time etched on one of the walls—a picture of Nick and a younger kid, probably Rafe, posing in front of a handsome buck, their guns lifted like some old-time rustlers. Nick’s dusty high school diploma was propped on his bureau. A rolled-up poster stood in the corner.

  She pushed aside a pair of jeans crumpled on the floor and went straight to the suitcase. All indications said that he hadn’t unpacked, and she dug her hands into the spaces between his clothes, pushing aside the spurs of guilt. She was doing this for Jimmy, fo
r justice. Nick Noble had framed him. She wouldn’t be fooled by the Old West–gentleman charade.

  She unearthed a ratty book—Louis L’Amour’s one about the Sackett brothers. Of course. She tucked it back under his sweater and felt around the pockets on the edges. Her fingers landed on a wallet, and she wiggled it out. No, not a wallet. His badge. She stared at it only a second before putting it back.

  It galvanized her, however. How she hated hypocrisy. Hated people who hid behind titles, behind the justice system. She closed the suitcase, feeling inside the top pocket.

  Something hard . . . she pulled it out. A manila folder. And inside a printed copy of a Web page entitled “The Probate Process.”

  Wasn’t that interesting? She flipped through the other pages, found highlighted sentences, in particular those concerning beneficiaries.

  That fit with what she’d overheard in Wellesley. The conversation replayed in her head and stopped on one name: Cole St. John. She’d even written it down in her reporter’s notebook.

  After closing the manila folder, she slipped it back inside the suitcase. She’d wanted to find some connection to Jenny Butler, but what if she was going about this all wrong? Maybe it wasn’t about exonerating Jimmy as much as about making Nick suffer.

  “I’m not going to let you destroy more lives,” Stefanie had said. Maybe Piper couldn’t nail Nick for hurting Jimmy, but she could certainly stop him from hurting someone else. In fact, the thought centered her. She’d discover the truth about Nick and Cole St. John and use it to ensure that St. John received every penny of his inheritance.

  She was turning to leave when she heard a creak outside the bedroom door.

  She stilled, conjuring up explanations.

  Footsteps moved farther down the hall.

  Holding her breath, she eased Nick’s door open. At the end of the hall, a third doorway stood half open. Wasn’t this interesting? Stepping past the squeaky floorboard, Piper snuck toward the open door and looked in.

  She observed Nick Noble sitting on a double bed, a book in his hand, leafing through the pages.

  Piper started to leave when she heard a voice in the yard.

  “Dutch, are you here?” Downstairs, the kitchen door squealed open. “Dutch?”

  Nick jerked, as if branded by the voice.

  Piper ducked behind the door.

  Apparently she also wasn’t the only snoop in this house.

  “Dutch, are you here?” The voice lifted through the quiet house, echoing against the stinging silence.

  Nick shoved the journal he’d been reading into his jacket pocket and crossed the room in three long strides, closing the door behind him softly.

  It wasn’t as if he had found anything, anyway. His father’s journals held nothing but the Scripture passages he’d read over the years and the thoughts he applied to the readings. Nick wouldn’t learn anything revealing or life-changing from them.

  “Dutch?”

  Nick thundered down the stairs and entered the kitchen. A kid stood by the door, wearing a grin on his dusty face. It vanished when he spotted Nick.

  “Hey there, kid. Dutch isn’t here. He took the pickup out to the pasture.”

  The kid looked all of ten or twelve, poised on the cusp of adolescence, with wide shoulders and a defiant swagger about him. Reddish brown hair poked from his tan felt cowboy hat, and Nick noticed a hint of color on his forearms where he’d pushed his thermal shirt up to the elbows.

  The young boy looked at Nick, curiosity on his face. “Who are you?”

  “I live here,” Nick said, glancing out the window, wishing he saw Dutch or Pete around. Since when did they start taking on kids? Maybe it was Pete’s kid—hadn’t he heard something about Pete getting hitched shortly after Nick had left town?

  “Ms. Noble lives here. Alone.” The kid folded his arms over his chest, wariness in his eyes.

  For a second Nick felt like the time he’d been caught picking tomatoes from his mother’s kitchen garden. He’d had to pull weeds for a week. “Uh . . . well, I’m her brother. I just moved home.”

  The kid stared at him as if trying to read the truth.

  Oh, brother. “Listen, kid, I really live here. My name is Nick, and I should be the one asking questions. Who are you?”

  The kid raised his chin. “CJ.”

  “Okay, CJ, what are you doing here?”

  CJ’s bravado appeared to slip. “Dutch is supposed to help me with my roping.”

  Yes, he must be Pete’s kid. Pete had the rope throw of a blindfolded mule. “Well, like I said, Dutch isn’t here.”

  CJ’s face twitched, and he betrayed his disappointment in a sigh. “Okay. Thanks, mister.”

  Watching the boy’s shoulders slump turned a shard of pity inside Nick. He didn’t have a kid, but if he did he hoped to teach him to rope. “What event are you in?”

  “Breakaway roping.”

  Nick couldn’t help a grin. “One of my favorite events. I won the Custer County Rodeo three years in a row during my junior years.”

  CJ’s face brightened, and with his expression, excitement lit in Nick. “I had a great roping horse. He knew when to stop, as if he could read my mind.”

  “My horse, Coyote, does that! But sometimes he gets excited and breaks the barrier too soon.”

  Nick grinned at his enthusiasm, the spray of freckles over his nose, and eyes that held a like passion for throwing a rope. “That’ll fix easily enough. Probably need to put more score in him—make him sit there as you let the calf out, only letting him free when you say.”

  CJ nodded, but his face fell. “He’s not the biggest problem. It’s me. I do fine on the dummy. But when I’m on Coyote, half the time I catch only air. I don’t know what’s wrong. My dad says that I need to make my loop travel outside my elbow, but I’m doing that, and I still keep missing.”

  As Nick listened, he played the kid’s throw in his mind. “I have an idea. C’mon.”

  CJ followed him out to the barn, where Nick took a lasso off the wall. The coils felt tight and rough in his hand, and he remembered the blisters and the heat marks the hours of practice had etched. He’d eventually learned to rope with a glove, but those early years he had to feel the rope, had to make it an extension of his arm.

  On their way back out to the yard they detoured to the shed, where a sawhorse with a dummy steer head lay in silent anticipation. Nick dragged them out.

  The sun had eaten the clouds, and a perfect blue sky blanketed the greening bluffs. The occasional loll of a cow carried on the spring breeze.

  CJ stood a few feet away, smiling at him.

  “You might need to change your pitch . . . only about five degrees. Otherwise you’ll throw it like a Frisbee and completely miss your calf. Angle the tip of your rope down across the calf’s head at least one swing before you deliver. Two swings would be even better. The loop wants to follow the same trajectory as the couple swings before it.” Nick made the loop and swung it around his head, showing the difference in the angles. He roped the dummy steer perfectly around both horns, yanking back on the rope to tighten it in a smooth, practiced flow.

  When the rope snapped, Nick felt a surge of that old pride. He could nearly feel Pecos moving beneath him.

  “Cool,” CJ said.

  Nick loosened the rope, wound it back up. “Secondly, watch your targeting. You know you start from the heeling box on the right side of the chute. When you’re catching up to the calf, your weight should be in your left stirrup, and Coyote’s nose should be angled about at the calf’s left hip. When you throw, shift your weight to the right stirrup. If you teach Coyote that your weight shifting is his cue to plant his back end and stop, you’ll get the fastest times.”

  Again Nick demonstrated, shifting his weight.

  Clearly thinking over Nick’s words, CJ’s gaze fixed on the rope.

  “You try.”

  CJ stepped up, threw a perfect loop. But the boy used muscle to compensate for rhythm. Cole had once had the
same problem. The guy had always used brute force instead of timing and finesse.

  Nick gestured for the rope. “Good job. But again, it’s about timing and angle. Power your loop forward as you turn it over, but let the tip lead and give it a full release.” He held CJ’s arm, moving it to the right timing.

  When Nick stepped back, CJ threw two beautiful loops.

  “That’s right.” Nick climbed on the corral fence, sitting on the top rung to watch CJ. He remembered too well his own hours of practice catching that renegade steer dummy. But watching a lasso land around a calf’s head, seeing it jerk to a stop, listening to the crowd roar, and landing the silver-buckle first prize—well, that was worth the blisters and sunburn and hours of frustration.

  “If you want, I’ll help you and Coyote with your timing sometime.”

  CJ landed another throw, then worked off the lasso and walked over to Nick. Beads of dirty sweat ran down his face, off his chin. “Really? Because Dutch is so busy, and his event is bronc bustin’. He’s just helping me ’cause my dad can’t.”

  Nick jumped off the fence, laughing. “Yeah, well, Old Pete is better at steer wrestling than throwing a rope.” He clamped a hand on the kid’s shoulder in sympathy. “You keep practicing. Old Pete will be back soon.” He turned toward the house.

  “Old Pete?” CJ ran to catch up to Nick. “He’s not my dad.”

  Nick stopped, turned. “Who is your dad, then?”

  “Cole St. John.”

  Nick stared at the boy, taking in the dark brown eyes, the cocky demeanor, the reddish brown hair, the build. He felt like an idiot. CJ . . . Cole Junior . . . Maggy’s kid. Stef had said that she’d helped out on the ranch a lot over the past ten years. Of course the kid would know Dutch. And if he remembered correctly, Cole was wearing a cast when Nick saw him at the lawyer’s—a hindrance to helping his son learn roping tricks. He blew out a breath.

  “You okay, Mr. Noble?”

  He turned back to CJ, saw concern on the boy’s face. “Yeah, kid, I’m okay. I . . . well, I know your dad. And your mom, I guess. Her name is Maggy?”