by Diana Palmer
“That’s Melissa Avery, the owner,” Luke’s friendly neighbor volunteered. “Real nice gal.”
Melissa Avery not only looked like a “real nice gal,” she was pretty enough to draw any man’s attention. At any other time, Luke would have pursued the topic, such as asking the fellow next to him if Melissa was married. But this morning his mind was on more important matters than pretty women. Granted, Maris Wyler was damned attractive, but her looks weren’t the reason he couldn’t stop thinking about her. His stomach cramped every time he thought of hounding a woman for money, even though there was no other way to collect on that IOU.
He mentally counted the cash in his wallet—two twenties, a ten and three ones. Fifty-three bucks. In a secret compartment in the wallet was also an old, sharply creased hundred-dollar bill. That bill had been in that compartment for at least seven years, which was the last time Luke had been down to nothing. The first money he’d earned after being dead broke for nearly two weeks, he had folded that hundred and secreted it in that compartment, and ever since, knowing it was there had given him a modicum of security.
But that was all the money he had left, one hundred and fifty-three bucks, and the thought of using that hundred gave him a sinking sensation, as though he were going down for the count.
He had to collect that three thousand.
“Ready to order, mister?”
Startled, Luke looked up at the waitress. He’d been staring at the menu without absorbing anything written on it. “Uh…ham and eggs and some hash-brown potatoes. And coffee.”
“Sure thing. How do you want your eggs?”
“Over easy.”
“And what kind of toast? There’s wheat, rye, white and sourdough.”
“Sourdough.”
The waitress stuck her pencil behind her ear and smiled. “I’ll get your coffee. Your order will be up in a few minutes.”
“Thanks.”
“Bread’s homemade,” Luke’s neighbor remarked. “Melissa turned this old place into a fine eating establishment.”
A cup of coffee was set in front of Luke. “Thanks,” he said to the waitress, then turned to his neighbor and offered his hand. “Luke Rivers.”
“John Tully. I own the drugstore between here and the boarding house.”
John Tully was around fifty, Luke figured, with a balding head and smelling of antiseptic. “Know of any jobs in the area?” Luke asked.
Mr. Tully frowned. “Well…can’t think of anything right off. What kind of work are you looking for?”
Though he had initiated it, the topic depressed Luke. He didn’t want a job, damn it, he wanted his three thousand dollars so he could get back on the rodeo circuit. “Ranch work,” he said grimly.
“In that case you shouldn’t have a problem. There are a lot of ranches around Whitehorn. Let’s see now. You might try the Kincaid place first—it’s the biggest. Then there’s the Walker ranch, and Wyatt North’s spread, and…” The man’s eyes lit up. “Hey, I bet you could get a job at the Circle W.” Then he started to chuckle.
Luke couldn’t see that anything funny had been said, so he took a swallow of coffee—very good coffee, he realized—and gave Tully a chance to simmer down.
Then he stiffened. The Circle W was Ray Wyler’s ranch! Maris Wyler’s ranch, he reminded himself with an inward wince.
John Tully stopped laughing, though his round, chubby face still bore an amused grin. “You couldn’t know, being new and all, but Mrs. Wyler changed the name of her ranch right after her husband died.” For a moment Tully’s grin vanished. “Fatal highway accident. Tragic business.” His smile returned. “Anyhow, she took down the old Circle W sign and put up one that says No Bull Ranch. It’s got everyone around here trying to figure out what she means by that name.” Tully chuckled again. “No Bull Ranch. Could signify a lot of things, couldn’t it?”
Luke wasn’t laughing. “Could mean there’s no bull on the place.”
“Or no man?” Tully suggested with a masculine twinkle in his eye.
The waitress delivered Luke’s breakfast. “Here you are, sir. Enjoy.”
Luke picked up his fork, wondering why he hadn’t seen that sign yesterday. He’d found the Wyler ranch by asking directions from a gas-station attendant in town, and he’d been anxious to see Ray. Then, too, maybe the sign wasn’t in a prominent location. At any rate, he’d missed it completely, and besides, he didn’t think it was nearly as funny as John Tully did.
“Anyway,” Tully continued, “Mrs. Wyler is undoubtedly in need of a good ranch hand. You might speak to her about a job.”
“Yeah, I might. Thanks.” Luke was glad to see John Tully picking up his check.
“Nice talking to you, Luke. Be seeing you again, I’m sure.”
“Probably will,” Luke muttered as the chatty druggist walked away. He dug into his food, which was hot and as tasty as any ham and eggs he’d ever eaten. Out of the corner of his eye he could see John Tully paying his check and talking to Melissa Avery, who was tending the cash register.
Depressed again, Luke concentrated on his food. He was just finishing up, when the café’s door opened for another customer.
“Hi, Judd,” Melissa called from the opposite end of the counter, where she had sat down for her own breakfast, a cup of coffee, a glass of orange juice and a plate of toast.
Luke paid no attention to the newcomer until someone else greeted him. “Hello, Sheriff.” Then Luke slowly swiveled on his stool to get a look at the man Maris Wyler had used to threaten him with yesterday. So, he thought dryly, that tall, dark, muscular lawman was Maris’s personal friend. That was what she had said. The sheriff is a personal friend.
For some reason Luke’s lips thinned, probably because he didn’t like the sheriff at first sight and it made no sense. Grabbing his check, he ambled past the sheriff, who was heading for an empty stool, and stopped at the cash register.
Melissa hurried over. “I hope you enjoyed your meal.”
Laying down the check and his ten-spot, Luke looked directly into her stunning blue eyes. “It was the best breakfast I ever had.”
Melissa smiled. “That’s what we like to hear.” She rang up the sale and gave Luke his change.
Remembering that he hadn’t left a tip, Luke walked back to where he’d been sitting and dropped a dollar on the counter.
Then he sauntered out of the Hip Hop as though he hadn’t a care in the world, just in case Melissa Avery was watching.
As he climbed into his pickup, however, his dark mood returned and Ms. Avery was completely forgotten. Sighing heavily, he started the engine and tried very hard to resign himself to making the rounds of the local ranches to inquire about work.
Right now life stunk. Big time.
Luke did a lot of driving. The Kincaid ranch was seventeen miles northwest of Whitehorn; the Walker ranch lay twenty-five miles west; and the North ranch was in the opposite direction entirely, thirty-five miles east. Then he crossed Interstate 90 and took a look at the Bain spread. When he turned around and reached the interstate again, he pulled his pickup to the side of the road. He’d found the major ranches in the area without too much trouble, but he hadn’t stopped at even one and asked about a job.
All during the driving and the looking he’d been doing some heavy-duty thinking. John Tully was right; Maris Wyler did need a good ranch hand. He himself had realized yesterday that she needed someone with the know-how to break those broncs. If he had any genuine talent, Luke knew, it was in working with horses. He’d grown up on a ranch in Texas and there’d been plenty of green horses to train to the saddle. Of course, he’d loved rodeo a whole lot more than ranch work, and once he was old enough to take off on his own, he’d pretty much left the Rivers ranch to his parents.
Then his father died. He’d been notified and had made a mad dash for home. His mother was naturally devastated, but within a month she was pretty much her old self and noticing her son’s increasing restlessness.
“I know yo
u want to get on with your own life, Luke, so it probably won’t bother you none that I’m selling the ranch and moving to town. Am I wrong in that assumption?”
He’d been so relieved that his knees had gotten weak. “That’s a great idea, Ma. Just great.”
Lila Rivers had smiled wryly. “That’s what I thought.”
Luke saw his mother about once a year. His visits always coincided with the rodeos scheduled in East Texas, but Lila never seemed to mind. Once in a while, though, she made subtle references to him getting married and settling down like the rest of the world. Luke’s standard response was always a big laugh, a hug for his mother and a cocky “Heck, Ma, think of all the unhappy gals there’d be out there if I settled down with just one.”
Though he was thirty-five years old, settling down wasn’t in Luke’s plans, certainly not in his immediate future. The thought of tying himself to a steady job actually pained him, but he was in a financial bind and had to do something. Still, he’d driven on past a half-dozen ranches today. He might have a job right now if he could get Maris Wyler, her unbroken horses and that three thousand dollars out of his mind.
Sitting alongside that vacant stretch of road, with the interstate on ramp no more than a hundred feet ahead, Luke pondered his options. His things were in the back of the pickup, and he could kiss goodbye that three thousand and leave Whitehorn and Maris Wyler in the dust right now. The interstate went west to Butte and east to Billings. He could find out where and when the next scheduled rodeo with any kind of decent purses would take place in either city.
So…why in hell didn’t he do that? Why fight with a woman over money? Why worry about her being straddled with a hundred wild broncs and, apparently, no money to hire someone to break them?
He rubbed his mouth and then his jaw, scowling intently. He tugged on his left ear and glared at the interstate, at the traffic it bore, the eighteen-wheelers hauling freight, the motor homes, the pickups and cars.
After about ten minutes of deciding first one way and then another, he muttered a vicious curse, slapped the shifting lever into Drive and took off.
He drove under the interstate and headed back for Whitehorn.
Maris had been bending over and pulling weeds from her vegetable garden for at least two hours. Straightening her back with a muffled groan of relief, she wiped her sweaty forehead with the back of her forearm and eyed the neat rows of weed-free plants. A garden was always a must for Maris, but this year’s crop was going to see her and Keith through the winter and seemed more important than usual. She would can and freeze everything that was possible to can and freeze, and come fall she would have Keith haul one of the steers to Grayson’s Meat Packing Plant, which would supply them with beef to eat with the vegetables. They would make it through the winter—providing, of course, she managed to scare up enough cash to meet the mortgage payments on the ranch each month.
The movements of the horses in their pasture drew Maris’s attention, and she chewed on her lip while considering their present value, certainly not for the first time. Unbroken, they might bring a hundred dollars apiece, and there were ninety-three horses. Finding buyers for ninety-three unbroken horses in the Whitehorn area was a fantasy, however, so anticipating ninety-three-hundred dollars was nothing more than a futile exercise.
Besides, they were fine animals, and with the proper training should be worth at least five times that amount. She had been delaying asking around about a good horse trainer, because anyone with experience and knowledge was bound to come high, and where would she get the money to pay his or her wage? It was a vicious circle, Maris decided bitterly for about the hundredth time in the past several weeks. No money, no trainer. No trainer, no money. Why in God’s name had Ray thought selling the cattle to buy a herd of green horses made sense? That was what he’d done, with absolutely no warning—sold their best cattle and used the money to buy those horses. Maris hadn’t understood Ray’s motive for doing something so impractical at the time and she still couldn’t figure it out.
“Maris, look what I found!”
It was Keith, and Maris turned around to see him coming toward her with a scruffy, skinny black dog on his heels. “You found a dog?” she said dryly. “Where?”
Keith shrugged. “She just showed up out of nowhere. Maybe someone dropped her off on the road.”
People did that, Maris knew, just stopped their cars and kicked a poor little kitten or dog out to fend for itself. A stray of that nature raised her hackles. Some pet owners behaved abominably.
She left the garden to inspect the pitiful dog. The animal cringed and trembled and then lay down with its head on its paws. “She’s skinny as a rail,” Maris said angrily. “Keith, go into the house and fix a bowl of bread and warm milk. This poor little dog might even be too weak to eat, but we’ll give it a try.”
Uncertain about touching the sad-eyed pooch until it knew her better, Maris sat down in the grass to await Keith’s return. “Life dealt you a dirty blow, too, huh, girl?” The dog’s tail weakly thumped the grass. “You’d like to be friends, wouldn’t you? Well, maybe we will be.” Maris shook her head in dismay. The last thing she needed right now was another mouth to feed, particularly one that couldn’t possibly benefit the ranch.
But chasing off a poor hungry animal just wasn’t in her. She pulled off her canvas garden gloves and examined her dirty, broken fingernails. “Might as well go without gloves,” she mumbled dejectedly.
It was just that everything seemed to get her down these days, and she realized that she could easily shed tears over that sad little dog and her own work-worn hands.
Keith came striding up. “Here we go, girl.” He set the bowl down in front of the dog, but the little pooch just lay there listlessly. “Come on, girl, you have to eat.”
Keith, Maris saw, wasn’t at all wary of the dog, as she’d been, and he scooped up a piece of milk-soaked bread from the bowl and held it to the dog’s mouth. The animal’s tongue flicked to wipe it away, and then she seemed to realize what it was. Struggling to her feet, she stuck her nose in the bowl and began eating.
“That’s it, girl,” Keith said soothingly. “Eat it all up.”
“She probably needs water, too,” Maris said while getting to her feet. After locating an old pan in the toolshed, she returned to fill it with water from the garden spigot and brought it to the dog.
“She didn’t eat all the bread and milk,” Keith said.
“She’ll probably finish it later. Here, girl, have a drink of water.”
The dog lapped up some water, then lay down again. “Do you think she’s sick, Maris?” Keith asked worriedly.
“I think she’s half-starved, Keith. But she ate a little, and now she needs to rest. She’ll probably be fine in a day or two.”
Keith was on his knees next to the dog, petting its matted back. “She’s real pretty, don’t you think?”
Maris almost smiled. This piteous, bony mutt certainly wasn’t pretty. But Keith had had so little love in his young life, and if he felt some fondness for the stray it was fine with Maris. “She’ll be a handsome dog, once she’s fattened up,” she said agreeably.
They both heard the vehicle approaching the compound. Keith saw it first. “Oh-oh, guess who’s back.”
Maris turned to see Luke Rivers’s pickup pulling to a stop near her own truck. Her face turned stony. “Great. Another go-around with that man will certainly complete my day.”
“Want me to talk to him?” Keith asked, willing, as always, to help Maris whenever he could.
“Thanks, but I think I’d better do it myself. Apparently he hasn’t given up on that IOU Ray gave him.” Maris had been sitting on the grass again, and she pushed herself up to her feet. “Do this for me, Keith. Stay within listening distance, and if Mr. Rivers gets too belligerent, call Judd and ask him to come out here, on the double.”
Keith’s youthful features turned hard right in front of Maris’s eyes. “Do you think he’ll try something funny, Maris
? If he does, I’m gonna tear into him.”
“No, Keith, no! Just do as I said about calling Judd. Luke Rivers is twice your size, and I don’t want you getting hurt.”
“Size ain’t everything,” Keith mumbled. “I ain’t scared of him just ’cause he’s bigger.”
“I know you’re not. If it makes you feel any better, I’m not scared of him, either. It’s just that I’m not going to be harassed every day by Luke Rivers. If that’s going to be the case, then Judd should be brought in to set him straight. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Guess so,” Keith said rather sullenly. He wanted to protect Maris, and would protect Maris from any threat or danger. Calling the sheriff probably made good sense, but he wished Maris would realize that he wasn’t a helpless little kid.
Drawing a deep breath, Maris detoured around the garden and walked toward the parking area of the ranch, where Luke was getting out of his truck.
“Before you start yelling,” he said with the same scowl he’d worn all day, “give me a chance to say one thing, okay?”
“If that one thing is about Ray’s IOU, the answer is no,” Maris said flatly.
“It’s not. Well, in a way it is, but mostly it’s about something else.”
Maris folded her arms. “Very well. Shoot.”
Clearing his throat, Luke turned his gaze on the horse pasture. “You need someone to break those horses and I need a job. Here’s my offer.” His eyes connected with Maris’s. “You give me room, board and a few bucks a week, and I’ll put a smile on every one of those horses’ faces. Some of them look to me like good cutting stock, which will take more work than the others. But when they’re all broken to the saddle and acting as sweet as sugar, you’ll get a good price for them. Then you pay me the three thousand, give me my pick of the lot for a bonus, and I’ll get out of your hair for good.”
Maris was slightly stunned. “Seems to me your offer is pretty heavily weighted in your favor. Why should you end up with the best horse in the herd, which I’m sure would be the case?”
