“He won’t listen,” Joslyn said sadly. “He’s made up his mind, Kendra.”
“God help us,” Kendra said, “when John Carmody’s sons make up their minds.”
“Amen,” Joslyn replied, her throat thick. She certainly hadn’t liked the idea of the horse race herself, but Kendra’s reaction heightened the urgency to a new pitch.
“Try talking to Callie, then,” Kendra persisted. “Maybe she can get through to him.”
“Maybe,” Joslyn almost whispered. But Slade’s mother must have already known about the race, and if she’d tried to reason with her son, she couldn’t have succeeded, because the thing was still going to happen.
Joslyn seriously doubted that Callie or anyone else could stop it. Still, if only for Shea’s sake, she had to make some kind of attempt.
The call ended with Kendra’s assurance that she’d be back in Parable before Saturday, no matter what she had to do to make that happen. Her car was parked at the airport, so she wouldn’t need Joslyn to pick her up.
It was midafternoon by then, and Joslyn closed the office early, locking up and shutting down her computer.
She gave Lucy-Maude an early supper, ratcheted up her courage a notch or two, and rounded up her car keys to drive to the Curly-Burly. She felt like a meddlesome fool—going to bed with Slade Barlow didn’t give her the right to interfere this way and, besides, she was still convinced that stopping the race was a lost cause.
Reaching the parking lot at Callie’s place, Joslyn sat behind the wheel, trying to figure out what to say to the woman.
Before she’d come up with anything that really made sense, Callie appeared in the doorway to the salon, smiling and beckoning to Joslyn to come inside.
“Here goes nothing,” Joslyn murmured, getting out of her car, smiling hard.
Minutes later, after spilling her petition over a friendly cup of coffee at Callie’s kitchen table, her expectations were confirmed.
“Nobody short of God Himself can talk Slade out of that horse race,” Slade’s mother said grimly. “It’s something he’s got to do.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE SATURDAY OF THE RACE, the sky was ominously overcast, and both Boone and Shea were all over Slade as he led his gelding, Highlander, down the ramp from the Whisper Creek trailer.
Hutch was already there in that strangely desolate landscape far from the big house and the sturdy barn, with his tall paint, Remington, and a small crowd of spectators was beginning to gather in the leaning grass, the women hugging themselves and whispering to each other, the men somber as Judgment Day.
From the looks of the sky, Slade thought to himself, they might be right.
“Dad,” Shea pleaded, clutching at Slade’s arm and looking pale in the early-morning light. The rising wind blew her hair around her face. “Don’t do this. Let Hutch have this stupid ranch—you don’t really want it anyway!”
He’d long since explained the terms of his wager with Hutch to her, but his reasons for not letting this go, for not backing down, were harder to put into words. Besides, he was in an obstinate mood, having already had his ears pinned back twice that morning, once in his kitchen, by Opal, and once, via the cell phone, by his mother.
“This isn’t about the ranch, Shea,” was all he could think of to say. He knew the statement was inadequate, but there it was.
About that time, Boone stepped up. He wasn’t on duty, and he’d made it clear what he thought about the race, but as a friend to both Hutch and Slade, he must have felt he had to be there just the same.
Dark-haired with deep brown eyes and the stubble of a beard on his square chin and jaws, Deputy Boone Taylor gave Slade a restrained punch in the shoulder.
“Listen to the kid,” he said. “She’s making sense.”
Slade slipped into sheriff mode, though of course he wasn’t in uniform, either. Even when he was working, he seldom wore one, mainly because he felt it separated him from the very people he’d been elected to serve. “Get those folks to move back a ways,” he said, inclining his head toward the small but growing audience. “I don’t want anybody getting hurt.”
Boone gave a raspy hoot at that, his voice void of all humor. “Well, now, sheriff,” he drawled, “that’s certainly ironic.”
Just then, out of the corner of his eye, Slade spotted a little blue Beamer bumping overland toward them. The top was down, and he could see two women inside.
Kendra Shepherd was at the wheel, while Joslyn rode with her, not even buckled in but kneeling on the passenger seat, waving both arms and yelling something.
Overhead, the sky roiled and thunder clapped, and Slade couldn’t make out what she was saying, but he had a pretty good idea.
Hutch, leaving the paint in the care of one of his many ranch hands, stepped up alongside Slade to watch as the women sped toward them.
“That can’t be good for the shocks,” he said.
A corner of Slade’s mouth pulled upward. “Not to mention the seat belt violation,” he responded. “I could cite her for that.”
The Beamer screeched to a halt in the grass, died with a gasp and a series of clicks and disgorged Kendra on one side and Joslyn on the other.
Kendra marched straight up to Hutch, doubled up both fists and pounded unceremoniously on his chest.
He laughed and caught her by the wrists.
She struggled, but not, as far as Slade could see, with any real conviction.
“Hutch Carmody,” Kendra sputtered, “you are a stupid, proud, bullheaded—”
He kissed her then.
The crowd cheered.
Joslyn stepped up alongside Slade and poked him hard in the ribs. “And you’re just as bad,” she said. “Don’t you dare kiss me, either!”
He did, though. Hard and deep and with tongue.
There was more whooping and hollering from the onlookers.
Shea, by that time, had retreated to stand with Opal and Callie at the edge of the group. Jasper, usually his daughter’s faithful sidekick, had been left at home. The girl’s eyes brimmed with tears, and she was still pale, but she held her chin high and her shoulders were back.
“I love you,” Slade told Joslyn.
She blinked up at him, and her mouth dropped open. Her hair was windblown from the drive out from town, and her eyes flashed with temper, with surprise, with the passion her body had already betrayed, however much she might deny it after the fact.
“What did you say?” she gasped, pushing her hair back from her face with one hand. The wind was picking up, and a few drops of rain spattered the hard dirt of the road that ran alongside the river.
“You heard me,” Slade said quietly. “I love you, Joslyn Kirk.”
A confused smile broke across her face, busting right through the frustration and the fury and the fine layer of dirt from the off-road approach in Kendra’s car. “Oh,” she said.
Her eyes shone, but then, like the sky, they clouded over. “I love you, too,” she whispered, almost angrily. “Which is why I’m asking you to forget this race and settle things with Hutch in a sensible, adult way.”
“Sorry, but that isn’t going to happen,” he told her with a wry glance at Hutch and Kendra, who were standing a few yards away, arguing nose-to-nose, with their fists clenched. He noticed, with further amusement, that Boone had eased closer to them, in case there was a need for riot control, evidently.
Hutch looked over at him. Like Slade, he wasn’t wearing a hat.
When their gazes collided, there was another roar of thunder, as though they’d generated the uneasy weather themselves.
“Let’s get this done,” Hutch said.
Slade nodded in agreement.
Joslyn stepped back, shaking her head as though in disbelief. Was she crying, or were those raindrops sparkling on her face?
Hutch pulled away from Kendra, who might have tackled him and gone right on hammering him with her fists, if Boone hadn’t taken hold of her shoulders from behind, and John Carmody’s
two sons led their horses to stand side by side.
“To the bend and back,” Hutch reminded Slade when they were both in their racing saddles, bought specially for the occasion.
Slade nodded again, and, as if by reflex rather than intention, they shook hands.
A neighbor drew what passed for a starting line across the dirt road with a long stick. Another raised a pistol, pointed skyward and waited.
The rain came down harder, splotching the ground, raising the pungent scent of wet dust.
Slade and Hutch bent low over their horses’ necks, waiting for the signal.
The pistol went off, and both Remington and Highlander bolted off the line, first at a trot, then a gallop, then a run.
The two geldings were side by side, as though they might be pacing each other, but neither Slade nor Hutch slapped down the reins or nudged their mount with the heel of a boot to speed them up. There was time.
The course was simple, if rough. Half a mile to the bend, half a mile back.
Slade felt pure joy surge up inside him, loving the ride for its own sake, loving the angry sky and the intermittent rolls of thunder and the green Montana range grass, bent under the wind. Loving the memory of Joslyn’s testy declaration, back by the starting line.
I love you, too, she’d said, looking as if she’d wanted to slap him stupid in one and the same moment.
He laughed, remembering that, and the horses hit their stride, running full-out now, streaks of sheer, elemental power tearing along that rain-dappled road. Beside him, Hutch gave a wild shout, celebrating the race both of them had, on some level, been anticipating all their lives.
It was true, what he’d said to Shea, that this wasn’t about the ranch. It wasn’t about winning or losing, either, he realized. It was about being brothers, him and Hutch, whether they liked it or not, and acknowledging that fact through action, rather than just words.
It was about being young, too, in their prime. And it was definitely about being male.
They reached the bend, neither horse tiring yet, crisscrossed in a big loop of space and started back.
By then, both men were soaked with rainwater and laughing like a pair of fools, and the horses, instead of slowing down, ran even harder.
Hutch and Slade let the animals have their heads at the same moment, it seemed—the race was between Remington and Highlander now, and both geldings were in deadly earnest. Both of them wanted to win.
Hutch gave another exuberant whoop and bent low again over Remington’s long, lathered neck.
Slade did the same on Highlander, without the yell. He could hardly see now for the rain in his face.
The geldings shot across the line, Highlander barely a head in front of Remington, but it was enough.
Both men reined in carefully, giving the horses time to slow and then stop when they were ready.
Women and ranch hands and various members of the crowd rushed toward them.
“You win, Slade,” Hutch said, so quietly that he was barely audible over the storm and the shouts of the approaching throng. Then, incredibly, he laughed, a raucous sound, with something broken in it. “But not by very damn much.”
Slade’s horse pranced and turned in circles as it cooled down, and he allowed that, easy in the saddle. “We’re done with this?” he asked his half brother.
“We’re done,” Hutch told him, somewhat wearily.
“Good,” Slade answered, just as Shea and Joslyn pulled ahead of the oncoming wave of people headed their way. “Then I accept your latest offer to buy me out—Whisper Creek is all yours.”
Hutch’s face changed, and his mouth fell open. “What—?”
“Maggie Landers will handle the deal,” Slade finished. Swinging one leg over Highlander’s neck, he jumped to the wet ground. His hair and clothes were plastered to his skin by then, and Joslyn splashed through a puddle just before she leaped off the ground and flung herself into his arms, sobbing that he was a fool.
He laughed and held her, kissed her temple and winked at Shea, who was standing nearby, looking up at him with a mixture of relief, admiration and indignation.
She smiled, though, oblivious to the pouring rain, and then turned to walk away.
Slade kissed Joslyn soundly, and she kissed him right back with spirit. And when their mouths parted, she clung to his shirtfront with both hands and cried even harder, the sound strangely punctuated by gulping giggles.
“You’re all right,” she said, choking out the words. “You’re safe.”
“I’m better than all right,” he told her. If he could have had his way, he’d have taken her straight to the nearest bedroom, peeled off those sodden clothes of hers, along with his own, and made love to her for hours.
But that would have to wait. He had to get Highlander back to the barn at Hutch’s place, rub the animal down, feed and water him, along with Chessie and Sundance.
“Did you mean it—before?” Joslyn asked.
Hutch was swarmed by the spectators, though they seemed to be giving Slade and Joslyn plenty of space.
Slade touched the tip of Joslyn’s nose.
Rain poured down in torrents, drenching them both.
“You know the deal,” he said. “I never say anything I don’t mean—especially not ‘I love you.’”
“What happens now?”
“I tend to my horse, Opal and Shea spend the rest of the day with Callie at the Curly-Burly, the three of them discussing my stupidity and stubbornness the whole while, no doubt, and you and I meet at my place. We get naked, take a hot shower and do a whole lot of rolling around on my bed.”
She smiled, tried in vain to wipe her face on the sleeve of her wet shirt and nodded. “See you there,” she said, kissing him on the chin and then turning to walk away.
Kendra’s car was stuck by then and had to be pushed onto the road, muddy as it was, an exercise in cussing that involved half a dozen men. Someone had put the top up, fortunately, and when the vehicle was on solid ground again, both Kendra and Joslyn got inside.
Slowly, the party dissolved.
Hutch and Slade rode their tired horses back to the barn, so the animals could work the kinks out of their legs along the way, paying no heed at all to the steady rain. Conversation was virtually impossible by then, but it didn’t matter.
They might never be friends, he and Hutch, but they’d settled something that day, and it brought a new and fragile kind of peace.
“You didn’t throw that race, did you?” Slade asked, when they were both inside the Whisper Creek barn, unsaddling their horses.
“Hell, no,” Hutch replied, leading Remington into a stall before he removed the bridle. “You won, fair and square. But just barely.”
Slade chuckled, shook his head. “True enough,” he said, as he preceded Highlander in the stall across from Remington’s and reached for a grooming brush. “At the track, it would have been a photo finish.”
Hutch murmured a few soothing words to his horse and took up a brush of his own. “A deal’s a deal,” he reminded Slade from the other side of the breezeway. “We agreed that if you won, you could move into the main house and run the ranch as an equal partner.”
“I don’t want half of Whisper Creek, Hutch,” Slade replied forthrightly, still working with the horse, who was finally settling down, muscle by twitching muscle, munching hungrily at the fresh hay in his feeder. “I mean to buy the place I’m living on now, put up a barn and good fences, add on to the house.”
Hutch left off brushing Remington down and left the stall, carefully closing the door behind him and then crossing to stand in looking in at Slade and Highlander. “Is that what you were planning to do all along?” he asked, resting his forearms on the stall gate.
Like Slade, he was soaked to the skin. Like Slade, he didn’t seem to give a damn.
Slade considered the question, sighed before he answered, “Probably.”
“Then why the race?”
“Because you challenged me to it, I
suppose,” Slade said with a grin. He’d finished with Highlander; it was time to let the gelding rest. God knew, the critter had earned it.
Hutch laughed, stepped back so Slade could leave the stall. “The way you laid that kiss on Joslyn out there on the road, I’m thinking she’s got a place in your plans?”
Slade quirked his mouth into another grin. “Might be,” he allowed, moving on to Chessie’s stall. He had plans for Joslyn all right, but they were nothing he meant to discuss with Hutch. “What about you and Kendra?”
Hutch went into the next stall to feed Sundance. “She hates my guts,” he replied cheerfully. “I think she would have spit on me if she didn’t think it was a waste of saliva.”
Slade chuckled. “And I took you for the world’s greatest expert on women,” he said. “Guess I was wrong.”
Hutch’s head appeared in the gap above the wall that separated Chessie from Sundance. “What the hell do you mean by that?” he asked, peevish.
Slade shrugged one shoulder, patted Sundance’s gleaming, golden neck. Tried hard not to grin. “I figured you’d recognize passion when you saw it,” he said. “But apparently, it went right over your head.”
“I kissed her,” Hutch reminded him, almost defensively.
“Yeah,” Slade said, averting his face so his half brother couldn’t see his expression. “I noticed.”
“And you know how she responded?” Hutch challenged, stall to stall.
“No,” Slade replied, folding his arms. “I was a little busy at the time myself.”
“She kicked me, Slade. Square in the shin.”
Slade grimaced. “Ow,” he said.
“It probably cost me the race, in fact,” Hutch went on speculatively.
“Dream on, cowboy,” Slade responded, stepping back out into the breezeway as Hutch did the same. “Your horse was fast, mine was a shade faster, and your bruised shin had nothing to do with it.”
Hutch planted his feet a little apart, folded his arms and glowered. But for all that posturing, he didn’t seem to have an answer or a plan, and that made Slade want to laugh.
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