A COWBOY'S SECRET

by Anne McAllister

  Then they said, "He needs more time. He'll get it. If he tries, he'll get it. Another year."

  Two years of first grade. He got it – a little. Not like everybody else. He knew his letters. Most of the time. But sometimes he Wrote b when he meant d. And sometimes he wrote q when he meant g. And when he had to read out loud, he just froze because he couldn't remember which was which.

  "Slow down," the teacher told him. "Sound it out. Think." Then when he still couldn't do it, she'd ask, "Can anyone help J.D. out?"

  Well, everyone could. Everyone did. And they all looked pityingly at J.D.

  He didn't want anybody looking that way at him. He didn't want anybody thinking he was dumb! He wasn't dumb, he assured himself. He could add and subtract as good as anyone. Better. He could do it in his head. He could ride better, rope better, run faster and see farther than anybody in his class. He could tell which of his father's cattle was sick and which was hurt before anyone else could. He knew every cow at a glance, and none of them looked alike to him. Which was more than he could say for those letters on those pages he tried to decipher every day.

  They didn't get any more understandable if he stayed in at recess to learn them. They didn't make any more sense if he had to write them fifty times after school. The teacher said he wasn't paying attention, that he was being sloppy. And sometimes she was right. But most of the time he didn't read because he couldn't, and he didn't write because he got it wrong.

  "J.D. isn't doing his work," they told his parents. "He's lazy."

  He wasn't. But it was better to look lazy than stupid. At least that way it seemed like he didn't care.

  He cared. He'd been kept back twice by then. He was eleven, going on twelve. Most of the kids were nine. It was humiliating. He hated it. Hated school. Hated teachers. Hated the stupid little kids who thought he was a stupid bigger kid.

  That was the year he started getting into fights.

  It worried his mother. It made his dad mad.

  It wasn't like he wanted to fight. Not really. But when he fought, they didn't call him stupid anymore. They called him tough.

  It was an improvement.

  Kids left him alone. And he managed to get enough work done to pass.

  "See?" his teachers said. "He's got it. At last."

  He hadn't got "it." What he'd got was Gus.

  Three years younger than J.D., Gus idolized big his brother. He wanted to run like J.D., to ride like J.D., to do everything J.D. did.

  "Then you gotta practice," J.D. told him. "You aren't ever gonna be the best if you don't practice." He made Gus run. He made Gus ride. He made Gus read.

  As long as he had Gus, J.D. got by. He did fine in math without any help at all. Occasionally the 6s and the 9s confused him. But eventually he got the hang of them. Numbers, he discovered, were what they were. They didn't change sounds. They made sense.

  Letters never did.

  He made it all the way to high school on math and on Gus. But that was the end. He couldn't do high school without Gus. He tried. He failed.

  "He's not paying attention again," his teachers said.

  And before long they were right. He wasn't listening because it wasn't enough. He wasn't writing papers because he couldn't spell the words. He wasn't reading the assignments because he didn't know how.

  And, anyway, he had other things he wanted to do – things he was good at: like training and gentling horses, like tending and doctoring cattle.

  So he started missing classes to do them. His father didn't object. He saw how much happier J.D. was at home, working with the animals, than he was in school. And he needed the help.

  A trainer himself, Dan Holt had had a bad fall from a shying horse the year J.D. started high school. He hadn't been able to ride for several months.

  J.D. could. J.D. did.

  Riding was easy. He was good at it. He liked it. He liked horses. They didn't think he was stupid. Neither did the men who brought their business to his dad.

  They appreciated his work. They treated him like he was one of them. They thought he was smart.

  And even when he dropped out of high school the next year, they just shrugged their shoulders. "Aw, well," they said. "He's got better things to do. Some boys, you just can't keep 'em stuck in a schoolroom."

  The day he quit school had been the happiest day of J.D. Holt's life. He hadn't been a failure since.

  Until now.

  He stared around at the ranch he'd grown up on, the ranch he'd made so many plans for, the new corrals he'd built, the stable he'd finished just last month for the horses he had hoped to board and train. He liked the foreman's job – a lot more than he'd thought he would. But he'd wanted something else – something that belonged to him, something of his own that he'd developed from the ground up. Something that said J.D. Holt could be a success in this world.

  But now he knew he couldn't.

  Because he was too damn stupid to read his own mail! Because all the figuring and compensating and telling himself there were ways around being able to read ultimately didn't work.

  It was gone. His hope. His dream. His future.

  Not because of Trey. Not really. J.D.'s throat ached. His chest squeezed as if it was going to strangle his heart. But as much as he'd like to blame Trey, he knew that the old man was, for once, not the cause of his misery.

  The fault was his.

  The pain was his.

  The fury was his.

  His fists clenched. His whole body trembled. He blinked against the sudden angry mist that blurred his vision. Then he went into the shed and when he came out, he took a chain saw to his dreams.

  Lydia was in the shower washing off an afternoon's dust from riding horses with Kristen Brooks and her family when the phone rang.

  She was tempted to ignore it, but she was on call. So she shut off the shower and reached for the cordless.

  "Lydia? It's Jim."

  For a moment she couldn't think which Jim. Then she realized it was the sheriff.

  "Did I forget something?" she asked. She wasn't accustomed to bailing her clients out of jail. Criminal law wasn't the focus of the practice she and Rance ran.

  "No." He paused. It was a long pause. Then he said. "You just gotta come do it again."

  "What?"

  "He's back. J.D.," Jim explained unhappily, in case there was any question.

  "He's back? In jail? He went after Trey again?" She'd remembered J.D. having a temper. She remembered J.D. being in fights as a kid. But surely a grown man didn't do things like that.

  "Nothin' like that," Jim said quickly. "This wasn't assault. It was malicious mischief this time. Property damage.

  "Property…"

  "You know those corrals and that stable out on the Double H? The new ones? Well, now they're firewood."

  * * *

  "They were my corrals! It was my stable!" J.D. said furiously. "I built 'em! Where does he get the right—"

  "It doesn't matter who built them," Lydia told him. They were driving back to the ranch for the second time that day, and she was trying to explain how Trey could have had him hauled in and charged a second time. "They were on his property."

  J.D. muttered something under his breath that Lydia thought it was probably better she hadn't heard.

  She shouldn't be here at all, shouldn't have bailed him out, shouldn't have got involved a second time. The first time she'd just been doing her duty as Rance's partner. But now she knew better.

  She should have said, "No, sorry. I can't," to Jim. But that would have necessitated explanations – explanations she owed to J.D. before anyone else.

  So she'd had to come. She couldn't think what else to do. Jim had wanted to go home.

  "It's not that I think he's going to do something stupid," Jim said, then stopped and qualified that. "Something else stupid. Something to hurt himself, I mean. It's just that if he stays in jail, I stay in the office. It's the law. And I've got a wife and three kids and a two-month-old baby at hom
e, and no deputy here…"

  What else could she have done? "I'll be there," she'd promised.

  But J.D. hadn't come willingly. He'd sat stubbornly on the cot in his cell and said, "How do I know the old bastard won't have me thrown off the land?"

  "Jim told you, he said you have until the first of September. Provided you don't keep mowing things down."

  "They were my things!"

  And so it went. Finally he subsided into silence, and she did, too, trying to figure out how to say what needed to be said without setting off another explosion.

  But for a woman with an abundance of intellect and the oratorical skills to convince a jury, Lydia didn't have a clue as to how she was going to manage this.

  Only when she came over the rise and noted that, yes, there weren't any corrals or any stable, just a neatly stacked, very impressive pile of firewood, did she muster up the words to say what she should have said the first time she'd brought him home.

  She took a breath and said the words straight out. "We can't represent you."

  His head whipped around. "What? Why not? Because there is no defense?" His tone was sardonic. His hard blue gaze seemed to nail her right where she was.

  Lydia swallowed. "No. There's always a defense." Though in this case it was hard to imagine what it would be. "Because I have a conflict of interest."

  "Because I hit Trey and he's Rance's father?"

  She smiled slightly. "On those grounds, Rance would probably be more than willing to act in your behalf. This … has to do with the ranch."

  "My ranch?"

  "My ranch," Lydia corrected gently. She took a breath and got it over with. "As of September first, anyway. I'm the one who bought it from Trey."

  * * *

  Chapter 2

  « ^ »

  Lydia Cochrane owned his ranch? Trey Phillips had sold the Double H to a city-girl lawyer?

  To a woman who didn't know one end of a horse from another? His land, his dream would become what? A hobby farm?

  "The hell you say!" J.D. stared at her, incredulous, half expecting her to grin and tell him it wasn't true. But he could see from the tilt of her chin and the fire flashing in her eyes that it was.

  "My money's as good as anyone else's," she said flatly. "Besides, you didn't want it."

  He gaped at her. "Like you asked me?"

  "Trey did," she reminded him.

  J.D. said a word his mother used to wash his mouth out for, a word he never used in front of a lady. But then, Lydia Cochrane wasn't a lady. She was a lawyer. "Sure he did. He sent a letter!"

  "You could have read it," Lydia said mildly. "You could have paid attention to the details of running your ranch. Opened your mail, for instance. If you had, you wouldn't be in this mess now."

  "Thank you very much. What do I owe you for that analysis?" he snarled at her.

  Something flickered in her eyes. Hurt? Hardly. He was the one who was hurting. She was the one who'd caused it.

  Now she pasted on a smile. "Consider it free advice."

  He jerked open the car door and got out. "I'll be out by morning," he said over his shoulder. He slammed the car door, wheeled away and started toward the house.

  The other car door banged and quick footsteps came after him. "J.D.!"

  He kept walking.

  "Damn it, J.D. You can't leave!"

  "Try an' stop me," he muttered.

  A hand grabbed him by the arm and pulled him up short. She'd grabbed his arm this morning in the jail, when she'd probably thought he was going to take a pop at Jim Muldoon. He was surprised again at how strong her grip was He would have shaken her off, but something fierce in her expression made him think she wouldn't be easy to shed.

  And the last thing he needed now was to get into a battle with a woman on top of everything else! So he just stood there and stared stonily from her face to the fingers digging into his arm.

  Her gaze followed his. Slowly she eased her grip, then dropped her hand. But even then, her eyes were still fierce. "You can't leave," she insisted.

  The urgency in her tone reminded him of half a dozen distraught teachers who had, over the years, told him a thousand things he couldn't do.

  He shrugged negligently. "Sure I can."

  "But you don't need to." She sounded almost desperate as she looked up at him with her big bright eyes.

  No lawyer should have eyes like that. And she was standing way too close. J.D. could smell some sort of soft, flowery, feminine scent when the wind shifted. He took a step backward.

  "I don't? Why not? You gonna make me an offer I can't refuse?" He gave her an insolent grin. He didn't use it much these days. He was comforted to find it came back quickly. For a moment he thought he'd bested her, thought she'd turn and jump back in that yuppie car of hers and hightail it down the road.

  But then Lydia Cochrane's chin came up. "You wish."

  And, damn him for a fool, for an instant he did. He and Lydia Cochrane? The lawyer and the illiterate? There was a laugh.

  "Me? Wish?" He let his gaze slide down her in leisurely appraisal from head to toes. Then he shook his head. "Nope, sorry, sweetheart. Not on your life."

  And just like that, the light in her eyes went out.

  He actually saw it happen. As if he'd thrown a bucket of ice water right in her face, J.D. saw her blink and blink again – and then her expression became shuttered, stony, cold, flat.

  "Of course you wouldn't," she said in a voice as flat as her gaze. "And I assure you, the feeling is mutual, Mr. Holt." Then she turned abruptly and headed toward her car.

  "I—" Didn't mean it he started to say. But he had.

  She kept walking.

  He glared after her, furious. She'd stolen his ranch and now she acted like he'd hurt her feelings!

  "Hell!" J.D. turned and gave his mother's old mounting block a savage kick, then swallowed a pain-induced curse.

  Lydia turned. She looked at him curiously, quizzically. Then a corner of her mouth twitched as he hopped on one foot.

  "Tripped," he muttered as he gritted his teeth and tried to act like he'd just accidentally stubbed his damn toes, not broken them. The pain was hissing through his teeth.

  He saw Serves you right as plain as day in her expression. But all she said was, "I'll be in touch with the names of some lawyers."

  As if that would help.

  He glared at her. But she just got in her car and drove away.

  Goaded, he shouted, "You do that! Send me a letter!"

  * * *

  She sent him a letter.

  In it Lydia told him politely and professionally that the firm of Phillips and Cochrane would not be able to represent him because of a conflict of interest. She didn't spell the conflict out. No sense in rubbing salt in the wound. She suggested several attorneys he might contact.

  She trusted he would read this letter. Then she put it – and him – firmly out of her mind. For about an hour and a half.

  It was hard to put J.D. out of her mind completely. She owned his ranch.

  And she felt unaccountably guilty for doing so. It wasn't her fault, she tried to tell herself. It was his. She wouldn't own the ranch if he'd read his mail. The simple fact was, he hadn't.

  So the Double H was hers.

  Her good fortune. J.D. Holt's bad luck.

  She supposed she should say she would sell it to him. That would be the kind, compassionate thing to do.

  And Lydia Cochrane – Patron Saint Of The Perpetual Underdog, Rance called her – ordinarily would have considered doing just that, but in this instance she was too selfish.

  She didn't much like admitting it. She certainly didn't admire it in herself.

  But the fact was, when Trey had said he'd sell it to the first person who came along, she'd jumped at it.

  The Double H Ranch was her dream come true. It had been the ranch she'd longed for ever since she'd gone out there with her father all those years ago.

  It was the Double H she thought of whenev
er she pictured her ideal home. It was nothing like her real childhood home had been – a somewhat cold, sterile place where she had existed but had never seemed to fit. After she'd grown up, she'd lived in a series of nondescript apartments that weren't home, either. The current one was a second-floor, one-bedroom in an old, wood-frame building. Her downstairs neighbor was an antique shop, and next door sat LeRoy's Auto Repair. The place had been the only rental unit available in town when she'd come from Helena two years ago.

  She'd told herself it was temporary, that she'd find something soon – or she'd decide that coming back to Murray was a mistake and move on.

  But coming back to Murray had been a good move. And. she'd assured herself, the right place would open up in time.

  She'd never dared hope it would be the Double H. And since it was … well, even a woman like Lydia could be selfish when it came to hanging on to a dream.

  It was odd, really, that she'd felt so attached to a ranch. She'd certainly never spent much time on one. But despite her lack of experience, it was where she felt she'd belonged.

  Her whole life Lydia had hated being a town kid. She'd envied the ranch kids in her class who came to school each morning on the bus while she and her sister, Letty, had walked the five blocks from their home to the school. They might as well have lived in New York or Chicago, she'd wailed at her mother more than once, for all the horses and cows she ever saw.

  Being a banker's daughter had been a sore cross to bear. Her mother wasn't sympathetic. Nor was her father. No one was. Not even her best friend, Kristen, who had grown up on a medium-size spread west of town.

  "Cows aren't all that great," Kristen told Lydia with clocklike regularity. "They smell and they're dirty and they drool."

  "Drool?"

  "Some of them," Kristen insisted. She had a new baby brother, and Lydia wondered if maybe Kristen wasn't getting them mixed up, but it didn't seem like something she wanted to get in an argument about.

  "Horses don't drool," she'd said.

  "No, but they step on you," Kristen countered. "They buck you off. They bite, too!"

  It was a case of familiarity breeding contempt, Lydia decided. She let it drop. They didn't talk a lot about ranching after that. They talked about school and homework and getting all A's and which college they were going to go to, and which law school – because Kristen was every bit as ambitious and brainy as Lydia.