Crossing Nevada

by Jeannie Watt

  Now all she had to do was find a sewing machine.

  * * *

  “DAD, HAVE YOU seen Misty?”

  “Not lately.” The last time he’d seen Emma’s cat, she’d been curled up with Benny on the porch.

  “I can’t find her. It’s feeding time and she didn’t show up.”

  “She’s probably hunting,” Zach said. “She’s disappeared before for a day or two.”

  “I’m.” Emma placed her hands on her hips. “Worried.”

  “I. Know.” Emma worried too much. Which at times worried Zach. “Give her a little time.”

  Emma had lost her first cat shortly after Karen had died, when she needed a pet to cling to. She hadn’t allowed herself to get attached to another until orphan Misty had appeared at the school last year.

  “You don’t think she got hurt in that fire?”

  “Unlikely.”

  “But she could easily have traveled over there.”

  “Yes, but Misty isn’t stupid. She would have been out of the barn the second it caught fire.” Zach pushed his hat back. “I’m sure she’ll turn up soon.”

  “All right.” Emma pressed her lips together and went back into the house, long braids bouncing as she ran up the porch steps. Damn but he hoped nothing had happened to the cat. Since Karen’s death it had been an ongoing battle to not try to protect his daughters from every other hurt in the world. As he well knew, a person couldn’t control everything...but they could damn well kill themselves trying.

  * * *

  “HEY, DAD?” DARCY called from the porch. “Irv’s on the phone. He wants to know if you can stop by the firehouse today.”

  “Tell him no. I’m going up on the mountain.” Three of his cows had ended up on the neighboring feed allotment and he needed to find how they were getting out. Darcy disappeared back into the house and Zach continued saddling Roscoe.

  A few minutes later he whistled for Benny and set out for what was probably going to be a long day.

  “Hey, Dad?” Darcy stood on the porch again. He stopped Roscoe and turned back, wondering what Irv wanted now. “Have you seen Misty?”

  “Em already asked. No.”

  Her thin shoulders slumped and she went back into the house, his caretaker child. Sometimes he wished Darcy didn’t feel the need to solve all problems for her sisters, but he knew where she got the inclination. He’d given up trying to convince her that she didn’t need to mother her sisters.

  Once he turned onto the county road, he urged Roscoe into a trot to take some of the kinks out. It’d been a couple weeks since they rode and the horse was feeling his oats. Roscoe was an excellent horse in many ways—he had incredible endurance and good cow sense, but he also had a propensity for shying when he wasn’t in the mood to work. And the more time he spent in the pasture with the cows, the less he felt like working. Zach was not in the mood to put up with any nonsense today. He had fences to fix.

  The county road made a T about half a mile from his place, the road running along the base of the mountain, but Zach continued straight ahead, through the Murray Ranch’s open gate and down a rutted track of a road that led up the side of Lone Summit. After he gained some altitude, he stopped and looked back over the valley, his gaze immediately drawn to the Anderson place, where there was now a blackened smear of ash and cinders where the large barn once stood.

  What was his neighbor going to do about the remains? Hire someone to clean it up? Leave it? He could have given her the names of a couple of people who would clean up the mess at a very reasonable price, but he wasn’t going to go out of his way to do that. He didn’t like her attitude and it still pissed him off that she’d been cranky with his kids, even if they were in the wrong. They were kids, damn it, and had been using that path for most of their lives. Jim Anderson certainly hadn’t cared.

  But she did.

  Maybe she had reason.

  Jeff’s words drifted into his mind and Zach firmly shoved them aside as he pulled Roscoe’s head around to start back up the trail. Stewing about the neighbor wasn’t going to find his cattle and the hole they’d escaped from.

  And neither was looking for them, it turned out. After easily finding the section of downed fence and repairing it, he scoured the mountain for almost five hours before coming to the conclusion that his missing ladies must have crossed to the other side. People tended to underestimate the mobility of cattle. He’d seen cows jump a five-foot fence from a standing start and he’d found them traversing craggy passes that he wouldn’t ride his horse over.

  Zach pushed back his hat, wiping the back of his sleeve over his forehead. He’d make some calls once he got home, put the word out and hopefully someone would find his cows in their herd.

  The trip down the mountain was much faster than the trip up, despite the fact that riding downhill was harder on the horse. Roscoe was in a hurry to get home and Zach gave him his head for the most part. They traveled down into a small valley behind the foothill and then topped the last rise before home, when Zach pulled the horse up. Below them, in Murray’s field, he could see a lone figure and two brown dogs ambling along.

  It had to be Tess. No one else had two wolflike dogs.

  Zach should have rode on by, kept his distance and tended to his own business. Should have. He didn’t.

  Once Zach hit Murray’s field, he turned to the left, despite Roscoe’s head-tossing protestations that home was straight ahead, and rode toward Tess. She slowed to a halt when she saw him coming. The dogs stopped hunting and instantly returned to her side.

  Even from a distance he could read her body language, saw her fighting the urge to turn and simply walk away—or perhaps run away. But today there was no door to shut in his face. Just the two of them in a field that neither one of them owned, but that he had permission to cross when necessary. Did she?

  She wore sunglasses instead of her regular glasses and for the first time Zach was able to get a good look at the reddish, relatively fresh scars extending from the area covered by her oversize sunglasses to the edge of her mouth. Another shorter scar started at her temple and met the long scar midcheek, forming a rough Y-shape. Tess’s hand went up to her cheek as he continued to stare and then she lowered it again. In the harsh light of day, the scars were impressive. Whatever had cut her face had been jagged, reinforcing his theory that she’d been in one hell of a car accident. Did a car accident explain her attitude?

  Perhaps she was bitter about having her face ruined. Who wouldn’t be? But she didn’t need to take it out on him and his family, or whoever else happened to be near.

  Or perhaps she was damned afraid of something.

  But she didn’t look afraid. She looked defiant as she stood with her chin up, as if daring him to ask about her injuries. He didn’t, but he did have another matter he wanted to discuss—for his girls’ sake.

  “You do realize you’re trespassing, don’t you?”

  She had the grace to blush, which surprised him. A lot. “Is this your property?” she asked. He was tempted to say yes, as she so obviously expected him to.

  “No.”

  She put her hands on her hips, pulling the ugly T-shirt taut, outlining the curves of her breasts. Which Zach was taking pains not to notice.

  “Then aren’t you trespassing, too?”

  “I have permission.”

  Tess glanced down at the ground for a moment, then back up at him, her sunglasses reflecting the mountain behind him. “There’s no
house here,” she finally said. “I’m not disturbing anyone’s privacy.”

  “Oh.” He held her eyes for a moment—or assumed he did, since her glasses were so dark he couldn’t see her eyes. “So, that’s the criteria for trespassing? A residence? And here for all these years I thought it’d been a matter of posting the place.” He pointed at a sign on a fence post near the road.

  She let out a breath. He could see her chest fall when she did so. There was no defense. He’d caught her dead to rights, and now that his point had been made, he was done. He nodded at her and reined Roscoe to the right, intending to take the shortcut through the field to his back pasture.

  He’d barely taken two steps when Tess suddenly called from behind him, “Be careful.”

  Pulling the bay to a stop, he looked back over his shoulder with a perplexed frown at the imperative note in her voice. What the hell?

  Tess gestured as if embarrassed at her outburst. “There’s a hole...somewhere over there. My dog fell into it and hurt himself. I wouldn’t want your horse...” She abruptly shut her mouth, as if she’d said too much.

  “So that’s what happened to your dog. I’d wondered.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  They both knew why he didn’t just ask, but he answered anyway. “You aren’t that easy to talk to.”

  “Maybe I have a reason for that,” she said darkly, unknowingly echoing Jeff’s words. She turned then and started walking back toward the boundary fence for her own property, her strides long, her eyes focused on her house as if it was a target.

  Zach watched her go with a slight frown. The last thing he’d expected after purposely going out of his way to give her a hard time was for her to warn him about prospective danger—even if she was only thinking of his horse.

  “Hey,” Zach called after her. She stopped, hunching her shoulders a bit, as if she’d been desperate to escape and had just been caught, which didn’t read at all as bitterness or anger.

  “Can you show me where this hole is?” he asked.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IT WAS ON the tip of Tess’s tongue to say, “I think you can find the hole without me,” but she didn’t. She wasn’t certain how she knew—maybe it was just the slight change in his tone of voice, or the what-the-hell-am-I-doing? look on his face—but Zach was making a peace offering. Maybe not a full armistice, but a token, and after everything that had happened between them, she was going to be reasonable about it. She had enough issues without continuing to fight on all fronts.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to say yes. Instead she nodded and then called the dogs, telling them to stay close. She didn’t want another vet visit.

  Zach dismounted as she approached and she almost turned back around. Tess hadn’t expected him to walk with her, to wait next to his tall bay horse for her to reach him.

  And she hadn’t expected every nerve in her body to go on high alert once she was close to him. He was taller than she remembered, or maybe she was just way more aware of him out here in the field, where she had no place to escape. And he smelled good.

  Married man. Children.

  “It’s, uh, this way,” she said as she pointed, her voice ridiculously husky. “I think.”

  They walked slowly through the tall grass, the horse reaching out for a mouthful every now and then as he trailed behind Zach, who was focused on what he could see of the ground in front of them. And she was focused on Zach—out of the corner of her eye. He was wearing jeans that were nearly worn out from work, not from processing and chemicals. His brown leather boots were scuffed and scarred and the pocket of his shirt was ripped so that it flapped slightly as he walked. Working clothes on a working man. And why was she so focused on his clothes?

  Because it kept her from focusing on the fact that she hadn’t been this aware of a man in a long, long time. It was only because they’d had a nasty argument the last time she’d seen him and now they were making peace. Because she was secretly grateful not to be fighting.

  But he was still too close for comfort.

  “You can probably see better from horseback,” she pointed out.

  “So if the horse goes into the hole, I go in, too?” he asked.

  “That was my plan,” she said without looking at him.

  He gave a soft snort, which may have been a laugh, but when she glanced over at him, he wasn’t smiling. He had lines, though, at the corners of his eyes, that hinted that he was a man who smiled and laughed. Or had been. There was an air about him, sadness maybe, or resignation. She couldn’t decide.

  “Your dogs are well behaved,” he commented after a few silent seconds.

  “They had a good trainer,” she replied.

  He kept his gaze straight ahead as he said, “You?”

  It was her turn to snort. “No. Hardly. They were trained when I got them.”

  “You adopted them?” Now he did look at her and once she met his eyes, it was hard to look away again, but she did.

  “You could say that.”

  He cut her a sidelong glance when she didn’t elaborate, but kept walking. A few seconds later he stopped as a deep narrow ditch came into sight through the tall grass only a few feet in front of them.

  “Diversion ditch,” he said, parting the grass and moving closer. “I didn’t realize Murray had put one in. Must have been last year.”

  He’d barely gotten the words out when his horse bumped his shoulder with his nose, pushing him forward. Zach stumbled, almost fell into the ditch, then rounded on the animal, an irritated expression on his face.

  “If you knock me in this ditch, you’re going to be sorry,” he said. The horse, looking patently insulted at Zach’s harsh tone, took a few steps back.

  Tess pressed her lips together to hold back a laugh. Damn, how long had it been since she’d laughed? When she looked back at Zach she lost the struggle and smiled.

  “What?” he asked, straightening his shirt with one hand. There was grassy horse slobber on his shoulder.

  Tess cleared her throat, trying not to laugh. “Your horse seems very unrepentant.”

  “He is. This animal is shameless.” Zach shook his head with a half smile and Tess felt the undeniable pull of attraction and it had nothing to do with making peace. This was one hot guy. With a family. “But I don’t want him falling into ditches,” he said directly at the horse, before bringing his attention back to Tess. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “No problem,” Tess said, taking a casual step back and folding her arms across her midsection, closing herself off. “I’m glad I know where it is now, so I can avoid it next time I trespass.”

  “Will that be soon?”

  “Probably not now that I know how easy it is to catch me.”

  He smiled again, wider this time, his expression surprisingly open for all of a heartbeat.

  “You could call Murray and ask permission.”

  She smiled politely, knowing she wasn’t going to be calling anyone. She’d simply stay out of this field. Zach gave his head a slight shake. “You know, Tess, this isn’t a bad community.”

  “Meaning?” she asked, hating the defensive note that crept into her voice.

  “Just what I said. We’re not a bad bunch here. You might just...lower the shields a little. Get to know people. I think you’ll like them.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, sounding less than convincing, even to her own ears.

  He rubbed a hand over the
back of his neck, as if acknowledging he’d taken on a losing battle. “We didn’t start off well, you and I.”

  “I’d say that’s correct.”

  “But we are neighbors.”

  Tess nodded, her heart beating a bit faster as she wondered where he was going with this.

  “I’m not asking to be friends or anything,” he continued, “but...well...maybe we could be...less adversarial? For the good of everyone involved?”

  He was a couple feet away from her, but it seemed like he was closer. Much closer. She dropped her gaze down to his boots, but somehow it traveled up the worn denim of his jeans to his belt buckle, where it lingered for a few seconds, then up over his chambray shirt to his very blue eyes. His incredibly gorgeous very blue eyes.

  Tess needed to get out of there, to head back to the safety of her house. Safety that had nothing to do with post-traumatic stress and everything to do with being attracted to a man who had a wife and family.

  She forced a smile and pushed her hair back like she used to do, before her face was ruined, gave him her serene model look—a look she hadn’t used in a long, long time. “I’ll try,” she said. “I need to go now.”

  Zach nodded. “See you around. I guess.”

  “Likewise,” she said. But by the time the words had left her lips she and the dogs were already heading in the opposite direction. Toward safety.

  * * *

  TESS’S SEWING MACHINE arrived less than a week after she’d ordered it. The UPS man never bothered knocking anymore, so she found the sewing machine box on the porch early Friday morning, along with another box from an online sewing site containing two how-to-sew DVDs—chosen at random from the zillions available since her internet was too slow to watch online tutorials—a book, a couple dress patterns—“very easy” according to the label—scissors, needles, pins, fabric and thread.

  Now it was all here on her porch and she had to figure out what to do with everything.