by Jeannie Watt
“I thought cowboys rode horses,” she said, not quite ready to be all alone again.
He smiled, the corners of his mouth tilting up in an interesting way that had her nerves humming and made her want to smile back. “Generally we ride whatever will get the job done fastest.” He put a hand on his thigh and she fought not to follow the movement. “I should have asked this sooner, but your dogs won’t chase cattle, will they?”
Tess rubbed a hand over her upper arm. “They never leave the yard.”
“What about your walks across the field?”
She gave a soft snort. As if she was going to walk across a field with cows in it. No, thank you. “I’ll find another way to get my exercise,” she said.
He seemed satisfied with that and reached for the ignition key. Tess turned to go back into the house as he started the engine, then paused on the porch to look back and watch him drive through the open gate and start riding along the fence line, the ATV bumping and bouncing along. It looked like fun.
Tess opened the door and retreated into her sanctuary.
* * *
WHEN TESS O’NEIL relaxed, dropped her shields, she seemed to transform into a different person, giving Zach a glimpse of what she might have once been like before whatever had driven her here to Barlow Ridge. Not that she’d relaxed all that much while talking to him, but she’d been less defensive than before. And when she’d fought that smile, he’d found himself wanting to tell her to go with it. Ease up a little.
A half hour after Zach had driven through the gate, he drove back out again. He’d made two minor repairs, but all in all, the fence was in good shape. He left the gate open, since his cattle knew exactly where they were going when he started them down Tess’s driveway, and then rode back to Tess’s house to give her a time frame for keeping her dogs in the house. The last thing he needed was a wreck involving Tess’s urban dogs, Benny and a bunch of mama cows hell-bent on protecting their calves.
And speak of the devils... The dogs tore around the house when Zach parked the ATV, jumping up on the gate, barking wildly.
“Afliggen!” Tess yelled as she came around the corner of the house. The dogs instantly dropped to their bellies, obviously waiting for another command.
Impressive and telling. He knew from Jeff’s experience with K-9 that protection dogs were often given commands in a foreign language.
“Sorry about that,” Tess said, coming through the gate.
“Let me know when you’ve gone over the contract and if it’s agreeable, I’ll move the cows,” Zach said, keeping his eyes on the dogs, who were now grinning and wagging their tails, but still on their bellies as Tess had commanded.
“Sure.” Tess nodded as she bent down to stroke the injured dog.
“How safe is it for my daughter to be around those dogs?”
“Totally safe,” Tess said with a lift of her eyebrows. “They put on a big show, but don’t do anything.”
“Unless told?” he guessed. Tess cocked her head at him, her eyes narrowing slightly. “They act like guard dogs.”
“They’re retired.”
“You have retired guard dogs for pets?”
Her barriers started sliding back up again. “Actually they’re personal protection dogs, not K-9s or anything, and yes, they are my pets. They had to go somewhere when their owner no longer wanted them.”
That sounded reasonable, unless you added in their current owner’s scars, desire for isolation and defensiveness.
“What brought you here, Tess?” he said softly. It was a reasonable question if his girls were going to be in contact with her.
Tess stood up, her fingers clutching the edge of her plain black T-shirt. “I needed a break from my old life.”
His gaze settled on her scars, but he let her get away with the half-truth. And now that her glasses were not obscuring her eyes, he could see they were a shade of green he’d never seen before. Green like the Depression glass his mother used to collect.
“How long have you been here?” she asked, apparently trying to make it seem as if they were having a normal conversation. They weren’t. Too many undercurrents.
“I was born here,” he said. “The ranch belonged to my parents. Shortly after I got married, they moved to Colorado where my dad was raised, so my wife and I bought the place from them.” She didn’t flicker an eyelash at his announcement, which told him that she knew about Karen.
“Generational ranch, then?” she said.
“Yours was a generational ranch, too, right up until old Jim Anderson got put into the home. He tried to sell it to pay for his care. Ended up leasing when no one bought.”
“He had no family?”
“None that wanted to buy a ranch.”
“Good for me, I guess.” She pressed her lips together and glanced down at her shoes. Her hair fell forward, hiding the scars, making Zach want to gently brush it back, find out if it felt as silky as it looked, shining in the sun.
The reaction startled him.
It was time to go.
* * *
TESS WATCHED ZACH ride down her driveway, barely visible in the cloud of dust the ATV kicked up. The next time he stopped by, she was sticking to hi and bye. No lingering chitchat, because she didn’t want him asking more questions.
Why had she moved here?
You don’t want to know, Zach.
Maybe she would have been better off if she hadn’t leased the property. Things had been simpler when it was just her and the dogs, living her isolated life...and she hadn’t been thinking about a guy she couldn’t have.
Tess read the contract as she drank a glass of wine later that afternoon—the first alcohol she’d touched since moving to the ranch because she hadn’t wanted anything to dull her senses, make her slower to react. Today she indulged. Today something other than Eddie was keeping her on edge. Zach.
The contract was simple and to the point, just as she’d assumed it would be. Either party could end the agreement with thirty days’ notice. She got paid monthly and the terms of the contract would be reviewed for renewal every twelve months. Good enough. She smiled a little when she read the part about her being allowed access to her own land during the lease period.
He’d taken care of the potential trespass issues.
CHAPTER TEN
ZACH WAS SADDLING Roscoe for the morning mountain ride when he heard the crunch of gravel behind him. Tess. It had to be. He finished pulling up the cinch, then dropped the stirrup. By the time he was done, Tess was only a few feet away. She stopped as soon as he looked at her, leaving a good stretch of gravel between them.
She held up a folded paper. “Did I come at a bad time?”
“Not at all,” he said, untying Roscoe and walking a few steps toward her. He had a strong feeling that she wanted to cut and run, as she always did when she wasn’t on home turf, but she held her ground as he approached.
“I take it you had no problems with the terms?” he said, taking the paper she held out to him.
Tess shrugged. “It’s very straightforward.”
“That’s the way I like things,” he said, folding the paper again and slipping it into his shirt pocket, making a mental note to take it out before he did laundry. “No convoluted language, no bullshit.”
“You wouldn’t have made a very good lawyer,” Tess said, putting her hands into her pockets.
“Which is probably why I’m here wearing jeans instead of gabardine.”
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br /> “I don’t think lawyers wear gabardine,” Tess replied with a half smile. A breakthrough. Zach wanted to see if he could get more.
“See how ill prepared I would be for that profession? I wouldn’t even be able to dress properly.”
As he’d hoped, her smile widened. Even with the scar pulling at the left corner of her mouth, it was something. And gone too soon.
“Going out to do...cowboy stuff?” she asked, nodding at Roscoe.
“Yeah,” Zach said. “I’m going out to ride the range, round up some doggies.” He wondered if she knew that a doggie with a long o was a calf.
“What do you really do?” she asked, once again fighting a smile. This was the Tess that intrigued him, the Tess he wanted to get to know.
“Look for holes in the fence, try to find the cows that got out through those holes and put them back where they belong.”
“I’d hate to keep you from that,” she said with another ghost of a smile.
“I’ll walk with you to the road.”
“I don’t want to slow you down.” Tess took a step backward as she spoke, her heel catching on the low curb of concrete next to the barn, and Zach put a hand to her elbow, to both steady her and stop her from retreating so fast. Her breath caught as he made contact, her eyes flashing up to his in an instantaneous fear reaction. Fight or flight. Zach let go of her arm.
She’s been assaulted.
The thought hit him from out of nowhere. He could be wrong, but he didn’t think so. Not judging by the way fear had flashed in her eyes at his unexpected touch. And suddenly a whole lot of stuff made sense and he felt like a jerk for not considering this possibility earlier. No. He’d assumed she’d been in a car wreck.
An assault may not have anything to do with the scars...but he was pretty sure it did.
Zach stepped back, bumping into Roscoe as he gave Tess space, and she let out the breath she’d been holding once he was a good two feet away from her. For a long moment she solemnly held his eyes as if silently asking him to forget what had just happened. He wouldn’t forget, but he wouldn’t ask any questions, either. Yet.
“You can walk with me,” she said, as if nothing had happened.
“Let’s go.”
They started down the driveway in a not very easy silence, and then Tess pointed to his boots. “How comfortable are those things?”
“I’ve put in miles and miles in these things,” he said, glad she was making an effort at conversation. Glad she hadn’t hightailed it home after he’d touched her. “Almost five miles once when Roscoe here abandoned me up on the mountain.”
“He what?” Her eyebrows went up comically.
“Not his fault.” That time. “I was working on the fence, spooked a buck and when the deer jumped out of the underbrush, Roscoe took off.”
“Didn’t the girls worry when he came home without you?”
“They were at school. We all got home about the same time, except that I had blisters and they didn’t.”
Tess laughed, and though she didn’t look at him when he glanced over at her a few seconds later, a smile still played on her lips.
Satisfied, Zach left it at that. They walked the rest of the way down his long driveway to the county road and stood for a moment regarding Tess’s long driveway. The houses were both about a quarter mile from the road, so they sat a mere half mile apart—practically on top of each other in this country.
“What are you going to do about your barn?” he asked. The place still looked odd without the huge old wooden structure.
“What barn?” Tess asked innocently.
Zach smiled. In her effort to sidetrack him from her earlier reaction, she was dropping more barriers than usual. And Zach liked what he was seeing. “I guess I mean what’s left of the barn.”
Her forehead creased. “To tell you the truth...I’m not sure.”
“I can contact a guy I know and get an estimate for a cleanup.”
“Which involves...?”
“Bringing in a loader and a truck and hauling the debris away.”
Tess brushed her hair back from the injured side of her face, without seeming to realize what she was doing. The still-red edges of the healing scars stood out against her pale skin.
The scars made him angry. Who’d done that to her?
He had to be careful about jumping to conclusions. The scars could still be the result of some other kind of accident. But he didn’t think so.
“Well,” she said, “it would be kind of nice not to have the dogs tracking black crud into the house every time they went outside. And I’ll have to do something about the propped-up fence before you put the cattle on the property. My dogs are natural shepherds, I hear, and they may want to shepherd your cows.”
“I can come by tomorrow morning before I move the cows and put it back up for you.”
“Oh, no.” She flushed. That pale skin again. “I wasn’t trying to get you to do that.”
“I know,” he said simply.
She pressed her lips together briefly and he wondered if he’d stepped over the line, offered to help just a little too much. But then she gave a small nod and said, “If you want to.”
“I do.” He pushed his hat back. “We’re neighbors, after all, even if we did get off to a rocky start.”
“You mentioned that once before. Neighbors. The rocky start.”
“Maybe it was so rocky, it merits mentioning twice.”
The corners of her mouth tilted up. “Yes. Maybe.” The smile faded way too soon.
He wanted to touch her, reassure her that he was a good guy who meant her no harm, but knew that was the last thing she wanted. So instead he said, “I, uh, guess I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Yeah, I guess.” She tilted her chin up. “Tomorrow morning, then.”
She gave a brief, cool smile, then started walking down her stretch of driveway. Zach watched her for a moment, appreciating the way the sweatshirt curved over her butt and emphasized the sway of her hips, thanks to her hands being jammed so deeply in her pockets. He finally tore his eyes away and mounted Roscoe, turning the horse toward the mountain.
He glanced back over his shoulder at the exact instant Roscoe chose to shy violently at the horse-eating rock in the ditch.
“You son of a bitch,” Zach muttered as he regained his seat. He reined the horse around and made him approach the rock that he’d used as an excuse to shy. Roscoe blew through his nostrils as if terrified—a blatant ruse, since Zach had ridden him down this road about two zillion times without the rock attacking even once—and then touched his nose on the stone.
“Keep it up,” Zach said to the horse, “and I’ll sell you to those junior rodeo kids on the other side of the valley.” Even though he knew it’d be a long time before he found another horse with as much endurance and cow sense. Sometimes enough was enough.
* * *
AS SOON AS she walked into her house, Tess closed the door and leaned against it as the dogs joyously celebrated her safe return by dancing in front of her, poking their noses at her. Then she blew out a breath that lifted her bangs.
She ran her hand over her injured cheek, then abruptly pushed off the door and headed to the bathroom, dogs close on her heels, where she leaned over the sink and studied her face, first full on, and then tilted to either side.
Good side.
Bad side.
Pretty side.
Ugly side.
&nbs
p; She studied the way the corner of her left eye was pulled down. The nasty jagged red lines, the upward tilt of that side of her mouth from the healing scar tissue. Things could be done, eventually, to mitigate some of the damage to her face, but it would take time. That wasn’t what was bothering her.
Why was Zach flirting with her? Or if not flirting, then being so very nice? It couldn’t be because he wanted something. She’d given him the pasture.
Tess turned away from the mirror and went back to the lonely living room where her sewing machine sat with fabric draped over it.
She didn’t want to think about why he was being so nice, because Tess did not want to get knocked on her ass again—especially since she was so damned attracted to him and didn’t totally trust herself.
And she wasn’t even going to think about whether or not he’d noticed her knee-jerk reaction when he’d reached out to touch her earlier. Of course he’d noticed—but that didn’t mean he’d interpreted her response correctly. How could he have?
He may have just thought she was reacting to nearly falling.
Yes. That was what she was going to believe.
* * *
BETH ANN PULLED into the driveway shortly before Zach crossed the ditch and rode through the side gate leading into his property. The girls piled out of the car as Zach rode to Beth Ann’s trailer, Lizzie running up to pet Roscoe on the shoulder after Zach dismounted. The big horse put his nose on top of the girl’s head.
“Careful,” Beth Ann called. “He’ll snot you.”
“He will not,” Lizzie said indignantly, but she put a hand on top of her head and backed away. “Are all the calves gone now, Daddy?”
“Tomorrow, but I’m not taking the two leppies. You and Emma still have to take care of them.” Orphan calves that he wasn’t able to graft onto a new mother took a lot of care. He handled the brunt of it, but the girls were a big help. In return for raising the calves, they got to keep them.
