by Janet Dailey
But it was the certainty in her voice that prompted Trey to challenge. “How do you know that?”
“The same way you know which way a cow is going to jump when you try to separate her from the herd. You read the body language. Sometimes all it takes is a twitch of a muscle,” Laura replied. Observing his slightly dumbfounded reaction, she laughed. “You didn’t think it was some great mystery, did you?”
“I never thought about it at all,” Trey replied with easy candor and eyed her with disapproval. “But you’ve gotta admit the way you talk about catching a man sounds a bit calculating.”
“And I suppose you have never calculated what the best way to approach a girl might be,” Laura scoffed. “Why is it wrong for a woman to apply similar tactics?”
When Trey started to answer, Quint held up a silencing hand. “Don’t get into that argument. I guarantee you’ll lose it.”
The bell above the door tinkled. Automatically Laura glanced toward the entrance as a scruffy-looking boy of about seven slipped inside. She noticed the way his glance scoured the restaurant area as if looking for someone. An instant later the clatter of billiard balls had his head jerking in the direction of the bar. After a slight pause, he headed toward the pool table. But there was something hesitant, almost fearful, about his movements that captured her attention.
“Someone you know?” Trey asked in jest, observing her interest in the boy.
“No,” Laura replied easily. “But if someone washed his face, he might be cute.”
“A little young, though,” Quint observed.
“I like them young.” Laura smiled, all the while keeping a curious eye on the boy as he approached the two men playing pool.
One man, the younger of the two, seemed to be the object of the boy’s attention. Dark-haired and burly, he was bent over the pool table, arm muscles rippling as he took aim on the cue ball. The cue stick in his hand shot forward in a lightning-swift strike. Laura heard the rapid roll of the ball and the click of it hitting another. On the flat top of the bumper, a chalk cube weighted down two paper bills.
As the ball tumbled into a pocket, the man straightened, a dark scowl of concentration creasing his expression as he studied the lie of the remaining balls on the table. He seemed unaware of the boy watching him until he moved to that side of the table and his glance landed on him.
“What are you doing here?” The man snapped in obvious irritation.
The boy seemed to shrink back. “Mom said I was to tell you supper’s almost ready,” he said in a small voice.
“You’ve told me. Now git.” Instant obedience was something the man clearly expected. When the boy failed to immediately move, he raged at him. “Can’t you see I’m in the middle of a game? Now get the hell out of here.”
The young boy threw up an arm as if to shield himself from a blow. The man grabbed it and shoved him toward the exit with a force that sent the boy sprawling against an empty chair.
In a cold fury, Laura sprang to her feet and ran to the boy’s side. The minute she touched him, the boy scooted away from her hand.
“The kid’s not hurt.” The man’s voice was almost on top of her.
Laura threw him an angry glare. “No thanks to you.”
Just for an instant the man faltered, then recovered. “The kid’s got no business bein’ in a bar, and he knows it,” he declared as if that somehow justified his actions.
By then the boy had scrambled to his feet, moving with an alacrity that told Laura he had probably suffered nothing more serious than a bruise. She stood up and swung around to confront the man.
“That’s no excuse to be so rough with him.” Her voice vibrated with the heat of her temper.
“Are you blamin’ me for him runnin’ into that chair?” The man drew his head back in a great show of innocence.
“He didn’t run into that chair. You pushed him,” Laura stated.
“Like hell I did.”
“You can deny it all you want,” she said with contempt. “But I know what I saw, and you pushed him.”
He took a threatening step closer, gripping the cue stick in front of him like a potential weapon, his arm muscles bulging. “Listen, you smart-mouthed little bitch. Somebody needs to teach you to quit stickin’ your nose into other people’s affairs.”
Suddenly Trey was there, placing an arm in front of her and pushing her behind him. “Lay a hand on her and it’s the last thing you’ll ever do.” His voice was as steely with warning as his look. “Any problem you’ve got with her, you’ll settle with me.”
The man wisely backed up. “I don’t have any problems as long as you damned Calders mind your own business and stay out of mine,” he said with some of his former bluster, then swung back toward the pool table.
Too angry to let him have the last word, Laura took a step after him. Trey grabbed her by the arm and forcibly turned her toward their table.
“Just shut up,” he muttered.
Reluctantly Laura acknowledged the wisdom of his advice and let him steer her to where Quint still sat with his casted leg propped on a chair seat.
“Who is that guy, anyway?” she demanded, her temper still simmering
“I think his name’s Mitchell. He used to work at the coal mine until he got laid off when it closed down. He had a job for a while stringing fence at the old Connors Ranch. I don’t know what he’s doing now. Hustling pool, I guess.”
“The man should be horsewhipped,” she said with conviction.
“Laura,” Trey began in a placating tone.
She whirled on him. “Don’t you ‘Laura’ me! I saw the way that little boy tried to protect himself. He’s been knocked around before by that bastard who claims to be his father.” Just as abruptly, Laura pivoted away from her brother and headed for the table. “What I should do,” she muttered to herself, “is turn him in for child abuse.”
With the thought still rolling around in her mind, Laura sat down in her chair and glared in the direction of the pool table. Trey followed her, swung a leg over his chair and lowered himself onto it, then reached for his beer.
“For a minute, I thought I was going to have to hobble over there,” Quint remarked. “What happened?”
“Nothing really,” Trey replied.
“Bullies like that one only pick on women and children.” Laura made no attempt to conceal her loathing for such men.
A small smile crooked Quint’s mouth. “It might interest you two to know that while you were trading words with your would-be pool shark, the kid was stuffing his pockets with mints from that basket by the cash register. What he couldn’t get into his pockets, he shoved in his mouth, paper and all.”
“You’re kidding,” Laura said, shocked.
“ ’Fraid not,” Quint replied.
Trey chuckled. “Why that damned little thief.”
“With a father like that, who can blame him?” Laura retorted.
Trey made no reply to that and took a swig of his beer, made a face, and set the mug on the table. “It’s warm,” he said in distaste. “What d’you say we get outta here and head back to the ranch before Aunt Cat sends out a search party for Quint?”
“That’s a good idea.” Quint leaned to the side and scooped his crutches off the floor. “Besides,” he said, throwing a teasing look at Laura, “Crockett might call tonight, and we wouldn’t want Laura to miss that, now would we?”
Laura just shook her head in mild disgust. “Aren’t you two ever going to grow up?”
“Not where you’re concerned,” Trey replied with a grin.
Chapter Ten
With the horse sale only two days away, there was a steady bustle of activity at the Triple C headquarters. Adding to the seemingly constant flow of horses coming and going from the barns to the work pens, a half dozen buyer’s reps had already shown up to get an advance look at the horses being offered for sale. A couple were inspecting the horses in the stalls, but the rest were scattered around the pens, observing the horses bein
g exercised and put through their paces.
As Laredo left the big-timbered barn, he spotted one of the reps standing at the rails of the large cattle pen, watching a cutting horse at work. The minute he got a good look at the claybank stallion through the gaps in the fence rails, Laredo guessed there would be questions and veered toward the rep. He was right.
“Would you happen to know the catalog number for that stud?” the man asked as soon as Laredo reached the fence.
“That’s Cougar’s Pride,” Laredo told him. “You won’t find him in the catalog. He’s not for sale, but it’s his get you’ll be bidding on.”
Disappointment flickered in the man’s expression. He gave the middle rail a slap and made a pushing turn away from the fence. “Tell Calder if he should change his mind about selling that stallion, I’ve got a buyer. And with that stud, he can name his price.”
“I’ll pass it on, but I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Laredo replied.
The man walked away, and Laredo climbed onto the top rail to watch the champion stallion at work. He had barely settled on his perch when he caught the flash of blond hair and bare skin. And he privately marveled that the rep had noticed the stallion at all with Laura in the saddle.
The flashy dun stallion crouched low, pouncing first one way then the other to frustrate the cow’s attempts to rejoin the herd, exhibiting all the agility and cat-quickness of a mountain lion. Laura sat deep and balanced in the saddle, giving the horse no cues, aware that he needed none.
A beauty Laura had always been, easily worth two or three looks. But today it was her attire that was drawing male stares. Brown leather chaps covered a pair of skin-tight jeans, and a matching leather vest stopped just below her breasts, about the same place as the crop top she wore, baring her midriff.
Leave it to Laura to come up with an eye-catching getup like that, Laredo thought and shook his head in amusement.
After working the cow almost to a stop, Laura reined the claybank stallion away from it, letting it rejoin the penned herd. She waved at one of the riders, loosely holding the cattle, and called, “That should do it.”
A horse and rider moved into Laredo’s side vision. He glanced to the right as Trey halted a three-year-old colt parallel with the fence. Laura spotted him at almost the same moment and rode over.
“You’re every bit the horsewoman that your mother is,” Laredo told her when she halted the stallion near the fence.
“All I did is sit in the saddle. This guy did all the work by himself.” She tunneled a hand under the stallion’s black mane and gave him a congratulatory pat. “I swear, no one works cattle with the ease of The King,” she said, using the nickname the ranch hands had given to the claybank stud when he was a yearling.
The stallion was the last thing on Trey’s mind. “What the hell are you doing in that outfit, Laura?” he demanded, disapproval vibrating in his low voice. “You look like something out of Playboy magazine.”
Laura never blinked an eye. “Don’t be naive, Trey,” she chided. “If I were posing for Playboy, I’d have to ditch the jeans and the top, and you know it.”
As she uttered the last, a Land Rover pulled up to the pens. Her attention immediately swung to it. When a tall dark-haired man climbed out of the driver’s side, Laura stood up in the stirrups and waved to draw the man’s attention.
“Hey, Boone,” she called. “Meet me at the gate.”
The minute she said the name, understanding dawned in Trey’s expression. “I forgot Crockett was supposed to show up this afternoon. That’s why you’re dressed so sexy, isn’t it?”
Laura didn’t deny it as she swung the stallion away from the railing and fired a warning look at her brother. “So help me, Trey, if you call him Crockett while he’s here, I’ll steal all your shorts and leave you with only the silk ones to wear.”
Without giving him a chance to reply, she cantered the stallion the last few yards to the gate. While Trey watched, Boone Rutledge swung the gate open and Laura rode through, then pulled up to wait for him to shut it. She made no attempt to dismount until Boone had moved to the stallion’s head. Trey couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but he could see the way the man’s eyes raked over Laura.
“I’m surprised his tongue isn’t hanging out,” he muttered to Laredo.
“You can say that about nearly every man who sees her,” Laredo reminded him.
With Trey looking on, Laura dismounted and managed to stumble against Boone yet make it look like an accident. But Trey saw through the act.
“You know,” He glanced at Laredo, a grimness entering his expression, “having Laura for a sister makes it hard for me to trust anything a woman says or does.”
Laredo chuckled, but Trey was dead serious.
Laura stayed against Boone, tipping her head back to look up at him, conscious of his hands clasped around her bare middle, knowing that he was equally aware of it. She laid her hands on his upper arms as if to push away, then left them there to feel the rock-hardness of his biceps.
“I had forgotten how strong you are,” she murmured.
“Funny. I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful you are.” There was a primitive quality to the look of desire in his dark eyes.
Just for an instant, she pressed herself more fully against him to make certain the feel of her body against his would be imprinted in his mind before she drew back. “I was beginning to wonder,” Laura said with a touch of coyness, “considering how long it took you to get here.”
“Then you did want me to come,” Boone stated, a cocky kind of male confidence flaring in his expression. “On the phone you didn’t seem all that excited about seeing me again.”
“A woman shouldn’t sound eager,” she told him. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“You don’t look all that proper.” His glance dropped to the bareness of her middle and the navel that was exposed by her low-riding jeans.
She laughed. “That’s because I seldom feel proper around you. Besides, being proper can become boring, and I hate being bored.” Turning her back to him, Laura unlooped the reins from around the stallion’s neck and stepped to his head, then glanced back at Boone. “Want to walk along while I take The King back to his stall and unsaddle him?”
Boone looked at her with surprised frown. “Can’t someone else put him up?”
“On the Triple C, a rider takes care of his or her own horse. Only guests can get away with passing them off to someone else. It’s an ironclad rule that can be broken only in the event of a dire emergency.” Laura paused to slant him a provocative glance. “Did you think I had led a pampered life?”
“A woman like you deserves to be pampered.”
“Careful,” Laura warned lightly. “Some women might mistake a remark like that for a proposal.”
“What makes you so certain it isn’t?” Boone countered, matching strides with her when she struck out for the stallion barn.
She gave him a considering look. “It might be,” Laura conceded. “You do seem to be the impulsive type.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Oh, I’m definitely impulsive, but never rash.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Definitely.” But Laura didn’t bother to explain the distinction, choosing to change the subject instead. “So what do you think of the Triple C?”
“It’s quite a spread.” It wasn’t so much his words as his expression that told Laura he was impressed by what little he had seen.
“I’ll take you on a tour of it after I get The King settled in his stall,” she said. “And I’ll show you the horses that will be up for auction. That is, after all, the reason you’re here.” Her sideways glance invited him to deny that the horse sale was the main attraction for him.
Boone didn’t disappoint her. “It’s hardly the only reason.”
“That’s good to know. By the way,” Laura said, making another lightning-fast change of subject, “did Tara pass along the invitation for you and
Max to join us for dinner tomorrow evening?”
“She did.”
From her bedroom window Laura saw the Land Rover pull up in front of The Homestead. Even before Boone stepped out of the vehicle, she felt that little hum of excitement that came with being confronted with a challenge. She had spent much of the last two days constantly in his company, at his side, but never alone with him. It was part of her plan—to be within reach, yet out of reach.
Briefly Laura toyed with the idea of making an entrance, then rejected it as too dramatic. She paused in front of the mirror and absently ran a smoothing hand over the waistline of her teal-colored dress, then gave her blond hair a push to increase its fullness and exited the room to run lightly down the oak staircase.
As she reached its broad landing, her grandfather’s voice reached out to her. “There you are. I was just about to holler upstairs and let you know your guests had arrived.” He stood outside the double doors to the den, his aging body tilted to one side as he leaned on the support of his cane. “I thought you might want to be on hand to welcome this Crockett fellow in person.”
Laura opened her mouth to correct him, then saw the twinkle in his brown eyes. “Honestly, Gramps, you are as bad as Trey,” she admonished with affection and crossed the living room to his side.
“You mean that isn’t his name?”
“It’s Boone, and you know it. Now hold still. Your tie is crooked.” She reached up to center it. “And please try to be on your best behavior tonight. I think he might want to marry me.”
Unimpressed, Chase Calder responded with a harrumph. “He certainly isn’t the first.”
“I know.” Laura smoothed the lay of his collar. “But he’s the first I might consider accepting.”
“Really?” He showed his surprise.
“Yes, really. So, be good.”
“I thought you just met him when you were in Europe.”
Laura didn’t bother to recount the number of times she had seen Boone, first in Rome, then in England and on the Triple C. “Now, Gramps,” she reasoned instead, “when have you ever known me to be slow at making up my mind about anything? And just imagine the kind of splash a marriage between the Rutledges of Texas and the Calders of Montana would make.”
