All for a Cowboy

by Jeannie Watt

  Empathy, Jordan. I’m feeling empathy.

  He’d never believe it.

  She got back to her feet and walked to the window, watching through the filthy glass as Jordan disappeared into his house. Just how badly scarred was he? Did worse injuries lurk beneath his clothing? And how damaged was he mentally? He seemed to hold his own in their confrontations, but there was no missing that faraway, haunted look he got now and again. Was he all there? How could he have gone through what he had and not suffered lingering damage?

  The kicker was that this put her at a disadvantage. How was she supposed to deal with a guy like this on a daily basis? How was she supposed to work around him?

  * * *

  JORDAN HADN’T BEEN anywhere near serious when he’d told Emery he was going to stop by Claiborne’s to see if they had any rank colts. After training his last batch of potential widow-makers for the man, he’d sworn never again. But he hadn’t been desperate for a way to make money and stay on his ranch before now. He needed to be there. Guard his interests. Hope against hope that Shae wouldn’t come up with a viable proposal, although he knew, realistically, that Miranda would probably make a dude ranch there even if it lost money—just to teach him he couldn’t mess with her.

  As if he’d started it all.

  Nope. She’d started it and he’d ended it, almost as abruptly as he’d dumped Shae on the barroom floor not that long afterward. And now he wished like hell that he’d told his old man what his perfect new wife had tried.

  He couldn’t have done it. As far as he knew Hank had died a happy man, content with his life and his marriage.

  Jordan pulled into the driveway of the Claiborne place. It hadn’t changed much. Beautiful yellow horses of all ages filled the fields and corrals. Buckskins, palominos, yellow duns. Claiborne bred for color and conformation and, unfortunately, his foundation stud had a nasty disposition that he’d passed along to his striking get. They could become fairly decent horses with the proper start...and therein lay the rub. There were too many foals produced each year to start properly and Claiborne was constantly playing catch-up, trying to find time to train the older horses first, before they got too old. Meanwhile another crop of foals was born.

  Jordan parked and steeled himself for the inevitable averted glances. Part of his life now. He wasn’t disappointed. When Claiborne came to the door, his head jerked back when he saw Jordan’s face.

  “Jordan,” he said after clearing his throat. “This is a surprise.”

  “I imagine so,” Jordan said. “Maybe I should have called first.”

  “No, no. That’s fine,” Claiborne said, stepping back and holding the door open so Jordan could come inside. “What brings you here?”

  “I’m looking for work.”

  Claiborne’s gaze shot down to Jordan’s hand and he grimaced slightly. “Around the place here?” he asked.

  “No. If you have any colts to start, I’d like to work at the High Camp. And if you don’t, I thought you might know of someone who did.”

  “Can you work colts...like that?” Claiborne asked.

  “I can,” Jordan said giving the man points for candidness while taking away a few for having no faith in his abilities.

  “I, uh, might have a couple I can throw your way.”

  “What’s your hesitation?” Jordan finally asked. “My hand isn’t what it used to be, but I can still use it.”

  “Are you alone at the High Camp?”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want you to get yourself in trouble up there by yourself with my colts.”

  “Are you worried about liability?” Jordan asked, flabbergasted.

  “Some. They’re my colts, after all.”

  “You never worried before.”

  “You were...whole before.”

  And there it was, laid out for him. He wasn’t whole. Screw this. “I’m whole in the ways that count,” he said. “But I’m not here to twist your arm.” Jordan got to his feet.

  Claiborne also rose. “I’ll give you three fillies...if you sign a release saying you won’t come back at me if my animals injure you.”

  Jordan turned back. “Whatever.”

  “What’s your rate?”

  “Same as before.”

  “That’s low now.”

  Like your expectations of me? Jordan held the words in. He wanted some income, not to correct Claiborne’s feelings about him.

  “If this goes well, the rates will go up,” Jordan said.

  “Agreed.” Claiborne gestured to the door. “Want to see what I have?”

  “Yeah.” Jordan followed the man out the door, slowing his steps when he caught sight of a short, rotund pig that was waiting for them on the porch. It sniffed Claiborne’s pants as he walked by, then fell into step behind him, trotting along like a dog.

  “Pet?” Jordan asked.

  “My son’s girlfriend wasn’t aware that potbellied pigs don’t stay small,” the older man said on a note of disgust. “She thought they were micropigs or something. My son’s in love. He gets the girl. I get the pig.”

  Jordan smiled a little and it felt odd, smiling. He never smiled anymore.

  Claiborne ended up showing him ten young horses and told him to take his pick. Generous for Claiborne, but then Jordan wasn’t “whole” anymore. He ended up taking two halter-broke three-year-olds and a rank five-year-old palomino mare that’d been started by Claiborne’s son’s last girlfriend, who hadn’t had any idea what she was doing.

  “You sure about this?” Claiborne asked.

  “Yeah.” Jordan figured if he could make headway with the five-year-old, then he could probably write his ticket with Claiborne, taking a few animals every sixty days until the man ran out of horses...which probably wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

  “Can you deliver to the High Camp?” he asked. “I don’t have a trailer yet.”

  “I can do that, but it probably won’t be for a couple days. That okay?”

  “That will be fine.”

  * * *

  AFTER LEAVING CLAIBORNE’S place, Jordan drove straight to Emery’s, hoping against hope the old guy had come up with something. Emery met him on the porch again, ushered him inside, and Jordan decided that even if he didn’t have the news he wanted, it was good to see the old man. Good to have someone in his life who was on his side.

  “I’ve been waiting for you to stop by,” Emery said after serving Jordan a cup of coffee that was the antithesis of the iced tea—pale and weak. Jordan preferred it to the overly strong tea. “It’s impossible to call you up there at the ranch. Thought I was going to have to drive over if you didn’t show soon.”

  “Call about what?”

  “Well, Miranda is correct in her assertion that ‘operations’ are not limited to farming,” Emery said. “And I apologize for Jasper’s oversight.”

  “Who would have thought that someone would use the place for anything else?” Jordan said, sounding more philosophical than he felt. No sense raging at Emery for something that had happened while his wife had been dying.

  “She can use the land as she pleases as long as she gets the proper permitting. She can build a structure as long as she either removes it at the end of the lease or turns it over to you. However—” the old man smiled a little and Jordan found himself leaning forward in anticipation “—while she has access to the buildings—the barn, tool and equipment sheds and the like—she can’t change them. If she wants to make capital improvements like, say, adding a bathroom, or cooking facilities, she needs your approval. All she can do is repair them.”

  Jordan felt a smile start to spread across his face—the second in one day. “Shae’s measuring buildings as we speak.”

  “All she can do is repair them,” he repeated. “No renovations. N
o tearing down walls or anything like that.”

  “I see.” Jordan tapped the tips of his fingers on the table. Things had just gotten so much better. He couldn’t kick Miranda off the place, but he could probably affect how she used the bunkhouse, which was no doubt intended to be part of the unique experience Shae had mentioned.

  “So what now?” Emery asked cautiously.

  “Guess I’ll share the good news with Shae.”

  “You want me to give Miranda’s attorney a call so that we’re on the same page?”

  “Yeah. Do that. And I’ll let Shae know.” Jordan rolled his shoulders, popping out the kinks. “This is the best I’ve felt in a couple months.”

  “This is nowhere near over,” Emery cautioned.

  “Oh, I know. But at least I’ve won a little ground.” Jordan picked up his coffee. “There’s nothing in the lease about me using my own corrals, is there?” There’d better not be, since he was going to need them.

  “You have the corrals.” Emery picked up a pen and flipped over an envelope. “The lease is specific.” He drew a rectangle that represented the High Camp acreage. “Your dad leased everything south of the fence that separates the upper part of the property from the lower, which unfortunately includes all the buildings except the house. You have access to those buildings, but can’t use them for anything that interferes with Miranda’s operations.”

  “Which in her opinion would be everything I want to do.”

  “The corrals, if I recall, are on the north side of the line, so you can do anything you want with those and she can’t interfere.”

  “So the north pasture is mine, too.”

  “It is.”

  “Then I foresee a long future between myself and Claiborne.”

  Emery sat his cup down with a thunk that sloshed the coffee over the side. “I was kidding when I said you should start colts for him.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  Emery stared down at Jordan’s hand and it was all he could do not to pull it back. Hide the reason everyone thought he was less than capable. “The hand is not that big of a deal. Lots of guys train who have more of an infirmity than this.”

  “That wasn’t what I was thinking.”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “You said you’d never again touch a Claiborne colt after that last batch. And you were eight years younger then and a hell of a lot less beat-up.”

  “I need to do this. If I can send out decent Claiborne horses, then I can get all the business I need.”

  “And if you can’t...what then?”

  “Maybe I can get a job on a guest ranch. I hear there may be one close by.” Jordan clenched his good hand into a fist on the table. “But regardless of what happens, I’m not leaving the High Camp.”

  Emery shook his head as if Jordan’s answer pained him. It probably did. No one liked to see someone beat their head on a brick wall until it was bloody.

  “I’m going to focus on the horses, Emery. Try to ignore what Shae’s doing, which should be a hell of a lot easier now that I know she can’t renovate the buildings.”

  Emery fell silent, his gaze focused on Jordan’s two hands—one loosely fisted, the other with stumps where his fingers had once been. Only his thumb and his index finger to just beyond the first knuckle remained.

  “I want to reclaim my ranch,” Jordan said. “I’m living there and making it my home for just as long as I can. It’s the only way I can think of to fight back.”

  “I think you’re on the right track if you plan on staying,” Emery said slowly, as if trying to convince himself rather than Jordan. “Make the ranch back into a home. Get yourself some livestock. A few chickens. A dog.”

  “I have one.”

  Emery lifted the cup to his lips before he said in an undertone, “Kind of.” He swallowed, then set the cup back down, a smile spreading across his face. “Chickens? Hell. Get peacocks. The most annoying domestic bird known to man.”

  Jordan gave the man a satisfied nod. “I like the way you think.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THERE WERE HEAVY tire tracks on the road going into the High Camp. Uneasy for reasons she couldn’t pinpoint, Shae stepped on the gas and Killer bounced over a rut, jostling her sideways. Jordan had made himself scarce over the past several days—three, to be exact—leaving the ranch shortly after Shae arrived and not returning home until after she left, and Shae had started to wonder if he’d made peace with the idea of the High Camp becoming a guest ranch.

  Unlikely. So why did it appear that he’d just given up?

  She’d told herself that he was probably looking for work. Or had found work. But whatever the reason for his absence, she should be glad he wasn’t there, purposely making her feel self-conscious. Instead she felt uneasy. The Jordan Bryan she’d known in high school wouldn’t have backed down so easily. A guy who backed down didn’t become a top-notch bronc rider...although it was possible that the accident had changed him in that regard, too, affected his determination and drive.

  It hadn’t affected his work ethic, though. During the evening hours, while she’d been back at her apartment, dealing with the bills that kept pouring in and making calls and calculations, he’d been working around the ranch. Every morning when she walked the property, she noticed new repairs, like loose boards nailed back on the barn and outbuildings. And he’d started working on the corral attached to the barn. He had to be working to keep from going crazy from boredom during the long evening hours. She figured he certainly wasn’t doing it to help her in any way.

  Shae had taken advantage of the repaired barnyard corral yesterday and brought in her little bay mare, Belinda, so that she could ride the trails she’d marked out on the aerials and determine how much grooming was necessary. There’d surely be windfalls that she’d need to deal with and areas of washouts and overgrowth.

  When Shae drove past what was left of the windfall, she realized that there were several sets of trailer tracks, as in more than one trip had been made. She wasn’t expecting any kind of deliveries yet, so this was all Jordan. As soon as she came in sight of the ranch, she spotted three horses in the pasture—a buckskin, a dun and a palomino—banded together at the far end. Belinda stood at the corral gate, head high, trying to no avail to get the attention of her brethren.

  Horses Shae could deal with—it was a guest ranch, after all—but she hadn’t expected Jordan to get livestock. And why did one man need three horses?

  She pulled her truck to a stop close to the Subaru and got out, stopping in her tracks when a black-and-white-spotted pig wandered out from behind the house. It saw her and made a beeline for her, snorting and grunting as it charged. Shae took a backward step, then scrambled back into the truck as the pig picked up speed, slamming the door shut as the animal rushed toward her. Porky slid to a stop at the truck and looked up at her with beady, marblelike eyes barely visible between the rolls of fat on its forehead. Tufts of hair wavered in the breeze between its ears as it studied the truck, as if trying to figure out a way to get in.

  Shae pressed her palm to the window, plotting strategy. It’s just a pig. A super-ugly pig. How fast were pigs? Did she care to find out? But it wasn’t as though she could spend the day in the cab of her truck. The pig snorted as it disappeared under the truck.

  Damn Jordan Bryan.

  Speaking of the jerk—Shae spotted him at the old round pen, his yappy dog trotting beside him as he carried a board toward the round pen. Shae rolled down the window and the pig reappeared, snorking and snuffling. “Why don’t you go eat that poodle?” Shae muttered. Should she yell for help?

  Oh, hell, no. That was exactly what he wanted. Shae debated and then, while the pig was still in view on the driver’s side, she scooted across the seat to the passenger side, thrust the door open, jumped out and ran for the h
ouse. The pig followed, and while it didn’t take long for Shae to realize that the animal was no sprinter, she didn’t slow down. She jetted across the porch and into the house, slamming the screen door behind her. Only then did she turn and see the pig come to a stop at the steps, which were apparently too much for the chubby beast. It let out a hefty breath, then snorted its way along the edge of the porch, snout down in the dirt, looking for who knew what.

  Shae leaned her forehead against the doorframe, waiting for her heart rate to return to normal. A pig. Really? If Jordan Bryan thought a pig was going to slow her down, he had another think coming...although it was going to slow her down until she caught her breath.

  Turning back to the room, Shae was surprised to see signs of habitation. A stack of paper plates sat on the kitchen counter next to the sink, and while the living room was still dusty, the kitchen had been cleaned. There were gallon jugs of water next to the sink and a cooler next to the oak table, which had been scrubbed. Curious, Shae walked down the short hall to the two bedrooms. One of them had also been cleaned and Jordan’s sleeping bag was laid out on an old-fashioned metal bed frame, a pair of running shoes neatly lined up under the window, an open duffel bag next to them. A couple of prescription bottles sat on the floor next the bed, along with a tube of scar cream. Shae bit her lip for a moment as she tried to imagine what his life had been like since the explosion. What he’d been through. But that was past. They were in the here and now and she was part of that here and now.

  She went back to the living room and looked out to where he was repairing the round pen. The pig wandered past the window, snout still to the ground. That was going to be a problem. And she was trespassing. She needed to get out of there.

  If Jordan could be outside with the pig, then so could she. It was probably friendly, even though it had looked as though it wanted to maul her. She watched the animal as it went on its way, cheerfully doing its pig thing, until it disappeared behind the house. Only then did she go to the door and step out onto the porch.