A Husband in Wyoming

by Lynnette Kent

  As he said it, she hissed at the sudden slice of glass across her palm. “You’re right. I am.”

  Caroline came up with a broom. “You two move out of the way so I can sweep this up.” She saw Jess holding a paper towel to her hand. “You got cut? Poor thing. There’s a big first aid kit at the house. Can you make it there with the paper towel? Just go on, now. I’ve got this.”

  Dylan went with her, keeping his arm around her waist as if she might faint. “It’s not that bad,” she assured him. “Just a shallow cut.”

  He shuddered. “That sounds terrible. I’m not so good with blood.”

  She laughed at him. “Then why did you come?”

  “Moral support.”

  But in fact, when they got to the ranch house kitchen, he pulled out the first aid kit and took over the bandaging process. “This is deeper than you said.”

  “It’s practically stopped bleeding already.” His fingertips were warm on her skin.

  “Do you see your phone, while you’re sitting there doing nothing?”

  “No. I can use my computer for now. But I do need my phone.”

  Dylan smoothed the tape over her palm. “I guess you won’t be riding for a few days. It’s lucky we had our cattle drive today, since we needed your help.” He was still holding her hand in both of his, rubbing his thumb lightly over the back of her wrist.

  She was starting to get chills from the contact. Pulling away, she said, “Let me go check the living room. Maybe I just don’t remember what I did with the phone.”

  “I’ll check the studio,” Dylan said, after they’d searched underneath all the cushions and pillows. Honey followed them around the room, as if maybe she could sniff out what they couldn’t find otherwise. “It could be there and I just didn’t notice it. I don’t keep track of my phone most of the time.”

  When Jess sat down on the rocker, the dog planted herself at her knee, clearly expecting to be petted. “I’m beginning to understand why people have animals. It’s very soothing to stroke their heads, have them lean against you.”

  Dylan sat forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped. “You could have a dog of your own, couldn’t you? Or a cat. They’re more self-sufficient. Like you.”

  “Are there cats on the Circle M? I haven’t seen one.”

  “We have barn cats. They keep the mice away. But they tend to be pretty shy.”

  Shaking her head, Jess relaxed into the chair. “I doubt I’m home enough to keep an animal. I go out of town for several days at least every six weeks on interviews. What would the poor dog or cat do then?”

  “One of your friends would stop by and keep them company,” Dylan said. “It would be good for both of them.”

  “I’m not sure there’s anybody who would do that for me. I suppose there are services you can hire. But then you’ve got a stranger coming into your house when you’re not there. It sounds too complicated to me.”

  “Your life sounds too solitary to me.”

  She sat up straight and stared at him. “I’m here to talk about your life, not mine.”

  “You can’t have one without the other.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Of course I can. I’m a journalist.”

  “Not with me.”

  “I’m not a journalist with you? What does that mean?”

  “In my opinion, we’ve progressed to being friends. Even more than friends.”

  “Dylan—” The problem was, she couldn’t deny the truth. How had this gone so wrong?

  “And that gives me the right to be concerned. You don’t seem to have a man in your life, and you don’t have friends who would come over to take care of a pet. You don’t have a family to depend on. Is there anybody in your life you care about? Anybody to care about you?”

  “I have friends.”

  “Have you called them, since you’ve been here? Have they called to make sure you arrived?”

  “We get together when I’m in town.”

  “Who do you call to bring you medicine when you’re sick?”

  “I have a pharmacy that delivers.”

  “Well, that’s great.” He slapped his hands on his thighs and stood up. “Do they deliver chicken soup, too?”

  “That’s the Chinese place down the block.” Jess smiled at him as she left the rocking chair. “It’s nice of you to worry about me. But I’ve lived on my own for more than fifteen years. I’m an expert.”

  “You shouldn’t have to be.” He came to stand in front of her, putting his hands on her shoulders. “Everybody needs someone to take care of them.”

  “And what happens when that someone leaves? Or changes their mind? Or dies? Relationships always end, Dylan. What are you supposed to do then?”

  “Not always. But if they do, you keep going. You find somebody else.”

  She shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m satisfied depending on the one person I’m certain will always stick around—myself.” Stepping away from his hands, she walked to the door of the hallway. “I’m going to get my plane ticket changed, and then turn in early. I’m pretty tired after that ride this afternoon.”

  “I’ll bring your phone over if I find it,” he promised, his handsome face solemn, his dark eyes sad. “See you in the morning.”

  Jess didn’t wait to watch him leave, but walked down the hallway to her room and closed the door firmly behind her. All these people with their smiles and good intentions had diminished her detachment. A few hours of solitude would restore her objectivity and balance. She hoped.

  Crossing the room, she reached for her leather tote bag, which carried her computer as well as every other possession she might conceivably need if the airline lost her suitcase. When she picked it up, the unexpected lightness caught her attention and she stood it up on the bed, spreading the handles to peer inside.

  The computer was missing, along with its power cord. And the remaining contents of the bag were wrecked. Makeup had been pulled out of the toiletries bag and left lying open, with eye shadow, mascara and face powder now streaking the silk lining of the tote. The papers in her wallet and the notebook she always carried had been pulled out and scattered through the bag. The wallet itself was missing.

  Swearing softly, Jess fetched a towel from the bathroom and spread it over the bed, then upended the tote over it and shook hard. The disturbed contents tumbled onto the towel, along with a dribble of pink moisturizer and the bottle, from which the cap had been removed.

  “It’s ruined,” she muttered. “Totally destroyed.”

  Feeling sick to her stomach, she sorted through the articles on the towel, making a pile for the trash, one for makeup she could still use and another for the items that were supposed to be in her wallet.

  “I’ve been robbed,” Jess said aloud. “Vandalized and robbed.”

  * * *

  THE KITCHEN WAS crowded when Dylan strode into the house on Saturday morning. “Call the sheriff,” he said loudly. “My studio has been vandalized.”

  They all straightened up, and Jess gasped. “Dylan, no!”

  “Pieces knocked over and thrown around, tools bent, mangled, scattered. He set a fire on the floor, for God’s sake. All my sketches, burnt to a crisp. I didn’t switch on the light last night so I didn’t see it. Not till this morning.” He was breathing hard. “The wooden pieces didn’t burn well, so I guess he gave up. Or didn’t have time. I can’t believe this. Who would do such a thing?”

  “He was here, too,” Wyatt said. “Jess has been robbed.”

  Dylan stared at her. “Your phone?”

  “My wallet, cash and credit cards,” she said. “The computer and the phone.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry. That’s a hell of a thing to happen. Though not,” he said, turning back to Ford, “entirely unexpected. Have you talked to the kids?”

  “Not yet. There’s nothing to indicate one of the teenagers knows anything about this.”

  Coffee splashed out of several mugs when Dylan pounded his fist on the counte
r. “Who else?”

  “All of us—including the kids—were away from the ranch yesterday. Someone could easily have come in and taken whatever they wanted.”

  “For the first time in twenty years? Come on, Ford, isn’t that a little naive?”

  Carolyn stepped forward. “Let’s take a wider view, Dylan. Just because something hasn’t happened in the past doesn’t mean it didn’t happen yesterday.”

  He met her bright green gaze. “I hate that one of the kids might have betrayed our trust. But it seems the most likely answer. They could have told someone we’d be gone—the perfect setup.” Shaking his head, he finished wiping up the spilled coffee. “So I take it we won’t be going to the rodeo this afternoon.”

  Garrett poured himself another mug. “Why not? We aren’t going to spend the day interrogating the kids with thumbscrews and branding irons.”

  “You have to talk to them, at least.”

  “We’ll talk to each one individually,” Ford said. “But before you even ask, I don’t intend to search everyone’s bags.”

  Jess said, “I agree. These aren’t hardened criminals. They won’t be able to lie convincingly.”

  Dylan started to say something smart, but stopped himself. They’d come to this conclusion without him, so there was no point in protesting. “What about your files, Jess? Are they backed up?”

  She nodded. “I save everything online, so I can retrieve my work.”

  “That’s smart of you.” He looked at Wyatt. “Is anything else missing?”

  His brother nodded. “Beer from the fridge. My phone and my computer, which I’d left on my dresser. Garrett’s computer is at the church and Ford had locked his in his truck. We didn’t have money lying around, besides Jess’s. Most of the electronics are too big to carry easily or hide.”

  “How about the tack room? We’ve got silver spurs in there, silver conchas decorating a couple of saddles...”

  “Everything’s where it should be.” Ford’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Just try to calm down. It’s especially terrible that this happened to a guest in the house. We’ll be replacing the cash and the phone—”

  “No, you won’t,” Jess said.

  “Yes, we will,” the lawyer insisted. “And maybe we’ll figure out who did this and get it all back. But until then, we carry on with the day as planned. We’ll just be sure the house is locked tight this afternoon while we’re gone.”

  “I’m staying,” Wyatt said. “I’ve been to my share of rodeos.”

  “Even better,” Ford said. “Now, Dylan, let’s go check out your studio before we have to get the kids working on breakfast.”

  As his brothers and Caroline walked ahead, Dylan kept pace with Jess. “I can’t believe we’re still going to the rodeo. The least we could do is stay home until the sheriff has come out.”

  She held her hands out in a helpless gesture. “What can they do? The stuff has been gone since yesterday afternoon.”

  “Something, at least—we could examine tire tracks, take casts of footprints. I have some plaster in the studio.”

  “Right, Sherlock. I think locking the door when you leave is the best strategy I’ve heard all morning.”

  “We’ve never had to do that before.” He hesitated at the entrance to the studio. “Do you suppose it’s just coincidence that this happens during the same summer we have seven adolescent troublemakers staying with us?”

  Jess didn’t say anything, but he could read her face.

  Dylan nodded. “Yeah, me, neither.”

  Ford and Garrett and Caroline condemned the damage in his workshop. “This is terrible,” Ford said. “I hate seeing your sculpture attacked like this.”

  “That’s three pieces I have to replace in the inventory for the showing in November,” Dylan told him. “I’m supposed to produce twenty-five individual sculptures, and I was going to have to push to get the last two done. I don’t know how I can possibly work up three replacements.” He pushed his hair back from his face. “If I don’t have enough to show they might cancel the whole event.”

  Jess gazed at him, speechless with distress. But the worst part for Dylan was that he couldn’t move anything, couldn’t pick up his sculptures and see how bad the damage was, until after a deputy had examined the scene. Witnessing his studio as a crime scene made him sick to his stomach.

  With seven kids to take care of, though, the morning soon resumed its standard routine—breakfast in the bunkhouse followed by general house cleanup for both the boys and the girls. Complaints were lodged, as usual, but somehow the necessary tasks got done, even though the kids disappeared one after the other to talk with Ford, Caroline and Jess.

  And the results, as Dylan had predicted, weren’t useful. “They lie better than you expected them to,” he said, when the adults reassembled in the kitchen at noon. “Should have used the thumbscrews.”

  “Or else they didn’t do it,” Garrett pointed out, frowning. He seemed to be frowning a lot lately. “Innocent until proven guilty?”

  “We called the sheriff’s office,” Ford said. “Wade Daughtry said he’d investigate who from the outside might have done this.”

  Dylan rubbed the nape of his neck, where a headache had started. “And you still plan to go to the show this afternoon?”

  “Maybe it’s for the best.” When he sent her an incredulous look, Jess said, “Why sit here stewing about it, waiting for the deputy? We can all use a diversion. It’ll be my first and probably only rodeo.” Then it was her turn to frown. “But somebody will have to pay my way.”

  Dylan put an arm around her waist and squeezed. “I’ll be honored to take you as my date.”

  “This isn’t a date. I’ll repay you.” She glared at him. “And we can talk about your rodeo days for the article.”

  As they gathered to load up for the trip to Buffalo, however, Caroline walked down from the girls’ cabin with a harried expression on her face. “Lizzie is refusing to go.”

  “She enjoyed it the last time,” Dylan said. “What’s different?”

  “A fall,” Garrett told him. “And her whole attitude.”

  “I can stay home with her,” Caroline said. “Maybe we can talk and I can persuade her to stay in the program.” Her glance at Ford was loaded with regret.

  “Or I could,” Jess said. “I wanted to meet with her about her writing, anyway.”

  “You’d miss the rodeo,” Dylan protested. “Our date.”

  “It was not a date,” Jess insisted. “This is more important.”

  “I’d hate to have you pass up the show,” Caroline said. “I wonder if Lizzie would go if she could ride in the car with you and talk about writing.”

  Jess nodded. “I’ll ask.”

  While she was gone, the boys and Lena climbed into the van they were using to transport the kids. Dylan remained outside with Ford and Garrett.

  “This is a hell of a thing to have happen,” he told them. “I knew there would be trouble when we brought those kids to the ranch.”

  “If you say that a little louder they’ll be sure to hear you,” Garrett snapped. “The theft is not related to the kids.”

  “Neither of you is sure of your facts,” Ford said in a taut voice. “And having you argue about this doesn’t help. Dylan, why don’t you ride with Caroline and Jess? You’ll agitate the situation if you ride with us and the guys.”

  “Not a problem for me.” Dylan walked to his truck, where Caroline and Becky were waiting. “Where’s Susannah?”

  “She decided to stay home. Amber wasn’t too happy about going to a rodeo. I think she has some bad memories from when her dad would act out after he lost.” Nate’s dad was a cowboy and perennial loser at bull riding.

  “Poor little girl.” He glanced at the girls’ cabin and saw Jess and Lizzie coming down the hill. “We’ve got Lizzie on board, anyway. Let’s climb in. The show starts in just under an hour.”

  With Caroline riding shotgun and Jess, Lizzie and Becky in the backse
at, Dylan followed the van off the ranch. The rearview mirror showed the blonde girl huddled in on herself in the middle, with her friend staring out the window on one side and the journalist on the other. Jess caught him watching and gave a tiny shrug. He nodded in encouragement, and made a thumbs-up sign for good measure.

  “So, Lizzie,” she started, “I really liked the poem you wrote on Thursday. Do you write poems often?”

  Shrug.

  “You painted a lovely picture of a day at the beach. Have you been to the beach?”

  Head shake. And then, when an answer seemed unlikely, “I want to go.”

  “I went once,” Becky said. “In California. The water was cold.”

  “Did Lizzie show you her poem?”

  “Yeah. But my favorite is the one about horses.”

  “Did you write about the horses when you came to camp?”

  Nod.

  “I’d be glad to read that one. This is my first experience with horses, too.”

  “I ripped it up.”

  Caroline gasped, and Becky made a sound of protest. Dylan tightened his grip on the steering wheel.

  Jess stayed calm. “Yeah, sometimes when you’re angry it feels good to tear up something you wrote about. Kind of like revenge.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did it make you happy?”

  “Not really.”

  “When I rip up my work, I end up feeling as if I punished myself. Usually, no one else finds out. And wouldn’t care if they did.”

  Lizzie sighed. “Horses are stupid.”

  Dylan couldn’t stay quiet. “In some ways, they are, but not always. Can you imagine what would happen if a horse—especially a short one like Major—stood still while the herd ran toward him?”

  This pause lasted so long he was sure he’d made a huge mistake.

  Finally, though, she answered. “He’d get run over.”

  “He would. You would, too, if you were in the saddle.”

  Another extended silence. “So he was protecting me.”

  “He was staying safe the only way he knew how. We depend on horses to do that and try to anticipate danger. You just weren’t quite ready for his reaction. He didn’t mean to dump you. Believe me, I’ve ridden horses that tried, and they’re very good at it.”