by BJ James
“That’s what I want,” she answered, refusing to be daunted by his ferocity.
“There’s a better than good chance I won’t be here.”
“You will. I’m sure of it.”
“Madame Savannah and her crystal ball?” he mocked.
“I’m not Madame Anybody, and I don’t need a crystal ball to know you’re going to make a success of the Broken Spur.”
“Why?” Steve refused to let her off the hook so easily. “What makes you so sure?”
Searching for a response, she found none but the truth. “I’m sure because of you.” In the beginning, her answer was tentative, guarded, then spilled out in a rush. “I believe in the Cody horse.”
Her lashes fluttered down, then up again with a slowly taken breath. His gaze waited for hers, and under its piercing intensity, the rest of her admission tumbled from her. “I believe in you.”
“As a horseman,” Steve said flatly. “But not a man.”
“I...”
“Don’t.” He stopped her with a slashing gesture. “Don’t say what we both know isn’t true. Don’t deny what can’t be denied.”
Savannah had no more strength to wrangle. She was uncertain, confused and vulnerable and made no effort to conceal it. As she stood across a chasm of her making, a small, sad smile touched his lips, recalling a memory. A memory so overwhelming that for a stunning, thoughtless instant, there was neither chasm between them nor earth beneath her feet.
The blast of music faded into illusion, becoming the splash and ripple of a waterfall. In its mists a man and woman stood entwined, lovers, lost in themselves, caring for neither time nor circumstance. Soon they would swim naked in the small pool carved by eons of rain and wind and streams rushing over stone. And when they mated, she would be soft and yielding as the water that embraced them, he hard and strong as the crucible of stone. The pinnacle of desire would be exquisite beyond measure, the culmination wild and fierce and absolute.
As it had been for them. For Savannah and Steve, who could be more than friends, but never less than lovers.
“Do you see, Savannah?” he asked, his voice hushed, as if he’d d seen into her thoughts, lived a part of her reverie. “No half measures. Never for us. Do you understand?”
She nodded, her writhing fingers were still. There was nothing more to say, nothing more to do. It was time to go, and still she couldn’t move. “I wish...”
“If wishes were horses, honey, the Broken Spur would be a five star gold mine.” The raucous comment was bold and brash, like the woman who made it. Angie stood in the corridor that ran between temporary stalls. Better groomed this time, but still a mélange of brass and flash that made Savannah seem as inviting a shady glen.
“What do you want, Angie?” Steve hardly glanced at her as he watched hurt gather in Savannah’s eyes. “I’ve told you there’s nothing here for you.”
“And as I told you, that remains to be seen.” Sauntering past Savannah, she stopped a pace closer to Steve. “At any rate, Tad and I thought you might need a cheering section.” Slim shoulders lifted elegantly, large breasts shimmied within the containing satin of a form fitting shirt. “A little encouragement never hurts.”
“Coming from you it might.”
“Ahh, Stevie, you don’t mean that.” With a sidelong glance at Savannah, she shrugged, including her in a tongue-in-cheek camaraderie. “Stubborn male pride! What’s a girl to do about it?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.” Savannah’s reply was stilted.
“You realize this is all because I left him. I know now what a mistake it was, and Stevie must, too, but I just can’t seem to get past his...”
“Stubborn male pride?” Savannah finished for her.
“exactly!” Angie’s mouth curved in delight at what she considered her success. “Then you do understand.”
“Until just this minute, I didn’t. Now I understand perfectly.” Angie was a bad joke, a threatening nuisance. Savannah’s eyes were bright as they found Steve’s. “Stubborn pride, whatever the gender, can destroy something too precious to be lost.” Her voice softened, dropped. “But only if we allow it.”
Nothing changed in Steve’s posture or his face. Only a breath half caught, then cut short, betrayed his questioning surprise. Savannah didn’t wait for more. Or less, if that was to be the way of it. She wanted to know his response to her sudden clarity, but not here in a predator’s company.
“I’m sure you both have a great deal to discuss.” She turned to the woman who watched her sharply. “Angie.” She didn’t offer her hand, didn’t use the surname she knew now was the only claim the woman had on Steve. “Meeting you again has been, shall we say, illuminating.”
“Illuminating?”
Savannah turned a bright smile on her. “Very illuminating, when it shouldn’t have had to be.”
“It shouldn’t?”
“Certainly not.” Savannah patted a satin clad shoulder. “But you have business with Steve, and I’m keeping you from it.”
“Yes.” Angie bristled, suspecting that something significant had just occurred and she hadn’t understood. “You are.”
“But no more.” With the grace taught her by a Southern lady, Savannah inclined her head and retreated.
Her journey to the entrance of the stockyards would be long and slow. Before she’d taken a half-dozen steps, the hiss and buzz of furious conversation began- The words were indistinguishable, the mood required no interpretation. Angie Cody was in fine form, switching from calculating seductress to calculating shrew on a whim and a heartbeat.
Steve’s voice was quiet, and deep, but stronger. Angry words rang sharply through the corridor. “No more, Angie. Not one penny, or one grain of sand.”
Angie laughed. So certain, so confident. So cruel, with greed stripping reason and humanity from her.
Savannah could see her clearly now, as if blinding scales had suddenly fallen from her eyes. She knew she hadn’t before because she’d been waiting for the spoiler, expected it.
“All because it was too wonderful, I nearly threw it away.” At the last stall she paused and looked back. Steve hardly moved as Angie gestured pointedly with her saberlike nails flashing blood red. “Maybe I did throw it away because of you, Angie. Then again,” she smiled, a smile filled with hope, “maybe not.”
There was little Savannah knew of love, except that it had a way of surviving. Steve loved her. He’d never said it, but she knew. Standing in the stockyard, with animals milling and lowing, and blaring music changing to an aching ballad, she knew.
Where there had been little trust, she would trust in love.
Lost in hopeful dreams, she continued toward the parade ground, managing only a distracted greeting for a stockman passing by. “Morning, Cactus.”
“Morning, Miss Benedict.” Cactus Poteat was sometimes a drifter, sometimes a cowhand, a state dependent on whether or not he was sober. Tipping his hat, he watched her furtively out of sight before stepping into the yard.
Eager to retrieve the bottle he had stashed in the Spanish stallion’s stall, he hurried down the corridor. Eagerness curdled to anxiety when he found the stall occupied, and a ripsnorting argument calming along. No matter how desperate he was for a drink, there was little to do but wait. Creeping into the shadows, finding a pile of straw, he stretched out for the duration.
Quite into his cups already, he was just drifting off when he heard a slap and a woman’s screech. Then the voice of the squatter from Sunrise Canyon thundered, threatened.
Footsteps rushed past his biding place, and the yard was quiet.
“A pity,” Cactus grumbled as he settled too comfortably into the hay to seek out his bottle after all. “A dang pity if a man was to truly break the neck of a woman as pretty as that.” A snore rattled the back of his throat, and buzzed his lips. He snorted and stirred, rubbed the tickle of his mouth. Later he would search out the bottle, carefully hidden in the most perilous place he could conceive. For now, he
settled into sleep again.
“Yesiree.” His words slurred as he slipped over the edge. “A dang pity, for sure.”
Chapter 15
“Well, now, aren’t you a treat for eyes lonesome for the sight of you?” Caught up in Jubal’s bearish embrace, Savannah could only hang on and hug back.
Leaving her with ribs that were one squeeze shy of cracking, he put her from him. Holding her at arm’s length, his hands resting briefly on her shoulders, the massive man looked her over from head to toe. “It’s been too long since I’ve been around to ride herd on this slave driver here.” A slanting glance flicked to Jake and back. “And I can tell he’s been working you too hard.”
Jake snorted and whipped his chair around, giving them his back as he glared out over the festival grounds. The arena lay virtually at his feet, a natural amphitheater formed as the land was formed, by the forces of nature. This was the second day of the festival, the most important; in a few minutes the highlight of the festivities would begin. The showing of the horses, prize stock from some of the richest and best ranches, and from the working ranches, the shoestring operations.
Always a splendid gathering of horseflesh, no matter the source. But one, more than any other, captured the interest of Jake Benedict and every serious horse breeder alike.
Steve Cody’s Spanish stallion would be strutting his stuff for the curious and informed in less than a quarter hour. If rumor could be believed, the stallion was the best of a spectacular stable, expected to sweep the show.
Jake hadn’t been feeling so well lately, but not even gimpy legs and a herd of wild horses could have kept him away. “Nosiree,” he groused aloud to himself. “No-sir-damn-ree.”
“Jake’s right, Jubal. He’s worked me no harder than usual.” Rescuing her hat from the precarious angle left by the exuberant embrace, she smiled her brightest smile, defending Jake as she wrongly interpreted his muttering. “Working the herds and the stock can be taxing for any of us this time of year.”
“Working the stock and what else?” Jake brought his chair around abruptly. The look in eyes so like her own pinioned her with their question.
His remark took her by surprise, in all the months of her protracted days, he’d never commented on her absences. If he’d questioned Sandy or Bonita, each had sidestepped the truth adroitly and hadn’t worried her with news of the inquisition. “It’s true,” she admitted. “I’ve been away some.”
“Some!” Jake leaned forward in his chair, his elbows on the armrests, his fingers locked in a hard grip. “Gone more than she’s home, and she calls it some?”
“She’s a woman grown, Jake, wouldn’t you think she deserves a little privacy?” Jubal intervened, casting a puzzled look at her.
“She wants privacy, all she has to do is go in her own room and shut the door. She’d be perfectly alone there. I damn sure couldn’t disturb her if I wanted to.”
The big man chuckled heartily. “Maybe being alone in her bedroom isn’t the sort of privacy our Savannah would be wanting.” His twinkling eyes swept over her appreciatively. “The range is as full of wranglers who’d like to spend time with her as it is jackrabbits.”
In spite of an effort to the contrary, Savannah cringed. Jubal was trying to help, trying to tease Jake from his bad mood, but the direction he was taking was dangerous ground.
“It ain’t wranglers. Hell, not even a wrangler.” Jake snorted his distaste for a greater complaint. “It’s those damn lawyer books.”
A look of blank astonishment left her speechless as silver eyes flashed at her again.
“Don’t act so surprised, either of you,” Jake fumed, working himself into a rank mood. “Takes no genius to figger that when she sneaks off to whatever line cabin she’s holed herself up in, it’s to study on them dusty tomes. Making ready, so she can go back to finish what she started. Fact is, I expect any day to hear that she’s decided to go back East.
“Deserting!” His mouth pursed, turned down in a grim line. “Just like her ma.”
Savannah gaped at her father, wondering how he’d arrived at this theory. “Where did this come from? What prompted you to think I was considering returning to law?” Questions burst from her. “Did Sandy tell you?”
“Sandy told me nothing,” Jake groused. “Fact is, he’s made a career out of telling me as little as he could about you. ‘Twas true when you were a little girl, and true now. And before you ask, Bonita’s as closed mouthed where you’re concerned.”
Her relief was palpable, the last thing she wanted was for either Sandy or Bonita to jeopardize their jobs by lying for her. “Then all on your own you arrived at the conclusion that I was studying, planning to go back to Georgia after all this time?”
“Oh, I looked around for a likely fella first, and finding none, it wasn’t a great stretch to make the conclusion.”
“Not a great stretch!” It was Jubal’s time to snort. “You take a flimsy thread and weave a whole cloth from it, and you say it isn’t a stretch? Even if it were more than a thread, why would it be cause for resentment? The child has given you more than a father’s due for more years than I can count. Even putting aside her own ambitions for you when you needed her. How could you begrudge her if she did want to continue her studies?” Jubal wagged a finger. “Mind you, I say if.”
“She’s a Benedict, a rancher, born and bred to it. She’d die of boredom locked in a courtroom listening to a bunch of legal prattle.”
“If she were just your daughter, maybe.” Jubal shifted his weight, his face alight as he mounted his fictional white charger to gallop full speed into battle. “You forget she’s Camilla’s daughter, as well. From a scholarly family peopled with doctors and lawyers, and judges and such.”
Jake bristled, his head jerked up, slumping shoulders lifted. “It’s not something I’m likely to forget, considering I have her image before me every day of my life.”
Jubal rocked back on his heels, pleased by this rare chance to make a point that needed making. “And every day you miss her.”
“I do not!”
“Do!”
Looking from one determined man to the other, Savannah was exasperated by the childish nature of their argument, but relieved their attention had been diverted from her. In a suspicious thought, she wondered if that had been Jubal’s intention all the while.
“What do you take me for? A blathering idiot? The woman absconded, left me without a backward glance, why on earth would I miss her?” Jake was too bemused to be concerned by the stares of those who hurried by to take their seats before the showing of the horses began.
“She didn’t abscond.” If Jake was bemused, Jubal was completely oblivious. “There was nothing secret about her leaving, or the reason for it. She gave you every opportunity to ask her to stay.”
“Every opportunity!”
“Yes, Jake Benedict, every opportunity. And do I think you’re a blathering idiot? No.” Aware or not, in any case, Jubal dropped his tone a degree. “Stiff-necked pride is your problem. Any fool but you would have asked her back, especially when you wanted her back so badly.”
“You’ve become an expert, have you, Jubal Redmond?”
“Jake! Jubal! That’s enough.” Savannah had been content to remain a silent bystander, glad Jake’s focus had switched from her. She always enjoyed this common and often comical sparing of old friends, but a warning flag had been raised. Temperament of the discourse had turned from heated to icy, and the use of full names signaled it was time to step in. “You sound like children.”
“Don’t.” Jake practically bellowed the denial.
“Don’t,” Jubal echoed more quietly.
“You!” Jake stabbed an accusing finger in Jubal’s direction, returning to the argument as if Savannah had never intervened. “You would have asked Camilla back.”
“In a heartbeat, on my knees,” Jubal shot back.
“You were always half in love with her yourself.”
At her father’s reve
lation, Savannah’s jaw, which seemed eternally prone to drop today, dropped again. As if she were watching a fast and furious tennis match, her head swiveled from one graying giant of the West to the other.
“I was, and more than half.” Jubal nodded, perfectly at ease with his admission. “A common condition among half the populace of the county—the half that isn’t female—and you, Jake. You loved her then,” he finished in a drawling flourish. “You love her now.”
Jake Benedict tossed about in his chair, his fist drummed the armrests. “Where the hell did you get an idea like that?”
“From the best source. From you. What can you say to deny it?” He didn’t embellish his proof with his own astute observations, or Sandy’s. Jubal was too wise to bring him into this. The foreman had been fired too many times for too many reasons. Meddling in Jake’s emotional ties to Camilla might be the one that stuck.
“I say we need to change the subject.” Savannah stepped between them. “This isn’t the place for this.”
“There’s no place for it.” Jake glared up at Jubal, tossing the only insult he could think of at him. “Damn Kentuckian.”
The announcer chose that time to make the last call for the show of horses. In his singsong voice he invited all who were interested to take their seats before the initial parade around the ring.
“We should go,” she urged. “Sandy will be waiting for us.”
“We should, and yes, he will,” Jubal agreed. “All of us are anxious to see what young Cody has done with his stock.”
“You mean you’re anxious to see what he’s done with yours,” Jake tossed over his shoulder as Jubal grasped the back of his chair. “And I don’t need your help.”
“I won’t deny I’m curious to see if my faith in the boy is vindicated.” Jubal kept his hold firmly on the chair, slowing its descent down a ramp constructed for Jake. “What’s more curious is the way you keep insisting you don’t need help. All of us do, at one time or another.”
“You’re just hurrying me along because you’re anxious to see that horse of yours.”
