Wyoming Born & Bred

by Cathleen Galitz

  Filled like a vessel to overflowing, with a rare sense of happiness, Cameron longed for the sound of her laughter. Toward that end, he cracked a silly joke about the birds that blighted his life with their noise and stench.

  “Ah, but they love you,” she insisted. “The way the mammas have taken to you, I’d lay odds that at least one chick will imprint with you at hatching time. That is, if you’d care to stick around till the first of the year.”

  Patricia tossed the comment out as nonchalantly as one would mention the weather or some other such mundane subject. But her hands gave away her real feelings. They were shaking ever so slightly as she lifted the wineglass to her lips.

  Cameron felt his heart leap to his throat at the offer. She wanted him to stay. Needed him. For more than just maintenance work he suspected. But rather than show the depth of his feelings, he focused instead upon her remark about imprinting.

  “I draw the line at playing mamma hen to lost chicks,” he said.

  Patricia worried her lower lip between her teeth. There was more than one way to take that assertion. She related to the image of a poor little hatchling following Cameron around. For some reason he was just the kind of man who naturally made one feel safe, protected—and cherished.

  “Why, Cameron Wade, you old—!”

  The oath trailed off and was swallowed up by the hubbub of other conversations wafting through the room amid the aroma of delicious food. Patricia looked alarmed. Was someone going to make trouble for them on such a pleasant evening?

  A big fellow with a ruddy complexion pushed his way through the maze of tables and chairs. He stood before Cameron and took a long moment to size him up. Then he grasped his hand and began pumping it up and down like a piston.

  “How’ve ya been?” he demanded in a booming voice. “Glad to see you’re back home at last. We’re all awful proud of ya, boy. Awful proud.”

  Meeting the man’s gaze head-on, Cameron seemed surprised at the sincerity he found there.

  As a buzz passed from table to table like a bee passing from one blossom to another, people started staring. And pointing.

  “That’s Cameron Wade,” whispered one.

  “The bull rider?”

  Another cowboy, a younger version of the first, stepped up to the table and shook Cameron’s hand as well. “Surprised you ain’t wearing that championship buckle. I sure would if it was me.”

  Patricia’s mouth fell open. A drop of wine fell upon the white tablecloth, staining it red with shame. The blush on her cheeks was a perfect match.

  “You ever get a hankering to move back here,” offered a gentleman at the table next to them, “I’ve got a nice piece of property along the river that’s prime ranch land. I’m getting too old to run the place myself.”

  Cameron looked as startled as Patricia. After spending years imagining he had something to prove to the people living here, it came as quite a shock to discover that they seemed genuinely happy for his success. When he finished accepting praise from all around, he turned to her and softly said, “I tried telling you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

  Words failed her. Never before had Patricia felt such a complete and utter fool. He hadn’t lied to her after all. She had spent so much time worrying that she might fall for another man made out of the same flimsy cloth from which Hadley had been cut that it hadn’t occurred to her to believe Cameron’s claim.

  Her own words came back to haunt her.

  If it’s any consolation, I had a heck of a time myself selecting you from among all those other rodeo stars who applied for the job—and the movie stars, too. How embarrassing for a man of your stature to be working here of all places. How humbling!

  How humbling indeed.

  “Why?” she uttered through a haze of confusion. Why would a rodeo superstar hire himself out as a lowly ranch hand? What was his ulterior motive?

  “I’ll answer all your questions in a moment,” Cameron assured her. “But right now I’d very much like the pleasure of a dance with the prettiest woman in the place.”

  He took her by the hand and led her to the dance floor. Patricia was too stunned to do anything but follow. Feeling lightheaded, she leaned against him. His arms went around her, and she mumbled apologetically. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “Hush,” he whispered back, and she felt the warmth of his breath raise goose bumps against the nape of her neck.

  She did as she was told, swaying mindlessly to the beat of a slow, hurting song that wrung her heart out like an old dishcloth. The end was coming, but Patricia was willing to forestall it for the length of a song.

  Cameron felt her shudder in his arms. A single tear fell upon his shoulder, and he felt its weight upon his soul.

  “Ah, honey,” he implored, standing quite still. The other dancers moved around them, covertly eavesdropping on the drama unfolding in their very midst. “Don’t cry. I’m not worth it.”

  She stroked his face as if it were the most precious gift on earth. “I am so sorry I doubted you. So terribly sorry.”

  Cameron had relished the thought of the day he was going to make this woman eat crow. Now that it had arrived, he took no satisfaction from it. His heart felt like someone was squeezing it. Hard.

  “It’s all right,” he crooned softly, hoping she would be half as generous when she heard the rest of the story. Right there in the middle of the dance floor, he kissed her so tenderly, so thoroughly that a little boy sitting at a table with his parents was moved to exclaim with the loud enthusiasm of an innocent voyeur, “Wow!”

  Everyone within earshot laughed. Everyone except a certain man who had obviously had too much to drink. He forced his way to the dance floor and tapped Cameron on the shoulder.

  “I heard rumors it was you who was working for the bird lady, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe that any self-respecting cowboy worth his salt would sink so low as to hand in his prize belt buckle for a Colonel Sanders hat and apron.”

  The music had stopped, and the dancers hurried to make their way back to the safety of their chairs. Cameron smelled the whisky on the man’s breath and tried turning him away with equal measures of forcefulness and civility.

  “You’re drunk, mister,” he stated, taking Patricia by the elbow and steering her off the dance floor. “And since I don’t particularly want any trouble tonight, I’d suggest you go and sober up and count yourself a lucky man in the morning.”

  Patricia flinched as the lout stepped between them and bodily blocked her path. He may have been drunk, but he was also very big and clearly intent on making himself look big by challenging the town’s local hero. On more occasions than she cared to remember Hadley had sloshed the bottle dry, but he had never been a mean drunk. The hatred written on this man’s hardened features made Patricia feel very sorry for any woman unfortunate enough to be in this fellow’s life.

  “Come off it, Dick,” called a voice from the crowd. “The last thing you need right now is another strike against you before you go to court.”

  Ignoring his friend’s admonition, Dick taunted Cameron with the same term the rodeo announcer used with admiration on the circuit. “Come on, Big Man. I dare you to take a swing at me,” he poked his intended victim in the chest with his forefinger for added emphasis, “Chicken Man.”

  Cameron’s voice was soft yet commanding as he told Patricia to “go sit down.” She stepped aside and heard him offer the man a final warning. “Buddy, this is your last chance to walk away from here with all your teeth.”

  “Well, I guess it’s true that big old dumb birds of a feather do stick together, Chicken Man!”

  Rough and masculine, the sound of his laughter filled Patricia with primitive fear. “Let’s go,” she urged Cameron. “You don’t have to respond to this big ape for me.”

  Dick smelled her fear and was spurred on by it. He continued making a spectacle of himself by tucking his hands beneath his armpits and flapping his arms up and down. “Cluck, cluck, cluck,
cluck...”

  A muscle in Cameron’s jaw jumped. His blue eyes turned the color of ice. “Let’s go outside,” he suggested with deadly calm. If it could be avoided, he’d just as soon not subject Patricia to any display of violence.

  “But now I see the two of you together with my own eyes, I can understand your thinking better. It’s a dif ferent kind of hen you’re after, heh? Maybe there’s far less bird bid‘ness going on at the widow Erhart’s place than monkey bid’n—”

  Cameron didn’t let him finish. It seemed the only way of ensuring the man shut his ugly mouth was by ramming his fist into it. Blood spewed in all directions. The unfortunate meddler staggered to his knees, holding his mouth. He spit a tooth into his open palms.

  “Sum uf a—” he muttered. Only temporarily stunned, he flung himself at Cameron’s ankles and knocked him to the ground.

  A chair splintered beneath Cameron’s weight as he fell upon it. The man was on top of him in an instant flailing his fists as if into a feather pillow. Cameron, shifted beneath him, and the sound of Dick’s fist connecting with the hardwood floor splintered in Patricia’s ears. Though his agonizing groans left little doubt that he wanted no more to do with the famous bull rider, Cameron drove his point home with a solid upper cut.

  The giant of a man lay sprawled on the floor like so much dirty water waiting to be mopped up. Parting to let Cameron pass, the crowd cheered.

  He shrugged it off with the practiced nonchalance of a celebrity.

  It was tempting to remain here and bask in the glow of mass admiration. Cameron had a sick feeling in his gut that the brawl he left behind was going to be nothing compared to the one awaiting him. The stiff set of Patricia’s backbone as she preceded him outside told him he was in for the fight of his life.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Patricia applied an ice pack to Cameron’s eye with clinical aloofness. She had remained pointedly quiet on the way home, not even putting up a token argument when he insisted on driving himself. Offering neither reprimands nor praise for his part in the altercation that had not only ruined a perfect evening but also left his right eye swelling and purple, she remained rooted to her side of the pickup.

  As Cameron took the baby-sitter home, she checked on the children. They were fast asleep in their respective beds. Kirk’s front tooth, which had been hanging on by a mere thread, was enshrined atop the kitchen table in the official family tooth-fairy jar, awaiting the traditional monetary exchange. Only after swapping a fifty-cent piece for the baby tooth did Patricia turn her attention to the man walking through the front door.

  “Sit down,” she commanded, grabbing an ice pack out of the freezer, “and let me have a look at that eye.”

  Though her ministrations were some consolation, Cameron had hoped for something warmer than the professional-nursing routine to which Patricia subjected him. Having sacrificed his face in the defense of her honor, the least he expected was a kiss to make it feel better.

  “Ouch!” he exclaimed, brushing her hand away. “Are you purposely trying to push that ice pack through the back of my head?”

  “Sit still.”

  For all the sympathy he was getting, Patricia might as well have been removing the tiniest of slivers from a petulant child’s finger. The full lips he had kissed just a short time ago had lost all their generosity. Pursing them as if holding back something distasteful, Patricia worked in silence, volunteering nothing of her thoughts.

  “You can’t possibly be mad to discover that I was telling you the truth all along,” he scoffed.

  The silence was deafening, as skeptical brown eyes burned a hole right through him. He knew better than to rush in where angels feared to tread, but even as a child Cameron could never leave well enough alone. He was the sort who took perverse pleasure in picking at a scab.

  “If you’d care to remember back a week or so, you laughed in my face when I tried to tell you a little about myself.”

  Patricia rolled her son’s baby tooth between her fingers and held it up to the light as if to examine it in detail. Squinting, she ventured her opinion.

  “My boys may believe in the tooth fairy, but I don’t. Things just don’t stack up right. A big-name rodeo star signing on to work as a lowly hired hand out of the goodness of his heart? I’m not buying it, cowboy. Why, with all your winnings you could buy any ranch around here that you wanted.”

  The light of sudden understanding dawned in Patricia’s eyes. “You want my ranch! That’s your scam, isn’t it?”

  Cameron flinched from the word which evoked images of shysters, snake oil salesmen, bankers in pinstripes... and of all the fools taken in by them. First and foremost on the list was his own father, who had put his faith in the dubious good will of his long-time friend and personal banker. And then there was Patricia’s dead husband who had apparently been taken in by every con artist within fifty miles of him.

  Ignoring the tug at his conscience, he responded cryptically, “I also told you about my ties to this place.”

  Patricia eyed him with that same unblinking resolve that inevitably elicited the whole, unvarnished truth from her children.

  “I care too much about the Triple R to see it falling down in disrepair,” he felt compelled to add.

  Patricia’s hands went to her hips in indignation. Just because he had done more around this place in about a week than had been accomplished in the previous decade didn’t give him the right to rub it in her face.

  “In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the Triple R anymore. It’s my home. Now, I’m only going to ask you one more time. What exactly are you after?”

  Cameron’s purpose was his own. He was here, of course, because this land, claimed by the sweat, blood and audacity of his grandfather, was his birthright. He was here because destiny demanded that he reclaim it and restore dignity to the Wade name. He was here because the realization of a twenty-year dream hinged on his presence.

  Feeling as defensive as a choirboy caught drinking the communion wine, Cameron’s first impulse was to come out swinging. But one glance into that gentle face and he suddenly lost his way around the fight. The hint of moisture glistening in eyes the color of fine scotch made him go as weak as Superman in the presence of kryptonite. The proud tilt of Patricia’s jaw made her look as vulnerable as little Amy Leigh refusing to back down in the face of her big brothers’ bullying. Cameron knew many women who could cry on cue if it got them what they wanted, but he searched his memory for a single one who could keep the tears from falling by sheer willpower alone.

  Nope, this was a first.

  Finding that he admired her a whole lot more than he did himself at the moment, Cameron realized he could no more stonewall this good woman than he could spit on his own mother’s grave.

  “Why exactly am I here?” he said dully, uncrossing his arms and taking a deep breath. “The truth is I came here to buy this ranch out from under you.”

  His words resonated in the room like the lingering sound of a death knell. Patricia’s eyes widened in disbelief, and the hurt tangibly shimmering there sliced Cameron to the bone.

  “I want to buy you out, Patricia,” he said, meeting those wounded eyes directly. “I want to turn this place into the finest quarter-horse ranch in the whole state. I’m prepared to offer you a fair price. More than fair.”

  “And just when were you going to get around to telling me about all this?” Patricia asked through tight lips. “When you presented me with the receipt for the back taxes?”

  Back taxes? So things were actually as bad as that. Cameron knew that Patricia was struggling to make ends meet, but apparently her finances were even worse than he’d imagined. A month ago he would have taken advantage of this woman’s dire straits without giving it a second thought. Now, however, he recoiled from the accusation as if from a rattlesnake.

  “Of course not!” he protested, feeling like some mustache-twirling villain in an old-fashioned melodrama. “It’s just that I’ve been waiting on a
contract from my agent that may or may not materialize. The minute I was sure I had the money, I planned on making you a generous offer.”

  ‘“Fair, more than fair, generous’...” Patricia repeated his choice of adjectives with disdain. “I wonder if Judas used such discriminating words when he accepted his thirty pieces of silver.”

  Cameron threw up his hands at the comparison. “It’s not like that,” he protested.

  “Yes, yes it is,” she insisted, grabbing a stack of mail off the table and rifling through it with an intensity of purpose that was frightening to behold. “It’s exactly like that, you manipulative son of a—wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

  Finding what she was looking for, Patricia thrust a manila envelope beneath his nose. “Something came in the mail for you today. Probably that fat contract you’ve been waiting for. Take it and get out of here.”

  Cameron stared at the package she so ignominiously dropped in his lap. It was indeed from his agent, and from the size and weight of it, he guessed it to be good news.

  “This could be a new start for us both,” he suggested, his voice a harsh whisper in the stillness of the room.

  He didn’t want to leave. Not now. Not like this.

  Until this very minute Cameron hadn’t truly understood how much he had come to care for this woman and her children. The thought of life devoid of their presence stretched before him like a desolate road littered with empty beer bottles discarded by passersby wasting their days on false, illusive dreams. It came as quite a shock to him to discover that all he had been seeking his whole life was right here in the same room where his own parents had so openly displayed their love. It had absolutely nothing to do with riding back into town a big man, as he once had thought. It had nothing to do with fame or money or all the glitz the world had to offer. It had nothing to do with the land that he held so precious.