Man and animal stood poised on the edge of disaster for a long two seconds as the horse flared its nostrils and danced, shying at the boys and their racket then spooking again at a leaf that blew across his path.
“Easy.” The man had a low, soothing voice that reminded Sierra of George Strait crooning a country love song, but the horse wasn’t succumbing to his charms.
The boys had calmed a little, except for Isaiah, who was still shouting Madonna lyrics in total disregard of the delicate situation with the horse. Jeffrey looked from the horse to Isaiah then stepped up to the taller boy with his hands on his hips.
“Shut up,” he hissed into Isaiah’s face.
Isaiah looked as shocked as if the horse itself had spoken, but he followed orders and fell silent.
“Thanks, bud.” The tall man gave Jeffrey a nod of thanks. “You must be Jeff. You want to lead this guy over to that corral?”
Before Sierra could object, the guy had handed the lead rope to Jeffrey. She wanted to run and grab it away, or at least shout out an objection, but she knew she’d only make matters worse. She could only watch as Jeffrey took the rope and walked the horse to the corral, opening the gate and passing the horse through, then unclipping the rope from its halter as if he’d been a ranch hand all his life. He shut the gate and returned to stand nearby, like a soldier awaiting further orders.
The tall man grinned and tipped his hat to Sierra with a charm that stopped her objections in her throat. “I’m Ridge’s brother Shane. You must be Sierra. Am I right? That was Jeff?”
She nodded while the man looked over the rest of her crew.
“And you’re Carter, and you’re Josh, you’re Frankie, and you’re Isaiah,” he said, pointing at each of the boys in turn.
“How do you know our names?” Josh asked.
Shane laughed. “My brother talks about you all the time.”
“Ridge?” Josh looked both thrilled and amazed. “Ridge talks about us?”
Ridge stepped onto the front porch, slamming the screen door behind him. “Yeah, I complain about you guys,” he said with a grin.
Isaiah shoved Josh. “He probably said Josh was the wimpy blond kid.”
“Well, I bet he said Isaiah was the smart-ass black kid,” said Carter.
Ridge gave the boys a quelling look. “And I said Sierra was in charge of all of you and she’d take you all back home if you didn’t behave.”
Another truck rolled up in a cloud of dust, hauling a trailer that was empty, judging from the way it clattered and bounced over the ruts.
“Is that Suze Carlyle?” Shane asked.
Ridge nodded. “She’s here to pick up her horse. He was giving her some trouble, so I ran him through some fundamentals again. He was running the barrels all right, but he’d forgotten how to stop.”
Sierra watched the new arrival climb out of the cab. Suze Carlyle looked like the quintessential cowgirl in fitted jeans and a white shirt. Graceful and well muscled, with a don’t-mess-with-me look in her eye and plumes of long blond hair spilling from a rakishly shaped cowboy hat, she reminded Sierra of the horse Jeffrey had just led to the corral.
“How’s my guy doing?” She walked right past Sierra and the boys without so much as a look. It was kind of rude, really, but Sierra figured there was probably some reason the woman’s attention was so firmly fixed on a red horse with a blonde mane that matched her own—or maybe her social skills just needed a little work.
“He’s ready to rumble,” Ridge said. “You can load him up, but let me go get Brady. He wanted to take a look at him before you take him back.”
“Brady’s here?” she asked.
“Yeah, let me go get him,” Ridge said, but she gave him an airy wave.
“Don’t bother. I need to get home in a hurry.”
Sierra assumed the man who emerged from the barn was Brady. She could still see the remnants of the boy he’d been in the picture, but he’d acquired a smile somewhere, along with a confident stride filled with youthful energy.
“You’re in a hurry? How come?” he asked the cowgirl. “Is somebody waiting for you?”
She flipped her hair and ignored him.
“No, really. You said you’re in a hurry. You got somebody waiting for you at home?”
He was evidently hitting a nerve, because the woman was flushing deep red as she strode past him, heading straight for the corral gate. It was obvious she wanted to get her horse and go. Jeffrey stepped up eagerly.
“You want me to get him for you, ma’am?” He waved the lead rope that was coiled in his hand and Sierra’s jaw dropped. Another full sentence from the boy who never spoke—and he’d said “ma’am.” To a stranger.
Wonders never ceased at Decker Ranch.
Chapter 40
The girl glanced at Brady then back at Jeffrey and sighed. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s get Ridge or Shane to help too. Trailering’s hard for this guy.”
“I’ll help,” Brady said.
“You shouldn’t have any trouble with him now,” Ridge said. “I fixed that problem.”
“You fixed Brady?” Suze smiled for the first time since she’d arrived, and Sierra was stunned at how it transformed her face. “It’s about time somebody did that. Maybe he’ll behave better once his testosterone level quits clouding his brain.”
“He fixed your horse.” While his brothers laughed, Brady strode over and tried to take the lead rope from Jeffrey, who had just clipped it to the horse’s halter. The horse pinned its ears and danced, a bundle of hair-trigger energy wrapped in horsehide. Sierra held her breath, wondering if the boy was about to get kicked or trampled, but Brady backed off and Jeffrey spoke softly to the horse, who calmed down as quickly as he’d riled up.
“Speedo just needs to run,” Suze told Jeffrey. “That’s what makes him a good barrel horse.”
“His name is Speedo?” Frankie and Carter staggered around, laughing. Even Jeffrey smiled a little.
“He earned that name,” Ridge said. “Nobody ever had to teach him to race. Hard part’s getting him to slow down and take it easy when there’s not a rodeo purse on the line.” He turned to Suze. “But you were right. He’s getting older. I wouldn’t practice hard stops any more than you have to.”
While Ridge showed Jeffrey how to safely trailer the horse, Suze climbed into the truck and clipped on her seat belt. Brady hovered nearby, and Sierra thought his confident grin had gone a little shaky at the edges.
“Why don’t you stick around a while?” he asked Suze. “I had a great ride on Tornado last night. Don’t you want to hear about it?”
“No,” she said flatly, checking the rearview mirror.
When Ridge clanged the trailer door shut and gave Suze a thumbs-up, she cranked the engine into a slow rumble and put the truck in gear.
“I’m sure you wore that story out already, telling it to all the girls at the beer tent last night,” she said.
“I didn’t…” Brady clamped his mouth shut, and Sierra figured he’d realized protesting would be a lie. He might seem like a devil-may-care cowboy right out of a country song, but he’d been raised by the same honorable man who’d raised Ridge, and while womanizing was evidently irresistible, he drew the line at lying. Casting Suze a wounded look, he pressed his worn brown felt hat lower on his forehead and slouched into the house.
“They’re in love,” Ridge told Sierra as Suze rolled out of the drive. “Hope they figure it out before they kill each other.”
Sierra didn’t comment. From what she’d seen, Suze couldn’t stand Brady, but Ridge apparently saw his little brother through rose-colored glasses. She supposed that’s what it was like when you had family. She’d never had any siblings herself; it had been just her and her mother. She still talked to her mom now and then, although the two of them didn’t have much to say. Sierra got tired of listening to one-sided rants about how men were dogs.
Shutting down her memories, she brought her attention back to the present. Jeffrey stood by the
corral, watching the bay horse with far more fascination than it seemed to merit. The animal was only cropping grass, but Jeffrey seemed entranced.
“How come you talk here at the ranch and not at home?” she asked him.
“Nobody can hear me,” he said, as if it was obvious.
“Sure we can. I can, and Ridge and his brothers. What do you mean, nobody can hear you?”
“You said.” His little face was solemn. “It’s a secret place, where nobody can see or hear us. It’s okay here.”
“I did say that, didn’t I?” She remembered that first day, how she’d told the kids the ranch was magic.
She’d been right.
She walked with him to the barn, where Ridge and Shane were handing out instructions for the day.
“I’ll be your riding teacher today,” Shane said. “Jeffrey’s going to stick with Ridge.”
“No fair,” Isaiah grumbled, but a glare from Ridge shut him down.
“I teach a little different from Ridge,” Shane said. “I have some secret cowboy stuff he doesn’t know about.”
Isaiah’s eyes widened, and he followed Shane willingly.
On a hunch, Sierra followed Ridge and Jeffrey. When she was certain of where they were going, she stopped.
“Wait a minute.”
Ridge turned. “What?”
She bent over Jeffrey and pointed toward a corral that was far enough that he wouldn’t be able to hear their conversation but not so far that she couldn’t keep an eye on him.
“Jeffrey, could you go over there and watch those horses for a minute?”
He nodded and began trudging over to the corral.
“Just watch. Don’t touch,” she called after him.
She turned to Ridge. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking him with me while I work Moonpie,” he said. “And by the way, you can’t come. It’ll distract the horse and he’s liable to get feisty.”
“Feisty? Ridge, that horse is dangerous.”
“Not to Jeff. You saw them, same as I did. You telling me there’s not a bond between those two? They’re just alike. Their only experiences with people have been bad ones. There’s something broken in both of them, and it’s like they recognize each other.”
“Kindred souls.”
“Exactly. Jeffrey’s never had that. There’s a chance he’ll never find it again.”
She thought a moment. “Can you guarantee the horse won’t hurt him?”
Ridge looked irritated. “Of course not. There are no guarantees in ranch life, believe me.” He thought a moment. “Except one.”
“What’s that?”
“If you keep Jeff away from that horse, you’ll break his heart.”
She looked over at the corral. Jeffrey had climbed up the fence and was perched on the top rail. The two horses were jockeying for his attention, pushing each other in a battle for the boy’s touch.
She could hear his voice in her head. I’m sick of someday.
“Don’t take this away from him, Sierra,” Ridge said. “Let him help this horse. I’ll guide him through it, and he’ll see that you can recover from the past. It might be the best thing that ever happens to him.”
“It might be the last thing that ever happens to him,” she said. But it was a weak protest. She’d seen Jeffrey’s face. The horses had helped all the boys, but for Jeffrey, they’d opened a dark door that had been closed, locked, and painted shut a long time ago.
“All right,” she said. “Just let him watch, okay?”
Ridge smiled, and the old cowboy was back—the one who won every contest, who conquered every bronc and bull. Suddenly, she knew exactly how the broncs and bulls felt.
When she returned to the group, Shane had Carter and Isaiah mounted on two horses, playing a game that involved tossing rings onto fence posts from the animals’ backs.
“Looks like fun,” she said.
“Yeah, they needed to do something more than ride in a circle.” He turned and flashed her a smile.
Dang. Ridge’s big brother was almost as deadly handsome as Ridge himself.
“Did Ridge take Jeff to work on that damned crazy horse he bought?”
Sierra felt suddenly cold. “You mean Moonpie? You think he’s crazy?”
He looked her in the eye and seemed to sense the panic there. “He’s fine. Just one more hayburner than we need, that’s all. They’ll be in the round ring over there.” He gestured toward a high-walled enclosure near the back of the barn. “The kid’ll be fine as long as you leave ’em be. Seems like the quiet kind, and he’s got a way with horses. Reminds me of Ridge at that age.”
“Really?”
Shane grinned. “Really. You could hardly get a word out of him when he first came here. Barely talked at all.”
Sierra thought about that while she watched the kids for a while, making sure Shane could handle them. After ten minutes, she wondered what it was about cowboys that cast a magic spell of good behavior over her raucous crew of troublemakers.
She drifted away, telling herself she’d go look for Riley, but somehow she found herself at the round ring where Ridge and Jeffrey were working the buckskin horse. The high sides of the ring shut her out, so she just stood and listened awhile. She didn’t hear a word from Jeffrey, but Ridge was talking to somebody. She could hear hoofbeats, slow and sort of stumbling, and the cowboy kept saying “That’s it. That’s it.”
Curious, she pressed her eye to a knothole. Jeffrey was walking around the ring with the horse following behind him. At first Sierra thought the boy was leading the horse, but as Jeffrey circled and backed up, moved sideways and executed sharp, sudden stops, she realized there was no rope involved. The horse was simply following him, as if fascinated. Through most of the exercise, it looked as if the horse’s muzzle was almost touching the boy’s shoulder.
As for Jeffrey, he looked enraptured by what was happening. He had a wondering, dumbstruck look that told Sierra something was changing inside the dark world of his mind.
She’d just crouched down for a better look when the horse stopped and snorted. Jeffrey gave Ridge a puzzled glance, and Ridge turned and looked straight at the knothole.
“Go away, Sierra,” he said. “You’re distracting the horse.”
She started to speak then realized she’d only spook the animal and endanger the child she was trying to protect.
Trailing off to the house, she felt a little lost. She was used to being indispensable, and now nobody needed her—not even Riley.
As if to answer her thoughts, Riley came clomping down from the second floor in work boots that made her pale legs look even skinnier than usual. Her hair was covered in plaster dust and her tool belt hung so low on her hips Sierra feared for the cutoffs that barely covered her butt, but she was smiling like she was glad to see Sierra, and that was all that mattered.
Chapter 41
Shoving her safety glasses up on her head, Riley led Sierra out to the porch, where Brady was drinking a beer.
“There’s something terrifying about a beautiful woman who can handle power tools,” he said.
Riley revved the electric drill in her hand and Brady faked terror.
“Long as you stay out of my way, you’re safe,” she said.
“No problem there,” he said.
Sierra looked from Brady, cool and calm on the porch swing with his beer, to Shane and the boys, who were shrouded in the dust rising from the dry, hot dirt of the riding arena.
“Let’s make lemonade.”
“Why? Somebody give you lemons?” Brady asked.
“No.” She smiled. “Not today, anyway.”
Riley shed her tool belt and goggles and hung out in the kitchen while Sierra stirred up a pitcher of Country Time. Their conversation was a little awkward, but Sierra was reassured; they were still friends. The frost between them was dissolving, sure as the sugar was dissolving in the glass pitcher as she stirred.
Maybe the men and boys had a sixth sense for refr
eshments, or maybe they heard the ice cubes clinking. Shane and his four aspiring cowboys trailed in, dusty and dirty but with smiles on their faces. Just when she’d gotten them all situated with plastic Solo cups of lemonade, Ridge and Jeffrey arrived.
“How’s that stargazing, saddle-shedding, bucking, biting son-of-a-bitch working out for you?” Brady asked.
Shane shot his brother a quelling look as he settled on the porch rail. “There are kids here, Brady,” he said. “Try to watch your language.”
Sierra, perched on the railing on the far side of the porch where she could see the whole group, saw Frankie mouthing the phrases to himself already.
“They got to learn sometime,” Brady replied, but he switched off his grin for a second and shot Sierra an apologetic look. She could see why he drove Suze crazy. He was charming in a roguish way that made it impossible to dislike him, and disliking him seemed to be Suze’s goal in life.
“Anyway, the stargazing saddle-shedding horse is a wonder,” Ridge said. “Either that, or Jeffrey is. Kid had him joining up in about five minutes and just put his first ride on him.”
“It must be the horse,” Isaiah said. “Because I can tell you, Jeffrey ain’t no wonder. He doesn’t even talk.”
“Do too,” said Jeffrey.
“Wait a minute,” Sierra said. “Did you say Jeffrey ‘put his first ride on him’? What does that mean, exactly?”
“Means he rode him.” Ridge grinned. “I told you, the kid’s a natural.”
“You put him on the back of that horse?”
Ridge shrugged. “It’s not like it’s the first time.”
“But the horse is dangerous.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he just needed the right person to help him see the world a little different.”
She felt her anger rising and trapped it just before it spewed out. Shoving off the railing, she ran down the porch steps and stalked around the corner of the house. As soon as she figured they were out of hearing of the group on the porch, she turned to face Ridge, who’d followed her just as she’d expected.
How to Handle a Cowboy Page 26
