Cowboy in Colorado (Fifty States of Love)

by Jasinda Wilder

  Suddenly, Will is hauling at the reins, and Gopher turns sideways, skidding to a stop in a tiny clearing under the trees. Barely a clearing, really, more of an open space between trees. In it, there is a small cabin, hand-built from logs, with a small barn a few feet away, the pair of structures hunkering under the trees, hidden by them. The ridge is a stone’s throw away, and as Will hauls Gopher around, I catch a glimpse of the view—meadows and pastures and miles of fence and rolling hills and stands of trees—breathtaking…and hazed by a silver curtain of lightning-lit rain.

  I barely have time to register what’s happening—Will has Gopher dancing sideways, and there is a desperate urgency to his actions as he leans over from the saddle and hauls the barn door open without dismounting. I feel something big and hard slam into my shoulder, leaving me numb and shaken—a ball of hail the size of my fist rolls to a stop at Gopher’s feet, and I look out into the forest, seeing similarly sized balls of hail slashing through the tree cover, bringing down leaves and branches with them, slamming into the earth with the audible thunder of impact.

  Harder, thicker, faster, the hail comes, moment by moment, crashing and slicing through the air. Gopher bolts sideways, screaming in pain as a ball of hail bounces off his left flank, and Will ducks as he gets the barn door open. I bend over Gopher’s neck as Will dances him into the barn—it’s a low-roofed structure, rude and crude and smelling of hay and manure and wood and horse. There’s a small loft, bales of hay stacked against the roof, a ladder running up to it. There’s one stall, made from what looks like old pallets stacked on end and nailed together and to the ceiling, forming two walls. A gate, comprised of another set of pallets, is fastened by hinges to one wall. It’s surprisingly neat, well-built, tidy, and cozy. The moment we’re inside, the noise becomes deafening as hail rattles off the metal roof. All three of us—Will, Gopher, and I—just sit for a moment, grateful to be out of the rain and wind and hail. The door is still open behind us, and I twist to look out—the world is white with hail, each at least the size of a grape, if not bigger, some nearly the size of a baseball. We made it just in time, I realize; if we’d gotten caught out in this, we would have been killed.

  “I hope your men made it,” I hear myself say, my voice shaky.

  “Me too,” Will mutters. He takes the walkie-talkie he appropriated earlier, and twists up the volume, then presses the button. “Everyone make it to Alpha?”

  “Affirmative, Boss,” I hear a voice say, and recognize it as Clint’s. “Nick of time, too. Never seen hail like this in my life.” A pause. “You make it okay?”

  “Same here—just barely.”

  “Think the herd will be okay in that pen?” Clint asks.

  Will sighs. “Yeah, they should be fine. Nothing we can do about it anyway. They have shelter.”

  “Boss, about Miss Brooklyn…”

  “Forget it,” Will cuts in. “You did what you could. She’s hotheaded and hardheaded and obviously has more balls than sense.”

  I throw myself off the horse and stand facing him, anger snapping. “I’m right here, in case you didn’t notice!”

  He clicks off the walkie-talkie, eyes crackling. “I know.” He dismounts Gopher, and sets about quickly stripping the saddle off, and then the bridle.

  Gopher, once free of the tack, ambles on his own into the nearby stall, murmuring at Will, who takes a fishing tackle box from a shelf on the wall, opens it, and pulls out a couple old rags and a big brush. There’s a waterer attached to the wall inside the stall, and Will dips one rag into the water, wrings it out, and then uses it to rub Gopher all over, head to tail, shoulders to hooves. Once this is done, the rag is filthy, and Gopher’s sweat-wet hide is smeared and flattened against his skin. Next, Will uses the dry rag to wipe Gopher down again, several times, until he is somewhat drier, at which point Will goes over him again, this time with the brush.

  “He was already wet and sweaty, so why the wet rag?” I ask.

  “He’s been out working all day, and he’s dirty, plus he’s sweaty from the run, but the dirt under the saddle and blanket was all mired up in his sweat. The wet rag picks up the dirt and sweat and loose hair, and then dry rag cleans him up a bit more, dries him off, and the curry finishes it off.”

  Will closes the gate, bringing the rags and brush out with him. He opens a nearby plastic bin full of grain pellets, scoops some into a bucket with a flat back and a hook meant to go over the gate top, and hooks the bucket where Gopher can get to it. In a back corner under the hayloft is a partial bale of hay, coming apart in thin slices; Will grabs three of the pieces and stuffs them into a leather bag full of holes attached to one of the walls. Gopher already has his nose in the bucket of grain, crunching happily. After a few bites, he turns and noses into the water, slurping loudly. Once he’s had his drink, I hear running water, and the water level rises automatically.

  “An automatic water feeder?” I ask. “Out here?”

  Will laughs. “No plumbing, if that’s what you mean. Not in the barn at least.”

  “Then how?”

  “There’s a cistern out behind the barn with a rain catchment system, which feeds down into his stall. There’s a little floater that stops the water supply when the waterer is full. Simple physics.” Will goes to the open barn door, watching the hail. “This is the craziest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I move beside him, standing at the barn door watching the vicious monstrosity of the storm, and I am hyperaware of his size and strength; he is a strange, intoxicating mixture of wise and rough and calm and wild, and just being this near him makes me feel shaky, in much the same way I was nervous standing face to face with an angry, wary Demon. “The storm?”

  He nods, arms crossing over his chest. “Yeah. Seen some pretty bad storms before, hail and even a couple twisters, but this? This is insane.” He gestures outside, at the thick white haze of hail, rain, and wind. “The cabin is right there, but until this lets up, it’s not safe to leave the barn. It's maybe thirty feet, but in this crazy shit, it may as well be a mile.”

  He turns to look at me, and now his expression is unreadable. “Looks like we’re stuck here together.”

  I’m soaked to the bone, shivering, bruised from the hail and aching from another mad gallop, and yet all I can see, all I can hear, all I can feel is the pounding of my pulse in my throat, in my chest, the coursing of heat between my thighs.

  Stuck here together.

  With a man as wild as the charging, rearing stallion he faced down.

  It was no longer just the chill in my bones making me shiver.

  8

  Will crosses his arms over his chest, breathing slowly and watching the storm. He is utterly still, but for the rise and fall of his chest, and the watchful flick of his summer sky eyes. He’s a creature of nature, less a man and more something born and bred of all the wild things—horses and eagles, wolves and antelope. His stillness is not waiting, not coiled, or pent up, it’s simply…stillness. Completely and utterly in the moment, at peace with himself and his world.

  I’ve never been so aware of being out of place, with my absurdly expensive custom silk suit and three thousand-dollar shoes, my diamond-and-platinum Bulgari watch, my entire world waiting impatiently for me out beyond this place. I cannot be that still, cannot simply stand and just be, the way Will is right now.

  “How do you do that?” I ask, the words tumbling out unbidden.

  He turns his head just so, enough to indicate I have his attention. “Do what?” His voice is low, deep, quiet, calm, soothing.

  “Just stand there like that, so still?”

  He smiles, a tiny ghost of a curve to his lips that I almost doubt I’m even seeing, and yet it lights up his entire being. “It unnerves some people. My parents thought I was slow, when I was a kid.”

  I snort. “What?” I cannot possibly fathom how you could mistake the intelligence in him.

  “Even as a baby, I only cried when I was hungry or needed a diaper, my mom said, an
d even then, I’d stop once the basic need was met. Otherwise, I could just lay in the bassinet or whatever and be fine. As a kid, I would sit out on the porch and just…look. My capacity for stillness made them think maybe I was a little learning impaired, or whatever they call it these days. Once I started school, it became apparent I was plenty smart, I just wasn’t prone to…excess movement, I guess.” He shrugs. “No secret to it, really. You just have to slow down your mind.” He glances at me then, doubtful. “Harder for some than others.”

  “That feels like a dig.”

  “Just a comment, take it how you will.”

  A silence wreathes between us like vapor, thickening into a fog. He just watches, unmoving, arms crossed, legs braced apart, head high—still. The storm rages, lightning flashing again and again, close and far, thunder cracking loud and close and distant and then quieter. The hail continues to fall thick and hard, until white balls of ice coat the ground like snow, piling up and up, the sound of it falling now making a clicking and cracking sound.

  “How long will the hail last?”

  He shakes his head. “Dunno, no way to tell. Never seen a hailstorm like this before.” He breathes a sigh. “A lot of good folks are being ruined right now.”

  I frown at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Our livelihood on the Bar-A Ranch is livestock. They can take shelter, they can survive hailstorms. We’ll be fine. A few younger or older animals may die, but it’ll be within the scope of our typical mortality rate.” He gestures at the hail. “Farmers? Not so much. This hail is going to absolutely decimate entire crops. Utter ruin.”

  I blink, taking in what he’s saying. “The crops can’t take shelter. If the hail can hurt or kill people and animals, what chance does a field of corn or whatever have?”

  He nods. “Exactly. You follow that much at least. What you may not realize is how huge a gamble farming is. You ever see those huge combines and tractors they use?” I nod, and he waves a hand. “Those things cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. They have millions of dollars, literally, tied up in equipment debt, which they roll over and roll over year after year, putting it off and putting it off, gambling on each crop to pay their bills. Then along comes a freak storm like this, with hail the size of golf balls and baseballs, and those guys are in their houses and barns, totally helpless, watching their lives get ruined. They won’t get a harvest, they’ll have nothing to sell, and those bills will come due, and they won’t have any way of paying them.”

  “Sort of like stock trading.”

  “Wall Street, you mean?”

  I nod. “Yeah. I know men who have put up their entire net worth on a stock, based on a tip or something, gambling that the value will rise and that they can sell at exactly the right moment to make the most profit…and instead of that stock jumping like everyone expected, it tumbles, for a plethora of reasons beyond anyone’s ability to predict, and that entire investment is torpedoed. Zeroed out. Total loss, and then some. Fortunes are made and lost in seconds on Wall Street, and yet the average person only sees the numbers on the TV screen with no real understanding of what it means for those on the other side.”

  “So you’re into that whole scene, then?” Will asks, and I get the sense that he’s feeling me out, taking my measure. “Stocks and bonds or whatever? Day trading?”

  “No, not really.” I hesitate. “I mean, I have a few investments, but they’re all stable, long-term things. I don’t play the game.”

  He nods, a slight frown marring his features. “Then what are you into? What is it you do?”

  “I’m a real estate developer.”

  “Pretend I’m an ignorant, uneducated country boy born and raised on a horse ranch,” he says, his tone wry. “What’s that mean?”

  I can’t help a laugh, because that may be a technically accurate description of Will, but it far from captures who he is—I can tell that much just from the few, limited interactions we’ve had. “I buy land and buildings and…develop them. Turn them into something that makes a profit.” I wave a hand in a broad gesture at the world beyond the barn. “A typical deal for me would be, let’s say…there’s an old warehouse building somewhere in a city. Say that warehouse is in a section that’s currently not entirely developed, meaning sort of rundown, not super nice, but not crime-ridden or dangerous. And that warehouse is aging, but not dilapidated. I would go in and buy the building—I’d fight like crazy to get the lowest possible price, obviously. When I buy it, I have to have a vision for it, what I want to do with it. What I want to turn it into. I have to see beyond what’s there to what it could be. So say that warehouse has lots of exposed brick and I-beams and piping, lots of big windows, well…that would make a great condo. So I would explain my vision to architects and contractors, and they would give me a bid for what they think it would cost to do that, as well as a timeframe. I would pick the best proposal—based on estimated price and length of construction, and whether I like their past work. Then, we’d go to work, ripping the building down to studs, making it structurally sound, and we’d turn that old warehouse into a set of upscale condos. We’d have to market them, find our demographic of who would want to take the risk of buying a condo in a less than established area.” I wave a hand again. “Long story short, we’d sell the condos, and the area would start to trend, hopefully. Others would come in and develop other buildings, and once prices of real estate go up, we’d slowly increase the cost of the condos. In time, the amount of money we’d make on the condos would pay for the work it took to create them, and then we’d start turning a profit.” I pause. “But that’s just one aspect. We build new buildings, renovate old ones, buy already established profit-makers and try to make them even more profitable, there’s a lot of other aspects besides what I described.”

  Will nods, musing. “So you gamble, too?”

  I nod and shrug. “Yeah, for sure. If a project doesn’t pan out, if the contractors take too long and go too far over budget, if we can’t sell or make it turn a profit, then we take a loss, meaning less capital for the next project. You have to have a solid sense of risk versus reward, good instincts which you trust, and vision for what something can be.”

  He eyes me. “And you think there’s something I have which you can buy, develop, and turn a profit on.”

  “It’s not quite as selfishly avaricious as you make it out to be.”

  “No?” His eyes and his tone dare me to contradict him, to prove him wrong.

  I sigh, rolling my shoulders at the discomfort of my wet clothing and the bruises from the hail and the other rigors and damages of the insane day I’ve had. “I mean, at the most basic level, yes, that’s what I’m after. But—”

  “But you want me to hear you out so you can twist it and sell it and couch it in terms of what I stand to gain from your plans for my land.” He shakes his head. “No. In the end, you’re looking to make a profit off of me and what’s mine. And I’m not interested.”

  “But, Will—”

  He gestures outside. “Hail’s letting up.” He jogs out into the storm, tossing words over his shoulder. “Stay here if you want, make your way back if you want, come to the cabin if you want, but I’m not discussing any kind of deal.”

  When he said the hail was letting up, he meant, it was no longer coming down in big enough balls that they’d crush my skull like a grape, but it was still hailing, and hard. He jogs easily, head ducked, hail bouncing off his broad shoulders and back, and then he reaches the front door of his cabin and vanishes inside.

  And I’m alone.

  Gopher whickers behind me, and I can hear him munching on hay, hear his hoof stomping restlessly.

  I don’t know if I have the energy left to run even another twenty feet—I’m all in, exhausted and aching and hungry and overwhelmed. I can’t even process all that’s occurred today. Yet, my only options are to stay here in this barn, alone, cold and wet and shivering and aching and hungry, or make the run through the hail…into a rustic cabin in th
e middle of nowhere, with a huge, wild, recalcitrant man who doesn’t seem to like me all that much, and is only really suffering my presence because he’s stuck with me.

  My feet are killing me. Beyond killing me—I’m only now becoming aware of exactly how much my feet really hurt. These shoes are gorgeous, but even under normal circumstances; I’d take them off as soon as possible. This has been the farthest thing possible from a normal business day—I’ve ridden horses in them, walked through poop in them, run in them, faced down a brutish monster of a horse in them, and now my feet are telling me they’re absolutely done with wearing these stupid, beautiful, fashionable heels.

  But, looking out at the ground I have to cross, I dare not take them off. The earth is carpeted in hail, and there’s no way I’ll make it across barefoot. By god, it’s still raining so hard even if it weren’t for the hail, this storm would be hazardous to be out in—the rain is so thick I can barely make out the cabin twenty feet away.

  I groan out loud, knowing I’m faced with another no-choice situation. Staying here alone in this barn is not an option, leaving the barn to find the Big House and my car and the rest of civilization is even more clearly not an option…which Will knew when he left me here. It was his way of making sure I knew he was dead serious about not even being willing to hear me out. No discussion, or I’d be out on my own—that was the subtext of his actions.

  I draw in a breath, steady myself mentally, summoning the courage necessary to leave the shelter of this barn.

  And then I jog, to the best of my ability, on three-inch heels and aching, screaming, blistered, agony-racked feet, into the thunder and lightning, into the hail and the rain. Within steps, I’m soaked again—I’d sort of started to dry out a little, but within an instant I am utterly soaked, water pooling in my shoes, sluicing down my face, down my back, my clothing flattening against my bones and dragging heavily on me. Hail clatters around my feet in ankle-high piles, rolling over my feet with biting, icy touches, and bounces off my skull and my shoulders and my back. I cover my head with my arms, but the hail stings and bruises all the same. Twenty feet has never seemed so far.