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Clea jumped and spilled water on her jeans.
“I’d lay money on it,” Teddy said. “Don’t she look jist like a hoss thief to you?”
She felt her eyes go wide and the blood rush to her cheeks. “I can’t believe you saw through my disguise,” she said.
They laughed, loving that she played along with their joke.
“We mind our own business,” Teddy said. “So we ain’t turnin’ you in, Miss Clea, not unless you try to throw your long rope on some of our hosses.”
“Yore disguise ain’t so bad, though,” Buck said. “Ain’t seen many thieves wear them high-heeled shoes like you got on.”
She laughed, too, even if it sounded a little forced, then she finished the water fast and stood up. She didn’t want to get involved. She had to be alone to get her head straight and her confidence back.
“All I need is directions to my cabin and I’m outta here,” she said.
The old guys nodded. “We’ll show you where it’s at and then we’ll help you with your move,” Buck said. “If you do move.”
Damn, he was stubborn.
Jake thought so, too, judging by his irritated tone. He yelled from the bedroom, “She is moving. And remember, Buck, we’ve got work to do.”
Gallant enough to carry a foal around but not to carry boxes for her.
Face it, girl. The real cowboys have been gone for a hundred years. “I don’t need any help,” Clea yelled back at him. “I won’t accept any help. I moved myself in here and I’ll move myself out.”
Jake came out of the bedroom carrying a paper sack with a shirt peeking out of the top and a pair of boots in his other hand.
Clea said, “What’re you doing? I just told you I’ll move.”
“This’s only for a few more nights.”
“So’s he can take his turn feedin’ the baby,” Teddy said. “He brought in a orphan foal that we’re helpin’ him with.”
She turned to Buck. “Maybe they could go feed the foal and you could ride with me and show me where I’m supposed to be,” she said. “Then I’ll drop you at your place.”
All three of them just stood and looked at her.
“What?” she said.
“Reckon we’ll all have to hitch a ride with you,” Teddy said, “or walk. Our truck ain’t runnin’ right now.”
Clea’s face went hot. She slapped a hand to her forehead. How could she have forgotten?
How could she survive—anywhere—when she’d lost her memory and most of her good sense?
She found her keys and led the way out across the porch, down the steps and past the ruins of the pickup with Natural Bands, whatever that was, written on the door. It was truly a wreck. Also new and top-of-the-line. How much was that going to cost her?
She’d never had to clean up her own messes before. She couldn’t call Brock to take care of it and she couldn’t call Daddy. There was no one she could call.
Not even an insurance agent. Nobody sold policies to protect shooters against their own bad marksmanship.
“First experience,” Jake had said. No kidding.
CHAPTER FOUR
CLEA KEPT going, using her longest, most confident strides to make herself feel stronger. She was almost to her truck when she realized no one was behind her anymore. She turned to look and then she leaned against the truck and let her shoulders sag.
Of course. Once again, she’d failed to use her common sense. She’d forgotten that she couldn’t get her truck out with the wrecked one blocking her driveway.
Jake was unhooking it from the trailer. Buck was sitting in the driver’s seat with the door open.
“Put ‘er in neutral,” Teddy yelled at him. “I’ll give you the heads-up when we’re ready to push.”
The only answer he got was a light nicker from Ariel.
Clea whirled on her heel to see the mare standing at the fence watching the entire proceedings with ears pricked. Her stomach clutched. She’d prefer that no one ever see Ari, even though she’d dyed her white markings after she fed her this morning.
That was a useless hope, of course. And the disguise was paper thin. She doubted that there were very few horses around this part of Montana at least who were part-thoroughbred and stood nearly seventeen hands, much less horses who moved the way Ariel did.
But no sense in worrying. She didn’t even know whether these guys would pay any attention to or remember the mare. Anybody could go around pulling a horse trailer. That didn’t mean they’d know a warmblood from a quarter horse.
Ignoring Ari in the hope that the mare would wander off, preferably somewhere out-of-sight behind the barn, Clea turned back to the truck and started clearing spaces for passengers in the backseat. She gathered up her barn coat and clogs, piled them on top of the metal train case that held most of her cosmetics and balanced all that on the hump in the middle of the floor. She pushed the sack of snacks and carton of soft drinks left over from the trip to the middle of the seat. The old-timers weren’t very big. They could fit in here just fine.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and looked in the rear-view mirror at the long piece of driveway stretching from the house to the road and the nose of the Natural Bands trailer hanging over it. Backing out, she’d have to swerve her own trailer and then get it back on track so as not to go off into the ditch when she reached the road.
Maybe she should unhook it.
She shook her head at herself in the mirror. No, she had to be able to handle all kinds of situations and she’d backed the trailer before. She needed the practice. And she didn’t need the extra work of unhooking and hooking it up again to move Ariel this afternoon.
Jake finished unhooking his own trailer and went to help Teddy push the truck. As soon as he got behind it, the truck moved smoothly out into her—no, his yard.
Buck steered, holding the door open with his foot. Debris scattered everywhere and a large piece of shiny metal fell and bounced away into the grass when Buck put on the brake.
Dear God. This was going to take every penny she had saved. She might as well drive into Pine Lodge tomorrow and apply for a job at a McDonald’s restaurant. If they even had a McDonald’s. There must a café or two, at least. Could she learn to carry a heavy tray above her head on one hand?
Buck got out, closed the door and started up the little slope toward her. Jake went back to the trailer, picked up his paper sack of belongings from the ground, and he and Teddy followed Buck. Jake’s face, what she could see of it from under the brim of his hat, struck her as incredible. Heart-stopping.
Would he let her get some more pictures of him? No. She didn’t know him, but she could not imagine him willingly posing for a photographer.
She reached down, turned the key and looked at the protruding gooseneck of his trailer again. She’d better keep her mind on her business.
She looked for Ariel. Thank goodness, now she was nowhere to be seen.
Clea made herself draw in a deep, calming breath. Her insides were still a little shaky from all the havoc of the morning but now that was over. It had just been a terrible shock when she’d seen the snake and then three men rolling up into her yard with a trailer. Men who could easily have been sent by Brock to take Ariel back.
They hadn’t come for that at all. Brock still didn’t know where she was. She’d take these men to their cabin, find out where hers was, then come back and load up. She’d be settled again by tonight. Everything would work out all right.
Buck opened the door behind her. “All right, Miss Clea,” he said. “Yore way is clear. Let’s you and me run off and leave them two sorry so-and-so’s.”
He kept chattering away as he climbed in, as if they’d known each other for years. Clea had the sudden thought that she might’ve wrecked the only vehicle they had. What if she had to drive them everywhere they wanted to go until their truck was fixed?
Montana was turning out not to be quite as solitary as she’d expected.
Jake glanced back at his trailer as he walked up to Clea’s truck. It wouldn’t be easy to get past it without messing up one or the other or both, and one wrecked new vehicle was enough for one day. What a waste!
Natural Bands might have deep pockets and probably had good insurance but he wasn’t going to enjoy trying to explain to Celeste how this had happened.
He opened the passenger door as Teddy got in the back.
“I’ll drive,” Jake said.
Clea gave him a disdainful look. “Why should you?”
“In case you can’t drive any better than you can shoot.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Get in.”
“That trailer’s the only one we’ve got,” he said. “And you panicked.”
She sat up straighter and glared. “If you want a ride, get in. If not, shut the door.”
He held the stare, trying to intimidate her, but she wouldn’t give in or look away. Her eyes were blue, instead of brown like Victoria’s, but they were just as sure and hard as Tori’s had been when he tried to talk her out of leaving him.
Yep, here was another woman too stubborn for her own good. Too stubborn to have good sense. Why was that the only kind of woman who ever crossed his path?
He couldn’t by rights throw her bodily out of the seat, therefore he ought to stay on the ground to direct her, at least until she got around the trailer.
But that’d be a good way to get killed, judging by the way she was looking at him now. So, damn it, let her prove what she could do if she thought she was such a hand.
He moved her fancy piece of luggage—one of those with letters and little French symbols printed all over it—to the floor, set his paper sack on top of it and got in.
Clea put the truck in Reverse and her eyes on the mirror, released the brake and started rolling back the rig.
“You can do it,” Teddy said from his seat behind Jake. “Just take ‘er slow and steady.”
“You bet,” Buck said. “We’ll spot you. You git around that gooseneck, you got’er made.”
“You’re all right,” Teddy said, looking out the back window. “Jist do what we tell you now.”
Clea didn’t take her eyes off the mirror but she pulled in a deep breath and lifted her chin. The way her hair moved when she did that—so smooth and sleek and shiny, falling back from her perfect face—reminded him of Victoria again, although Tori’s hair was dark. Maybe that was why Clea’d irritated him from the get-go—besides shooting the hell out of his truck, she was a spoiled rich girl.
Jake stared out the window and tried to ignore her. The old guys would direct her. He’d just sit here and be ready to grab the wheel if she got in a jam.
“You’re all right,” Teddy said. “Just keep on comin’.”
She was moving at about an inch per hour.
“Cowgirl up,” Buck said. “Don’t let nothin’ git you down on the day you killed your first truck.”
She jerked the wheel. The trailer jerked, too. She got it back.
“Thanks a lot, Buck,” she said through clenched teeth.
The old guys laughed. Jake shook his head. They’d probably rattle on until they unnerved her completely.
Then she pressed the accelerator and backed a little faster. Another second or two and she could crash into the gooseneck.
“Want me to unhook you?” Jake asked.
“I’ve backed a trailer before,” she snapped.
“Once,” he muttered, under his breath.
Spoiled rotten, determined to do whatever she wanted whether she knew how or not. Wouldn’t listen to reason. He hated that.
She sped up a little more but she was still just creeping. In spite of that caution, her trailer seemed to be going in a more and more crooked path.
“There you go,” Buck said. “You’re nearly to the hard part. Come on, now.”
Clea clenched her jaw even harder and pressed down on the gas a little more. Jake kept his eyes on the outside rear-view mirror.
Buck muttered, “Go for it.”
“Watch it,” Teddy said. “Crank ‘er to the right, just a hair.”
“No, she’s okay that way,” Buck said. “Send ‘er toward the house, Clea, and then hold ‘er there. Straight back.”
“You cain’t even see straight, Buck. You shut up and let me do this. You’re…”
A sudden loud whinny cut through the air and a big black mare ran to the fence. Clea sucked in her breath and stepped on the gas a little more.
“Now, you all watch for that trailer,” she said, and kept her eyes on the mirror. The whinny rang out again.
“Whoo-ee, and not a white hair on her,” Teddy said. “Black as the ace of spades and, what is she? At least near seventeen hands.”
“You’ve got a mighty fancy mare there, Clea,” Buck said.
Clea didn’t say thanks for the compliment. She didn’t say a word.
“What d’you use her fer?” Buck asked.
Finally, she said, “I show her some.”
“She one o’ them jumpers?”
“Yeah.”
“Never could stay in one o’ them little postage-stamp saddles,” Teddy said. “But I never did try it but the one time.”
