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Rachel kept her stance, swallowed hard. Instinctively, she knew he would not let the animal step on her. Squinting into the bright Montana sky, she offered, “I’ll pay peak season rates.” For the story, but mostly for Charlie. Two birds with one stone.
McKee studied the herd trotting ahead of them; several cows lowed. The Stetson’s brim shadowed his eyes, and that obscurity sent a tingle across her arms.
“Go back where you came from, Ms. Brant.” His voice was low and without mercy. Spurring his mount forward, he left her staring after the cattle now rushing through the pasture’s gates.
An animal broke free and the black-and-white dogs darted out, piloting it back to the herd in seconds. Daisy jumped from her chocolate-colored horse—half the size of the gray—to close the gate. When her eyes caught Rachel’s across fifty feet of road, she sent a two-fingered wave, then climbed into the saddle before following McKee to the barns.
Go back where you came from.
He hadn’t meant Sweet Creek.
Ash led Northwind, his prize Andalusian stallion, into the big box stall at the rear of the horse stable.
She had nerve, that woman.
Last time newshounds swarmed the ranch was five years ago, chasing that goddamn stupid mad-cow story. A bunch of bull that cost Susie her life.
But this one didn’t want a story, just a roof over her pretty head.
Pretty. No damn way would he think a hack pretty.
Except she was. That bob of hair the color of his mother’s antique cherrywood sideboard, those eyes that tilted slightly at the outer corners. Cat eyes in Siamese-blue.
They always sent the pretty ones on a story hunt.
Did you not hear what she said? She wants to rent a room.
Right. That he would believe in another life.
He yanked the saddle off Northwind hard enough to make the horse sidestep. “Easy, boy. Don’t mean to take it out on you.” Hauling the gear into the tack room across the corridor, Ash clamped his teeth. Yeah, that was all he needed, a word wizard living on his ranch. A word wizard with media broadcasting power. And her power—if she chose to use it—could be a thousand times worse than the taunts and gossip he’d endured in school.
Well, dammit, this ranch was his life, and though he held its paperwork together through the eyes and smarts of his family—they paid the bills, did the ordering, worked e-mail and the Net—those bills and orders came through his direction, his guidance, his knowledge of the land and the animals. Still, the fact he wasn’t college educated sat like chain mail on his shoulders.
And while he couldn’t put the onus of that fact on the head of a woman he had met for three minutes, newsperson or not, neither could he trust her.
His family had seen its share of run-ins with the Rocky Times. The year Ash turned sixteen, Shaw Hanson, Senior, had sent his team to the Flying Bar T after Tom was accused of not feeding his stock properly due to his disability.
Ash snorted. All of it drivel. Still, the newshounds had fed like a wolf pack on the ASPCA’s investigation. Yet, to this day the person or persons who’d pointed the finger at Tom remained a mystery.
And then there was Susie’s death….
The memory twisted a knot in Ash’s gut. Now a Rocky Times reporter wanted to rent the little cottage she’d designed and he’d built? Never.
“Dad?”
He turned from retrieving a currycomb off the tack room wall to his fifteen-year-old daughter standing in the doorway. A sprite like her mother with big green eyes, a mop of long red curls. But strong enough to lift the saddle she carried to a loop hanging from the ceiling rafters.
His heart bumped. “Hey, Daiz. Need some fresh bedding for Areo?”
“Already did that this morning.”
He crossed the room and wove the loop into the hole on the pommel and around the horn.
“Thanks.” She tossed the blanket over a wooden drying rack in a corner. “What did Mi—that woman want?”
“Nothing important.”
Daisy reached for a second currycomb. “You chased her off.”
“She works for the Times.” And that should explain it. He went into Northwind’s stall. “You know how I feel about them.” About Shaw Hanson, Junior, and his crew of sleazy reporters.
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “I know.”
He glanced over his shoulder. Her expression sent a shaft of pain across his chest. She still missed her mother, missed their girl chats, Susie’s laughter, her hugs. Hell, he missed those hugs. He combed Northwind’s powerful withers. “I won’t let her hurt you, honey. And I won’t let her come near your grandpa.” Or this ranch.
“Oh, Dad.” She sighed and turned into the corridor.
What the hell?
“Daisy?” He peered around the door as she disappeared into Areo’s stall. For a moment, he stood wondering if he’d heard right. Her voice had held resignation, not sorrow. Had he disappointed her by chasing off that journalist? He shook his head. No. She knew how their family felt about the Hansons and their editorial finesse. It had to be something else. Well, she’d tell him in time.
Back in Northwind’s stall, he brushed down the big dapple-gray stallion, then filled his water bucket and manger. As Ash finished, Daisy exited Areo’s stall. “All done, pint?” He strode down the aisle toward his daughter. The dogs, Jinx and Pedro, trotted ahead.
“Yep.”
“All right. Let’s see what Grandpa’s got for lunch.”
They headed from the warmth of the barn into clear cold air. Hoof and boot prints pockmarked last night’s snow. Ash slowed his stride for his daughter. They walked in silence toward the two-story yellow Craftsman house that Tom’s great-grandfather, an immigrant from Ireland, had built in 1912.
Ash set a hand on Daisy’s shoulder. “Good thing your teachers had that in-service today. Don’t know if I could’ve moved those steers without you.”
“Oh, Dad. You and Ethan do it all the time when I’m at school.”
Ethan Red Wolf, their foreman. A good man. “You know Wednesday is Eth’s day off. Anyway, things go ten times faster with you helping.”
“You always say that.”
“And I mean it.”
A grunt. “What did the reporter want?”
Back to that. His pixie-girl, forever the little dog with an old shoe when she focused on some particular subject. While her tenacity baffled the heck out of him at times, he was damned proud when she brought home her straight-A report card. “She wanted to talk to Grandpa about renting the guest cottage.”
“Are you gonna let her?”
“No.”
“Why not? We could use the money.”
He rubbed Daisy’s shoulder. “We’re not so hard up, honey, that we need to rent to a reporter.” Never mind that the woman in question had him thinking about things he hadn’t thought of in a long time. Like how pretty a female could be and how feminine her voice sounded on the cold morning air—even though she pushed with her words.
“Got any homework that needs doing?” he asked, veering off the thought of Rachel Brant and her attributes.
“Some social studies and English.”
The thought of Shakespeare and essays had him sweating. “Better get at it after lunch.”
“I need Grandpa’s help. We’re doing this project in socials.” A small sigh. “I have to ask him some questions.”
“What kind of project?” They walked up the wheelchair ramp to the mudroom door at the side of the house. Tom was good at English, good at reading and writing. If his blood had run in Ash’s veins maybe—
“We’re supposed to pretend we’re journalists.” Shrugging off her coat, Daisy trudged into the mudroom ahead of Ash. Her eyes wouldn’t meet his. “And…and we’re supposed to interview a veteran, so I was thinking of asking Grandpa.”
Speak of the devil. First a real reporter and now a make-believe one in the guise of his daughter. No wonder he had hated school. Teachers were always pushing kids into role-playing and projects, pretending they were real life. Just last week, John Reynolds’s eleventh grader brought home an egg and said it was a baby. Ash snorted. What the hell was the world coming to anyway? Eggs as babies? Kids playing war correspondents?
Ash closed the door, hooked the heel of his left boot on a jack. “You know Gramps won’t talk, Daiz.”
Holding back her long, thick hair, Daisy removed her own boots. “Well, dammit, maybe it’s time, y’know?”
Ash glowered down at his child. “Watch your language, girl.”
A tolerant sigh. “Dad, it’s been, like, thirty-six years. Why won’t Grandpa talk about his tours? I mean, jeez. It’s not like they happened yesterday. He even got the Purple Heart.” Frustrated, she kicked her boots onto the mat with a “Get over it already” and flounced into the kitchen.
Ash watched her go. They had been over this subject two dozen times in the past three years, the instant she reached puberty. She wanted to know episodes of her heritage, about her mother, about him, about Tom.
Ash had no intention of talking about Susie or her death. Too damn painful, that topic. What if he accidentally let out the truth, that his wife was as much to blame for the accident as that two-bit journalist?
He shook his head. No, he couldn’t chance it. Hell, thinking about it gave him hives.
Maybe one day he would tell Daisy, but not during her “hormone phase,” as Tom put it.
As for Tom…Vietnam was the old man’s business.
Ash entered the quaint country kitchen. “Hey, Pops.”
His stepfather, bound to a wheelchair for three-and-a-half decades, swung around the island, a loaf of multigrain bread in his lap. “Daisy in a mood?” On the counter lay an array of butter, cheese, tomatoes and ham slices ready for Tom’s specialty: grilled sandwiches.
Ash walked to the sink to wash his hands. “In a mood” was the old man’s reference to Daisy’s monthlies. “She’s upset about a couple things, yeah.”
“What things?”
“Wants us to rent out the cottage to a reporter.”
Tom snorted. “You’re kidding, right?”
“New one hired on with the Times. Drove out here this morning while we were moving the yearlings.”
“You tell him we’re not interested?” The chair whined behind Ash. In his mind’s eye, he saw his stepfather pressing a lever, raising the seat so he could maneuver his stump legs into the open slot Ash had constructed under the counter years ago.
“Not him. Her.” A sassy-mouthed woman with big eyes.
“Her?”
Ash leaned against the sink and crossed his arms. The reporter splashing the ASPCA story across the front of the Rocky Times twenty years ago had been a woman and Hanson Senior’s wife.
Tom slapped cheese and ham onto a slice of bread, cut the tomatoes deftly with his right hand.
“What’d you tell this reporter?”
“That she’s not welcome.” He glanced toward the stairs, warned, “Daiz sees it differently. Figures we need the money.”
“Huh.” Right hand and left prosthesis worked in sync over the sandwiches. “What’s her name?”
“Rachel Brant.”
Silence. Then, “Brant, huh?” More slicing and buttering. “Suppose we could use the extra cash.”
Ash straightened. “You crazy?”
Tom shrugged. “Why not? Place is sitting empty. Might as well burn it down if we ain’t gonna use it. Besides, with calving season starting, Inez’ll be feeding extra hands over the next couple months.”
Inez, their housekeeper and Tom’s caretaker, was in Sweet Creek at the moment, buying two weeks’ worth of groceries. “We’ll get by,” Ash grumbled. “We always do.” He did not need the Brant woman here, within walking distance, within sight. She was a journalist and he would bet a nosy one, prying until she got a barrel of tidbits to create a stir with her words. “Stories,” they called those reports. He knew why. More fiction than fact.
And with her working at the Times, talking to publisher–owner Shaw Hanson Jr…. Hell, Hanson probably sent her to the Flying Bar T as a dig on the McKees. After all, Ash had gone after Hanson for sending Marty Philips to sniff out that mad-cow scare. Two days following Susie’s death because of that cocky young kid, Ash walked into the newspaper and kicked ass.
And where did that get you, Ash?
Tossed in the hoosegow for three days.
Tom buttered six additional slices, cut another two tomatoes, assembling enough for a soup kitchen. “You said Daisy was in a snit over a couple things. What’s the other thing?”
“Social studies project.”
Across the counter, his stepfather eyed Ash under a line of bushy gray brows. “You wanted it done yesterday.”
“No. I don’t want her bugging you.”
That narrowed Tom’s eyes. “Me?”
“She’s supposed to interview a vet for war facts.”
“Huh. Don’t they have textbooks for that?”
“They do, but this time the kids are supposed to get it from the horse’s mouth. So to speak.”
“Well, this old horse ain’t talking.” The chair hummed as Tom wheeled around to the range. “Same reason you don’t talk about Susie,” he muttered.
Same reason? Hell, there were things Ash would never share with his family. Like the day he’d buried Susie. How he’d gone back at dusk and sat where he’d put her ashes and cried until he puked. How he pounded his fists against the sun-dried earth, cussing that she’d known better than to drive after drinking, a fact he found out from the coroner four days later.
