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Barney opened his mouth wide and yawned.
Brody laughed and turned back to his computer just as an electronic voice chirped, “Someone likes you!”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Brody told the dog, who, by that time, had stretched himself out for a spur-of-the-moment nap.
And there it was.
Nice horse, Carolyn had written.
Brody sighed. It wasn’t a yes, but it wasn’t a no, either.
He rubbed his hands together and thought hard.
Once again, inspiration eluded him.
Thanks, he finally wrote back. Want to go riding with me?
Brody sighed again, heavily this time, and shoved the fingers of one hand through his hair in frustration. He was a regular wiz with the ladies, he chided himself.
The truth was that he had lot to say to Carolyn Simmons, starting with “I’m sorry,” but he’d sooner have his thoughts posted on a billboard in the middle of town than send them over the internet.
His cell phone rang.
Distracted, Brody hit Send, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
“Hello,” he said into the phone.
“What kind of outfit do you think we’re running over here?” Conner demanded. “This is a working ranch, Brody—operative word, working—and it would be nice if you could drop by and do your part sometime before noon.”
Brody laughed. “Now, Conner,” he drawled, because he knew slow talking made his brother crazy, “you need to simmer down a little. Take life as it comes. The cattle have a thousand acres of grass to feed on, and the fences will get fixed—”
“Brody,” Conner broke in tersely, “this is as much your ranch as it is mine. We split the profits down the middle, and by God we’re going to do the same with the work!”
“What got up your backside?” Brody asked. “For a man getting regular sex, you’re pretty testy.”
He could literally feel Conner going from a simmer to a boil on the far end of that phone call.
“Enough of your bullshit,” Conner almost growled. “Get over here, unless you want me coming after you.”
“Maybe you’re not getting regular sex,” Brody speculated.
“Brody, I swear to God—”
“Okay, okay,” Brody relented affably, logging off of the computer, pushing back his chair and rising to his feet. “Don’t get your bloomers in a wad. I’m on my way.”
Barney scrambled upright, with a lot of toenail scrabbling against the plank floor, and Brody didn’t have the heart to leave him behind. He decided to give Moonshine a day off and drive out to the ranch in his truck.
It was big, that fancy new extended-cab truck, painted a bluish-silver color, and it had all the upgrades, from GPS to video screens in the backs of the front seats. For all the flash the rig had, Brody still missed his old pickup, the one he’d driven right down to the rust.
He hadn’t had to worry about denting the fenders or scraping up the bed of the previous truck with feed sacks and tools. And it would have gone anywhere.
Unfortunately, it had finally breathed its last, a few months before, and Brody had been forced to sell it for scrap.
He opened the rear door on the driver’s side and Barney leaped through the air like a movie dog showing off for the paparazzi. Settled himself on the far side and stared eagerly out the window.
Chuckling, Brody took his place behind the wheel and started up the engine. He should have been thinking about downed fences and stray calves and generally staying on Conner’s good side, but his mind was stuck on Carolyn.
Nice horse? What the devil was that supposed to mean?
Fifteen minutes later, he and Barney pulled in at the main ranch house.
He let Barney out of the truck, watched as he and Valentino met in the driveway and sized each other up.
Conner strode out of the barn while the dogs were still getting to know each other, his face a thundercloud with features.
He started right in, tapping at the face of his watch with one index finger. “Damn it, Brody, do you have any idea what time it is?”
Brody didn’t wear a watch. Hadn’t for years. He went to bed when he felt like it and got up when he was darned good and ready, and old habits were hard to break.
“No,” he replied smoothly, “I don’t know what time it is, and if I did, I probably wouldn’t give a rat’s ass anyway.”
Conner glowered at him, hard, but when it came right down to it, he couldn’t sustain his bad humor. Hoarsely, and entirely against his stubborn Creed will, Conner laughed.
Brody grinned and slapped his brother on the shoulder. “That’s better,” he said. “You’re going to be somebody’s daddy one day soon, little brother, and that means you’ve got to stop stressing out about everything. What good will you be to that kid if you keel over from a heart attack?”
Conner shook his head, took his hat off and then plunked it back in place again. Shoved out a loud sigh. “You’re impossible,” he finally said.
“So they tell me,” Brody replied lightly. “What’s on the schedule today, boss?”
Conner let the word boss pass without comment and arched one eyebrow. “The usual. There are strays to round up, calves, mostly. Davis spotted half a dozen of them down by the river, but he didn’t go after them because that gelding of his threw a shoe, and he had to head home to fetch another horse.”
“We running low on horses these days?” Brody asked, with a pointed glance at the barn, and the surrounding corral and pasture area. He counted eight cayuses right there in plain sight.
“You know Davis,” Conner said. “He wants to ride the roan, and it’s up at his place, in the pasture. He’s pigheaded and set in his ways, our uncle.”
Brody grinned. “You’d think he was a Creed or something,” he said.
Conner laughed again, started back toward the barn. “Let’s ride, cowboy,” he replied. “Calves aren’t known for their intelligence, and we’ll have a hassle on our hands if any of them take a tumble into the river and get swept off by the currents.”
The possibility was real enough; they’d lost plenty of cattle, a few horses and a handful of people to the falls. The plunge was better than a hundred feet, and there were boulders directly below, in the white water.
This probably explained Conner’s sour mood earlier, during that phone call.
Brody and Conner saddled their horses at the same pace, with the same motions, and when they rode out, they were side by side.
Barney and Valentino kept up.
Brody enjoyed that ride, enjoyed being with Conner, on horseback, and out in the open air.
But once the brothers reached the ridge overlooking the river, where a narrow trail ribboned off the dirt road and down the steep side-hill to the stony bank, the fun was over.
Five yearling calves bawled in loud dismay at edge, and a sixth was already in the drink, struggling in vain to regain its footing and get back to shore.
“How’s this horse in the water?” Brody asked Conner, with a nod to his own mount, resettling his hat as he spoke.
“He’s good,” Conner said, with grave reluctance. “Brody, maybe you oughtn’t to—”
But Brody cut him off with a whooping “Yee-haw” and headed straight down that hill, Snowy-River style, unfastening the leather strap that secured his coiled rope as he went.
Conner yelled a curse after him and followed.
Having gotten a head start, and with the trail barely wide enough for one horse, forget two, Brody reached the riverside first. He and the gelding he’d saddled back at the main barn splashed into the water at top speed.
Back in his rodeo days, Brody’s event had been bronc riding, but he was a fair roper, as well. He looped that lariat high over his head, shot a wordless prayer heavenward and flung.
The rope settled around the calf in a wide circle of hemp, and Brody took up the slack. The yearling beef bawled again and paddled furiously, being too stupid to know he’d already been helped.
The current was strong, though, and it was work, for man and horse, hauling that noisy critter back to the riverbank.
Conner was mainly dry, except for a few splashes on his shirt and the legs of his jeans, and he’d corralled the other calves into a loud bunch, his well-trained cow pony expert at keeping the animals together.
Brody, of course, was soaked, but he laughed as he brought that calf out of the water, out of sheer jubilation.
“Looks to me like your horse is doing all the work,” he called to Conner, swinging down from the saddle to grab hold of the rope and pull that calf along.
“You damn fool,” Conner retorted, messing with his hat while that pony danced back and forth, containing the calves in a prescribed area, “you’ve been away from this ranch—and this river—for too long to go taking chances like that!”
Brody grinned, removed the lasso from around the calf’s neck and prodded it toward the herd.
The poor critter didn’t need much persuading and, for a bit, the cacophony got louder, while the baleful tale was told.
This time, Conner was in the lead as they drove that pitiful little herd back up the trail to high ground. Valentino and Barney waited up top, their hides dry and their tails wagging.
It just went to show, Brody figured, that they were the smart ones in this bunch.
“What is it with you and rivers, anyhow?” Conner grumbled, as they walked their horses slowly along the dirt road curving along the edge of the ridge.
Brody sighed, took off his hat and wrung the water out of it, leaving it a little worse for wear. “First you bitch because I wasn’t here at the crack of dawn, punching cattle. Then, when I get a little wet pulling one out of a river, you complain about that. Damned if I know what, if anything, would make you happy.”
Conner shook his head. “You always were a grandstander,” he accused, though not with much rancor.
“Oh, hell,” Brody groused back, “you’ve just got your tail in a twist because you wanted to show off your roping skills.”
Conner let loose with a slow grin. “I can outrope, outshoot and outwrestle you any day of the week,” he said, “and you know it.”
Brody laughed at that. His clothes felt icy against his skin, and his boots were full of water—again. At this rate, he’d need a new pair every payday. “Keep telling yourself that, little brother, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“You could have roped that calf from the bank,” Conner pointed out, almost grudgingly, after tugging his hat brim down low over his eyes because they were riding straight into the sun. “Instead, you risked your life—and the life of a perfectly good horse—to pull a John Wayne.”
“I was safe the whole time,” Brody replied, “and so was this horse. It was the calf that was in a fix, and I got him out of it. Seems like you ought to be glad about that, in place of griping like some old lady whose just found muddy footprints on her carpet.”
Conner’s jaw tightened and he looked straight ahead, as though herding six yearling calves along a country road required any real degree of concentration. When he did speak up, Conner caught Brody off-guard, as he had a way of doing.
“I reckon Carolyn’s out to find a husband,” he said, with a hint of a smirk lurking in his tone. “And she’s not too picky about her choice, as long as she doesn’t get you.”
The words went right through Brody’s defenses, as they’d no doubt been meant to do. Heat surged up his neck, and he glared over at Conner. The two dogs were traveling between them now, both of them panting but otherwise unfazed by the morning’s adventure.
“If you’re looking for a fight, little brother, you’ve found one,” Brody said. “As far as I’m concerned, we can get down off these horses right now and settle this discussion in the middle of the road.”
Conner smiled without looking at Brody and rode blithely on. The main part of the herd was up ahead, grazing on spring grass.
The stray calves seemed to know that, too, because they picked up speed and quit carrying on like they were being killed.
Conner didn’t speak again until they’d reached the edge of the range, where the view seemed to go on forever, in every direction.
Even with his hackles raised, Brody couldn’t ignore that scenery. The land, the trees, the mountains and the sky, the twisting river—all of it was as much a part of him as his own soul.
Conner raised his hat and swung it in a wide arch, as a greeting to the mounted ranch hands on the far side of that sea of cattle.
Then he turned to look Brody’s way. “You’d better get on home,” he said. “Get out of those wet clothes before you come down with something.”
Brody just sat there, breathing in his surroundings, letting it all saturate him, through and through. “I’m already half-dry,” he argued, “and not the least bit delicate, for your information.”
Conner laughed. “I got to you, didn’t I?” he said, in quiet celebration. “I do like getting a rise out of the great Brody Creed.”
“Why don’t you go to hell?” Brody suggested mildly.
Again, Conner laughed. It seemed there was no end to his amusement that morning. “Are you just going to stand back and watch Carolyn order up a husband online?” he asked, a few moments later.
“She can do what she wants,” Brody bit out, more nettled than he would have cared to admit.
“What do you want, Brody?”
“Me?” Brody asked. “What do I want?”
“That was my question, all right, ” Conner replied, implacable and amused.
“Fine,” Brody answered, nudging his horse into a trot, figuring the dogs had had time to rest up a little by then. “I want you to stay the hell out of my business, that’s what I want.”
CHAPTER SEVEN (#uf7c115c5-a9d7-5b32-aee2-ae56f0742b88)
IT WAS TIME to take action, Carolyn thought, a wicked little thrill going through her as she reread Brody’s response to her message earlier that day.
Want to go riding with me?
She bit her lower lip.
Brody had asked her to go riding with him, and she was actually considering it. A sad commentary on her level of intelligence, she figured, since she’d been burned, and badly, the last time she played with fire.
