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“You’re doing good.” The woman squatted beside the cow and smoothed a hand over her head. “Hang in there.”
Another contraction rolled over the cow’s belly and her legs stretched straight out, her stomach muscles convulsing.
Reaching down to the calf’s shoulders, Reed tugged as hard as he could and the calf slid out the rest of the way.
For several long moments, the cow and Reed gathered their strength. Then the cow rolled to a sitting position and nudged the dead calf.
“Sorry, girl, this baby didn’t make it.” The woman patted the cow’s neck.
While the cow licked at the calf’s face, Reed stood and wiped his hands on his jeans.
The woman straightened, the top of her head only coming up to Reed’s shoulders. “You here about the job?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She walked around the cow to stand beside the dead boar. “Was I mistaken or did you drop that boar with one shot?”
“You were not mistaken, ma’am.”
She dusted her hands on her jeans and reached out. “I’m Mona Grainger. You’re hired.”
Chapter Two
The man with the sandy-blond hair, moss-green eyes and a square jawline stood with his cowboy hat in hand, staring at her. “You’re M. Grainger? The owner of the Rancho Linda?”
She had to give this guy a little credit. He asked without the usual shocked look. “That would be me.” She’d gotten the shocked response from all the applicants thus far. They expected a wiry, grizzled hulk of a man like her father. Not a petite young woman who barely topped five feet three inches.
Her father had died less than a year ago in a riding accident, leaving her as the sole surviving heir to the ranch. She couldn’t change her sex or size. What you saw was what you got. “Do you have a problem answering to a female boss?”
“Not at all.” He grinned. “I just didn’t expect M. Grainger to be so…pretty.” He stuck out his hand. “Reed Bryson.” He glanced at his dirty hand. “Never mind.”
When he started to drop his hand, she grabbed it and shook it with as firm a grip as she could muster. She may be small, but she didn’t want him to think she wasn’t tough. “A little dirt never hurt me.”
Now that she had time to really study him, she wasn’t as pleased as she’d been at first to hire him. Although not exactly what she’d hoped for, Mr. Bryson had proven he could ride and shoot, and he hadn’t balked at helping a cow with a stillborn calf. The roping part could be taught. It was the rest of the package that bothered her.
Mona’s gaze ran the long length of the cowboy who stood at least six feet two in his faded denim jeans and blue chambray shirt. A twinge of apprehension gnawed at her now-empty gut. She didn’t like men who were too good to look at. She’d fallen into that trap before and she sure as hell wasn’t going there again. Some mistakes were harder to live with than others.
Reed dropped her hand and squatted next to the boar. “Should be good eating. Want me to fieldstrip him?”
The stench of the hog wrapped around her olfactory nerves and her stomach rebelled. For the second time in the past ten minutes, she ran a couple steps and then hurled the last of the contents of her belly.
“On second thought, why don’t we get you back to the house. I can come back here later and take care of him and check on the cow.”
Fernando raced around the corner, brought his horse to a skidding halt and dropped to the ground. “Miss Mona, are you all right?” He hurried across the floor of the canyon and wrapped an arm around the woman as if she would break.
With a grimace, she pushed him away. “I’m all right. Nothing’s broken.”
He snatched her hat from the ground and pounded it against his leg before he handed it to her. A deep frown marred his dark forehead. “You should have waited for me to come help you with the cow. It’s not something a—”
“I’m fine.” She shot a glance at Reed. Fernando worried too much about her and her condition. Let the new hand get adjusted to working for a woman before he learned more about her.
Her foreman followed her glance and nodded. “This kind of work takes more than one to accomplish. Especially when you’re in the canyons. Wild boars aren’t the only animals you have to worry about.”
She knew all too well the risks. But she refused to lose any more livestock to man or beast. Mona turned to the new hand. “When can you start?”
“It seems I’ve already started.” He glanced down at his dirty jeans and the cow, just lumbering to her feet. “Is today all right with you?”
“Perfect. How are you for working nights?”
“I spent twelve years on the force in Chicago and the past few months as a deputy for Briscoe County. I know how to pull night duty, but tell me—” Reed frowned “—what kind of cattle ranching are you doing at night?”
Her rosy lips twisted. “Call it ranch security.” She turned to Fernando. “I don’t suppose Sassy stopped at the edge of the canyon, did she?”
“No. She’s probably back at the barn by now.” He removed his toe from the left stirrup. “You take the saddle. I’ll ride behind.”
With her bottom bruised from the fall, Mona didn’t argue. She stretched high to reach the saddle horn. Before she knew it, hands grasped her waist and lifted her into the saddle. Hands bigger and stronger than Fernando’s.
Heat filled her cheeks as she fitted her boots into the stirrups. She hadn’t had someone lift her so effortlessly into a saddle since she was a little girl. And damned if she didn’t like it a little too much. A frown settled between her brows. “I can manage on my own.”
“Yes, ma’am. I reckon you can, but my mamma taught me to help a lady. It’s kind of a habit.” As he stared up at her, a smile tipped the corners of his lips.
Her insides warmed, the heat spreading up her neck. Then a gray haze filtered her vision, blackness creeping around the edges. Oh no. Not again.
The blackness claimed her.
“ARE YOU SURE you’re up to this tonight?” Reed sat behind the wheel of the ranch pickup truck, bumping along the dirt road that ran parallel to the inside of the fence.
“Look, I didn’t hire you to give me advice. I needed a ranch hand, period.” He was learning fast, Mona Grainger didn’t mince words.
“Normally I wouldn’t worry about another human being except you happened to get knocked on your butt by an angry hog today and then you passed out. And you haven’t even had a doctor check you out for concussion.” He’d carried her all the way back to the ranch house on his horse before she’d woken up. Despite their brief acquaintance, he’d been scared half to death for her. With her limp body leaning against his the entire way, he’d had too much time to think up reasons for her to pass out and none of them were good.
“I was hungry and tired. That’s all. Besides, we’re not riding horses. What we need to do tonight can be accomplished in a truck. I didn’t ask to drive, so drop the worried-employee act. If I pass out, you won’t be required to carry me anywhere.”
“I didn’t mind carrying you.” Hell, his hands still tingled from lifting her into the saddle and holding her snuggly against his chest. Her hips were narrow, she had a cute bit of a belly, but she didn’t weigh much more than a bale of hay. How could someone so small be so tough…and so sexy? Her long black hair had hung to her waist in wavy disarray. He could tell by the crease at her nape that she must have had it secured earlier in a ponytail. Though he liked it loose.
The long strands had brushed against his face when he’d lifted her into the saddle. Silky smooth and smelling of prairie grass. A man could lose himself in her scent. Reed shifted in his seat, disturbed by the direction of his thoughts.
Focusing on his surroundings, he committed to memory the few landmarks he could see in the fading light. Once away from the ranch house and its lone stand of trees planted as a windbreak, the terrain looked pretty much the same. Gently rolling plains stretched for miles with not another tree in sight. With the window down to let in the cool night air, the smell of dry grass and sagebrush filled the interior of the truck. The scent brought back recollections of growing up on his father’s ranch just a county over from Briscoe.
He had to admit they weren’t all bad memories. He’d had free run of thousands of acres, and a horse he could escape on whenever he got the chance. For that reason he missed his father’s ranch. Too bad his father didn’t own it anymore.
Mona’s hand reached out and touched his sleeve. “Slow down.” She pointed to a slight rise in the prairie. “Park the truck behind that hill and turn off the lights.”
He pressed the brake, slowing the truck to a halt at the same time as he flicked the lights off. For several moments, they sat in the dark, until their eyes adjusted.
When Mona opened the door, Reed’s hand shot out. “I know you told me ranch security, but what exactly do you mean by that?”
She stared at his hand until he released her arm. “We’ve had several instances of cattle rustling in the past month. With over six thousand acres of land to manage, I can’t do it all on my own. There are too many places to be at once.” She grabbed her rifle from the gun rack behind her head and slid off the truck seat, dropping to the ground.
Reed reached for his rifle and followed suit. “Why don’t you go to the sheriff?” Not that he’d trust the sheriff to handle anything more than a speeding ticket.
“No.” No explanation, no reasons.
Mona Grainger moved up a notch in Reed’s esteem. He didn’t care for Sheriff Parker Lee. “Okay, if not the sheriff, why not the DPS?”
An unladylike snort escaped her. “Public Safety referred me to local law enforcement.” As she neared the top of the small rise, she knelt in the grass and dropped to her hands and knees, inching toward the ridgeline.
Following her lead, Reed did the same until he’d crawled up beside her in the grass. A moonless night had settled in, with a million stars lighting the heavens. On the other side of the hill, a dark ribbon of road stretched for miles, disappearing in the blackness.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Reed made out tiny red dots in the distance just as they disappeared over the horizon. Possibly the blink of brake lights on a tractor-trailer rig.
“Did you see that?” Mona asked.
“Yeah.”
“Hundred bucks says that’s a truck full of Rancho Linda cattle.” She stood and fired a shot at the retreating vehicle, not that her rifle had that kind of distance.
An answering shot echoed through the darkness.
Reed grabbed Mona and pulled her to the ground.
“Some of them are still down there. I’d like to keep my job for longer than a day, if you don’t mind.”
The sound of a small engine revving carried across the hill.
“Come on!” Mona leaped to her feet and scrambled back down the slope to the truck.
Right behind her, Reed climbed into the truck and switched it to four-wheel drive. They topped the hill doing thirty and plunged downward to the field below.
Taillights glowed red on the road over a mile away. The rustlers had a head start on them. If they had any kind of horsepower in their vehicle, they’d be gone before Reed and Mona made the highway.
“Damn.” Mona held on to the handle above the door as the truck bounced over uneven terrain, small bushes and rocks on its descent to the bottom of the hill.
Meanwhile, the taillights disappeared into the night.
Reed eased across the cut barbed-wire fence, careful not to get wire wrapped around the axles. When he pulled up onto the pavement, he turned to Mona. “Want me to follow?”
“Hell, yeah.” Mona slammed her palm against the armrest. “They can’t get away with this. Those are my cattle.”
With the lead the rustlers had, Reed didn’t think they had a chance, but he gunned the truck and flew down the road, gaining speed until the pickup traveled at over one hundred miles per hour. For the next thirty minutes, they raced over deserted highways and back roads, but the truck and tractor-trailer rig had disappeared.
When he came to a crossroad where the county road T-junctioned onto a state highway, Reed pulled to a stop and turned to his new boss. “Which way?”
Instead of looking at the highway stretching to the left or right, she stared straight ahead across an open field in front of them. The lights from the dash glinted off the moisture in her eyes. Once again, her hair had escaped the confines of the elastic band she’d worn earlier and laid across her shoulders in shiny waves of ebony.
Tempted to reach out and touch the strands, Reed gripped the steering wheel tighter. He wanted to comfort her, give her reason to hang on. Something told him she wouldn’t appreciate any sympathy from him or any other man.
She sat there, her jaw firmed, her lips thinning into a straight line. “In case you haven’t gotten the hint, this is the reason why I hired you. Tomorrow we come up with a plan to stop these thieves. Do you still want the job?”
More than ever. The challenge excited him, almost as much as his new boss. “Yes.”
“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She opened the door, climbed down from the truck and threw up in the ditch.
Chapter Three
“Just like you said, the fences were cut and there were tire tracks in the dirt by the road. Other than that, we didn’t find any other evidence.” Sheriff Parker Lee stood with his hat still firmly planted on his head, despite being indoors. A smug look barely hid beneath the surface of his painted-on concern.
Mona’s stomach burbled, the acid churning nonstop since Parker Lee stepped through her door. She swore she’d never let him set foot on her property in her lifetime. But then tough times called for compromises. “You can’t tell me you’re still clueless. That’s three hits in the past month.” Mona stopped midway across the living room to face the one man she hated more than any other. “What’s it gonna take to get you to do something about this problem?”
The sheriff stepped forward and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Now, Mona, if you’d just let me take care of you like I promised, none of this would be happening.”
Her anger turned to deep dark rage. If her eyes could shoot venom, she’d have poisoned Parker Lee with one look. “Get your hands off me.”
“Mona…” His fingers tightened on her arms until they hurt.
Mona cocked her knee, ready to plant it square in his groin.
“The lady told you to get your hands off her.” Reed pushed through the screen door and entered the room. He stood with his feet braced apart, his cowboy hat in one hand.
“Bryson.” Sheriff Lee’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t expect you to be out here. I thought you headed back to Chicago.”
“Hardly.”
Mona shot a look at Reed. She’d hired him on the spot without so much as an interview. She knew nothing else about this man. “He’s with me.”
“You do know Bryson here was a deputy for all of five months before I fired him. Can’t have a deputy who refuses to follow orders.” Lee’s brows rose. “Ain’t that right?”
Reed’s lips thinned, but he refused to answer, although his gaze remained on Sheriff Lee.
Mona liked him all the more for not rising to Parker Lee’s bait. She couldn’t claim the same amount of restraint. Too often she’d come close to scratching the man’s eyes out. A purely female reaction to a lying, deceiving man. Thank God she was over him.
“Mona? What’s goin’ on here?” A booming voice sounded outside on the porch before her uncle Arty pushed through the doorway. “What’s the sheriff doin’ here?”
Her two ranch hands, Dusty Gaither and Jesse Lopez, followed him in.
“Pardon, Miss Mona,” Jesse said. “He insisted on coming in.”
Oh great. Now they could have one happy hoedown. The dry cereal she’d forced herself to eat that morning threatened to come up. “Someone made off with thirty head of Rancho Linda cattle.”
“Told your daddy to leave this place to me. Ain’t right to saddle a girl with this much responsibility.”
Mona’s head hurt and she didn’t want to take anything for the pain, but the pain was making her stomach act up.
Rosa Garcia, her housekeeper and surrogate mother, appeared by her side with a tray of lemonade and crackers. “Eat this,” she whispered.
The thought of putting anything past her lips made her even more nauseous, but if she didn’t, she’d be sick in front of all three men. Mona lifted a cracker and a glass of lemonade. “Thank you.”
“I’ve tried to tell her the same. She needs a man around here.” The sheriff’s chest puffed out as if to say he was the one who should fill that role.
