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Jeffrey Kuhn had left her standing alone while he smiled and greeted two men wearing expensive suits. With little more than a passing glance her way, Kuhn ushered the wealthier clients through the door of his office, closing it firmly behind them.
Well, that was that. If she needed confirmation that her uncle was right and she was fighting a losing battle, today’s news was it.
In a daze, she stumbled out into the Texas sunshine beating the heat into the top of her bare head. She plunked her straw hat in place and stared around the brick-paved Main Street of Prairie Rock, at a loss for what to do. Her feet carried her the two blocks south to Dee’s Diner near the town square. She’d left her truck parked near the diner for her lunch date with Catalina, Rosa and Fernando’s only daughter.
By the time she pushed through the swinging glass entrance of the café, perspiration beaded on her brow and upper lip and slid down between her pregnancy-enhanced breasts. Since when had walking become more difficult?
Catalina Garcia met her at the door, a mug in one hand and a carafe of aromatic coffee in the other. “Hey, sweetie.”
Mona smiled and carefully hugged her friend without spilling the coffee.
“Would you hurry it up? We don’t have all day.” Wayne Fennel sat at a table several yards away, facing Mona. His shiny new cowboy boots tapped against the linoleum-tiled floor, a scowl marring his otherwise handsome face. The guy had always been a jerk, especially as a football player in high school. Now he owned a body shop with his partner Les Newton, another equally big jerk.
Les turned to stare at Mona, barely giving her more than a glance, but his gaze ran the length of Catalina’s bare legs, a leer forming on his tanned face. A quiet and more creepy version of Wayne.
Mona wanted to throw up. Gentlemen, they weren’t. If a barroom fight was what you wanted, you could count on those two to deliver.
Catalina grimaced at Mona and tipped her head toward an empty booth in the far corner. “Take a seat by the window. I’ll get you some water just as soon as I take care of Wayne and Les.” With a flounce of her long, bleached hair, she hurried toward the two men and sloshed coffee into their mugs.
Catalina had been Mona’s friend from the day she was born. They’d been inseparable until their teens when Catalina decided she no longer wanted to be Mexican, Hispanic or anything related to Latino. In the past ten years, Catalina had done everything in her power to change her image from Hispanic to white. From gloriously black to bleached-blond hair, brown eyes gone blue with the aid of contacts, down to erasing every hint of accent from her speech. She even affected a southern drawl around eligible men from the big cities who found their way to the small Texas town.
Not Mona, she embraced everything about her mother’s Mexican legacy that she could. It was all she had left of the woman who’d died when she was only six years old.
Mona slid into a vinyl-covered booth overlooking the town square and fought the overwhelming despair washing over her. She wished her mother or father were there to help her figure out the mess she was in. What was she going to do? How could she come up with fifty thousand dollars in a month? She didn’t have two nickels to rub together in her savings, having depleted it to pay her hands and make this month’s loan payment. The sale of some of her herd was supposed to help her make next month’s payment and overhead. Now with over fifty head rustled, even making payroll was looking like a no go.
Catalina swung by the table and called out to the room, “I’m on break, Kelly is covering for me.” Then she dropped into the seat across from Mona, her deep-brown brows tugging downward, a sharp contrast to the bright blond of the fringe hanging over her left eye. “What’s wrong?”
“Everything.” Before she could say more, tears welled in Mona’s eyes and spilled over. She brushed them away with the back of her sleeve. “Damn it, I never cry.”
“It’s the baby talking. All those hormones play hell with a woman’s emotions.”
“Shh. Don’t say that too loud.” Mona glanced around the room to see if anyone had heard Catalina’s remark.
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell. Especially since you won’t tell me whose it is.” Catalina’s eyes narrowed. “Was it Jimmy Raye over at Bar M?”
“No. And forget it. I’m not telling anyone. That particular secret will go with me to my grave.”
“Damn. And I thought best friends shared all their secrets.”
“I can’t afford for this one to get out.” Mona’s gaze dropped to where her hands twisted together, more tears slid down her cheeks.
“Okay, okay. I won’t push it. Now tell me what’s got your chaps in a twist.”
“I just came from the bank.” She gulped and forced calm into her voice. “They’re going to start foreclosure proceedings on the Rancho Linda if I don’t make the balloon payment that’s due in thirty days.”
“Madre de Dios!” Catalina slammed her palm against the tabletop, all of the Latino in her coming out in the one phrase. “As if you don’t have enough problems. Why won’t they roll it over into a new mortgage?”
“From what I gathered, they’ve lost faith in my ability to manage the ranch. What with the rustling and hiring a new ranch hand.”
“Was it the advertisement that got them in a froth?” Catalina’s chocolate-brown eyes lit. “I have to admit, it reminded me of the Wild West.”
Her fit of desperation had backfired, and now Mona regretted placing the ad. However, she didn’t regret hiring the man with the gun. His green eyes haunted her thoughts, vaguely familiar, as if she’d seen them before, when she knew she hadn’t met him until he’d shown up in the canyon. “Something like that.”
“I heard you actually got a man to apply for it.”
“I hired one.” Mona didn’t want to go into the details. She wasn’t altogether sure why she’d hired Reed Bryson on the spot. For now, she attributed her brash move to desperation.
“So what’s he like? Does he look like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne from one of the old westerns?”
“No. And it doesn’t matter what he looks like, I have bigger troubles.” She inhaled and let out a deep breath. “How can I come up with fifty thousand dollars in thirty days?”
“Have you tried one of the other banks in Prairie Rock? If they won’t help, you may have to go to Amarillo.”
“I’ve never applied for a loan, which means I don’t have a credit history. I’ve only been paying on the loan my father set up.” She dropped her head into her hands. “I can’t believe I didn’t pay closer attention to the terms of the loan. I’m doomed.”
“Cut yourself a little slack. It’s not as if you’ve had a lot of spare time on your hands.” Catalina snorted. “So who is your cowboy? Anyone I know?”
“Why are you asking? You already know it’s Reed Bryson. By now everyone in town should know.” She smiled sheepishly.
“I just wanted to hear you say it. So, you hired Reed?” Catalina’s brows rose up into the fringe of bangs that swooped to one side of her pale olive forehead. She fanned herself with one of the plastic-coated menus. “He’s hot.”
“You know him?”
“He broke up a few fights in Leon’s Bar over the past couple months while I was working my weekend shift. How could I miss him?” A grin spread across her face. “How’d you catch him? I couldn’t get him to ask me out no matter how hard I tried.”
“I didn’t ask him out, I hired him.” Her cheeks warming again, Mona glanced toward the window.
“Your face is turning red. What else did you do? Fess up, girl.”
Mona sighed. Her friend knew her too well. “I kinda told Sheriff Lee that Reed and I were living together.”
“You did what?” Catalina chuckled. “I’d loved to have been there when you did. That man’s been chasing you like a rutting bull for the past few months.”
“I know. He doesn’t get the meaning of the word no. So when he came out about the missing cattle, I made up the story.” Mona tried to shrug it off, but Catalina wasn’t having any of it.
“And Reed? He went along with it?” Her friend sat back, crossing her arms over her chest. “From what he told me, he didn’t want anything to do with relationships. Seems contradictory, if you ask me.”
“It was a lie. I made it clear to him that I only wanted him to provide a front to keep the sheriff out of my hair. Nothing else.”
“Well, good for you. Maybe something will come of the little game you’re playing. You could do worse than have him as a husband.”
“I’m not in the market for a husband. I’m looking for a way to save my ranch.” Mona stood. “Speaking of which, I need to get moving. The men are out repairing the fences, and I have a loan to secure. Guess I’ll check out the competition here and then head to Amarillo.”
“What about lunch?” Catalina raced across the floor and grabbed a prepackaged sandwich from a glass-fronted refrigerator. “At least take this.”
Although the sandwich looked less than appetizing, Mona accepted it and dug into her purse for money to pay.
“It’s on me.” Catalina laid her hand over Mona’s, halting her search. “You know you’ll have to slow down pretty soon, don’t you?” She stared at the thickening waist Mona tried so hard to hide by wearing her shirttails loose.
Hiding her bulge wouldn’t be an option in the next couple of weeks. She’d be forced to wear bigger shirts and the maternity pants Rosa had purchased from a resale shop. Of all times to be pregnant, now wasn’t the best.
Catalina walked with her to the door. “I’d stop by this evening and check out your Mr. Bryson myself, if I didn’t have to work. Why don’t you bring him by Leon’s tonight, if you get a chance.”
“Don’t think that a smoky bar is the place to be at this time.” She ran a hand over her belly, the thought of cigarette smoke making the acid churn.
“I guess not. Then give Reed a kiss for me, will you?” Catalina laughed at the killer look Mona gave her. “Okay, be that way. Keep him all for yourself.” She glanced at the white truck pulling into a parking space several yards away. “Look out, there are the Lang Oil speculators from hell.”
“Damn.” Mona ducked behind Catalina. “Between Teague and Lang, they’re as persistent as a heat rash in the summer. Kuhn was pushing Lang as a potential buyer for the Rancho Linda. Not that I’d let that happen. Not as long as I’m still breathing.”
Catalina fluffed her bleached-blond hair and smacked her lips together. “Let me take care of them, you can sneak out through the kitchen.”
While Mona darted back into the diner, Catalina said, “Hello, gentlemen, come back for some of Dee’s apple pie?”
Hurrying through the kitchen, Mona almost slipped on the greasy floor twice before she made it to the back door. But she didn’t feel like listening to a sales pitch when she had bigger issues.
With the Lang Oil Exploration people inside Dee’s Diner, Mona hurried down the sidewalk to her pickup, shaking her head. Catalina had it all wrong about Reed Bryson. Dating and kissing were at the bottom of Mona’s list of things to do when she had a ranch to save.
Then why did Reed’s full lips come to mind when Catalina had mentioned kissing?
REED RODE BESIDE Fernando, slowing his horse the closer they came to the broken fence. The other two ranch hands would be here shortly with the pickup and tools to mend the fence.
Last night’s search for clues and evidence had yielded nothing. He wanted to go over the area again in the light of day. Assuming the sheriff and his crew of deputies hadn’t disturbed the ground too much.
When he was within a hundred yards he reined in his horse. “Let’s walk the rest of the way.”
Fernando nodded and climbed down from his horse, dropping his reins to the ground. The gelding munched on the prairie grass, his tail twitching like a metronome, swatting at horseflies.
“Miss Mona didn’t need this to happen.” Fernando stared ahead at the mutilated fence line and off into the distance as though he might spot the missing cattle.
“Does anyone need to be robbed?”
“No, but her being with child makes it twice as hard.”
Reed agreed silently. “Any idea who the father is?” He asked the question before he could catch himself. Internally, he rationalized that if the father of the child had a bone to pick with Mona, he could be a suspect in the current situation. What better motive than to ruin Mona Grainger to make her own up to the paternity of her child?
“No. As far as I know, she hasn’t told anyone. None of us knew she was even dating.” He turned his attention to Reed. “Why did you leave the sheriff’s department?”
“I had my reasons.” Reed squatted in the dust and stared at the disturbed ground.
“You worked as a police officer in Chicago before that, didn’t you?”
That bit of information wasn’t hush-hush. Folks in small towns could rarely keep a secret. With a new man in town, word was bound to get around. Especially with a big mouth like Sheriff Parker Lee. “Yeah.”
“The Texas panhandle is a long way from Chicago.”
In more ways than one. If not for his mother, Reed wouldn’t have come back. “I grew up in these parts. Came back because of family.”
Fernando nodded. “Family is important.”
Some of them.
“Miss Mona swore on her papa’s grave she’d keep the land in her family. It meant a lot to him and her mother. She wants to have something to pass down to her child.”
“What if her child doesn’t want it?” Too often ranches were sold to big corporations when the children showed no interest in eking out a cyclical living on the land. As an only child, Reed had vowed to leave the panhandle rather than work alongside a father who couldn’t stand the sight of him. As soon as he’d graduated high school, he’d left, swearing never to return.
Funny how life came full circle and more often than not, he found himself eating his own words. Never say never. As much as he resented his father, Reed couldn’t deny his mother anything. When she’d had a stroke, he’d flown home to take turns with his father, sitting by her side in the hospital. When he’d had to leave to go back to Chicago, she’d begged him to stay.
In the end, he’d returned to be closer to her.
Reed shook off the past and focused on the smashed prairie grass all around. “Look here.” He pointed at holes in the dirt, spaced evenly in a wide circle. “Looks like they had portable corral panels.”
“Sí.” Fernando straightened. “They cleaned up well, didn’t they?”
“Too well. I don’t see tire tracks or hoof prints anywhere around.” He stood. All he found were a few footprints probably left by the sheriff’s team who’d investigated the site last night.
“As if they raked it before leaving.” Fernando crouched next to the loose barbed wire. “Look at this.”
Reed joined him for a closer examination. On one of the barbs was a tuft of coal-black human hair and a bloody patch of what looked like scalp. “Someone has a scrape on his head that’s pretty deep.”
“Sí.” The old Mexican nodded farther along in the dust. “They missed a track.”
The telltale print of a dog’s paw stood out as clear as a signature. Whoever the rustlers were, they had a herd dog. Every rancher on the plains had herd dogs.
An engine’s roar alerted him to the approach of a vehicle from the direction of the ranch house.
The ancient red-and-white ranch truck, with the fading sign of Rancho Linda on its side, lumbered across the grasslands, lurching to a stop next to the fence. Chewy, Jesse’s border collie, hopped out of the back and ran around the area, sniffing at the tracks.
While Dusty and Jesse unloaded tools from the rear, Reed walked the fence line, bending to inspect the snapped posts.
Dusty dug the blades of a posthole digger in the dirt beside Reed and brushed his gloved hands together. “Won’t take long to fix this fence. Jesse and I can handle it, why don’t you and Fernando check for any loose steers.”
Reed had intended to do just that, but he’d changed his mind. “No. I’ll help here, if you don’t mind.” He stared past Dusty to the foreman.
Fernando nodded and walked across the dirt to his horse, silently climbing into the saddle. He crossed over where the fence should have been and turned to his right. Following the remaining line of wire and posts, he disappeared over a rise.
Reed lifted his hat, brushed the sweat from his brow and grabbed the posthole digger Dusty had left beside him. Ten minutes later, he lifted the last clump of dirt from the hole and set the implement to the side. His muscles burned with the honest effort of physical labor. He hadn’t known how much he’d missed it until today.
While he fitted a post into the hole and packed dirt around it, Jesse grabbed the tool and went to work on the next hole, twenty feet away.
Jesse, Dusty and Reed worked at mending the fence. Several wooden posts had been snapped as if run over by something big. Some of the thin metal T-posts had been bent double. Dusty was able to straighten one, but the others snapped off, rust and weather making the metal brittle.
Wielding the posthole digger, Jesse dug through the hard earth, making a hole deep enough for another wooden brace post they’d brought along in the back of the pickup.
The constant sound of metal clanking against metal rang in Reed’s ears. Dust kicked up by their heels smelled of Texas and cattle.
Dusty pounded a new T-post in the ground with the heavy post pounder that fit over the post like a giant metal sleeve. He pushed the pounder up and off the post, letting it fall to the ground at his feet. “Going to Leon’s tonight, Jess? They’re having a wet T-shirt contest, from what I hear.”
“No.” Jesse raised his arms high and slammed the sharp blades of the posthole digger into the hard-packed dirt.
