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Frank scratched idly at his jaw. “I saw the new lady vet come tearing into her parking space ’bout forty-five minutes ago while I was having lunch at the café. She looked mad. And sorta scary. I’d hate for her to be mad at me.”
Daniel stared out his window.
“That have anything to do with you walking this road in the middle of the afternoon?”
“Frank, I’m warning you—”
“Okay, okay. I wanted to talk to you, anyway, Danny. That’s why I came into town.”
Daniel sighed again, knowing what was coming. “What do you want, Frank?”
“You know what I want. I want out.”
“I know.”
“But you’re not going to do it.”
“No.”
Another silence.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” Frank said.
“If you spent half as much time thinking about getting on with your life as you do thinking about how to sell this ranch, you’d be better off.”
“Thanks for the advice, Danny. You can shove it.”
Daniel eyed his little brother. “Nice talk.”
“Better yet, take a little of that advice yourself. I was with you when it all came down up at W.A.S.U., Danny, and I was right there when you put Julie on that plane back to her parents. You haven’t been the same since. Maybe you should get on with your own life.”
Daniel pulled his bottom lip through his teeth, a habit when he was mad. “What do you want, Frank?” he asked, though he already knew.
“Borrow on your shares of Cash Cattle. Buy me out.”
“We’ve gone over this a million times. I owe more on the property in town than I own. I’m stretched. The bank will never loan me enough to buy your shares in the corporation. I don’t want them, anyway.”
“You’d be majority shareholder.”
“So what? I could boss Mom and Dad around then?”
“What about Lisa?”
“What about her?”
“She could buy my shares.”
Daniel stared at his brother. “She doesn’t have that kind of money.”
Frank thrust out his chin. “I think she does.”
Daniel’s cousin Lisa worked for them, putting up hay in the summer, helping with calving in the spring, feeding the cattle during the long winter. Daniel knew exactly what she made.
Daniel shook his head. “It doesn’t matter if she has it or not. You’re not selling.” He looked at his brother. “What about all we’ve talked about? What about keeping the ranch between the two of us, for our children? It was what Grandad wanted, what Mom and Dad want. How many ways do you want to parcel it out? You want the rest of the cousins in? How about the neighbors?”
“Children?” Frank’s handsome, weathered face drained of color. He’d taken hold of that single word like a man on a lifeline. “Our children?”
“Oh, hell, Frank. I’m sorry.”
“We’re not going to have children, Danny. I’m sure as hell not going to, and you’re not moving in that direction as far as I can tell, either. You’ve had—what?—a dozen dates since Julie left you. Two dozen? How many of those women you considered having kids with? What children are we going to give this place to?”
Daniel turned his head, watched the farmland and dairies go by. Frank was right. He wouldn’t have children, would never marry again, would never fall in love. The first go-around had taught him more about loss and betrayal than he’d ever wanted to know. A second such lesson would probably kill him.
And Frank was less likely to have children than even he was. Frank’s wife, the silly, laughing Sara he’d married two weeks after they’d graduated from high school, had died three years ago on an icy highway between Nobel and Boise. Daniel thought Frank could have gotten over that, eventually. Could have outgrown his grief, go on to be the man he was meant to be.
But the accident had taken a baby, as well. Frank and Sara’s firstborn. Frank was only twenty-five years old. And already three years gone to his grave.
“Do you really love the place so much?” Frank asked finally. “Is it really that important to you?”
“It’s important to me.” Daniel moved his shoulders restlessly. He hated putting emotions into words. It was a sorry, unmanly habit to get into. “As much as anything, though, it’s the folks. They poured their lives into Cash Cattle so they could give it over to us.”
Frank eyed him. “You liar,” he said flatly, and snorted when Daniel’s fists clenched. “That isn’t why you won’t sell out, Danny. You think because of the thing at W.A.S.U., you have to hold on to the ranch with both hands. You don’t want to fail again, and you don’t care who gets in the way in the meantime. This isn’t about the folks and their ‘dream’ for us. And even if it were, I don’t want that dream. And until you got booted out of vet school, you didn’t want it, either.”
“You know I was always going to keep a hand in.”
“While I was stuck running the place on my own.”
“You wanted it, Frank. Remember? And you had Lisa there. She loves the ranch as much as we do. Did.” Daniel shook his head. “Why the hell are we discussing this now? It didn’t work out that way, it worked out this way. We both have to live with it.”
“That’s what I’m saying. We don’t. We could sell the outfit, lock, stock and barrel. Get a fresh start somewhere else.”
“And how would Mom and Dad live? We don’t have enough equity in the land to give them a big chunk of money all at once, and the capital gains taxes would take what we did make off it. Would we just leave here and let them fend for themselves after everything they’ve sacrificed for us?”
Frank slumped over the wheel of the truck, studying the road ahead of him. “We could work around that.”
“No, we couldn’t.” After a long silence Daniel said, “I need you there, Frank. I need you, and I’m not about to pay you to leave.” He ran his hands down his face, pulled reflexively at his bottom lip. “Look, I know you’re frustrated. I know you’re overworked. Maybe we can see our way clear to hire on a summer rider. That’d leave me free to help you and Lisa with the farming.”
“She’s getting a job in town.”
“Lisa? Where?”
“With the new vet. Heard about it down at the Rowdy Cowboy, I guess. She doesn’t know much about vetting, but she took those secretary courses in high school, and those computer classes a couple years back.”
“Huh. I didn’t know she wanted a job in town.”
“Guess she does.”
“We’re about to start farming.”
Frank shrugged. “We’ll have to hire someone else.”
“Is she moving to town?”
“No. She said she’ll stay out in her house. Cost her too much to rent in town.”
“Huh,” he said again, though the longer he considered, the more sense it made. Lisa had been complaining, albeit gently, subtly, for months about Frank’s erratic behavior. It was no wonder she wanted out. “I guess I’ll have to hire a rider, after all. You’ll need help with the farming until we find someone.”
“Whatever.”
“Frank—”
Frank turned pleading eyes to his brother. “I can’t take much more, Danny. I swear to God.”
“You’ll be okay, Frank. You’re just feeling blue right now.”
“I’m not just feeling blue. It’s more than that.”
“I can see that it is.” He could, quite clearly. “Have you thought about seeing someone about it?”
“You were an animal doctor, Danny, not a human doctor.”
“I wasn’t either. But it’s been three years, Frankie. You need some help.”
“Yep.” His brother pulled up to the curb, behind Daniel’s pickup. “And I keep hoping you’ll give me some.”
Chapter 4
Daniel watched his brother drive away until he could no longer see the truck. He was opening the door to his own pickup when Dr. Grace McKenna herself stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Instantly his eyes narrowed and he ruthlessly pushed his brother from his mind. He had a bone to pick with this lady vet, and now was as good a time as any.
“Hey, McKenna!”
Her head jerked around at the sound of his voice. Oh, she should have known. She’d just been about to go back out after him, and here he was. Probably used those hunky long legs of his to run all the way back to town, she thought resentfully. She’d wasted an entire hour feeling guilty about leaving him stranded.
She walked slowly over to where he stood, hip-cocked and fuming.
“You made good time.”
He wasn’t about tell her he got a ride. Let her suffer. “I’m fast.”
“That wasn’t a very good display of common sense, walking back.”
“You never miss a chance at a shot, do you, McKenna?”
“I’m just saying—”
“I know what you’re saying.” She’d cleaned up since she got back, was in her office clothes. Damn if those prim pleated pants and the sensible blouse didn’t distract him. In her coveralls, he could think of her as just another vet, and his nemesis. In this getup she looked like a woman. She smelled like a woman. She certainly made every instinct and cell and nerve ending in his body sit up and take notice of her as a woman. Now, what had he been planning to say? Oh, to hell with it. “Have dinner with me tonight.”
She blinked those big brown eyes at him. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding you,” he said, exasperated. “Why the hell is it every time I ask you to dinner you act as if I’ve just asked you to saw off my arm or something?”
“That wasn’t asking me to dinner. That was telling me to have dinner with you. Besides, you don’t even like me.” It came out a little less snippy, a little less confident than she wanted it to.
Daniel caught the edge of hurt in her voice. Wondered at it.
He frowned. “I still have to eat. And so do you.”
“Not together.”
His lips thinned. “Okay, Doc. I’m not going to beg you.” He turned on his boot heel and went back to his truck. And just as quickly turned back. He went toe-to-toe, face-to-face. “Listen, why do you have to make this so hard? You look nice in that outfit. I thought maybe we could talk. I don’t dislike talking to you, except when you get all huffy. And dinner at the café with me is not going to kill you.”
“‘Huffy,’” she said, cocking her head to peer up at him. “‘Huffy.’” She stood her ground, though he was close enough that their breaths mingled. When she couldn’t quite manage to hold his green gaze a moment longer, she looked up at the hazy spring sky. “And he asks me why I’m making it so hard.”
Grace shook her head, conscious of the fact they were standing on the sidewalk, and every client she could hope to have could come by at any minute and see the county vet in a knock-down, drag-out with one of the biggest cattlemen in the state. She lowered her voice, leaned in. “Let’s do a rundown, shall we?”
He couldn’t help it. He loved how her voice went from little-girl vulnerable to snotty in less than a moment. Yeah, she was huffy, and it made her darn near irresistible. He inched closer. Her breath tasted like coffee. And he could smell her hair.
“Run it down, Doc.”
“You come into my office the first day I’m in town and practically write down your grievances. I’m too young. I’m inexperienced. I’m a woman.”
“I never said anything about you being a woman.”
She ignored his interruption. “Then, in the middle of the night you bring me a cat that is clearly not in need of my attention, wasting my time. You don’t even know the cat’s name. It may not even be your cat!”
“It was not the middle of the night. And his name is…Boots!”
“Tiger. Then you take me home and act very gentlemanly and kiss me brainless.”
“Brainless?” He had more than enough healthy male ego for that to make him grin.
Grace ignored the grin, too. “Then I don’t see or hear from you for a week.”
That reminded him. “Look, Doc, I kiss a lot—”
She interrupted him this time. “Then you show up today and I think, Okay, he doesn’t seem that weird. He’s totally humorless, but maybe I imagined all that surliness and bad temper. Maybe he’s just a nice man and he can come on my first dairy call with me because he seems to want to and we can talk and maybe he’ll kiss me again.”
His green eyes flashed at that, and too late Grace realized she’d said more—much more—than she should have. Typical. Her temper was usually very even, but when she lost it, she lost it big.
“Then this thing at the dairy,” she rushed on, “and you jump out of the truck and walk ten miles back to town? What is wrong with you?”
“You want me to kiss you again?”
“No!” she shouted at him, forgetting the sidewalk and her potential clients.
He smiled. “All you have to do is ask,” he said mildly.
