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“That’s not what I asked you. At Christmas last year, Alex said he bought himself a big-screen plasma TV so he could watch his tapes and improve his rodeo technique.”
Taking the ice pack and moving it to a different part of her shoulder, she asked, “Does it matter?”
“It might. What happened to it?”
“I needed the money from it to pay bills.”
Brock didn’t like the picture that was coming into clearer focus. “I want to look at the books.”
Again her expression was troubled. “I can’t prevent you from doing that.”
“But you’d like to. Why?”
Her cheeks became rosy with color. “On your own admission, you couldn’t wait to leave here. You rarely came back after you went to school. You haven’t come back since your dad died. So why do you want to get involved now?”
The problem was, he couldn’t give her just one reason. The problem was, he wasn’t certain why he was here or what he expected from coming home. It wasn’t his place now, though—it was hers. Unless she decided to sell it. “I came back because Dix admitted he couldn’t handle you and the ranch.”
“I’m going to be—” She stopped.
“It’ll be at least two weeks—maybe longer—until you’re really back on your feet. That’s what the doctor said. By then you’ll be dealing with the last two months of your pregnancy. How much do you think you’ll be able to help Dix? Face reality, Kylie.”
Without any warning she let the ice pack drop to the sofa and stood. “I’ve faced more reality than you can ever imagine. So don’t preach to me, Brock.” She headed out of the living room to a hall at the back of the house.
“Where are you going?” he demanded.
“To the bathroom. Don’t think you’re going to follow me there.”
Brock raked his hand through his hair. Making Kylie’s supper would be the easy part. Sitting together and pretending there weren’t issues and problems to be resolved between them would be the difficult part. With her pregnancy and all, she really should be staying on the first floor. After Jack had had a heart attack a few years before he died, he’d renovated the downstairs, closing the back porch into a bedroom and modernizing and expanding the bath so it included a shower. Kylie should really be spending the latter part of her pregnancy down here. He could help her move her things. But right now wasn’t the time to suggest it. Maybe after he’d cooked them a meal, maybe after they’d talked superficially about something other than Saddle Ridge, she’d relax around him and he’d relax around her.
A little devil in his ear told him he was dreaming if he thought that was going to happen.
The bottom line here was he had to tread carefully. He had to remind himself she was still grieving over Alex, and the loss would be with her for a long time. If he tried to take over, he might trample everything she held dear. Then she’d hate him.
He couldn’t abide the thought of Kylie Armstrong Warner hating him. That realization made him decidedly uneasy.
Leaning back in his kitchen chair, Brock swiped at his mouth with his napkin and tossed it onto the table. His plate was clean. Frustration with Kylie was growing minute by minute. Frustration with himself for caring how she was reacting to him wasn’t much better. The fact that his gut twisted every time she smiled had him totally unsettled. He was damned uncomfortable.
“When are you going to stop pretending with me?” he asked, hoping to clear the air. For the past fifteen minutes she’d pushed food around on her plate, not eating much of anything. He suspected she was hurting but she wouldn’t admit it.
“We’ve known each other for years,” he went on. “I won’t be insulted if you don’t like the way I cooked the steak.”
She studied him for a moment. “We spent some time together years ago on your short visits home. I haven’t laid eyes on you for five years. I’m not sure we do know each other.”
Okay, he’d asked for that. Maybe he should have put things a different way. “Years ago, you said what you were thinking. You were as easy to read as the proverbial open book. Now you’re acting as if you want me to go away and never come back when it’s obvious you need help here. I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on. Alex never mentioned this place was headed downstream. Why not?”
Her answer was quick coming. “Do you really think he’d tell you? He’d never want you to know that he’d failed to succeed in managing what Jack had left him.”
“What if I’d come back and seen it?”
“But you didn’t. The decline of Saddle Ridge didn’t happen overnight. It’s been slow. There were times when I thought that with or without Alex’s help I could turn it around—”
She stopped.
“What do you mean with or without Alex’s help?”
The guarded expression was back on her face, the shadows in her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t Alex want to keep Saddle Ridge going?” he pressed.
“Oh, he wanted to keep it going. Rather, he wanted me to keep it going.”
“And what was he doing?” Brock asked cautiously.
“You know what he was doing. He was riding the rodeo circuit, chasing the wildest bull.”
That’s what Dix had said. Brock thought about the times Alex had called him. Often he’d been away from Saddle Ridge. And whenever Brock had called Alex—those times had been too few—at Alex’s direction, he’d gotten hold of him on his cell phone.
So Kylie wouldn’t answer?
The same tension that had looped around them ever since he’d stepped into Kylie’s hospital room surrounded them now. It was broken when the door opened and Dix came in.
The foreman took off his Stetson and when he entered the kitchen, he looked like a man who was facing his executioner. “Are you still talking to me?” he asked Kylie.
“Do I have any choice?” she returned with a half smile that told Brock she couldn’t stay mad at Dix for long.
“You do,” the older man answered, “but the horses don’t like a woman in a snit any more than I do.”
She laughed. The sound was so genuine, so free, that Brock remembered the girl she’d been.
“Well then, that decides it,” she said, getting to her feet and wincing because she’d moved too fast.
Every protective instinct in Brock urged him to push back his chair, put his arm around her shoulders and make sure she got to the sofa safely. Yet he stayed put because he knew she wouldn’t tolerate it.
Kylie was lifting her plate to take it to the sink when Brock said, “I’ll get the dishes.”
Dix’s gaze cut from one of them to the other. “Looks like everything’s under control in here,” he muttered.
“In a week I’ll be back in the barn,” Kylie told him.
“Only to visit.” Brock’s voice was steel.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Dix assured her. “Feather’s doing fine. She even let me put a blanket on her rump this afternoon. Of course she does miss you, but I’ll tend to her real good.”
“Feather?” Brock asked.
“I adopted a mustang from the B.L.M.”
The Bureau of Land Management thinned the wild mustang herds that roamed the western rangelands, then they put the horses up for adoption. The mustangs were descendants of the Spanish horses and, when trained, made great riding mounts with stout constitutions. But not just anyone had the patience to gentle a wild mustang. Kylie obviously did.
Reflexively, his gaze went to her rounding tummy. She’d make a wonderful mother. He’d seen her patience and kindness as she’d interacted with horses. She’d be the same with children.
“Thanks, Dix. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The sincerity in her voice said she meant every word.
Flushing, her foreman dropped his hat back on his head. “I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.”
This afternoon Brock had learned Dix resided in the old apartment over the barn where Kylie had stayed when she’d moved to the ranch. The bunkhouse, which once housed four to six hands, no longer had running water or electricity. Brock still didn’t understand what had happened here, and he intended to find out.
Every step Kylie took to the sofa seemed to be an effort, and Brock knew she was hurting. She was so petite, her pregnancy mainly showed at her tummy. Her cheeks might be a tiny bit fuller, her breasts might be a little bigger—
He stopped that thought before it could form. He stopped that thought before a picture went with it. She was a pregnant woman, for God’s sake! He couldn’t be attracted to her.
Could he? Hadn’t he always noticed Kylie, but—being five years older—kept away from her? After Alex had declared his intentions to marry her and kept declaring them until he did it, Brock had stepped away for good. She was still his brother’s wife. She was still carrying his brother’s baby. And she loved Saddle Ridge.
He’d almost hated it. He’d hated what Jack Warner had felt about it. He’d hated the fact that his father had left it to his brother. He’d hated all the memories that had made him feel like a second-class citizen and his mother an outcast. Everyone had known Jack hadn’t loved Conchita Vasco. He’d done his duty by her. When he’d met someone else who was his kind, who would produce the blond son he’d craved, he’d divorced Brock’s mother and never cared about seeing her again. He’d been a cold man. When his new wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer and died a few years later, he’d turned even colder.
Coming back here had rubbed every one of Brock’s nerves raw. Being around Kylie wasn’t helping. The best solution for both of them was to sell Saddle Ridge and move on. But he had the feeling that wasn’t anywhere in her plans.
Brock was dropping plates into the dishwasher when the phone rang. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kylie reach for the cordless on the end table by the sofa. She obviously knew the person on the other end because she propped a pillow at the sofa’s arm and curled into it, trying to make herself comfortable.
In spite of himself, Brock wondered about her life now. What had she done in her free time before she’d become pregnant? Did she still ride into the Painted Peaks, hoping to glimpse the bands of mustangs that hadn’t inhabited the mountains for years? Did she ever return to Devil’s Canyon in the Bighorns and feel as if she were standing on top of the world? He’d taken her there once…the day before her graduation.
Why was he remembering that now? Why was he remembering the peace and awe on her face as she’d studied the striated cliffs, the gorge, the river below? Why could he still remember her absolute delight when she’d spotted a band of mustangs?
He’d learned “why” wasn’t a good question to ask. What should he do? was more easily answered. Action won over philosophizing any day.
Fifteen minutes later, the kitchen cleaned up, a pot of coffee brewed and a mug in his hand, he no longer heard Kylie’s voice on the phone.
Going to the living room he sat in the armchair across from her. “A friend calling to see if you got home safe and sound?”
The smile left her face, and at first he thought she was going to put those guards up again. Instead, she asked, “Do you remember Shaye Bartholomew?”
He remembered both girls Kylie had run with. Shaye was a brunette and Gwen Langworthy had auburn curls that had bobbed everywhere. “I remember Shaye. Her father was a doctor—a cardiologist.”
“Yes. He still is. At least until the New Year. Then, from what Shaye says, he’s going to retire.”
“I’m surprised Shaye stayed in Wild Horse Junction. She was a smart girl.”
“Smart girls leave?” Kylie asked with a hint of amusement.
“If I remember correctly, Shaye was headed off to college.” Kylie had been smart, too, so smart she’d skipped a grade and was a year younger than her friends. But she’d never had aspirations to go to college or to leave Wild Horse Junction. Not as far as Brock knew.
“Right now she’s a social worker part-time. Last February, Dylan Malloy’s sister died. He was probably a year or two ahead of you in school. Anyway, his sister had a baby right before she passed on, and her will made Shaye legal guardian.”
“Not her brother?”
“After Dylan’s and Julia’s parents died, he’d given up his own dreams to get his sister out of foster care. She lived with him. I guess as an adult, she hadn’t wanted to burden him again with a baby. But along the way of figuring out whether Shaye or Dylan would be the best parent for Julia’s son, they fell in love. They just married in July.”
“What about Gwen? Are you still in touch with her?”
“Sure am. She’s an obstetrical nurse practitioner. She’s getting married after Christmas and I’m her matron of honor.”
Bypassing details of the wedding, he remarked, “You said you’re due the end of January. When’s your exact due date?” He was surprised she was going to be in a wedding that late in her pregnancy.
“January twenty-ninth. I’ll be as big as a house, but Gwen didn’t seem to care. Both Shaye and I are standing up for her.”
“I’m surprised the three of you are still close. That doesn’t often happen—childhood friends holding on until adulthood.”
“No, I guess it doesn’t. But we were always more like sisters than friends. Shaye asked me to come for Thanksgiving dinner, but her place will be bedlam with all her family. I’m not sure I’ll be ready for that by Thursday.”
“Wise choice.”
“I’m glad you approve,” she responded somewhat acerbically.
“Kylie, I didn’t mean to make it sound—”
“As if you know best?” she interrupted. “That’s exactly how you’ve made it sound ever since you arrived.” Shifting to the edge of the sofa, she used her good arm to push herself up. “I think I’m going to turn in. It’s early, but the doctor said to rest, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
She knew he wasn’t about to refute the doctor’s orders. She could make her escape and he’d be left with his thoughts, as well as the mess Saddle Ridge was in.
“Where’s your computer?” he asked.
“In the spare room upstairs. Why?”
“Because I want to start going over the books.”
“Tonight? I really should show you the program I use.”
“I’m computer savvy. I have to be with the work I do. I can figure out almost any program. Do you have a problem with me looking at the records?”
“Would it matter if I did?” she asked with a sigh.
“No, not if you want me to help you.”
“That’s the problem, Brock. I don’t know if I want your help, not only for my sake, but for yours. You don’t want to be here. You don’t want to be involved with Saddle Ridge.”
“You’re my sister-in-law. Family helps family.”
“Like Jack and Alex helped you?”
“I didn’t need Alex’s help. And Jack? Well, he put me through college. That’s one of the reasons my mother left me here with him. He gave me my future, so I really can’t complain.”
“He never gave you the love and care you needed. You have every right to complain,” she said softly…compassionately.
“Let’s not get into that, Kylie. The past is what it was. Now Jack and Alex are gone, and you have decisions to make.”
“Such as?”
“Such as whether or not you’re going to sell Saddle Ridge and start a really good life with the proceeds.”
