Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (54 page)

"The point is, Romeo," Wes answered, "you still don't know a consarned thing about women. Some fellas just have to learn the hard way. I reckon you must be one of them."

Zack snorted at his brother's half-baked notion. "You seem to forget. Bailey's not like Rorie. Or Fancy either. She's spent so much time being ranch boss, she wants to be boss of me too."

"Uh-huh." Wes grinned. "Who does that sound like?"

Zack reddened.

"Bailey's a whole lot like Rorie and Fancy," Cord was quick to intercede. "The only reason you don't see me and Wes waging pitched battles on the front porch with our wives is that we've learned how to handle them."

"Yeah?" Zack asked dubiously.

"Sure. When Fancy is hell-bent on something, like lecturing the calico queens, I let her do it. I figure it's not worth arguing about, unless she puts herself in danger. In the long run, she just might convince some girl to aspire to a better way of life, and that makes her feel good." Cord grinned. "And believe me, good things come to a man who makes his wife feel good."

Wes chuckled. "Amen, brother. You can't go getting your nose in a snit every time a woman gets an idea, Zack. They're skittish enough as it is, with a whole convoluted thinking process that isn't ever likely to cotton to yours.

"For instance, Rorie thinks women ought to have the right to preach at church. I figure there must be a good reason why silence is the Golden Rule, so I keep quiet rather than pointing out that women can preach six days of the week, while Sunday at church is the only time we menfolk can get a word in edgewise."

Wes smirked. "'Course, I'm such an ideal husband, I'm sure Rorie would never object to a single thing about me."

Cord chuckled. Even Zack cracked a smile at that.

"You've just got to love your woman, Zack," Wes continued, ardently sincere now. "You have to love her, and listen to her, and give her some space now and then. Isn't that what you want from Bailey?"

"Yes, but..." Zack swallowed. He'd given her his heart. He'd offered her his name. He'd tried so hard to understand her, but none of his efforts seemed to work. "What if I do all the things you suggest, and they still aren't enough for us to keep getting along?"

Cord squeezed his shoulder. "Then you give her more love, son."

Wes nodded. "You can't ever go wrong with that recipe."

Zack sighed.

Maybe they were right. Maybe more love, a little diplomacy, and lots of compromise could salvage his relationship with Bailey.

He'd had to spend five miserable days in this hotel before he'd been able to admit he didn't want a cloying, clinging spouse any more than she did. He'd grown to like the independence her unconventionally gave him. She didn't pressure him to do she-stuff; she didn't nag or whine or throw a fit to earn his attention. She simply gave him the room to be with her or to be with himself, as he chose. She was the kind of woman who understood the needs of a private man like him.

And he was beginning to understand that his needs were her needs.

Although he sensed his brothers' advice was sound, he couldn't very well test it until he proved to Bailey how wrong he'd been to declare they had no future together. Her hurtful words had cut him deeply, but in the final analysis, he and he alone had made his worst fears become reality when he'd lost all patience and ridden off her ranch. Now he faced the prospect of losing her forever if he couldn't find some way to make amends.

He chewed his bottom lip for a moment, wondering what to do, what to say. A bolt of inspiration struck him.

Grinning, he leaned forward, gesturing his brothers closer in a conspiratorial fashion.

"I have an idea," he said, his eagerness mounting. "I have to take a trip, so I'll need y'all to cover for me...."

Chapter 23

October fifteenth dawned blustery but warm. With no word from Zack in nearly three weeks, Bailey's heart was heavy as she watched the Rawlins' family wagons arrive at her ranch shortly after sunrise. Beneath the pale streaks of the horizon, she could see Zack wasn't among his laughing, chattering kinfolk and the ranch hands who jumped down, unloading fence posts, carpentry tools, and picnic baskets to help with her barn raising.

When she'd returned to her big house several days earlier, she'd learned that Zack had been true to his promise. He'd ordered his men to remove the carcasses from the fire-scorched pens, but he'd had no personal involvement in the activities that Rorie and Fancy had organized for this day to help Bailey get back on her feet.

In fact, as long as she'd been a guest in Cord's home, Zack hadn't shown his face at his family's spread. Bailey had every reason to believe her presence had driven him away. He was determined to cut off all communication with her.

The strangest part was, he hadn't even bothered to make an appearance at the Bullwhip Saloon on October first, when Hank had stunned the entire county by declining his election win and appointing Zack as the Cattlemen's president. Apparently Hank had bigger political offices in mind now that he fancied himself a rainmaker. The cattlemen were still in an uproar, and every-one was out beating the bushes for Zack. Cord and Wes had solemnly sworn they hadn't seen hide nor hair of their brother since the day the rain had stopped falling more than two weeks earlier.

Sighing heavily, Bailey pasted on a smile and strolled off the porch to welcome her neighbors.

"Morning." She nodded to the men and reached to take a stack of quilts and table coverings from Rorie.

The newest Rawlins bride took one look at Bailey's face, and her smile of greeting faded. "He's not here, is he?" Rorie murmured.

Bailey shrugged. The gesture kept her shoulders from slumping abysmally low. "I reckon the day's still young."

Fancy was on her way to the picnic table with a basket and her daughter, Megan. She must have overheard their exchange, because Fancy halted in midstride and cast a speculative look after her husband, who was disappearing around the corner of the privy with five-year-old Billy in tow.

"Those Rawlins men are thicker than thieves," she muttered in Bailey's ear. Then she quickly cornered her brother-in-law before he could sneak out of earshot with another child.

"Wes," Fancy asked pleasantly, "where's your brother?"

The picture of innocence, Wes stood holding Merrilee's hand. "You mean Cord, ma'am? Why, I reckon he's, er, helping Billy stave off an accident."

Meghan snickered to learn of her brother's indisposal, but Rorie sternly faced her husband. "You know very well who Fancy means, Wes. Bailey has been more patient with you three scapegraces than either Fancy or I would have been. It's time you came clean. What tomfoolery has Zack been up to?"

Outnumbered three to one, Wes didn't look in the least bit daunted. "Aw, you know Zack, ladies. He has so much common sense wrapped up in that head of his, it's gotten harder than a rock. He isn't capable of tomfoolery.

"But don't you worry none, Miss Bailey," he added, adopting a slightly more serious tone. "Zack's heart isn't as stone hard as his noggin."

Merrilee's eyes grew impossibly round. "Did Uncle Zack turn to stone, Papa?"

Megan caught her breath. "Like the Indian prince in the bedtime story?" Skirting her uncle, she ran anxiously to Bailey and threw her arms around her hips. "Miss, you have to find Uncle Zack. You have to kiss him! Only a kiss from his true love can save him!"

Wes flashed Bailey a lopsided grin, and she didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Had he been the one to put that idea in the child's head? That she and Zack were true loves?

She wished it were true. She wished Zack would come back and let it be true....

"Megan," Fancy gently chided her daughter, "bedtime stories can't happen to real people."

"At least the part about turning to stone can't," Wes said, winking at his wife. "Reckon I'm no Indian prince, but I know a lot about true love."

Rorie blushed prettily.

Fancy wasn't as easily disarmed as her sister-in-law, however. "Hmm. I suppose Zack must be involved in something awfully important to have forgotten his election day," she prompted Wes.

Hope flurried through Bailey's chest. "Do you think he'll come for the barn raising, then?"

Three sets of expectant female eyes bored into their mischievous quarry. Wes shrugged, flashing Bailey an enigmatic smile.

"He will if he knows what's good for him."

By midmorning, the canyon echoed with the rasping of saws, the pounding of hammers, and the shouts and grunts of men. Townsfolk and farmers, sheepmen and cowboys—the river of volunteers had overwhelmed Bailey, nearly bringing her to tears. Rorie and Fancy must have rallied the whole county for the barn raising. The Good Samaritans kept flowing in, bringing their women, their picnic lunches, and their tools. Some of them brought other things as well. Rob Cole donated four hundred yards of barbed wire for her new pens; the Rawlins men supplied cedar fence posts, and Judge Larabee staked the capital to roof her outbuildings in fresh tin.

Feeling strangely displaced, Bailey wandered between the sycamore tree—where the women were gossiping as they guarded their baked goods from wide-eyed youngsters—and the wooden frames of her new smokehouse, toolshed, and barn, where the men were laughing as they rubbed elbows. She kept hoping a black gelding would top the rim of the canyon, or she'd hear a whiskey-smooth, bass voice calling out her name. But the river of volunteers had dwindled to a trickle now. The last arrivals, the Rotterdams, came around eleven o'clock, herding a fine Berkshire sow and five half-grown shoats.

Bailey intercepted Hank near her well while the twins fenced the hogs inside one of the pens that Rob and Jesse Cole had finished stringing. The fifty or so yearling goats that had outclimbed the fire and her twenty surviving breeding ewes would have to be culled from Vasquez's flocks after the volunteers finished raising her buildings.

"Mornin', Miss Bailey." Hank greeted her with uncharacteristic humility. His deep blue eyes scanned the charred grounds, the barren orchard, and the flurry of activity taking place in the new barnyard. "I'm mighty sorry to see my storm brought you so much trouble."

Bailey arched her eyebrows as the twins joined them. "Your storm?"

"Pa claims his cannon brought the rain," Nat explained with careful gravity.

Hank snorted. "'Claims' nothing, boy. Old Reb took only a week to warm up to her job, not like all those upstart pretenders who've been humbugging this county since last autumn. But go ahead, have your doubts. You won't be so quick to thumb your nose at my cannon when a Rotterdam sits in the governor's mansion."

Nat looked to his brother for support. Nick rolled his eyes as if to say, "I'll believe it when I see it."

Bailey hid her smile. Hank wasn't the only one taking credit for the end of the drought. Preacher Underwood's congregation boasted that their six months of prayers had been answered, while the Indian rain dancers claimed that their lifelong influence with the Great Spirit had done the trick.

"Well, I'm glad you came by, Hank," she told him solemnly. "It means a lot."

He reddened, giving her shoulder an awkward pat. "Seemed like the least I could do, ma'am, after you were so generous with your water. Folks around these parts ain't forgotten how you've always been ready to lend a hand to those in need. I know the Rotterdarns and McShanes have had some, er, misunderstandings in the past, but that's all behind us now, right, neighbor?"

Bailey blinked the sting from her eyes. Her daddy would have been dumbfounded to hear the Rotterdam patriarch say such a thing. "Reckon so, Hank."

Nick grinned, elbowing her in the ribs. "We figured you'd get plenty of bull from that sweetheart of yours, so we went ahead and brought you some pork."

"Yeah, in honor of your rodeo," Nat chimed in. He leaned toward her and whispered, "I still say you were the better pig herder."

Bailey managed a weak laugh. She didn't seem able to pass more than a minute or two without someone reminding her of Zack... and the love she'd apparently lost.

Hank's cagey eyes were studying her. "You haven't heard from him, have you."

She sighed. "No. Have you?"

"No, ma'am, I haven't." Hank's brow furrowed. "Seems strange though. He used to want that presidential office plenty bad."