B00DVWSNZ8 EBOK (12 page)

After the hostess and waitress left, he said, "Steak okay with you?"

Jude smiled. "You bet. My family's in the beef business."

"I wasn't trying to be rude by not asking you what you wanted, but those girls are talkative. I figured if I didn't get a word in edgewise and tell them what we want to eat, we could be here all night. They were in the same grade in school as one of my sisters."

Jude had no idea how it would feel to have several sisters and brothers to chat about. Even her childhood relationship with her cousins wasn't the same as having siblings. "It's okay. Do your sisters all live here?"

"None of my family lives here anymore. We're all scattered in four directions now."

Jude wanted to ask why he had returned if he had no family here, but for once she managed to keep her mouth shut. They sat in awkward silence, her with her hands tucked between her knees, Brady looking around the room. He nodded at a couple who sat a few tables away and the man returned the greeting.

"A lot of people seem to know you," Jude said. "Are you here a lot?"

"Since I can't cook worth a damn, I'm everywhere a lot if there's food. Stephenville's a small town. Once you get away from the college, there aren't that many places to get a good meal."

"Ah." Jude nodded. A few more seconds of silence, then their drinks came. The cold margarita tasted good, but strong. After the events of the day, Jude needed something strong.

"I want you to know I appreciate your helping me," he said and sipped his whiskey, swallowing on a grimace. "Clearing out the trailer took longer than I thought it would. If you hadn't come along, I'd still be packing boxes."

She had wondered if he would acknowledge that she had been of help. She didn't care so much about being thanked, but she wanted him to say she had been useful. She couldn't keep from smiling. "I offered because I wanted to. Can I ask you something?"

One corner of his mouth tipped into a sort-of grin. "Have I been able to stop you so far?"

"Where did you learn to do that trick, mounting Sal like you did this afternoon?"

"It's not a trick. I just refuse to let an animal that's supposed to be dumber than I am get the best of me. It's bad enough she's spoiled rotten."

"But you did it perfectly, like a trained trick rider. You must have practiced it."

"Darlin', I've been working on ranches
and fooling with horses and cows my whole life. I'm not afraid of them."

She suspected he wasn't afraid of much. What little she had learned of him in a short time said he had no fear of stepping out of the ordinary.

"I'm not afraid of them, either,” she said, “but I can't jump on the back of a loping horse."

He ducked his chin and rubbed his brow. End of discussion.

"Can I ask you something else? I'm not being nosy, but—"

"I know you're not. What is it you want to know?"

"Why did that woman have those pictures? Where did she get them?"

He gave a rueful sigh. "She bought 'em online. The Cowboys' PR company sells 'em."

"But you look so young in them and—"

"Darlin', the people who sell 'em don't tell their customers they're buying old pictures. And I guess people who want pictures of
nearly-naked men wouldn't care anyway."

"But what if you don't want them sold?"

"I don't own 'em. I get a little bit of royalty money when they sell 'em, but it's very little. These days, believe me, us old guys have been replaced by young bucks wearing even less."

Recalling the thong, Jude laughed. "How could they be wearing less? You mean they're clear naked?"

"Yep."

"Oh, my gosh." Her hands flew to cover her nose and mouth as she laughed. A new image of him without the thong replaced the more modest one.

"You're not shocked, are you?" he asked. "Lord, look at the stuff out there nowadays."

"I'm a high school teacher, remember? Almost nothing shocks me anymore. But once in a while, something does surprise me."

"Why don't we stop talking about me and you tell me why a rich, good-looking woman—"

"Hey, Brady." A tall, lean cowboy wearing a black hat and the typical garb sauntered toward them, carrying a beer bottle. "You been out to the place?" His pointed gaze came at Jude, and she saw devilment in his eyes.

"Hey, Ace." Brady put out his hand and they shook. "Listen, I picked up the horses. I left a message on your voice mail. Figure out how much I still owe you and we'll settle up."

"No hurry." Ace's quizzical look came at Jude again.

"This is a friend of mine," Brady said, tilting his chin toward Jude. "Jude Str—Judy Strong. She's doing me a favor and helping me clear out the trailer."

Jude shot a questioning look across the table at Brady, then quickly recovered and decided to go along. She said hello and offered Ace her right hand.

Ace took it and held it a few extra seconds in more than a handshake of greeting. "Where you from?"

"Abilene," Brady said before Jude could reply. She removed her hand from Ace's.

"Abilene, huh? I roped in that little rodeo over there a few times years back. Even won a little money."

"I see," Jude said.

Ace returned his attention to Brady. "You all moved out?"

"Soon will be."

"I'm gonna miss that ornery mare," Ace said on a laugh, stealing glances at Jude.

She could tell he was as curious about her as she was about Brady.

"I picked up some calves from Jack a couple days ago," Ace said. "Man, he hates seeing you leave, buddy. He was ready to bawl. Says he doesn't know how he's gonna replace you."

"Yeah?" Brady said. He appeared to be embarrassed by the compliment. "So where you headed, Ace? Wanna sit down and eat with us?"

"Nah. I'm going back to the bar to drink tequila with Billy Torrence. I think there's a poker game coming together and I got paid today." He swigged a drink from the bottle, then looked down intently at Brady. "Ginger came to see me a little earlier."

Brady's brow arched as he looked up at Ace.

"She says you've moved up a rung from the rest of us, Brady. Looks like you're cutting all your old ties. Gonna start over with a clean slate, huh?"

"That's the definition of starting over, Ace."

"Cutting ties with your boy, too?"

Brady fixed him with a hard glare that said
back off, and Jude sensed his edginess again. "No," he snapped.

Ace didn't reply for a few moments. Then, "Yeah, well, Ginger's pretty upset. She was drunk and on a crying jag. I took her home and put her to bed."

Jude wondered what that meant and watched Brady's reaction. He nodded but didn't reply. His expression remained neutral. After a few seconds, Ace backed away. "Well, see you around."

Brady put out his right hand again. "If you're ever in West Texas, Ace
..."

"Sure thing." They shook hands, but it was nothing more than one of those ceremonial things. Jude sensed a low-grade tension between them. She suspected Brady and his friend might never meet face-to-face again.

She waited until Ace passed through the doorway into the bar. "You and Ginger were serious?"

"No. I've known her for years. She gets drunk and goes crazy.
She oughtta give up booze, but she never will."

Jude waited for more. When he said nothing else, she said, "Have you known Ace long?"

"Most of my life."

"Has he always been envious of you?"

Brady snorted. "Of me? Darlin', I don't have much for anybody to envy. Nah, Ace is just being Ace. He's a ladies' man. It's you he's interested in. Couldn't you tell?"

“That was
obvious. But I wonder if his attitude toward you comes from something deeper. He's jealous over something. Maybe it's your inheritance."

Brady's gaze moved to the doorway. "Huh," he said, as if he'd just had a sudden revelation.

"Why didn't you want him to know my name?"

"Because I don't feel like explaining to anybody what J. D. Strayhorn's daughter is doing in Lupe's Cantina in Stephenville, Texas. It's nobody's damn business."

Chapter 11

Brady was having trouble with his eyes. They kept straying to the lacy edge of Jude's black bra that occasionally peeked from behind the V-neck of her tight little green top. Or they landed on the black bra strap that sometimes sneaked out at her shoulder. If she was aware of it, she showed no indication. After being around her for two days, he wondered if she would care even if she were aware of it. She didn't strike him as being an empty head who cared about her own looks and comfort above all else.

He was surprised by how she had sized up Ace in a matter of minutes. With that ability to read people, she probably made a good teacher.

N
o doubt Ace did envy him inheriting a ranch, even a small one. Ace had always made a living as a ranch hand and had never aspired to do much else. Still, almost every ranch hand had a dream, even if far-fetched, of owning his own place.

Knowing Ace too well, Brady was still annoyed by
the man’s blatant attention to Jude. He always had his eye out for a good-looking woman, even one who was taken.

Whoa!
Just back up. Jude wasn't "taken." At least not by Brady. Sure, he was turned on by looking at her and felt a strong need to protect her until he got her back to Lockett safe and sound, but Jude Strayhorn was nothing more than an acquaintance to him, right?

Right.

She did look sexy, though, in that top that hugged her everywhere and highlighted nearly perfect tits with plenty of enticing cleavage.

Cool it,
he warned himself. The last thing he should be looking at was her cleavage.

The waitress appeared and he was relieved to sideline
his nonsensical thoughts. She set a large wooden bowl of salad, a white crockery pitcher of salad dressing and an array of fixin's in the middle of the table. She added a pair of tongs and two salad plates, then sailed away.

Jude
reached for the tongs. "Ace mentioned your son. How old is he?"

Brady watched as she used the ton
gs to pile salad onto a plate. "Nine," he said.

"Where does he live?"

"Fort Worth."

"With his mother?" She handed the heaped-up plate across the table to him.

He took it, leveling a dubious look at the pile of salad. Being a meat-and-potatoes man, he typically didn't eat this much green stuff in a whole week. "Yeah," he said.

She was already loading up the other plate. "How're you going to see him if you live in Lockett?"

Dammit, he didn't need to be reminded by someone who had no idea about his life or his contentious history with his ex-wife and father-in-law that he hadn't quite found an answer to that question.

"I'm gonna work it out as soon as I get settled
," he said, but was unable to keep doubt from creeping into the reply.

Holding the pitcher of salad dressing above her plate, Jude gave him a solemn, probing look. "I just wondered. A lot of the time, ex-wives don't like the kids being carted off to a location miles away."

Inwardly, he winced under her scrupulous gaze. Why did her eyes always seem to be probing, looking for something inside him? "You know this how?"

"I
might have never been married, but I know plenty of divorced parents who have kids." She drenched her salad with dressing, then dipped her finger in it and tasted. "Hmm. This is good dressing. Try some." She passed the pitcher across the table to him. The movement of her arm pressed against her breast, raising a soft-looking pillow of flesh above the edge of the black lace that was already spinning fantasies in his mind and groin.

Willing his eyes back to his plate, he dripped a small amount of the dressing onto his salad. "I told you it's a good place to eat," he said defensively.

"More than half my students come from single-parent homes," she said, digging into her salad. Her full lips moved with agility as she munched like a rabbit. His eyes fixed on her mouth. She swallowed with a frown, wiped her mouth with her napkin and tilted her head. "It's a challenging dilemma. The kids with only one parent don't seem to do as well in school."

Brady
deplored hearing her say that, though he knew it instinctively. He worried every day about how Marvalee and her new husband were raising—or not raising—Andy. Having grown up without a father himself, he hated not being a part of his son's daily life. "You had only one parent. You seem to have turned out okay."

She looked at him with a smile that made him dizzy. "Oh, wow. I forgot you would know that about me." She returned to her salad. "Actually, I had more supervision than most kids ever have. Besides Daddy, I had Grandpa. And a dozen housekeepers. For that matter, Daddy and Grandpa still want to supervise me. And for a long time I had Grandpa's mother. Do you remember her? Everyone called her Penny Ann, but when I was a little girl she told me to call her Grammy Pen, so I still do when I talk about her." She picked up her glass of tea and swallowed a long drink.

Jude's great-grandmother must have been ancient when Jude was born. As a boy, Brady might have seen an elderly woman around the Circle C, but after twenty years, he couldn't recall.

He barely remembered the people with whom he had interacted often back then—people closer to his age, like Jake and Cable, and even Judith Ann. "I don't think I do," he answered, picking chunks of tomato out of his salad and placing them on the edge of his plate.

She pointed her fork at the tomato chunks. "You should eat those. Tomatoes are good for you. They're high in antioxidants. They have lycopene. Everyone should eat either the raw fruit itself—tomatoes are really a fruit, you know—or some kind of tomato product every day."

Brady didn't think he would win this debate. He
speared a tomato chunk with his fork and popped it into his mouth. "Is that what you do?"

"I try to. And I nag Daddy and Grandpa about it, too. It isn't pop science. It's real. You know that old saying about eating an apple a day? I happen to think it should be revised. I believe a tomato should be added to it."

"I see," he said, and ate some more salad and bites of tomato.

"Grammy Pen passed away just a few years ago," she said. "She was ninety-five. I really miss her. She's the person in the family I want to be like. I'm named after her. Well, not after her only. I'm also named after a cousin who died as a little kid."

Following her chatter took some effort, Brady was beginning to realize. He leaped at the chance to ask a question of his own for a change. "Who died?"

"
My namesake is Judith Ellen Campbell. She drowned in the Red in 1861, when the Campbells first came to Texas. She was the first Judith. I'm the third one."

"The Red."

"The Red River. You know, that long body of water between Texas and Oklahoma?"

"I know where the Red River is," Brady grumbled.

Jude giggled. "I'm kidding you. I'm trying to make you smile. But there is more than one Red River, you know."

To please her, Brady forced himself to smile. "But the others don't count."

"Spoken like a true Texan. You are a Texan, right?"

She went on talking between forkfuls of salad and more lip action as she chewed. "In case you're wondering how the Campbells got into the Strayhorn act, or vice versa, the founder of the Circle C was
named Alister Campbell. He was a farmer from Missouri and a Southern sympathizer. That's why all of the men in the family are named after Jefferson Davis. After Alister and his family got burned out by Jayhawkers, they left Missouri forever. Grammy Pen said they thought they would escape the war and the Yankees by coming to Texas."

"So why do you want to be like your great-grandma?" Brady asked.

"Grammy Pen was strong. She was only two years older than I am now when her husband died suddenly. Heart failure, they thought, but they never really knew. There weren't any doctors close by in those days. Some people say he was so mean and crooked, the devil called him to come and be one of his generals."

She sat back, dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and laughed. "You don't ever want to let Grandpa hear you say anything like that, though. He thinks his father was a good businessman
. But most people will tell you the guy was a crooked lawyer."

Family lore. Brady had never known his grandparents on his father's side and had barely known his m
other's parents. "Humph," he grunted, but he was interested in Jude's story.

"Anyway, after he died, Grammy Pen had the whole ranch on her shoulders. That same year, Pearl Harbor was bombed. Most of the men in Willard County left for the military, including Grandpa. He joined the navy."

For a man who had spent his life in West Texas, where there were few natural bodies of water, to join the navy struck Brady as curious. "The navy?"

"That's funny, isn't it? Especially since no one in the whole family, including him, can swim. Grammy Pen said he hauled some calves to Abilene and when he passed a recruiter's office, he stopped and signed up."

"Seems like a man would have to be able to swim to be in the navy."

"Grandpa was scared they
’d kick him out if he couldn't swim, so he tricked them and they never knew the difference."

"You can't swim, either, huh?"

She laughed. "Where would I have learned? I could have taken swimming in college, but I couldn't see myself in a beginner's swimming class. I'll bet you can swim, though, huh?"

Brady thought again about the sheltered life Jude had led. "Yeah," he answered.

"Grandpa was in the navy more than two years, and he never did learn to swim. While he was gone, Grammy Pen worked right alongside the few hands the Circle C had left. She could ride and rope and do all the work. She managed the business end of things, too. And she gardened and cooked and ran the household. She didn't shirk from anything. A few years after the war, she finally turned management of the ranch over to Grandpa and took up causes."

Every big old ranch in West Texas probably had a similar story, including the part about a crooked ancestor. But hearing all that family history only reminded Brady of the vast differences between Jude's life and his own. Hell. She was Texas aristocracy. A damn princess. He had been a reasonably successful businessman—and had made a lot of money at one point—but compared to her, he was nothing more than a saddle tramp.

Don't let her get to you
, horse sense told him. After you get her back to Lockett, she'll disappear behind that wall of family and money and you'll never see her again.

While she continued to talk, his mind drifted to the days just two short years ago when he'd had several popular subdivisions under development
, multiple construction jobs under way and a financial statement any man who had started with nothing would envy. It had been a mistake for him to move to Stephenville and hole up in a singlewide trailer house, working a low-paying job. After his business fell apart, with his education and experience, he could have done a number of things in Fort Worth, and had even turned down some good offers. Marvalee's father hadn't succeeded in totally ruining him. But at the time, Brady had wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and lick his wounds. Tonight, revisiting his errors in judgment only worsened his mood.

Jude stopped chattering and eating and looked up at him, no doubt having noticed that his mind had wandered. "Am I boring you?"

"No," he answered quickly. "I've never heard the Circle C's history."

"When I get started on it, I tend to ramble. Because: I love all of it so much, I forget other people might not be interested. I'm a little bit of a nut. I'm so devoted to Daddy and Grandpa and the ranch that I'm unable to leave
it for long. People tell me I'd be less frustrated if I’d just move to Fort Worth or Dallas and get some kind of real job where I can use my education and make a true contribution to society. But I know I wouldn't like leaving the ranch. Or Willard County, either."

"Why is contributing to society so important?"

"Because I was born blessed and I know it. I realize it more every day." She set her fork on the empty salad plate and her mouth broke into a smile that lit her whole face. "I'm afraid if I get too full of it, taking advantage of all that I've been given and not giving anything back, lightning might strike me or something."

Before Brady lost himself in admiration for her, the waitress delivered their steaks, sizzling on heavy hot platters, along with huge baked potatoes, sliced open and steaming. He watched Jude heap her potato with a little of everything—salt, pepper, butter, sour cream, grated cheese, chives and bacon bits.

So much for a delicate flower who eats like bird
. But he liked that she didn't come up with the tired I-have-to-watch-my-figure cliché. She seemed to dive headlong into everything she did.

He sampled a bite of steak. It was as delicious as it was tender. From the outside, Lupe's Cantina looked like a dive. Inside looked only slightly better. But he wanted Jude to know he had brought her here because he truly thought the food was good.

"How long were you married?" she asked, cutting into her steak.

Brady's fork stopped on the way to his mouth. He wasn't eager to discuss his former marriage
, but he didn't want to be rude by saying "none of your business."