B00DVWSNZ8 EBOK (31 page)

“That was that the phone call was about?”

Brady nodded. "I know it’s a lot to spring on you all at once, especially since we haven’t had much chance to talk about it. I’m hoping you’ve already figured out that I’m a package deal, Jude.”

She grinned.
“Why, Brady Fallon. What are you saying?”

“
Andy has a half-brother who might come along with him. I know taking on two half-grown kids is a lot to expect from any woman. Jarrett’s not my boy, but I took care of him since he was an infant and he looks up to me. I’m the only daddy he’s ever known. Besides that, I’m afraid it would break his heart to separate from Andy.”

“Do I strike you as someone who hates kids
? I teach kids.”

“I know, but that’s not the same as being a mother, or that is, a stepmother to them.”

"We don't have a problem, Brady.”

“Really?”

“Really. A ranch is an ideal place for two boys to grow up.”

He draped his arm around her, pulled her close and planted a kiss on her lips.

"Stop that," she said, pushing against him with her elbow. "Windy's probably looking."

“So be it,”
Brady said. He got to his feet and stepped off the concrete bench. "I gotta go. I'll call you when I start back from Abilene."

Jude was in such a good mood, she marched into the kitchen and began making a sack lunch. Windy was peeling potatoes and whistling
. Oh, yeah, he had seen Brady kiss her out on the terrace. For now, she wouldn't worry about it. Daddy wouldn't even be home until late afternoon. She grabbed a bottle of water out of the pantry, then took her lunch with her to the tack room and saddled Patch. She hadn't been paying nearly enough attention to him lately.

She rode through the barn lots and corrals until she reached the vast range that butted up to the back of the ranch compound. She rode through thick, sun
-baked grass, taking in all there was around her, the endless expanse of the rolling plain that stretched until it collided with the brilliant blue sky, all that she adored. The fact that so much unobstructed space represented a special kind of freedom only a chosen few ever saw for themselves was never lost on Jude.

A flock of quail burst into flight in her path. Patch shied, but she controlled him and kissed to him and assured him he was okay.

She rode past the old rock fences—layers of flat limestone pieces stacked without mortar. They had been built at the very beginning of the Circle C, before barbed wire. She reined Patch into the depths of Rimrock Canyon, where layers of prehistoric strata looked as if someone had painted stripes on the canyon walls. The canyon's sandy floor was still damp from the rain. She rode to where she knew a pool of rainwater would be standing and saw deer tracks in the soft sand that surrounded it. She stopped for Patch to rest, loosened his cinch and let him drink. There, on a flat outcropping of red limestone, she ate her lunch.

On the high canyon's rim stood the deteriorating walls of an old rock house that had been built before Grandpa was born. The roof had been gone for years. The Crowell house, it was called, after its occupant.
It had been a dwelling for an outpost cowboy who kept an eye on the fences and the cattle herd. These days, with four-wheel- drive pickup trucks and other all-terrain rigs, there was no need for someone to live this far away from the ranch.

Rested, Patch easily carried her out of the canyon on a steep trail. At the old rock house she tied him in the shade of an ancient chinaberry tree growing at a corner of the walls and walked inside the rock shell.

She had been here many times. Once, when she came here with Daddy, he had killed a rattlesnake in the tall grass near the front stoop.

Weeds and grass had taken over the floor. Little mounds of sand lay where the floors joined the walls that faced west, deposited there by the ceaseless wind. There had been three rooms, delineated by rock walls. Other than erosion, the walls showed little sign of weakness. They had defied all that nature could throw at them. To Jude, they were a symbol of strength and endurance.

She tried to imagine how it must have been to live here a hundred years ago. How had a lone cowboy stayed warm when a blue norther swept across the plains in January? What did he do when a wicked tornado blasted through in the spring? Or when the relentless August sun seared everything under it?

She had to bring Brady here, to show him what it meant to be Alister Campbell's descendant.

Chapter 25

Jude returned to the ranch late in the afternoon and saw her father's pickup parked in its usual place in front of the garage doors. She could hardly wait to see him. He wasn't often gone for four days. At the same time, though she was glad he was back, she
was anxious about telling him about her and Brady.

She unsaddled and brushed Patch, thinking through what she would say first. She tried several opening sentences on Patch, but he only snorted and kept eating. If only she could get the same reaction from Daddy.

She entered the house through the back door as she usually did. The housekeeper, Lola Mendez, intercepted her, obviously nervous. "Tu padre. Esta waiting en he oficina."

"Thanks, Lola." Jude hurried toward Daddy's office, wondering what had the housekeeper in a dither. She found her father standing behind his desk reading a document. He looked up when she stepped in. The tension in the air was palpable. Lola had been right. He was uptight about something. "Hey, Daddy. Good trip?"

"Come in." He turned to face her, dropping the document onto the desk. He leaned forward, bracing his fingertips against the desktop. "Please tell me, Judith Ann, that you don't really have something going on with Brady Fallon."

He hadn't even said hello. Though she was standing and the wide desk separated them, Jude had the distinct impression he loomed over her. She held his gaze but didn't answer right away.

"Do you?" he shouted, and she jumped.

His aggressi
on was as painful as a slap. He never yelled at her. She had hardly heard him raise his voice to anyone, ever. Reflexively, she shouted back. "Yes!"

Seconds passed. Unmoving, he glared at her, his face redder than she had ever seen it. "Sit down," he said sharply but more calmly. He gestured toward the leather wing chair in front of his desk. She dropped into it, still stunned
and made off-balance by his outburst.

He took his seat behind his desk. "My God, Jude," he said quietly, as if shouting at her had shocked him, too. "You know the rules. Why would you take up with him, of all people?"

She set her jaw. This was not how she had expected this conversation to occur, but here it was. Time to fish or cut bait, as she had heard Jake say. "Because I care about him," she said firmly.

Her father drew a deep breath. His head shook. "Jude, we've entrusted him with the management of this place. And it
was looking like it was going to work out. Do you think I can have you playing...playing whatever the hell you're playing at in front of the men? In front of their families?"

Jude had already anticipated those words—not precisely, but close. "No one knows. We haven't—"

"How long have you been seeing him?"

Still flustered after having been caught off guard, she couldn't decide how much to tell him. She didn't answer.

His head shook again as if he were still working his way through his shock. "My God. That's what all of this horse riding and training has been about, isn't it?"

Jude winced. "I was trying to help him. I thought he needed help."

More silence. Then, "Are you sleeping with him?"

She almost shouted none of your business, but
she faced the fact that her lies had finally caught up with her. More silence passed. She inhaled deeply, shoring herself up to deliver the final blow. "Yes," she admitted softly.

Her father sat back in his chair and turned his face away. After another even louder silence, he heaved a sigh and leaned forward, placed his forearms on his desk and laced his fingers. "How do you think I should deal with this? What do you think I should do about him?"

"What do you mean? He's a grown man. There's nothing you can do about him." She, too, shook her head. "I mean, you can fire him, but..." A frown tugged at her brow. "Why—why do you have to do anything? Why can't you just let things be?"

"Because things, Jude, are not that simple. He needs to have the respect of the hands and their families to do the job we've given him, not to mention the people who live in Lockett and Willard County
and even the whole fu…the whole cattle industry. The man we put in charge of all this"—he made a sweeping gesture with his arm—"needs to have enough self-discipline to keep his nose clean and his pants zipped. Do you think people won't have fun at our expense behind our backs? Especially yours, Jude."

"I don't know what they'll do," she snapped.

But she did know. They would do exactly what Daddy said. Gossip was a pastime in Willard County and the Strayhorns had always been prime targets. How did she think her father should deal with this? She had no idea. She stood, turning her back to him, clasping her hands tightly in front of herself.

“I
don't know how I can keep him in the job I've given him," Daddy said matter-of-factly. "I don't have to tell you that this ranch is one of the most important agribusinesses in West Texas. It's crucial to the economy of this whole area. To be perfectly blunt, Jude, the hands, their families, the county, the whole state will assume I've turned management of it over to a man whose only qualification is he's...he's having sex with my daughter. I don't know if I can even keep him on as a hand. Is he prepared for that? Are you?"

She flinched inside. He was right. If his reasons, other than love for her, for trying to run her life had been in doubt, they now became painfully clear. As for Brady, he hadn't said he had considered the consequences and she didn't want him to have to.
Tears rushed to her eyes. She turned back with a direct look into her father's troubled eyes. "Daddy, please don't fire him. He needs this job. If it means so much to you, I won't see him anymore. Just don't fire him."

Her father shook his head again. "I swear I don't understand you, Jude. You were engaged to two fine young men from good families. You found something wrong with both of them and went off half-cocked and broke those alliances."

"Alliances? Maybe that was the problem, Daddy. They were alliances arranged by—"

"Then you take up with a—a damn saddle tramp who works for the ranch," he went on as if he hadn't heard her.

"Don't say that about Brady. If you thought he was a saddle tramp, why did you hire him to run the place? Especially when you knew I wanted to?"

His head cocked and his eyes narrowed. "Is that what this is about? Are you trying to come in through the back door with this guy? Is this a mutiny?"

"A mutiny?" she cried. "Forgodsake, please spare me the melodrama." She willed herself to stay calm and stop crying. She slashed away her tears with her fingertips. "Why can't you just accept that he's someone I like? Someone
I
picked out?"

"So how serious is this?
” he asked more calmly. “You're not pregnant, are you?"

"No
! I'm not pregnant. But what if I were? You and Grandpa are always yammering about me having kids."

"Kids with fathers, Jude. Kids with legitimate fathers. Do I have to say it again? This family sets an example in this county."

"Oh, really? We should talk about that. What kind of example, Daddy? The whole state of Texas gossips about this family's scandals. They even write books about them. My uncle Ike and my stepmother. My uncle Ben and—"

“Shut your mouth, Jude.”
Her father sprang to his feet and stabbed the desktop with his finger. "Ben Strayhorn died a hero. Don't you dare disrespect him."

"I was going to say my uncle Ben's wife, Daddy," Jude said as calmly as she could, though her stomach was shaking. "She could hardly be called a hero, could she?"

Ben Strayhorn's wife, Cynthia, had passed from a cocaine overdose soon after Ben's death in combat in Vietnam, leaving their infant son, Cable, an orphan. More of the Campbell Curse, Grammy Pen had said. Daddy and Grandpa had raised Cable, too.

Her father came around the desk and draped an arm around her shoulder. "Look, let's calm down. Let's not fight, Daughter. Listen to me, now. Let's think through this and make the right decision. I'll speak to Brady. I'll—"

"Daddy, no!" Jude shook her head fiercely. "I don't want you to speak to him. Can't you understand? I'm not a kid. And I care about him. And I think...no, I know he cares about me. Not the money, not the ranch." She stabbed her breastbone with her thumb. "Me."

"All right, Jude." He closed his eyes and raised his palms. "We'll let this rest for now. We'll talk again when I'm less upset. After I've had some time to think."

She studied him. As surely as she knew her name, she knew he would confront Brady. Because that was the way he was. Nothing she could say would change that. The only thing she didn't know was when.

But she no longer believed he would arbitrarily fire him, either. "C
an I ask you something, Daddy?"

"What?"

"Was it Windy who told you?"

"Windy's a friend of mind. Has been since I was sixteen years old."

Jude had no one to blame but herself. She had known better than to sit on the terrace and let Brady kiss her. And she had known better than to get involved with a ranch employee in the first place. "I intended to tell you myself. It would have been nice if I'd had that chance."

With nothing left to say, she started to leave.
As she put her hand on the doorknob, he said, "Jude."

She looked back at him. He adjusted his glasses and gave her a long, solemn look. "Here's something for you to consider while you're caring about Brady Fallon. Your grandfather still wants that 6-0 land. And I'll tell you right now, he intends to get it. When he finds out about this, I don't know what he'll do."

She couldn't resist a sardonic smile. "Looks like the easiest way for him to get what he wants would be for you two to figure out a way to marry me off to Brady. Why not? You've tried to marry me off to everyone else."

Jude found Suzanne at home. Barefoot, red faced and sweating, she was standing a dingy string mop to dry against the wall on the back porch. "Thank God you showed up," she said. "Now I can sit down and have a glass of tea."

"What're you doing?" Jude asked, taking in the oversize chambray shirt that hung mid-thigh on her best friend.

"Mopping the kitchen. Dad's due in tomorrow night. He's on the road so much, I want the house to look like a home when he gets here."

Suzanne worried about her father while he trucked across the country—the places he slept, the food he ate. One of the bonds she and Suzanne had was that they both only had fathers. Suzanne's mother hadn't been absent in body in her daughter's youth, but she might as well have been.

Suzanne
washed her hands in the utility room sink, then walked into the kitchen and picked two glasses from the cupboard and a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator. Jude seated herself at the phony-wood table in the small eating area off the kitchen, watching and listening as Suzanne dropped ice cubes into the glasses. She didn't know where to start. She leaned an elbow on the table and propped her chin on her palm. "What's new with you and Pat?"

"Aww. He's the sweetest man. Treats me like a queen." Suzanne came to the table and placed a tall glass of tea in front of Jude. "But he doesn't say much about himself. I still don't understand why he's divorced. The people I work with at the grocery store said his ex took up with some dude from
Lubbock."

Jude remembered well when Pat Garner and his wife had split. It had been the talk of Lockett for a couple of weeks.
"She did. Before you came back. She wanted to live in the city."

She stared out the large window at the end of the room, trying to divert her attention to anything besides what had happened at her own house. "Daddy found out about me and Brady," she said. The words just came out.

"Oops," Suzanne said. "And then what happened?"

Jude shook her head, continuing to stare out the window. "I haven't seen him
so mad since I broke up with Webb Henderson. I won’t be surprised if he fires Brady altogether. Then again, he might not."

Her heart heavy, Jude turned her attention back to her friend, her only friend. "I've made the biggest mess. It started out as something so simple. I was just going to help someone who I thought needed
it. Somehow everything got out of my control."

Suzanne leaned forward, her hand clasping Jude's forearm. "Did
J.D. say he was gonna fire Brady?"

"At first. Then he backed off a little. I still don't know exactly what he'll do."

Jude told Suzanne about making the offer on Brady's land, the crisis with the bulls in the storm and the unbridled sex at Brady's house. She even talked about her grandfather's interest in acquiring the 6-0.

"What was Brady's reaction to your dad
having a fit?"

"He doesn't know yet. He's in Abilene meeting with his ex-wife. He thinks he might get custody of his son."

“No kidding? He comes with a ready-made family?”

Jude nodded. “A stepson, too.”

“Oh, my God,” Suzanne said. “Are you ready for that?”

Jude shrugged and sipped her tea.
“Why not? I spend a good part of my life around kids. Not quite that young, but still…I don’t mind.”