Cowboy Come Home (8 page)

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Authors: Janette Kenny

BOOK: Cowboy Come Home
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The name meant nothing to Trey, but then he’d never gotten involved in the horse world. That was Reid’s dream.
Trey knew the value of a good horse and hoped to get into prime stock one day too. But at this point in his life, a saddle-broke mustang was more valuable than a fancy thoroughbred.
Kirby had raised him to be a cattleman. He understood beeves and enjoyed working with them, and he believed these white-faced Herefords he’d taken as back pay from Daisy would be the start of his own ranching dynasty.
Coupled with those thoroughbreds Barton had kept for him, he’d at last be equal to Reid when he claimed his share of the Crown Seven.
But with that dream gone, he had to figure out how to acquire land and keep his livestock. He let his gaze trail over the rolling pasture.
Maybe when the drought broke and Daisy returned to the JDB with her cattle, he could work a deal with her to let him stay on here. There was enough land for him to run his stock with hers.
If she even kept the thoroughbreds.
There was nothing saying she had an interest in them. As cash poor as she seemed to be now, she’d likely sell them in order to hold on to the JDB.
Yep, she might be willing to work a deal with Trey so he could buy this spread. He could stay on as foreman here for shorter wages, maybe sell off enough of his cattle to let him make a down payment on the land.
He wouldn’t have to deal with her on a day-to-day basis as he did now. He’d finally own something of his own.
“Barton mention who else was interested in them?” Trey said.
Galen shook his head. “Nope, just said another man had his eye on the horses.”
Ned would’ve likely known. If Barton hadn’t convinced him that the horses were history, he’d have sold them already.
Galen scuffed a boot in the dirt again, clearly restless. “Miss Barton say what she aims to do with the stock?”
Trey snorted. “Don’t think she rightly knows what to do. Barton kept her apart from the ranch, and Ned ran roughshod over the JDB.”
The wrangler thumbed his hat back and fixed Trey with a steely look. “It’s got to be mighty hard on her right now.”
“Yep. Barton didn’t do her any favor by keeping her ignorant of how things were run.”
“Well, from my experience, ladies in her position usually marry a man who knows ranching inside and out, or they sell out completely and head on into town.”
Just what Trey thought. “She claims she wants to learn the business from the ground up.”
Teach me,
she’d asked him.
Just as she’d asked him to teach her how to kiss. How to make love. How to please a man and tell him what pleased her.
“Reckon that’ll keep you mighty busy then,” Galen said.
“No doubt you’re right.”
It wouldn’t be easy for her to start from scratch and learn the business. Wouldn’t be easy for him to be near her and explain the workings of a ranch.
But he couldn’t walk away. Not now.
Maybe being around a close working ranch would make it easier for her to understand. This old ranch had been the start of a dynasty before. There was nothing here to distract her. Nothing soft. Nothing done for her, even in the antiquated house.
Survival of the fittest.
Yet Daisy had already surprised him by making the journey here without complaint. She had grit—he’d give her that.
But did she have the drive her daddy had to rebuild the JDB? Time would surely tell.
Trey pushed away from the fence, casting a quick glance back at the house. “Guess I’d best see when the lady wants to start. I’ll be at the house if you need me.”
As he strode back that way, he saw in a new light just how neglected this place looked. It wasn’t rundown by any means. Repairs had been made when needed—the fairly new sheets of tin on the roof proved that.
But there were patches in the yard that were overgrown—places that might’ve once held flowers. The whitewash on the house had dulled to the point that the whole thing blended in with the terrain.
Instead of fancy curtains at the windows, the men had used flour sacks, and they were in poor shape. Unlike the shiny glass panes at the JDB, these windows appeared to be covered with years worth of grime.
She’d always had someone else doing for her. How the hell was she going to survive on her own?
Galen was right. She’d likely marry a man who’d take the whole damned thing over.
Trey tried to ignore the spurt of jealousy that erupted in him at the thought. His romancing with Daisy was in the past. He’d not make the same mistake.
Nope, if he managed to work a deal with Daisy for the ranch, so be it. She’d still own the JDB with its fancy house and fancy outbuildings. She’d end up miles from him, which was for the best.
He stepped into the kitchen and helped himself to another cup of coffee. It was strong enough now to damned near stand on its own, but he needed the jolt to face an afternoon with her.
Trey stepped into the parlor and frowned. No Daisy. Damn, was she upstairs?
“Daisy?”
Just the sigh of the wind around the eaves answered him.
He swore under his breath and mounted the steps. Her bedroom door was open a crack, but he couldn’t see anything. Didn’t hear anything either, though that would’ve been hard over the sudden hammering of his heart.
The last place he wanted to find her was near a bed. Yet here he was at her bedroom door.
“Daisy?” he said, louder than before.
Still no reply. Was she sleeping?
He knocked on the door. When she still didn’t answer, he shoved it open and stepped inside. The bed was made. No sign of her here.
Where the hell was she?
He crossed to the window and looked out, his heart hammering from a far different emotion now. She should know better than to wander off without letting him or one of the men know.
His gaze swept over the land for a sign of her. He was about to give up when he saw a flash of white climbing the knoll. What was she doing way out there?
Trey retraced his steps in a matter of seconds. He left his untouched coffee on the table and strode outside, his long legs eating up the distance. But it seemed to take forever before he climbed the same rocky knoll.
He swallowed the ass-chewing he’d been mulling over and stared at her standing alone in a small, fenced cemetery plot that he hadn’t known was even here.
The smart thing would’ve been to leave her in peace, but he couldn’t walk away. Still he kept his thoughts to himself and just let his shadow fall over her, let her be the one to speak first if she wanted.
“This is Daddy’s first wife,” she said at last, her voice nearly lost in the wind. “He never talked about her or my half brother.”
“Who told you about them?” he asked.
“Hollis Feth mentioned them yesterday. He told me that Daddy lost them both to a fever.” She ran a slender finger over the carved stone. “I can barely read the inscription, but I know her name was Corinne.”
He stepped closer and peered at the lichen-covered gravestone. Far as he could tell she was right about the name. He barely made out
Beloved Wife
below it.
Farther down was another name, the carvings far too small and nearly impossible to read from any distance. “What was his name?”
“I’m not sure. It starts with a
D,
but the rest of it’s so worn down I can’t make it out.”
Trey didn’t comment. In the year he’d worked for Barton, he’d never heard him mention his first family. But he was a bit surprised the man hadn’t named a son after himself.
“A,”
she said, excitement in her voice now. “
D. A.
But the rest wasn’t carved as deeply.”
“Moss filled it in,” he said, and fished in his pocket for the pearl-handled knife that Kirby had given him, one of the few possessions he cherished, for it tied him to the man who was the closest thing Trey had ever had to a father.
She sat back on her haunches and lifted her face to the sun, eyes closed and expression intent. “
D. A. D. A.
Da—
Dade !
That’s it.”
“I’ll be. That’s my foster brother’s name too.”
He crouched beside the stone and began chipping the lichen from the carving. Hard to say what unnerved him most. Daisy’s nearness or the fact he felt her gaze on him.
“What happened to him?” she asked.
He swore to himself. This was why he never mentioned his past. Folks always wanted to know more, and he wasn’t one to share the few good things that he guarded, any more than he shared the pain.
“Don’t know. We drifted apart.”
But there were many times he thought of his foster brothers and wondered if he ever crossed their minds. If Dade had made the deadline to buy back his shares of the Crown Seven. If Reid had gotten his comeuppance.
The faintest outline of the carving was visible now.
“D A V.”
He ran the blade down the next letter.
“I.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, leaning over his shoulder now and tempting him with her sweet scent and velvet-soft voice.
“Positive. Last letter appears to be an
s.
Davis Barton.”
Her sigh vibrated with disappointment. “I was so sure it was Dade. It felt right. It still does. How can that be?”
Trey hadn’t a clue, but it was damned spooky that she’d plucked that name out of the air, because his foster brother Dade had a blood sister name of Daisy. Had he mentioned it before when they’d laid tangled in the loft in each other’s arms? Had the name simply stuck in her head?
That had to be it. He turned to tell her as much, and his breath caught in his throat.
In less than a blink he had recognized an expression he’d seen countless times on Dade when he’d gotten lost in memories and worry over his blood sister.
She shook her head, and her confused gaze met his. Any resemblance vanished. Yep, it had to be a trick of the light.
“I wonder where I heard the name Dade?” she asked, though he suspected she’d aimed the question at herself.
“Reckon I told you about my foster brother Dade and his sister Daisy,” he said.
She nodded and turned her attention back to the tombstone. “Yes, of course. That must be it.”
Trey stood and fought the urge to pull her into his arms. She’d never looked so lost. So alone.
Feelings he knew well.
But he wasn’t about to dally with her again.
“Thought today would be a good time to start teaching you about ranching,” he said. “Unless there was something else you had to do.”
“No, the sooner we start, the better it’ll be.”
Yep, all he had to do was keep his mind on business around her. That, he admitted, was going to take some doing.
Chapter 7
 
Daisy sat frozen on the tattered ladies’ parlor chair and simply stared at Trey, stunned that he’d been talking and pacing for the better part of an hour. She’d never heard him string so many words together before. Never heard him speak with such authority and conviction. Never seen him show such passion for anything other than loving.
It was obvious that he knew the cattle business inside and out—the pitfalls and the rewards. He understood what it took to eek through those meager times and how to lay back in the fat ones.
He’d done it himself by having her daddy hold out part of his pay for a year. Shoring up for the lean times, he called it.
“Barton was the shrewdest rancher I’ve ever met,” Trey said, and she smiled. “He didn’t hold with no abuse of the stock.”
“Daddy was a gentle giant.”
“He was a mean sonofabitch when crossed,” he said.
Her smile vanished, and she blinked, thunderstruck he’d say something like that to her. That he believed it of her daddy. And looking into his eyes told her he thought Jared Barton had a streak wider and meaner than the Colorado River.
“Daddy didn’t suffer fools well.”
“Or any man who dared to look too long at you.”
Daisy eased forward on the cushion, sensing a charged energy in the air that had the skin at her nape burning with unease. “That’s in the past. We’ll do well to focus on the lesson of running a ranch.”
“Yes’m,” he said, his lean cheeks taking on a darker hue.
But he launched into the whys and wherefores of winter ranging of cattle, and her mind simply couldn’t absorb it. She was still straddling that accusation he’d hurled out there about her daddy.
Yes, Jared Barton was overprotective. That was no secret.
In his eyes no man was good enough for his little girl. It didn’t matter that she chaffed at the tight rein her daddy held on her.
She loved him. He was her daddy. Her only family. Her world.
He wanted her to marry a man worthy of her—not by her standards but by his. Wanted to leave everything he owned to her and her progeny. God, how she hated that word!
Though he professed to having reservations about Kurt, he had all but pushed her into the man’s arms. She’d gone from Kurt stealing one chaste kiss at the county fair to being engaged to marry him one week later.
Her daddy surely had a hand in arranging that betrothal!
Yes, Trey was right. Her daddy
was
a mean sonofabitch when crossed, and poor Kurt tied himself to her with that stolen kiss made on a dare.
A dare meant to make Trey March jealous.
She liked Kurt. But she didn’t love him.
Her heart had been lost to Trey March the first time she laid eyes on the rough and tumble cowboy with the crooked smile and hurt look. Those wounded eyes dared her to venture near. Dared her to tear down the barriers and get close to a man who craved love. Who desperately needed love.
Moth to the flame.
She’d reveled in the heat of him—the power he held a tight rein on. The unbridled passion he kept hidden from the world. The smoldering fury that drove him to give enough to please, enough to tempt a woman to want more if she was willing to dance in the fire.
Daisy had opened herself to all he was able to give her. She had trusted him with her heart and her soul. She’d found heaven in his arms and promise in his eyes. She’d found the man she wanted to spend eternity with.
But she’d ended up burned. Used and discarded.
He’d planted his seed in her and vanished.
And yes, her daddy had been enraged when he found out what she and Trey had done. He’d vowed Trey would be sorry for trifling with her affections.
“I’ll drag his sorry ass back here and make him do right by you,” he’d told her.
But soon after there’d been no need to force the issue. She’d barely come to grips with that loss when her daddy had dropped dead.
“You getting any of this?” Trey asked.
“I’m not sure,” she said, flustered that she’d been caught woolgathering. If he only knew what had occupied her mind ... “It’s almost too much to take in at once.”
He nodded, watching her closely. Too closely. “It’s a start in the right direction.”
They were good at starting. It was the staying that they’d failed at.
“There’s much more to ranching than I had realized,” she admitted. “How’d you come to know so much about it?”
“By doing it. Trial and error and a damned patient man to guide me.”
“Who would that be?” she asked, speaking as softly as she would to a buck she’d happened upon so she wouldn’t scare it off.
He frowned. Looked away. For a moment she was sure he was closing her off again. That he’d ignore her question.
“Kirby Morris, the man who took me and my foster brothers in off the street.”
She hid her surprise over that news. He’d told her once he’d been in an orphanage, but she hadn’t known that he’d gone from there to living on the street. Told her once that he had foster brothers but that he didn’t care to talk about
them.
Told her he’d lived on a ranch in Wyoming but nothing more.
He’d never gone into detail about his life, and asking hadn’t produced any answers. So she was hesitant to start now, because she feared that would signal an end to further talk.
“Is Kirby the Englishman who owned the Crown Seven?”
“That was him.”
“Was?” she asked, coaxing him to say more.
He stared at the wall, his frown deepening, telling her more than words could that whatever had happened to the man troubled Trey still. “Kirby died a couple of years back.”
A year later he’d come to work at the JDB. She could still picture that day clear as glass. He’d caught her eye the moment he’d ridden onto the ranch, seeming as tall and strong as her daddy.
She’d known him for a year, yet he was still so much a mystery to her. This rare give-and-take of conversation wouldn’t last long with him. Nothing lasted long with Trey but lovemaking, and that he took his slow, sweet time with.
The memory of him moving with her, thrusting deep inside her, whispered over her, and she shivered. “You cold?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry you lost Mr. Morris.”
He shrugged, and she knew before he spoke that this interlude was over. “Nothing or nobody sticks around for long.”
Perhaps it’d been that way for him. Perhaps that was what had made him hard. Perhaps that was why he seemed afraid to give too much of himself.
“It doesn’t have to be that way, you know,” she said. “The land will always be here, with strong men and women tending it.”
“True, but ranching is a hard business made harder by the weather and the market.” He shook his head, and one side of his mouth crooked in a rare smile. “But it’s all I ever wanted to do or be. You have to want it too, Daisy, in order to hold on to the land and your sanity.”
What she wanted ... It’d changed so from the girlish dreams of having a family. Of being the rancher’s wife. She’d never aspired to be the one in charge of such decisions or to have men dependent on her for their livelihood.
But the thought of moving into town terrified her more than sticking it out on the ranch. A hazy image of big, drafty buildings and long, dark halls tickled her memory, like a nightmare she’d been told about and could never forget. There were even times she heard crying, and would awaken to find her own eyes swimming in tears.
No, she didn’t want to leave the wide-open spaces and the ranch her daddy had sweat blood to build. She’d learn this business if it was the last thing she ever did. Maybe if she was lucky, she’d learn to trust another man. She’d find love again. Maybe she’d forget Trey March in time.
“I’m not leaving my home,” she said.
He nodded as if pleased with that answer. “Reckon we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us then. You got any questions?”
Did she ever! If Ned hadn’t intervened, would Trey have stayed with her? But she was tired of talking. Tired of being cooped up in the house in mourning.
She’d ridden all over the JDB and knew its beauty and its pitfalls. But this ranch was all new to her.
“I think it’s time I got a better look at what I own,” she said. “Care to give me a tour of the ranch?”
Again she was treated to a quick half grin before he sobered and tugged his hat brim lower, reminding her of a boy who was embarrassed to say more. “Sounds like a good idea. I’ll have your mare saddled.”
Daisy got to her feet, suddenly excited. “I’ll change into riding clothes and meet you at the barn.”
His curt nod was her reply, but she couldn’t look away from his eyes. He was questioning and measuring her in turns with that mesmerizing gaze, and she caught herself from taking a step toward him.
Or maybe she did move, for he jerked his head back a smidgeon as if surprised by the hold they had on each other too. Whatever it was, the moment was broken. He turned and walked from the room without another word.
Daisy was finally able to draw a decent breath again. Still her legs quaked as she hiked her skirt to her knees and sprinted up the steps. She knew she was just kidding herself by thinking she’d ever find another man like Trey March.
 
 
The hesitancy bridling Trey over joining Daisy for a ride vanished as the ranch house and outbuildings blurred in the distance. He’d been itching to take a closer look at this spread, and now was the perfect opportunity.
Didn’t matter that he was alone with Daisy. Didn’t matter that this was all hers.
She’d soon find out that running the JDB would be more than enough to turn a profit with careful management. Holding on to this ranch as well would mean she’d have to employ a second man she trusted to manage this one separately from the JDB.
He hoped to be that man. Yep, she could head back to the JDB when the drought broke, and he’d stay on here.
That’s the way Barton had set the ranches up, though Ned had had other ideas. Did they mirror his own?
“This land is so different from the JDB,” she said when they topped a rise and stopped to rest in the shade of an old pecan grove.
“Deeper draws and hilly,” he said. “Helluva lot more water too, which means better grazing.”
And trees. They were few and far between farther west with the land flattening out and getting sandier. The JDB had triple the acreage of this spread, but less than a fourth of it had water rights.
But in West Texas, a man was rich if his spread had good water rights. Barton had done well by himself there, but Trey couldn’t help thinking he’d have done far better if he’d stayed here.
“Makes me wonder why Barton left this land,” he said.
“Maybe it was the ghosts,” she said, and he wondered if she’d gone loco on him to suggest such a thing.
“Ghosts, huh?”
She nodded, but her attention remained riveted on the acres of rolling land and the cattle that were grazing to their heart’s content. “He lost his first family here. Maybe the memories were too much for him to bear.”
Trey couldn’t imagine big, gruff Jared Barton being haunted by the loss of a family. Yet the man had been overprotective of Daisy. Had he feared losing her?
His gaze flicked over to her again, and he felt a similar twang of worry vibrate through him. Daisy was small and delicate, the kind of woman a man naturally felt compelled to protect. But seeing her astride her horse with her back straight, taking in the vastness of the ranch through those big eyes, told him she had steel in her spine.
Yep, there were plenty of women ranchers in the west, but few who took it up when they knew only the soft side of that life.
“Would you consider selling this spread?” he asked.
“Maybe.” She looked at him with eyes that probed deeply, but for once she gave nothing away of what she was thinking. “You interested, cowboy?”
He knew better than to tip his hand, but he couldn’t stop his grin anymore than he could’ve stopped the sun from rising. She was handling herself like a seasoned horse trader, just like he’d told her to do back at the house.
“You’re a quick learner, Daisy Barton.”
This time she smiled, and he felt that old familiar kick of arousal that had gotten him in a fix with this woman in the first place. “I had a good teacher.”
Dammit all, they were falling back into that easy routine, getting too comfortable with each other. At least he was.
He wasn’t about to travel that road again, not out of pity or want. “You ready to see the rest of it or are you ready to turn back?”
She sobered, and he knew she’d picked up his withdrawal from her. “I’m just getting started.”

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