Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (4 page)

“Christ on a crutch, Robin, are you okay?”

“Sure. Just a few beers. No biggie,” Robin said, answering the wrong question. “I don’t have to work until eleven tomorrow. Say…” her eyes popped open, “…you want me to go get some more? Won’t take me long at all.”

“No, you’re going home now,” Mary Beth said as firmly as she could while she hoisted Robin up. “You need to sober up and get your college applications together, and I need to unpack.”
And figure out what the hell I’m going to do about this fine mess I landed in.

“I guess.” Robin pouted. “Hey, you’ll come to the show tomorrow, right?”

Despite the long-buried memories and Buck McGillis—despite the damn fine mess she’d walked into—Mary Beth couldn’t help but smile. “I wouldn’t miss the show for the world.”

Chapter Three

Mary Beth spied the slightly stooped older man standing on the steps, his grey hair blending with the grey morning light. For a second, she hesitated but decided against carrying the knife in with her. Somehow, packing a blade didn’t seem to be a part of making a good first impression, so she shoved it in the glove box and hopped out of the truck.

“Dr. Coleman?” she asked, although the answer was obvious.

“Dr. Hofstetter, so glad to meet you in person.” He smiled as he held out his hand. While he looked a bit frail, his grip was still the grip of a man who held onto animals for a living. “Please, call me Bill. Did you like the house?”

Mary Beth thought back to the shag rug, lava lamp, and avocado-green appliances. “It’s a little Brady Bunch, but otherwise, I love it, Bill. Perfect. Do I have you to thank for the groceries?”

“My wife wanted to make sure you were comfortable.” Bill leaned in close, an impish grin on his face. “Leslie is looking forward to Florida this winter. Our son and his family are down outside of Tampa.”

“I like what I’ve seen so far. I imagine that she’ll get there before Christmas. And call me Mary Beth.”

“Of course. Come in and meet Fran. She’s my everything assistant.”

A grumpy-looking older woman, her hair in a permanently curled helmet and her orthopedic shoes peeking out from behind a low desk, scowled when Mary Beth walked in. The scowl looked familiar, and Mary Beth realized that Fran had been at the show.

“Hello,” Mary Beth said as she stuck out her hand. “I’m Mary Beth Hofstetter.”

“I know that,” Fran snipped as she stared at Mary Beth’s hand. “You made quite a scene at the café last night. I told Bill all about it.”

Whoa, unpleasant
. Mary Beth winced as she pulled her hand back.

“Now, Fran, be generous. She didn’t know who she was talking to.”

“She does now,” Fran snipped again as she answered the phone.

“Bill, I can explain,” Mary Beth stuttered as they headed back to his cramped office off the small operating room.

“No need.” He motioned to an empty chair. “While Fran is a bit of a sourpuss, she’s a darned good assistant. You’ll be surprised how fair she is. She told me you handled yourself quite well.”

“Well, if you call insulting the biggest client handling myself, then yeah, I handled myself well.”

Bill gave her a kind smile. “You’ll get the hang of it. Now, Fran does all the scheduling and secretarial stuff. She’s in charge of billing, but you need to tell her what you did. She knows what we charge. Costs are different for cattle, horses and buffalo.”

“Buffalo? We care for buffalo?”

“Didn’t I mention that? The Lakota keep a small herd on the edge of their reservation. There’s not a lot I can do for them—the buffalo aren’t what you call tame, you know. But every now and then one gets wrapped in barbed wire or the like,” he explained. “If they are properly sedated, it’s just like working on a big, hairy cow.”

Maybe Bill wasn’t quite as sharp in his old age as his grip foretold. How could he forget to mention buffalo?

“Now,” he continued as if buffalo were no big deal, “Friday is the small-animal day at the clinic. The one day of the week we see dogs and cats and the like. Can you handle ferrets?”

“In the plural?”

“Mike Nolan raises ferrets. Sells some for pets to stores in Rapid City. Ranchers like to have them in the barns too. I see a lot of ferrets.”

Suddenly, she wished she’d taken that exotic pet class. But she was a large-animal vet. Who knew she’d need to know ferrets? “What do you do for a ferret?”

“A lot of neutering and de-scenting. I’ll walk you through the operations. Not terribly complex. Mike does a good job raising them. Saturday I’m on call, but I only go to the office for emergencies. Mondays are at-large days. Everyone else’s horses, any buffalo emergencies and the like. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are at the McGillis ranch. Over 10,000 head of cattle.”

Mary Beth whistled. “That should keep me out of trouble.” For years to come.

“Actually, I spend more time with the ranch horses than the cattle. Jacob’s got the skills to do almost everything the cattle need, but the horses require a higher level of care. They get a lot of work, and we do a lot of preventative maintenance. Everyone’s got horses out here. Best way to get around.”

“I have no problem riding. But…about Buck.” She hated the feeling of having opened her big mouth a bit too far. Even more, she hated how damn familiar that feeling was. Would she ever be able to keep quiet? “How badly did I stick my foot in it last night?”

“Seems pretty clear. He came onto you, you rebuffed him—what was it Fran said? ‘I don’t sleep with clients, I castrate calves’?”

“Yeah.” She couldn’t stop the blush that moved up. “Best I could do on short notice.”

“It’s a good stance. Men outnumber women five to one in this town.”

“But he’s our biggest client, and I insulted him.”

“Well, yes,” he chuckled, “I’d not do that a whole lot more, but frankly, I rarely deal with him. Haven’t much for the last seven, eight years. He spends most of the day either holed up in his house with some shady lawyer or riding the boundary of his property. Jacob Plenty Holes basically runs the place.”

Mary Beth blushed again.

“Fran said you met him as well.” Bill smiled, looking just like a grandfather should.

“It is a small town, Bill.”

“His land management is a step up from McGillis’s last guy too. That dope was grazing the place flat, but Jacob keeps the fields irrigated and rotates the herd. We use a lot less wormers now. It keeps the parasites manageable.”

“So he really is smart,” she marveled before she shut her mouth.
You sound like a smitten teenager
, her brain scolded her.

His eyes wisely smiling, Bill replied, “He keeps better books too. He pays on a monthly basis,” he added. “The McGillis check on the thirtieth, and Jacob’s check is on the fifteenth. After we get those, we pay bills, put some aside for Fran’s weekly paycheck and order the next round of supplies.”

She was missing something, she just knew it. “His check?”

“Jacob is quite a businessman,” he said, the admiration undisguised. “He breeds mustangs for rodeos. Pays McGillis for some of the land, keeps the rest on the tribe’s land next to the ranch. His horses are as tough as nails and quick too. The Lakota are big horse people.”

Mary Beth’s mouth opened—force of habit—but for once, nothing came out. She was having a little trouble reconciling the man in the mask and the ratty T-shirt and the holey jeans with someone who had an MBA and ran a horse-breeding business on the side. Again, she was struck by the thought that he was hiding. Not necessarily from her—she’d barely met him—but from someone. Or something.

“It’s a small town. Everyone knows everything about everyone.” Bill sighed, picking up a picture of him and what had to be his wife a good twenty years ago. “Leslie’s looking forward to Tampa. Says no one will know who we are. I have trouble imagining that though.”

A perfect opening to talk about something other than the fool she’d made of herself last night. “When are you leaving?”

“Two weeks before Christmas, if we can get everything squared away.”

“It’s seven thirty!” Fran screeched from the front.

“Going!” Bill hollered back. “Come on. It’s a ranch day. I’ll show you around.”

By the time Bill drove through the formidable stone gate with the name
McGillis
worked in iron at the top, Mary Beth knew the names, birthdays and favorite toys of all seven of his grandchildren. Clearly, Leslie wasn’t the only one excited about Tampa.

Bill pulled up in front of a large barn abutted against several huge lots. Jacob Plenty Holes stood against the barn door, his paint horse drop-tethered next to him, and two other horses tied to the fence nearby.

Indian perfection next to a horse
. He looked every inch the cowboy he was, his hat pulled down low to shade his eye, one boot kicked back and resting on the door, thumbs stuck in his belt loops. The only difference was that instead of a six-shooter, there was a knife that had to be close to nine inches long tied to his leg.

Her thoughts spun as they walked up to him.
At least he’s dressed this time
. The maroon flannel shirt was cuffed up to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms tanned from long hours in the sun. At the sound of their footsteps on the gravel, he slowly lifted his head, his eye trained on her the whole way up.

The mask seemed bigger now, but Mary Beth reasoned that it was just because she was really looking. There were three straps holding it to his face—one where it began at the left temple, one that continued the diagonal back under his right ear and another strap that went just below his right eye and over his right ear. He didn’t need a whole lot of help to look rugged and mysterious, but the mask sealed the deal.

I wonder what a man with no face looks like. I wonder if he’s wearing underwear. I wonder if he knows I’m picturing him naked.
Her thoughts cascaded as he spoke.

“Morning, Bill, Dr. Hofstetter,” he said coolly as he tipped his hat towards her.

“Morning, Jacob.”

“Please,” she added, trying not to think of his underwear status. “Call me Mary Beth.”

“Where’s your knife?” he demanded.

That shook her brain firmly back to reality. “What?”

Jacob angrily cocked his eyebrow as Bill chuckled. “Your knife. You should have one.”

“I didn’t tell her she needed one on the first day, Jacob. I imagine she’s just going to get the lay of the land.”

Jacob pursed his mouth into a narrow line, his long face growing harder. There wasn’t a whole lot of his face visible, but the parts she could see said nothing but barely contained anger. “You should have one.”

“I do,” she defended. “I just left it in my truck.”

Glaring at both of them, he undid the ties at his thigh in one quick gesture. “Wear mine.”

“Now, Jacob,” Bill scolded.

“No, she needs one. McGillis isn’t the only jerk around here. You know some of those guys he hired are barely better than thugs. Someone as beautiful and delicate as she is?” Jacob scowled at Bill, completely ignoring the high scarlet blush that swamped Mary Beth.

Holy cow, that may be the best line I’ve ever heard—even if he didn’t say it to me
. Her brain swooned.

“She’s got to draw the line in the sand early before any of Buck’s knuckleheads get the wrong idea,” Jacob continued.

“You sound like my father,” she snipped as she grabbed the blade from him. God bless her mouth. It always covered for her, and she had the feeling that it was going to be doing a lot more of that today. Even if she didn’t exactly remember what her father sounded like, Jacob was being more patronizing than her uncle Hank had ever been.

His knife was a lot heavier than hers, with a beefy handle she could barely wrap her hand around. She nearly dropped it as she tried to fit it along her leg.

“I’ll do it,” he grumbled, kneeling before her. Aside from the
beautiful
comment, he showed absolutely no awareness that she was particularly female in any aspect. It was almost like he was mad that she’d shown up.

Mary Beth held her breath as he completely encircled her thigh with his fingers, drawing the rawhide cord between her legs. But for a man who seemed as gruff as he did, Jacob’s touch was surprisingly gentle, like he was used to handling fragile things. The mere thought made Mary Beth start sweating as he pulled the cord taut.

He stood and stepped back just as three cowboys emerged from the side of the barn. “Whooee! Looks like Doc Coleman brought us a present,” the tall one with red hair whooped. The two other cowboys hung back, already looking uncomfortable as the redhead winked and blew a kiss to Mary Beth.

Ugh
, she mentally recoiled. This would have to be one of Buck’s knuckleheads, for no honest cowboy would talk to a woman like that. Mary Beth had spent a long time on farms and ranches, and not once had any man ever treated her like a party favor. The most she normally got out of a cowboy was
ma’am
. At least the other two hands looked like they were watching a car wreck.

Jacob shot her a look before he turned to the men. But before he could open his mouth, Mary Beth asked loudly, “Dr. Coleman, are those the ones?”