Maverick (Star Valley Book 3) (20 page)

Back at Snake
River, Leah whirled like a dervish in the kitchen, readying side dishes and pulling biscuits out of the oven with one hand while stirring a pot of baked beans with the other. Leah finally understood Snake River and her place in it. She could help with all the household chores. And Snake River apparently needed it, from what she’d seen so far.

Beside her Sofia carved the standing rib roast she’d been slow roasting all day and Seth helped her chop the salad. Together they brought all the utensils and napkins out to the dining room for the others. Leah fixed two plates, one for Austin and one for herself, and balanced them as she left the kitchen for the last time. She set his plate down in front of him and Austin looked up at her, pinning her with his gaze as surely as if he’d reached out and snatched her shoulders. She was rooted to the spot.

“Thank you, Leah,” he drawled and she couldn’t stop the smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth.

He smelled amazing from his recent shower and she paused to take a deep breath. It reminded her of the way he’d smelled that night, woodsy and fresh, a clean sort of scent that still brought up images of the Wyoming open country. She sat down beside him with what she was sure was a goofy grin on her face, but she hardly cared.

Across from her, Cassidy reached for a biscuit. She smelled it and sighed. “These are great.”

Sawyer laughed. “They’re actually edible.”

The former beauty queen cast him a look so sharp Leah nearly reached for a napkin to staunch the inevitable bleeding. Then she turned to Leah, as though she were now ignoring Sawyer’s presence entirely. “Did you like it up on the Folly?” she asked.

Leah nodded. “It was amazing. You could see for miles.”

All the way into her future.

Austin reached for her hand under the table and squeezed it.

“I drove, too. It was awesome!”

“Really? I can’t drive a stick,” Cassidy admitted.

“Sure you can, princess,” Sawyer countered.

Several people groaned and Cassidy elbowed the man. Hard.

“With no reasonable explanation I can give,” Cassidy said to Leah, “I’m still going to marry this stooge and I have to go to Jackson Hole to pick up my dress. Want to come? With me and Dakota?”

“Yeah, absolutely!”

“Returning to the scene of the crime, huh?” asked Austin. He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it. “Just remember I’ll be waiting for you here.”

“Don’t worry,” said Cassidy. “I won’t keep her too long. I wouldn’t want her to end up tied to a bed in that falling down cabin in the woods on the east pasture.”

Leah nearly dropped her biscuit onto her plate. “
What?
Tied to a bed?”

Around her, most of the Barlow men laughed. Leah looked at Austin, more than slightly alarmed. “It’s an old family legend,” he told her.

“Except it’s not a legend,” said Dakota. “It’s true. A hundred years ago when Kit Barlow bought the land, he built that cabin for a beautiful Mexican girl named Rafaela. She loved him but her father wouldn’t let her marry him. So Kit rode up to the house one night, lassoed her, and took her to the cabin and held her for days. Until she was pregnant, and her father had to agree to the marriage or let his daughter and his family be forever shamed.”

“Wow,” Leah gasped.

“Yeah. People don’t love like that these days,” she said, shooting Walker a dark look. “Or at all, I guess.”

Walker didn’t even meet her gaze and Leah felt sick over it.

Austin broke the awkward silence by squeezing Leah’s hand. “So you spend too long in Jackson Hole and I’ll come after you,” he threatened.

“I might like that,” she whispered, feeling bold.

Austin grinned. “I bet you would, you little minx.”

Feeling emboldened, Leah could hardly wait for dinner to be over. She sped into the kitchen to drop off her plates and then, finding both the living room and the dining room now empty, went straight to Austin’s door and found it open. She stepped inside and closed it softly behind her. When her eyes adjusted to the dark, she found that room empty as well. With a frustrated sigh, she was about to turn when suddenly, two powerful arms grabbed her from behind. He spun her and planted a rough kiss on her lips before pushing her backward to the bed. He rolled onto her, pinning her to the mattress, and took his hand away just long enough to replace it with his mouth. After a long, slow kiss he finally gave her just enough space to breathe.

“Leah,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you to come across that hallway. Every God damn night I just lay here thinking about it, hoping for it. Then last night…” He ran his hands down her body, making her shiver.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, either,” she confessed.

He laughed and pulled his t-shirt off over his head. “I don’t have my boots on.”

“I don’t care,” she replied, reaching for him again in the dark.

‡

A
ustin hated leaving
her in the morning because damn, he did enjoy sleeping next to her. Leah had pressed against him all night long and he was surprised that it hadn’t bothered him at all, in fact, he slept better than he could remember, better than he could’ve hoped. He kissed her goodbye because she was half-awake anyway, but didn’t feel like breakfast.

“Just make sure you eat something,” he told her as he got dressed beside the bed.

“I will.”

“I’ll be back in three days,” he told her. She nodded, smiling, though her eyes were a bit pained. Austin was getting better at reading her expressions. He was sure it was daunting to be left alone with a bunch of people she barely knew and he was sorry it had to be that way. “Just three days,” he told her again with a kiss.

“Thanks for making it a short trip,” she told him.

Normally each of them went out to camp for a least a week, but Leah’s presence was an unforeseen factor they were all trying to work around. He gave her one final kiss and headed downstairs. He and Sawyer met in the barn, tacked their horses, and set off toward the Folly over the eastern valley. No sooner had they left than he already wanted to be back home, which had never happened in Austin’s entire memory.

Never in his life had he cared about anything—anyone—more than his family’s land and it was only the knowledge that if he
didn’t
get his ass to the Folly and work as hard as he possibly could, there would be no piece of land to leave to his child. He would’ve rather stayed with Leah, but working
for
Leah had to suffice.

When they arrived at camp, Gabe didn’t look happy and that was cause for concern. Austin nudged Colter toward him and crossed the distance between them. “What’s wrong?” he asked by way of a greeting.

“More tracks,” said Gabe. “ATV this time, but high up on the road. I wouldn’t have noticed except I was riding the fence line to check for storm damage. They’re far away from camp. They came down from the service road on foot, the same size ten Carhartts,” said Gabe pointing to the left.

Austin headed over for a quick look. “Hiked in so we wouldn’t hear him. Fuck. I’ll call about the dogs.”

Gabe nodded as Austin dug into his pocket and retrieved his cell phone.

A few hours later, a truck Austin actually recognized rattled down the service road and Austin left his irrigation line to greet it. “Hey, Mac!” he called as the Ford rolled to a stop.

Mac sounded the horn in two short blasts and the pack of white, furry, Great Pyrenees dogs riding in the back barked joyfully as they jumped out, kicking up dust with their huge paws. “Go on!” said Mac with a gesture of his arm. “Check it out!”

The three dogs set off in a loose formation, starting to the right, keen eyes on the tree line ahead as they patrolled.

“They’ll come on back,” Mac told him. “Once they’ve got a feel for their boundaries. They’ll sniff out the predator line and that’ll be their piece of land to guard.”

Austin reached out a hand and shook with the grizzled man before him. “Thank you, Mac. It sure makes me feel better. Thanks for helping us out.”

“Hell, you’re helping
me
out,” the man countered. “And
them
. Ain’t got but one calf and one lamb to guard these past two weeks with your herd on rotation. Pretty soon they were going to go
looking
for trouble.”

The Barlows were now renting the Archer’s large sheep-grazing lands, moving the herd back and forth so as not to tax any one piece of land too hard with grazing. The Barlow herd was off the Archer property this month, though, to give the grass time to recover.

Austin and Gabe helped Mac get the bags of dog food out of the truck and Gabe stacked their stainless steel bowls near the fire they maintained for cooking.

“They know what to do!” the old man called as he swung back up into his cab. “Just stand back and let ’em.”

“Will do!” called Austin. “Thanks again!”

As predicted, the dogs returned in a little more than an hour, from the eastern side of the property this time, apparently having made a full inspection of the perimeter. When they got back to camp, they nosed into everyone’s tents and belongings, keeping a respectful distance from the horses in the pen.

It had been a long time since the Barlows had had a dog of their own, not since Austin was a teenager, but if he had to guess, he’d say that the Archer pack was now familiar with the scent of everyone who was supposed to be in camp and God help anyone dumb enough to come back tonight after it got dark. It’d be nice for them, too, to get more rest and not have to keep one ear out for bears, wolves, coyotes, or cougars tonight.

Austin bedded down with the pistol within easy reach, though. Just in case.

Three days passed excruciatingly slowly, to Austin’s way of thinking, but without incident which was good. No new tracks appeared and Mac Archer’s dogs seemed perfectly happy to be extra sets of eyes and ears as Austin and Sawyer set up the irrigation lines across the largest hay field. They got a lot of work done, but by the morning of day four, Austin was already up before the sun rose and had saddled up Colter.

Sawyer snorted when he finally woke to make some coffee on the fire.

Austin glared at him. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Go back to mooning over Cassidy and forget what I’m doing over here.”

Sawyer’s grin faded and though Austin didn’t have a mirror, he was dead certain that the dark, fiery expression on his brother’s face at the mention of his woman’s name, the woman who was alone in his bed right now, matched his own. “Let’s go,” Sawyer growled, throwing out half his metal cup of joe and stalking toward the pen.

“
Exactly.
”

*

He unpacked in
a hurry and found her on the front porch, bent over the table. She was so engrossed in her work that she didn’t even notice him climbing the porch steps to greet her. “Hey, darlin’,” he called out.

She yelped and turned, then gave a sigh of relief when she saw him.

“Whoa! Woman swinging a hammer! I definitely would’ve come back sooner if I’d known you were going to hold a grudge.”

She laughed and it was like music to his ears. Not many things were better on this earth than to see Leah happy. “You’re ridiculous,” she told him, rising from the chair.

They embraced and Austin held on tight as she clutched him. “Miss me?” he asked, stroking her hair.

She nodded. “From the minute you left.”

He held on a bit longer. On the one hand, he felt bad that he’d left her alone. But it was nice having someone to come home to. He looked past her, to the table, where she had her work spread out. “What are you working on?” he asked, genuinely interested. He let go of her with one arm and picked up a piece of braided copper to inspect it. “This looks like my reata.”

She nodded. “It is. This place…it’s so inspiring! It’s amazing, Austin. Everything from the colors of the mountaintops to the tools you use, the fields and the sky. It all seems…different here. Still Wyoming, but a part I never knew existed before.” She blushed then and took the piece of metal out of his hand. “Anyway, now
I’m
being ridiculous. I was just messing around.”