One Fine Cowboy (4 page)

Charlie swiped at an end table with a rag, then pummeled a flaccid throw pillow to life. Removing a row of plastic horses from each windowsill, she swabbed at the grit that had seeped through the crevices. The wind seemed to have swept every loose speck of the Wyoming plains right into Nate’s living room. It was a wonder there was anything left of the landscape outside.

She replaced the toy horses in their prancing rows, wondering why a grown man would collect such things. There was an old rocking horse in the corner too, with leather reins and a mane and tail of woven rope. The guy was obsessed with horses. It was odd, and kind of endearing, really. She shoved that thought out of her mind, calling up the image of him standing over her with the lunge whip.

There was nothing endearing about that.

And then there was that business with the attic. If he had an extra bedroom up there, why wouldn’t he let her use it? What was he hiding? She paused at the door and tried the knob.

Locked.

Nate Shawcross didn’t seem like the criminal type, but it was a little unnerving to be alone on an isolated ranch with a man who had a locked secret chamber in his house. If he’d made any effort to lure her into his bed, she’d have been worried about becoming the next victim of the Wild West version of Bluebeard—but serial killers generally make some effort to charm their victims into submission, and he hadn’t so much as smiled at her all day.

She filled the kitchen sink with hot water and a squirt of soap, rattling dirty plates and silverware around and scrubbing them before stacking them haphazardly in the dishwasher. The machine was full, so she stabbed a few buttons until it whirred to life. Then she danced a quick and dirty tango with a battered O-Cedar broom, unearthing the respectable hardwood floor that was hiding under all the mud and straw the dog had dragged in.

She cursed herself silently the whole time.
Observe and report
, Sadie had said.
Maintain an objective perspective.
If Charlie had taken that advice she might have waited before reacting and saved herself a lot of embarrassment. Nate’s defense of the whip rang true, so he was probably right: the only person hurting the horse had been her.

But she wouldn’t apologize. Not after catching the hard glint in Nate’s eyes while he stood there with the whip raised. She remembered how exposed and vulnerable she’d felt, cowering in the straw. Apologizing would give him an advantage, and she couldn’t let that happen. So she’d help out. Clean his house. That ought to count for something.

The place sure as hell needed cleaning. The pile of dust and dirt from the kitchen floor looked like she’d just cleaned out a stall in the barn. The man lived like an animal. Worse, actually. If he made his horses live this way, she’d sic the wrath of PETA on him and have them hauled away.

She was scraping the last of the dirt into a dustpan when she heard the heavy tread of boots hit the porch outside. Folding her arms across her chest and setting her jaw, she leaned against the sink and waited for his reaction to her efforts.

“Hmf.” Nate forced out a noncommittal grunt as he strode past her, scattering mud and straw across the clean floor. He kept his head down and his hat on, hiding his eyes under the wide brim while he prepared a rudimentary lunch. All she could see of his face was his clenched jaw, square and stubbled, set in a stony scowl.

The man ate like a farm animal too. Fisting a spoon like a toddler, he shoveled Fruit Loops and milk into himself until the last loop was scooped, then upended the bowl and slurped up the last of the sugar-laced milk. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and glanced around the house, taking in the shining counters and the empty sink. She was prepared for a thank-you, maybe even an apology, but he just stared up at her for a moment, his pale eyes expressionless. Turning away, he walked out without a word. She watched him go with her teeth painfully clenched.

Had she ever been this angry in her life? She thought back to every bad breakup she’d ever had, every fender bender, every fight. She hadn’t felt this kind of rage since Teresa Grummond stole her boyfriend in seventh grade.

“Bastard. Son-of-a-bitch bastard,” she mumbled. She stormed into the bedroom and changed her pants, kicking her feet into clean jeans so angrily she tripped herself and hopped around the room like a palsied rabbit before she managed to poke her foot through the leg-hole.

She’d call Sadie. That was what she’d do. She’d call Sadie and demand a rental car. She wasn’t spending an entire week of her life with Nate Shawcross. He was dangerous, for heaven’s sake. He’d brandished a whip at her, right? Well, sort of. Anyway, she was going home.

Sadie picked up on the first ring. “Tate,” she said.

“Get me out of here, Sadie.” Charlie’s resolution to act poised and professional hadn’t even survived the dialing process.

“Charlie, I never would have suspected you were a bigot,” Sadie said. “I am so disappointed in you.”

“Bigot?”

“This problem you have with Westerners. Now just because someone isn’t quite as sophisticated…”

“It has nothing to do with sophistication!” Charlie’s knuckles whitened on the handset. “Sadie, there’s no dude ranch here. The whole thing’s a bust. The place is a broken-down dirty hole, and I need to leave.”

“Charlie, I’m looking at the brochure as we speak, and…”

“I don’t know where those pictures were taken, but it wasn’t here. The brochure is a freaking hoax.”

“Then there are no horse whisperers there?” Sadie sounded like she’d just found out there was no Santa Claus.

“There’s just one guy and he’s a cowboy, not a horse whisperer.” Charlie explained about Sandi and the brochure.

“But there were all those recommendations from other trainers. Satisfied clients. Admiring colleagues.”

“She made them up,” Charlie said. “She made up the whole thing.”

“No.” Sadie sounded so sure of herself that Charlie felt a spasm of doubt. “Those were endorsements from top trainers, Charlie. Buck Brannaman. Clinton Anderson. And I called for confirmation.”

“They were real?” Charlie’s mind was racing, trying to figure out how elaborate a hoax Sandi had managed to put together.

“Definitely. They were surprised to hear Mr. Shawcross was running a clinic—he’s evidently somewhat, er, antisocial—but they were unanimous in their praise. Unanimous.”

Charlie didn’t want to believe it, but the antisocial comment certainly rang true. “Well, he’s not teaching a clinic,” she said. “So however talented he is, it’s not doing us any good.”

Sadie sighed. “You’ll need to get our deposit back,” she said. “Then I guess you might as well come home.”

“I don’t think he has it. The deposit, I mean. I think his girlfriend took the money and ran.”

Sadie cleared her throat. She always cleared her throat when she had something unpleasant to say.

“He’d better have it.” Her nasal voice jumped into a higher register. “We can’t afford to lose it.”

“I know,” Charlie said. “And I need a rental car. Mine broke down.”

There was a long silence.

“Sadie?”

“Charlie, our funding is limited. We need to conserve our resources.”

“It’ll be a week before the car’s fixed. I can’t stay here for a week.”

The silence again, and then the throat-clearing.

“I’m looking at my budget right here, Charlie,” she said, “and I don’t see a line item for ‘rental car.’ Besides, you can’t just leave yours there.”

“I’ll get it back somehow. That’s my problem. Listen, I’ll even fly if you want. I just need to come home. Now.” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t a good situation you’ve put me in, Sadie. He definitely doesn’t want me here.”

“Good. We’ll use that for leverage. Tell him you’re not leaving until you get that deposit.”

Charlie hated to bring out the heavy artillery. It didn’t seem fair to Nate somehow, but she had to get Sadie to pay for a ticket. “Sadie, you don’t understand. He’s dangerous. He brandished a…”

The door swung open and slammed against the wall. Nate staggered inside, holding a bloody cloth to his forehead.

“Oh my God,” Charlie said.

He bent over the sink and pulled the cloth away. A bloody gash on his forehead sent a rivulet of blood down his pale face.

“What?” Sadie sounded panicked. “What was that? What did he brandish? A knife? A gun? Charlie, are you all right?”

“I have to go.”

“But if he’s dangerous…”

“I was—I was joking, Sadie. I have to go.”

“That’s not funny, Charlie.”

Charlie looked over at Nate. The side of his face was streaked with blood.

“I know,” Charlie said. “It’s not funny at all.”

Charlie hung up the phone and turned to Nate. “Keep pressure on it. I’ll get some antiseptic.”

She ran to the bathroom and rummaged through the medicine cabinet. She found every substance known to Mary Kay, but no peroxide. No Neosporin. No Band-Aids either, but she suspected he needed more than a strip of plastic to close that wound anyway.

“Peroxide. In the barn,” Nate said. He was rocking back and forth, his jaw clenched, still holding the rag to his head.

She dashed out to the barn. Unlike Nate, the horses had a full first aid kit at their disposal. Charlie carried the whole thing inside along with a brown plastic bottle of peroxide.

She set the bottle on the counter and reached for a paper towel. Apparently, horses didn’t use cotton balls.

“Thanks.”

Nate didn’t use cotton balls either. Leaning over the sink, he grabbed the bottle and poured a stream of peroxide into the wound, clenching his eyes shut and grimacing as the liquid hissed and bubbled.

“Whoa.” He teetered a little as Charlie pressed a handful of paper towels to the wound. “Gotta siddown.” She took his arm and supported him as best she could while he stumbled to the table.

He pulled the paper towel away, then dabbed at the cut. The flow of blood was slowing. Resting his elbows on his knees, he held his head in his hands and stared at the floor, looking so hurt and helpless that Charlie’s heart softened a little. Maybe if she helped him they could get along somehow.

Unless this injury was her fault.

“Was it…” She paused. “Was it Junior?”

“What?” He turned toward her, puzzled. “Oh. No. You thought Junior kicked me? No.” He tried to laugh, then grimaced with pain. “If Junior kicked me in the head, I’d probably be dead.”

“Oh.”

It wasn’t fallout from the scene this morning, then.

“I pulled a hay bale down from the top of the stack,” he explained. “Forgot I’d piled some lumber on top. Piece came down and clonked me in the head.” He tried to smile. “Just a stupid cowboy thing, that’s all.”

Maybe the blow on the head had done him some good. He’d actually admitted he was a stupid cowboy. She poked around in the first aid kit and finally found a packet of sterile gauze. Pulling his hand away, she dabbed gently at the cut with one last paper towel and pressed the gauze to it, adhering it with two strips of Red Cross tape.

“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll be all right now.”

“Do you want…”

“No.”

“I could…”

“No.” He glanced up at her. “Look, I appreciate the whole Florence Nightingale thing, but you can go back to whatever you were doing. I’m fine.” He grabbed the edge of the table and pulled himself up, wobbling slightly as he caught his balance.

“Fine.” She folded her arms across her chest and set her jaw so he wouldn’t see he’d hurt her. “Then I guess you’re okay to talk business.”

He sat back down, and she thought he might have turned a half-shade paler, going from ghost-white to almost transparent.

“I need a refund for my deposit,” she continued. “I can’t get home without it.”

“I don’t have it,” he said.

Charlie sat down across from him. “You have to have it. You owe it to me.”

“Sandi owes it to you.”

“Well, where’s Sandi, then?”

He stared down at the table. “I don’t know. Somewhere in Denver. It’s a big town.”

“Then I’ll have to get it from you. Come on, Nate. Two hundred dollars will get me out of here.”

“I don’t have it,” he repeated. He looked up, meeting her eyes for the first time since the whip incident. “I don’t have anything, Charlie. I don’t know how I’m going to pay for my next load of hay, for God’s sake.”

“This is a class-A operation, isn’t it?”

“It used to be. Well, it was going to be.” Nate dropped his head again. “She emptied the bank accounts. Checking, savings—it’s all gone.”

Charlie shoved her chair back from the table, suppressing a twinge of pity that threatened to overwhelm her anger. “Well, I can’t leave until I get my money back. And I know you don’t want me here.”

He didn’t respond.

She turned to the sink, picking up a rag and wiping the counters. They were already clean, but she had to do something so he didn’t see her crying. She was just mad, dammit. He was pissing her off. That’s all it was.

A series of heavy thumps made her turn back toward the table. Nate was staggering to his feet, pulling himself off the floor with a trembling hand on the tabletop. One of his knees gave way, and he fell back into his chair.

“Holy shit,” Charlie said.

“I’m okay. Slipped,” Nate said, hauling himself to his feet again. “I’m fine.”

“Sure you are. Nate, your pupils are huge and you can hardly stand up. You have a concussion.”

“It’s nothing.” He took a few steps toward the door, supporting himself on the counter, then reeled back to the chair and sat down. “Things are flickering a little, though. Just around the edges.”

“I’ll bet,” she said. “You need to go to the emergency room.”

“What emergency room? The closest one’s Cheyenne, and it’s a fifty-minute drive.”

“I’ll take you.”

“I can’t afford it,” he said. “I told you, she took everything.”

Charlie gave him a long look. Maybe he’d be okay. He was starting to get some color back.

Arguing seemed to do him good.

“Okay. But you have to lie down, and you can’t go to sleep,” she said. “And we ought to ice that.”

“What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” he said.

“We, as in you and me. Hey, I don’t like it either, but I’m all you’ve got.”

“I’ll call Ray.”

“Ray’s busy. He’s fixing my car.”

“Not yet he isn’t. And somebody needs to feed the horses and check their feet. Peach needs her bandage changed too.”

“Peach?”

“One of the mares.”

“I can do that.”

He lifted his head and looked her in the eye, his pupils dark and dilated but still managing to express his utter disdain at her horse-handling skills.

“I can,” she protested. “Look, I’m good with animals. This morning—well, that wasn’t me. Not really.”

“Who was it then?”

She sighed. “My evil twin, the PETA activist,” she said, letting a smile tip her lips. “Really, she causes so much trouble for me.”

“Seems to me she causes trouble for everybody.”

“Well, yeah. You might say that. It’s kind of a hobby of hers. She even got me arrested once.”

“Arrested?”

“Long story,” Charlie said, wishing she could bite back the words. It definitely wasn’t a story she wanted to tell. Not to this guy.

He looked at her a long moment, then let it go with a shrug. “Can you do me a favor, then?”

“Sure.” She nodded eagerly. If he let her handle the horses, she might get a chance to make up with the stallion. Undo the damage she’d done, and prove herself in the process.

“Keep your evil twin away from me. And bring me the phone so I can call Ray.”

She glowered, hands on hips. “You don’t need Ray. You have me.”

He rolled his eyes.

“What is your problem?”

He shrugged. “Look, I’m sorry, but Sandi was ‘good with animals’ too, and I wouldn’t trust her with a gerbil. You have to be really focused to work with horses, and you girls always have something else on your mind.”

“Like what?”

“God knows. Mary Kay, I guess. Clothes. Girlie stuff.”

“I’m not Sandi, Nate. I’m not like that. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a girlie girl.”

***

Charlie stood with her feet apart, jaw jutting, fists clenched, obviously trying to look tough, but all Nate could think about when he looked at her was her panties. And her red lips. And all the other parts of her that lay across his bed last night.

She sure looked girlie to him. She’d felt pretty girlie too when she’d dressed his head wound with surprisingly gentle hands.

He shook his head, trying to shatter the image of her bending over him. Her breasts had been inches from his face, pressing into the cloth of her T-shirt, and she’d smelled sweet and clean.

“You look pretty girlie to me,” he said, hoping she wouldn’t notice the weird strangled quality of his voice. “I mean, look at your fingernails. You can’t groom a horse with nails like that.”

“I can so. I’ve done it before. Lots of times.”

“When?” he asked.

Charlie looked up at the ceiling as if she was probing her long-term memory. She probably couldn’t remember the last time she’d so much as seen a horse. “All right, it was a long time ago. I was maybe fourteen. But still…”

“You’ve grown your claws out since then.”

“In more ways than you know,” she said, tossing her head. “But I can do stable work. I don’t care if I break a nail.” She sat down beside him. “Come on, Nate. At least let me feed them.”

He looked at her a long time. There was an element of pleading in her expression, as well as determination. The combination was a little unsettling, but he finally interpreted it as desperation and gave in.

“All right,” he said. “You can feed them. Stay out of the stalls, though. There are a couple customers out there that have a bad history with humans so far. And try to calm down. They’ll mirror your mood, and you’re kind of… well…”

“Kind of what?” She tossed her hair, eyes flashing, obviously on the defensive.

“Kind of type A,” he said. “See if you can think happy thoughts or something.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” she said. “I’m happy when I’m with animals. You’ll see.” She shot to her feet with a speed that would send a nervous horse into conniptions. “I’ll do a great job.”

She’d try. He had no doubt of that. But succeed? Probably not. Sending this woman out to the barn was like sending a mouse into the elephant house at the zoo.

It wasn’t likely to end well for anybody.