Reclaiming Nick (9 page)

“You’re achin’ to blame someone, aren’t you?”
Cole’s voice rushed at him in memory, and he shook it away.

“What’s he doing here?” Nick growled, mostly to Saul, but if Cole heard, he didn’t care.

“I could ask the same about you,” Cole growled back.

Nick saw him inch forward. Closer, he looked pale and gaunt. For a second, worry sluiced through Nick. He ignored it and turned back to Saul. “We’re done here anyway.”

Saul shook his head, defeat in his eyes.

Nick didn’t care that the man had spent the last hour trying to convince him that Bishop Noble had been genuine in his desire to give the land to St. John. So what that Saul had questioned Bishop to ascertain his ability to make sound decisions?

Nick knew that Cole had coerced Bishop to lie even to his best friend.

But the truth would find Cole out. Nick planned on filing the petition today and would spend every millisecond between now and the date of the hearing proving what he knew with ever fiber of his soul—that Cole St. John was a thief.

After what Stefanie had told him last night, Nick labeled Cole even more of a thief than he had before.

Nick stood and snatched his hat from the desk. “This isn’t over.” He turned and waited for Cole to clear the door before brushing past him without another word.

He felt Cole’s eyes on him as he left. Cole had always given off a holier-than-thou vibe and used it with precision when he wanted to bring Nick to task. Dudley Do-Right, Nick had called him.

In high school Nick had blamed the do-gooder niceness on the fact that Cole didn’t have a father to teach him backbone, and he and his mother were at church every time the doors opened and then some. No wonder Maggy always considered Cole a gentleman. Nick couldn’t believe he had actually felt sorry for the guy. Wanted to make him part of his family, begged his father to hire him on during the summer. Too late he’d discovered Cole’s games.

Thankfully he wasn’t fooled any longer.

Marching out to his Silverado, Nick got inside, noticing St. John’s battered Ford behind him. He couldn’t believe that thing still ran.

Pulling out, he spit gravel as he drove back to the Silver Buckle.

Maggy is Cole’s wife.

Cole had stolen everything from him—his land, his woman. Not
that Nick deserved her—it had taken him about two years to figure that out—but he hadn’t found a woman since he left who laughed at his wry humor, who put up with his bullheadedness, who listened until he unraveled the thoughts that knotted his brain.

Someone who might fit into his life.

Then again, what kind of life did he want? Since he’d turned in his badge, he’d been waiting tables, occasionally throwing flapjacks.

He’d sacrificed everything because of his temper, and even now his sins seemed to haunt him. According to Saul, Nick couldn’t do a thing to contest Bishop’s will. Not unless he found evidence that the will had been signed under duress—that Cole or some other benefactor had been in the room putting unseen pressure on his father during the signing. But Saul said they’d been alone in Bishop’s bedroom during that critical hour. Unless Nick unearthed a miracle—in Bishop’s journals or an untapped vein in Stefanie’s memory—he’d lose his past and his future to Cole the Thief. It felt like yet another punishment from God.

When, God? Everyone else seems to have forged on. When will
I
get to pick up the pieces? Will I ever feel Your forgiveness?

He drove into the Silver Buckle yard and parked right behind his father’s old pickup. He’d driven the truck yesterday out of some errant desire to reconnect, to belong to the ranch again. He strode past the pickup and headed into the house, bracing himself for another go-round with Stef.

Only the old Maytag fridge met him as it kicked on and hummed in greeting. He tossed his keys on the counter, listening to his heart thump. He’d been ready, even eager, for a verbal sparring. Instead, Stef had left him a note in her bubbly handwriting.

Dear Nick,

Went to town. Dutch is in the barn, working with the heifers. Please check on our new chef. I’ll be back for supper.

S.

Peering out the window over the sink, he saw Dutch’s hulking frame exit the cow barn. The old boss, ten years his father’s junior, had been like an uncle to him. Nick had always been a little afraid of Dutch’s stern expression and huge hands. He wasn’t foolish enough to ask for—or expect—Dutch’s forgiveness.

Pouring himself a cup of coffee, Nick leaned against the counter and drank it black, his mind churning. Dutch might know what Cole had on his father—Dutch had always seemed to take an extra interest in Cole and, in particular, his shapely widowed mother, Irene. Spent a lot of Sunday afternoons on her porch. For a long time Nick thought he might marry Irene. Cole had even called him Uncle Dutch.

Nick finished his coffee, pocketed a granola bar, and headed outside. The smells of early yarrow and Wyoming kittentail hung in the warm air. The late-morning sun had begun to cut the chill from the cool air.

Rounding the house, he shot a glance toward the hunting cabin. He’d have to figure out a way to talk their new chef into hitting the road. After he figured out how to get their land back, they wouldn’t need Ms. Sullivan anyway, and she’d be out of a job. He was doing her a favor.

He stood there, remembering her troubled look as she watched him build the fire last night. Vulnerable, even afraid. He had the strangest sense that she might be lost or running from something.

Then again, weren’t they all?

He hoped Stefanie checked her references. He turned, heading for the corral.

Pecos was gone—had probably died—but the old bay lifted his head in greeting and nickered. Nick took down a lead rope and easily caught the horse, bringing him into the barn to be saddled.

It wouldn’t be the first time he got on a horse to escape his problems.

Nick would be a hard nut to crack. Even though he’d showed a glimmer of his true side after Piper’s arrival yesterday, since then he’d played the part of a perfect gentleman—searching the cabin and building her a cozy fire. He played his game like a gambler. But she aimed to earn his trust. By the time she finished with him, he’d spill his secrets like a drunken sailor, and she’d have it all on her digital tape recorder.

She’d spent the night curled inside the quilt in the center of the double bed, listening to the wolves howl. The last time she’d heard howling like that, she’d been five, and her brother had heard her whimpering in fear. She remembered how he’d crawled into her bed and let her fall asleep next to him.

Piper pressed her hand against her empty stomach, feeling it burn. She’d eaten a bag of dried fruit and an antacid earlier in the morning, but she’d need more than that if she hoped to fortify herself to face Nick Noble. He’d offered to take her riding today, which meant that if she showed up in the yard, hoping to cash in on the offer, he wouldn’t be suspicious.

She pulled on a pair of jeans, boots, a long-sleeve shirt, and a
lined leather coat. She slipped the recorder into her jacket pocket. She’d outfitted herself at a Western apparel store before leaving town, hoping she might fit in, and she hadn’t appreciated Noble’s condescending look yesterday.

The air felt fresh and the sun warm as she stepped out of the cabin and stood on the porch. The vista swept her breath away. The cabin looked out onto rangeland, and for as far as the eye could see, greening prairie rolled over bluffs and washes, gullied by brown streams and occasional patches of wildflowers. Clouds brushed the periwinkle sky in the lightest of strokes, and down in the valley the hulking bodies of black cows completed the pastoral frame. Big-sky country, indeed. It made her want to sing or spread her arms and run through the grass in a sort of
Sound of Music
emotional outburst.

Evidently she’d played one too many parts. Piper had never been the sentimental kind, and she was no Julie Andrews do-gooder nun. As long as she got to the truth, she didn’t mind getting her hands a little dirty, telling a few white lies.

Most of the time she slept just fine.

But this view nudged a place inside her, something she hadn’t felt since childhood when hope felt easier to grasp. When she believed that God looked down upon her, saw her, loved her.

But only dreamers and five-year-olds believed in that fairy tale. God, like the big sky, was simply too far away. Untouchable. And unconcerned with righting the wrongs in the world.

Leaving people like Piper to fill in the gaps.

Nick had told her to follow the path through the winter pasture to return to the main house. She only briefly considered her Jeep. She probably needed the exercise, and with her SUV close by,
she couldn’t beg Nick for a ride back to the lodge, could she? She stepped off the porch and walked to the barbed-wire fence. Not seeing an opening, she held it apart and gingerly climbed through.

The slight sound of bellowing drifted in the air. She’d heard that sound yesterday, and it had surprised her. She thought cows mooed . . . not bellowed. As she descended the hill, she noticed that another fence stood between her and the homestead. She’d entered one pasture too soon.

As she hiked down the hill, one cow raised its black head, then got to its feet. A windmill creaked, and another animal looked up from the round metal water tank and stared at her, water dripping from its jowls.

“Hi, cow,” she said. Such a big cow, such a petite face. She wondered where its calf was—didn’t they all have calves?

She stopped halfway down the hill between her cabin and the homestead, staring at the animal, her heart doing a slow spiral to her knees.

The beast stared back at her, switching its tail.

She liked cows, didn’t she? They gave milk and were mostly afraid of humans.

The animal turned as she passed, and in her peripheral vision she watched it shift toward her. Then it let out a bellow that raised every hair on the back of her neck.

She picked up her pace.

The animal continued to follow her.

“Shoo!” She broke into a jog.

The bellow came again and nearly lifted her from the earth.

“Go find your baby!” Piper started running, and her heart nearly broke from her chest when the animal behind her followed suit.
Its hooves thumped the ground, and it blew out of its nose as it chased her.

“Go away!” Piper stumbled, fell hard, scrubbing her knees and skidding the heels of her hands into the mud. Scrambling back to her feet, she looked over her shoulder to see the cow nearly upon her.

The scream that was building in her felt as if it might have the power to send her airborne and hurl her to safety. She let it rip, then rolled into a ball, covering her head with her hands.

CHAPTER 5

“P
LEASE, OH COW, DON’T PUSH,
” Maggy pleaded as the laboring cow’s eyes bulged with effort.

Next to Maggy, dressed in insulated Carhartt overalls and a feed cap on backward, CJ looked worried. “She’s going to kill her calf.”

The sunlight had begun to soak the day, but the chill that invaded Maggy’s bones wouldn’t dissipate. Not with another heifer on the verge of dying. Last night they’d found two stillborn calves and a heifer dead next to her struggling calf in the field by Rattlesnake Creek. Maggy had rounded up the few heifers ready to drop their calves and sent them into the barn along with this laboring cow, one of their oldest, who’d had a difficult birth last year. She’d watched them through the night, catching a few winks in the wee hours of the morning. Now it looked like that precious sleep would cost her another life. During her absence, the cow had gone into labor, pushing her uterus out in front of her calf.

“We’ve got to get her to stop pushing, so we can push her
membranes back inside.” Blood covered Maggy’s armpit-high plastic gloves.

“Should I call the vet?” CJ asked, his voice tremulous.

Maggy said nothing, blinking back a film of exhausted tears. No. They didn’t have money for a vet. But they couldn’t afford to lose this calf either.

Please, God.

If only Cole were here. Where he’d gone this morning she didn’t know, but it nagged at her, especially with this cow dying. Cole would know what to do. He had a way with animals, a sixth sense about what they needed, and he’d have some home remedy.

“CJ, see if your father has any whiskey in the toolshed.”

He frowned. “Why would Dad have—?”

“Just go check for me.” She found a syringe, cleaned it, glancing out to the yard, praying that Cole might return.
Please.

CJ returned with a dirt-crusted half-full bottle of Everclear.

Relief filled her. In her darkest hours, she’d feared that . . . well . . . maybe Cole’s forgetfulness of late had other origins. But her husband—Dudley Do-Right, as Nick had so often called him—wasn’t a man who turned to drink to solve his problems. However, he didn’t turn to her either.

Maggy took the bottle and filled the syringe. Then, feeling for the place between the sixth and seventh vertebrae along the cow’s back, she injected the alcohol into the spine. “Please work.”

CJ stared at his mother in fascination.

The wind hit the tin barn, whistled through the cracks, and rustled the feed sacks shoved into the larger holes.

The cow moaned, but when the next contraction hit, she didn’t
bear down upon it, the alcohol relaxing her enough to keep her from killing herself and her baby. Maggy began working the cow’s prolapsed uterus back inside her body.

After a moment a small black hoof appeared.

“Get the calf puller, CJ.”

Wordlessly, he handed her the contraption—a long metal bar that fitted over the cow’s rear. She attached one end of the chains to the small black hoof that protruded from the cow’s body, then attached the other end to the bar. Once upon a time, Cole had been strong enough to heave a baby calf free from the womb. Now Maggy would have to ratchet it out herself.

Perspiration beaded on her greasy hair as the cow bellowed. CJ caught another hoof as it appeared, bloody and sticky with birth. Together they delivered the baby, lowered it onto the hay, and wiped it with a towel.

The calf opened its eyes and let out a high-pitched cry.

Hot tears burned Maggy’s eyes.

“Wow, Mom, that was cool.”

“Sure was.” The familiar voice echoed through the tin barn.

Maggy startled. “Cole. You’re back.”

He looked tired from his excursion, leaning on his crutches, his hat pushed back. But she saw pride in his eyes. “I can’t believe you remembered the whiskey trick.”

Maggy let a tear drip from her cheek. She was just tired. So tired. Overwhelmed, really. Yet as Cole hobbled farther into the barn, his smile reminded her of those late nights and early mornings when they had watched new life come into the world together.

“Where were you?” she asked, hating the edge of accusation in her voice.

His smile dimmed. “To see a feller. I’ll tell you later.” He glanced at CJ. “How’s your ropin’?”

CJ clapped his gloved hands together to clean them. “Thought I’d head over to the Buckle this afternoon. Dutch said he’d work with me on timing.”

Cole said nothing, and it was right then that Maggy realized that Egger Dugan had spoken the truth yesterday in the café. Nick had returned. And with him the old rivalries, the old hurts. They showed on Cole’s face like war scars. Cole shot a look at Maggy, then turned away, walking out of the barn.

Maggy closed her eyes.

“Dad—” CJ ran after him—“how about you coming with me?”

“No.”

Maggy winced at Cole’s curt tone, and something inside her snapped. This feud had eaten away at Cole long enough. So what that Nick had returned? They all knew he would someday. And after all these years, certainly Nick had gotten over the past.

Most importantly, CJ deserved his father’s attention. “Cole St. John, don’t you walk out on me!” She followed Cole, catching CJ first. “Go back to the barn. Keep an eye on the cow.”

Cole had reached the front porch by the time she caught up with him. She slammed her foot against the door before he could open it, snapping off her surgical gloves. “What is your problem?”

“You know what my problem is.” Cole kept his voice low, glancing once toward the barn, a signal that usually meant go away.

Well, she was sick of his silence, this cloud of doom that hovered over him. After ten years he should figure out that she planned on sticking around.

“Just because Nick Noble is a selfish jerk doesn’t mean you can’t be the father CJ needs. Dutch is only offering to help him because you won’t. CJ needs you—he wants you there.”

“
Can’t
—not won’t—help him. And I’m not going to Noble’s property. Not with him there. Every cell inside him still wants to get his hands around my neck. Probably even more now.”

She swallowed her reaction, kept her voice sober. “You saw Nick?”

He nodded, not looking at her.

“What did he say?”

Cole met her gaze, and for a second fear flashed through his eyes—something naked and so vivid that every word in her mouth crumbled. Then he looked away, leaving only the residue of his doubts. “Why don’t you ride over and talk to him yourself, Mags? I’m sure you have lots to catch up on.”

She slapped him. Hard.

He simply closed one eye, absorbing the pain.

She stood there, trembling.

“Just say it,” he said in a low voice. “Say it.”

Her words emerged on a breath. “Say what?”

“That you wish you’d waited for him to come back. That you wish you’d never married me.”

“Tiny, get out of here!” The voice came from behind Piper, accompanied by hooves thundering across the ground. “Shoo!”

She opened her eyes just in time to see a cowboy on a horse, waving his coil of rope and running his horse right at the animal that rushed her.

At the last moment, the animal turned, shaking its head and snorting as it ran off.

Piper lay on the ground, breathing in tremulous gasps, precariously close to tears.
Get a grip!
She’d handled being shot at better than this. Gritting her teeth, she climbed to her feet, feeling light-headed.

The cowboy chased the beast off, then turned and trotted back toward her, shaking his head, a smirk on his face. Of all the rotten luck . . . of
course
it had to be Nick Noble coming to her rescue. And he looked straight out of some updated Western flick—dark leather chaps, cowboy boots, an open leather jacket, a day’s worth of black whiskers gracing his chin, and an arrogance in his demeanor that made her want to shoot him between the eyes.

“A pretty gal shouldn’t be walking through the bull pasture if she doesn’t want to attract attention.”

The bull field?
Piper opened her mouth but couldn’t conjure words.

Nick leaned forward in his saddle, pushing up the brim of his hat with one long finger. “Tiny wouldn’t have hurt you. He just hasn’t seen a cute gal in a while.” He held out his hand and took his foot out of the stirrup, indicating she should climb up behind him.

If it weren’t for the absence of a charming smile, she’d think he was delivering her a pick-up line. But he didn’t smile, and the edge of sarcasm told her he meant every word. And not in a good way.

Whatever she did to turn him prickly side out, Piper intended to fix it. She took his hand, slipped her foot into the stirrup, and, ignoring the heartbeat filling her throat, swung up behind him. “He needs to find someone more his type,” she quipped.

Nick didn’t laugh.

The man had a serious glitch in his funny bone. Piper sat there a moment before she realized that this mode of transportation didn’t come with a seat belt or even handles. Exactly where was she supposed to put her hands? The back of the saddle? Noble’s belt loops? The horns growing from his head?

“Hang on to my jacket,” Nick said, as if reading her mind.

She dug her fingers into the soft leather as he urged the horse forward. He smelled good—rebelliously good—like leather and a hint of soap. And he was tall, with broad shoulders and a straight posture. Strong, in a natural build sort of way.

Yeah, strong enough to wring her stupid neck.

“Thanks for . . . the rescue.” She heard the tremor of fear still rattling her voice.

Nick urged his horse toward a gate in the fence. Behind her the bull stared at her with glassy black eyes.

“How did you get in this pasture?” Nick’s voice still sounded peeved. She had angry beasts on all sides apparently.

“You told me to go through this pasture,” she said, trying to keep accusation from her voice.

“There’s a gate down the road from the cabin.” He shook his head. “Stay out of the bull field.”

“Are you sure? Because it’s great exercise.”

Silence.

For the first time, she wondered if she would be able to chink his armor. She was reaching deep, tapping into her best stuff. “Sorry,” she added.

He angled toward a gate in the field dissecting the barbed-wire fence. “I don’t suppose you want to rethink this job opportunity?”

“Not on your life.”

“Well, out on the trail all day surrounded by cattle . . . you’re bound to make a boyfriend or two.”

Was that humor? “Very funny. I didn’t know this was the bull field. Next time be more clear in your instructions. Unless, of course, you’re
trying
to get me killed.”

Oops, her tone held way too much accusation. And she didn’t want this skittish horse to run for the hills. She added laughter, so he might know she was kidding. Really.

Okay, so that wasn’t a funny quip to either of them.

He reached the fence. “I have to dismount to open the gate.”

“I’ll do it.” Piper held his arm as she slid off, opened the gate, then waited for him to pass through. “What were
you
doing in the bull field?” she asked as she closed it.

“Looking for tracks from the wolves we heard last night.” He held out his hand, and she swung back up behind him.

She held on to the back of his coat, putting as much space as possible between them. “Do you really think there are wolves out here?”

“It’s been a brutal winter. I wouldn’t be surprised if we found dead stock in one of the outlying pastures.”

“Will you shoot the wolves?” She replayed the lonely sound of the howls again, felt them sink into her bones.

“We can’t. They’re endangered. We have to call DNR and ask them to remove them.”

“That’s good.”

“When a wolf takes down a cow, it not only costs the life of the cow but all the future lives the cow would have produced. Other cows panic, and it can cause a stampede, more deaths, and even stillbirths. Wolves aren’t the cute animals you see on National
Geographic specials. They’re serious predators and a threat to every range rancher.”

“Oh.” Yep, they’d be fast friends in no time at this rate.

The saddle creaked in the silence that followed.