Renegade Father (6 page)

Cheeks flaming, she backed away from him and returned to the sink to gaze out the window. She could sense him watching her, feel the heat of that black-eyed gaze.

She had always thought Joe would have made a good cop—he could stare the truth out of anybody. But she wouldn't bend this time.

He must have reached the same conclusion. He sighed, a soft, frustrated sound in the quiet kitchen. “You're not going to tell me what's bothering you, are you?”

“There's nothing to tell,” she lied. “I'm just edgy from the storm, that's all.”

“You could teach stubborn to a blasted mule.”

Before she could answer, C.J. came bursting into the kitchen. “Hey Mom! There's gonna be a show on next about panda bears in China. Want to come watch?” His voice trailed off when he saw Joe standing by the mudroom door. Her son's finely drawn features twisted into a frown.

“Why is
he
still here?”

“He helped clean up the kitchen.”

“It looks clean to me, so he can leave now.” He glared at Joe. “You're good at that, right?”

Great. Now she had two moody, angry children to deal with. She gave C.J. a stern look. “That is quite enough, young man.”

“Why are you mad at me? He's the one who's leaving.”

“That doesn't give you the right to be rude. Apologize right now and then I think we need to skip the show about pandas tonight. Turn the TV off. You can play in your room for a while before bed.”

With another glare toward her this time, C.J. mumbled an apology that was miles away from being sincere, then stormed out of the room before she could call him on it.

Joe shoved his hat on but not before she saw pain and regret flash in his eyes. She wanted to soothe it, to comfort him, but she didn't know where to begin.

“I'm sorry,” she finally said. Her apology was at least heartfelt. “I thought he would have begun to accept your new job by now but apparently he still has a ways to go.”

Joe shrugged into his coat. “He has a right to be upset.”

“But not to vent his feelings by hurting others. I won't tolerate it and he knows it.”

Charlie used to say she was going to turn C.J. into a weak little mama's boy with all her talk about politeness and correct behavior. Maybe she was a little demanding, but what choice did she have? Every time her son raised his voice or even
thought
about bullying someone else, she worried he would turn out like his father.

These last months with Joe had been so good for C.J. He had finally had the example of a decent, hardwork
ing man to follow. She hoped Joe had shown him that a man didn't have to be rough and menacing to be masculine, that most of the time quiet strength could get a lot further in life than brawn and bluster.

Who would teach him these things after Joe left? She sighed. Just another thing to worry about.

“He'll get over it eventually, I promise,” she said. “Just give him time.”

But both of them knew time was something they didn't have the luxury of enjoying anymore. Joe shoved his hat on his head and shrugged into his coat, then turned the conversation back to her edginess. “If you change your mind and need to talk about whatever's bothering you, you know where to find me. Good night, Annie. Sleep tight.”

She watched him go out into the cold knowing perfectly well that she wouldn't sleep tight, that she would toss and turn all night, thinking of a wounded little boy and a spooky, voyeuristic Polaroid picture and the man who would be walking out of her life in just a few short weeks.

“A
lmost there. Just a few more minutes…got it.” Annie carefully pulled the needle out of the little calf's side. “Okay, Luke. You can let him out now.”

The ranch hand worked the latch on the network of chutes and the bawling little Hereford darted through the gate then headed off across the snow-covered winter range to find his mother.

Annie stood and tried to stretch the kinks out of her back while Luke grabbed one of the canteens hanging over the metal chute and took a grateful swig of water.

She knew just how he felt. Immunizing calves could be sweaty, exhausting work even when the temperatures were only in the midtwenties. She wasn't about to complain, though. Midtwenties beat below zero anytime in her book.

The vicious cold front of the week before had finally headed south, returning temperatures to their seasonal norms. Even though it was still cold, at least she could
stand to stay outside now for more than a few minutes without feeling as if the air were being squeezed from her lungs by vicious, icy hands.

Here in the pale winter daylight, surrounded by lowing cattle and the sharp, familiar scents of alfalfa hay and manure, the frightening incident with the photograph the week before seemed as far away as the sun.

Just her imagination. That's all it had been. One of the men had played a cruel, senseless prank on her and she had let herself get entirely too carried away by it.

Nothing else out of the ordinary had happened since then. If she sometimes seemed to feel icy fingers glide down her spine with the sensation of someone watching her, well, that too was just her imagination working overtime.

“Hey, quit loafing over here. We got work to do.” Manny Santiago rode up to them, his teeth gleaming in the sunlight as a grin split his dark, handsome face.

She pushed the thoughts of that eerie photograph out of her mind and looked up at him, forcing a smile. “Yeah, yeah. Easy for you to say. You've got the best part.”

Manny had won the coin toss and drew out the en-viable task of rounding up the calves, with the help of the dogs.

“Any time you want to trade, let me know,” she went on. “I could use some time on the back of a horse.”

“How many more?” Manny asked.

“I don't know. Let me check.” Annie picked up the computerized printout, grateful again for technology that helped her easily track each calf through every stage of its life on the Double C.

In the old days, her father would have pages and
pages of data about the herd. Now everything was on computer, from the moment the calf came into the world until he met his inevitable end.

“We're about halfway there,” she answered. “About a hundred more. We still might beat the others.”

“I hope so, boss. I could really use that twenty bucks.”

She sent him a teasing grin. “Quit stalling, then. Get out there and bring us some more calves. I think it's fair to say the other team isn't just going to hand it to us. They all want the prize, too.”

Joe had turned the drudgery of vaccinating the new calves into a contest—the first team to take care of its allotted calves would each earn an Andrew Jackson.

He was so good at getting the most out of the men. He always seemed to know exactly what they needed to spur them to work harder and faster. Annie sighed, depressed again at the idea of trying to find someone to replace him.

While she waited for Luke to set up the next calf, she watched Manny go to work, with help from her best cow dog. Dolly's black and white belly brushed the snow as she effortlessly separated another calf from its mother. Together the border collie and the cowboy drove the calf into the overflow chute, without Dolly even having to nip at the animal.

“That sure is one fine dog.” Following her gaze, Luke shook his head in admiration.

Annie couldn't agree more. Although Dolly was nearly fourteen, the border collie still could outwork any of the other three dogs on the ranch, all half her age or younger.

Her father had prided himself on the quality of his herders and he used to spend hours training them. As
far as Annie was concerned, Dolly was better than any of them had been.

“Should have named her Shadow, though.” Luke flashed her a grin just as Annie slid the a needle under the hide of the next bawling calf.

“Why's that?” she asked, only half-listening to him.

“The way she follows you around and all.”

Annie smiled as she pulled the needle out. “She always has, I suppose because I trained her from a pup. We've been through a lot together.”

Now there was an understatement. Dolly had been one of her best protectors during her marriage. She had hated Charlie fiercely—a sentiment he returned whole-heartedly—and she instinctively seemed to sense when he'd been drinking and was at his most dangerous.

She would always bark like crazy, giving Annie enough advance warning so she could retreat somewhere he wouldn't dare bother her, either her own room or one of the children's.

Ah, the joys of matrimony.

She blew out a breath and forced herself to turn back to the job at hand. “Okay, that one's done. Ninety-nine more.”

“Have you given any more thought to hiring me to take over for Joe?” Luke asked suddenly.

At the completely unexpected question, she fumbled with the hypodermic and would have dropped it into the mud they'd churned up through the snow if her instincts hadn't kicked in at the last minute. She ended up catching it in midair.

“What… What did you say?”

“You know. What we talked about the other night. About hiring me to be foreman after Joe leaves.”

Dumbfounded, for a moment she could do nothing
but stare at him. She thought she had made it abundantly clear he wasn't even in the running for the foreman position. Good grief. Did he need to be knocked over the head with it?

She sat back on her heels, fumbling for words just like she had just fumbled the syringe. “Luke, I told you I wanted someone with a little more experience,” she finally said. “I'm sorry, but I'm not going to change my mind about it.”

He didn't seem at all fazed by her answer, just gave her a smile brimming with cockiness. “You will. Just wait.”

The complete conviction in his voice astounded her but before she could answer, the muffled thud of horse hooves on snow sounded in the clear, cold air.

Joe rode across the pasture toward them on Quixote, his big bay gelding. He wore jeans, a lined denim jacket, his customary black Stetson and leather gloves—the standard winter attire of all the cowboys who worked the Double C. Manny and Luke deviated only in the color of their hats.

But somehow Joe made the clothes look far different than either of the other men. He seemed so perfectly right on the back of the muscular horse—so wholly, ruggedly male—that her stomach quivered in reaction.

He always made her feel completely feminine by comparison, even when she was grubbing around in the snow and the mud in her ratty old ranch coat and beat-up ropers.

Joe was the kind of man who turned heads wherever he went, just by his sheer physical presence. He always had been. Even as a boy he had been strikingly beautiful, and all the girls at school used to have crushes on him. Joe ignored all of them except for Annie, which
didn't exactly win her points with the other girls. Not that she cared much. She hadn't had much patience for other girls her age.

If anything, age and life had only improved Joe's looks, had hardened his sculpted features to masculine perfection. With that exotic copper skin, his piercing dark eyes and that full, sensuous mouth—not to mention the air of barely leashed danger surrounding him in an almost visible aura—it was no wonder women still acted like fluttery idiots around him.

Including her.

Annie jolted back to earth and to the calf bawling in the pen in front of her, suddenly remembering the bet.

“Your team can't be done yet!” she exclaimed. “No way!”

Joe's grin nearly stopped her heart. “Scared, are you?”

She took a deep, fortifying breath, relieved to find her blood still pumping, her lungs still working. “Not at all. We're gonna kick your butts. Aren't we, boys?”

“Hell, yeah.” Luke's chest puffed with bravado and Manny's grin flashed in his dark face.

“Right into next week, boss,” he said.

Joe rested both hands on the saddle horn as Quixote stamped a few times in the snow and puffed out a cloudy breath, eager for action.

Like most modern ranches, the Double C had a couple of snowmobiles and two four-wheelers but she and Joe both preferred to do things the time-honored way whenever possible. A snowmobile could never take the place of a good cutting horse, and Qui was one of the best she'd ever seen.

She gave the big bay a pat, then turned to Joe with a smirk. “We're especially going to kick your butts if
you spend all day checking up on us. Worry about your own calves, why don't you?”

“Well, you know, I'd like to do that but for some reason we didn't have enough needles to finish the job. You wouldn't have shortchanged us on purpose, would you?”

“Why on earth would I do that?”

He shrugged. “Maybe you were trying to sabotage our chances at winning the contest.”

You stupid bitch. Can't you do anything right? You're always trying to ruin everything for me.

His words sparked another of those damn flashbacks. It took her completely by surprise. She hadn't had one for months, but for a moment she froze.

Locked in the past, she felt herself respond—felt her head bow, her shoulders hunch in foreboding—and she could think of nothing else but escaping.

Eventually through the old haze of misery and fear, reality intruded. Joe would never hurt her. Her mind knew it even if her instincts had been conditioned to cower.

She looked up and found him watching her with a smile in his eyes. Teasing. He was teasing her.

Calming breaths. Deep, calming breaths. With effort, she made her muscles relax and when the fear finally fled she forced herself to play along, raising a haughty eyebrow as if nothing had happened. “Why would I have to resort to sabotage? We were going to win anyway.”

“Just hedging your bets, maybe. Our team mysteriously ran out of sharps halfway through our calves and last I checked, you were the one handing out the supplies.”

No wonder she'd been thrown off balance. She
wasn't used to Joe in this teasing mood. Even when he was younger, he'd always been far too serious and his time in prison had only made him more somber.

Apparently the men weren't used to it either. Manny watched the exchange avidly from his saddle and even Luke had dropped what he was doing to lean his elbows on the rail of the chute.

She tried to ignore them both.

“I had nothing to do with it.” She gave a small, prim smile, vastly relieved that the flashback hadn't been a bad one. “What I gave you should have been more than enough. You probably dropped them in the snow somewhere.”

“That's what I would have suspected too, except you do have a reputation to uphold.”

“What are you talking about? I always play fair!”

“Do the words ‘letter jacket' mean anything to you?”

The memory surprised a laugh out of her, conjuring up a long-forgotten memory. She'd been about eleven, Joe and Colt fifteen. The three of them had been moving irrigation pipes on the Broken Spur one summer day and Joe had boasted that he could ride any horse on either of their ranches. She had bet him his brand-new football letter jacket that she could find a horse he couldn't ride.

She laughed again, remembering the completely baffled look on his face when he had hit the dirt. “You just can't let it go, can you? Twenty years later and you can't forget.”

“You cheated, Annie. You never told me you had a ringer, a wild mustang your dad had just brought to the ranch. It was a dirty trick. Can you blame me for being suspicious now?”

“I gave you back your stupid jacket.”

“Only because your dad forced you to.”

She grinned at him, relishing their banter. She had a sudden, fierce wish that they could travel back in time to the days when their friendship was pure and uncomplicated. Before the terrible summer when their world had changed forever.

Her smile faded. They couldn't go back, any more than they could change the past. And soon all she would have left of him would be those memories.

She picked up a handful of wrapped needles from the box in front of her and held them out. “Here. Take as many as you need,” she said, her voice short. “Want us to take some of your calves to make it fair?”

His own smile slid away and he didn't say anything for a moment, as if sensing her mood. Finally he took the needles from her. “No. Wouldn't want to give you any reason to say we didn't win fair and square.”

He wheeled Quixote around, then the horse cantered off across the pasture, leaving her watching after him.

 

Joe poked at the cedar log in the fireplace, sending sparks fluttering up the chimney. Outside the wood-frame foreman's cottage, snowflakes drifted softly to earth. But inside the four-room cottage was warm and cozy.

He watched the fire for a few moments, lost in the hypnotic dance and sway of the flames and the hiss and chatter of wood being consumed, then he returned to the easy chair facing it.

This is what he had missed so desperately in prison—this satisfying ache in his muscles from knowing he'd put in a good, honest day's work, the calm assurance that he'd left no chores undone, a warm, comfortable
chair, and a good book to come home to at the end of the day.

Other inmates filled the endless hours in the joint talking of what they missed most on the outside—their friends or their women or their whiskey. But Joe had dreamed of only simple, pure moments like this.

And of Annie.

He picked up his book, angry at himself for always coming back to her. He'd had no business dreaming of her then and he had even less business dreaming of her now.