The Cedar Tree (Love Is Not Enough) (33 page)

The trek across the valley to the shearing barn took two hours. The rest of the morning, he packed bundles of wool into burlap sacks, moved sheep around, and grew more and more irritated.

Dressed in her own clothes, Katie's slender fairness drew the gazes of the dark eyed men in the shearing barn like a magnet. He glanced up a few times over the course of the morning to catch Manuel—who had six kids, for Pete's sake—brushing against her where she stood operating the alley gate. Finally, she let the last group of five ewes in for the shearers. Manuel leaned close to her, saying something against her ear. Her brows snapped together and hot color flooded her face. She jerked away from the older man.

He crossed the shearing floor, the broken spot on his nose burning. "If you touch the Campbell girl again, or even say anything to her," he said to Manuel in an undertone, "I'll knock your teeth down your throat.
Comprendes?
"

Manuel's eyes smoldered with resentment, but he nodded. A short time later, the two hundred ewes, pink skin showing through startling white and smoothly shorn wool, trailed back to Sunnyside.

That afternoon another batch of two hundred made the trip to the barn. Manuel stayed away from Katie, but his dark gaze often lingered on her. Just after sunset, the last ewe scuttled through the gate at Sunnyside.

He found Manuel dismounting Juan's old horse in the darkness. "Go find Dave," he said. "He'll write you a check."

"Qué?"

"You're done here."

Manuel stared at him. "You firing me because of that girl, man?"

"Vamoose, pal."

For a moment, it seemed Manuel might take a swing at him. His fists itched hopefully. He'd love to give Manuel—or almost anybody, as a matter of fact—a good thumping right now. He'd pray for forgiveness later.

But Manuel only stomped away, swearing in Spanish. A few minutes later the taillights of his pickup vanished.

Dave met him as he led Lucky toward the trailer.

"Dude," Dave said angrily. "What'd you do that for?"

He jerked loose Lucky's saddle straps then slung the saddle over his shoulder. "He's a lazy sucker."

Dave followed him toward the pickup. "I know, but he was better than nothin'."

He dumped his saddle over the pickup bed. "We'll find somebody else tomorrow."

"Sure," Dave said sarcastically. "No problem with what we pay."

"You want him around with his filthy hands all over your sister?"

"She won't be here all the time, dude. If we're gonna be partners, you've gotta talk to me about this stuff. You can't just go shootin' off like this."

Katie stepped around the back of the trailer, headed toward them. He walked away from Dave then loaded Lucky.

A minute later, he headed back to the truck where Katie stood. Avoiding her gaze, he coiled his lead rope. "Ready to go eat?"

"I need to get back and fix Dad's supper."

"Oh, let ol' money bags buy you a burger, Katie," Dave said testily. "You're the only help we got now, and that's pretty much all the pay you'll get."

At the Lone Tree Café, the three of them silently wolfed down cheeseburgers. Afterward, Katie headed toward the restroom. He stretched out his legs on the booth.

"She can handle Manuel, dude," Dave said in a calmer tone, following his gaze after her. "She wasn't raised in a houseful of boys for nothin'."

He shook a toothpick from the container on the table then picked his teeth in silence.

"Seriously." Dave gave him a knowing look. "She don't fight fair…if you know what I mean."

He chuckled grimly. Oh, yeah. She definitely hit below the belt. "It's a done deal. We'll find somebody else."

***

Dave stayed at camp with the sheep that night. The next morning before daylight, Gil found him heavy eyed and harassed in the lambing shed, two lambs in his arms.

"At least fifty of the ewes we moved yesterday lambed last night," Dave said, brushing past him on his way to a makeshift pen of hay bales. The lambs' frantic mother followed on his heels. "Go get Katie. Bring Tim, too. He'll have to help 'til we get somethin' figured out." 

Just after sunrise, Tim rode at the head of the band of sheep while he brought up the tail. Katie reined in her mare, waiting for him to approach on Lucky.

"Where's Manuel?" she asked.

He didn't stop. "Probably still in bed."

She urged Candy into step beside him. "You fired him, didn't you?"

"Why would I do that?"

She held his gaze then ducked her head. "Thank you," she said softly.

His heart jumped and an unaccustomed flush of pleasure burned his cheeks, but he nudged Lucky into a trot.

"Not everything's about you," he said over his shoulder.

***

Throughout the next week, Dave stayed at camp, attending the tidal wave of new lambs while Gil, along with Katie, his grandfather, and sometimes Tim moved sheep back and forth across the valley to the shearing shed.

He only spoke to Katie as necessary while they worked together. She didn't seek out his company, but she didn't avoid him like she had for months, either. Her silent presence kept him in turmoil, chafing at him like a horse hair he couldn't spit off his tongue.

He still couldn't figure out why she was there. Probably, female like, she couldn't stand it he'd almost come to grips with living without her.

Well, he wouldn't let her wreck him again. As soon as the shearing finished he'd tell her to get lost. He would.

The shearing finished. She kept showing up most days. Long hours in the saddle and even longer nights in the lambing pens left him dead on his feet and unable to think clearly. That must be why he couldn't figure out how to tell her to get lost. As soon as he could think again, he would.

He wasn't some lovesick idiot who couldn't let go.

One night, a late blizzard roared down the Rockies, dumping a foot of heavy snow at Sunnyside. The storm triggered a burst of labor pains in the ewes and sometime after midnight, he let himself into the dark silence of the Campbell house. Snow melted on his slicker as he moved quietly down the hall to Katie's room where a nightlight glowed.

She'd cleaned the room since his last visit. Lance's picture sat on the dresser again. The kid slept in a crib next to the wall and Katie lay on her side in the bed, her lashes fanned across her cheeks. Her braid fell over her shoulder, bare except for her nightgown strap.

He stepped close to her bed, but didn't touch her. "Katie, wake up."

She stirred, opening her eyes. Their sleepy depths held his, almost like…she'd been waiting. For him.

"Gil?"

"We need some help at camp."

She sat up, rubbing her face. "Okay."

"The kid?" he asked with his gaze on the pale outline of her shoulders.

She pulled the covers around her. "I'll put him in bed with Dad."

A few minutes later, she slid into the warm pickup. He drove into the swirling white wall of snow insulating them from the world outside. She huddled in her coat across the seat, the curve of her face in the glow of the dash lights soft and drowsy.

He cleared his throat. "I know you'd rather have tea, but there's coffee in my thermos if you want it."

"I'm okay." She glanced at him from under her lashes. "Thank you."

His heart hammered against his ribs. "Yeah," he said.

At Sunnyside, he led her through makeshift pens of hay bales to one where a ewe strained beneath the glow of a kerosene lantern.

"I think this one's got two or three lambs tangled up. Dave's busy, and my hand's too big to stick up a sheep's rear."

She looked at him, questioning.

"Yours ain't," he said by way of explanation.

A minute later, he squatted beside her where she lay stretched out on her belly behind the straining ewe, her arm inside the sheep halfway to her elbow.

Frowning with concentration, she raised her gaze. "I don't know what I'm doing."

"Pick a leg. Follow it to the joint, see if it's a front or back―"

"That's what I'm trying to do, but it's not as easy—" She broke off with a grunt of effort. "Wait. Maybe…"

A few minutes later, she delivered the first lamb onto the straw, and then two more. Soft lantern-light glowed on her disheveled hair where she knelt beside him, her arm covered with mucus. A smile of wonder spread slowly across her face. The lambs shook their knobby heads and their thin cries brought the ewe scrambling to her feet. Whirling to face them, the new mother gave an almost human start of surprise at three lambs instead of one.

Katie laughed. Then she turned her smile on him.

And he couldn't breathe. How had he imagined for even a minute he could make a life without her in it?

He held her gaze. Her smile slowly faded.

"You like the lambs?" he asked.

She nodded.

"Do you…still think it was stupid for me to buy them?" His stomach tightened while he awaited her answer.

"Gil…" Her eyes softened with remorse. "No."

He forgot she didn't belong to him anymore. Gently, he reached to stroke his thumb across her cool, smooth cheek and the slight hollow beneath her cheekbone…it hadn't been there the last time he'd touched her face.

Her eyes closed. Trembling, she slowly turned her cheek into his hand. His heart raced wildly as he leaned into the smell of lightning and the scent of soap on her warm skin. She didn't breathe. He brushed his lips against the curve of her mouth.

Then she forgot she didn't belong to him, too.

For a long, heart stopping moment she forgot.

He moved to draw her into his arms. "Katie…"

She stiffened. Her eyes flew open wide. She stared at him in guilty panic.

"Oh, no," she whispered. "Oh, no…" She bolted to her feet and ran, disappearing into snowy darkness.

He stared after her, shaken.

That had been Lance between them in her gaze, not God.

She hadn't made a promise to God about him. If she had, she'd never have come near him…not to help with the sheep, certainly not to kiss him.

The ewe moved from one lamb to the next, her tongue licking furiously, a low chuckling sound rumbling in her chest. A lamb staggered to its feet, teetering on spindly legs toward the ewe's udder.

Katie had just let him think the one thing that would make him leave her alone. But, why?

He lifted his hat to rub his fingers through his hair. Why'd women do anything they did?

Whatever her reasons…she'd made a huge mistake. The flame God had kindled between them was still there. It always would be. She'd never be able to erase that…or him. No matter how hard she tried.

He had to make her wake up before it was too late. She was stubborn enough to marry Lance someday. Maybe twenty-five miserable years down the road she'd want to meet him in Lance's barn one night.

And maybe he'd do it, too. Then what?

He'd have turned into his father.

He hardened his jaw. She wasn't going to drag him any farther down that road. If she thought he'd roll over and play dead again after she'd given him a glimpse of his own Katie tonight, she was crazy.

She'd been in the driver's seat ever since the day he'd met her, but—he rose with a grim smile—from now on…?

He'd drive the bus.

Chapter Nineteen

One evening two weeks later, Tim gulped air, reared back in a Campbell kitchen chair, and gave a terrific belch.

"No contest, man," Gil said, shaking his head. "I could let 'er rip better than that in kindergarten."

Katie entered the kitchen with the kid on her hip. He gulped air then let out an explosive belch. She slammed a bottle onto the counter, her shoulders stiff.

"Awesome," Tim said. "I bow to the better man, dude."

He grinned at Tim then turned to Lance's gawky figure at the end of the table. "Hey, Lance…Go ahead. Give it a go."

Lance glanced uneasily at Katie.

She whirled. "He's got more class than that, you moron. Don't you have anything better to do than sit around in here eating all the cookies and belching like a camel?"

He grinned. "Nope."

With an irritated exclamation, she flung out of the room with the kid clinging to her hip like a flea on a mad cat. Lance hesitated then rose to follow her down the hall. A murmur of voices sounded from the vicinity of her room.

"Just go away," she said, her voice rising, "I've got to study."

Her bedroom door slammed.

He turned to Tim. "What's she studyin' for?"

"She only had two or three credits left to finish school when Mom died. The principal told her she could finish at home."

He stared at Tim in surprise. "She'll get to graduate, after all?"

Tim grimaced. "If they let mean people graduate."

Lance wandered into the kitchen, his ears red, and then lifted his jacket from the back of the chair and slipped it on.

"She's got a tongue like a chainsaw, don't she, dude?" he said sympathetically. "You shouldn't put up with it. It's like my dad says…there's too many good horses out there to put up with a bad one."

Lance flushed. "She's tired is all."

He eyed Lance as he crossed to the door and left. The guy was hopeless. Katie was way too much firepower for him…like a .458 magnum elephant rifle against a BB gun. She'd eat him alive and he'd just stand there and let her.

He headed down the hall. "You need a ride in the mornin'?" he asked through her closed bedroom door.

"No," she snapped sarcastically. "I can walk. It's only twelve miles."

"Okay. Have it your way."

"Okay. Have fun bottle feeding all those bummers."

"I could feed 'em. Any moron can feed bum lambs."

"Perfect."

"While I'm feedin' bummers, you can build the hay barn."

"I would, but I didn't take building lessons from Dr. Seuss."

"Hey," he said, stung. "That salvaged lumber might not look so hot, but it's a good barn."

"It's magnificent."