The Cowboy (28 page)

“I never meant to suggest—”

“It’s not that I think people couldn’t appreciate something less than perfection. It’s simply that I prefer it myself.” She turned away and focused on the painting,
her head tilted to one side. “Like this stallion. He wasn’t quite perfect. But I’ve made him perfect.”

Callie took a second look and realized that the stallion Mrs. Blackthorne had painted, and the one featured at the Rafter S auction, weren’t at all the same animal. She and her father hadn’t bid on the number
2
stud because he was too heavy in the chest, which would have made him too slow getting off his front feet. Mrs. Blackthorne had painted a flawlessly proportioned cutting horse.

“Yes,” Callie agreed. “He is perfect.”

But by then, Eve Blackthorne had already turned back to her work.

Once the studio door was closed behind them, Trace said, “I hope you’ll forgive my mother. She isn’t rude on purpose. When she’s working on a painting she doesn’t notice much of anything that goes on around her.”

“Her work is truly incredible,” Callie conceded. “So …” She searched for the right word. “Perfect.”

Trace smiled ruefully. “It’s sometimes hard even for the critics to find enough superlatives.”

“I have to admit I can’t wait to see the completed work. How long does it take your mother to finish a painting?”

“That’s anybody’s guess,” Trace said. “Some are done in a matter of weeks. Some take months. Some she never finishes.”

“I hope she finishes this one,” Callie said.

She could feel Trace’s palm against the small of her back, directing her. How many times had he put his hand in that same spot when their bodies were joined to urge her closer? Callie felt the curl of desire in her belly and stepped away from his touch.

She didn’t realize where they were going until they crossed the threshold of a room lined with shelves that contained hundreds of leather-bound books, and she saw Blackjack sitting behind an oak desk.

“About time you showed up,” Blackjack said. “Handy came to me for instructions this morning when he couldn’t find you.”

Trace checked his cell phone. “I guess I had my phone turned off. I trust you managed all right without me.”

“I told him what needed to be done,” his father said. “How are you, Mizz Monroe?”

Callie wasn’t prepared for Blackjack’s cordial greeting. “Fine,” she blurted.

“I hear you and my son are courting,” he said, in a voice that suggested their eventual marriage was a foregone conclusion.

Before Callie could make a retort, Trace said, “Dusty and I are meeting this morning to work on the infrastructure for the breeding operation. Do you want to come?”

“Where are you meeting?”

“At Dusty’s place. He’s moved into one of the manager’s houses—the one Harry Pope lived in.”

“Why don’t you have the meeting here?” Blackjack asked.

“Dusty’s already arranged for an architect and a building contractor to meet us at his place.”

“What time?”

“Nine sharp,” Trace replied.

“Count me in,” Blackjack said. He turned back to Callie and asked, “How’s your mother?”

Before her mother’s confession last night, Callie might have convinced herself that Blackjack was merely being
neighborly. Now she knew the truth. “My mother’s fine,” she said curtly.

“When is she getting out of the hospital?”

“In a couple of days.” Callie couldn’t keep the antagonism out of her voice. Blackjack was still too handsome, and her mother had obviously never gotten over him.

“I’ve got to take Callie by Three Oaks,” Trace said, apparently aware of her agitation. “Then I’ll be back to pick you up.”

“No hurry,” his father replied, a gleam in his eyes as his gaze shifted from Trace to Callie and back again. “I understand young lovers need their time alone.”

Callie felt a flush—of anger, or humiliation, or both—creeping up her throat and fled before Blackjack could see it.

“What an insufferable man,” she muttered.

And a powerful enemy.

She felt like circling the wagons, bringing in the children and horses, storing up water, and loading her guns for the fight to come.

“Take me home,” she told Trace. “I want to go home.”

T
race wished his father to Hades. Couldn’t the old man let well enough alone? Callie was walking so fast through the house, she was almost running, and she had a panicked look in her eyes.

“Callie—”

“I want to go home,” she repeated, cutting him off.

“No problem,” he said. “You can visit Hannah before I drop you off at the cabin.”

Her lips pressed flat, and she didn’t say another word until they were out of the house. When she started to get in the hunting car he said, “I’m changing vehicles.” He gestured to a Chevy pickup parked next to the Buick.

Without a word, she got in and sat facing forward, as though she had a steel rod down her spine. “Take me home,” she said.

He didn’t argue with her, merely drove her across Blackthorne property to the gate at the boundary of Three Oaks. He stopped and turned to her. “I think we should talk here, where we won’t upset Hannah.”

“We have nothing to discuss,” Callie said. “I’m going home, and I’m staying there. End of discussion.”

“You need some rest, Callie.”

“I got a full night’s rest. And you got what you wanted this morning. Now take me home.”

His eyes narrowed. It hadn’t been sex for money. That wasn’t what he’d wanted from her, and that wasn’t what she’d given to him. “If you don’t want to stay at the cabin, where I can keep an eye on you, then I guess I’ll have to move in with you.”

“What are you suggesting?”

He started the truck and bumped his way through the gate. “I thought I made myself pretty clear. I’ll be moving in at Three Oaks this evening.”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, thinking I’d agree to such a thing!”

“I’m not asking you, Callie,” he said in a hard voice. “I’m telling you. In case you’ve forgotten, I’ve invested a great deal of money in you, and I intend to protect my investment.”

She crossed her arms and stuck her nose in the air.
“You’re only going to make things a thousand times worse.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

When he stopped at the back door to Three Oaks, she shoved open the door to the pickup and scrambled out. Before she could slam it, he said, “I’ll be back at sundown.”

“Don’t expect to be welcome!”

Trace drove away with a knot in his stomach.

He spent a frustrating morning trying to make headway on the infrastructure for his breeding operation. His father vetoed every plan submitted by the architect. The contractor announced he had to start work in ten days or be forced to take another job. Trace stared down Blackjack, until he finally agreed to one of the plans the architect had submitted for a foaling barn, with certain changes, and the contractor agreed to have it completed by the end of the year. Although the meeting demanded his attention, Callie was never far from his mind.

Trace spent the rest of the day working with Russell Handy, cutting down mesquite trees and then dredging their roots under with a giant disc harrow. Clearing the mesquite was a dusty, dirty, thankless job, but it had to be done. The scratches left by mesquite thorns, and the protection the impenetrable undergrowth gave to flies, made the worm hazard to cattle a dozen times worse in the brush. Once Trace had all the mesquite in this pasture plowed under, he planned to plant Blue Stem grass, which put roots down more than ten feet, choking out the brush.

Trace was grateful for the physical effort the work required, because it distracted him from the confrontation with Callie he knew was coming at sundown. He could
conquer the brush with sheer brute strength. It wasn’t going to be that simple to deal with Callie.

Trace wasn’t sure himself why he was forcing the issue by moving in with her. It was bound to cause problems. But he had never felt with another woman the joy he’d felt waking up with Callie this morning. He didn’t want to give that up. And she owed him. She’d stolen something precious when she’d walked away from him eleven years ago. And until the day came when he left Texas for good, he intended to make up for lost time.

“See you tomorrow,” Trace said to the
segundo
at the end of the day, as he slid wearily into the cab of his pickup.

“I’ll be here,” Handy replied, touching the brim of his Stetson in obeisance.

Trace needed a bath. He was covered in dust, which his sweat had turned to mud, and he itched all over. He considered stopping by the Castle before he headed to Three Oaks, but he found himself more anxious to get to Callie than he was uncomfortable.

He regretted that decision when he stepped inside the kitchen at Three Oaks to find Callie nowhere in sight, an argument in progress between Eli and Luke, and no supper cooking. He realized he was not only hot and tired and dirty. He was also hungry.

“What the hell is the problem here?” he demanded.

Luke and Eli stopped yelling at each other and turned on him, like wolf pups facing a menacing mountain lion. It was plain from the look on their faces, that while they weren’t happy to see him, they weren’t surprised, either.

Callie might not want him here. But she’d expected him to come. She must have decided it was better to tell
her family he was welcome, than to fight a war when he arrived.

Luke glared at him and said, “Callie told me to make hamburgers for supper, but Eli forgot to take the hamburger out of the freezer this morning.” He held up a fist-size lump wrapped in aluminum foil and said, “How am I supposed to make hamburger patties out of frozen hamburger?”

“Make Sloppy Joe’s,” Trace said flatly.

“I don’t like Sloppy Joe’s,” Eli whined.

“You made the mistake. You suffer the consequences,” Trace decreed. “Get supper started, Luke, before we all starve.”

Luke was happy to have the matter decided in his favor, and got down the electric skillet to start browning the hamburger.

Before Eli could stomp off, Trace caught his arm and asked, “Where are Rosalita and your mom and your sister?”

“Rosalita went home. Mom went grocery shopping and took Hannah along.”

Trace was frustrated to hear that Callie had sent Rosalita home, but glad for the chance to freshen up before she saw him. He looked worse than a calf with the slobbers. “Which is the best shower?” he asked.

“The only one that works is in Mom’s room” Eli suddenly noticed Trace’s canvas bag. “What’s in there?”

“Everything I need to move in,” Trace said matter-of-factly.

“Where are you planning to sleep?” Eli demanded.

He intended to slip into bed with Callie, but he didn’t think Eli was ready to hear that. He glanced through the
kitchen door into the living room. “I guess I’ll bunk down on the sofa. Unless you’ve got an empty room upstairs?”

“All the bedrooms are taken,” Eli said with satisfaction.

“What about your aunt Bay’s room. She’s away at school, isn’t she?”

“You don’t wanta sleep in a girl’s room,” Eli said certainly.

Any bed was preferable to the Victorian sofa in the living room. And he would much rather be on the same floor as Callie than have to maneuver his way up a flight of creaky stairs in the dead of night. “Why don’t you show me Bay’s room?”

“All right,” Eli said. “But you’re not gonna like it.”

Trace wasn’t crazy about the lacy canopy that topped the double bed, or the piles of stuffed animals that adorned the pillows, but he was across the hall from Callie’s bedroom. He sent Eli back downstairs to help with supper while he unpacked a change of clothes and a few toiletries from his bag.

He left his boots in Bay’s room and walked barefoot across the wooden floor to Callie’s bedroom. He left his dirty clothes on the rag rug next to her bed and carried his toiletries into the bathroom. The water in the shower wasn’t as hot as he liked it, and there wasn’t much water pressure, but he was grateful for even the halfhearted spray as he used a bit of Callie’s apple-scented shampoo to wash his hair.

He had just wrapped a too-small towel around his waist, when the bathroom door opened. He expected it to be Callie, but it was Hannah.

“Hi,” she said, smiling up at him.

He clutched at the towel. “You should have knocked,” he growled, yearning for the hot, pulsing showerhead, much larger towels, and blessed privacy of the bathroom at the cabin. He wondered whether Callie’s children walked into her bedroom at all hours without knocking. He’d have to make sure there was a lock on her door before he made any midnight visits.

“Are you mad at me?” Hannah asked.

He saw her chin begin to wobble and felt his resentment melt. “I need to shave,” he said. “You can stand on the toilet seat, if you want to watch.”

“Okay,” Hannah said.

Trace lifted her up, then lathered his face with foamy shaving cream and located his razor. Before he’d taken the first stroke, Eli had crowded into the bathroom and was standing beside him.

“My dad used to shave in the morning.”

“I have to do it morning and evening, if I don’t want to show up at the supper table with a beard,” Trace explained.

“Mom wouldn’t care,” Eli said, hanging over the sink and staring up at him. “She liked it when Dad rubbed his beard on her face. It made her laugh.”

That was a bit of information Trace could have done without. It was painful to think of Callie laughing with Nolan Monroe. Loving Nolan Monroe. He shaved quickly, wanting the job done before Callie herself showed up to see what was keeping him.

“What does that feel like?” Eli asked.

“It’s like mowing hay,” Trace replied. “One blade lifts the beard up, the next cuts it off.”

“But what does it
feel
like?” Eli insisted.

Trace stopped shaving, picked up the can of Gillette shaving cream, and said, “Hold out your hand.”

When Eli held out his hand, Trace spritzed a small amount of lather into it. “Spread that on your cheek,” he instructed.

Eli edged Trace aside so he could look into the mirror while he was working.

“I want some, too,” Hannah said.

“Girls don’t shave,” Trace said.