Chapter
Ten
With the horse sale only two days away, there was
a steady bustle of activity at the Triple C headquarters. Adding to
the seemingly constant flow of horses coming and going from the
barns to the work pens, a half dozen buyer’s reps had already shown
up to get an advance look at the horses being offered for sale. A
couple were inspecting the horses in the stalls, but the rest were
scattered around the pens, observing the horses being exercised and
put through their paces.
As Laredo left the big-timbered barn,
he spotted one of the reps standing at the rails of the large
cattle pen, watching a cutting horse at work. The minute he got a
good look at the claybank stallion through the gaps in the fence
rails, Laredo guessed there would be questions and veered toward
the rep. He was right.
“Would you happen to know the catalog
number for that stud?” the man asked as soon as Laredo reached the
fence.
“That’s Cougar’s Pride,” Laredo told
him. “You won’t find him in the catalog. He’s not for sale, but
it’s his get you’ll be bidding on.”
Disappointment flickered in the man’s
expression. He gave the middle rail a slap and made a pushing turn
away from the fence. “Tell Calder if he should change his mind
about selling that stallion, I’ve got a buyer. And with that stud,
he can name his price.”
“I’ll pass it on, but I wouldn’t hold
my breath,” Laredo replied.
The man walked away, and Laredo climbed
onto the top rail to watch the champion stallion at work. He had
barely settled on his perch when he caught the flash of blond hair
and bare skin. And he privately marveled that the rep had noticed
the stallion at all with Laura in the saddle.
The flashy dun stallion crouched low,
pouncing first one way then the other to frustrate the cow’s
attempts to rejoin the herd, exhibiting all the agility and
cat-quickness of a mountain lion. Laura sat deep and balanced in
the saddle, giving the horse no cues, aware that he needed
none.
A beauty Laura had always been, easily
worth two or three looks. But today it was her attire that was
drawing male stares. Brown leather chaps covered a pair of
skin-tight jeans, and a matching leather vest stopped just below
her breasts, about the same place as the crop top she wore, baring
her midriff.
Leave it to Laura to
come up with an eye-catching getup like that, Laredo thought
and shook his head in amusement.
After working the cow almost to a stop,
Laura reined the claybank stallion away from it, letting it rejoin
the penned herd. She waved at one of the riders, loosely holding
the cattle, and called, “That should do it.”
A horse and rider moved into Laredo’s
side vision. He glanced to the right as Trey halted a
three-year-old colt parallel with the fence. Laura spotted him at
almost the same moment and rode over.
“You’re every bit the horsewoman that
your mother is,” Laredo told her when she halted the stallion near
the fence.
“All I did is sit in the saddle. This
guy did all the work by himself.” She tunneled a hand under the
stallion’s black mane and gave him a congratulatory pat. “I swear,
no one works cattle with the ease of The King,” she said, using the
nickname the ranch hands had given to the claybank stud when he was
a yearling.
The stallion was the last thing on
Trey’s mind. “What the hell are you doing in that outfit, Laura?”
he demanded, disapproval vibrating in his low voice. “You look like
something out of Playboy
magazine.”
Laura never blinked an eye. “Don’t be
naive, Trey,” she chided. “If I were posing for Playboy, I’d have to ditch the jeans and the top, and
you know it.”
As she uttered the last, a Land Rover
pulled up to the pens. Her attention immediately swung to it. When
a tall dark-haired man climbed out of the driver’s side, Laura
stood up in the stirrups and waved to draw the man’s
attention.
“Hey, Boone,” she called. “Meet me at
the gate.”
The minute she said the name,
understanding dawned in Trey’s expression. “I forgot Crockett was
supposed to show up this afternoon. That’s why you’re dressed so
sexy, isn’t it?”
Laura didn’t deny it as she swung the
stallion away from the railing and fired a warning look at her
brother. “So help me, Trey, if you call him Crockett while he’s
here, I’ll steal all your shorts and leave you with only the silk
ones to wear.”
Without giving him a chance to reply,
she cantered the stallion the last few yards to the gate. While
Trey watched, Boone Rutledge swung the gate open and Laura rode
through, then pulled up to wait for him to shut it. She made no
attempt to dismount until Boone had moved to the stallion’s head.
Trey couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but he
could see the way the man’s eyes raked over Laura.
“I’m surprised his tongue isn’t hanging
out,” he muttered to Laredo.
“You can say that about nearly every
man who sees her,” Laredo reminded him.
With Trey looking on, Laura dismounted
and managed to stumble against Boone yet make it look like an
accident. But Trey saw through the act.
“You know,” He glanced at Laredo, a
grimness entering his expression, “having Laura for a sister makes
it hard for me to trust anything a woman says or
does.”
Laredo chuckled, but Trey was dead
serious.
Laura stayed against Boone, tipping her
head back to look up at him, conscious of his hands clasped around
her bare middle, knowing that he was equally aware of it. She laid
her hands on his upper arms as if to push away, then left them
there to feel the rock-hardness of his biceps.
“I had forgotten how strong you are,”
she murmured.
“Funny. I hadn’t forgotten how
beautiful you are.” There was a primitive quality to the look of
desire in his dark eyes.
Just for an instant, she pressed
herself more fully against him to make certain the feel of her body
against his would be imprinted in his mind before she drew back. “I
was beginning to wonder,” Laura said with a touch of coyness,
“considering how long it took you to get here.”
“Then you did want me to come,” Boone
stated, a cocky kind of male confidence flaring in his expression.
“On the phone you didn’t seem all that excited about seeing me
again.”
“A woman shouldn’t sound eager,” she
told him. “It wouldn’t be proper.”
“You don’t look all that proper.” His
glance dropped to the bareness of her middle and the navel that was
exposed by her low-riding jeans.
She laughed. “That’s because I seldom
feel proper around you. Besides, being proper can become boring,
and I hate being bored.” Turning her back to him, Laura unlooped
the reins from around the stallion’s neck and stepped to his head,
then glanced back at Boone. “Want to walk along while I take The
King back to his stall and unsaddle him?”
Boone looked at her with surprised
frown. “Can’t someone else put him up?”
“On the Triple C, a rider takes care of
his or her own horse. Only guests can get away with passing them
off to someone else. It’s an ironclad rule that can be broken only
in the event of a dire emergency.” Laura paused to slant him a
provocative glance. “Did you think I had led a pampered
life?”
“A woman like you deserves to be
pampered.”
“Careful,” Laura warned lightly. “Some
women might mistake a remark like that for a
proposal.”
“What makes you so certain it isn’t?”
Boone countered, matching strides with her when she struck out for
the stallion barn.
She gave him a considering look. “It
might be,” Laura conceded. “You do seem to be the impulsive
type.”
“And you aren’t?”
“Oh, I’m definitely impulsive, but
never rash.”
“There’s a difference?”
“Definitely.” But Laura didn’t bother
to explain the distinction, choosing to change the subject instead.
“So what do you think of the Triple C?”
“It’s quite a spread.” It wasn’t so
much his words as his expression that told Laura he was impressed
by what little he had seen.
“I’ll take you on a tour of it after I
get The King settled in his stall,” she said. “And I’ll show you
the horses that will be up for auction. That is, after all, the
reason you’re here.” Her sideways glance invited him to deny that
the horse sale was the main attraction for him.
Boone didn’t disappoint her. “It’s
hardly the only reason.”
“That’s good to know. By the way,”
Laura said, making another lightning-fast change of subject, “did
Tara pass along the invitation for you and Max to join us for
dinner tomorrow evening?”
“She did.”
From her bedroom window Laura saw the
Land Rover pull up in front of The Homestead. Even before Boone
stepped out of the vehicle, she felt that little hum of excitement
that came with being confronted with a challenge. She had spent
much of the last two days constantly in his company, at his side,
but never alone with him. It was part of her plan—to be within
reach, yet out of reach.
Briefly Laura toyed with the idea of
making an entrance, then rejected it as too dramatic. She paused in
front of the mirror and absently ran a smoothing hand over the
waistline of her teal-colored dress, then gave her blond hair a
push to increase its fullness and exited the room to run lightly
down the oak staircase.
As she reached its broad landing, her
grandfather’s voice reached out to her. “There you are. I was just
about to holler upstairs and let you know your guests had arrived.”
He stood outside the double doors to the den, his aging body tilted
to one side as he leaned on the support of his cane. “I thought you
might want to be on hand to welcome this Crockett fellow in
person.”
Laura opened her mouth to correct him,
then saw the twinkle in his brown eyes. “Honestly, Gramps, you are
as bad as Trey,” she admonished with affection and crossed the
living room to his side.
“You mean that isn’t his
name?”
“It’s Boone, and you know it. Now hold
still. Your tie is crooked.” She reached up to center it. “And
please try to be on your best behavior tonight. I think he might
want to marry me.”
Unimpressed, Chase Calder responded
with a harrumph. “He certainly isn’t the first.”
“I know.” Laura smoothed the lay of his
collar. “But he’s the first I might consider
accepting.”
“Really?” He showed his
surprise.
“Yes, really. So, be
good.”
“I thought you just met him when you
were in Europe.”
Laura didn’t bother to recount the
number of times she had seen Boone, first in Rome, then in England
and on the Triple C. “Now, Gramps,” she reasoned instead, “when
have you ever known me to be slow at making up my mind about
anything? And just imagine the kind of splash a marriage between
the Rutledges of Texas and the Calders of Montana would
make.”
His gaze narrowed, anger flaring in the
wells of his eyes. “I knew it was a mistake to let you spend all
that time in Europe with Tara. That’s the kind of talk you hear
from her.”
“But if I hadn’t gone, I might never
have met Boone,” Laura responded.
“Do you love him?” The question
bordered on a challenge.
Considering how close she had come to
falling in love with Sebastian, Laura didn’t consider love to be
the most trustworthy of emotions. But she had long ago learned that
where women were concerned, her grandfather tended to be idealistic
rather than pragmatic.
“Any woman could love Boone, including
me.” She believed that. More importantly, Laura was confident of
her ability to manage him. “Wait until you meet him, Gramps.” She
hooked an arm around his and directed him toward the entry. “He’s
one of those big, tall Texans with a potent animal magnetism that
can make any girl’s heart beat faster.”
But her reply failed to provide Chase
with much peace of mind. In his way of thinking, Laura put way too
much stock in the things that Tara considered important. And that
tended to color his attitude toward this Boone
Rutledge.
Chase vaguely recalled having met Max
Rutledge before, but most of what he knew about the family was by
reputation. Rutledge was a name that carried weight in a lot of
circles. And from what Chase had heard, the old man wasn’t shy
about throwing it around. He was known for being a ruthless
businessman and a demanding boss. As for the son, other than some
idle talk about him being a disappointment to the old man, Chase
knew nothing.
He looked Boone over good when Laura
introduced him. The man was tall, as tall as Trey, with a more
muscled chest and shoulders. He had his father’s hard features and
a look of coarse masculinity that Chase supposed Laura had chosen
to call “animal magnetism.” Try as he might, Chase couldn’t fault
the courtesy and respect Boone showed him, but he took an instant
dislike to the possessive way he looked at Laura. Something about
it made his hackles rise in anger, but he couldn’t put his finger
on just what it was.
All through the social hour that
preceded dinner and the meal itself, Chase puzzled over it,
contributing little to the conversation. A dozen times his
attention strayed to the couple, observing the glances Laura
slanted at Boone, subtly suggestive and flirtatious, the same kind
that Tara had once practiced on his son Ty. And with each of
Laura’s attentions, the possessive gleam in Boone’s eyes grew
brighter.
By meal’s end Chase was no closer to
identifying the thing that troubled him about Boone. Chase knew he
was getting too damned old, and his discernment wasn’t nearly as
sharp as it once had been.
There was only one man, other than
Laredo, whose judgment he trusted. Chase started to get up, then
sat back down in his chair and did something he would never have
done under any other circumstances.
“Logan, will you give me a hand here?”
he said, careful to inject the right note of impatience for his
supposed infirmity.
Seated closer, Trey immediately pushed
back his own chair. “I’ll help you, Gramps.”
“No.” Chase waved him off. “You take
the rest of them into the den. We’ll be there directly. It’s just
going to take me a bit longer than you young folks.”
Even with Logan’s assistance, Chase
made certain they were the last ones to move away from the table.
It didn’t take Logan long to catch on to his delaying
tactics.
“What’s the problem?” Logan pitched his
voice low to keep it from carrying.
“Laura’s new beau,” Chase muttered, his
gaze tracking the man exiting the dining room with his
granddaughter. “The way he looks at her.”
“You mean, like she’s a prize to be
won?”
“That’s it.” The fog cleared in his
mind. There was heat in the man’s look, but no warmth or
tenderness, Chase realized.
“I wouldn’t worry,” Logan told him. “If
Laura hasn’t noticed it already, she will.”
“But will she care?”
It was a question without an answer,
and Logan didn’t bother to attempt one.
“Tara’s to blame for this,” Chase
grumbled, mostly to himself as they trailed after the others. “The
first time she set foot in this house, I should have shown her the
door. It would have saved this family a lot of grief—then and
now.”
With Logan at his side, Chase thumped
into the den with his cane. As he headed for his customary seat
behind the big desk, he slid a glance around the room and
immediately noticed both Laura and Boone were absent.
“Where’s Laura?” he asked no one in
particular.
It was Tara who answered. “She and
Boone went outside to enjoy the sunset.” She set a cup of coffee on
the table next to Max Rutledge’s wheelchair. “Would you like some
coffee, Chase? Or something stronger?”
“Coffee’s fine,” he said and continued
on his way around the desk.
“Here you go, Dad.” Cat took the cup of
coffee that Jessy had just poured and carried it to the
desk.
“Is that the famous map of the Triple C
Ranch that I’ve heard so much about?” Max gestured to the framed
map hanging on the wall behind the desk. Age had yellowed the
background of the hand-drawn map that identified the water courses,
outlying camps, and various landmarks as well as the boundaries of
the ranch.
Chase stopped to look at it. “My
grandfather drew that more than a hundred years ago. The boundaries
haven’t changed more than a few inches since that
time.”
“Not many family ranches can make that
boast these days,” Max declared.
“It’s no boast. It’s a fact.” Chase
maneuvered himself in front of the oversized swivel chair, gripped
the armrest, and lowered himself onto the cushioned
seat.
“Naturally.” Max nodded briefly in a
kind of respectful apology. “I didn’t mean to imply
otherwise.”
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr.
Rutledge.” Cat smiled affectionately at her father. “Dad’s gotten a
bit testy lately.”
“She’s trying to make you believe I’ve
turned into a crotchety old goat,” Chase declared.
“I am not,” Cat protested, then saw the
teasing light in his eyes. “You are impossible, Dad.”
“So you’ve told me before.” His
attention strayed to the window and the couple moving down the
steps and striking out in the direction of the ranch
buildings.
“I must say,” Max began, drawing
Chase’s glance back to him, “I never expected to see a set of Texas
longhorns this far north. That’s quite a pair you have hanging
above the mantel. What are they, six feet across?”
“Closer to seven,” Chase replied. “They
came off the old brindle steer that led every Calder herd north
from Texas. Old Captain was always something of a legend back in
those early days of the Triple C. It’s good to keep a reminder like
that around.”
“I don’t imagine a lot of people know
you Calders came here from Texas,” Max said with seeming idleness.
“In fact, that ranch you own near the Slash R, it originally
belonged to your family, didn’t it?”
Chase nodded. “My granddaddy Seth
Calder settled the place.”
“The next time you go down there, you
need to look me up,” Max told him. “Give me a chance to return some
of your hospitality, one neighbor to another.”
“I appreciate the invitation,” Chase
acknowledged, “but I’m getting too old to make a long trip like
that.”
“I know what you mean.” Max rubbed a
hand over one of his bony, lifeless legs. “Traveling has gotten to
be more of an ordeal with each passing year.”
“That’s why I stick close to home.”
Chase sensed this conversation was leading to something; he just
didn’t know what.
“It can’t be convenient being an
absentee landlord, especially when there’s so much distance between
the two ranches,” Max observed, providing Chase with his first
solid clue. “If you ever decide you want to sell the C Bar, let me
know. I’m interested in buying it.”
“Calder land is never for sale.” Chase
was cool with his answer.
Max smiled in understanding. “I feel
the same way about Rutledge land. I only mentioned buying it
because I think it would make an appropriate wedding present.” He
gave Chase a long, considering look. “Almost from the moment I met
your granddaughter, I’ve never made it a secret that I’d like my
son to marry her.”
For a moment Chase looked down at the
blotter on his desk, smiled wryly, and exhaled an amused breath,
then lifted his head to meet Max’s puzzled glaze. “It seems I owe
you an apology.”
“What for?” Max frowned in genuine
bewilderment.
“When you offered to buy the C Bar, I
assumed it was the abundant water resources on it that you wanted.
I didn’t realize your motive was something more personal. For that,
I apologize, Mr. Rutledge.”
“Call me Max,” Rutledge insisted.
“After all, it’s likely we will be related one day
soon.”
It was a thought that didn’t please
Chase one bit.
Brushstrokes of crimson and orange
streaked the western horizon and tinted the undersides of the
scattered clouds. A soft breeze drifted off the river, the coolness
of its breath wafting across Laura’s face as she strolled arm in
arm with Boone toward the white-painted gazebo near the
riverbank.
His glance wandered over the collection
of picnic tables. “What’s this? Your own private
park?”
“Something like that,” she admitted.
“Situated the way we are, miles from anything that even remotely
resembles civilization, there is little in the way of entertainment
available. And what there is tends to be rustic.” Releasing his
arm, she caught hold of an upright post and stepped onto the
gazebo. “This is about the only place on the Triple C that is even
slightly romantic.”
“And private.” Boone caught her wrist
and bent her arm behind her back to draw her against him. “Do you
realize this is the first time I’ve been alone with you since I
arrived?”
Smiling, Laura gazed at him through the
tops of her lashes. “Don’t count on it lasting,” she warned. “Any
second kids can show up—to play hide-and-seek or hunt
frogs.”
“They have to go to bed sometime,
though.” He bent his head and nibbled on her neck.
The heavy scent of his cologne swirled
around her, strong and citrusy. Unbidden came the memory of how
quickly Sebastian had identified it on her skin. And Laura knew it
wasn’t wise to have thoughts of Sebastian in her mind when she was
in Boone’s arms. There was no choice; Boone would have to change
colognes. Laura smiled, knowing it wouldn’t be all that difficult
to accomplish. She would simply enlist Tara’s aid to arrange for
his current bottle to be accidentally broken and a different one
offered in its place.
“Personally,” she moved sinuously
against him and let one hand glide up to his shoulder, then slipped
the other one free from his loose grip, and curled it around his
neck, “I think we should make good use of the little bit of privacy
we have now. By tomorrow afternoon the ranch will be packed with
people. Between the party tomorrow night and the auction the day
after, it isn’t likely we’ll have a moment to
ourselves.”
He raised his head, his dark eyes like
a black fire as he pushed his hands into her hair and framed her
face with them. “We’ll make time,” he told her with a kind of
savage insistency in his voice.
But Laura knew it wouldn’t happen; she
would see to that. “Let’s make use of this time instead.” She
applied pressure to the back of his head, urging his mouth down to
hers.
The rough hunger in his kiss was
exhilarating. Laura gave herself up to it without inhibition,
letting her body come awake to the arousing caress of his hands on
her hips and back, molding her ever more firmly against him. She
felt the rigid outline of him pressed against her stomach, the
hardness of it leaving her in little doubt of his desire. But it
had to be more than just sexual desire, something any woman could
satisfy. It had to be more personal than that.
Instinctively she knew that marriage to
Boone would never work if it came about solely through Max’s force
of will. Such an event would result in Boone’s eventual resentment
of her, possibly even hatred. She had to be the trophy he brought
home, not the woman he’d married merely to satisfy his
father.
As much as she might want to let him
take her where he wanted to go, Laura knew she had to hold back,
for a while longer anyway. His big hand molded itself over her
breast, and she trembled with the longing she felt. It was almost
with relief that she heard boyish tittering coming from somewhere
close by.
With a reluctance that wasn’t feigned,
she pulled away from his kiss and said huskily, “We have
company.”
Boone threw an irritated glance at the
two boys, dressed in straw cowboy hats and boots and clutching
fishing poles and a worm can in their hands.
The distraction allowed her the
opportunity to create a little more space between them. “We might
as well walk back to the house,” she told him. “As long as we stay
here, they’ll be stealing peeks.” When he looked at her with a kind
of angry impatience, she reminded him, “I did warn
you.”
In response, his fingers dug into her
elbow. “Let’s go,” he muttered and propelled her out of the
gazebo.