Читать книгу Tough To Tame - Jackie Merritt - Страница 7

The long-distance telephone conversation began as usual; Stuart “Stu” Paxton, calling from his home in New York, asked how things were going at his ranch in Wyoming. What was unusual was the reply of the ranch manager, Jake Banyon. “I’m afraid we have a problem, Stu. A strange stallion has been gathering himself a harem of our mares. He collected one the other night and two more just last night.”

“A strange stallion, Jake? I’m not following.”

“Neither am I,” Jake said grimly. “Truth is I have no idea where he came from or who he belongs to. If he belongs to anyone, that is. He appears to be completely on his own.”

“Surely you’re not thinking he’s a wild horse,” Stuart said, sounding skeptical.

“It’s not impossible, Stu, though to be perfectly honest he has the conformation lines of good breeding. Course, I’ve only seen him once and that was from a distance.”

“And he just showed up? A full-grown stallion? Jake, he had to come from somewhere. With the ranch being so isolated and all, I mean, he didn’t just trot over from a neighbor’s field.”

“Exactly. I’ve put an ad in the Tamarack newspaper describing him. If anyone in this county owns him, they’ll be calling. In the meantime, I’ve got men out every day trying to locate his lair. I’d like to get those mares back.”

“And if you manage to capture him?”

“That’s hard to say without getting a closer look at him.” Jake was intimating that if the stallion did belong to someone, the horse might be carrying tattoos or brands identifying his owner.

Stu grasped the concept at once. “Makes sense. Well, let me know what happens.”

“Will do.” Jake then started talking about other events on the 4,000-acre Wild Horse Ranch, owned by the Paxton family for almost a century. Stuart hadn’t taken to the isolation and business of raising cattle, as his ancestors had, and he’d left the ranch right out of high school and, to this day, only went back two or three times a year. Since his father’s death ten years before, Stuart had relied entirely on hired help to keep the place going. Even though he didn’t want to live in Wyoming, he couldn’t bring himself to sell his birthright. He’d run into some bad apples posing as ranch managers, however, and now claimed to be extremely fortunate to have a man of Jake Banyon’s knowledge and expertise at the helm. During their four-year working relationship, the two men— even though Stuart was twenty years older than Jake—had formed a durable bond of mutual respect.

Jake was still talking about current affairs at the ranch when Stuart interrupted. “Jake, sorry to break in like this, but I called tonight for a reason. I need a favor. Uh, it’s a personal favor.”

Stuart sounded anxious, which startled Jake. If ever he’d met a more confident, self-assured man than Stuart Paxton, he couldn’t remember it. Nor, he realized, could he recall Stuart ever asking for, or even mentioning, a “personal favor.” This was a first, and it made Jake sit up and take notice. He would, after all, do just about anything for Stuart.

Jake had grown up on a ranch—same as Stuart—but that was the only similarity between the two men’s early years. Stuart went to college and then proceeded to make a name and a fortune for himself in the business world. Jake’s home had been in Montana. He had finished high school but he’d been too far gone on a local girl to consider leaving her to attend college—a disappointment for his father. But he’d worked as a cowhand for his dad and made plans with Gloria to get married in August.

When August rolled around that summer, however, Gloria gave him back his ring and announced that she’d met someone else. “Sorry,” she’d said calmly.

Jake went a little crazy. He was nineteen years old and believed his life was over. Everyone had advice for him, none of it meant a damn. He loved a girl who’d met “someone else,” and there was nothing he could do about it. He had never felt so helpless in his life, especially when Gloria moved away and no one would tell him where she’d gone.

He started going from woman to woman—the wilder the better—until his father gruffly told him to wake up and smell the coffee. “Jake, you’re drinking too much, and I can’t depend on you anymore. Find yourself another job.”

Years passed. Jake’s downward slide went from bad to worse, and he’d pretty much hit rock bottom when he’d finally gotten a whiff of that coffee his dad had talked about. It was at his father’s funeral—his mother had died long before—when something inside of him seemed to cave in and he saw a painfully clear image of what he’d been doing to himself over a girl who probably never had loved him. He vowed on the spot to be the kind of man his dad had been— hardworking and clean-living. He would, of course, run the family ranch.

Only there no longer was a family ranch. The bank fore-closed, and Jake—totally stunned and shaken—had tried to make some sense out of the shambles of his life. His old friends—especially the women—couldn’t understand why he avoided them or why he wasn’t hanging out at his favorite watering holes.

To make a complete break with the past, Jake left Montana and went to Wyoming to find work, and he just happened to stop in a little town called Tamarack. While eating supper in a café he read the local newspaper and saw an ad for a ranch manager. That was how he met Stuart Paxton, and to this day Jake still considered it a miracle that Stuart had taken a chance on the transient, down-on-his-luck stumblebum he’d been four years ago.

Jake’s most profound regret was that his parents, especially his father, had not lived to see the man he was today. He worked hard, he was physically strong and fit, he didn’t smoke, drink or chase wild women. In fact, the pendulum had swung so far in the other direction that Jake had become an antisocial loner. That was one reason he loved the Wild Horse Ranch; it was eighty miles from Tamarack, the nearest town, and he didn’t have to even set eyes on a woman unless he wanted to take that long drive, which didn’t happen often. His sex drive, once so outrageously out of control, was now banked and mostly forgotten. Jake questioned his wasted youth and wished he had it to do over again. He should have gone to college when Gloria broke their engagement. He should have behaved like a man, taken her rejection on the chin and gotten on with life instead of floundering in self-pity for so many years. All he could do, he’d finally decided, was to accept the way he had once lived and be proud of the way he lived now, sincerely believing that he had Stuart Paxton to thank for everything he’d accomplished.

It was the reason he said quietly, “Stu, whatever you need, if I can help out, all you have to do is name it.”

“Thanks, Jake. I knew I could count on you. Okay, here’s the situation. You’ve heard me mention my daughter Carly.”

“Uh, sure, Stu. What about her?” Actually, Jake just barely recalled Stu talking about his daughter, probably because Jake simply hadn’t been interested enough to retain the memory. Stuart’s wife had died many years ago, and Jake did remember—vaguely—Stuart saying something about the difficulties of raising a daughter without her mother.

“I brought Carly to the ranch a couple of times when she was a little girl, but then in her teens she decided she didn’t like it, so I didn’t force her to go with me when I went to Wyoming. She hasn’t been there for about fifteen years. Anyhow, this past year has really been tough on her—her divorce, you know—and, Jake, it breaks my heart to see her so unhappy. She’s trying so damned hard to pick up the pieces and start a new life that she deserves a medal. But I think she still can’t believe that a man could be as…as phony and despicable as her ex was.”

Jake frowned. There was something Stuart wasn’t saying, Jake could hear the hesitation, the holdback, in Stuart’s voice. But Jake really didn’t want to hear any sordid details about anyone’s divorce—anyone else’s personal problems, for that matter, because he had more harsh memories of his own than any one person deserved—so he didn’t encourage Stuart to say more than he had. Instead, he murmured quietly, “What is it you want me to do?” He heard his employer draw a long breath before he spoke.

“I’ve been thinking that a change of scene just might give Carly a whole new perspective. Jake, would you mind if I sent her to the ranch for a visit?”

Jake’s whole body stiffened with instantaneous dread. It was all he could do to say something even remotely sensible. “It’s your ranch,” he mumbled.

“But you’re running it, Jake. It’s your home, and if Carly’s presence would bother you in any way…”

Jake had gotten his wits together—some of them, at least. “No, no, Stu,” he said, abruptly cutting in. “Carly is more than welcome here. Anytime.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.” Jake’s mouth was so dry he felt parched. The ranch was a strictly male society. Even the cook was a man. The house was old, rundown and not especially clean. Jake was the only person who used the house at all; every other man on the place slept in the bunkhouse.

But Stuart knew all that, Jake thought uneasily. When Stuart came to the ranch, he used one of the four bedrooms on the second floor. There were boots and clothes in that particular room’s closet and bureau, things that Stuart deliberately left behind so he wouldn’t be hauling them back and forth between New York and Wyoming.

There were no bedrooms on the first floor, which meant that Carly would be sleeping upstairs, same as Jake. It flashed through Jake’s mind that he could move into the bunkhouse during her visit, but he hated giving up his privacy so much that he immediately retreated from that idea. He needed his privacy, he could not live with a bunch of men. And the crew wouldn’t like it, either. Jake had never attempted to be buddies with his men, and if he moved into the bunkhouse now, everyone on the place would be uncomfortable.

“I think Carly remembers some things about the ranch,” Stuart said. “When I brought her there as a child, my folks were still living, of course, so her memories could be more about her grandparents than about the ranch itself. But it’s a nice quiet place, Jake—which I think she needs right now— and she will own it someday, so there’s more than one reason why she should spend some time in Wyoming.”

“Anything you say, Stu.” Jake marveled at the normalcy of his voice when his pulse was leaping around erratically and his palms were sweaty. Everything had been just about perfect for four years now, ever since he’d set foot on Wild Horse Ranch. A woman on the place—any woman—would change the very air they all breathed. The men smoked, chewed tobacco, spit and cussed wherever and whenever they felt like it. They told off-color jokes and made crude references to females in general, even though most of them were married or had girlfriends and would defend the reputations of their own women to the death, if challenged.

But that was all stuff that Stuart knew, too, Jake thought. Stuart had grown up among cowhands, and there was one thing they both knew they could rely on. Cowboys might be tough talkers and hard as nails with other men, but they were respectful and often shy around a lady. Now, if the lady turned out to be not so ladylike, that was a different story, but the truth was that most cowhands—just like most men in any line of work—took their cue from the woman.

Actually, Jake admitted with a knot of anxiety in his gut, it wasn’t the men he was worried about if Carly really did come to the ranch; it was himself. He liked the status quo. He liked eating in the cookshack with the crew and not having to worry about meals. How would Carly take eating with a bunch of strange men?

Of course, there again Stuart knew the score, and Jake didn’t think it was his place to suggest that his employer’s daughter might not enjoy some of the routines on the ranch.

“When, uh, do you think she’ll be coming?”

“Probably in a week or so. I’ll let you know for sure.”

“Do you want me to meet her plane in Cheyenne?”

“No, I think I’ll hire a helicopter for the trip from Cheyenne to the ranch. I’ll let you know when everything comes together,” Stuart said.

“Yeah, okay,” Jake mumbled. They talked a few more minutes, but when Jake hung up he couldn’t remember what they’d said. He really felt as though the life he had created for himself on this beautiful piece of Wyoming land was slipping away. A rational part of his brain told him not to panic or jump to conclusions. After all, Carly Paxton might be a perfectly nice person who would fit in so smoothly that no one on the ranch would even be aware of her presence.

“Yeah, right,” Jake muttered with a dark scowl on his face. Getting up from the desk he’d been sitting at in the room used as an office in the house, he headed for the front door and stepped outside onto the wide, wraparound porch. This was a favorite after-dark retreat. The crew was somewhere in the vicinity of the bunkhouse—smoking, talking and just hanging around until bedtime—but that building was behind the main house, along with the barns and corrals, the sheds and such. Jake always felt pretty much alone on the front porch, and when the weather was good—as it was now, in late June—he spent a lot of evenings out there. It was a good place to think and to formulate the men’s work schedules. The seasons pretty much determined the cycle of work on cattle ranches, but there were still decisions to be made about which man should be doing what.

Settling himself into a chair, Jake inhaled deeply and attempted to reason away the knot of anxiety in his gut. That exercise raised a question: Who was he now? He was not the same man he’d been after Gloria dumped him, nor was he like the other cowhands on the ranch. He couldn’t compare himself to Stuart, who possessed almost a magical talent for making money and who certainly lived in a much bigger world than Jake did.

The word misfit entered Jake’s mind, and he sighed heavily. He couldn’t deny being a misfit, nor could he deny the bitterness he still felt toward all women because of what one had done to him, even though he kept it fairly well under control. For instance, it was not a subject he had ever discussed with Stuart. In fact, he hadn’t talked about his past with anyone since coming to Wyoming. Wasn’t it rather peculiar that he couldn’t get rid of the bitterness when he’d stopped seeing Gloria so long ago?

Jake thinned his lips. He hated these moments when he tried to analyze himself. Good Lord, he was no worse than any other man on the place. Everyone had problems and not everyone had solutions. He would live through Carly’s visit and, in the meantime, he’d do a little praying that she still wouldn’t like the ranch and her stay would be brief.

Other than worry, what else could he do?

This helicopter ride is by far the best part of today’s trip, Carly thought while gaping at the Wyoming landscape below the aircraft. She had very little memory of the openness, the lack of population, and realized that the things she did remember from childhood visits to the Paxton ranch were from a child’s point of view and possibly contradictory to the reality of this remote part of the world.

Today she was fascinated with the occasional huddles of buildings she saw—obviously other ranches, for the most part few and far between—and the almost traffic-free roads, the immense fields and pastures dwarfing herds of cattle and antelope. The beauty of the distant mountains—the Tetons— actually took her breath, and she felt something sigh within her, a whisper of serenity she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Carly really hadn’t wanted to come to Wyoming, and had agreed to her father’s suggestion merely to alleviate his concern for her. She had caused him terrible worries in the past year and had decided that a trip to Wyoming was a very small sacrifice for her to make, if it made her dad feel better.

Now, seeing the area for herself, through adult eyes, she realized there was no sacrifice involved. Who would not appreciate the vastness of uncluttered valleys and the grandeur of distant mountains, such as she was viewing? Small wonder that her father had become excited whenever he’d planned a trip to the ranch.

The pilot touched her arm to get her attention. “Your destination is just ahead,” he told her. “We’ll be landing in that field to the right of the house.” The copter began descending.

Carly found the spot the pilot had indicated and the corners of her lips tipped into a little half smile when she found herself nostalgically remembering the large two-story house, with its wraparound porch, and the numerous old shade trees in the yard. Attempting to absorb everything at once, her gaze moved to the barns, sheds and corrals. The lower the copter dropped, the more details she could see.

Then, movement farther out caught her eye, and she spotted two men on horseback, riding hard it seemed, trailing some distance behind a third horse. Were the men trying to catch the riderless horse? For some reason, Carly wanted to know what was happening.

“Could you get closer to those three horses?” she asked the pilot.

“Sure, no problem,” he told her.

The helicopter swung to the right and dropped lower, until it was just above the treetops. Carly could see the two riders look up and knew that the copter had startled them. At almost the same moment she got an unobstructed view of the third horse, the one without a rider.

“Oh, he’s magnificent,” she whispered in awe. The horse was black as coal, and his hide glistened with perspiration in the waning afternoon light. Why on earth were those two men running him so hard? Had he escaped a stall or corral? “What do you think is going on?” she asked the pilot.

“Looks like the men on horseback are trying to rope the third horse. They’re both carrying ropes.”

“Oh, yes, I see that now.” The black horse suddenly disappeared in a heavy stand of timber, and a minute later so did the two men and their mounts. Carly felt a pang of disappointment. She would have liked very much to see the outcome of that chase.

“Okay if we land now?” the pilot asked.

“Yes, of course. Thanks for the detour.”

“No problem at all. As I told you when we met, I’ve flown your father out to the ranch many times. He sometimes requests a few detours along the way.”

Carly smiled. “Like father, like daughter?” Carly liked being favorably compared to her father, even though she knew their personalities differed in some very crucial ways. Stuart was a laid-back easygoing guy, which sometimes gave people an erroneous impression of his intelligence and perspicacity, particularly in business. Carly, on the other hand, was high-strung, excitable and quick to speak her mind. Plus, even with a high IQ, she had inherited very little of her father’s talent for spotting a money-making deal and then knowing exactly what to do about it.

There was one more trait Carly wished she had inherited from her dad: He was an incredibly good judge of character, and she fell really short in that department. Her awful marriage was proof of that, and she wondered now if she would ever trust her own judgment of a man again. Not that she was in any kind of rush for another personal, so-called romantic relationship. Her entire system shied from the idea whenever it passed through her mind, and she didn’t doubt that it could be a very long time before she let herself be caught in that trap again. In truth, she had come to believe that the whole concept of romance was nothing more than media hype to sell magazines and expensive products to lily-livered women who believed they simply could not live any sort of productive life without a man. She was no longer in that category, thank God. Instead of the romantic little fool she’d once been, she was now a down-to-earth, unromantic, unsentimental, no-nonsense realist. No sweet-talking, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth man was ever going to pull the wool over her eyes again. She believed it with every fiber of her being.

The pilot, a pleasant, older man, smiled back. “No crime in that.”

Carly smiled again, but said no more. They were about to land and she could see a tall lanky man in jeans, boots and a big hat standing at the edge of the field.

When Jake heard the approaching helicopter, he had immediately headed for the landing field. He’d stood there frowning when the copter veered off in another direction. But he’d been able to follow its course well enough and had watched until it turned around.

Jake was admittedly nervous about this first meeting with Stuart’s daughter. To be perfectly honest, he’d been nervous since he’d lied to Stuart on the phone and said that Carly was welcome to visit the ranch anytime. She wasn’t welcome, no woman was, and Jake had been wishing for everything from a pilot’s strike canceling flights to Wyoming to a flu virus hitting the entire country that wouldn’t kill anyone but would sure keep them from traveling. Those were silly wishes, of course. Nothing was going to prevent Carly’s visit, and that fact had sank in a little deeper every day until now it seemed to gnaw at the very center of Jake’s bones.

It was especially unnerving that instead of landing immediately, the copter had flown a circle over the ranch compound. Since the pilot would have no reason to make that aerial tour, then Carly must have asked him to do it.

Hell, why wouldn’t she want to get a good look at the ranch? She hasn’t been here since she was a kid.

That argument, though sensible, didn’t elevate Jake’s dark mood by much. If Carly was the kind of woman to throw her weight around because her dad owned the ranch, then there wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the two of them getting along. And if they didn’t get along, wouldn’t it affect his and Stuart’s relationship?

Jake’s lips thinned from an abrupt onslaught of tension. He couldn’t let anything destroy, or even maim, his and Stuart’s working relationship. He and Carly Paxton—Stuart had told him that she’d resumed her maiden name after the divorce—had to get along, even if it meant his kowtowing to an overbearing woman’s whims. Mumbling a curse over that image, Jake watched the copter descend and finally settle on the ground.

The pilot cut the engine, and Jake began walking toward the aircraft. He had a terrible knot in his gut and something else almost as uncomfortable—a premonition. From this moment on his life was not going to be the same.

“Damn,” he muttered under his breath. “Dammit to hell.”