Читать книгу Cavanaugh Cowboy - Marie Ferrarella - Страница 13

Sully looked at the woman, wondering if Rae was trying to goad him or if this was actually her opinion. He couldn’t help wondering what Seamus would have thought of this feisty five-four embodiment of womanhood.

He probably would have liked her, Sully decided. His great-uncle liked women with fire in their blood who weren’t afraid to speak their mind.

“Never had a reason to believe that before,” Sully finally replied.

Rae shrugged, her shoulders moving carelessly beneath her checked work shirt.

“Have it your way. Anyway, you’re in luck,” she told him. “Early this morning I found a whole length of fence that needs to be replaced and you look more able-bodied, like you could probably do a better job of it than the two wranglers I’ve got here working on the ranch now.”

Leading the way to her truck so she could drive him over to the location, Rae stopped walking for a moment. She decided it would be more prudent for her to ask rather than just to assume. “You do know how to dig post holes and swing a sledgehammer, don’t you?”

There was a fifty-fifty chance she wasn’t trying to insult him, Sully thought. In either case, he answered, “I think I can manage.”

Rae nodded. She’d thought as much. “Good. At any rate, you probably can’t be any worse at it than Rawlings and Warren are.”

“Rawlings and Warren?” he echoed. He was trying to keep all the names straight, having a feeling that Rae Mulcahy wasn’t much for repetition.

Rae nodded. “Those are the current two drifters that Miss Joan okayed to work on the ranch. Actually,” she reflected, “Mr. Harry was the one who gave the okay in this case.”

“Mr. Harry, that would be Miss Joan’s husband?” Sully asked.

He was fairly certain that Miss Joan’s husband and Mr. Harry were the same person, but he didn’t want to take anything for granted and make a mistake. He had a feeling that people around here were pretty touchy. He wasn’t really familiar with the names and dynamics of this hamlet yet, and he didn’t want to step on any toes if he could help it.

This time Rae didn’t stop walking as she spared him a quick glance. “Is that just a lucky guess on your part or are you bucking for sharpest tool in the tool box?” she asked.

He got the feeling that he was attempting to maneuver across a chasm walking on a tightrope and trying not to lose his balance—while his foreman was rooting for the rope.

“Why don’t we split the difference and just move on?” Sully suggested diplomatically.

“Get in,” she told him, indicating the truck. When she got in behind the steering wheel, she waited for him to sit down on his side before she asked, “What’s your name, anyway?” Rae had suddenly realized that while this new man knew her name, she hadn’t bothered finding out his.

“Sully,” he answered just as she started up the truck.

Rae frowned, obviously rolling the name over in her head. “What kind of a name is Sully for a man?” she asked.

“What kind of name is Ray for a woman?” he countered.

“It’s Rachel,” she reminded him pointedly. “But men don’t seem to be able to take orders very well from a Rachel out here. They will, though, take orders from someone named Rae.”

Sully nodded. “Point taken. And it’s Sullivan,” he told her after a beat. “My full name,” he added when she made no response.

She ran the name through her mind. “Sully’s faster to say.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“You got a last name, Sully?” she asked, sparing him a glance now that they were out in completely open country. “Or is that it?”

“Cavanaugh,” Sully told her. “My last name’s Cavanaugh.”

“Sullivan Cavanaugh,” Rae repeated. He wasn’t sure if she was mocking him or trying it on for size. “That’s quite a mouthful. Anyway, when you get a chance, you can store your gear in there,” she told him, indicating the single-story structure they were passing at the moment. “You can sleep in there at the end of the day, too.”

The structure wasn’t very much to look at, he thought as they made their way to the open range. “Was that the bunkhouse?”

“You guessed it. It’s closer than the hotel,” she told him drily. “I’ll introduce you to Rawlings and Warren—they should be working on the fencing by now—and then you can get started. Dinner’s at six—unless the job runs over. It’s served in the main house,” she told him, then in case he wondered about the logistics, she explained, “There’s no kitchen in the bunkhouse.”

He figured as much. “Understood.

“You got work gloves?” she asked as the question suddenly occurred to her.

“No.” He’d noticed a general store in town. He could always get a pair there.

Rae frowned slightly.

“It figures.” And, even though she was driving, she paused to take a closer look at his hands. Taking one of his hands in hers, she gave it a cursory glance. “No gloves,” she repeated. “Your hands are softer than Miss Joan’s. Let me guess, you’ve never done any physical labor before.”

“I have,” Sully contradicted. He didn’t care for the woman’s way of passing quick judgments. “I just didn’t think to bring any gloves when I packed.”

“Left in a hurry?” she asked. It was a rhetorical question she didn’t expect him to answer. “Well, we’ll see if we can find you a pair. Wouldn’t want you to mess up those soft hands of yours any more than you really have to.”

Foreman or not, he had had just about enough of the woman’s goading attitude. “Just show me the area that you want me to fix and I’ll worry about my hands.”

She drove to a section of the fence that was clearly in disrepair. It appeared to be about a hairbreadth away from falling over.

Sully noticed the frown on her face was growing more pronounced the closer they came to their destination.

“Something wrong?” he finally asked the woman.

“Yes, there’s something wrong,” she snapped, although this time it didn’t sound as if her annoyance was directed at him or his question. “There should be two people over here.”

She pulled up abruptly, parking the truck. Getting out, she got up into the back of the flatbed and then turned 360 degrees around, trying to get a wider view.

It didn’t help.

Rae started to climb down from the flatbed and was surprised when Sully suddenly offered her his hand.

At first she started to ignore it, then, blowing out a huff of angry air, she wrapped her hand around his and got down.

“Thanks.” Begrudgingly, she all but bit off the word.

He wondered if she had always been this angry, or if it was something she had developed working out here. Either way, he wondered what she looked like when she smiled.

“I take it your two wranglers are supposed to be here,” he surmised.

“They’re not my wranglers,” she corrected. “And yes, they’re supposed to be here. They’re supposed to be working to fix the damn fence.” She let out an exasperated huff. “I had a bad feeling about those two from the minute each of them first set foot on the ranch. Mr. Harry just got too big a heart.”

Having said that, the foreman looked at Sully accusingly.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” he said by way of denial. “I only met Miss Joan, and she didn’t really strike me as a pushover.”

“That’s because she’s not—that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a good heart,” Rae quickly interjected in case he was going to comment on that.

“Never said she didn’t,” Sully replied.

Standing next to the truck, she looked around again. There was still no sign of either one of the two men who were supposedly currently involved in earning their keep on the ranch.

This was going to put fixing the fence seriously behind schedule, Rae thought irritably.

“Well, those two had better show up if they know what’s good for them. In the meantime, I need you to get to work before this whole fence falls down.” She paused, assessing the man before her. “You want me to show you what to do?”

Amusement curved his lips. He resisted the temptation to tell her to go ahead and demonstrate. “I think I can handle it.”

“For all our sakes, I hope so,” she told him. “I’m going to take the truck and go back to the bunkhouse.” Surveying the work that had to be done, she wasn’t sure if she was making a mistake. “You sure you’ll be all right if I leave you here?”

“Yeah.” As she started to get back in behind the steering wheel, Sully told her almost conversationally, “But if you happen to see buzzards circling this area, I’d take it as a personal favor if you came back.”

Rae looked at him. “By then it’ll probably be too late,” she answered matter-of-factly.

The next moment, the sound of the truck’s engine starting up pierced the otherwise quiet atmosphere. Two minutes later, she was gone.

Sully looked at the posts that were lined up on the ground beside carefully cut lengths of lumber, a sledgehammer, a shovel and what appeared to be enough boxes of nails to build a small city.

It looked as if he had everything he needed, he thought. Time to earn his keep. Sully picked up the shovel and got started.

* * *

This work was hotter than he’d thought it would be. Sully held out as long as he could, but when rivulets of sweat all but sealed his shirt to his body, he peeled the shirt off and then continued working on the fence bare-chested.

That was the way Rae found him when she returned a little while later.

Her breath involuntarily caught in her throat as she absorbed the sight: the stranger’s body glistening with perspiration, the muscles in his upper arms straining with each movement he made. The man had abdominal muscles that looked as if they had been chiseled out of rock, and for the first time since she was fifteen years old, Rae’s mind suddenly went numb.

The next moment, because there was someone else in the truck with her, she managed to slowly regulate her breathing and collect herself.

“Who’s that?” Jack Rawlings, the passenger in the truck, asked.

“Someone who’s not afraid of work,” she replied, taking no pains to hide her displeasure with her passenger.

Getting out of the truck, she strode up behind Sully. “Maybe you should put that shirt back on, Cavanaugh,” she told him.

Caught off guard, Sully swung around. He looked at Rae and then at the man with her. “You have a dress code out here?” he asked the woman, keeping an innocent expression on his face.

“No, other than making sure you keep your pants on,” she informed him. “But that sun is pretty merciless around this time of day. If you don’t put your shirt back on, you’re probably going to watch your skin start peeling off before evening.”

He shrugged off her so-called concern. “Don’t worry about it. I’m pretty resilient.” Sully looked around the foreman’s shoulder at the man standing just behind her, taking all this. He made an assumption. “I thought you said there were two other men working on the ranch.”

“There were. There are,” Rae said, correcting herself. “But apparently the other one—Warren—decided to take off, at least according to Rawlings here.”

“He did,” the other man, a rather dusty, jowly-looking man who appeared to be somewhere in his late forties, said. The years hadn’t been kind to him, and he looked as if he knew it and resented the fact. “When I woke up this morning, he was gone.”

Taking a time-out, Sully leaned against his shovel. “Are his clothes gone?”

Jack Rawlings looked at him blankly. “What?”

“Warren’s clothes,” Sully repeated. “Are they gone, too?”

The man looked irritated. “I dunno. I guess so,” he mumbled. And then he seemed to take offense. “Hey, I don’t go looking through a man’s things,” he protested, looking at Rae rather than this offensive newcomer. “That’s private.”

“You’re right,” Sully agreed. “I just meant that if this missing wrangler didn’t take his things with him, maybe he’s not really missing. Maybe he’s just somewhere else on the ranch.” He directed his conversation to Rae. “It’s a big ranch.”

That was all relative, Rae thought. “Not compared to the other ranches around here.”

He wasn’t familiar with the area, but he supposed that she would know better than he did. But that didn’t change his initial assumption.

“Still, a man could go somewhere and not be seen.” His eyes swept over the wrangler Rae had brought back with her, and then returned to Rae. “You’ve got several structures from what I can see, not to mention all this wide-open acreage. Could this Warren be on another part of the ranch, doing something you assigned him to do?” Sully asked.

Rather than answer him, Rae turned her eyes on Rawlings. The wrangler raised his shoulders in complete frustration. “I don’t know. Maybe. All I know is he wasn’t there when I woke up and he didn’t leave me no note to tell me where he was at. Not that he would,” the wrangler added in what Sully took to be disgust.

“Maybe someone should look around for him before deciding that the man just took off for good,” Sully suggested to Rae, picking up his shovel again. “But that’s just my opinion.”

“And a pretty good one. You heard the man,” Rae said, turning toward the wrangler. “Start looking.”

“What, he’s my new boss now?” Rawlings asked resentfully, jerking his thumb at Sully and looking disgruntled.

“No, but I am, and I just gave you a direct order,” Rae pointed out, looking at Rawlings expectantly.

“That’s going to take me forever on foot,” Rawlings protested.

Rae took off a key from her key ring and then held it out to the wrangler. “Go back and get the other truck. And try not to drive it into a ditch,” she warned. “It belongs to Miss Joan.”

“What she gonna do if something happens to it?” Rawlings asked sarcastically.

“Trust me,” Rae answered, looking up into his eyes. “You do not want to find out.”

Rawlings frowned as he took the key from her. “I’ll be careful.”

“Wise decision,” she told him.

Taking the key and putting it into his pocket, Rawlings started to go off in the direction of the bunkhouse. Just before he left, the wrangler glanced over his shoulder and glared at the newcomer. When Sully glanced his way, Rawlings ducked down his head and quickened his pace.

“I don’t think I made any points with your man,” Sully told her as he got back to digging holes for the posts.

Although she didn’t want to, Rae found herself staring at the way the man’s muscles strained and seemed to bulge with every movement he made with the shovel. It took considerable effort to draw her eyes away.

She replayed what he had asked earlier when Rawlings had told her that the other man had taken off. It raised questions in her mind.

“What did you say you did before you came here?” she asked.

“I didn’t say.” Pausing for a second, he spared her a glance. “You didn’t ask,” he reminded her in case Rae thought he was being flippant.

“I’m asking now,” she told him, waiting.

“A little of this, a little of that,” he said vaguely.

Some people reacted strangely when they found out that he was a detective with the Aurora police department, so it wasn’t the first thing he volunteered when he was asked.

“Do this and that have a name?” Rae asked him pointedly.

“Yes,” he answered, his breath growing a little short as he dug yet another hole. He was grateful that there were only two more holes left to dig.

“So are you going to tell me what you did, or are you waiting for me to say ‘pretty please?’” Rae asked. When she saw his mouth curve in a deep smile, she decided she’d had enough of playing games. “What the hell were you?”

“A detective,” Sully answered. Crossing his arms and resting them on top of the shovel handle, he added, “I still am.”