Читать книгу The Wrangler's Woman - Ruth Dale Jean - Страница 9

KEEPING JACK’S PICKUP in sight, Dani drove down dirt roads, through miniforests, over hills, until suddenly the Bar K Dude Ranch lay spread out before them.

The ramshackle Bar K. A sudden silence fell, and then from the back seat of the Jeep, Toni uttered a faint, “Oh, dear.”

A tight-lipped Dani braked in a large gravel parking lot in front of the ranch house. To the right lay several outbuildings and a barn; to the left a number of log cabins and a swimming pool, empty and sad in the March sunshine.

The first word that leaped into her head was paint. The Bar K was in dire need of paint, preferably many coats of it. The house itself, although a pleasant sprawl with a wide front porch running the entire length of the building, looked shabby and unloved. The outbuildings were equally neglected and the barn was practically gothic.

Granny cleared her throat. “You girls will be amazed at what a little elbow grease will do for this place,” she announced in a determinedly cheerful tone.

“But the brochure…!” Niki wailed.

Dani opened her car door. “It’ll look like the brochure again,” she said grimly. “I’m afraid it’ll take more than elbow grease, though.”

“Whatever it takes,” Toni said, “we’ll see it gets it. We’re not afraid of a little hard work.”

“Or a lot, for that matter.” Dani climbed out and stretched, trying not to give in to panic when she thought of the state of their bank account.

The road from Elk Tooth, Montana, to Hard Knox, Texas, had been a long one. Without waiting for the rest of them, she hurried around to open the door to the trailer and back Sundance out. By the time that was accomplished, everyone had alighted and Jack had joined them.

His expression, Dani thought, was evasive, to say the least.

“So what do you think?” he inquired, his tone guarded.

“Uhh…” Toni licked her lips. “It’s a little more…run-down than I expected.”

He nodded. “That’s true, but the underlying structure is still strong. After Miss Elsie died, Wil did kind of let things go—” He stopped short. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to sound critical of your father.”

“Feel free,” Dani invited. Tossing the rope lead over the horse’s neck, she grabbed a hunk of mane and swung up. After settling herself firmly on the bare speckled back, she turned the horse and tightened her knees to urge him forward.

They took off toward the trees at a slow lope, Dani reveling in the rippling muscles between her thighs. All that pent-up power raised her spirits considerably.

So did the landscape. All her life she’d heard about the Texas Hill Country, and she wasn’t disappointed. These rolling hills would be beautiful in the full flower of spring. So the buildings were not in the best of shape, the land was wonderful. What had she expected, the moon?

Not exactly expected. More like wanted.

Reining Sundance around, she supposed she’d been naive to believe that brochure. Still, the place was full of potential. It had been successful in the past and could be again. It all depended upon how badly they wanted it.

Dani wanted it more than anything in the world.

With a yell, she let out the tight rein she’d been holding on the Appaloosa’s halter and he shot forward in a dead run. Wind whipped Dani’s hair away from her face and she felt her spirits rise with every pounding hoofbeat.

This would work. She’d make it work. Nothing would stand in her way, not even the dangerously appealing cowboy waiting beside the barn.

DAMN, THE WOMAN COULD ride.

Jack watched the spotted horse sit back on his haunches in a sliding stop. Even bareback and guided only by a halter rope, the animal was under perfect control.

Dani jumped to the ground, her cheeks red and her eyes sparkling. He’d thought she was good-looking before, but he hadn’t seen anything. This was the real Dani Keene, he knew instinctively, not that suspicious woman who’d cut him off back in town.

By the time she reached him, though, the joy had been replaced by caution. “This is beautiful country,” she said, glancing around. “Sure, the ranch itself needs work, but it’ll be worth it.”

“I wondered if you’d see that.” He patted the nose of the curious Appaloosa. “You got a real nice horse here.”

Her smile revealed genuine pleasure. “He sure is. I raised him from a colt and trained him myself. We suit each other just fine.”

“The corral’s empty. You can put him in there.”

She frowned. “Don’t we have any stock at all?”

“Some. Dobe can tell us how much.”

“Dobe?”

“Dobe Whittaker. He’s kinda the caretaker, you could say. He’s around here some—”

“I’m where I’m s’posed to be.” A man stepped from the deep shadows of the open barn door. Looking as old as the hills, he wore cowboy clothes softened by age. The stamp of the West was in far-seeing blue eyes and a lined, leathery face partially concealed by a snowy beard and trailing mustache.

“Howdy, ma’am.” He doffed his hat. “I’m Dobe Whittaker. At the moment you got a dozen horses and a small herd of longhorns and that’s just about it.”

“Dobe.” She smiled, genuinely pleased to meet him. “I’m Dani Keene. My sisters and grandmother are back at the house.”

“Seen ’em go in.” Without waiting for a response, Dobe wheeled back into the shadows.

Dani looked at Jack, her forehead furrowed. “Not very friendly, is he?”

“Depends on who he’s dealin’ with.”

“He doesn’t know me well enough to dislike me,” she pointed out.

“He knew your dad.”

She walked past him, leading the horse toward the corral. “If he disliked my father so much, why is he looking out for things?”

“Because of loyalty to Miss Elsie.” Jack was still cautious about criticizing Wil Keene.

“I see.” She said it so grimly that Jack thought maybe she did see.

Opening the gate, she slipped off the halter, and Sundance trotted inside. Making straight for a patch of dirt stomped and mashed by a multitude of horses before him, he lowered himself and rolled.

When she looked at the horse, her expression softened. Jack wished it would do the same when she looked at him, but so far that hadn’t happened.

Squaring her shoulders, she faced him. “Will you bring Dobe up to the house to meet the rest of the family?”

“I’ll try.” In actual fact, he wasn’t at all sure Dobe was interested in meeting any more Keenes.

“Thank you.” She turned and walked away, covering the ground between barn and house with long, easy strides.

He watched with admiration. She might be a foreigner, but she was no stranger to ranch life. If it was possible to make a go of this run-down dude ranch, Dani Keene was the woman who could do it. Although Jack’s father and grandfather were still determined to own this place, Jack would help her in every way he could.

Or more accurately, in any way she’d let him.

He turned toward the barn and hollered. “Dobe! Come on out here, you old reprobate.”

Dobe shuffled out immediately, his grin sheepish. “Howdy, Jack. What you up to, comin’ in here with them wimmin?”

“Just bein’ neighborly.” They shook hands and then Jack patted the smaller man on the shoulder. “You might give it a try yourself.”

Dobe snorted. “Not hardly. I done my duty by Miss Elsie because nobody else would. Now I’m pull-in’ up stakes. I don’t want nothin’ to do with no more Keenes, no sir-ee-bob, I don’t.”

“You got ’em all wrong, Dobe.” If he couldn’t talk the old man into staying, Dani’s row was going to be even harder to hoe. Dobe had earned the respect of the cowboy community, and if he refused to hang around, who would? “They’re real nice, those Keene sisters and their grandma. Don’t you think you could cut them a little slack?”

“Nope.” The old cowboy shook his head decisively. “I’m leavin’ pronto, already packed and ever’thin’.”

“And going where?”

Dobe blinked. “I can find a job,” he declared defensively. “Don’t you worry about me none.”

Realizing he’d taken a wrong approach, Jack nodded. “It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s the Keenes. They need you, Dobe, whether they know it or not.”

“Yep, but I don’t need them.”

“Why not? They’ll pay you a fair wage—” Jack assumed they would “—and they’re smart enough to realize you know the lay of the land and they don’t.” He hoped.

“They ain’t got a prayer of gettin’ this place back on its feet,” Dobe scoffed.

“Not without you,” Jack said, buttering up the old codger. “How about giving them a chance?” When that didn’t bring instant acquiescence, he added, “As a personal favor to me.”

Dobe thought that over. Then he let out a disgusted snort. “When you put it that way, I don’t have a whole lotta choice. You always been square with me so… Okay, Jack, I’ll do it as a favor to you. But if they turn out to be anything like their old man, I’m outa here, no ifs, ands or buts.”

“Fair enough.” Jack felt great relief. “How about comin’ up to the house with me so you can meet the rest of them?”

“Okay, but I ain’t gonna like ’em.”

You might, Jack thought. That grandma could be just your type.

“THE HOUSE HAS TONS of possibilities,” Toni announced.

“And some of this furniture is wonderful.” Niki ran a hand over the dusty arm of a leather chair with armrests made of animal horns. “I wonder how old this stuff is.”

Dani, who was much more interested in the outdoors than the indoors, looked up from the old ledgers she’d pulled from a desk drawer. “Could be from the twenties. That’s when dude ranching really took off in a big way, according to the research I’ve done.”

Toni looked around with surprise. “Gosh, I didn’t know you’d done research.”

“It’s an interesting subject.” Dani closed the book and leaned her elbows on it. “For instance, dude ranching got started in the late nineteenth century. A lot of people from back East visited friends in the West, and sometimes they stayed and stayed and stayed. When it got too expensive for the ranchers to support all those frequent guests, some of them started charging and voilà! The dude ranch was born.”

“I don’t know about that.” Toni looked worried. “It doesn’t sound too nice to charge your friends.”

“Oh, dear,” Granny exclaimed. “Don’t let Toni handle the billing or we’ll be broke in a month.”

Everyone laughed. Opening a drawer, Dani pulled out a wad of papers. Old bills, mostly, but when she unfolded a piece of lined notepaper it revealed a scrawled message: “Are you having fun yet? You girls don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

“What in the world?” she wondered aloud. “Granny—?”

The front door opened and Jack walked in, leading the old cowboy she’d met briefly at the barn. Hastily stuffing the piece of paper in her jeans pocket, she stood up to greet them.

While Jack made the introductions, she tried to calm her jangled nerves. Finding the unsigned note had upset her because she was sure her father had written it. Reading it had been like hearing his voice from the grave. While he was alive he’d had no interest whatsoever in his daughters, leaving Elk Tooth before they were born and never so much as contacting them afterward. It had been a shock to learn he’d left them this dude ranch, but she’d supposed he’d had no one else to pass it on to.

Now she wondered if he’d simply lured them here to torment them from the netherworld.

“And you met Dani at the barn.”

She smiled automatically and nodded, pulled back into the here and now. Dobe wasn’t looking at her anyway, but at Granny. And he wasn’t smiling, he was glowering.

So was she, Dani saw with surprise. Grandma, who liked everybody and was liked by all in return, did not look impressed by Dobe Whittaker. It didn’t take much to figure out why, either.

If Grandma looked like Mrs. Santa Claus, Dobe was the spittin’ image of Mr. Santa Claus. Tilly Collins didn’t like that, not one little bit. He was stealing her thunder, and worse, he’d got here first.

Dani intervened quickly. “So when will it be convenient for you to show me around?” she asked the old cowboy.

Dobe slanted a skeptical glance at Jack. “About anytime, I reckon. Maybe you can all come so I’ll only have to do it once. I’ll round up the horses and—”

“Not me,” Niki said quickly.

“Beg pardon?”

“I’m not a horse person.”

“Missy, this is a dude ranch. Horses are a real big part of it.”

Niki’s expression grew uncharacteristically stubborn. “There are a whole lot of things in this world that I can do happily, but messing with horses isn’t among them. Count me out, please.”

Dobe rolled his eyes expressively, but all he said was, “It’s up to you, missy. Tell you what, I’ll be ready first thing tomorrow morning and anyone who wants to come along is welcome.”

“Thank you,” Dani said. “And thank you for taking care of things after…after our father died. We do appreciate it.”

“Yeah, well…”

“You’ll be staying on with us, won’t you?”

Silence greeted her question, and Dani found herself holding her breath. They were starting so deep in a hole that without the continuity Dobe could provide, she couldn’t imagine what they’d do.

He let out his breath on a gusty note. “I’ll stay for a while anyway, till we see how it goes. In the meantime, I got chores.”

Turning, Dobe stomped out of the house. After a moment’s silence, Dani laughed a bit shakily. “Another crisis averted.”

Jack stirred. “Naw, no problem, he’s always like that. Just treat him fair and he’ll work his heart out for you. He goes back a real long way with this place so I think he can tell you a lot of things you need to know.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

For another long moment, she met his gaze directly, until a slight feeling of unease skittered up her spine. Looking down abruptly at the messy desktop, she said faintly, “Well, if you have to leave now… I mean, you’ve been very helpful, but I’m sure we’ve already intruded on your time quite enough.”

Jack said, “I can take a hint.” Turning toward the door, he put his hat back on his head. “If there’s anything else I can do for you—”

“You’ve done quite enough already.” The words sounded considerably more impatient than she’d intended.

“See you around, then. Ladies…” His nod included them all and then he was gone.

Everyone looked at Dani with various degrees of puzzlement. Then Toni said, “Gosh, he’s cute,” which pretty much broke the tension.

THE WOMEN HELD a war council that night over a supper of canned soup and crackers. They were all in complete agreement: their futures depended upon making the Bar K pay, so they’d knuckle down and work their fingers to the bone if need be.

Dani, proud of the lot of them, nodded approval. “It will be tougher because money is so short,” she said, “but when wasn’t it?”

“Money can’t buy happiness, anyway,” Toni said blithely.

“That’s only your opinion,” Dani snapped back. Softening her tone, she added, “It is a little strange that no money came with this place. With what we cleared for the house in Montana, though, we should be able to make it, God willing and the creeks don’t rise.”

“I can get a job,” Niki said suddenly.

Dani frowned. “Are you sure you want to do that? I mean, with all that has to be done here, you’d be working night and day.”

“It won’t be that bad. Besides, we need the cash.”

“I’ll bet they’d hire you at the chamber of commerce,” Toni predicted. “Remember what Mason said? You’re the best advertisement a town can have and you even have experience.”

Niki made a wry face. “I don’t want to do that again. I just want a job where I can maybe make a little money. Unfortunately, I’m not loaded with qualifications.”

“Tips,” Toni declared. “You need a job where you can get tips. All those cowboys at that café were just falling all over you. Maybe you could be a waitress?”

Niki perked up. “Or a barmaid.” She glanced at Dani. “Maybe we can ask Jack for—”

“Leave Jack out of it, why don’t you.” It sounded terribly ungracious, but that was how Dani felt. “I’m sure you can get any job you want without his help or anybody else’s. But a barmaid… I don’t know. I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

Her two sisters exchanged puzzled glances, but let it pass.

“While we’re splitting up jobs,” Tilly said, “I’ll handle the cooking and the kitchen, of course.”

“I’ll be Grandma’s assistant,” Toni said eagerly. “I can manage the housework, so once we get this place in shape, I’ll be the maid.” She grinned broadly. “And Dani will handle the business end of things, of course, and take care of all the outdoors stuff.”

“And,” Niki interjected, “when I’m home I’ll do whatever’s needed as long as it has nothing to do with horses.”

Nods of understanding greeted this pronouncement. Niki’s fear of horses was well known in the family; they understood its roots and accepted it with regret.

“All right,” Dani said decisively. “Tomorrow’s Sunday, so Niki and I won’t be able to get anything done in town until the next day. Then, while she fills out job applications, I’ll put an ad in the newspaper. We need wranglers and we need them bad if we hope to be ready for the first guests.”

Granny blinked. “What first guests?”

“These!” Dani held aloft a handful of reservation forms. “I found these in the desk in the big room in front—the great room, I guess you’d call it. Apparently there are quite a lot of people who come here every summer and have for years. If we can just pull everything together in time… But it’ll take help, so it’s important that we get the ad into the newspaper right away.”

“Hey,” Toni said with a smile, “things are looking up!”

“Don’t count your chickens,” Dani warned. “We can’t let down our guard for a minute. Don’t forget, this is Texas. It’s a man’s world down here. You saw how those guys swarmed around you today? Well, don’t let ’em fool you. If you give any of them an inch, he’s sure to take a mile.”

“Really?” A very faint smile curved Niki’s lips. “Are you thinking of anyone in particular, maybe someone like that good-lookin’, slow talkin’ Jack Burke?”

Dani felt hot color rush into her cheeks. She lifted her chin with hauteur. “I’m speaking of men in general. Which reminds me…” She dug around in the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a scrap of paper, which she offered to Granny. “Do you think Wil Keene wrote that?”

Granny’s eyes widened and she smoothed out the wrinkles, then read aloud, “Are you having fun yet? You girls don’t know half as much as you think you do.”

Niki and Toni gasped in unison. “Where did you get that?” Niki demanded.

“Found it in the desk. Granny, do you think that’s his handwriting?”

“Mercy, your guess is as good as mine. He wasn’t big on writing letters, you know.”

They did indeed.

“But…” Granny pursed her lips. “If you ask me, it sounds just like him—are you having fun yet! It’s like…like some kind of clue to something. What in the world has that man done now?” She shook her head with obvious disgust.

And who could blame her? It was her daughter, twenty-five years younger than Wil Keene, who’d fallen for the fast-talking con man, been seduced and abandoned in short order. Granny had said over and over through the years that she would be eternally grateful her granddaughters had better sense.

“We won’t worry about it,” Dani decided for all of them. “We have too many important things to do to waste any thought or effort on a note that might not have been written by him at all. So who wants to do the grand tour with Dobe and me tomorrow morning?”

The answer was exactly nobody.

SUNDAY BREAKFAST at the huge XOX Ranch was a four-generation affair: Austin the grandfather, Travis the father, Jack the son, and Petey the orphaned, four-year-old grandson, whose parents had died tragically when he was still an infant. Gathered around the big wooden table in the dining room, they ate and argued and generally gave all-male households a bad name.

The Sunday menu never varied: chicken fried steak with home-fried potatoes, two or three fried eggs on each plate, with cream gravy over the whole thing. Jack figured if it didn’t clog your arteries and kill you, you were just lucky.

Petey dropped his spoon on the floor and looked expectantly at his uncle, a stubborn brown cowlick hanging across his big hazel eyes.

“Get it yourself,” Jack said. “I’m tryin’ to teach you to be independent, kid.”

“Ha!” Grandpa Austin snagged another huge slab of fried meat off the platter. “You help that boy, Jack.”

Travis poured coffee into his cup and his father’s. “You’re spoilin’ the boy, Pa. Jack’s right.”

Petey just sat there grinning from one to the other; he always enjoyed stirring up the pot. When his glance snagged on his uncle Jack’s, the grin slipped. He hopped off his chair to pick up the spoon, which he put back on his plate without even wiping it off.

Jack figured the boy had already met and conquered every germ on the XOX, so he let it pass.

Austin fixed Jack with a gimlet eye. “I hear them Keenes are in town,” he said.

“That’s right.” Jack hacked at his fried eggs with the edge of his fork. “Got in yesterday. Turns out they’re daughters, not sons.”

“Heard that.” Travis speared a chunk of steak. “That’ll make it easier to do what we’re afixin’ to do.”

Alarm flared in Jack. “And what might that be?”

“Buy the place, same as always.”

“Oh, that.”

“We’ll be doin’ them a favor.” Austin piped up. “It’d be hard enough for three able-bodied men with deep pockets to save that place. For three women it’ll be dang nigh impossible.”

Travis nodded. “I heard on the grapevine that no money come with the place so they gotta be strapped for cash. Seems kinda strange to me, though, all things considered.”

“Well…” Jack’s appetite was fading. “They—”

A crash shocked all thought out of him and he swung around to find Petey grinning while milk from his smashed glass traveled quickly across the hardwood floor.

“Doggone it, Petey!”

Muriel appeared, mop in hand. “I’ll handle this,” she announced, fixing the little culprit with a condemning eye. “Did you do that on purpose, Peter Burke?”

Petey caught his lower lip between baby teeth and shook his head solemnly. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I just goofed.”

Muriel’s scowl transformed into an unwilling grin. “I swear, you take after the rest of the men in your family,” she declared, flopping mop strings around in the white mess. “Just get by on charm, which is what all you Burkes do.”

Grandpa winked at son and grandson. “Charm only gets us so far, right, fellas?”

Travis shrugged and Jack groaned. His grandfather had been married and divorced three times, and his father twice. One of the main reasons Jack had never taken the marital plunge was because of the rotten family track record where women were concerned.

When Muriel had withdrawn, Travis returned to the subject at hand without missing a beat. “The thing I don’t get is, what happened to all Miss Elsie’s money and family jewels? Even a fast worker like Wil Keene would have had trouble blowing it all in less than two years. If he was spending big money, it sure wasn’t on anything a man could see, especially not that ranch.”

“He coulda been a closet gambler,” Austin speculated. “Or maybe he invested in a lot of bad stocks. I seem to recall a certain someone who tried to invest in the awl bidness a buncha years back and got took to the cleaners.”

Travis lowered his brows in warning; his losses had been so large that the entire family was in an uproar about it for months. Jack had been a kid at the time, but he remembered it well.

“Whatever,” Travis said. “Keene was stupid not to sell that ranch when he had the chance. It sure woulda spared them women a whole lot of grief.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said mildly. “They seem awful determined to make a go of it, and I, for one, wish them well.” He was thinking of Dani and the intensity of her determination to make the Bar K a success. Surely anyone who cared that much could make almost anything work. “It may take a miracle but… I think the Keene sisters might be able to make something out of the Bar K again.”

Austin obviously did not see it that way. “You’re pulling my laig.” He scowled at his grandson. “They couldn’t make a go of it even if they had plenty of money behind them, which they ain’t. Besides which, nobody’s gonna work for them, just for starters. And where, I ask you, are they gonna find dudes? Us, on the other hand…” He puffed out his chest. “We’re turnin’ reservations away.”

“Maybe we should turn a few of them toward the Bar K.”

“Not only no, but hell no. Look, you just tend to your own knittin’ and stay away from them girls. Women are nothing but trouble, as ever’ last one of us knows to our sorrow. And them Keene women are bound to be twice as bad.”

“I don’t happen to agree.”

Splat! A big glob of gravy struck the rim of Jack’s plate and splattered across the shiny wood beyond the plastic place mat. He looked up sharply to find Petey holding a spoon catapult fashion in his chubby, childish hands.

His smile was beatific and he said but a single word: “Oops!”