Читать книгу Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride: Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride - Wendy Warren - Страница 9

JILLIAN AND MIKE PULLED into Kade’s yard around four that afternoon. Mike was an accountant for one of the big mines in Elko. Quiet and unassuming. Kade had to admit that Mike was better for Jillian than he had ever been, but when Maddie ran and gave him a big hug Kade found it a little hard to take. She really did have two dads, and Kade sometimes had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn’t number one.

But he wasn’t giving up. Maybe he had some stuff to make up for, but for the most part he’d been there for his daughter—and he would continue to be there.

Jillian eyed the house, with its peeling paint and dirty windows, while Mike loaded Maddie’s purple suitcase in the trunk of the car. Her expression was pained.

“We stayed in the trailer,” Kade said.

“Good. I don’t want her exposed to hantavirus.”

Like he would let his kid be anywhere near mice. “Give me some credit, all right?”

Jillian sniffed. “When Maddie comes back here in June, will she be staying in the trailer? Or will the house be ready for habitation?” She smoothed her wind-ruffled hair away from her face as she spoke. It was a lighter brown than it had been when they’d been married. And streaked in a classy kind of way.

“I plan on having the house done by the time she gets here. If not, well, we’ve stayed in the trailer before.”

“But not for weeks, Kade. And when are you going to tell her she won’t be going to horse camp?”

“I’m not, Jillian. You’re the one who set that up—you explain it to her.” Kade was in a lose-lose situation, thanks to his ex-wife, and when they’d finally discussed the matter over the phone she hadn’t been one bit repentant.

“I get Maddie for two months every summer. It’s part of the agreement,” Kade continued.

“It’s not in her best interest. I thought you would understand that. Whatever happened between us, you always put Maddie’s well-being first.”

That’s it, Jillie. Slap down the guilt card.

“I allowed you to reduce child support,” she said with a tilt of her head.

“That was temporary. And I made it up.”

“But I cooperated.”

“Jillian, I want to see my daughter for the summer, as per the agreement. I don’t want to have to get a lawyer.”

He couldn’t afford a lawyer, and unfortunately, due to his having to temporarily lower his child-support payments while he’d fought his way out of the financial bind his crooked ex-accountant had left him in, she knew that.

“Do what’s best for Maddie, Kade. I’ll give you a couple days to think about it and then we’ll talk again. Oh … you really don’t need to send the support checks this summer, if it’s a burden.”

“Are you trying to buy me off?”

“I’m trying to do what’s best for my daughter.”

“Our daughter.”

“Do you have a means of support?”

“I’m doing all right.” Kind of.

“Well, if you’re working, then who’ll take care of Maddie?”

“Damn it, Jill …”

She started walking. “I’ll call in a few days, Kade, and we can discuss this some more.”

She got into the car, where Mike was waiting behind the wheel and Maddie was arranging her nest of blankets and pillows in the backseat beside the twins, leaving Kade seething. He faked a smile and raised a hand to wave to Maddie as they drove away. Mike waved back, too. Jillian didn’t.

Okay, maybe he wouldn’t go to work until after Maddie left. That was the way things would probably pan out, anyway, since he’d checked with every place he’d sent an application to and there were no bites so far. But on the bright side, riding colts for Joe Barton would help immensely, plus it was something he could do while Maddie was there and he’d still have time left to work on the house. Besides that, Maddie would only be there for a matter of a few weeks, unless he got tough with Jillian. But what kind of father kept his daughter from going to horse camp? Even he wasn’t delusional enough to imagine that riding with Dad would be as much fun as spending three weeks with other girls and lots of horses. There’d probably be campfires and marshmallows and girl talk.

Was Maddie old enough for girl talk?

It kind of tore at him to think that even if she wasn’t now, she soon would be. Kids grew up fast—faster than he’d ever dreamed. So why had his childhood seemed to last forever?

Must have been the fear factor.

Kade stared at the evil house in which he’d planned to spend the day, then turned his back on it and walked to his truck. The house would keep. Right now he was going to attend to some other unfinished business. Libby might not want to hear what he had to say, but he needed to say it.

LIBBY HAD JUST finished filling her horses’ water troughs when she heard a vehicle pull into her yard. Buster and Jiggs, her Australian shepherds, shot around the side of the barn at the sound of tires on gravel.

Libby wiped her damp hands down the sides of her jeans and followed the dogs, hoping she was about to come face-to-face with a traveling salesman—anyone other than Kade.

No such luck. Kade was crouched next to his truck, petting her traitorous dogs, who were taking turns licking his face.

“To the porch,” Libby ordered. The Aussies slowly obeyed, slinking away from Kade and casting Libby dark canine glances as they headed for the house.

Kade stood up. A good ten feet separated them. It didn’t feel like enough space. “You fixed the place up nice,” he said.

And she had, pouring all the work into it that her parents never had, due to their addictions. The barn had a proper roof now, and the pastures were well fenced. Her small house wasn’t the greatest, but she’d planted flowers all around it and someday she’d redo the inside. Someday.

“Yeah. Thanks.” Libby shoved her hands into the back pockets of her worn jeans. One of her fingers poked out of a hole that had worn through because of her fencing pliers. “Why are you here?”

“There’re still some things I want to straighten out.”

Libby shook her head. “I believe that everything between us is as straight as it’s going to get.”

“I beg to differ.”

“Differ all you want. And while you’re differing, maybe you could get into your truck and drive away.”

He advanced a couple slow steps forward. Libby held her ground, which wasn’t easy since every nerve in her body seemed to be screaming at her to back up.

“You came to see me,” he said in a reasonable tone once he’d come to a halt.

She pulled her hands out of her pockets, crossed them over her chest. “I came to tell you that I didn’t want you stirring up gossip.”

“Bull. You’ve never been concerned about gossip in your life.”

He had her there.

“All right. I’ll admit it—I wanted to get the damned reunion over with, since we were bound to run into each other sometime. I didn’t want an audience when it happened. Okay? I didn’t come to make friends with you.”

“Libby, a lot of stuff has happened since—” He gestured with one hand, but Libby cut him off before he could start talking again.

“I don’t want to hear about it.” She kicked a pebble with her foot, watched it bounce a couple times and then looked up at him, determined to get things straight once and for all, if that was truly what he wanted. Then maybe he’d leave.

“Here’s the deal, Kade. I trusted you. You were my lover and I trusted you.” She stopped, surprised that the corners of her mouth had started to quiver. It only took a second to regain control, but Kade had noticed. “I never thought you’d let me down.”

“There were circumstances.”

“Circumstances?” She couldn’t believe the force of anger that surged through her. “Circumstances? What circumstances led you to screw another woman—and knock her up?”

“Stop.”

He meant it. His face had turned pale. Libby shoved both hands through her curls, tilting her chin and squeezing her eyes shut, trying to get a grip. He probably didn’t want to think of his daughter as the result of knocking someone up. Even if it was true.

She opened her eyes but didn’t look at him. Instead, she focused momentarily on the gravel at her feet.

“Kade, I can tell you right now we’re not going to talk this through. We’re not going to shake hands and let bygones be bygones. I can’t do it.” She finally met his gaze. “I don’t even want to try.”

And then she turned and headed for the house, reinforcing her words with action, hoping Kade had the good sense to get in that truck and drive away. If he didn’t, things might get ugly.

Fortunately Kade knew trouble when he saw it. She heard the truck door open and shut, then the engine chug to life.

Libby kept walking.

AS SOON AS HE got home, Kade backed up to his dad’s old stock trailer. A few minutes later the trailer was hitched and he was out in the pasture slipping a halter on his horse.

A couple of hours in the mountains and then he’d go to work on the house, when he wasn’t so frustrated and pissed off that he could barely see straight. He’d had it in his mind to do two things when he moved back to Otto—make peace with Libby, or at least attempt to make peace, and find Blue. Obviously he wouldn’t be making peace with Lib, but maybe he could find his old horse and see if he’d managed to do one thing in life that hadn’t later turned to crap.

Kade parked the trailer and unloaded his horse in almost the same spot where he and Libby had parked their “borrowed” horse trailer fourteen years ago. There was a very real possibility that something had happened to Blue since they’d released him, but Kade was hoping that wasn’t the case. He wanted to see the stud running free, with many red and blue roan foals at the sides of his mares.

He smiled at the image, the tension in his muscles easing as he recalled the exhilaration, the sense of empowerment he’d felt when he’d turned Blue loose, slapping him on the butt and sending him off the hill to join the mustang herd.

Take that, Dad.

He and Libby had known enough about herd dynamics to realize Blue wouldn’t be welcome, but would hang about on the periphery until he’d managed to steal a few mares of his own. They’d discussed the possibility that Blue might not survive, but to Kade, young as he was, he thought it would be better for Blue to die in the wild than to be abused by an angry man. Kade’s father.

So they’d borrowed a trailer from Menace’s dad, taking it late at night without permission, and then they’d led Blue through the pasture and out the far gate to load him in the trailer on the county road so there’d be no suspicious tracks. A two-hour drive over to the Manning Valley, with Libby sitting close to him. They’d arrived at dawn, released Blue and been back in town by six o’clock. Menace’s trailer was back behind the barn and Libby had her dad’s truck in the garage before he’d come home from the bar. Kade had climbed in through his bedroom window and sprawled across his bed. Fifteen minutes later his dad had slammed the door open and told him to get his sorry carcass out of bed and go feed. Which Kade had done, coming back in a few minutes later to tell his dad that the blue stud was gone.

Kade had spent the rest of that day hovering between the satisfaction of knowing that the stud was safe and out-and-out fear. He’d been unable to meet up with Libby for several days, due to his old man’s fury. His dad hadn’t let him out of his sight.

Now Kade mounted and started up a road that would soon deteriorate into a rocky trail. A mustang trail. He sucked in a deep breath of mountain air. It had been too long since he’d been out here. He and Maddie had ridden around his rented property in Boise before he’d sold his second horse, but other than that, he hadn’t spent enough time in the saddle. He’d be rectifying that.

When he topped the pass leading into the next valley, he paused to let his horse have a breather. The meadow below was greening up, but the junipers and brush around it were little more than twisted black snags—evidence of a fire. The creek still ran through the meadow, pooling up at one end, but he could see that this was no longer the mustangs’ watering hole. In fact, he hadn’t seen a single sign of the herd.

He made a slight movement with his rein hand and his mount started to pick her way down the rocky trail to the meadow. If the mustangs weren’t watering there, where were they?

He drew his horse up and reversed course. He’d ride the ridge line and check the next drainage. They had to be somewhere close. Mustangs kept to their own range.

Six hours later he dismounted at the trailer. Both he and his horse were exhausted and he was by now certain that the mustang herd no longer resided in this valley.

Had some natural disaster wiped them out? There were fire scars. Disease? Had someone shot them?

Libby was a wild horse specialist. She would know.

And she’d be so happy to see him.

Maybe he’d wait a day or two before he asked.

ALMOST A WEEK had passed and Libby was still stewing over Kade’s recent visit. And it didn’t help that she couldn’t stop forming a mental picture of Kade and his daughter whenever she looked across the field and saw the lights of his trailer. The girl holding on to his belt, Kade putting a protective hand on her thin shoulder. Those little silver hearts and hot-pink kitties on the pjs.

Kade was a dad. He knew about parenting and diapers and midnight feedings. He’d experienced things that Libby was beginning to think she never would experience. Sure, she dated. She liked men. But every time someone got close, she felt the need to send him packing. Togetherness made her freeze. As a consequence, she generally didn’t didn’t date guys who wanted to put down roots.

She wasn’t certain if her commitment phobia was a character flaw or the result of Kade screwing around on her. Or if it went back even further than that, back to the time she’d finally figured out that not all parents were so busy drinking that they didn’t have time for their kid.

But she’d made her own family ties by then, attaching herself to Jason’s and Menace’s families, as had Kade. Since she and Kade had the most in common, however, and lived closest to one another, they’d hung together the most, understood each other the best—which was exactly why she’d never comprehended what had happened between them. She’d decided long ago that she wasn’t going to waste any more of her life trying to figure it out. The past was just that, and she was moving forward—if she could just get that damned father-daughter snapshot out of her head and stop feeling the jabs of pain that came with it.

Libby finally gave up and closed the computer file she’d been working on. She wasn’t accomplishing anything while her thoughts were all over the place, and she needed to concentrate as she tabulated the research results of a two-year range study. Then, as soon as she was done with the tabulations, she would write her section of a report that weighed the effects of animal usage, including cattle, native herds of deer, antelope and elk and mustangs. Which animals had the most impact on the land, which needed to be cut back during certain negative conditions. And most importantly, the optimum numbers that the range could sustain.

Glen, her former boss, had started the project the year before he retired, and she, Stephen and Fred, her coworkers, had spent the past eighteen months gathering data, as well as searching archived reports for information. Now, with no end to the drought in sight, the findings would be used as the basis for making some serious land-usage decisions. Libby wanted to be as careful and accurate as possible with her part of the report—which meant that this was not the time to work on it.

She reached for the phone and dialed the number for Menace’s service station. “This has been one long week,” she said as soon he answered.

“You at work or home?”

“Home.” Such as it was. Libby glanced around her living room, thinking she really had to spend less time in the barn and more time making her house a home. But right now her animals were more important to her than new curtains or furniture.

“Lucky you,” Menace grumbled.

“I did four ten-hour days this week,” she retorted. And thanks to Ellen and a series of “important” yet useless meetings, it felt as if she’d worked six ten-hour days. “So … are we on for this evening?”

“What do you mean, are we on?” Menace asked, sounding shocked. “It’s chorizo night at the bar. Of course we’re on.”

Chorizo night. Great. Libby wasn’t really a fan, but the Basque sausages were a local favorite, and she’d much rather lose herself in a crowd than sit at home and brood about what was. And wasn’t.

“I only asked because I heard you’ve made a new friend and I thought you might have other plans,” she said.

Menace coughed. “Uh, what new friend?”

“Your new female friend.” The one the waitresses at the café had been buzzing about when Libby had stopped to pick up dinner on her way home the night before. The new owner of the hardware store. Ginger someone.

“No plans,” he said stiffly.

“I’d like to meet her.”

“I’m taking it slow. Don’t want to scare her off, you know?”

“Good idea.” And it was about time. Menace had dreadful luck with women, and part of the problem was that his enthusiasm at actually being with a woman often overwhelmed the new girlfriend. “See you around eight?”

“Sure. But what if, you know, Kade shows up, too?”

“We already cleared the air.” Sort of. Enough for him to stay away from her, she hoped.

“Any broken bones?” Menace was only half joking.

“No,” Libby said with a sigh. If only it had been that simple.

“Glad to hear it,” Menace said. “You can’t go living your life being mad at someone.”

“I never said I wasn’t mad,” Libby said softly. “See you tonight.” She hung up and went to the back porch, where she slipped into her barn boots, whistled for the dogs and went out to feed her horses. Four hours to burn. Four hours to think too much. Maybe it was a good time to muck out the stalls.

JOE BARTON SHOWED up with three beautiful colts late Friday afternoon, colts that radiated breeding and money. Joe had come to inspect the premises before allowing his animals to stay with Kade, but since Kade had put in two backbreaking days bringing the corrals up to standard, fixing the sagging gates and rebuilding the mangers and wind shelters, Joe had no problem with what Kade had to offer. He’d stayed while Kade started ground work with the first colt, a black Appaloosa with a splashy blanket.

“I can see this will work out just fine,” Joe said when Kade released the colt and caught the second. “I’d heard good things.” He smoothed his mustache with a forefinger. “You know, I was in the stands the night that bronc beat the snot out of you. I apologize for not recognizing you at the feed store.”

“Not one of my better nights,” Kade said, tying the colt to the hitching rail. “And I don’t really want to be remembered for being beat up.”

“You came back.”

“I did.” He just hoped he could do it again, prove he wasn’t a loser.

“You don’t mind if I stop by to check progress?”

“Anytime you want,” Kade said. “I, uh, want half the payment now. The other half when the thirty days are up.”

Barton reached for his wallet and damned if he didn’t give him cash. “I want a receipt.”

“Sure.” It would have been cool to whip out a regular receipt book, but instead, Kade went into the horse trailer and wrote a receipt on the legal pad he used for his grocery lists. He handed the yellow paper to Barton, who took it and folded it carefully into quarters.

“If you don’t mind my asking, what happened to you?” Barton asked as he put the receipt in his shirt pocket.

Kade tucked his hands into his back pockets. “You mean why aren’t I living the high life?” Why am I wearing boots that need to be resoled while you’re wearing brand-new eelskin?

“Pretty much.”

“Just the way things worked out, Mr. Barton.” He wasn’t going to recite a litany of his life errors for this guy.

Barton patted the colt that Kade had just haltered. “If I’m happy with these, there’ll be more.”

“You’ll be happy,” Kade said. Because if there was one thing Kade understood, it was horses.

“I hope so. I have some friends who wouldn’t mind having a world champion cowboy tune up their horses.”

Kade just smiled. The irony was that riding broncs and starting colts had about as much in common as did competing in a demolition derby and teaching drivers’ ed. Both might involve cars, but there weren’t a whole lot of similarities beyond that. If Barton wanted to pay for Kade’s name, however, Kade wouldn’t dissuade him. He’d do an excellent job on the colts, get paid well and they’d both be happy.

Joe left after Kade had worked the third colt, a skittish chestnut that was more difficult to handle than the other two. Kade put away his tack, then went to sit in his lawn chair and stare at the house as if it was an adversary. Which, in a sense, it was.

He wasn’t going in there tonight. He’d spent enough time alone, working on it. He felt antsy. Edgy. After he’d stopped drinking, he’d also stopped socializing for the most part. It was the surest way to avoid temptation, so he’d spent a lot of time alone. Alone was nothing new.

Maybe that was the problem.