Nevada Cowboy Dad
Staring sightlessly at her hands, she supposed she could wait for the foreclosure and simply buy the property from the bank. But that wasn’t how she wanted it. She wanted the Lazy S and Rusty. If only as a business partner.
Deep inside her soul, a silent bell of loneliness and pain began its familiar, dismal peal. All her life, she’d quit everything she’d started, given in when she should have fought back, accepted “no” when she should have demanded “yes.” The lonely, pealing toll grew in her mind until she could almost feel its grim vibrations.
Not this time. She crushed the defeating voice inside. This time I’ll stand firm. She swore to it.
“You’re part of the deal,” she whispered to his back, her throat tight and aching. “Don’t you see? You complete everything.”
His biceps straining, Rusty lifted the bale into the wheelbarrow and rolled it to the bank of stalls, broke it open and methodically tossed six-inch thick flakes into feeder bins. In the end stall, a hungry buckskin mare whinnied. Rusty didn’t look up at Lucy. “What sort of man was he?”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Your husband, Lucy. Was he good to you?”
The unexpected question blindsided her. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“That’s not too personal a question to ask, is it? Was your husband—what was his name?”
“Kenneth.”
“Kenneth, then.” He tossed a chunky flake into the next stall. “Was Kenneth a man who treated his woman well? Were you happy with him?”
“I...I don’t, that is—” She licked her lips, took a deep breath and tried again. “Kenneth had many fine qualities.”
The narrow-eyed glance he shot over his shoulder sliced straight through her like a shard of broken glass. When they were younger, most of the time he’d barely noticed her. But on the infrequent occasions when he had, she well recalled his piercing, perceptive eyes. Always he’d appeared able to read her innermost thoughts.
Lucy swallowed and forced her mind back to business. “The ranch, Rusty. If you won’t let me help, how can you keep it? Who else could you turn to?”
As he faced her, finished with the afternoon feeding, she saw that his skin was drawn taut over his cheekbones; his brown eyes took on a hard glitter. Tension radiated from every line in his body, and she felt his frustration beating at her in waves. Jerkily he stripped off his gloves.
For a moment he stared at the ground. It was a strangely dejected look for such a confident, strong man. She wondered at it. At last he raised his head.
“Sell you half,” he ground out.
“What?” Lucy stared at him dumbly.
“I’ll sell you half interest. God knows it’s the last thing I want. I thought I could raise capital selling you a few acres. But you want it all, don’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “And you’re right. There’s little choice. The bank’s gonna take it if I don’t act. I can’t believe it, but you’re my best—and only—option.”
Wisely she refrained from telling him she knew this.
“I get full control over the running of the ranch,” he demanded. “You’ll be a partner, but mostly in name and on paper.”
Pulse beating wildly, she said, “What about my idea—opening the ranch to others?” She didn’t dare use the term he found so derisive.
“We’ll work that out,” he evaded. “And no promises. Meantime, the property will be appraised, and you’ll invest exactly half the amount right back here.”
“Certainly,” she said.
“And you understand that I have final say in everything pertaining to ranch business, at least for this year?”
“Sure, but—”
“One more thing. If I can raise the same amount you’re investing, I have the right to buy you out. Agreed?”
Lucy faltered. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. When he got enough money he’d simply throw her off the ranch?
He continued staring at her in his hard-eyed way.
The capital she’d agreed to invest was quite a healthy sum. Would he be able to raise it...ever? It seemed unlikely. Besides, if he could, by then he’d have gotten to know her better, maybe even grown fond of her. By then, perhaps she’d have carved out a place for herself on the Lazy S. It seemed an unlikely event.
“You get a year,” she said, thinking fast.
He looked stunned. “What?”
“If you can raise the money in one year’s time, I’ll agree to it.” Behind her back, she twisted her chilled fingers together, hoping against hope he’d settle on this. “And, I get my dude ranch. On that point you have to agree.” There, she’d said it.
Rusty’s mouth flattened. He squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a word she pretended not to hear. “Fine,” he spat out. “A year it is. And in running things here, you won’t interfere?”
“No.” A welling joy rose in her chest like champagne bubbles. She wanted to shout her delight to the world. She wanted to sing. She wanted to rush to Rusty and throw her arms around him.
“My word’s as good as a contract,” he informed her coolly, and instead of the hug she would prefer, he proffered a broad palm.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling tremulously. Enclosing his hand in both her own, she shook it warmly. “Thank you.”
What the hell had he done, Rusty asked himself an hour later as he walked to the corrals. Just what? The situation was impossible. Had he really agreed to sell his former stepsister half the ranch? And how were they supposed to live—together in the big house—a bachelor and a young widow woman?
Fighting down resentment, he watched her walk to her zippy, completely impractical sports car and retrieve a purse and a shoulder bag. Her body beneath the plain gray suit was compact, her derriere firm. Though not large, her breasts appeared well rounded.
Rummaging in the back seat, Lucy bent at the waist. The action hiked her skirt up several inches above her knees and presented him with a view of slim, smooth-skinned thighs. Outlined by the gray fabric, her rump curved sweetly: taut, yet rounded just right. He wondered how she’d look without the ugly suit. An image of a nude Lucy reclining on the navy sheets of his bed instantly flooded his mind. He found it alarmingly arousing.
Grimacing, he turned to go check on the automatic waterers. Great. Alone together in the house with an all-grown-up Lucy, and him already picturing her firm body unclothed and splayed on his bed like a centerfold.
It was crazy. He didn’t even like her. At least, he disliked what she’d forced him to do. Hated it, actually. His hands fisted.
Fortunately Fritzy was staying in the house and not in her cottage. She seemed happy living there; he didn’t think she’d mind staying on.
He entered his gelding’s stall and went to the waterer in back. The horse raised its head a brief moment from its dinner, chewing. Its dark eyes asked ancient questions.
What did Lucy want, really? Not for a minute did he believe that business about her needing the damn house and horsey smells. It was odd, though, the way she’d shied away earlier when he’d only bumped her arm. And how evasive she’d been when he asked about her husband.
Somehow he’d get the cash to buy her out. He’d work night and day, save everything. There were many ways other than raising cattle to make money on a ranch, especially one with the rich resources of the Lazy S. Ways his brothers hadn’t even begun to explore. He would tap them all.
Her ludicrous proposal of turning the ranch into a vacation spot rankled. He vowed that the public hordes would come trampling onto the Lazy S only over his dead, decomposing body. A years-old scene came vividly to his mind: his father addressing him and his brothers, each word ringing with clarity.
“We must keep the land pure,” Howard Sheffield had exhorted his three almost-grown sons. “I won’t be around forever, and the ranch’ll pass to you, just as it did to me and my brother from our daddy.”
The three teenagers sat at attention in their father’s office and listened solemnly.
“You boys have to carry on the family tradition. It’ll be hard, I know, to resist commercialism, and this new business of catering to city slickers so many of our friends have succumbed to. It brings in money, but, by God, there’s got to be other ways.”
To Rusty’s seventeen-year-old eyes, his father suddenly looked old—Howard’s sun-roughened skin was splotched with benign cancers, his eyes rheumy. For Rusty it was a small shock, yet it came abruptly. His father was the burly, iron-willed constant on the ranch, the immortal bulwark for them all against a cruel world.
However, in that instant Rusty knew the first glimmerings of maturing youth: his father wouldn’t always be there to solve problems, to repair their mistakes made from inexperience. Someday, maybe soon, he’d have to grow up, take on full adult responsibilities.
“Dad,” he said, anxious and uncomfortable with his thoughts, “don’t worry. We’re not gonna let a bunch of strangers overrun the ranch.”
Howard fixed his youngest with a particularly penetrating stare. “See that you don’t. Jim Curlan’d give ten years off his life if he could get rid of his sideline. So’d old Harley Jacobson down at the Flying J. They need the money, I can understand that. God knows there’s more lean years than fat ones running a ranch. But as a result their spreads have been spoiled. All those damned idiots from the city playing cowboy, ruining good horses, getting underfoot, pistol-shootin’ at anything that flies by.” He snorted, then paused to look thoughtfully at each of his sons.
“Now, boys, promise me you’ll never sell out. Keep the Lazy S as it’s always been. In the family. Swear it.”
The memory receded on Howard’s binding dictum and the grave vow Rusty and his brothers had made. The fact that the other two had passed away now, leaving only Rusty to uphold the promise was entirely irrelevant. He’d given his word, and failure was unacceptable.
At the end of this year he would exercise the clause he’d write into his contract with Lucy. She would be gone. It would just take time, he knew that. From the training in his former career as a contracts attorney working for major corporate accounts, he would have no trouble wording their agreement into cast-iron legal language. Every clause would be phrased to favor him—and not Lucy Donovan.
The gelding moved to nuzzle his shoulder. The waterer was working fine. Absently he rubbed the horse’s withers. Something was wrong in Lucy’s life. Something...
Again the image of her jerking away from him came back and suddenly he knew. Thinking of it, he closed his eyes and wondered how he hadn’t realized it before.
Lucy had come to the Lazy S to heal.
He hadn’t told her everything. Wait until she found out that the ranch she’d just purchased half interest in came with an added bonus. Suddenly he grinned. What would she say when he presented her with a pinkskinned, milk-swilling, diaper-wetting, loudly squalling six-month-old baby?
Chapter Two
The ear-splitting squawk behind Lucy startled her so badly she whirled. Her purse and briefcase flew from her hands, skittered across the living room’s floor and slammed into the cabbage-rose-print davenport. Lipstick, keys and a checkbook hurled from the purse while file folders and assorted legal papers spewed from the briefcase.
Fritzy stood in the kitchen doorway. Her eyebrows were raised, but she was smiling. However it wasn’t the older woman with whom Lucy had enjoyed a reunion an hour ago that had startled her, but the grinning, drooling, chortling creature Fritzy held in her arms.
A baby. Fritzy was holding a baby.
“Sorry we scared you,” Fritzy said, the apology much too offhand for Lucy’s still-pounding heart, “but Baby sure does like squealin’.”
Lucy laid a hand on her chest “So I gather. Whose, um...baby is it?” Shakily she bent to stuff papers into the briefcase.
“Oh, didn’t Rusty tell you before he went back to branding?”
It was true that less than an hour ago Rusty had informed her tersely that he was “burning daylight” and stomped off toward the corrals.
The housekeeper went on airily. “The men’ve got to get those late calves marked before cold weather sets in and then moved to low pastures. Fall roundup’s not so important as spring, but—”
“Uh, Fritzy,” Lucy gently reminded her, “the baby?”
“Oh, this is Tom’s. You remember, one of Rusty’s brothers?” The graying woman shook her head sadly. “Such a shame, him dallying with that gal. Even she said it was just one night—but when will people learn—that’s all it takes!”
The baby waved plump arms and flexed its feet, forcing Fritzy to shift the weight to one generous hip. Her soft-printed house dress bunched up a little, but Fritzy didn’t appear to notice. The infant’s blue eyes stared back at Lucy, and she noticed the rounded head was bald but for a soft bit of auburn down. The child’s body was stuffed like a sausage into a pink terry one-piece suit, the seams pulled so tight Lucy could see frayed threads threatening to burst. She shrugged; maybe that’s how baby clothes were supposed to fit. On the creature’s feet were a kind of bootie, white, with mock laces.
The tot squealed again.
“Fritzy, what do you mean it’s Tom’s?” Lucy asked warily. She straightened to place her purse and case onto the couch. She’d never had any experience with children. In the first months of her marriage, Kenneth had gone off without her knowledge and paid a surgeon to perform a vasectomy. Kids got in the way, he’d said. Kids were a nuisance. Kids were a pain in the a—
“Tom got that woman pregnant, like I said,” Fritzy supplied. “Then that freeway accident happened and...well, after she delivered, she showed up here, shoved Baby at Rusty and said, ‘You keep the brat, I don’t want her.”’ Fritzy harrumphed and nuzzled the infant’s neck. “Imagine, abandoning a child just like that. It’s terrible. But we don’t mind, do we, Baby?” She finished by making a silly face at the child.
Before Lucy could voice another question, Fritzy glanced up. “You’ll help, won’t you dear? Not that I wouldn’t love to spend every minute with such a perfect little lamb, but I’ve got housekeeping to do, you know.” Without waiting for a reply, she came forward and bundled the baby into Lucy’s arms. “Hold my angel a bit. I’ve got to get that chicken roasting or we’ll have no supper!”
“No, wait!” Lucy cried as a warm sloppy mouth came flush with her throat, depositing spittle down her neck, and a wriggling body smashed against her chest. “Fritzy,” she wailed at the woman’s fast-retreating back, “I don’t know how—I can’t do this.”
“Nothing to it,” the housekeeper said with a wave of her hand.
Lucy dashed after her, awkwardly balancing the child in her arms. In the spacious kitchen with its sunflower yellow curtains and cozy nook, Fritzy lifted a large blue-speckled roasting pan onto the tiled countertop and settled a raw chicken into its depths.
“Just a minute,” Lucy panted. Babies were heavier than she would have guessed they could be. “I’ve got to get this straight. Are you saying that Rusty’s brother Tom indulged in a one-night stand with some woman he didn’t know, and that this baby was born after his death?”
“Yes, dear.” Without looking up, Fritzy began spreading the chicken skin with herbs, then shook salt and pepper on top.
“And then,” Lucy continued doggedly, determined to get matters clear, “the woman came here and sort of...dropped it off?” On her shoulder, tiny fingers tried to pull one of Lucy’s small hoop earrings into its mouth. Lucy batted at the pudgy, grabbing hands. She was beginning to have a terrible sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.
“Yes, dear.” Fritzy poured a cup of what looked like broth into the roaster and took up a basting brush to paint melted butter over the chicken.
“Ouch,” Lucy yelped. The child had clamped the earring and her earlobe into its fist and was pulling both toward the yawing maw of its mouth. Dismayed, Lucy wondered how such a minuscule hand could wield all the strength of a lumberjack. With great difficulty, considering she had to juggle the infant with one arm, she finally managed to free her ear.
Over her shoulder Fritzy smiled. “You shouldn’t wear jewelry any more,” she said. “At least not for a while. Babies are like crows—everything that glitters catches their eyes.” She chuckled at her own joke.
Lucy did not laugh. The sinking sensation had reached her toes. “You can’t mean,” she began, speaking slowly and distinctly so that Fritzy wouldn’t misunderstand, “that this baby lives here, in this house.”
The housekeeper paused in surprise. She smoothed her gingham apron over her stout midsection. “Course I do. Gracious, where would you expect the child to live? It’s why I moved up from my cottage. I was thinking of moving back sometime, but,” she frowned, then resumed her work, “I s’pose with you here now I’d best stay. Wouldn’t be right—an eligible bachelor like Rusty and a sweet young thing like you living alone under one roof.” Her graying topknot bobbled as she shook her head. “No, indeed.”
Of all the developments Lucy had expected to arise from her business deal with Rusty, she’d never considered anything like this. Numbed by shock, she wondered what other little surprises Rusty might have in store for her.
Lucy placed her protesting burden in the crib while she took three minutes to change into her jeans, an old black sweatshirt and tennis shoes, and twenty more to wrestle the baby’s flailing, stubby limbs into a new diaper and another too-tight suit. Fritzy insisted she had kitchen work, that Lucy could of course change Baby—there was nothing to it—and had sent her off with a box of diapers.
The child’s bedroom was on the second floor, between the one Rusty had assigned to her and his own. A wood-slatted crib with clown-print bedding, a lamp and a changing table were the only pieces of furniture. The walls were an unadorned white, and nothing much matched. Even to Lucy’s untrained eye, the nursery appeared bare. Weren’t there supposed to be teddy bears, toy chests, hanging colored mobiles?
At the changing table, the disposable hourglass-shaped diaper was fitted with confusing tapes, which maddeningly kept sticking to her skin, to the bedding and even together. Then Lucy somehow got the baby’s arms into the outfit’s leg holes and the legs into the arm holes before she managed to figure out the intricacies of such an ensemble, but in the end she was triumphant.
And she learned that the child was a girl.
Lucy blew a strand of hair from her eyes.
Presumably to show gratitude, the baby squealed with impressive volume.
“You’re welcome,” Lucy replied. Guessing the pink plastic pail beside the changing table was the dirty diaper receptacle, she bent low and removed the tightfitting top. Like demons from Pandora’s box, an eyewatering, brain-numbing odor of revoltingly appalling proportions burst forth.
Lucy staggered, slammed down the lid and abandoned the diaper on the table for Fritzy to deal with later. In the hallway she paused and took grateful moments to breathe in lungfuls of clean air.
Back in the kitchen with her cleaned-up human cargo, Lucy expected Fritzy to be suitably impressed and ready to take over, but the corpulent woman, now peeling potatoes, merely suggested she carry the child down to the corrals.
“Fritzy,” Lucy said carefully, still holding the infant, “I, uh, don’t know how to do stuff with a baby.”
“stuff?”
“You know...things.” Trying to explain, Lucy floundered while the baby attempted to flop out of her arms. She struggled to hold the slippery infant. “Like...feed her. Or, um, give her a bath. Or—” What else did one do with babies? “Uh, or other stuff.”
“Lucy, Lucy,” Fritzy replied kindly, “don’t worry. You’ll learn. Experience is the best teacher.”
“I’m afraid,” Lucy explained even more kindly, “that this will have to remain your job. I’m not very maternal.” Hadn’t Kenneth told her many times that she’d make a poor mother?
Because she knew she and her husband would never become parents, she’d long avoided children, ignored baby shower invitations, declined to hold acquaintances’ newborns. Why should she, when she’d never get one of her own—when cuddling someone else’s darling only made the ache for her own children sting so profoundly?
She tried to hand over the child, but Fritzy scoffed, peeling another potato.
“It’ll be all right, Lucy, you’ll see. Now, why don’t you go down to the corrals? Baby just loves to see the horses.” She turned her back and filled an enormous pot with water, salted it, and then began slicing potatoes inside.
Alarm replaced Lucy’s growing apprehension, spiked up her spine like a hand running over barbwire. Fritzy was determined that Lucy help in child care, of this she had no further illusions. Slice went Fritzy’s paring knife, plop went the potato into the water. Frustrated, Lucy stared at Fritzy’s broad back.
Fritzy ignored her.
Slice. Plop. Slice. Plop.
This was ridiculous. How dare Rusty neglect to mention this almost-brand-new child to her!
She’d come to the Lazy S searching for peace, for quiet and tranquility.
Not squalling voices and grabby fingers and... peepee!
“I will go down to the corrals,” she said aloud. If Fritzy was going to be stubborn, she’d get Rusty to take the child. It was his niece, wasn’t it? “Nothing personal,” she whispered into the baby’s shell-like ear. Suddenly she noticed that the baby’s scent was different from anything she’d ever smelled before. Different but good, and thank goodness nothing like that disgusting diaper pail. No, more like fresh-from-the-oven buns or soft, lovable puppies.
She shook off the thought. “I’m just not the motherly sort,” she whispered. “You understand, don’t you?”
Baby cooed.
With a fleecy blanket Fritzy handed her, Lucy managed to wrap the child up against the cooling air, clamp it to her chest and march out.
Autumn was beginning to cloak western Nevada in hues of russet and claret, turning the leaves of grouped alder and spruce trees into a fall-colored kaleidoscope. Winter sun had nearly sunk behind the fanged upthrust of the Humboldt mountains.
Outside the house, Lucy paused a moment to draw a breath. Pure, lung-expanding air filled her chest, scented of sage and the faintest hint of a branding fire. For once, the tyke made no sound, merely nestled her face into the crook of Lucy’s neck. The sensation wasn’t so bad, she thought, not really minding the child’s wet mouth anymore. And she so enjoyed the chirrup of the coming night crickets and the breeze soughing serenely through the trees’ brittle leaves.
There was no honking of angry commuters, no blare of city sirens, no suffocating exhaust fumes. One could relax here, find solace from the frenetic pace of city life.
These qualities were why she’d come to the country, she thought, pleased. Others should have the chance to enjoy this wonderful environment. How easily she could picture groups of twenty or so—nice, hardworking city folk who needed a place to relax, appreciate country sunshine, wildlife, the great outdoors.
As a child, her short time here had bolstered her for the hard years to come. Always when life mired her in difficulty, she could close her eyes and travel in her mind to the ranch and find relief.
Rusty could be persuaded to see her side, surely he could. He was set in his ways and proud, she could see that. She would just have to explain matters more thoroughly.
But he couldn’t be allowed to get away with his deception about the child. With determined strides, she crunched her way over the gravel-lined drive to the corrals, where at least eight men appeared to be just finishing their work.
At the far end of the large enclosure, a man worked, mounted on a deep-brass-colored horse. Why Lucy’s eyes should focus so swiftly on Rusty she didn’t know—but she didn’t even have to look for him. He was dressed the same as, and he worked the same as, the cowboys inside. Yet the unique tilt of his black Stetson and the confident set of his broad shoulders somehow set him apart from other men.