Mistletoe in Texas, page 7
Or Hank was reading way too much into the fact that his dad hadn’t cleaned out a damn closet. He pushed his hair out of his face, tugged the standard rancher’s wool cap down low over his ears, and went out to find Cole tossing hay into mangers in the barn. The trip hopper feeder mounted on the flatbed of the chore pickup was already full to the brim with cake—the large pellets of compressed grain with vitamin and mineral supplements that were the cow equivalent of PowerBars.
Cole checked the settings on the control panel. “Five pounds.”
“What’s he got out on the wheat field?”
“Two hundred stocker calves, he said, and three pounds apiece.”
Hank did the math in his head. Six hundred total pounds of feed, dumped out five pounds at a time. “A hundred and twenty clicks.”
Cole nodded and headed around the back of the pickup. “You drive.”
Hank blinked at him, stunned. Between rodeos and bouncing around the Jacobs ranch, he and Cole must’ve traveled ten thousand miles together, with Cole always in the driver’s seat. But now he planted himself on the passenger’s side.
Well. Okay then.
When Hank opened his door, both dogs piled in, a ball of hair, legs, snarls, and yips. Mabel’s tail swatted Hank in the face as he tried to squeeze onto the seat. Cole got an arm around Spider and pinned her to his side. Mabel plunked down next to Hank with an expression that clearly said, Hah!
The last three years had not been kind to the chore pickup. The clutch slipped as he started out, and the front U-joints were clanking. Bouncing over mounded bunches of big bluestem and slamming into badger holes hidden in the switchgrass took a toll, and it wouldn’t be like Johnny to fix anything until it completely gave up the ghost.
Half a mile down the highway, Hank turned onto an approach that led to an irrigated field of winter wheat, planted in late summer to provide grazing for stocker calves: four- to five-hundred-pound weanlings purchased in the fall, then sold in the spring at twice the size. They were a fairly reliable way to increase a ranch’s income unless the market went bottoms up, or feed prices skyrocketed, or the weather went nuts, or whatever.
There always seemed to be a whatever when it came to cows.
These were the juvenile delinquents of the bovine world, mobbing the gate at the sight of the feed truck, pushing, shoving, calling one another stupid mother-suckers, and ripe for any excuse to go tearing around trashing stuff.
Hank dropped one forearm over his crotch and rolled down the window. “Push ’em back, Mabel.”
The dog used his lap for a launch pad—hence the protective measures—as she vaulted out and hit the ground running. The calves scattered when she flew under the gate, nipping noses and toes to clear enough space to get the pickup inside.
Spider practically turned upside down, but Cole maintained his grip. “Your dad said whatever we do, don’t let her out with the calves. Last time he ended up with cattle running through the fence and down the highway.”
Hank closed the window, then grabbed Spider and hauled her over to his side of the pickup while Cole got out to open the gate. Cole. Riding shotgun. Opening gates while Hank drove. If the dog hadn’t been all but clawing holes in his leg, he might think he was still dreaming.
“Down!” he commanded.
Spider licked his face. Sighing, Hank shoved her off so he could drive through the gate. Cole shut it behind them, ambled over to switch on the feeder’s electric motor, and waved a hand to indicate that Hank should go ahead. The conveyor in the bottom of the feeder’s tank began to rattle cubes of cake into the hopper box. Hank put the pickup in low gear and started off at a steady pace as the metal trapdoor opened to dump a five-pound pile of feed, then slapped shut.
One click.
He began to count automatically. Hank had done this so many times he’d sometimes caught himself counting the taps of a windblown branch against the side of that old camper in Montana. Some people preferred to use the electronic counter mounted on the dashboard, but it had stopped working before he was big enough to see over the steering wheel.
As the mass of jostling bodies rocked the pickup, he kept an eye out for animals that hung back or had a droop to their ears, the earliest signs of illness. Meanwhile, Cole strolled through the herd, examining them close up for a limp that might mean hoofrot, or a tear-streaked face that might be pink eye.
One hundred and eleven, one hundred and twelve, one hundred and thirteen…
At a hundred and twenty, Hank stopped the pickup and started to jump out. Spider slammed into him, and he barely grabbed a leg before she escaped.
“Down!” Hank barked, shoving her to her belly with a hand on the middle of her back before he scooped her up and stuffed her into the pickup. Meanwhile, the feeder had continued clacking away. He hit the off switch, but a mound of cake had accumulated while he wrestled the dog. Crap. Hank squatted to scoop up the excess.
“Leave it,” Cole said. “An extra ten pounds won’t hurt anything.”
Was he kidding? Hank eyed Cole as if he’d sprouted a second head. “Since when? I swear, you used to make me count out the kernels of grain when I was feeding your bucking stock.”
“That’s different. They’re athletes.” Cole made a sheepish face. “And I’ve learned to pick my battles since Shawnee came along.”
Hank laughed. “I’ll bet.”
Cole’s grin was downright devious. “Sometimes I still do it just ’cuz it’s fun to watch her get wound up.”
An odd pain twisted through Hank at the easy humor and affection in Cole’s voice. He was…happy. Not just with his life, but with himself. All it took was a woman who could love him for exactly who he was—and thirty-three years to find her. Measured by that stick, Hank had eight years to go, assuming he had smartened up enough to recognize what was right under his nose.
If dating Grace had been a possibility, would he have looked at her differently back in school? She hadn’t been allowed to go to movies or dances, and sneaking around was not an option with Mr. McKenna stalking the halls that he kept polished to a high sheen. God save the fool he’d caught scribbling curse words on the bathroom wall, let alone anyone who touched his daughter. Some days it took all of Hank’s nerve just to sit across a cafeteria table from her. Their friendship had played out under surveillance and within ironclad boundaries that hadn’t left room for so much as a wayward thought. Would he have had them, given the space?
Luckily, he’d never had a chance to find out, or he might have lost Grace sooner.
Hank dropped the cake pellets and stood, then paused with his hand on the pickup door. “Why am I driving?”
“It’s your ranch.” Cole paced off toward the gate, leaving Hank to laugh in disbelief.
His? Yeah, right. Maybe marriage was making Cole soft in the head after all.
* * *
Hank wasn’t a bit surprised to find his saddle on the same old rack in the barn, but he got another stab in the gut when he saw the empty spaces where Melanie’s stuff should have been. It was yet more proof that she was really, truly gone.
Cole threw one of the other saddles on Ruby.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Hank asked.
“Johnny said she’s never bucked before. She should be fine as long as that dog doesn’t get underfoot again.”
Hank led Ranger into the back corral. The air was damp and laced with scents of grass and brush and earth that were indefinably different than the Montana range. They triggered a rush of memories…and longing. He loved this land. The endless stretches of sky, and riding out on a good horse with his dog loping alongside. He would have been happy to make this his home base forever, if he could have found a way to coexist with his father.
He might’ve even learned to tolerate the stupid cows.
Chapter 9
The Brookman ranch was nothing like Grace had imagined.
She had woven elaborate fantasies where she was a real cowgirl and rode the range with Hank, checking fences, trailing cows, pausing beside the river to share the canteen and a stolen kiss. Hokey, yes, but everything she knew about cattle, she’d learned from old movies in the library’s DVD collection.
Her father did not believe in television. Or the Internet. Or anything that might cause his children to consider viewpoints other than his own.
Even Grace had heard about the Brookmans, though. They were local legends, generations of the best ropers and horse trainers in Texas going back to Hank’s great-grandfather, who’d traveled all the way to Madison Square Garden to compete in the earliest version of the National Finals Rodeo. It was natural to assume their ranch would be steeped in that history, a place of towering oaks, weathered wood, rocking chairs on shady porches, and horses dozing at a hitching rail.
In reality, the place couldn’t have had less personality if it had been designed by an architect who specialized in tract housing.
There was a midsized manufactured home with no landscaping beyond a few sad-looking bushes, and a steel-sided pole barn built from a trucked-in kit. Even the corrals were ugly—heavy pipe posts with oilfield sucker rod for rails. Beyond the iron wheel that served as a signpost, there was nothing rustic in sight. Everything original had been consumed by the fire and replaced by whatever was quickest and easiest, but someone should’ve cared enough to spruce the place up a little in the thirty years since.
The saddest sight, though, was the arena. Weeds had grown up in the fence lines and roping boxes, and cattle munched at round bale feeders evenly spaced down the middle of what had once been the plowed surface.
Shawnee followed her gaze and shook her head. “It’s a damn waste. Johnny Brookman is a genius when it comes to rope horses.”
“Hard to do alone, I guess.”
Shawnee made a sound that was equal parts irritation and agreement and headed for the back door of the house. Grace was uncomfortable invading someone else’s personal space, but Shawnee barged through the mudroom and into the kitchen with the assurance of someone who’d visited often. The scarred wooden table was covered in junk mail, feed-store flyers, crumpled receipts, and at least three months’ worth of The Cattleman magazine.
Shawnee dumped her trio of reusable grocery bags on the narrow island separating living room from kitchen. One end of the couch was heaped with unfolded laundry, and beside the recliner, a coffee mug and an open carton of Oreos sat next to the television remote.
“Geezus,” Shawnee muttered. “You might as well put a sign up that says pathetic divorced male.”
“It’s not as bad as I expected.” Grace shuddered at the memory of drinking glasses in her brother’s apartment that had been left so long that whatever was inside looked—and smelled—like gray sewage. These countertops appeared to have been wiped recently, and a cereal bowl and a few plates were stacked on the drainboard.
“He pays the neighbor lady to come over and clean every couple of weeks.” Shawnee peered at a collection of photos on the closest wall. “Look at those baby faces.”
Grace looked, and was confronted with a picture of Melanie that could have been Maddie’s beaming face. Her daughter had definitely inherited the Brookman genes. Grace turned away to dump her bags on the island and peek inside drawers and cupboards in search of pots, pans, and cooking utensils.
Shawnee wandered through the living room and down the hall, opening a door on the right. “The bathroom is safe.”
The refrigerator was too, stocked with only canned pork and beans, a partly used package of hamburger, the remnants of a take-and-bake lasagna, and a Smoke Shack takeout bag. Mmm. Brisket.
Shawnee’s phone chimed. She glanced at the message and headed for the door. “Cole wants me to bring the side-by-side and fencing tools down to the pasture. We probably won’t be back until around one o’clock.”
She thumped out the door, leaving Grace almost two hours to manufacture enough food for four, including Cole. Shawnee hadn’t said who he’d wrangled to bring with him—probably one or two of the Jacobs hands—but having grown up in a family of nine, Grace could throw together a large meal in short order. Once she’d gathered the necessary tools, she sautéed vegetables in a Dutch oven, added cubed, cooked chicken, then poured in stock and a bag of frozen southern-style hash browns, one of her mother’s favorite time-savers.
Now for dessert. She dumped canned peaches in a large pie pan, sprinkled them with cinnamon and brown sugar, tossed in a few dabs of butter, and whipped up a simple batter of flour, sugar, cinnamon, and milk to pour over the top. While the stew simmered and the cobbler filled the house with the mouthwatering aroma of cinnamon and peaches, she threw together a pasta salad and stirred up a batch of biscuits, ready to slide into the oven while her diners washed up.
There. That would do. She gave the stew another stir before tackling the mess on the kitchen table. Receipts went in one careful pile on the island, magazines and newspapers in another, and mail in a third. Everything else went in a fourth pile, including a used plastic syringe, a couple of yellow ear tags, and half a roll of elastic veterinary bandage. After she’d wiped away dust, smears of barbecue sauce, and a sprinkling of hay, she found silverware and plates to lay the table.
Satisfied, she headed for the bathroom. Three other doors led off the hallway, the one at the end left open to reveal a master bedroom. The others would belong to Melanie…and Hank.
Temptation nudged Grace with sticky fingers. She could just take a peek…
She marched herself straight to the bathroom, then right on back to the living room. Once there, though, it was impossible to ignore the photos. There was Melanie, propped in front of her daddy in a shiny new trophy saddle at the famous Pendleton Roundup with her hair pulled up into sassy ponytails tied with pink ribbons to match her boots, and that smile so much like Maddie’s.
And talk about smiles—back in the day, Johnny Brookman had had one that could make a girl’s heart flutter. Grace had only seen him being large, dark, and grim at school events, but here his eyes brimmed with laughter and a hint of the mischief that used to constantly dance in Hank’s.
Damn life for taking the joy out of them, turning all that potential to pain. And damn them for letting it. People shook their heads at Hank, the way he’d squandered the opportunities handed to him, but how was that any worse than his father? Johnny had had three decades to recover from the devastation of the fire, but it didn’t look as if he’d even tried to revive his rodeo career. Grace had worked so hard to become a roper she couldn’t fathom being that good and just walking away.
She’d barely known the sport existed until the McKenna clan had moved to the Panhandle after her daddy had been hired as head custodian by the Earnest school district. From day one, she’d been awed by the girls who climbed out of beat-up pickups to saunter past with long, loose-hipped strides. Bring it on, their body language shouted. I can rope it or ride it better and faster than you.
Grace had immediately decided that somehow, some way, she was going to be a cowgirl.
She’d had to wait until college to begin turning that vow into reality. Had had to beg a horse trainer on the outskirts of Canyon to hire a clueless town girl, first to muck stalls, then to groom horses, and finally to be his exercise rider. Though rodeo wasn’t his specialty, he had taught her to swing and throw a rope, using a hay bale as a dummy calf. And he’d located Betsy for her, lounging around a pasture after the teenager who’d gotten her from Shawnee had lost interest in roping.
She’d had to scrape up money for feed, beg for opportunities to rope, and pay by the run, but she’d stuck with it. It made her vaguely sick to see all the signs of a Brookman rodeo legacy being allowed to wither and die. How did someone go from that proud champion, showing off his new saddle and his precious daughter, to an arena overrun by ragweed and thistles?
And how did Hank go from a laughing kid in an Earnest Badgers football uniform—seventh grade, and so skinny Grace had been sure he’d get snapped right in two on every tackle—to a flinty-eyed man who seemed like he’d forgotten how to smile?
At the rattle of the door, voices, and the scuff of boots in the mudroom, she spun around and hustled toward the kitchen.
“It smells great,” a familiar deep voice said, but the man Grace crashed into as she rounded the island was not Cole.
Hank grabbed her arms as her nose practically mashed into his chest. Recognition blasted through her at the scent of Irish Spring and warm male skin that had forever defined Hank. Like bees catching a whiff of clover on the breeze, her hormones buzzed to life. She jerked away. “What are you doing here?”
His mouth twisted. “You know what they say about bad pennies.”
She did. And damn her fluttering pulse, because Hank seemed determined to keep turning up when she least expected him.
Chapter 10
It was the best meal Hank had ever eaten at his family’s kitchen table.
Partly because he’d never been this kind of hungry when he’d lived here—working a full morning with nothing in his stomach but a bowl of generic raisin bran—but mostly because he’d been raised on dry pot roast, rubbery potatoes, and warmed-over hamburger casseroles, with ketchup accounting for ninety percent of their vegetables in an effort to make the rest edible.
His dad had been close to helpless in the kitchen, but Hank could swear his mother did it on purpose, revenge for her forced indenture as a ranch wife. Until he had started making his own breakfast, he hadn’t realized it took effort to stir together water with mix from a box and somehow create leathery pancakes. Their lot had improved some when Melanie took over the cooking, but she’d never served biscuits that melted in your mouth like these.
He helped himself to a third, using half to mop up every drop of gravy from the chicken stew as Grace dished up whatever made the kitchen smell like sugary cinnamon heaven. When she set the plate in front of him, Hank nearly swooned. Peach cobbler with a scoop of Blue Bell butter pecan ice cream. He moaned a little when he took the first bite.
