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  Beau hesitated, clearly suspicious. “Then why was he hiding?”

  “Maybe he was scared—or just shy. He’s only a boy.” Natalie gave the young man a friendly wave. “Hello, Lute. We were just checking the mare. Keep an eye on her, will you? Tell Sky if you see any change.”

  “Sure.” Without raising his eyes, Lute picked up the shovel from beside the wheelbarrow and ambled back into the stall. The sound of scraping came from the shadows.

  “We should go.” Beau pressed a hand to the small of her back.

  “Yes, we should.” Natalie needed no urging. Their embrace had been innocent enough, but neither of them relished the idea that they’d been observed.

  The door where they’d entered earlier had swung shut. Reaching past her, Beau shoved it open. Bright afternoon sunlight spilled into the barn, dazzling her eyes. Only as her vision cleared did she see the looming shape of a man in front of her.

  “I’ve been looking all over hell for you, Natalie,” Slade growled. “Care to tell me what you two were doing in there?”

  CHAPTER 2

  Beau curbed the impulse to push forward and confront the man. But he damn well didn’t like the way Slade Haskell was talking to his wife; still, any interference on his part would only make things worse for Natalie.

  “I figured you’d be here when I got home early and didn’t find you.” Slade’s eyes were glittering slits. Blond, with close-clipped hair; blunt, handsome features; and a thickening belly, he was dressed in jeans and a grease-stained work shirt with HASKELL TRUCKING stamped on the chest pocket. “Spotted your SUV out front, but when I went in the house, none of those folks had seen you. How the hell do you think that made me look—a man who can’t keep track of his own wife?”

  “That’s enough, Slade.” Natalie’s voice was low and taut. “I planned on going into the house, but first I needed to check on a mare.”

  “And this hotshot government man just happened to wander in? Checking on a mare, my aunt Nelly’s ass!” Reaching out, he plucked a piece of straw from Natalie’s hair. His gaze burned into Beau like a red-hot poker. “She’s my wife now, Tyler. You’ve got no business fooling around with her! I ought to knock you down and kick your damned teeth in!”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea, friend.” Beau spoke with great restraint. “Give your wife some credit. She’s a good woman. I simply wanted to say hello to her and good-bye, since I’ll be leaving tomorrow.”

  “Well you can say good-bye here and now!” Slade turned his fury on Natalie. “Back in high school, everybody knew you were doing it with him. If I find out you were messing around with him again—”

  “Stop it, Slade!” Natalie exploded. “Don’t be an idiot! We weren’t even alone! Lute was there the whole time, cleaning out the stalls! If you don’t believe me, go in and ask him.”

  Beau saw the big man pause, as if hesitant to call his wife’s bluff. Then Slade took a firm grip on her elbow. “Come on, we’re going to the house to say hello to all those fine folks together.”

  “Not now.” She twisted away from him. “We both need some time to cool down. I’m going to my car. I’ll see you at home.”

  “No, you don’t.” His big fist locked around her arm again. “They saw me arrive alone. I want them to see that you’re with me now.”

  This time Natalie didn’t argue. She walked beside her husband across the muddy yard, her back ramrod straight, her small chin thrust forward, her dark curls ruffled by the breeze as he marched her toward the ranch house.

  Beau watched them, his hands crumbling a piece of straw that had clung to his jacket. He hadn’t planned to stir up old memories or cause trouble between Natalie and her husband. Yet coming to the barn with her had done just that.

  Turning away, Beau gazed westward, to the escarpment that rose in rusty white buttresses above the rolling bed of the canyon. A golden eagle, riding an updraft, soared above the Caprock where the high plain began. The scene was one of peace and beauty. But the tension in Beau’s gut wouldn’t go away. Holding Natalie in his arms had reawakened all the old emotions—emotions he no longer had the right to feel.

  Inside the barn, Lute Fletcher smiled to himself and pushed the shovel under the last bit of dirty straw and manure. A man would have to be damned near deaf not to overhear every word of the confrontation that had just taken place right outside the barn door—just as he would have to be damned near blind not to see the near embrace between Beau Tyler and Slade Haskell’s wife. And Lute Fletcher was far from being deaf or blind.

  As he tossed the shovelful of debris onto the mound already in the wheelbarrow, he wondered if that little scene he had witnessed between Beau and Natalie might prove useful to him. Maybe he’d get himself into Haskell’s good graces, because he sure as hell was tired of mucking out stalls. To emphasize his disgust with the job at hand, Lute let go of the shovel, letting it fall against the stall’s wooden partition instead of propping it up. It clattered onto the cement floor about the same time he heard the creaking hinges of the barn door opening again.

  Figuring it was Beau Tyler coming back in, Lute reached for the wheelbarrow handles. It wasn’t Beau who walked in, but Lute’s older cousin Sky Fletcher. Lute ran a skimming glance over Sky, noting the crisp white shirt he wore tucked into a pair of dark, belted jeans, a silver and turquoise bolo tie around his neck. A dressy, tan Stetson covered most of his midnight-black hair.

  Sharp blue eyes briefly locked their attention on Lute. “I thought you’d be finished in here by now,” Sky stated even as he angled toward the stall with the pregnant mare inside it.

  “Almost.” Lute couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice over being stuck with such a menial task. “That lady vet was just here checkin’ on the mare.”

  “I know. I spoke to her outside.”

  The longer he looked at Sky in his clean clothes, knowing how much his own smelled like shit and sweat, the hotter his resentment grew—until it spilled out. “Don’t see why I gotta work on the day the big boss got buried.”

  Unfazed by the heat in Lute’s voice, Sky slipped into the stall, moving to the buckskin’s side. “Bull would have been the first to tell you that there’s never a day off from doing chores.”

  “Maybe not, but it seems like I’m always the one shoveling shit,” he grumbled. “When you hired me on last month, this sure as hell wasn’t the kind of work I figured I’d be doing. I figured I’d be out working cattle, learning the ranch business. Dammit, you’re my cousin, Sky. You know this isn’t fit work for a Comanche.”

  “It’s how I started,” Sky replied, never losing his air of calm. “Eventually I worked my way up to wrangler, and now assistant foreman.”

  “And how long did that take?” Lute challenged.

  “Does it matter?” Sky countered.

  “Hell, yes! I’m twenty-one and I don’t plan on spending the next however many years it will take pushing this shovel.”

  “That’s your job for now.” Sky gave the mare a final pat on the neck and let himself out of the stall. “Don’t forget to clean the stallion barn when you finish up here.”

  “Yeah, and after I finish that, I’ll be taking a shower and headin’ into town, so don’t be looking for me around here,” Lute shouted at Sky’s back as he exited the barn.

  With the closing of the barn door, Lute resumed his grip of the wheelbarrow handles and used the built-up anger inside to propel the wheelbarrow out the back of the barn, where he dumped the reeking mass into a shallow pit. For a moment he glared at the growing mound piled there, knowing that his next job was likely to be loading it up and hauling it off to be spread over the lower pastures for fertilizer while the cattle were grazing up on the caprock.

  He wondered what the chances were that Slade Haskell would be at the Blue Coyote tonight. Lute had heard some talk that Haskell might be looking for drivers for his trucking company. But when he’d cornered Haskell about a job a couple weeks ago, Haskell hadn’t been hiring.

  Rig
ht now there was nothing that would give Lute more pleasure than to find work somewhere else and tell Sky where he could put this shovel.

  By the time the last of the guests had left, the spring night had turned chilly. A blaze crackled in the parlor’s great stone fireplace, casting its warmth out to the room’s massive leather chairs and letting it rise to the open-beamed ceiling.

  Will lounged in one of the four overstuffed chairs and let his gaze slide to the occupants of the other three—his brother Beau, the ranch’s aging foreman Jasper Platt, and Sky Fletcher. He watched as his brother took a swig from the bottle of Mexican beer in his hand.

  “It was a fine service, Will,” Beau said with a nod, and absently used the back of his hand to wipe away the bit of foam on his upper lip. “But there’s one thing I’ve wondered about all afternoon. Why in hell’s name did you have Garn Prescott give the eulogy? Dad hated Ferguson Prescott his whole life, and I can’t imagine that he felt much different about Prescott’s son. I could almost picture Dad turning over in his coffin when the esteemed congressman took the pulpit.”

  Will fixed a steady gaze on his brother, reminding himself that Beau hadn’t set foot on the ranch once in the past eleven years. It was time he learned the true situation, considering half the ranch would now be his.

  “There are two answers to that question,” he said. “The simpler one is that Garn phoned me with an offer to do it. Since nobody else was stepping up, I let him. I knew he’d do a decent job, and he did. So what if he was looking for a few votes in next fall’s election?”

  “As well as a vote from that good-lookin’ ex of yours,” Jasper added with a wink. “He’s been sniffin’ a trail around Tori ever since his wife died.”

  “Not that Tori’s interested,” Beau said. “I know for a fact she’d like him to take a walk.”

  “Tori can do whatever she wants,” Will snapped. “This isn’t about her.”

  “So what’s your second answer?” Sky Fletcher was a man who did more listening than talking. Tall and lean, with the black hair, hawkish bones, and tawny skin of his Comanche ancestors, he studied Will with riveting cobalt eyes.

  “The second answer’s about survival.” Leaning forward, Will set his bottle on the coffee table with a sharp thunk. “This isn’t the Old West anymore. Most of the ranches in these parts have sold off their acreage to farmers and developers just to stay afloat. The biggest outfits, the ones that haven’t broken up, have been taken over by syndicates of investors, a lot of them from back East or even places like Singapore and Dubai. More and more cattle are being raised on farms. As for big, open family ranches like ours . . .” Will shook his head.

  “You’re saying we’re dinosaurs.” Beau’s remark wasn’t a question.

  “Something like that,” Will admitted.

  “What’s that got to do with letting Garn Prescott deliver Bull’s eulogy?” Jasper demanded.

  “Just this,” Will said. “We can’t afford to have enemies. Bull and old Ferg may have feuded all their lives, but now that they’re both dead, we have to make peace. We need allies—and it never hurts to have one in Congress, looking out for the interests of ranchers in these parts.”

  Jasper came close to spitting on the floor. “Bull wouldn’t like that. He always said, ‘If you wallow with pigs, you’re bound to get dirty.’ And he had the Prescotts in mind when he said it.”

  Will sighed. As foreman, Jasper was entitled to be here. But the old man wasn’t making this discussion any easier, and given what needed to be said, his mood was bound to get worse.

  “Let me paint the big picture,” Will said. “The Prescott ranch has been bailed out by investors. Garn’s the figurehead, but he’s no longer running the operation. That’s why he has time for politics. If we can’t manage to stay afloat, we’ll be fated to go the same way.”

  “Are we in trouble?” Sky asked the question.

  “Not yet, but we’re cutting it close. If we don’t make changes now, another drought like last summer’s could put us under.” Will leaned back in his chair, studying the man his father had taken in when he was a scruffy, lost teenager. Bringing Sky Fletcher in as part of the ranch family had been one of the best decisions Bull ever made.

  “One idea I have involves you, Sky. Our Rimrock cow ponies have always gotten top prices at auction, as much for your training as for their breeding. I’d like to expand the operation, to shore us up in case we have to sell off our beef early. What would you think about choosing some prime-quality colts to be brought in and broken here?”

  Sky’s expression barely flickered. “We could work it out. But training horses takes time. So does being second foreman. If you want me to focus on the horse side, we’ll need some help.”

  “How about that young cousin of yours? Is he any good?”

  “Not as good as I’d hoped. So far he does more complaining than working.”

  “In that case, if we get those extra colts, it might be easier to find a man who can shoulder your other duties.” Will shifted his somber gaze to Jasper, bracing for what needed to be said. “I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know, Jasper, but there are some days when you’re so crippled up with arthritis that it’s all you can do to climb into the saddle. And those days are happening more frequently.”

  Jasper bristled with pride. “So what are you saying? That it’s time I retired?”

  “Not until you can train a new boss to take your place, teach him everything you know about this business and this ranch. You have a wealth of knowledge that we’ll always need to draw on. So don’t have any doubts—you have a home on this ranch for as long as you want it.” Will could see that none of his words were sitting well with the old cowboy. But as much as he hated saying them, this had to be done. “Hell, Jasper, you were more a father to me and Beau than Bull ever was. You put us on our first horses, taught us how to work cattle and rope. And I need you to do the same with Erin. As things stand right now, she’ll be the one to inherit the ranch. She’ll need to know how to run it. No one could do a better job of teaching her that than you.”

  The old cowboy brightened. He had always regarded Erin as a kind of granddaughter. “It’d be a pleasure to take her in hand,” he said, and meant it. He paused, a slight frown puckering his forehead. “But if you’re having Sky focus on the horse side of the business, who are you figurin’ on gettin’ to be foreman?”

  Will fixed his gaze on Beau. “I’m looking at him.”

  Ever since Will had turned the conversation to the ranch’s future, Beau had suspected he’d get drawn into it somehow, but he hadn’t foreseen this. He felt his jaw muscles tightening in instant resistance.

  Beau took a quick swig of beer to try to cool his temper and managed an even response. “You’re overlooking one small detail,” he said. “I’m leaving in the morning to catch my flight back to D.C.”

  Will came right back at him without a pause.

  “That’s easily remedied. Just cancel the reservation.”

  “You know damn well that I have a job waiting for me.” This time Beau couldn’t keep the heat out of his voice. “You don’t really expect me to walk away from it just like that.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time you walked away from something,” Will countered, his expression one of hard challenge as he deliberately referenced the day when Beau had walked out of the ranch house, never to return until now.

  The tension in the room was palpable, the air fairly crackling with it. Sky rose from his chair, unfolding his lanky frame with a movement as smooth as water. “The buckskin mare showed signs of going into labor. I need to check on her.”

  Will glanced up at him. “Erin’s upstairs in her room. I know she wanted to be there when the foal came. Should I call her?”

  “Not yet,” Sky replied. “It’s the mare’s first foal. Let’s wait until we’re sure everything’s all right.”

  “Keep me posted.” Will directed the words to Sky’s back as he left the room.
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  Before he was out of sight, Jasper planted his hands on the chair’s armrests and proceeded to lever himself out of it. “Sky’s got the right idea. You two need some time alone to hash this out, and I’ll just leave you to it.”

  Beau watched the old cowboy hobble from the room, then turned his attention back to Will, determined to end this discussion quickly and cleanly.

  “I’m not the man for this job, Will,” he stated flatly. “It’s been years since I sat in a saddle, swung a rope, or doctored a cow. You need a foreman with experience.”

  “Do you know the kind of salary a man like that would command ?” Will fired back. “The ranch can’t afford it. This place is land-rich and cash-poor. Another bad year, we could be cash-broke. And, yeah, you might be rusty when it comes to ordinary ranch work, but you know how to manage men. You’ve got the organizational skills we need. And better yet, you know your way around a computer.” With the last of his arguments thrown at Beau, his voice took on the thickness of repressed emotion. “If you have a drop of family loyalty in those ice-water veins of yours, brother, you’ll cut your ties back East and stay here.”

  With the words still echoing in his mind, Beau realized this wasn’t some spur-of-the-moment idea; on the contrary, his brother had clearly given it a lot of thought before proposing it. He started to tell Will that all his arguments had failed to change his mind. Then Beau met that riveting gaze and felt his brother’s attempt to impose his will on him. He had always known that Will had been chiseled from the Texas Caprock in Bull’s image, but the resemblance was more than a surface one. Will had a stubborn streak every bit as wide as their father’s. Once he sank his teeth into an idea, he didn’t let go of it.

  Knowing it would likely be futile, Beau tried one last time to make his position clear. “Look, Will, I’m sorry you’re going through a rough patch, but the ranch has been through them before. It’ll make it through this time as well. In any case, it’s your problem, not mine.”