Leftover Love Page 6

  “I’m sorry, did you want to use the phone? I had to call my parents so they wouldn’t start worrying about me,” she stated, sounding very nonchalant as she moved unhurriedly across the room to him, although her destination was actually the doorway he was blocking. “And I reversed the charges, so the call shouldn’t appear on your billing.”

  With a negligent push of his shoulder, Creed straightened to his full height. “You still haven’t said what it is that you haven’t told Mattie.” His hat was pushed to the back of his head and his dark eyes were narrowed with suspicion.

  “Did I say Mattie?” Layne stalled for time as she tried to recall. She was almost sure she hadn’t mentioned Mattie’s name in the conversation. “You must have misunderstood something. It’s easy to do when you only hear one side of a conversation. It’s hard to be sure what someone’s talking about.”

  “You said you hadn’t told her yet, and wanted to wait until later.” He continued to eye her skeptically, but Layne was satisfied with a little doubt.

  “I was probably referring to my girlfriend,” she lied. “I didn’t tell her how long I planned to be gone, since I wasn’t sure myself.” There was an impulse to challenge him for listening in on a private conversation, but instinct told her that that was the wrong tactic. A shift in topics seemed wisest at this point, so Layne glanced down at the pumpkin-colored tomcat, curling against Creed’s leg. “Fred certainly likes you.”

  Creed acknowledged the cat’s presence with a brief glance, then moved leisurely out of the doorway. “He’s a cat.”

  The explanation puzzled Layne. Creed was no longer blocking her path, but she didn’t take advantage of his shift into the room. She half turned to study him with a curious tilt of her head.

  “What does that have to do with it?” she asked.

  “A cat has a different set of standards for judging a person.” Which was not a much more informative response than the first. Creed paused in the middle of the room and met her look. “Your story checks out, by the way.”

  “My story?” Layne didn’t follow his meaning.

  “I called the newspaper in Omaha yesterday and they confirmed that you worked for them and that you had taken an extended leave of absence.”

  Bless Clyde, she thought, and said aloud, “It was sensible of you to verify it. I guess I never got around to supplying Mattie with any references. They didn’t seem necessary at the time.”

  “Your decision to leave the paper was rather sudden, wasn’t it?” It was a rhetorical question, indicating that Clyde might have let something slip. “I suppose a love affair turned sour and you wanted to get away to mend your broken heart.”

  The apprehension that had been building shivered away in a faint sigh of relief. “My heart is unbroken. It’s been cracked a few times but it’s still intact. I promise you I’m not running away from any affair.” She laughed briefly. “No lover is likely to pursue me all the way here, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “No. I was just trying to find a reason for your sudden decision to come out here. A broken romance seemed the logical one.” There was still something vaguely speculative in the way he looked at her.

  “I came because it was something I had always wanted to do, and I couldn’t think of one reason why I wasn’t doing it,” Layne stated confidently because there was a degree of truth in it. This was the culmination of eight long years of searching.

  “I can see why Mattie hired you. You’re a lot like her.” He couldn’t know the warm pleasure his comment gave her. “She can be as bold as brass sometimes—and rash in her decisions too.” There was an implied criticism in the comparison that stiffened Layne just a little.

  Still she managed to smile. “My daddy always told me that the people who never make mistakes are the ones who never do anything.”

  “Your daddy is a wise man,” Creed agreed easily.

  The conversation was threatening to turn into one of those battles for the last word. Layne turned again to the door. “Mattie’s upstairs. Shall I tell her you’re here?”

  “No need. I just came by to pick up some papers she was going to leave on the desk for me.”

  As he walked over to the desk Layne hesitated another second, then left the room. The minute his questions were answered, Creed appeared to have lost interest in the conversation. It was becoming obvious to her that he was not one for idle talk.

  That fact became more and more evident to her as the days went by. The work on the ranch didn’t get any easier in that first week, but her body began to become conditioned to it, most of the soreness easing to a few minor aches.

  Yet in all the working hours, some of which Layne spent in his company, Creed rarely had anything to say to her unless it was in relation to the job being done. Otherwise he seemed to treat her as some sort of nonentity. At first it bothered her because Layne was used to people liking her. Finally she chalked him off as being antisocial by nature.

  When the end of the week rolled around, Layne had her first day off. But she had learned long ago that a day off meant that she had to regroup before starting again. She gathered her pile of dirty laundry and carried it downstairs to the kitchen, where Mattie was finishing up the breakfast dishes.

  “Would it be all right if I used your automatic washer to do my clothes?” she asked, hoping she wouldn’t have to lug them all the way to the coin-operated Laundromat in town.

  “Sure. There’s dirty clothes in the basket if you need some to fill out a load,” Mattie said.

  The enclosed back porch had been converted into a utility room, housing an automatic washer and dryer as well as a scrub sink. Mattie followed Layne onto the porch and showed her where the detergent was kept.

  “It’s going to be a good day to hang the clothes outside,” Mattie observed with a glance out the frosted windows. “They’ll freeze-dry in an hour.”

  “That’s for sure.” While Layne put the first load of light clothes into the washer, Mattie started separating her basket of dirty clothes. “Who washes Hoyt’s and Stoney’s clothes?” Layne asked.

  “They do,” Mattie replied. “That’s one of the first things I tell a man when he hires on —I don’t do laundry. I think Hoyt has sweet-talked some girl into doing his wash for him, but Stoney just takes a duffel bag of clothes into town and throws them all into the same machine. It isn’t just his head that’s gray. It’s every stitch of clothing he owns.”

  “Gray but clean,” Layne laughed and added the pile of Mattie’s light-colored clothes to her small load in the washer. “What about Creed? Who does his?”

  “He does. A typical bachelor, too set in his ways,” Mattie declared. “Everything has to be done in a certain way or it’s not right. John was that way.” She paused to think about it and frowned. “No, John was worse. He wasn’t set in his ways; he was hardened in cement.”

  “How did you manage?” Layne wondered.

  “Don’t forget. I came to work for him as his housekeeper, so I was paid to do it the way he wanted it done. If he wanted his shorts ironed, I ironed his shorts no matter how ridiculous I thought it was. Of course, he didn’t think it was too funny when I started putting starch in them.”

  “What made you decide to answer that ad in the paper and come to work here?” It was a perfect opening to ask Mattie about the events immediately following her birth. “Couldn’t you find any work in North Platte? You did say that’s where you were from, didn’t you?”

  There was a slow affirmative nod from the woman. “I probably could have found work there but I wanted to get away.” She shrugged idly. “It’s one of the oldest stories. I’d fallen in love with a rodeo cowboy. They’re the worst kind,” she informed Layne with a dry look. “They live too fast, love too fast—and leave too fast. But he was the handsomest devil you’ve ever seen. And intelligent. He could talk circles around anybody, so a fresh redhead from North Platte was easy pickings. He was going to call me every week, see me when he could. ’Course, it was all a line.
”

  “He didn’t come back.” It didn’t take much guesswork to figure out that that man was her father.

  “No. Broke my heart, he did. I swore off men. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. I wanted to get far away from everybody. That’s why I answered that ad in the paper,” Mattie explained while she mocked those earlier, exaggerated feelings of pain and rejection. “I was a very bitter young girl when I came here, soured on life and all its supposed tomorrows. I slapped away every kindness that was shown to me. Pride is a terrible thing, Layne,” she mused almost absently. “It makes you reject the very thing you want the most.”

  The shrug of Mattie’s shoulders seemed an attempt to dismiss the somber subject as she again bent to the task of sorting clothes, briskly tossing them into the appropriate piles. Layne could only wonder whether that had been a direct reference to the illegitimate daughter she’d given up for adoption, or if Mattie had been generalizing.

  “I guess John eventually changed all that,” Layne said idly.

  “It took a while—a long while. He had no patience with people who felt sorry for themselves. I had worked here almost four years before I realized how much that man meant to me. No one could have been more surprised than I was at the time.” She straightened, her face slightly flushed from all the blood rushing to her head, and studied Layne with a speculative look. “All this must be boring to you. Or is this research for your article?”

  “I was interested in your background, but we can keep the personal part of it off the record if you want.” Avoiding that gaze, Layne poured detergent into a measuring cup and added it to the clothes in the washer tub.

  “None of it’s a secret, but it’s all in the past and I’d rather keep it there,” Mattie stated.

  “That’s okay with me,” Layne assured her and set the washing machine to start its cycle.

  “It looks like you’re all set here, so I guess I’ll go see if I can’t get that plane started this morning. Enjoy your day off,” Mattie offered wryly, knowing one kind of work was being exchanged for another.

  “I will.” A small smile touched Layne’s mouth as she watched Mattie disappear through the door to the kitchen.

  That copper hair might owe some of its color to a henna rinse, but Layne suspected that Mattie was still as strong-minded and adventurous as she ever was. Experience might have given her a sense of caution but it hadn’t lessened any of her spunk.

  Only a small percentage of the current female population were licensed pilots, but Mattie had stopped logging her hours ten years ago when she had flown more than a thousand. The boundaries of the Ox-Yoke Ranch encompassed twenty-five thousand acres, and another ten thousand acres were leased. With a plane a lot of territory could be covered in a hurry—broken fences spotted, strayed cattle located, and overall range conditions checked.

  Thoughtfully Layne leaned a hip against the washing machine as it filled with water. In many respects Mattie hadn’t lived up to Layne’s image of what her natural mother would be like. She didn’t possess the tender, motherly attributes Layne had tried to associate with her. But, woman to woman, Layne liked and respected Mattie. Maybe that was a discovery in itself.

  The machine kicked into its wash cycle, and the agitator splashed water onto her. Layne jumped with a start, then shook her head when she saw that she’d forgotten to close the lid.

  The following week a warm spell came and melted the snow from the hills. The complexion of the rolling landscape changed from its glistening white to a faded brown, the color of the thick grasses that blanketed the land. Billowing, white clumps of cotton clouds chased each other across the wide blue sky, changing shape and size.

  The dense grass absorbed the thud of cantering hoofs as Layne rode alongside Hoyt Weber. A cow had fallen on some ice and badly scraped its front legs. Layne had ridden out on the range with Hoyt to catch the lame cow and doctor its injuries. The animal had not been the most cooperative nor grateful patient. But the task was accomplished and they were heading back to the gate where the pickup and horse trailer had been left.

  All the swells and dips of this undulating land looked the same to her. Layne realized how easy it would be to become lost once a person went beyond the sight of the ranch buildings. She was completely turned around and trusted that Hoyt knew which way to go.

  They crested a hill and headed down its slope. At the bottom one of the many lake ponds that dotted this region was sprawled in their path. It was ringed with trees, dark skeletons around the ice-packed surface that still held patches of snow. Instead of riding around its long, curving shoreline, Hoyt aimed his horse at a narrow finger. Layne started to pull up, checking her horse’s pace. Hoyt glanced back when she started to fall behind.

  “It’s okay. The lake’s still frozen solid. No sense riding around it when we can go across,” he called to her above the groan of saddle leather and drumming hoofs.

  Still a little uncertain, she followed him. When they entered the trees, Hoyt slowed his horse to a walk and approached the snow-crusted ice covering the lake. Layne waited until he had started across before urging her own mount onto the rough ice. The shaggy-coated sorrel blew out a nervous snort at the slick footing as it moved gingerly across the frozen lake, its pricked ears in a constant flux of direction at the ominous cracking sounds beneath its hooves. On the opposite shore it made a slipping lunge onto solid ground.

  “See? That wasn’t so bad.” Hoyt grinned at her.

  “Lead on,” she laughed in return.

  He kicked his horse into a canter to climb the slope of the next mounded ridge. At the top of the hill Layne caught a glimpse of the cartwheeled spokes of a windmill. It had to be the one located by the gate. It was a relief to finally get her bearings and know for herself which way to ride.

  The windmill grew steadily bigger as they approached, looming on the horizon. When they topped the last rise, Layne noticed the mud-spattered pickup parked beside the stock tank at the base of the windmill. Her curious glance made another sweep of the wide pocket of range. That pickup was the one Creed usually drove, but she saw no sign of him in the immediate vicinity. The tailgate of the truck was lowered, and an opened toolbox was sitting on the ledge it made.

  “It looks like Creed is finally getting that broken shaft fixed,” Hoyt observed.

  The comment pulled her gaze back to the windmill. On the platform atop the tall wooden structure, a dark shape was crouched next to the convex blades. Its bulk couldn’t belong to anyone else but Creed.

  “Hello!” Hoyt shouted the greeting and Creed’s head came up, and a hand was briefly raised to acknowledge their approach. Hoyt reined in his horse while they were still several yards short of the windmill’s base where he still had an angle of view at the man on the platform. Layne stopped beside him. “We got that cow treated, so we’ll be heading back to the house.”

  “Before you go”—Creed moved to the edge of the platform and looked down—“one of you bring me up a crescent wrench.”

  Hoyt hesitated and glanced at Layne. “You do it,” he urged. “I get nosebleeds every time I climb on anything taller than a horse.”

  The look in his eye advised Layne that he wasn’t joking. His phobia about heights was very real. High places had never bothered her, so she didn’t offer any objection to his request.

  “Sure, I’ll do it,” she agreed and swung out of the saddle.

  Bending, Hoyt reached for the reins of her horse. “While you do that, I’ll get the horses loaded in the trailer.”

  “Okay.” She passed him the reins.

  The pickup and horse trailer were another hundred yards distant, beyond the fence gate. Layne didn’t object to walking that far. After so much riding, she needed to exercise her legs a little. As Hoyt led her horse away, she walked to the toolbox on the tailgate of Creed’s truck.

  “The crescent wrench should be lying right on top,” Creed called down to her. It wasn’t but she quickly found it among the other tools.


  “Got it.” She started for the base of the windmill.

  “Are you sure it’s a crescent wrench?” he questioned with a hint of skepticism.

  She didn’t bother to look up as she continued confidently to the crossboards that served as a ladder. “Don’t worry. I know what it is.”

  Chapter 5

  The boards were rough-cut and quick to splinter, but Layne had borrowed a pair of Mattie’s lined leather gloves to ride that morning. If she’d worn her mittens to climb the windmill, they would have been shot with slivers of wood. She paused to glance up and check how much farther it was to the platform.

  When her gaze came back level again, she suddenly noticed the view of the Sand Hills from this high vantage. She could literally see for miles and miles. She stared, her imagination caught by the bigness and the emptiness of it.

  “You okay?” The graveled edge of concern in Creed’s question snapped Layne from her absorption. She looked up quickly to see the rough crags of his broad features as he peered over the edge of the platform.

  “I’m fine,” she assured him and hurriedly started climbing again.

  When she was at the top, his hand closed around her arm just above the elbow and hauled her the rest of the way onto the platform with little apparent effort. Layne scooted away from the edge and passed him the wrench. She noticed the way his half-glance identified the tool, then came back to her face, something flickering briefly in his expression.

  “I used to help my dad a lot when he was monkeying around in the garage,” she offered in explanation. “So I was indoctrinated early in the world of wrenches and ratchets.”

  He held her gaze for another beat, then turned toward the stationary windmill blades and began to tighten the bolts that secured the metal shaft. With the wrench delivered, Layne was free to climb back down, but the view from atop the windmill platform was too compelling. She leaned back on her hands to gaze at the vast stretch of rolling hills.