Tempting the Rancher Read online

  January took that as a good sign. She retreated with a confident gait, careful not to turn her back completely on the thousand-pound female. At Brontë, January climbed and settled into the saddle, all without a word from the slack-mouthed cowboy next to her.

  The cow and her calf followed.

  January glanced away and smiled into the night. She felt like she had summitted Everest. Gone was the unseasoned girl of ten years ago. She was wiser, more skilled at handling challenges and learning from her mistakes, able to atone for her wrongs, even if it was only to convince a cow to get to the safety of the herd.

  Nat rode up beside her. “How did you—”

  “She needed a little female understanding.”

  He gave a snort of laughter that clearly said bullshit. “Yeah, well don’t get too attached. She’ll be gone soon.”

  Words as densely packed and double-loaded as a shotgun shell.

  “Got a tough one for you, Mona.”

  Mona peeked out beside the Dodge truck’s exposed engine, squinted into the magnum light-bug zapper contraption hanging from a hook inside the diesel’s open hood, and said, “Lay it on me.”

  Post-supper behind the barn was advice time.

  “Man slept with his mother-in-law while his wife was away on business. Wife’s boss spotted them having sex in a car behind the office and is jealous because she wanted to sleep with him, so she told the wife. Wife had an indiscretion of her own with the man’s brother.”

  “For real?” said Mona. “Add a fancy pool and a couple of sparkly ball gowns and you’d be inside a rerun of Dallas.”

  A bubble of amusement originated in Nat’s gut and took its sweet-ass time heading north for release. Laughter felt great after the brutal day. He had started writing the anonymous advice column in college as a favor to a friend, then for some side cash, then out of habit. Now, he continued it mostly as a security blanket—but for the grace of God, he could be as fucked up as most of the people who asked him for guidance. And he got off on it—a strange fucking high—to know people read his words, even if it was just to tell someone to get off a high horse and forgive. The payoff was damned near immediate—sometimes as soon as he got to the feed store, before dawn, people would be debating, engaging, admiring or disagreeing, newspaper ink still wet. But the sensation was hollow, short-lived, nothing close to writing something that would last more than a day, that might change someone’s outlook on life or give a reader refuge during a storm in life, that rewarded him with that sense of ultimate freedom time and time again. Years back, he tried to hand the column over to Mona—she helped him with the trickiest advice, anyway—but she refused. Said she couldn’t rub two sentences together and make it make sense—her words.

  “Any kids?” Mona asked.

  “None mentioned.”

  “What was the question?”

  “Guy wants to know if the infidelity cancels out, puts him back on even ground with his wife.”

  “What…would…you…say?” Tightening something under the truck’s hood punctuated Mona’s question with grunts.

  Nat learned long ago that to offer muscle was a serious affront to Mona’s independent streak. Brutal, that streak in the Rose women.

  “I guess I’d say fidelity isn’t a scorecard,” said Nat. “Doesn’t matter who cheated first, both people put the outside world ahead of their relationship. No coming back from that.”

  “And if they still love each other?”

  “Some choices you can’t come back from, Mona.” Nat’s voice wavered like a calf that had slipped free of a rope. He leaned his backside against the truck’s quarter panel, grateful for relief from the bright light, grateful he could hide in the darkness. “Hurts too much.”

  Mona returned her wrench to the toolbox and wiped her hands on a grease cloth she snagged from her pocket. “Are we still talking fancy pools and ball gowns?”

  As if she had to ask. He bunched his hands inside his jean pockets to keep him from tearing his hair out.

  Mona leaned against the wheel well beside him. “Do you know the real reason I saved up for that telescope?”

  Nat shook his head.

  “I look through that lens and know nothing about what I see. Everything looks pretty much the same except the moon. On clear nights, I’ll drive to kingdom come to get a clear line of sight on that celestial body. Makes me feel close to her—even if I know it’s daylight on her side of the world, it’s still there, watching over her. Raising a strong, independent child ain’t easy. Raising her to remember all the parts of her that ain’t so strong and independent is even harder. She rarely calls or writes, but I know she looks at the same moon each night, and that’s enough for me. Love always brings people back.”

  “I’m glad you had the chance to see her again.”

  “For someone who gives damned fine advice, you sure are thick. J-Rose didn’t come home for me, son. She’s looking for something that’s got nothing to do with that money her grandmother left her.”

  True north, January had said in the darkened pasture, in that distant voice that had crept in more and more in the days before she left. Those moments reminded him of one of those old-fashioned, slow songs of longing his grandfather listened to after he lost his wife of fifty-two years, the ones with a ton of wiggle room between the notes to lose your shit completely.

  Nat wasn’t anyone’s true north—not now that the ranch was hanging on by its fingernails and certainly not for January Rose. That weathervane snapped long ago. As far as he was concerned, aligning himself to the prevailing winds of the Meier legacy was all he needed.

  Fidelity wasn’t a scorecard, but leaving certainly was. And right now, the score was January-1, Nat-0.

  Nat’s favorite time in the barn was before bedtime. The chaos of the day was gone, replaced by a subtle burr of contentment from the animals. Most chores were complete, which took the edge off his stomach, which seemed to exist in a perpetual state of stress—especially near auction time. His grandfather had taught him that late night was about the little details: throwing hay as a bedtime snack so your animals look to you for leadership and loyalty; topping off water to ensure hydration in the Texas heat, though by October, the nights felt less like a goat’s butt in a pepper patch—Clem’s words; and, most importantly, reflecting on the day from a place of gratefulness. Wes was alive; Chance wasn’t in trouble—for once; their mother emailed daily photos of herself smiling in front of tourist places in Paris; and Nat had done everything in his power to save the ranch for one more day.

  And for Nat, late night was the time for the only selfish thing he allowed himself—finding time to write.

  Not fancy pools or sparkling ball gowns or the emotional messes people got themselves into when they’d as soon bang a hole in a tree as make good choices. He clicked the send button in his email program—his daily column to the Close Caller senior editor (not surprisingly in small-town America, also his Kindergarten teacher)—and pulled up the draft of his novel.

  He busied himself with clearing some space on the desk, in his head. The cursor winked back at him at even, one-second intervals like a resting heartbeat. Poe stirred in his stall—always a restless sleeper. A yawn slipped loose. He hadn’t checked market reports yet. Jesus, he had a window of about thirty minutes before he fell into a sitting coma then had to be awake in four hours.

  Focus, Nat.

  He was close enough to typing “The End” that he could taste no small victory, but the climax scene when the main character returned home lacked perspective and a compelling narrative drive. Five unpublished novels into the series, Nat still couldn’t put his finger on what was missing in his writing. His skills were decent enough—feedback from the column readers and the fact that other towns in the South saw fit to run his words in their hometown papers attested to that. Then there was the A.I. Briggs award for best unpublished manuscript that he snagged one month before he left college. He wanted nothing more than to fuse the dying Western genre to the las
t frontiers of ocean trenches and artificial intelligence, to capture the amazing spirit of his grandfather on the page, to remind people that reading was a soul-nurturing pastime, to prove that writing wasn’t a waste of time, as his father believed.

  Can’t support a family on dreams, son.

  When Wes returned from Middle East deployment, when Chance finally grew some responsibility, when their mother finally found the self she claimed the ranch and their father had denied her all those years…then Nat could breathe enough to carve out a path to publication. For now, he stole moments of freedom like bubble gum from the corner gas station, telling no one, denying how late nights in his stable office went down. Ranch hands had a ten-to-one bet that porn had something to do with his closed door at midnight. Most nights, Nat was simply hearing the poetic storytelling of his grandfather’s World War II letters home in his mind and trying to capture a sliver of that frontier, cowboy magic.

  He scrolled back and reread the paragraph in which the love interest walked onto the page. God almighty, but she had been January all along. As close as he was to the material, he hadn’t seen it until now. Truth be told, she was the love interest in the other four books, too—different hairstyles, different locales, but always that same ignition switch in his chest. And, as in real life, the love interest left.

  Nat snapped his laptop closed. He glanced around his office with new eyes, with old eyes. And when his tired mind had mentally written the scene of January Rose coming to his door at midnight, straddling him in his chair and losing the ten-to-one bet for half his staff, he snapped on the old transistor radio and listened to the market report until carcass values slaughtered every urge to tear a streak to the hump trailer, drive her to a place where only the stars stood witness, and show her what he had really been holding onto for the past ten years.

  Hope.

  3

  Go right in,” Mona had said.

  “She’ll need a little prodding to wake up,” Mona had said. Though some particularly hot memories of that fact were probably not what Mona had in mind.

  Nat stood inside Mona’s trailer, hat in hand, as unable to decide where to look as a priest in a whorehouse. On a white sheet spread across the bench seat, January lay asleep on her belly, shirt ridden halfway up her tanned back, her ripe and round and cheeky ass decorated with cherry-emblazoned panties. Her legs were sprawled, no doubt from the dawn’s humidity, leaving him with morning glory that had nothing to do with Mona’s vines out front.

  Nat held his hat over his fly, wiped his sweaty hand on his jeans, and reached for her shoulder.

  “J?”

  His slight jiggle of her lithe body had no effect. Except on him.

  Nat glanced around for a way to wake her that didn’t involve his skin and her skin in direct contact. He spotted a pail of cans to be recycled by the door and nudged it over with his boot toe.

  The aluminum cacophony had January scrambling off the couch like he’d caught the cushions on fire, which made his conundrum all the more uncomfortable. Her off-the-shoulder shirt dipped wide and low enough that he glimpsed clear to her navel with the most perfect orbs as scenery along the way.

  “Nat…what the hell?” Her words came out in breathy gusts. She put a palm over her heart, effectively concealing his view. In typical January fashion, she sported a morning sleepy-scowl in total contradiction to a familiar flush of cheeks and untamed hair.

  He did a crisp about-face that would have made Wes proud.

  “I’m sorry. Mona said to come wake you.”

  “With beer cans?”

  He had no answer, so he moved on. “Willie has some work up at the house for you. Some calves that need grooming—washing, oiling up their coat, hair clipped.”

  “You wake every girl up with sweet talk like this?” She had on her best stink face—he heard it in her voice.

  Again, he had no answer, so he moved on. Nat could count the women he’d been with on one hand. One hand where most fingers had been taken off by a rogue saw blade.

  “Be up at the house as soon as you can.” Nat headed toward the trailer door.

  “Wait. I’ll get dressed. You can give me a ride.”

  Perfect. Just what Nat needed in a tiny trailer with no privacy—to watch the love of his life wrestle herself into a bra and jeans. In his quest to remain a gentleman, he searched the place for a diversion, saw nothing but the inside of the hump trailer, and headed for the morning sun.

  “Stay, Nat. Nothing you haven’t seen before.”

  Her request had him at a stop. Dead stop.

  Behind him, the zipping of bags and rustle of clothes weakened his knees. He closed in on the world map to give his eyes somewhere to go beside her creamy surplus of skin.

  Nat remembered the Christmas morning January’s father gave her the map. She talked of little else, mostly because her old man wove a spectacular tale about treasure hunting in Mozambique on a scuba expedition. That spring, on their way back from a guy’s camping weekend, Nat witnessed her father unable to go with him into floodwaters to save a stranded motorist. Lying son-of-a-bitch had a ball-shriveling fear of water. Nat came close to telling January. Twice. But her eyes? Goddamned but they lit up when she poked pins in the map and talked about her future. About her father.

  His eyes locked in on a lush, green, three-word place in Vietnam he couldn’t pronounce. He’d have bet his entire herd that January could fill up an hour with nonstop facts and stories from the far-off place. All he could fill an hour with was a list of attributes that made for good breeding stock. January may have been six feet away, but in terms of worldliness, it may as well have been galaxies between them. Nat felt like a dumb hick, the realization as heavy on his shoulders as a raincoat in a sauna.

  “So, where are you headed next?” He didn’t want to know, really. Unless it was down to the community bulletin board at Dairy Mart to find a permanent place to stay in Close Call.

  “Nepal. Hopefully.”

  “What’s in Nepal?” The destination lay on his tongue like sushi.

  “Prayer flags…Annapurna mountain peaks…rickshaws in Thamel…The Garden of Dreams in Kathmandu.”

  She went on about something that sounded like dull bat—rice and lentils and a handful of other things a cattle rancher from Texas would never eat. Hadn’t even been there yet, and already her tone carried reverence. Mostly, he sank into the energy and life of her voice—fuel to burn memories during the chilly nights to come.

  He had nothing to say in response to those things. Didn’t even understand them. But the sound of crisp denim making its way over her bare legs left him scrambling for a connection, leverage, something that made him feel less like a two thousand-pound bull in quicksand.

  “Cowboy church out past the Reynold’s place put up a prayer garden. Well, mostly a handful of geraniums and a bench made out of a Ford tailgate.”

  The space behind him quieted.

  “Probably nothing like Kathmandu, but I suppose someone could dream there if the mosquitoes didn’t eat them alive.” Nat laughed, more of a shudder that sounded like someone had tapped their size-twelve boot sole up against his voice box. This time, when he retreated, he was hell-bent on making it to the cab of his truck before he died of inadequacy right there on Mona’s green shag carpet.

  “You want a ride up to the house, you got one minute,” he called over his shoulder. “Already behind on chores.”

  He climbed behind the wheel. The breeze through the open window cooled his heated neck. January joined him like a five-alarm drill: one boot on, one in her hand; an apple from Mona’s fruit bowl wedged in her bite; the fly on her Levi’s half-fastened and buttons on a yellow shirt askew. She handed him the bitten apple as she climbed up in his cab and set a hairbrush on his dashboard. Golden curls cascaded from the nylon bristles and past his hazard button—so comfortable, so familiar, he nearly lost all intent to hightail it back to the house and off-load her on Willie so she would stay out of Nat’s way all day.

>   Transmission in gear, he orchestrated a three-point turn in record time. January bounced on the seat beside him like eight seconds in an Amarillo arena. She reached for the Jesus bar above the window.

  “Jesus, Nat.”

  Thus re-enforcing the handle’s nickname.

  “Beauty shop to a bunch of bovines, huh?”

  Her dull-edged excitement piqued him even more. Meier land wasn’t the Annapurna mountain range, but the vistas looking south during bluebonnet time damn near took a man’s breath away. She didn’t get the draw of this place; she never would.

  Best January Rose clear out to her rickshaws and dull bats before the urge to sit on that Ford tailgate, smell the geraniums, and unearth old dreams came on too strong to fight.

  * * *

  Dietrich’s had been a Saturday night custom in Close Call since the Rose family breezed through town fourteen years ago and Mona had picked up enough odd repair jobs to stick around. Back then, ice chips rode glass bottles of soda, not alcohol—at least not when adults were around. A honky-tonk in small-town Texas wasn’t exactly an anomaly. One that welcomed entire families with a live country band and a dance floor constructed under the stars?

  Nowhere else on earth.

  The night was mild, the crowd thick and friendly. January sat beside Mona atop a picnic table under the trees. Oak branches that normally functioned as primo shade from the day’s heat provided structure to simple yellow bulbs strung across the dance floor at night. The singer’s imperfect but genuine baritone notes landed deep in her chest.

  God, she missed this. Dietrich’s was responsible for some of her best memories, ever, and not only for what happened on the dance floor. Someone their senior year became convinced that the legend about passing under the train trestle in a boat and glimpsing your true love was real, and the entire class spent every Saturday night trying to prove it, one way or the other. She never did spot the face of her true love, but she supposed that was because Nat was always in the rowboat with her.