She managed what she hoped was a friendly smile. “Well, you know what they say. The grass is always greener on the other side.”
“Not that it matters much to the cows.” He shifted in the saddle with a creak of leather. “You’re not from around here.”
“Aw, what gave me away?” The fact that she was lacking that luscious, slow-lazy-day accent of his? Or maybe that she was wearing sandals instead of Justins, a ball cap instead of a Stetson, and linen pants instead of Wranglers?
“Let’s start with the fact that I’ve lived my entire life here and never run into you,” he said with a grin. “You wander off the highway and get lost?”
“No. I’m just taking a drive.” No doubt, knowing everybody’s business was the small-town, country-folk way, but she kept hers to herself. She looked at the cows. “Do you leave them here until they’ve eaten their fill and wander back to the right side of the fence?”
“No,” he drawled, then lifted one hand in a gesture too lazy to be considered a wave.
She turned just as another very cute cowboy on another great big horse came through the trees. He tipped his head in greeting, then began herding the cows over the downed wire and into the pasture, with the help of one of the biggest dogs she’d ever seen. Damn, all the creatures around here were big enough to intimidate her—especially the men.
Understandable, since she hadn’t gotten close to one who wasn’t wearing a stethoscope around his neck in…oh, eleven months.
“Don’t you need to help?” she asked.
“Nah. The dog does most of the work.”
It looked to her as if the cowboy and the dog were sharing the job equally, but she wasn’t going to argue. “I guess a dog provides cheap labor on a ranch. He can’t ask for a raise, doesn’t get drunk and fail to show up for work, can’t talk back….”
“Give ’im a little chow, and he’s happy,” he said with a grin. “Ol’ Red there is extra cheap—he belongs to our neighbor, so we don’t even have to feed him. He just likes working cattle.”
“Red?” she echoed. “He’s black as night.”
“You noticed.” He didn’t offer an explanation as the last couple of cows crossed the road. “Well, I guess you can go on your way now.”
She glanced ahead and smiled weakly. “I guess I can.”
“Enjoy your drive.”
“I will.” She pulled forward a few feet, then stopped. “Would you happen to know if there’s anyplace around here where I could get a cold beer and a greasy burger for supper tonight?”
“You can have one or the other, but not at the same time. For a greasy burger, try the Dairy Delight in town. For a cold beer…” He removed his hat with one hand, shoved the other through his hair, then reseated the hat. Damned cute, indeed. “I tend to do my drinking at Frenchy’s. It’s about a mile north of town. You can’t miss it.” He made a clicking sound with his tongue, and the horse started around the car and toward the broken fence. About halfway there, he looked back at her with a grin and a wink. “Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Maybe you will.” Candace was smiling as she drove away. A handsome cowboy who was either single or didn’t care that he wasn’t…what more could a woman on a quest ask for?
But her smile faded. Although there actually was a mention of a cowboy on her list—Pick up a handsome cowboy/soldier/cop/jock—that wasn’t her priority right now.
Natalie was.
According to her calculations, the ranch should be just a short distance ahead…and sure enough, long before she was ready to reach it, there it was—a large house, a barn and some other stuff out back, Natalie’s classic old Mustang parked in the drive.
Candace stopped at the end of the driveway and tried to take a deep breath, but couldn’t. Her chest hurt. Her stomach hurt. Even her fingers hurt from clenching the steering wheel so tightly.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t. She didn’t care if she’d driven all this way, didn’t care if she was letting herself down. The only thing that mattered was that she could not face Natalie. Not now.
Maybe not ever.
“Have you ever met a pretty woman you didn’t flirt with?”
Josh Rawlins glanced up as his half brother, Tate, swung to the ground beside him. They would do a temporary fix on the fence for now, then come back out later to do it right. He would rather do damn near anything than fix barbed wire. It was his least favorite job on the ranch.
No, that wasn’t quite true. The job he hated most was digging post holes for barbed-wire fences. It was a general rule in Oklahoma that wherever you dug, you were bound to hit rock. Sometimes it seemed as if the entire ranch was nothing but a foot of dirt on top of one huge slab of sandstone.
“I didn’t flirt with your wife,” he pointed out at last, then grinned. “I like women, and they like me.”
“She didn’t look like your type.”
Josh scoffed. Pretty, blond, blue eyes and a nice body. What could possibly be not his type? “All women are my type, Pop.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“J.T. does.”
“He calls me Papa, and he’s allowed. You’re not.”
As they got to work, Josh laughed at the scowl accompanying the last words. “What’re you going to do? Give me a whippin’?”
“I’ve done it before. I’ve also saved you from more than a few of them. Don’t antagonize me or I won’t do it again.”
“Well, hell, big brother, you haven’t been to a bar with me since you got married. If somebody decides to kick my ass, you’re not gonna be there to stop ’em anyway.”
Tate shook his head. “You know, Mom and I keep hoping that at some point, you’ll outgrow this habit of fighting in bars and getting thrown in jail.”
“Hey, I haven’t been arrested in a year, and that last time wasn’t my fault. She told me she didn’t want to leave with that guy.”
Tate gave him a dry look as he spliced two strands of wire together. “She was underage, and that ‘guy’ was her father. You’re lucky all they did was lock you up until you were sober.”
“She looked a lot older. Even the sheriff thought so.” Josh faked a sorrowful look. “It’s a sad day when a man has to ask a woman in a bar for ID to find out how old she is.”
“Then again, a man could try meeting a woman someplace other than a bar.”
Josh cheerfully shook his head. “Sorry, but we’re fresh out of pesky reporters wanting to write about the old man.” That was how Tate had met his wife. Retired senator Boyd Chaney had hired Natalie to write his biography, and had required that she gain the cooperation of his six ex-wives and nine children, including the illegitimate son he’d never recognized—Josh himself. There had been a little passing around of identities, a quick trip out of town for Josh and his mother, plenty of lies and deception and, ultimately, a happy ending. Tate and Natalie had been married four years now and had a little boy, J.T.
But how many times was something like that likely to happen? Maybe once in a blue moon? Which meant Josh was out of luck. He had to settle for meeting women the old-fashioned way…not that he was looking to settle down just yet. He figured one of these days the carousing would stop being fun, and then he would know it was time to give it up. To pick one woman, get married and start acting respectable, like Tate.