Gil noticed. He ran a self-conscious hand over his bare chest. “Sorry if I offend your Southern sensibilities. I didn’t expect to find ladies in my barn at this hour—except the equine variety.”
Liz didn’t flush or look away. “Who says I’m Southern?”
Gil crossed his arms and laughed. “You have that drawl, Miss Scarlett.”
Whirling, Liz led Shady Lady to an empty stall she’d spread deep with sand and sawdust, then covered with fresh hay. “I was born and raised in bluegrass country. We don’t consider ourselves Southern.”
“That’s right,” he said lightly as he followed her. “You said your daddy raises thoroughbreds. So why aren’t you home in Kentucky shoeing his horses?”
Liz felt a knife blade slide into her heart. How had their conversation taken this turn? Corbett and Hoot Bell were the only two people who knew about her permanent estrangement from her parents. Melody had never asked about grandparents or her lack thereof. Liz wanted to keep it that way. The poor kid had enough strikes against her having never known her father. Patting Shady Lady’s silky nose one last time, she backed out of the stall and quietly closed the door. “I’ve left the mixture for her leg in the fridge. You should use it liberally two or three times a day until the swelling’s completely gone. And don’t ride her for a week. But I’m sure you know that.” Liz strode briskly through the barn, stopping where Melody lay asleep in the hay.
Gil wondered at being so rattled by Lizbeth Robbins that he hadn’t seen the child until now. He was even more puzzled by the woman’s curt response.
“Wait,” he called as she bent and slid her hands beneath the girl. “You aren’t going to carry her, are you? She must weigh fifty pounds.”
“Forty-four,” Liz replied. “And I’m quite capable, Mr. Spencer.”
Gil didn’t know why it grated on his nerves when she said “Mr. Spencer” in that tone, but it did. “I’ll take her,” he offered politely, refraining from suggesting she call him Gil. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for the time you put in on my horse.”
Liz straightened, Melody draped over her arms. “I wasn’t looking for gratitude,” she said, moving carefully toward the door. “The only thing I want from you is the money I’ve earned. ‘Nice’ doesn’t suit you, Spencer. Don’t strain yourself.”
Gil blinked as if he’d been slapped and watched her disappear into the night. The moon had slipped behind a cloud, swaddling the area beyond the barn in inky blackness. He debated the wisdom of chasing her down. But before he could make up his mind, he saw a light appear in the cottage. Then another. He stood a moment where he was, until he noticed a colored square lying in the hay where the child had slept. It was a book—a horse story, he saw as he picked it up. From the school library. The book had been checked out only today.
Guilt swamped him. There were many reasons Gil had fought for sole custody of his sons. A major one—with which the judge had agreed—was that Ginger’s job with the rodeo necessitated her jerking the twins from school to school.
In firing his farrier today, he’d just sentenced that sweet dark-eyed little girl to the vagabond life he hadn’t wanted his own boys to suffer. Gil dropped the book back on the hay bale. Damn Mrs. Robbins for being what she claimed. And damn Rafe Padilla for hiring her in the first place.
GIL SPENT the next hour with his mare, and the girl’s library book mocked him the entire time. Damned if he wasn’t forced to admit Mrs. Robbins had done a damned good job—which didn’t mean that another farrier wouldn’t have been just as astute. But…she’d also homed in on Night Fire’s problem, something his previous farrier had missed.
It didn’t matter, he argued. Throwing a woman—especially a pretty one—out on the range with a bunch of randy cowboys was asking for trouble. Take, for instance, Kyle Mason’s experience at the neighboring Drag M. Last year he’d hired a woman cowpuncher and bragged to anyone who’d listen about being the area’s first equal-opportunity rancher. Far as Gil knew, there’d never been a fight among Drag M hands till Maggie Hawser came on board. After, they’d had plenty. More accidents, too. Not that it was all Maggie’s fault. And not to say she wasn’t a good hand. Some of the men admitted they’d spent so much time mooning over her they’d gotten careless.
But lovesick cowboys were only half the problem. Maggie’d up and married the clerk at the feed store. She left Kyle shorthanded in the middle of branding. Drag M wranglers moped around for months and spent weekends in town raising hell.
Come to think of it, there’d been an unusually large number of Lone Spur horses throwing shoes this last week—meaning Gil’s headaches had already started. It was a good thing Ben had sent Rafe out with the notes from the twins’ teachers, or he might not have come in yet and learned what his manager had done.
Those notes spelled more trouble. Of a kind Gil didn’t want to think about tonight. Giving Shady Lady’s neck a final pat, he went back to the house and upstairs to bed.
IN THE MORNING at breakfast Gil contemplated the best way to tackle the twins’ teachers’ concerns. As usual when his mind wrestled with a dilemma, the boys’ yammering passed right over his head. Suddenly, as if through a fog, Gil heard Dusty gloating about a “neat trick” they’d pulled on Melody’s mother last night. That got Gil’s attention.
“Sneakin’ out to put those bats in Mrs. Robbins’s bedroom after she went to the barn was easy as eatin’ pie, wasn’t it Rusty? I wish we coulda seen what happened when she went to bed. Buddy Hodges said bats always get tangled in girls’ hair. I bet Melody’s mom screamed up a storm.” Dustin laughed around the mouthful of pancake he’d stopped to shovel in.
Gil choked, spewing coffee over his place mat as his second son wiped a milk mustache from his upper lip and ventured, “I think we shoulda waited, Dusty. That was a good supper she fed us.”
“So? She wouldn’t have if Melody hadn’t bugged her. She didn’t want us there. I could tell.”
“Hold it right there.” Gil raised a hand, then slammed it on the table as he gazed in horror from one boy to the other. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. You two know bats carry rabies.”
Dustin looked smug. “We didn’t touch ‘em, Dad. They came from Rafe’s bat trap. We opened the box and shook ‘em out in her room. Same as we did that old bull snake we put in her bed last week.”
Gil counted to ten under his breath, then he exploded. “Remember that rabid coyote I showed you last year? We discussed how painful treatment is for our horses. I assumed you knew it’d be as bad or worse for humans.”
Dustin stuck out his lower lip. “Men are smart ‘nuff to not get bit. Can we help it if girls are stupid?”
Livid, Gil rose over his sons. Grounding them for life was too lenient. Through a haze of anger Gil heard his white-haired houseman bang a cupboard door and grunt. “Spit out what’s on your mind, Ben. It can’t get much worse.”
“Time somebody teaches them knot-heads some respect,” he said. “Lord knows they don’t listen to me. It’s a cryin’ shame, the shenanigans they pull on folks. I tell you, Gil, I’m too old to be kickin’ the frost out of kids meaner than oily broncs.” In cowboy lingo he’d likened the twins’ need for discipline to breaking a bad horse—which, Gil knew, laid Ben’s feelings squarely on the line. He loved the twins.
So, the lady had told the truth, Gil fumed. No doubt the teachers’ notes regarding disrespect in the classroom were on