He put on his cowboy hat, then pulled open the door and stepped back to let Lillie Jean precede him outside. Before following her into the crisp air, he once again met his uncle’s gaze. Thad gave him a grim nod. The dog on his uncle’s lap looked as if he were about to implode from anxiety, but he stayed put as Lillie Jean stepped out of the house. Gus just hoped Thad had some answers when he got back. He looked determined. The one benefit of almost being scammed last year was that his uncle had no intentions of being played again.
* * *
THE HEAVY COAT Lillie Jean wore smelled of hay and earth and Gus. The warm scents teased her nostrils as she followed the man across the frosty driveway, making her feel as if she was encroaching on intimate territory instead of simply wearing a borrowed coat to keep the wind from cutting through her. She should have simply believed Gus when he said the truck heater would keep her warm enough, and worn her own less than adequate coat.
The wind was blowing stronger than it had been when Gus had pulled her car out of the bottomless pit. Clouds were moving in from the north, a solid bank, grayish at the top, dark charcoal at the bottom, pushing the wind ahead of it. She pulled the coat around her more tightly, the gloves still in her hand. She didn’t want to put them on yet. They were huge but preferable to putting her hands in the prickly pockets of the coat if she needed to warm her fingers. She sincerely hoped she wouldn’t.
Her grandfather’s old car looked ridiculous parked next to the barn—like a time machine. It did not belong on this ranch, and she couldn’t picture her grandfather on the ranch, either. He’d never seemed all that rural to her. He and her grandmother had lived quietly on a one-acre rented lot near the edge of town. They hadn’t kept livestock, or even much of a garden, except for her grandmother’s flowers and tomatoes. He’d worked for nearly three decades at first as a welder, then a shop foreman. For relaxation, he tinkered with motorcycles.
Had he ever been on this ranch? Had he invested with Thad? Were he and Thad friends? Enemies? What?
She was going to get answers before she left.
She hoped. Gus’s grim profile wasn’t making her feel particularly optimistic, but since arriving at the ranch, her mission had crystallized. She’d left Texas to get away from Andrew and the stress of losing her business, losing her grandfather, but the answers she thought she’d like to have, had become answers she needed to have.
Gus led the way to an old truck loaded with posts, wire and tools that looked as if it would fall apart if she breathed on it. But it sounded solid enough when he wrestled open the passenger door and motioned for her to get inside. Everything he needed must have been in the mechanical beast, because after closing her door with a clang that reverberated through the mostly metal interior, he walked around to his side, got in and started the engine. It chugged a few times, then fired to life with a blast of exhaust. The entire cab vibrated.
Lillie Jean couldn’t help frowning over at Gus, who ignored her as he put the vehicle in gear and started down the driveway, stopping at a gate. He got out and opened it, drove through, then got out and closed it again. They drove across the pasture to another gate. This time Lillie Jean said, “Would you like me to open it?” It only seemed polite.
“This one is kind of tricky.”
“I can probably handle it. We do have gates in Texas.” She’d spent time on her best friend’s tiny ranchette during high school. They had wire gates very similar to the one in front of them.
“Have at it.”
She got out and went to the latch, where she realized she’d never seen anything like it before. There was a lever and a loop and, feeling a little foolish at having to take her time to study the contraption, she finally managed to pop the loop off the top of the wire gate and drag it open so that Gus could drive through.
“That lever is kind of counterintuitive,” she said as she got back into the truck.
“I’m not a fan,” he agreed.
Common ground. She brushed the thought aside. What did she care if he agreed with her or not? Especially when it was patently obvious that she was with him because he hadn’t wanted to leave her alone with Thad. What did he think she would do? Weave some kind of a hypnotic spell over his uncle?
No. He thought she might listen in on phone calls. A phone had been sitting on the table when she and Gus had returned to the house, as if Thad had been making or waiting for calls. She didn’t blame him. She would have done the same. She could have helped him do the same, but that was neither here nor there. They didn’t trust her, and she couldn’t force them to. Let Thad get his answers—then perhaps he’d give her some.
Gus drove across the grassy pasture to the tree line and then followed the narrow road through the deciduous trees that were just leafing out. They came to another field and then a fence. Gus turned to the truck to follow the wire along what was more of a trail than a road. The grass was short and slick with frost in the high area between the two ruts that the tires were following.
“Is it always this cold in March?”
“Pretty much. The weather changes fast here. It might be balmy in a few days.”
“Define balmy,” Lillie Jean muttered.
“Not freezing.”
“Kind of what I thought.” She glanced over at him, but he kept his eyes on the fence. She had a sense of him wanting to say something, but holding back. Okay. He could talk when he was ready. She was certain he wasn’t going to say anything she wanted to hear, anyway. She’d gone with him for two reasons—to get a look at her inheritance, and to give Thad time to check her out. She hoped he did a lot of research while she was gone. Once he understood that she was on the up-and-up, then they could move forward.
The truck lurched and it hit a deeper rut, knocking her against the door, then shooting her sideways to bump shoulders with Gus, causing the seat belt to cut into her.
“Road gets rough sometimes.”
This isn’t a road. It wasn’t. It was a rutted track, working its way through a pasture, over and around rocks, through boggy spots. Gus was now driving so that the tires were next to the ruts, rather than in them, but every now and again, the truck slid into one of the deep Vs.
He pulled to a stop, put the truck in neutral and set the parking brake. “I’ll leave the heater on. You’ll be fine.”
“I’ll get out for a while.”
He gave her a “suit yourself” shrug and opened his door. While Lillie Jean stepped down into the crunchy frozen grass, he went to the rear of the truck and pulled out a bucket and an odd contraption. He walked to the fence, set them down and then went back for a roll of wire. For some contrary reason, Lillie Jean did not want to get back into the truck. Maybe it was because he thought she was too wimpy to stand out in the cold—and it was at least ten degrees colder here than it had been at the ranch. Altitude, maybe. Her lips twitched grimly. They didn’t have much altitude where she came from. Rolling hills, but no big changes that would drop temperatures ten degrees or so.
Gus set about connecting new wire to old, stretching it tight with the metal contraption, then crimping it off with a small tube and pliers. He did it for all five strands in a surprisingly short period of time, then loaded his tools back into the truck, which was still chugging away, sending up an exhaust cloud near the rear wheels. There was something satisfying about watching a guy do something he did well, or maybe there was something satisfying about watching a guy as good-looking as Gus do something he did well. And maybe it was just a little irritating that, due to circumstances, he was probably always going to view her through a veil of suspicion.
So be it. Some things were simply out of her control. Like the fact that she felt this crazy tug toward the man. Despite everything, he kind of fascinated her. Well, he was a Montana cowboy—the stuff of