Her words struck him momentarily mute. Before he could speak, Jewel gasped. “What’s that!”
He followed her finger point into the looming pasture and took in the overgrowth of sorghum, the wilted leaves, the lack of ryegrass, just as Jewel predicted.
“The grass,” he began, but she cut him off again.
“No! That!” She spurred Bear forward, leaning low over his neck, her red braid lifting behind her.
“Yah!” Destiny responded to his cue and gave chase. They’d nearly caught up to Jewel when she stopped Bear on the edge of the grazing area and vaulted from the saddle.
“Look.”
He followed her nod and spied a buzzing cloud of flies over a dead animal. A large animal. Was it...?
“This one of yours?” Jewel pointed to a motionless cow.
His stomach turned as he eyed the brand on its flank and the ear tag. “She went missing a couple of days ago. We’ve been looking for her...” He eyed the white foam around the Brahman’s mouth and pale gums. A dark suspicion grabbed him by the throat. His gaze swept over the yellowing field of water-deprived sorghum, then to the approaching herd. They were walking to their deaths if they got any closer.
“Prussic acid poisoning.”
Jewel glanced up at him sharply when he spoke.
He braced for the “I told you so” that didn’t come. Instead, Jewel nodded, leaped into her saddle and grabbed Bear’s reins to yank his head up from the deadly plants. “Let’s turn them around.”
The top of the herd began descending the small slope, just yards from the poisoned forage. “No time to waste.”
Together, they sprang into action, hustling the cattle, arcing them left and back. At his whistled commands, the cattle dogs streaked to and fro in a blur of white and black. Jewel was like a scarlet lightning bolt as she thundered along the front line, waving her bright red kerchief, spooking the cattle to change course. She was fearless, as bold as she was skilled. He’d be darned if Cole could do as good a job turning the massive herd back on itself.
“What’s going on?” Travis shouted over the panicked bellows of the confused, hungry Brahmans.
“Pasture’s no good. Stay here and run any off that get by me or Jewel.” He charged forward on Destiny, his heart pounding hard enough to come out of his chest when he spied a drop-off hidden by a copse of spruce. If they didn’t control the herd while turning it, they might stampede to their deaths.
Yet hotheaded Jewel was surprisingly cool under pressure. She applied pressure when needed and eased off when it wasn’t, her small features set in fierce concentration. She was as tough a cowgirl as he’d ever seen when she faced down one of the larger Brahmans determined to get by her. Without hesitation, she drove Bear forward, hollering, “Yip! Yip! Yip!” until the cow balked at the last minute and turned. Others followed suit and gradually, after hours of painstaking work, they had the cattle back home, watered and hay fed.
He’d expected Jewel to gloat, but she’d been all business, and darned if he didn’t miss sparring with her when they’d finally gotten the situation under control.
At last, he mounted the stairs to the house, bone weary and longing for a shower. Jewel’s voice stopped him before he reached the top tread.
“You still haven’t said it,” she drawled.
He turned and flicked the brim of his hat up off his soaked brow. “Said what?”
“That I was right.” She climbed past him and stopped on the top step, meeting him eye to eye.
He sighed. “Fine. You were right.” She’d saved the herd today—no denying it.
“And...” she prompted.
He stared at her steadily. “Thank you.”
“Yes, and...”
He lifted a palm to the rosy orange sky, then dropped it. “What else is there?”
“You’d be a better range boss than me.” Her lips curved into a smirk.
The tension was palpable between them, and instinct told him it ran deeper than the fact that their families were enemies. “I’m not saying that.”
Her eyebrows quirked. “But I bet you’re thinking it.”
“You’re a mind reader now?”
“Nah, I’m just clever.” The smirk spread, revealing even white teeth against her freckled face, the contrast unconventionally attractive. “And I also think I’m hilarious.”
He bit back a laugh and slid by her into the house, shaking his head at her brashness.
“Oh, Heath?” she called, and he stuck his head around the doorframe. One of Jewel’s hands lifted a single finger; the other rounded into an O shape. “Cades one, Lovelands zero.”
The smile lingered on his face as hot water pounded on Heath’s sore muscles while he twisted beneath the showerhead’s spray minutes later. Jewel sure had an ego, but she had the talent to back it up, too. He snapped off the water, wrapped a towel around his waist and sauntered from the steam-filled bathroom.
“Oof!” He collided with someone—someone much too petite to be one of his brothers. Small, calloused hands landed on his bare chest. His muscles clenched as his heart stopped and then sped up.
Jewel Cade’s enormous brown eyes trailed up his contracting abdomen to his face. “Travis said I could find an extra deck of cards up here.” Air separated her halting words. She yanked her hands down. “We’re playing Texas Holdʼem. Want to play?”
He shook his head, wordless. No. He did not want to play with the aggravating redhead who nettled him like a burr. Her soft mouth parted, and the tip of her pink tongue appeared on her generous lower lip.
“Come on, Heath, don’t you want to live dangerously?”
He pictured icicles dangling from barn eaves, his breath frosting winter air, the sting of sleet hitting his cheeks...anything to stop the temptation to sample her full lips. “Kelsey wants me over for dinner.”
Jewel’s sparkling brown eyes dulled and darned if he didn’t want to make them shine again. Get out of here, he ordered himself, yet his feet had other ideas and stuck him in place.
“But what do you want?”
“Peace.” He ducked back in his room and slammed the door. Her chuckle wove through the thick pine anyway. He paced to his closet and savagely buttoned on the dress shirt and pants Kelsey bought him for his birthday. His rough fingers fumbled to knot the tie. Once, twice...five times. He yanked off the noose. Kelsey’s impending frown flashed in his mind’s eye.
Contrary to Jewel’s opinion, he already knew he wasn’t suited for this ranching life, let alone the one awaiting him once he married. Or maybe it was the other way around and his life didn’t suit him. Either way, he needed to resign himself to it...if she’d just leave him be and stop challenging him.
Was that too much to ask?
When it came to Jewel, his money was on yes.
In the hall, he’d wanted to kiss the everlasting smirk off her face. She tested the limits of his self-control, self-denial and unselfishness.
That, of course, was the problem.
Some part of him apparently liked being unrestrained and taking what he wanted. It’d be his downfall, though, if he didn’t keep his distance from bold, spirited Jewel Cade.
Hopefully, dinner with Kelsey would give him clarity. A loud, raucous laugh erupted from downstairs, Jewel’s shout mingling with his siblings’. He