Shelby laughed. “What a thing to say.”
“Well, nobody makes it like you do, Mom. And they’re not keen on fish around here, so we don’t have it much. I dream of cod fillets, gently baked with fresh herbs and fresh butter…Darn, I have to stop drooling on my pillow!”
“When you come home, I’ll make you some. You really need to learn to make them yourself. If you do move out and live apart from us, you have to be able to cook.”
“I can always order out.”
“Yes, but fresh food is so much nicer.”
“Yours certainly is.” She glanced at her watch. “Got to go, Mom. We’re dipping cattle today. Nasty business.”
“You should know. You were always in the thick of it here during the spring.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, sweetheart.”
“Love you.”
“Love you, too. Bye.”
She hung up, then got out of bed and dressed. Her mother was one in a million, beautiful and talented, but equally able to whip up exotic meals or hostess a dinner party for royalty. Morie admired her tremendously.
She admired her dad, too, but she was heartily sick of men who took her out only with one end in mind—a marriage that would secure their financial futures. It was surprising how many of them saw her as a ticket to independent wealth. The last one had been disconcertingly frank about how his father advised him to marry an heiress, and that Morie was at least more pleasant to look at than some of the other rich men’s daughters he’d escorted.
She was cursing him in three languages when her father came in, listened to her accusations and promptly escorted the young man off the property.
Morie had been crushed. She’d really liked the young man, an accountant named Bart Harrison, who’d come to town to audit a local business for his firm. It hadn’t occurred to her at first that he’d searched her out deliberately at a local fiesta. He’d known who she was and who her family was, and he’d pursued her coldly, but with exquisite manners, made her feel beautiful, made her hungry for the small attentions he gave with such flair.
She’d been very attracted to him. But when he started talking about money, she backed away and ran. She wanted something more than to be the daughter of one of the richest Texas ranchers. She wanted a man who loved her for who she really was.
Now, helping to work cattle through the smelliest, nastiest pool of dip that she’d ever experienced in her life, she wondered if she’d gone mad to come here. May had arrived. Calving was in full swing, and so was the dipping process necessary to keep cattle pest-free.
“It smells like some of that fancy perfume, don’t it?” Red Davis asked with a chuckle. He was in his late thirties, with red hair and freckles, blue eyes and a mischievous personality. He’d worked ranches most of his life, but he never stayed in one place too long. Morie vaguely remembered hearing her father say that Red had worked for a former mercenary named Cord Romero up near Houston.
She gave him a speaking look. “I’ll never get the smell out of my clothes,” she wailed.
“Why, sure you can,” the lean, redheaded cowboy assured her, grinning in the shade of his wide-brimmed straw hat. “Here’s what you do, Miss Morie. You go out in the woods late at night and wait till you see a skunk. Then you go jump at him. That’s when he’ll start stamping his front paws to warn you before he turns around and lifts his tail… .”
“Red!” she groaned.
“Wait, wait, listen,” he said earnestly. “After he sprays you and you have to bury your clothes and bathe in tomato juice, you’ll forget all about how this old dipping-pool smells. See? It would solve your problem!”
“I’ll show you a problem,” she threatened.
He laughed. “You have to have a sense of humor to work around cattle,” he told her.
“I totally agree, but there is nothing at all funny about a pond full of…Aaahhhhh!”
As she spoke, a calf bumped into her and knocked her over. She landed on her breasts in the pool of dip, getting it in her mouth and her eyes and her hair. She got to her knees and brought her hands down on the surface of the liquid in an eloquent display of furious anger. Which only made the situation worse, and gave Red the opportunity to display his sense of humor to its true depth.
“Will you stop laughing?” she wailed.
“Good God, are we dipping people now?” Mal-lory wanted to know.
Morie didn’t think about what she was doing; she was too mad. She hit the liquid with her hand and sent a spray of it right at Mallory. It landed on his spotless white shirt and splattered up into his face.
She sat frozen as she realized what she’d just done. She’d thrown pest dip on her boss. He’d fire her for sure. She was now history. She’d have to go home in disgrace…!
Mallory wiped his face with a handkerchief and gave her a long, speaking look. “Now that’s why I never wear white shirts around this place,” he commented with a dry look at Red, who was still doubled over laughing. “God knows what Mavie will say when she has to deal with this, and it’s your fault,” he added, pointing his finger at Morie. “You can explain it to her while you duck plates, bowls, knives or whatever else she can get to hand to throw at you!”
Mavie was the housekeeper and she had a red temper. Everybody was terrified of her.
“You aren’t going to fire me?” Morie asked with unusual timidity.
He pursed his sensuous lips and his dark eyes twinkled. “Not a lot of modern people want to run cattle through foul-smelling pest-control substances,” he mused. “It’s easier to take a bath than to find somebody to replace you.”
She swallowed hard. The awful-smelling stuff was in her nostrils. She wiped at it with the handkerchief. “At least I won’t attract mosquitoes now.” She sighed.
“Want to bet?” Red asked. “They love this stuff! If you rub it on your arms, they’ll attack you in droves… . Where are you going, boss?”
Mallory just chuckled as he walked away. He didn’t even answer Red.
Morie let out a sigh of relief as she wiped harder at her face. She shook her head and gave Red a rueful wince. “Well, that was a surprise,” she murmured drily. “Thought I was going to be an ex-employee for sure.”
“Naw,” Red replied. “The boss is a good sport. Cane got into it with him one time over a woman who kept calling and harassing him. Boss put her through, just for fun. Cane tossed him headfirst into one of the watering troughs.”
She laughed with surprise. “Good grief!”
“Shocked the boss. It was the first time Cane did anything really physical since he got out of the military. He thinks having one arm slows him down, limits him. But he’s already adjusting to it. The boss ain’t no lightweight,” he added. “Cane picked him up over one shoulder and threw him.”
“Wow.”
He sobered. “You know, they’ve all got problems of one sort or another. But they’re decent, honest, hardworking men. We’d do anything for them. They take care of us, and they’re not judgmental.” Red grimaced at some bad memory. “If they were, I’d sure be out on my ear.”
“Slipped up, did you?” She gave him a quizzical look. “You, uh, didn’t throw pesticide on the boss?”
He shook his head. “Something much worse, I’m afraid. All I got was a little jail time and a lecture from the boss.” He smiled. “Closest call I’ve had in recent years.”
“Most people mess