Authors: Anna Jeffrey
"Who said?" Brady asked.
"I say," she answered. "More nutritious grass is why West Texas, even with all its challenges, is better cattle country."
"That sounds like a direct quote from your granddad."
"Actually, it's a direct quote from a textbook and a professor at A&M."
His eyes fixed on her.
"Watch the road," she said, uncomfortable under his scrutiny.
"Just exactly what is it you studied at A&M anyway?"
She didn't miss the you-mean-you've-got-a-brain tone of the question. "For what it's worth at this particular moment, I have a master’s in biology, with emphasis on genetics. And a bachelors in business ag. In case you haven't figured it out, I'm the future of the Circle C Ranch."
"Is that a fact?"
Didn't he believe her?
"Yes," she said flatly.
"Your dad and granddad are just going to turn the whole place over to you."
More mockery. It was wearying. "They've never said so. But Daddy and Grandpa refuse to face the facts. I'm the only choice. There simply is no one else. I know it's going to happen someday. So I'm grooming myself every day."
"Trying to replace two ranching legends, darlin', now that's a tall order."
He didn't say "for a woman" but she heard the implication. He reeked of chauvinism, in both looks and attitude.
"Jake and Cable are the only other heirs
. I know it’s hard to believe, but they’ve shown no interest in the place. I'm the only one who cares about the fact that the Circle C Ranch has existed for a hundred and forty years and is a legacy to be preserved. It's part of Texas history. I refuse to see it go up for sale and get cut up into ranchettes or subdivisions or whatever they want to call it."
"So you're telling me if I cowboy for the Circle C long enough, one of these days you'll be my boss?"
"Yes," she said again.
He made no obvious response, but she sensed that the balance between them had shifted and she regretted it. She never discussed ownership of the ranch and wished she hadn't talked about her role in its future. Before that, she had believed Brady felt no inferiority to her.
They turned off the highway onto a caliche county road. "It's another fifteen miles to my trailer," he said.
Soon they made another turn and bumped along a rugged two-track
path that was little more than a trail. A few cattle grazed in the distance. At last they came to a gray single-wide mobile home perched atop a bald knob of a hill without a tree in sight. A silver late-model four-horse trailer was parked beside it. The mobile home wasn't much bigger than the horse trailer and had probably cost less.
"Is that your horse trailer?" she asked.
"Yep."
"It looks like it has bunk room in it."
"Yep. I figure if Aunt Margie's old house falls down around me, I can always sleep in the horse trailer."
He laughed, so she did, too.
The mobile home had no skirting, but it still looked neat and well kept. No trash around it, nothing stored under it or against it. A hundred feet down the hill behind it stood a silver steel barn with an attached iron-pipe corral so white and clean, it almost sparkled.
Jude knew about the outpost dwellings ranches furnished for their hands. The Circle C had a number of houses and mobile homes similar to this one. Except for major repairs, the employee using it was expected to keep the place up. "I'll bet the owner of this place hates to see you go," she said. "Most ranch hands wouldn't keep it this neat."
"I don't like being a slob. I grew up in a tiny house with three younger sisters and a brother. Everything we had was either worn-out, torn up or broke down. At some point, I decided not to live that way."
He
stepped down from the driver’s seat and reached into the backseat for his hat, then yanked the tarp off the pickup bed. Jude hurried to help him lift out the empty boxes. In the late morning heat and heavy humidity, she began to sweat immediately.
Together they carried the empty boxes up four wrought-iron steps to a four-foot-square
open-grid wrought-iron porch and on into the mobile home. The narrow space was so stuffy and hot, she could scarcely draw a breath. If the place was like most singlewide mobiles, it probably lacked adequate insulation. Plastic shades on the windows offered a scant barrier against the relentless sun.
It
was as neat and clean inside as it was outside, but it smelled like plastic and chemicals. Jude recognized the odor as typical of mobile homes that had been manufactured as cheaply as possible. She had been in all of the Circle C's mobiles at one time or other, either when they were new or when they had been vacated by an employee.
"There's an air conditioner in the bedroom," Brady said and left the living room.
A low roar soon emanated from the bedroom. When he returned, he said, "That cool air will make its way in here pretty soon.” He made a gesture around the living room. “Everything in here except the furniture belongs to me. I'll pack up the computer and that stuff in the second bedroom and you can get the living room."
Jude picked up an empty box. The closest she had ever come to packing to move was when she had traveled back and forth between the Circle C and her condo in Bryan during her college days. Even then, she hadn't had to do the whole chore herself. Daddy had hired a moving company to help her.
Turning in a circle, she couldn't see much in the living room to pack: a small TV, a CD player and CDs, a cactus plant and a few other odds and ends. She began to place things in the box.
Soon Brady passed through the living room on his way outside carrying a monitor and a computer and she wondered what he did with a computer. After that, he carried out two huge boxes of books. He made several trips with
boxes of books, and she wondered what kind of books they were. He hadn't impressed her as being a reader.
She finished packing everything that was loose in the living room. Looking for the next project, she poked her head into the adjoining room and discovered a bedroom. His bedroom.
It looked like him. Spartan and uncluttered. Nothing out of place. Queen-size bed neatly made, plain brown bedspread. One square lamp table, one round, stubby ceramic lamp, one rectangular digital clock radio. A pair of well-worn boots sat side by side near a wooden chair. She caught that scent of cologne again.
A small air conditioner roar
ed dully. It filled half of one of the bedroom's two windows.
She picked up an empty cardboard box and carried it to the bedside table. She started by unplugging the clock radio and placing it in the box, then opened the top drawer of the lamp table. Inside the drawer was a paperback book, some loose coins...and a box of...condoms.
Jude sank to the edge of the mattress to examine the small flat box. It was a commonly seen brand, but what she found most intriguing was the large XL showing in bright white against the black background.
Well, after all, he is a big guy
, she thought.
She opened the box and found it half
-empty. So he had a girlfriend with whom he must have had sex here in this bed. An uneasiness trickled through her.
Just then, she heard him come back into the mobile through the front door. She dropped the box back into the drawer, shut it quickly and got to her feet just as he walked into the bedroom. "I, uh, finished the living room," she told him, her voice wobbling with a nervous quiver.
"Mind starting on the kitchen?" he asked. "Before we leave tomorrow, I'll take care of the rest of the stuff in this bedroom. I already took most of my clothes to Lockett, so there's just a few odds and ends left."
"Right." She grabbed the cardboard box and headed for the kitchen, but her mind was still focused on his bedroom and what it said about him.
She had just started emptying the kitchen cupboards when she heard the sound of a vehicle. Brady came out of the bedroom, went to the front door and looked out. "Shit," he mumbled, and stepped outside.
Jude walked over and looked out the door. A car was roaring up the long driveway
, a cloud of caliche dust behind it. It came to a gravel-grinding halt that kicked up another cloud of white dust. The car, an aged Toyota, was so filthy and faded she couldn't determine the color, but she thought it might have been blue once.
Brady stepped down the four steps and walked toward the car.
A woman with long, obviously dyed dark auburn hair as straight as string climbed out of the car. She had on skintight jeans and a black skintight tank top that showed ample cleavage and said JACK DANIEL'S in rhinestones across the front. She slammed the car door with a loud
clunk!
The very air around her trembled with her agitation.
"Hi, Ginger," Brady said.
The woman stamped to within a couple feet of where he stood and glared up at him, her hands on her hips. Even from her station at the front door, Jude could see the fire in the new arrival's eyes.
"I can't believe you," the woman barked. "You left town without saying kiss my ass, go to hell, or see ya later?"
"Calm down, Ginger."
"Calm down?" She bent at the waist, face thrust forward, eyes bugged. "Calm down?" she said louder. "That's the thanks I get for fucking you anytime you wanted it? Putting up with your shit? Never taking me anywhere, never spending any money on me? Spending most of your free time on your fuckin' horses?
Or your fuckin’ kids?"
She spun on the ball of her foot, yanked open the car's back door and dragged out a small TV. Gripping it with both hands, she raised it to shoulder level and slammed it to the ground. It hit with a clunk and broke into pieces.
Jude's breath caught, but Brady stood there unmoving, one knee cocked, his arms folded over his chest.
The upper half of Ginger's body disappeared inside the car again. Seconds later she emerged with a cardboard box, turned it upside down and dumped the contents—which looked like
dozens of CDs—on top of the broken TV pieces.
She stomped around the car's back end and yanked open the other back door. She pulled out a large photo album and loose pictures and what looked like a rolled poster. She threw the album and poster on top of the pile of rubble, then ripped a handful of the pictures in half and threw them onto the pile.
Then she kicked the debris with the toe of her cowboy boot. "Fuck you, Brady Fallon!"
She stomped to the driver's door and jerked it open, slid behind the wheel and slammed the door shut
. The engine ground to life with a loud growl. She backed in an arc, stopped and stuck her head out the window. "I hope you starve to death, you cocksuckin’ son of a bitch!"
Jude's eyes popped wide. She had never called a man a
name like that and couldn't recall if she had ever heard any woman say anything like that to a man's face. For that matter, she couldn't recall ever having a tantrum like the one she had just witnessed. She waited for some kind of outburst or reaction from Brady, but he continued to stand in the same spot, unmoving.
The visitor gunned the engine and roared back down the driveway, leaving a rooster tail of dust and gravel behind her.
Her pulse drumming inside her ears, Jude eased out of the trailer onto the tiny wrought-iron porch. "Brady?"
He turned and looked up at her. "What is it, darlin'?"
"Are you okay?"
"Finer'n frog hair. Sorry you saw that."
If the expression on his face was any indication, he didn't feel that fine. He came up the steps and she had to move aside so he could get to the front door. "Who, uh, is she? A girlfriend?"
"Sort of. But not really."
Jude didn't even try to figure out what that meant. "She's mad, huh?"
Another one of those mysterious soft chuckles that made his eyes crinkle at the corners.
"She spends a lot of her time that way. Her problem is that her presence just doesn't light up a room." He leveled a look into her eyes and winked. "Unlike yours."
He pushed the door open. "I think there's still some beer in the fridge. Want one?"
She stood a few speechless seconds and watched him disappear into the mobile home.
Chapter 9
After Brady went into the mobile home for the beers, Jude stood for a moment looking at the small pile of torn and broken objects. What had she walked into? She had witnessed something not just personal, but probably painful. Who else or what else might suddenly appear? A shard of doubt about the wisdom of making this trip with a man she scarcely knew stole into her good intentions.
Well, the least she could do was pick up the rubble on the ground. She went back inside the mobile home for a trash bag. Brady was nowhere to be seen, so she assumed he was in the bathroom. She carried a black plastic bag back outside and down to
the little pile on the driveway some twenty feet away from the porch's bottom step.
She knelt on one knee and started with the loose photographs. They were eight-by-ten black-and-white prints and only a few of them were torn in half. As she gathered them, she would have had to be blind not to see that the pictures appeared to be professionally taken and all were of the same subject—an extremely well-built, nearly naked man in various poses. He wore a bandana around his neck, cowboy boots on his feet and a dark thong that barely covered his privates. To her astonishment, even with shoulder-length hair, he looked amazingly like...
Oh. My Gosh! Like a younger Brady Fallon.
Her mind went blank, as if it didn't want to acknowledge what her eyes were seeing. "Oh, my gosh," she whispered, letting the shock of recognition seep in. She sorted through the pictures, stealing quick glances at each one. "Oh, my gosh."
She looked up and around to see if someone could be watching her. Then she shot a look over her shoulder toward the mobile home to see if that someone could be Brady.
Seeing no sign of him, she quickly shuffled through the pictures again, stopping at a back shot in which he wasn't wearing even the bandana and the cowboy boots. The thong's waistband was visible, but she hardly noticed it. He stood in a he-man pose, his face in profile, arms raised to shoulder level and bent at the elbow, biceps flexed and bulging like melons, shoulder muscles clearly defined. He was beautiful, like an ancient Greek athlete.
Jude hadn't seen a naked man since ending her affair with Jason Weatherby. And Jason in the buff was pathetic compared to the body in the photographs she held in her hand. She couldn't tear her eyes away from the bare buttocks, small and taut, the narrow waist, the broad, muscular shoulders.
On a hard swallow, she stuffed the loose photographs into the plastic bag, picked up the poster and began to unroll it. Inch by inch a full frontal photograph came into view—the same man from the thighs up. Distinct ab muscles rippled be
low his pecs. No hair showed on his body, but a dark shadow peeked from beneath the triangular thong. The thong's silky-looking fabric clung to and outlined the shape and generous size of his genitals.
Her mouth went dry and she had to fight an urge in her fingers to touch the very spot the black triangle covered. Her thoughts darted everywhere at once, including back to his bedroom and the extra-large-size condoms in his bedside table drawer. "Oh, my gosh," she whispered and pressed her unruly fingers against her lips, still unable to tear her eyes away from the photograph.
"Like what you see?"
Her heart leaped. "Oh!"
All in one motion she sprang to her feet, thrust the poster behind her and spun toward the voice. Brady stood on the porch. He was holding a small cardboard box. Her eyes dropped directly to his fly, but she quickly angled her attention to a bush beside the step. "Um, I was just picking up this mess."
He tossed the box onto the porch and took the four steps down in two long strides. Without a word, he held out a can of beer
to her.
She took it reflexively with her free hand. "I wasn't trying to be nosy, honest. I mean, the pictures were just lying all over the place. Anyone could have seen them."
He neither smiled nor frowned. He set his own beer on the ground and reached around her for the poster. His chest brushed her shoulder and his musky male scent surrounded her. Her heart leaped again and she gave him an uneasy smile, relinquishing her hold on the poster.
He bent at the waist, picked up the plastic bag and crumpled the poster into it. She winced. A wicked part of her hated seeing something as delectable as the poster be trashed. She would love to show it to Suzanne.
He picked up what was left of the photographs, crumpling them into his fist, and shoved them inside the bag, too. The album, then the pieces of the broken TV, followed. He jerked the bag closed and carried the bundle to the bed of his pickup.
Watching him cram the bag into the corner they had designated for trash, she squatted and, with her free hand, picked up the CDs. Even with a task
to do, she couldn't shake the image of the frontal shot. "I wasn't being nosy, honest."
"I believe you."
As a dozen questions flitted through her head, she held up the CDs. "Did you, uh, want to keep these?"
"That's what the box is for."
She nodded, returned to the porch and picked up the box. She set her own beer can down on the top step and began arranging the CDs in the box, looking at each one as if she were really interested. "Oh, Alan Jackson. I like his music.... And Carrie Underwood. I like her, too.... Hey, here's one by Josh Turner...."
Shut up, Jude.
She set the box of CDs aside, took a seat on the top step and sipped her beer.
He stood with his arms braced against the edge of the pickup bed, his back to her. He was obviously upset and probably too embarrassed to look at her.
"Those pictures, uh, look like they were taken a while ago," she called to his back, raising her voice so it would carry across the front yard.
He neither replied nor turned in her direction.
"Were you, uh, a model?"
He said nothing, but continued to stand with his back to her.
She dared not put her next question into words. A minute passed, then two, while she waited silently, hoping he would explain. She had never found herself so speechless.
"Look, dammit, they're just pictures
," she said.
He finally turned and looked her way, his blue eyes hard as ice cubes.
"They look like some kind of publicity shots," she added, unable to read his expression.
He walked over and picked up his beer from where he had left it on the ground and sauntered toward the steps. A visual of those long, muscular thighs free of blue denim and leading all the way up to his groin filled her mind. He sat down beside her, his hip touching hers. Unnerved by the closeness, she scooted to her right to give him more room.
"No, I wasn't a model." He lifted his beer can and swallowed a long drink, the flex of his throat muscles nearly hypnotizing her.
Another minute of silence passed. "You, uh, certainly had a nice body back then."
That was lame, Jude. As if he didn't now.
Shut up, Jude.
She sat there, her shoulders taut, feeling the heat of his body close to hers and wishing she could identify the strange crawly feeling deep within her.
"Before you ask the next question, I'll just tell you," he said dully. "I was a dancer."
Stripper!
Her jaw dropped, but she stopped herself before blurting out the word.
"Hey, that's great," she said cheerily. "It's great you can do that. I've got two left feet myself.
I couldn’t dance if I were going to be shot."
He looked across his shoulder at her again with a don't-be-stupid expression.
But even his glare didn't stop her. She had to know about those pictures. "You danced professionally? Around here? Around Fort Worth? Dallas?"
He heaved an aggrieved sigh. "You ever hear of Cowboys?"
"Cowboys? You mean like Chippendales?"
"Yeah," he grunted.
Jude was naive and she knew it. But even she had heard of Cowboys. They were a team of male dancers similar to Chippendales who performed to country-western music and wore breakaway Western costumes. When she lived in Bryan, she had even attended private parties where Cowboys had performed. A new visual came to her of Brady with folded dollar bills tucked under his G-string. Then it dawned on her that the thong in the photograph was, in reality, a G-string.
"You were a Cowboys dancer?" She almost burst out laughing, but she could see he found nothing humorous in the situation. "Wow. Those guys can really dance. Where'd you learn how to do that?"
"They teach you."
"Wow," she said again. She had never known a professional...dancer. She didn't even know if "dancer" was the correct word. There had always been plenty of talk among women about what those gorgeous, sexy men did besides dance. "There's no need to be upset. I won't tell anyone, if that's what's worrying you."
"Darlin', I couldn't care less who you tell. It was a long time ago. And it's not exactly a national secret."
More minutes of silence passed as they sipped their beers, during which time she was finally able to make herself keep her mouth shut.
"I was just thinking," he said, without looking her in the face. "There's still enough daylight. I could go get those horses now and bring them back here. They could spend the night in the corral. Then we could get on the road early tomorrow morning without having to fool with catching them. We could get back to Lockett early enough for me to do half a day's work tomorrow afternoon."
She glanced at the pristine barn and corral. "Why aren't they here already? Your employer wouldn't let you keep them here?"
"He wouldn't mind. But they've always stayed at Ace's. When I left Fort Worth, I didn't have a home for myself, much less three horses. I've been gone quite a bit lately. It's just been easier to leave them at Ace's place. He lives about ten miles from here."
"Ace
? I don't think I've ever known anyone named Ace."
"Me, neither. Ace is his nickname." Brady leaned his head back, tilted his beer up and finished it off. "It's initials." He crushed the beer can between his palms as she had seen the Circle C ranch hands do. "His real name's Arthur Charles Earl. But everybody's always called him Ace."
Now she couldn't keep from laughing. The whole afternoon had taken on a comic atmosphere. "That's three first names. I think I like Ace better. But then, he's Ace Earl. That sounds funny, too." She broke into laughter again.
He frowned at her, a deep crease showing between his thick brown brows.
Shut up, Jude.
She cleared her throat and wiped the grin off her face. "Bad joke," she said. "Look, I'll help you with the horses. Are they easy to catch?"
"The two geldings are, but my mare's like a lot of women."
Jude let out a strained laugh. "I don't know what that means, but I hope she isn't like the one who just left here."
Brady huffed. "Every horse I've ever been around has a better disposition than Ginger." He got to his feet and started back up the steps. "I'll get us another beer and we'll go."
Jude had drunk less than half the beer she already had. When he disappeared into the mobile home, she poured the remaining liquid on the ground.
As they approached Brady's friend's place, the three horses were standing on a ridge, silhouetted against a sky made golden by the waning afternoon sunlight. The minute the horses saw Brady's pickup, they ambled down the hill toward it.
The two geldings appeared to be strong and solid, what Daddy and the ranch hands called "using horses." But the mare was special. Her superiority showed in her conformation, her size and her attitude. And she was a beautiful grullo color. Jude's curiosity about her sparked immediately.
The horses gathered around them, snuffing and snorting and nuzzling. When Jude reached to stroke the mare's neck, she jerked her head and sashayed backward, snorting and farting as she escaped Jude's touch.
"Watch yourself with her," Brady said. "She's got a mind of her own. And she's still in season, which makes her an even bigger pain in the ass."
He started for the barn and Jude followed. The horses clomped along with them and would have come into the barn if Brady hadn't shut them out. Jude followed him into a tiny tack room, where he plucked three plastic buckets and three halters off nails on the wall. In the tack room's close, hot quarters,
after seeing Brady naked, she felt strangely uneasy. She didn't know if she would ever be able to be near him again without thinking of him in that way.
"I love horses," she said, holding out her hand to receive a bucket and a halter.
"All women love horses. Until it comes to taking care of them."
Jude resented that
remark. It, along with others he had made, must say something about his past relationships with women, though she wasn't sure what. "What are their names?"
"Sorrel's named Tuffy. The bay's Poncho."
"What about the mare?"
"Sweet Sal. But she's not sweet."
"High-strung, huh?"
"Afraid so."
High-strung horses didn't frighten Jude. She had grown up with spirited horses. Her own horse, Patch, was a powerful stallion with a mind of his own.