Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) (4 page)

             
Gracie gave a little cry of alarm and looked tearfully at Miranda, whose own features were frozen in shock. How could this crude man possibly be her husband? Where was the guy who’d been so kind and almost poetic in the emails? Sure, she’d never spoken to him on the phone, but he’d explained that they had to use satellite phones because of their location. It had made sense at the time. But how could she be expected to even ride with this guy for an hour, let alone get to know him? Thankfully, at least Gracie was there to run interference, such as she was. Miranda looked to Gracie and held out an arm, allowing the confused and frightened girl to sit close beside her in the protection of Miranda’s thin hold.

             
Miranda closed her eyes against the oppressive heat and the indignation at being met by her new husband and practically tossed in the back of a vehicle like a sack of produce. Gracie began to sniffle softly beside her, the girl’s fears about this strange place and Miranda’s arrangement obviously becoming more and more real in her mind. For his part, their rugged driver barely cast a glance at their direction in the rearview mirror as he drove, although he did toss an exasperated glance over his shoulder at Gracie when her sniffles turned into tears.

             
They rode in total silence over the miles of uneven terrain, the heat nearly causing Miranda to faint and the sounds of rushing wind drowning out any chance of talking. She wanted to take off her coat, especially now that it had been basically ruined by sitting in the hay rust and by having her baby sister cry all over its collar, but she wasn’t about to do anything that resembled undressing in front of this man. It had been different when he was nothing more to her than a ranch hand sent to fetch her, but knowing that this man was her “Internet betrothed” made it completely out of the question.

             
She must have at least been daydreaming at one point, because she was suddenly jostled awake and thrown sideways from where she had leaned against one of the suitcases. Miranda sat upright, pulling Gracie up with her. She looked at the empty prairie and immediately felt afraid, worried about why they could possibly be stopping here with no structures in sight. Casey read her mind.

             
“Come down out of the back,” he ordered, looking up at her when she didn’t move right away. She pressed an arm in front of Gracie and moved the girl behind her, looking defiantly at Casey. “Please don’t flatter yourself, I’m not gonna hurt you. If I wanted to violate someone, I could have had either of the girls back at the tavern. Both, for that matter. At least they would have been willing.”

             
Miranda felt her cheeks grow hot with the callous tone and lewd suggestion Casey made, not only to someone he had literally just met, but in front of her sister, too, her very under aged sister. She squared her jaw and crossed her arms in front of her, refusing to budge. Casey looked bored.

             
“You can come down, or I can make you come down. What’s it gonna be?” He squinted up at her from beneath the brim of his hat, the sun forcing him to nearly close his eyes.

             
“What it’s going to be,
Mister Carson
, is that you will turn this junk heap around and take my sister and me back to Hale, where we will board the next bus back East. I had no idea when I answered your friend request that a brutish lout would be waiting at the other end of the country.”

             
“Yeah. Well, unless you plan to walk back to that bus, you’re not going anywhere. You’re sitting on the truck, and we have broken a wheel. You have to come down so I can look at it and see if it can be repaired.” He began hefting their suitcases out of the truck bed and tossing them to the ground as Miranda and Gracie reluctantly helped each other down.

             
They sat on their luggage as Casey surveyed the damage to the axle. Finally, he declared they would have to walk the rest of the way to the ranch, his expression daring the ladies to argue with him. They looked at their belongings silently, wondering if there would be anything left of their trunks when someone came to retrieve them.

             
Casey led the way as Miranda and Gracie stumbled over every rock and clump of hard-baked dirt, the pebbles tearing at the soft threads of Miranda’s delicate shoes. After only a half hour of treacherous walking, Miranda demanded an explanation.

             
“Why are we walking? Why can’t we call someone to pick us up?” she asked huffily.

             
“First of all, do you see a cell phone tower around here anywhere? And second, everybody at the ranch is busy. There’s not a minute of the day when someone’s not working, and you don’t go calling people from their work to do what your two legs are quite capable of.”

             
“You don’t have to be hateful about it,” she answered hotly.

             
“Ma’am, if I was being hateful, I’d have let you sit there and wait for someone to come along. Instead, I’m telling you to move your pretty little asses. We want to be at the ranch by sundown because ugly things come out at night in this area.” Gracie gasped quietly at the base use of profanity, and her reaction somehow seemed to soften Casey to some degree. He shot her an apologetic look, realizing his anger over the whole marriage situation was causing him to talk to these two women in a way that he hoped no one had ever spoken to his mother. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. But if you two will pick up the pace, we might make it to the house sometime today.”

             
He turned to go, but Miranda boldly put a hand on his arm to stop him. He instinctively pulled away from her touch without thinking, then turned toward her. “Mr. Carson,” she began quietly, “I can’t help but feel like our being here is not at all welcomed. Why did you bother signing up on the Internet if you were going to be pissed off that someone would answer it?”

             
Casey stopped and looked off to the horizon for a minute as Miranda waited for an answer to her very genuine question. Finally, he spoke, looking directly at her for the first time since she arrived.

             
“I didn’t place the ad, ma’am. It was placed on my behalf by someone meddling in my affairs. Honestly, looking for a wife hasn’t even crossed my mind, what with trying to keep a ranch with a few thousand head of cattle going.”

             
“Did you say, ‘a few thousand’?” Miranda asked nervously.

             
“Yeah,” Casey answered, unsure of why she cared.

             
“So, how large is this farm I’m supposed to work on?” She swallowed down a lump in her throat, visions of a simple farm evaporating in her mind.

             
“It’s about 800,000 acres, with 30,000 head at any given time. Why?”

             
“Mr. Carson, you didn’t need a wife, you need a team of field hands to work that property!” she insisted, becoming more and more distressed and forgetting her composure.

             
For the first time since he’d been told that morning to fire up the truck and ride to retrieve his new wife, Casey Carson threw back his head and laughed, a sound that both alarmed and endeared him to Miranda just a little bit.

             
“Ma’am—I’m sorry, but I truly don’t even know your name—you aren’t here to work as a farm wife, although I would love to see you try to slaughter a hog and boil down the fat to make lantern fuel,” he said, looking her attire up and down and smirking at her refined appearance. “You’re here because my father is a lonely, crazy old coot who has big ideas about filling up the house with grandchildren to sit by his feet in his old age. We lost my mother years ago, and it’s been nothing but men running ragged and leaving boots strewn across the floor since that time. My father thought marrying one of us off would make the place more like a home than a barn. And trust me, you’d have an easier time trying to slaughter that hog than getting my five brothers to get their elbows off the table and chew with their mouths closed.”

             
Casey turned and continued walking, his laughter following behind him. Gracie clutched at Miranda’s sleeve again and pulled her forward from where’d she’d stood frozen in place.

             
Grandchildren?
She hadn’t even seen the house yet and certainly hadn’t heard word of a minister and a ceremony, and already her future father-in-law had plotted her course. Miranda wasn’t sure which was scarier, the thought of coming here to work her fingers to the bone doing farm chores from sun up until sundown, or having come all this way to be a brood mare for the old man’s wishes for a family.

              “Casey? Is that you?” Bernard asked, calling from the porch into the near darkness surrounding the main house.

             
“Yeah, Dad, we finally made it.” Casey walked up the front path to the steps leading onto the porch.

             
“We? You don’t mean to tell me you’ve brought your new wife in the dark?” The old man sounded indignant and alarmed.

             
“It was that or leave them on the prairie ‘til morning, when I could go back and fix the truck. It broke an axle on the way home.” Casey plopped down in one of the chairs on the porch and leaned his head back, closing his eyes as Miranda and Gracie waited nervously in the yard, eyeing the house with a small bit of satisfaction. At least it wasn’t the shack both ladies had envisioned. Instead, it was a two-story structure with wide glass windows and a high peaked roof with a sprawling porch wrapping around the front of the building and disappearing on either side.

             
Bernard began to seethe, choosing his words carefully as there were ladies present, and strangers at that. He immediately stormed over to Casey and boxed him on the side of the head, not hard enough to do any damage but enough to send Casey out of his rocking chair.

             
“You made these ladies walk that distance? And what were you doing taking that piece of crap old truck in the first place? They should have been picked up in the car! Where are your manners? This is not how I raised you!” the old man stormed as Casey blinked in confusion. Bernard didn’t wait for his son to answer, but limped down the wide steps to the ground and greeted Miranda. “I apologize now for my son, who does not usually have the manners—or the brains—of a mountain goat. I am Bernard Carson, the proprietor of Carson Hill Ranch. Please, come this way and I will see that you have every comfort.” He held out the crook of his arm for Miranda’s hand and led her into the house, gesturing to Gracie to follow. He shot Casey an angry, embarrassed look as he passed, assuring him that there would be further repercussions for the young man’s treatment of their guests and newest family member.

             
The older man’s sweet talk and charming smile worked to melt Miranda’s heart and boost her spirits. At least someone in this wasteland would care if she lived or died. She followed Bernard’s lead to the large kitchen of the house and for a moment, her heart sank.
I won’t even get to wash the travel dust off me or rest in a chair before I’m required to cook something?
she thought bitterly. Miranda was reassured when a cook appeared, tying an apron over what was obviously her housecoat and pajamas. Rather than be upset by the appearance of someone who was less than fully dressed and mad at herself for disturbing the cook, Miranda could only be grateful that the woman was more interested in feeding the weary travelers than maintaining decorum.

             
“This is Cook, she’ll see that you are properly fed. In the meantime, I will send my son back out immediately to fetch your belongings and see to it that they are sent to your room. I did not realize you would be traveling with this young girl,” he pointed to Gracie, “and did not prepare another room for her. Would it be okay if I move another bed into your room for her?” Bernard asked, doting on her like a loving father would.

             
“That would be wonderful, sir, thank you,” Miranda replied, relieved.

             
“Oh, no, you must call me Dad. When the pastor comes to marry you, then you will be like my own daughter, the daughter I never was able to have,” he said, a sad smile playing across his face as he patted both her hands. “But, for now, you eat, and then you’ll get some rest.” He said good night to Cook and walked out of the spacious kitchen, noticeably favoring one leg as he walked. His booming voice sounded through the house as he called for Casey to go back out on the four-wheeler and find their suitcases, leaving Miranda and Gracie to exchange a stupefied look and suppress a giggle behind their hands.

             
After a heavy meal of warm stew and crusty homemade bread, washed down with cold sweet tea, Miranda and Gracie followed Cook’s directions and found their room at the top of the stairs. Because their clothing couldn’t be expected to arrive until at least morning, if it ever showed up at all after being tossed out of the truck and abandoned on the prairie, both girls fell into their beds and slept soundly, not even bothering to remove their shoes.

             
Before the sun was even fully up and only a bare light filtered through the curtains, Miranda was startled awake by feet stomping outside her bedroom door. She pulled the thin covers closer to her and waited for something to happen, only to have the ruckus move on as the thundering feet and voices trailed down the staircase. Gracie hardly stirred during the disturbance, and Miranda decided not to wake her as she tried to find out the cause for alarm.

             
She stepped out of the bedroom and smoothed her rumpled clothes as best she could, straightening the seams on her slacks. As she tiptoed down the stairs and peeked into the kitchen, she was horrified by the sight she saw. Nearly twenty grown men were pushing and shoving for food Cook laid out on a long table as other kitchen hands shoveled food onto plates as fast as they could. Metal pans banged and scraped against every flat surface in an effort to get the food put out fast enough. Coffee sloshed all over the counter top and splashed to the floor as the men grabbed at the steaming mugs, reaching over each other to get to the plates and servings of food. Those who were seated at the table hunched over their plates like convicts in a prison trying to save their last scraps of food. Through it all, Bernard watched from his seat at the head of the unusually long table, a look of disappointed resignation on his face as he drank the last of his coffee and picked at a thick piece of toasted bread amidst the complete chaos going on around him.

             
His face lit up as soon as he spied Miranda in the doorway. He banged his heavy earthenware mug on the table top and shouted, “HALT!” Everyone in the room froze from the shock of the older man’s outburst. He looked at the frozen faces around him and bellowed to those at the table, “STAND!” The cowboys at the table gave each other perplexed looks and tentatively stood from their chairs, their uneaten plates in front of them. Several of them kept their hands on either side of their plates, unsure of what was transpiring but knowing that their food had best not be pinched by a greedy hand.

             
“Good morning, Miss Billings,” Bernard began. He looked around the room at the silent cowboys, then gestured to them to repeat him. A chorus of twenty voices awkwardly mumbled, “Good morning, Miss Billings.”

             
Bernard addressed the group. “Gentlemen, this is Miss Miranda Billings, my son’s future wife and therefore, my future daughter.” Casey rolled his eyes as some of the men near him snickered. Bernard slammed his cup on the table again and the room went silent once more. “I expect she will be joining us for most meals, and as such, when a lady enters the room, you will stand as is polite. Whenever a lady is in the room, you will sit up straight, you will use your forks, you will use a napkin instead of your sleeve.”

             
“What about the guy next to me’s sleeve?” a voice called out, followed by rowdy laughter. Miranda felt herself blush at both the attention and the total disdain for the family patriarch.

             
“You, sir, will meet me outside after this meal,” Bernard said in a threateningly dark tone of voice. The room became quiet again as the older man continued in a magnanimous voice. “I have extended an invitation to Miss Billings to bring some sense of decency back to what used to be my home…my wife’s home.” Several of the men dropped their heads at the mention of the former Mrs. Carson. “If she could see, and I believe that she can see us now, my wife would be heartbroken at the state of her family. I implore Miss Billings to turn this back into a home, rather than the barn it has become. You will finish your meals, you will place your utensils and napkins on top of the plates, then you will push your chair in and head to your work. Now, carry on.”

             
Bernard sat back down in his seat and an awkward silence overtook the room. The reprimanded cowboys reached for their food and began to finish eating, casting sideways glances at Miranda. Bernard gestured to her to join him at the head of the table, waving over one of the kitchen helpers to bring a chair. “What would you like for breakfast, my dear?” he asked her softly, beaming at his new daughter.

             
“I think just some coffee and some toast,” she answered quietly, thanking the helper when a plate of food and cup of hot coffee appeared in front of her. She shook out the paper napkin that was provided and was pleasantly surprised when a small dish of creamer and sugar appeared for her coffee. It felt weird being waited on because she was so used to being the one doing the waiting. She smiled at Bernard nonetheless and began to eat. Casey shot looks at her even as he continued to slap at the hands that teasingly patted him on the back.

             
“Would you meet me in my office after the meal?” Bernard asked. Miranda nodded and smiled at him. “We have to hurry, the next wave of hands will be coming in for their food as soon as these men clear out.”

             
“How many hands are there on the ranch?” Miranda asked, wondering how even more men than these could fill the room.

             
“About fifty are employed here at all times, then an additional thirty or so are brought in for things like harvests or to make the cattle drive,” he explained.

             
“Cattle drive?” she asked.

             
“Yes, when we bring a good portion of the herd north to Missouri, or sometimes to New Orleans, to sell at the markets or auctions.”

             
“I didn’t know people still did that. I mean, I’ve read about the Old West and see it in movies, of course. But, if you don’t mind my asking, why don’t you just load them up in those giant trucks?” She hesitated to ask, and hoped her questions weren’t seen as coming from some johnny-come-lately newcomer who thought she knew everything. Miranda was genuinely interested in how the process worked.

              “My father’s generation did that for a time but of course, the trucks were smaller then and there were no massive interstate highways back then, just paved two-lane roads. We discovered that the animals arrived in very poor shape and several died along the way, even in trucks that could cover that distance in only a couple of days. Besides, it’s become a family thing. We all take part, and we spend that time together.” He smiled at Miranda and patted her hand.

             
She coughed a little and finally managed to choke out, “All?”

             
“Yes, all! But don’t worry, you don’t have to sleep on the open ground if you don’t want to.”

             
“Oh, goody!” she said with a smile.

             
“You can have the tent!” Bernard shot back, enjoying tormenting her a little bit in his good-natured way. “Even around the farm, though, we still do some of the work in the tried-and-true ways. Sure, we have radios to call each other and wifi even in the barn, but we still do a lot of the work on horseback. We tried modernizing when I was much younger, what with these fancy four-wheelers and fast pickup trucks, but we found that we spent more time trying to gather up the cattle that had been spooked by the engines. So much time, that these things weren’t a time saver.

             
“And even though the cattle drive is not a tremendous distance, it is still dangerous for the animals and has to take place over several weeks. If the animals walk too far without enough rest, they will lose too much weight and become too unhealthy for the market. We do this several times a year, as we obviously cannot move the whole herd with only a few men.

             
Miranda nodded and finished her breakfast, amused at the man’s statement that this mob of field hands was a “few” men. As she stood to leave the kitchen, everyone paused, many in the middle of chewing their food, looking first at Miranda and then to Bernard. The old man sighed, and said, “Well?”

             
The ranch hands stood uncertainly as Miranda turned to leave the kitchen, the young lady stopping first to thank Cook and her staff. She left the kitchen and smiled knowingly as twenty men flounced back in their chairs with relief and began eating like animals once more.