“Had a good talk with your daddy a while back before he passed. You know, he wasn’t half bad when you caught him in the right mood.”
Yeah, yeah, my father cozied up with all these assholes who turned their backs on a young girl, blaming her for being assaulted, blaming her for speaking against it.
“Last time…we had a good laugh,” he reminisces. It’s his way of making amends, giving me a piece of Daddy.
I keep my face emotionless, but I don’t walk off either. I stay. Wait.
“A reporter was callin’ him all the time.” He chuckles, his fingers tucked into his pockets. “Some big-time paper from back east wanted to write a story about ranch vets orsome such. Your daddy told her that if she wanted a real story, she oughta come out and help him pull a calf in a snowstorm. Said if she could keep her boots clean, he’d give her a story.”
That wrenches a smile out of me. Dr. Sam Kirk was known for his one-liners. They were pithy, dry, and, most of the time, they were also funny.
Lyle laughs again, shaking his head. “Man could spin anything into a joke when he wanted to.”
He looks at me, and his face folds into itself. “I’ll be seein’ you around, Doc.”
I make a noncommittal hum. I’m not sure I want to beseein’ Lyle Dunn around.
I wait until he’s gone to pack up my stuff and head home, where I intend to send an email to Bodie and Lyle with care instructions, take a shower, and sleep for a few hours before making my rounds at Longhorn Ranch and Kincaid Farm.
CHAPTER 5
cade
When Noelle called me, I’d almost said I couldn’t make it.
Everyone is struggling with calving season, and I don’t have the time to drag my ass to Dunn’s.
But then she tells me Sarah is there with Bodie, and for reasons I don’t care to examine too closely, I ask my ranch foreman’s sister to sleep in the guestroom in case Evie wakes up, then head out.
It’s been a couple of tense hours. I should be in the Dunn kitchen drinking the coffee Noelle is making because the first light of morning is spilling across the canyon, turning mud and manure to shades of gold, and I need to get back to Blue Rock.
But I stand outside the barn, leaning against an oak tree, waiting forher.
I see Lyle talking to her, and a part of me, the one that used to be her man, even though I was only a boy then,wants to make sure he isn’t being harsh with her—but that boy is long gone.
She killed him.
I watch her take a deep breath and walk out of the barn, her bag slung over one shoulder, her hair mussed up, her coveralls streaked with blood and straw.
She looks dead on her feet, but she’s hanging in there. That kind of resilience develops from doing the work over the years.
When Billy came to me and said that Bodie was gone and Lucile, a heifer, was in distress, I told him to get Sarah. She didn’t tell him to fuck off—which, truth be told, most folks would’ve after the welcome she got from Lyle and Noelle…andme.
Instead, she rolled up her sleeves and did the damn work.
“She’s somethin’ else, Cade.” Billy’s eyes are wide, and I can see he’s already half in love with her. A pretty face that knows her way around cattle—hell, that’s every cowboy’s wet dream.
She looks fragile and ethereally beautiful as she walks to her daddy’s truck.
I feel anger surge through me. She has no right to be this woman—one I want to respect.
Riding on temper, I step out from the shadows just as she opens the door of the passenger seat and drops her bag in.
“Stay away from my people, Sarah.”
She slams the door shut and walks to the driver’s side.
“Sarah,” I call out.
