“She’s right,” Sarah murmured, shooting an uneasy glance out the window. “It’s no time for a woman to be out on the road alone at night. Ben—”
“I’ll ride over with her.” Ignoring Willa’s protests, he rose and fetched his hat and coat. “One of your men can drive me back, or I’ll borrow a rig.”
“I’d rest easier,” Sarah put in before Willa could refuse again. “It’s a shameful thing what’s happened here. We’d all rest easier knowing Ben’s with you.”
“All right, then.”
Once the good-byes were said, with the rest of the McKinnons walking them to the door, Will climbed behind the wheel of the rig. “You’re a lucky man, McKinnon.”
“Why is that?”
She shook her head and stayed silent until they’d left the ranch house behind. “You can’t know, you can’t possibly understand how lucky you are because it just is for you. It’s just the way it is and always has been.”
Baffled, he shifted in his seat to study her profile. “What are you talking about?”
“Family. Your family. I sat there in that kitchen. I’ve sat there before, but I don’t know if it all sank in. It did today. The ease and affection, the history, the bond. You wouldn’t know what it’s like not to have any of that. It’s just yours.”
It was true enough, and he didn’t know if he’d ever thought it through. “You’ve got sisters now, Willa. There’s a bond there, and it’s easy to see.”
“Maybe there’s the beginnings of something, but there’s no history. No memories. I’ve seen you start a story and Zack finish it. I’ve heard your mother laugh over something stupid the two of you did as boys. I never heard my mother laugh. I’m not being maudlin,” she said quickly. “It just hit me, sitting there today, watching you and your family. That’s the way it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, I’d say it is.”
“He stole that from us. I’m just beginning to realize how much he stole from all three of us. Not just me. I’m going to make a detour.”
When they came to the boundary of Mercy land, she shifted into four-wheel drive and swung onto a winter-rutted access road. He didn’t ask where she was heading. He’d already figured it out.
Snow was mounded over the graves, burying the headstones, smothering the wild grass and tender flowers. She thought it looked like a postcard, so perfect, so undisturbed, with only Jack Mercy’s stone, higher, brighter than all the rest, thrusting up out of the snow toward the darkening sky.
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No, I’d rather you didn’t. If you could just wait here. I won’t be long.”
“Take your time,” he murmured as she climbed out.
She sank knee-deep in snow, trudged her way through it. It was cold, bitterly, with the wind slapping the air, sending snow swirling from its bed. She saw deer, a small herd of doe on the rise of a hill, like sentinels for the dead.
There was no sound but the wind, and the wind was like the first stars groaning as she made her way to her father’s grave.
The headstone was carved as he’d ordered, carved as he’d lived his life. Without a thought to anyone but himself. What did it matter? she wondered, for he was as dead as her mother, who was said to have lived kind, and gentle.
She had come from that, Willa thought, from the kind and the cruel. What it made her she couldn’t say. Selfish on some levels. Generous on others, she hoped. Proud and filled with self-doubt. Impatient, but not without compassion.
Neither kind, she decided, nor cruel, and that wasn’t so bad, all in all.
What she did understand, standing there in the rough wind, in the rougher silence, was that she had loved them both. The mother she had never known, and the father she had never touched.
“I wanted you to be proud of me,” she said aloud. “Even if you couldn’t love me. To be . . . satisfied with me. But it never happened. Ham was right today. You slapped me all my life. Not just the physical slaps—there wasn’t much punch behind those because you didn’t really give a damn. Emotionally. You hit me emotionally more times than I can count. And I just came back, my head lowered like a kicked dog, so you could do it again. I guess I’m here to tell you I’m done with that. Or I’m going to try to be.”
She was going to try, very hard.
“You thought you’d pit the three of us against each other. I see that now. Doesn’t look like we’re going to oblige you. We’re keeping the ranch, you selfish son of a bitch. And I think we may just keep each other too. We’re going to make it work. To spite you. We may not be much of a family now, but we’re not done yet.”
She walked away the way she’d come.
He hadn’t taken his eyes off her, and was grateful for the lack of tears. Still, he hadn’t expected the smile, even the grim one that firmed her lips as she got back into the rig.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.” She drew a deep breath, pleased that it didn’t hitch. “I’m just fine. Beau Radley’s selling off,” she said as she maneuvered the rig around. “I’m buying some of his equipment, a couple hundred head from the feedlot, and taking on two of his men.”
The lack of segue left him a little muddled, but he nodded slowly. “Okay.”
“I didn’t tell you that for your approval, but so you can note it in your supervisory capacity.” She swung onto another access road to shortcut it to the ranch. Quick gusts of wind that would drag the temperature down to unbearable rattled gleefully at the windows.
“I’ll have the monthly report up to date by tomorrow so you can go over it.”
He scratched his ear, wary of the trap. “That’s fine.”
“That’s business.” Her smile relaxed a bit as she saw the lights of the ranch house peek through the distance. “On a personal level, why haven’t you ever asked me out for a sit-down dinner or a picture show instead of just trying to get my pants down?”
His mouth fell open so far he nearly had to use his hand to shove his jaw up again. “Excuse me?”
“You come sniffing around, get your hands on me when I let you, ask me to bed often enough, but you never once asked me out on a date.”
“You want me to take you to dinner?” He’d never thought of it. He would have with another woman, but this was Willa. “To a movie?”
“Are you ashamed to be seen in public with me?” She stopped the rig again, left the engine running as she swiveled in the seat to face him. His face was in shadows now, but it was still light enough for her to read the stunned look in his eyes. “I’m all right to go rolling around in the horse barn with, but not good enough for you to put on a clean shirt and invest fifty bucks in a meal?”
“Where’d you get a damn fool idea like that? In the first place, I haven’t rolled around in the horse barn with you because you’re not ready, and in the second place, I never figured you were interested in sitting down in a restaurant and eating with me. Like a date,” he finished lamely.
Maybe feminine power was fiercer than she’d imagined, Willa mused, if wielding just a hint of it caused a man like Ben McKinnon to flop like a trout on the hook. “Well, maybe you’re wrong.”
It was a trick, he thought, as she drove on. There was a trap here somewhere, and it would snap its teeth on his ankle as soon as he took a wrong step. He watched her narrowly, ready for signs as she pulled up in front of the main house, turned off the engine.
“Go on and drive this back,” she said easily. “I can send someone over to get it tomorrow. Thanks for the company.”
Damn it, he could almost hear the snap of the spring as he stepped a toe into the trap. “Saturday night. Six o’clock. Dinner and a movie.”
Her stomach muscles quivered with laughter, but she nodded soberly. “Fine. See you then.” And stepped out, shut the door in his face.
SEVENTEEN
W INTER CLUNG LIKE A BUR TO THE BACK OF MONTANA. Temperatures remained brutal, and when they rose to tolerable, snow tumbled from the sky in frosty sheets
. Twice, access roads at Mercy were blocked by ten-foot drifts, piled into glossy white mountains by the unforgiving wind.
Cows went into labor despite the weather. In the pole barn, Willa sweated through her shirt with the muscle-straining effort of pulling calves. An expectant mother mooed bitterly as Willa reached into the birth canal, grabbed hold. Still in the birth sac, the calf was slippery and stubborn. Willa dug in, hissing as the next contraction vised painfully on her hands.
Her arms would carry bruises to the elbow before it was done.
She waited it out, timed her pull, and dragged the first half of the cow out.
“Coming on the next,” she called out as blood and amniotic fluid soaked her arms. “Let’s go, baby, let’s go.” Like a diver going under, she took a quick breath to fill her lungs with air, then dragged hard with the next contraction. The calf popped out like an oiled cork.
Her boots were slimy, her thick cord pants stained. Her back was screaming. “Billy, stand by with the injections,” she ordered. “Keep an eye on them.”
If things went well, mother would clean baby up. If not, that task would also fall to Billy. In any case, she had trained him carefully over the past few weeks, with a hypo and an orange, until she was confident that he could inject the newborns with the necessary medication.
“I’m going on to the next one,” she told him as she wiped an arm over her sweaty forehead. “Ham?”
“Coming along.” He watched eagle-eyed as Jim pulled another calf.
It was always a worry that even with human assistance a calf would prove too large, or be turned wrong, and make the birthing process lethal for both baby and mother. Willa still remembered the first time she’d lost this battle, the blood and the pain and the helplessness. The vet could be called, if they knew in time. But for the most part, the calf-pulling season of February and March was the province of the cattleman.
Steroids and growth hormones, she thought as she examined the next laboring cow. The price per pound had seduced ranchers into producing bigger calves, turning what should have been a natural process into an unnatural one that required human hands and muscle.
Well, she would be cutting back on that, she thought as she sucked in a breath and plunged her cramping hands into the cow. And they would see. If her attempt to return to more natural ranching proved a failure in the long run, she would have only herself to blame.
“Ladies and gentlemen, coffee is served.” Tess’s entrance was spoiled when she went white and gagged. The air in the pole barn was thick with the mingling smells of sweat and blood and soiled straw. Visions of a slaughterhouse danced in her head as she turned straight around and gulped in the icy air.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” No good deed goes unpunished, she thought, and waited for the dizziness to pass.
Bess had known, certainly Bess had known exactly what she would walk in on when she’d casually asked Tess to take the thermoses of coffee out to the pole barn. With a shudder Tess made herself turn back around.
That little deed would require punishment as well, she decided. Later.
“Coffee,” she repeated, staring, fascinated despite herself as Willa wrenched a calf partially out of a cow’s vagina. “How can you do that?”
“Upper-body strength,” Will said easily. “Go ahead and pour some.” She spared her sister an arch look. “My hands are full.”
“Yeah.” Tess wrinkled her nose as the calf squirted out. It wasn’t a pretty sight, she mused. At one time she would have said that no birth could be. But the horses . . . she’d been charmed and humbled by the sight of a foaling mare.
But this was nasty, she thought, and messy and almost assembly-line cold. Pull ’em out, clean ’em up. Maybe it was because they were destined to be steaks on a platter, she considered. Then she shook her head and handed a cup of coffee to Billy. Or maybe she just didn’t like cows.
They were, in her opinion, too big, too homely, and too desperately uninteresting.
“Wouldn’t mind a cup of that,” Jim said, and his eyes twinkled at her. “We could switch places a minute. It’s not as hard as it looks.”
“I’ll pass, thanks.” And she smiled back at him, giving him a steaming cup so he could take a breather. It no longer insulted her to be considered an ignorant greenhorn. In fact, at the moment Tess thought it was a distinct advantage.
“How come they can’t just push the calves out themselves?” she asked him.
“Too big.” Grateful, he gulped down the coffee. Even the burning of his tongue was welcome.
“Well, horses have pretty big foals, and when we’re in the foaling stall we mostly just stand by and watch.”
“Too big,” he reiterated. “With the growth hormones we give them, cows can’t throw off calves by themselves. So we pull ’em.”
“But what if it happens when nobody’s around to . . . pull?”
“Bad luck.” He handed back an empty cup. She didn’t want to think about what was smeared on the outside.
“Bad luck,” she repeated. Because that didn’t bear thinking about either, she left the thermoses and cups and went outside again.
“Your sister’s all right, Will.”
Willa shot a half smile at Jim and took a moment to pour herself coffee. “She’s not all bad.”
“Wanted to puke when she walked in,” he pointed out. “I figured she’d haul ass back to the house, but she didn’t.”
“Maybe she could help out in here.” Billy grinned. “I can’t see her sticking her hands in a cow’s hole, but she might could use a needle.”
Willa rolled her shoulders. “I think we’ll leave her to play with the chickens. For now, anyway.” And now was what mattered, she decided, as she watched a newborn calf begin to nurse for the first time.
“A ND SHE WAS UP TO HER ELBOWS INSIDE A COW.” TESS shuddered over her brandy. Evening had come in cold and clear, there was a fire roaring in the grate, and Nate had come to dinner. The combination made her brave enough to recount the experience. “Inside, dragging out another cow.”
“I thought it was fascinating.” Lily enjoyed her tea, and the warmth of Adam’s hand over hers. “I’d have stayed longer, but I was in the way.”
“You could have stayed.” Willa had a combo of coffee laced with brandy. “We’d have put you to work.”
“Really?” Though Tess moaned at Lily’s simple enthusiasm, Lily just smiled. “I’d love to help tomorrow.”
“You haven’t got enough brawn to pull, but you could medicate. Now you,” Willa continued, giving Tess a long, considering look, “you’re a big, strapping woman. Bet you could pull a calf without losing your breath.”
“Just her lunch,” Nate put in, and earned chuckles from everyone but Tess.
“I could handle it.” Gracefully, she skimmed back her hair, making the rings glitter on her pretty manicured fingers. “If I wanted to handle it.”
“Twenty says you’d chicken before you were in to the wrists.”
Damn it, Tess realized. Cornered. “Make it fifty, and you’re on.”
“Done. Tomorrow. And Mercy Ranch adds another ten for every calf you pull.”
“Ten.” Tess sniffed. “Big deal.”
“Pull enough and you’d be able to pay for your next fancy haircut in Billings.”
Tess flipped her hair again. She was about due for another trim. “All right, then. I say you’re going to be springing for a facial as well.” She raised an eyebrow. “You could use one of those yourself. And a paraffin wax on those hands. Unless, of course, you like skin that resembles leather.”
“I don’t have time to waste in some silly salon.”
Tess swirled her brandy. “Chicken.” She hurried on before Willa could hiss out a response. “I say I’ll pull as many as you, and if so, Mercy Ranch treats all three of us—you, me, and Lily—to the works. A weekend at a spa in Big Sky. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Lily?”
Torn between loyalties, Lily fumbled. “Well, I—”
“
And we could do some shopping for the wedding. Check out a couple shops Shelly talked about.”
“Oh.” The thrill of that had her looking dreamily at Adam. “That would be lovely.”
“Bitch,” Willa murmured at Tess without rancor. “You’re on. But if you lose, you’re back on laundry detail.”
“Oops.” Nate took the coward’s way out and studied his brandy when Tess snarled at him.