Calder Pride (Calder Saga 5)

“What’d he do to you?”

“Nothing.”

He didn’t buy that. “It’s plain enough you got something against him. You lit into him from the moment you walked in the door. You must have had a run-in with him before. I don’t think it was around here.” Culley didn’t mention the comment he’d overheard about Fort Worth. That was for Cat to tell him.

She released a long, tension-filled sigh, her head dipping a little. “Logan Echohawk is Quint’s father.” There was no one else she would have trusted with that knowledge.

“The eyes,” he murmured. “I should have seen it.”

“What will happen when he sees Quint? Will he notice the similarities? Will he care that he has a son? Will he demand a father’s rights, or will he use Quint to get his hands on the Calder fortune?”

Culley tipped his chin to one side in a denying fashion. “I got the impression he doesn’t think too much of the Calders.”

“Nobody does when they’re on the outside looking in,” Cat replied with heavy cynicism.

“Logan didn’t strike me as the kind who talks outa both sides of his mouth.”

“Maybe he isn’t. He certainly seems determined to stay here,” she said, then sighed again. “I don’t know what to do, Uncle Culley. I feel like there’s a sword hanging over my head, and the rope holding it is fraying.”

Advice had never been his strong suit. But he had a willing ear. “Sometimes just talking it all out makes it all clearer.”

Cat shook her head. “I don’t see how.”

“Well…what’s the worst that could happen?”

“That’s easy.” Wryness tugged at her mouth. “For my father to find out who he is. Dad would insist that I marry him, as if that would somehow legitimize Quint’s birth.”

“And you don’t want to marry him,” Culley guessed.

“Repp is the only man I ever wanted to marry. With him gone—I couldn’t love anyone else.” Even as she said that, she went hot with the memory of how readily her body had reacted to Logan. It was an animal thing. It had nothing to do with her heart.

“Marrying him would give the kid a father, though.”

“Quint doesn’t need one. He has Ty and my father. He couldn’t have better role models.”

Not to Culley’s way of thinking, but he refrained from saying that. “It strikes me if that’s the worst that can happen, you don’t have much of a problem. If Calder tries to make you marry him, you can just take the kid and leave, come over here and stay with me until you can make him see reason.”

“I hate to think of that,” she murmured. “Quint won’t understand all the quarreling and shouting, people making him a battleground. The Triple C is his home, his heritage. I want him to grow up there, loving it as much as I do. There has to be some way I can protect him from all this, but I don’t know how.”

“It would be confusing to a kid,” Culley agreed absently, distracted by other thoughts her remarks had triggered.

She glanced to the west where the sun sat half below the horizon in a golden fire. “If I’m going to be home in time to tuck him into bed, I’d better be going.

“Are you sure? I got some cookies in the house.”

“Maybe another time.” She reached for his hand and watched him turn self-conscious. Touching always came awkward to him. “I’m sorry for unloading all my troubles on you tonight. I guess I needed someone to talk to, and there isn’t anyone else I can trust as I do you.”

“If you need me, you let me know.”

“I will,” Cat promised, her smile warming. “I honestly don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t here, Uncle Culley.”

It was the same thought that was on his mind, but he said nothing as she brushed a kiss across his cheek, then walked away with a quick wave. He stood there while she climbed into the Blazer and drove out of the yard.

After she was out of sight, he waited there a little longer, then crossed the ranch yard to the pole corral. A halter with an attached lead rope hung on a near post. Culley gathered it up and slipped between the corral rails. A scrawny bay gelding snorted in quick suspicion and turned his head to eye him warily. The horse waited until Culley was almost to him, then flung up his head in a halfhearted attempt to elude capture.

Culley grabbed a handful of scraggly mane. “Whoa there, you old buzzard bait.” The horse stopped, snorting again, and Culley slipped the halter on with practiced ease. “You and me’s got us some nighthawking to do. It’s for sure I ain’t gonna be around forever to look after Cat.”

The jaw strap buckled, he led the horse to the barn. Five minutes later, he rode out and headed west, into the crimson fire of the setting sun. Having seldom ventured onto the Circle Six during his night wanderings, it took Culley some time to make his way across the rugged hills and locate the ranch yard. He rounded a thinly wooded shoulder of land and spied the yard light. He reined in, then swung the surefooted bay up the slope and circled around to find a vantage point.