Not much, according to Judge Burch. She'd have to vacate the premises. No legal right to stay, he'd said. Glen Riley owned the land, and it was through his good Christian charity that she would be allowed to stay, or not.
Oh, everyone was plenty sympathetic. Even Glen, who made the strangest expression when the Judge had come back with his verdict. She'd mistaken it for a smile at first, but there wasn't any happiness in his face. Nor in his demeanor. He'd just walked up and taken the bill of sale and the deed, and started making his way to the back.
Glen's arms being wrapped around the pretty woman in front of him were no sort of comfort. Catherine no doubt thought that she was gua
rded, that she kept herself closed, but he'd never had much trouble reading people. It was why poker seemed a natural choice of second career while he sipped on what the army had given him for pension.
More than that, he was good at predicting what people would do, a product of twenty-odd years scouting out in the western territories for the Army. Mostly working alone, it had given him plenty of time—and plenty of motivation—to learn how to guess where the chips fell before he got caught out.
He had known before he'd walked into the courtroom that he had her dead to rights. She probably had expected him to use it like some sort of bludgeon. Bill seemed to have planted some very strange thoughts in her head about how men acted, but the truth was that he had hoped to discover that there was some sort of legal recourse she could be offered. Some sort of legal way out. But instead—nothing.
It was past lunch when they finally pulled back up in front of the ranch home front. Garth and Brady were leaning on the paddock fence and talking, and it burned him more than it should have.
"What, you two couldn't find anything to do? Place is in such great shape that you got time to sit around and dilly-dally around?"
He could already see gaps in the fence, a ways down, and posts that were hanging wrong. Things he could have fixed himself, given an afternoon. Things he needed to fix.
Brady turned, his broadly handsome face looking as if to say something, but then he thought better of it. He turned to his partner and jerked his head. "The man's right. Come on…"
Garth stood still. "What were we supposed to be doin', boss? This here's the woman's place, ain't our place to go fussin' with it if she says not to. Did she give her go-ahead? Cause earlier you were sayin' to leave her things alone."
Glen didn't like being talked back to one bit, but the younger man had a point. The thought was cut off by Catherine's voice, cold and hard.
"This is Mr. Riley's property, as I've just been informed by the county Judge. It's his place to do with whatever he likes." Catherine ignored Glen and his help's hands offering to help her down and slipped off the saddle on her own, rubbing the soreness out of her thighs before heading inside.
The twins just had Ada's clothes, and she had never had as much as Catherine would have liked. Well, that would make it easier to pack up. The only thing that stopped her was the thought of the steers outside.
Her father could afford to pay the loss, but it represented years of work to get back to the point where she could keep a herd this size. Even if she wasn't treating them like she should, even if she didn't have the men to deal with them, it had meant more to her than it should that she'd been able to raise up a thousand head and have them as fat as they were getting. But they were still underweight.
She could sell them anyway, of course. Catherine heard the screen door open and shut, heard the main door close along with it. She folded up the dress in her hands and put it into her suitcase and picked up another before she heard the boots moving through the house and decided she couldn't ignore him forever. No matter how much she wanted to.
She came out the door to find Glen down the short hall, squatted down in a way that made his body look good. Every position seemed to, and that was the thing she liked the least about him.
She had been married once to a man who looked good, a man who liked to gamble, and she'd learned from that mistake. The similarities repeated themselves in her head, whispering that she should be careful, not get too involved with this man outside the childrens' room, but she already knew better.
He spoke softly. "Y'all doin' alright?"
She heard Ada's answer that they were doing "just fine, thank you." Catherine smiled to hear the 'thank you' at the end.
He held his hand out through the door, just the right height for a child. "My name's Glen. I'm gonna be hanging around a little while. Your ma's letting me stay out in the barn. I thought we should get acquainted, long as we're gonna be neighbors."
"My name's Ada. This's Cole, and Grace."
"Nice to meet you, Ada. Say—how old are you?" There was a pause, and Catherine could just imagine Ada counting off seven fingers. "Wow, seven? Gee, Ada, you know—"
He seemed to see Catherine standing there, all of a sudden, and stood back up. Back into the adult world. He wiped his hands on his blue jeans and stepped clear of the door as Catherine walked up. She couldn't help smiling when she saw Ada standing.
"Mama!" Ada reached up at her. "Pick me up!"
She was getting big enough, now, that Catherine couldn't help thinking the days where she could pick Ada up and hold her were numbered. That just seemed to make it feel that much more important that she do it now. Catherine reached down and picked her daughter up, planting a soft kiss against her head. Seeing her children grounded her again, set Catherine's head straight.
There was no reason to rush off for her father's house. It would only upset the children, confuse them, and then she'd have to have the talk she had been putting off far, far too long.
Catherine remembered all of a sudden that Glen was beside her, that he'd likely come in for a reason. Whatever it was, he wasn't there when she turned back around.
Five
Glen guided the calves out of the pen by himself, letting the Garth and Brady do the real work of keeping Catherine's herd in. She hadn't asked him to deal with them, so he wouldn't. It wasn't pride or even spite—they were hers, and it was her right to do what she wanted with them. But if Brady were to be believed, then they'd do better out of the pen.