“We need the help,” added Willie. “Even if it’s to flank. She can ride.”
“She knows nothing about herding. What if one of them balks?”
“She’s right here.” January approached, her walk more assured than he remembered. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk around me.”
“Fine. You can’t go,” Nat said, pointed, direct. The kickback of authority in his voice bolstered his dogged determination to not get distracted by her ass bouncing against the saddle all day.
The ranch’s second-eldest hand, Mack, poked his head around the corner. “Clay’s wife went into labor twenty minutes ago, boss.”
Nat felt the wind knocked out of him. He yanked his hat low, so low that the silk band cinched his eyelids closed, a blessed counter-pinch to the headache forming behind his brow. “Perfect.”
January’s sultry-low voice filled the stalls. “Looks like you don’t have much choice, Hugo.”
His cheeks flamed. He hated the nickname Hugo, given to him by his English teacher after he witnessed Nat running down Main Street in nothing but a gray shawl early one Sunday morning when Wes stole his clothes after a night of drinking. Though Victor Hugo had, according to legend, managed to write a masterpi
ece while wearing nothing but a shawl, Nat only managed to flash the Baptist choir filing in for Sunday services.
He repositioned his hat, approached her like he was considering a duel but she had all the pistols, and stared the sass right back out of her.
She pressed her lips together, effectively erasing her grin.
Her face was different. Contour replaced fleshy, youthful cheeks. Shadows dusted the delicate skin beneath her green eyes. Lips he once had to coax into ripe, plump shades of fruit now came naturally full. Sun-kissed waves tumbled down to rest on her shoulders. She was sexy, seasoned with time. And the reason he nearly lost his mind a decade ago. He would let that happen again when his cold, dead corpse was pushing bluebonnets up through the dirt.
“No noise. No yelling unless you’re in trouble. Calm and steady movement to minimize stress on the herd. Mack’s the lead, I control the direction. Hang back. Do what you’re told. I won’t have my men getting hurt.”
She blinked too much, at an apparent loss for words. Something else different. Maybe in the ten years since she disappeared without a proper goodbye, she had learned that empty last words held little power. Her gaze drizzled below his chin. She nodded.
He felt like a USDA, prime-cut asshole.
Nat took Poe’s reins, led the horse out like the barn was on fire, and rode until he was satisfied January would hightail it back to Mona’s trailer and consult her prized map for another place to spread her heartache. But at the target pasture, he found her among those assembled. Atop his steadfast mare, Brontë, her chin tipped defiantly, spine erect, hat brim obscuring her eyes, she was beautiful.
And he was sixteen ways of gone.
* * *
Goats, January had discovered, are like best girlfriends. Brush the hair, have a good heart-to-heart about the shortcomings of males—any species, really—belt out a favorite tune alongside them, deliver on great food and drink, and there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for you. January knew this because of a two-week jag to New Zealand. After many days of failed whistles and yelling and skipping-by-example like a madwoman down the Waikato hillside, she had collapsed in a valley, belted out a few lines of David Bowie’s Always Crashing in the Same Car, and one particularly sassy goat named Dolly nudged her elbow and started to follow her everywhere. Others soon followed.
Cattle?
More like that arrogant jerk you once dated: prefers firm strokes, dislikes the sound of your I’m-serious voice, shies away from a pointed stare, and has the potential to kick when you’re unaware. January’s backside alternated between numbness and pain, and she wanted nothing more than to climb down from Brontë, drag herself to the hump trailer, and take a pre-shower to her shower. But there was something about a particular cow and calf that had her thinking all day, well past the time they had moved and sorted a hundred head, well past a long day’s work when she did more watching than doing—something she hated. Nat said to forget them—the cow and calf they had tried to keep with the herd for an hour—but January couldn’t forget them. What if the calf was injured and the surly mom was showing protective instincts? What if a coyote came in the night? On the New Zealand hillside, her job had been to count then sleep at the pen’s opening—no animals in, no animals out. No animals left behind.
The memory came on like a nightmare: entrails, blood, black and white and gray hair. An unfortunate lesson in adulting, nothing more. Most likely, the predator struck so fast, Dolly was gone before she awoke.
January’s throat squeezed closed. She wanted to go back.
“No,” said Nat. “We’ll try again at first light.”
Nat had already dismounted Poe and was in the throes of a surprisingly intimate exchange between rider and horse that involved strokes, scratches and lip puckering. Horse, too. An odd sensation squirmed deep in January’s belly. For most of the day, she had convinced herself that Nat had turned into a bitter, small-minded person incapable of seeing anything but the bottom dollar on his ranch. His all-business demeanor, his absence of humor, and his steadfast determination to hold on to anger where she was concerned pointed to a completely different person than the easy-going boy she had loved at eighteen. She had hurt him. She owned that. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. On a hundred different days in a hundred different ways, she had made it clear this town would not hold her.
“I won’t sleep tonight.” January shifted Brontë’s reins toward the north pasture and gave her a nudge.
Nat called after her a few times by his old nickname for her—J—then let loose a few choice cowboy words before she heard Poe eating huge stretches of pasture with his strides to catch up.
She braced for a tirade that didn’t come. What the sun hadn’t leeched out of Nat’s new cactus personality, aching muscles had finished off. At a greater-than-usual distance apart, they rode in silence, nothing between them but the cadence of Poe and Brontë leaving their mark on the world. Turns out, first light wasn’t needed. The harvest moon lit the open spaces and branches like a lantern always hanging from the next tree.
They spotted the bovine pair near a mesquite tree whose lowest branch stretched wide like a park bench. Nat tucked Poe beside Brontë.
“True north,” whispered January.