Rode Hard, Put Up Wet: Cowboy Romance (Rebels & Outlaws 2)

He should've had a rifle, but he had barely a hundred dollars left. Fifty on a Spencer and cartridges would have left him unable to feed himself. Even the next few months would be close.

Glen felt the itch to find a table. If he were careful and lucky about who he sat down with, he could double that stake by the end of the week. Once he put the hundred back into his pocket and started playing more freely, that money could turn into a good month's pay.

The numbers for cattle ranching made sense. There wasn't much risk, and he didn't have to worry about the feast-or-famine pace that gambling stuck him with. He had told himself this was what he wanted.

Settle down. Raise a family. Make a life for himself that wasn't

built around wheeling around the territories like a tumbleweed. But there had been years of relative independence, only reporting in every few weeks in the Army and then living on his ability to take people's money from them.

So instead of a rifle, he just had the Colt, and he let his hand rest on it. He looked out across the cattle and admired them. He'd given up that old life. There wasn't time to be thinking about going back now that things were tight. He had already expected that, and there was nothing going to change it. Might as well hang on tight and see it through.

Catherine looked at the money, stacked neatly on the table in front of her. Two hundred, thirty-seven dollars. It would get the four of them through to Autumn, and by then she had hopes that she might get the steers up to weight. That infusion of cash would be enough to get her into another ranch if it came to it.

But she didn't have that kind of time. She tried to do the math on how much she would make if she sold the steers as they were, underweight. Before the courtroom that morning, she hadn't seen the bill of sale.

Now that she was thinking about numbers, she realized something that hadn't seemed so important before. The ranch was worth better than four hundred dollars an acre, and it only held a hundred. Forty thousand dollars was so far outside her reach that it bordered on absurd.

Somehow, her ex-husband had gotten himself nearly fifteen thousand dollars into debt, sitting at a single table in a single night. She closed her eyes and searched for the grace to forget about him. She hadn't found it in her to forgive him, not after what he'd done. She doubted she ever would.

There was no way she could pay what he was owed for the deed, not without sending word back to her father. He'd insist that she come right back, and then he would give her an earful about what a damned fool she had been to ever trust that no-good Billy Howell. He had the money, but he wouldn't send it.

He was right about Billy, she had to admit, but that didn't mean that she was ready to hear him tell her about it. And she wasn't ready to give up. She had made it all this time on her own strength, and now that she was so close, she wasn't going to give up at the last moment.

Glen smiled at her as he passed by the window, flashing a handsome set of teeth that only made Catherine more frustrated. Of all the times for this to happen, why did it have to be now?

She felt a pull on her skirt, and reached down to pick up Cole, and they watched the three men outside closing up the range. She would need to go out tomorrow and do another head count. Things had been mostly quiet at night, with the men here, but that didn't mean they weren't still stealing her cows. They were just doing it more cautiously.

Glen dusted himself off as he came in, suddenly more conscious of his clothes. Catherine hadn't moved from where he had seen her through the window, until she turned around and handed him another one of her delicious cups of coffee.

"Mr. Riley, we need to talk."

He drink a sip, enjoying the taste and the rush of mental clarity that accompanied it. Damn fine cup of coffee. "What about?"

Catherine took a seat at the table, a piece of paper set out where she'd been scratching out her math. She started to read it over and Glen waited a moment for her to tell him what was going on, but when she didn't he pressed her on it again. She seemed to look up as if she had already forgotten he was sitting there.

"I have a proposal for you, Mr. Riley."

"Alright."

"I've managed to save a few dollars here and there, over the past few years. As you can see, I've got a bit of a larger herd than you have, as well. So I figured, well, I need the land more than you."

She waited a moment to let it sink in, and he sat back in the chair and waited for the other shoe to drop. Kept his face impassive, the way he'd learned to do playing. If she made a good offer, he couldn't look too impressed. If she didn't, he couldn't look too frustrated. Controlling the conversation meant first controlling himself.

"And?"

"What would you say to my buying the land from you? I could put down a few hundred dollars now, to show I'm serious. Once the cattle are ready for butchering, I can get you the rest."

"What's 'the rest?' "

"According to your bill of sale, you paid fifteen thousand dollars for the land."

"That's true, if you want to count it that way."

"Well, I'd be willing to make you whole again, Mr. Riley. It'll be tight, but we can manage."

Glen took a breath in through his nose and let it out through his mouth. The hot sun must have baked his brain, because for a second he thought about it. Then he came back to his senses. "I'm sorry, ma'am. But I'm not selling it."

Anger flashed across her face, an instant before she managed to smooth herself back over. "Why's that?"