Manure. Noah sucked in the distinctive tang of it and thought how very far from Los Angeles he was. How he preferred the sharp, distinctive aroma of well-fed horses to the musk of exhaust and power. Horses and hay, leather and liniment, man sweat and more coffee. Dawn air and dirt.
Not a person on the planet would believe that Cameron Ross would find himself brought to a halt in the middle of a predawn pasture, sniffing the air like a sommelier testing an old Château Margeaux. He didn’t care. The ground was hard and uneven beneath his boots, the men taciturn at his approach. The horses danced and whuffled a bit with impatience as they waited to be loaded onto the horse trailer that waited by the barn. Mist curled from the ground like thin smoke, and birds were beginning to wake in the trees. The morning was perfect.
Noah’s head was threatening to split open like a rotten cantaloupe. His stomach was heaving from whatever that woman had introduced to it, and he was still trying to get over the sight of himself grinning out from the cover of that rag on the kitchen table. It didn’t matter. He was beginning to feel better.
He hadn’t been recognized. Not even a quizzical glance. There were not cameras in the bushes, no sleazy innuendo about his need to mount a horse or hide in the mountains. As far as the world knew, he wasn’t here.
But he was.
He was home.
“Mr. Campbell,” the little girl was saying in that no-nonsense tone of voice of hers. “Do you want to meet Hank or not?”
Well, Noah had to give the women in this outfit credit. They didn’t worry any about insulting the boss.
“Yes,” he told her, lifting the too-big hat from his head and taking a swipe at his hair.
One of the men stepped forward, a huge, slow-moving, steely eyed specimen Noah couldn’t remember seeing at the bar the night before.
“You got my men drunk,” Hank immediately said, squinting down his broad nose at Noah, who came up to his chin.
Noah felt like sighing. Didn’t anybody read the employment agreement around here?
But then, the attitude here was refreshing after the warm bath of obeisance he’d been paddling around in, in L.A.
“I bought rounds,” he said evenly. “I didn’t know the men accepting them worked here. Not till it was too late.”
He actually got a round of tender chuckles for that one. It had been a grand evening. At least until one of the men, a Hispanic kid named Paco, had admitted that they all had to be up and saddled in fewer than four hours.
Hank squinted even harder, as if he had a hard time figuring this Eastern greenhorn out. “You ride?”
Noah nodded. “I ride.”
“Ever rode a cow pony?”
“Matter of fact, I have. It’s been a while, though.”
Hank nodded, his eyes still tight with withheld opinions.
“I think he can handle him, boss,” one of the men piped up. “Give him a shot.”
Hank swung a steely glare at the hapless man. “Hannah’s gone for him.”
Noah hadn’t realized that Hannah had separated herself from the inquisition until she returned, leading a solid buckskin gelding.
“His name is Doofus,” she said with a straight face.
Noah considered the animal. “You’re kidding.”
“Don’t make fun of him,” Hannah warned, with just a trace of childish concern in that prim voice. “He’s sensitive.”
“I’ll bet.”
Noah was a fairly good judge of horses, and this one was a good one. A solid quarter horse with the high tail and arched neck of an Arabian and the delicate head of a mustang. He had intelligent eyes, and ears that were on a constant swivel to catch all the action. Nosy bugger. Noah liked that in a horse.
He solemnly accepted the reins from Hannah and began to get acquainted. The minute he took control, the horse danced away, his ears flattening. Noah smiled, crooned a little and rubbed at the horse’s withers until he settled.
“We’re goin’ to the Wheelright,” Hank said. “First ranch on the dance card. You want, you can help corral the herd so we can get ‘em down and done.”
Noah knew better than to ask what they needed doing that needed them to be down for. He assumed branding. “Is Ms. McCann coming along?”
That provoked another round of chuckles. “Oh, yeah,” one of the hands spoke up. “The Big D’s comin’. She wouldn’t miss a chance to show us what she’d like to do to us all.”
Hank’s attention swiveled again, completely silencing the man. Noah didn’t react to the interplay. He stored it away for later retrieval. There had been a lot of bitterness in that voice. A truckload of frustration.
And no argument from the other men, either when the first man spoke or when Hank silenced him.
“All right,” Hank said, turning for the trailer. “Let’s go.”
And that was that. Six men exploded into action, and horses all over the yard were turned toward the trailer. Noah noticed again that it was Hannah who led Doofus. And Doofus who responded quietly, easily and with just a few playful nips to Hannah’s hair, which made her look up and grin.
“Doofus isn’t your horse, is he?” Noah asked, walking alongside.
Hannah looked almost abashed. “Oh, no, sir. My horse is a pony. Esmerelda. Doofus and I are just friends.”
Noah nodded. “I’ll take good care of him.”
“You wanna ride with the bo—” Hank stopped short and scratched at his cheek. “Uh, wanna ride with Dulcy? Gonna be crowded in the truck.”
“Don’t mind callin’ her the boss,” Noah assured the man. “She is. For now, at least, I can only get here to visit.”
Hank’s expression betrayed the fact that he hadn’t decided how he wanted to take that particular arrangement yet. Noah was about to say something else when he forgot what it was. For some reason he found himself turning toward the big white house up the hill.
Dulcy.
Funny, he hadn’t even heard the door slam. Couldn’t really hear her tread across the grass. Even so, he’d realized she’d been closing in as certainly as he knew where every camera was when he was working a film. It was a sixth sense he’d never extended to women before.
Interesting.
Noah had the most unsettled feeling that interesting wasn’t really the word he wanted.
“Ready to go, Dulcy,” Hank said, alongside.
Noah knew he should be listening to Hank’s tone of voice. Was he deferential? Patronizing? Long-suffering? It would say a lot about how the ranch was run.
The minute Noah caught sight of his manager, though, he couldn’t seem to think past incongruities. Mixed messages. Her hair was shoved up beneath a battered beige Stetson, and her stride was brisk. It didn’t manage to mask the sensuality of her gait, though, her slim hips swinging just a little as she walked, her face a too-soft bloom hidden beneath that hat like a mayflower beneath its umbrella of leaves.
Noah had come to concentrate on horses and cattle and open air. He was having a hell of a time doing that, all of a sudden.
“How ‘bout you, Mr. Campbell?” she asked, just a crust of contest in her pleasant, throaty voice. “You ready to go?”
She was pulling on leather gloves and held another, larger pair, which she handed over to Noah.
“If Doofus is ready, so am I,” he said with a smile.
Her eyes, he thought inconsequentially as he took the gloves from her. He wanted to see her eyes better beneath that shadow. Her eyes were almost translucent, gray and soft as mist.
For just a second, Noah thought she might have been having a little problem looking away, too.
“Who’s staying?” she asked Hank, her turn toward her foreman abrupt.
This time Noah couldn’t mistake the fractional raising of the eyebrow that betrayed the old man’s surprise. “Billy Boy. You know how he is.”
She nodded. “Make sure he takes care of the irrigation while we’re gone.”
“Done.”
Nobody thought it necessary to explain or clear their decisions with the man who controlled their livelihoods, Noah realized, and felt the pressures of the other world lift a notch farther away. He was all but invisible here. It was all that he wanted.
Or it had been until he’d opened his eyes to see just what kind of manager he’d hired.
He was suffering from Isabelle’s rejection. Her insistence in loving the man he only pretended to be. He was a prime candidate for a bad rebound.
None of that seemed to be making a bit of difference to the part of his anatomy that responded to soft gray eyes and lithe figures.
“All right, Mr. Campbell,” Dulcy was saying, her eyes hidden beneath the brim of that big hat, as she wrestled keys from her pocket and headed for the battered pickup in the yard. “Let’s go rope us some cattle.”
Not the kind of invitation a man got from a pretty woman every day. Just the kind Noah wanted on a morning like this. Pulling on his own gloves, he headed over to the passenger door and climbed in.
Noah wasn’t sure what he’d expected. The only cow time he’d done had been on his uncle’s small ranch in Texas. He’d never done a big spread before. He’d certainly never joined a pool of ranchers and cowboys who worked their way up a valley getting the branding done for every ranch in sight within a week.
The ranchers all worked together, Dulcy had explained as she’d deftly steered the truck over some of the most difficult back roads in the country. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have the manpower at the all-important branding season. Everybody pooled hands and got the job done quickly, efficiently and almost painlessly.
She’d warned him, as they’d led the horse trailer down over a low pass and into the main scoop of the valley beyond, that there would be dust and noise and blood and the worst language this side of a baseball dugout. She’d warned him that he would work hard and hurt worse by the end of the day. She’d warned him that they wouldn’t take time for him to get up to speed, so he should just follow Paco and do whatever he did.
She hadn’t warned him that every rancher who showed up would seem more interested in grilling him than charring cattle.
“Philadelphia?” Walt Stewart from the Flying Diamond demanded, hands shoved in his threadbare jeans pockets, his legs bowed, his teeth stained with tobacco juice, his eyes flinty and sharp. “Whatcha doin’ here?”
Other eyes watched him answer. Other arms remained crossed in silent mistrust well into the day, no matter how cordial and helpful the men were.
“I spent a lot of time as a kid working my uncle’s ranch in Texas.”
“Why didn’t you buy there?”
“Too flat. Too dry.”
Everybody waited for some other answer. “Philadelphia,” Walt repeated, as if testing the sound of it. “Just don’t make sense.”
“You don’t live somewhere else now?” another of the owners asked as he sipped at his coffee.
“Like where?”
“California,” Mike Murphy said much too quickly.
Ah. Yes. Now Noah understood. When Noah had started looking for his ranch, he’d tried the area around Bozeman. Unfortunately, Bozeman already wasn’t Bozeman anymore. The Hollywood community, embracing the wide outdoors the way they had EST and yoga, had descended on the sleepy Western city and turned it into a kind of mongrel Aspen. In valleys all along the continental divide, obscenely wealthy people had grabbed good land and tucked it away so no one could use it. They had brought in herds of elk and buffalo and had forbidden generations-old access to hunting and fishing areas and high grazing pastures. They’d tarted up the towns and skyrocketed the taxes. Noah had seen the first Gelato stand in Westridge, and knew that these men had a right to be afraid. Just not of him.
“Philadelphia,” he said evenly, slurping down the rest of his own dregs before the quick break ended.
The cattle were in the holding pens. It was now time to drive the young bulls down one chute and the heifers down another. Castrating, branding and ear-tagging were the activities of the day.
“You know,” Walt said, not exactly looking at Noah but at the ground he was scuffing with his sharp-toed boot. “There’s an access way to the Little Ridge River on your property. Not to mention those high mountains.”
Noah hadn’t known. He guessed that came with the guided tour he hadn’t gotten yet. “Uh-huh.”
Six pair of eyes drilled him like lasers. “You gonna close it off?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Privacy.”
Noah snorted. “You ever been to Philadelphia, Walt?”
“Can’t say as I have.”
“Then let me be the first to tell you. I have more privacy in my barn than I have in the entire city of Philadelphia.”
“My access to public grazing is through your west pastures,” another rancher offered, almost diffidently. Noah heard the warring emotions in the man’s voice and felt for him. Furious at having to ask, terrified at the answer. Caught right between everything he’d known and what was coming.
Noah gave him special attention. A thin man, with the gnarled hands of a lifetime’s work and the sharp tan line of a man who had always lived in the high sun.
“You’re next door, aren’t you?” Noah asked.
There was a small dip of the head. A tiny easing of posture as age-old hospitality warred with defenses. “Cletus Wilson.”
Noah nodded and extended his hand for a quick shake, as if they’d just met. “My pleasure, Cletus. What does Dulcy say about it?” he asked.
“Dulcy?” Walt Stewart retorted with a broad grin. “What’s she got to do with it?”
“She’s in charge,” Noah assured all the men.
The reactions this time were telling. A quick range from amazement to distrust to acceptance. It was Walt Stewart who spoke up.
“Surely you can’t think that little girl’s gonna handle all that herself. I mean, she tries an’ all…”
“Always been a feisty one,” another man said.
“That don’ mean—”
Noah felt it again. A tickle at the base of his neck. A crowding of dust-thickened air. He didn’t see her, but she was close by.
“You’re not going to put Hank in charge?” Cletus asked sincerely.
Noah proffered a look of blank innocence. “Why would I do that?”
“Because…well, because…well, we just figured Dulcy was temporary. Till you got here and all.”
“Now, Walt,” Mike Murphy spoke up easily. “Dulcy’s worked hard over there. Can’t take that from her, no matter what.”
The answering shrugs were small, but Mike Murphy kept smiling. A big, self-assured man with a broad smile and premature snowy white hair over pale eyes. “You can count on us all to help if you need it,” he said almost needlessly. “If you’re gonna let her stay on.”
“Unless I catch her stealing my cattle and selling ‘em to Kevin Costner,” Noah said. “I can’t think of a reason to change things.”
That was when he realized where she was. Just on the other side of the barn, hidden from sight. Waiting. Not wanting the men to know she’d eavesdropped.
“Hey, you guys work for the government or something?” she yelled, striding up as if she’d been at full steam from the far corrals. “We got cattle to brand.”
For no reason at all Noah smiled. If a person looked, he wouldn’t even notice that she’d heard. She was grinning and swaggering like any one of the hands he’d seen that morning, her hands shoved into back pockets and her hat pushed back. More at home on this ground than he or Mike Murphy or even Walt Stewart. She was sharp and strong and exciting, and she was the last thing Noah needed in his life right now.
“Where do you need me, boss?” he asked, dropping the ceramic mug on the picnic table with the others and pulling his gloves back out of his belt.
Dulcy squinted up at him as if sizing him up. “You’re doin’ just fine where you are with Paco,” she admitted, and Noah realized he’d been complimented. “Okay with you?”
He fingered the brim of his hat and grinned. “Yes ma’am.”
Her eyes widened a fraction. She knew. She realized that he’d seen her back there. That he’d enjoyed baiting the men, like a game. An answering grin caught the corners of her mouth, striking that dimple into her cheek.
“You got the knife?” Mike asked her.
She nodded. “It’s what I do best, huh, Uncle Mike?”
“Sure is, sweetie.” Tweaking her nose, the big man turned for the cattle and led all the other men with him.
“‘Uncle Mike’?” Noah asked.
Dulcy faced him, her features gathered into a semblance of nonchalance. “Sure. Didn’t I tell you? He’s the successful side of the family. You two should really hit it off. He’s another entrepreneur, just like you.”
“Any other family members I should know about?”
She grinned. “I’m related to half the valley. But don’t let that intimidate you.”
“The half that wants you to keep your job, or the half that thinks you’re…feisty?”
That got the grin back, full wattage. Bright and brash enough to make Noah’s toes curl in his boots. “Feisty isn’t the word most of my family calls me,” she allowed, then eased that grin toward pure mischief. “Especially when I’m wielding a castrating knife.”
Noah flinched, just the way she’d wanted. “Is that a subtle warning?”
Dulcy laughed. “I never give warnings,” she assured him, turning on her heel. “I just attack. Now, let’s work.”
Noah swung back up on Doofus and turned him toward where he saw Paco riding drag. He took his place alongside, letting his horse and the ranch dogs do most of the work, while he ate most of the dust. He listened to the unrelenting chorus of calves bawling, of men yelling, of dogs barking. He felt himself settle into the pattern on a good horse, bumping cattle with his knee as they were edged to the chutes, wiping the sweat off his forehead with a forearm and feeling the high sun hot on the back of his neck.
It was dirty, noisy, sometimes dangerous work, performed like a thundering ballet by the experienced men who had done this their entire lives. Smooth and swift and communicated via ribald jokes and obscene epithets.
And there, in the middle of it, just where he could see her through the dust and crowd of bodies, was Dulcy. Armed with the sharpest knives he’d ever seen. Smaller than any living creature in this yard, sweating and red-faced and focused on the job at hand.
She worked the knife like a surgeon, so fast a man barely had time to flinch before another serving of Rocky Mountain oysters was available and the calf was back up on his feet and stumbling back to Mama. Working around the men who helped as if born to it, bred to it.
Even in sweat-soaked shirt and filthy jeans and battered old hat, she was striking. Lithe and supple and as agile as a prima ballerina.
And not one of the men realized it.
Not one of the men saw past the fact that the job was getting done. Not one of the men, for that time, noticed she was a woman.
Noah shouldn’t have, either.
He did.
Oh, he did.
He also realized, sitting here atop a well-trained horse alongside a good working hand, that if he did anything about it, he’d lose the best manager in the valley.
It was going to be a very long six weeks after all.