Chapter Ten
Hell came in the form of a saddle and regret.
Actually, Kara had less trouble physically than Rye did. She hoped that the others did not notice how gingerly he sat in the saddle and how often he found it necessary to stand in his stirrups. Much more painful to her than the physical ramifications of sexual overindulgence was the way Rye began withdrawing into himself from the moment he left her bed near daylight. The attentive, inventive, amazingly generous lover reverted back to the slightly prickly, emotionally cautious and distant business partner of her experience. It was obvious to her that he regretted, at least to some extent, the breathtaking intimacies of the night before.
He hadn’t fully met her gaze since checking on his sleeping son that morning before leaving the privacy of the motor home. Throughout the morning he spoke little and astutely avoided her touch. It was in some ways no more than she had expected. After all, he had offered her no promises beyond the moment. No mention of love or the future had been made. And yet she felt so profoundly changed by what they had shared that she could not believe he remained unaffected. Surely there should have been a fleeting, secretive look, a small, bemused smile, a sly, suggestive whisper, some acknowledgment of past wonders, something. Instead, she seemed to have ceased to exist for him.
She tried not to be hurt. She did try. But when Rye picked up his lunch, had a quick word with Bord, then rode right past her without so much as a lifted finger in greeting, her heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. It didn’t help that Bord had bad news.
“We got four sick horses, Ms. Detmeyer, and something tells me it won’t stop there. Never seen anything like it. Spreading like wildfire.”
“Did you tell Rye?”
“Yes, ma’am. He said to run it by you.”
“Where is the remuda?”
“Campsite. Want me to turn your horse in with the herd so you can ride ahead with me in the truck?”
Kara sighed. “Guess so.” She dismounted, saying, “I’ll just grab a sandwich while you get the saddle off.”
“No problem.”
She joined her mother at the other truck. “You get a look at those horses?”
Dayna nodded. “They’re sick all right, but it’s nothing I’ve ever seen. Dean was getting on the computer when we left, said he’d find the nearest vet.”
Kara nodded. “Sounds like a good idea.” She lifted her hat and wiped her forehead with her shirtsleeve. “Man, I hope it doesn’t stall us. No rancher anywhere in the world would want us crossing his property with sick animals.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Rye will keep ’em headed to camp for now. Dean’s got a cell phone. Maybe you’d better keep this one.” She unzipped her fanny pack and extracted the small flip phone, handing it to her mother. “Tell Rye to wait until he hears from me before bringing them all the way in. If this is something that will affect the cattle, I don’t want them anywhere near those horses.”
Despite a look of surprise, Dayna nodded and slipped the phone into her shirt pocket, where it made a strange lump atop one breast. “You haven’t already discussed this with Rye?”
“Rye has other things on his mind just now,” Kara told her dismissively, taking a sandwich from the cold box and a prepackaged cup of soup from the other. For some reason, Kara felt compelled to kiss her mother’s cheek before striding off toward the other truck, not knowing how much she’d given away.
“Poison!” Rye exclaimed. “You’re telling me someone’s poisoned our horse feed?”
Kara pressed her fingertips to her pounding temples. “Dr. Weitz didn’t actually use that term, and he’s not one hundred percent positive yet, but that’s what he expects the tests to show.”
“Dear God!” Rye shook his head, bringing his hands to his hips. “What treatment does he recommend?”
“Fluids, diuretics, emetics, depends on what was used. He doesn’t think it’s anything fatal, but we need to flush it out of the animals’ systems.”
“Damn!”
Kara felt close to tears, but she wasn’t about to give in to them now, not in front of him, never again in front of him. Pity was not something she could take from him again. She was pretty sure, now that she’d had some time to think, that pity was behind the events of the previous evening. He’d felt sorry for her. Poor, inexperienced, unloved Kara. The least he could do was see to it that she didn’t go to her grave a virgin without ever knowing what she was missing. If he’d been unusually caring and thorough, well, she supposed that was just Rye. Whatever he did, he gave it his all. As a work ethic, it was a commendable trait from which she willingly benefited. It would be boorish of her to be ungrateful now. Still, she couldn’t help wishing that he’d been slightly less meticulous. She feared that Ryeland Wagner had taken her to heights that she would never again scale, no matter how many attempts she might be foolish enough to make. She tried to bend her mind around this latest catastrophe.
“Weitz says this could cost a thousand bucks before it’s over,” she said with a sigh, “but that’s not the worst of it. Those horses are going to need time to recover, more than we can give them, I’m afraid.”
Rye made an inarticulate sound. “That means abusing the few healthy mounts we’ve got left or staying put, which is exactly what the son of a bitch who did this wants!
Kara pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m open to suggestions.”
“Soon as I have one, I’ll let you know.”
Kara nodded as he turned and walked away. Her stomach roiled. Her head felt as though it might split in two. Fatigued and emotionally drained, she wanted nothing so much as she wanted a long, hot bath in a tub full of bubbles. Now if only one would magically appear. Yeah right. She’d be lucky if she could soak both feet at the same time. Not that it made any difference. Heartaches were damnably difficult to treat.
Rye fought the urge to slam a fist into the first thing he saw. Better to save it for the spineless scum who was doing this to Kara. Then, in all fairness, he’d have to stand back and let the wretch take a swing at him; God knew he’d already done more to hurt her than anyone else. He’d known he was going to the moment he’d found her sitting on that rock last night, but he couldn’t have stopped if his life had depended on it. The only thing he could say in his favor was that he’d known he would be hurting himself as much as her. He just hadn’t understood the nature of the pain. The term regret took on a whole new meaning when the regretted action tended to color the rest of your life. Looks like he’d have learned that, but nothing could have prepared him for how it felt to make love to Kara.
He kept wondering if it had really been so much better than anything else he’d ever known, or if it had just been so long that he’d forgotten. Unfortunately, he remembered only too well his disappointment with Di‘wana. His only other experience had been with the “buckle bunnies,” the trophy hunters among the groupies who flocked around rodeo athletes much like those who followed rock musicians. He’d known women who loudly bragged about all the champion cowboys with whom they’d slept, women who publicly discussed the superior techniques of the bronc and bull riders, saddle versus bareback, ropers as opposed to steer wrestlers. The open indulgence in such raucous sex had been heady indeed—for a while. But even in the midst of it, he’d realized that something was missing. He’d expected to find that intangible something with the woman he loved, with Di’wana. Yet, it had been many months before their sex life had developed into something approaching satisfying, and it had never, ever been anything approaching what he’d experienced last night.
Kara had blown away every concept he’d ever had about satisfaction in one evening. And he didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t have a clue. One part of him was convinced that trying to repeat the phenomenon would be like trying to hit the lottery twice in a row. Another part wanted nothing more than to drag her into the woods, rip her clothes off and go at it like two animals in heat. But the consequences of that were utterly terrifying. If Kara were pregnant, he’d have to marry her. He couldn’t do anything else. And just the idea of falling into that trap again made him sick to his stomach. He was a failure at marriage. He’d suspected it even at the time. He’d known that he wasn’t making Di’wana happy, but he hadn’t seemed able to do anything about it. That hadn’t changed. He knew, deep down, that he hadn’t changed. He didn’t even know how to go about it.
He and Kara would both be much better off if he just stayed away from her, but that was harder to do than he’d expected, especially when she stood there patiently enduring such obvious pain and worry. He’d had to walk away to keep from taking her in his arms, but if he was going to maintain the distance he’d so carefully constructed during the day, he’d have to find some way to help her. He sat on the bumper of his truck and tried to think what to do. That’s where Champ found him.
“Hi, Daddy.”
“Hey, sport, what’s up?”
Champ shrugged. “Dunno. The horses got sick, though.”
Rye nodded. “Come here and sit with me. Tell me about your day.”
Champ climbed up onto the bumper and parked himself. “I made cookies with Miss Dayna.”
“Oh, yeah? Think I might get some?”
“Ever’body gets some,” Champ said, as if anything else would be unthinkable.
“Great. What else did you do?”
“I played a game with Dean on the computer.”
“You’re getting to be a real computer whiz, aren’t you?”
Champ nodded emphatically. “And I helped Bord clean the curry brushes.”
“Yuck,” Rye said dramatically. “I always hated doing that myself.”
“It’s easy!” Champ exclaimed. “You just rub ‘em and rub ’em together in a bucket of soapy water, and then you rinse ‘em, and you shake ’em out real good.” He demonstrated how he’d shaken and shaken the brushes. “Then you just let ’em dry.”
“Well, you must be a lot better curry-brush cleaner than I arm.”
Champ nodded matter-of-factly. “Yeah, prob’ly.”
Rye laughed and ruffled the boy’s thick black hair. He’d been a lousy husband, but he loved being a father. “Listen, pard, I’m sorry I haven’t had much time to spend with you lately. I miss hanging out with you.”
Champ screwed up his face. “Well, you know, Dad, it won’t last forever, this trail drive thing. Bord says that afore long we two will be at Grandpa’s and Uncle Jesse’s, and we’ll have all kinds of stories to tell ’em about this—” he squinted, trying to remember the exact words, finally coming up with “—historial ebent.”
Rye clamped down on another laugh. “Historical event, I think is probably what he said.”
Champ nodded. “Yeah. That’s it That’s what Bord said.” Rye paused a moment and casually asked, “Champ, do you like Bord?”
Champ shrugged. “Sure, I like him. Uncle Jesse and Grandpa and Shoes are still my second favorite to you, though.”
“Of course. They’re family.”
“And Dean and George and ‘specially Pogo are prob’ly third, but I liked Mr. Detmeyer real good, too.”
“So did I. He was a fine man.”
Champ looked down at his hands. “And Dayna’s not too bad. She’s about as good as Miss Meryl, but she’s prettier.”
Rye smiled. “Yes, she is prettier.” He wondered if Champ would say anything about Kara, but the boy changed the subject.
“Uncle Jesse’s got a bunch of horses, don’t he, Dad?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact, he does.”
“That’s what I told Miss Dayna when she was worrying about ours. I told her, prob’ly we’d just borrow some of Jesse’s.”
Suddenly Rye grabbed his son and kissed him in the middle of the forehead. “Champ, you’re a genius!”
“I am?”
“You sure are! I can’t believe I didn’t think of it myself!”
Rye hurried back to camp and practically snatched the telephone from Dean’s shirt pocket, quickly punching in the numbers while his son announced to everybody in camp that he was a genius. Minutes later Rye gave a curious Dean a thumbs-up sign. He’d solved the immediate problem.
“I really appreciate this, Jess,” he said into the phone. “She’s fighting for something we can both identify with. It’s our way of life as much as hers. And you can be sure I’ll take your advice about locking up the feed and keeping the key. The other will have to be Kara’s decision, but I’ll run it by her and give you a call back.”
A few seconds later he broke the connection, handed the phone over to Dean and went in search of the one person from whom he most needed to keep his distance. She had showered and changed and was drying her hair with a towel. Rye grinned. “I thought of something. Actually, it was Champ.”
Kara stared at him a long moment, the towel still next to her head. “I overheard something about him being a genius, not that he’d tell me, mind you.”
She seemed so sad about it that Rye had to clench his hands into fists to keep from reaching out to her. “He just might have saved our bacon. See, he remembered that his uncle Jess has a neat little sideline business going. He trains horses. He’s going to meet us outside Dove Creek tomorrow with half a dozen of his strongest mounts, and he’s taking our sick ones back with him.”
Kara gasped, dropped the towel onto her shoulder and closed her eyes. Swallowing, she said, “I’ll pay him somehow, I swear it. Whatever it takes, I’ll see that he’s compensated.”
“You just try it,” Rye told her, “and Jess’ll pin your ears back for you.”
“I can’t let him do it for nothing, Rye. It wouldn’t be fair.”
“Listen, I’m an easygoing fellow—”
“Yeah. right.”
“Compared to my big brother.”
She actually smiled. “Hard to think of you having a big brother.”
He cocked his head. “Oh, no. Jess is half of everything I am, all the good. He’s the best of big brothers, truly.”
She looked away. “You’re lucky,” she said. “I would have liked to have a big brother, well, a sibling of any sort, actually. But Mom couldn’t have any more after me.” She suddenly turned back to him. “Payne’s the closest thing I have to a big brother. That’s why I can’t believe he has anything to do with what’s happening.”
Rye bit his tongue. When the urge passed to point out that Payne had the best motive, Rye said, “There’s more.”
“More?”
“You won’t like this, but we’re doing it, anyway.”
Some of the fire leaped back into those blue eyes. “Don’t try to tell me—”
“Just shut up and listen a minute,” he said flatly. To his surprise, she did. It made him uneasy. He wasn’t used to quick capitulation from her. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. “You can pay for this if it’ll make you feel better, but later when you can afford it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Jess is bringing us some feed, too, in bulk, ’cause that’s how he buys it.”
“Where are we going to keep it?”
He chuckled because she always asked the most salient questions. “He’s bringing it in a container with a lock and a key.”
Kara blinked and slid to the edge of her chair, pointing a finger at him. “I want you to keep that key on your person at all times. No one goes into that container but you. Period.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
She smiled lopsidedly. “That happens to us a lot. Have you noticed? We seem to think alike, strange as that sounds.”
He suddenly felt the ground shifting beneath his feet and scrambled for firmer footing. “One m-more thing.”
Kara sighed, then tossed back her hair, the damp tendrils curling fetchingly about her face into a pale golden halo. “All right.”
He couldn’t look at her anymore. “Jess wants to bring a newspaper reporter with him, someone he knows.”
“Whatever for?”
He hurried to explain Jesse’s thinking. “He figures there ought to be a public record of what’s been going on, if for no other reason than to build a case against the saboteur once we catch him. There’s a chance, too, that the publicity might scare him off, make him think twice about pulling another one of these stunts.”
Kara shrugged. “Can’t hurt, I suppose.”
“That’s what I th—uh, I mean, I told Jess you’d have to give the word on this one.”
Kara nodded. After a moment she picked up her towel and began drying her hair with it again. He sat there like a lump, watching her, wishing... He couldn’t even bear that. Wishes were just regrets dressed up in longing, his father always said. Rye mumbled that he’d promised Jess he’d call back after talking it over with her. She neither spoke nor looked at him before he hurried away.
They took it real slow and easy on their last day in Utah, which kept Kara from falling out of her saddle in a pathetic heap. She was exhausted from losing two nights of sleep in a row, and from the sharpness of Rye’s temper, he wasn’t in much better shape. The horses had been fed on grass and hay, not the highenergy oat and protein blend to which they were accustomed, and were tired from the hard day before. So it made sense to go slowly, even if it did make for a terribly long day.
Knowing that dinner would be later than usual, Dayna provided a particularly hearty lunch, but Kara still felt as though her stomach was digesting itself by the time they dragged into camp. Thank God that they had real holding pens just outside the small town of Dove Creek, Colorado. They also had ample electricity, which meant real hot water showers in the dinky bath in the motor home. Kara made darn sure that she was at the head of that line, putting off dinner until afterward despite the gnawing in the pit of her belly. Rye’s brother, Jesse, was standing in the chow line next to his nephew when she picked up her plate and fell in behind. He immediately stepped aside, sweeping out his arm.
“Ladies first, ma’am.”
Kara stuck out one hand. “In this outfit we’re all equals, Mr. Wagner. You are Jesse Wagner?”
He swept off his silver-gray Stetson, displaying an impressive head of wavy chestnut hair. It was hard to tell without a matching mustache, but he didn’t strike Kara as particularly resembling his brother. Besides being clean shaven, he was taller by a couple of inches, and his hair bore no trace of premature gray. His sparkling eyes were almost as blue as they were silver, and his well-sculpted mouth tended to quick, easy smiles that displayed strong, white teeth.
“He takes after our mother,” he explained cheekily, as though having read her mind, as his big, broad hand enveloped hers.
“I see.”
“A pleasure to meet you, Miss Detmeyer.”
“It’s Kara.”
“And Jess.”
Frowning, Champ tugged hard on his uncle’s arm. Jess immediately dropped his gaze to his nephew’s face, going from affability to rock-hard sternness in the blink of an eye. “Your father may tolerate that behavior, young man, but I won’t Now mind your manners. I’m talking to the lady, so you just bear up.”
Champ bowed his head abjectly. Kara immediately sought to lessen the blow. “He didn’t mean anything.”
“The heck he didn’t,” Jesse Wagner said baldly. “He and his father have a problem with good-looking young women, and you qualify in spades.”
Kara’s brows went up. “Er, thank you.”
He grinned, switching on the charm again with disarming abruptness. “Just telling it like it is, one of my many virtues.”
Kara laughed. She couldn’t help it. Jess Wagner was about as different from his careful, aloof brother as a man could be. “Generosity must be another, then. I haven’t thanked you for the horses and the feed yet. You’ve saved my life.”
Wagner shrugged his broad, thick shoulders. “Frankly, I’d have done more to get an early look at the only woman I’ve heard my brother praise in years.”
Kara had to work to keep her jaw from dropping. That left no space or time for subtlety. “Praised how?”
Jess chuckled. “Isn’t that just like a woman, always wanting the details. Let me tell you something about men, Kara, they see the big picture. Details sometimes get lost. That’s what we need women for.... Well, one of the things we need women for.” He winked. As they’d been shuffling forward in line, they now found themselves at the serving table. Dayna was there with a big smile and a huge pot of spaghetti and meatballs. Jess split a look between the two women and said, “My, my, you Detmeyer women sure dress a place up!”
Kara hid a smile. “Jess, allow me to introduce my mother.”
He drew back in overdone disbelief. “No, surely she’s your sister!”
Dayna rolled her eyes. “Now that’s just what we need around here, more hot air.” Just then, Pogo appeared at her side, an arm sliding possessively about her trim waist. Dayna slung an elbow halfheartedly at his ribs, saying, “This one could launch dirigibles.”
Jess laughed and stuck out his hand, which Pogo gripped heartily. “I should have known, you sneaky old buzzard.” He turned his smile on Dayna again. “What do you women see in him?”
Dayna smiled secretively. “Trust me, it’s not visible to the eye.”
Kara felt herself blush while Jess Wagner laughed delightedly. For the first time she truly understood the innuendo. For one bleak moment she felt such intense jealousy that her stomach turned over, but then her heart swelled and she let herself be glad for her mother. If what Dayna felt with Pogo Smith was anything like what she’d felt with Rye, then Kara rejoiced. She couldn’t help wondering, though, if it had been like that with her mother and father. If it had, how had Dayna borne it when he’d died?
Rye arrived before she could ponder that question further, slapping his brother on the back. “I see you’ve met the Detmeyers.”
“Oh, indeed, I have, and a real pleasure, too.”
Rye addressed Kara then. “Bord and I got the fresh horses settled and the feed out. Jess has brought us some fine mounts.”
Kara kept her gaze on the older brother, afraid she would betray her own personal misery if she looked at Rye just then. “I’ve already told Jess how grateful I am. Guess I’ll have to up the ante now.”
Jess chuckled and picked up the plate Dayna had filled with spaghetti. Passing it to Kara, he took her empty one and put it on the table for Dayna to serve. Champ added his, splitting avid looks between Kara and his uncle. Jess treated Kara to a particularly charming smile. “Your company through dinner is more than ample compensation.” Suddenly he looked up, first at his brother, then Pogo, adding, “Er, unless someone else has staked another claim I ought to know about....”
Kara caught her breath, torn between the need to look at Rye and the desire to run. Long seconds ticked by, during which no one said a word. Finally Jess Wagner picked up his plate, placed a hand in the small of Kara’s back and gently pressed, saying mildly, “Tell me all about this trail drive. Rye said something about a codicil to a will.”
Kara nodded and latched on to the subject gratefully, doing her best to ignore the ache spreading throughout her chest.
The reporter showed up the next morning just as they were mounting up. Rye did his best to tamp down his temper, but watching his brother fawn all over Kara the evening before had just about exhausted his control. It didn’t help that Jess had actually seemed able to put the roses back in Kara’s cheeks and the flash in her eyes. She had relaxed with Jess, laughed with him, even glowed beneath the constant shower of flirtatious charm. Rye couldn’t help feeling invisible, forgotten. Now here was Jess pulling Kara down off her horse—as if she couldn’t dismount on her own—to introduce her to a drugstore cowboy more comfortable with pen and paper than horse and rope.
He walked his horse over to the trio shaking hands and making introductions. Drawing rein, he leaned a forearm on his saddle horn and said, “Anybody around here remember that we’ve got work to do?”
Kara lifted a hand in his direction. “Chad, this is Jesse’s brother Rye. You might call him my good right hand. Rye, I’d like you to meet Chad Bevery. He’s a reporter.”
He looked more like a kid playing reporter to Rye, a blond, pretty kid. And he was staring at Kara’s chest as if taking her measurements. Rye put on a false smile.
“Do tell. Well, Chad, your timing’s bad, son. We’re just about to move these cattle down the trail. Schedule’s to keep and all that.”
Chad flipped open his pad and busily scribbled as if trying to get down every word. Jess laid a hand on Rye’s arm. “This is important, Rye. Get someone else to fill in for Kara this morning.”
Rye ground his teeth. “You seem to forget who’s giving the orders around here, bro. Besides, Kara can’t be replaced. I need her on point.”
The reporter shook his ink pen at Rye, saying excitedly, “This is so good. Two centuries collide! Sabotage on the trail. Liberated female holding her own in a man’s world. Fortune at stake!” The fool was talking in headlines. Rye rolled his eyes. Jess, meanwhile, seemed intent on playing the hero.
“Tell you what,” he said to Kara, placing his hands familiarly on her shoulders. “I’ll take your place until the noon rendezvous. You give our boy Chad here everything he needs. All right?”
Kara nodded and patted one of his hands where it rested on her shoulder. Rye fought down the urge to kick his brother off his feet, choosing instead to wheel his horse and gallop away, barking orders left and right. Damn Jess! What the hell did he think he was doing, mauling Kara like that, countermanding his own orders, sticking his nose in where it just didn’t belong! He rode to point himself, shouting, “Head’s up out there! New man on the wing!” Without waiting for Jess to fall into place, he cut out Number One from the milling herd and started her down the trail at a trot. “Let’s move ’em!”
The herd gave a satisfying surge forward, the drovers hawing them and slapping leather. They moved out like a gigantic, welloiled machine, throwing up dust in their wake. Rye realized suddenly that he was going to miss this moment in the future. He was going to miss giving the order to move, miss looking forward and seeing Kara driving out the leaders, miss the sounds of his men calling and ropes snapping. Miss her. Oh, God. He’d tried not to notice where she’d laid her bedroll last night, but he knew—knew—that she’d slept next to Jess. What had he done, bringing the two of them together?
He concentrated on moving the herd over some rough terrain. Some of it was so rough that they had no choice but to move out into the roadway in places. Rye prepared himself for confrontation with the locals and possibly even the constabulary. To his surprise people tended to pull over to the side of the road, roll down their windows or get out of their cars, wave their hats and shout questions.
“Where you headed?”
“New Mexico!”
“Where you from?”
“Utah!”
“How many head?”
“Better’n three hundred!”
“Who-ee!”
When Kara finally joined the drive at lunch, she was full of big news. “Chad says we can drive ’em right through Cahone, says he’ll take care of everything as soon as he gets back to his office.”
“Is that so? And what happens if somebody decides to throw us in jail for disturbing the peace or some such?”
“I told you, he’ll take care of it. If some problem should crop up, he’ll call.”
“Well, isn’t that special,” Rye crabbed.
Kara just shook her head and rode out to point, Jess falling in beside her. Before long they drew up, and Jess leaned out of the saddle like some circus rider to buss her on the cheek. Kara laughed and waved him off as he rode away. Rye swallowed gall and yelled at George to get off the blankety-blank phone and mind his business. “That Wanda’s got him on a short tether,” he grumbled, referring to George’s intended wife.
Jess laughed, catching him off guard. Rye wheeled his horse around to face him. “What’s so funny?”
“You.”
“Yeah, I’m a laugh riot, especially when I’m moving three hundred head on a public roadway with an inexperienced hand.”
“We did okay, seems to me. Everybody says Kara’s a surprisingly good hand—”
Rye snorted. “Kara’s the best hand on the crew.”
Jess grinned. “Next to you, you mean.”
Rye shrugged, sensing that he was being led somewhere he didn’t necessarily want to go. “Guess you’ll be shoving off now all the rescuing’s done.”
Jess grinned and said, “I like her.”
“I noticed.”
Jess heaved a long-suffering sigh and crossed his hands over the saddle horn. “She’s not a whit like Di’wana.”
Rye turned his horse. “Tell Dad I look forward to seeing him in a few days.”
Jess spurred forward and grabbed Rye’s reins. “Sit still, damn it! I’ll let you know when I’m through with you.”
Rye actually cocked his fist. “I’m not ten years old and still taking orders from you!”
“Then stop acting like it!”
It took a few moments for that to sink in, fortunately his hand got the message before his brain did and was hanging at his side by the time he realized what he’d almost done. He tugged his reins from Jesse’s grasp and made a show of relaxing. “All right, I’m listening.”
“I want to take Champ home with me.”
“Champ?”
“Living on the trail is exciting, but it’s also hard. He needs a break, and you need some slack. Besides, I’m worried about all the stuff that’s been going on.”
Rye nodded. What Jess said was true. He hadn’t been able to spend as much time with the boy as he’d intended, anyway. Seemed there was always something needing his attention. And he had another reason for liking the idea. Jess had a way with Champ, for making him see reason. “Okay. But there’s something you ought to know, something I haven’t been able to prepare him for myself.”
“Seeing his mother. He told me.”
Rye lifted a hand to the back of his neck. “It’s time.”
“Past time, if you ask me.”
“Which I didn’t.”
Jess reached across the distance between them and laid a hand on Rye’s shoulder. “You’re doing the right thing, Rye. I know it’s hard, but if the two of you are ever going to put this behind you, you have to make your peace. Champ doesn’t understand that right now, but I intend to tell him how proud I am of you for taking this step.”
Rye blinked, surprised at how his brother’s approval still had the power to warm him. “Thanks. I’ll ride back to the lunch wagon with you to tell Champ so long.”
Jess nodded. “You’ll see him again in a few days.”
“Yeah. Meanwhile, he can have a good time with his grandparents and Uncle Jess.”
“And you can have a good time with that hot number riding point.”
Rye jerked his horse to a halt. “What the hell do you mean by that crack?”
“Give it up, Rye. She’s wild about you, and you’re behaving like a bad-tempered stud with his first whiff of scent. I know you’ve been wanting to put out my lights just for looking at her.”
“You’ve got some nerve, you know that?”
“I just want to see you happy, Rye, for once. Even if it’s only for the next week or so.”
Rye was startled. “I’m happy.”
Jess shook his head. “Rye, you’re the unhappiest fellow I know. Just this once, take a little time for yourself. Enjoy some of the good life has to offer. Let that little gal do everything she’s aching to do for you. Take it and be grateful. Please. I guarantee you, the world will seem a new place after.”
Rye was speechless. Was this his big brother begging him to cut loose? After all those lectures on responsibility and sobriety? Had Kara told him something about the two of them? If so, he wanted to hear it from Kara herself.
“Think about it,” Jess said, kicking his horse into a canter.
He was thinking about it. He was thinking that he could walk into any drugstore in any town along the way, buy a box of condoms and walk out again without answering to anybody. He could have Kara in his arms every night until Durango. And maybe the world would seem a new place afterward. He closed his eyes. Could he do this? Could he love Kara for now and walk away later? Would she come to him, knowing he wouldn’t, couldn’t stay with her beyond Durango? He only knew that he was going to find out.