Flying K Ranch, Montana
“Goddamnit!” Dirk hoisted the saddle onto his horse’s back with a curse. “And double damn Wade!”
His brother had ridden out late yesterday afternoon after strays and still hadn’t come back. He had a half-dozen animals missing and Wade was too busy screwing around with his new girlfriend to care—as if there wasn’t already enough bad blood between him and his brother already. Had Wade not taken the girl with him, Dirk might even have been worried, but now he’d bet the whole friggin’ ranch they were holed up in the cabin doing what he could only fantasize about.
The only reason he’d sent Wade after the cattle was his own difficulty riding. He used the ATV most of the time for cattle work, but there were a number of strays on the mountain and some of the cow paths were too treacherous and narrow to chance it with the ATV. He rarely rode a horse unless he had to. He couldn’t do it like he used to, so he didn’t want to do it at all.
Unfortunately, there were still a few occasions where riding was unavoidable. It was the only reason he kept horses at all. It wasn’t just the mounting and dismounting that made it difficult, but the chance of a hang-up was a constant danger. Riding with a prosthetic leg was a royal pain in the ass. He supposed his stubborn pride was an even bigger pain in the ass, but that’s just how it was.
If the missing cattle wasn’t already enough to fire him up, Allie Evans had just shown up with another offer on the ranch. He’d thought the issue of selling out was laid to rest a week ago, but here was Allie back again. She might have Wade in her pocket, but she was wasting her breath if she thought to change Dirk’s mind. He had a legacy to protect and he swore he’d do so with his very last breath. It wasn’t just a matter of guilt on his part, it was a matter of honor.
The Flying K was all he had left.
He’d screwed up his life so many times and in so many ways that all he wanted was the opportunity to start over. Just one stinking chance to see if he could finally get it right—whatever-the-hell “it” was.
He was damned tired of just scraping by and barely surviving. Hell no, he wanted the Flying K to thrive again as it once had, as he knew it still could. While his neighbors continued to complain about the low prices they were getting for their Angus and Herefords, Dirk had researched everything he could get his hands on about Japanese Wagyu and what it would take to raise a herd. His ideas meant taking chances and facing mockery, but he didn’t give a rat’s ass what others thought. Montana ranching methods were steeped in old tradition but it was time to break out of the box or perish.
He knew he could turn things around but a new breeding program didn’t happen overnight. It took time. Not weeks or months but years. It was also risky, but he knew in his gut it would pay off in the long run—if only his damned brother would have a little faith. But instead of supporting Dirk’s ideas, he’d teamed up with Ms. Allison Fuck-Me-Pumps Evans to sell the place out from under him. Allison’s unexpected arrival had also forced him to deal with his handicap head-on, which pissed him off even more.
Copenhagen shifted uneasily. They were decades-old trail partners and the horse was sensitive to Dirk’s every mood. While only a few years ago he could have effortlessly vaulted onto the back of the most skittish and ill-mannered horse, now he only picked the veterans out of the paddock, the old-timers with patience—like Red Man and Copenhagen.
“S’all right, boy.” He soothed the animal and adjusted the saddle. Then, cursing his brother all the while, he swung himself up, positioning his prosthesis carefully in the custom-designed stirrup. He resented the hell out of having to drop everything to go up the mountain after Wade, but being honest, rage about Allie’s appearance wasn’t all that motivated him. He was equally eaten-up with envy. Wade had found himself a new woman and looked to be moving forward with his life, while everything Dirk was working for was slowly turning to shit.
* * *
It was Sunday. Three full days since Wade and Nikki had walked into the Pioneer—and three long and sleepless nights that Janice had waited for her silent phone to ring. Although she hadn’t given Wade her number, Dirk would surely know how to find her if he was inclined to. Maybe he wasn’t inclined? She quickly canned that thought, instead favoring the possibility that Wade had simply forgotten to mention her.
For weeks she’d struggled to come up with any plausible excuse just to “happen by” the Knowlton place, but so far nothing had come to her—neither had Dirk. Although the idea terrified her to the core, she was growing more convinced that she’d have to just cowgirl up and take the bull by the horns. Bull? The thought stopped her in her tracks.
How ironic that bulls would be her link to him. Dirk was a rancher said to be branching out into a new breed of beef cattle. How hard would it be to go out there and strike up some talk about his bulls? Maybe even ask about a job? She was a bit of an expert in that arena, after all.
She sank her teeth into her lip and looked at her watch. If she drove out to the Flying K now, she could visit an hour or two with the Knowltons and still be back in time for supper. Even if she was a bit late, Mama would surely watch over Cody until her return.
She’d taken him to Caleb’s house early this morning to ride horses. It’d been years since he’d been on one, but he was too young at the time even to remember it. They’d once kept a number of ranch horses for moving cattle, but the stock had been sold off long ago to pay medical bills and the bulk of the property had soon followed. Little good it had done. The cancer had not only eaten her father alive—it had taken his entire life savings. After the bills were paid only the old farmhouse and five acres remained of the original two-section homestead. Things had gone south real fast after that.
She’d realized too late that she was only an insurance policy to Grady. He’d married her in hopes of getting the ranch, but no one had counted on the bill collectors getting it instead. The ranch sale marked the beginning of the end of their marriage, or maybe better said, it was the nail in the coffin. At one time she was desperate to save her sinking marriage, even though she’d been bailing buckets out of it almost from the start. She’d wed Grady for all the wrong reasons but had hoped to make it work anyway. On that account she was also wrong.
Horribly. Horribly. Wrong.
She hadn’t loved Grady. He hadn’t loved her either. Nevertheless, she’d somehow managed to keep it together for Cody’s sake. In the end, there was no saving it and no saving him. Now Grady was gone, but she couldn’t shed any more tears. She’d wasted too many while he lived.
But the nightmare was finally over. She was safe from all the dirty secrets she’d struggled to keep hidden from the world. Now free of all that, she longed for a second chance to see what might have been. She’d lived too damned many years with what-ifs not to see this thing through once and for all. There was so damned much history and hurt to overcome, but she wasn’t about to live out the rest of her life with added regrets.
That’s right, Janice. Now or never. Just do it before you lose your nerve.
With her pulse racing, Janice shed her ratty sweats and pulled on her best ass-hugging Wranglers. Maybe she wasn’t the lanky cowgirl she’d once been, but a lot of men preferred curves on a woman. Today, however, she was unable to decide whether she should emphasize or downplay. She didn’t want to send the wrong message.
In the end, she settled for something in between, donning a fitted Western blouse in a turquoise shade that suited her well. She always tried to stick to blues and greens. She had Rachel Carson to thank for that. After dressing, Janice dug into the back of her closet for her only pair of dress boots—the worn pair of Old Gringos she’d spent eight hundred dollars on at Cheyenne Frontier Days a decade ago. She had Rachel to thank for that purchase too.
The boots represented the biggest act of self-indulgence in Janice’s entire life, and one she’d never repeat. Although wearing them always invoked bittersweet memories, she’d never been able to bring herself to throw them away. Instead, she’d resoled them three times. Although they’d both seen some hard times, like the boots, Janice had held together all these years—even if sometimes by a thread.
* * *
Two hours later and halfway up the mountain, Dirk was still seeing red. Arriving at the spike camp and finding Wade’s horses picketed outside had him ready to rip his brother a new one. Dirk tethered Copenhagen and approached the cabin, forcing himself to count slowly to ten but only making it as far as eight before he slammed his fist into the door. He didn’t wait for an answer. The single knock was as much courtesy as his brother was going to get.
He shoved the door open with a thud, his blood pressure skyrocketing as he took in the scene—scattered clothing, two bodies huddled together in a single sleeping bag. It was exactly as he’d thought. He braced himself in the doorway with a glower while the startled couple disengaged and scrambled for their clothes. “Just fucking great, Wade. You told me you were going to bring down the strays. Instead, I come all the way up here to find you two knocking boots!”
Wade yanked on his jeans and tossed Nikki his shirt before stepping toward the door, blocking her from Dirk’s view. “What the hell are you doing up here? I told you we’d bring them down, and we will.”
“I’m playing the messenger boy for Allison Evans, that’s what. Seems she has a new offer on the table and needs you, Wade. She won’t go into it with anyone else.”
“What’s he talking about? Who’s Allison Evans?” Nikki asked Wade.
“He hasn’t a friggin’ clue what he’s blabbering about,” Wade replied. “Allison is my partner’s daughter. She’s the ranch broker I’ve been working with. This is business, Nikki. Plain and simple.”
“Plain and simple?” Dirk laughed outright. “Yeah, you just tell yourself that, little bro. Hell, it seems to me with such a fierce competition for that dick of yours, we should pin a blue ribbon on it.”
“Shut the hell up, Dirk!” Wade snapped. “And get out!”
“You done fucking then?”
Wade’s expression darkened. “I’m warning you, one more word and my fist is going to get mighty familiar with your face.”
Dirk felt his body stiffen at the clear call to arms, but tamped down the explosion that was threatening to erupt. After considering how he would have reacted had the boot been on the other foot, he forced himself to back off. He then turned and stalked out.
He was already on his horse when Wade followed a few minutes later. At least he was saved the indignity of an audience as he struggled to mount up.
“What the fuck was that all about?” Wade demanded. “What possessed you to run your mouth off about Allie in front of her?”
Dirk shrugged. “Figured she’d be better off knowing now than getting ambushed back at the house. You should thank me. I saved you from having to deal with a big cat-scratching scene.”
“You think you saved me?” Wade threw a saddle on his horse. “You’re a class-A asshole, you know that, Dirk?”
“Maybe, but I’m also right. What do you think will happen when Fuck-Me-Pumps—”
“Quit calling her that—”
“—gets an eyeful of Peaches?”
“It’s not like that. I’ve never promised Allie anything and never expected anything in return.”
“Yeah, right,” Dirk scoffed. “Not even her daddy’s law practice?”
“You really think I’d use her like that?”
“What I think is that you’re kidding yourself if you think Allie don’t have designs on you. And my money says she’s gonna make that pretty damn clear the moment you ride up with Peaches in tow.”
“There’s nothing serious between Allie and me. Our relationship has always been mostly business.”
“Business with benefits? Hell, if that’s the deal you have going, where do I sign up?”
“Jackass.” Wade pulled himself onto his horse.
“Just calling your bullshit. She’s not my type.”
“Yeah, I recall your type all right—other men’s wives.”
Dirk’s knuckles whitened around the reins. The reference to Rachel was a damn low blow. They’d avoided any talk of her for over three years. Wade’s marriage had failed and she was gone. He knew the guilt ate at Wade, but it seemed easier for his brother to make accusations than to shoulder the blame for the death of his wife and unborn child. But Dirk had let it ride long enough. “It’s time to pull your head out of your ass, brother. That’s not how it was, and I think deep down you know it.”
“She never wanted me. She wanted you,” he accused.
“That doesn’t mean anything happened. It ended between Rachel and me ten years ago.”
“If that’s true, why did she turn to you instead of me?”
“You refused to make time for her, so she played us against each other just like she always did. It was her juvenile effort to get your attention.”
“Sure looked like more than that to me.” Wade spun around and spurred his horse up the mountain.
Dirk mumbled another curse. He’d said his piece. There was nothing more he could do to convince a brother who wanted to believe the worst.
They rode the next hour in an edgy silence, looking for any sign of the stray cattle but finding only dried-up dung piles. They followed the dung trail farther up the mountain until Wade’s horse unexpectedly shied. “What the hell’s wrong with you, Skoal?”
The wake of turkey buzzards, closely followed by the putrid assault of decaying flesh, provided the answer. Wade made to dismount but Dirk stalled him with his rifle raised. “I despise the ugly mothers.” Aiming into the cluster of birds, he fired to clear the view of the rotting carcass.
Shit! It was worse than he’d feared. The buzzards were picking the bones of not one, but three of the missing herd—a cow and twin calves. Dirk’s chest tightened at the loss. It had taken three years of careful and highly selective breeding to establish the beginnings of a Wagyu herd—not to mention a huge financial risk that Wade wasn’t about to let him forget.
Wade dismounted, crouching with a handkerchief over his nose to examine the half-eaten remains—the obvious work of wolves. A grizzly or mountain lion couldn’t have taken down all three at once. Nor would they have torn away the haunches and eaten the viscera first.
Bad enough they were killing his stock, in this case they were killing his future too. Even if the insurance paid out on the dead cattle, it wouldn’t come close to what he’d invested. He’d busted his ass for the past three years trying to keep the ranch going while everyone else around him was selling out. With the beef market going all to hell, he’d studied every angle in hope of doing better than they’d done in the past.
He couldn’t afford to lose any more stock, but how the hell was he going to keep a pack of wolves away? He didn’t have any help and sure as hell couldn’t be a twenty-four-hour babysitter to a herd of cows. He seemed only to be running into obstacles at every damned turn!
“How many were you missing?” Wade asked.
“Seven,” Dirk hissed through his teeth.
“Well, then I guess this accounts for almost half of ’em.”
“Think the wolves got the lot of ’em?” Dirk asked.
“Not unless they took them last night,” Wade replied. “’Cause I swear I saw at least a half-dozen grazing up on the ridge. Maybe more.”
“Couldn’t have been more. The rest are all accounted for.” Dirk gave Wade a dark look. “And we wouldn’t have lost these if you hadn’t been so damned preoccupied with your prick.”
“Bullshit! This kill is at least two days old. Besides that, it would have been too dark to bring them down the mountain last night anyway. I’m not about to risk my life for a stupid cow.”
“That’s the difference between us. This cattle is my life. I spent the past three years cultivating this breed, and now I’m looking at over six grand in dead stock.” He slapped his hat on his thigh.
“How much can you reclaim from a wolf kill?”
“Hell, that’s nothing but a crock to begin with. Unless you can prove it was depredation by a wolf, they won’t pay a friggin’ nickel.” He dismounted. “C’mon. Wildlife Service has to investigate, so we’d better cover these carcasses and preserve what little we can of the crime scene—not that I’m holding my breath. Even if they do pay, it’ll only be a fraction of what I had invested.”
“Which begs the question—why do you still want to hold on to this? You know there’s no future in it. Private ranching is as dead as these cattle.”
“You’re wrong. There is still an opportunity, but it has to be the right cattle. In Vegas they’re getting three hundred bucks for a Kobe T-bone. There’s opportunity for those who can think outside the box, Wade. American Kobe is an emerging market.”
It was purely by chance that Dirk had come upon that answer. The night Grady’d won the World Bull Riding championships they’d celebrated at Vic and Anthony’s where Grady ordered the most expensive thing on the menu—a jaw-dropping three-hundred-dollar steak. Dirk had never even heard of Kobe beef before that night, but at thirty to fifty dollars an ounce, it didn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out where money could still be made in cattle.
“There are all kinds of restaurants and gourmet food chains looking for suppliers,” Dirk said. “It’s going to take off in a big way. I just need to be able to meet the demand.”
“You’re crazy, Dirk, and I’m done! I’m not putting another penny into this operation. It’s stupid to hang on. I finally had the ol’ man seeing reason—until you laid waste to everything,” Wade added bitterly. “Is that damned ego of yours worth giving him another coronary? He can’t do this anymore. You’re gonna kill him.”
“Then we’ll hire some help,” Dirk argued. “There’s plenty of hands looking for work.”
“And why is that?” Wade scoffed. “You just proved my point. Name me one private ranch that isn’t struggling just to survive.”
“You’ve made yourself crystal clear, that you want to bail out. That’s the difference between you and me. While you’d just walk away from four generations’ worth of blood, sweat, and tears, I’m willing to fight to keep it.”
“You’re an ungrateful asshole, you know that? It’s been my hard-earned money that’s paid the taxes and grazing leases to keep this place going—money that would have been better spent on a condo in Arizona where our folks could retire.”
“If that’s how you feel, I’ll buy you out. Whatever offer Fuck-Me-Pumps produces, I’ll match a third of it—your share. All you’ve ever cared about is money, anyway. You’ve got no loyalty, Wade.”
“Loyalty?” Wade snarled back. “You sure as hell are no judge on loyalty!”
“Back to that, are we?” Dirk’s jaw tightened along with his fists. He refused to swallow any more of Wade’s bullshit. “You got what you deserved, little brother.”
Wade speared him with a murderous look. “Is that what you really think?”
“Does it matter what I think? It’s what she thought and it’s what killed her. You killed her, Wade.”
“You goddamn son of a bi—” Wade reined in and pulled back a fist, but a ground-shaking sound of thunder halted him. “What the hell?”
“Holy shit!” Dirk echoed his cry as a band of madly galloping horses came barreling down the mountain toward them. In hot pursuit was a pack of half a dozen ravenous-looking gray wolves.
Dirk cocked his rifle, raised it, and took aim, but then held his fire at the last second. He could take down one or maybe two but then risked bringing the whole pack down on them if he missed, not to mention the litany of laws he’d be breaking if he shot any of them without a kill permit. As it turned out, the wolves were too preoccupied with their current prey to pay any attention to the two riders.
Dirk lowered his rifle with a head shake. “They’ve been having some wolf troubles down in Paradise Valley for a good while, and I’d heard there were a few who’d ventured farther north, but I hadn’t seen any around these parts. Now a whole friggin’ pack of ’em? How the hell am I going to protect my stock?”
“Guess you’d better bring in Wildlife Services,” Wade said. “They’ll probably just trap and collar them, but maybe you can convince them to relocate the pack.”
“Yeah, that’s real likely,” Dirk snorted.
“What about those horses?” Wade asked.
“Hell if I know. I have enough on my hands without worrying about a herd of mustangs. Maybe if I’m lucky, they’ll keep the wolves away from my cattle.”