A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (3 page)

For now Harry decided to move the dead lamb behind the barn and cover it with a tarp. As long as the weather stayed cold, the body wouldn't decay. When she could spare the time, she would take a trip into Big Timber and strike up a conversation with Slim Harley at the feed store. Somehow she would casually bring up the subject of dead lambs in the conversation and get the answers she needed. Harry's lips twisted wryly. Western conversations certainly tended to have a grittier tone than those in the East.

Harry couldn't put off what had to be done. She slipped her vest back on, pulled her cap down on her head and stepped back into her galoshes. A quick search turned up some leather work gloves in the drawer beside the sink. A minute later she was headed back out to the sheep pens.

Harry actually shuddered when she picked up the dead lamb. It had stiffened in death. It was also
heavier than she'd expected, so she had to hold it close to her chest in order to carry it. Despite everything Harry had read about not getting emotionally involved, she was unable to keep from mourning the animal's death. It seemed like such a waste. Although, if the lamb had lived it would have gone to market, where it would eventually have become lamb chops on some Eastern dinner table.

Maybe she ought to call Nathan Hazard and take him up on his offer, after all.

Before Harry had a chance to indulge her bout of maudlin conjecture she heard another sheep baaing in distress.

Not again!

Harry raced for the sheep pens where she had separated the ewes that were ready to deliver. Instead she discovered a sheep had already given birth to a lamb. While she watched, it birthed a twin. Harry had learned from her extensive reading that her sheep had been genetically bred so they bore twins, thus doubling the lamb crop. But to her it was a unique happening. She stopped and leaned against the pen and smiled with joy at having witnessed such a miraculous event.

Then she realized she had work to do. The cords had to be cut and dipped in iodine. And the ewe and her lambs had to be moved into a jug, a small pen separate from the other sheep, for two or three
days until the lambs had bonded with their mothers and gotten a little stronger.

Harry had read that lambing required constant attention from a rancher, but she hadn't understood that to mean she would get no sleep, no respite. For the rest of the night she never had a chance to leave the sheep barn, as the ewes dropped twin lambs that lived or died depending on the whims of fate. The stack under the tarp beside her barn got higher.

If Harry had found a spare second, she would have swallowed her pride and called Nathan Hazard for help. But by the time she got a break near dawn, the worst seemed to be over. Harry had stood midwife to the delivery of forty-seven lambs. Forty-three were still alive.

She dragged herself into the house and only then realized she'd forgotten about the orphan lamb in her kitchen. He was bleating pitifully from hunger. Despite her fatigue, Harry took the time to fix the lamb a bottle. She fell asleep sitting on the wooden-plank floor with her back against the wooden-plank wall, with the hungry lamb in her lap sucking at a nippled Coke bottle full of milk replacer.

That was how Nathan Hazard found her the following morning at dawn.

 

Nathan had lambing of his own going on, but unlike Harriet Alistair, he had several hired hands
to help with the work. When suppertime arrived, he left the sheep barn and came inside to a hot meal that Katoya, the elderly Native American woman who was his housekeeper, had ready and waiting for him.

Katoya had mysteriously arrived on the Hazard doorstep on the day Nathan's mother had died, as though by some prearranged promise, to take her place in the household. Nathan had been sixteen at the time. No explanation had ever been forthcoming as to why the woman had come. And despite Nathan's efforts in later years to ease the older woman's chores, Katoya still worked every day from dawn to dusk with apparent tirelessness, making Nathan's house a home.

As Nathan sat down at the kitchen table, he wondered whether Harriet Alistair had found anything worth eating in her bare cupboards. The fact he should find himself worrying about an Alistair, even if it was a woman, made him frown.

“Were you able to buy the land?” Katoya asked as she poured coffee into his cup.

Nathan had learned better than to try to keep secrets from the old woman. “Harry Alistair wouldn't sell,” he admitted brusquely.

The diminutive woman merely nodded. “So the feud will go on.” She seated herself in a rocker in
the kitchen that was positioned to get the most heat from the old-fashioned woodstove.

Nathan grimaced. “Yeah.”

“Is it so important to own the land?”

Nathan turned to face her and saw skin stretched tight with age over high, wide cheekbones and black hair threaded with silver in two braids over her shoulders. He suddenly wondered how old she was. Certainly she had clung to the traditional ways of her tribe. “It must be your cultural background,” he said at last, “that taught you not to feel the same need as I do to possess land.”

Katoya looked back at him with eyes that were a deep black well of wisdom. “We know what the white man has never learned. You cannot own the land. You can only use it for so long as you walk the earth.”

Katoya started the rocker moving, and its creak made a familiar, comforting sound as Nathan ate the hot lamb stew she'd prepared for him.

Nathan had to admit there was a lot to be said for the old woman's argument. Why was he so determined to own that piece of Alistair land? After all, when he was gone, who would know or care? Maybe he could have accepted Katoya's point of view if he hadn't met Harry Alistair first. Now he couldn't leave things the way they stood. That piece of land smack in the middle of his spread had always been a burr under the saddle.
He didn't intend to stop bucking until the situation was remedied.

Nathan refilled his own coffee cup to keep the old woman from having to get up again, then settled down into the kitchen chair with his legs stretched out toward the stove. Because he respected Katoya's advice, Nathan found himself explaining the situation. “The Harry Alistair who inherited the land from Cyrus turned out to be a woman, Harry-et Alistair. She's greener than buffalo grass in spring and doesn't know a thing about sheep that hasn't come from some article or book or internet forum. Harry-et Alistair hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of making a go of Cyrus's place. But I never saw a woman so determined, so stubborn….”

“You admire her,” Katoya said.

“I don't… Yes, I do,” he admitted with a disbelieving shake of his head. Nathan kept his face averted as he continued, “But I can't imagine why. She's setting herself up for a fall. I just hate to see her have to take it.”

“We always have choices. Is there truly nothing that can be done?”

“Are you suggesting I offer to help her out?” Nathan demanded incredulously. “Because I won't. I'm not going to volunteer a shoulder to cry on, let alone one to carry a yoke. I've learned my lessons
well,” he said bitterly. “I'm not going to let that woman get under my skin.”

“Perhaps it is too late. Perhaps you already care for her. Perhaps you will have no choice in the matter.”

Nathan's jaw flexed as he ground his teeth. The old woman was more perceptive than was comfortable. How could he explain to her the feeling of possessiveness, of protectiveness that had arisen the moment he'd seen Harry-et Alistair? He didn't understand it himself. Hell, yes, he already cared about Harry-et Alistair. And that worried the dickens out of him. What if he succumbed to her allure? What if he ended up getting involved with her, deeply, emotionally involved with her, and it turned out she needed more than he could give? He knew what it meant to have someone solely dependent upon him, to have someone rely upon him for everything, and to know that no matter how much he did it wouldn't be enough. Nathan couldn't stand the pain of that kind of relationship again.

“You must face the truth,” Katoya said. “What will be must be.”

The old woman's philosophy was simple but irrefutable. “All right,” Nathan said. “I'll go see her again tomorrow morning. But that doesn't mean I'm going to get involved in her life.”

Nathan repeated that litany until he fell asleep,
where he dreamed of a woman with freckles and braids and bibbed overalls who kissed with a passion that had made his pulse race and his body throb. He woke up hard and hungry. He didn't shave, didn't eat, simply pulled on jeans, boots, shirt, hat and coat and slammed out the door.

When he arrived at the Alistair place, it was deathly quiet. There was no smoke coming from the stone chimney, no sounds from the barn, or from the tiny, dilapidated cabin.

Something's wrong.

Nathan thrust the pickup truck door open and hit the ground running for the cabin. His heart was in his throat, his breath hard to catch because his chest was constricted.

Let her be all right,
he prayed.
I promise I'll help if only she's all right.

The kitchen door not only wasn't locked, it wasn't even closed. Nathan shoved it open and roared at the top of his voice, “Harry-et! Are you in here? Harry-et!”

That was when he saw her. She was sitting on the floor in the corner with a lamb clutched to her chest, her eyes wide with terror at the sight of him. He was so relieved, and so angry that she'd frightened him for nothing, that he raced over, grabbed her by the shoulders and hauled her to her feet.

“What the hell do you think you're doing,
leaving the back door standing wide open? You'll catch your death of cold,” he yelled, giving her shoulders a shake to make his point. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, greenhorn—”

And then it dawned on him what he was doing, and he let her go as abruptly as he'd grabbed her. She backed up to the wall and stood there, staring at him.

Harry Alistair had a death grip on the lamb in her arms. There were dark circles under her eyes, which were wide and liquid with tears that hadn't yet spilled. Her whole body was trembling with fatigue and the aftereffects of the shaking Nathan had given her. Her mouth was working but the words weren't coming out in much more than a whisper.

Nathan leaned closer to hear what she was trying to say.

“Get out,” she rasped. And then, stronger, “Get out of my house.”

Nathan felt his heart miss a thump. “I'm sorry. Look, I only came over—”

Her chin came up. “I don't care why you came. I want you to leave. And don't come back.”

Nathan's lips pressed flat.
What will be must be.
It was just as well things had turned out this way. It would have been a mistake to try to help her, anyway. But there was a part of him that died inside at the thought of not seeing her again. He
wanted her. More than he'd ever wanted a woman in his life. But she was all wrong for him. She needed the kind of caretaking he'd sworn he was through with forever.

It took every bit of grit he had to turn on his booted heel and walk out of the room. And out of her life.

I
am not a failure. I can do anything I set my mind to do. I will succeed.

Over the next two months there were many times when Harry wanted to give up. Often, it was only the repetition of those three sentences that kept her going. For, no matter how hard she tried, things always went awry. She had been forced to learn some hard lessons and learn them fast.

About a week after the majority of the lambs had been born, most of them got sick. Harry called in the vet, who diagnosed lamb scours and prescribed antibiotics. Despite her efforts, a dozen more lambs died. She stacked them under the tarp beside the barn.

Early on the lambs had to have their tails docked, and the ram lambs, except those valuable enough to be sires, had to be castrated. Several of the older books described cutting off the lamb tails with a knife and searing the stump with a hot iron. Castration was described even more graphically. Faced with such onerous chores, Harry had known she would never make it as a sheep rancher.

At her lowest moment a magazine describing a more manageable technique for docking and castration mysteriously arrived in her mailbox. An “elastrator” and rubber bands were placed on the appropriate extremities, which wasted away and dropped off on their own within two to three weeks. She found the process unpleasant, time-consuming work. But with the information provided in the timely magazine, she'd succeeded when she might have given up.

Unfortunately Harry also lost several ewes during delivery and found herself with more orphan lambs, which she had learned were called bums, that had to be fed with milk replacer. Bottle-feeding lambs turned out to be surprisingly expensive, and
she had to dip into the meager financial reserves Cyrus had left in the bank. She would have run out of money except Harley's Feed Store had a sale on milk replacer. That had seemed a little odd to Harry, but a blushing Slim had assured her that he'd ordered too much replacer, and if he didn't sell it cheap, it was just going to sit on the shelf for another year. Cyrus's money had gone further than she'd dared to hope.

It was a month of exhausting days and nights before Harry could wean the lambs off of milk. But she'd made it. She still had money in the bank, and the lambs had all gotten fed. In fact, Harry was still bottle-feeding some that had been born late in the season. She'd forgotten what it was like to get more than four hours of sleep in a row. When there was work to be done, she'd repeat those three pithy sentences. They kept her awake and functioning despite what felt very much like battle fatigue. But then, wasn't she engaged in the greatest battle of her life?

By now even a novice like Harry had figured out that in its best days, Cyrus's sheep ranch had been a marginal proposition. With all the neglect over the years, it took every bit of time and attention she had simply to keep her head above water. But she was still afloat. And paddling for all she was worth. She hadn't failed. Yet. With a lot of hard
work, and more than a little luck, she just might surprise everyone and make a go of Cyrus's ranch.

In the brief moments when Harry wasn't taking care of livestock—she had six laying hens, a rooster, a sow with eight piglets and a milk cow, as well as the sheep to attend—she'd thought over her last meeting with Nathan Hazard.

Perhaps if she hadn't been quite so tired the morning he had come to see her, or if he hadn't woken her quite so abruptly or been quite so upset, she might have been able to listen to what he had to say. If he had offered help, she might have accepted. She would never know for sure. Harry hadn't seen hide nor hair of him since.

Nor had anyone else come to visit. She'd made a number of phone calls to John Wilkinson at the bank for advice and had managed to get a few more tidbits of information from Slim every time she made a trip to Harley's Feed Store. But, quite frankly, Harry was beginning to feel the effects of the extreme isolation in which she'd been living for the past two months.

Which was probably why she hadn't argued more when her mother, father and brother had said they were coming out to Montana to visit her. Unfortunately, with the time it had taken her to finish her chores this morning, she only had about fifteen minutes left to put herself together before
she had to meet them at The Grand, the bed-and-breakfast in Big Timber where they were staying.

 

The varnished wooden booths that lined one wall of the luncheon dining room at The Grand had backs high enough to conceal the occupants and give them privacy. Thus, it wasn't until Nathan heard her exuberant greeting that he realized who was soon to occupy the next booth.

“Mom, Dad, Charlie, it's so good to see you!” Harry said.

“I'm sorry I can't say the same, darling,” an uppity-sounding woman replied in a dismayed voice. “You look simply awful. What have you done to yourself? And what on earth is that you have on your head?”

Nathan smiled at the thought of Harry-et in her Harley's Feed Store cap.

A young man joined in with, “For Pete's sake, Harriet. Are you really wearing bibbed overalls?”

Nathan grinned. Very likely she was.

Before Harry had a chance to respond, an older man's bass voice contributed, “I knew I should have put my foot down. I didn't think you could manage on your own in this godforsaken place. And from the look of you, I wasn't wrong. When are you coming home?”

Nathan listened for Harry-et's answer to that last question with bated breath.

There was a long pause before she answered, “I am home. And I have no intention of going back to Williamsburg, if that's what you're asking, Dad.”

Nathan took advantage of the stunned silence that followed her pronouncement to take a quick swallow of coffee. He knew he ought not to eavesdrop on the Alistairs, but it wasn't as though he'd come here with that thought in mind. He'd been minding his own business when
they'd
interrupted
him.
He signaled Tillie Mae for a refill of his coffee and settled back to relax for a few minutes after lunch as was his custom. He didn't listen, exactly, but he couldn't help but hear what was being said.

“I've been to see John Wilkinson at the bank,” her father began. “And he—”

“Dad! You had no right—”

“I have every right,” he interrupted. “I'm your father. I—”

“In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a child anymore,” Harry interrupted right back. “I can take care of myself.”

“Darling,” her mother said soothingly, “take a good, close look at yourself. There are dark circles under your eyes, your fingernails are chipped and broken and those awful clothes you're wearing are filthy. All I can conclude is that you're not taking good care of yourself. Your father and I only want the best for you. It hurts us to think of
you suffering like this for nothing when in the end you'll only fail.”

“I'm
not
suffering,” Harry protested. “And I will
not
fail. In fact, I'm doing just fine.” That might have been an overstatement, but it was in a good cause.

“Fine?” her father questioned. “You can't possibly know enough about sheep ranching to succeed on your own. Why, even ranchers who know what they're doing sometimes fail.”

“Dad…”

Nathan heard the fatigue and frustration in Harry-et's voice. Her father shouldn't be allowed to browbeat her like that. Nathan ignored the Western code that admonished him not to interfere, in favor of the one that said a woman must always be protected. A moment later he was standing beside the next booth.

Harry was explaining, “I know what I'm doing, Dad. I've been reading all the articles I can find about sheep ranching—”

“And she's had help from her neighbors whenever she ran into trouble,” Nathan finished. A charming smile lit his face as he tipped his hat to Mrs. Alistair and said, “Howdy, ma'am. I'm Nathan Hazard, a neighbor of your daughter's.”

Nathan bypassed Harry's stunned expression and turned an assessing gaze to her father and brother. “I couldn't help overhearing you, sir,” he
said to Harry's father. “And I just want to say that we've all been keeping an eye on Harry-et to make sure—”

“You've been what?”

Nathan turned to Harry, who'd risen from her seat and was staring at him with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open in horror.

“I was just saying that we've been keeping a neighborly eye on you.” Before Harry could respond he'd turned back to her father and continued, “You see, sir, we have a great deal of respect for women out here, and there isn't a soul in the valley who would stand by if he thought Harry-et was in any real trouble.

“Of course, you're right that she probably won't be able to make a go of Cyrus Alistair's place. But then it's doubtful whether anyone could. That's why I've offered to buy the place from her. And I have every hope that once she's gotten over the silly notion that—”

“Don't say another word!” Harry was so hot she could have melted icicles in January. She hung on to her temper long enough to say, “Mom, Dad, Charles, I hope you'll excuse us. I have a few words to say to Mr. Hazard. Alone.”

Harry turned and stalked out to the front lobby of The Grand without waiting to see whether Nathan followed her. After tipping his hat once more to Mrs. Alistair, he did.

Just as Harry turned and opened her mouth to speak, Nathan took her by the elbow and started upstairs with her.

“Where do you think you're going?” Harry snapped, tugging frantically against his hold.

“Upstairs.”

“There are
bedrooms
upstairs!”

“Yep. Sarah keeps all the doors open to show off her fancy antiques. We can use one of the rooms for a little privacy.” He pulled her into the first open bedroom and shut the door behind them. “Now what's on your mind?”

“What's on my—?” Harry was so furious she was gasping for air. “How dare you drag me up here—”

“We can go back downstairs and argue. That way everyone in the valley will know your business,” he said, reaching for the doorknob.

“Wait!” Harry made the mistake of touching his hand and felt an arc of heat run up her arm. She jerked her hand away and took two steps back from him, only to come up against the edge of the ornate brass bed. She stepped forward, only to find herself toe-to-toe with Nathan.

“Hold on a minute,” she said, trying desperately to regain the upper hand. “How dare you insinuate to my family that I haven't been making it on my own! I most certainly have!”

Nathan shook his head.

“Don't try to deny it,” she retorted. “I haven't seen a soul except Slim Harley for the past two months. Just who, may I ask, has been helping me?”

“Me.”

Harry was so stunned that she took a step back. When the backs of her legs hit the bed, she sat down. Her eyes never left Nathan's face, so she saw the flash of guilt in his blue eyes and the tinge of red growing on his cheeks. “You helped me? How?”

Nathan lifted his hat and shoved his fingers through his hair in agitation, then pulled his hat down over his brow again. “Little ways.”

“How?”

He cleared his throat and admitted, “Dropped off a magazine once. Broke the ice on your ponds.”

That explained some things she'd wondered about. She'd needed the knowledge the magazine had provided, but it wasn't as though he'd come over and helped with the docking and castration of the lambs. And while she'd appreciated having the ice broken on her ponds, she could have done that herself. His interference didn't amount to as much as she'd feared.

“And I talked Slim into putting his milk replacer on sale,” he finished.

That was another matter entirely. Without the
sale on milk replacer she'd have run out of money for sure. “You're responsible for that?”

“Wasn't a big deal. He really did order too much.”

“Did anybody else get their milk replacer on sale?” she asked in a strained voice. “No.”

Harry's chest hurt. She couldn't breathe. “Why did you bother if you were so certain I'd fail in the end?”

“Thought you'd come to your senses sooner than this,” he said gruffly. “Figured there was no sense letting all those lambs starve.”

Harry turned to stare out a window draped with antique lace curtains. Her hand gripped the brass bedstead so hard her knuckles were white. “Did it ever occur to you that I'd rather not have your help? Did it ever occur to you that whether I was going to fail or succeed I would rather do it all by myself?”

Nathan didn't know how to answer her. He willed her to look up at him, but he could tell how she felt even without seeing her face. Her pulse pounded in her throat and her jaw worked as she ground her teeth.

To tell the honest truth, he didn't know why he'd interfered in her life. If he'd just left well enough alone, she would probably have quit and gone home a long time ago. Maybe that had something
to do with it. Maybe he didn't want her to go away. He still felt the same attraction every time he got anywhere near her. And it was impossible to control his protective instincts whenever she was around. Just look what had happened today.

He reached out to touch her on the shoulder, and she jumped like a scalded cat. Only, when she came up off the bed, she ran right flat into him. Instinctively his arms surrounded her.

The only sound in the room was the two of them breathing. Panting, actually, as though they'd just run a footrace. Nathan didn't dare move, for fear she'd bolt. It felt good holding her. He wanted more. Slowly, ever so slowly, he raised a hand and brushed his knuckles across her cheek. It was so smooth!