Adrienne deWolfe - [Wild Texas Nights 03] (7 page)

Fortunately, Cord's front door squealed open, sparing Zack from Bailey's impending wrath.

"Well, it's about damned time you showed up, Rawlins," Hank Rotterdam growled, plunking his Stetson down on his thinning blond hair. "I've been waiting on you for nigh on an hour. You're lucky your Aunt Lally bakes a pecan pie like a dream. If she weren't so consarned full of opinions, I'd have to marry her. Now. You want to sell me a hunting hound, or don't you?"

Zack bit back an oath. He'd forgotten all about his appointment with Rotterdam. "Where's Cord?"

"How should I know? You've got more damned relations on this ranch than I can keep count of. That sister-in-law of yours tried to strike a deal with me, though." Hank snorted. "Thinks she's a regular sharper, the way she kept haggling over the price. So I told Miss Fancy to go do business with her soup kettle. I'd wait for a man to get home."

Zack glanced into the hallway beyond Hank's hulking frame. If he was speaking even a modicum of truth, Hank was lucky Fancy wasn't standing behind him with a shotgun, or at least a pot of boiling soup to dump over his head.

"Simmer down, Rotterdam. You'll get your pick of the litter just as I promised. But it's going to take another three weeks before those pups are weaned."

Hank's color rose, and he lowered his head as if to butt horns. "My grandson's birthday's in two days."

"Yeah? Well, if you don't like the arrangement, go see Rob Cole. I hear his bitch whelped six weeks ago."

"What would my Jeremy want with some stinking collie? He's chasing coons, son, not sheep."

"Glad to hear it, Hank," Bailey interjected dryly. "For a while there I was beginning to think troublemaking ran in your bloodline."

Hank started, then peered over Zack's shoulder. "Well now, lookie who's here." Hank's anger blew away as quickly as it had come, and he gave Bailey a horsey grin. "Have you sheepherders come begging for mercy already? Shoot. We ain't even decided on the contest's events yet."

To her credit, Bailey handled Hank's ogling of her chest with more than passing aplomb. Zack, however, wanted to punch out the old skirt-chaser's lights—a confusing feeling that he attributed to the disrespect Hank had shown Aunt Lally and Fancy.

"Don't go betting the ranch just yet, Hank," Bailey said. "We sheepherders have a couple ideas of our own about how that contest should be run. I expect there's going to be a contract drawn up whenever you boys quit stalling and agree to meet with us Woolgrowers."

"Stalling?" Hank darted a speculative look at Zack. The corners of his mouth twitched. "Don't tell me you've been holding out on the little lamb lady, Zack. That there's a rodeo planning meeting you called for tomorrow night, ain't it?"

Bailey sucked in her breath, and Zack felt absurdly guilty. Damn Hank anyway, it wasn't as if
he'd
been the one who'd neglected to invite Bailey. The sheepherders had been responsible for alerting their own kind.

"Nice try, Rawlins." Bailey folded her arms, and Zack felt the temperature between them drop a few degrees. "Did you think you could keep the Woolgrowers' board from participating?"

"Now, hold on a minute, Bailey. President Eldridge and Vice President Cole were contacted in plenty of time to get the word out to their planning committee—"

"What planning committee?"

"Sounds to me like someone's been keeping secrets from you, hon," Hank drawled, his sympathy about as genuine as fool's gold. "Seems a shame your Rawlins neighbors can't be straight with you after the hardships you've had to face all by your lonesome these days.

"Now, I'm not as versed in cattlemen's business as I used to be, since a certain young whippersnapper filled my presidential boots, but I recollect hearing something about a group of volunteers coming together about sevenish tomorrow night at the Reedstrom Hotel to discuss that rodeo idea you've been peddling."

"Oh?" Pint-sized as she was, Bailey could be powerfully intimidating when that blue norther rolled across her stare. "And when were you planning on telling me, Zack?"

Zack shot a quelling glance at Hank. The old rancher looked mighty pleased with himself.

"Vent your spleen on Will Eldridge, Bailey. Or Rob Cole. I wasn't the one who decided which names to include on the Woolgrowers' roster—"

"Tarnation, Zack," Hank interrupted, "if the McShane ranch was left off the invitation list, it seems to me you should have paid closer attention to the details. Why, Bailey went and built herself the biggest spread in this here county when she outbid you on old widow Sherridan's property. Shoot. You didn't go and forget her out of spite, did you?"

"No, Hank." Zack's fingers were itching to form a fist. "I didn't forget her, although it seems to me you must have some agenda of your own for making her think so."

Hank arched his eyebrows. "The little lady thinks I cut her fences. I'm just trying to show her who her real friends are."

"Oh, for God's sake, stop it," Bailey muttered. "I will not become another campaign bone for you two to fight over."

"I'm just watching out for your best interests, honey," Hank said. "It's true your daddy and I weren't on good terms when he died, but I don't hold our differences against you. We Rotterdams think of you like family, and we don't like to see you struggling all alone to fend for yourself.

"Tell you what, sugar. Why don't you let me send my boys on over to your spread to help you take care of business, patch up your fences, and see your wells stay safe?"

"Safe for whom, Hank?" Zack demanded irritably. He didn't know why it should bother him so much to hear Hank speak of Bailey and family in the same breath. After all, Bailey and Nick's affair was common knowledge.

Bailey smiled mirthlessly at Hank. "Much obliged for all your neighborly concern. I know how much my eight thousand acres mean to you, Hank. Rest assured that drought or no drought, I'll manage them—and all their water—efficiently. Because, you see, that's what a good boss does. And I am a good boss. No one's going to bully me off my land."

She nodded curtly, then turned on her heel, whistled for her dog, and mounted up.

Hank grinned, admiration in his gaze as he watched the gentle rolling of her hips when she rode away. "It'd be hard to measure the spunk in that little bitty filly," he said almost wistfully. "She's gonna make me a heap of fine grandbabies someday, eh, Zack?"

Their eyes locked, and Zack stiffened. There was an unmistakable warning in that cagey blue gaze.

Hank smiled, tipping his hat. "Be sure to give my regards to Miss Amaryllis for me, would you, son?"

Chapter 3

Thanks to her search for a lost lamb, Bailey arrived later than she had intended at the rodeo meeting the next night. She was still smarting over the way the Woolgrowers had tried to exclude her from the proceedings, and she wasn't particularly pleased that she'd had to compromise with her foreman about her plan. When she'd confided her battle strategy to get on the team, Mac had insisted he accompany her to help keep her temper in check.

"Lass," he'd said in his quiet way, "I dinna like what they've done to ye any more than ye do. But there might be a reasonable explanation. And like it or not, ye're going to need a friendly face in that meeting if this plan of yers backfires."

Well, her plan wasn't going to backfire. She'd tear the hotel down timber by timber before she left the building without her rightful berth on the sheepherders' team.

She supposed she shouldn't resent Mac for coming along. It wasn't his fault she was a woman and that men took her seriously only if she had a man at her side. She should probably be grateful for his offer of support, since she knew she could trust him never to contradict her in public or try to take matters out of her hands. Mac, bless his heart, understood how much his interference would cost her in the eyes of other men.

She just wished he would hurry up and stable the horses.

Loath to spoil her grand entrance, Bailey ducked out of sight of the arriving Woolgrowers and camouflaged herself behind a potted prickly pear cactus near the registration counter. Unfortunately, the position left her no recourse but to glare at the vision of peach-chiffon loveliness that was greeting the male committee members at the meeting room door.

Amaryllis Larabee had absolutely no business being here tonight—no ranching business anyway. Since any meeting these days between the sheep and cattle factions was a potential powder keg, Bailey could understand why Amaryllis's father, County Judge Larabee, had decided to make an appearance. Larabee wasn't just representing the law, he was protecting the hotel, which he owned along with every other business on the south end of town. But why on God's green earth had he brought Amaryllis?

That question pretty much answered itself a few minutes later, when the street door swung open to reveal a trio of rugged, sun-darkened cattlemen. Zack was escorted by Cord, Wes, and a Winchester rifle, its brass receiver flashing in the lamplight above his black-gloved fist. Rough-shaven and wind-groomed, he stole Bailey's breath away as he strode across the hotel lobby, his spurs chinking and his buckle winking low over his narrow hips.

Bailey wasn't the only one to take notice of the Cattlemen's president. Amaryllis's china-blue eyes practically ate Zack alive. The hands and mouth of Bandera's reigning belle would have gladly done the same, Bailey felt certain, if convention and Judge Larabee had allowed.

Frowning, Bailey studied the way her nineteen-year-old rival fluttered her lashes and pouted her perfectly painted lips. Such behavior had always mystified Bailey. It seemed... well, unnatural somehow, yet all the unmarried girls seemed to do it, especially when they were talking to bachelors. Bailey wasn't completely immune to the loneliness her way of life had forced upon her, and she wondered if things had been different, if she had learned more about she-stuff than sheep, would Zack have noticed her the way he noticed Amaryllis?

Just then Amaryllis loosed one of her girlish giggles. Bailey cringed. The struggling female side of her, the side that wasn't quite sure how to express itself, balked at the idea of fawning over a man like Amaryllis did. Even so, Bailey was secretly wounded to know that Zack preferred a sweetheart who was all fluff and no substance. If she were a man looking for a wife, she told herself staunchly, sawdust-for-brains was the last thing she'd settle for.

She gazed wistfully after the Rawlins brothers as they passed her hiding place. Halting first before Judge Larabee to surrender his firearm, Cord Rawlins doffed his hat with his usual economical politeness and nodded to the preening Miss Larabee. A smirk peeked out from under Wes's auburn mustache, and he followed Cord's example. Then he furtively nudged Zack. Bailey wasn't sure who scowled more at this brotherly ribbing, her or Zack, before the two married Rawlinses strolled into the meeting room.

Zack never got the chance to stroll anywhere. Her ambush unfolding to plan, Amaryllis latched on to his arm like a cockleburr that couldn't be shaken off.

Not that Zack was shaking too hard, Bailey observed irritably. If he let that girl get any closer, she'd have to be pried from his hip with a crowbar. No wonder the biddies at Arbuckle's General Store were tittering that the county's most eligible bachelor would be hitched by year's end. Cord or Wes needed to sit Zack down and talk some sense into him.

Either that, or dump a wagonload of ice down his britches.

"Oh, Zack," Amaryllis cooed, "I was so worried when Daddy told me you'd be in the thick of things tonight if that wretched McShane spinster comes around, spouting off about her nasty, smelly sheep. She just loves to cause trouble, you know. I guess she can't help herself since she doesn't have a marriage-minded beau to pay attention to her, and probably never will."

Well,
that
was the final straw.

Bailey marched forward to surrender her own firearm to the judge. When she drew her .45, she had the satisfaction of watching Amaryllis's eyes grow rounder than terrapin shells.

"Evening, folks." Snapping open the cylinder of her Colt, Bailey dumped out the bullets, pocketed her cartridges, and smiled deliberately as she spun the wheel. It made a well-oiled clicking noise that she knew from experience would put prissy Amaryllis on edge. "Nice night for a bushwhacking, eh, Miss Larabee?"

The belle's knuckles whitened on Zack's sleeve. "I'm sure I haven't the vaguest idea what you're talking about, Miss McShane." She tossed her copper-colored ringlets over one shoulder.