B00DVWSNZ8 EBOK (28 page)

As he detached his pistol holster from his belt and laid it on the table, she said a prayer of thanksgiving that he hadn't had to use it.

"I'll light the fire in the living room," he said.

When Jude had passed through the living room, she hadn't even noticed a stove. But of course this house would have a space heater. In most of the older dwellings in Willard County, space heaters were the only source of heat.

"I boiled some water
,” she said. “I saw the coffeepot, but I couldn't find any coffee."

He smiled. "Don't have any. I
never drink coffee at home. Don’t know why I even own a coffeepot." He picked up the towel she had used to dry her hair, roughed it over his own wet hair, then dropped it back on the table. "I'm gonna get some dry clothes on."

Walking
toward the living room, he squeezed her shoulder with one hand as he passed her. A frisson of indefinable emotion passed through her chest.

He was gone a long time. Just as she began to wonder if she should check on him, he came back into the kitchen wearing sweatpants
, a long-sleeve snap-button shirt and a pair of old fabric house shoes. Pulling a pinch of knit fabric out from his thigh, he smiled almost apologetically. "I don't have a lot of these jogging kind of clothes. But since I don't jog, I guess I don't need ’em."

Jog.
From what Jude had seen of Brady, a jogger couldn't keep up with him. She forced a smile, too, thinking how out-of-costume he looked.

Though the sw
eatpants were loose-fitting, the soft fabric vaguely outlined his genitals. A visual of the poster from those weeks ago in Stephenville slid through her memory. She thought of the night in bed with him and experiencing things she had never known before. They had touched each other everywhere in every way, even shared secrets.

A
profound sense of intimacy coursed through her, along with awareness that underneath his robe, she was naked. She couldn't make herself stop staring below his waist. Sensing his eyes on her, too, she looked up. Their gazes met and an edgy silence stretched between them—the same unbearable tension as that night in the Stephenville mobile home’s living room.

"Sweatpants don't suit you
,” she murmured. “I see you as a Wranglers kind of man."

"I've got other clothes besides Wranglers."

He broke the spell and scuffed toward the cupboard nearest the sink. "How about some hot chocolate?" Before she could answer, he dragged out a box of instant hot chocolate mix and used the hot water remaining in the pan on the stovetop to make two mugs. "You hungry?"

She should be starved. She hadn’t eaten since dinner at the Dickerson ranch. But food was the last thing that came to her mind.
"Not really. Can I ask you something?”

He chuckled. "Have I ever tried to stop you?"

“What did you wear other clothes for?"

"My other life."

"Would you tell me about your other life? When you lived in Fort Worth?"

He didn’t reply, just
stirred the chocolate. "Not much to tell. I owned a land development and construction company. Fallon Ranches. Medium to upscale homes on five to twenty acres outside the city. Country living."

He lifted a fifth of some kind of whiskey from the top shelf of the cupboard and poured a dollop into each mug. "The homesites weren't really ranches, obviously. More like big lots, but they were what a lot of people wanted.
The homes we built sold as fast as my crews could stand ’em up. I was doing pretty well for somebody who started with nothing."

Jude suspected he had done better than "pretty well."

He came to the table and smiled as he handed her a steaming mug. The sharp smell of whiskey touched her nostrils. Their eyes locked again and that now-familiar longing rushed into her. The power he held over her emotions was stunning.

"Thanks," she said softly, and took the warm mug.

He sat down adjacent to her, leaving no more than two feet between them. As it had before, that heady current swirled up between them, as powerful as the storm she had just driven through and just as unnerving.

"I can't imagine you not doing well." She propped her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her palm, ready to listen all night if he w
as willing to talk. "I suppose getting a divorce ruined everything."

"It was sort of the beginning of the end," he said in his soft, deep voice. She loved his voice.

He fiddled with his mug handle as he talked. "But there was more to it than that. It took me a while to work my way through it, but living all by myself on that ridge in Stephenville, I finally came to terms with all that I did wrong.”

“You mean with your marriage?”

“No. The business. I was too hungry. Tried to move too fast. I was stretched way too thin and had been for a long time. I knew it, but I kept thinking I’d eventually get on top of it. I owed a lot of money to banks. To keep things on an even keel, I needed to give the business all my attention, all the time."

"Then why get a divorce? I mean, you must've known a divorce—"

"My ex pushed for the divorce." He paused again, his beautiful blue eyes locked on hers. "If she hadn't, I probably would've just kept fighting the battle. I didn’t love my homelife, but I didn’t hate it. She didn’t love it either. She'd found somebody else and wanted out. I was so wrapped up in the business and in trying to be a good father, I didn't even suspect she had a boyfriend."

"Oh," Jude almost whispered. A thousand new questions sprang into her head, but she restrained herself from asking them. "That must have been painful."

A weak smile tipped one side of his mouth and he shrugged. "Actually, the divorce itself wasn't a big trauma. Marvalee and I never did have a love story like you see in the movies. I was okay with ending the marriage. But I wasn't okay with giving up Andy."

"Your son?"

"Yeah. He's a pistol. He needs me. Marvalee had already started ignoring him before we ever split up. I figured she wouldn't be that upset about giving him up, so I asked for full custody. She said no, so I hired a lawyer and sued. That's when her dad got involved. He's got a lot of money, a lot of influence and a lot of friends. He didn't spend much time with his grandson, but he didn't want to let go of him, either."

My father was
the same way
, Jude thought.

"
After her dad entered the picture, things went downhill for me in a hurry. Fighting for custody of Andy is what finally broke me. Lawyers are expensive. Lawsuits use up your mental energy and keep you upset all the time. In plain words, with all that was going on in my personal life, I took my eye off the ball in the business."

He picked up his mug and sipped, then gave her another long look across his shoulder. "But it isn't over. I'm looking for things to go in a different direction. That's why I'm trying to hang on to this place."

Jude felt a thud in her stomach. She had to say something. "Brady, I—"

"Feeling better now?"

"Yes," she said and pulled the robe tighter around herself. She was still cold, but she no longer feared she might die from it. And she really didn't want to confess what she had started to.

"
So what happened today?” he asked. “Last I heard this morning, you were planning to get home ahead of the storm."

She told him about succumbing to the Dickersons' hospitality because she didn't want to be rude to friends of her father. When she stopped talking, except for the wind whistling around the corners of the old house
and rattling the window over the sink, silence filled the; room.

"This storm's supposed to be gone by daylight," Brady said finally.

"Unusual weather for this time of year," she said.

His beautiful mouth widened into a slight smile. "That's the nature of these tempests that blow in from the mountains."

Discussing the weather. God, how lame could we get?

But discussing the weather was easier than saying what was going on in her head or voicing what she thought she saw in his eyes.

Her father's words from the night he had told her he intended to install Brady as the ranch's general manager echoed through her memory:
Caring for livestock is a physical, outdoor job. The years of hard work in the sun and weather have taken their toll on Louelle.

For the first time ever, an inkling of the point her father had been trying to make for years seeped into her obstinacy, and she said,
"I don’t know if I’ll ever be willing to admit this to Daddy, but I couldn't have gotten those bulls out of that trailer all by myself."

"Lucky you didn't have to."

"But if you had been in my shoes, you could’ve done it."

His shoulder lifted in a careless shrug. "I'm bigger and stronger.
Despite what the PC crowd wants us to believe, men are just more physically able. That’s a simple fact."

"
There’s something else. Those bulls might have been injured to the point of uselessness or even died. If—if they'd had to be shot..." She looked away, hating to admit she might have difficulty doing what would have had to be done. "In all the years I've lived at the Circle C, I've never put down an animal? When it's been necessary, it's always been done by someone else. Shooting a cow or a horse would be extremely traumatic for me. It’s hard enough just knowing about it when it has to happen."

"
It’s traumatic for anyone who works around animals, Jude. It’s hard not to get attached. The responsibility of taking care of them never relents, rain or shine, day or night. They become kind of like your kids."

"I know. Of course I know that. I've lived wi
th it since the day I was born. A thousand times I’ve heard Daddy and Grandpa and even Clary and Windy say, ‘It’s man’s work, Jude.’”

He was looking back at her intently, listening to her
confront her shortcomings and try to work past her guilt.

“
And I’ve always been satisfied to let certain aspects of ranching
be
man's work,” she said. “I’ve been the spoiled daughter. But if you’re in charge, you can’t separate it, can you? You can’t pick and choose which tasks you like and ignore those you find unpleasant, can you?”

“That’s
how it is in all of life, Jude. Not just ranching.”

She looked into the eyes of the man who had snatched away her plans. No wonder her father had put his faith in Brady. He was much more than a pretty face and magnificent body. He was smart and capable and caring.
“I don’t know what made me think I was mentally and physically prepared to take on the job that was given to you.”

“But there’s something left
for you, darlin’. Your dad is a visionary. He really wants you to work with your grandpa and learn about the ranch’s investments and money management. That might be the most important job of all. You need to do that. At some point in time, the whole operation will fall into your lap.”

He was right. He father might be in charge of the daily operation of the ranch, but Grandpa controlled the money. For as long as she could remember, no issue had ever been settled without his approval.
Something shifted within her and she let go of some of the anger at her father and indirectly at the man who had just saved two of the ranch's bulls and maybe even her.

E
ver since Monday, when Daddy had asked her to give up her office, she had been circling and pacing—the house, the barns, the vet clinic—spoiling for a fight. For a week, everyone but Grandpa had avoided her and spoken to her in mollifying tones, which had only escalated her ire and frustration. Even Windy had given her a wide berth. She had volunteered to haul the bulls to escape the heaviness of her own stew. “I feel guilty,” she said. “I can’t recall ever behaving so badly for so long. I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't been home tonight."

"You would've done what you had to. Everybody usually does."

"Maybe. But not everyone can." She closed her eyes and rolled her shoulders against the ache in her back and neck. "People might have good intentions, but they have...limitations. Like me."

The next thing she knew, Brady's hand had crossed the two feet of distance between them and cupped her nape. He began to rub her neck with his thumb. "I know it was a hard day. It was a bad idea for you to make that trip alone, especially with the weather forecast we had.
I wanted to speak up, but I wasn’t sure it was my place to do it. And I didn’t want to start an argument."

“And as hardheaded as I sometimes am, you can be sure I would’ve argued.”
She let out a great sigh and tilted her head to the side, relishing the gentle massage of his fingers. "I’ve always done things alone. I never see it as a big deal. But tonight, I was so scared for a while. I know those bulls were, too. I just hope they aren't hurt."

"
They didn’t look it. But they probably think they've been hauled into five kinds of hell. It'll all be better tomorrow when the sun's shining."

His fingers moved to another tender place and she tilted her head in the opposite direction, letting her shoulders sag and her hands relax in her lap.
Having someone care that she had been tied in knots all afternoon and evening was a new and wonderful feeling.