Cattleman's Courtship (10 page)

Cara fussed needlessly with the reins, hiding the twinge of pleasure his touch gave her.

“Looks like Lorne and Trista are eager to be off,” Nicholas said, untying the other horse and swinging easily into the saddle.

“Do they know where to go?” Cara asked, as they disappeared into the trees crowding the trail they were following.

“Lorne knows the place.” Nicholas glanced her way, frowning. “You okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” But as she chanced a look down,
fine
was replaced by a quiver of apprehension. Two Bits stood about sixteen hands high and the ground looked too far away.

“He’s a good horse,” Nicholas assured her. “He’ll be fine.”

“Fine is good. Let’s go then,” she said, trying to project calm into her voice.

“Okay.” Nicholas clucked to his horse and turned its head. “Let’s go, Bud.”

His horse gave a tiny jump, but then settled down and started a steady walk in the direction Trista and Lorne had gone.

Two Bits obediently followed Bud, his movement causing her to sway lightly in the saddle. Cara tried not to grab the pommel and forced herself to keep from squeezing Two Bits with her legs.

The saddle will keep you on,
she reminded herself.
Just relax. You’re not running a horse race.

She took a few calming breaths. The warm summer air, the faint buzzing of insects and the regular footfalls of the horse’s hooves on the packed ground lulled her into a sense of security.

She chanced a look ahead, watching Nicholas from behind.

Nicholas glanced sideways at the fields they rode beside, a smile curving his lips.

This is where he belongs,
Cara thought, looking at him now silhouetted against the mountains.
This is his natural setting.

Pain twisted Cara’s heart.

And where do you belong?

Before she met Nicholas, the question had resonated through her life. Then, for those few, magical months with Nicholas she thought she had found her place. And now?

Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

The passage from the Bible leaped into her mind, as if to underline her resolve. She was expending too much energy wondering how to react to Nicholas and thinking of how to behave around him.

They were outside on this beautiful day and were headed out into the hills.
Just enjoy it. Don’t put extra burdens on it.

Nicholas sat easily on his horse, his one hand on his thigh, the other loosely holding the reins. He had rolled his shirtsleeves up over his forearms, and as he rode, she could see his broad shoulders moving ever so slightly in response to the movement of the horse.

He’s an extremely good-looking man,
she thought with a touch of wistfulness.

And he doesn’t belong to you anymore.

Chapter Seven

C
ara and Nicholas reached the end of the field and turned on the trail where Trista and Lorne had gone moments before.

The trail started climbing almost immediately, winding through the dusky coolness of towering spruce and pine trees. In the light-strewn openings between the foliage, Cara caught glimpses of hayfields below them. The swaths Nicholas had cut were green and lush, thanks to recent rains. She knew, from talking to other farmers and ranchers, that this year would be productive.

“How much of this belongs to you and your father?” Cara asked, raising her voice so Nicholas could hear.

Nicholas glanced back and pushed his cowboy hat farther up on his head. “What you see below you is ours up to the river. Beyond that is Olsen’s land.” He pointed with one gloved hand.

Cara leaned to one side to see better, squinting a little until she saw the river.

“That’s quite a lot of property.”

“That’s the hay land. We have pasture farther up the trail and we lease a bunch of land, as well.”

Cara easily heard the pride in his voice as her eyes followed the contours of the land.

She knew, oh, how well she knew, how much this land meant to him. Hadn’t he chosen this over her?

She tried to look at it through his eyes, to understand why she had been second choice.

The land was beautiful, the setting almost postcard perfect.

“Are your other cows up there?” she asked, thinking of the herd she saw close to the ranch.

“The purebred herd is in the pasture by the barn and the commercial herd is farther up,” Nicholas explained. “I like to keep them separate as much as possible. And because I’m shipping heifers from the purebred herd, I wanted to keep them closer to the house so I could monitor their feed better.”

“Did you buy this land or did it come with the ranch when your father took it over?”

Nicholas stopped his horse and Two Bits kept going until the two horses were side by side.

“My great-grandfather proved one quarter and bought a few more from the neighbors who were struggling. He started there, by the river, using a horse and his own manpower.” Nicholas pointed to a small peninsula of land. “My grandfather expanded on that using an old tractor and my dad used a bulldozer to clear it all the way up to the fence line you see.”

She nodded, still looking at the land. For the first time since Nicholas chose the ranch over her, she got a tiny inkling of why this meant so much to him.

“My great-great-grandfather started with a small herd of cattle and a horse-drawn plow for the grain land, and it’s been growing since. My grandfather thought he’d try exotics and dabbled in Charolais and Simmental, but my dad and I went back to Angus. And now I’m breaking into purebreds. And we’ve always grown grain and canola on the river-bottom lands.”

Cara didn’t imagine the note of pride in his voice as he spoke of the ranch and she envied him the history. Her grandmother was also a single mom and had moved around as much as her mother had. She had passed away before Cara moved in with Uncle Alan and Aunt Lori. She didn’t know who her father was—her mother had told her repeatedly that he died working overseas and that was all she needed to know.

All she had was her uncle and aunt, a few faded photographs and some stories that Uncle Alan would dredge up if pressed. Nicholas had a ranch steeped in history and generations of ancestors who were buried in a local churchyard.

“With each generation the ranch got a bit bigger,” Nicholas said. “And with each generation it got easier to find a way to feed more cows and farm more land without hiring a whole bunch of people.”

“And now it’s just you and your dad.”

“Yup.”

She knew his history but because of Nicholas’s work and because of his father’s antagonism toward her, she’d caught only glimpses of the rest of the ranch. They had started dating in September, then Nicholas went away to work for a couple of months. When he came back, winter had arrived.

During his time off, their dates consisted of going out to movies, going out for coffee, some ski trips to Banff and visits with Uncle Alan and Aunt Lori. When Nicholas left again for work and returned with a broken leg, Cara thought he would quit.

But when the leg healed and spring came, he got a call for another job and took it.

As a result, she had never seen the ranch like this.

Would things have been different between them if she’d seen this earlier?

She pushed the question aside. What was done was done. Nicholas’s choices were still difficult for her. That much hadn’t changed.

“Did any of your ancestors ever think about moving somewhere else?” She knew the answer to this one, too, but she liked hearing him talk about his ranch. When he did, his voice softened and he became the Nicholas she remembered, the Nicholas she had fallen in love with.

“I’ve told you about Lily, my dad’s sister who lives in Idaho,” Nicholas said. “And my great-grandfather had a brother who moved back to England, but the rest of us stayed here.”

“You told me once about your grandfather building a house somewhere else.”

Nicholas stopped his horse and pointed through the trees to a small building tucked in some trees and edged with lilac bushes.

“Can you see that?” he asked. “That’s it, right there.”

“So why did he abandon it?” She knew his great-grandfather had moved the main residence to where it stood now, overlooking the valley.

“Too close to the river,” he said. “They got drowned out once and my great-grandmother insisted on the move. She was a feisty one. I never knew her, but my grandfather and dad had a bunch of stories to tell about her.”

“Like what?” Cara asked, intrigued by this unexpected chapter in the Chapman family history.

“I guess a porcupine was hanging around the yard one day chewing on some apple trees she had just planted. So she was going to get out the gun and kill it, but when she saw it looking at her, she couldn’t. So she shot over its head to chase it away. Had to do that for the rest of the summer. She went through a lot of bullets chasing it away. Claimed she missed seeing it when it didn’t show up one day.” He smiled at the memory and Cara’s heart hitched at the sight. Nicholas looked more relaxed than he had since she had come to Cochrane. The ranch agreed with him. It was where he belonged.

She shifted in the saddle, forcing her attention back to the land below them. “It’s beautiful. I can see why it means so much to you.”

Nicholas shot her a puzzled glance. “Can you?”

“It’s been a part of your family for a long time.”

Nicholas leaned on the pommel of his saddle, and as he looked out over the open fields, his voice tinged with pride. “We put a lot of ourselves into this place. When Mom left—” Nicholas stopped there.

As he often did.

Cara didn’t know much about Nicholas’s mother, Barb, only that she had suddenly left his father and Nicholas one day. Left a note on the table and a casserole in the oven.

“When your mom left,” Cara prompted, wondering if she’d hear a bit more from him.

Nicholas sighed, his movement causing the saddle to creak. “Doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago.”

He straightened and it was as if a shutter dropped over his face. Cara experienced a glimmer of frustration. When they were dating she’d tried to get him to open up about his mother and his relationship with his father. But every time the conversation veered close to his parents, he shut down.

She had always assumed they would have time to find out more about each other. To encourage each other in their faith.

To grow together.

But that didn’t happen.

“It’s a terrible thing when a marriage falls apart,” Nicholas said. “That’s why I’m worried about Lorne and Trista.”

Cara felt as if gears in her mind were grinding with the sudden shift in topic.

Obviously still not ready to talk about his mother and father’s relationship, she thought. Or maybe Nicholas didn’t think she warranted a glimpse into his private life.

“I’m concerned, too,” she said, going along with the conversation, aware that Nicholas’s concerns were hers. “Do you think he’s getting cold feet?”

“I’m not sure.” Nicholas tugged on the reins, turning his horse on another trail, leaving the open fields behind them. “I haven’t had a chance to talk to him. I want to make sure Lorne doesn’t go through the same thing I did.”

Though he tossed the words out casually they wounded with precision.

“I think he and Trista are pretty committed to each other,” Cara said quietly, trying to mask her own hurt as she kept her eyes on the landscape below them. “They’ve both made some sacrifices to make this relationship work, regardless of how it’s starting out.” She chanced a quick sideways glance and caught his frown. As if he didn’t understand.

A relentless current of frustration washed through her. This lack of understanding of the sacrifices necessary for a relationship had dogged their own.

“At any rate, Trista seems nervous,” Nicholas said.

“She doesn’t do pressure well.”

“None of us do.”

It’s just a casual comment,
Cara reminded herself.
Don’t read more into it than what’s on the surface.

But as their eyes connected, she caught a glimmer of an older, deeper emotion that made her wonder just how off-the-cuff this, and his previous comment, actually were.

“I know she loves Lorne and wants to marry him,” Cara said, determined to keep this conversation on their friends. “But there’s something else going on.”

“We better figure out what it is before things go too far and I end up stuck with a bunch of guests and a caterer and no bride and groom.”

“I doubt it will get that far,” Cara said. “I think they’ve got a lot to deal with, but I have a feeling they’ll find their way through this. I think they love each other enough.”

Nicholas sighed heavily and his horse jumped a little to one side. He settled it down, then shot her a quick, sideways glance. “I guess that’s always enough.” His voice sounded wry.