Knight in a White Stetson (13 page)

“They kept tipping over. When we tear the tents down in the fall, we can unbolt them.”

She turned to him. “There’s no room for a cot in here if we don’t take the saddle trees out.”

“Huh.”

She put her hands on her hips and cocked her head. “Did you do this on purpose?”

“Of course not.” He hadn’t, in truth. He’d done it all that first day. Before Pete had shown up.

Calla stared at him for several seconds before she came to a reluctant conclusion. “I guess I’ll have to bunk with you.”

“Guess so.”

“Well, hell.” She knitted her brows, then looked at him. “Don’t get any ideas.”

“I won’t.” Not any new ones, anyway.

Calla stepped off the low wood platform that made up the floor of the tack tent. She scooped up her saddle and rested it on her hip. Henry started toward her but she turned quickly and ducked between the open flaps of the small tent.

This woman would rid him of every gentlemanly instinct he ever had if he wasn’t careful. Still, there was something pretty intoxicating about a female who could so thoroughly take care of herself.

Despite her strength, though, Henry thought a half hour later, she was most definitely a woman. Calla and Calla’s belongings had taken over his neatly swept sleeping tent like a sweet-smelling Hun invasion. Henry had set up her cot, ignoring her protestations that she could take care of her own self, thank you very much, against the wall opposite his. Her down-filled sleeping bag, a match to Henry’s, lay on top of it. She had emptied her leather saddlebags of a pile of neatly pressed jeans, shirts and underwear, and had stacked them in a small wooden box now shoved out of the way under the cot. A mesh bag on top of the clothes held shampoo, soap, a toothbrush and paste, a hairbrush and a rat’s nest of ponytail holders and hair clips. The tent, which normally smelled faintly of dust and sweat and leather, now smelled of Calla’s hair and skin and the detergent Helen used to wash her clothes.

Henry stood at the tent flap and smiled. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman in his house. It was a pleasant sensation, even when his house was a canvas tent in the middle of the Idaho wilderness and the woman belonged to another man.

* * *

Calla listened to the steady breathing of the man on the other side of the tent. The sound of it filled the still air. It filled her senses. She had been tossing inside her sleeping bag for hours.

She was twenty-four years old and had never spent an entire night with a man. Well, Clark, the other night, but he’d been downstairs on the couch.

No, that was silly. She’d spent many nights with men. Lester, Jackson, Benny. She’d been surrounded by men her entire life. She had, in point of fact, she reminded herself harshly, spent hundreds of nights in this very tent with various men every summer since she was six years old.

So, why was this particular man and his steady breathing keeping her awake?

Probably because this man wasn’t her brother or her father or an old, hairy-eared man she’d known since childhood.

This was Henry.

She’d watched him carefully all day. After she’d settled in—no, after Henry had settled her in, she corrected herself—they’d saddled horses and spent the rest of the day riding the fence lines Calla had been building and repairing all her life.

After Henry had settled her in.
She frowned in the darkness. He’d set up her cot and smoothed out her bag and carried her empty saddlebags to the tack tent. While she’d refolded her clothes into the little wooden box, he’d even oiled her saddle for her with the bottle of strong-smelling neat’s-foot oil he kept stored against pack rats in a metal box under his saddle tree.

Then he’d returned to the larger tent and packed a new saddle pad under the top of her sleeping bag.

“Pillow,” he’d said matter-of-factly, and then walked back outside.

She had been annoyed and embarrassed. And thrilled.

Henry had taken care of her. A small gesture as those things went, she supposed, but it was still disconcerting and had made her feel awkward and clumsy. She liked being in control. Being in control was what she did best.

She had reasserted that control once they were out on the range. She’d removed a voluminous map from her saddlebags and spread it across her saddle horn. Henry had moved his horse close to hers for a better look, his booted foot resting against her stirrup. She’d marked fence lines with her finger and then pointed to them across the horizon. Henry had listened with gratifying intent.

They’d returned to camp at dusk and Calla had taken the map out again while Henry pulled out the dinner Calla had packed for them—a cold roasted chicken and fresh carrots and zucchini from Helen’s garden. Henry had lit the lantern and brought it to the picnic table that served as the Two Creek Camp dining table, food preparation area and office. Then he’d come from behind and leaned over her, studying the map, his breath stirring the fine hairs on the back of her neck. His wide palms had been flat on the table, and Calla had stared for a minute at the little moons at the base of his fingernails.

“Calla?” he’d inquired politely.

“Uh, sorry. I was thinking about something else.”

After she’d told him of her plans for the next day, she’d folded the map and returned it to her saddlebags.

“It’s late,” she said. “Must be eleven o’clock.”

Henry lifted his wrist so she could see his watch. “I’m going to buy you a watch.”

She stood opposite him across the picnic table. For some reason, every muscle in her body was tensed.

“I guess I’ll turn in,” she said awkwardly.

“Good idea. You’ve got us all over these hills tomorrow.” He smiled.

She nodded, then ducked her head at his calm regard and walked to the outhouse. When she returned, Henry was gone.

“Hey,” she called softly. The echoes of a million crickets beat gently against the rimrock cliffs surrounding the camp. “Where are you?”

“Over here.”

Calla walked toward the sound of his voice. When she reached him she saw he was neck deep in a metal water trough next to the horse pasture. It was outside the fence, useless to the animals, and Calla wondered why she hadn’t noticed it before.

“What in the world are you doing?”

“Taking a bath.”

“In the horse trough?” Calla laughed.

“No, in the hot tub,” he’d said, closing his eyes. Calla had noticed steam rising from the water. She came closer.

“I’m naked in here.”

Calla jumped back a step, and she heard Henry chuckle softly.

“Did you tap that hot water spring?”

“Yeah, a couple days ago.
I’m
not the type of person who can
go a whole
week without a bath.”

“No? I wish you’d talk to Lester. How did you do it?”

“I dug it up with a pick and shovel, put in a springbox, tapped a pipe into the springbox and ran the pipe into the trough. It has an overflow that runs down into the horse pasture. That keeps it pretty clean. I cover it with a tarp during the day to keep out the leaves and dirt.”

“Very clever. Where’d you get the trough?” She ran her hand along the side of the smooth metal tub. She couldn’t see beneath the surface of the water. Unfortunately.

“I found it behind the barn. I brought it up in case we needed another water trough up at East Fork. It’s pretty dry up there.”

“I thought you didn’t know where East Fork was. I thought you were helpless.”

“I am.” His voice had thickened, sounded almost sleepy, but he met her gaze with startling intensity. “Right now anyway.”

Calla’s breath caught in her throat while they shared another of those long, stretched-out moments that seemed to come every time they were within fifty feet of each other.

“How hot is the water?” she asked after a minute, lowering her eyes, trying not to try to see beneath that dark water.

“Come in, Calla. Find out.”

She looked up at him. He was still watching her, his eyes steady, intense and of the deepest brown. “Henry,” she whispered, her mouth dry. “Don’t do this.”

Henry went still for a minute, then leaned his head back and closed his eyes again. “You’re right,” he said roughly. “Go on back to the tent. If you want a bath, I’ll come in and you can come back out.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

He’d been as good as his word. He’d come back to the tent a few minutes later, dressed in a clean pair of jeans, a towel slung around his bare shoulders. He’d hung the towel on a nail hammered into the cross post of the tent, slipped into his sleeping bag, pulled his jeans off under the covers and tossed them to the bottom of his cot.

“All yours,” he’d said evenly. He hadn’t even looked at her. She’d slipped out of the tent without a word.

The bath had been wonderful, a tremendous luxury in the normally rough life of cow camp. She’d even washed her hair, watching the babbles flow silently out the overflow to reappear, foaming, in the horse pasture beyond. After her fingers and toes were properly wrinkled, she’d stood on the little wooden deck Henry had built next to the tub and dried herself off in the starlight. No moon tonight, and the feeling of being naked in the soft night under a billion bright stars had made her feel a sensual relaxation she hadn’t felt in months. Maybe years. Maybe ever. She had slipped her flannel nightgown over her head, put her boots on her bare feet and padded back to the tent. Henry had been asleep.

She’d thought she’d fall asleep, too, after a hot bath and a long day. And she’d been tired from three days of preparing for Lester and Helen’s wedding.

But now it was two hours later and all she could think about was the man on the cot across the tent, breathing in that sleep-steady rhythm. She turned over again, punching the pad into a ball.

There were several very good reasons why this was stupid, she told herself.

One, she was engaged. Engaged people were so filled with love for their intendeds they couldn’t even look at another person, much less wonder what it would feel like to sit in a hot-water trough in the middle of the night with that person’s hands running up and down…

Okay, let’s not think about that anymore.

Two, she was this man’s employer. She had bossed many mew, young, old, ugly, pretty. This one was no different. So, why had she been counting the number of times he drew breath in a minute? Calla wondered.

Three, this was definitely not the man of her dreams, even if sleeping next to him in one of her favorite places in the world made him seem like the man of her dreams. The man of her dreams was going to help her pay off the note to her ranch. The man of her dreams was going to make sure she wasn’t the McFadden who lost a century’s worth of land and livestock. The man of her dreams was not an $850-a-month, dusty cowboy. Clark was the man of her dreams. Future generations were riding on that fact.

Four… She couldn’t think of four. She’d have to make do with three reasons not to climb out of her sleeping bag and into the sleeping bag of the man lying five feet away.

She shifted again. It was going to be a very long week.

* * *

Henry heard the rustle of nylon as Calla turned again in her cot. He’d been listening to her for hours.

Go to sleep, baby. You’re driving me crazy.

Henry clenched his fists inside his sleeping bag and forced his breathing to steady.

I wonder if that flannel nightgown you were wearing when you came in has hiked its way up around your hips?

Henry squeezed his eyes tightly, trying to rid himself of that particularly erotic image. He couldn’t.

It was going to be a very long week.

Chapter 13

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^
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C
alla awakened to the smell of bacon frying. She clasped her hands above her head and stretched inside her sleeping bag. Since when did Lester fry bacon in the morning? And what time was it anyway?

She blinked her eyes open, and shut them again. Henry was frying bacon. Calla peeked over at his empty cot. It was still rumpled from sleep. At least it wasn’t folded up all nice and neat. At least the man was human.

The man was also … singing. No. Calla shook her head and squeezed her eyes open and shut a couple times more. Henry was not singing. It was her imagination.

But he was. He was singing an old cowboy song in a voice wildly off-key.

It was the most charming sound Calla had ever heard. She lay in her bunk for several minutes, savoring the sound of Henry’s rotten singing voice and the smell of the bacon and the feel of the breeze that lifted the tent flap and brushed across her face.

Cow camp. How did other people survive without the wonder that was cow camp?

It was late in the morning, at least eight o’clock, Calla estimated by the light that poured through the flap of the east-facing tent. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d slept in. Well, slept in sober, anyway.

Calla stretched again and slowly eased herself to a sitting position. She wondered when she had finally dozed off last night. She looked resentfully over at Henry’s sleeping bag. He obviously hadn’t had the same trouble sleeping she’d had. Cross-legged on top of her sleeping bag, she reached down and tugged the little wooden box from underneath her cot. She untied the little mesh bag and took out her hairbrush and a ponytail holder.

“Yay-yeeeaaa, yipee-i-ooo-ooo.”

Yodeling!? Calla laughed. There was instant silence on the other side of the canvas. Then she heard footsteps heading for the tent. She tried to scurry back under her covers but she was too late. Henry yanked open the tent flap.

He opened his mouth to speak, but Calla saw his expression change from mild to acute embarrassment as he realized she was still in her nightgown, her hair brushed free around her shoulders. He collected himself after a second and narrowed his eyes.

“Are you laughing at my singing?”

“Was that singing? I thought maybe you were skinning a coyote for breakfast.”

Henry thrust out his wrist to show her his watch. “Coyotes are seldom awake at this late hour.”

Calla threw her brush at him. He dodged it effortlessly and forced himself to be cheerful, even though his mouth had gone dry at the sight of her cross-legged on her narrow cot. “Breakfast is ready. Do you plan to get up or would you like it served to you in your bed?”

“I would like it served to me in my bed. First the bathtub, then breakfast in bed. I swear, I don’t ever remember cow camp being this luxurious before.”

“Well, don’t get used to it. Get dressed. We have a long day ahead of us.”

Calla rolled her eyes and hauled herself out of the cot. “Oh, thank you for telling me. As I’ve only spent the last eighteen summers on this mountain, I probably have no idea at all what’s in store for me today.” She straightened her nightgown around her ankles. It was a long, heavy flannel gown meant to ward off the chill that clung to the higher elevations of the high desert even in midsummer, and Calla knew her figure was invisible under
it.
Still, she felt Henry’s eyes sweep her like fire across a sagebrush plain. She busied herself by zipping her bag and wadding
it
into a ball. “I see you don’t bother to tidy up before you leave camp.” She tossed her head of hair in the direction of Henry’s tousled sleeping bag.

Henry dragged his gaze away from her bare feet. “I didn’t want you to think I was anal. Besides, you didn’t get much sleep last night and I didn’t want to wake you.”

Calla paused, the saddle pad clutched to her breast. “How do you know I didn’t get much sleep last night? You were crashed by the time I came in.”

“That’s true,” Henry said mildly. “But considering you didn’t wake up until nearly—” he showed her his watch again “—nine o’clock, I assumed you stayed up late brooding about the ineptitude of your newest employee.”

“Nine o’clock?”
Calla exclaimed. “Oh, my God.” She knelt quickly and jerked jeans, a shirt and underwear from her box and shoved it back to its position under the cot. “I can’t believe this,” she muttered. “I’m getting as bad as Lester.” She reached up and gathered her hair into her hands and then fastened it with a band. She grabbed the bottom of her nightgown and made to pull it over her head. Henry was still at the door of the tent, watching her with undisguised interest. She scowled at him. “Do you mind?”

He smiled again and stepped from the tent without a word. Calla waited until he had zippered the tent flap before she undressed quickly and pulled on her work clothes. She was still stuffing her shirt into her jeans when she emerged into the already dazzling sunlight. She stopped and sat on the edge of the wooden floor of the tent to tug on her boots. Henry was eating a strip of bacon, a small, distinctively pink Bureau of Land Management map spread on the table before him.

“What’s that?” Calla asked as she headed toward the outhouse.

“A map,” he answered around a mouthful of breakfast.

“Very funny.” She made use of the outhouse, stopped to wash her hands in the soapy water Henry already had warming on the camp stove, and sat impatiently down to the breakfast he’d prepared.

“I usually make my own breakfast,” she muttered, trying not to salivate over the fluffy eggs and crisp bacon. A slab of Helen’s homemade bread with butter and jam already applied sat on a blue enamel plate in front of her.

Henry took a sip of coffee. “If you’d been up at a decent hour, I’m sure you could have this morning, as well.”

She rolled her eyes as he poured coffee into her empty cup. She sniffed at it appreciatively, and then tucked into her breakfast. She ate quickly, guilty about the late hour.

“What are doing with that?” She indicated the map with her fork.

“I’m just trying to familiarize myself with the topography of the area.”

“That’s what we’re going to do today.”

“I thought we were checking cows and looking at the feed today.”

Calla waved her fork. “Same thing.” She slurped her coffee.

“Not the same thing. Today we’ll be concentrating on animals and forage. I’m also interested in the topography.”

“‘Scuse me, professor.” Calla jumped to her feet, tossed her empty plate into the water, took another sip of coffee and then dashed the rest of it onto the ground, and placed the cup in with the plate. “Let’s go. We’re burning daylight.”

Henry rose to his feet, placing his hat on his head at the same time. “Don’t call me that,” he said. Calla was already inside the tent, scrambling for her toothbrush. She barely heard him.

“What did you say?” she called.

“Don’t call me professor,” he shouted back.

Calla stuck her head out of the tent and looked at him. “Why not?”

“Because I asked you not to.”

“You know, you are a very irritating person,” she said around
her toothbrush. “I have known you, I don’t know, weeks now, and you have never told me a single thing about yourself. I don’t know where you worked before you came here, how you learned about ranching, if you’re married or single, nothing. All I know is what you told Clark that very embarrassing evening at the house, a night, by the way, I’ll not soon forget. You may even
be
a professor for all I know, and yet I ask you one simple…”

“I’m not married.”

Calla stopped and took the toothbrush from her mouth. “I know you’re not married.”

“How did you know that?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think you would have … kissed me … or anything, if you’d been married. You don’t seem like the type.”

He looked at her for a long time before he nodded his head.

“So, are you a professor?” She stuck the toothbrush back in her mouth.

 
“No.”

“Okeydokey.” Calla walked to the edge of the little clearing and spit. She returned and rinsed her mouth with cool water from the jug on the table. She walked a few steps and spit again. Henry watched her in amusement.

“What are you laughing at?”

“I’m not laughing. You are just very comfortable up here, aren’t you?”

“You mean I’m not very ladylike, don’t you? Well, too bad. I’m a little too busy to worry about whether or not you’re offended by my brushing my teeth in front of you. I’d never be that silly anyway, even if I weren’t too busy.” Still, she felt a rush of color come into her face. “I’m taking Toke today.”

“Yeah, you told me last night. They’re all ready to go.”

Calla walked around the tent to the horse pasture to see her horse and Henry’s contentedly tied to a fence post, saddled and
bridled. First the cot, then breakfast, now this. She stomped back around the front of the tent.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

“About what?” He was tossing the dishwater onto the ground.

“I can catch my own horse.”

“I guess maybe you could if you got up before nine o’clock in the morning. Why are you giving me all this grief?”

“I don’t like to have people wait on me. It makes me nervous.”

“I am not waiting on you. I just saddled your horse.”

“And
fixed
my breakfast,
and
put up my cot,
and
oiled my saddle.”

Henry looked at her thoughtfully, the empty pot still in his hands. “Doesn’t anybody ever do anything for you, Calla?”

“Of course people do things for me. All the time. Helen takes care of me like I was her daughter. My father takes care of me. Clark takes care of me.”

“Not very well.”

“What?”

“I said I don’t think Clark takes very good care of you. In fact, I think you two couldn’t be more ill-suited if you tried. He’s a selfish bastard and you’re marrying him because you think he’ll save your ranch.” Henry shook his head. “Well, he won’t.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lester.”

Calla saw a familiar red haze cloud her vision, just before her hands fisted at her side. “You’re fired.”

It was Henry’s turn to look surprised. “What?”

“You heard me,” she growled out between clenched teeth. “You’re fired. You have gone way too far. I mean it. Pack up your stuff and get the hell off my land.”

Henry shook his head. “No.”

“Okay, that’s it.”
She stalked
toward him. “If you don’t get off my land right now, I’m going to kick your butt from here to Sunday.”

Henry looked down
at her, his eyes going to slits. “Although I’m sure you could kick my butt from here to Sunday, whatever that means, I don’t think you will. I am stuck up here until Jackson returns at the end of the week with supplies and to take your sorry self back to the ranch.” He now had his own temper to contend with as well as hers. It made him furious. He never used to lose his temper. This woman made it a regular thing for him. “Now, if you would like me to take one of your horses down this mountain, I will be happy to oblige, but as you pointed out I don’t know these hills very well and would probably get lost and have to eat your horse for nourishment…”

He was warming to his subject and looked very serious, but for some reason Calla had an overwhelming urge to giggle. Eat her horse? How dramatic. She felt a tiny smile tug at the corners of her mouth. He continued, narrowing his eyes at her grin. “I’ve eaten worse. And furthermore, you brought all this on yourself. I simply caught your horse for you… Are you laughing at me?”

“No.” She moved back a step and clutched her hand to her mouth.

“You are laughing at me, you little brat. I can’t believe this.” He turned his back on her, turned again to her just as swiftly. “You are the most infuriating woman I have ever met.”

“Sorry.” She muffled another giggle. Henry raised his eyebrows at her. Adorable man, Calla thought. Glowering, with his chest puffed up, looking surprised by his own temper … just adorable.

Henry took in a deep breath. Infuriating, he thought again. And remarkable. “Am I fired or not?”

“Oh, geez, I guess not,” she said, shaking her head. “Just don’t bring up Clark anymore. And for God’s sake, stop doing everything for me. I feel like a child.”

“It’s a powerful instinct to do things for you,” he admitted, and watched in wonder as the pulse at her throat doubled. “But if it annoys you, just think of it as an employee serving his employer, okay?”

Calla pulled herself together with an effort. Those eyes had
gone all soft and brown again. “I already do think of it as that,” she said, doing her darnedest to believe it.

* * *

They rode all morning and into the hot afternoon. At around 2:00 p.m. Calla discovered Henry had packed sandwiches in his saddlebags for them. She never ate lunch on the trail. She briefly considered resurrecting their argument, but changed her mind when she bit down into the fresh bread and thick meat sandwiches. They sat on a wide black lava rock at the head of Deer Creek and surveyed the valley below and the twenty head or so of cow and calf pairs grazing there.