Reclaiming Nick (17 page)

Maggy nodded. “We hired a man. Quiet. Gets his work done.
He went to check on the herd today. I expected him to show up here, but I guess he got tied up.”

“That happens. We ’bout got ’em licked.”

Maggy gestured toward the blonde, the one with barbeque sauce staining her apron. “Where did Stefanie find her?” She’d noticed how Nick had helped her stoke her fire, stir her food. And he’d been in charge of frying the oysters.

“Some school in Kalispell. Going to cook for the city-slicker tourists this summer.”

Maggy watched as the woman began to wash the dishes. Even as she did it, however, she seemed to study people, hear conversations. “Stef is going through with that idea, huh?”

“She’s got a full schedule of folks heading here for the ‘ultimate family adventure.’” He inflected a British accent into his words.

Maggy laughed.

Dutch’s voice fell. “You know, Nick’s kicking around trouble about Bishop’s will. He’s been asking questions, hunting up reasons why Bishop mighta left that land to Cole.”

Maggy said nothing. She knew little of estate law, but it seemed to her that if Bishop wanted to give them his land, Nick couldn’t stop him.

“He thinks he can find a reason to get the will set aside.”

Maggy turned to Dutch. He’d been a good friend to Cole and his mother, Irene, over the years, helping them out with their motley crew of cattle. The years wore hard on Dutch’s face, turning his skin leathery, his pale eyes wizened. She always wondered why he’d never married.

She used to think that Dutch and Irene would have made a wonderful couple. But then again, some things just weren’t meant
to be, regardless of how good they looked in dreams. And now, of course, she knew why.

“What kind of reasons?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Like something Cole might have had over Bishop’s head. Or someone coercing Bishop. He asked me if Cole was around when the will was signed.”

Maggy glanced at him. “Why would that matter?”

“Well, because Cole got the land. And Nick says if any of the beneficiaries are in the room when a will is signed, then it can be contested.”

A coldness started in Maggy’s belly and spread through her. “He wasn’t there.”

“’Course not. But just so as you know. Nick’s a’huntin’ trouble.”

“Thanks, Dutch.”

While he carried their plates to the dish bin, Maggy’s eyes settled on Nick. So that’s why he returned. To make sure Cole didn’t get a blade of Noble range. And she had a sinking feeling she knew why.

Perhaps the old emotions weren’t as dormant as she thought. In fact, she found herself crossing the fire pit before she could stop herself. She stood above Nick as he crouched by the fire, cooking.

He glanced up at her. Good. He actually looked a little pale.

“I want to talk to you.”

“Hi, Maggy.” Nick stood, but she didn’t care that he towered over her. “How are you?”

“Don’t ‘how are you’ me! I can’t believe that you came back to take away Cole’s land.”

He gaped and glanced past her.

Maggy followed his line of vision and saw Stefanie freeze, her mouth drawn in a dark line.

“It’s Noble land. But, Maggy, this isn’t about you.”

Not about her? “This is completely about me, Nick. I know that! I’m not an idiot.”

His voice dropped. “Of course you’re not. It’s just that . . . this is between me and Cole.”

She wanted to pull back her fist and sink it squarely in his arrogant jaw. “You think I don’t know why you left? why you haven’t come back for ten years?”

He stared at her, at a loss for words.

“You’re really a piece of work, Noble. Well, for your information, Cole is twice the man you are. He’s kind and honorable and patient, and he keeps his promises. He deserves that land your father gave him. And you, of all people, should know that.” She turned and realized that the entire camp had stopped speaking. Motioning to CJ, she stalked toward her pickup.

She didn’t make it. A hand caught her, spun her around, and in a second, she saw the old Nick, the one she’d loved, the passionate boy she’d given herself to thinking it would last forever. He wore hurt and not a little anger in his piercing dark eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Maggy, but you got this all wrong.”

She couldn’t hold back any longer. She slapped him—hard.

As if he were made of stone, he didn’t even blink.

“You turned out exactly as my mother predicted,” she said in a lethal voice. “I’m so sorry I didn’t listen to her sooner.”

What had Nick done to her?

After not seeing Maggy for nearly a decade, and most importantly,
after the way he left, he didn’t expect her to leap into his arms. But slap him?

He stared at her, feeling her eyes needle him, not sure how to respond. First of all, he thought her mother had always liked him. But secondly, what was this business about Cole being twice the man he was?

“Mags, calm down.”

“I’m Mrs. St. John to you. And I’ll have you know we’ve done just fine for the last ten years without you. We didn’t need you then, and we don’t need you now.” Her eyes flashed, and he braced himself for another slap. She snorted in disgust. “It’s a good thing you didn’t return before Bishop died. He would have been devastated.”

She could have picked anything else in the world to say, and it wouldn’t have phased him. But the way she stood there, smug and sneering, speaking the truth, Nick felt as if she’d blown a hole clear through him with a deer rifle.

“C’mon, CJ.”

He watched as she loaded Suds—yes, he recognized Cole’s horse—into the trailer and drove off.

He couldn’t meet Stefanie’s angry expression as he turned back to camp.

What did Maggy have to do with this? He stalked away from the prying eyes toward the campfire. He remembered that explosive night too well, in vivid dime-store-novel detail, and according to that recollection Maggy had only been around for the tragic ending. Why would she think his anger at Cole had anything to do with her?

Unless, of course, he’d been right that night when he’d accused them of having an affair.

He crouched beside the fire and stirred the coals, hating the fact that after ten years Maggy still hadn’t forgiven him, still despised him. Hating that once upon a time she’d been someone who understood him without his having to speak words.

Maggy alone knew how his mother’s cancer had turned him inside out. She’d been by his side as his mother’s disease slowly took her. Had comforted him with more than her words that first Christmas without his mother. He’d held her, knowing he’d broken every rule his mother had instilled in him and didn’t care. Maggy had been his best girl, and at the time he thought he loved her. Told her that, convinced her.

But even a grieving kid knew that love didn’t manipulate, it didn’t connive, and it didn’t use emotions to seduce a person who trusted him.

He deserved that slap and more.

He got up, walked away from the glow of the flames into the coming darkness, where no one could see his grief.

He owed Maggy an apology and had been trying to form one ever since that fateful spring break when he’d returned home, a proposal on his mind. But as he watched her truck lights disappear into the horizon, he knew he didn’t deserve her—not now, not then.

But neither did Cole. At least not if he was anything like his mother.

“Nick, are you okay?”

The voice—soft, sweet, gentle, and consoling—behind him made him breathe out, uncoiling the knot in his chest. He felt Piper’s hand on his arm and looked down at her. “Yeah.”

“That was quite a show back there. She hit you hard?”

He gave a wry grin. “She could probably match that roundhouse kick you’re so proud of.”

Piper didn’t smile. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened between you two, but it seemed that you were trying to apologize—”

“I should have apologized years ago.” He looked toward the setting sun and Cole’s ranch. “There’s a lot I have to apologize for.”

“It can’t possibly be that awful.” She sat on a boulder, her fingers laced on her lap. The sun set her gold hair on fire, and she smelled like barbeque sauce. He could trace the outline of her smile, and it made him want to let go, to confess it all regardless of the pain, much like the lancing of a wound.

After checking around for prickly pear cactus, Nick sat on the ground near her feet, facing her. “I don’t know. Ten years is a long time to go without apologizing.”

She reached out and touched his shoulder. The contact felt warm and reassuring. “I agree.”

He glanced up at her, again touched by how well she seemed to understand.

Her smile was kind, unaccusing.

“Did you like your first roundup?”

She wrinkled her nose, shook her head slightly. “Sorry. I was happier living in ignorance.”

That made him smile. “My first roundup I was five years old. My mother had just given birth to my sister and brother, and she didn’t want me underfoot, so she sent me out with my dad. I cried the first time I saw them brand the calves. But by the end of the day, I was helping them, pulling the lassos off the steers, keeping the branding irons hot. I loved the chaos, the smells, the men treating me like I was one of them. Old Pete gave me a chaw of
chewing tobacco, and I threw up all over the grass. My dad nearly killed him.”

Piper laughed.

Nick looked at her, grinning, his chest expanding. “My dad used to tell me that one day I’d run the ranch. I used to ride this land watching my own shadow, seeing myself tall and bold and strong. The king of the Silver Buckle.”

He picked a nearby yellow bell, turning it between his fingers. “I really thought I was something. Then my mom got sick. She had cancer my senior year of high school. Died in the spring, right before graduation.”

Piper’s eyes glistened. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t handle it well. Thought I was fine, but I was torn up inside. Maggy was my girlfriend in high school, and her husband, Cole St. John, was my best friend. Without them I think I might have driven myself right off a cliff. As it was, I lived pretty wild that first quarter of college. I don’t know what my dad heard back home, but by Christmas I was ashamed of myself.”

“You were grieving.”

Nick began to pull the petals off the flower, flick them into the wind. “So was my dad.” He tossed the whole flower out into the sunset. “We had a fight over Christmas, and I came home drunk on New Year’s Eve. I knew I’d shamed the Noble name. I came home for spring break, sorta hoping to set things right—tell my dad how sorry I was for my wild behavior. But he wasn’t home. I had this . . . eerie feeling. I still don’t know why, but I went to Cole’s house.” He huffed, weaving his hands together.

From the camp, the soft sounds of laughter and the tones of a
guitar drifted in the breeze. Piper didn’t move or even breathe, it seemed. But she frowned, a hint at her confusion.

Nick gazed at the slight sprinkling of stars. “My dad and Cole’s mom. They were . . . well, I didn’t exactly find them in the back bedroom, but what was going on in the kitchen was certainly rated PG.”

“Oh, Nick.”

“It wasn’t pretty. Cole came to the door just as I spun to leave, and all my anger erupted. I hit him, maybe even broke his jaw. My dad yelled at me to leave him alone, and I couldn’t believe that he was taking Cole’s side after he’d betrayed my mother’s memory so I ran out. Maggy was in the yard—evidently she and Cole were coming in from working some place, but I thought they were up to something, even though she nearly leaped into my arms.”

His throat tightened at his remembered words: “Get away from me, Maggy! What, are you having an affair too?”

“My dad came out and things got worse. Cole was furious and tackled me right there in the yard—I’d never seen him so mad—and we rolled around beating on each other and getting bloody. Then my dad separated us and told Cole to go in the house. But Cole stood there as my dad shoved me against the truck and told me that it wasn’t what I thought.”

“What did he mean by that?”

Even now, Nick tasted the moment, stinging, acrid in his mouth. “He told me that he wanted to marry Irene, that he loved her, and I told him that he’d do that over my dead body.” He closed his eyes, seeing again his father’s face, the hurt, the disbelief.

“Then I told him that I wanted nothing to do with him or the
Silver Buckle—with any of them—and I made a point of looking at Maggy when I said it. I finished by telling them all where they could go, hopped in my truck, and drove back to the ranch.”

Piper drew a small breath. “That sounds horrible. But you were young and hurting.”

“It gets worse.” Nick could still hear the yelling, watched himself go after his father like a man possessed. His voice began to tremble. “My dad followed me back to the ranch, and when he came into the kitchen I was so angry, I tackled him.”

Piper had gone silent and still.

“I forgot everything I’d been taught about respect and even self-control and attacked him. Hit him as hard as I could.” He flinched, remembering his father’s broken expression. “And he didn’t even fight back. Just tried to push me away or grab my hands. I know that if he wanted to he could have sent me flying through the wall. But he didn’t. He just let me spend my energy on him.”