Taming Rafe (6 page)

If only John Senior had seen it. But then again, John might never have had the courage to write it had the old man been around to read over his shoulder.

John only regretted that he’d never told the people he loved the most—namely, the good folks of Phillips and most particularly Lolly Stuart—about his success.

But he wasn’t stupid. Big, tough cowboys didn’t write love stories. They loved their horses, their trucks, and then their women. He would have been laughed clear out of the county. Lolly certainly hadn’t made him feel anything but silly when she rolled her eyes at his kind of books, calling them romantic rags.

She might feel differently now. Not only had his book been optioned for a movie and put into production, but Lincoln Cash agreed to play the part of Jonas.

Which meant the time had come to finally say good-bye to this life.

John loathed herding cattle; fixing fences, trucks, and tractors; mending saddles; making ends meet—or
not
meet as the case had been for the past ten years. Without his book income, the Kincaid ranch would have folded the year John Senior died. Perhaps he would have been more thankful for the forty thousand acres and thousand head of cattle if his father hadn’t also left him with thousands of dollars of gambling debts.

“Anything else, sir?” Crockett asked as he pulled out a tin of chewing tobacco. He wedged a pinch into his mouth and talked around the bulge. “The truck’s running rough. I’m thinking it needs a new fuel pump.”

“Leave the truck,” John said. He’d ordered a new car—a black BMW Z4 convertible. Yes, he had this dream of driving up to Lolly’s Diner and seeing the expression on her face when she saw his wheels. He’d definitely turned into a teenager.

A
desperate
teenager, especially two days ago when he’d
spontaneously asked Lolly to accompany him to Sheridan. He kept thinking that when he signed his intent to sell the ranch, then took her out for dinner and gave her flowers and a ring and got down on one knee, she’d see that he hadn’t given up on them.

But she’d squashed those hopes, and he’d had to face the raw truth. Lolly didn’t want his name, his life. He wasn’t so stupid as to get kicked in the teeth again.

John took a sip of coffee, letting the bite soothe him. Maybe it would be better all around if he just left without saying good-bye.

Only what if . . . what if he went in right when Lolly was closing shop and slipped Cody the cook a crisp Benjamin Franklin to clean up the place. He’d wait while Lolly changed, then take her out to the divide, where his land met the Breckenridge place, where the stars seemed to fall into the horizon, where he’d told her he loved her the first time. And there, he’d get down on one knee . . .

“Did you hear about that Noble kid?” Crockett’s question brought John back to now and his cooling cup of coffee. “His brother’s bringing him back to the ranch. Guess he made a real mess of that fancy hotel there in New York.”

John nodded. He remembered Rafe from way back, when he was a gangly kid with big ears trying to stay on a steer. He especially remembered the day he’d been fooling around with his daddy’s truck while waiting for Nick to pick up supplies at the hardware store and driven into the plate glass of the Buffalo Saloon. John had watched from Lolly’s as Nick dragged his kid brother out by the scruff of his neck, kicking and screaming all the way home.

Yeah, that Rafe had a wild streak, something that branded him as trouble. John hadn’t rightly kept up with his shenanigans, but
he’d heard he’d become a big-time bull rider. Probably trying to find the one thing tougher, wilder than himself.

Perhaps in a way, all of them were trying to find something bigger than themselves.

John had found it in Lolly—or his love for Lolly—worked out on the pages of his Westerns. But unless he found a way to tell Lolly the truth before Lincoln Cash showed up, the pages of his books were where his feelings were likely to stay. She wasn’t the type to let this oversight—his author status—go with so much as a shrug.

Then again, he couldn’t exactly label her Miss Tell-It-All, could he? She kept her past locked up tighter than a bank on a Sunday. He’d stumbled onto her secrets purely by accident. Although he’d never breathed a word, never gone probing where he wasn’t invited, he knew her wounds still pained her; he saw the shadows of hurt range occasionally through her gaze. Yes, Lolly had secrets. And he hoped the fact that he’d helped protect those secrets counted for something when he came clean about his pen name.

John grimaced, thinking again of her laughter at the B. J. King book. Would she laugh when she discovered that his “romantic rags” had purchased them a new life?

He threw the now cold coffee out on the ground and placed the empty cup on the stoop. “I’ll get to that water truck,” he said to Crockett, who spat on the ground and followed him to work.

No, he wouldn’t miss this life at all.

“The Mercy Doctors grant proposal this year is requesting funds to open three more traveling clinics—”

“I know, Cari. I read their new budget proposal. I’d sell a kidney on eBay if it would help keep even one clinic open. Which is why we need to get the Breckenridge Foundation back in the black.” Katherine adjusted the cell phone headpiece as she hightailed it west. She felt a small smile, despite the panic in Cari’s voice.

“I don’t know where we’re going to dig up the money. But I’ll go over our donor sheets, see if we forgot to contact anyone.”

“Did you go over our short list?” Katherine hoped that the Rafe Noble she’d read about in the newspaper so many years ago still had a soft spot for the hurting. In fact, she had poured all her plans into that idea.

“I have a call in to a couple of other foundations that might be willing to cut us a one-time check. But we’re down to the dregs.”

“I’m not giving up. Not yet.”

“I can’t believe you’re
driving
in San Francisco. Who drives anymore? What’s wrong with going first-class?”

It wasn’t exactly
how
she was traveling but
where
that Cari should be asking. She’d be shocked to know that in the last three days, Katherine had planned her flight to Nowhere, South Dakota, where she rented a car and started driving to Montana. She’d read an interview a year ago about how Rafe had rented out his ranch while he went on tour this year. Please,
please
let her hunch be right and let him be in Phillips.

She didn’t want anyone talking her out of her insanity. Thankfully, Angelina didn’t seem to think it insane when she caught Katherine packing. Not only did the woman swear to secrecy, but she gave Katherine a sort of divine blessing with her “May God’s grace and peace go with you.”

Please, God, let this trip be fruitful.
Katherine harbored a crazy
mix of fear and hope as she’d landed in Rapid City, rented a Jeep Liberty, and picked up an atlas.

As if to add visual credence to her jumbled emotions, the landscape in this stretch of Montana was at once harsh and beautiful, jagged rock pushing through lush carpets of field grass that rolled over hill and beyond, dotted with purple and white flowers, and bordered by miles upon miles of fencing. A perfect big blue sky told her that she had pointed her Jeep in the right direction coming out of the airport.

Maybe this wasn’t insanity after all. Her ever-present headache had nearly subsided, and for the first time in months, she suspected she was thinking clearly.

She
would
talk Rafe Noble into helping her, even if she had to hog-tie herself to his truck until he said yes. She wasn’t leaving Montana without a check written out to Mercy Doctors. Or, if he wouldn’t give her the money, a thumbs-up to the plan she’d concocted to raise the cash. Even she had to admit her plan had facets of brilliance.

“I like to drive,” she finally answered Cari. “What is the latest on our insurance claims?”

Katherine passed a car piled with luggage and two children with headphones staring out the passenger windows. She waved at them and they waved back. Her heart gave a small tug. Bradley didn’t want children—they would stand in the way of his political aspirations. But deep inside, Katherine wanted at least one. A little girl, with long braids, who would wear red cowboy boots.

“Your grandfather’s insurance company is suing the Breckenridge Foundation
and
Noble for the damages, but his people are saying he isn’t at fault—”

“He drove the wrong way—”

“They called it reckless driving, and his insurance only covers it so far. They’re claiming it was an honest mistake. Our insurance company will go after them, but we might have to eat the damages.”

“It’ll wipe us out. We don’t have coverage for this kind of thing.” She kicked the AC on high, seeing heat ripple against the highway. “Besides, it
wasn’t
an honest mistake.” An ace that she planned on using, should Noble put up a fuss.

“Despite what you smelled, Katherine, according to the police reports, he wasn’t legally drunk.”

Katherine had done her research on Rafe Noble over the past three days, and everything she read screamed trouble. Worse, he’d managed to slide out of said trouble with his slick charm and boyish smile every single time.

That only fueled her anger. She’d show Noble exactly what he’d cost her . . . and how to atone for his crimes.

“Besides,” Cari continued, “Noble is MIA. His agent isn’t answering questions, and I can’t nail down a forwarding address. He has a place in Texas, but the number is disconnected.”

“I just wish that guys like him didn’t get away with their stupid behavior. Anyone else would be handcuffed to their hospital bed.”

“Listen, Katherine, Bradley isn’t going to let him walk away from this. You can bet that by the time he’s done, Rafe Noble will have paid through the teeth.”

Get in line.

She wasn’t sure why, but that only made Katherine feel worse. Maybe it was because she wanted Noble to
want
to help, not to have to force him. But that might be expecting a bit too much, even for her. . . .

“I’m glad you’re getting away,” Cari said, cutting through her thoughts. “Forget about New York. Do some shopping; buy a new outfit. This will all be sorted out when you get home.”

“I hope so.” Katherine switched lanes to fly past a semi. “Thanks, Cari. I’ll be in touch.” She clicked off, then pushed the Play button on her CD player.

A collection of books on CDs had caught her attention at the last place she gassed up, and she couldn’t believe that they’d had the B. J. King Western—the one she’d shoved into her suitcase. It seemed like providence, a sign from God or something to help her find the courage to face Noble, so she’d purchased it.

She didn’t expect to feel a kinship with the heroine, a widow with an infant, left on her own in the middle of Wyoming.

Mary Sutton stood at the edge of the grave, her feet in the dry, lifeless soil, the hot sun sending a trickle of sweat down her back, and knew that she’d never be whole again. The baby fussed in her arms, and Mary readjusted Rosie’s bonnet, pulling it low so the dirt couldn’t find her eyes. Even so, it caked her little mouth and nose, just as it dusted Mary’s skin, her dark pleated skirt, the once-white blouse. She felt soiled all the time.

Or maybe that feeling came from deep inside her soul.

“’Bout ready, Mrs. Sutton?”

Mary turned and squinted at Matthias Thatcher, the man she’d agreed to marry, to raise Charlie’s daughter. Her stomach turned. Matthias was fifty, with a paunch that told her exactly what she’d spend her time doing, and he owned the
land where Charlie had run their tiny head of cattle. Matthias wasted no time telling her that he owned her, too. He didn’t own her soul. But they had to eat, so . . .

“I’m ready, sir.”

He didn’t hold out his hand to help her into his Ford Model A. Charlie had dreamed of owning a car, and when Matthias drove out to the fields—usually to harass her poor husband—Charlie had stopped his work to watch the dark machine motor toward him. If Matthias’s whiskey-induced diatribe affected Charlie, he didn’t show his irritation as he let his gaze wander over the sleek machine.

It felt traitorous to ride in it now, away from their two-room shanty to Matthias’s big two-story house. Just like every rancher in Wyoming, Matthias hadn’t had a decent crop of calves for years, and his herd had dwindled to a handful of bony cows unable to reproduce. But he made his money in his vast land holdings, in squeezing the small rancher of every drop of profit and working him until he crumpled into the soil at the age of thirty-one.

Leaving behind a child, a wife, and nothing else.

Mary swallowed back a wave of grief and soothed the baby. At least Charlie had seen his daughter before his heart gave out. She’d given him that much.

They pulled up to the unpainted house. It sat in a dip between two weather-beaten, grassless hills. The effects of the last dust storm had piled dirt against the barn and porch. Dirty curtains flapped from the open windows, and a pot of dead geraniums told her that Mrs. Thatcher—God rest her soul—had been a woman of hope.

Matthias’s bulk jiggled the car as he got out. “Preacher’s inside. Hurry up.”