Bound, Branded, & Brazen (33 page)

Jolene was beginning to see a future with Walker. What she didn’t know was what kind of future Walker saw, because everything with him seemed to be all about right now. Though they enjoyed each other’s company, they hadn’t talked about the future. They didn’t talk about much of anything, including Walker’s past. He knew everything about her, had asked her to fill in the blanks about her family and her past and anything he didn’t know. He liked her to talk about herself. But when she asked him about his past, he always managed to change the subject.

If things were going to go any further between them, that would have to change. She wasn’t going to fall in love with someone she didn’t know.

Or maybe she was already in love with him. She’d never been in love before, so how was she going to recognize it when it happened?

She opened the front door of the bar and country music blasted her in the face.

God, she loved this place. Grin still plastered on, she went inside, spotted Brea and Gage and headed over to their table.

“Where’s Val and Mason?” she asked.

“Home having hot sex while they have the place to themselves, probably,” Brea said, waggling her eyebrows.

“Decided to stay in tonight?”

“Yeah. Valerie said she needed to inventory medical supplies, so Mason said he’d stay to help her.”

“Which means they’re having sex instead of doing inventory,” Gage said. “Or at least that’s what I’d be doing.”

“Yeah, but you’re perverted.” Brea elbowed him in the ribs.

“And that’s why you love me.” Gage grabbed her and kissed her.

Jolene rolled her eyes. “Maybe you two should have stayed home and had sex, too. I’m going to the bar.”

She leaned against the bar and waved to Sandy, who was working at the other end. She didn’t have to bother to order. Sandy would just bring her favorite beer when she had a free minute. Jolene flipped around, putting her back against the bar, and scanned the room. Mainly she was looking for Walker. They hadn’t made plans for tonight, but she’d told him she was coming to Dirk’s. He’d nodded and said he might be here, too.

They didn’t make plans, they didn’t have dates, they didn’t go out together.

And that was beginning to irritate her. They were going to have to talk about having this secret relationship. Jolene didn’t want it to be a secret any longer. Walker was going to have to talk to her about why it was necessary to have all their meetings be clandestine.

She spotted him playing poker with some of the guys from the ranch, and waited for him to make eye contact. When he did, she smiled, but he looked away immediately.

Okay, maybe he hadn’t seen her.

“Hey, girl, you’re looking good tonight.”

Jolene turned around and grinned at Sandy. “So are you.”

Sandy was a beauty. A stunning, tall, built-like-a-brick-shithouse raven-haired beauty, one of the main attractions for men at Dirk’s. At thirty, she owned the bar that she’d inherited from her dad, ran it single-handedly and had a shotgun under the bar that she used to handle anyone who got out of hand, though plenty of the guys acted as unpaid bouncers if some out-of-towners got out of control and didn’t understand the rules.

Sandy was another mystery that most people questioned, just not to her. She’d never been married, claimed she’d been in love several times, and that once you got your heart stomped on twice by the same man, you weren’t up to having it happen again. And when she gave you the evil look, you knew not to ask questions. So no one did. She never went home with anyone, though many of the guys tried. She just seemed happy to run the bar.

“Looking for some fun tonight, or just killing time?” Sandy asked.

Jolene shrugged, dying to tell Sandy about Walker. But she figured she and Walker needed to come to an understanding before she started blabbing about their relationship.

So she shrugged and grabbed a handful of peanuts. “Keeping my options open, as usual.”

“Have fun, honey.”

Jolene grabbed her beer. “I intend to.”

She swung around and tried to act nonchalant this time, determined not to zero in on Walker right away. But despite her best intentions to remain oblivious to him, her gaze kept drifting in his direction.

He kept his focus on his cards, not on her. In fact, after she’d looked right at him for a full five minutes, she realized he looked up from his cards only to place a bet or respond to something one of the other players said.

He knew she was there, dammit. And he knew where. Yet he ignored her.

Poker face? Maybe. It was important to concentrate when playing poker, and flirting with her across the bar wasn’t a good idea when a game was going on. But he could at least acknowledge her presence. This was exactly like he acted on the ranch during the day.

So she waited until he finished his game, left the table and came to the bar to get another beer. And even at that he headed to the opposite end of the bar.

Son of a bitch. Was he blind and in need of glasses so that he could see her?

Enough was enough. She headed down the bar and tapped him on the shoulder.

“I thought maybe you didn’t see me.”

He turned around, beer in hand, actually looking to see who was around them before he acknowledged her. “I saw you.”

That was it? “I saw you”? “Are you planning on ignoring me tonight? I thought we had a date.”

He scratched the side of his nose. “I don’t recall making a date with you.”

“I told you I was going to be here.”

“And I said I was coming, too. That doesn’t make it a date.”

Unbelievable. She pushed aside the ache of rejection in the pit of her stomach and replaced it with a good healthy dose of anger. She laid her beer on the bar. “You know what, Walker? You’re absolutely right. We had no plans for tonight. Or any night for that matter. Have a good time.”

She walked away, tears blinding her and impeding her progress across the dance floor. She bumped into several people, but she was determined not to stop until she pushed through the front door and out into the parking lot. She dug her keys out of her pocket and opened the truck, slid in and started the engine, tears streaming down her face now.

As she put the truck into gear, she caught sight of Walker coming toward her. She jammed her foot on the gas and burned rubber peeling out of the parking lot, gravel shooting from her back tires as she did.

No way would she let him see how much he’d hurt her in there.

She’d never allow any man to crush her heart.

Though she was afraid it had already happened.

 

 

walker stood at the edge of the parking lot and
watched the taillights on Jolene’s truck disappear down the road.

Asshole. Motherfucking, heartless asshole.
His gut had clenched when he saw the tears well up in her eyes, the way her lips turned down, her bottom lip trembling as she tried so hard not to cry in front of him there in the bar.

He’d hurt her. What kind of a son of a bitch did that to a woman he cared about? He was so damn worried about keeping his job that he didn’t pay attention to how he was treating Jolene. He hadn’t noticed what he was doing . . . or what he was doing to her.

He pulled his hat off and jammed his fingers through his hair, trying to figure out how he was going to fix this. He could climb into his truck and follow her back to the ranch. Talk to her.

But she was angry, and right now talking to her wasn’t a good idea.

He’d give her a day—or two—to cool down. Then they’d talk. Besides, if he disappeared right after Jolene, people would notice. They’d talk. And that’s what he’d been trying to avoid. Better to let it go right now.

He turned and headed back into the bar, the word “coward” screaming in his head.

Yeah, yeah. He already knew that.

jolene hadn’t had any time to dwell on her misery
about Walker, because ranch business took front and center. There was cattle to move and calves to process, and those duties required all of them to get busy from dawn to well after night fell, leaving everyone in a state of exhaustion at the end of each day. It had worked out perfectly, because she’d needed to drive herself from sunup to dark to keep thoughts of Walker from entering her mind.

Fortunately Walker had stayed busy with Mason and she hadn’t seen him, which helped. And the weather had been prominent on her mind, keeping Walker out of it.

Even worse were the ugly clouds that had begun to form yesterday morning. Jolene knew Oklahoma weather. Mason had checked the forecast and it wasn’t good. They were about to enter a rain pattern that was due to last several days, on top of already rain-soaked land and swollen creeks, which meant they needed to get all the cattle moved to the higher pastures. A steady bout of rain would fill all the creeks on the property to overflowing, and the runoff on the hills would be even worse. She wasn’t about to lose any of the cattle to flooding.

The first drops had fallen midday the day before, followed by torrential downpours that hadn’t quit. The already saturated ground wasn’t soaking anything up; runoff had already begun and the ponds filled up fast. They’d ridden out to check the water levels, and decided it was inevitable the creeks were going to overflow. They’d moved as much cattle as they could already.

Now, late afternoon on the second day of nonstop monsoon-like weather, Jolene, Mason and Walker huddled inside the barn and talked strategy.

“Head count looks good. Other than a hundred or so grazing in the outermost portions of the property, we’ve got most of them moved,” Mason said.

Jolene wrinkled her nose. “Problem is we don’t know where the remaining ones are. We’re going to have to split up in groups, take the vehicles and scan the acreage until we find them, make sure they’re safe and not stuck in lower ground where they might drown.”

Mason nodded. “Grizz and I will take the south. You and Walker can head east. I’ve got Gage and Joey tracking north, which leaves Bobby and Ray to the west. Four teams should be able to cover the property and be back before nightfall.”

Jolene was going to object to the pairings. The last thing she wanted was to be anywhere alone with Walker. But she had no other reason to object. She could do her job, even if it was with Walker. Right now her relationship with him was the least of her worries.

“Pack up survival and overnight gear in your trucks just in case the creek rises and any of you get stuck,” she said, mentally plotting the routes they’d take.

Jolene dashed across to the main house, where Lila had already packed up food and drinks for all four crews. Loaded down with waterproof packs, she met everyone back at the barn. Walker had the Jeep backed up to the barn entrance. She tossed her gear in the back, handed off the food and drink packs to the other crews, then climbed into the passenger side of the Jeep and started pulling off her rain gear as Walker pulled away and headed east.

Tension filled the Jeep as soon as they took off. Jolene inhaled and exhaled, forcing her shoulders down. It wasn’t going to help the cattle if all she thought about was her anger at the man sitting next to her. She had to focus, and not on Walker.

The rain came down so hard it was difficult to see more than a foot in front of the vehicle, but Walker maneuvered the wet, muddy road with ease. Jolene held on with both hands as they traversed sunken, mud-and-water-filled holes while circumventing rushing water by climbing up and over hills. She’d done this plenty of times before, the unpaved road washing away whenever it rained, creating an off-road course that was nothing short of a wild roller-coaster ride. Her main concern was her cattle and making sure they survived the storm.

While Walker drove, Jolene watched out of all the windows, looking for stray cattle.

“See anything?” he asked after they’d been driving for about half an hour.

The sound of his voice made her stomach knot up. She shook it off and focused out the window. “Nothing yet.”

“That’s good. They might have made it up to higher ground already.”

“Let’s hope so.” But she knew better. Cattle not with the herd were the stupid ones. They weren’t smart enough to head to higher ground and didn’t know enough to get out of the way of rushing water.

Jolene loved the stupid ones, damn her soft heart. Someone had to look out for them.

They’d just ridden down into a valley when she spotted them, a large herd of brown blotches in the distance.

“There,” she said to Walker, pointing. “At two o’clock.”

“Got it.” He turned the wheel and headed off road and toward the wayward cows. Once again Jolene had to hold on as they flew over rough terrain, mud splattering the windshield as Walker zeroed in on their cattle.

Walker knew what to do and where to go. Herding cattle was the same no matter if you were on horseback or in a vehicle. The cattle were on low ground, and the creek was rising. They were at risk of being caught amid the rising waters with no way of escaping if Jolene and Walker didn’t get them to the higher elevations where they’d be safe.

She threw on her rain gear and rolled down the window, hooping and hollering at the cattle as Walker scared the holy bejeebers out of them with the careening Jeep. At first curious to stare at the approaching vehicle, they ran like hell up the hill—well, as fast as cattle run, anyway—especially when Walker laid on the horn.

“It’s working,” she said, finally rolling up the window and shaking off the dripping water. She grabbed a towel from the backseat and dried her face and hair, keeping her gaze trained on the cattle, who were more than happy to stay as far away from the Jeep as possible.

“Looks like they’re going to be just fine, but we should hang out here to make sure they don’t drift back down.”

She nodded. “Good idea. I counted eight of them here, so that’s a good number of them accounted for.” She got on the walkie-talkie and reported their find to the other teams. Mason said they’d found some of the herd, and Gage had found others. All were headed to higher ground.