Masked Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy) (5 page)

“The ones?” Bill asked, eyeing her warily.

Jacob pivoted back towards her, the look of amusement she’d briefly caught last night outside the café dancing at the edge of his mouth. “The ones?”

“Yeah.” Mary Beth nodded, taking a step in the direction of the confused cowboys.
Don’t drop it
, she thought as she unsheathed the knife. “The ones you wanted castrated this morning. You said you needed to fix a couple of animals. They fit the bill.”

All three cowboys froze. The one who looked like an Indian turned beet-red as the other white man took a panicked step back. Mary Beth could see they weren’t the problem. Not Buck’s knuckleheads, and she felt bad for grouping them with the redhead.

She didn’t feel bad for the redhead. The blood drained from his face as his eyes shot wide with a real fear. “You’re the new vet?” he mumbled, seeming to shrink before Mary Beth’s eyes.

She slid the knife back in the sheath, amazed her shaking hand hadn’t dropped the heavy blade. “Dr. Hofstetter, gentlemen.” She quickly crossed the distance between them, firmly shaking their hands as she glowered at them. “I look forward to your cooperation.”

The Indian almost smiled as the other two quickly scurried back to the barn. “Jacob,
awán
ič’iglaka yo
,” he said over her head as he turned and disappeared behind his cohorts.

“
Níš-eyá tanyán awánič’iglaka yo
, Tommy,” Jacob shouted back.

“Wait, what?” she asked as Jacob led the palomino over to her. She saw that Bill had slung a pair of huge nylon saddlebags over both horses. “What did he say? What did you say? What language is that?” Mary Beth stiffly mounted up, hoping she wouldn’t stab herself in the leg doing so.

“It’s our language,” he said as he led their group away from the barn. “Lakota. Tommy Yellow Robe’s an old buddy of mine. You should castrate him last. Definitely do Paul—the redhead—first. He could use the rest.” She thought she saw the corners of his mouth curve up, a definitive crack in his frozen demeanor. “You’re riding Jezebel there.”

“You gave me a horse named
Jezebel
?” So much for that line in the sand.

The terrain changed and they headed down a steep gully. Bill trailed behind them. If she kept her eyes pointed forward, she could pretend she was alone with the masked cowboy. On a horse named Jezebel. Had he done that on purpose? “Where are we going? And what did Tommy say again?”

She could see Jacob’s shoulders shaking with glee. Not always stone-faced, she thought.

“You’ve got some mouth on you. Do you always threaten to castrate people?”

Mary Beth rolled her eyes at his back. “Only the ones who need it,” she replied. Both men chuckled.

“We’ll be there in a bit. Bill’s convinced me to move to electronic tagging instead of branding,” he called back as they forded a trickle of a stream.

Tagging. Mary Beth felt some tension ebb out of her shoulders. She’d been helping tag cattle for years on her Uncle Hank’s farm. Those summers out on the farm—and away from whatever jerk Mom was dating—had saved her. She shuddered to think of where she’d be if she hadn’t had those months of freedom and safety. “My uncle never had the stomach for branding,” she absent-mindedly said to herself.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. Tagging is good. Like accessorizing cows with earrings.”

Jacob twisted in his saddle, shooting her the oddest look.
Yeah
, she nodded.
Probably not a man who accessorizes much
.

There was a break in the forest before them, and suddenly Jacob’s paint shot forward.

“Hey!” she called out, but Bill clucked behind her.

“He’s just going to let the hands know we’re here,” he cautioned. “You think you can handle tagging and vaccinating?”

“Been doing it for years, Bill. I told you that on the phone,” she reminded him, a bit irritated that he would question her skills within earshot of the cowboys.

“Oh, that’s right.”

The horses walked into a meadow tall with prairie grass. Ringed with ancient pine forests and a small pond in the center, the meadow probably looked as it had for hundreds of years.

Beautiful
. Mary Beth tried to take it all in without looking like a tourist.
Just beautiful
.

Jacob came racing back towards them, expertly pulling up just before his horse crashed into Jezebel. When the dust settled, he was sitting there almost grinning at her, his horse perfectly parallel to hers.

“Jesus, Jacob!” she hissed even as the girly part of her brain realized he was showing off.

“Come on,” he said with his eyebrow arched in challenge. “We’ve got 400 head to do today.”

Almost three times the number she’d done at home with Uncle Hank. For a moment, she wasn’t sure if she could handle knucklehead cowboys, Buck McGillis, a cowboy in a mask
and
that many cattle, plus random things like ferrets and albinos.

But then she saw the four cowboys standing around waiting for her and Bill to get started. If 400 head was what it took to prove herself, then she’d do 400 head. In one day. And she’d do it with a smile.

Of course, smiling was easier said than done when a girl had cows stepping on her, cows pooping on her, cows head-butting her. And with the cowboys wrangling the next cow before she’d had the chance to catch her breath? The morning passed in an unending swirl of mooing, fur and hooves.

What few moments she did get were filled with an odd silence. Usually, ranchers joked and talked—anything to pass the day a little faster. Not this lot. Aside from the occasional heads-up or shout when a cow broke loose, they worked in near silence. It was such a foreign thing that Mary Beth found herself wondering how much of it was her fault. She’d promised to castrate at least three of those present. She had to stop doing that. Or, at the very least, come up with a better variety of defenses.

Every time she looked up, she saw Jacob. She only caught him watching her a few times—maybe three, total. Half the time, his mask was the only part of his face she could see. But even then, something about the way he moved…it was like every part of his body was keyed onto her movements. No matter where he was, she
felt
his presence.

Or maybe that was just the lingering sensation of his hands on her thighs. That was always possible too.

Uncharted territory
. That’s what Robin had said, and Mary Beth could see what she meant. The hired hands didn’t show many signs of familiarity. In fact, the only thing she’d heard to signal that he even talked with other humans was the conversation he’d had in Lakota with Tommy. Otherwise? It was as if he existed on a separate plane from the rest of the mere mortals. It wasn’t that no one dared to challenge him, although she doubted anyone would. It was that no one dared even
look
to him.

At one point, a calf broke loose from the redhead cowboy named Paul. She lunged at it and wrestled it to the ground. The next thing she knew, Jacob was next to her, holding onto the calf.

“Can you handle this?” he asked. His voice was quiet, so Mary Beth doubted anyone else could hear him.

Still, she bristled. She was not about to stand for having her abilities questioned, no matter how intimidating Jacob could be. “I’ve got him—or did you miss the part where I caught him all by my little ol’ self?”

He stared at her—actually stared—for a three-count, and in that moment of eye contact, Mary Beth saw the mask slip. Not the physical leather mask, but the front that made him so unknowable. He gave her a look that could have been amused or could have been something else—something
interested
.

Heat flared between them. This
was
interest—it had to be. Hell, yes, she was interested.

But then Paul was apologizing for losing the calf and Bill asked Mary Beth to look at something and the calf kicked. The moment was gone.

She couldn’t be sure it’d been there at all.

Jacob let his mind wander as his paint, Mick, followed the familiar route down to the town.

What on earth was he going to do about Dr. Mary Beth Hofstetter?

He’d known from the moment he laid eyes on her she was trouble, and it had taken all of five minutes to prove that suspicion right.

Like he didn’t have enough with Buck McGillis to worry about. Had to go add Dr. Mary Beth Hofstetter to the mix.

Didn’t help that she was beautiful. It would have been so much easier if she’d been the size of an ox and twice as ugly.

But no. Her light-brown hair falling in natural waves around her perfectly curved shoulders, her gray-blue eyes flashing as that mouth of hers—oh, Lord, that mouth the color of barely ripe strawberries—cut a swath of destruction through every man who even looked at her funny.

And to top it all off, she knew what she was doing. Lying awake in bed last night, long after Kip’s even breathing gently filled their tiny, ancient trailer, he’d hoped that maybe she wouldn’t be able to cut it and would bail after a week. Hell, most people would have bailed after Buck threatened them.

Not her. She’d handled those cows like she’d been doing it her whole life, because she probably had. She may be delicate looking, her long fingers awkwardly wrapped around his knife handle, but she was plenty strong. When that calf had broken loose from Paul, she’d grabbed it before Tommy could even move and wrestled it to the ground, bare handed, better than most of the kids did at the rodeos.

He had to give her credit. Her little introduction to Paul had been quite effective. No one had probably ever threatened to castrate him before.

All in all, she was hell on horseback.

Mick paused just outside the first house, and Jacob stripped his shirt off and shoved it into the far saddlebag. Sue, Kip’s retired Mustang, shifted nervously as she waited to finish the trip down and get her rider.

“Calm down, Sue,” he scolded as he picked up Mick’s reins. “We’ll get her soon enough.”

Finally, after a long breath, he gently squeezed Mick’s side. “Showtime,” he muttered to himself, unable to stop from wondering if she’d be there or not. She wouldn’t have had a lot of time, he thought. Maybe she won’t make it.

He rounded the corner, trying to pinpoint her at the café, but at this distance it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t until he was past the first house that his depth perception kicked in and he could gauge where the café was. After a few moments, everything came into sharp focus and he saw her.

Her hair, still wet from the shower she must have raced to get in, hung in dark damp waves, pulling in the fading light until she practically glowed. As he got closer though, he couldn’t help but notice her face. Her lips were glistening in the evening sun.

She’d put on lipstick.

Jacob sat up a bit straighter in the saddle as Fran caught his eye and shook her head in warning.

Good old Fran. Ugly as a tumbleweed and twice as prickly. Why couldn’t Bill have hired someone like that—someone who he didn’t have to feel like he had to protect, someone who didn’t remind him of what he’d lost so many years ago— someone instead of Dr. Mary Beth Hofstetter?

Tonight, he only undid the top button. He could tell by the way Robin’s eyes were shooting between him and Mary Beth that she’d told the new vet all about the show, and he wasn’t about to set that tongue wagging again.

Besides, it had been idiotic to undo the second one yesterday, even if it had been worth it to see every single jaw drop.

She was
tough
. She met his gaze as he undid his pants, her eyes never dipping below his face.

Oh, hell
, he thought, a moment of unaccustomed panic sweeping through him,
is she staring at the mask
?

He almost undid the second button just to make her look away.

Thankfully, as he put his hat back on, she finally shifted those eyes that weren’t quite grey and weren’t quite blue back to Robin, breaking his panic. He forced himself to take a deep breath.

“He been by?” he asked as the sexual tension melted from the content women. This was the only time he’d ever seen Fran without a frown, even if it did feel like he was stripping for grandmothers. But the café kept Ronny clean and Robin out of trouble. He’d do anything for the Benge family, after all those years they’d taken pains to make him part of their family. Including show off for little old ladies.

And now, Dr. Mary Beth Hofstetter.

“He drove by about twenty minutes ago,” Robin replied, visibly relieved as her gaze danced down to his pants and back up.

Ignoring the unspoken button question, Jacob somberly nodded to Mary Beth. “He must have found out she threatened to castrate Paul, Benny and Tommy today and decided not to push his luck.”

“Jeez, Jacob, do you have to spread it around?” Jacob had to bite his inner lip to keep from laughing at Mary Beth’s self-induced fluster. Then he noticed the warm blush spreading across her face, giving her a heated glow that melted his amusement into something deeper, and he remembered that he’d actually said
delicate
and
beautiful
out loud. In front of her.

In a split second, he resolved to keep his mouth shut from here on out. Shouldn’t be too hard. She was just a white woman.