Roz Denny Fox (9 page)

Jake recognized the steel in his mother’s voice. It was a tone he’d heard her use for thirty-two years when she wanted things done her way. That same thirty-two years of experience told Jake when to back off and let her think she’d won.

“Sure ’nuff, Mom.” He pulled away to help himself to more stew. “I’ll be riding out at dawn, checking the draws between here and Ruby for strays. Thought I’d stop by and check on old Ted Mortimer. He’s pretty much alone since he retired from ranching. I’ll try and make it home in time for supper. This eating warmed-up food every night is getting old.”

The tension he’d felt through Nell’s fingertips a minute earlier, dissipated, as he’d known it would. A sixth sense made him hold his tongue with regard to the food he’d given Hayley Ryan. The same instinct advised him to skip sharing his idea of taking her a few of his mother’s laying hens. Jake quietly finished his meal while Eden said her goodbyes. Shortly thereafter, he tuned in to a conversation his mother had begun about finding a fantastic pottery-supply store in Tucson.

“I’m beat,” he admitted around a giant yawn. “I’d like to see what you bought, but can you show me later?”

Nell chuckled. “Get off to bed with you. I don’t have to be told twice that I’m boring.”

Because he loved her very much and wouldn’t hurt her for the world, Jacob leaned over and kissed her cheek soundly. “Never boring. I’m proud of you. It’s why I’ll be hunting until I find a woman like you. And why I lose patience with Dillon and Eden heckling me about the likes of Ginalyn Westin.”

Nell exchanged bemused looks with her husband as their youngest son broke off abruptly and left the room.

“I told you to quit worrying about Jake and that Ryan woman,” Wade growled. “Boy’s got a good head on his shoulders. He’s a chip off the old block.”

T
HE SUN HADN’T YET RISEN
above the mountain peaks when Jacob rode into Hayley’s camp, a crate filled with squawking chickens balanced precariously across the broad rump of his mount. Instead of his bay gelding, Jake had chosen Paprika, a placid roan mare with a better disposition for serving as a pack animal. Her gait, however, wasn’t nearly as smooth as Mojave’s. Already Jake knew he’d pay dearly by nightfall. This trip had been a foolish decision.

“Foolish” was putting it mildly, Jake calculated as he reached the clearing and saw Hayley Ryan emerging from the spring, a flash of white limbs in the pale gray dawn. Anger at Hayley’s carelessness crashed through him.

“Are you insane?” he bellowed, shattering the serenity of the dawn. Birds flapped excitedly from the trees and a family of rabbits bounded toward previously unseen burrows.

Hayley, who’d wrapped herself in a short cotton robe and now vigorously toweled the ends of her long hair, froze in her tracks. Only the wild rolling of her eyes spoke of her true panic. Then she dived behind a tree trunk and came up holding a rifle, the gleaming barrel pointed at Jake’s chest.

For a moment, as they stared at each other through the hazy mist rising off the spring, Jacob saw his mistake in judging this woman vulnerable.

“Take it easy.” He made his voice quiet and even. “It’s Jake. I brought those laying hens we talked about last night.”

With shaking hands and a disgusted look, Hayley let the gun barrel drop. Her heart still raced madly from the fright. Bending, she retrieved the towel that had fallen from her hair in her haste to protect herself. “Talk about insane,” she said at last in barely disguised fury. “What brand of idiot sneaks up on a naked woman?”

“I wasn’t sneaking! I rode straight in off the trail.”

“On a strange horse and without your dog,” Hayley said, standing the rifle against a tree while she swiftly fashioned a turban around her wet head.

Gritting his teeth, Jake swung down from the saddle. “You’re dead right. I could’ve been anyone. A desperate man fleeing the border patrol. A deranged war vet wandering these hills trying to live off the land. Or even a no-account drifter riding from ranch to ranch looking for work. We’ve covered the possibilities before. Thank you for making my point. It’s bad enough that you’re bunking out here alone. It’s pure stupid to be hopping around naked.”

“I was not hopping. Well, maybe when I first got out. When you’re wet, the air feels cold.” She stopped to collect a shell-shaped dish that contained a bar of soap, then stalked over and stoked a bed of coals. “I suppose you’d prefer I slink out in the dead of night to bathe and be eaten by the wild animals you said come here to drink.”

Jake untied the ropes holding the cache of chickens to the saddle. He caught the crate seconds before it crashed to the ground. “In my opinion, you shouldn’t be bathing at all.”

At that, Hayley faced him and arched an amused brow.

He felt a suffusion of heat streak up his neck and into his cheeks. “I mean, not out here in front of God and everyone. Can’t you wash up in the trailer?”

“I plan to wash my clothes out here, too. And dry them on that rope I strung between these two trees. Would
you
settle for spit baths if you had this lovely waterfall within reach?”

Still scowling, Jake unwound a roll of wire mesh, took a staple gun out of his saddlebag, and set about stringing the mesh into a reasonable pen for the chickens.

“Well, would you?” Hayley demanded, when the silence stretched out.

“I hardly think it’s the same. Even the orneriest scalawag would hesitate before tangling with me. You, on the other hand, are an open invitation.” He gestured at the trailer. “Don’t let me keep you from going inside to dress.”

Hayley, who rarely got her dander up enough to raise her voice, shouted, “Are you accusing me of trying to be provocative?”

“Stop putting words in my mouth. I never said that. But when a man happens on another man skinny-dipping in a wilderness stream, it’s no big deal. Let him stumble across a woman in the same situation and…well, there’s a lotta guys who’d take advantage.”

The fight went out of Hayley. He was right of course. If she’d been Ben’s grandson and not his granddaughter, Joe Ryan would still be peddling mining supplies in the back of beyond. And she’d be unmarried, still living in Tombstone. But then, she wouldn’t be looking forward to having a child. A baby of her own.

Holding in thoughts and emotions she couldn’t share with anyone, Hayley took a deep breath and gathered her robe tightly under her chin. Then she turned and stomped into the trailer.

Jake had watched the various expressions that crossed her face, including reluctant resignation. He disliked being the one to open her eyes to the harsh realities attached to her present venture. But better him than some guy who thought women had only one role in life—to serve men’s baser needs. While most cowboys held women in high regard, he’d met some who didn’t. There were men who’d take advantage of rural women who had no sophistication. He didn’t know Hayley Ryan well enough to place her in that category. Yet she didn’t strike him as particularly worldly.

He released the chickens into the makeshift pen and then dawdled, breaking apart the crate and stacking it carefully near the fire to be used as kindling. The longer it took for Hayley to reappear, the more Jake considered mounting up and leaving her to sulk. After all, he faced a hard day’s ride. Why stick around? He’d done his duty, and had even delivered a lecture that would’ve made his mother proud. What Hayley chose to do with the information wasn’t his problem.

Nevertheless, Jake was glad that the door to her trailer popped open and she stepped out before he could sling a leg over the roan’s broad back.

Clean shiny hair curled over delicate shoulders covered in a khaki blouse. She’d tied the blouse at the waist of denims, worn white in spots from frequent washing.

Jake’s breath whooshed out as if he’d been sucker-punched. In a way, maybe he had. His brain backpedaled furiously. It was difficult to know what transformation he’d expected to see. Certainly not this look of innocence, this utter lack of guile. Or the engaging sunny smile she flashed him.

“I’m glad you didn’t ride off before I could thank you for bringing me the hens. I started thinking you must consider me the most ungrateful wretch who ever lived.”

“Not at all. We got off on the wrong foot today. My fault,” Jake mumbled. “For riding in unannounced. For calling on you so early.”

A self-conscious laugh fell from her lips. “That’s okay. Much later, and I’d have been out digging.” She tugged a few loose bills and some change from her pocket. “How much do I owe you for the chickens? I’ll have to trust you to set a fair price. So far, the only fowl I’ve ever bought came wrapped in plastic.”

Jake grinned at that. “Well, now.” He stroked his chin in an exaggerated manner. “I could pad the bill and try to make my day’s wages. Then I could skip hunting strays and goof off all day.”

Hayley played along. “You could. But I recall you telling me your family owned the ranch. So wouldn’t that hurt your profits, too?”

“Smart lady. In any event, I’d be wise to charge you enough to keep me solvent while I hunt for a new job. I’ve got a feeling blood won’t count for much when my mom discovers I swiped her private stock.”

Hayley’s smile disappeared. “You’re selling me stolen chickens?”

“Nope. I’m giving them to you. I do have some scruples.”

She looked aghast. “And what do I say if anyone else from your ranch wanders past and happens to recognize these birds?”

Jake laughed. He gathered Paprika’s reins in his left hand and swung up into the saddle. Gazing down at Hayley’s puckered brow, he knew he should assure her of his mom’s generosity. He should make her understand that Nell Cooper would give a neighbor her last dime if need be. But Jacob felt a sudden unexplained need to dig a deep boundary between his home, his family and this woman. He sobered and dropped all pretense of joking. “Give them hens a few days to see if they lay eggs for you. If they do, I’ll stop by and collect ten bucks for the lot. I’ll even write you up a bill of sale.”

“All right.” Hayley, who understood that something in their give-and-take had shifted, folded her money and tucked it back in her pocket. “Goodbye until then,” she said.

Jake, who’d hardened his resolve, who’d argued internally that he couldn’t keep riding out of his way to check up on this woman, gave a curt nod. He jerked the mare’s reins sharply to the right. The surprised horse wheeled and bolted up the trail. It was all Jacob could do not to turn back and offer a friendly wave, but he kept his shoulders square to the saddle and let the momentum carry him out of sight.

Hayley lifted a hand. Once she realized he wasn’t going to return her wave, she curled all four fingers into her palm. She didn’t try to gauge how long she stood there smarting at his slight. Longer than she should have, she acknowledged with a grimace. Who was Jacob Cooper to make her feel like an insignificant bug? He was nobody, that was who.

The day she’d filed for divorce from Joe, she’d seen pity on the face of the clerk as she read what Hayley had written:
for reasons of abandonment.
Hayley had promised on the spot that no man would ever make her feel pitiable again. Certainly not an arrogant cowboy. For all she knew, he might be feeding her a line about his relationship to the owner of the Triple C. He could be any old saddle bum.

She would have collected her gear and stomped off into the hills at that moment, if not for the fact that her stomach decided to act finicky again. Very likely because she hadn’t eaten breakfast. Hayley chose to place the blame on Cooper’s effrontery. “I’ll give him back his chickens.” She fumed aloud as, with jerky movements and roiling insides, she filled a pot of water to heat for tea. After hurrying into the bushes to empty her stomach twice, Hayley dug out the booklet Dr. Gerrard’s nurse had given her, outlining what she could expect over the ensuing months of pregnancy. Without the book, she’d probably have panicked over the sudden bout of weakness and flulike symptoms.

Fortunately she’d read the booklet cover to cover before heading into the wilds. Now she had to hope one of the book’s recipes—a tincture of horehound, peppermint, ginger and fennel, which she’d bought at a healthfood store—would have the promised calming effect on a stomach gone amuck.

The booklet also indicated that staying calm tended to ease many problems associated with pregnancy. Her seeming inability to do so was something else she laid at Jacob Cooper’s door. “Insufferable man,” she grumbled, sitting down to drink the concoction she’d brewed. As she glared at his morning gift, one of the hens spread her wings and flapped them frantically, then squawked and made gross noises as she burrowed into a pile of dead leaves. When she stood, a pristine white egg lay atop the heap.

Grinning like a fool, Hayley ran to the pen and plucked up the egg. “So, girl,” she said, adding a soothing layer to her voice to disarm the bird. “It’s high time your new mistress learns to think before she shoots off her mouth. After all, the man went to considerable trouble to cart you ladies here. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hasty about throwing you all back in his face.”

She promptly soft-boiled the egg, layered it between two halves of a toasted biscuit and ate every morsel. By the time she’d polished off the meal, her nausea had disappeared. With an improved disposition, Hayley gathered her mining tools and set off to coax the rocky hillside into giving up its secrets.

I
T WAS STRAIGHT UP NOON
when Jake reached the Mortimer ranch that abutted the fenced perimeter of the old ghost town of Ruby. He’d turned up another hundred head of Triple C stock. They looked fat, sassy and content, so he jotted their approximate location in his log; he’d let the wranglers flush them out during roundup.

Ruby was a once-prosperous mining town that had been abandoned for nearly three decades. Its location discouraged all but the most avid ghost-town enthusiasts. Along with other local boys, Jake and Dillon had loved exploring the old buildings, which were still in surprisingly good condition. The mine, originally named Montana Camp, had at one time yielded lead, silver, gold, zinc and copper. Somehow, shortly after Arizona received its state-hood, the town’s name had changed. According to the story Jake had heard, the owner of the general store and post office had named it after his wife. Currently the town was privately owned. Jake knew the owners hoped to restore Ruby and open it to tourists. But area residents liked the tranquillity its anonymity afforded them. Locals, and Jake included himself, would be happy to see Ruby maintain its status quo.

Ted Mortimer’s house overlooked the remains of Ruby. He’d quit ranching after his wife died, but couldn’t bring himself to leave the old homestead.

It was time for lunch, and Jake always preferred sharing a meal to eating alone. Besides, catching Ted up on area events would take Jake’s mind off Hayley Ryan. He’d meant to forget her after he left her camp. So far it hadn’t happened. Visions of her intruded on him all too frequently. He found his mind wandering in her direction when he should have been paying attention to business.

“Yo, the house,” Jake called, sliding out of the saddle.

A man appeared from behind a clapboard house. “Well, bless my bones, Jacob. Welcome.” He grasped Jake’s right hand and squeezed it hard. “Hope you have time to sit a spell. It’s been a while since anybody stopped by.”

“Isn’t Pima College still running field trips to Ruby?”

“Yeah, but them professors and kids have got their own agenda. Between you and me, I think they pity me.”

“Pity you? Why?” Jake loosened Paprika’s cinch, dropped the saddle on the porch and led the mare to a metal tub brimming with water. Shading his eyes, he gazed over the rolling hills, taking in a hawk soaring against the cloudless sky.

“I get the feeling all those folks from town believe I’m an outcast forced to reside next to a ghost town as punishment.”