Summer at Mustang Ridge (14 page)

“Thanks.” She glanced over as Shelby reined around to fall in beside her, and did a sudden double take. “Is that Loco?” She gave a low whistle. “Wow, girl, you rank.”

“Why, is he the barn favorite?” She had guessed something of the sort based on his buttery soft bridle and memory foam saddle pad.

Dana gave her a funny look. “No, he’s Foster’s.”

Shelby’s stomach gave a shimmy. “One of his projects, you mean.”

The other woman shook her head. “Nope. His own personal horse.”

“But he has others. Like, a string.”

“Just one. I once heard him say that Loco and his saddle were the only two things he brought with him when he came here, the only two things that mattered.” She smiled, not unkindly. “I take it you didn’t know.”

“He told me . . .” Shelby cleared her throat. “Um, no. He didn’t mention it.”

In fact, he’d let her believe Loco was one of Krista’s rescues. Her pulse stepped it up a notch at the realization that she was riding his horse, using his equipment. And he’d handed it all over before they got involved. But why?

Head spinning, she patted the glossy bay’s neck and fought to steady her voice, keep it light. “You’ve been holding out on me, huh, Loco? I’m guessing you’ve got a few stories to tell.”

“I’d say. He was the RRC’s horse of the year three years running.” At Shelby’s blank look, Dana elaborated, “It’s a circuit of ranch rodeos—they’re rougher and more hard core than the professional rodeos, strictly for working cowboys.” She looked around and lowered her voice, though they were very alone. “Foster doesn’t know that a few of us recognized him. We figured if he doesn’t want to make a big deal of it, then we won’t, either. Back in the day, though, he and Loco were the best of the best.”

I’m not a gossip. I’m not a gossip
. “How long ago was the day?”

“Eight, maybe ten years ago?”

Before he had come to Mustang Ridge, then. Shelby patted Loco’s neck again.
I wish you could talk
. Did it count as gossiping to ask a cowboy’s horse about him?

Dana had followed the gesture. “So . . . what’s he like to ride?”

“Very kind and smooth. Soft-mouthed, too.”

Dana’s smile went a little wicked. “We’re talking about the horse, right?”

“Yes,” she said too quickly. “Absolutely. Foster . . . he’s just helping me out with my daughter.” And giving her his personal, prized horse to ride, pretending she was doing him a favor. Her body buzzed with pleasant tingles, even as she reminded herself not to take any of this too seriously. For all she knew, it was the Wyoming equivalent of him having the waiter bring her one of whatever she was drinking.

“Your daughter’s the one who’s been sitting with Lucky?”

“That’s my Lizzie.”

“Cute kid.” Dana shot her a sidelong look. “Seems to me, a man who’s good with animals has daddy potential. Always wondered why Foster didn’t have a family.”

“It’s not like that.” And even if it was maybe just a little “like that,” she didn’t want to talk about it, not with Dana, not with anyone. He was too much of a presence. Krista relied on him, Gran baked him chocolate chip cookies with extra nuts even though she didn’t think nuts belonged in cookies, and Stace worshipped him as a big-brother-slash-mentor and started every other sentence with “Foster says.” And then there were the guests. Some of the men tried to outcowboy him, while others tried to be him, and more than half of the women Shelby had seen so far, from eight to eighty, batted their eyelashes and sighed after him when he passed. They all wanted his attention, his approval, and she didn’t want to be part of the herd. It was like seeing a picture of Clive Owen in a coworker’s cube and being annoyed because Clive was her celebrity crush and she didn’t want to share, only so much worse, because Foster was real. More, she didn’t want to upset the balance that worked so well at Mustang Ridge.

Then again, Krista knew he’d lent her Loco, and she hadn’t said anything. Why? Did she approve? Disapprove? Or was Dana wrong that it was so unusual for him to lend out his horse?

As they reined up in front of the barn, the other woman shot her a dubious look. “Should I have kept my mouth shut? I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“You didn’t. I’m not.” Shelby wasn’t sure what she was, but it wasn’t uncomfortable. “At least now I know that Loco’s an old pro.”

“You couldn’t be in better hands, horse or man.”

There it was again, that sense of familiarity. And a spurt of jealousy that made Shelby want to bare her teeth at the other woman. Which wasn’t cool, considering that she and Foster were just having fun.

“Well, it was nice chatting with you,” Shelby said as she swung off Loco. “I hope Justice—”
FWEEEEET! FWEEEEET!
The shrill whistle cut her off and sent her stomach plunging. “
Lizzie!
”

“I’ll take care of Loco.” Dana held out a hand. “Go!”

Shelby didn’t argue. She tossed the reins and bolted for the barn.

Lizzie stood at the back, just outside Sassy’s stall, waving her arms in a
come on, come on, come on
gesture. Shelby flew to her side, heart pounding. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

But the moment she saw her daughter’s bright, happy face and looked over the web gate, she saw that it wasn’t something wrong, so much as something very right.

Lucky was standing on his own, with his head under Sassy’s belly and his little broom-wisp tail flipping back and forth as he nursed.

“Oh!” Shelby breathed. “Look at him!”

He only took a few more gulps before losing interest, but even then he stayed on his feet, wandering around and poking at the corner feeder and shaking his head now and then as if to say, “Okay, it took a few extra days, but I’m ready to go now.”

As her adrenaline started to drain, Shelby hugged Lizzie closer. “Oh, sweetheart, you just about gave me a heart attack.” She didn’t care, though. Not when it looked like Lucky was going to be lucky after all. And not when her daughter had called her to come and see.

I
f
Shelby hadn’t been involved in packing for the roundup, she never would’ve believed that so much of Mustang Ridge could go mobile, and look good doing it.

Bright and early Saturday morning, the twenty-eight riders—eight from the ranch and the twenty invited guests—were mounted and waiting in the parking area. The chuck truck was parked off to the side; the converted military transport was stuffed full with food for man and beast, along with bedding, cookware, camping gear, first aid, and entertainment, in a stripped-down version of the usual dude experience. They’d be camping in boo-yah luxury compared to how it would’ve been back in the day, when everything that couldn’t be packed on a cowboy’s saddle would’ve been jammed into the mule-drawn chuck wagon, or left behind. Still, Shelby was feeling very pioneerish as she settled into the crawler, riding shotgun beside Gran, with Lizzie strapped into a rumble seat behind them.

They didn’t have airbags, AC, or, she suspected, any real suspension. Yep, pioneering in the twenty-first century.

Gran glanced back. “You two comfortable back there?”

Lizzie nodded. Herman, who had been moved to a tall, insulated Tupperware container with holes punched in the lid, was Bungee’d into the rumble seat next to her, wearing his red-and-white-checkered towel at a rakish angle.

“They look good to go,” Shelby said, shooting Lizzie a “roll with it” wink and getting back a small smile that warmed the heck out of her heart.

It wasn’t the big breakthrough she’d been hoping for, the one all the experts had warned her not to expect, where Lizzie would wake up one morning singing the Toastee Krunch jingle, but she didn’t have to wait long for the nods or head shakes now, and the iPad’s volume had stayed on. Lizzie had tucked the whistle back away, but Shelby wasn’t letting that bother her. Not when she was getting the occasional look, wink, or smile, those small interactions that had been missing between them for so long.

Gran leaned out the truck’s giant window side and called, “What do you say, boss?”

Krista, sitting astride a lean, mottled gray gelding with one blue eye and one brown, shook her head. “No boss here. I’m just the temp.”

Foster hadn’t made it back yet, but nobody seemed to be worried. Krista said that the gather could drag on if the weather wasn’t right, or he might stay an extra day or two if there were some particularly promising horses in the group. Shelby kept reminding herself that he hadn’t promised to call, didn’t have her number, and might not even know where his phone was. So there was no point in feeling as if he’d been gone for a really long time. Still, she’d kept an eye out for his truck, hoping he would make it back for the roundup. She wanted to tell him about Lizzie and the whistle, wanted to tell him how much Lucky had improved, wanted to ask more about Loco’s history, wanted to know more about
him
.

He’d told her to think about him, and she was sure doing that.

She only hoped he had done the same.

“He’ll be along,” Gran said, and Shelby thought it was aimed at her.

Krista stood in her stirrups, took off her hat and waved it in a wide, sweeping motion. “Okay, gang, listen up! Foster wouldn’t want us to waste such a gorgeous day waiting on him, so I declare this Fourth of July roundup officially on! We ride out in five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . .”

Everybody yelled, “One!” And, laughing, they headed out of the parking area, following Krista’s lead through the gate and onto the dirt road leading up the ridgeline. The crowd bottlenecked at the opening, so some of the horses stood for a minute, excited but obedient as they waited their turns. Then they, too, picked up a slow trot and started off on the journey.

“Not exactly the Snowy River cavalry charge I was expecting,” Shelby said drily.

“Walk the first mile out and the last one back,” Gran said piously. “Unless, of course, you’re driving.” She patted the cracked dashboard.

Shelby gave the aged dials a dubious look, but didn’t argue. She figured that, worst case, they would break down and the riders would circle back around to find them. In the meantime, they certainly wouldn’t starve, as they were the ones with all the food. Besides, it was too beautiful a day to worry, and with Lucky out of the woods and the kitchen gone mobile, it felt like they were ditching school, skipping work, and heading out on an adventure.

She was going to roll with it.

So as the horses and riders streamed up the road, turning dust-hazed and indistinct, she fished in her foot-well for the soft-sided cooler she’d loaded with leftovers. “Catch,” she said, and tossed Lizzie a biscuit, then offered Gran the bag. “Want one?”

“Don’t mind if I do. There’s no better road food.”

Despite brief nostalgia for McMuffins and Starbucks chai, Shelby held up her biscuit. “To Herman!”

“To Herman!”

They did a three-way biscuit clink and laughed as Gran hit the gas and sent them rumbling off in a different direction from the one the riders had taken. They would go around the hill and strike out cross-country, shortcutting the day’s ride so there would be plenty of time to rustle up dinner before the riders reached camp.

•   •   •

It took six hours of bumpy driving to reach the first campsite, and by the time Shelby staggered down from the high cab, she felt like her ovaries had been scrambled. She perked up, though, as she filled her lungs with clean, thin air and took a look around at a colorful three-sixty landscape that looked like it’d been painted on a backdrop, like some artist’s rendition of the Wild West.

“Well, this doesn’t stink.” Which was the understatement of the week, because it was flipping gorgeous.

The shallow, grassy bowl had a stream running through its middle that separated the stock pens from the campsite, while a double line of trees on the banks provided a windbreak against the gentle breeze. The stock side was enclosed by slipboard fencing that could be easily switched around to juggle horses and cattle, as needed. Some of the sections were down, giving it a weathered feel that was picked up by the open fire pits on the other side of the stream, with all of it surrounded by a panorama of purple-veined, snowcapped mountains rising to the cloud-scudded blue sky.

Flowers dotted the grassland with splashes of purple and white, and a bird trilled in the middle distance. The noise startled Shelby, as if her city senses were still trying to say, “This is a movie or something—it can’t possibly be real.” But the tick of the chuck truck’s hot engine block was very real, as was the sight of Lizzie reaching for a butterfly, then watching as it fluttered up and away.

“I’ve got a job for you,” Shelby called. When Lizzie looked over, she nodded down the hill. “Splash on over there and put up as many of those boards as you can, please. I bet Krista and the others would love to get here and find the fencing already tightened up. Oh, and while you’re down there, grab some sticks and deadwood. Carefully! Don’t pull anything down on top of you. We’ll use it for the fire.” She glanced at Gran and said in an undertone, “It’s safe for her to run around, right?”

“Compared to playing in traffic or walking through Central Park at night? Definitely.”

“Not helping. And I’ve bet you’ve never set foot in Central Park.”

“No, but I watch
Law and Order.
All three of them.”

“’Nuff said.” Raising her voice as Lizzie started down the hill, Shelby called, “Keep your eyes peeled, your ears open, and your whistle with you. If you see something you don’t like, freeze and call one of us.”

“Don’t worry.” Gran patted her hand. “I’ve got a rifle and a sawed-off in the truck.”

“Oh, that makes me feel loads better.” Oddly enough, though, it did make her feel better, as did seeing Lizzie looking down at the ground, watching for snakes.

“She’s got good instincts,” Gran said, then glanced at Shelby. “And so do you.”

“When it comes to predators?”

“When it comes to lots of things.” She faced the chuck truck and put her hands on her hips. “Okay, first things first. Let’s get the fires going and the beans on the boil. They’ll take the longest, and if there’s not much better than a perfectly slow-cooked bean, there’s not much worse than a badly done one.” She wrinkled her nose. “Except maybe the aftermath of a bad batch.”

“Oh-kay. Fire and good beans. Let’s get on it!”

After a word from Shelby, Krista had talked to Gran about taking it easier and letting other people do the heavy lifting. Which might’ve been past due, but meant that Shelby got to lug the heavy Dutch ovens from the truck to the fire pits. Gran followed her, tsking, though Shelby couldn’t tell if she was worried about the ovens or her assistant cook. Probably the ovens, because without them, there wouldn’t be any biscuits. And what was a roundup without biscuits?

By the time the sun kissed the mountains and the sky got a little purple around the edges, the beans were well on their way—not good yet, but not bad, either—and she and Gran were pulling biscuits out of the ovens. They weren’t as uniform as the ones that came out of the kitchen on a daily basis, but when Shelby bit in . . . “Mmmm. These are . . . what are they? Something’s different.”

“It’s the ovens. They give it a special roundup flavor.”

“They sure do.” It was tempting, but Shelby held off on a second, hearing the carbs do a
ka-ching, ka-ching
in the back of her head. Forget the freshman fifteen, she’d put on the sous chef sixty if she didn’t watch herself.

“Let’s get the next batch going, and get the jacket potatoes wrapped up and buried in the coals. Then we should have time to take a breath, as the riders won’t be here for a—”

Fweeet!

Shelby whipped around at the whistle, and found Lizzie down by the stream. There wasn’t a bear or mountain lion in sight, but she pointed off into the distance, where ant-specks were just visible against the green, ribboning in their direction. “Correction,” Shelby said with a laugh, “the riders are already here.”

“So they are.”

Things whipped into high gear then, and they dragooned Lizzie into wrapping the potatoes while Gran seasoned the beans and Shelby turned the steaks in their marinade.

Krista led the way into camp twenty or so minutes later, with a group of very happy riders in tow. Ty, Stace, and the other wranglers brought up the rear. Relaxed chatter filled the campsite as the guests broke off into groups, some to see to the horses, others to set up camp using the tents and the rest of the equipment filling the back of the chuck truck. After passing off her horse to Stace, Krista crossed the stream and came up to the fire pits.

“Any problems on the ride?” Gran asked.

“Zero, zip, zilch, nada.” Krista snagged a cooling biscuit and bit in. “Mmmm. Roundup Hermans rock.”

“There’s an ad campaign in there somewhere,” Shelby said. “Maybe.” She hadn’t forgotten her plan to craft a slogan—and maybe even a campaign—for Mustang Ridge, to thank Krista and Gran for helping her out. She just hadn’t connected with exactly the right idea yet.

It would come, though.

Gran poked a couple of the potatoes, turning them in the coals. “Did you see any cows?”

“A few pockets here and there. We moo-ved them around a little—get it, moo-ved?” Krista paused, but only got eye rolls, and shrugged good-naturedly. “Anyway, we gave the dudes a refresher on working cattle, bunched up a dozen or so of them—cows, I mean, not guests—in a good-looking valley, and left them there, figuring we’d pick them up on the way back. No reason to run the flesh off them.” She paused, then nudged Shelby and pointed downhill. “That’s got to feel good.”

Lizzie was headed from the corral to a growing pile of tack with bridles draped over her shoulder, a saddle cradled in her arms, and a Tigger bounce in her step. She still wouldn’t handle the horses, but she had apparently appointed herself the head tack schlepper.

“So, ranch therapy is working?” Krista asked.

“Seems that way.”

“You’re not sure?”

Darn it. Shelby squeezed her eyes shut, annoyed with herself for letting the cracks show, especially in such a gorgeous spot, with them surrounded by some seriously yummy smells. “No, it’s working. Of course it is. Look at her!”

“Preaching to the choir.” Krista paused. “But you’re worried that she’s still not talking.”

Shelby wanted to say, “No, I’m sure she’ll get there,” but she squelched the fib, hesitated, and said, “I’m trying to hold it together . . . but yeah, I’m worried. It’s been two years, and she was older than most SM kids to begin with. In a few years, she’ll be a teenager, and—” She clamped her lips together. “And I need to stop it. I’m putting too much pressure on both of us, whether I mean to or not. I’m just not very good at taking myself out of the equation.”

Krista gave her a funny look. “Why would you want to do that?”

“It’s my job to stay positive and not add more stress to the mix.” She rolled her eyes. “Sounds easy when you say it that way, doesn’t it?”

“Not so much. That’s basically like saying you need to love your daughter—because of course, you do—but at the same time, be unemotional when dealing with her. Which is pretty much impossible, because you love her.”

“Welcome to my world.” But Shelby felt her smile wobble.