The Color of Forever: Book Two: Forever Cowboys Series (17 page)

Another first, she thought as she put away the clean linens. She knew that some people had clotheslines in New York but she had always done her laundry at a laundromat near her apartment and had no idea how amazing it was to dry them outdoors. Of course, she had to admit that the air in the city couldn’t compare to that up here. Too many exhaust fumes, factory smoke and other not so sweet smells.

She stopped in mid-motion of folding sheets. What was wrong with her? Why was she constantly comparing this place with New York? It wasn’t like there was a contest, for heaven’s sake. She wasn’t weighing the pros and cons of each location like a prospective property buyer. The two places were naturally very different but just because laundry hung out on an old fashioned clothesline smelled heavenly, it didn’t mean that the city had failed some sort of test.

She’d try out some new fabric softeners when she went back home to make her laundry smell as good as this. As soon as this thought entered her mind, Samantha knew that no chemical product could match fresh air and sunshine.

Oh, so what, she told herself irritably. She was starting to sound like one of those old housewife ads from the 50s where an attractive woman gushed over this detergent or that furniture polish. As long as her clothing and linens were clean, that would be good enough. It wasn’t like laundry was the be all and end all of her existence. Maybe the sooner she could go back home the better. She was turning into a completely different person. The chic, sophisticated city girl who came up here a few weeks ago was becoming a stereotypical hausfrau. This wouldn’t do at all.

Samantha resolved to make more of an effort to hang on to her real identity and stop letting this place change her into someone out of a WWII edition of Good Housekeeping.

She ran water for a bath, looking forward to having dinner with Mari and Trey and hoping that Ben would come by there if he stopped here and found her not at home. The thoughts of him having a confrontation with those two poachers continued to make her uneasy.

“Mari, that was a delicious meal.” Samantha dabbed her lips with a napkin and sat back, feeling pleasantly full after a superb dinner featuring paella and ending in deep fried sopapillas. Consuelo had told her that sopapillas, which were deep fried yeast dough with pockets inside just made for dollops of butter and drizzles of honey, were a favorite in Mexico and that their name meant “little pillows.”

They were little pillows of goodness and Samantha intended to ask Consuelo for the recipe before she went home this evening.

She hadn’t been feeling especially hungry when she arrived tonight. As much as she hated to admit it to herself, worry about Ben had affected her appetite. Few things were able to put a dent in her normally healthy appetite, so she had to face up to the undeniable truth: Ben’s well being was vitally important to her.

However, shortly after she had gotten there, Ben had shown up and was naturally invited to join them for dinner. Seeing him alive and well, unscathed by whatever had transpired today in his efforts to catch the poachers, restored Samantha’s appetite and she ate heartily.

Consuelo’s seafood paella was to die for! Rich and flavorful with a variety of fish and shellfish served atop a bed of Spanish bomba rice with saffron, it was beyond delicious. Marielle had stayed in the kitchen with the cook and housekeeper as the dish was prepared and shared her knowledge with Samantha.

“The sofrito is very important to the overall recipe, Sam. It’s a sauce made with smoked paprika, garlic, onions, tomatoes and peppers sauteed in olive oil.”

“Nom nom,” Samantha replied. “This is the best paella I’ve ever had. Mari, I must confess that if I had Consuelo to cook for me I probably wouldn’t be motivated to learn to cook myself. She’s a jewel.”

“She sure is. She keeps the household running smoothly and I agree, her cooking is as good as any four star chef. But I still enjoy learning to make good food and I couldn’t ask for a better teacher than Consuelo.”

The two men had been talking between themselves about ranch and livestock matters, discussing the best pasture grass, fencing, the current market prices of beef and lamb and more in that vein. They discontinued this conversation when the girls stopped talking.

“Ben,” said Samantha, “have you told Trey about the poachers?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he replied. “I stopped by here this morning and clued Trey in on their activity in the area so he can be on the lookout for them.”

“Any trace of them today?” Trey asked his friend.

“Yeah, more than a trace. I found where they’ve been tracking a big grizzly. No signs of them catching up with him yet, thank goodness.”

“Why would they want to kill a grizzly bear?” she asked Ben. “For the fur?”

Ben shook his head, looking disgusted. “No, they slaughter a bear and then cut out its gall bladder. Bile from the gall bladders of bears is used in traditional Chinese medicine and there’s a huge black market trade for it. Bear paws, too, are in demand on the black market. They’re considered an exotic delicacy on the menus of upscale Chinese restaurants. A lot of the bear paw trading is between Russia and China, but the U.S. is involved, too.”

“That’s terrible!” Marielle exclaimed. “Aren’t there laws against it?”

“Yeah,” Ben answered. “There are laws against international trade of any protected or endangered species. The thing is, though, that this just drives the price up on the black market, which encourages poaching and illegal trade.”

“Oh, Ben,” she cried, “they won’t kill our mama and baby bear, will they?”

Ben looked across the table and saw that Samantha’s stunning deep blue eyes were welling with unshed tears. He wanted to comfort her … take her in his arms right here, right now, and kiss her until she forgot everything else in the world. It gladdened his own heart to see that hers was so easily affected by cruelty to animals. In his opinion, people who didn’t like animals were suspect and not people he wanted to be around. He didn’t trust people who didn’t like animals and he especially didn’t trust people that animals didn’t like. Animals seemed to have a sense about the character of human beings that other humans lacked, in his experience.

“Not if I can help it,” he told her. “The bear they were tracking today was traveling alone and from the size of its prints, almost definitely a big male.”

“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Trey told his friend. “You know how I feel about poachers.”

“Thanks, Trey, I’ll be in touch if I need some help. The puzzling thing is that I can’t figure out where they’re stashing a vehicle and getting in and out. I haven’t heard a vehicle, not even a four wheeler.” He shook his head, perplexed. “But I found a big whitetail buck today, shot and missing his rack.”

“That’s a shame,” Trey replied, his voice thick with disdain for whoever had killed the deer out of season and not even for food, just its antlers.

“Yes it is,” Ben concurred. With these words, he stood up and prepared to take his leave. “I’ve got another long day tomorrow, so I’ll be getting on home now. Marielle, Trey, thanks for supper and my compliments to Consuelo.” He turned slightly to face Samantha, his smile widening and lighting up his whole face.

“Samantha, I’ll stop by as soon as I can for some of your good coffee.”

“Yes, please do,” she said. “I want you to keep me posted on what’s going on with the poachers.” Her unruly heart did its usual thing when she looked at Ben, skittering around in her chest like a wild thing. The man had a killer smile! Try as she might to remain unaffected by it, she melted every time he turned its full effect on her.

As Ben was leaving, Trey’s ranch foreman and close friend, Bandy, came in.

“Hey Boss, Miss Mari, Miss Samantha,” he greeted them.

“It’s
Mrs.
Mari now, Bandy,” Trey teased the older man.

Bandy chuckled. “Yeah I know, Boss, but she’ll always be Miss Mari to me and lucky you were to get her, too.”

“Don’t I know it,” Trey agreed, putting an arm around his bride and pulling her close. “Hell, I had to marry her to keep an eye on her. She’s a walking accident.”

Marielle laughed and punched his arm lightly in mock censure. “Oh puh-leeze,” she teased him. “You married me because you’re crazy about me. Admit it.”

“I admit it, sweetheart,” Trey told her tenderly. “Crazy in love with you, that’s me.”

As an onlooker to this exchange, Samantha smiled to see her best and oldest friend so happy, with the soft light of love in her eyes. She felt a twinge of envy, wishing she could have what they had together someday, but not believing it would ever happen.

“Boss,” Bandy said, “I’m gonna take Johnny and a couple of the other boys up to the far pasture tomorrow to check fences unless you’ve got something else you want them to do.”

Trey shook his head. “Nope, I don’t and anyhow you know I leave all that stuff up to you.”

“Well okay. Guess that’s why I get paid the big bucks, right Boss?” Bandy cackled at his own joke and accepted Marielle’s invitation to join them in a cup of after dinner coffee.

“I never turn down coffee, Miss Mari, you know that,” the elderly foreman said, sitting down in one of the big leather chairs in the living room. Even though it was officially Spring, the evenings were still chilly and the log fire burning in the fireplace was welcome. It’s flames flickered and danced, casting shadows on the walls, floor and ceiling, lending the room a cozy ambiance.

As they sipped coffee, Samantha impulsively turned to her host. “Trey,” she said anxiously, “couldn’t you prevail upon Ben to let you go along with him tomorrow? I mean, if he catches up with those poachers he’ll be outnumbered and they have guns.”

She fumbled her words a little, trying to convey her thoughts without showing Trey and Mari how deeply worried she really was.

“I know he’ll have a gun, too, but it will still be two against one. I don’t like those odds.”

Trey and Bandy exchanged glances and Bandy chuckled. “Oh, I reckon Ben will be tickled with those odds,” he said. “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about ol’ Ben. He’ll sort those lowdown varmints out in a Texas heartbeat. If they give him any trouble they’ll wish they’d headed for the hills while they had the chance.”

Samantha was puzzled. Bandy seemed sure that Ben could hold his own with two armed criminals, but she didn’t share his confidence. Ben was so kind, so sweet; she feared that he wouldn’t be any match for those poachers.

Trey must have seen her look of uncertainty because he added his vote of confidence to his foreman’s. “Bandy’s right. Ben can take care of himself, Samantha, and he’s not too proud to ask for help if he needs it.”

Samantha tried to look as though she believed them, but privately, she had grave doubts. She finished her coffee, thanked her host and hostess for a wonderful dinner, bade Bandy goodbye and drove Mari’s jeep—on loan during her stay— back to the little ranch house.

Her sleep was restless again, the same as the night before, a rare occurrence since she’d been here. But she was still plagued with uneasiness about Ben. She hadn’t realized what his job as game warden entailed but since he explained it to her, she saw that it wasn’t without risk.

His duties including enforcing laws, investigating violations, conducting surveillance, conducting search and rescue operations, partnering with other law enforcement agencies, apprehending violators and issuing fines and citations, collecting and cataloging evidence and much, much more. He had told her he had a degree in wildlife management as well as criminal justice.

Samantha was impressed. Clearly, Ben wasn’t the country bumpkin she had taken him for at first. Looking back on the first days she had known him, after a space of just a few short weeks she could see how very wrong she had been and wondered now how on earth she had come to misjudge the man so badly in the first place.

He was well spoken, obviously intelligent, ran a large ranch while working full time as a game warden plus drop dead gorgeous and ridiculously sexy.

So, country bumpkin he wasn’t, but he was still a babe in the woods about women, she thought. Look at how shy he had been about even kissing her, much less anything else, when she had been giving out signals like a sex starved lighthouse. Okay, she thought, maybe that wasn’t a good analogy since lighthouses didn’t have sex. But the point was that an experienced man, one who had been around the bedroom block, would have picked up on those signals and bedded her way back.