Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) (11 page)

“Oh…” Nate shook his head once. “Remember Grandpa Ben. He was still spry well into his nineties. There’s hope you’ll live so long.”

T
HE DAYS PASSED
with painful slowness. Twice Ty tried to speak to Hannah, but both times she managed to evade the issue. On the second attempt, he’d nearly lost his fingers in the door she slammed.

But he could wait no longer. Today they would have this out if he had to wrestle her down and sit on her. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that because he was too young to die.

“I’ve got to talk to you,” he said.

She didn’t stop bedding the calf pen. In fact, she didn’t turn to look at him when she spoke. “Of course, Mr. Fox. You’re the boss.”

“Hannah.” He stared in frustration at her profile. She’d discarded the tweed cap he’d loaned her. Her hair, bright as summer wheat, swung gently as she continued to spread a soft, golden layer of straw for her small charges. “I owe you an apology. I shouldn’t have made that stupid bet.” She continued working, her movements graceful, her expression unchanged. “But I didn’t know you then. I thought you were just a spoiled little rich girl who thought herself too good for the likes of me. I thought you wouldn’t last a day. But here you are, working…” He paused, searching for words as he watched her. She had hung her jacket on a nail, and now wore faded jeans and one of his cast-off shirts. The wear-softened flannel caressed her shoulders and breasts, making her look small and so feminine it was all he could do to not pull her into his arms and beg for her forgiveness. “Working like a storm trooper,” he murmured. “With your hair all soft and your…” He blew out another breath, his mouth dry. “It’s no secret that you’re beautiful, Hannah. Not to you. Not to
anyone. And I was all tied up in knots. With you so haughty, and me looking like a country hick. And I made that idiotic bet. But that wasn’t why I kissed you. I was just overwh—”

“So we have a new calf?” she interrupted, still not looking at him.

Tyrel tightened his jaw. “Are you listening to me?”

She straightened and stared at him in mock surprise. “Why, no, Mr. Fox, I’m not. I said you could talk. I didn’t say I would listen.”

“Dammit it, Hannah, I—”

“He’s lonely.”

“What?”

“The new calf. What happened to his mother?”

Ty ran splayed fingers through his hair and contemplated pulling it out. “She can’t get up. It happens sometimes after a hard labor. Maybe in a day or two she’ll be on her feet. Listen, I—”

“He’ll need colostrum. And we’re out”

“Dammit, will you—”

“You’ll have to get some for him. Or I can collect it myself if you tell me where to go.”

She faced him squarely, as if challenging him to do just that.

Tension steamed between them.

“I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Hannah,” he said softly, laying all his cards on the table, taking that awful risk that could well break him.

She stared at him for a moment, her expression open, her eyes vulnerable. He dared not breathe. Then suddenly her expression became closed, and her eyes went hard. She laughed out loud, and the sound was harsh and cold.

“In love with me? And you think I care? Or that I should be surprised. You’re hardly the first man to tell me that. You’re simply the boldest. What a nerve you have! You think I’d ever become serious about you—” Her voice broke, and for an instant, he wondered if she was about to cry. But it was a foolish thought. “A two-bit North Dakota cowboy on
a broken-down ranch. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea?”

Tyrel tightened his jaw. Anger flooded in, ripping through him like a January wind. “I don’t give a damn who you are.”

For a moment her face went pale and something showed in her eyes. Sadness? Loneliness? Hope? But it was gone in a second, drowned beneath her pummeled pride.

“I’m here until you pay me and no longer,” she said, her voice low. “Six more days and I’m out of this nightmare.”

They stared at each other, then Ty turned away and left the barn.

“S
O YOU’RE WORKING
for the Fox boys.” Ed Norton was a small, narrow man with a two-day beard and eyes that resembled the placid Holsteins’ he milked with his son-in-law and two daughters.

“Yes, I am,” Hannah said. Having no wish to talk to Ty again, she’d asked Nate for directions and come for the colostrum herself.

“They must be having some trouble with their herd, huh? Lose some mommas, did they?” he asked, glancing stiffly over his shoulder as he puttered into the milking parlor. Six cows stood in a row on a concrete slab four feet above the floor. Their heads were in stanchions. They munched contentedly while octopuslike machines slurped at their udders.

“Some,” she said, staring at the strange apparatus. Her mood was as black as sin. All she wanted was to collect the colostrum and leave.

“Yeah, them babies gotta have that colostrum. Gives ‘em their first antibodies, ya know. And our cows give so danged much milk, we don’t need all that rich stuff. Best herd in the state,” he said, then nodded at his own words. But his thick brows were beetled over his watery eyes now. “Best herd in the state, and that’s ’cuz we know how to cull,” he murmured, reaching up to pat a bony Holstein on the shoulder. “I gotta do it, Betty. Gotta do it.”

She just wanted to leave, Hannah reminded herself. Leave
the milking barn, the state, maybe even the country. But she was staring at the old man now, and was almost certain his chin was quivering.

“What do you have to do?” she asked.

“I gotta sell her.” His voice broke.

“Sell her?” Hannah straightened her back. The nearest cow turned from her grain, still chewing, and suddenly the image of Bette Davis flashed through Hannah’s mind. The bovine eyes were just like the woman’s. “You mean for slaughter?”

“She’s been with me nigh unto ten years,” he said. “My wife, God rest her soul, named her. But she don’t hardly give eight gallons anymore.”

“Eight gallons! A day?”

“Barely half what she used to do. Still…I…” He shook his head and patted her again. “She’s been a good old girl. See them kind eyes.”

She did. “Mr. Norton,” she said, pursing her lips and coming to a quick decision. “I’d like to make you a proposition.”

Half an hour later, Hannah was back at The Lone Oak. Behind her, Ed Norton drove up pulling a stock trailer.

Stepping out of the Jimmy, Hannah didn’t deign to glance at Tyrel, though she saw him coming out of the barn. He crossed the muddy yard-with long, quick strides.

Ed creaked from behind the wheel of his old Dodge. “Tyrel,” he said by way of greeting.

“Ed.” Ty nodded and reached out to shake the old man’s hand, his arm half-bare where he’d rolled back the sleeve of his denim shirt. “What brings you out this way?”

“It’s the girl here.” Ed chuckled, and nodded toward Hannah who stood nearby.

“The girl?” Ty moved toward her. There was suspicion in his eyes and a thousand other emotions she refused to try to decipher. Instead, she met his gaze evenly.

“You’re purchasing Mr. Norton’s cow,” she said.

“Purchasing—”

“I’ll be putting her in with the bottle calves,” she informed him.

For a moment his expression registered nothing but shock. Then he gritted a smile at her. “Over my dead body.”

“Why, Mr. Fox…” She smiled back. Tension snapped between them. “You’re giving me goose bumps.”

Ed cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said, bobbing his head and glancing nervously from one intense face to the other. “She’s a heck of a nice cow. And a good mother. She don’t cut it as a milker no more, but she could nurse a bundle of calves. It’s a damn fine idea. Wish I’d a thought of it myself. The son-in-law though, he’d bust a gasket if I tried a stunt like this—always wanting to modernize, modernize. But Betty…” He pursed his lips as if holding back tears. “She’ll do the job for ya.”

“Ed,” Tyrel said, “if you’ll excuse us for a moment…” Taking Hannah’s arm, he pulled her off to the side.

“Listen, honey,” he said. “You might think you’re God’s gift to mankind, but you’re not going to come sashaying in here and take over my ranch.”

“You listen, cowboy,” she said, jabbing a finger at his chest. “So far you’ve got three calves without mothers. Before you’re done that number will probably double. As it is I spend half my day feeding babies. Betty was made for the job.”

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he asked, his voice low.

“I think I’m getting a mother for your calves.”

“Well, you’re not,” he said. “You’re screwing with my ranch. And when you screw with my ranch, you screw with me.”

“Believe me, Mr. Fox, that’s the furthest thing from my intentions,” she snapped.

He glared at her. “This animal isn’t going to let those calves nurse,” he said, waving toward the trailer. “If you knew anything about cattle, you’d know that”

“Ed said she would.”

“Well, Ed’s a sentimental old fool who blubbers at every auction. She’s a milk cow not a foster mother.”

Hannah raised her brows and glared up at him like a princess with a peasant. “She’ll do the job I got her to do.”

She’d said something very similar about Pansy. It pained Ty no end to think she might be right again, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. “Oh? And does your vast experience tell you that, Ms. Nelson?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Geez! They’re bottle calves, Hannah, not Romanian orphans.”

“They’re living beings,” she growled, yanking her arm from his grasp. “With hearts and minds and feelings. Or have you forgotten about feelings, Mr. Fox?”

Their gazes fused and snapped.

“Bring her out,” Ty ordered, turning on his heel and striding toward the trailer. “I’ll put her in the barn.”

“S
O OL’
B
ETTY’S WORKING
out pretty good, huh?” Nate asked, glancing over his milk glass at Hannah.

“Yes.”

“That was a fine idea you had,” Nate said, then nodded toward his brother. “Wasn’t it a fine idea, brother?”

Ty snorted into his coffee.

It had been six days since he’d kissed her, six days since he’d handed her his heart. Six days since she’d sliced it into ribbons. He hated her for that. And she’d be leaving in ninetyfour hours. Good riddance to her!

But greenhorn that she was, she’d made a difference in this ranch. She’d slaved over Daniel, convinced him to eat. Saved his life, really. And the other orphans—they were growing in leaps and bounds, not stunted and scraggly like bottle calves often were, but actually gaining more weight than some of the calves who were with their real moms.

She’d hired Pansy to cook and clean, freeing them up to fully concentrate on the ranch work. And she’d started ground work on the young horses. He’d watched her. Ty had been
meaning to halterbreak the yearlings himself. Hell, he’d been meaning to halterbreak the two-year-olds. It was a crime really, that he was so far behind on his horse work. They’d be a lot harder to train now that they were older.

But Hannah had a way about her. You wouldn’t know it to look at her cool exterior, but she could reach a horse like few others could. Ty glanced across the table at her. His heart pitched. Not that he cared about her. Hell, he may be a masochist, and he may be an idiot, but he wasn’t a masochistic idiot.

He didn’t know why she was here, but he knew she wouldn’t be for long. And good riddance, like he’d already said.

But she did have good hands. He remembered watching her as she’d calmed Platinum’s yearling. She was a tall, dappled gray filly with endless legs and big spooky eyes. But by the time Hannah was through with her, she’d stood like an old cart horse, half asleep as Hannah ran her hands over her dappled coat.

How would it feel to have her touch him like that? To feel her fingers feather soft against his skin.

Geez! Ty jerked himself abruptly to his feet.

“Where you going?” Pansy barked from the stove.

“Going to bed,” Ty said.

“You ain’t hardly ate nothing.” She said it like an accusation.

“I’ve had enough,” he said, and he had, enough of thinking of Hannah, dreaming of Hannah, watching Hannah. Enough and not nearly enough.

“Go ahead then,” Pansy said, miffed. She did her duties with militant seriousness and to her own way of thinking, her duty was to add fifty pounds to each of their weights. “Hannah,” she said, turning from Ty as if he were a traitor not worthy of her concern. “You got a letter today.”

“A letter?” Hannah glanced up.

Ty turned in the doorway and watched her. Her gaze flickered
to him and away. His stomach turned over. Who was the letter from? What was it about?

He didn’t know and didn’t care, he reminded himself, and repeated it a hundred times before sleep finally took him.

N
ERVOUS AND UNCERTAIN
, Hannah sat on her bed and opened the letter.

Her father’s scrawled handwriting winked up at her. She took a deep breath and read.

“My dearest Hannah.” She frowned at the use of her assumed name.

I hope all is well with you.

As for me, I am fine. I miss our home. Or perhaps just the opportunity to return there. Strange how we don’t realize what we’ve got until we can no longer have it.

Which brings me to my reason for writing. Perhaps it’s my advancing age that makes me realize what a hopeless parent I have been. But I realize it now, and I wish with all my heart that I could redo those years.

All the life I have lived, all the melodrama I have witnessed, one would think I would have seen what was most important.

You. Your happiness. And it is you I have failed with my endless days away from you. My endless obsession with my own success.

Please forgive me. I hope you have found something I neglected to give you. Real life. Not just the cheap fiction that has filled my days. But something lasting and true.

I wish I could see you now. I wish I could make up for those years, but I cannot.

Please, Hannah, no matter what you do, do
not
return home, or indeed, to any of the haunts where you might be recognized. Don’t try to contact me. Any call might
be traced. Stay where you are. You are safe there. And I would surely die if you were lost to me now.

All my love, Daddy.