Dare To Love A Cowboy (Canton County Cowboys 2) Read online

  Ian split his lips as if a fiery insult was about to come flying out, but Everett pivoted on his jagged heels before he had the chance to say anything. Mia, sensing that something was wrong, put her brush down and stepped over to the large cooler that sat on a long wooden bench in the center of the barn, where she retrieved a beer and went straight to Ian. “Think nothing of it, babe.”

  “I know. I’m not!” he said with a voice a little too elevated to be directed at someone who was right next to him, especially someone whom he was dating and who was trying to help. Mia blinked away tears and went back to the horse.

  Everett narrowed his eyes at them. It seemed there was often tension between the two lately. They had been dating for nearly five years, but Ian seemed to have nothing but disdain for the pretty, stout bartender now for several months. He wondered why Mia, who was used to taking on drunk cowboys on a nightly basis, was allowing Ian to treat her with such disregard. His thoughts were interrupted when Connor, a shorter man with auburn hair and striking hazel eyes, stepped up to the cooler to claim his own beer, then turned to Ian and said, “Calm down, we’ve got work to do.”

  Ian took another swig of his beer. “Shut up, Connor. Stay out of matters of men.”

  Connor threw his hands up defensively. “What am I, then?” he demanded.

  Ian shrugged. “Chill. You’d be a man . . .,” he started as he approached him and patted him on the top of his head, “if you made the height requirement.”

  The others couldn’t help but laugh, and even Mia and Ellie cracked a smile.

  Connor glowered at him. “You’re a special kind of mean, Ian.” But he was already starting to laugh, in spite of himself. One of things Everett liked most about Connor, who had been his best friend since they were twelve, was how very little unsettled him. It took a lot to make Connor angry.

  Ian’s humor was as famous as his orneriness and had proven useful many times to diffuse angry confrontations, which he usually created himself. And Connor had such patience for his antics, where Everett wanted to punch Ian in the nose every time he opened his mouth.

  Everett clenched his fist and continued to where Ellie stood but didn’t turn around to address Ian’s callous comment. He made eye contact with Jimmy, a lean sixty-year-old Hispanic man with bushy black eyebrows. “Could you grab the brands and carry them outside? Tell the others we’ll be starting soon,” he ordered.

  Jimmy tipped his hat and then turned around to carry out his directions. Jimmy had been working at the ranch the longest of any of the ranch hands. As the eldest, he kept a watchful eye on the younger men and spoke only when it seemed prudent to him, which meant that anytime he spoke, it seemed to be the wisest thing anyone had ever said to them. His English was nearly perfect, though it carried an accent that betrayed his nationality even more so than did his skin. The accent seemed to intensify anything he said, giving it more gravity than it might otherwise have. Everett wasn’t as intimidated by him, having practically grown up at his knee. He knew Jimmy didn’t think of himself as wise. He just had more experience and a calmness many men achieve with age after their hot-headedness cools and their hormones settle.

  Everett returned his attention to the horse that Ellie, a young woman with wild, curly red hair, continued to brush. Just looking at the beautiful horse—perfectly proportioned, bred from a match made in heaven, with its coat a brilliant, browning gold and its mane a deep, midnight black matched only by the same shade in his tail—made Everett’s heart smile. He took the brush from Ellie and set it next to the cooler on the wooden table. “All right. I think we can get started now,” he hollered as he unlatched the gate and coaxed the horse, Duke, out of his pen. “Matt, follow me with your horse.”

  A young man with dusty blond hair cut low nodded and approached the horse Mia had been brushing. Matt was the youngest of the ranch hands and the most recent arrival. He’d only been there four months, but Everett saw great potential in him. He had a strong work ethic for being so young and was always eager to learn more. He had told Everett shortly after he had started working there that he hoped to run his own ranch some day and he felt Rock Creek Ranch would give him the most knowledge and experience to help him achieve that goal. Everett considered that he may end up working for Matt one day at his ranch after his grandfather, Arlo, died and Rock Creek Ranch passed down to Aunt Jana. Everett was fairly certain that Aunt Jana was counting the days until she could push him out of her life for good.

  “We’ve got a hundred-ninety-seven calves in two different pastures,” Everett explained. “We’ll take the one closest to the barn first. As soon as we get out there, Ian, Connor, and Ethan need to start getting the brands hot. Matt and Jimmy are going to round up the calves.” He finally emerged into the warmth. The sea of people had grown thicker, and a steady hum of voices filled the air.

  Everett took in one massive breath, filling his lungs with the rancid smells of the ranch. The low hum of voices slowly morphed into a collection of cheers and clapping; the branding was about to start. Everett pasted a smile on his face, all the while telling himself he needed to remember to at least pretend like he wanted the crowd there, which he didn’t. In fact, if he had had his way, the branding would have been done in complete private with just the ranch hands and maybe a few volunteers, but Aunt Jana had Everett and the other ranch hands out there treating the place like a circus every chance they got.

  He clasped the saddle horn and pulled himself onto Duke’s back. He took a minute or two to adjust his seat and his posture and to get himself accustomed to the height; it was like a different world up on that horse. Once he was settled, he glanced back at Connor, Ian, and Ethan to make sure they were heating up the brands. Then, he turned his attention to the seven volunteers just underneath him.

  “All right. This is going be fairly regular. Me and my friend Matt here,”—he gestured at Matt, who sat on top of his horse, only a few paces behind him—“are going to round up the calves to that front corner of about twenty yards over there,” he explained, pointing directly to his left. He paused for a moment to give them a chance to see for themselves what he was talking about. “Once we do that, I’m going need the four of you”—he pointed at the three men wearing identical expressions of concentration and the one adult woman whose eyes were shielded with a cowboy hat—“to rope a calf. I don’t care which one. It doesn’t have to be in any particular order. I don’t think I’ve seen any of y’all at a branding before so I’m just going to go ahead and explain it right here.” Everett took both of his hands off the horse so that they might help him explain to his volunteer ranch hands the proper procedure.

  “I need you to take the calf by the neck and hold him down. Make sure you get enough pressure on its upper body, but not too much, because you don’t want to injure him. And y’all”—Everett pointed at the three young boys, none of them any older than eleven—“need to keep ‘em down by holding the legs. Once y’all are able to do that, try keepin’ ‘em down without hurtin’ ‘em and I’ll come around with a brand. Once I brand them, y’all can let ‘em go and we’ll start this whole process all over again.”

  When everyone nodded with understanding, Everett made a circling motion with his hand, then kicked his horse. Duke started at a slow trot, and Everett could feel his every movement from the sides of his feet all the way up to the insides of his thighs. He glanced to his right to check that Matt had also started off in the opposite direction. He kicked the horse again to set off at a quicker pace. Five minutes of rounding the back corners of the large pasture with the horse and the calves were finally all concentrated in the right area. With that accomplished, Everett looked up, his eyes combing the landscape for Ellie; when he spotted her, he motioned to her.

  “Are you sure you got this?” he asked her when she finally reached him.

  Ellie winced but then nodded eagerly. “You quit doubting me or I’m going to stop helping with these things,” she retorted defensively.

  He laughed as he s
tepped down from the horse. “Just don’t stay too close to any of the calves.”

  She rolled her eyes as she mounted his horse. “I got this.”

  Everett shrugged. She couldn’t blame him, he thought. She had only turned eighteen the previous February and unlike him, her childhood had not been spent learning how to herd cattle. But Ellie hadn’t yet warmed up to allowing Everett—or anyone, for that matter—to help her. She had barely begun hanging out with the crew after work. How could Everett expect anything else? He had agreed to let her move in to the ranch after a high school friend asked him for help. Ellie had been a rebellious teen and had run away from home a few times before her parents, fed up, had decided they needed a break from her. That was just over a year ago, and the change in her had been dramatic.

  Everett set off running back to the front corner of the pasture, where the ranch hands and the volunteers stood waiting. Once he got closer, he tipped his hat at them. Ian darted out into the herd of calves. He selected one and grabbed its neck. His right arm flexed as he pinned the calf to the ground, his muscles bulging in clear definition under his thick layer of skin interrupted by protruding veins and a thin layer of dark hair. The calf released a small grunt of surprise, but remained somewhat calm. The four remaining ranch hands immediately followed suit; being as experienced as they were, they didn’t need extra hands to keep the calves down.

  Connor volunteered to man the branding iron. With the “RCR” brand heated until it was an ashy color, he placed it on the side of the calf’s neck. A high-pitched, yet guttural cry escaped from the animal. There was a hush in the crowd at the sound of this very first branding of the year. Then, as the cry subsided, a cheer erupted, complete with boots being slammed against the hard, grassy ground, hands clapping together, and people whistling. Again, Everett thought to himself, What an unnecessary circus.

  Everett grabbed his own brand. As he turned around, the volunteer with the graying beard picked out a calf and, with some difficulty, wrestled it to the ground. The Hispanic boy dove for its legs without hesitation, and Everett followed with the brand. As he placed it on the side of the animal, he could feel its resistance. It was like a tiny spark of energy that originated deep in its muscles and traveled up the brand and was absorbed by Everett’s arm. As the calf let out a grunt of pain, a cloud of steamy fog, filled with the stench of burning flesh, rose. Everett rolled the brand back and forth to assure equal branding then lifted it. Almost simultaneously, the boy and the man released their grip and the calf darted back into the herd.

  He returned the brand to the pot of hot coals just as the next pair of volunteers pinned another calf. In this small intermission, he could hear the sounds of Connor and Ethan branding calves. He paused with the hot brand to swipe the beads of sweat off his forehead. Five minutes in and he was already starting to become uncomfortably hot.

  He spotted something moving rapidly out of the corner of his eye. He snapped his gaze up, automatically searching for the spot in the pasture where he had left his horse with Ellie, but they weren’t there. It didn’t take long to find her riding to the far reaches of pasture, chasing after a stray calf. Everett narrowed his eyes. “She’s got this,” he muttered to himself, for she was keeping to a trot and the calf itself was slowing down.

  It was as if Ellie had heard his words and sought to prove him wrong, for as soon as he had said this, she broke out into a full-out run. Everett sucked in a quick breath of air, frozen in his spot, hoping she would catch her mistake and stop the horse. But her brilliant red hair slapped against her back even quicker than it had before, and it was clear that she hardly had any control of his horse. Thinking fast, he glanced over at Matt, who sat serenely on his horse watching over the group of animals. Everett jerked his body in his direction, wanting to get Matt off the horse so that he could catch up with Ellie and stop the calf before it threw itself at the fence. But realizing that doing that would just drive the calf to wherever it was already going much faster, he dropped the brand back in the coals and set off in a sprint toward Ellie and the runaway calf.

  His volunteers stopped what they were doing and followed with their eyes. It seemed the entire town was watching him as he cut through the pasture, his boots slamming against the grass, kicking up dirt and stray plants; his torso tight as a washboard, and his arms swinging from front to back as he propelled himself toward them as quickly as he could.

  Just as Everett was about to reach it, the calf bounded into a hole in the fence, and remained lodged between sharp stakes of wood and thin wires. A shrill roar of pain shot into the air and intertwined with Ellie’s cry of horror and surprise. She jumped off Everett’s horse just as he reached the fence. His brow furrowed at the sight of the relatively small animal stuck in such a painful position. A wire was wrapped around one of its legs and a stake hung dangerously close to its chest. It wriggled violently against the cage with which it had entrapped itself.

  “Keep him calm!” Everett ordered Ellie as he ripped his knife out of its sheath on his boot.

  She nodded, then turned her attention to the small calf. She murmured incoherent things and cooed at it, running her hands over its head and blowing lightly on its face to get it to stop wriggling so violently. All the while, Everett hacked at the wire with his knife, trying his best to cut it without cutting the calf any further. Its tiny vocal chords gave rise to high-pitched, yet full-bodied roars of pain. Each scream seeped into Everett’s every pore, rattling his muscles on his bones and the socks in his boots. He could hear his heart beating in his ears as it pumped hot blood through his body. Despite the stench of the animal and its blood, Everett’s mouth hung open as he struggled to take in as much air as possible.

  Finally with a life-giving snap, the wire relented. Anticipating that the calf would immediately try to spring up and run away, Everett immediately clasped its body with his arms and lifted it out of the hole, careful to avoid the stake.

  Sensing that the worst was over, Ellie launched into a string of barely coherent apologies. “I’m so sorry, Everett! I don’t know what happened! It was all so fast! I couldn’t control the horse!”

  He shook his head. When he looked up to find her face all flushed and that she had started crying, he said, “It’s not entirely your fault. You did what you could. Now get back on my horse so we can finish this branding; the calf will probably be fine.”

  She nodded, sniffed a little, then climbed back on the horse. As she trotted away, Everett squinted at the small group of people standing in front of the barn, wondering what the hell had happened. His deft eyes spotted Ian, and he spat angrily into the grass. “I told that cowboy to let me check the fence to make sure there weren’t any holes,” he muttered angrily to himself. He followed Ellie, the injured calf bleeding all over his plaid shirt.

  Chapter Two

  Everett pulled open the large French doors separating the sunroom and the outside world and stepped onto the cobble-stoned path that led to Aunt Jana’s garden. As he followed the trail of stones, the sound of his clicking boots cut through the crisp air. He sucked in deep breaths of it, taking in the potent aroma of flowers and plants, intensified by the warm wind.

  Eventually, he rounded a corner and laid eyes on a large pergola. Its four wooden pillars twisted up, their white, intricately carved details intertwining with vines. Their thick spines contrasted beautifully against the brilliant white of the painted wood. Each leaf was adorned with a red berry, small but striking, like small red bulbs of light. It was a trail of colors that led the eye to the magnificent canopy, a gated covering filled out with more vines. Beams of sun streamed through this makeshift roof, the leaves casting shadows onto the soft, damp ground below; in the midst of the mud sat a tray of baby flowers and a small shovel.

  As he approached the pergola, he got a better look at the woman who knelt in the mud. Draped over her thin frame was a pink-and-blue flannel shirt. Its sleeves rolled up, exposing two thin arms and small wrists which were shoved into thick gardening
gloves. Her long, graying hair was drawn up into a ponytail, exposing her neck, glistening with sweat, and the gold chain that accented it. Without looking up, Aunt Jana snatched up the shovel. Her shoulders shifted up and down for a moment or two before she dropped the shovel back in its original place and then, with gentle hands, scooped up one of the small flowers. Her lips, covered in bright-pink lipstick, folded into a frown. The flower trembled in her hands as she concentrated all her effort on getting the baby plant into the tiny hole she had dug for it.

  Everett stepped up into the small, shaded oasis and went straight for the wooden table toward the back. There sat a large pitcher of iced tea with half-melted ice floating at the top, along with small slices of lemons. He picked it up, wincing at the shot of pain that ran through his shoulder and arm and poured a generous amount into one of the empty glasses.

  “I heard you saved a calf’s life today,” she commented. Her voice, although a bit raspy from decades of smoking, sounded robust and energetic.

  He took a sip of the iced tea, sighing as the cool, refreshing liquid tumbled down his throat. “Yup. It was a bull calf. Looks like he’s gonna make it. It was nothing special.”

  She took off her gloves and stood up, holding them in one hand while running the other hand through the stray wisps of hair. “You carried a bleeding calf through a crowd of people.” She picked up her half-full glass and sipped. “That’s hardly nothing.”

  He shrugged. “Ellie kept it calm. I wouldn’t have been able to cut it out of there if she hadn’t.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Ellie got it stuck in the first place.” Her voice held the sharp lilt of an accusation. He shot her a severe look. Faced with his sharp eyes, her bright lips stretched into a knowing smile. “Or so I was told.”