Renegade Father (3 page)

“Thank you,” she murmured.

“I mean it,” he persisted. “You make a real good spaghetti sauce.”

The fact that it was her night to cook had completely slipped her mind until she had returned from the barn after delivering the calf. She hadn't had time to do much more than open a jar of store-bought sauce and mix it with ground beef, but she didn't want to embarrass the eager ranch hand by pointing out the obvious so she just smiled politely.

“With that wind chill, we're supposed to dip down to minus twenty tonight,” Joe interjected before Luke could say anything else. “That means we're going to have to drop another load of hay after dinner. Mitchell, you and I can take the cows and calves up on the winter range. Manny, Ruben, you can take care of the bulls and yearlings down by the creek. Patch, can you handle the animals in the barns by yourself?”

The grizzled old cowboy nodded. For the next several moments, Annie listened with only half an ear to them discuss ranch business and the constant struggle to keep the livestock warm for the night. The rest of her waited, nerves twitching like a calf on locoweed, for Joe to tell everyone he was leaving.

He seemed to want to drag it out, though, while they discussed vaccinations and the yearly race to be the first ranch in the area to have the calving over with and how many of last year's steers they would take to auction in a few weeks.

She waited all through dinner but it was only after the men cleared their plates and she had dished up left
over apple pie for dessert that Joe set his fork down with a clatter and pushed back his chair.

“I have an announcement,” he began. Damn. This was harder than he expected it to be. As he studied the faces around the table, his gut clenched and he scrambled for words.

“I'm, uh…I'm leaving the Double C,” he finally just said bluntly. “I'll be taking a new job in Wyoming come April.”

Everyone was silent for several moments. He saw varying degrees of shock on everyone's expression except Annie's—from profound surprise in Patch's good eye to what he could only describe as an odd kind of glee on Luke Mitchell's smooth-cheeked features.

To his surprise, Leah was the first to react—Leah, who acted like she couldn't stand him most of the time. She slid her chair back from the table so abruptly it tipped backward as she stood. She didn't bother to right it again, just looked at him out of dark eyes wounded with an expression of complete betrayal, like he'd suddenly up and slapped her for no reason, then she rushed out of the kitchen.

The sound of her pounding up the stairs seemed to break the spell for all of them and everyone began talking at once.

“You're gonna run out right in the middle of planting season?” Patch exclaimed.

“Where in Wyoming are you going?” Ruben asked.

“I guess that means Miz Redhawk's gonna need to find herself a new foreman,” Luke said.

It was C.J.'s plaintive cry that pierced through the buzz of questions, and brought the men's conversation to a grinding halt. “You can't leave, too, Uncle Joe! You
can't!
”

Awkward silence echoed through the kitchen while he scrambled for something to say to make things right. Before he could figure out a way to achieve the impossible, Patch cleared his throat, discomfort plain on his face. “Uh, boys, we've got some feed to put out if we want to spend the worst of that storm out there where it's warm and dry. There'll be time to talk about this later.”

Eager to avoid the scene they all must have known was inevitable, the men murmured their thanks to Annie for the meal then trooped out of the kitchen, leaving him alone with her and her son.

The boy was trying valiantly not to cry but a tear trickled from the corner of his eye anyway, leaving a watery path down the side of his nose. His fingers trembled as he swiped at it, damn near breaking Joe's heart.

“C.J.—”

Whatever he was going to say was lost as C.J. cut him off. “You promised you'd take me campin' and fishin' on the Ruby this summer. You
promised!
”

He flashed a look toward Annie and found her watching her son out of green eyes filled with compassion and pain.

“We can still go.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I'll try to get away for a weekend and come up and take you.”

“It won't be the same.”

“I know. I'm sorry.”

More tears followed the pathway of that lone trail-blazer and Joe felt small and mean for putting them there. He wanted to gather his nephew close, to try to absorb his pain into him if he could, but he sensed the boy would only jerk away.

“Just because I'm leaving doesn't mean I'll stop be
ing your uncle,” he said quietly. “That'll never change. We can still talk on the phone and write letters. I promise, I'll take you on that fishing trip this summer and maybe you can even come stay with me for a while once I get settled.”

“It won't be the same,” C.J. cried again. His whole face crumpled. “Why do you have to go?”

How could he explain to a seven-year-old how a man sometimes ached for more than he had, more than he would ever have? And how sometimes the lack of it, this constant, aching emptiness, was like a living thing chewing away at him until he couldn't breathe?

C.J. didn't wait for an answer, which was probably a good thing since he didn't have one to offer. The boy stared up at him, and there was a world of disillusionment in his eyes. “You're no different than
him.
I thought you were, but you're not.”

The impassioned words—and all the heartbreak behind it—sliced into him like a just-sharpened blade.
No different than him.
Than Charlie. The man who had spent every one of C.J.'s seven years destroying his faith in everything.

It was his greatest fear—that he and his half brother were more alike than he wanted to believe. That somehow the genetic makeup they had in common was stronger than his own self-control.

They weren't, he reminded himself. He had done his damnedest throughout his life to make sure of that. Charlie was a drunk and a bully who delighted in terrorizing anybody smaller than he was. He wasn't anything like him.

Oh no, he thought with sudden bitterness. Nothing at all. He was just an ex-con who served four years in Deer Lodge for killing his father.

He thrust the thought away and tried to concentrate on the crisis at hand. “C.J.—” he began, but the boy turned away.

“If you leave, I don't want you to come back. I don't want to go to the Ruby with you. I don't want to go
anywhere
with you.” And for the second time in just a few minutes, the room echoed with the sound of feet pounding up the stairs and the slam of a bedroom door.

At the sound, Annie froze for just an instant, then she stood abruptly and started clearing away dishes with quick, jerky movements, as if she was suddenly desperate to keep her hands busy.

He scratched his cheek. “That went well, don't you think?”

She fumbled with a plate, catching it just in time to keep it from smashing to the floor, and sent him a baleful look. “Great. Just great. With all these slamming doors, I'm surprised none of the windows are broken.”

His laugh sounded raw and strained. “I'm sorry, Annie. I didn't think they'd take it this hard.”

“They love you,” she said simply. “You've always been decent and kind to them. Lord knows, they got little enough of that from their…from Charlie.”

“I hate like hell that I'm putting them through this.”

“They'll live. People get over all kinds of things.”

Have you?
He wanted to ask, but didn't. He carried a pile of plates to the sink, wishing things were different. That he didn't have to leave. That these were his dishes, that this was his kitchen.

That she was his woman.

W
hat a mess.

With her hands curled around a mug of lemon tea, Annie sighed and looked out the kitchen window at the snow whirled around by the shrieking wind. Hours after Joe's announcement at dinner, her head still ached, her nerves still in an uproar, and nothing seemed to help.

C.J. was finally asleep after crying most of the evening. She had a feeling if she checked his pillowcase, it would be damp with more tears.

He couldn't understand why the man who had been more of a father to him in the last eighteen months than his own father had been for his whole life could just walk away. All her efforts to console him only seemed to sound hollow and trite.

She had knocked on Leah's door a few minutes earlier to tell her to turn the lights out and had received just a grunt in return. Her daughter was no longer speaking to her, but she didn't know if it was due to Joe's
impending departure or because of their earlier battle over homework and riding privileges.

Had she been this difficult when she was twelve? She didn't think so. She had been a handful, certainly, always tumbling into trouble with Joe and Colt, but she'd always tried hard not to disappoint her father, anxious for the love he had such a hard time demonstrating.

Of course, by the time she was twelve, Joe and Colt had been in high school and too busy with sports and school and girls to pay much attention to the wild-haired tomboy from the ranch next door who used to follow them everywhere.

She sighed again. If she didn't stop woolgathering, she was going to be up all night trying to finish this blasted help-wanted ad. She wanted to be able to call it into the newspaper and some of the ranch periodicals in the morning.

She read what she'd written so far: “Wanted: Experienced foreman to oversee six-hundred-head Hereford operation. Prefer long-term commitment and extensive ranching background. Salary based on experience. Must be loyal and hard-working.”

She winced. Was she advertising for a foreman or a dog? She scribbled the last part out and was trying to come up with something better when she heard a soft knock at the back door.

A quick glance at the clock over the stove showed it was nearly ten—a little late for company.

Maybe Joe had some unfinished ranch business he needed to discuss. It wasn't unusual for him to stop by after the evening chores were done to talk about what needed to be done the next day—a gesture she appreciated but which she'd tried to tell him repeatedly wasn't necessary. She trusted his instincts completely.

It would take a long time to build up that kind of trust with whomever she finally hired to replace him. She set the pencil down so hard the lead snapped off, and went to answer the door.

To her surprise, it wasn't Joe she found in the light of the back porch at all but Luke Mitchell, looking nervous and edgy and, if possible, even younger than normal.

“Luke! Is something wrong?”

“No. I just…” the ranch hand shifted his weight, “I wanted to talk to you tonight. Are you busy?”

“No. Just trying to write an ad for a new foreman. Come in.”

She helped brush snow off his black slicker in the mudroom, then led the way into the kitchen. “Can I get you something? I was having a cup of tea and there's plenty more hot water.”

He shook his head. The movement seemed to remind him of his manners because he abruptly yanked the cowboy hat from his head, leaving a flat line haloing his blond hair.

She took her seat again and pointed to another chair. “Why don't you sit down, then.”

He shook his head again, a quick, restless gesture. Shoulders tense, he stood in the doorway and began measuring the brim of his hat with his fingers. Round and round he went, first in one direction then the other, over and over until—given her lingering headache and the uproar of her emotions—she had to fight the urge to yank the blasted thing away from him and throw it on the table.

He opened his mouth to speak twice, but both times he jerked it shut again, and she could tell he was trying
to work up his nerve for some kind of major announcement.

Fiddlesticks. She had absolutely no energy left to deal with this after the day she'd had. “It's late,” she finally said, when it looked like he was going to stand in her kitchen fidgeting all night. She should probably try to be more patient, but she just wasn't in the mood tonight. “What can I do for you, Luke?”

“I'd like to apply for the foreman job,” he blurted out, so loudly it startled both of them.

The foreman job? She stared at him, shocked, watching a flush creep up those baby-smooth cheeks. Of all the possibilities racing through her head about what he might be doing there at ten o'clock at night, the idea that he wanted Joe's job never would have occurred to her.

“I know I'm young and all but I'm a hard worker. Joe's always sayin' so. I'm strong and I'm willing and I've been around cattle all my life. If my daddy hadn't had lost our spread because of the damn banks—excuse my language, ma'am—I'd be on my way to runnin' my own place by now.”

Like so many ranching families, the Mitchells had been hurt by the recent run of low beef prices. They had run a pretty big spread near Big Sky and she knew his father slightly.

She heard he was trying to support his large family by working in a ranch supply store over in Bozeman now. It had been one of the reasons she'd taken a chance and hired Luke two months earlier, in an effort to give the family one less mouth to feed.

Compassion for the eager young man washed over her. To grow up thinking he would take over the reins of the family ranch someday and then to lose it all with
the bang of an auctioneer's gavel must have been devastating. Heaven knows, it was one of her own biggest fears.

“You could do a whole lot worse, ma'am,” Luke went on, “if you don't mind me sayin'.”

Drat Joe for putting her in this position. She rubbed suddenly clammy hands on her jeans beneath the table. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt his fragile pride by telling him she didn't think he was man enough for the job.

Especially when life had already dealt him a rough hand—and when he had more than a slight crush on her. “I… You've been a real asset to the Double C, Luke.”

“Thank you.” His wide grin made him look not much older than C.J. “I could be even more of an asset as foreman. I have some real good ideas about improving things around here. Not that Joe hasn't done a good job, mind, but I've been reading about these fancy new low-cholesterol breeds they got out there and I think it might be worth your while to look into it.”

He went on for several minutes about the direction he'd like to take the Double C. She listened with only half an ear, trying to figure out how she could let him down gently. Finally she realized he had wound down and was waiting expectantly for an answer.

She cleared her throat. “I have to say, those certainly sound like interesting ideas.”

“Does that mean you're willing to give me a chance?”

She paused, feeling like she was about to drop-kick a puppy, then finally drew in a deep breath and took aim. “Luke, you're a good cowhand. Like you said, you're a hard worker, always willing to dig in and do
what has to be done, no matter what. And while I'll certainly keep you in mind for the foreman's job, I have to be honest with you. I was hoping for somebody with a little more experience.”

“I told you, I've been around cattle all my life. That's twenty years of experience right there.”

Twenty years. Oh mercy. He wasn't even as old as she had thought he was. She felt like a shriveled up old lady compared to all this youthful exuberance.

“It's more than just experience.”

She fumbled for words for a few moments, then decided she would just have to be blunt, as much as she hated it, and as much as it might hurt. “The foreman of a ranch like the Double C has to have a certain…authority. Not just with the hands who work on the ranch, but out in the community, too—with other ranchers, with our suppliers, when we take stock to auction. He has to be able to command respect in the ranching community and that's something that comes not just with experience, but with age.”

And something Joe still struggled with, at least with the ranchers around Madison Valley who couldn't forget his history. She frowned, wondering if that was one of the reasons he was leaving, if he thought his presence was somehow detrimental to the Double C's bottom line.

“So what you're sayin' is you're not gonna hire me because I'm too young?” The boy couldn't have looked more offended if she had just told him his horse was ugly.

“I'm not saying you could never be foreman of the Double C,” she answered. “But I have to be honest with you. I just don't know if it's a responsibility you're ready for yet.”

Hurt flickered in his pale blue eyes and with it she glimpsed a deep anger that somehow made him look much older. Just as quickly, the anger disappeared and she wondered if she had imagined it.

“I see.” His voice was low in the hushed kitchen, so quiet she could barely hear him. “So that's it?”

She nodded. “I'm sorry, Luke. I'd like nothing better than to hire you for the job right now. Maybe in a few more years, though.”

“You're wrong.” Though he spoke in the same quiet, intense voice, he gripped his hat so hard it creased the soft brown felt. He shoved the hat on his head. “I could do a helluva lot better job than Redhawk. I could prove it to you if you'd only give me a chance.”

He didn't wait for an answer but stalked out of the kitchen and into the storm.

She watched through the window as he made his way back to the bunkhouse, shoulders hunched against the wind and whirling snow. Just as he went inside the doublewide trailer he shared with Patch and the Santiago brothers, a flicker of movement near the barn caught her gaze.

The vapor light on the power pole between the house and the outbuildings wasn't powerful enough to completely pierce the darkness or the whirling snow, but she thought she could just make out the figure of a man standing motionless, his attention focused on her, on the house.

For just an instant, her heart stuttered, and old feelings of dread and helplessness came roiling back, and then the figure moved out of the shadows and she recognized Joe's black Stetson and broad shoulders. Unlike Luke, he walked unbent in the wind, oblivious to the storm raging around him as he came toward the house.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked after she opened the door off the mudroom to his knock.

She shrugged. “Why wouldn't it be?”

“I saw Mitchell walking back to the trailer. Just wanted to make sure he wasn't pestering you.”

“Pestering me?”

He cocked his head. “I told you at supper, it's no secret the boy's got it bad, Annie. He makes moon-eyes at you every time he gets within spitting distance. I wouldn't want him to make a nuisance of himself.”

She felt herself blush. “I can handle it.”

“Well, let me know if he gets to be too much of a bother and I'll have a word with him.”

Why did he always assume she couldn't take care of things by herself? Probably because she had a pretty lousy track record in that department, she admitted.

“He wasn't pestering me or making moon-eyes or anything like that. If you must know, he was applying for your job.”

For a long moment, he just stared at her, the only sound in the kitchen the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the furnace spewing warm air out of the register, then he tilted back his head and laughed, low and long and deep.

The sound of it—so rare coming from him—slid over her nerve endings like silk.

“He wants to be foreman?” He laughed again and flipped a chair around to straddle it, removing his hat and tossing it onto the table in the same motion. “I hope you didn't encourage him.”

There he went again, thinking she didn't have a brain in her head. “Of course I didn't. I told him I was looking for somebody with a little more experience.”

He snorted. “I'm sure that went over well.”

“About like you'd expect.”

“How could he think you'd be willing to hire a twenty-year-old kid to run a big operation like the Double C?”

“Maybe he thought I'd be desperate, with you leaving and all.”

He studied her for a moment, then looked away. “How's the boy?”

“Sleeping. Finally.”

“I hate like hell that I hurt him like this.”

“Of course he's hurting! Did you think you could just walk away and it wouldn't affect any of us?”

“I guess I was hoping it wouldn't.”

“You're part of the Double C, Joe. More than that, you're part of this family. What you do affects all of us. C.J. loves you—of course he's upset you're going to leave. And Leah is, too, although she shows it differently.”

“What about you? Are you upset I'm leaving?”

He didn't know why he asked it. Maybe because she looked so damn beautiful here in her warm, cozy kitchen, with the light from above the stove turning her hair red-gold and making her eyes look soft and welcoming and her mouth about the sexiest thing he'd ever seen.

Or maybe because he'd been more annoyed than he had a right to be when he saw Mitchell sneaking out her back door so late at night.

Whatever his reason for asking, her answer was clear. “You know I am.” She spoke in a low voice and then lifted eyes the color of brand-new aspen leaves to his.

He was shocked to his bones at the depth of emotion there—if he didn't know better, he could swear there
were tears lurking in those green depths, but Annie hardly ever cried.

Even if she
had
been the watering-pot sort, his brother would have fixed that in a hurry.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. It was rougher than it should have been, almost as nicked-up and callused as his own. She was killing herself trying to turn the Double C back into the ranch it once was. And he sure didn't help matters any by taking off.