Cavanaugh Cowboy

Chapter 2

Miss Joan smiled and nodded with approval as she cleared away the empty plates.

“Well, for a man who didn’t want to eat anything, you certainly did justice to that steak and apple pie,” she commented, then swiped a cloth along the counter, getting rid of any lingering crumbs. Finished, she asked, “Can I get you anything else?”

“Only if you want to watch me explode,” Sully answered.

He placed his hand against his stomach as if he was trying to keep the contents inside from suddenly emerging.

“Wouldn’t want to see that,” Miss Joan told him with a puckered expression. “All right then, if you can wait here for a while—no more than an hour—Harry said he can come by and bring you up to the J-H Ranch.”

Sully saw no reason why he needed to be taken by the hand and escorted. “I don’t want to put you out any further,” he told Miss Joan. “I’m sure I can find the ranch on my own. Just point me in the right direction and tell me approximately how many miles the ranch is from here.”

The lines along Miss Joan’s forehead furrowed, forming a skeptical pucker.

“Are you sure?” she asked. She was used to townspeople finding their way around, but this was a tenderfoot, and she had no knowledge about his innate skills. “Because Harry won’t mind. The man loves company and he loves to talk. Says he doesn’t get much practice with me around. Something about sucking up all the oxygen in the room,” she added, shaking her head and dismissing her husband’s words.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Sully told her. He noticed that Mandy reached under the counter to take the dishes that Miss Joan had cleared away. The waitress lingered just long enough to look at him longingly. “Once I get settled in, I would love to meet with your husband, Miss Joan, but right now, I’m anxious to see where I’ll be hanging my hat for the next few weeks.”

“You’re not just going to be hanging your hat,” Miss Joan informed him. She eyed Sully, trying to decide if he was just talking or if he was serious. If it was the latter, he needed to be set straight. “You understand that you’re going to be working for your keep once you’re at the ranch. My foreman doesn’t have much patience with people who don’t pull their own weight or are waiting to be served,” she told Sully.

“Oh, I understand,” he answered, not wanting there to be any misunderstandings. “Uncle Seamus made the terms of this arrangement very clear, and to be honest, I’m really looking forward to working with my hands.”

Miss Joan studied him for a moment, decided he was being honest and then nodded. “All right then, about those directions you wanted.”

Flipping over the menu she had just used earlier, Miss Joan took out the pencil she had in her apron pocket. Using a minimum of strokes, she drew a very basic map for Sully that took him from the center of the town to edge of the ranch that she and Harry owned.

Finished, she put the pencil back into her pocket with a flourish and let him have the map.

“You sure you don’t want to wait for Harry?” she asked, looking at him somewhat dubiously.

“No, this’ll do fine,” Sully assured her, tapping the map she had drawn for him.

Miss Joan had never accepted anything at face value. This was no exception. “How often do you get lost?”

“I don’t,” he said simply. “I just keep on going until I get there.”

Her expression was only partially skeptical at this point.

“All the same, I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for losing one of Seamus’s great-grandkids, even if he does have a bunch of them to spare,” Miss Joan said.

“You won’t be.” His tone was final, indicating that the discussion was at an end. Sully reached into his pocket again, this time to take out his wallet. He was about to flip the folded leather open. “How much do I owe you for lunch?”

Miss Joan’s face darkened, like clouds gathering in the sky just before a storm. “You take your hand out of your pocket, boy, or your journey’s going to be over before it ever gets started,” she warned him. Under her watchful eye, Sully did as he was told—for now. “Nothing was said about there being a charge for lunch.”

Still, Sully’s hand lingered by his pocket. “I’d feel better paying my own way.”

“And I’d feel better if I were twenty years younger, but we can’t all get what we wish for,” Miss Joan snapped. “Now get going. And be sure to tell Rae I sent you.”

“Ray?” Sully asked.

Miss Joan nodded. “That’s the foreman. Rae Mulcahy. Otherwise you might find yourself being shot for trespassing.”

He should have known, Sully thought. People out here stripped things down to the basics.

“Right. I’ll introduce myself first thing,” he promised the woman. “Thank you for lunch, Miss Joan. It really was every bit as good as you said.”

She accepted her due. “Of course it was. You don’t stay in business as long as I have by lying to people. Don’t let Rae work you too hard,” she told him as an afterthought as Seamus’s great-nephew began to leave the diner.

Sully’s mouth curved a little as he took in her warning. “Not possible,” he replied just before he took his leave.

* * *

The twenty-some-odd mile trip to the J-H Ranch went by so quickly, Sully found that he was there before he realized it. If it weren’t for the tall wooden gate proclaiming the ranch’s name, he wouldn’t even have known that he had reached his destination. He would have just thought he was out on the open range.

Part of the problem was that the land had a sameness to it that didn’t set apart one area from another.

Getting out of the 4x4 truck he had rented at the airport when he had landed here in Texas, Sully opened the gate. Getting back in, he drove through to the other side, then got out a second time in order to close the gate behind him. He didn’t want to accidentally allow one of the horses to escape, although right now, he saw no sign of any kind of life forms in the vicinity.

Well, you said you wanted a change, right? Sully asked himself. And this is certainly a change.

While Aurora wasn’t a bustling metropolis the way Los Angeles and San Francisco were, it was definitely not anywhere nearly as deserted-looking and desolate as the land just outside of Forever was.

A person really had to be comfortable in their own skin to live out here, Sully thought. Otherwise, they could easily go stir-crazy inside of a day and a half.

Maybe two if they were particularly well-adjusted, he mused.

For a moment, he seriously considered turning the truck around, returning to the airport and catching a flight back to civilization.

The moment passed.

He was here, he silently argued, and Seamus seemed to think that being here would help him get through this unsettled part of his existence. He might as well at least meet this ranch foreman who was going to put him to work the second he set foot on the property.

He glanced at Miss Joan’s map that he had placed on the passenger seat in the truck. It looked as if the ranch house was straight ahead—wherever that was.

Sully drove more than a mile beyond the gate before he finally caught sight of the ranch house. There looked to be another structure some distance behind it. He guessed it was either the barn or the stable.

He still didn’t have all these ranching terms straight, he thought and wondered if Miss Joan’s foreman would cut him some slack until he got oriented. He hoped the man didn’t turn out to be one of these smug characters that built up his ego on the carcasses of workers he put down.

“Can’t worry about that,” Sully muttered. He was here, and he had to make the most of it. He hadn’t traveled all this way looking to make new friends. He just wanted to get back his zest for life. The zest he’d lost along the way while tracking down a serial killer.

Sully decided that he might as well pull his vehicle up in front of the ranch house and see if there was anyone there who could tell him where he could find the ranch foreman. He didn’t want to wander around aimlessly—for all he knew, that could get him shot out here.

Sully smiled grimly. He supposed that would be one way to deal with the funk he had slipped into.

After parking the truck, he got out of the cab. For now he left the one suitcase he’d packed where he’d put it, in the back seat. No sense in lugging it around until he found the foreman.

Sully smiled to himself as he approached the ranch house. The outside looked as if it had come straight out of one of those old Westerns he used to watch with his father. According to his dad, Angus, the Westerns had been old when he was a kid watching them with his father. That just made them classics in his book, his father had said.

Smiling to himself as he recalled the old memory, Sully knocked on the door.

When there was no answer, he knocked again. And again after he’d let a couple of minutes pass.

After the fourth time, he decided that no one was home and he was going to have to search for this elusive ranch foreman somewhere else.

Sully looked around. Maybe the man was in the large structure located some distance behind the house. It was worth a shot.

Sully had just turned away and gone down the three steps off the front porch when the front door suddenly opened.

Finally! Sully thought turning back around.

The single celebratory word faded instantly as the person he found himself looking up at turned out not to the foreman.

It wasn’t a man at all.

Instead, it was a slender young woman who appeared to be in her twenties. She had long straight black hair pulled back into a ponytail, prominent cheekbones and the most incredible blue eyes he had ever seen.

For a moment, the blue eyes held him captive, melting time and space into a single entity.

It took concentrated effort for him to finally come back to his senses.

“Yes?” One hand on her hip, the woman fired the single word at him like a bullet. Rather than friendly, she seemed exasperated.

Sully found himself wondering why. “Um, Miss Joan sent me.”

“Of course she did,” the slender young woman in jeans and a work shirt said with a sigh, looking more harassed. “You got any gear?”

He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about. “Gear?”

Her impatient look grew only more so.

“Things,” she told him. “Your possessions, clothes, whatever.”

He felt like an idiot, but then, people didn’t talk the way she did back home. And they didn’t snap their questions unless they were interrogating someone.

“Oh, in the truck,” he said, then to make sure he was being clear, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the vehicle parked close by.

The woman’s expression looked no friendlier. “You can park your car behind the house and your gear in the bunkhouse.”

“Bunkhouse?”

“Behind the stable,” she said. Since it was obvious that didn’t clear anything up, she said, “C’mon, I’ll show you.” In a second, she was down the steps and striding toward the rear of the house ahead of him.

They were not starting off on the right foot, Sully thought. Hell, he’d encountered friendlier criminals. Raising his voice, he called after her. “Wait!”

The woman swung around on her heel, still looking as if her supply of patience was seriously depleting by the second. She didn’t say anything, but her entire countenance let him know that she was waiting for him to say something.

Obviously, conversation was not at a premium around here.

“I’m looking for the foreman,” he told her. Since she was still standing where she’d stopped, he crossed to her. “Ray Mulcahy.”

She continued looking at him as if waiting for something to dawn on him. When it didn’t, she said, “You found her.”

“Where?” he asked, looking around. And then the pronoun she’d used suddenly echoed in his brain. “Her?” he asked incredulously.

She opened her mouth, and he had a feeling she was about to say something less than flattering, but then she closed it again. Regrouping, the woman said, “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

Blowing out a breath, she spread her hands wide and said, “Here.”

Sully stared at the shapely woman, dumbfounded. So much for the sanctity of old Westerns. “You’re the foreman?” he questioned in disbelief.

It wasn’t the first time one of the down-on-his-luck drifters Miss Joan had decided to take in looked appalled at the idea of having a woman giving him orders.

“I am. Something wrong with that?” Rae asked.

“No, no,” Sully denied, trying not to trip over his own tongue.

He had grown up in a house of capable females. He had no problem with the idea of a woman running the ranch and issuing orders—he just really wished he’d been briefed about that ahead of time so he wouldn’t have come across like a dolt.

Belatedly, he said, “I’m fine with that.”

Rae took a deep breath, silently telling herself not to get on her soapbox. Scrutinizing the man in front of her, she decided that he didn’t really look as if the idea of having a woman telling him what to do went against his grain. But the guy did look stunned.

She came to the only conclusion she could. “Miss Joan didn’t tell you, did she?”

Sully allowed himself a hint of a smile. “That she did not.” Then, because he could be seen as partially to blame, he said, “In all fairness, I didn’t ask. She just said to go find the foreman, Ray Mulcahy.”

And therein lay the problem, Rae thought. “Rae’s short for Rachel,” she told him.

“Oh. Never thought of that,” he confessed.

And then, for the first time in a while, Sully started to laugh.

Rae’s eyes narrowed, and she felt her back going up again. She’d worked hard to get and keep this position. Miss Joan was charitable, but the woman was also tough and gave nothing away that hadn’t been earned.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

It took Sully a second to catch his breath. “My sisters are really going to get a kick out of this when I tell them about how I put my foot in my mouth.”

“You have sisters?” she asked.

The drifters who came through professed to be loners and kept to themselves for the most part. They hardly ever volunteered any details about themselves, and certainly never this soon.

Maybe this one wasn’t just a drifter, she thought.

“And brothers,” Sully told her.

Somehow, it felt comforting to mention his family. That surprised him, because all he’d wanted to do in the last few weeks was just detach himself from everyone and everything.

“And a whole bunch of cousins,” he added, “almost half of whom are female.” He offered her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like I was insulting you before.”

“You weren’t,” Rae replied.

Even if he had, it wasn’t the sort of thing she admitted. To do so would have been to expose her own feelings, and she never did that.

Rae examined him more closely. He had a tired look about him, she decided. But he didn’t appear as if he’d been knocked down one too many times or lost one con too many. That raised questions for her.

“Why are you here again?” Rae asked.

He wondered if she was trying to trip him up. “Miss Joan sent me.”

“To work?” she questioned.

Sully thought for a second, wanting to get the wording just right. “She said something about earning my keep.”

Rae studied the man next to her, trying to work this out in her head. He didn’t look like a wrangler, but then, neither did Rawlings or Warren, the men who were currently working on the ranch.

But there was something different about him, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. She didn’t like not knowing. Not knowing made her feel as if she wasn’t fully prepared for whatever might come down the road.

“Where are you from?” she asked.

“Aurora. California,” Sully added when the young woman who was Miss Joan’s unlikely foreman continued looking at him blankly.

“California,” she repeated. “And you worked your way here?”

“I flew,” Sully told her, not really sure just what the woman was asking him.

This was still not really making any sense to Rae. “To Forever?” she asked skeptically.

Sully still didn’t see what the problem seemed to be. “Yes.”

Rae’s eyebrows drew together over penetrating blue eyes. “On purpose?”

He nearly laughed at the disbelieving expression on her face but instinctively knew that would not go over too well with this woman.

So instead, he told her, “Seamus, my great-uncle, thought I might like it here.”

“This great-uncle of yours, Uncle Seamus,” she said, wrapping her tongue around the man’s name. “He doesn’t like you very much, does he?”

The way she said it, it wasn’t a question—it was a conclusion.

Chapter 3

Sully looked at the woman, wondering if Rae was trying to goad him or if this was actually her opinion. He couldn’t help wondering what Seamus would have thought of this feisty five-four embodiment of womanhood.

He probably would have liked her, Sully decided. His great-uncle liked women with fire in their blood who weren’t afraid to speak their mind.

“Never had a reason to believe that before,” Sully finally replied.

Rae shrugged, her shoulders moving carelessly beneath her checked work shirt.

“Have it your way. Anyway, you’re in luck,” she told him. “Early this morning I found a whole length of fence that needs to be replaced and you look more able-bodied, like you could probably do a better job of it than the two wranglers I’ve got here working on the ranch now.”

Leading the way to her truck so she could drive him over to the location, Rae stopped walking for a moment. She decided it would be more prudent for her to ask rather than just to assume. “You do know how to dig post holes and swing a sledgehammer, don’t you?”

There was a fifty-fifty chance she wasn’t trying to insult him, Sully thought. In either case, he answered, “I think I can manage.”

Rae nodded. She’d thought as much. “Good. At any rate, you probably can’t be any worse at it than Rawlings and Warren are.”

“Rawlings and Warren?” he echoed. He was trying to keep all the names straight, having a feeling that Rae Mulcahy wasn’t much for repetition.

Rae nodded. “Those are the current two drifters that Miss Joan okayed to work on the ranch. Actually,” she reflected, “Mr. Harry was the one who gave the okay in this case.”

“Mr. Harry, that would be Miss Joan’s husband?” Sully asked.

He was fairly certain that Miss Joan’s husband and Mr. Harry were the same person, but he didn’t want to take anything for granted and make a mistake. He had a feeling that people around here were pretty touchy. He wasn’t really familiar with the names and dynamics of this hamlet yet, and he didn’t want to step on any toes if he could help it.

This time Rae didn’t stop walking as she spared him a quick glance. “Is that just a lucky guess on your part or are you bucking for sharpest tool in the tool box?” she asked.

He got the feeling that he was attempting to maneuver across a chasm walking on a tightrope and trying not to lose his balance—while his foreman was rooting for the rope.

“Why don’t we split the difference and just move on?” Sully suggested diplomatically.

“Get in,” she told him, indicating the truck. When she got in behind the steering wheel, she waited for him to sit down on his side before she asked, “What’s your name, anyway?” Rae had suddenly realized that while this new man knew her name, she hadn’t bothered finding out his.

“Sully,” he answered just as she started up the truck.

Rae frowned, obviously rolling the name over in her head. “What kind of a name is Sully for a man?” she asked.

“What kind of name is Ray for a woman?” he countered.