Man of the west, p.4
Man of the West, page 4
If Billy were somehow able to trace her to Lockett, even if he didn’t see her or Danni in person, if he saw the Ford, he would recognize it no matter what license plates it had. On the other hand, if he turned her in to the police for taking the car, they would be looking for the original plate number.
Given Billy’s history with law enforcement, he might not contact them for any reason. She wondered if she should tell Amanda about the stolen plates, but decided against it. Amanda had helped her get this job. No way would she want to make her an unknowing participant in a crime. And last of all, Amanda worked for the county sheriff and she might be obligated to report a stolen license plate.
With her mind foggy from stress and exhaustion, Jolie couldn’t think clearly. In a split second she decided to leave the stolen license plates right where they were and to keep her mouth shut. She might be functioning on pure adrenaline, but at least the sun was shining, the sky was clear and it was as blue as Danni’s eyes. She had her father’s eyes, one of the few redeeming basics of being his daughter.
Carrying one last laundry basket into the cottage’s living room, Jolie found her daughter slumped in the corner of the sofa and scowling. Jolie fought not to break into tears. She had planned so carefully, taken a huge risk by uprooting their lives. What if Danni, in the end, was unhappy?
She took a few minutes, slowly turning in a circle and taking her surroundings. The house was old, but she could already tell it would be comfortable. She had never had so much space, never lived with a floor so solid. The furniture, though obviously old and used, was far better than what she had left behind.
Her survey stopped with a natural stone fireplace in the corner of the living room. She had never had a fireplace, hadn’t even been in many buildings that had one. “Did you see the fireplace, Danni?”
“Yes,” her daughter said in a small voice. “But where will we get some wood to burn?”
Jolie wondered the same thing, because so far, she hadn’t seen an abundance of trees growing naturally. She was sure the huge old trees around the ranch house had been planted a long time ago. “I don’t know, but we’ll get some. I think the winter is colder here than in Grandee. A fireplace will be nice. We really don’t need it for now. It’s spring. We’ll worry about burning a fire in the fall.”
If we’re still here.
Who knew where she and Danni would be come fall? Once Billy knew she had pulled out, they might be on the run.
Danni got to her feet and went to the fireplace, ran her small beringed fingers along the highly varnished wooden mantel. Jolie set down the basket of clothing and joined her, looped her arm around her shoulder. “Just think, Danni. We can put up Christmas stockings. Can’t you see our stockings hanging here and a big fire?”
“I guess so,” Danni said with little enthusiasm.
She wrapped Danni in her arms in a tight hug, rested her cheek on her daughter’s hair. “Listen, we’re going to be okay. We’ll take a day to get straightened out and rest. Then we’ll see about getting you into school.”
“But why do I have to, Mama? School’s almost out and I already learned everything.”
Jolie squeezed her eyes tightly shut, pushing back tears. This behavior wasn’t like Danni. She loved school, was a good student, but the last twenty-four hours had surely scared her. Jolie couldn’t blame her if she just couldn’t stand the thought of one more big change.
Jolie would love nothing more than to grant her daughter’s wish about not enrolling in school. Having her attending public school could be a way Billy might find them. But she couldn’t allow Danni to not finish the school year. “Because you have to get a good education. You need to pass fifth grade so you can be in sixth.”
She set her daughter away and brushed tendrils of her brown hair off her face. “Did you decide which bedroom you want?”
Danni answered with a scowl and a nod of her head.
“Which is it?”
“The last one.”
“Good. Go ahead and get the sheets out of the hall closet and start on the bed. I’ll come help you as soon as I put these clothes away.” Jolie picked up the laundry basket and carried it to her bedroom.
There, she paused and heaved a great breath, her gaze landing on the queen-size bed and its new mattress. The Jensens had never slept on brand-new mattresses.
As she placed the laundry basket on the bed and began to sort through the folded clothing, she looked around the room. The walls were painted beige and the floors were made of some kind of wood. There were two tall windows side by side, with white blinds and white crocheted curtains. Besides the bed, she had a bedside table and a lamp, a dresser and a matching chest of drawers and a wooden rocking chair. She walked over to a closet with sliding doors and peeked inside. The closet was huge, far more than enough room for her scant wardrobe.
A sliver of happiness began to peek through Jolie’s fatigue and gloom as she thought of what Jude had said: “Jolie, I don’t know what you left behind, but you’re safe here....We take care of our people.”
Already, Jolie felt it. Safety. Working as a waitress for so many years had afforded her an uncommon ability to read people and she sensed that Mr. and Mrs. Fallon were what Amanda had said they were—good, fair people. On the way back to her daughter’s room, she stopped off in the bathroom. She found a corner in the bathroom closet and left the laundry basket there to collect dirty clothing, remembering that Jude had told her to feel free to use the washing machine and dryer inside the ranch house.
The job that was expected of her didn’t frighten her. She suffered no lack of confidence when it came to cooking, though she wasn’t a trained cook. She had worked with food and food service for all of her working life, first as a teenager in fast-food joints, then as a dishwasher and waitress in busy cafes. Over the years, she learned food prep from the various professional cooks with whom she had worked. She had no doubt she could manage the Circle C’s kitchen, though she had never had a restaurant manager’s job.
The Cactus Café, for instance, located at an intersection that was an interstate exit, was a large, busy place, with customers ranging from truckers to travelers in luxury RVs. Beyond that, being the oldest of three sisters and with her mother working long hours for as long as Jolie could remember, at a young age, out of necessity, Jolie had learned to cook and manage their small household. The Circle C Ranch’s kitchen couldn’t be much different.
She tried not to think of that ranch house. Not yet. She couldn’t even guess how many rooms it must have. Going to it every day and going inside, having free run of that fancy kitchen, she would feel like a princess. She already felt as if she had entered a fictional world.
Robotically, she walked to Danni’s room and began to help her with the sheets. On the wall opposite the regular-size bed was a blank wall painted a soft yellow, which was probably why Danni had chosen this room. “I was thinking, Danni, after I get a paycheck, maybe we could get a little bookcase where you could put all of your books. Wouldn’t that be neat?”
“I could put my stuffed animals in it if I had some.”
Jolie felt a stab of guilt over her daughter’s collection of stuffed animals they had left behind, including the brand-new stuffed bunny Jolie had bought her for Easter. But she couldn’t let little things affect her shaky resolve. Stuffed toys were easily replaced.
She could get a desk for Danni. A place for her to work on her lessons would be a luxury. Maybe someday, once Jolie established some order in their new lives, she could even think about a computer. “Maybe soon we could get you a desk and put it right over there.” She pointed toward the corner.
For the first time, Danni’s blue eyes sparked with interest in what they were doing. “Could I get a bulletin board?”
“We could do that. There’s plenty of room for it. Soon as we get organized and I start making some money, we can work on it.”
Chapter 4
Jude glanced away from her computer monitor toward the outside and the barns and corrals. From her office in the back of the ranch house, she had a clear view of the big red horse barn with a huge encircled C painted on the second story. Clary Harper, the horse wrangler, was working a colt in the round corral attached to the barn. This was unusual. Most Sundays only a few hands worked at chores that were absolutely necessary.
Jude’s husband and her father, their backs to her, had their arms hooked over the corral’s top rail, watching Clary and the colt. The two men were about the same height. Both had a right boot braced on the bottom rail. Both had on Wranglers and long-sleeve light-colored shirts, both wore gray hats. Jude couldn’t keep from grinning. Brady and Daddy were such total cowboys. Other than herself, that was probably the most profound connection they had.
In the year and a half that had passed since she had married Brady, he and her father had grown close. Since her father had always wanted a son, she was happy to see him bond with her husband.
She left her desk and ambled out to the corral to see what was going on. She walked up between them. “Hey,” Brady said. He hooked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to his side. “How you feeling?”
She’d had a few bouts of morning sickness, but that phase of her new pregnancy seemed to have settled down. “Great.”
“You ate something, right?”
“Bowl of cereal, just like every morning.”
He gave her his white-toothed grin and a smack on the lips. God, she loved him.
“What do you think of the cook?” her father asked.
Jolie was the first ranch employee Daddy hadn’t had a direct hand in hiring. He had left it entirely up to her. Jude still hadn’t told him Jake had recommended Jolie, but her father was so happy these days, he probably wouldn’t care that Jake’s two-bits had gone into the hiring of the kitchen help.
“She seems okay. I told her not to worry about the kitchen until Tuesday. She has to enroll her daughter in school tomorrow. Y’all want a sandwich for dinner? I could probably manage that without doing too much damage.”
“Sure,” Daddy said. “When did you learn to cook?”
She gave him a flat look and he chuckled.
“Sounds good,” Brady said. “I’ll help you. As you should recall, I’m pretty good at sandwiches.”
The very first meal Jude had shared with Brady had been a bologna and cheese sandwich he had made in his antiquated kitchen at the old 6-0 ranch that had been left to him by his aunt. And for the rest of Jude’s days, “baloney and cheese sandwiches” would hold a special place in her heart. Brady grinned and Jude grinned back.
Her father’s face took on a blank expression. He didn’t get the private joke and Jude made no effort to explain.
The three of them sauntered toward the ranch house, with Jude walking between them, Brady resting his big hand at the base of her neck. She slid her arm around his waist. “Whose colt is Clary working with?” she asked.
“Betsy’s,” her father answered. “Remember, we bred her to Sandy Dandy a couple of years ago?”
Betsy was one of the ranch’s best broodmares and Sandy Dandy was a prize-winning stud. “Oh, wow. I do remember. That pairing should produce a good horse.”
“Clary thinks so, too. That’s why he’s working him on Sunday. He doesn’t want to miss a single day.”
In the kitchen, with Brady’s help, Jude made three ham, cheese, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, sliced them into halves and laid them on plates. Then she found tortilla chips in the pantry. They took seats at the glass-topped breakfast table and while they ate, discussed branding the spring calves. The branding would occur in June as it had every year for generations. Soon Brady and the hands would start to tally how many calves would be branded and Daddy would determine if they needed to hire extra temporary help.
At the end of the meal, Jude offered to make a tuna casserole for supper. “Suzanne gave me the recipe,” she added, “and we know she’s a good cook.”
“Don’t mean to hurt your feelings, punkin,” her father said, “but I think I’ll just go to town later and eat supper at Maisie’s.”
He left the table for his office on the other end of the house. Soon after Grandpa’s death, Daddy had taken over Grandpa’s office.
Brady hung behind. As she rinsed their dishes in the sink, he came up behind her, wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “Ride to Abilene with me?”
She turned in his embrace, placing her palms on his chest. “What’re you doing in Abilene on a Sunday?”
“I was thinking if I had a hot date, I might take her to a nice dinner somewhere, then to a movie.”
She smiled up at him. She had never been as happy as she was now. “Dinner and a movie. Hmm.”
“Yep,” he said.
They kissed, thoroughly enjoying each other. When it ended, she said, “Lord, I can’t remember the last time someone wasn’t here to eat supper. This old house won’t know what to think if all of us are gone at suppertime.”
“I’ll bet it’ll still be here when we get back.”
“I’ll bet so, too,” Jude said, still smiling.
Abilene was an hour-and-a-half drive from Lockett. As they turned onto the highway, Brady said, “I heard what you told your dad about the cook, but what did you really think?”
“I don’t know yet. She’s a woman with a past, I think. But obviously, I didn’t want to mention that to Daddy.”
“Couldn’t have much of a past. She can’t be thirty years old.”
“Amanda said she’s twenty-seven. She seems older than that. I sense that she’s very responsible and Amanda says she can cook. I’m just going to keep an eye on things for a while. Not with the cooking but with the management of the kitchen and the budget. I know she’s Amanda’s cousin, but we don’t know her. And Amanda might not know her as well as she thinks she does.”
JOLIE REMOVED THE REMAINDER of the food she had brought from the Cactus Café from the cooler and spread it on the table in the dining area off the kitchen. She opened bottles of milk for Danni and herself and they sat at the table to eat. “Tomorrow we’ll start eating in the ranch house,” she said.
“Do you think there’s some kids here?” Danni asked, mincing at her sandwich.
“You heard Mrs. Fallon, er, Jude. She has a stepson near your age.”
Danni finally took a bite of her sandwich, then said, “But he doesn’t live here. And she doesn’t have any girls.”
“Your aunt Amanda said the ranch has around fifty employees and most of them live here on the ranch. Surely some of them have girls.”
They ate the rest of the sandwiches in silence. “Are you tired?” Jolie asked.
Danni nodded.
“Me, too. I’m worn out. We could watch TV and maybe take a nap on the sofa. This might be the last day we aren’t busy. It might take all day tomorrow to get you enrolled in school.”
Danni grimaced.
“It’ll be fine, Danni. You’ll see. Just try, okay?”
“Will I have to ride the school bus?”
“You rode the school bus in Grandee.”
“But I knew everyone.”
“You’ll know everyone again. You’re a sweet, friendly person and all the kids at school will want to be your friend.”
“No, they won’t. Couldn’t you take me?”
In Jolie’s mind’s eye, the stolen license plates glared. Dare she risk driving to the school and back? Well, there wasn’t much traffic and she had been lucky so far and she didn’t want her daughter to be more uncomfortable than necessary. “Look, I’ll drive you for a few days, just until you get used to things. I’ve been thinking, I wonder if we could figure out a way to enroll you using a different last name.”
Jolie didn’t know if this was even possible or legal, but she intended to try it. Dealing with Danni in a new school had been a worry from the moment Jolie had begun to formulate her escape plan. When she had removed her daughter from school in Grandee, she had told the principal they were moving west for work and the principal’s office had given her all of Danni’s records. Unfortunately, they had her last name as “Jensen.”
“Why?”
“So Billy won’t be able to find you. I was thinking maybe we could get the school to let you enroll as Danni Kramer. That used to be my name before I married Billy. You wouldn’t mind, would you?”
Danni answered with a shake of her head. “Will Billy hurt us?”
Danni had never called her father “Dad” or “Daddy” or anything other than Billy. Most of the time, he hadn’t given her the time of day. They had lived almost as if Danni were just Jolie’s child and Billy had had nothing to do with her existence.
Who knew if he would hurt them? Not Jolie, even after living with him for more than ten years. If he was doing drugs and wasn’t passed out, he was short-tempered and she believed he was capable of violence. He would be really mad that she had left and even madder that she had taken their only dependable vehicle. His old pickup ran only half the time. “Don’t worry. We just won’t let him find us.”
PAT GARNER DISMOUNTED the blue roan stallion he was training for a calf roper in Abilene and headed for the end of the arena. An engine noise caught his ear. Suzanne Breedlove’s daddy’s pickup truck. He felt a lift in his chest. Just seeing that woman could turn a dark day bright. He led Blue Streak outside and waited for Suzanne to come to a stop.
She scooted from behind the steering wheel looking beautiful. Her long blond hair had that messy look like some of the movie stars wore. She had a big smile on her full, kissable lips. Lord, he loved just the sight of her. He couldn’t help it.
Without a moment’s hesitation she walked straight to him, slid her arms around his middle, rose to her tiptoes and kissed him. Still hanging on to Blue Streak’s reins with one hand, he kissed her back in a long, languid joining, not even trying to hide his hunger. He’d had that hunger almost from the beginning of their relationship and it had never waned. When they stopped for air, he was hard as a rock and Blue Streak snorted in his ear. “Even this horse knows how you tear me up.”
