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“I can’t take off at the drop of a hat, Tara,” he told her, grim-mouthed under the mustache.
“Surely you can go just this once,” she coaxed with her most provocative smile. “It’s been ages since we’ve gone anywhere.”
“If you had said something sooner, I might have been able to arrange things so we could go. But this afternoon it isn’t possible.” There was a finality in his voice that didn’t encourage any further use of feminine wiles. She had used her beauty and her body on him too many times for Ty to let their persuasions alter his decision. Yet there was also the knowledge that this party was an occasion she badly wanted to attend. Her protests of boredom made him feel guilty and hard-pressed to deny her the excitement she craved. “You can go to the dinner with your father if you like,” he offered grudgingly.
“Do you mean it?”
He watched her eyes light up. “Yes.” He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Somehow he knew it was the start of something, the first of many trips she’d take without him, the first of many reasons she’d find to leave the ranch and go back to a more socially active life surrounded by so-called important people.
“I already know which gown I’m going to take.” She was busy planning. “Where’s Stricklin? I’ll need to let him know I’ll be coming with them.”
“I haven’t seen him since breakfast this morning.” He should have guessed Strickiin would be attending the dinner. Dyson never went anywhere without his second pair of ears.
“He might be in his room, working on those reports for Daddy.” Tara headed for the door, belatedly blowing Ty a kiss. “See you tomorrow, Ty darling.”
Ty was slower to leave the room.
The drone of an airplane broke the afternoon quiet. Ty reined his horse in atop a rise and looked up to see Dyson’s twin-engine aircraft making its swing west with Tara aboard. There was a knotting of his muscles, a fine-honed tension that sharpened his nerves.
He’d finished his inspection of the site on the north range. It appeared to be the most promising of all, with an ample supply of water, good natural drainage, and only a short distance from one of the main ranch roads and the north camp bossed by Arch Goodman.
The plane grew steadily smaller. Ty soon lost it in the glare of the low-hanging sun. He sat a second longer on his horse, then lifted the reins to head for the north camp, where he’d left his truck and horse van.
As he started to send his horse down the slope, he spotted a rider leading a sore-footed horse along the shallow pocket. It was Jessy Niles who had been forced afoot. Ty rode down. Cowboy boots were not conducive to walking long distances. When she heard the drum of hooves, she stopped and extended the shade of her hat brim with her hand to block out the sun’s glaring angle and identify the approaching rider.
“Trouble?” His dryly amused glance ran over her dusty face.
“Threw a shoe about six miles back,” she answered ruefully. “Wouldn’t ya know I’d get nearly home before someone comes along.”
Ty chuckled and took his boot out of the left stirrup. “Climb aboard.”
Jessy passed him the reins to her horse, then stuck a toe in the empty stirrup and grabbed his saddle horn to swing up behind him. There was never any ease within her when she was around him. She didn’t have it now as she had to grip the solid trunk of his waist to steady herself while she shifted into a comfortable position on the saddle skirt. Underneath all that casualness, she was as taut as a bowstring.
“Ready?” Ty wrapped her horse’s reins around the saddle horn to eliminate the drag.
“Yeah.” She took her hands off him and rested them on her thighs, balancing easily at the slow walk necessitated by her tender-footed horse. His shoulders were broad and well muscled. He smelled of horses and tobacco smoke. It was a full minute before Jessy realized he had turned off the path she’d been on. “Where are you going?”
“To the camp.” He turned his head, giving her a view of his jutting profile, bronzed and sun-lined at the corner of his eyes. “Why?”
“If you angle to the north, it’ll shortcut you to the edge of camp,” Jessy said, knowing the area like the back of her hand. “I’ve got a cabin there, stuck in the woods.”
“The old Stanton place?” Ty asked, neck-reining his mount in a northerly direction.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were still living with your folks,” he remarked idly.
“I was up until last fall. I usually moved in with the Goodmans over the winter ’cause it’s too hard trying to get from one end of the ranch to the other when the weather’s bad. Old Abe Garvey had been living in the Stanton cabin. When he died last September, I decided to just move up here permanently so I wouldn’t have to keep making that long drive back and forth,” she explained matter-of-factly.
“You’re completely independent now.” It was an observation that said she had always been independent by nature, but cutting loose from her home made it total.
“My folks have the place to themselves now that Ben and Mike have both gone to work on other parts of the ranch. They used to complain it was too noisy in the house. Now they’re saying it’s too quiet,” she said, smiling faintly and swaying with the rhythm of the walking horse. “I keep telling them they should be glad to get a twenty-four-year-old daughter off their hands.”
“You’re getting to be an old maid, Jessy.” There was a smile in his voice.
“There’s the cabin.” She pointed over his shoulder at the low roofline in the shadows of the cottonwoods rising along the riverbanks.
When he reached the small log structure, he reined in the horse and Jessy pushed backwards to slide off its rump to the ground. Ty unwrapped the reins to her horse and stepped down.
