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“Do you know what people will start saying when I walk down the street now?” He looked down at her, faintly smiling.” ’There goes Ty Calder’s old man.’”
“No, you’ll always be Chase Calder,” she insisted, but there was a part of her that knew he was right. The time would come, but not for a long while yet.
When she looked back to the scene, Ty was coming toward them, moving with that long, easy gait of his. He stopped once to direct a load of fence rails to a particular section of the yard, then came on. Chase let his arm slide off her shoulders and squared around to face his son, for the first time man to man.
“It’s coming right along,” Chase observed.
“Yeah. That load of fenceposts finally arrived.”
Maggie listened to the run of their voices, not paying any real attention to their discussion. Chase’s remarks were making her notice little things that had escaped her before. Ty was browner, leaner, and the mustache she had teased him about growing fitted the rough vigor of his features. When she compared him to Chase, she realized Ty looked stronger, more flatly muscled, and he was a good inch taller than his father.
Then her son’s dark eyes were gazing at her, his features relaxed and at ease. “Has Tara called to say what time her plane would be arriving?”
Maggie hesitated. “She did call ... to say she was going to stay in Dallas a couple more days and do some shopping—replenish her wardrobe.”
Nodding, Ty looked away, a faint grimness underlying his expression. But there was nothing in it when he turned back, his reaction carefully hidden in a crooking smile. “I’ll probably work late tonight, so don’t wait dinner for me. I’11 fix something for myself when I get there,” he said and moved off to check on the workers again.
“She’s too confident of him,” Chase murmured, his gaze thoughtfully narrowed. “Or she wouldn’t be gone so much.”
“They seem happy enough.” Together, they turned to walk to the pickup.
“She’s a hungry girl,” Chase observed grimly and opened the cab door on the passenger side for Maggie. “It doesn’t seem to matter how much she has, there’s always something more she wants.”
“She loves him,” Maggie said.
“In her way, I think she does,” he agreed and helped her into the truck, closing the door.
Long after the workers had quit for the day, Ty stayed at the site, stacking lumber and preparing things for the next day’s work. He needed to exert himself—to sweat and feel the pull of his muscles to rid himself of the bad mood.
It finally became too dark to see and he stopped, leaning against a section of finished fence to light a cigarette. There was a movement in the purpling shadows to his left, a silent stealth in it. Ty jerked his head around, nerves tensing, then easing slightly when he recognized the lean shape of Culley O’Rourke.
“Working late,” Culley observed with a bright-eyed watchfulness, the premature gray of his hair showing almost white in the twilight.
“Just finishing up,” Ty said and dragged on his cigarette, the red tip glowing brighter.
“Your wife’s gone again.” The statement carried a knowing sound that, in some way, suggested Ty wasn’t man enough to keep her home.
“She’s visiting friends in Texas.” That was sufficient as an explanation for Tara’s absence from the ranch, although Ty had trouble swallowing it. She was his wife; she belonged with him. Although he recognized her need for that other life, it wasn’t easy to accept.
“Guess you’ll be stoppin’ by Jessy’s on your way home again tonight,” Culley said.
Ty’s head came up as he tried to measure what lay behind that comment. Since construction had started on the feedlots, he had stopped at Jessy’s cabin a couple of times for coffee and the company. Each time it had been when Tara was away, but it was only a coincidence.
“I might.” He dropped the cigarette and ground it under his heel, then looked around. “Did you ride over?” He didn’t see a horse tied anywhere.
“Yeah.” But O’Rourke didn’t volunteer where he’d left his horse.
“You do a lot of riding, Culley. Why?” Ty cocked his head to the side, curious about what went on in the man’s mind.
Too many psychiatrists had asked probing questions about the workings of his mind. Culley didn’t like explaining why he did things anymore, nor did he like revealing what he thought. Now he had his privacy and he guarded it jealously.
“I like it.” He shrugged and edged toward the deepening shadows. “It’s getting late. Better be headin’ that way while the horse can still see the trail.”
“Take care, Culley.” The man was already a dark shape moving silently into the evening. Ty waited, listening, then heard the dull thud of hooves, nearly muffled by the distance. Turning, he walked to the lone pickup at the site and climbed behind the wheel.
The new road took him by Jessy’s cabin, where welcoming lights gleamed from the windows. Ty almost drove past it, then whipped the wheel around at the last second and turned in. His headlight beams revealed another vehicle already parked there. By then, it was too late to change his mind about stopping without it looking odd.
Before he walked into the cabin, he had a look through the glass window in the door. The young cowboy sitting at the table with Jessy was a new rider. The Triple C didn’t hire many outsiders except during the busy times, so Ty was quick to recognize the sandy-haired would-be Romeo with the hat pushed to the back of his head, leaning on the table to avidly study Jessy. He was the man hired two months ago, named
