Читать книгу: «Cowboy Accomplice», страница 3

Chapter Three

Buck caught up to him just before he reached the line shack and stopped him. “You won’t be too hard on her, will you?”

J.T. stared at the older man in astonishment. Either Buck Brannigan was getting soft in the head or that woman had gotten to him. Either was unbelievable having known Buck all his life.

“Did you just temporarily lose your mind or were you drunk when you hired her?” J.T. demanded, more upset than he would have been under normal circumstances. He couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that had settled in his gut after seeing where the cow had been burned and dragged off into the woods. A missing distributor cap and a disabled truck. A crew he didn’t know—or necessarily trust. Hell, he had more than enough to worry about without having a woman in camp. Especially that woman.

“You said, find a cook,” Buck said stubbornly. “I found a cook. And let me tell you, I had one heck of a time but I knew better than to show up without one so when Regina walked into the Longhorn and begged me for the job…”

J.T. swore. There was only one way she had known about the job opening. J.T. had opened his big mouth and told her. But Buck still shouldn’t have hired her.

“Any man with even one good eye can see that that woman doesn’t belong off concrete sidewalks, let alone in a cow camp,” J.T. snapped.

Buck rubbed his grizzled jaw with a large paw of a hand, then grinned. “Heck, J.T., she was such a determined little thing and cuter than a white-faced heifer. She talked me into hiring her before I knew what had happened. She said she was desperate for the job and we do need a cook. I thought, what could it hurt?”

They both looked back toward the truck.

“Sorry, boss,” Buck said again.

J.T. just shook his head. “I want you to ride out at first light. Come back with the other four-wheel drive truck. When you get back, you take Ms. Holland to town and find us another cook if you can. Either way I want you back here by early afternoon.”

Buck nodded looking contrite. “You didn’t mention how you knew her.”

“No, I didn’t,” J.T. said and glanced toward the fire. The men were all pretending not to be watching—or listening—to what was going on. None of them had complained that they hadn’t had dinner yet. Under normal circumstances there would be some powerful bellyaching going on. Nothing about this roundup was normal.

He thought about the warm bunk beds waiting in the cabin as he glanced over at the wall tents where he would be sleeping instead. Damn this woman.

Reggie begged to be a camp cook? Well, J.T. would oblige. She could cook supper over the woodstove, then they’d see how she felt about being a camp cook.

He leveled his gaze at Buck. “You’d better hope she’s the best darned cook this side of Miles City, starting with supper tonight.”

“She was just so desperate,” Buck said again.

“Yeah,” J.T. said, “but desperate to do what?” He was wondering if her story about the TV commercial was even true. Maybe there was something else she was after. Something even worse than his perfect posterior.

Buck chewed at the end of his thick mustache. “I might be a fool but I can’t imagine that woman in there taking the truck part.”

“Might be a fool?” J.T. let out a snort. Buck was no pushover, quite the contrary, except somehow Reggie had the old cowboy wrapped around her finger. But he had to agree with Buck, even if she’d faked her incompetence when it came to tire changing, he still couldn’t see her stealing the truck’s distributor cap—not with seven men in camp watching her every move.

“If she’s really behind this,” Buck said, “then someone must be helping her. I suppose it could be someone who followed us up here and camped nearby. Or someone in camp.”

“My thought exactly,” J.T. said as he looked from the campfire back to Buck. “No one in this camp better be trying to help her, Buck. I’m warning you and you better warn the men.”

“I can’t believe the men wouldn’t know how dangerous this is,” Buck said. Without the truck, the only way off this mountain was on horseback. A twenty-mile ride to the ranch. If anyone got sick or hurt—

Maybe someone had followed them up here and was camped nearby. “I’ll ride out and take a look in the morning, if I can’t talk her out of the distributor cap tonight.” He glanced toward the cabin. “You have no idea what that woman is capable of.”

Buck lifted a heavy gray brow. “But you do?”

He ignored the question and Buck’s curiosity. “Let me handle this. If she’s behind taking that distributor cap—”

“Just don’t be too tough on her, okay?”

J.T. shot the foreman a warning look and stomped to the cabin.

Reggie had rolled her suitcase as far as the door.

“The truck doesn’t run,” he said.

She looked alarmed. “How do we get out of here?”

“I could have Buck saddle up a horse for you.”

Her eyes widened in even more alarm. “You would send me off this mountain in the dark on a horse?”

“In a heartbeat. All you have to do is follow the trail fifteen miles down to the county road. From there just go east. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding the ranch. One of my brothers will give you a ride into town to your car from there.”

She looked at him as if she couldn’t believe he was serious.

He wasn’t. He was angry and upset but there was no way this woman could find her way back to the ranch even in broad daylight with street signs to follow. She’d sooner fall off a cliff or stumble into the river and drown herself and one of his horses. For the horse’s sake, he couldn’t do it.

But it was tempting. Especially if she was responsible for the disabled truck. And if she wasn’t? Well, then he wanted to get her out of here and as quickly as possible because he didn’t have a clue what was going on.

“You can’t send me off this mountain on a horse,” she said again.

He thought he saw tears in her eyes. Had she finally realized that she’d gotten herself into something she couldn’t handle?

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I don’t know how to ride a horse.”

J.T. looked at her. Of course she didn’t ride. Any fool could have guessed that. “You do know how to walk though, don’t you? It’s probably only twenty miles to the ranch as the crow flies.”

She practically gasped.

Fighting the urge to throttle the woman and Buck, he said, “You can stay here tonight.” As if he had a choice. He was tempted to throw her to the wolves. Not literally, but at least make her sleep in one of the wall tents tonight on a cot instead of the warm cabin where he should have been sleeping, he thought with a curse.

“Buck is riding down in the morning,” he said. “He’ll bring back a truck and take you to town. In the meantime, you’re the camp cook. Buck?” he called.

Buck was waiting outside the door listening, of course. “Yes, Boss?”

The words were almost impossible to get out, knowing that Buck and Reggie cooking together could be lethal. But he wasn’t going to stay in here with her. No way.

“Help Ms. Holland with dinner,” he ordered.

Buck grinned. “You got it, boss.”

“She can stay in the cabin. You and I will take one of the wall tents.”

“I’m sorry to put you out of your cabin,” Reggie said sweetly enough to give a man a toothache. “I can sleep in the tent.”

Like she had ever slept in a tent on a cot in her life, J.T. thought.

“I don’t mind staying in the tent,” Buck said quickly.

All J.T. could do was shake his head in wonder. There was nothing worse than a sentimental old fool.

Except for a young one, he thought with disgust as he left the cabin. Buck must be getting old. There’d been a time when even a woman like Reggie Holland couldn’t have conned a man like Buck Brannigan. What was the world coming to?

J.T. marched over to the fire, apologized that supper was running late and explained the new sleeping arrangements. He’d expected the men to complain and loudly.

“No problem, boss,” Cotton said grinning as he glanced toward the cabin. “Let me know if there is anything I can do to help Ms. Holland.”

This was why women didn’t belong in a cow camp.

Slim and Luke quickly offered their assistance as well.

J.T. groaned under his breath and reminded himself that she would be gone by tomorrow. But he couldn’t help but worry that she hadn’t given up. What would she try next? He hated to think. Especially if she had an accomplice in one of his men.

Well, before the night was over, J.T. figured he could talk Reggie into handing over the distributor cap and the name of her accomplice. Both would be out of here at first light.

AS BUCK EXPLAINED cooking over a woodstove, Reggie tried to tell herself that she’d won round one.

So she had to cook supper. A slight drawback. Maybe she would wow J.T. McCall. True, she had never cooked anything in her life other than taking something out of a container and popping it into the microwave. She’d never had time to learn. But she was fearless. And determined not to leave this camp until she had McCall signed to the commercial. Her future depended on it.

Not just her future, she reminded herself. A lot of people were depending on her to pull this off. This entire advertising campaign was her idea, a desperate last-ditch effort to save the company—and her job.

If the campaign succeeded, Way Out West Jeans would go public and no longer just be a tiny obscure family-owned company. Regina’s future would be secure.

If it failed, the employees would be without jobs and Way Out West Jeans would have to close its doors, the hundred-year-old company bankrupt.

She was determined that wasn’t going to happen. No matter what she had to do.

She needed authenticity and J. T. McCall and his Sundown Ranch were it. She’d been flabbergasted when Buck had shown her the ranch before they’d come up the mountain. Thank goodness for Buck.

She’d overheard just enough of the conversation outside the cabin between McCall and Buck to know that without Buck she’d be on her way down the mountain in the dark either on the back of one of those horses in the corral or on foot.

How lucky that the truck hadn’t started. And how lucky that Buck Brannigan had been sympathetic to her story about needing this job. He’d probably heard the real desperation in her voice. She did need this. Just not the job she’d been hired on to do.

She felt a little guilty for putting Buck in what was obviously an awkward situation with his boss. But she got the feeling that Buck was one of the few people who wasn’t afraid of J. T. McCall.

She found Buck’s bashfulness cute, along with his “Aw shucks ma’am,” hat-in-hand protective politeness. For a moment, she wondered what her life would have been like if she’d had a father like Buck.

Shoving that thought away, she concentrated on the task at hand, cooking over the woodstove and assuring Buck she could handle this while he moved his stuff out of the cabin and into the tent.

“You can cook, right?” Buck had asked her earlier at the Longhorn Café.

She’d known all she had to do was answer the man’s question correctly. “I’m a woman, aren’t I?”

That seemed to appease him, just as she knew it would. A lot of men thought all women were born being able to cook and clean. Not in her family, that was for sure.

No, her talents lay somewhere else. That’s why, given time, she had no doubt that she could persuade even a man as mulish as J. T. McCall that he’d be a fool to just sit on his assets.

But she didn’t have much time. Only until tomorrow when Buck returned. Shoot, she’d closed impossible deals in a lot less time than that, she told herself. Whether she liked it or not, she was her mother’s daughter.

In the meantime, she would cook supper following the instructions Buck had given her. She just hoped cooking proved easier than changing a flat tire.

WHEN J.T. WALKED into the line shack cabin for supper, the air reeked of smoke even though all the windows were open and a stiff breeze was blowing through the place.

He didn’t have to ask how the new cook had done. As he settled into the chair at the head of the table, he spotted a large platter of incinerated steaks, black and shrunken and no longer resembling anything edible.

The cowhands who’d earlier seemed overjoyed to have a pretty female cook in camp were now eyeing the burnt steaks warily.

“You want to pass the steaks around?” Buck asked, sounding as if he had a sore throat.

J.T. noticed how Buck avoided his gaze as J.T. picked up the platter of cremated meat. Silence filled the cabin. He sensed the men around the table watching him as if waiting to see what his response would be. He knew if the cook had been a male, everyone in this room would be complaining, J.T. at the top of the list. Yet another reason a woman didn’t belong in a cow camp.

J.T. looked from the platter to Reggie. She stood in the corner not far from the woodstove, hanging back in the shadows as if trying to make herself smaller. Loose hair hung in limp tendrils around her face, a large dark smudge of charcoal graced her cheek and her new duds looked as if she’d been in a mud wrestling match—and lost. So much for her signature color. All in all, she appeared exhausted. And close to tears.

But it was the expression on her face that was his undoing. She looked downright contrite. He watched her inspect a red, inflamed fingertip, then bring it to her mouth to suck on the burn, and he felt a rush of sympathy for her.

Earlier he’d threatened to throw her to the wolves, but he realized now that that’s exactly what he’d done by allowing her to pretend to be the camp cook. He doubted she’d ever cooked in her life, let alone over a woodstove.

Cursing himself, he looked down at the ruined meat on the platter. “Steaks huh, great,” he said between gritted teeth as he slid one of the charred chunks of once grade A beef onto his plate before passing the platter to the man next to him, Cotton Heywood.

Cotton quickly helped himself to a steak. “Looks good! Boy am I hungry.”

The spell broken, each man complimented Reggie as the meat made its way around the table, each man except for Will Jarvis. He stared at the steak remains, then let his gaze lift to J.T.’s for a long moment before finally stabbing one and dropping it to his plate.

J.T. watched him, still fighting the feeling that there was something familiar about the man.

When J.T. glanced up, he found Reggie’s gaze on him. While she still looked duly chastened, he glimpsed gratitude in her blue eyes. He wanted to tell her that he was only keeping peace in his camp, not saving her, but he doubted she’d believe it any more than he did.

He mentally shook his head. This woman had the ability to make a man want to wring her neck one minute and take her in his arms and comfort her the next. Women like her were damned dangerous.

“You are going to join us, aren’t you, Ms. Holland?” he asked, reminding himself that this was her doing. She’d gotten herself into this. And if she thought she was going to get out of eating what she’d cooked, she was sadly mistaken. He wouldn’t force his men to eat anything the cook wouldn’t also be required to eat.

“I’m not very hungry,” she said in a quiet, almost timid voice.

He’d just bet she wasn’t considering what she’d done to this food. He studied her. Was she ready to give up? He could only hope. “I insist you have something to eat.”

Luke Adams got up to pull out a chair for her. Even though the men had to know this woman was going to ruin their food as long as she was here, they all smiled over at her as she sat down. But how could they not feel sympathy for her? She looked as pathetic as a rain-drenched stray kitten. He wondered which of the men had taken the distributor cap for her. The woman was persuasive enough, she could have talked any one of them into it, J.T. realized—even Will Jarvis, the most cantankerous of the bunch it seemed.

Buck passed a bowl full of something small, shriveled and crispy brown. J.T. frowned down at them, trying to figure out what food they’d originally been. The brown nuggets resembled large hard nuts.

“Do you want some butter on your baked potato?” Buck asked with more pleasantness than J.T. had ever heard in the big man’s tone.

So that’s what they’d once been? He would never have thought it possible to make a potato look like this. He wondered what she’d done to them. And decided he didn’t want to know.

He was almost afraid to take the large bowl Buck offered him next, but was relieved to see that he recognized the food in it. Baked beans. He scooped a healthy serving onto his plate, glad at least something would be edible. How much damage could Reggie do to a can of pork and beans?

He started to take a bite, but stopped, disturbed to realize what else Reggie’s presence had done. Cow camps revolved around male custom. The conversation at the table should have been about critters, who’d be riding the draws looking for strays tomorrow, who’d be wrangling the horses. Instead the men ate in silence.

Nor were they wolfing down their food, though who could blame them. Still some of them were actually using napkins and employing the utensils in the way they were designed.

J.T. shook his head. Reggie was destroying century-old rituals, making grown men behave against their nature, and he didn’t like it.

He sawed off a piece of steak and took a bite. It tasted like charred cheap shoe leather. He chewed and chewed and finally forced the bite down with beans. Big mistake. Fire shot through his mouth and down his throat. Choking, he grabbed his water glass, his wild-eyed murderous gaze leaping to Buck.

Buck kept his head down as if intent on his food. Everyone else at the table also seemed unduly interested in their plates.

He downed his water, then glared across the table at Reggie, fire in his eyes as well as his mouth. The woman was going to kill them all. Any woman who could do this much damage to food wouldn’t even blink when it came to disabling a truck.

Was all of this just a plot to get him to change his mind and do the commercial? My God, the woman would stoop to anything.

She appeared busy pushing her food around her plate. Smart not to eat it. She glanced up as if she felt his gaze on her. She stared at him in concern. Was she worried that he might leap across the table and throttle her or that he might die right before her eyes? He knew his face must be bright red, his eyes were running water and he could not stop choking.

“Buck said you liked a lot of green pepper in your beans,” she said into the strained silence. No doubt the men were quietly choking to death as well. “So I found a bag of chopped peppers and put them all in. I think they might have been the wrong peppers.”

No kidding.

Buck let out an uncharacteristic little laugh. “There were two different bags of peppers in the cooler. I should have shown her which ones to use. I think she used the jalapenos.”

“Yeah,” J.T. said, narrowing his gaze at her. Was it an honest mistake? Or had she purposely done this? No one would be that cruel, would she?

Well, she’d underestimated him. There was nothing she could do to get him to change his mind. Not poison him. Not kill his taste buds. Not starve him. Nothing. He would get her out of here tomorrow and Buck would bring back a real cook. Now that J.T. knew what she was capable of, he wasn’t letting her near the stove again. He would cook breakfast himself.

“I like my beans hot,” Cotton piped up. “They’re spicy but real good.” He smiled at Reggie.

Luke and Slim jumped to Reggie’s defense as well. J.T. watched them eat the beans, their eyes tearing with each bite, lies on their lips, their politeness costing them dearly.

He would have felt sorry for them except for one thing. Reggie was losing that chastened look. Their compassion and polite compliments seemed to be giving her renewed strength. When J.T. looked down the table at her, he saw that spark of determination, still fairly dim, but burning again in her eyes.

It was the last thing he wanted to see burning there.

“Here, Luke, have some more beans,” J.T. said, passing him the bowl. “There’s enough for all of you to have seconds.” He watched each man take his share as the bowl was passed around the table. How could they not without hurting Reggie’s tender feelings?

Everyone except Will Jarvis and Nevada Black helped themselves to more beans.

“I’ve never been a big fan of beans,” Nevada said. Nor burnt steak and potatoes, it seemed. His plate looked untouched.

Same with Will, only he didn’t bother to say anything as he passed on the beans.

J.T. didn’t blame the men. He was feeling a little guilty about making the others eat more of the horribly hot beans. It wasn’t their fault that they’d gotten caught in the middle of this war between him and Reggie and they didn’t even know what was really at stake. J.T. wasn’t even sure he did. He just couldn’t let them get too taken with this woman before he could get her out of here.

He felt her reproachful gaze on him as the beans reached her and she scraped the last of them onto her plate. Defiantly, she ate them, her gaze fixed on him. He watched her, knowing how much each forkful cost her, and yet, other than unshed tears swimming in her big blue eyes, she didn’t let it show. She ate every bite.

The men did the same.

If Reggie had wanted to make him feel like a heel, she’d succeeded. Worse yet, her defiant act had only managed to do just what he’d feared. It had allied the men to her. Even Will and Nevada were watching her with a look of something like respect. Damn this woman was impossible! She already had Buck on her side, now she had them all eating out of her hand, so to speak.

Earlier he’d thought her beaten, close to crying, ready to cave in. He saw now that Reggie Holland didn’t fall to defeat easily. He’d not only underestimated her tenacity, he found himself admiring it and at the same time fearing it. How far would the woman go to get what she wanted? And how many of his men would she use to do it?

The disabled truck nagged at him. He looked around the table, trying to imagine what any of the cowhands had to gain by taking the distributor cap. Cotton, Slim and Luke weren’t paying attention to anyone but Reggie.

Will Jarvis seemed to be watching everyone at the table while picking at his food with distaste. Roy, head down, was eating quietly, but then Roy did everything quietly, it seemed. Nevada Black was eating what he could salvage of the meal, but he didn’t look happy about it.

Of the men, Nevada Black looked like the one who had probably done some time. He seemed the most likely to have disabled the truck. But for what possible motive? J.T. wouldn’t be surprised if Nevada Black was gone in the morning. He didn’t look like a man who put up with much.

Neither did Will Jarvis. Both men were older and no doubt less tolerant. Unless they needed this job desperately, they would hit the road if the conditions didn’t improve.

Luke, Slim and Cotton were a whole other story. Any of the three could have come to Reggie’s rescue and disabled the truck.

J.T. let his gaze come back to Reggie. She had to have known he would send her packing as soon as he found her at the line shack. She’d gotten to stay here tonight only because of the missing distributor cap. And she was the one person who supposedly didn’t ride a horse.

She looked up at him, resolve burning again in those eyes like a hot blue flame. He shouldn’t be surprised by anything this woman did, but he found himself surprised over and over again. He’d never met anyone like her and hoped he never did again.

He cursed under his breath as he watched each of the men take his plate and utensils over to the large galvanized tub full of hot dishwater on the stove, something they would never have done for a male cook. Several tipped their hats to Reggie and actually thanked her for cooking, then hung around as if not wanting to leave.

She bestowed one of her drop-a-man-to-his-knees smiles on each of them. Even Will Jarvis who had hardly touched his meal returned her smile, though grudgingly.

J.T. couldn’t blame them. Reggie looked like a waif. You wanted to take her in your arms and tell her everything was going to be all right. She seemed so tired that he had to wonder what was keeping her on her feet as she got ready to do the dishes. She meant to finish the job she’d started, even if it killed her. And for a moment, he thought about seeing if it would.

“Cotton, why don’t you and Slim clean up the dishes tonight,” J.T. suggested. “Luke, you can see to the horses.” Everyone but Reggie knew it was an order. “I need to talk to Ms. Holland and I think she’s done quite enough for one day.”

If the men were surprised by his irregular order or resented it, they didn’t show it. Doing dishes in a cow camp was strictly the cook’s domain, but Reggie had already destroyed most of the established codes of the west, why not break a few more?

J.T. saw Cotton and Slim exchange knowing smirks as they set about their work. They thought something was going on between him and Reggie! He wanted to deny it. Well, at least tell them that what they thought was going on wasn’t.

But he knew better than to open his mouth. Protesting would only dig the hole he was in deeper.

He was just thankful that Buck would be leaving early in the morning and Reggie would be history by afternoon. Even if her cooking didn’t kill them all, he couldn’t have her here. Pretty soon, she’d have the men fighting over her. Or worse.

Sending Buck into town would put the roundup behind a little, but it would be worth it. Things could get back to normal. Even if Buck didn’t find a cook, J.T. would rather hear the men complain about Buck’s cooking than put up with this.

Buck looked worried as J.T. ushered Reggie out the door of the line shack. What did the old coot think he was going to do to her? Take her out and shoot her? Let Buck think the worst since he was the one who’d gotten them into this mess.

No, J.T. thought, he couldn’t blame it all on Buck. He should have made it clearer to her on the highway this afternoon that he was never going to change his mind. And he should never have mentioned to her that he needed a camp cook. Nor should he have let Reggie cook tonight.

Discouraging this woman wasn’t easy but he had to try. He couldn’t let her continue with this charade. She was wasting her time and his. He would make her see that. Somehow.

He’d convince her to return the distributor cap and send her back to town with Buck tonight in the truck. The sooner she was out of the camp the better. Especially since he had a bad feeling about this roundup.

The last time he’d had that feeling, five men had died.