Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) Read online

  “The new calf. What happened to his mother?”

  Ty ran splayed fingers through his hair and contemplated pulling it out. “She can’t get up. It happens sometimes after a hard labor. Maybe in a day or two she’ll be on her feet. Listen, I—”

  “He’ll need colostrum. And we’re out”

  “Dammit, will you—”

  “You’ll have to get some for him. Or I can collect it myself if you tell me where to go.”

  She faced him squarely, as if challenging him to do just that.

  Tension steamed between them.

  “I think I’ve fallen in love with you, Hannah,” he said softly, laying all his cards on the table, taking that awful risk that could well break him.

  She stared at him for a moment, her expression open, her eyes vulnerable. He dared not breathe. Then suddenly her expression became closed, and her eyes went hard. She laughed out loud, and the sound was harsh and cold.

  “In love with me? And you think I care? Or that I should be surprised. You’re hardly the first man to tell me that. You’re simply the boldest. What a nerve you have! You think I’d ever become serious about you—” Her voice broke, and for an instant, he wondered if she was about to cry. But it was a foolish thought. “A two-bit North Dakota cowboy on a broken-down ranch. Do you know who I am? Do you have any idea?”

  Tyrel tightened his jaw. Anger flooded in, ripping through him like a January wind. “I don’t give a damn who you are.”

  For a moment her face went pale and something showed in her eyes. Sadness? Loneliness? Hope? But it was gone in a second, drowned beneath her pummeled pride.

  “I’m here until you pay me and no longer,” she said, her voice low. “Six more days and I’m out of this nightmare.”

  They stared at each other, then Ty turned away and left the barn.

  “SO YOU’RE WORKING for the Fox boys.” Ed Norton was a small, narrow man with a two-day beard and eyes that resembled the placid Holsteins’ he milked with his son-in-law and two daughters.

  “Yes, I am,” Hannah said. Having no wish to talk to Ty again, she’d asked Nate for directions and come for the colostrum herself.

  “They must be having some trouble with their herd, huh? Lose some mommas, did they?” he asked, glancing stiffly over his shoulder as he puttered into the milking parlor. Six cows stood in a row on a concrete slab four feet above the floor. Their heads were in stanchions. They munched contentedly while octopuslike machines slurped at their udders.

  “Some,” she said, staring at the strange apparatus. Her mood was as black as sin. All she wanted was to collect the colostrum and leave.

  “Yeah, them babies gotta have that colostrum. Gives ‘em their first antibodies, ya know. And our cows give so danged much milk, we don’t need all that rich stuff. Best herd in the state,” he said, then nodded at his own words. But his thick brows were beetled over his watery eyes now. “Best herd in the state, and that’s ’cuz we know how to cull,” he murmured, reaching up to pat a bony Holstein on the shoulder. “I gotta do it, Betty. Gotta do it.”

  She just wanted to leave, Hannah reminded herself. Leave the milking barn, the state, maybe even the country. But she was staring at the old man now, and was almost certain his chin was quivering.

  “What do you have to do?” she asked.

  “I gotta sell her.” His voice broke.

  “Sell her?” Hannah straightened her back. The nearest cow turned from her grain, still chewing, and suddenly the image of Bette Davis flashed through Hannah’s mind. The bovine eyes were just like the woman’s. “You mean for slaughter?”

  “She’s been with me nigh unto ten years,” he said. “My wife, God rest her soul, named her. But she don’t hardly give eight gallons anymore.”

  “Eight gallons! A day?”

  “Barely half what she used to do. Still…I…” He shook his head and patted her again. “She’s been a good old girl. See them kind eyes.”

  She did. “Mr. Norton,” she said, pursing her lips and coming to a quick decision. “I’d like to make you a proposition.”

  Half an hour later, Hannah was back at The Lone Oak. Behind her, Ed Norton drove up pulling a stock trailer.

  Stepping out of the Jimmy, Hannah didn’t deign to glance at Tyrel, though she saw him coming out of the barn. He crossed the muddy yard-with long, quick strides.

  Ed creaked from behind the wheel of his old Dodge. “Tyrel,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Ed.” Ty nodded and reached out to shake the old man’s hand, his arm half-bare where he’d rolled back the sleeve of his denim shirt. “What brings you out this way?”

  “It’s the girl here.” Ed chuckled, and nodded toward Hannah who stood nearby.

  “The girl?” Ty moved toward her. There was suspicion in his eyes and a thousand other emotions she refused to try to decipher. Instead, she met his gaze evenly.

  “You’re purchasing Mr. Norton’s cow,” she said.

  “Purchasing—”

  “I’ll be putting her in with the bottle calves,” she informed him.

  For a moment his expression registered nothing but shock. Then he gritted a smile at her. “Over my dead body.”

  “Why, Mr. Fox…” She smiled back. Tension snapped between them. “You’re giving me goose bumps.”

  Ed cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said, bobbing his head and glancing nervously from one intense face to the other. “She’s a heck of a nice cow. And a good mother. She don’t cut it as a milker no more, but she could nurse a bundle of calves. It’s a damn fine idea. Wish I’d a thought of it myself. The son-in-law though, he’d bust a gasket if I tried a stunt like this—always wanting to modernize, modernize. But Betty…” He pursed his lips as if holding back tears. “She’ll do the job for ya.”

  “Ed,” Tyrel said, “if you’ll excuse us for a moment…” Taking Hannah’s arm, he pulled her off to the side.

  “Listen, honey,” he said. “You might think you’re God’s gift to mankind, but you’re not going to come sashaying in here and take over my ranch.”

  “You listen, cowboy,” she said, jabbing a finger at his chest. “So far you’ve got three calves without mothers. Before you’re done that number will probably double. As it is I spend half my day feeding babies. Betty was made for the job.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” he asked, his voice low.

  “I think I’m getting a mother for your calves.”

  “Well, you’re not,” he said. “You’re screwing with my ranch. And when you screw with my ranch, you screw with me.”

  “Believe me, Mr. Fox, that’s the furthest thing from my intentions,” she snapped.

  He glared at her. “This animal isn’t going to let those calves nurse,” he said, waving toward the trailer. “If you knew anything about cattle, you’d know that”

  “Ed said she would.”

  “Well, Ed’s a sentimental old fool who blubbers at every auction. She’s a milk cow not a foster mother.”

  Hannah raised her brows and glared up at him like a princess with a peasant. “She’ll do the job I got her to do.”

  She’d said something very similar about Pansy. It pained Ty no end to think she might be right again, and he wasn’t going down without a fight. “Oh? And does your vast experience tell you that, Ms. Nelson?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “Geez! They’re bottle calves, Hannah, not Romanian orphans.”

  “They’re living beings,” she growled, yanking her arm from his grasp. “With hearts and minds and feelings. Or have you forgotten about feelings, Mr. Fox?”

  Their gazes fused and snapped.

  “Bring her out,” Ty ordered, turning on his heel and striding toward the trailer. “I’ll put her in the barn.”

  “SO OL’ BETTY’S WORKING out pretty good, huh?” Nate asked, glancing over his milk glass at Hannah.

  “Yes.”

  “That was a fine idea you had,” Nate said, then nodded towa
rd his brother. “Wasn’t it a fine idea, brother?”

  Ty snorted into his coffee.

  It had been six days since he’d kissed her, six days since he’d handed her his heart. Six days since she’d sliced it into ribbons. He hated her for that. And she’d be leaving in ninetyfour hours. Good riddance to her!

  But greenhorn that she was, she’d made a difference in this ranch. She’d slaved over Daniel, convinced him to eat. Saved his life, really. And the other orphans—they were growing in leaps and bounds, not stunted and scraggly like bottle calves often were, but actually gaining more weight than some of the calves who were with their real moms.

  She’d hired Pansy to cook and clean, freeing them up to fully concentrate on the ranch work. And she’d started ground work on the young horses. He’d watched her. Ty had been meaning to halterbreak the yearlings himself. Hell, he’d been meaning to halterbreak the two-year-olds. It was a crime really, that he was so far behind on his horse work. They’d be a lot harder to train now that they were older.

  But Hannah had a way about her. You wouldn’t know it to look at her cool exterior, but she could reach a horse like few others could. Ty glanced across the table at her. His heart pitched. Not that he cared about her. Hell, he may be a masochist, and he may be an idiot, but he wasn’t a masochistic idiot.

  He didn’t know why she was here, but he knew she wouldn’t be for long. And good riddance, like he’d already said.

  But she did have good hands. He remembered watching her as she’d calmed Platinum’s yearling. She was a tall, dappled gray filly with endless legs and big spooky eyes. But by the time Hannah was through with her, she’d stood like an old cart horse, half asleep as Hannah ran her hands over her dappled coat.

  How would it feel to have her touch him like that? To feel her fingers feather soft against his skin.

  Geez! Ty jerked himself abruptly to his feet.

  “Where you going?” Pansy barked from the stove.

  “Going to bed,” Ty said.

  “You ain’t hardly ate nothing.” She said it like an accusation.

  “I’ve had enough,” he said, and he had, enough of thinking of Hannah, dreaming of Hannah, watching Hannah. Enough and not nearly enough.

  “Go ahead then,” Pansy said, miffed. She did her duties with militant seriousness and to her own way of thinking, her duty was to add fifty pounds to each of their weights. “Hannah,” she said, turning from Ty as if he were a traitor not worthy of her concern. “You got a letter today.”

  “A letter?” Hannah glanced up.

  Ty turned in the doorway and watched her. Her gaze flickered to him and away. His stomach turned over. Who was the letter from? What was it about?

  He didn’t know and didn’t care, he reminded himself, and repeated it a hundred times before sleep finally took him.

  NERVOUS AND UNCERTAIN, Hannah sat on her bed and opened the letter.

  Her father’s scrawled handwriting winked up at her. She took a deep breath and read.

  “My dearest Hannah.” She frowned at the use of her assumed name.

  I hope all is well with you.

  As for me, I am fine. I miss our home. Or perhaps just the opportunity to return there. Strange how we don’t realize what we’ve got until we can no longer have it.

  Which brings me to my reason for writing. Perhaps it’s my advancing age that makes me realize what a hopeless parent I have been. But I realize it now, and I wish with all my heart that I could redo those years.

  All the life I have lived, all the melodrama I have witnessed, one would think I would have seen what was most important.

  You. Your happiness. And it is you I have failed with my endless days away from you. My endless obsession with my own success.

  Please forgive me. I hope you have found something I neglected to give you. Real life. Not just the cheap fiction that has filled my days. But something lasting and true.

  I wish I could see you now. I wish I could make up for those years, but I cannot.

  Please, Hannah, no matter what you do, do not return home, or indeed, to any of the haunts where you might be recognized. Don’t try to contact me. Any call might be traced. Stay where you are. You are safe there. And I would surely die if you were lost to me now.

  All my love, Daddy.

  Hannah let the letter droop in her fingers. What did he mean, he had failed her? It wasn’t true. He had been a good father. It was she who was the failure. He had given her everything, every trinket, every garment, every vehicle she had asked for. True, sometimes it had taken tears, and sometimes it had taken tantrums, but eventually she’d always gotten her way, until this last disagreement.

  No matter what she did, she’d been unable to change his mind about her leaving LA, about coming here. You must leave before it’s too late, he’d said. And now he spoke of the things she had missed. But what things? She’d had everything from tennis instructions to daily room service. And yet…

  She shifted on the bed, then stretched her arms above her head. Suddenly the image of a dark man with musical laughter and entrancing eyes came to mind for the zillionth time. A man who had touched her and kissed her and made her heart…

  Springing from the bed, Hannah began to pace.

  Tyrel Fox meant nothing to her. Indeed, he was far beneath her. And he had laughed at her, bet that he could bring the ice princess to her knees. And all the time she had been falling in love…

  No! Foolishness.

  Reaching the window, she gazed out onto the rolling pastures beyond the yard. The snow had melted, leaving only tired, spotty patches of dirty white.

  She hated Tyrel Fox, she told herself. But regardless of her feelings, it looked as if she would be staying awhile longer.

  8

  HANNAH PULLED the buckskin to a halt. He was a two-year-old with a two-year-old’s energy, and a two-year-old’s attention span. Peppy’s Dillon Dude was the name on his registration papers. She rubbed his forehead, wondering if he’d been named after Matt Dillon’s buckskin. He looked much the same as that movie horse, only better, longer legs, finer neck.

  Tyrel Fox may be an immature, dishonest, mean-spirited, half-witted, down-on-his-luck…Well, in short he was a jerk, but he did know his horses.

  Hannah let her attention stray over the fence. Several of the young animals were lying flat out on their sides, exposing as much area of their bodies to the sun as possible. Nate’s palomino mare stood with one hip cocked and her lower lip drooping. All the horses looked drugged by the sunshine. All except Maverick. He reared on his hind legs again, trying to coax a yearling to play with him.

  He would look good under an English saddle. With those legs and that drive, he’d jump like a deer. Not that the Tyrant would ever allow his cowboy horse to be used that way, but…

  Hannah stroked the buckskin’s neck as she thought.

  She hadn’t told Ty about the letter she’d received from her father, of course. Neither had she broached the subject of her staying on. It was entirely possible he wouldn’t allow it. But what else could she do? Daddy had begged her to remain where she was, and because of that she had no choice. But her pride wouldn’t let her admit her predicament to a barbarian like Tyrel Fox. No. She wouldn’t sacrifice her pride. But maybe…

  “MR. FOX.”

  Tyrel sent his lariat loop flying over a plastic steer’s head that had been stuck into a hay bale. Snapping up the slack, he turned to her, his eyes flat, his expression inscrutable.

  She held his gaze and raised her chin a fraction of an inch. “I need to speak to you.”

  “Yeah?” he said, staring at her for a moment before striding off to retrieve his loop from the dummy steer.

  She clasped her hands together, knowing she’d be a fool to show her emotions.

  “I have a proposition for you,” she said, forcing her arms back to her sides and hoping the posture looked more natural than it felt.

  “Do you now?” He coiled up his rope.

  “Yes.”
She refused to clear her throat. “I’ve decided to stay on awhile longer—but only if I can train Maverick to jump.”

  He was still for a moment, then laughed.

  She wasn’t going to get mad, she told herself. She couldn’t afford to get mad. “May I ask what you find so amusing?” she asked finally.

  “You,” he said. Having apparently gained control of his humor, he flipped and caught his loop with practiced ease. “You are, honey.”

  “God knows, it’s my sole goal in life to entertain you,” she said.

  “Well, you sure as hell do.” He tossed the loop again. It settled easily over the dummy.

  “Do you have an English saddle?” she asked. She’d learned with Daddy that it was best to treat her wishes as though it was a foregone conclusion that they would be met.

  “English saddle?” He chuckled again. “No. I sure don’t.”

  “Then you’ll have to buy one,” she said, her tone stiff.

  He chuckled. “So you can teach Maverick to jump?”

  “That’s right.”

  “There’s just one problem,” he said, retrieving his loop again. “I don’t want Maverick to jump. He’s a roping horse.”

  His expression was smug, his attitude irritating—but she wasn’t going to get mad.

  “He’s not a roping horse,” she said, and managed a gritty smile.

  “That just goes to show that you don’t know any more about horses than you do about anything else.”

  Anger rolled over her like a high tide. “Listen, you goon,” she snarled. “He’s no more a roping horse than I am a cocktail waitress.”

  “Well, honey,” he said, staring at her, “you dress yourself in one of them short skirts and get that big-hair thing going, that just might be an option.”

  She caught her breath. Did that mean he wouldn’t let her stay? But she couldn’t allow herself to think that way. “He’s built like a Thoroughbred,” she argued, refusing to take his bait, to be sidetracked. “He’s born to jump. A natural.”

  “What do you know about natural?” he asked. “Natural means honest. And, honey, that’s something you don’t know the first thing about”