Finding Home Read online

  He raised Indian-dark brows over eyes that perpetually looked amused. “What’s that?”

  “That was you in there with Toby what’s-his-face.”

  “Leach.” He nodded. “Yeah. I’m doing a little work for him.”

  “For a killer buyer?”

  He shook his head once. “Now don’t go getting on your high horse, Case. The man’s not Satan. He’s just trying to make a living like everybody else.”

  “Sure.” She tried to keep the emotion out of her tone. Unbridled emotion, Bradley said, caused more foolish decisions than ignorance and alcohol combined. Her fiancé also thought her parents had been a testimony to that truth. They’d been like fire and oil, her father stubborn and stoic, her mom hot-tempered, vivacious, and pretty. Casie was nothing like her mother. But her voice warbled a little when she spoke. “By slaughtering horses.”

  “It’s better than letting ’em starve to death,” Dickenson said, seeming leery of her tone. “And it’s not like he’s buying Secretariat. Dammit, I mean …” He jerked a thumb toward the auction barn. “What were you thinking in there?”

  She remained perfectly still, refusing to be embarrassed by her purchase and shrugging to emphasize her cool demeanor. “Oh, I don’t know, I was looking for something to run at the Cow Palace. Thought the gray looked the type.”

  He stared at her a second, then snorted. “Hell, Case, she’ll be lucky to cut it as a lawn ornament.”

  Casie’s careful temper prickled, but she smoothed it down. “She’s a little rough around the edges, maybe.”

  “Rough around the edges,” he said and grinned, cracking a dimple into his left cheek. “Head Case, that nag’s rough clean through.”

  The old nickname turned the prickles to barbed wired. “So what should we do, Dickey? Throw her away? Send her to slaughter? I mean, if she can’t run or buck or …” She waved a hand. “She could at least be pretty, right?” Dickenson, she remembered, had dated every girl on the cheerleading squad while Casie had been fighting acne and playing piccolo in the marching band. “Otherwise she might as well be dead. She might as well be—”

  “Hold your damned horses!” he said and lifted his injured right hand as if to forestall any further histrionics. “Simmer down.”

  A thousand nasty rejoinders popped into her brain, but she pursed her lips, effectively holding them all at bay, and returned to the problem at hand. “Why are you in my truck?”

  “Listen, I didn’t mean to get you all hyped up. I just—”

  “Why?” she asked. Her tone, she thought, was admirably steady. Bradley, who valued good sense above all else, would be proud.

  Colton pushed the fingers of his left hand through blood bay hair and exhaled. “I need a ride home.”

  “What?”

  “We don’t live half a mile apart.” He grinned again. “I can walk from your house if you’re nervous about going all the way.”

  Rainwater was dripping down her back from the ponytail she’d tucked through the hole in her cap, but she didn’t bother to remedy that. Instead, she watched him narrowly, wary of double meanings. There were always double meanings with Colt Dickenson. “You need a ride home.”

  He gave her a solemn nod, seeming to have his smile under control. “Yeah.”

  “How’d you get here then?”

  “Toby gave me a lift.”

  “Why don’t you just have him lift you on back?”

  “He’s got a trailer full of horses to take care of.” He did grin now, but cautiously, almost innocently. “You wanna buy them, too?”

  She considered telling him to get out, to shut up, to drop dead for all she cared. But at twenty-eight years of age she was a little long in the tooth for such dramatics. “Put your seat belt on,” she ordered and started up Ol’ Puke. Well into its third decade, the Chevy truck ran loud enough to rattle the fenders.

  “I don’t think it has a seat belt,” Dickenson said.

  She scowled at him as she pulled out of the parking lot. He was pushing aside a tattered envelope and a single rawhide glove, searching in the groove between the seats for the device.

  “Then just …” His forage through the detritus of her life was embarrassing. “Just don’t die until you get out. Okay?”

  “Hell, Case, I didn’t think you cared,” he said.

  She snorted and he chuckled. They rolled along in silence for most of three miles. In the darkness up ahead two bucks stood at the side of the road, antlers raised, red eyes gleaming. They remained frozen for a moment, then leaped away, breaking a hole in the darkness.

  “I’m sorry about your dad.” His voice was quiet, devoid of humor for once.

  She didn’t look at him. “Thanks.”

  “Heart attack, huh?”

  “That’s what the cardiologist said.”

  “Was he sick beforehand?”

  She shrugged. The movement felt stiff. “He never wanted to go to a doctor.”

  “But everything seemed okay right up to the end?”

  “Yes.” It was a bald-faced lie and surprisingly well delivered. She tightened her hands on the steering wheel and kept her gaze on the gravel road ahead. “I found him in the heifer pasture one morning.”

  “So what brought you home in the first place?”

  “Some of us visit our families now and then, Dickenson.” Guilt made her tone sharper than she’d intended.

  “For nine months?”

  How the devil did he know how long she’d been home? she wondered, but she kept her tone casual. “He needed a little help around the ranch. I’ll be going back to Saint Paul as soon as I can get things straightened out here.”

  “Things?”

  “I’ll have to sell the place.”

  There was a moment of absolute silence, then, “You’re selling the Lazy?”

  “A girl can’t …” She stopped herself before her father’s words escaped into the ether, though she had no reason to believe they were wrong. “This isn’t where I belong. Besides, I have to get back to work.”

  From the corner of her eye she could see him watching her, but he didn’t speak for a moment.

  “I hear you’re a secretary,” he said finally.

  Maybe it was his tone that put her back up. Maybe it was the fact that she was a secretary. “Administrative assistant.”

  “Oh, sorry, I thought you were a secretary.”

  She felt her teeth grind. “You know, Dickie, not everything has to be a death-defying adventure.”

  He stared at her for a second, then chuckled. “I suppose not. Anyway, I guess congratulations are in order.”

  “Congratulations?” she said and turned toward him.

  He raised one brow. “You’re engaged, right?”

  “Oh.” She felt herself blush and resented her fair Celtic roots all the way to her scalp. Growing up, she would have given her right hand to be Lakota or Cheyenne or Arikara. She could have even tolerated being Ponca, though that was Dickenson’s maternal heritage. “Yes.”

  “When’s the big day?”

  She concentrated on refraining from throttling the steering wheel. “We haven’t set a date yet.” Bradley had insisted that when they got married they would have a real wedding. Her secretarial job had barely managed to pay his tuition, and now, after nine months at the Lazy, her savings were all but depleted.

  “He must have heard about your temper, huh?”

  She scowled at him and he laughed.

  “Why haven’t you set a date?”

  “There’s been a lot to take care of.”

  “Like what?” he asked. Colt Dickenson had never considered being nosy a character flaw.

  “Dad let things slide a little after Mom died,” she said and wondered if one could be struck dead for exaggeration. She vividly remembered the day she had discovered he had not opened a single letter since his wife’s death two years before. Relatives had been ignored, neighbors had been snubbed, and bills had gone unpaid. The chaos that ensued was only matched
by the guilt she felt for never having realized the situation earlier. And that guilt was only equaled by how bad she felt about her recent neglect of her fiancé.

  But Dickenson only glanced out the side window, seemingly unaware of her glaring shortcomings. “That must have just about killed him right there.”

  “What?”

  “Your mom’s death.” He shook his head and turned back toward her. “To tell the truth, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did once Kathy was gone.”

  She glanced at him. Off in the distance, the Gradys’ craggy shelterbelt could be seen as a black, jagged line against the late spring snow.

  “He thought she walked on water.”

  Casey opened her mouth to refute his statement. There had been dozens of times she’d been sure their marriage wouldn’t last another hour. She’d been even surer it was lunacy to subject oneself to that brand of misery, but that was before she’d witnessed her father’s broken life. Before she’d realized the “important papers” he warned her not to touch were nothing more than grocery lists and worthless doodles penned by her mother’s artistic hand. “She was …” She swallowed, punting. “She was always so—”

  “Full of life.”

  “Yeah.” The word didn’t come out quite right. She’d planned it to sound cool and cosmopolitan, but her tone had a rough edge to it. “Yeah, she was that.”

  “Stuff happens, right?” he said and shifted his arm a little, settling it cautiously against his ribs.

  “Yeah, but …” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “… It was … you know … a long time ago now.”

  “Sure,” he said and drew a deep breath. He sounded tired. “So I hear your boyfriend’s a doctor.”

  “Fiancé,” she corrected.

  “Right. So what happens now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Ace student like you, I always thought you’d be the one with the MD after your name. Or maybe a DVM.”

  Doctor of veterinary medicine. That had once been her dream, but Bradley thought she could do better. Large animal vets were notoriously overworked and underpaid. “Once Bradley gets his feet on the ground, he’ll put me through school.”

  Dickenson stared at her in silence for a moment before nodding and canting up his lips. “So then it’ll be Dr. and Dr …” He paused, lifted a brow in question.

  She scowled at him a second before catching his meaning. “Oh … Hooper,” she supplied.

  “So you’re giving up your ranch and your name?”

  “I’m not giving anything up,” she said, her tone too antagonistic. “I’m—”

  “Just let me off here.” He nodded toward the cottonwood near the intersection. “No need to go any farther.”

  “I’m not giving anything up,” she repeated. “I’m gaining something.”

  “Sure,” he said, and pumping the handle twice, managed to wrench the door open with his left hand. “Hey, thanks for the ride, Case. Just let me know if you need any help. I’ll be home for a while.”

  “Yeah.” She pursed her lips and lied, not thinking about warm summer nights and strawberry wine poached by lanky teenagers. Once upon a time she’d been far too young to know that opposites might attract, but they would always make each other miserable. “Yeah. I’ll do that.”

  CHAPTER 3

  A half mile later the Chevy’s single headlight made a wide sweep as Casie turned onto the Lazy Windmill’s bumpy lane. A piebald border collie slunk out from beneath the porch. An untilled garden, weathered outbuildings, and a house that listed noticeably southward appeared briefly before they were lost again in the anonymous darkness. A half dozen Hereford heifers could be seen peering at her from the cattle yards. After saving them from the neighbor’s bloat-inducing alfalfa for the second time since Clayton’s funeral, she’d confined them there to prevent further trouble. But they were running low on hay now and would need their fences mended before they could be turned out on fresh grass. Their eyes shone as red as the deer’s in Puke’s single headlamp. Their breath appeared as frosted quotation bubbles as she stepped out of the truck.

  Jack reared up, bumping Casie’s hand with his wet nose, reminding her again that the dog missed Clayton. She wondered vaguely if, despite the chasm of unspoken discomfort that had always existed between them, she did, too.

  By the time she opened the trailer door, the mare had pivoted to face backward but made no move to disembark. Finding the abandoned twine on the floor, Casie placed it back around the animal’s scrawny throatlatch and tugged.

  The old gray stepped stiffly down, glanced around the darkened yard, then shuffled quietly in her person’s wake toward the barn.

  Feeling along the post to the right of the wide-flung, listing doors, Cassandra found the switch and turned on the lights. Only half a dozen bulbs had survived the dearth of attention since her father’s decline, but that was enough to illuminate the rubbish stowed in every nook and cranny. The flotsam of the past several years had been discarded in heaps: a decrepit washing machine, two broken hoes, five lethal rolls of rusty barbed wire, and a host of old farm equipment.

  The building was divided in two by a tall wooden fence. On the far side a couple dozen cows licked their newborns or ruminated quietly about life. One or two pushed their rumps in the air, then rose to their feet, glancing nervously at the horse before rumbling low warnings to their snoozing offspring. As for the mare, she took it all in without flinching, although the goat’s welcoming bleat gave her pause.

  Five molting chickens and one snooty goose flapped from the warmth of the Nubian’s hairless back as he bobbled to his little split hooves. Grinning, he gazed at Casie from his tiny enclosure, hoping for an early breakfast, late supper, or any snack in between. Casie had learned four months earlier that the folklore regarding goats’ appetites could not be completely dismissed. They would eat almost anything, tin cans not entirely out of the question.

  “That’s Al,” she said and urged the mare past the goat and his irritated entourage. “He’s just here until that alopecia problem clears up.” Of course, he’d been there for nearly half a year with no improvement in the condition of his follicles thus far.

  But that wouldn’t be the situation with the horse. She had just bought the old plug to foil Dickenson and his fat buddy’s sadistic plans. In a couple weeks, when the mare had put on a few pounds, Casie would find her a new home. Until then, of course, she’d need somewhere to stay. Luckily, Chip’s old stall near the back of the barn was still reasonably sound.

  Tugging the animal inside the twelve-by-twelve-foot pen, Cassandra latched the door and found a salvageable bucket in a pile of almost indistinguishable rubble. Rinsing it from a hydrant that remained miraculously intact, she filled the pail with fresh water before depositing it on the crusty bedding.

  “Don’t eat that stuff,” she warned, but the mare was nothing if not a survivor and had already lowered her head to do so. “Don’t …” she began again, then hurried out of the stall and rummaged around until she found a mouse-chewed halter. Lengthening it to its last notch, she slipped it behind the horse’s impressive ears and tied her to an eyebolt in the wall before searching for hay. Twenty grassy bales lay moldering in a dark corner.

  She cracked the nearest one open. It was less than perfect, but certainly better than the mare was accustomed to. After shoving a quarter of it into a hay bag, Casie hung it from the wall.

  In a minute the horse was munching, head cocked a little to the right. The angle suggested dental issues. Cassandra winced. Wonderful. She was going to have to sell her body at the local Whoa and Go in exchange for a loaf of bread, and the horse needed an endodontist.

  But right now, she’d best get that moldy straw cleared away or she’d be dealing with colic and a host of other issues.

  A half hour later, the stall was mucked and bedded. The mare, Bones, as Casie referred to her in her mind, was settled in, looking contented if a little surprised at this sudden change of fortune.


  The sound of her masticating timothy was unexpectedly soothing, sparking a little flame of warmth in Casie’s chest. But it was late and she was exhausted.

  Finally, she trudged up the hill to the old farmhouse. The porch creaked as she crossed it. She stepped through the doorway and refused to let the circle of mold on the ceiling of the tiny foyer depress her as she wandered into the kitchen.

  Come morning she would …

  The phone rang, startling her from her plans. Nerves jangled through her. Who would call so late at night?

  “Hello?”

  “Cassandra?”

  “Bradley! What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” he said, but she didn’t believe him. She’d been in crisis mode ever since her mother’s lymphoma years before and couldn’t seem to switch tracks.

  “Why are you calling so late?”

  “I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Why?” Her tone was breathy with worry, but it wasn’t as though she didn’t trust him. Eighteen months was a long time to carry a grudge, and he’d promised never to stray again. The girl meant nothing to him … a one-night stand, really, and he and Casie had been at odds for weeks. Not that it had been her fault. But maybe if she had been more attentive …

  “Because I miss you,” he said. For a moment his tone was reminiscent of the weeks following his confession, the weeks when he had tried so hard to win her back. Once the battle was won, things had returned to normal … but of course they would. That’s why it was called normal. “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. Where have you been?”

  A sliver of guilt sliced through her both for her lack of trust and her newly acquired mare. She dropped stiffly into the nearest chair. “I took some tack in to sell at the auction.”

  “Tack?” Bradley was unabashedly city, having spent most of his formative years in Philadelphia.

  “A couple old saddles, show halters. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh. Good. Did you get a decent price?”

  Her stomach pinched up a little, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “They hadn’t sold yet when I left.”