Rough Stock(22)

Willow’s eyes lit up. “Can we, Mama?!”

Rowan licked her lips and looked for all the world like she wanted to say no, but her heart seemed to melt anyway as she looked at her daughter. “Yes,” she finally said.

“Yay!”

“We can go. Sometime. And you can look at all the horses.”

As Court loaded the jittery colt back into the trailer, Rowan moved several feet away, put Willow down on her feet, and nodded toward the house. “Okay,” she said. “Go on inside and wash up for dinner.”

Willow turned and stomped gleefully across the driveway, one of the shaggy white dogs trailing along behind her.

Seth watched Rowan sigh and rub the back of her neck, like she had a crick in it, like she was stressed. Which of course she was. Seth fought the urge to reach out and rub it for her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I had no idea he was planning on doing that.”

Rowan looked up at him with sad, tired eyes. “I don’t think it’s possible to predict what Court will do. Except get bored, eventually, with playing the hero. What happens when she’s not new and shiny anymore, Seth? What happens when things get hard?”

It was hard to assure her that that wouldn’t happen, especially since Seth knew she was speaking from personal experience. Usually it was just irritating to clean up Court’s messes. It was heartbreaking to see them involve actual people this time. “I won’t let him hurt her,” Seth vowed.

Or you.

Rowan didn’t reply. Instead, she just watched him pull back out onto the highway.

Seth’s phone rang, and he dug it out of his pocket, glancing down at it. Sighing, he pressed the button on the screen. “Calm down,” he told Dakota before she got too far into her rant. “Court took her. He’s brought her out to the Archer place. Dakota, I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to her. I promise. Anyway, she’s back in the trailer. He’s headed back home with her.” Seth sighed again. “No, honey, I had nothing to do with it. I wouldn’t do that to you. And if you string him up when he gets home, I won’t cut him down.” He hung up and slid the phone back into his pocket, aware that Rowan was looking at him.

“Sorry,” she said, “if you’re in dutch with Dakota. She sounds royally pissed.” Rowan cleared her throat and turned to watch Court drive away. “Is she…is she your girlfriend?” she asked and she must have meant Seth because Court was gone.

His eyebrows raised. “Dakota? No. She’s like my sister.” While not entirely true, Seth could admit, at least to himself, that he never felt for Dakota what he felt for Rowan Archer when he’d first laid eyes on her at the Silver Spur…or any time since.

The light was getting gauzy, and Rowan turned away from him to look at it. A faint smile played on her lips, and he realized it was the first time in days he’d seen it. “I missed this,” she said. “So much.”

“Isn’t it the same sunset in Cheyenne?” he asked as blue bled into pink, like large strands of cotton candy from the fair.

“No,” she said firmly.

And Seth knew that it wasn’t. Because it wasn’t for him, either. The sunset in Star Valley was the closest to Heaven. He’d convinced himself of this as a child and had never wavered in this belief.

“I used to think if I climbed high enough,” she said, nodding to the foothills, to their right, “I could reach out and catch the clouds as they went by.”

They stood in silence for a while, watching the light fade. When the sun itself was finally below the horizon, Seth tipped his hat to her. “Good night, Rowan.”

“Good night, Seth.”

She turned away and headed up the porch steps.

Seth got into his truck and turned over the engine. All his good feelings faded as his tires ate up the blacktop from the Archer place to Snake River. What had Court been thinking swiping a horse and bringing it by? The answer was, of course, he hadn’t been. Seth threw his Ford into park in the large driveway and lowered himself to the ground, slamming the door in disgust.

Sawyer was perched in a rocking chair on the porch and peered over the railing at him. “It’s safer out here,” he called out in warning.

“Dakota?” Seth asked as he mounted the stairs.

Sawyer nodded. “Well, that, and Austin and Walker have managed to lower the temperature around here by a few degrees all on their own.”

“Austin and Dakota went to the barn together. Walker’s inside. Tearing up the office, chewing on the furniture, I suspect.”

The front door opened, and Court appeared on the porch. “Hey,” he said. “Why were you at Rowan’s place when I got there?”

Seth narrowed his eyes at his youngest brother. “I forgot a feed bag last night. We can’t use it, and she needs it.”

“Oh. Hey, listen, can you…can you talk to her for me?”

Sawyer chuckled from his seat. “Your famous Vaquero charm not working on her these days?”

Court glared at him. “She’s just stubborn,” he insisted.

“Well,” Sawyer drawled, “impromptu group sex to which she wasn’t invited tends to do that to a woman.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Really?” asked Sawyer. “Seems like that was how you rang in the New Year, too, if I recall.”

“I wasn’t cheating on anybody that time!”

“All right,” Seth said wearily. “Enough.”

Court shot one last venomous look at Sawyer before turning to Seth. “She likes you.”

Seth was quiet, waiting to hear where this was going.

“So, I was thinking, you could…work on her. Explain to her that I’ve changed.”

Seth let out a long, slow breath. “I don’t know.”

“I have!” Court protested. “You know I have.”

Seth knew no such thing, but he didn’t feel like arguing tonight. “So, just show her.”

“That’ll take forever. And you saw she doesn’t exactly lift her tail when I come around.”

Seth’s hands flexed at his sides, but other than that he remained still.

“Just talk to her for me,” Court said. “You’re good with women.”

“Yeah, Seth,” Sawyer chimed in. “You’re great with women. Well, you don’t lie, and you don’t cheat, and they don’t cry after they’ve been with you. Thumbs-up in my book!”

“Shut up!” Court snapped. “She’s pissed off, Seth. And I don’t want her pissed off.”

Seth sighed. “Neither do I.”

“So, you’ll talk to her?”

“I’ll…I don’t want her to get hurt. She needs help, Court.”

“Yeah, okay, so you’ll help her, and you’ll get her to sit down with me to talk.”

“I’ll help her,” Seth replied, feeling a bit slimy as he spoke.

“Awesome!”

Court took off down the stairs, whistling a jaunty tune.

Seth sighed again and lowered himself into the chair next to Sawyer.

Dakota and Austin came out of the barn, heads together, speaking in hushed tones. They parted ways at the foreman’s shack.

Sawyer grunted. “Sure makes things complicated,” he said, “when your brother’s got his eyes on your woman.”

Seth turned and studied his younger brother intensely, searching for some kind of veiled accusation. But Sawyer’s eyes, as usual, were the darkest of the Barlows and impossible to read. “I can’t see Austin moving in on Dakota,” Seth declared.

Sawyer shrugged. “They’ve been spending a lot of time together.”

“I’m sure it’s not like that,” Seth insisted, defending Austin as much as himself.

Sawyer peered at him. “Yeah,” he finally said. “I mean, you’ve been over to the Archer place a few times now. Just helping out.”

Rowan had a laundry list of things to do at the farm, none of it being actual laundry, it seemed. “Rowan and her sister are running the place by themselves while their dad is in the hospital,” Seth told Sawyer. “It’s hard work for two people. Especially two women.”

Sawyer shrugged again. “They grew up on the farm,” he pointed out. “They’re used to it.”

“Rowan’s a nurse,” Seth argued. “And she lives in Cheyenne. She’s not a sheep rancher.”

Sawyer smiled in a way that made Seth want to punch him. “Well, I guess you know her better than I do.”

Seth heaved himself out of his chair and started toward the front door.

“Hey,” Sawyer called after him. “Where’s your jacket, anyway? Your lined one? That’s your summer jacket you’re wearing.”

Seth ignored him as he yanked open the door.

“Aren’t you cold?” Sawyer shouted.

“No,” Seth snapped without looking back.

He was too pissed off to be cold.





Chapter Fourteen




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Rowan tucked Willow into bed, wondering how her daughter had grown so big without her noticing. She was big enough now to ride a pony, Rowan supposed. And old enough to ride away from her mother and straight to Court, she also thought bitterly.

“That horse was pretty, wasn’t she?” Willow asked as Rowan pulled up the blanket.