The Cowboy's Way(16)

T.J. cussed a blue streak when he felt his body start to tighten. Had he lost his mind? Heather Wilson was the last woman he should be getting all hot and bothered about. She wanted to argue with him over everything and just trying to use good manners around her proved to be a powerful struggle. Hell, he didn’t really know the woman beyond the fact that she lived on the ranch next to his, she had a horse that was an escape artist and her little boy was cute as a button.

“Hey, boss? You got a minute?”

When T.J. looked up, one of his men was walking toward him from the far end of the barn.

“Sure,” he answered, thankful that the sandy-haired cowboy had interrupted his train of thought. “What’s on your mind, Tommy Lee?”

“Didn’t you tell me Ms. Wilson’s men had the weekend off?” the man asked as he strolled up to him.

T.J. nodded. “They should be back on Monday. Why?”

“I don’t know if this means anything,” the man said. “But earlier, when I was over at the Wilson place feeding the horses, I noticed something that didn’t seem quite right.”

“What’s that?” T.J. queried, frowning. “When I sent Harry over there yesterday, he didn’t mention seeing anything out of the ordinary. What did you see that he didn’t?”

“I probably wouldn’t have noticed myself, but last night when it stormed the wind blew kind of hard and must have blown Ms. Wilson’s bunkhouse door open. When I went to pull it shut, I got a look inside.” Tommy Lee shook his head. “There weren’t any signs of it being lived in and it didn’t look like it had been used in quite a while. Everything was real dusty and it had that stale smell like when a place is closed up for a long time.”

T.J. frowned. Heather’s men might live elsewhere, but that was unlikely. The area was comprised of large ranches and since a working cowboy’s day started well before dawn, it was a matter of convenience for the men to live on the outfit where they worked, or at least nearby. Even T.J.’s foreman, Dan, and his family lived in one of the two small houses T.J. had built on the property when he bought the Dusty Diamond, in anticipation of some of the men he hired being married.

“Anyway, I just thought I’d let you know,” Tommy Lee continued, shrugging.

“Thanks for passing along the information,” T.J. answered. “I appreciate it, Tommy Lee.”

“Do you want me to go over there again tomorrow mornin’ to do the feedin’?” the man asked as he started back toward the end of the barn where he had been repairing a stall door.

“No, I’ll go over there first thing in the morning to take care of her horses and check things out for myself,” T.J. said as he entered the tack room.

He knew he should probably let one of his men take care of going over to Heather’s tomorrow. It was really none of his business about her men and he was certain she would tell him as much. But he wanted to check on her and Seth anyway and he refused to delve too deeply into the reasons why.

Taking one of the lead ropes hanging on a hook on the wall, he couldn’t stop thinking about what he had just learned. As he walked to one of the stalls to get the sorrel gelding he’d been training he wondered why Heather had let on like she had given her men the weekend off if she didn’t have anyone working for her. Did that mean she was trying to run the Circle W by herself? With a kid and a case of the flu?

He led the horse back to the tack room to saddle him. T.J. wasn’t sure what the deal was with Heather Wilson. But he had every intention of finding out.

If, as he suspected, she was trying to run her ranch on her own—without any help—it would explain a lot.

Whenever her stallion had gotten onto his property, he’d wondered why she hadn’t immediately instructed her men to make the needed repairs to the fence to keep it from happening again. It was not only the mark of a good rancher to keep his fences in decent condition, but it was also the neighborly thing to do to keep your animals from being a nuisance. But if there was no one working for her, there wasn’t any way Heather could have mended her fences with a baby in her arms.

The guilt he had experienced after she explained that she had tried to keep the stallion confined increased tenfold. She had either been too stubborn or too proud to explain things and ask for his help. From being around her the past couple of days, he suspected it was a combination of both.

Shaking his head at her obstinacy, he finished saddling the gelding. Just as he secured the cinch his cell phone rang. “What’s up, Nate?” he asked when he recognized his brother’s number on the caller ID.