Authors: Firebrand
The smile he gave her when she’d finished wasn’t a surprise. His reply—“Guess not, with McCall blackmailing everybody into using that bull”—was.
“What do you mean?” Rusty slid to the edge of her chair and leaned on his desk.
He looked at her as if he didn’t believe her question. “You don’t know, do you.”
“Know what, Thomas? You’d better tell me, or I’ll move what’s left of my account to another bank and tell everybody in town that yours is failing.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that, Rusty. I’ll tell you. After all, I stand to gain as much as everybody else. It’s your water. McCall is going to build a dam and siphon it off.”
“Build a dam? How’s he going to do that?”
“He’s going to make me a partner. He builds the dam and pipeline. I put up the money. We have all the water we need, and we sell the rest. I’ll have to hand it to you, Rusty, you’ve got more sense than I gave you credit for. Even old Walt could never have pulled this off.”
She didn’t remember leaving the bank. She didn’t know when it started to rain either. Cade had found a way to pull Silverwild out of the financial hole, and he’d set his plan in motion without saying a word to her. No wonder he’d been so happy. He’d stayed out of running the ranch, taking her orders and carrying them out like everybody else who worked for her. And all the while he was carefully planning to dam the canyon and sell the water to any rancher in the valley who needed it.
Carrying out her orders like all the other men who worked for her
. That phrase kept running through her mind.
What did she expect? She’d started the game, but he was the better player. He was doing the same thing that her father had done to her, giving her an illusion of power by letting her take care of the routine business of ranching while behind the scenes the future of Silverwild was in his control.
She could hardly see the road now. Between her tears and the rain everything was a blur. Lightning cracked the sky. Thunder rolled across the mountains and crashed into the valleys. The rain was falling in torrents. Too bad, Mr. McCall. If you had your dam built, you’d be able to fill it without waiting for the spring runoffs.
And I went and fell in love with the man. I couldn’t even advertise and find some man willing to give me a child as a pure business arrangement
. She thought about the contract she’d insisted on. More than that she thought about the nights she’d spent in Cade’s arms, loving him with every part of her, opening herself up to him. Praying each time they made love that he’d give her a child.
Rusty blinked. She pulled the scarf from her hair and dried the tears from her face. He had intended to stay all along. He was carving out a niche for himself, binding himself to her so tightly that she couldn’t shake him loose when she learned the truth. It might have worked if she hadn’t already lived that kind of life with her father and Ben.
She should have known. Men were all the same. Like her father he had set out to undermine her position. But Cade couldn’t have lied about how he felt. That was real. Even now, knowing what he was doing, she was making excuses for him. For days her emotions had seesawed back and forth, from suspicion to incredible joy and back again.
She wished that Paxton hadn’t told her the truth. She’d have to fire Cade, give him his bonus and let him move on. Except that everything had changed. She’d gone and fallen in love with him and with Pixie. She even liked Eugene. And now, according to the doctor she’d just seen, her prayers had been answered. Cade had given her a child. It had apparently happened the first night they’d made love. She was pregnant. There was to be an heir for Silverwild.
She wished—how she wished she’d never heard of Cade McCall. She wished—
Suddenly she was at the entrance to Silverwild. As she drove around the house, she saw horses and riders gathering by the barn. What was going on?
Something was wrong.
Rusty slid from the Jeep and crossed the yard, splashing through the quickly forming mire.
“Doak, what’s the trouble?”
But it was Cade who dismounted and directed her into the barn. The expression on his face was more grim than she’d ever seen it.
“It’s Pixie. She’s gone.”
“Pixie? Oh, my God! What happened?”
“Pretty Boy got out of his pen again. Apparently she was worried about him being afraid in the storm. She … she went after him.”
“Pixie is out there”—Rusty gave a quick twist of her head—“in all this?”
“We’re going out to find them. I’ve sent for Will Fleming. With the storm we don’t know if Pixie is with Pretty Boy or how he’ll react if we corner him. I want you to stay here.”
“No, I’m coming along.”
“Not this time, Rusty. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
The pain in his voice stopped her for a moment, but the thought of Pixie out there in the storm quickly erased any thought of arguing about his taking over this hunt. He didn’t have time to debate, and she wouldn’t force the issue. Pixie’s life might be at stake.
“Go on, Cade, find her. Bring her back home quickly.”
He gave her a hasty kiss and was gone.
Rusty waited until he was out of sight before saddling her horse. Dashing into the house, she passed Letty in the kitchen, making coffee and filling the thermoses she had lined up on the counter.
“Make toast, Letty, with butter and jelly—fast. As much as you can before I get back.”
“Sorry, Rusty, I don’t have time. Didn’t you hear that—” she began.
“I heard, Letty. Make the toast. The coffee can wait.” Upstairs she donned warm clothes, ran back down the stairs, and pulled on the slicker hanging by the kitchen door.
Sorry, Cade. You may have all the answers, but this is my land, and I know it better than anybody
.
Letty quickly buttered a stack of toast and spread it with jelly. As she finished, Rusty packed it in a plastic bag.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Willadean Wilder. If anything happens to Pixie because of that creature you brought here, I’ll personally shoot him.”
“You won’t have to worry about that, Letty. Once this is over,” Rusty promised as she put the plastic bag inside her slicker and zipped it up, “Pixie and her father are leaving. They don’t belong here. I was wrong. A family can’t be bought.”
She rode hard across the range, following the path that Pretty Boy had followed before. The canyon would act like a funnel, capturing the downpour and the runoff from above. It would direct the stream out through the narrow opening and what was normally a dry dead-end canyon would turn into a raging torrent. Rusty nudged her horse into a run.
But this time Pretty Boy hadn’t gotten as far as the canyon. He was standing in the middle of the north range, pawing anxiously at the ground. The men were circled around him.
Rusty rode up beside Doak. “What’s happened?”
Doak looked at Rusty with dismay in his eyes. “It’s Pixie.”
Rusty looked around again. There was no sign of the child. “Where is she?”
“There’s an old well there. Walt sealed it off years ago. Apparently the heavy rain loosened the earth. She’s down in the hole. We could hear her calling when we first got here. But that bull won’t let anybody get close enough to see.”
“Oh, no! Where’s Cade!”
“Over there.”
Rusty felt her heart contract. It would all come down to this. She’d lose the bull, Pixie, and the man she loved all at one time. And it was her fault, all her fault. No matter that she hadn’t even known they existed when she’d bought the bull, if she hadn’t tried to change things, this wouldn’t be happening.
As the rain came down, it seemed to wash her mind clear for the first time. She couldn’t send Cade away. She loved him. She’d give him the whole ranch to run as he pleased if that’s what it took to keep him. She should have sold the canyon to Thomas. Land wasn’t important! People were. Her father was wrong. He’d always been wrong.
It wasn’t Silverwild that was important—it was the family. Rusty had been a child when her mother died, but she hadn’t been too young to understand that her mother had hated Silverwild. But it was Letty who’d explained the rest. Her father hadn’t meant to hurt her mother. But Melanie Wilder believed that she wasn’t important to her husband. Her only purpose was to provide an heir. She did—one. There would be no more, the doctor said. When she died four years later, Walt grieved for a while. But six months later he hardly knew she was gone. It had seemed that way, at least to Rusty, for he rarely mentioned her.
It had taken Rusty much longer to get over losing her mother.
An hour ago she had still been blindly repeating her father’s mistake, following his plan as if he were alive and directing her life. Cade would provide an heir, and he’d be gone. Except that Cade had refused. He wanted to be a father to any child they created together. The business contract had made that a part of the agreement between the two of them.
She could see the truth clearly now. She should be happy. She was pregnant. But the cost was too high.
Rusty slid off her horse and started toward the man she loved. “Cade, is Pixie all right?”
“I think so. She’s scared. I told her not to talk to us. Pretty Boy is already spooked enough. Apparently he thinks he’s protecting Pixie. He won’t let us get to her.”
“Then you’ll have to shoot him!” Her response was quick and certain.
“What did you say?” Cade stared at her in disbelief.
“Shoot him. Now. There’s no time to stand here talking about it!”
Rusty glanced at the canyon at the end of the valley. By now, the water ought to be pouring into it. In a matter of minutes it would be flooding the pasture where they were standing. She didn’t have time to argue with him. Did he really think that a bull was more important to her than Pixie? But there was no time to explain or argue. She had to force him into action.
“When you go into partnership with Paxton and
build your dam, you can buy me another bull. Doak, give me your rifle.”
Cade caught her arm. “No. He might fall across the well and collapse it over Pixie. I’m going to try and get him with the tranquilizer gun.”
A tranquilizer gun? Not only was he building a dam without her approval, but he was also ready to change the way she operated the ranch. But this time it was Rusty’s turn to protest. “No, he could still fall. Those tranquilizers can work pretty fast. What you need to do is get closer. I think I know how to lead him away.”
“And how do you plan to do that? Give him an order?”
“I’m going to coax him away with jelly and toast.” She unsnapped her slicker and unzipped the parka beneath, producing the plastic bag of mangled toast and jelly. “Just like Pixie.”
“No way. He might trust Pixie to feed him toast and jelly, but he doesn’t trust you. I don’t want you hurt.”
“I’m not going to get hurt. Besides, all this is my fault, isn’t it?”
Cade took a deep breath. She was right about the toast. It might work. She was wrong about whose fault it was. If Pixie’s running after Pretty Boy hurt anybody, it would be his fault. He’d been so busy working out his surprise for Rusty and the children he was going to give her that he hadn’t paid enough attention to the child he had.
He’d been able to meet with the representative from the Utah Water Commission and the soil-conservation expert on dam building without Rusty’s knowing what he was doing. With a little luck he’d be able to harness any future water pouring into
the canyon, and it could be distributed to the other ranchers easily. Not through evaporation and runoffs, but through the same kind of pipeline that he’d spent the last ten years working on.
His plan would solve Rusty’s concern over the ranchers’ rejection of her bull and prove to her that he belonged on Silverwild, not just for six months but forever.
Like lightning, the truth ran through him. Rusty did care. From the first moment they’d laid eyes on each other, they’d been caught up in a desire that was so intense that it clouded every part of their lives. But he’d understood that a relationship based on sex and nothing else couldn’t survive. And he had been afraid that was all they had.
Rusty had just proven him wrong. “Shoot the bull,” she’d said. She’d give up Pretty Boy without a thought to save Pixie. Cade began to smile.
The rain was falling steadily, and Cade knew that they had to hurry. He didn’t know how deep the well was or how long Pixie would be safe. After her first answer to his call he’d told her to remain silent. Any outcry might spook Pretty Boy and cause a cave-in.
Cade removed his slicker.
“What are you doing?” Rusty demanded.
“Open that bag of toast.”
“Why?”
Fumbling inside his jacket, he brought out a long-necked brown bottle.
“I’m adding some of Eugene’s Tundra Tonic to the toast. One way or another we need to get that bull’s cooperation.”
“We also want him to be sober enough to walk. Otherwise he’ll be caught in the flood too.”
“Oh, we’re not going to give him this. The toast is just the carrot we’re going to dangle in front of his nose. Besides, Will is bringing a hoist to lift him into the truck.”
As Cade poured the liquid into the bag, the rain continued to fall. “I’ll try to tempt him into following me away,” he explained, including an anxious Eugene and Doak in his plan. “As soon as he moves away from the hole, Doak, you shoot him with the tranquilizer gun. Eugene, you get Pixie.”
“What about me?” Rusty said as evenly as she could.
Cade glared at her. “You stay out of the way.”
He started toward the bull, waving the bag slowly back and forth, praying that the scent of its contents would overcome Pretty Boy’s fear.
It wasn’t working. The closer Cade got, the more anxious the bull became. He pawed the earth, lowered his head, and moved it back and forth slowly in a threatening manner.
Rusty knew that Cade was going to be killed. The bull was going to charge. The ground was going to collapse, and Pixie would be buried alive. She had to do something, but what? Then it came to her.
She began to sing “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”
The bull slowed his movement and cocked his head.