The Cattleman (Sons of Texas Book 2) (28 page)

Pic closed his eyes and arched his brow. Zochi hadn’t showed up for breakfast any morning she had been here. He doubted today would be different. “That’ll be great, Johnnie Sue. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

The housekeeper made an exaggerated huff and gave him a flat-mouth look.

“Okay,” Pic said. “Even if she doesn’t,
I
appreciate it, okay?”

“Like I said, you’re a good man, Pic. And I want to keep thinking that about you.”

With Johnnie Sue already putting the eggs on to cook, Pic quelled his urge to bolt, topped off his mug of coffee and took a seat at the breakfast table. While he waited, one knee involuntarily bounced up and down, his typical reaction to anxiety.

Women.
Shouldn’t a college-educated, thirty-three-year-old man know more about dealing with women? He had battled drought, range fires, cattle rustling, vandalism and varmints. Every day he oversaw the care of 7,000 head of stupid mama cows and their calves and several hundred horny bulls. He exercised range management of thousands of acres of grazing land and supervised the farming and cultivation of thirteen thousand acres of acres of hay, wheat and oats. But the most confusing and frustrating quandaries in his life came as a result of something some woman had done or said.

Soon, Johnnie Sue brought him a plate with two perfectly cooked eggs-over-easy, three sausage patties, two biscuits and a
steaming bowl of cream gravy. He wolfed it down, not enjoying it as much as he usually did, then picked up his empty plate and mug and carried them into the kitchen. Johnnie Sue was washing something in the sink. “Good breakfast, Johnnie Sue. My favorite. Thanks for cooking it.”

The housekeeper didn’t abandon her chore at the sink. “I baked that extra chicken last night so I can make some chicken salad for you and Zoshi to take out for lunch today. I’ll have it all put together when you’re ready to go.”

He took her making something Zochi would probably eat as being her way of trying to make up with him. “Thank you, Johnnie Sue. Everything’s okay then?”

“Right as rain,” she said without looking at him.

He finally escaped the kitchen and stalked toward the office, mumbling swear words as he went.

Besides everything else, Troy lurked in his mind. He should be back from Brenham by now. Pic couldn’t forget that he had promised Drake he would capture Troy and have a
serious talk with him about his Dallas friends and the fact that the Texas Rangers and the insurance company’s arson investigator still had him listed as a person of interest.

Second, Troy was the answer to his predicament of having two women on his hands. He had made a firm decision about Zochi. As hot and sexy as she was, he had to put distance between her and himself.

Troy had no landline, so Pic yanked his cell off his belt and keyed in his little brother’s number. “Hey,” Troy answered, then let out a string of cuss words.

“What’s going on?”

“Feeding. Damn mare kicked over a bucket of water.”

F
or Troy to be in his horse barn before daylight wasn’t unusual.

Pic found the heavy office door unlocked. He stepped inside, heard his dad talking on the phone in his office.

“When did you get back?” he asked Troy, walking toward his own office. “You didn’t show up for supper last night. I thought I’d hear from you.”

“I called Dad
last night after I got home. I didn’t leave Brenham ’til late yesterday afternoon.”

Pic rolled his eyes
. Troy paid only scant attention to schedules unless he had to do something related to his horses. He didn’t wear a watch, relied on the location of the sun or his cell phone to tell him the time. Pic sank to his desk chair. “Did you come up to the house and say hello to Dad?”

“Haven’t had time.”

“You need to make time, Troy. Dad worries about you when you’re traveling. Listen, I need a favor. We’ve got a photographer here taking pictures of the ranch. I need you to drive her down to the old homeplace today. I took her up to the mesa yesterday, but I’ve got too much to do to be providing escort service.”

Troy chuckled. “You said
“her.” Is she good-looking?”

An image of Zochi as she had looked last night at supper floated through Pic’s mind. “Island princess
.”

“No shit?” Troy laughed again. “Haven’t seen an island princess in a while. I’d like to help you out, Bro, but I can’t do it today. I’ve been gone since Saturday. You wouldn’t believe all that I’ve got ahead of me. Farrier’s coming out later this morning. And a guy I met down in Brenham is bringing me his mare to look at. Three different trainers have fucked her up. He wants me to try to fix her.”

Fixing fucked-up horses was what Troy did. And he did it extremely well. He had an almost eerie connection to horses. Some called him a horse whisperer. That ability brought him substantial earnings. “Why can’t you take her down there yourself?” Troy asked. “Shouldn’t take more than two or three hours.”

Pic sighed. “I guess I’ll have to. You’re gonna be at the picnic tomorrow, right?”

“Planning on it.”

“Maybe you can entertain her at the picnic. Mandy’s coming out and me having to entertain a hot chick will go over like a turd in a punch bowl.”

“She’s that hot?”

“Would I lie?”

“In that case, Big Brother, I’ll be glad to show her some of my good ol’ Texas cowboy swagger.”

Pic could picture his ornery little brother
—his laughing dark eyes and wide grin. “Great. Just make sure that’s
all
you show her. Don’t forget she and her parents are friends of Mom’s. You’re gonna come to the house for supper tonight, right? Say hello to Dad? You can meet her then.”

Pic reminded him they needed to get together for a talk and they disconnected. He sat there staring at the phone trying to think of someone else who could take Zochi to the old homeplace. Like a bright light, Kate popped into his mind. She was the perfect one to do it. They could girl-talk all the way there and back. He hooked his cell back onto his belt, picked up his desk phone receiver and pressed in Kate’s number.

She came on the phone, her voice husky from sleep. “I know who this is. The question is do
you
know what time it is?”

Uh-oh.
He had awakened her. “Time you got outta bed.”

“Maybe I don’t want to get up yet.”

Then it dawned on him, she might not be alone. Troy had told him she had hooked up with a car dealer who owned a cutting horse. “What, you got some dude there with you?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know? What do you want?”

After he told her what he wanted her to do, she said, “Can’t help you, Bro. I’m still in Brenham.”

Pic made a mental sigh. “When are you coming home?”

“I met this guy. He’s got this cabin in the mountains in Colorado. We’re thinking about going up there. He flies his own plane.”

Concern raised its’ head in Pic’s imagination. “What kind of plane? How long has he been flying? How many hours has he got?”

She gasped. “Do you have a reason for this inquisition? Isn’t it bad enough that I’ve got these Rambo guys following me everywhere I go?”

“Flying in the mountains in the summertime is not like flying around in South Texas. It can be dangerous.”

“Don’t get your boxers in knot, Big Brother. I’ll mosey on home when the good time runs out.” She laughed.

Pic hated acknowledging it, but his little sister was a man-eater. She went through guys like changing socks, had no interest in a steady boyfriend or a husband. He worried about that. “You oughtta get yourself back here and show up at the picnic tomorrow,” he told her.

“Why? Is Daddy gonna paddle me if I don’t?”

“C’mon, Kate. How long have you known this guy? Three days? And you’re going off to the mountains with him? And in a puddle-jumper to boot?”

“Um, I met him Thursday. So that makes it six days.”

“You shouldn’t be going off to a mountain cabin with a guy you’ve known six days. Hell, he could be an axe-murderer.”

“Dammit, why is it okay for you and Drake and Troy and even Daddy to screw everything that stands still, but it’s not okay for me?”

Pic envisioned her stamping her foot.
He skipped over the double-standard accusation. “Because you’re a girl, dummy. And you’re my little sister. And that makes it not okay. I don’t like hearing the shit I sometimes hear about you, Kate. It makes me feel like I oughtta whip somebody’s ass.”

“Really. And how do you think it makes me feel hearing people say all of my brothers and even my daddy are cockhounds?”

He let out a breath of frustration. He didn’t want to get into one of those circular arguments that she was so good at and always won. “You need to just forget the mountains and come on back home. You know Dad wants the whole family at the picnic. Troy’s already back. And I’ll be worried about you until you get back here.”

Silence. Then, “Well….I’ll think about it. I don’t know how I’d escape the damn ninjas anyway.”

Just as he figured, bringing up gossip he had heard about her had touched a nerve. “Think hard about it. If you leave right now, you’ll be here in time for supper.”

She disconnected in his ear.
Shit!
Pic drew his hands down his face. He tried not to be narrow-minded asshole, tried not to criticize, tried not to intrude into Kate’s life. After all, she was no kid and she operated a fairly successful business. But she was his baby sister. She was smart and beautiful and she deserved better than to be thought of as a…as a party girl. What she needed was a good, solid guy she cared about. Somebody like her neighbor, Will Harrington, who worshipped the ground she walked on. But she thought of Will as nothing more than a friend. Pic couldn’t figure it out.

Just then, his dad appeared in the doorway, leaning his shoulder on the jamb. “That Kate?” Where is she?”

“Still in Brenham.”

“Troy said she and Little Boy Blue won that little horse show down there.”

“Yeah, I guess they did.” Pic had been so preoccupied, he had forgotten to ask her how Little Boy Blue had done in the finals. He rose from his desk chair and rounded the end of his desk. “He’s a good-looking horse. Maybe he’ll turn out to be a performance horse after all. Did you make coffee?”

“Yeah,” his dad answered as they walked together toward the coffee pot in his office. “You still taking Zoshi to the old homeplace today?”

What had happened in the guesthouse yesterday zoomed into Pic’s thoughts. What would hours alone with Zochi bring today? She seemed to be a different person every time he saw her. But today, he had a tight rein on his libido and he intended for things to go in a different direction. “Guess so. I can’t find anybody else to do it. Looks like we’re looking at another hundred-degree day.”

“If you get started pretty soon, you can get down there, snap a few pictures and get back by early afternoon. Before it gets so hot. Then that’ll be the end of it.”

“Are you kidding? I just hope to hell she gets her act together by noon.”

Chapter 18

After a miserable night, Amanda awoke before daylight. The temperature had been in the nineties all night and with the humidity high, her air conditioner hadn’t cooled her house that well. She had been asleep exactly three hours.

She lay there gathering the will to force herself out of bed. And thinking.
Phone sex! Ridiculous!
It had left her frustrated and edgy and even needier. She had tossed and turned until midnight, greatly missing having Pic beside her, inside her.

She and Pic had had phone sex before. Mostly, it had been fun, but it had always left her unsatisfied. It was a poor substitute for the real thing. So were sex toys. Last night, finally, desperate to ease the feeling of emptiness, she had called on
BOB, the gel vibrator she had bought at a sex toy party long ago.

She had to admit
that the way things were going these days with Pic, she would be even more frustrated without her trusty BOB. After Pic learned she had it, he had told her he wished she wouldn’t use it. Their conversation about it scrolled through her mind:

…
Are you jealous of BOB?

I just don’t want a damn battery-operated machine standing in for me
.

Hah.
Then you should show up more often…
.

In truth, s
he couldn’t imagine a substitute for him. He was the most sexual being she had ever known and he had ruined her for anyone or anything else.

Pic. And sex
. He knew more about the female anatomy than she knew herself and he knew how to titillate and arouse in ways she was sure most men didn’t. He’d had that knowledge even when they were kids. Back then, having no experience herself, she had been too naïve to question his sophistication, but in adulthood, she wondered where such skill had come from. It was more than instinct. He had to have learned it from someone.

She had even teased him, saying he had learned about sex from whorehouses and porno movies. She suspected none of the Lockhart sons had ever been to a brothel, but she knew Pic and Drake and probably Troy, too, had sneaked around and watched porno movies when they were boys. Maybe they still did. What would
their meddling mother think if she knew that about them?