Marie Ferrarella - Cavanaugh Cowboy

Still, Sully’s hand lingered by his pocket. “I’d feel better paying my own way.”

“And I’d feel better if I were twenty years younger, but we can’t all get what we wish for,” Miss Joan snapped. “Now get going. And be sure to tell Rae I sent you.”

“Ray?” Sully asked.

Miss Joan nodded. “That’s the foreman. Rae Mulcahy. Otherwise you might find yourself being shot for trespassing.”

He should have known, Sully thought. People out here stripped things down to the basics.

“Right. I’ll introduce myself first thing,” he promised the woman. “Thank you for lunch, Miss Joan. It really was every bit as good as you said.”

She accepted her due. “Of course it was. You don’t stay in business as long as I have by lying to people. Don’t let Rae work you too hard,” she told him as an afterthought as Seamus’s great-nephew began to leave the diner.

Sully’s mouth curved a little as he took in her warning. “Not possible,” he replied just before he took his leave.

* * *

The twenty-some-odd mile trip to the J-H Ranch went by so quickly, Sully found that he was there before he realized it. If it weren’t for the tall wooden gate proclaiming the ranch’s name, he wouldn’t even have known that he had reached his destination. He would have just thought he was out on the open range.

Part of the problem was that the land had a sameness to it that didn’t set apart one area from another.

Getting out of the 4x4 truck he had rented at the airport when he had landed here in Texas, Sully opened the gate. Getting back in, he drove through to the other side, then got out a second time in order to close the gate behind him. He didn’t want to accidentally allow one of the horses to escape, although right now, he saw no sign of any kind of life forms in the vicinity.

Well, you said you wanted a change, right? Sully asked himself. And this is certainly a change.

While Aurora wasn’t a bustling metropolis the way Los Angeles and San Francisco were, it was definitely not anywhere nearly as deserted-looking and desolate as the land just outside of Forever was.

A person really had to be comfortable in their own skin to live out here, Sully thought. Otherwise, they could easily go stir-crazy inside of a day and a half.

Maybe two if they were particularly well-adjusted, he mused.

For a moment, he seriously considered turning the truck around, returning to the airport and catching a flight back to civilization.

The moment passed.

He was here, he silently argued, and Seamus seemed to think that being here would help him get through this unsettled part of his existence. He might as well at least meet this ranch foreman who was going to put him to work the second he set foot on the property.

He glanced at Miss Joan’s map that he had placed on the passenger seat in the truck. It looked as if the ranch house was straight ahead—wherever that was.

Sully drove more than a mile beyond the gate before he finally caught sight of the ranch house. There looked to be another structure some distance behind it. He guessed it was either the barn or the stable.

He still didn’t have all these ranching terms straight, he thought and wondered if Miss Joan’s foreman would cut him some slack until he got oriented. He hoped the man didn’t turn out to be one of these smug characters that built up his ego on the carcasses of workers he put down.

“Can’t worry about that,” Sully muttered. He was here, and he had to make the most of it. He hadn’t traveled all this way looking to make new friends. He just wanted to get back his zest for life. The zest he’d lost along the way while tracking down a serial killer.

Sully decided that he might as well pull his vehicle up in front of the ranch house and see if there was anyone there who could tell him where he could find the ranch foreman. He didn’t want to wander around aimlessly—for all he knew, that could get him shot out here.

Sully smiled grimly. He supposed that would be one way to deal with the funk he had slipped into.

After parking the truck, he got out of the cab. For now he left the one suitcase he’d packed where he’d put it, in the back seat. No sense in lugging it around until he found the foreman.

Sully smiled to himself as he approached the ranch house. The outside looked as if it had come straight out of one of those old Westerns he used to watch with his father. According to his dad, Angus, the Westerns had been old when he was a kid watching them with his father. That just made them classics in his book, his father had said.

Smiling to himself as he recalled the old memory, Sully knocked on the door.

When there was no answer, he knocked again. And again after he’d let a couple of minutes pass.

After the fourth time, he decided that no one was home and he was going to have to search for this elusive ranch foreman somewhere else.

Sully looked around. Maybe the man was in the large structure located some distance behind the house. It was worth a shot.

Sully had just turned away and gone down the three steps off the front porch when the front door suddenly opened.

Finally! Sully thought turning back around.

The single celebratory word faded instantly as the person he found himself looking up at turned out not to the foreman.

It wasn’t a man at all.

Instead, it was a slender young woman who appeared to be in her twenties. She had long straight black hair pulled back into a ponytail, prominent cheekbones and the most incredible blue eyes he had ever seen.

For a moment, the blue eyes held him captive, melting time and space into a single entity.

It took concentrated effort for him to finally come back to his senses.

“Yes?” One hand on her hip, the woman fired the single word at him like a bullet. Rather than friendly, she seemed exasperated.

Sully found himself wondering why. “Um, Miss Joan sent me.”

“Of course she did,” the slender young woman in jeans and a work shirt said with a sigh, looking more harassed. “You got any gear?”

He hadn’t the slightest idea what she was talking about. “Gear?”

Her impatient look grew only more so.

“Things,” she told him. “Your possessions, clothes, whatever.”

He felt like an idiot, but then, people didn’t talk the way she did back home. And they didn’t snap their questions unless they were interrogating someone.

“Oh, in the truck,” he said, then to make sure he was being clear, he jerked a thumb in the direction of the vehicle parked close by.

The woman’s expression looked no friendlier. “You can park your car behind the house and your gear in the bunkhouse.”

“Bunkhouse?”

“Behind the stable,” she said. Since it was obvious that didn’t clear anything up, she said, “C’mon, I’ll show you.” In a second, she was down the steps and striding toward the rear of the house ahead of him.

They were not starting off on the right foot, Sully thought. Hell, he’d encountered friendlier criminals. Raising his voice, he called after her. “Wait!”

The woman swung around on her heel, still looking as if her supply of patience was seriously depleting by the second. She didn’t say anything, but her entire countenance let him know that she was waiting for him to say something.

Obviously, conversation was not at a premium around here.

“I’m looking for the foreman,” he told her. Since she was still standing where she’d stopped, he crossed to her. “Ray Mulcahy.”

She continued looking at him as if waiting for something to dawn on him. When it didn’t, she said, “You found her.”

“Where?” he asked, looking around. And then the pronoun she’d used suddenly echoed in his brain. “Her?” he asked incredulously.