Ruth Dale - The Wrangler's Woman

They did indeed.

“But…” Granny pursed her lips. “If you ask me, it sounds just like him—are you having fun yet! It’s like…like some kind of clue to something. What in the world has that man done now?” She shook her head with obvious disgust.

And who could blame her? It was her daughter, twenty-five years younger than Wil Keene, who’d fallen for the fast-talking con man, been seduced and abandoned in short order. Granny had said over and over through the years that she would be eternally grateful her granddaughters had better sense.

“We won’t worry about it,” Dani decided for all of them. “We have too many important things to do to waste any thought or effort on a note that might not have been written by him at all. So who wants to do the grand tour with Dobe and me tomorrow morning?”

The answer was exactly nobody.

SUNDAY BREAKFAST at the huge XOX Ranch was a four-generation affair: Austin the grandfather, Travis the father, Jack the son, and Petey the orphaned, four-year-old grandson, whose parents had died tragically when he was still an infant. Gathered around the big wooden table in the dining room, they ate and argued and generally gave all-male households a bad name.

The Sunday menu never varied: chicken fried steak with home-fried potatoes, two or three fried eggs on each plate, with cream gravy over the whole thing. Jack figured if it didn’t clog your arteries and kill you, you were just lucky.

Petey dropped his spoon on the floor and looked expectantly at his uncle, a stubborn brown cowlick hanging across his big hazel eyes.

“Get it yourself,” Jack said. “I’m tryin’ to teach you to be independent, kid.”

“Ha!” Grandpa Austin snagged another huge slab of fried meat off the platter. “You help that boy, Jack.”

Travis poured coffee into his cup and his father’s. “You’re spoilin’ the boy, Pa. Jack’s right.”

Petey just sat there grinning from one to the other; he always enjoyed stirring up the pot. When his glance snagged on his uncle Jack’s, the grin slipped. He hopped off his chair to pick up the spoon, which he put back on his plate without even wiping it off.

Jack figured the boy had already met and conquered every germ on the XOX, so he let it pass.

Austin fixed Jack with a gimlet eye. “I hear them Keenes are in town,” he said.

“That’s right.” Jack hacked at his fried eggs with the edge of his fork. “Got in yesterday. Turns out they’re daughters, not sons.”

“Heard that.” Travis speared a chunk of steak. “That’ll make it easier to do what we’re afixin’ to do.”

Alarm flared in Jack. “And what might that be?”

“Buy the place, same as always.”

“Oh, that.”

“We’ll be doin’ them a favor.” Austin piped up. “It’d be hard enough for three able-bodied men with deep pockets to save that place. For three women it’ll be dang nigh impossible.”

Travis nodded. “I heard on the grapevine that no money come with the place so they gotta be strapped for cash. Seems kinda strange to me, though, all things considered.”

“Well…” Jack’s appetite was fading. “They—”

A crash shocked all thought out of him and he swung around to find Petey grinning while milk from his smashed glass traveled quickly across the hardwood floor.

“Doggone it, Petey!”

Muriel appeared, mop in hand. “I’ll handle this,” she announced, fixing the little culprit with a condemning eye. “Did you do that on purpose, Peter Burke?”

Petey caught his lower lip between baby teeth and shook his head solemnly. “No, ma’am,” he said. “I just goofed.”

Muriel’s scowl transformed into an unwilling grin. “I swear, you take after the rest of the men in your family,” she declared, flopping mop strings around in the white mess. “Just get by on charm, which is what all you Burkes do.”

Grandpa winked at son and grandson. “Charm only gets us so far, right, fellas?”

Travis shrugged and Jack groaned. His grandfather had been married and divorced three times, and his father twice. One of the main reasons Jack had never taken the marital plunge was because of the rotten family track record where women were concerned.

When Muriel had withdrawn, Travis returned to the subject at hand without missing a beat. “The thing I don’t get is, what happened to all Miss Elsie’s money and family jewels? Even a fast worker like Wil Keene would have had trouble blowing it all in less than two years. If he was spending big money, it sure wasn’t on anything a man could see, especially not that ranch.”

“He coulda been a closet gambler,” Austin speculated. “Or maybe he invested in a lot of bad stocks. I seem to recall a certain someone who tried to invest in the awl bidness a buncha years back and got took to the cleaners.”

Travis lowered his brows in warning; his losses had been so large that the entire family was in an uproar about it for months. Jack had been a kid at the time, but he remembered it well.

“Whatever,” Travis said. “Keene was stupid not to sell that ranch when he had the chance. It sure woulda spared them women a whole lot of grief.”

“I don’t know,” Jack said mildly. “They seem awful determined to make a go of it, and I, for one, wish them well.” He was thinking of Dani and the intensity of her determination to make the Bar K a success. Surely anyone who cared that much could make almost anything work. “It may take a miracle but… I think the Keene sisters might be able to make something out of the Bar K again.”

Austin obviously did not see it that way. “You’re pulling my laig.” He scowled at his grandson. “They couldn’t make a go of it even if they had plenty of money behind them, which they ain’t. Besides which, nobody’s gonna work for them, just for starters. And where, I ask you, are they gonna find dudes? Us, on the other hand…” He puffed out his chest. “We’re turnin’ reservations away.”

“Maybe we should turn a few of them toward the Bar K.”

“Not only no, but hell no. Look, you just tend to your own knittin’ and stay away from them girls. Women are nothing but trouble, as ever’ last one of us knows to our sorrow. And them Keene women are bound to be twice as bad.”

“I don’t happen to agree.”

Splat! A big glob of gravy struck the rim of Jack’s plate and splattered across the shiny wood beyond the plastic place mat. He looked up sharply to find Petey holding a spoon catapult fashion in his chubby, childish hands.

His smile was beatific and he said but a single word: “Oops!”

“BAR K DUDE RANCH, Toni Keene speaking.”

“Hi, Toni. It’s me, Jack. Is Dani around?” He’d expected her to answer and hoped his disappointment wasn’t obvious.

“Uh-uh, and neither is Niki. They’ve gone to town.”

“What for?”

She laughed; Lord, she really was nice. “Niki’s looking for a job and Dani’s going to put an ad in the newspaper.”

“What kind of ad?”

“A wrangler wanted ad. Heaven knows we need help around here, and when the guests start arriving…”

He practically heard her shrug. “It’s kinda late in the season to be hiring men,” he said. “That may be a problem.”

“I sure hope not.” But her worry came through loud and clear. “We’ve got so many other problems that we don’t need another one.” She sighed. “Whatever—Dani will think of something. She always does.”

Jack thought maybe he could “guide” Dani in the right direction, but what he said was, “What kind of job is Niki looking for?”

“Whatever she can find. Maybe waitressing? She’s very conscientious and could probably make good tips.”