Carolyne Aarsen - Cattleman's Courtship

She knew that everything had changed. In the space of a heartbeat, or lack of a heartbeat, her world had spun around.

There was no way she could wander around the streets of Malta knowing that her uncle, the man she thought of as her father, lay helpless and recuperating from a devastating heart attack.

She had no choice now. She would have to cancel her trip and stay in Cochrane to support her aunt. Even if it meant running the risk of seeing Nicholas and having her pain reinforced.

Though she had told her aunt she didn’t pray much, she caught herself praying that when the time came she would be able to leave with her heart still intact.

Nicholas pulled up to his father’s house and slammed on the brakes, dust swirling around his truck as it fishtailed then abruptly stopped. He was being juvenile and he knew it, but his anger and frustration had to find some release and driving like a fool seemed to be a part of it.

The events of the past days piled on top of each other. Seeing Cara in at the clinic then at church. She acted so cool. So remote. He knew part of it was his own fault. He’d put up his own barriers to her and he had to remind himself to keep them up.

Like you did at the hospital?

For a brief moment, when he and Cara had seen Alan lying on the hospital bed, he thought she might lean on him just a little longer. But she had quickly pulled herself together and had drawn away from his support.

Nicholas grabbed his tie from the seat and opened the door, his anger fading with each moment. He felt tired and drained. In the next couple of weeks he had to get fences fixed, his haying done and then get ready for another work trip overseas.

He sighed as he trudged up the sidewalk. He wished he could stay home, at the ranch. Wished he could get on his horse and head up into the mountains.

He thought of Cara’s past insistence that he not go back to work and the ensuing fight that had sent her running.

Nicholas stopped at the top step of the house and, turning, let his eyes drift over the valley spread out before him. Cattle dotted the pasture near the house. His purebred herd painstakingly built up by him and his father over the past five years, had been paid for by the work he did.

Beyond this valley lay the land he and his father had purchased back from the bank after his parents’ divorce. When missed payments led to foreclosure, this, too, had been paid for by his work. He had focused his entire life on this ranch.

He could have found work closer by, but it wouldn’t have paid near what he got from working on oil rigs. The time off gave him the opportunity to work on the ranch. His father managed the ranch while he was gone. All in all it had been a convenient and lucrative arrangement.

One he wasn’t in a position to change. Not yet. He knew the beating his father’s pride took when they had to go, hat in hand, to the bank to refinance the ranch.

Four generations of Chapmans had farmed and ranched on this land and each generation had added to it and expanded it. Nicholas was the fifth generation and he wasn’t going to let the ranch fail on his watch.

He knew Cara couldn’t understand. She didn’t have his attachment to the land. She didn’t have the continuity of family and community he had. Though he didn’t appreciate his father’s puzzling antagonism toward Cara, he did agree with his father on one point.

Cara’s lack of strong roots made it hard for her to appreciate the generations of sweat equity poured into this place. She couldn’t understand how important the ranch was to him and to his father.

And if she didn’t get that, then she wasn’t the girl for him. Logically he knew his father was right about that.

He just had to convince his heart.

“And how’s Uncle Alan?” Cara asked, shifting the phone to her other hand as she slowed the car down and steered it around a tight corner. Dust from the gravel road swirled in a cloud behind her.

“He’s still very tired, but the doctor says that’s normal. How are you doing?” Aunt Lori sounded tired herself.

“I’m fine, busy, but things are going well. I’m on my way to take a stick out of a horse.”

“Just another day at a vet practice,” Aunt Lori said with a small laugh. “Uncle Alan asked me to remind Anita to do the supply checklist. He thinks the clinic is running low on—”

“You tell Uncle Alan that Anita has already sent in the order and everything at the clinic is under control.” Except my driving, she thought, as she pushed the accelerator down, hoping she didn’t hit any washboard on her way to the next call.

The Chapman ranch.

The last call she’d been on had taken too long. A sheep with trouble delivering her lambs. Something that could have been dealt with at the clinic, but the woman insisted someone come out to look at it.

Then the woman wanted her to check out her dog’s gums and have a quick peek at her laying hens.

Which now meant that in spite of keeping the accelerator floored, she was twenty minutes late.

So it was easier to blame her heavily beating heart on the pressure of trying to get there on time rather than possibly seeing Nicholas again.

“But I gotta run, Aunty Lori. Tell Uncle Alan I’ll be there tonight and give him a full report of how things are going.”

“You take care, sweetie. I’ll have supper ready for you when you come.”

Cara smiled as she hung up. She was busy, sure, but there was a lot to be said for coming home after a hard day of work to supper cooking on the stove.

While she enjoyed cooking, many of her suppers back in Vancouver consisted of pizza or a bowl of cereal in front of the television. Hardly nutritious, despite the claims of the cereal manufacturers.

Cara made the last turn up the winding road leading to the ranch. She allowed herself a quick look at the mountains edging the fields. The bright spring sun turned the snowcapped peaks a brilliant white, creating a sharp relief against the achingly blue sky.

When she and Nicholas were dating, they seldom came to the ranch. This suited Cara just fine. Every time she came, she received the silent treatment from Nicholas’s father, which created a heavy discomfort. Cara knew Nicholas’s father didn’t approve of her, though she was never exactly sure why.

All she knew was each time she saw Dale he glowered at her from beneath his heavy brows and said nothing at all.

So she and Nicholas usually went to a movie, hung out at her uncle and aunt’s place or visited Nicholas’s best friend, Lorne Hughes.

So when she found out the call came from Dale Chapman, she was already dreading the visit, and running late just made it more so.

She parked the car and, as she got out, she heard Dale Chapman speaking.

She grabbed a container with the supplies she thought she might need out of the trunk of the car. Then she headed around the barn to the corrals, following the sound of Mr. Chapman’s voice.

Dale was holding the horse’s head, talking in an unfamiliar gentle tone to his horse.

Just for a moment, Cara was caught unawares. She wasn’t used to gentleness from Dale Chapman in any form.

“Good morning, Dale. Sorry I’m late.”

His cowboy hat was pulled low on his head, shading his eyes, but when he looked up, his mouth was set in grim lines.

“I came as soon as I could.” Cara knew trying to explain to him about unexpected problems with her previous case would be a waste of time.

Cara set the kit down in what seemed to be a safe place, pulled a pair of latex gloves out and slipped them on as she walked toward the horse.

She knew from the phone call that Dale had found the animal with a stick puncturing the muscles of its leg.