much of anything. He suspected she was hurting but she wouldn’t admit it.
“We’ve known each other for years,” he went on. “I won’t be insulted if you don’t like the way I cooked the steak.”
She studied him for a moment. “We spent some time together years ago on your short visits home. I haven’t laid eyes on you for five years. I’m not sure we do know each other.”
Okay, he’d asked for that. Maybe he should have put things a different way. “Years ago, you said what you were thinking. You were as easy to read as the proverbial open book. Now you’re acting as if you want me to go away and never come back when it’s obvious you need help here. I’m trying to make sense of what’s going on. Alex never mentioned this place was headed downstream. Why not?”
Her answer was quick coming. “Do you really think he’d tell you? He’d never want you to know that he’d failed to succeed in managing what Jack had left him.”
“What if I’d come back and seen it?”
“But you didn’t. The decline of Saddle Ridge didn’t happen overnight. It’s been slow. There were times when I thought that with or without Alex’s help I could turn it around—”
She stopped.
“What do you mean with or without Alex’s help?”
The guarded expression was back on her face, the shadows in her eyes.
“Why wouldn’t Alex want to keep Saddle Ridge going?” he pressed.
“Oh, he wanted to keep it going. Rather, he wanted me to keep it going.”
“And what was he doing?” Brock asked cautiously.
“You know what he was doing. He was riding the rodeo circuit, chasing the wildest bull.”
That’s what Dix had said. Brock thought about the times Alex had called him. Often he’d been away from Saddle Ridge. And whenever Brock had called Alex—those times had been too few—at Alex’s direction, he’d gotten hold of him on his cell phone.
So Kylie wouldn’t answer?
The same tension that had looped around them ever since he’d stepped into Kylie’s hospital room surrounded them now. It was broken when the door opened and Dix came in.
The foreman took off his Stetson and when he entered the kitchen, he looked like a man who was facing his executioner. “Are you still talking to me?” he asked Kylie.
“Do I have any choice?” she returned with a half smile that told Brock she couldn’t stay mad at Dix for long.
“You do,” the older man answered, “but the horses don’t like a woman in a snit any more than I do.”
She laughed. The sound was so genuine, so free, that Brock remembered the girl she’d been.
“Well then, that decides it,” she said, getting to her feet and wincing because she’d moved too fast.
Every protective instinct in Brock urged him to push back his chair, put his arm around her shoulders and make sure she got to the sofa safely. Yet he stayed put because he knew she wouldn’t tolerate it.
Kylie was lifting her plate to take it to the sink when Brock said, “I’ll get the dishes.”
Dix’s gaze cut from one of them to the other. “Looks like everything’s under control in here,” he muttered.
“In a week I’ll be back in the barn,” Kylie told him.
“Only to visit.” Brock’s voice was steel.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” Dix assured her. “Feather’s doing fine. She even let me put a blanket on her rump this afternoon. Of course she does miss you, but I’ll tend to her real good.”
“Feather?” Brock asked.
“I adopted a mustang from the B.L.M.”
The Bureau of Land Management thinned the wild mustang herds that roamed the western rangelands, then they put the horses up for adoption. The mustangs were descendants of the Spanish horses and, when trained, made great riding mounts with stout constitutions. But not just anyone had the patience to gentle a wild mustang. Kylie obviously did.
Reflexively, his gaze went to her rounding tummy. She’d make a wonderful mother. He’d seen her patience and kindness as she’d interacted with horses. She’d be the same with children.
“Thanks, Dix. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The sincerity in her voice said she meant every word.
Flushing, her foreman dropped his hat back on his head. “I’ll be in my quarters if you need me.”
This afternoon Brock had learned Dix resided in the old apartment over the barn where Kylie had stayed when she’d moved to the ranch. The bunkhouse, which once housed four to six hands, no longer had running water or electricity. Brock still didn’t understand what had happened here, and he intended to find out.
Every step Kylie took to the sofa seemed to be an effort, and Brock knew she was hurting. She was so petite, her pregnancy mainly showed at her tummy. Her cheeks might be a tiny bit fuller, her breasts might be a little bigger—
He stopped that thought before it could form. He stopped that thought before a picture went with it. She was a pregnant woman, for God’s sake! He couldn’t be attracted to her.
Could he? Hadn’t he always noticed Kylie, but—being five years older—kept away from her? After Alex had declared his intentions to marry her and kept declaring them until he did it, Brock had stepped away for good. She was still his brother’s wife. She was still carrying his brother’s baby. And she loved Saddle Ridge.
He’d almost hated it. He’d hated what Jack Warner had felt about it. He’d hated the fact that his father had left it to his brother. He’d hated all the memories that had made him feel like a second-class citizen and his mother an outcast. Everyone had known Jack hadn’t loved Conchita Vasco. He’d done his duty by her. When he’d met someone else who was his kind, who would produce the blond son he’d craved, he’d divorced Brock’s mother and never cared about seeing her again. He’d been a cold man. When his new wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer and died a few years later, he’d turned even colder.
Coming back here had rubbed every one of Brock’s nerves raw. Being around Kylie wasn’t helping. The best solution for both of them was to sell Saddle Ridge and move on. But he had the feeling that wasn’t anywhere in her plans.
Brock was dropping plates into the dishwasher when the phone rang. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kylie reach for the cordless on the end table by the sofa. She obviously knew the person on the other end because she propped a pillow at the sofa’s arm and curled into it, trying to make herself comfortable.
In spite of himself, Brock wondered about her life now. What had she done in her free time before she’d become pregnant? Did she still ride into the Painted Peaks, hoping to glimpse the bands of mustangs that hadn’t inhabited the mountains for years? Did she ever return to Devil’s Canyon in the Bighorns and feel as if
