the bunkhouse door, beaming. “We’ve got a good, old-fashioned Saturday night stomp at the Mystery Saloon tonight. You thinkin’ of comin’, Bruce?”
Lyndie cringed. She suddenly felt like she was in junior high, waiting for that first guy to ask her to dance. And there were no takers.
“You know I go for the trail and not the saloon, Hazel,” he answered gruffly.
Her great-aunt snorted like she was one of the cowpokes. “There was a time before Katherine that you were all too familiar with the saloon, and it’s time you stepped out again.”
If Lyndie didn’t know better, she would have sworn Bruce Everett gave Hazel one of those permafrost looks she was beginning to recognize herself. But that was not possible. No one thwarted Hazel. Hazel was the grand-dame of Mystery, Montana.
The McCallums went back more than a century, and had settled the entire valley. Among cattle ranchers, the McCallum name was interchangeable with the Midas touch. Even Lyndie herself knew how persuasive her great-aunt could be. In the midst of expansion and fiscal crisis, Lyndie had been lured to drop everything and attend a three-week vacation at a dude ranch—when she didn’t even know how to ride.
“We’ll see you at the stomp,” Hazel announced.
Bruce stood and stared at the two women, Lyndie’s leaden suitcase still perched on his broad shoulder.
“Well, if looks could kill…” Lyndie murmured as soon as she was locked inside Hazel’s signature burnt-orange Caddy and away from the eyes and ears of Bruce Everett.
“He just needs a nudge, that’s all.”
She looked at her great-aunt. “Hazel, I said no shenanigans. I certainly don’t need them, not when you’ve convinced me to take a break. And certainly Bruce Everett doesn’t need a woman thrown in his lap when he has this Katherine he’s hung up on.”
“He needs to quit his hang-up with Katherine. It wasn’t his fault. She was a headstrong fool who couldn’t be taught to respect a horse. And I don’t care how beautiful she was, he had no business with a woman who wouldn’t respect a horse,” Hazel said astutely.
“I am totally confused. What does this have to do with me?” Lyndie enquired. “Because, let me tell you, I respect horses. In fact, if the truth be known, I so respect them that I’m scared to death of them. So let Bruce and Katherine have their respect-the-horse love-fest without me.”
“He needs to go to the saloon tonight and two-step around a bit. It’d be good for what ails him. There was a time when he was the tomcat of Mystery. And believe me, the ladies didn’t complain.”
Lyndie released a cynical sigh. “I know too well of what you speak, Hazel, but his tomcat ways sound like Katherine’s problem.”
“Katherine’s dead.”
Lyndie gave her a sharp look.
“Yep,” Hazel continued. “She died on the trail with Bruce. There was talk he was in love with her. There was even rumor of a wedding. But Katherine had no horse sense, literally. She felt horses were no better than men, ready to serve her beck and call. When the bobcat attacked, she didn’t realize the cat was protecting her litter. Katherine ignored all her mount’s warnings, and, in my opinion, that’s why she was bucked and fell to her death off that cliff.”
The news punched Lyndie in the gut. Empathy, something she swore she’d feel for no man after Mitch, came swelling up inside her. “I had no idea,” she said softly. “Gosh, how awful for him.”
“Yep. And him the kind of man who likes to have everything in control,” Hazel said solemnly.
“Maybe you ought to leave him alone, Hazel. After all, I’m sure he feels guilty—”
“Guilty? Why should he feel guilty? It wasn’t his fault. The horse neighed and shied. And then shied and shied again. She shouldn’t have forced the poor animal. But that Katherine, she was the kind of gal who never took ‘no’ for an answer, and she spurred that poor frightened animal to its death. Along with hers.”
“How horrible.” A sympathetic moan emanated from Lyndie’s lips. “No wonder he’s so cold.”
“He was never cold before. But now he punishes himself every day.”
“Terrible.”
Hazel took a deep breath as she sped the Caddy along the dusty gravel roads toward her ranch. Every now and again, the matron gave Lyndie a probing glance. “It’s not your concern whether Bruce Everett heals or not. It’s just that the man works so hard. It’s as if he’s running from something—and I just want to see him stop and turn around, is all. Success is useless if you can’t have some fun now and then.”
Lyndie grew pensive, thinking of her own situation. Her divorce had been public and humiliating, but even worse was the inexpressible shock of betrayal, the sudden discovery that her “charming and loving” husband had been not only embezzling money from her for years, but using the funds to support his mistress.
Swindling his wife, betraying his wedding vows and her trust—it had meant no more to Mitch than killing a fly.
Suddenly, wanting to confide in Hazel, she said, “You know, Hazel, I didn’t always work like a slave. I used to have fun, but…well, the fun in me just ran out, I guess. I kind of understand where Bruce Everett’s coming from. Lately, work’s been my only antidote, you know? Sometimes I think that after going through a divorce, ‘hell’ is a redundant concept.”
Hazel gave her another study, then soothed, “You just have to let it go, hon, you hear me? What’s done is done, and it can’t be changed now. Remember, people come out west to start all over. From now on you have to be forward-oriented. And a few weeks at the Mystery Dude Ranch is just what you need.”
Despite the breathtaking summer panorama, Lyndie still felt a chill settle on her as she remembered a much different, much uglier picture from last fall in New Orleans. She had returned home unexpectedly early from a business trip to Manhattan. Nothing in her life could have prepared her for the shock of opening the front door and seeing the man she loved, naked and in the throes of orgasmic bliss with a woman she had never even suspected existed.
She had tried so hard, in the difficult, intervening months, to erase that picture, to somehow focus on the good in her life and expunge the bad. But her own mother’s divorce had left permanent scars. Somehow work seemed the only way to heal. At least she wouldn’t be impoverished as her mother had been when Dad had kissed them all off for a younger woman. Her mother had been abandoned, with no skills, and no job, and a young child of five to raise all by herself. Work was a way to restore her pride, as her mother’s pride had been restored when she went back to school and refused to let the McCallum money raise her child.
But no matter how hard Lyndie tried, it seemed that negative thoughts always had the upper hand; already the “good times” she had shared with Mitch had become a formless mist in her memory, while the sharply defined edges of the ugliness still rubbed her raw….
You have to curb such thinking, Lyndie lectured herself, or the entire trip will be a waste.
“I said, has success tied your tongue? Lands, when you were little, everybody called you Babbling Brook, you rambled on so.”
The
