you wouldn’t ride over with Gabe because he’s sweet on you?” Sheila asked knowingly.
Kate, who was twenty and a little nervous about men because of an extremely sheltered background, nodded. Her father and mother had raised her in the same strict fashion they’d been raised. They were old-fashioned, church-going people. And even though her father was dead, her mother was still a stickler for morality and didn’t hesitate to ask Jason’s opinion of Kate’s infrequent dates. That rankled, too, but Kate’s mother, Mary, thought the sun rose and set on the man. Kate’s late father had been Jason’s foreman, and she sometimes thought that was one reason Jason seemed to feel responsible for her and Mary.
She drew her mind back to the present. “Gabe is a very nice man, but I want to be a fashion designer. I don’t want to get married for ages yet.”
Sheila nodded, thinking privately that Kate and Jason got along so well because both of them wanted their independence. Jason would probably never marry since that Maryland woman had thrown him over for a movie contract.
“Good luck,” she murmured. “He was already wound up and cussing when he went out the door this morning. Had some terrible things to say about what I did to his eggs.” She sniffed, snapping beans with renewed vengeance. “Nothing wrong with salsa and refried beans on top of them. Well, is there?” she asked Kate.
Kate knew how Sheila made salsa, and having tasted the extremely hot sauce once, she had every sympathy for Jason. “Why did you put salsa on them?”
“Because the minute his feet hit the floor, he started cussing because he couldn’t find where I put his jeans, and then he swore the detergent I used gave him an allergic reaction, he said there wasn’t enough cover on his bed...” Sheila’s thin lips flattened. “I guess I cause cancer, too, although he stopped short of accusing me of that!”
Kate shook her head, laughing softly. “You ought to short sheet his bed for him.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, I’ll get even,” Sheila replied. “He loves cherry pie. Hell will freeze over and shiver before he gets another one.”
That wasn’t quite true, of course. Jason would get hungry for that cherry pie and start flattering his housekeeper, and he’d have his cherry pie like a shot. He and Sheila had these blowups almost daily, and both forgot them just as frequently.
“Well, I’ll go try to patch him up so you can get your own back on him,” Kate offered.
“If you can get him back here, I’ve got some nasty antiseptic...!” the older woman called.
Kate shook her finger at Sheila and rode on. But once she was on the narrow, rutted path through the grass that led to the holding pens, she felt a little nervous. Jason in a temper wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. Part of Kate was still a little afraid of him, although she wouldn’t admit it or show it. He was a very masculine man, and he didn’t bother to hide his faults; he just let them hang out for everyone to see. He’d never have made it as a diplomat.
Kate smoothed her hands down her jeans and fumbled to tuck the shirttail of her faded blue print blouse back into them. Down the road, a deep, drawling male voice called out orders with more than the usual amount of venom, rapid-fire Spanish reverting quickly to English and back again. Jason spoke both. Since most of the local ranch hands were of Mexican-American descent, being bilingual came as naturally as wearing boots around San Frio. Cattle bawled and dust was everywhere, with men on foot and men on horseback trying to keep some kind of mad order in all the confusion.
This rural part of south Texas hadn’t changed a lot since the Civil War. There was less native grassland because of the enormous amount of grazing that had been done back in the cattle era. These days ranchers who wanted good grass had to plant it, so the local Soil Conservation Service people were Johnny-on-the-spot with help for those who wanted it, as Jason had. But, too, there was a lot of scrub and more prickly pear and mesquite than anybody wanted. Despite the drawbacks, the open country was the same; wide and spread out and endless, with just a few scattered trees here and there to signal houses hidden from the sun. It was pioneer country. Cowboy country. And Kate, who’d been born next door to the Donavans, loved it with all her heart. Sitting astride the quarter horse with the wind blowing the grass down and teasing her shirt, she felt as free and unchained as the land itself.
She left her horse at the big makeshift corral and moved along on booted feet, tugging nervously at her long swath of hair. Her hair was a deep, rich brown, down to her waist when she didn’t braid it or put it up. She had a pretty oval face with wide-spaced green eyes under long lashes, and a straight nose and a bow mouth. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful face. It was thin and high-cheekboned. But Kate had a sweet personality and a kind of unabashed honesty that overshadowed her lack of beauty.
Just ahead, a large fenced area held a number of bawling calves and unhappy cows who were having their babies taken away for branding, tagging, and a disease check. There was a long chute down which calves were herded singly to a tilt tray that held the bovine head in a kind of vice while the rest of the protesting animal was branded, tagged, and vaccinated. A lot of ranchers had recently gone back to the old-time way of using a corral and doing each animal out in the open with ropes and cutting horses. But Jason liked this new technique and his men had it down to an art—they could usually tag, brand, and vaccinate an animal a minute.
Most of the victims were calves, but new bulls and replacement heifers had to be screened, too. They were given the same treatment, and many of them protested. Jason ran purebred longhorn cattle in this section of the ranch, so the horns on some of them were frankly dangerous if a cowboy let himself get backed into a corner. That was what Gabe had said Jason had done. Jason didn’t like mistakes. He didn’t make them himself, and he expected the same perfection in other people. So naturally he wasn’t admitting that he was badly hurt. That unforgiving attitude was a source of worry to Kate, who was afraid that someday she might make a slip and be crossed off his list of friends forever.
Jason was leaning against the chute, tall and powerful and darkly elegant in his unconscious pose, one worn boot hooked on the lowest board of the chute while he watched big blond Gabe drive a calf up it to be worked. But before Kate was halfway to him, his dark eyes had found her. He always seemed to see her before anyone else did.
She could see that he was favoring his right arm, resting it on his propped-up leg. He looked good in Western clothing. Faded jeans and a worn black Stetson, leather boots curled up and matted with dirt from long use and a dusty chambray shirt made him look like a handsome desperado.
He was handsome to Kate, anyway—even if his high-cheekboned face had overly craggy features and he wasn’t shy about speaking his mind. He was dark-eyed, dark-skinned, with a deceptively lithe build. Tall and powerfully muscled, Jason had one of those physiques seen so frequently on the screen and so rarely in real life. With the misshappen black Stetson pulled low over his eyes, he had that dangerous look. Kate came closer.
“I wondered why Gabe vanished all of a sudden,” he mused in a deep, south Texas drawl. His dark eyes cut upward to where his forearm was trying to look invisible. “My God, are we so hard up for help that we’re kidnapping seamstresses?”
“I’m a designer, not a seamstress,” Kate pointed out pleasantly, smiling up at the tall man. “And if you don’t think I can throw a calf, stand back and watch me. My daddy was foreman of this outfit before Gabe was, and he taught me all I know.”
Jason’s dark eyes softened as they searched her creamy complexion, lingering on her thick, dark eyelashes. “I guess he did, but most of these calves outweigh you, honey,” he murmured
