The Rancher's Dream

But Rory hadn’t touched her in the morning for weeks. They still had sex, of course, but mostly at night, after he got home from work. He’d shower first, naturally. He hated the stink of the shop. All through dinner, he’d bitch about the customers and the other mechanics, and Joe, the owner. He’d keep up a running monologue as he wolfed the food down, even when she’d made something really complicated and special for him as a treat.

And when he was finished eating and complaining, he’d want to have sex. Lately, she’d stopped even thinking of it as “making love.” It was just sex. Just a way to let off steam, like eating or complaining.

She knew what this change in him meant. It meant he was terribly, terribly unhappy. He hated his job. He hated his poverty, this apartment, the fact that her father had disowned her for moving in with a blue-collar loser like him.

What she didn’t know was what to do about it. She didn’t know how to make him happy again.

She listened to him moving around the small apartment now, mentally following the routine, gauging how long till he would be gone. She had to pee, too, but she didn’t want to risk tying up the bathroom at the very moment he needed it.

He was in a superbad mood today, she could tell. His steps were heavy on the uncarpeted floors, and he made a big to-do of trying to find a clean spoon for his coffee in the silverware drawer. She wondered whether, at least subconsciously, he wanted to wake her, specifically so they could have a fight.

He resented that she only had a part-time job at Fanny Bronson’s bookshop and didn’t have to get up as early as he did. He was always telling her she needed to look harder for something full-time, or at least another part-time gig.

He was running late. She could tell by how rushed his movements were. Too rushed. Suddenly she heard his coffee mug hit the kitchen floor. The ceramic splintered on the wood like a china bomb.

He cussed loudly, using the F word, which he once had kept off-limits, around her, anyhow.

“I don’t have time for this shit,” she heard him say. She did not hear the sound of the broom closet opening, or the swish of bristles across the floor or the clink of broken pieces collecting in the dustpan.

She merely heard the cabinet open, the trickle of coffee filling a new mug, and then Rory slamming the pot back on the stove with undisguised hostility. As if she, not he, had broken the first mug.

Becky wondered whether she could get away with feigning sleep any longer—even the dead couldn’t sleep through all this—but she didn’t have the courage to open her eyes.

She heard him stomp to the bedroom door. He stood there a minute, and she knew he was staring at her. She tried to breathe regularly, but her lungs felt like iron. And she wasn’t sure what her real-sleep breathing sounded like. Was it fast? Slow? Noisy? Did she snore? She ought to record herself sometime, she thought numbly, so she could imitate it more accurately.

After what seemed an eternity, he cursed again, smacked the door frame with the palm of his hand and left the apartment. Even then, she didn’t get up. She waited until she heard his truck rumble to life in the parking lot outside their window. When he turned the corner onto Cimarron Street, and its sputtering sound died away, she finally pushed back the covers and stood.

Her legs were oddly unsteady, and her stomach felt loose and unpleasant, as if she’d swallowed a gallon of dirty water. She put her hand over her navel, hoping to might stop the sudden surge of nausea.

Was she coming down with stomach flu?

She hoped not. Fanny was a good boss, but she didn’t offer sick leave to her part-timers, and Becky needed the money. She’d sold a gold chain last week to cover her half of the rent, and she didn’t have much more of her good jewelry with her at the apartment.

She’d left most of it back at the Callahan House on purpose. To make a statement. To show her father she didn’t give a damn about his money. She didn’t need it. Where she was going, the currency was love.

Her father had laughed. “Let’s see how much he loves you when you’re not decked out in diamonds and gold.”

How sad, how indescribably sad, to discover her father was right, after all. It wasn’t that Rory didn’t love her unless she had money—it was just that nothing could bloom in an atmosphere of this much stress and financial worry. Not even love. Nothing could go right at home when a man spent all day at a job he hated, with people who didn’t value him.

After she used the bathroom, her stomach felt a little more settled, so she cleaned up the broken mug, made the bed and took a shower. She still felt light-headed, but not actually ill, so she decided not to call in until she tried having some breakfast.

But when she sat down at the kitchen table and ate her first spoonful of cereal, she suddenly doubled over with nausea. She rose blindly, knowing she would never make it to the bathroom. She turned toward the sink.

And vomited.

She stood there many minutes afterward, shaking strangely, her elbows pressing against the cold stainless steel. She stared into the sink. She’d had nothing in her, really, so nothing much had come up except greenish bile that had slipped right down the silver drain.

At the thought, her stomach turned again. Helplessly, she retched, desperately trying to gather her long hair and keep it from falling into her face. Again, nothing came up except a thin, sickly stream of water.

So it couldn’t be anything she’d eaten. What was it? Was it nerves? Was it Rory?

Bowing her head, she made a small sobbing sound. She felt confused and weak, as if she wanted to curl up on the floor and cry for her mommy. But she hadn’t had a mother since she was eight years old. And she hadn’t had much of one, even before that.

“Jesus, what the hell is this?” Rory’s voice was suddenly right behind her. “Don’t you have to be at work in half an hour?”

She let her hair drop from numb fingers. She whirled around to face him, too shocked to take offense at his tone. What was he doing home? He should be at the garage, shouldn’t he?

“I...I’m not feeling that great,” she stammered. “I was thinking I might call in sick.”

“Oh, yeah?” His handsome face looked menacing, suffused with dark, angry blood. He strode to the sink and caught her by the arm. His fingers were so tight she swore she felt them reach her bone.

“Well, you better think again. You’re going in no matter how you feel. We need that money. Especially now.”

She swallowed. Her mouth felt sour and unclean. “Why especially now?”

“Because only one of us can sit around in our pj’s eating bonbons, princess, and it’s my turn now. That bastard Joe Mooney just fired me.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_99581d82-1f56-595b-8a0f-f6d8b28c97c7)

“YOU KNOW ABOUT this horse, I guess.”

Dusty Barley, the crusty old trainer who had answered Campbell Ranch’s call for help the other day, shot a quick glance at Grant, who was watching the halter training from just outside the paddock fence.

“Know what?” Grant was definitely interested in Barley’s opinion. Cawdor’s Gilded Dawn was the horse he hoped to sell to his deep-pocket buyer Monday night. Grant thought the three-year-old filly was fabulous, but if she had a defect he needed to know about it now.

“Ah, well, yep, of course you know.” Barley always talked softly, as if he were thinking aloud, which maybe he was. He also sounded as if he had a mouth full of gravel, probably the result of his crowded and crisscrossed teeth. “But I still gotta say it. This one’s gonna be special, Campbell.”

Grant held back a sigh, watching as the copper filly flicked her beautifully elevated tail. As Barley prompted her to step to the right, her muscular hips caught the sunlight, gleaming as if she truly were made of gold.

Barley was right, of course. Barley was always right. That’s why Grant couldn’t afford him at Campbell Ranch, not full-time. It had been a small miracle he’d been able to get him on such short notice Wednesday—and hold on to him for three whole days now.

“So...I’m just saying.” Barley kept his voice steady as he moved around the young filly, careful not to spook her. “You sure you don’t want to keep this one?”

“I never said that.” Grant leaned on the post, taking the weight off his bad foot. The grass was soft, but right now it felt harder than concrete. “I just said I’ve got a buyer coming from California to look at her.”

“Yep.” Phlegmatic as ever, the older man put the crop close to the young filly’s nose. She didn’t flinch. “Good girl. Good girl. Still. This one’s got star quality. Look at that neck.”

Grant didn’t answer. Truth was, he was 100 percent sure he did want to keep her. But he was 99.9 percent sure he couldn’t afford to.

She would have been perfect, though. If he was going to maintain a breeding program, and not just a boarding and training stable, he needed a foundation mare. Up to now, Charisma Creek had been his dam, but she was reaching the end of her breeding years.

If Campbell Ranch was going to make a name for itself, Grant needed a champion maker, a consistent producer with a good bloodline. And he needed her soon.

Dawn could be that mare.

Though she was very young, she already had the most extraordinary elegance—a high, airy motion and impeccable conformation. She had a swan-like neck, a flat topline, a perfectly dished head. Her eyes were soulful and intelligent.

Plus, as Barley pointed out, she had that indefinable something that made a star. Everyone fell in love with her. The best Arabians were as pretty in the face as cartoon horses, as powerful in carriage as thunderbolts and as graceful in motion as water. Dawn was all of that...and then some.