Renegade Father

Like so many ranching families, the Mitchells had been hurt by the recent run of low beef prices. They had run a pretty big spread near Big Sky and she knew his father slightly.

She heard he was trying to support his large family by working in a ranch supply store over in Bozeman now. It had been one of the reasons she’d taken a chance and hired Luke two months earlier, in an effort to give the family one less mouth to feed.

Compassion for the eager young man washed over her. To grow up thinking he would take over the reins of the family ranch someday and then to lose it all with the bang of an auctioneer’s gavel must have been devastating. Heaven knows, it was one of her own biggest fears.

“You could do a whole lot worse, ma’am,” Luke went on, “if you don’t mind me sayin’.”

Drat Joe for putting her in this position. She rubbed suddenly clammy hands on her jeans beneath the table. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt his fragile pride by telling him she didn’t think he was man enough for the job.

Especially when life had already dealt him a rough hand—and when he had more than a slight crush on her. “I… You’ve been a real asset to the Double C, Luke.”

“Thank you.” His wide grin made him look not much older than C.J. “I could be even more of an asset as foreman. I have some real good ideas about improving things around here. Not that Joe hasn’t done a good job, mind, but I’ve been reading about these fancy new low-cholesterol breeds they got out there and I think it might be worth your while to look into it.”

He went on for several minutes about the direction he’d like to take the Double C. She listened with only half an ear, trying to figure out how she could let him down gently. Finally she realized he had wound down and was waiting expectantly for an answer.

She cleared her throat. “I have to say, those certainly sound like interesting ideas.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to give me a chance?”

She paused, feeling like she was about to drop-kick a puppy, then finally drew in a deep breath and took aim. “Luke, you’re a good cowhand. Like you said, you’re a hard worker, always willing to dig in and do what has to be done, no matter what. And while I’ll certainly keep you in mind for the foreman’s job, I have to be honest with you. I was hoping for somebody with a little more experience.”

“I told you, I’ve been around cattle all my life. That’s twenty years of experience right there.”

Twenty years. Oh mercy. He wasn’t even as old as she had thought he was. She felt like a shriveled up old lady compared to all this youthful exuberance.

“It’s more than just experience.”

She fumbled for words for a few moments, then decided she would just have to be blunt, as much as she hated it, and as much as it might hurt. “The foreman of a ranch like the Double C has to have a certain…authority. Not just with the hands who work on the ranch, but out in the community, too—with other ranchers, with our suppliers, when we take stock to auction. He has to be able to command respect in the ranching community and that’s something that comes not just with experience, but with age.”

And something Joe still struggled with, at least with the ranchers around Madison Valley who couldn’t forget his history. She frowned, wondering if that was one of the reasons he was leaving, if he thought his presence was somehow detrimental to the Double C’s bottom line.

“So what you’re sayin’ is you’re not gonna hire me because I’m too young?” The boy couldn’t have looked more offended if she had just told him his horse was ugly.

“I’m not saying you could never be foreman of the Double C,” she answered. “But I have to be honest with you. I just don’t know if it’s a responsibility you’re ready for yet.”

Hurt flickered in his pale blue eyes and with it she glimpsed a deep anger that somehow made him look much older. Just as quickly, the anger disappeared and she wondered if she had imagined it.

“I see.” His voice was low in the hushed kitchen, so quiet she could barely hear him. “So that’s it?”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Luke. I’d like nothing better than to hire you for the job right now. Maybe in a few more years, though.”

“You’re wrong.” Though he spoke in the same quiet, intense voice, he gripped his hat so hard it creased the soft brown felt. He shoved the hat on his head. “I could do a helluva lot better job than Redhawk. I could prove it to you if you’d only give me a chance.”

He didn’t wait for an answer but stalked out of the kitchen and into the storm.

She watched through the window as he made his way back to the bunkhouse, shoulders hunched against the wind and whirling snow. Just as he went inside the doublewide trailer he shared with Patch and the Santiago brothers, a flicker of movement near the barn caught her gaze.

The vapor light on the power pole between the house and the outbuildings wasn’t powerful enough to completely pierce the darkness or the whirling snow, but she thought she could just make out the figure of a man standing motionless, his attention focused on her, on the house.

For just an instant, her heart stuttered, and old feelings of dread and helplessness came roiling back, and then the figure moved out of the shadows and she recognized Joe’s black Stetson and broad shoulders. Unlike Luke, he walked unbent in the wind, oblivious to the storm raging around him as he came toward the house.

“Everything okay in here?” he asked after she opened the door off the mudroom to his knock.

She shrugged. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I saw Mitchell walking back to the trailer. Just wanted to make sure he wasn’t pestering you.”

“Pestering me?”

He cocked his head. “I told you at supper, it’s no secret the boy’s got it bad, Annie. He makes moon-eyes at you every time he gets within spitting distance. I wouldn’t want him to make a nuisance of himself.”

She felt herself blush. “I can handle it.”

“Well, let me know if he gets to be too much of a bother and I’ll have a word with him.”

Why did he always assume she couldn’t take care of things by herself? Probably because she had a pretty lousy track record in that department, she admitted.

“He wasn’t pestering me or making moon-eyes or anything like that. If you must know, he was applying for your job.”

For a long moment, he just stared at her, the only sound in the kitchen the ticking of the clock and the whirring of the furnace spewing warm air out of the register, then he tilted back his head and laughed, low and long and deep.

The sound of it—so rare coming from him—slid over her nerve endings like silk.

“He wants to be foreman?” He laughed again and flipped a chair around to straddle it, removing his hat and tossing it onto the table in the same motion. “I hope you didn’t encourage him.”

There he went again, thinking she didn’t have a brain in her head. “Of course I didn’t. I told him I was looking for somebody with a little more experience.”

He snorted. “I’m sure that went over well.”

“About like you’d expect.”

“How could he think you’d be willing to hire a twenty-year-old kid to run a big operation like the Double C?”

“Maybe he thought I’d be desperate, with you leaving and all.”

He studied her for a moment, then looked away. “How’s the boy?”

“Sleeping. Finally.”

“I hate like hell that I hurt him like this.”

“Of course he’s hurting! Did you think you could just walk away and it wouldn’t affect any of us?”

“I guess I was hoping it wouldn’t.”

“You’re part of the Double C, Joe. More than that, you’re part of this family. What you do affects all of us. C.J. loves you—of course he’s upset you’re going to leave. And Leah is, too, although she shows it differently.”

“What about you? Are you upset I’m leaving?”