“So, then, who’s in charge of the ranch?”
“Blair’s the overseer. All the Kincaids own a share of the ranch, as I understand it, but Hunter and Blair actually work on the day-to-day dealings. Hunter’s married, a fireman, and he needed help with a spread that big, so he practically begged Blair to come back and help out.”
“And he came? Just like that?”
Beau lifted a dismissive shoulder. “Just what I heard. I work with a few of the hands, Scott Massey, Roland Gonzalez, and Belle Zeffer.”
She’d heard of Massey and Gonzalez but didn’t recall Belle Zeffer.
“You’d have to ask Blair what really brought him back to Prairie Creek. Again—”
“I know, I know.” She held up her hands as if in surrender. “You ‘don’t pry.’” Still, she was curious as she remembered Blair from her youth as being kind of a rebel.
Beau slid a glance her way before walking to the short hallway, where he peeked inside Morgan’s bedroom.
“She okay?” Shiloh asked.
“Still asleep.”
“Good.”
He added, “So the long and the short of it is that I live near the Kincaid ranch and work for them too. Blair’s my immediate boss. I don’t deal much with Hunter or his wife.”
“Who’d Hunter marry?”
“Delilah Dillinger.”
“Dillinger? Really? But I thought . . . huh . . .” A person couldn’t have grown up in Prairie Creek and not known that the Dillingers and the Kincaids were sworn enemies, two ranching families whose animosity had gone on for decades.
He seemed to read her mind. “Heard they’ve got a baby, too, but yeah . . . a lotta bad blood there. Big ranches, big families, and even bigger egos. At least back in the days when Major Kincaid and Ira Dillinger were in charge. Guess Hunter got over it, now that the Major’s gone. Ira’s lost some of his fire too. He’s letting his kids run the Rocking D.” He walked into the kitchen and, as if he owned the place, opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “Time has a way of making people forget the bad times.”
“Does it?” She didn’t believe it. Not after what she’d been through. If so, she would have forgotten about the night of Ruthie’s rape, the horror of nearly being killed, and, of course, of the cruelty of Larimer Tate. Without thinking about it, she rubbed the scar on her shoulder where the would-be killer’s blade had sliced through her skin.
“Usually.” He studied her for a second so intently that she felt a wave of heat rise up the back of her neck. “Maybe not always.”
It was as if he knew about that night, which, of course, he couldn’t.
“Want one?” He held up a long-necked bottle, and she shook her head.
“Not now.”
“Suit yourself.” He twisted off the top and took a long swallow. Again, as if he’d done it a hundred times and was comfortable in her mother’s home.
“So the feud is over?”
“I wouldn’t say over. Seems unlikely, y’know. For now, though, it’s at least buried.” His brow furrowed. “Things seemed to have calmed down a lot since Hunter and Delilah’s wedding.”
“Sometimes marriage only makes things worse.”
“Tell that to Sabrina Delaney. She’s marrying Colton Dillinger. In September.”
“Sabrina Delaney.” Shiloh wasn’t certain she remembered her, but, of course, she’d run into all of Ira Dillinger’s kids growing up. Colton had been way ahead of her in high school, but that boy had caused more than one teenage girl’s heart to pound. “Well, good luck to them on making it work,” she said dryly.
“Speaking from experience?”
“Thought you didn’t pry.”
“You seem to have a tainted view on marriage.”
“Well, yeah. I’ve seen enough bad ones.” And one of the worst happened here, within these four walls. “Everyone thinks marriage will make things better, improve their life.”
“Not everyone.”
Fine. Your turn. “So now you’re speaking from experience.”
He smiled faintly. “If you’re asking if I’ve ever been married, the answer is ‘no.’”
“I wasn’t asking,” she said, lying a little. “So how’d you get involved with the Kincaids?”
“I’d just come back to town and ran into Blair down at The Dog. The ranch is massive, and they needed a foreman.”
She nodded, remembering the Prairie Dog, a local watering hole.
“Blair and I were in school together, and I knew most of his brothers and sisters. We got to talking, and I said I’d run several other spreads out of state. He was looking for someone, so it was kind of a perfect deal. They needed a foreman. I needed a job. The rest, as they say, is history.”
“Recent history.”
He took a long pull from his bottle. “Right.”
She looked around the kitchen, wishing his big body was not in it. “Look, I’ve got this. At least for tonight. You really don’t need to hang out here.”
He shook his head. “I’m good. If she”—he hooked his thumb toward the hallway and the closed door beyond—“wakes up, she’ll want me to be around.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Course not. I don’t know you, and neither does Morgan. You’re a stranger to her, someone she’s heard about but never met.”
He waited for her to argue. She couldn’t.
“So for the next few days at the very least, I’ll be around. Until the dust settles and I see that she’s good.” Another drink and the beer was gone. He set the empty on the window ledge.
“And your job?”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got it handled.”
That’s more than she could say. “All right. Fine.”
“Glad you agree,” he said sardonically, then he checked on Morgan once more, whistled to the dog, and walked out the back door.
Through the windows, she watched as he crossed the dry patch of lawn to the garage. With Rambo at his heels, Beau mounted the steep exterior stairs that led to the attic tucked under the ancient building’s rafters.
Why, she wondered, did it seem so obvious that he belonged here while she felt like a damned intruder?
*
Shiloh Silva.
Beau should have expected her to show, but she’d stayed away for so many years, who would have thought that Faye’s last dying plea would get to her? He unrolled the sleeping bag he’d brought with him and spread it on a folding camping cot that had seen better days. A dusty rug covered the ancient floorboards, and haphazard junk, the detritus of a hardscrabble life, surrounded the small open area. He’d opened the two dormer windows earlier so the heat of the day was slowly dispersing, and he could hear the sounds of the night: a faraway train rattling on distant tracks, a night owl hooting softly, the flutter of insect wings drawn to the attic light. He eyed his surroundings and smiled to himself. He’d slept in worse. More times than he could count, once in a while with a woman, often alone.