Wyoming Fierce

“They’re working on prosthetics that can be directly connected to nerve endings, so they work like real hands,” she told him. “The whole field of prosthetics is very exciting, with all the advances....”

“And why would you be reading up on that?” he asked suddenly.

She hesitated. “Because I have this idiot friend who thinks he’s disabled,” she fired right back.

He burst out laughing. “Are we friends?”

“If we weren’t, why would I be rescuing you from bars and certain arrest?” she wondered out loud.

He sighed. “Yeah,” he replied. “I guess we are friends.” He paused. “You’re barely twenty-two, Bodie,” he said gently. “I’m thirty-four. It’s an odd friendship. And just so you know, I’m not in the market for a child bride.”

“You think I’d want to marry you?” she exclaimed.

There was a hesitation. She could almost feel the outrage. He’d be thinking immediately she didn’t want to marry him because of his arm.

“Just because you know a tibia from a fibula when you dig it up, right?” she continued quickly in a sardonic tone. “And because you know how to pronounce Australopithecus and you know what a foramen magnum is!” she said, referring to the large hole at the base of the skull.

He seemed taken aback. “Well, I do know what it is.”

“You wait,” she said. “When I finish my master’s work and get into the PhD program in anthropology, I’ll give you a run for your money.”

“That’s a long course of study.”

“I know. Years and years. But I don’t have any plans to marry, either,” she added, “and certainly not to a man just because he can tell an atlas from a sacrum. So there.”

He laughed softly. “I used to love to dig.”

“You can get people to dig for you, and still do it,” she suggested. “In fact, when you’re doing the delicate work, it doesn’t really require two hands. Just a toothbrush and a trowel and no aversion to dust and mud.”

“I suppose.”

“You shouldn’t give up something you love.”

“Bones and mud.”

“Yes.” She laughed. “Bones and mud.”

“Well, I’ll think about it.”

“Think about the therapist, too, would you?” she asked. “I’ve already lined up a summer job at a dig in Colorado next year after graduation. I’ll be away for several weeks. Nobody to rescue you from bar brawls,” she added pointedly. “And depending on which specialization I choose, I might go overseas for PhD work, do classical archaeology in the Middle East....”

“No!” he said flatly. “Don’t even think about it. I’ll talk to your grandfather if you even consider it.”

She was surprised and flattered by the protest. She knew he was remembering what had happened to him in Iraq, with the roadside bomb. “Cane, I wouldn’t be working in a combat zone,” she said softly. “It would be at a dig site, with security people.”

“I’ve seen the quality of some of their security people,” he came back. “Rent-a-Merc,” he said sarcastically. “Not even real military—independent contractors who work for the highest bidder. And I wouldn’t trust them to guard one of our culls!” he said, alluding to the non-producing cows who were sold at auction each breeding season.

“Selling off poor cows because they can’t have babies,” she muttered. “Barbarian!”

He laughed roundly. “Listen, ranches run on offspring. No cow kids, no ranch, get it?”

“I get it. But it’s still cow insensitivity. Imagine if you couldn’t have kids and somebody threw you off the ranch!”

“I imagine they’d have a pretty hard time harnessing me,” he admitted. “Besides, that’s not something I’ll ever have to worry about, I’m sure.” He hesitated. “You want kids?”

“Of course, someday,” she qualified, “when I’m through school and have my doctorate and have some success in my profession, so that I can afford them.”

“I think it might be a problem if you wait until you’re moving around with a walker,” he said.

“It won’t take that long!”

“Generally speaking, if you wait to have kids until you can afford them, you’ll never have any.” There was a pause. “I hope you don’t plan to do what a lot of career women do—have a child from a donor you don’t even know.”

She made a huffing sound. “If I have kids, I plan to have them in the normal way, and with a husband, however unpopular that idea may be these days!”

He laughed. “Statistically, married people still have the edge in childbearing.”

“Civilization falls on issues of religion and morality,” she stated. “First go the arts, then go the morals, then go the laws and out goes the civilization. Egypt under the pharaohs, Rome…”

“I have to leave pretty soon.”

“I was just getting up to speed!” she protested. “Where’s my soapbox…?”

“Another time. I studied western civ, too, you know.”

“Yes. Sorry.”

He hesitated. “You’re sure that nothing…happened?” he asked again.

“Cane, you were too drunk for anything to happen,” she replied. “Why are you so concerned?”

“Men get dangerous when they drink, honey,” he said, and her heart jumped and skipped in a flurry of delight, because he’d never used pet names. “I wouldn’t want to do anything out-of-the-way. Maybe it’s a bad idea to let my brothers keep calling you when I go on a bender. One day, I might do something unspeakable and we’d both have to live with it.”

“The answer to that is that you stop getting drunk in bars,” she said in a droll tone.

“Spoilsport.”

“You can drink at home, can’t you?”

“It’s the ambiance of bars. I don’t have that at the ranch. Besides, Mavie would throw me out the back door and pepper me with potato peelings if I even tried it.”

“Your housekeeper has good sense.”

“Good something. At least she can cook.

“Well, I guess I’ll let you go,” he said after a minute.

“You be careful on the road,” she said softly, in a tone far more intimate than she meant it to be.

“You be careful, too,” he added. His own tone was oddly tender. “Wear a coat when you go out. Temperature’s dropping.”

“I noticed.”

Soft breathing came over the connection. “I guess I should go.”

“You said that,” she replied, and her own tone was as reluctant as his.

He laughed softly. “I guess I did. Well…good night.”

“Good night, Cane.”

“I like the way you say my name,” he said suddenly. “Bye.”

He hung up abruptly, as if he regretted what he’d just let slip. Her heart was pounding like mad when she put up the phone and opened her bedroom door. She felt as if her feet weren’t even touching the floor.

All the same, she did manage to get the material memorized for her biology final. She got up very early the next morning to drive back to school in her battered old vehicle.

She kissed her granddaddy goodbye.

“Good luck on those finals,” he told her as he hugged her.

She grinned. “Thanks. I’ll need it. I’ll see you next weekend.”

He managed a smile. “Miss you when you’re not here, girl.”

She was touched. “I miss you, too. I won’t be away that long, and then we’ll have the Christmas holidays together. I’ll make cakes and pies…”

“Stop! I’m starving already,” he teased.

She grinned again and kissed him again. “See? Something to look forward to.”

* * *

FINALS WERE EVERY BIT AS grueling as she’d imagined. Her first was biology. A lab rat was laid out on a dissecting board with pins stuck in various portions of its anatomy, designating which parts were to be labeled and discussed on the exam.

She felt that she’d sweated blood on the written portion, however, especially trying to recall the methodology of the Punnett Square, used to predict heritability of genetic traits. That was one part of the textbook section that she had problems with. But she hoped she remembered enough of the material to slide by.

The next exam was physical anthropology. That one didn’t worry her. She loved the subject so much that she was in her element when she studied it. She breezed through the test. Only two to go at that point, English and sociology.

* * *

FINALLY THE EXAMS WERE finished, the teacher evaluation forms at the end of each class were filled out and turned in and she was packing to go home.

“You should stay here tonight…come out with us to celebrate,” Beth told her with a grin. “Ted’s got this friend Harvey. He’s really nice, you’d like him. You never date,” she accused.

Bodie just shook her head as she went back to her packing. She wasn’t going to tell her friend anything about Cane, for fear of being teased. It was too early in her changed attitude toward him for that. “I have a career in mind. No time for romantic activities.”

“There’s the holidays, we could go out then,” Beth persisted.

Bodie shook her head again. “I’m going home for the holidays and it’s just too far to drive back with gas prices what they are. I’m really sorry,” she said when her friend looked disappointed.

“Well, I’m going home, too, to Maine,” she agreed. “But after the first of the year, when the new semester starts, you really should meet Harvey. He’s just so cute!”

“Poor Ted!”

“No! I mean, he’s cute. My Ted is gorgeous,” she added, wiggling her eyebrows. “He wants to marry me.”

“Really?”

“Really.” She sighed. “I don’t know what to do. I really want to go on to do my master’s work in history, but Ted wants to get married now.”

“You should do what you want to,” Bodie advised.

“Marrying Ted is what I really want to do. Ted and several babies and a nice house with a fence,” she said dreamily.

“Babies.” Bodie laughed. “I want one, too, but not for years yet. I’m going to be successful first.”

Beth gave her a look that she didn’t see; her nose was in her suitcase.

“That’s why you won’t date,” Beth guessed. “If you fall in love, that career’s going on hold for a while.”

“Mind reader,” Bodie said. “Now go dress for your date and let me finish packing.”

“Ted wants to go dancing. I love to dance!”

“I didn’t notice,” Bodie said dryly, because it was a familiar theme.

“Okay. Well, you drive safely. I’ll see you in January. I hope you have a great Christmas and New Year.”

“Thanks. I hope you do, too. And that Ted buys you a nice big diamond,” Bodie teased.

“On his salary? Fat chance. But the ring doesn’t matter.” She sighed. “All I want is Ted.”

Bodie just smiled.

CHAPTER THREE

BODIE’S HOMECOMING WAS met with a sense of urgent misery by her grandfather’s sudden bout of indigestion. He took a dose of baking soda, an old-time recipe he’d learned from his grandmother, but it didn’t seem to be working.

Bodie was worried enough to get him to their family doctor, who diagnosed something that stood her hair on end.

“I think it’s his heart,” Dr. Banes said gently. “His blood pressure is abnormally high and he has a murmur. I’m having my nurse do an electrocardiogram. I need to send him to a specialist. We have a good one up in Billings, Montana, and he can do an echo, a sound picture, of your grandfather’s heart to see if there are clogged arteries.”

Bodie’s expression was eloquent. “He gets a pension from the ranch he used to work for,” she said, remembering the Kirk brothers’ kindness in that act. “He’s just now eligible for social security, but it won’t start until January. He’s trying to get disability, too, but it’s a long process. We just don’t have any money, and there’s no insurance.”

He patted her on the arm. “We can make arrangements about that,” he assured her. “I know you’re getting through school on scholarships and grants and student loans,” he said. “And you work at a part-time job near the college to pay for your expenses. I admire your work ethic.”

“I learned it from Granddaddy.” She sighed. “He was always a stickler for earning things instead of being given them.”

“He’s a fine man. We’ll do what we can for him. I promise.”

She smiled. “Thanks.”

“You can come in with him when we get the results of the trace we’re doing. Won’t be long.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, she went into the doctor’s office with her grandfather. The doctor was very somber.

“I’ve had my receptionist make you an appointment with a heart specialist in Billings,” he told the old man. “Now, don’t start fretting,” he warned. “We can do a lot of things to help a failing heart. You’ll have options and you’ll be able to decide…”

“What did you find?” the old man asked shortly. “And don’t soft-soap me.”

The doctor grimaced. He leaned back in his chair. “I think it’s heart failure.”

“Oh, no,” Bodie ground out.

“I figured there was something pretty bad wrong,” the old man agreed, looking no more upset than he’d been all along. “I’ve had some pain in my chest and left arm, and a lot of breathlessness. That sort of thing. Will I die right away?”

“No one can tell you that. I can tell you that it’s actually a fairly common condition at your age, and not necessarily a death sentence. There are medical options. Drugs. Surgical intervention if it will help.”

“No surgery,” the old man said doggedly. “Nobody’s cutting on me.”

“Granddaddy,” Bodie began.

“Won’t change my mind,” Rafe Mays told her flatly. “I’ve had a long life, a good life. No sense trying to prop up a body that won’t work right anymore.”

“You’ll have great-grandchildren one day,” Bodie said firmly. “I want them to know you!”

He looked at her. “Great-grandkids?”

“Yes!” she said. She glared at him. “So you’ll do what the doctors say, or else.”

The old man chuckled. “Just like your grandmother,” he said. “My wife was like that. Ordered me around, told me what to do. I’ve missed that,” he added.

“I’ll order you around more,” Bodie promised. “You have to try. Please. For me.”

He grimaced. “Okay. But I’m not getting cut on. Period.”

Bodie looked at the doctor with an anguished expression.

“We can do a lot with drugs,” he replied. “Wait and get the results of the tests. Then we can all sit down and make decisions. Don’t anticipate tomorrow. Okay? I mean both of you.”

They both nodded.

“Go home and get some rest,” the doctor said, standing up. “You know, most bad news is acceptable when the newness of it wears off. It takes a day or two, but what seems unbearable at first will be easier to manage once you have time to get used to the idea. I can’t get that to come out the way I want it to,” he said irritably.

“I understand, anyway,” Bodie assured him. “Thanks.”

“Thanks a lot,” the older man said, and shook hands with the doctor. “I appreciate you giving it to me straight. That’s why I come to you,” he added, and chuckled. “Can’t abide being lied to and treated like a three-year-old.”

“I understand,” the doctor agreed.

Bodie followed her grandfather out the door. She felt the weight of the world on her shoulders.

* * *

IT WAS MUCH WORSE when they got home. Her stepfather was in the living room, waiting for them. It was unsettling to notice that he’d used a key to get in. It was her mother’s property. The man had no right to come barging in without an invitation, even if he did own the place!

Bodie said so, at once.

Will Jones just stared at them with a haughty expression. The way he looked at Bodie, in her well-fitting but faded jeans and sweatshirt, was chilling. She glared at him.

“Got no right to barge into my home!” the old man snapped.

Jones shifted his position, in Granddaddy’s chair, and didn’t speak.

“Why are you here?” Bodie asked.

“The rent,” her stepfather said. “I’ve just raised it by two hundred. I can’t manage on that pitiful little life insurance policy your mother took out. I wouldn’t even have had that, if I hadn’t been insistent before she got the cancer,” he said curtly.

“There’s a really easy answer,” Bodie shot back. “Get a job.”

“I work,” the man replied, and with an odd smile. “I get paid, too. But I need more.”

More to buy his porno, he meant, because Bodie’s mother had remarked how expensive it was, considering the amount he bought. It turned Bodie’s stomach. She wanted to order him out of the house, remind him that it had been in her family for three generations, like the land. But she was unsure of her ground. Her grandfather couldn’t be upset, not now, when he was facing the ordeal of his life. She bit her tongue, trying not to snap.

“I’ll take care of it,” she told her stepfather. “But the bank’s closed by now. It will have to wait until tomorrow.”

“Oh, you can write me a check,” he said.

She drew in a long breath. “I don’t have enough in my checking account. I’ll have to draw it out of my savings account. I don’t even write checks. I use a debit card for groceries and gas.” Her old truck needed tires, but they’d have to wait. She couldn’t afford to let Granddaddy lose his home. Not now, of all times.

She would have told her stepfather what his health was like, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Will Jones had been watching old movies on television at home when her mother died, with Bodie at her bedside, in the hospital. Bodie and her grandfather had made all the arrangements. Her stepfather said he couldn’t be bothered with that, although he was quick to call the insurance company and empty her mother’s savings account. He’d also been quick to produce a will with her mother’s signature, leaving everything her mother had to him. That had been strange, because Bodie’s mother had promised everything to her. Perhaps she’d had a change of heart on her deathbed. People did. Bodie hadn’t felt bitter at her for making her husband the beneficiary of her property; after all, he’d paid her medical bills.

“I’ll come by in the morning, first thing,” her stepfather said irritably. “You’d better have the money.”

“Bank doesn’t open until nine o’clock,” she pointed out with cold eyes. “If you come before then, you can wait.”

He stood up and moved toward her, his dark eyes flashing angrily. He was overweight, unkempt, with brown hair that looked as if he never cleaned it. She moved back a step. His scent was offensive.

“Don’t like me, huh?” he muttered. “Some fine lady you are, right? Well, pride can be cured. You wait and see. I got a real good cure for that.”

He glanced at the old man, who looked flushed and unhealthy. “I never should have let you stay here. I could get twice the rent from someone better off.”

“Sure you could,” Bodie drawled coldly. “I just know there are a dozen rich people who couldn’t wait to move into a house with a tin roof that leaks and a porch you can fall right through!”

He raised his hand. She raised her jaw, daring him.

“Bodie!” her grandfather called shortly. “Don’t.”

She was trembling with anger. She wanted him to hit her. “Do it,” she dared, hissing the words through her teeth. “I’ll have the sheriff at your place five minutes later with an arrest warrant!”

He put his hand down and looked suddenly afraid. He knew she’d do it. He knew it would be the end of his life if she did.

He lifted his face. “No,” he said insolently. “Hell, no. I’m not giving you a chance to make me look bad in my town. Besides, I wouldn’t soil my hand.”

“Good thing,” she returned icily, “because I’d hurt you. I’d hurt you bad.”

“We’ll see about that, one day,” he told her. He looked around the room. “Maybe you’d better start looking for another place to live. Government housing, maybe, if you can find something cheap enough!”

Bodie’s small hands were clenched at her sides. Now he was trying to make her hit him. It was a good strategy: turn her own threats back on her. But she was too savvy for that. She even smiled, to let him know that she’d seen through his provocation.

He glared at her. “I can throw you out any time I like.”

“You can,” Bodie agreed, “when you can prove non-payment of rent. I’ll require a receipt when I give you the money. And if you want to throw us out for any other reason, you’d better have due cause and a warrant. And the sheriff,” she added with a cool smile, “because he’ll be required.”

He let out a furious curse, turned and slammed out of the house.

Granddaddy was looking very pale. Bodie ran to him and eased him down into his chair. “Easy, now, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything…!”

She stopped, because he was laughing. “Damn, girl, if you aren’t just like my mother used to be,” he said. “When I was a boy, she took a length of rope to a man who tried to take one of our cows, said it had strayed onto his land and it belonged to him. She laid into him with it and beat him to his knees, and then invited him into her house to use the phone so he could call the law and have her arrested.” His eyes twinkled. “His pride was busted so bad that he never came back onto the place. Wasn’t going to admit to anyone that a woman beat him up.”

“My goodness!”

“You’re named for her. She was called Emily Bolinda, and her nickname was Bodie, too.”

“I’d forgotten that,” she confessed, smiling. “You okay?”

He nodded. “Just a bit breathless. Listen, he’s going to get us out of here one way or another. You know that. It isn’t the money. It’s revenge. He hates me. I tried my best to keep her from marrying him. I told her we’d find a way to get enough to support you and her, but she wouldn’t listen. She wanted things for you. She knew there was no money for cancer treatments, and no insurance, and she did what she thought was best for both of us.” He shook his head. “It was wrong thinking. We’d have managed somehow.”

She sat down opposite him. “It’s not right, that people can’t get treatment because they’re poor. Not right, when some people have ten houses and twenty cars and ride around in chauffeured limousines and others are living in cardboard boxes. Taxes should be fair,” she muttered.

“Not arguing with that,” he assured her. He sighed. “Well, when do we have to go see that specialist?”

“I’m just going to call the doctor’s receptionist and find out,” she promised, and got up and went to the phone.

She was very worried. Not only about her grandfather but about the threats her stepfather had made. He was going to bleed them dry. If he couldn’t find a way to do it with the rent, he’d find another way to humiliate Bodie. He’d always hated her, because she saw through his act to the filthy man underneath. He’d had plans for her mother’s possessions, especially two pieces of jewelry that had been in the family for four generations and were worth a good bit of money. One, a ring, had emeralds and diamonds; there was a matching necklace. Bodie had them locked away. She’d never have sold them, not for worlds. They were her legacy. Her mother had given them to her months before her death. But her stepfather knew about them and wanted them. He was furious that he couldn’t find a legal way to obtain them. He’d tried to argue with the lawyer that all her property belonged to him, as her husband, but the lawyer pointed him to a handwritten note, witnesses, that her mother had given Bodie—probably anticipating that Will might try to reclaim them. The note entitled Bodie to the jewelry. No way around that, the lawyer assured Will. No legal way.

So it was war. Not only did he want the jewelry, but his younger male friend wanted Bodie. She’d laughed when he’d asked her out on a date. She knew what he was like because her mother had told her. He liked to date prostitutes and film them. She’d said that Will Jones had actually mentioned that it would be fun to film him with Bodie, and her mother had had a screaming, furious argument with him over the comment. Over her dead body, she’d raged, and for once, Jones had backed down. But it had chilled Bodie to the bone, knowing that he’d even thought up such a sleazy intention.

She hated the man with a passion. Once, she’d thought of going to the Kirk brothers and asking for help. But they were just starting to get out of the hole. She’d heard that they’d come into a windfall from the sale of several of their prize purebred bulls and that their business was growing by leaps and bounds. That had increased when Mallory had married one of the heirs to the enormous Brannt fortune. Morie Brannt was the daughter of King Brannt, who was one of the richest ranchers in Texas. He’d provided Mallory with two seed bulls rumored to be worth millions. In fact, they were kept under lock and key with a twenty-four-hour guard around them. No way was Mallory risking his prize bulls.