Callie smiled, but then the sound of tires on the dirt road out front had them both looking in that direction. A moment later, a vehicle door slammed, and a male voice boomed, “Callie Dianne!”

Her heart beginning to pound, Callie swallowed and frowned apologetically at Rex. “I’m sorry about this,” she said, aware that her voice trembled. “My father’s come to call.” She’d hoped to have more time. Reluctantly, she moved toward the front of the barn, silently praying that this confrontation wouldn’t be as difficult as she feared.

She heard Rex set aside the tool and follow her. Stuart had made it halfway up the path toward the house when Callie reluctantly called out to him.

“I’m here, Dad.”

He spun around, a raging bull of a man. Not quite six feet tall and built like a brick wall, Stuart hadn’t changed much in the past twenty years, but then he’d always seemed middle-aged, angry and overbearing. His flattop haircut added to the squareness of his face, as did his blunt nose and pugnacious chin. Callie had never been able to see anything of herself in him. Long ago, she’d learned to remain calm in the face of his rages, and he’d never physically hurt her, but he wielded power with purpose and impunity to achieve his own ends.

“Get in the car!” he demanded, pointing.

Callie took a deep breath, cradled Bodie against her, ignored the quaking of her own knees and shook her head. “No.”

“You’re going home.”

Callie swallowed to steady her voice and said, “Wes needs me, Dad. I’m going to stay here to help Mr. Billings.”

“Get in the car!” Stuart roared, starting toward her.

Despite the slamming of her heart, Callie stood her ground. “I’m not going, Dad.”

To her relief, Rex stepped in front her. “Mr. Crowsen, I’m Rex Billings.”

“I know who you are,” Stuart growled. “Get out of my way.” He came to a halt, however, in the middle of the road.

“My father is ill, sir. I have my hands full with the ranch. Until my sisters can get here, we need Callie’s help.”

“Get other help.”

“I don’t have time to find other help,” Rex argued reasonably. “And Callie’s agreed to work for us.”

“She’s my daughter, and she’s coming home with me,” Stuart insisted.

Rex widened his stance and folded his arms. It was the very pose that Bo had taken when he’d told Stuart that he and Callie were getting married. Callie had feared that the announcement would come to violence, but Bo had promised otherwise, and he had kept his word.

“You have no legal authority over Callie,” Rex said.

“That’s my granddaughter!” Stuart bawled, throwing out a finger.

“Do you have legal custody of her?” Rex asked.

“He doesn’t,” Callie answered quietly, her voice wavering.

Rex didn’t so much as glance in her direction. He kept his focus on her father and his tone level. “You have no legal recourse here, Mr. Crowsen. I understand that you’re upset, but Callie and Bodie are safe and comfortable. You have my word on it. Moreover, Callie is being handsomely paid.”

That upset Stuart even more, though Rex wouldn’t have understood that. “You stay out of this, Billings! Callie, you’re coming home with me.”

“No, Dad, I’m not,” she said firmly, emboldened by Rex’s support. “I’ve been telling you for a while now that Bodie and I need to make our own way.”

Stuart thumped himself in the chest. He never wore anything but a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled back and dark slacks.

“I provide for you,” he declared. “You have no need to earn money.”

“But I do,” she told him softly. “I’m afraid the price for your provision is too high.”

They both knew she was talking about Ben Dolent. Stuart heaved several deep breaths, considering his next move. She imagined that he was tallying up any loans that he held on the Billings’ properties, any feed bills due, any equipment orders. The amount must have been negligible, for he shook his head and pointed a thick finger at her.

“I just want to take care of you, girl. Why won’t you accept that I know what’s best?”

“Why won’t you accept that I’m a grown woman who can decide what’s best for herself?”

Stuart shook his head. “I’ve worked my whole life to provide for you, Callie. You defied me once, and look what happened. I won’t stand for this a second time!”

“I’m afraid you have no choice,” Rex told him evenly. “My father is ill. I won’t have him upset. Callie’s already done him a world of good, and if she wants to stay, she’s staying. I can make it official and get a protective order to keep you off the property, if you insist.”

“You think a piece of paper will keep me away?” Stuart demanded.

Rex took a step forward, balling his hands into fists. “If it won’t,” he threatened, “I’m not above throwing you off the place myself. You think I can’t, you come here raving like a madman again.”

“I’m older than you by twenty years at least,” Stuart pointed out, backing up a step.

“You are,” Rex admitted, “but you look fit enough to me, and I’ll make good on that threat if I have to.”

Stuart glared, and snarled, “This isn’t over,” and stomped off to his big luxury car. He always drove the most expensive model of Cadillac.

Callie let out a silent breath of relief as he got inside, started the engine and drove away. Rex slid her a look from the corners of his eyes.

“Okay. Now I know why we won’t be going back to his place for anything.”

“He doesn’t mean any harm,” Callie said, tears filling her eyes, “and I don’t want to hurt him. He just...” She didn’t know how to explain her father’s overbearing overprotectiveness. Shaking her head, she carried her daughter toward the ranch house.

Her heart still pounded, and she privately admitted she was thrilled at the way Rex had stood up to her father, but she couldn’t help thinking that Bo would have handled it differently. Quiet, mild-mannered Bo had accomplished with sheer determination what Rex had done with threats and bravado. The thrill she’d felt when Rex had stepped between her and her father confused her. At least Rex hadn’t told her to pack her things and leave with Stuart, though, and he’d made it plain that she was valued at Straight Arrow Ranch.

She wondered just how long Rex meant to remain around War Bonnet. And that she even wondered worried her.

* * *

Stomping into the garage and throwing things calmed Rex somewhat, but he hated nothing more than a blustering bully. He’d had enough of that. When he’d walked away from his marriage and his job, he’d promised himself that he’d never put up with that kind of demanding, overbearing manipulation again.

Dennis Gladden had used his daughter as a bargaining chip. Rex had been foolish enough to believe that Amy loved him. He had married her in spite of who her father was, not because of it. Only later had he realized that Amy was meant to keep him in line, to bend him to her daddy’s will. When Rex had refused to be molded into an obedient yes-man, Amy had transferred her affections to a more malleable candidate within the firm, with her father’s approval. Rex still didn’t know if his discovery of her infidelity had been conveniently orchestrated or if it had truly been an accident. Certainly Dennis had known that Amy was at his house on the river when he’d sent Rex there for a weekend of fishing to “consider the future.” Whether Dennis had known that she was there with another man or not, Rex neither knew nor truly cared.

In a funny way, Amy and her bully of a father had made it possible for Rex to take care of his dad. He’d be hanged if another bully of a father would get in the way of that. He couldn’t help wondering why Stuart Crowsen would be so adamant about his daughter not leaving his household, though. He could understand if he was so fond of her and little Bodie that he wanted them with him, but it wasn’t as if they’d moved across the state. They hadn’t gone half a dozen miles away. And it was only a temporary situation.

Rex knew he was going to have to find out what was behind all this, if only to keep it from impacting Wes, but he didn’t feel sufficiently calm enough for that discussion until after he’d returned to the house, checked on his dad and cleaned up. By that time, Callie had supper on the table.

“Feels like Glory could come walking into the room any moment,” Wes commented, leaning an elbow on the table beside his plate. “Thank you, Callie.”

“My pleasure.”

“But from now on, you sit yourself down at this table with us,” Wes went on. “We take our meals together in this house.”

Rex knew he should have thought of that, but she seemed to be constantly moving about the kitchen. The only time she’d paused had been when Wes had said the blessing over the meal. Callie cast a taut smile at Wes and nodded. A thin wail rose from the second floor of the house, and Callie immediately began to remove her apron. It had been one of his mom’s favorites, sewn from remnants of her handmade clothing.

“That’s another thing,” Wes said to Rex, as she hurried toward the stairs. “There’s an old high chair out in the storage room in the barn. Your mom was saving it for grandchildren, but seeing as none of you kids have been cooperative on that end, it’ll do for Bodie. Probably needs some work.”

“I’ll see to it,” Rex promised.

“You do that,” Wes ordered. “Bringing those two here was a good thing, son.”

“I hope so,” Rex said. But he still had to ask Callie a question.

He got his chance a couple hours later. Wes was better, but he wasn’t up to par. Rex had helped him sponge off, check the bandages on his incisions and dress for bed. Wes’s willingness to let Rex help him was a testament to his exhaustion, which in turn showed that he still had a lot of recovery ahead of him.

Hearing Bodie babbling on the front porch, Rex walked out there to find Callie sitting in one of the chairs, holding Bodie’s hands while the baby jogged up and down around her mom’s knee, which sported a wide, wet spot where Bodie had drooled.

Bodie looked up at him, smiled and clearly said, “Hiii.”

“Hi, cutie.”

“She just started doing that,” Callie informed him with a smile. “She won’t say ‘mama’ yet, but she’s suddenly saying, ‘hi.’ Of course, she has no idea what it means.”

“Mmm,” Bodie hummed against her mother’s leg.

Rex walked around them both and sat down in the metal lawn chair next to Callie. It sagged and creaked ominously. He held his breath, but the chair seemed stable enough. With dusk settling around them, the stifling heat had begun to abate, but the only breeze stirring was that pulled in by the ceiling fan in the living room.

“I’ll get someone out here to look at the AC unit tomorrow,” he said. “According to Dad, it just needs coolant.”

Callie nodded beside him and softly said, “Wes is going to need air-conditioning to get through his chemo. He doesn’t think so, but I do. We’re two hours farther south here than Tulsa. You know how brutal these summers can be. I hate to think of him being sick to his stomach in hundred-degree heat.”

“I appreciate that,” Rex said. “I should’ve taken care of it already.”

“You’ve had other things on your mind.”

“I have. There’s something on my mind now.”

“You want to know why my dad is so upset about me working for you.”

“Yeah.”

“Ben Dolent.”

“Who?”

“Ben Dolent. He runs Dad’s grain silo, and Dad has him picked out as his next son-in-law.”

“I take it you’re not in favor of the idea.”

“No.”

“What about your first husband? Did Stuart pick him, too?”

“Oh, no,” Callie said, shaking her head and chuckling. “Bo was the exact opposite of the sort of man my dad wants me to marry.”

“What sort of man would that be?” Rex asked.

“One he can control, I guess,” Callie answered. “The kind who will do as he’s told and be glad for it.”

“And Bo wasn’t that kind of man?”

“He wasn’t.” She curved her hand around Bodie’s little head, smoothing the baby’s pale hair. “Bo didn’t care about money. He didn’t care about status. All he cared about was me, us and serving God. He had a campground ministry over at Turner Falls. Didn’t pay much. I had to work to make ends meet, but we had all we needed. For the little while we were together. We were only married a few months. He hadn’t had time to put away anything for us.”

“I’m sorry you lost him,” Rex said.

She cleared her throat, her gaze on the baby. “I’m still trying to figure out what God’s doing,” she admitted softly, shaking her head. “I just don’t understand yet. I worked and saved every penny right up until my labor started, but when Bodie was nine weeks old she got sick and couldn’t go to day care, and that’s all it took. We had to go back to my dad’s. I know it was God’s will. I just don’t believe it’s His will for me to marry Ben Dolent.”

Rex didn’t know what to say to that. His own marriage had imploded because his wife’s father had wanted a son-in-law who would “do as he’s told and be glad for it” and his wife had been only too happy to try to provide the same. When Rex had balked, the marriage had suffered. He’d sought refuge in work, thinking that if he could prove himself professionally then she would take pride in him. Instead, she’d gone to another man. He couldn’t help thinking that they’d still be together if she’d had Callie’s strength of character or if she’d loved him as much as Callie had apparently loved her husband.

He smiled at Bodie. “You named her after her father, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Her father and my mother. Bodie Jane. It seemed appropriate. She’ll never know her daddy, and I was only four when my mother died. I barely remember her.”

“It’s a good name,” he said, getting to his feet, “and it’s good that the two of you are here.”

“I’m glad you think so, especially after the way my father acted today.”

He did think so. A strong urge to put his hand on her shoulder seized him. He did it before he could stop the impulse, and the rightness of it shook him. Looking at his hand as it cupped her slender shoulder, he suddenly felt as if he hardly knew himself. The frayed cuff of his father’s old work shirt and the sheer size of his hand against her smooth, firm, woman’s frame rattled him. It was as if he’d never really seen his own hand before, never really touched a woman. He thought of Amy, and for a moment he wondered if she’d even been real. Shaking his head he took his hand away, thinking that he really needed to get some rest.

As for Callie Deviner, he was glad to have her help, but their arrangement was temporary, and even were it not, he had no intention of allowing history to repeat itself.

Pretty little Callie Deviner had the wrong sort of father.

Besides, once Wes was able to take over the reins of Straight Arrow Ranch again—or if it should be determined that Wes could never do so—Rex would be heading back to Tulsa. That’s where his life and his career were based. For as long as Rex could remember, he’d dreamed of leaving War Bonnet and the Straight Arrow Ranch. He’d wanted no part of the backbreaking drudgery that was his father’s life here, always at the mercy of the weather and whatever new disease befell the livestock or the crops.

No, this life, and any woman so obviously comfortable with this life, was not for him. That meant he would be wise to keep his distance from Callie.

“I’ll say good-night,” he told her.

“Good night.”

“I’ll, um, find that high chair in the morning.”

“It’s not important.”

“I promised Dad.”

“All right.”

He reached down to smooth a hand over Bodie Jane’s head. “Good night, precious.”

“Hiii,” she said.

Callie laughed and instructed her. “Bye-bye. Bye-bye.”

“Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh.”

Chuckling, Rex went into the house, said good-night to his father and climbed the stairs to read and wait for the dark that would bring him rest for another arduous day.

Chapter Four

The air conditioner repairman had to come all the way from Ardmore, so it would be late afternoon before he could reach them. Naturally, Friday turned up scorching hot before lunchtime. Wes fretted about the horses in the paddock beyond the stable barn.

“They need fresh bedding and the water troughs have to be cleaned, but I don’t want to plague Rex with anything more just now,” he told Callie when she brought him a tall glass of iced tea.

“Can’t one of the ranch hands see to it?”

“There’s only the three of them, and Rex has them working cattle today. Looks like a bumper crop of bull calves this year, and they’ve got to be castrated before the end of the month.” He shot an embarrassed glance at Callie. “Sorry. That’s blunt talk for a town girl.”

Callie chuckled. “You forget that I grew up in the Feed and Grain. I’ve heard worse, believe me.”

“All the same,” he mumbled.

Callie puzzled on the situation for a moment, then asked, “Do you have a cell phone?”

The only landline in the house hung on the wall in the kitchen—and had a rotary dial. She wondered if the thing even worked. She’d seen Rex talking on his cell phone, so she knew they had coverage out here.

Frowning, Wes opened the drawer in his bedside table and began pawing through it. “Gotta be ’round here somewhere.” Finally he came up with a flip phone that looked as if it had come right out of the package. “My girls call me every few days. Otherwise, I forget about the fool thing.”

“May I?” Callie asked, holding out her hand. He dropped the small phone into it, and she quickly programmed in Bo’s old number. They’d only had the one phone between them, and thankfully Bo hadn’t been carrying it the day of the flash flood that had taken his life. She’d managed to maintain the line, though her father had wanted her to cancel it and replace it with a business phone. “Here’s what we’ll do,” she said, handing back the phone. “I’ll bring in that old playpen that Rex found in the storeroom this morning when he went looking for the high chair, and you can watch Bodie while I go out and take care of the horses.”

“I can’t let you do that,” Wes protested, shifting on the bed.

“I’ve scrubbed out troughs before,” she assured him, “and I’m sure I can manage to muck out a few stalls if you’ll just explain how—”

“Although,” he interrupted, his pale blue gaze taking on a thoughtful expression, “what you could do is just open the gates between the paddock and the corrals beside the big barn. It’s shady over there, and if you turn the tap on and fill that trough next to the red barn, the horses will find their own way to it.”

Callie smiled. “I can do that. You have to promise that you won’t pick Bodie up while I’m gone, though. If she starts fussing, you just let her fuss. We can’t risk you opening an incision. If you get worried about her, you can call me and I’ll come right away. Agreed?”

He nodded and mused, “You know, when I built that paddock, there were three big trees in it, but the drought killed them, one by one, and I had to take them down. Now the horses have no shade out there, so they spend more time inside, which makes more work for us, but I can’t let them suffer this heat without some sort of relief, especially my faithful Soldier. That old gentleman has carried me many a mile and bred up some fine animals. Not a better behaved stud in the state.”

“I understand,” Callie said. “Let me get things situated in here, and I’ll open those gates.”

“Thanks, Callie.”

She made quick work of it, having already scrubbed every inch of the old wood playpen. The padding had long since disintegrated, so she folded a frayed, faded, quilted bedspread and put that in the bottom of the playpen, which she positioned next to Wes’s bed, before hanging one of Bodie’s favorite activity toys on the side rail and tossing in some stuffed animals. After feeding and changing Bodie, Callie retrieved the cell phone then plopped the baby down in the cushioned playpen and entertained her for several minutes with the activity center. While Bodie busily played with her toys, Callie slipped out to see to the horses.

She started by turning on the tap in the metal trough in the corral next to the big red barn, then wound her way through the maze of fences, opening the gates that led down to the horse paddock. Seeing only one animal in the pasture, it occurred to her that the others might be hiding from the heat in the horse barn, so she ventured in there.

The odors of horse, hay and manure enveloped her. As her eyes adjusted to the shadowed interior, she saw that all of the stall gates stood open so the horses could come and go as they pleased, but a glance at the nearest trough showed her why Wes was concerned. A green scum ringed the metal container.

Callie didn’t know much about horses, but she knew better than to surprise them, so she started talking before she started walking. “Hey, now, fellas, it’s cooler and cleaner up by the red barn, so why don’t we take a walk?”

Just moving around with her arms held out seemed to be enough to get the first one headed toward the door. Another soon followed, and then a big, dark beauty lifted its head, blew through its nostrils and the remaining four horses went out the door in a rapid clip. Smiling, Callie went out a safe distance behind them. She had to climb over a couple fences to get near the water tap and turn it off without wading through horses. They obviously appreciated the fresh water and clean trough. She climbed over those same fences again to avoid skirting too close to swishing tails and rear hooves on her way back to the house, but as she hit the dirt next to the road, she found unwelcome help waiting.

Meaty hands reached out to steady her as she landed after hopping backward from the top rail of the fence.

“Careful. Don’t hurt yourself.”

She’d know that oddly thin voice anywhere, and pulled away as politely as she could manage. “I’m fine.”

“I thought you were keeping house and cooking for the Billingses,” Ben Dolent said, squinting at her from above a stiff smile.

“That’s right.” She brushed her hands on the seat of her jeans and started for the house. “Need to get back and check on Wes and the baby.”

“How is old Wes?” Ben asked, hurrying to keep up with her. He wasn’t much taller than her, and his short legs meant that he had to take twice as many steps. She resisted the urge to lengthen her stride.

“Still weak but mending. He’ll start chemo before long.”

Ben clucked his tongue. He had a habit of doing that. “Terrible thing, cancer. I reckon Wes’s daughters will want to nurse him through that.”

“When they can,” Callie said. “Right now, I’m it, though.”

“You know you don’t have to do this,” Ben said, pumping his arms in an attempt to keep pace with her. “I’ll gladly hire professional help for old Wes.”

Callie felt her jaw drop. She came to a halt beneath the bur oak in the front yard and glared at him. “You’d cheat me out of my wages?”

Huffing for air, Ben threw up his hands, his round face registering shock and surprise. Obviously he hadn’t considered all the ramifications when he’d agreed to this little ploy of Stuart’s. “No! I—I just want to spare you the work.”

“But I enjoy the work, Ben. And where would you find professional help around here?”

“There’s an agency over in Lawton,” he squawked as she turned and headed for the porch.

“That’s over an hour away,” she tossed over her shoulder.

“But they’ll send help if it’s live-in,” he argued, following on her heels.

“To cook and clean and care for Wes?” she demanded, turning on him.

“Nursing care,” he answered lamely, backing up a step.

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