Rough Diamonds

Morie had been crushed. She’d really liked the young man, an accountant named Bart Harrison, who’d come to town to audit a local business for his firm. It hadn’t occurred to her at first that he’d searched her out deliberately at a local fiesta. He’d known who she was and who her family was, and he’d pursued her coldly, but with exquisite manners, made her feel beautiful, made her hungry for the small attentions he gave with such flair.

She’d been very attracted to him. But when he started talking about money, she backed away and ran. She wanted something more than to be the daughter of one of the richest Texas ranchers. She wanted a man who loved her for who she really was.

Now, helping to work cattle through the smelliest, nastiest pool of dip that she’d ever experienced in her life, she wondered if she’d gone mad to come here. May had arrived. Calving was in full swing, and so was the dipping process necessary to keep cattle pest-free.

“It smells like some of that fancy perfume, don’t it?” Red Davis asked with a chuckle. He was in his late thirties, with red hair and freckles, blue eyes and a mischievous personality. He’d worked ranches most of his life, but he never stayed in one place too long. Morie vaguely remembered hearing her father say that Red had worked for a former mercenary named Cord Romero up near Houston.

She gave him a speaking look. “I’ll never get the smell out of my clothes,” she wailed.

“Why, sure you can,” the lean, redheaded cowboy assured her, grinning in the shade of his wide-brimmed straw hat. “Here’s what you do, Miss Morie. You go out in the woods late at night and wait till you see a skunk. Then you go jump at him. That’s when he’ll start stamping his front paws to warn you before he turns around and lifts his tail… .”

“Red!” she groaned.

“Wait, wait, listen,” he said earnestly. “After he sprays you and you have to bury your clothes and bathe in tomato juice, you’ll forget all about how this old dipping-pool smells. See? It would solve your problem!”

“I’ll show you a problem,” she threatened.

He laughed. “You have to have a sense of humor to work around cattle,” he told her.

“I totally agree, but there is nothing at all funny about a pond full of…Aaahhhhh!”

As she spoke, a calf bumped into her and knocked her over. She landed on her breasts in the pool of dip, getting it in her mouth and her eyes and her hair. She got to her knees and brought her hands down on the surface of the liquid in an eloquent display of furious anger. Which only made the situation worse, and gave Red the opportunity to display his sense of humor to its true depth.

“Will you stop laughing?” she wailed.

“Good God, are we dipping people now?” Mal-lory wanted to know.

Morie didn’t think about what she was doing; she was too mad. She hit the liquid with her hand and sent a spray of it right at Mallory. It landed on his spotless white shirt and splattered up into his face.

She sat frozen as she realized what she’d just done. She’d thrown pest dip on her boss. He’d fire her for sure. She was now history. She’d have to go home in disgrace…!

Mallory wiped his face with a handkerchief and gave her a long, speaking look. “Now that’s why I never wear white shirts around this place,” he commented with a dry look at Red, who was still doubled over laughing. “God knows what Mavie will say when she has to deal with this, and it’s your fault,” he added, pointing his finger at Morie. “You can explain it to her while you duck plates, bowls, knives or whatever else she can get to hand to throw at you!”

Mavie was the housekeeper and she had a red temper. Everybody was terrified of her.

“You aren’t going to fire me?” Morie asked with unusual timidity.

He pursed his sensuous lips and his dark eyes twinkled. “Not a lot of modern people want to run cattle through foul-smelling pest-control substances,” he mused. “It’s easier to take a bath than to find somebody to replace you.”

She swallowed hard. The awful-smelling stuff was in her nostrils. She wiped at it with the handkerchief. “At least I won’t attract mosquitoes now.” She sighed.

“Want to bet?” Red asked. “They love this stuff! If you rub it on your arms, they’ll attack you in droves… . Where are you going, boss?”

Mallory just chuckled as he walked away. He didn’t even answer Red.

Morie let out a sigh of relief as she wiped harder at her face. She shook her head and gave Red a rueful wince. “Well, that was a surprise,” she murmured drily. “Thought I was going to be an ex-employee for sure.”

“Naw,” Red replied. “The boss is a good sport. Cane got into it with him one time over a woman who kept calling and harassing him. Boss put her through, just for fun. Cane tossed him headfirst into one of the watering troughs.”

She laughed with surprise. “Good grief!”

“Shocked the boss. It was the first time Cane did anything really physical since he got out of the military. He thinks having one arm slows him down, limits him. But he’s already adjusting to it. The boss ain’t no lightweight,” he added. “Cane picked him up over one shoulder and threw him.”

“Wow.”

He sobered. “You know, they’ve all got problems of one sort or another. But they’re decent, honest, hardworking men. We’d do anything for them. They take care of us, and they’re not judgmental.” Red grimaced at some bad memory. “If they were, I’d sure be out on my ear.”

“Slipped up, did you?” She gave him a quizzical look. “You, uh, didn’t throw pesticide on the boss?”

He shook his head. “Something much worse, I’m afraid. All I got was a little jail time and a lecture from the boss.” He smiled. “Closest call I’ve had in recent years.”

“Most people mess up once in a while,” she said kindly.

“That’s true. The only thing that will get you fired here is stealing,” he added. “I don’t know why it’s such an issue with the boss, but he let a guy go last year for taking an expensive drill that didn’t belong to him. He said he wouldn’t abide a thief on the place. Cane, now, almost jumped the guy.” He shook his head. “Odd, odd people in some respects.”

“I suppose there’s something that happened to them in the past,” she conjectured.

“Could be.” He made a face. “That girl, Gelly, that the boss goes around with has a shifty look,” he added in a lowered tone. “There was some talk about her when she and her dad first moved here, about how they got the old Barnes property they’re living on.” He grimaced. “She’s a looker, I’ll give her that, but I think the boss is out of his noggin for letting her hang around. Funny thing about that drill going missing,” he added with narrowed, thoughtful eyes. “She didn’t like the cowboy because he mouthed off to her. She was in the bunkhouse just before the boss found the missing drill in the guy’s satchel, and the cowboy cussed a blue streak about being innocent. It didn’t do any good. He was let go on the spot.”

She felt cold chills down her spine. She’d only seen the boss’s current love interest once, and it had been quite enough to convince her that the woman was putting on airs and pretending a sophistication she didn’t really have. Most men weren’t up on current fashions in high social circles, but Morie was, and she knew at first glance that Gelly Bruner was wearing last year’s colors and fads. Morie had been to Fashion Week and subscribed, at home, to several magazines featuring the best in couture, both in English and French. Her wardrobe reflected the newer innovations. Her mother, Shelby, had been a top model in her younger days, and she knew many famous designers who were happy to outfit her daughter.

She didn’t dare mention her fashion sense here, of course. It would take away her one chance to live like a normal, young single woman.

“You went to college recently, didn’t you?” Red asked. He grinned at her surprise. “There’s no secrets on a ranch. It’s like a big family…we know everything.”

“Yes, I did,” she agreed, not taking offense.

“You live in them coed dorms, with men and women living together?” he asked, and seemed interested in her answer.

“No, I didn’t,” she said curtly. “My parents raised me very strictly. I guess I have old attitudes because of it, but I wasn’t living in a dorm with single men.” She shrugged. “I lived off campus with a girlfriend.”

He raised both eyebrows. “Well, aren’t you a dinosaur!” he exclaimed, but with twinkling eyes and obvious approval.

“That’s right—I should live in a zoo.” She made a wry face. “I don’t fit in with modern society. That’s why I’m out here,” she added.

He nodded. “That’s why most of us are out here. We’re insulated from what people call civilization.” He leaned down. “I love it here.”

“So do I, Red,” she agreed.

He glanced at the cattle and grimaced. “We’d better get this finished,” he said, looking up at the sky. “They’re predicting rain again. On top of all that snowmelt, we’ll be lucky if we don’t get some more bad flooding this year.”

“Or more snow,” she said, tongue-in-cheek. Wyoming weather was unpredictable; she’d already learned that. Some of the local ranchers had been forced to live in town when the snow piled up so that they couldn’t even get to the cattle. Government agencies had come in to airlift food to starving animals.

Now the snowmelt was a problem. But so were mosquitoes in the unnaturally warm weather. People didn’t think mosquitoes lived in places like Wyoming and Montana, but they thrived everywhere, it seemed. Along with other pests that could damage the health of cattle.

“You come from down south of here, don’t you?” Red asked. “Where?”

She pursed her lips. “One of the other states,” she said. “I’m not telling which one.”

“Texas.”

Her eyebrows shot up. He laughed. “Boss had a copy of your driver’s license for the files. I just happened to notice it when I hacked into his personnel files.”

“Red!”

“Hey, at least I stopped hacking CIA files,” he protested. “And darn, I was enjoying that until they caught me.”

She was shocked.

He shrugged. “Most men have a hobby of some sort. At least they didn’t keep me locked up for long. Even offered me a job in their cybercrime unit.” He laughed. “I may take them up on it one day. But for now, I’m happy being a ranch hand.”

“You are full of surprises,” she exclaimed.

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he teased. “Let’s get back to work.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE SMALL TOWN NEAR THE RANCH was called Catelow, named after a settler who came out west for his health in the early 1800s. He and his family, and some friends who were merchants, petitioned for and got a railhead established so that he could ship cattle east from his ranch property. A few of his descendants still lived locally, but more and more of the younger citizens went out of state to big cities for high-tech jobs that paid better wages.

Still, the town had all the necessary amenities. Catelow had a good police force, a fire department, a shopping mall, numerous ethnic restaurants, a scattering of Protestant churches and a Catholic one, a city manager from California who was a whiz at making a sickly city government thrive, and a big feed store next to an even bigger hardware store.

There was also a tractor dealership. From her childhood, following her father around various vendors, she’d been fascinated with heavy machinery. Once, while she was in college, for her birthday present King Brannt had actually rented a Caterpillar earthmover and had the driver teach her how to operate it. She’d had her brother, Cort, do home movies of the event. The rat wouldn’t edit out the part where she drove the machine into a ditch and got it stuck in the mud, however. Cort had a wicked sense of humor, like King’s younger brother, Danny, who was now a superior court judge, happily married to his former secretary, redheaded Edie Jackson. They had two sons.

She walked down the rows of tractors, sighing over a big green one that could probably have done everything short of cook a meal. It even had a cab to keep the sun off the driver.

“This is how you spend your day off, looking at tractors?” a sarcastic feminine voice asked from behind her.

Startled, she turned to find Mallory with Gelly Bruner clinging to his arm.

“I like tractors,” Morie said simply. She glared at the other woman, whose obviously tinted blond hair was worn loose, with gem clips holding it back. She was dressed in a clinging silk dress with high, spiky heels and a sweater. It was barely May, and some days were still chilly. “Something wrong with that?”

“It’s not very womanly, is it?” Gelly sighed. She shifted in a deliberate way that emphasized her slender curves. She moved closer to Mallory and beamed up at him. “I’d much rather browse in a Victoria’s Secret shop,” she purred.

“Oh, yes, I can certainly see myself dipping cattle wearing one of those camisole sets,” Morie replied with a rueful grin.

“I can’t see you wearing anything…feminine, myself,” Gelly returned. Her smile had an ugly edge to it. “You aren’t really a girlie girl, are you?”

Morie, remembering how she’d turned heads in a particularly exquisite oyster-colored gown from a famous French designer, only stared at Gelly without speaking. The look was unanswerable, and it made the other woman furious.

“I hate tractors, and it’s chilly out here,” Gelly told Mallory, tugging at his arm. “Can’t we get a cappuccino in that new shop next to the florist?”

Mallory shrugged. “Suits me.” He glanced at Morie. “Want to come?” he asked.

Morie was shocked and pleased by the request. The boss, taking the hired help out for coffee? She pondered doing it, just to make the other woman even madder. Gelly was flushed with anger by now.

“Thanks,” she said. “But I’m having fun looking at the equipment.”

Gelly relaxed and Mallory seemed perplexed.

“I’m buying,” he added.

Which indicated that he thought Morie couldn’t afford the expensive coffee and was declining for that reason. She felt vaguely offended. Of course, he knew nothing about her background. Her last name might be unusual, but she’d seen it in other states, even in other countries. He wasn’t likely to connect a poor working girl with a famous cattleman, even if he might have met her father at some point. He ran Santa Gertrudis cattle, and her father’s Santa Gertrudis seed bulls were famous, and much sought after at very high prices, for their bloodlines.

She cleared her throat. “Yes, well, thanks, but not today.”

Mallory smiled oddly. “Okay. Have fun.”

“Thanks.”

They moved away, but not quickly enough for her to miss Gelly’s muttered, “Very egalitarian of you to offer cappuccino to the hired help,” she said in a tone that stung. “I bet she doesn’t even know what it is.”

Morie gritted her teeth. One day, lady, she thought, you’re going to get yours.

She turned back to the tractors with a sigh.

A red, older-model sports car roared up at the office building and stopped in a near skid. The door opened and closed. A minute later, a pleasant tall man with light brown hair and dark eyes came up to her. He was wearing a suit, unusual in a rural town, except for bankers.

He glanced at her with a smile. “Looking to buy something?”

“Me? Oh, no, I work on a ranch. I just like heavy equipment.”

His eyebrows arched. “You do?”

She laughed. “I guess it sounds odd.”

“Not really,” he replied. “My mom always said she married my dad because he surrounded himself with backhoes and earthmovers. She likes to drive them.”

“Really!”

“My dad owns this.” He waved his hand at the tractors. “I’m sales and marketing,” he added with a grimace. “I’d rather work in advertising, but Dad doesn’t have anybody else. I’m an only child.”

“Still, it’s not a bad job, is it?” she asked pleasantly.

He chuckled. “Not bad at all, on some days.” He extended a well-manicured hand. “Clark Edmondson,” he introduced himself.

She shook it. “Morie Brannt.”

“Very nice to meet you, Miss…Ms. …Mrs. …?” he fished.

“Ms.,” she said, laughing. “But I’m single.”

“What a coincidence. So am I!”

“Imagine that.”

“Are you really just looking, or scouting out a good deal for your boss?”

“I’m sure my boss can do his own deals,” she replied. “I work for Mallory Kirk at the Rancho Real,” she added.

“Oh. Him.” He didn’t look impressed.

“You know him.”

“I know him, all right. We’ve had words a time or two on equipment repairs. He used to buy from us. Now he buys from a dealer in Casper.” He shrugged. “Well, that’s old news. A lot of locals work for him, and he doesn’t have a large turnover. So I guess he’s good to his employees even if he’s a pain in the neck to vendors.”

She laughed. “I suppose.”

He cocked his head and looked down at her with both hands in his pockets. “You date?”

She laughed, surprised. “Well, sort of. I mean, I haven’t recently.”

“Like movies?”

“What sort?”

“Horror,” he said.

“I like the vampire trilogy that’s been popular.”

He made a face.

“I like all the new cartoon movies, the Harry Potter ones, the Narnia films and anything to do with Star Trek or Star Wars,” she told him.

“Well!”

“How about you?”

“I’m not keen on science fiction, but I haven’t seen that new werewolf movie.” He pursed his lips. “Want to go see it with me? There’s a community theater. It doesn’t have a lot of the stuff the big complexes do, but it’s not bad. There’s a Chinese restaurant right next door that stays open late.”

She hesitated. She wasn’t sure this was a good idea. He looked like a nice man. But her new boss seemed to be a fair judge of character and he wouldn’t do business here. It was a red flag.

“I’m mostly harmless,” he replied. “I have good teeth, I only swear when really provoked, I wear size-eleven shoes and I’ve only had five speeding tickets. Oh, and I can speak Norwegian.”

She stared at him, speechless. “I’ve never known anyone who could speak Norwegian.”

“It will come in handy if I ever go to Norway,” he replied with a chuckle. “God knows why I studied it. Spanish or French or even German would have made more sense.”

“I think you should learn what you want to learn.”

“So. How about the movie?”

She glanced at her watch. “I have to help with calving, so I’m mostly on call for the rest of the weekend. It’s already past time I was back at work. I only have a half day on Saturdays.”

“Darn. Well, how about next Friday night? If calving permits?”

“I’ll ask the boss,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow.

“I have to,” she replied. “I’m a new hire. I don’t want to risk losing my job for being AWOL.”

“Sounds like the military,” he suggested.

“I guess so. It sort of feels like it, on the ranch, too.”

“All three of the brothers fought overseas,” he said. “Two of them didn’t fare so well. Mallory, though, he’s hard to dent.”

“I noticed.” She hadn’t known that Mallory had been in the military, but it made sense, considering his air of authority. He was probably an officer, as well, when he’d been on active duty.

She saw him staring, waiting. She grimaced. “If I can get the time off, I’d like to see the film.”

He beamed. “Great!”

She sighed. “I’ve forgotten how to go on a date. I’ll have to go in jeans and a shirt. I didn’t bring a dress or even a skirt to the ranch when I hired on. All my stuff is back home with my folks.”

“You’re noticing the suit. I wear it to impress potential customers,” he said with a grin. “Around town, I mostly wear slacks and sport shirts, so jeans will be fine. We aren’t exactly going to a ball, Cinderella,” he added with twinkling eyes. “And I’m no prince.”

“I think they’re rewriting that fairy tale so that Cinderella is CEO of a corporation and she rescues a poor dockworker from his evil stepbrothers,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

“God forbid!” he exclaimed. “Don’t women want to be women anymore?”

“Apparently not, if you watch television or films much.” She sighed. She looked down at her own clothing. “Modern life requires us to work for a living, and there are only so many jobs available. Not much economically viable stuff for girls who lounge around in eyelet and lace and drink tea in parlors.” Her dark eyes smiled.

“Did I sound sarcastic? I didn’t mean to. I like feminine women, but I think lady wrestlers are exciting when they do it in mud.”

She laughed explosively. “Sexist!”

“Hey, I’d watch two men wrestle in mud, too. I like mud.”

She remembered being covered in that, and pesticide, on the ranch and winced. “You wouldn’t if you had to dip cattle around it,” she promised him.

“Good thing I don’t know anything about the cattle business, then,” he said lightly. “So ask your boss if you can have three hours off next Friday and we’ll see the werewolf movie.”

She hesitated. “Won’t it be kind of gory?”

He sighed. “There’s always that cartoon movie that Johnny Depp does the voice-over for, the chameleon Western.”

She laughed. He was pleasant, nice to look at and had a sense of humor. And she hadn’t been on a date in months. It just might be fun.

“Okay, then,” she told him. “I like Johnny Depp in anything, even if it’s only his voice. That’s a date.”

He smiled back. “That’s a date,” he agreed.

THERE WAS A LOT TO DO around a ranch during calving season, and most of the cowboys—and cowgirl—didn’t plan on getting much sleep.

Heifers who were calving for the first time were watched carefully. There was also an old mama cow who was known for wandering off and hiding in thickets to calve. Nobody knew why; she just did it. Morie named her Bessy and devoted herself to keeping a careful eye on the old girl.

“Now don’t go following that old cow around and forget to watch the others,” Darby cautioned. “She can’t hide where we won’t be able to find her.”

“I know that, but she’s getting some age on her and there’s snow being forecast again,” she said worriedly. “What if she got stuck in a drift? If we had a repeat of the last storm, we might not even be able to hunt for her. Hard to ride a horse through snow that’s over his head,” she added, with a straight face.

He laughed. “I see your point. But you have to consider that this is a big spread, and we’ve got dozens of mama cows around here. Not to mention, we’ve got a lot of replacement heifers who are dropping calves for the first time. That’s a lot of profit in a recession. Can’t afford to lose many.”

“I know.” Her father had cut his cattle herd because of the rising prices of grain, she recalled, and he was concentrating on a higher-quality bull herd rather than expanding into a cow-calf operation like the one his father, the late Jim Brannt, had built up.

“Dang, it’s cold today,” Darby said as he finished doctoring one of the seed bulls.

“I noticed.” Morie chuckled, pulling her denim coat tighter and buttoning it. She had really good clothes back home, but she’d brought the oldest ones with her, so that she didn’t raise any suspicions about her status.

“Better get back to riding that fence line,” he added.

“I’m on my way. Just had to pick up my iPod,” she said, displaying it in its case. “I can’t live without my tunes.”

He pursed his lips. “What sort of music do you like?”

“Let’s see, country and western, classical, soundtracks, blues…”

“All of it, in other words.”

She nodded. “I like world music, too. It’s fun to listen to foreign artists, even if I mostly can’t understand anything they sing.”

He shook his head. “I’m just a straight John Denver man.”

She lifted both eyebrows.

“He was a folk singer in the sixties,” he told her. “Did this one song, ‘Calypso,’ about that ship that Jacques Cousteau used to drive around the world when he was diving.” He smiled with nostalgia. “Dang, I must have spent a small fortune playing that one on jukeboxes.” He looked at her. “Don’t know what a jukebox is, I’ll bet.”