Thankful For You

She stopped when she reached him, and that was when he felt it again—that magnetic pull toward Dallas. He usually looked up to the women on his arm, even taller in their high heels, and it was nice that he could look Dallas right in the eye, that she was shorter than he was by a couple of inches, at least.

“I was thinking the same thing.” Nick surveyed the property with his eyes. The place seemed to be more of a mess than the day before. The trip back and forth from Helena to Bent Tree was going to get old quick.

“There’s plenty of room,” Dallas said. “But no luck with the trailer. It’s a long ways away from livable. I think the cabin is our best bet if you want to bunk out here too.”

They started walking toward the small cluster of buildings near the trailer where Dallas’s famous father had spent the last years of his life as an eccentric hermit. He didn’t want to offend Dallas, especially after she had just recently lost her father, but the legend of her father didn’t match the condition of his aunt’s property. It didn’t make sense that Davy Dalton could have ended up this way. Nick hadn’t said the words aloud, and neither had Dallas for that matter, but the famous rodeo personality had been hoarding for years.

With fresh eyes, Nick stated what might have already been the obvious to his companion. “This may take more time than I originally thought.”

Dallas nodded.

“I honestly don’t know where to begin.” He didn’t normally feel overwhelmed, but he did now.

“Pop always said...the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.”

* * *

Dallas had worked side by side with men her whole life. Her earliest memories were traveling from town to town, chasing rodeo money with her dad. Her father had been one of the first of his generation of rodeo men to garner endorsements, so when Davy wasn’t riding a bull or roping a calf, he was posing for pictures at tack and feed stores. She’d only really known the nomadic life because of Davy; he’d raised her his way on his terms. The schools were always after him about the huge blocks of time she was out from school, but her father believed that she could learn a heck of a lot more about life out on the road with him than she could locked up in a school for eight hours a day.

She had loved her freedom growing up and often felt sorry for her peers who didn’t get to do as they pleased. Davy was too busy making a buck or losing that same buck gambling to regulate her every move—she made her own rules, set her own agenda. Could her father have done better by her? Sure, he could have. What parent was perfect? And yes, her childhood had left scars—some too deep and jagged and discolored to ever heal. But she was as tough as any man—she wasn’t afraid of much in life—and she was a survivor. She had Davy to thank for that.

“It’s hotter than the dickens in here.” Dallas lifted the bottom of her ribbed tank top up to her face and wiped the sweat off her face.

“Let’s take a break,” he suggested, and she agreed.

Although she had spent most of her life surrounded by men, none of them had been like Nick. In the short time she had spent with him, he had caught her attention in a way no man before ever really had. Nick was clean-cut, educated and a gentleman. And so handsome. Just like everyone else in his family, Nick had those shocking Brand-blue eyes, and she had found herself staring into them more than once. Yesterday during practice, she’d found it difficult to focus on her work with Nick watching her.

While most of her fellow barrel racers dreamed of marrying cowboys, Dallas had always wanted something different than what she’d known. She didn’t spend a whole lot of time imagining herself married, but when she did think of a husband, it was to someone like Nick.

“You need gloves.” Dallas fished a bottle of water out of her cooler and handed it to him.

Nick’s once-well-groomed fingernails were black—his hands gray from the dust and the old print off the newspapers.

Nick looked down at his free hand as if he were noticing how dirty it was for the first time. He stared at his hand for a long minute.

“I admit,” he said, “I didn’t know what I was getting myself into here.”

“No.” She finished her water and capped the bottle. “I bet not.”

Not only was Nick a handsome man, he was tougher than she had originally given him credit for. She had thought that the thick, stale, hot air, the dust and dirt, and the piles of decaying magazines and newspapers would send him packing pretty quick. But he had hung in there with her. She was impressed.

“I didn’t even think about food.” Nick squinted in the bright sunlight streaming in through the window.

“Your aunt packed a care package for me this morning. There’s more than enough to share.”

Barbara Brand, Nick’s aunt, was the matriarch of the Brand family and self-appointed caretaker of the disavowed and disenfranchised youth. Nick’s aunt had been looking after her, in one way or another, ever since she was a little girl.

They took turns scrubbing their hands in the cabin sink with a sliver of soap that had become cracked and chalky over the years. Then they turned a crate over in the yard for a makeshift table and salvaged a couple of creaky-legged wooden chairs out of the cabin; with the backdrop of the expansive, cloudless blue sky and mountain peaks in the distance, Nick joined her for lunch.

“Okay—let’s see what we’ve got here.” Dallas fished into her cooler for the care package.

“This looks to be smoked ham and Swiss on Barb’s homemade sourdough bread. And this one is...” She peeked inside the wrapping. “Roast beef and cheddar on sourdough.”

“I’ll take whichever one you don’t want.”

She wrinkled her brow at him with a shake of her head. She held out both sandwiches. “Pick.”

Nick pointed to the roast beef.

“Perfect.” She smiled at him. “I wanted the ham.”

For the first several big bites of their sandwiches, neither of them spoke. They were too hungry to try to talk and eat.

“Hmm.” Nick made a pleased sound after he had devoured the first half of the sandwich.

Dallas nodded her agreement, still chewing on a bigger-than-necessary bite. Barbara was known in the county for her cooking. If you were invited to Bent Tree to eat, you didn’t turn the invitation down. She loved to cook, she was great at it and she always made enough for plenty of leftovers.

“I appreciate you sharing your lunch with me.” Nick balled up the wrapper.

She nodded to say “you’re welcome.” “I think your aunt planned it this way. She’s always thinkin’ about everybody else.”

“You seem to know Aunt Barb pretty well.”

Dallas watched Nick stand up and stretch. He didn’t have the height of the Montana Brand men, but he had nice shoulders and a fit body. Nick’s sister, Taylor, was married to Dallas’s best friend, Clint McAllister. Nick didn’t much resemble his male cousins, but she could definitely see the family resemblance with his sister and she told him as much.

“I’ve heard that all my life.” Nick looked down at her with his lips turned up slightly into the smallest of smiles. “I got razzed pretty regularly about it by my friends. The worst days were when Taylor wore a dress.”

“Why?”

Nick crossed his arms in a relaxed, resting manner. “Oh, you know... I’d hear things like, ‘what happened to your pretty blue dress, Nicki?’ Stupid stuff like that.”

“Heck.” Dallas stood up and tossed her wrapping onto the trash heap. “I get worse than that from those cowpunchers I bunk with part of the year.”

“It does sound tamer than I remember,” Nick said with a laugh. She liked how he could laugh at himself so easily.

Dallas stood next to the Chicago native wishing that they had met under different circumstances. She wasn’t at her best right now—she was dirty and sweaty and smelly. She wanted Nick to see her as a woman, not as a work buddy.

“Are you ready for round two?” Dallas asked, half hoping he’d give up for the day.

“The sooner we start, the sooner we’re going to finish.”

They walked the short distance back to the cabin side by side.

“You must know Taylor from Bent Tree.”

“No.” She grabbed the pitchfork she had left leaning against the side of the cabin. “I know her ’cuz she’s married to my best friend.”

It must have taken Nick a minute to make the right connections in his mind, because they were back inside the cabin before he asked her, “Clint’s your best friend?”

“Yep.” Dallas stabbed a stack of papers with her pitchfork.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nick lean on the handle of his shovel.

“You bunk with men and your best friend is a man? You lead an unusual life.”

Perhaps he didn’t mean it to sound condescending and judgmental, but that was how it sounded to her ears and that was how she took it. She didn’t much care what most people thought about her life, but for some reason, it stung when it seemed like Nick was joining her naysayers.

She grunted as she lifted the heavy pile of newspapers and dumped them into the empty cart between them.

“It might seem unusual to some.” Dallas turned away from him to stop him from seeing the hurt in her eyes. “But it’s normal for me.”

* * *

They spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning out the small cabin. Years of her father’s life were spent “collecting” these papers, something he could never explain to her, and she was shoveling those years into a trash pile to be burned. She didn’t feel sad too often—but this made her feel sad.

Dallas stood by the large pile of trash they had started, and she knew that this was just the beginning of what was going to be a painful journey of simultaneously discovering and discarding the secretive last years of her father’s life.

Nick wheeled another cart over to the pile and dumped it with an exhausted grunt.

“I think I’ve had enough for today,” he said to her. “How about you?”

More than enough.

“The cabin still’s got a long way ta go.” She expected Nick to suggest that they bring in a crew to clear off the land and just be done with it. She wouldn’t blame him, but she prayed that he wouldn’t. Her father still deserved his privacy. It made her heart hurt just thinking about strangers rummaging through his belongings, judging him.

“I’m not sure it’s ever going to get there,” he said.

She tucked her hands in her back pockets, glad that Nick was signaling that he was ready to leave.

“Well,” he said after she didn’t continue the conversation, “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Yep.”

He started heading to where he had left his rental car. But then she saw him hesitate.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay out here by yourself?”

She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was way more fit to rough it than he was. He was a Brand man, albeit a citified Brand man, and it was his nature to be a gentleman.

“Go on back to Helena and get some rest,” she tried to reassure him with a forced half smile. “We’ve got a full day ahead of us tomorrow.”

He hesitated for a moment longer; he gave her a quick nod to let her know that he’d gotten the message she was sending.

Once Nick was out of earshot, Dallas lowered herself onto her haunches, her arms folded tightly in front of her body, her hands pressed into her stomach. All of this was so much harder than she had thought it would be. One minute she thought she was okay and the next minute she felt like crying. And, other times, like now, she just needed to be alone.

“Oh, Pop.” Rare tears slipped onto her cheeks. “I miss you.”

* * *

Nick stood under the showerhead, letting the hot water beat down on his shoulders until the water started to run cold. He hadn’t ever worked that hard in his life. Not ever. And the only reason he had pushed himself as hard as he did was that Dallas was relentless and strong and he didn’t want to appear to be a soft city dweller in front of her.

Damn, but she was determined and strong. He’d never seen anything like her before.

“Ow...crap.”

His hamstring locked up when he stepped over the edge of the tub to get out of the shower. He half fell onto the bath mat, grabbed for his hamstring with one hand and the towel bar with the other.

After he got his hamstring to unlock, Nick hobbled, with stiff joints and an aching lower back, to the bed and flopped onto the mattress.

“Oh, man.” He carefully stretched out his legs, wincing at the pain in his knees as they straightened.

He’d never been a jock or a muscle head, and he had been slacking off on his workout routine for the past several years while he was buried up to his eyeballs in law books—but he’d never considered himself to be a lightweight before. He felt like a total lightweight now.

Eyes closed, Nick rested his hands on his stomach and tried to rest. The day after you exerted your body was always the worst; tomorrow he imagined he was going to feel awful. Instead of falling asleep as he’d hoped, he started to think of ways to make the cleanup of Lightning Rock quicker. But the only two options he could come up with included bringing a crew of men in to help clean out the buildings or bringing in a crew to just demolition the buildings and be done with it.

Whenever he thought through either of those options, his mind would conjure Dallas’s face. This was personal to her—these were her father’s belongings. And even though most of it was just moldy, decaying papers, every once in a while, Dallas would come upon something in the rubbish that she wanted to keep. How could he take that away from her? How could he tarnish the legacy of Davy Dalton?

The answer to both of those questions, no matter what angle he came at the problem from, was I can’t.

* * *

The next morning, Nick got a later start than he’d intended. He awakened stiffer than a starched shirt with an ache in his muscles, joints, neck and lower back that he’d never felt in his life. Even the palms of his hands hurt; they were red and rough from wielding that shovel all day. His hands had remained mostly callus free and he had been perfectly fine with that. Perhaps it had even been a badge of honor to be a part of the white-collar and blue-blood class. But after watching Dallas work like she could keep going until nightfall while he was sucking wind an hour into the cleanup, he’d decided some calluses on his hands were exactly what he needed. He could stand a little toughening up.

Nick packed his belongings, put them in the rental car and checked out of the hotel. If Dallas could rough it out at Lightning Rock, then so could he. He grabbed a fast-food breakfast on his way out of town, ordering an extra-black coffee for Dallas just in case.

When he drove long distances, he liked to take the time to think. Same when he was stuck in rush-hour traffic back home in Chicago. He didn’t listen to music or books on CD. He always thought about his next move, his next big goal. His future. All the way out to Lightning Rock, Nick thought about the property, and what he might say to his uncle Hank when it came time to discuss the sale of Lightning Rock. Intertwined with business was Dallas. On his first night in Montana, he’d wondered if his interest in her, his curiosity about her, was a passing fancy. By his second night in Montana, he had his answer: no. It wasn’t a passing fancy. She fascinated him. He was drawn to her. He wanted to know more about her—about what made her tick. He liked her.

And there was this one moment yesterday that he couldn’t stop thinking over again and again: the moment when Dallas lifted up the bottom of her tank top to wipe the sweat off her face. It wasn’t meant to be a tease—it was an innocent, practical move on her part. But that flash of pale skin on her toned stomach, so different than the reddish brown of the skin on her arms and neck, made his body stir and made his mind turn to sex.

* * *

“I was beginnin’ to wonder if you’d decided to get the heck outta Dodge,” Dallas said to him as she dumped the contents of her cart onto the trash pile.

“Don’t think I didn’t consider it.” He was working hard not to walk in a way that would show how much hurt he was feeling. “I wasn’t sure if you drink it, but I brought an extra coffee just in case.”

“Been drinkin’ it since I was ten.” Dallas dropped the cart and walked over to him. “More of that unusual life of mine.”

He caught her meaning and wanted to clear the air now that he had the chance.

“I think you have a great life, Dallas. Unusual isn’t a bad thing in my book.”

The cowgirl didn’t respond to his comment, but he could read in her eyes that his words had hit their intended mark.

“It’s black,” he said of the coffee.

“I drink it any way I can get it,” the cowgirl said to him as she took the cup of coffee from him. “Thank you for thinkin’ about me.”

She’d probably be worried if she had any idea of how much actual thinking he had done about her.

“I have somethin’ for you too.” The cowgirl pointed to his shovel resting against the porch banister of the cabin; a cowboy hat was hanging on the end of the shovel’s handle.

“It was Davy’s,” she added.

Surprised by her thoughtful gift, Nick walked over to the cabin and unhooked the hat from the shovel’s handle.

Nick hadn’t spent time following bull riding since he was a kid—his interest stopped around the time his father and uncle Hank had their falling-out over the will—but, before that, he wanted to be like his uncle Hank, and his uncle Hank loved bull riding.

“Davy Dalton’s hat.” Nick held the aged brown Stetson in his hands reverently.

“And his gloves,” Dallas added. “Flip it over.”

Nick turned the hat over and saw a pair of work gloves tucked inside the inner band of the hat.

“If they don’t fit, don’t worry,” the cowgirl said.

“I feel like these are things that you should keep,” Nick replied.

“Why?” Dallas shook off his comment with a shake of her head. “They’re too big for me, and Pop can’t use ’em anymore. He’d think it was right that one of Hank’s kin found some use for ’em.”

Nick decided to take Dallas at her word; she didn’t strike him as someone who spent much time talking around the truth. If she said it, she seemed to mean it.

He tried on the hat first and was pleased that it fit pretty well. Then he tried on the gloves. With a little stretching of the leather, they would suit him just fine.

“Thank you.” He smiled at the cowgirl.

Dallas, who was pulling the cart back to the cabin, paused when she looked at him. A flicker of some emotion flashed quick and ephemeral, like a shooting star across a black sky. He couldn’t read the emotion it passed so quick.

After a second, Dallas said, “Pop is pleased.” And then she got back to work.

Chapter Three

It took them three days of sweaty, backbreaking work to clean out the cabin and get it rehabbed enough for him to bunk there with relative comfort. It had running water and electricity in from the main part of the ranch. It was humble, but it was habitable. Dallas had taken a break from training long enough to get him in the cabin; today, the fourth day of cleanup, she insisted on taking a break to practice barrel racing.

“How are you gettin’ on?” Ketch asked him when he came back from giving Dallas some critiques on her technique.

Ketch was the only person Dallas had invited out to Lightning Rock. Nick had a feeling that Dallas didn’t trust many people, including him, but she trusted Tom Ketchum.

“She’s pretty quiet, most of the time.”

Ketch kept his focus on his student. “She’s been through a lot, that one.”

“I think everything we’ve been doing out at Lightning Rock,” Nick said about sifting through the remnants of Davy Dalton’s life, “would be sad for anyone.”

“Trouble is a private thing,” Ketch agreed, then went back to coaching Dallas.

Nick watched Dallas with unabashed fascination. She was in complete control of her horse; sometimes she careened around the barrels so fast and so low that it actually made him hold his breath thinking that the horse was going to tip over onto her leg and pin her on the ground. She was fearless, her hair flying loose down her back, her cowgirl hat worn square on the top of her head. He hadn’t thought she was beautiful when he first met her—cute, maybe. Now he had it in his head that she was one of the prettiest women he’d known. For sure, she was prettier on the inside than most he’d met. She was pretty on the inside like his sisters Taylor and Casey. That was the highest praise, as far as he was concerned.

“Woooo-weeee!” Dallas let out a loud whoop after her last barrel run. It felt great to be back in the saddle doing exactly what she loved to do. Blue’s coat looked a shade darker from the sweat and he had white foam dripping from his mouth.

Dallas gave Blue some big pats on the neck to praise him for a job well done. She slipped her feet out of the stirrups, dropped the reins so her horse could have his head loose and she kicked her legs forward.

“He did better with a couple days off, Ketch!”

“He’s lookin’ good. He’s gonna be ready to win big next time ye’re in it.”

Dallas picked up the reins to whoa her big blue roan gelding.

“He’s tight and fast,” Dallas said, her face flushed bright red from heat and exertion. “I can’t wait to get back out there. I can’t wait!”

“When you plannin’ on gettin’ back out there?” Ketch asked.

Nick, from her point of view, was paying particular attention to her answer to that question. The only thing she wouldn’t like about being back out on the road was the fact that she wouldn’t be spending time with Nick. They had been building a friendship, a genuine friendship, out there at Lightning Rock, and she was going to miss him. She truly was.

Dallas swung out of the saddle and landed on the ground easily. She slipped the reins over her horse’s head, loosened the girth and started walking over to the one spot where she could rinse the sweat off her horse’s neck and back.

“I think I’ve just about got enough stuffed under the mattress to make a go of it once I’m finished takin’ care of Pop’s business.”

Ketch stayed around to talk with them for a couple of minutes longer before he headed off to tend to the rest of his day. She finished rinsing off Blue before she turned him out with the rest of the horses. After such a great practice session, she really didn’t want to ruin her good mood by tackling more of the cleanup.

Back at Lightning Rock, she said to Nick, “I’m so greasy and grimy, and the water pressure in that ol’ outdoor shower Pop rigged up is as about as useless as tits on a bull. I swear I’ve got a week’s worth of dirt in my hair that I can’t get out. If I don’t take a quick minute to jump in the lake, you’ll be able to smell me from a mile away.”

He smiled at her. “Let’s avoid that.”

She stood there for a moment, just enjoying the way it felt to have Nick Brand smiling at her. So handsome, that man. She got butterflies in her stomach whenever he watched her practice—she never got nervous around anyone when she raced the barrels, but something about Nick was different. Something about Nick made her feel different.

* * *

While Dallas grabbed a bottle of shampoo, a bar of soap and a threadbare towel, Nick pondered on the way Dallas had looked at him just seconds before. She had stared into his eyes and although the moment was fleeting, he had wanted it to keep right on going. She was such a complicated woman that it was hard to figure her out. Maybe that was part of the attraction. She was a challenge.

“You can come, if you want. I’m wearing a bathin’ suit.” Dallas said, “I don’t suppose you brought anything to swim in?”

“No,” Nick said. And now, more than ever before in his life, he coveted his few pairs of clean, dry underwear. Besides, wet white underwear in front of Dallas? The family jewels looked much smaller after an exposure to cold water.