Page 42 of The Cowboy's Redemption
He didn’t know how to make things right for her, other than to follow her lead until one of them figured it out.
The water-slickened, over-long grass had been flattened by the rain. She’d taken her shoes off, and they dangled by delicate straps from her fingers. She didn’t want pity from him. She’d made that perfectly clear. But damned if she didn’t look soalone.
It killed him to see it.
He got out of the truck and followed her to her trailer.
*
He woke tiredthe next morning with the lingering sense that something was off, but no time to pursue it.
He eased from the bed, trying not to disturb her as he quietly gathered his clothes, then got dressed on the damp grass outside with the fresh air cooling his skin. The sun had returned from hiatus and peeked at him through the cottonwoods as he buttoned his jeans.
He grabbed breakfast to go from the cookhouse at the Endeavour before heading straight to his office.
Midmorning, he headed down to the pens to check on the bull calves in his program. He was at the fence, watching them play in the muck from the previous day’s rain, head-butting each other and kicking their heels, when Ryan joined him.
“I like the looks of that one,” Ryan said, singling out a roan-colored, longhorn cross.
“You would,” Levi replied. “He’s got a mean streak to him. My money’s on the white-spotted gray.” He pointed.
Ryan dismissed the dappled gray. “If that runt was human, he’d be a hairdresser.”
Levi’s lips twitched. “Maybe so, but he’d be a fast one.”
The two men discussed the merits of each of the calves for a few minutes, then quietly watched for a few moments more.
“What are your plans now that Otto’s left his herd to you?” Ryan finally asked.
“You mean with the horses, or my job here?”
“Both, I guess.”
“I’m not sure,” Levi said. “A lot depends on Dana and Ford and what they’d like to do.”
Ryan rested a boot on the bottom rail of the fence. “You can count Dana out. She won’t stick around. She’s more interested in barrel racing than she is in breeding. And why wouldn’t she be? Put the right horse under her, and she stands to make a whole lot more money riding than selling.”
She’d have the right horse under her soon enough. “Why can’t she do both?”
“She could.” Ryan’s gaze sharpened. “But it would require making compromises with her two partners, and does Ford seem like the compromising type to you?”
About as much as Ryan, although when it came to making business compromises, Levi would put his money on Ford, the more forthright of the two. Ryan kept his cards close to his chest. Ford laid them all on the table.
“I’d buy you all out in a year,” Ryan said. “I’d move the whole operation here. You could add it to your bull breeding program. You’d have cash in your pocket as well as a steady income from it.”
“Because horses and bulls are such similar animals,” Levi said dryly, and Ryan let loose a rare laugh.
“Just something for you to think about,” he said.
Nix McCray joined them. Nix was another one of Ryan’s new hires. He came from Texas, a former rodeo buddy of Miles Decker’s, here to offer professional bull riding training. Levi liked him.
“What’s your take on that puny little gray dapple?” Ryan asked Nix, shifting the conversation off Otto’s horses, to Levi’s relief.
*
That evening, beforehis truck had rolled to a stop, Levi finally figured out why he’d felt something was wrong.
Lady remained penned with the stallion, but Dana’s truck and trailer were gone.
