the split-rail fence that separated the yard from the driveway. “It looks lovely,” she said. Then, because of something she’d heard in his voice…seen in his eyes, she looked at him and added quietly, “Actually, I’ve never been that fond of the Ritz.”
There was a pause while they looked into each other’s eyes, and Mary wondered whether he was any better at figuring out her feelings than she was his. Then Roan said brusquely, “Well-no sense in sitting here in the car.” He opened the door, but paused a moment before getting out to nod toward the front of the car. “Here comes the welcoming committee.”
Boyd Stuart was angular and rawboned, small in stature-very likely smaller than he’d once been, thanks to decades of having his spine pounded on by a hard leather saddle. He walked with the bent-over, bandy-legged cowboy’s gait she’d grown accustomed to seeing in the years she’d been living in the Great American West. He wore the rancher’s uniform of boots, Levi’s, long-sleeved blue work shirt and a sweat-stained baseball cap with a tractor manufacturer’s logo on it. A pair of mottled gray cattle-herding dogs trotted along beside him.
“Oh, Cat’s going to love this,” Mary said as she gathered her courage, opened her door and climbed out of the car.
“What, you mean the dogs?” Roan threw her look across the roof of the SUV. “They’re used to the barn cats. They won’t bother him.”
“Tell that to Cat.” She could hear a loud growling sound emanating from the back seat as the dogs came ranging up to lick Roan’s hands. Having said their hellos, they then ambled over more slowly to check her out. She stood still, murmuring hopeful reassurances, while they sniffed her avidly-smelling the cat, no doubt. Having evidently decided she was Friend, they bumped and snuggled against her legs, begging to be petted. She bent down to oblige them with pats and coos and ear-fondles, and when she straightened up, Boyd was coming to a halt a few yards away.
The rancher took off his cap, wiped his pale forehead with his shirtsleeve and put it back on again. He flicked her a glance and a nod, then looked at Roan and gestured toward the sheriff’s department SUV. “What’s the law doin’ out here this time a’ day?” His growly voice reminded her of Roan’s, only rustier.
Roan looked over at Mary, flashed her a reassuring smile. “Got somebody here I want you to meet. Boyd…Mary Owen-or, I guess it’s Yancy, right? Anyway, Mary, this is my father-in-law, Boyd Stuart.”
Mary nodded and smiled, uncertain whether to offer her hand or not. But the rancher nudged the bill of his cap back with his thumb, swiped his gnarled hand across the front of his shirt and then held it out to her with a gruff, “I know who you are. How-do, miss.”
And that was when she saw that the hand he offered her bore the silvery discoloration of burn scars, and that above the grizzled jaws and weathered, leathery skin that covered the lower two-thirds of his face, his blue eyes were filled with a bottomless sadness. Kind eyes, she thought, that would never really smile again.
She took the scarred hand and murmured, “I’m so happy to meet you.”
“So,” Roan said, raking a hand through his hair in an uncharacteristically awkward gesture, “where’s your sidekick?”
“Little bit?” Boyd scowled and made a cranky gesture with his hand that failed to override the affection in his voice. “Ah, she’s off somewheres-barn, probably. One of the cats had a litter, and she’s bound and determined to find her nest. She’ll come a’runnin’, once she knows you’re here.”
“I can’t stay.” Roan shot Mary another look, one she couldn’t read. “I need to get back to town. A lot going on I need to tend to.”
The rancher took off his cap again…put it back on. “Yeah? How’d that go-the big parade?”
“Parade went fine,” Roan said, and his eyes were hard and flinty. “Somebody took a shot at Mary, though.”
Boyd’s head rocked back as if someone had thrown a punch at him. “You don’t say.”
“’Fraid so. That’s why I brought her out here. She’s gonna need a safe place to stay until we can get whoever’s responsible. You mind getting her settled in? Show her around? Like I said, I need to get on back.”
“Sure,” said Boyd. “No problem. Where you wanna put her?”
Mary opened her mouth, but her panic-stricken cries-
Roan had the back of the SUV open and was hauling out her suitcase and the cat carrier and the large shopping bag with the cat supplies in it. He set them beside the opening in the split rail fence, then looked up and said, “Put her in my room.” This time Mary managed to produce sound, but no discernible words. He opened the car door and paused, half in and half out, to give her a long, burning look. “I’ll sleep on the couch.”
He slid behind the wheel and slammed the door, and the SUV roared to life. Mary and Boyd stood side by side without speaking and watched it execute a wrenching three-point turn, then accelerate down the lane, crunching gravel and spitting dust.
For a few more seconds the dust and the silence hovered in the air. Then Boyd made an abrupt beckoning gesture with one hand, picked up her suitcase with the other and said gruffly, “No sense standin’ out here in the yard. Come on in the house-I’ll show you to Roan’s room.” He started across the enclosed yard, moving surprisingly quickly in his odd crabbed gait-rather like the oldtime Western movie star, John Wayne, in a hurry.
Mary picked up the cat carrier and the shopping bag and followed. “Oh, please don’t put him out of his room,” she said, puffing a little as she hurried to catch up. “The couch-anything will be fine for me.”
Boyd glanced over at the cat carrier, apparently ignoring that remark. “What you got there?” When the carrier’s occupant responded with a furious growl, he chuckled and said, “Oh-big old fella.” Then he looked up at Mary, and there was a gleam in his sad old eyes.
“Shoot, Roan don’t hardly ever use it anyhow, the hours he keeps. Waste of a perfectly good mattress, you ask me.” He opened the front door and held it with his backside while Mary slipped past him into the house, then pulled the door shut and clumped ahead of her across an entryway of polished pine. She barely had time to notice the large open rooms with vaulted ceilings, a sense of warmth and light and natural colors, a feeling of the outdoors brought inside, before following her host down a wide carpeted hallway that ended abruptly at a plywood barricade. Halfway down the hall, Boyd turned into an open doorway. Mary followed him into a room that was much smaller and plainer than she’d expected.
Boyd set the suitcase down with a thump on a Navajo patterned rug. “There you go,” he said, then straightened, hooked a thumb in the pocket of his Levi’s and surveyed the room with narrowed eyes, scratching his stubbled chin. “You’ll most likely be wantin’ clean sheets and such. You’ll find some in that chest a’ drawers over yonder. Bathroom’s around the corner, next to the kitchen. You think of anything else you need, give me a holler.”
“I wish you’d just let me have the couch,” Mary murmured absently, trying not to look with too much curiosity…trying not to think about the fact that she was standing in Roan’s bedroom. His private space.
“Couch is comfortable enough,” Boyd admitted, hitching one shoulder. “Use it myself now and then, when Roan’s in town late and I need to stay here with the little bit. Most a’ the time I have my own place up the road- foreman’s cottage. Suits me fine.” He paused, then shook his head in a way that brooked no further argument. “Woman needs her privacy. You let Roan take the couch-he’s young, won’t hurt him none. And you’ve got the cat. Cats don’t like strange places. You’ll be needing to shut him up, I reckon.” There was a definite twinkle in his eye as he nodded toward the case Mary was still holding. “Tell you a trick my wife used to use, to get a cat to settle in a new place. What you do is, you put butter on his paws.”
“Really?” Mary said over Cat’s outraged yowl. “That works?”
Boyd bobbed his head. “M’wife swore it did. Said the cat’d be so busy cleanin’ the butter off his paws, he’d forget all about bein’ in a strange place.” He turned to the door with one of his abrupt hand gestures. “Well-I’ll let you get settled-” he turned back in his bent-over, arthritic way “-unless you’d like to see around the place first…”
“I’d like that,” Mary said, with silent apologies to Cat. She’d wait to let him out of the carrier until she could stay to keep an eye on him. No telling what kind of damage he might do, the mood he was in.
Out in the hallway, she paused to look questioningly at the plywood barricade. Boyd’s hand gesture as he
