Angus just bet he had. “I can relieve Brick.”
She nodded. “I’ll let them know.” Like him, she must have hated to leave this quiet spot. There was an intimacy to it. When she looked over at him, their gazes locked for a few long moments.
Jinx pulled her gaze away first and rose to her feet. “I best get some shut-eye,” she said. “It was nice visiting with you.”
“You, too. Sleep well,” he said as he watched her stop by the campfire to speak with Brick and Ella. Jinx was chuckling to herself as she went to find Royce and Cash before heading to her sleeping bag spread out in the dried pine needles some distance from the fire.
Angus watched her go, telling himself that there was nothing he could do to help Jinx other than to get her cattle to the high country. But even as he thought it, he knew that wouldn’t be the end of her problems. And they hadn’t gotten the cattle to the high country yet, he reminded himself as he made his way to his own sleeping bag.
All they needed was another long day of moving the herd and then a short one without any more trouble than they’d had and the cattle would be on summer range. Then it would be just a matter of returning to the valley. The job would be over.
As he walked through the darkness of the pines toward where he’d dropped his sleeping bag earlier, he saw Royce ride off with Brick and then part company as they split up to take the first night shift.
He looked around but didn’t see Cash. The two worried him, especially after the incident with the bear in the chuckwagon. Since then, though, nothing had happened. So maybe Max had gotten forgetful and left the box holding the meat locker unlocked and cracked open just enough that a bear caught wind of it.
He told himself that in another day and a half they would have completed the job they were hired on to do. He and Ella and Brick could head back to Montana. They would have accomplished what they’d come here for.
Unless Jinx’s almost-ex had other plans for them before then.
ELLA COULDN’T SLEEP. She felt restless, even as tired as she was. For a while, she lay staring up into the darkness. Clouds from the aftermath of the storm hung low over the mountainside, blocking out the stars like a thick, dark cloak.
Finally, she rose and walked away from the camp, feeling as if she couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t sure what was causing it. Earlier she’d tried to reach her mother. But she couldn’t get cell phone coverage.
From as far back as she could remember, she’d “sensed” things. She’d been uneasy when they’d stopped by Cardwell Ranch before heading down here to Wyoming. Her mother had been acting strangely. It wasn’t anything she could put her finger on. Just a sense that something was wrong.
That feeling had only gotten stronger. Her instincts told her she should saddle up and go home. But she’d signed on to this job and she would stick it out. Especially after meeting Jinx. She wasn’t about to leave the woman shorthanded. In a few days they would be headed home. She just hoped that would be soon enough, as she reached the horse corral.
With the clouds hanging so low over the mountainside, she could only make out dark shapes behind the corral fence. She leaned against the railing, breathing in the cold night air, and tried to still her growing unease. She and her mother had always been close since from the beginning it was just the two of them—and of course the rest of the Cardwell/Savage family. As to her father, she knew little about him, only that he’d never been in the picture.
Not that she hadn’t had an amazing childhood growing up on Cardwell Ranch. Her mother had seemed happy there after having split with her family years before over what would be done with the ranch following Mary Cardwell’s death. Ella knew only a little about the argument that had caused the siblings to fight over the ranch. Apparently, Dana had refused to sell it, while Ella’s mother, Stacy, and her uncle Jordan wanted the cash from the sale.
When their mother’s will was finally found, it settled the squabble, but by then the damage had been done. It had taken time for Stacy and Jordan to come back to the ranch. Stacy had come back after she had Ella.
She felt fatigue pull at her and started to push off the corral fence when she heard a sound that made her freeze. Someone was moving through the darkness in her direction. Instantly, she was on alert, aware that whoever was moving toward her was moving cautiously, as if not wanting to be heard.
Whoever it was hadn’t seen her. She stayed still as the figure grew larger and larger. She knew it wasn’t an animal because an animal would have picked up her scent by now.
The shape grew larger and larger until the man was almost on top of her. She watched him look around in the darkness as if to make sure that no one had seen him. She could tell he was listening because the night was dark; he couldn’t see any farther than she could.
Then, as if believing he was alone, he reached for the latch on the corral holding the horses.
“Cash?”
He jumped and then froze for a moment before he slowly let go of the latch. Turning just as slowly, he squinted into the darkness. He took a few steps in her direction. “Oh, it’s you. I didn’t see you standing there.” He sounded winded as if she’d scared him. Or worse, she’d caught him.
“What’s going on?” she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.
“Nothing,” he said as he moved closer. “Just checking on the horses.”
“Looked like
