Cort sighed as he looked around. He lived in a smallish community near El Paso, which looked a lot like this except there weren’t so many green trees and no giant fir trees like the ones all around town. Lodgepole pines, he recalled from reading about Catelow.
He needed to stretch his long legs. He stuck his creamy Stetson over his black hair and slanted it over one light brown eye as he got out of the truck and walked up onto the sidewalk. He drew the eyes even of older women. He was tall and rangy, but powerfully built with long legs and narrow hips and broad shoulders, a physique that would have looked right at home on a movie lot. He was handsome, too, in a rugged, outdoorsy way. He had a way of looking at a woman that made her feel as if she was the only woman on the planet. And when he wanted to, he could be charming.
He glanced down at the dust and leftover cattle poop on his expensive hand-tooled leather boots. They needed polishing. He’d worn them out into the pasture to look at a sick bull just before he’d left for Catelow. Sloppy, he thought. He should have changed them for something cleaner.
“I never thought we’d have our own shop right here in town,” a young woman with blond-streaked brown hair in a tight bun was saying to a slightly taller woman as they came down the sidewalk. “All sorts of exotic yarns, just right for knitting…”
“Knitting,” Cort scoffed.
The plain woman looked up at him with big brown eyes in a pleasant but not really pretty face. She wore no makeup at all. Shame, he thought. She might not look half-bad if she tried to look attractive. Nice mouth, rounded chin, pretty complexion. But she dressed like a bag lady, and that tightly pulled-up hair wasn’t at all appealing.
The dark brown eyes were openly glaring at him as their owner looked up, a long way up the rangy, muscular body to the lean, tanned face under the cream-colored cowboy hat. “If I had boots as nasty as yours,” she said in a soft but biting tone, “I wouldn’t be so insulting about another person’s choice of hobbies.”
His eyebrows arched. “Do you rock, too?” he asked pleasantly.
She frowned. “Rock?”
“It goes with knitting. Chairs? Rocking chairs?” he taunted.
The glare got worse. “I don’t sit in a rocking chair to knit!”
“You can do it standing up?”
The look, added to the suggestive velvety tone, brought a scarlet flush to her cheeks. She started to come back with something even worse when she was interrupted by her name being called.
“Mina!”
She turned. Bart came down the sidewalk grinning. “Hey, girl!” he teased.
She laughed. It changed her whole face. She looked much more interesting now to the tall cowboy who’d been insulting her.
“Hi, Bart,” she replied. “I haven’t seen you since the church picnic!”
“I’ve been keeping a low profile. You know, so all the women wouldn’t embarrass themselves mobbing me.”
The brunette beside the one who was talking to Bart laughed.
Bart looked down at her with a smile. “You can laugh,” he returned. “I know the men mob you. I’ve seen them do it, you gorgeous brunette, you.”
She laughed again. “Stop that, or I’ll tell my husband you’re flirting with me.”
He held up both hands. “Oh no, please don’t,” he said at once. “I don’t need John Callister looking me up with his shotgun.”
“He wouldn’t dare,” Sassy Callister retorted. “He needs a new breeding bull and he likes the look of yours.”
“I noticed.” He grinned. “Thank him for his patronage, in advance. Oh, sorry, I forgot to introduce you. This is my cousin from Texas, Cort Grier.”
“Nice to meet you,” Sassy said with a smile and a nod.
The other woman didn’t smile or nod.
“This is Sassy Callister.” Bart introduced the brunette. “And this is Mina Michaels,” he added, indicating the woman with the glaring brown eyes.
Neither Cort nor Mina spoke. They glared at each other even more.
Bart cleared his throat. “Well, we’d better be getting out to the ranch. Cort’s just flown in from Texas and I expect he’s in need of some rest.”
“All that flapping. Are your arms tired, then?” Mina asked.
He glared at her. “Aren’t yours tired from all that knitting?” he drawled back. He gave her a hard look, taking in her lack of makeup and the dowdy dress she wore. “I guess a woman as pitiful looking as you has plenty of time to knit, for lack of a social life.”
She stomped on his booted toe as hard as she could.
He cursed and glared harder.
“That’s assault,” she said helpfully, dripping sarcasm. “I’ll go turn myself in to the police right now!”
Cort opened his mouth to reply and his expression indicated that it was going to be something toxic.
Bart, who knew his cousin’s temper very well, caught him by the arm and almost dragged him around. “We have to go now. See you later!”
* * *
“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE saved her,” Cort muttered as they got back to Bart’s pickup truck. His high cheekbones were ruddy with temper. “What a damned, unpleasant, ugly woman! I should have had her arrested for assault. Wouldn’t that have wiped that smirk off her face?” he added. His foot was a little sore. She’d been wearing boots, too, he recalled suddenly. Odd, for a city woman to have them on. Maybe they were in style. On the other hand, what would such an unattractive woman care about style?
“Now, now, she’s not so bad…”
“I’d rather we never spoke of her again,” he interrupted, and gave his cousin a look that said he meant it. “The other woman, the nice one,” he emphasized, “she’s married to John Callister, you said?”
Bart wanted to tell him about Mina, about her past, but he realized he’d get nowhere. At least not
