Her Western Heart_Seeing Ranch series Page 2

  “He deserved it.”

  Her father’s hands curled into fists. “I do not care.”

  Anger coursed through Gemma. “Father! How can you say that? You didn’t hear the things this man was saying, the way he was looking at me –”

  “And you, child, do not understand that you are only getting older.”

  Gemma folded her arms across her chest. “I am only twenty. I hardly think that classifies me as an old maid.”

  “No, but consider this next piece of information. How many eligible bachelors do you suppose are in this city?” Before she could answer, he held up a finger to silence her. “By that, I mean not just any unmarried men. I mean men who are well-off, well-bred, capable of supporting a family, respectable, from a good family… How many of those men do you think are in New York?”

  “I do not know,” Gemma admitted.

  His hard gaze latched onto hers. “The answer is not that many. And, sadly, you’ve gone through most of them.”

  “I have not found any I like, Father.”

  “And so, because you do not like them, you choose to lock them out on balconies.”

  “And leave them in the middle of the park,” her mother added. “Or tell them our entire household has Typhus and they had better leave before they get it, too.”

  “That man was almost sixty,” Gemma pointed out. “And he kept trying to pet my hair.”

  “Well, congratulations,” her father icily replied. “You are now out of options – except for one.”

  Gemma felt herself recoil. “I am not marrying Charles.”

  Her parents exchanged a glance. “I am not talking about him,” her father answered.

  Gemma studied her parents’ faces. “You said the choice was up to me.”

  “You have shown that you are not capable of making such a decision on your own. If it were up to you, Gemma, you would die an old maid.”

  Gemma lifted her chin. “Only because this city is full of money-hungry, shallow men.”

  He went on as if he did not hear her. “There is a new lumber company in town. Picoult Lumber. I have spoken to William Picoult and he is willing to take your hand, despite your impish ways.”

  Gemma’s jaw dropped. It was as if all the air was sucked from her body. “B-but...” She tried again to speak, but her tongue would not abide her mind.

  Her father sharply jerked his head, not a trace of compassion on his face. “Do not even bother to argue against this. There is nothing you can say that will convince me to change my mind, young lady.”

  He brushed past her. At the door, he stopped and turned. “Let me remind you that your entire life has been incredibly easy and lavish. The least you can do is avoid bringing your family any more shame.”

  With that, he exited. Gemma’s mother gave her a pale, tight look before following her husband. Then, Gemma was alone—more alone than she had ever been in her whole life.

  2

  2. Mitchell

  Chapter Two

  Shallow Springs, Wyoming Territory

  Land is everything, son. It’s where a man stakes his claim in the world, where he can be truly free to do as he pleases. Do not forget that. The only thing better than land is having a family to share it with.

  Mitchell jerked awake, the dark room pressing around him. His legs were tangled in the sheets, bullets of sweat sliding down his face and back.

  His father’s voice had sounded so real, it was as if he were in Mitchell’s bedroom. Mitch blinked against the morphing shapes in the darkness and rubbed his eyes. What he had heard was in a dream. It had to have been. His father had told him those words years ago, when Mitchell was just a teenager.

  Sighing, Mitchell lay back against the sweat-soaked sheets. At least he hadn’t forgotten what his father’s voice sounded like. Five years and the rich, warm timbres were still embedded in Mitchell’s mind. And just like he could hear his father’s voice, he could see his mother’s face—her sweet, gentle smile, the way she threw her head back when she laughed.

  “Dang.” Mitch rubbed his palm across his eyes and swung his feet to the floor. He was officially awake, which meant there was no point in not getting up and going.

  As he dressed in the dark, the movement of his fingers on buttons and buckle as familiar as familiar could be, he searched for traces of the dream. His father’s hands, tanned and strong, surfaced, but that was all. Whatever phantoms had visited him in the night were long gone.

  Moving quietly through the house so as not to alert Clara, he tiptoed out the back door. If his housekeeper heard him moving around, she would force him to sit down and eat a bite of eggs and ham before heading out, and Mitch did not want to do that. He needed a moment alone with God and the good, green earth.

  The crisp, early May air filled his lungs like a blessing as he headed across the yard and to the horse barn. Still fully dark out, it would be at least half an hour more before the ranch hands woke.

  “How you doin’, girl?” he softly asked Lady, the brown mare that had been his mother’s. “You ready to get some work done?”

  She whinnied softly. He led her out of her stable before saddling her up and jumping on. They trotted north, toward the Rockies and alongside Lullaby Creek. Each soft thud of Lady’s hooves in the earth brought Mitch another wave of peace. It didn’t matter how confusing or awful things got. He always knew he could come back to the wild—and to God.

  Where the creek split off, right before it opened into the hills, Mitchell turned back around. The sky was opening up, letting through rosy pinks and daffodil yellows. In the distance, a figure grew against the ranch’s backdrop.

  By the time he and Beau met by the copse of cottonwoods, Mitchell was a new man. The shock of dreaming of his parents was shaken off, like nothing more than a spider web spun across him overnight. His parents were gone. He would see them again one day – that, he knew for sure – but until then, he had their legacy, Winding Path Ranch, to focus on.

  Unfortunately, the good feeling did not last. The scowl on Mitchell’s closest friend’s face made his stomach sink.

  “What is it?” Mitch demanded before Lady even came to a stop.

  Beau sucked in his lower lip. “I didn’t want to mention this last night...”

  “Go ahead. Say it.”

  Beau removed his hat and ran his fingers through his dark hair. “I thought something was up yesterday when I went to look at the cattle in the East field, but I figured Heathcliff might have spooked some with that new crazy mustang and sent them hiding.” He shook his head. “But I just got up early to look again, and it seems at least three of them are missing.”

  “You check at the barns?”

  “Uh-huh,” Beau slowly said.

  “And down at the pond?”

  “Sure did.”

  Mitchell’s jaw tightened. “I was just down at the creek bed.”

  Beau cocked his head. “And no signs of them there?”

  “No.” He turned in the saddle to gaze at the monolithic mountains behind him. “Though, they could have followed the creek on up into the hills.”

  Beau nodded. “I’ll get a few together to go on and look for them.”

  “Wait till after breakfast. Clara will have a fit if I let you go up there without a good meal first.”

  Beau chuckled. “I wouldn’t want to put you in the path of her wrath.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  They rode back to the main house in silence, trotting past the just-stirring cattle in the grass, the half dozen ranch hand cabins on the slope, and the cantankerous chickens. With every step Lady took, the stone in Mitch’s gut grew twice as heavy.

  Three heads missing. Add that to the two that up and vanished several weeks before and things weren’t looking good.

  Winding Path Ranch had hundreds of cattle and more than enough land for them to roam and eat their fill on. For some to go missing every once in a while was expected. Often, they’d end up with a neighboring ranch’s cattle, or
eating some fresh grass down by the wooded area. But if heads were going missing and not being found at all, that pointed to a different situation entirely—a more problematic, sinister one.

  “I’ll go talk to Greene and Waters later,” Beau said, reading Mitchell’s mind, “and get them to check their heads.”

  Mitch nodded and their eyes briefly caught. He didn’t need to tell Beau about his worries. The man had been roping and branding for years longer than Mitch had. He knew when something was amiss.

  The last round of cattle that had gone missing didn’t end up with Waters or Greene’s heads. Mitch had a feeling this new group wouldn’t, either.

  Returning their horses to the barn, Mitchell and Beau trudged up to the house, the realization of what could be occurring on the ranch sitting heavy between them. There hadn’t been rustlers around Shallow Springs for years. If they were making the rounds once more, they could be hard to track down. The mountains held more places to hide than any bandit could wish for.

  The cacophony coming from the main house’s dining room was just as loud as it always was—a small comfort for Mitch. The dozen ranch hands rubbed sleep from their eyes as they shoveled eggs and reached across one other for more slices of meat. A few of them nodded to the two men entering, but most of them yammered on, joshing each other and talking about some party at the hotel that weekend.

  “Now, what is that look for?”

  Clara frowned at Mitchell, the brows above her usually sparkling eyes pushing together.

  Mitch forced himself to smile. “Nothing at all, Aunt Clara. Don’t you worry about it.”

  “Hush now. You know I will.” Reaching past him, she set a bowl of fried potatoes on the table. No sooner had the container hit the wood than were the boys’ hands all over it.

  Clara put a hand on her hip and turned back to Mitch, her skirts knocking against his leg. Although they had no blood relation, Mitch had taken to calling Clara “aunt” the very year she came on to work for his family. His parents’ deaths had made the endearing nickname mean that much more to him. Though she was energetic for a woman in her fifties, Mitchell had lately noticed the new gray streaking through her soft brown hair—yet another reminder to him of how fast time was slipping by.

  “You look like death,” she snapped.

  “I must not be getting enough of your good food.”

  Clara pursed her lips and shook her head before ambling off to the kitchen. “Gracious me,” she mumbled to herself. “Don’t know why I try… Every time these men...”

  “What’s the word?” someone asked from the other end of the table.

  Mitchell didn’t need to look over to know it was Samuel talking, but he connected his eyes with the man’s anyway. “At least three heads are gone.”

  The chit-chat stalled slightly at the announcement, everyone pausing in their conversations to take in the news.

  Samuel interlaced his fingers behind his head and tipped his chair back, rocking it against the wooden floor. Irritation prickled Mitchell’s chest and burned his throat. He knew the words that were going to come out of Samuel’s mouth before the other man had the chance to so much as draw a breath.

  “I told you,” he drawled. “We gon’ need to get more hands in here.”

  Mitchell worked to keep his face smooth, aware now of all the eyes on him. The ranch couldn’t afford to hire any more help—especially not with cattle up and vanishing. But this wasn’t something his employees needed to know. Sweating over the books was Mitchell’s job, and his alone.

  Mitchell kept his voice as cool as the water running down from the mountains. “We’ve been doing just fine, Samuel. The issue is not whether we have enough hands.”

  Samuel raised his brows and looked to the side, his silent look letting everyone know that he disagreed with his boss.

  “Beau is going over to Waters’ and Greene’s to see if the cattle headed on over there. He’ll need someone to split that with him. The rest of you all, take care today looking for anything that seems off.”

  Nat, the young blond hand sitting near the head of the table, eagerly nodded his head. Grabbing his hat from the back of his chair, he hopped right up. “Those new heifers are acting all slow and out of sorts. I’m gonna go check on them right now.”

  It wasn’t what Mitch had been talking about at all, but Nat was energetic and eager to do anything and everything. Mitch wasn’t about to shoot his offer down.

  As Nat loped across the floor, Mitchell took note of the slow smirk on Samuel’s face. Before he slipped and retaliated, he forced himself to turn and leave the dining room.

  Samuel was the ranch’s longest employee, the one who’d helped Mitchell’s father build the ranch from the bones up. He was also the oldest hand there. Combine those two facts, and the man fancied himself God Almighty of ranching.

  It wasn’t his cockiness that riled Mitchell up, though. It was his tendency to chew Mitch out in front of others. It was a show of bravado, a move meant to intimidate his boss.

  And it was something Mitch didn’t have time for.

  Cattle were going missing on the ranch. Whether their disappearances were natural or caused by man, Mitch had to move fast. With every head gone missing, a piece of Winding Path vanished as well. If things continued in this fashion, Mitch would have no choice but to sell the farm and quit the life his parents had built for him.

  Grinding his teeth together, he went across the porch and down the lawn, following Nat to the horse stable, the awful truth trailing him the whole way. Without the ranch, Mitchell Reed had nothing. Without the ranch, he was nothing.

  3

  3. Gemma

  Chapter Three

  Gemma flipped through the book, running her fingers across the familiar earmarked pages. Finding her favorite story, she settled back against the cushions and began to read.

  A minute later, she closed the book again, getting up to clasp her hands behind her back and pace around the parlor. On a day like this, not even the one thing that could take her away from the awful world—stories—did her any good.

  The double doors opened and both her parents strode through. One look at Gemma and her mother’s lips turned down. “You are wearing that old thing?”

  Gemma looked down at her pink dress. “What does it matter what I wear?”

  Her father made a noise of irritation as he went to pour himself a glass of brandy. Three days had passed since they’d presented Gemma with their awful plan for her, and many arguments and tears had followed.

  At this point, Gemma was undeniably out of options. Realizing there was no use in trying to delay marriage any longer, she’d attempted to persuade her father to let her look a bit longer for a husband. If there were no eligible men left in New York, perhaps they could try Boston or Richmond?

  But no. Her father, in his words, was tired of Gemma’s games and attempts to delay the inevitable, and that was that.

  Taking a sip from his tumbler, he turned to face her, his eyes raking across her face. Gemma lifted her chin and defiantly gazed back. “What if he does not want to marry me?”

  “Unlikely.” He swirled his glass, the ice clinking together. “This marriage will be advantageous to Picoult. His parents were not as… successful… as him. Despite your difficulties, you still come from a well-respected family. You should thank God for that.”

  “So, my own feelings in this situation, my own welfare… they still mean nothing to you?”

  A low growl rumbled from his throat. “You will not question me anymore, Gemma Campbell. I have had quite enough of your charlatan attitude. I suggest you not try it on your new husband, lest he decide to punish you in whatever way he sees fit.”

  Hot tears pushed at the backs of Gemma’s eyes, but she kept them at bay. Her father had seen enough of her emotional side in the last few days. She had the sense he derived a strange satisfaction from seeing her distressed—perhaps thinking she was finally being dealt what she deserved. If that were the case, she wou
ld no longer supply him with any reasons to think of her as weak. She would remain strong, hard as a rock.

  No matter that she was dying inside.

  A rap came on the thick doors a moment before they opened. “William Picoult has arrived,” announced Larsson, the butler, in his thick Swedish accent.

  All of Gemma’s muscles bunched together, coiling her body into a tight spring. She knew nothing of the man about to step through the door, having only gleaned from her parents that he was in the lumber trade. Anxiety pounded through her, her fear so thick that the stray dogs out on the street must have smelled it.