The Rancher's Dance Read online

  And in those eighteen months, Beck had managed to keep his interactions with everyone outside his own family to a bare minimum.

  The only reason he’d agreed to the build for Cage and Belle Buchanan had been because it was July and Beck knew it was better if he stayed busy—really busy—in July. His chores around the ranch and the few head of cattle he ran just wasn’t enough.

  And dawdling around noticing the attributes of his neighbor’s daughter wasn’t staying busy at all. “I’d better get to it.”

  She didn’t seem offended. She leaned over to pick up her coffee mug. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  The band of exposed skin widened fractionally.

  When she straightened, he managed to move his lips in what he supposed was a reasonable facsimile of a smile. Enough so that her pleasant expression didn’t change.

  But as he moved away from her, he imagined he could feel those otherworldly eyes watching him go.

  He waited until he turned around the corner of the brick house before he let out a breath. And waited even longer until he reached the framework of the addition he was building on the rear side of the house before he loosened his white-knuckled grip on his toolbox and set it on a stack of lumber next to some sawhorses.

  “Only thing I need died three years ago,” he muttered to the morning air. Two years, eleven months and sixteen days ago, to be exact.

  Lucy sat back down on the porch steps and cradled the coffee mug in her hands as she watched her parents’ neighbor stride out of sight.

  It was just after six in the morning and the warmth of the mug between her palms wasn’t quite enough to counter the cool air. It definitely wasn’t enough to counter the chill that had been in Beck Ventura’s eyes.

  She didn’t know all that much about the man except for the brief details her folks had shared. That he was building an addition for them. That he was their nearest neighbor, although he didn’t socialize much.

  And that he was a widower, living with his father and his small daughter.

  Having met him herself, now she knew that he was tall, broad-shouldered and lean. Those chilly, painfully solemn eyes were a muddy shade of green and he had only spoken to her because he’d obviously figured he’d had to.

  She hitched her scarf over her shoulders again, sipped the coffee that was still hot, even if it had stopped steaming, and stared out at the land around the house.

  At least the man had picked a good place to raise his child. Lucy might have become an East Coast transplant, but she’d loved growing up on the Lazy-B. The cattle ranch had been in the Buchanan family since her father was a boy, but now at least half the branded cattle growing fat on Lazy-B grass carried the Double-C brand, which was pretty much the largest operation in the state of Wyoming. It was owned by the Clay family. They happened to be Lucy’s family, too, thanks to the marriage between Lucy’s grandmother, Gloria, to Squire Clay, who was the ranching family’s patriarch.

  Lucy still considered marrying Gloria’s daughter, Belle, to be the smartest thing her dad had ever done. Not because Belle was one of the wealthy, influential Clay clan, but because she made her dad happy. One summer, Belle had come to the Lazy-B to help Lucy recover from a knee injury that had landed her in a wheelchair for months, and she’d ended up becoming the only mother who mattered.

  Now, Lucy tugged up the leg of her loose pajama bottoms and studied that same knee that she’d injured yet again.

  It was covered with a miserable choreography of scars. They were long and had paled over the years, having been earned when she was twelve from being thrown from a horse that had been too wild for her not-inconsiderable horse skills. But the current problem with her knee showed no scar.

  Just swelling and bruises that, over the course of the past several weeks, had evolved into a putrid shade of greenish yellow.

  A truck heading up the drive caught her attention. She pushed down the pant leg as she watched the vehicle race along the gravel until it came to an abrupt stop next to Beck Ventura’s dark blue pickup.

  She set aside her coffee again and pulled herself to her feet. “Caleb!” She’d wondered when he’d show his face.

  Her brother stepped out of the truck, looking rumpled and crabby, although he slanted her a grin as he headed her way. “Hey.” His voice was deep and he looked like their father, only his hair was as dark as chocolate, courtesy of Belle. “When the hell did you get here?”

  “Last night. And when did you get old enough to be staying out all night?” she asked as he caught her in a big, welcoming hug.

  He set her back on her feet and grinned. “Gonna rat me out to the folks?”

  “I didn’t interrupt Mom and Dad’s vacation to tell them I was coming home until I got here, so I hardly think I’m going to interrupt them with tales of your wild ways,” she said drily. “You were with Kelly, I suppose?” Kelly Rasmusson had been Caleb’s girlfriend since high school, sticking with him even when he’d left for college and she’d stayed behind in Weaver.

  Caleb grimaced a little. “Not this time.” He reached over to nab her coffee for himself. His brown eyes squinted as he drank down the brew. “That the rental you drove all the way from New York?” He jerked his head toward the economy car that looked particularly small situated as it was in front of two large pickup trucks.

  She nodded. “I’ll need to turn it in sometime this week. There’s an office over in Braden.” The town was Weaver’s closest neighbor, about thirty miles away. And even though both communities were small, when combined, they usually provided whatever the residents needed.

  “I’ve got some stuff to take care of there this afternoon. I can take it if you want.”

  She wasn’t about to turn down the offer. “How will you get back if you’re driving it?”

  Her brother just shrugged. “I’ll grab a ride from someone,” he said dismissively, just as the high-pitched whine of a power tool rent the air, startling Lucy. “Beck’s at it early.”

  A shiver danced over her skin and she hitched her scarf up yet again. She’d forgotten how chilly it could be in the mornings even in the throes of summer. “When does he usually start?”

  Her brother shrugged. “Depends.” He looked at the grass under their feet and grimaced. “Needed to get this mowed a week ago.”

  “And why haven’t you?” She poked a finger into his ribs, which had him squawking and jumping to one side. “Just because it’s your summer vacation from college classes doesn’t mean the chores stop.”

  Caleb rolled his eyes. “Sounding a little like Dad, there, Luce.” Still hogging her coffee, he launched up the front porch steps. “Figured all those years in New York would’ve knocked that outta you by now.”

  “Shows you’re not as smart as three years of college ought to have made you.” She followed him inside and closed the door. The whine of the power tool continued but more muted now. “How much longer before you finish?” He was studying pre-med.

  He headed straight through the simply laid-out house to the kitchen at the rear and dumped his keys on the granite counter that had replaced the worn laminate that Lucy remembered from her childhood. “A long damn time.” He drained her coffee and left the empty mug next to the keys before hooking open the stainless steel refrigerator. Another thing that had been updated over the years. As had the rest of the appliances and fixtures in the old house. Before now, her parents hadn’t expanded the space, but there had been improvements.

  She smoothed her hand over the granite and looked out the window above the kitchen sink. She could see Beck Ventura’s tousled brown hair but not the rest of him.

  She moved across the room.

  Then she could see him properly, even though he was facing away from the house and focusing on the length of lumber he was measuring. As she watched, he shoved the measuring tape back into his tool belt, flipped the wood around with an ease that belied its awkward length, and slapped it through a saw.

  Took thirty seconds, tops.
/>   She still managed to memorize the play of muscles beneath the white T-shirt he wore and admire the economy of his movements.

  Then his head suddenly turned and he looked straight at her through the window, as if he’d known she’d been standing there all along.

  Her pulse tripped strangely, but she managed a smile and a wave before turning casually away again.

  Only to find Caleb watching her over the leftover baked pork chop from her dinner the night before that he was eating cold from the refrigerator. “So what are you really doing here, Luce?”

  “Just having a little R and R.”

  He didn’t look convinced and his doubt helped alleviate the guilt she’d been feeling for not telling her parents all of the details that had gone into her “sudden” cross-country drive from New York to Wyoming.

  If she couldn’t manage to convince her little brother that everything was a-okay, there’s no way on earth she could have convinced her parents.

  Belle and Lucy’s father had left for the vacation of a lifetime nearly two weeks earlier and before they’d left, Lucy had carefully refrained from telling them just how serious her accident had been so that they wouldn’t put off their trip.

  She certainly hadn’t told them what had precipitated the fall resulting in her injury either.

  What would have been accomplished by telling them how she’d walked in on Lars—the man she’d lived with, worked with and thought she’d loved—busily entertaining his newest protégée, Natalia, in their bed?

  Knowing her father, he’d have just wanted to kill the man his daughter had been living with for the past two years.

  She also hadn’t told her mother that the fall that landed her in a knee brace for three weeks, putting the kibosh on her summer touring plans—as well as her status with NEBT—had occurred during her blind retreat from that particular sight. Nor had she told her mother that in those weeks since, she’d been staying with her friend Isabella, who was the company’s wardrobe supervisor.

  The wonders of cell phones and email. Neither of which depended upon a permanent address.

  She pulled out a fresh coffee mug and focused on pouring another cup from the coffeemaker.

  Did she feel guilty for keeping those details from her folks? Yes. Was there a point to lessening her guilt by confessing all to her parents? No. They’d only have insisted on canceling their six-week-long European trip that had been years in the making.

  It wasn’t often that Cage Buchanan voluntarily stepped away from the ranch that was his lifeblood as well as his livelihood. There was no way that Lucy wanted to be responsible for ruining it.

  “My knee is doing great,” she told her brother, slightly more optimistically than the truth merited. “But I had a taste for home.” She glanced at him. “You know what that’s like or you wouldn’t spend your entire summer break here. And because I’m not working right now, might as well indulge the yen, right?”

  He polished off the pork chop and licked his fingers. “Guess. You talked to anyone else since you got in?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll check in with Leandra and everyone later.” Leandra Taggart was one of her many cousins who lived in Weaver.

  “If they don’t get hold of you first,” Caleb drawled, because that was just as likely when word got around that she’d come home. He glanced over her head. “Looks like Beck’s gonna get the rest of the framing done today.”

  She didn’t have a clue what framing was, but she nodded anyway. “He seems nice enough.” For a man whose eyes were nearly devoid of all emotion.

  “Does good work, at least.” Caleb opened the refrigerator door and began poking around again. “Used to be an architect in Denver.”

  Surprised, she looked out the window again. “Can’t remember an architect ever setting up shop in Weaver before.” Closest thing to it was Daniel Clay, one of Squire’s five sons, who operated the only significant construction company in the area. “Is he running any stock at his place?”

  “Don’t think he has opened shop,” Caleb said. “He just does a few building projects here and there. And yeah, he’s got a few head of cattle. Enough to keep him busy when he’s not doing the contractor thing.” He closed the refrigerator and gave her a calculating look. “Don’t suppose you’ve taken a cooking class or anything recently, have you?”

  “Is that supposed to be a subtle way of asking if I’ve become a better cook ’cause you’re thinking I’ll start keeping your belly full?”

  “I can only hope. Only thing you ever make are brownies and the occasional breakfast.”

  “Ha ha.” She slid the plastic-wrapped loaf of bread that sat on the counter toward him. “Here. Peanut butter and jelly,” she suggested drily. “It used to work when you were ten.” She draped her scarf over the back of one of the leather-upholstered kitchen chairs and carrying her fresh coffee, started to head out of the room.

  “Damn, Luce. You’re walking like a cripple.”

  She gave him the stink eye. “Nice bedside manner, Dr. Buchanan.”

  He grimaced. “I just didn’t realize how badly you’d still be limping. You said it was a mild sprain.”

  “It’s stiffer in the morning,” she lied. “Another month or so—by the time Mom and Dad get back, probably—I’ll be right as rain.”

  She hoped.

  Because if she wasn’t, then everything she had in her life—her career—really would be over.

  She deliberately turned her thoughts away from that particular pity party as well as the suspicion on Caleb’s face. “Because you’re being nice and taking care of my rental car, I’ll take care of the grass this afternoon for you,” she told her brother as she headed out of the kitchen once more. Driving around on a riding mower wasn’t going to cause her knee any harm and getting out in the sunshine would hopefully get rid of the dark corners in her head. “But you can still muck out the stalls in the stable,” she called over her shoulder, smiling a little because that was a chore she knew her brother dearly despised.

  “Just because you’re way older than me,” his voice called after her, “doesn’t mean you still get to order me around.”

  Her smile died as she faced the staircase that led to her bedroom on the second floor. Caleb was only joking and she knew it. But that didn’t make the truth hurt any less.

  Thirty-three.

  She grimaced and made herself slowly climb the stairs.

  Every step was agony.

  As cool as it had been that morning, by the middle of the afternoon, the sun was beating down fine and true.

  Lucy sat on the riding mower dressed in denim cutoffs and a T-shirt that she’d found in her old dresser, directing the small tractor back and forth across the acre that fronted the ranch house.

  Beads of sweat trickled down her spine and her muscles felt warm and loose. It was the closest she’d felt to a good workout for three miserably long weeks.

  She reached the edge of lawn and turned to cut the last swath of grass in front of the house. She tipped her head back, lifting the brim of her ancient straw Resistol and narrowed her eyes against the sunshine.

  She smelled fresh-cut grass, clear air and nothing but summer. At that moment, the beginning of the ballet season seemed eons away and anything seemed possible.

  Even dancing? a small persistent voice whispered inside her head.

  She ignored the voice and looked ahead again, tugging the brim of her cowboy hat back down to shade her eyes as she aimed toward the side of the house.

  When she’d finally made her way back downstairs earlier after catching up on the phone with her grandmother and most of her cousins, there’d been no sign of Caleb, though he’d moved the mower next to the house for her from where it was usually stored in the machine shed. He’d also moved his truck from next to Beck’s over to the barn.

  Fortunately, some things didn’t change.

  As far as her brother was concerned, there was no point in walking when there was riding that could be done instead
. And because there was no sign of her rental car, she assumed that he was already driving it over to Braden.

  Something else that hadn’t changed were her mother’s flower beds that ran the width of the house. Lucy nudged the mower along the edge of them.

  And that, too, felt good.

  The sun. The sweat. The small details surrounding the roots of a life that still remained constant even if she’d exchanged them long ago for ballet barres and rehearsals and the heat of stage lights.

  She reached the back of the house.

  There was something that was not a constant.

  Not the signs of expansion to her childhood home. Not the fresh foundation or the frames where new roof and walls and windows would eventually stand.

  But the man who had his back toward her as he hefted an entire “wall” of studs into place.

  He didn’t so much as glance her way as he wielded a hammer that looked immensely heavy, nudging here, pounding there, until he reached for a nail gun that he swung around with astonishing speed.

  She wasn’t the only one sweating.

  She could see the moisture on the back of his neck where his nut-brown hair waved into spikes. The line of sweat was working down the back of his T-shirt, making the cotton cling even more.

  As she watched, he ran his forearm over his face and turned to glance at her.

  Her mouth ran dry. That was all there was to it.

  “Need something?” he asked loudly enough to be heard over the mower.

  She shook her head. She ought to be asking him that. He was working much harder than she was trolling around on her riding mower. Maybe he needed water or something.

  But getting her lips to form words seemed as impossible as it would have been for her to leap off the mower and do fouetté turns across the grass. She might be able to make her body do it, but the results would be comical at best and humiliating at worst.

  His brows hitched together after her silence stretched on a second too long, and she swallowed hard. “Looks good,” she managed, and was glad that there was no way for him to know the heat in her face wasn’t owed strictly to the sunlight.