Caitlyn's Prize

CAITLYN RODE INTO the barn, feeling more determined than ever. Judd Calhoun would not take everything she loved.

As she unsaddled Red, it crossed her mind that she had once loved Judd. And if a psychologist chiseled through the stubborn layers of pride encased around her heart, a flicker of love might still be there. But Judd had just killed whatever remaining emotion she had ever felt for him. Guilt, her constant companion for years, had just vanished.

Now she was fighting mad.

“Hey, where did you take off to?” Cooper asked, walking into the barn, with Rufus a step behind him.

Her cowhands were outcasts, both of them ex-cons who worked cheap. She trusted them with her life.

Cooper Yates was bad to the bone—that’s what people in High Cotton said about him. He’d had a nightmarish childhood, with a father who beat him regularly. In his teens he’d been in and out of juvenile hall.

Coop had been a year ahead of her in school and she’d always liked him. They were friends, sharing a love of horses.

After high school, Coop worked on several horse farms, determined to stay out of trouble. But trouble always seemed to follow him. When he’d hired on at an operation in Weatherford, Texas, several thoroughbred horses died unexpectedly. An investigation determined that the pesticide mixed with the feed to kill weevils had been incorrectly applied.

The owner pointed the finger at Coop. They’d gotten into a fight and the owner had filed charges. Cooper was arrested, tried and convicted. He’d spent six months in a Huntsville prison.

When Caitlyn heard the news, she was convinced Coop was innocent. There was nothing he didn’t know about horses or their feed. She’d been proved right. The cover-up soon unraveled. The owner had mixed the feed and had used Coop as a scapegoat. Her friend was released, but the damage had been done. No one would hire him.

Caitlyn had urged her father to take a chance on Coop. He’d been working on High Five for three years now.

Rufus, the husband of Etta, their housekeeper, was now in his seventies. Years ago he’d been in a bar with friends when he saw a guy slap his girlfriend and slam her against the wall. Rufus pulled him off her and the man took a swing at him. Rufus ducked and managed to swing back, hard. The man went down and out—for good. His head hit a table and that was it.

Rufus had been tried and convicted. He’d spent three years in a Huntsville prison for involuntary manslaughter. When he was released, he came home to Etta and High Five. They were a part of the Belle extended family.

Cait threw Red’s saddle over a sawhorse, then pushed back her hat. “I have a heap of problems, guys.”

“What happened?” Coop asked. He was always the protective one.

She figured honesty was the best policy, so she told them the news.

“Shit,” Rufus said, and quickly caught himself. “Sorry, Miss Caitlyn. Didn’t mean to curse. It just slipped out.”

“Don’t worry, Ru. I’ll be doing a lot of that in the days to come.” She took a breath. “I don’t know how much I’ll be able to pay you, so it’s up to you whether you go or stay.”

“I’m staying,” Coop replied without hesitation. “I’m here until Judd forces us out.”

Rufus rubbed his face in thought. “I go where my Etta goes, and she ain’t leaving High Five or Miss Dorie. I’m staying, too.”

“Thanks, guys. Now I have to go tell Gran.” Cait had had no doubt about the men staying. They were close. They were family.

“We’re going to fix that fence in the northeast pasture,” Coop said. “I guess we now have to play nice with the lofty Calhouns.”

A smile touched her lips for the first time all day. “We’re going to play, but I’m not thinking nice.”

Coop grinned and it softened the harshness she often saw on his face.

She waved toward her horse. “Would you please rub down Red and feed her? I have to see Gran.”

“You’re gonna let me take care of Red?” One of Coop’s eyebrows shot to the brim of his worn Stetson. “Did you hear that, Ru?”

“Yes, siree, I did.”

She placed her hands on her hips. “Okay, I don’t like other people taking care of my horse, so what?”

Cooper bowed from the waist. “I’ll treat her with the utmost care, ma’am.”

She shook her head and walked toward the house. The two-story wood-frame dwelling wasn’t as fancy as the Calhoun spread. John Cotton, her great-great-grandfather, who’d settled High Cotton with Will Calhoun in the late 1800s, had had simpler taste.

The exterior was weatherboard siding that desperately needed a coat of paint. The hip roof sported four chimneys, but since Grandfather Bart had installed central air and heat, they were rarely used.

Brick piers supported Doric half columns along three sides of the wraparound porch. A slat-wood balustrade enclosed the porch with a decorative touch. Black plantation shutters added another touch, as did the beveled glass door that had been there since the house was built.

In the summers Cait and her sisters used to sleep out on the porch in sleeping bags, laughing and sharing secrets. What she had to share now wasn’t going to be easy.

She picked up her stride and breezed through the back veranda into the kitchen. Etta was at the stove, stirring something in a pot.

“Where’s Gran?”

“In her room.” Etta always seemed to have a spoon in her hand, and she waved it now. “I’m almost afraid to go up there.” The housekeeper was tiny and spry, with short gray hair, a loyal and honest woman with a heart of gold. Cait had never met a better person.

Etta was fiercely loyal to Dorie, and worried about her. Since her son’s death, Dorie tended to live in a world removed from reality. As kids, playing make-believe with Gran had been a favorite pastime for Caitlyn and her sisters. But lately it had gotten out of hand.

“What is she doing?” Cait asked.

“She had me help her get that old trunk out of the attic. She was pulling clothes out of it when I came down to start supper. We’re having stew and cornbread.”

“Etta…” Cait sighed. “Neither you nor Gran are to pull trunks out of the attic. I’ll do it or Coop will.”

“She was in a hurry, and you know how Miss Dorie is.”

“Yes.” Cait turned toward the stairs in the big kitchen. “I’ll go talk to her.”

CAIT KNOCKED ON her grandmother’s door, stepping into the room when she heard her call, “Come in.” Then she stopped and stared.

Gran stood in front of a full-length mirror, in a dress from the 1930s. It fit her slim figure perfectly. She wore heels and a jaunty hat that were also of that era.

“Gran, what are you doing?”

“‘I’ve been betrayed so often by tomorrows, I don’t dare promise them.’”

Cait blinked. That made no sense. Though it kinda, sorta exemplified their situation, she thought.

“Remember that line, baby?” Gran primped in front of the mirror, turning this way and that way.

“No, I don’t.” Cait was thirty-three and her grandmother still called her “baby.” She wondered if Gran would ever see her as an adult.

“Bette Davis.” Dorie whirled to face her. “As Joyce Heath in Dangerous. Let’s play movies of the thirties.”