Mom's The Word

So, yes. Jake Cooper had an agenda. He wanted free access to the spring. He’d said his family had plans to buy this chunk of land and all the acreage that adjoined it, if and when her grandfather relinquished his claim.

Well…maybe Cooper had a water agreement with Gramps, and maybe he didn’t.

Hayley shook off the uncharitable thoughts that kept crowding in. Jake Cooper had made an effort to be friendly. She needed the fresh produce he’d brought. She needed milk and eggs, too. Why hadn’t she asked him if he knew of anyone who might sell her a milk cow or a couple of laying hens? Instead of getting so touchy, she should have made inquiries of her own.

JAKE RETREATED to the top of a rise that overlooked Hayley Ryan’s camp. Dismounting, he tied Mojave to a scrub oak and flung himself flat behind a slab of granite. Charcoal whined as Jake peeled off his gloves and trained a pair of binoculars on the Ryan woman.

“It’s okay, boy,” Jake murmured. “We’ll hunt strays in a little while. For now, find a shady spot and rest your bones.”

The dog flipped his ears to and fro, then stretched out under a tree. Eventually he settled his nose on his front paws, never taking his eyes off Jake.

Jake wasn’t sure what he’d expected Hayley to do once he’d gone. He felt a vague disappointment when she returned to her chair and stuck her nose in one of the books she had piled beside her.

“Crazy woman,” he growled. “Acts like she’s at a resort, instead of smack-dab in the middle of the wilderness.” He watched her read for the better part of an hour. Suddenly she glanced up and straight at his hiding place. Jake found himself yanking off his white hat, lest she spot him and get it into her head to take another shot. This time with her rifle.

Common sense told him he was too well hidden to be seen by the naked eye. Her naked eye. And brother, what eyes they were. So dark a blue they were almost purple. Still staring through his powerful binoculars, Jake all but drooled on the bandanna around his neck. He didn’t relax until she returned her interest to the book.

That didn’t last. She soon tossed it aside, stood and shaded her eyes, staring hard in his direction. She turned slowly as if searching the hills for something in particular. Or someone.

Jake realized the sun had shifted and was probably reflecting off the lenses of his binoculars. “Crap.” He dropped the glasses and scooted back on his belly until he was safely into the trees. “Why don’t I just send up a flare and announce I’m snooping?” he muttered disgustedly.

Lifting his head, Charcoal barked.

“Shh.” Jake raised a hand. “Sound carries down these ravines, boy. And we don’t want the lady to know the Triple C plans to keep her under surveillance for a while.”

The dog cocked his head, gazing at Jake intelligently before slithering to his side.

Grinning, Jake rubbed a hand between the dog’s ears. “I know. You think I’ve taken leave of my senses. Which is precisely what Dillon will say if I don’t hightail it out of here.”

Dillon was expecting him to report the total number of strays between the ranch and Hell’s Gate, where they were to meet. He’d been at the number-five line shack all week, moving half the herd into summer pastures. Jake was due to connect with him at three o’clock to exchange head counts and…Jake winced. The produce he’d left with Hayley had been meant to replenish his brother’s dwindling supplies. Dillon would have a fit when he learned Jacob had given away the food Eden had fixed for him.

Of course, Dillon would be grumpy, anyway, having spent four nights without his wife. They’d be apart a week all told. Hell, that wasn’t Jake’s fault. He’d offered to move the herd. It was a chore he used to do with his dad while Dillon oversaw the ranch. Last winter, though, Wade Cooper had tangled with a rogue cow and his bum hip hadn’t fully healed. His doctor recommended Wade let the boys handle fall roundup alone. Dillon didn’t have a good eye for spotting strays in the canyons. Not like Jake did. As a result, Dillon got stuck driving the steers to pasture.

Taking a last look through his binoculars, just to verify that Hayley Ryan had gone about her business, Jake climbed into the saddle again and set off to complete the job he’d started.

HAYLEY COULDN’T SHAKE the notion she was being watched. She’d closed her book once and let her gaze roam the nearby hills. Nothing moved and nothing appeared to be amiss. Refilling her teacup, she’d returned to her reading. The feeling persisted. Finally she felt so uneasy that she rose and walked to the edge of the clearing. Shading her eyes against the morning sun, she concentrated on a rocky promontory where she thought she’d seen a flash—like the sun reflecting off a mirror.

Hayley stared at the spot so long she became dizzy. Or had she gotten dizzy from self-imposed fright? Her heart was certainly beating fast.

When she could see no sign of any human presence, Hayley gave herself a stern mental shake. She decided that sitting around doing nothing but reading was making her paranoid. Why would anyone skulk around spying on her? No one other than that cowboy even knew she was here. He’d said his piece last night and had made amends today. She’d been perfectly honest about her reasons for being here.

As for the possibility of someone else keeping an eye on her, well, this wasn’t exactly a people watcher’s paradise. And it was too early for hunters to be combing the hills.

“There, see?” she exclaimed, marching back to her trailer, “You have an overactive imagination, Ms. Ryan. Get over it.”

The best way she knew to allay her fears was through physical labor. Rather than digging willy-nilly when she had no information about what to look for or where to search, Hayley elected to conduct a survey of the site. Gramps must have left, if not an open shaft, then at least test holes that might give her an idea of what he was after.

She loaded a day pack with a rock hammer and a cigar box divided into small compartments to serve as a collection box for specimens. She slapped together a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and added sunglasses and a baseball cap to her stash, before she filled a canteen at the spring. Despite the growing heat, the water was cool and sweet.

“This water could be lifeblood to a rancher,” she said to no one. No one except two squirrels who frolicked on a nearby branch. Their presence, and the melodious trill of songbirds flitting about, dispelled the last of Hayley’s anxiety.

Who needed human companionship when there was all this wonderful wildlife to serve as company and an early-warning system? Hayley took a measure of assurance from the fact that birds squawked and squirrels fled at the mere sound of her footsteps.

She trudged through the trees, walking a blanket of pine needles. For a time she was more interested in the flora and fauna all around her than in settling down to look for test holes in the pockmarked granite hills. She climbed steadily for the better part of two hours before she came to a man-made depression in the facer rock. Bits of broken rock lay strewn about. Hayley paused to inspect the dynamited debris. Quartz and pyrite were all she found. Obviously her grandfather hadn’t wasted much time on this spot.

Hayley continued upward. Eventually the trail petered out and the going got tougher. She could tell that Ben hadn’t taken his search this high. But now that Hayley had climbed all the way up here, she wanted to examine her claim from the ridge a little above her. Even if getting there appeared more suited to mountain goats than humans.

She was winded by the time she reached the sheared-off granite table. The view was everything she’d anticipated. Spectacular hills and valleys stretched out on all four sides. The binoculars she’d found in Gramps’s trailer were old and one lens was scratched; however, they served her purpose and helped her pinpoint his dig sites.

Four were visible to the right and below her. All seemed to follow one deep arroyo. Shedding her backpack, Hayley dusted off a wide flat rock. She clambered onto it, then pulled out her sandwich and a pad and pencil. While she ate, she drew a rough map, sketching in significant trees and boulders and other pertinent features around the test holes, so she could find them again.

As she turned her attention farther afield, a splash of moving color caught her interest. Cattle. The undulations of rock-strewn arroyos were dotted with white-faced steers. Beyond them were square cultivated fields of hay. It seemed strange to see signs of human habitation interspersed with miles of palo verde, ocotillo, yucca and prickly pear. Near the edge of what Hayley judged to be her line of demarcation, were piles of volcanic rock, many with a green tint. Copper. Had her grandfather been drawn to this site by such blatant evidence of copper—before prices plummeted?

A horse and rider came into view over a grassy knoll. The glasses brought him to within seeming arm’s length of Hayley. Her breath did a funny hitch. Jacob Cooper. He, too, had field glasses raised to his face. For a moment Hayley had the oddest feeling that they were staring at each other. But no, Cooper’s head rotated downward. He’d zeroed in on a group of wandering steers. As she studied him, he dragged a pad from his shirt pocket, similar to the one fluttering on her lap. He withdrew a pencil from his pocket and made notations on his pad. Hayley watched until he returned the items to his pocket and let the binoculars swing free around his neck. He nudged the bay’s flanks, and as quickly as he’d appeared, he rode out of sight. The collie trotted complacently at his side.

Only then did Hayley realize she’d been holding her breath. As she let it out, she had to acknowledge that he’d been a sight worth ogling.

Jacob Cooper’s shoulders were wide. His torso tapered to lean hips that melded perfectly to his saddle. His butt was encased in denim so worn it seemed almost white in the brilliant sunlight. Having accidentally honed in on his long legs, Hayley realized why the worn denim hadn’t made an impression before. He wore chaps to keep from being torn to pieces by cactus thorns. His chaps met scuffed and spurless boots. Hayley liked that. She’d always thought spurs were showy, and that the men who relied on them had little regard for the welfare of their horses.

A warm ripple ran up Hayley’s spine when she realized Jake Cooper was exactly what he’d claimed to be. A rancher. She couldn’t say why she’d felt any doubt before. Quite possibly because she was guilty of swallowing so many of Joe’s lines. Hayley didn’t think she’d ever be quite so trusting again.

She reminded herself that one good thing had come out of her brief sojourn with Joseph Ryan. A baby. The reminder brought her crashing back to the present—to her reason for sitting on a broad rock at the top of a dusty lonely hill. She’d come here to find the treasure her grandfather thought was somewhere in this desolate tract of land. She had no business wasting time salivating over Mr. Cooper’s skinny butt, even if it was a nine and a half on a scale of ten.

Sighing, Hayley folded her empty sandwich bag and tucked it into her backpack to use another day. Telling herself she’d probably never see Jacob Cooper again, she took a long pull from her canteen, then started her downhill climb.

JAKE HAD GLIMPSED Hayley Ryan seated on a flat rock at the very top of Yellow Jacket Hill. He’d been surprised to see she’d hiked so far since late morning, when he’d observed her scanning the hill from her camp. He’d been more surprised, though, to see her peering at him through binoculars. Jake didn’t know whether she’d caught him giving her the once-over. He’d certainly made a show of counting steers to throw her off. His heart had yet to settle into a normal rhythm. Hayley Ryan made quite a picture framed by the rock, a ruff of trees and a cloudless blue sky.

Checking his watch, Jake discovered he’d better put some speed on. He still had to cross the pass into Hell’s Gate, where he was meeting Dillon. It was past time he stopped obsessing over a woman he knew little about. One he’d very likely end up fighting with sooner or later.

But as he rode through the arid unfenced range land where the Cooper family had been raising cattle for four generations, Jake’s thoughts remained on Hayley. He couldn’t identify exactly what piqued his interest about her. He’d been fending off prettier women for years. Not that Mrs. Ryan was hard to look at, by any means. On the contrary, she was well put together. Small, but not so skinny you didn’t know she was all woman.

And those eyes. Those changeable eyes that shifted from blue to the color of lavender to a deeper violet, almost purple. He’d never paid so much attention to anyone’s eyes before. His own were light gray. Wouldn’t it be an interesting experiment to see what color eyes their offspring would have?

“Whoa, dude!” Mojave dutifully stopped dead on the trail. “Not you,” Jacob laughed, bending forward to stroke the bay’s neck. When Charcoal trotted back and sat staring up at him, Jake shook his head. “You, too, boy? Too bad you guys can’t talk. You’d tell me soon enough how crazy I’m acting over a woman who’d like nothing better than to see my backside trucking down the trail. She may have warmed up after I pulled those veggies out of the bag, but if you noticed, she didn’t request our return.”

Jake let Mojave amble through the deer grass for a while before they crossed a dry wash and turned north. The sun beat down mercilessly. Jacob thought the humidity had climbed to seventy percent. He shucked off one leather glove, removed his hat and blotted sweat from his brow with the crook of his arm.

“Feels like monsoon weather,” he muttered, settling the hat firm and low over his forehead. “I wonder if our Mrs. Ryan is prepared for the big rains that blow in here off the Baja. What do you think, Mojave?”

On hearing his name, the horse whinnied and swished his ears.

“I guess you’re right,” Jacob continued as if the gelding had spoken. “Better to keep my nose outta her business. She has Ben’s truck and trailer. The old guy must’ve given her directions. If she was stabbing in the dark, she wouldn’t have found her way to the Blue Cameo so easily.”

The threesome covered another few miles before Jacob spoke again. “There’s just something sad looking in the lady’s eyes, don’t you agree, guys?” Jake urged Mojave into a canter up a long steep incline over the ridge into the valley known as Hell’s Gate. “But there’s the matter of her calling herself Mrs. Ryan. Where do you suppose Mr. Ryan is? What kind of husband lets his wife prospect all by herself? Even more curious, why isn’t she wearing her wedding ring?”

The horse blew out a long breath. Cresting the hill, Mojave automatically quickened his pace. Jake knew why. In the distance Dillon’s horse, Wildfire, grazed on a picket. Dillon wasn’t yet visible. Jake figured he’d holed up in the shade of a stand of black walnut trees. Likely he was whittling a car or a truck or some part of a train set from the ever-present hardwoods he carried in his saddlebags. Their granddad Cooper had taught both boys to whittle at an early age. Dillon was much more adept at it than Jake. As kids they’d played with wooden toys; now Dillon carved a batch each year, and Eden’s church distributed them to needy children at Christmas.

In fact, that was how Dillon and Eden had met. She’d moved to Tubac from Albuquerque to open her own jewelry store, had joined a local church and dived right into community affairs. Small-town churches loved new blood. They’d put Eden to work collecting for the yearly toy drive. One October afternoon she’d arrived at the Triple C, all golden-hair and sweet smiles to beg for a donation of Dillon’s toys. Jake recalled wishing he could carve as well as his brother did. Eden Priest was the most beautiful woman Santa Cruz county had seen in a decade. She was nice, too. And talented. Successful in her own right. Both brothers had thrown their hearts at her feet; it was Dillon’s she’d picked up.