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“Not much. I
need a break and Will doesn’t want this young lady left alone in the stall. Could you spell me for a few minutes?”
“Sure. I could use a rest.” He sank onto the chair as Jasper hobbled toward the barn door. He had sharp, black eyes like a bird’s, and his worn leather gloves looked too big for his thin wrists. “Hi, I’m Lute,” he said.
“I’m Erin.” Her gaze sized him up. He looked old enough to be out of school, but not by much. “Do you work for my dad?”
“That’s what I’m doing here, working.” He spat out the last word as if he’d just bitten into a bad strawberry. “Sky gave me this so-called job. He’s my cousin.”
“Oh.” Erin shifted to face him, interested in learning more. “Sky never talks about his family. I didn’t know he had any.”
“Sky’s mother was my dad’s sister. She died when he was little, and our family raised him. So he’s almost like my big brother.”
“What happened to his father?”
Lute shrugged his bony shoulders. “Who knows? He was just some white jerk who knocked her up. That’s why Sky’s got blue eyes. But he’s mostly Comanche, like me.”
“Oh.” The young man did look something like Sky, Erin thought. But he was darker, his build smaller and more wiry, his features narrower.
His gaze had wandered to Tesoro. “That’s a fine-looking foal,” he said.
“He’s going to be my horse.” Erin laid a possessive hand on her foal’s back. “Sky’s already helping me train him. It’s called imprinting. That’s what I’m doing here.”
“Sky’s an important man on this ranch, isn’t he?”
“My dad says he’s the best horse trainer in Texas. That’s why cow ponies raised on our ranch are worth so much money. And that’s why we’re getting more colts for him to train, so we can sell them.”
Lute raised one jet-black eyebrow. “I hadn’t heard that. Maybe Sky will give me a better job when those colts get here. I’m good with horses, too. When’s it supposed to happen?”
“This spring, after the roundup, we’ll be building extra pens. As soon as that’s done, Sky can bring in the horses he wants and work with them over the summer.”
“He’s going to need some help. Maybe you can put in a good word for me.” He rose, glancing back toward the barn door. “I see our old friend Jasper’s coming back, so I’ll get back to work. Nice talking to you, Miss Erin Tyler. Maybe we can talk again.”
“Maybe so. Thanks for keeping me company, Lute.”
“See you around.” He opened the gate for Jasper and left. As he ambled away, Erin saw him take a cell phone out of his pocket, flip it open, and punch in a number.
CHAPTER 4
Slad Haskell slid out the back door of his red club-cab pickup. While his fingers tossed the condom and stuffed his privates back in his jeans, his eyes scanned the shadowy parking lot behind the Blue Coyote. Not that he was worried. The hour was late, the two remaining cars empty. Nobody was looking. And even if they were, what the hell. Everybody in town knew that Jess was a whore.
As his zipper closed with a satisfying snick, she came around the truck, pulling her little denim skirt down over her thighs. He had her usual payment ready—the small packet of white powder that he slipped out of his pocket and down the neck of her blouse. Whether she meant to resell it or snort it herself didn’t matter, as long as she knew better than to tell anybody where it came from. Stella would likely guess if she saw it. But Stella wouldn’t care as long as the girl kept her mouth shut.
As Jess trailed back into the bar, Slade pulled out of the parking lot, drove onto a side street, and stopped long enough to turn on the dome light and inspect the backseat for evidence. Finding none, he made a U-turn and headed for home.
He’d come back an hour early from a run to Lubbock to arrange a feed-hauling contract. Since Natalie wasn’t expecting him till later, and since he’d told her not to wait up, Slade figured he was covered. With luck, when he walked in from the garage, his wife would be deep in clueless sleep.
Damned good woman, Natalie. Her work paid the household bills and balanced the ups and downs of the trucking business, allowing him to stash what he made on the side in a Lubbock bank. She was a looker, too, and sexy as hell. Slade would castrate any male who so much as breathed on her. But he’d never been a one-woman man, and marriage hadn’t changed that. As long as he came home to his wife at night, what difference did it make?
He was pulling up to the house when he remembered that he hadn’t checked his cell phone messages. Letting the truck idle, he took a moment. There were two voice mails from the Indian kid at the Tylers. The first one let him know they’d be getting extra colts to break over the summer. Maybe some possibilities there, and the kid seemed eager to please. If he proved reliable, it might be worth trying him on bigger things.
The second message triggered a spasm in his gut. Evidently Beau Tyler, who’d promised to be back in Washington by now, was still at the ranch helping with the roundup.
Did Natalie know? Had he contacted her? So help him, if she’d been with that bastard again . . .
Seething, Slade punched the remote and waited for the garage door to open. If Tyler had so much as phoned her, he would punch that smug, too-handsome face of his to a bloody pulp. As for Natalie . . .
The door cranked to a stop. The truck’s headlights shone into an empty garage.
