LITMIR.BIZ

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records. He was right. It’s just hard to manage, that’s all. I imagine you know how that is.”

      He didn’t. Nobody knew how much money he had in foreign banks from the early days in his profession, when he was doing highly skilled black ops jobs for various governments. He didn’t advertise it. But he could have retired any time he felt like it. Holding a conventional job kept his skills honed and people in the dark about his true financial situation. And his true skills.

      “Anyway,” she continued, “he says that I didn’t check the pasture before I put the bulls in it, and they binged on clover and got bloat. Since we don’t use antibiotics as a preventative—and we certainly can’t afford to use vegetable oils for that, either—Judd said the tannins in the clover caused the bloat.” She sighed impatiently. “Listen, I know pasture management as well as he does, and I’m not stupid enough to stick susceptible young bulls in a pasture without feeding them hay or grass first. And the Hereford bulls were in there at the same time, all four of them. They didn’t get bloat!”

      “Didn’t you tell Judd that?”

      She nodded. “I guess he thinks there’s a special Salers gene that attracts bloat,” she muttered irritably.

      He tried not to laugh and failed.

      “Anyway, it happened right after we fired that Clark man,” she added. “Jack Clark. He’s got a brother, John. They’re unsavory characters and they get fired a lot, I hear. We fired Jack for stealing on purchase orders. I suppose he didn’t realize we check purchase orders to make sure they’re not being abused. He bought himself a two-hundred-dollar pair of boots at the Western Shop and charged it to us with a photocopied purchase order. He gave back the boots, and we returned them, so we didn’t press charges. But we fired him, just the same.”

      “He’s working for Duke Wright now,” he told her. “Driving a cattle truck.”

      “Duke had better watch him” was all she said. “One of our new cowboys said that the Clark boys had been suspected of poisoning cattle someplace that one of them was fired from a couple of years ago. Our guy was working with them at the time.”

      Grier was watching her closely. “This is serious. Are you sure Judd didn’t believe you?”

      “I didn’t tell him all I’ve just told you, because I didn’t find out about the Clarks being suspected of poisoning cattle until a few days ago,” she said. “I didn’t tell him that we found a cut in the fence there, either.”

      “You should tell him about that, and the other information. A man who’ll poison helpless bulls will poison people, given a chance.”

      She nodded with a sigh. “I’ve told the boys to keep a close eye on our other stock, and I ride the fence lines myself when I get home from school.”

      “Alone?”

      She stared at him blankly. “Of course, alone,” she said shortly. “I’m a grown woman. I don’t need a babysitter.”

      “That’s not what I meant,” he replied. “I don’t like the idea of anybody going out to distant pastures alone and unarmed. You don’t pack a gun, do you?”

      She grimaced. “I guess I should, shouldn’t I?” She laughed self-consciously. “I have this crazy nightmare sometimes, that I’ve been shot and I’m trying to get to Judd and tell him, but he can’t hear me.”

      “Take somebody with you next time you ride fence,” he coaxed. “Don’t take chances.”

      “I won’t,” she promised, but without agreeing to take along an escort. She did have that .28 gauge shotgun that Judd had given her. She could take that with her when she rode fence, she supposed. Cash made sense. If a man wouldn’t hesitate to poison a helpless bull, he might not stop at trying to kill a young woman. Fortunately, the waitress came back with coffee and beer in time to divert him, and they waited until she left before they resumed their conversation.

      “Do you want me to talk to Judd about the bull?” he asked.

      She shook her head. “It won’t do any good. He makes up his mind, and that’s it.” She touched her cup and noticed that it was blazing hot. She pulled her fingers back. “He’s distracted lately, anyway. Those film people are coming this weekend, including the stars.” She glanced at him. “I guess everybody’s heard of Tippy Moore.”

      “The Georgia Firefly,” he agreed. His face grew hard and his eyes were cold.

      “Do you know her?” she asked, puzzled.

      “I don’t like models,” he said, tossing back a swallow of beer.

      She waited, not liking to pry, but his expression was disturbing.

      He put the bottle down, saw the way she was looking at him, and chuckled. “You never push, do you? You just wait, and let people talk if they want to.”

      She smiled self-consciously. “I guess so.”

      He leaned back. “My mother died when I was about nine,” he mused. “I stayed with her in the hospital as long as they let me. My brothers were too young, and my father...” He hesitated. “My father,” he began again with loathing in his tone, “was absolutely smitten with another woman and couldn’t stay away from her. He used to taunt my mother with how young and beautiful his mistress was, how he was going to marry her the minute my mother was out of the way.

      “She was ill for a long time, but after he began the affair, my mother gave up. When she died, he was too busy with his mistress to care. He only came to the hospital one time, to make arrangements for her body to be taken to the funeral home. His new woman was a minor-league model, twenty years his junior, and he was crazy for her. Three days after the funeral, he married her and brought her home with him.” He picked up the beer and took another long swallow. His eyes stared into space. “I’ve never hated a human being so much in my life, before or since.”

      “It was too soon,” she guessed.

      “It would always have been too soon,” he said flatly. “My stepmother threw out my mother’s things the minute she set foot in the house, all the photographs, all the handwork—she even sold my mother’s jewelry and laughed about it.” His eyes narrowed. “That same year, my father sent me off to military school. I never went back home, not even when he finally wised up, eight years too late, and tried to get me to come home again.”

      Some men hated physical contact when they recounted painful episodes. But she slid her hand over Cash’s anyway, something she’d never have done with Judd. Grier glanced at her hand with a start, but after a few seconds, his fingers curled around it. They were strong fingers, short and blunt, with a grip that would have been painful if they’d contracted a centimeter more. She noticed that he wore no jewelry except for a complicated-looking silver metal watch on his left wrist. No rings.

      “I lost my mother the year I graduated from high school,” she recalled. “I was older than you were, but it hurt just as much. But I had Judd, and Maude,” she added with a smile. “She came when I was just a baby, to help Mother, because she was so frail. Maude’s been like a second mama to me.”

      “She’s a card,” he mused, turning her hand over to examine the tiny scars. “What do you do with your hands?” he asked curiously, noting short nails and cuts.

      “Fix broken fences, mend tack, use calf pulls, get bitten by horses, climb trees...” she enumerated.

      He chuckled. “Tomboy.”

      “I’m not made for a mansion or a boardroom,” she said with a grin. “If women are really liberated, then I’m free to do anything I like. I like livestock and planting gardens and working around the ranch. I hate the idea of an office and a nine-to-five lifestyle. I’m a country girl. I wouldn’t mind being a cattle baroness, of course.”

      “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

      “Of course, I’m a full partner in the

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