LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Five

      “Run the calves and their mamas to the seaward pasture,” Justice told Phil, his ranch manager, three days later. “You can leave the young bulls in the canyons for now. Keep them away from the heifers as much as you can.”

      “I know, boss.” Phil turned the brim of his hat between his hands as he stood opposite the massive desk in Justice’s study.

      Phil was in his early fifties, with a tall, lanky body that belied his strength. He was a no-BS kind of guy who knew his job and loved the ranch almost as much as his boss. Phil’s face was tanned as hard and craggy as leather from years spent in the sun. His forehead, though, was a good two shades lighter than the rest of him, since his hat was usually on and pulled down low. He shifted uneasily from foot to foot, as if eager to get outside and back on his horse.

      “We’ve got most of the herd settled into their pastures now,” he said. “There was a fence break in the north field, but two of the boys are out there now fixing it.”

      “Okay.” Justice tapped a pen against the top of his desk and tried to focus the useless energy burning inside him. Sitting behind a desk was making him itchy. If things were as they should be, he’d be out on his own horse right now. Making sure things were getting done to his specifications. Justice wasn’t a man to sit inside and order his people around. He preferred having his hand in everything that went on at King Ranch.

      Phil Hawkins was a good manager, but he wasn’t the boss.

      Yet even as he thought it, Justice knew he was lying to himself. His itchy feeling had nothing to do with not trusting his crew. It was all about how he hated being trapped in the damn house. Now more than ever.

      The past few days, he’d felt as if he was being stalked. Maggie was following him around, insisting on therapy sessions or swims in the heated pool or nagging at him to use the damn cane he’d come to hate. Hell, he’d had to sneak away just to get a few minutes alone in his office to go over ranch business with Phil.

      Everywhere he went, it seemed, there was Maggie. Back in the day, they’d have been falling into each other’s arms every other minute. But nothing was as it had once been. These days, she looked at him as if he were just another patient to her. Someone to feel bad for. To fix up. To take care of.

      Well, he didn’t need taking care of. Or if he did, he’d never admit it. He didn’t want her being paid to be here. Didn’t want to be her latest mission. Her cause. Didn’t want her touching him with indifference.

      That angry thought flashed through his mind at the same time a twinge of pain sliced at his leg. Damn thing was near useless. And three days of Maggie’s torture hadn’t brought him any closer to healing and getting on with his life. Instead, she seemed to be settling in. Making herself comfortable in the log house that used to be her home.

      She was sliding into the rhythm of ranch life as if she’d never left it. She was up with the dawn every day and blast if it didn’t seem she was deliberately close enough to him every morning so that Justice heard her talking to her son. Heard the baby’s nonsensical prattle and cooing noises. Could listen in on what he wasn’t a part of.

      She was everywhere. Her or the baby. Or both. He heard her laughing with Mrs. Carey, smelled her perfume in every room of the house and caught her playing with her son on several occasions. She and the baby had completely taken over his house.

      There were toys scattered everywhere, a walker with bells, whistles and electronic voices singing out an alphabet song. There was a squawking chicken, a squeaky dog and a teddy bear with a weird, tinny voice that sang songs about sharing and caring. Hell, coming down the stairs this morning, he’d almost killed himself when his cane had come down on a ball with a clown’s face stamped on it. There were cloth books, cardboard books and diapers stashed everywhere just in case the kid needed a change. That boy had to go through a hundred of them a day. And what was with all the books? It was not as if the baby could read.

      “Uh, boss?”

      “What?” Justice shook his head, rubbed at his aching leg and shifted his gaze back to Phil. That woman was now sneaking into his thoughts so that he couldn’t even talk about ranch business. “Sorry,” he said. “My mind wandered. What?”

      Phil’s lips twitched as if he knew where his boss’s mind had slipped off to. But he was smart enough not to say anything. “The new grasses in the east field are coming in fine, just like you said they would. Looks like a winner to me.”

      “That’s good news,” Justice said absentmindedly. They’d replanted one of the pastures with a hardier stock of field grass, and if it held up to its hype, then the herd would have something to look forward to in a few months.

      Running an organic cattle ranch was more work, but Justice was convinced it was worth it in the long run. The cowboys he had working for him spent most of their time switching the cattle around to different pastures, keeping the grass fresh and the animals on the move. His cows didn’t stand in dirty stalls to be force-fed grains. King cattle roamed open fields as they’d been meant to.

      Cattle weren’t born to eat corn, for God’s sake. They were grazers. And keeping his herds moving across natural field grasses made the meat more tender and sweet and brought higher prices from the consumer. He had almost sixty thousand acres of prime grassland here on the coast and another forty thousand running alongside his cousin Adam’s ranch in central California.

      Justice had made the change over to natural grazing and organic ranching nearly ten years ago, as soon as he took over the day-to-day running of King Ranch. His father hadn’t put much stock in it, but Justice had been determined to run the outfit his way. And in that time, he’d been able to expand and even open his own online beef operation.

      He only wished his father had lived to see what he’d made of the place. But his parents had died in the same accident that had claimed Justice’s chances of ever making his own family. So he had to content himself with knowing that he’d made a success of the family spread and that his father would have been proud.

      “Oh, and we got another offer on Caleb,” Phil was saying, and Justice focused on the man.

      “What was it?”

      “Thirty-five thousand.”

      “No,” Justice told him. “Caleb’s too valuable a stud to let him go for that. If the would-be buyer wants to pay for calves out of Caleb, we’ll do that. But we’re not selling our top breeding bull.”

      Phil grinned. “That’s what I told him.”

      Some of Justice’s competitors were more convinced it was his breeding stock that made his cattle so much better than others, and they were continually trying to buy bulls. They were either too stupid or too lazy to realize that fresh calves weren’t going to change anything. To get the results Justice had, they were going to have to redo their operations completely.

      The door to the study swung open after a perfunctory knock, and both men turned to look. Maggie stood in the open doorway. Faded jeans clung to her legs and the King Cattle T-shirt she wore in bright blue made her eyes shine like sapphires. She gave Phil a big smile. “You guys finished?”

      “Yes, ma’am,” Phil said.

      “No,” Justice said.

      His ranch manager winced a little as he realized that he’d blown things for his boss.

      Maggie looked at her husband. “Which is it? Yes or no?”

      Frowning, Justice scowled at his foreman, silently calling him traitor. Phil just shrugged, though, as if to say it was too late now.

      “We’re finished for the time being,” Justice reluctantly admitted.

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