Tough To Tame. Jackie Merritt

talking and just hanging around until bedtime—but that building was behind the main house, along with the barns and corrals, the sheds and such. Jake always felt pretty much alone on the front porch, and when the weather was good—as it was now, in late June—he spent a lot of evenings out there. It was a good place to think and to formulate the men’s work schedules. The seasons pretty much determined the cycle of work on cattle ranches, but there were still decisions to be made about which man should be doing what.

      Settling himself into a chair, Jake inhaled deeply and attempted to reason away the knot of anxiety in his gut. That exercise raised a question: Who was he now? He was not the same man he’d been after Gloria dumped him, nor was he like the other cowhands on the ranch. He couldn’t compare himself to Stuart, who possessed almost a magical talent for making money and who certainly lived in a much bigger world than Jake did.

      The word misfit entered Jake’s mind, and he sighed heavily. He couldn’t deny being a misfit, nor could he deny the bitterness he still felt toward all women because of what one had done to him, even though he kept it fairly well under control. For instance, it was not a subject he had ever discussed with Stuart. In fact, he hadn’t talked about his past with anyone since coming to Wyoming. Wasn’t it rather peculiar that he couldn’t get rid of the bitterness when he’d stopped seeing Gloria so long ago?

      Jake thinned his lips. He hated these moments when he tried to analyze himself. Good Lord, he was no worse than any other man on the place. Everyone had problems and not everyone had solutions. He would live through Carly’s visit and, in the meantime, he’d do a little praying that she still wouldn’t like the ranch and her stay would be brief.

      Other than worry, what else could he do?

      This helicopter ride is by far the best part of today’s trip, Carly thought while gaping at the Wyoming landscape below the aircraft. She had very little memory of the openness, the lack of population, and realized that the things she did remember from childhood visits to the Paxton ranch were from a child’s point of view and possibly contradictory to the reality of this remote part of the world.

      Today she was fascinated with the occasional huddles of buildings she saw—obviously other ranches, for the most part few and far between—and the almost traffic-free roads, the immense fields and pastures dwarfing herds of cattle and antelope. The beauty of the distant mountains—the Tetons— actually took her breath, and she felt something sigh within her, a whisper of serenity she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

      Carly really hadn’t wanted to come to Wyoming, and had agreed to her father’s suggestion merely to alleviate his concern for her. She had caused him terrible worries in the past year and had decided that a trip to Wyoming was a very small sacrifice for her to make, if it made her dad feel better.

      Now, seeing the area for herself, through adult eyes, she realized there was no sacrifice involved. Who would not appreciate the vastness of uncluttered valleys and the grandeur of distant mountains, such as she was viewing? Small wonder that her father had become excited whenever he’d planned a trip to the ranch.

      The pilot touched her arm to get her attention. “Your destination is just ahead,” he told her. “We’ll be landing in that field to the right of the house.” The copter began descending.

      Carly found the spot the pilot had indicated and the corners of her lips tipped into a little half smile when she found herself nostalgically remembering the large two-story house, with its wraparound porch, and the numerous old shade trees in the yard. Attempting to absorb everything at once, her gaze moved to the barns, sheds and corrals. The lower the copter dropped, the more details she could see.

      Then, movement farther out caught her eye, and she spotted two men on horseback, riding hard it seemed, trailing some distance behind a third horse. Were the men trying to catch the riderless horse? For some reason, Carly wanted to know what was happening.

      “Could you get closer to those three horses?” she asked the pilot.

      “Sure, no problem,” he told her.

      The helicopter swung to the right and dropped lower, until it was just above the treetops. Carly could see the two riders look up and knew that the copter had startled them. At almost the same moment she got an unobstructed view of the third horse, the one without a rider.

      “Oh, he’s magnificent,” she whispered in awe. The horse was black as coal, and his hide glistened with perspiration in the waning afternoon light. Why on earth were those two men running him so hard? Had he escaped a stall or corral? “What do you think is going on?” she asked the pilot.

      “Looks like the men on horseback are trying to rope the third horse. They’re both carrying ropes.”

      “Oh, yes, I see that now.” The black horse suddenly disappeared in a heavy stand of timber, and a minute later so did the two men and their mounts. Carly felt a pang of disappointment. She would have liked very much to see the outcome of that chase.

      “Okay if we land now?” the pilot asked.

      “Yes, of course. Thanks for the detour.”

      “No problem at all. As I told you when we met, I’ve flown your father out to the ranch many times. He sometimes requests a few detours along the way.”

      Carly smiled. “Like father, like daughter?” Carly liked being favorably compared to her father, even though she knew their personalities differed in some very crucial ways. Stuart was a laid-back easygoing guy, which sometimes gave people an erroneous impression of his intelligence and perspicacity, particularly in business. Carly, on the other hand, was high-strung, excitable and quick to speak her mind. Plus, even with a high IQ, she had inherited very little of her father’s talent for spotting a money-making deal and then knowing exactly what to do about it.

      There was one more trait Carly wished she had inherited from her dad: He was an incredibly good judge of character, and she fell really short in that department. Her awful marriage was proof of that, and she wondered now if she would ever trust her own judgment of a man again. Not that she was in any kind of rush for another personal, so-called romantic relationship. Her entire system shied from the idea whenever it passed through her mind, and she didn’t doubt that it could be a very long time before she let herself be caught in that trap again. In truth, she had come to believe that the whole concept of romance was nothing more than media hype to sell magazines and expensive products to lily-livered women who believed they simply could not live any sort of productive life without a man. She was no longer in that category, thank God. Instead of the romantic little fool she’d once been, she was now a down-to-earth, unromantic, unsentimental, no-nonsense realist. No sweet-talking, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth man was ever going to pull the wool over her eyes again. She believed it with every fiber of her being.

      The pilot, a pleasant, older man, smiled back. “No crime in that.”

      Carly smiled again, but said no more. They were about to land and she could see a tall lanky man in jeans, boots and a big hat standing at the edge of the field.

      When Jake heard the approaching helicopter, he had immediately headed for the landing field. He’d stood there frowning when the copter veered off in another direction. But he’d been able to follow its course well enough and had watched until it turned around.

      Jake was admittedly nervous about this first meeting with Stuart’s daughter. To be perfectly honest, he’d been nervous since he’d lied to Stuart on the phone and said that Carly was welcome to visit the ranch anytime. She wasn’t welcome, no woman was, and Jake had been wishing for everything from a pilot’s strike canceling flights to Wyoming to a flu virus hitting the entire country that wouldn’t kill anyone but would sure keep them from traveling. Those were silly wishes, of course. Nothing was going to prevent Carly’s visit, and that fact had sank in a little deeper every day until now it seemed to gnaw at the very center of Jake’s bones.

      It was especially unnerving that instead of landing immediately, the copter had flown a circle over the ranch compound. Since the pilot would have no reason to make that aerial tour, then Carly must have asked him to do it.

      Hell,