A Rancher Of Convenience. Regina Scott

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СКАЧАТЬ before her husband had been killed. When she’d beamed at him earlier on the porch, he’d about slid from his chair in thanksgiving.

      But now she merely lowered her hands and her gaze as she turned to her visitors. “Where are my manners? Please come in. I don’t have anything baked, but there’s cool water from the spring.”

      “And I brought a lemon cake,” Lula May announced. She put her hand on the rancher’s arm. “Would you fetch it from the wagon for me?”

      She didn’t fool Hank. Lula May was one tough lady, who’d managed her husband’s horse ranch after he’d fallen ill. Now a widow, she was the only woman in the Lone Star Cowboy League, and the member most respected by the others. If she was asking McKay to do her fetching and carrying, she was up to something.

      He was just as glad for it, for it gave him a moment to talk to his friend alone. As the two women passed him to enter the house, he hurried to pace the rancher.

      McKay cast him a quick look, green eyes thoughtful. “Mrs. Bennett says you’re doing right by the ranch. I wouldn’t have expected less.”

      Hank put a hand on the man’s shoulder to stop him before he reached the wagon. “I promised her I’d stay as long as need be. But there’s something you should know. Lucas Bennett took out a loan from a bank in Burnet before he died.”

      The rancher frowned, turning to face him. “From Burnet? Why didn’t he come into Little Horn or approach one of us? We’d have loaned him money or found a way to fix whatever he needed.”

      “I don’t think he wanted the money to fix anything,” Hank told him. “He may have convinced the bank he wanted to improve the ranch, but he sure didn’t use the money on anything worthwhile.”

      McKay nodded. “Lula May tells me he may have been gambling with her uncle while he was in town.”

      Hank felt as if he’d eaten something that had sat in the sun too long. “It wouldn’t surprise me. Not after what else he did.”

      McKay shook his head. “I can only feel for his widow.”

      Hank too. “It gets worse,” he said. “The bank is threatening to call in the loan. Seems they don’t think Mrs. Bennett is skilled enough to turn a profit ranching. I thought maybe the league could help her out.”

      “I’ll ask Lula May to call an emergency meeting for tomorrow night,” McKay promised, starting for the wagon once more. “You can make the case then.”

      Hank joined him at the wagon. “I might not be the best advocate. I’ve already done enough damage, carrying everything we discussed about keeping the ranches safe to the very thief we were trying to protect ourselves from.”

      “You didn’t know you were telling tales to the wrong person,” the rancher insisted. “No one holds you accountable either. Lucas Bennett fooled us all.”

      Hank dusted his hands on his Levi’s, wishing he could wipe away the last two weeks as easily. “At least we know it’s over. We stopped the rustler. Everyone can go about their lives.”

      Everyone but him and Nancy.

      “I wouldn’t be so sure.” McKay reached into the wagon and carefully drew out a basket covered with a gingham cloth.

      Hank frowned. “What are you talking about? Lucas Bennett is dead. I buried him myself.”

      The rancher eyed him. “He may be dead, but even alive he wouldn’t have been able to take all those cattle to market by himself.”

      “Upkins and Jenks had nothing to do with it,” Hank said, widening his stance. He recognized the gesture and forced his body to relax. What, was he going to draw on Edmund McKay now?

      “I believe you,” his friend assured him. “I thought maybe Bennett was stealing those cattle to build his herd. But if he was so desperate for money he’d mortgage his spread, he had to have been planning to sell them.”

      “Nobody in these parts would buy stolen cattle,” Hank protested.

      “Nobody we know,” McKay agreed. “But someone must have made him an offer. He would have known he couldn’t hide the cattle long before one of you spotted them. And he’d need help to drive that many to a buyer, one who wasn’t concerned about the brands.”

      His friend was right. Hank’s only solace for shooting Lucas Bennett had been that he’d stopped the man from shooting anyone else and he’d ended the rash of thefts that had plagued the Little Horn community. But if someone had been aiding Lucas Bennett, they still had a common enemy.

      “If I were you,” the rancher said, green gaze boring into Hank’s, “I’d keep a close eye on the spread. Where one rustler steps out, another may think to step in. There may be more than rattlers hiding in those hills, and Nancy Bennett is going to need protection from them.”

      That kind of protection was normally the job for a lawman or a husband. He was no lawman. And Jeb Fuller had the whole county to watch over. He couldn’t focus all his efforts on the Windy Diamond.

      So did Hank dare think of himself as a husband?

      He’d tried before. His father, in his usual proud way, had picked out the girl. For once, Hank hadn’t been willing to argue. Mary Ellen Wannacre had been downright beautiful, with hair brighter than sunshine and eyes the color of bluebonnets. With her on his arm, he’d felt like the man his father was always goading him to be—powerful, confident. Every fellow in Waco had been green with envy. He’d allowed himself to fall in love.

      But in the end, he’d come in second best. She’d chosen to marry his friend Adam Turner, who at least had had the decency to stammer out an apology. Hank couldn’t blame either of them. He’d never managed to measure up to his father’s expectations. It didn’t come as a surprise he didn’t measure up to hers.

      It had taken him five years to begin to meet his own.

      Was he willing to set those aside for someone else’s, to keep Nancy Bennett and her baby safe?

Chapter Three

      “It can be overwhelming, can’t it?” Lula May said as she took a seat in Nancy’s parlor. The two brown horsehair-covered chairs still sat at precise angles in front of the stone fireplace, as if waiting for Lucas to come through the door. Nancy sank onto the one opposite her friend and focused on the red-and-blue diamond shapes woven into the rug on the plank floor.

      “Yes,” she admitted. “And I can’t help thinking I might have spared everyone this pain if I’d just recognized what Lucas was doing.”

      Lula May raised her chin. “That’s enough of such talk. Why, I’d known Lucas longer than you had, and I had no idea what he was doing. I didn’t even know he was from Alabama, raised near where I grew up, until recently. And Edmund had no idea either, for all the two worked side by side during roundups.”

      Nancy managed a smile for her friend’s sake. “Edmund, is it?”

      The prettiest pink blossomed in Lula May’s cheeks. “He asked me to marry him.”

      Nancy reached СКАЧАТЬ