MacDowells assured us your discretion wouldn’t be an issue.”
His mare shifted under him and blew an impatient breath through her nose.
“Should we go to the house and have this discussion there?” Grace asked.
Travis kept an eye on the heifer that was ambling away. “I’m gonna have to round up that heifer and put her back on the right side of the fence. Got to check on the branding after that, but I’ll be back at sundown. I go past the main house on the way to my place. I’ll stop in.”
“We weren’t planning to stay all day.” The woman threw a look of dismay to her fiancé.
They couldn’t expect him to quit working in the middle of the day and go sit in a house to chat. He ran the River Mack ranch, and that meant he worked even longer hours than he expected from his ranch hands.
Heifers that wandered through broken fences couldn’t be put off until tomorrow. May was one of the busiest months of the year, between the last of the calving and the bulk of the branding. Travis hadn’t planned on spending any time whatsoever talking to whomever the MacDowells were loaning their house, but obviously, there was more to the situation than the average houseguest.
“All right, then. Let’s talk.” He swung himself off the horse, a concession to let them know they had his time and attention. Besides, if he stayed on horseback, he couldn’t see Sophia in the car. It felt like he needed to keep an eye on her, the same as he needed to do with the wandering heifer.
On the ground, he still couldn’t see much through the windshield. He caught a glimpse of black leather, her hands resting on her knees. Her hands were clenched into fists.
Travis shook his head. She was a woman on edge.
“Sophia just needs to be left alone,” her sister said.
“I can do that.” He had no intention of staying in the vicinity of someone as disturbing to his peace of mind as that woman.
“If men with cameras start snooping around, please, tell them nothing. Don’t even deny she’s here.”
“Ma’am, if men with cameras come snooping around this ranch, I will be escorting them off the property.”
“Oh, really? You can do that?” She seemed relieved—amazed and relieved.
What did these people expect? He took his hat off and ran his hand through his hair before shoving the hat right back on again. His hair was getting too long, but no cowboy had time in May to go into town and see a barber.
“We don’t tolerate trespassers,” he explained to the people who clearly lived in town. “I’m not in the business of distinguishing between cameramen and cattle thieves. If you don’t belong here, you will be escorted off the land.”
“The paparazzi will offer you money, though. Thousands.”
Before Travis could set her straight on this insinuation that he could be bribed to betray a guest of the MacDowells, Alex cut in. “That’s only if they find her. We’ve gone to great lengths to arrange this location. We took away her cell phone so that she wouldn’t accidentally store a photo in the cloud with a location stamp. Hackers get paid to look for things like that. That’s how extreme the hunting for her can be.”
“She’s got a burner phone for emergencies,” Grace said. “But if you could check on her...?”
Travis was aware that the front doors to the car were wide open, man and woman each standing beside one. Surely, the subject of this conversation could hear every word. It seemed rude to talk about her as if she weren’t there.
“If she wants me to check on her, I will. If she wants me to leave her alone, I will.”
He looked through the windshield again. The fists had disappeared. One leather-clad knee was being bounced, jittery, impatient.
“How many other people work on this ranch?” the man asked.
“Will they leave my sister alone?” the woman asked.
Travis was feeling impatient himself. This whole conversation was moving as far from his realm of normal as the woman hiding in the car was.
That was what she was doing in there. Rather than being part of a conversation about herself, she was hiding. This was all a lot of nonsense in the middle of branding season, but from long habit developed by working with animals, Travis forced himself to stand calmly, keep the reins loose in his hands, and not show his irritation. These people were strangers in the middle of the road, and Travis owed them nothing.
“I’m not in the habit of discussing the ranch’s staffing requirements with strangers.”
The man nodded once. He got it. The woman bit her lip, and Travis understood she was worried about more than herself.
“But since this is your sister, I’ll tell you the amount of ranch hands living in the bunkhouse varies depending on the season. None of us are in the habit of going to the main house to introduce ourselves to Mrs. MacDowell’s houseguests.” Travis spoke clearly, to be sure the woman in the car heard him. “If your sister doesn’t want to be seen, then I suggest she stop standing in the middle of an open pasture and hugging my livestock.”
The black boot stopped bouncing.
Grace dipped her chin to hide her smile, looking as pretty as her movie star sister—minus the blatant sexuality.
“Now if you folks would like to head on to the house, I’ve got to be going.”
“Thank you,” Grace said, but the worry returned to her expression. “If you could check on her, though, yourself? She’s more fragile than she looks. She’s got a lot of decisions weighing her down. This is a very delicate situa—”
The car horn ripped through the air. Travis nearly lost the reins as his mare instinctively made to bolt without him. Goddammit.
No sooner had he gotten his horse’s head under control than the horn blasted again. He whipped his own head around toward the car, glaring at the two adults who were still standing there. For God’s sake, did they have to be told to shut her up?
“Tell her to stop.”
“Like that’ll do any good.” But the man bent to look into the car. “Enough, Sophie.”
“Sophie, please...”
One more short honk. Thank God his horse trusted him, because the mare barely flinched this time, but it was the last straw for Travis. Reins in hand, he stalked past the man and yanked open the rear door.
Since she’d been leaning forward to reach the car horn, Sophia’s black-clad backside was the first thing he saw, but she quickly turned toward him, keeping her arm stretched toward the steering wheel.
“Don’t do that again.”
“Quit standing around talking about me. This is a waste of time. I want to get to the house. Now.” She honked the horn again, staring right at him as she did it.
“What the hell is wrong with you? I just said don’t do that.”
“Or else what?”
She glared at him like a warrior, but she had the attitude of a kindergartner.
“Every time you honk that horn, another cowboy on this ranch drops what he’s doing to come and see if you need help. It’s not a game. It’s a call for help.”
She blinked. Clearly, she hadn’t thought of that, but then she narrowed her eyes and reached once more for the steering wheel.
“You honk that horn again, and you will very shortly find the road blocked by men on horses, and we will not move until you turn the car around and take yourself right back to wherever it is you came from.”
Her hand hovered over the steering wheel.
“Do it,” he said. “Frighten