Her Right-Hand Cowboy (Forever, Tx Series Book 21) Read online

  “Yes. Why?” Mitch asked. “What did you think I meant?”

  “Never mind,” Ena told him, waving away the foreman’s question.

  Taking the bottle from one of the men she gathered was working with Mitch, she turned her attention to the foal. The wobbly colt all but attacked the bottle, sucking on it as if his very life depended on it.

  He was probably right, Ena thought. “What a good boy,” she murmured to the foal, pleased by the success she was having.

  Chapter Five

  Mitch stood off to the side of the stall, observing Ena as she fed the foal.

  “See, it’s coming back to you,” Mitch told her. The bottle was empty but the foal was still trying to suck more milk out of it. Drawing closer to Ena and the foal, Mitch took the bottle out of her hand and away from the nursing foal. “You’re a natural.”

  Ena shrugged. “It doesn’t take much to hold a bottle. The foal’s doing the work. It’s not like I’m forcing the liquid down his throat.”

  Mitch shook his head. He didn’t remember her being like this when they were in school together.

  “I would have thought that being away from here would have made you less defensive, not more,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong in accepting a compliment.”

  “I don’t need you to tell me what’s right and what’s not right,” she informed him.

  Mitch was not about to get embroiled in an argument, not over something so minor.

  “Sorry,” he apologized. “I meant no disrespect,” he assured her easily. “Nobody is looking to trip you up here.”

  “I know that,” she snapped.

  The smile on his face was just this side of tight. She was inches away from an explosion, but for now he kept his peace. “Good. Just so we’re clear.”

  Looking to change the subject, Ena glanced back at the foal. She ran her hand lightly along his back. To her surprise, the foal didn’t back away. “What’s his name?” she asked Mitch.

  The foreman watched her face for a reaction. “I was thinking of calling him Bruce, after your dad,” he told her. “Seeing as how he was born seven days after your dad passed on.”

  Ena’s first thought was to say that her father wouldn’t have appreciated the sentiment or being linked to the foal. But then she decided that her father might have liked that. He had certainly been attuned to anything that had to do with the ranch.

  Far more so than anything that ever had to do with her, she thought ruefully.

  “Well, maybe he would have liked that after all,” she finally told Mitch. “But if this foal grows up to have a stubborn streak a mile wide, you can blame it on his name.”

  Mitch laughed softly, stroking the foal’s back. “Your dad was a very stubborn man,” he agreed. “But seeing how hard he had to work to keep this place going, he sort of had to be.”

  Unlike his laugh, Ena’s was depreciating, bordering on almost dismissive.

  “You don’t have to tell me how hard my father worked. That man made sure he drove his point home about how hard he worked every time he’d lecture me—which was all the time,” she underscored.

  She was trying to draw him in again, Mitch thought, trying to get him into an argument with her. But he stood firm.

  “Everybody’s got a different parenting style,” Mitch replied.

  “That’s being rather generous,” Ena commented coolly. When he looked at her confused, she elaborated, “To call what he did style.”

  Mitch knew that Bruce O’Rourke could be difficult, but he had also mentored him and in effect became like the father he no longer had. He felt as if he had to speak up in the man’s defense.

  “Aren’t you being just a little hard on him?” Mitch asked her.

  Ena’s answer was immediate. “Not nearly as hard as he was on me.” She said the words almost pugnaciously, as if she were ready to fight Mitch on this.

  Mitch debated his next words, then decided that he wasn’t speaking out of turn. She needed to know this. If he let it go, he’d be doing both her and Bruce a disservice.

  “You know,” he told her, stepping away from the foal so that he could have her undivided attention. “Your father was heartbroken when you took off the way you did the day after graduation.”

  She would have given anything if that were true. But she knew that it wasn’t. For some reason that was beyond her comprehension, Mitch was being defensive of her father.

  “For him to have been heartbroken,” she informed Mitch stiffly, “he would have had to have a heart. And how do you know what he felt? You weren’t even here then.”

  “Actually, I was,” Mitch corrected her. “I came to work for your father the day after we graduated.” He remembered seeing her at the ceremony. He doubted that she had taken notice of him. The moment it was all over, he’d rushed off to see her father because he had interviewed for a job with the man a couple of days earlier. “I think we missed each other by a few hours. Your dad seemed pretty distraught when I saw him,” he recalled.

  Ena frowned. “Now you’re just making things up,” she accused. “You don’t have to speak well of him on my account. As a matter of fact, I’d rather you didn’t, because then I’d know you’re lying.” He was making her father out to be some sensitive, kind man and she knew that the man was far from that. “You forget, I lived with the man for eighteen years and I know exactly what he was like.”

  “Men like your father have a hard time letting their feelings show.”

  Ena didn’t see it that way. “He had no trouble letting his anger show. I never had to guess when he was angry—because he was angry all the time.”

  She couldn’t remember ever hearing so much as one kind word from her father, or any words of encouragement for that matter. All her father could do was point out her faults—at length.

  This was going nowhere, Mitch thought. For now he gave up. Inclining his head, he said, “All right, have it your way.”

  “It’s not my way. It was his,” she insisted. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to table this discussion for the time being. I’m going to go into the house and settle in.” Walking out of the stable, she headed back to where she had parked her vehicle.

  To her surprise, Mitch walked out of the stable as well and followed her to her car. Turning on her heel, she looked at him, thinking he had some more words of “wisdom” to impart.

  “What?” she demanded.

  “I thought I’d carry in your suitcases for you,” he offered.

  His amicable offer caught her off guard and effectively took her edge off. She couldn’t very well yell at him after that.

  “Suitcase,” she emphasized, opening the trunk. “Not cases.”

  He watched her reach in and take out a compact white carry-on. “I guess you believe in traveling light,” he noted.

  There was a reason for that. “I only intended to stay a couple of days,” she replied. “Apparently that’s changed,” she added with a sigh of resignation.

  Executing a smooth movement, Mitch took the suitcase from her and walked toward the house with it.

  “Do you want me to gather all the hands together?” he asked, looking at her over his shoulder.

  She didn’t understand why he would make that kind of offer. “Why would I want that?”

  He thought it was self-explanatory. There were a few new hands here since she’d left, men who had been hired on after he had started working here. “I thought so you could meet them officially.”

  She supposed that was a good idea, but she wasn’t up to that right now. There was one killer of a migraine forming right behind her eyes. Once one of those got going, it didn’t stop until it all but consumed her. She had felt it starting in the lawyer’s office, right after he had explained the will to her.

  The migraine had her father’s name on it.

  Just l
ike in the old days, Ena thought.

  “This is a small town and word spreads fast so I’m guessing that the new hands all already know who I am. As for the individual hands, I’ll meet them on the job. Best way to get to know someone is by seeing the level of their work.” She almost winced when she realized that she had just quoted one of her father’s edicts. Damn the man for getting into her head. “But right now, I’m going to go and lie down.”

  “Not feeling well?” Mitch asked sympathetically.

  It almost sounded as if he cared, Ena thought. But why should he? He was probably hoping that she’d take a turn for the worse so that he could get the ranch from her—cheap. She was willing to bet that her father’s “foreman” had fancied himself running the place—until he’d heard about the will.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s nothing fatal,” she told him. She struggled to block the shiver and only partially succeeded. “It just feels that way.” Ena saw the tall cowboy looking at her as if he couldn’t comprehend what she was saying to him. “I get migraine headaches,” she explained. “I realize that a person can’t die from that—they just want to. Or at least I do when it goes into high gear like this.”

  “You take anything for it?” Mitch asked, closing the front door behind them.

  “Why? What are you planning on giving me?” She winced again. “Sorry, bad joke. But I can’t do any better right now.”

  Mitch nodded. “I’ll bring this into your room,” he said, lowering his voice. And then he stopped to consider what he’d just said. “Will you be taking over your father’s bedroom?”

  She looked at him as if he were crazy. Why would she want to do that? “Oh, lord, no. If I do that, I won’t sleep until I get back to Dallas. My father would haunt me if I’m in his room,” Ena told the foreman.

  Rather than just go along with what she’d just said or gloss over it, Mitch asked, “Then you believe in spirits?”

  “Not spirits,” she corrected. “Spirit. Just one. Singular,” Ena stressed. “A ghost. If there’s a way for my father to come back and haunt me, he’ll find it and I’d rather not be camped out in his room when he does. No, I’ll just take my old bedroom,” she told Mitch. Then she added, “It’s the first room on the right at the top of the stairs.”

  He was already heading up the stairs. “Yes, I know,” he told her.

  “How?” she asked him, puzzled.

  She had never had him over when they were in school together. Because he had in essence rebuffed her advances, there had never been any reason to invite him to her house.

  “Your father pointed it out to me,” Mitch explained. “Said that way, when he came up at night, you could stand there and look down at him.”

  Flashes of light were interfering with her ability to see right now, but she tried to stare at Mitch. “He didn’t say that,” she protested.

  “I was there, but have it your way,” he told her with a shrug. “I don’t intend to mark the first day of our working relationship with an argument.”

  Our working relationship. That sounded way too structured to her. She didn’t want to think of her being here in those terms. As far as she was concerned, this was just a day-to-day thing and if there was any chance she could find a way to change it, sell the ranch and take off, she planned to do it. But only after she got rid of this awful brain-numbing migraine.

  “We’ll talk later,” she told him, waving him on his way. “After I get the little drummer boy out of my head,” she murmured.

  Gripping the wooden handrail, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other until she had finally managed to get herself to her room.

  Mitch had reached it before she did and he put her suitcase just inside the door. “Let me know if there’s anything that you need.”

  She waved her hand at him, indicating that he should just go. “What I need,” she said with effort, “is not to be here.”

  The corners of his mouth curved. “Other than that,” Mitch qualified.

  But she had already closed the door on him, shutting out his words and his presence.

  Ena found her way over to the double bed. Gingerly, she lay down on the gray-and-blue comforter. The fact that her room had remained just the way she’d left it registered belatedly somewhere amid the growing throbbing pain.

  Shutting her eyes, Ena willed herself to fall asleep.

  Unfortunately, her brain wasn’t being receptive. She tried pulling the covers over her head, but that didn’t help, either.

  Neither did the almost imperceptible knock on her door that came almost half an hour later.

  Ena stifled a moan. She wanted to pretend she hadn’t heard it and not respond, but something told her that the person on the other side of the door would just persist in knocking, so she surrendered.

  “Yes?” she asked weakly. Even the sound of her own voice was making the migraine worse.

  “Do you mind if I come in?”

  It was Mitch, she realized. Now what? She sighed, remaining where she was, a prisoner of this throbbing hotbed of pain.

  “Might as well,” she said in a whisper. “This migraine isn’t going anywhere and neither am I.”

  She heard the door opening. She didn’t hear it close. Was that for her protection? Or his?

  It wasn’t until she finally pried open her eyes that she saw that Mitch was carrying something. Up until this point, she had been doing her best trying to block out everything, including the ranch, all without much success.

  He brought the cup over to her bedside, but she wasn’t looking at that. She wanted to know why he was here. “What is it?”

  Mitch nodded at the mug he was holding. “I thought this might help.”

  What was he talking about? “What might help?” Ena asked. Very slowly, she pulled herself up into a sitting position. The very act threatened to split her head right in half. The pain was also making her nauseous.

  “This.” He indicated the large mug he was holding. She caught a whiff of something aromatic and warm—tea? She wasn’t in the mood for guessing games. Or for tea.

  “What is that?” Ena asked, opening her eyes and trying to focus. She thought she saw steam curling from the mug in his hand.

  “Something that is going to help make that headache of yours go away,” he told her.

  She truly doubted that. “Arsenic?”

  “Nothing quite that drastic,” Mitch assured her with a chuckle.

  “Then it won’t work,” she told him. “Take it away.”

  Mitch didn’t move a muscle. “Give it a try. What do you have to lose?”

  “Miss Joan’s breakfast.”

  “I promise this won’t make you sick,” he coaxed.

  “All right, I’ll drink it if it’ll get rid of you,” she muttered, resigned.

  Ena took the mug into both her hands. For a moment, she let herself absorb the warmth. It was comforting, but she strongly doubted that whatever was in the mug would do anything to help alleviate the savagery that was going on in her head.

  “What is this, really? Chamomile tea?” she asked, looking down at the dark liquid that was shimmering before her.

  “No. Just something my mother used to whip up using herbs and a little of this and that for her friends when they had migraines. It’s all natural,” he assured her.

  “So’s a coyote, but I wouldn’t bring it into my room and pet it,” she retorted.

  “Just drink it,” Mitch urged.

  She supposed she had to give it a try since he had gone out of his way to throw this together. But she really had her misgivings that this aromatic brew was going to help. She just hoped that she wasn’t going to regret being so trusting.

  “This and that?” she echoed.

  Sensing that she wasn’t going to drink the tea he’d made without having him elaborate, he gave her the names of
the ingredients that his mother had taught him to use.

  Ena stared at him. “Are those real names, or are you making things up?” she asked.

  “You can look the names up when you feel better. The remedy is something that my mother’s mother passed on to her. And, if I’m not mistaken, her mother’s mother before that, although I wouldn’t swear to that part. All I know is that everyone who ever tried this tea had positive results.”

  “Okay.” Ena took a tentative sip and immediately made a face. “Really? Positive results? This tastes awful.”

  “I didn’t say that anyone said it tasted good, only that it worked well.” He had a feeling that she needed to think this was her idea, not something he had talked her in to. “Try it or don’t try it, it’s up to you,” Mitch told her. “I’ll see you later—or tomorrow.”

  Ena sat there with the mug in her hand until he had let himself out, closing the door behind him. Then, taking a deep breath, she brought the cup back up to her lips. Still holding her breath, she drank the entire mug in what amounted to one long endless sip.

  Finished, she shivered as she struggled to assimilate the bitter brew.

  Setting the mug down, she lay back in bed and closed her eyes, sincerely hoping she wasn’t going to throw up. Or die.

  Chapter Six

  It was gone.

  Ena was on the verge of drifting off to sleep when she suddenly realized that the killer migraine that had been threatening to take off the top of her head for the last hour had totally disappeared. It was if it had never existed at all.

  Ena gingerly raised herself up to a sitting position, afraid that any sudden movement on her part would cause the migraine to return with a vengeance. She held her breath.

  But the migraine didn’t return at all.

  Still worried that this was all just wishful thinking on her part, Ena tested the extent of her “miracle recovery” by slowly moving her head from side to side once, and then again.

  Nothing.

  She swung her legs off the bed, putting her feet on the floor. Ena slowly stood up. Still nothing.