The McCullen Ranch

"When Miss Jade told me you would be traveling today I suggested that she book you to Houston. We don't normally pick up people here, because it's four hours by road to the ranch, but I had business here and I prefer to drive rather than fly. I'm not taking to the roads this late in the day, so we're staying here. And, judging by what you're wearing, we have some shopping to do on the way out of town tomorrow."

The same grin which had appeared on Missy's face earlier now infected her father as well. "Rest up after dinner, and we'll see you in the morning."

I phoned Jade when I got in my room; it went to voicemail, and I had a feeling I might get that for the next month.

Perhaps it was anticipation, but I was nearly finished packing before I got a knock on my door. We had breakfast at a Mom and Pop place that lit up when Abe and Missy walked in. I got ignored no matter how many times Abe tried to introduce me into the conversation. In the end Missy nudged her head sideways, and we both slid over to another booth and took our breakfast with us.

"Daddy tries not to come to town all that often; it will help when I'm legal to drive so I can take that chore off him."

Something about her statement left me feeling that she had explained all she intended, and to leave it at that. Abe's breakfast ended up in a carry out, and I offered to drive while he actually ate. Missy sat next to me, and directed me to a store near the outskirts of the city. Thankfully Abe had finished eating by then, and he joined us inside.

An hour later, and with a very big dent in my plastic, we loaded everything into the back of the truck and I headed in the direction Missy pointed. Abe took over three hours later, and thanked me for letting him rest. The last part of the drive was done in silence; I don't think it was intentional. The view out of the truck window was breathtaking, and that alone took up my time.

We had been travelling on smaller and smaller roads as we got further from Houston, and had been on a single lane dirt road for close to half an hour when an arched sign appeared in the distance. As we passed under it I could see that it was an intricate wrought-iron sign containing the words "McCullen Ranch." It was obviously handmade and painstakingly built. It took twenty more minutes before buildings came into view.

Abe brought the truck to a stop outside what was obviously the main house; outbuildings and stables were scattered around the area.

"Missy has you in a private room; she'll show you where as soon as we get the paperwork done. I must say, you haven't asked anything about all this."

It was time for me to smile and even shrug my shoulders.

"I learned early on in my relationship with Jade that she's damn good at what she does. More so when she's not hemmed in by words like 'can' and 'can't' do this or that. Not only that, I'm her boss and can fire her ass."

Abe just smiled as he helped me with my things from his truck. "She did say you were funny."

We walked to one of the buildings on the edge of the group. A Mexican woman watched us approach, and then had a long conversation with Abe in Spanish, ignoring me. She ran her eye over my new clothes and pointed to some stuff; almost everything was going to be washed before I wore it. I did see Missy wander off with my boots under her arm.

For the next hour we talked in Abe's office, as I signed everything he placed in front of me. In the end, though, even my own patience wore a little thin. He noticed, and smiled again.

"You're curious, aren't you?"

I just nodded; my trust in Jade was total, though it had taken a slight knock over this month-long holiday. "When I said 'book me a holiday,' I had visions of sandy beaches and practically naked women displaying their wares as they passed my chair by the pool bar at regular intervals."

Abe laughed, and put a big photo album on the desk in front of me. As I leafed through it, he told me that the ranch allowed a hands-on approach roughly six months of the year. I would be taught how to ride, and use a rope while on a horse, and would also spend time out on the range with the cows. Some of the photos showed men on their own, right up to whole families with children of various ages. I must admit it piqued my interest, and by the time I had reached the end of the album I was in.

Lunch was simple but superb, and then Missy showed me around for a couple of hours before leaving me back in my room. Dinner was also well worth the price of admission, but not the news that the next day would begin hours before I normally climbed out of bed.

As usual, I hadn't thought this through too well. Having someone banging on my room door at four-thirty in the morning would prove that. There was no better demonstration that my so-called nine-to-five job had just been put aside for a month than me waking up and having breakfast while it was still dark outside.

I flat out refused to have any photos taken of me in a Stetson. I had too much respect for the folks of the old West to ever think that wandering around wearing a Stetson made me a cowboy. Day two of my time at the McCullen Ranch and I was introduced to Domino, my horse for the duration of my stay.

Abe told me that from now on I was to feed her, muck out her stable and look after her. Sadly, the fact was that we both looked at each other, and for Domino it was hate at first sight. Abe gave up after an hour, leaving me in the hands of Missy.

"She can smell your fear, Chase."

"I'll wear deodorant next time." I wasn't even intending to be funny, but Missy sure laughed.

Her first lesson was how to put a saddle on a horse, and from then on it read like a comedy sketch. The sad part was that I was almost sure that Domino had read the handbook. I threw the saddle pad on and turned to grab my saddle; my damn horse turned her head and pulled the thing off just before the saddle got to her back.

In the end, Missy climbed down from the post she was sitting on watching this drama, stood in front of Domino, pulled her head down by the reins so they were eye to eye, and pointed a finger at her, saying "Behave!" Missy must have come in at about four foot eight or so, and if you hosed her down she might even reach the eighty pound mark, but my damn horse just stood there.

All four legs, head and teeth, muscle and tail, and she just stood there, towering over Missy and behaving. I had little doubt if I tried that the horse would have had my finger off. Needless to say, Domino had the hump for the rest of the day, and that was one mean horse when she was pissed.

The thing that separates a horse from a mule is that a horse knows patience, and Domino was no exception. Over the next few days, I actually thought we were getting along, Missy and I rode the trails during the day, and I crawled into my room in the evening and soaked and swore never again - until the next day. Abe wanted to make sure I mastered horse riding before anything else; most of the time I thought it a wonder that I actually stayed on.

*******

I woke, dressed, fed Domino and mucked out her stall, and made it to breakfast as Missy came into the kitchen. "Dad, Kelly just called. She's boarding now, so she'll be landing in three hours."

"Can't be! That's NEXT week."

When women roll their eyes at you, you know the other shoe is about to drop.

"You didn't put it on the calendar straight away, did you? She's due in today, not next week."

That's when they both looked at me, and I was so tempted to step back out of the way. Abe couldn't go; he had something already planned. In circumstances like these he usually asked one of the hands to go. An hour after we had converted breakfast into sandwiches, Missy and I were already passing under the McCullen Ranch sign and on the way to the airport.

This airport was a hell of a lot closer than Houston: near the closest town, and not much more than an hour from the ranch. We got to the arrivals hall just as Kelly McCullen passed the last barrier that would allow her access to the main hall. Missy spotted her and screamed. Kelly recognized her scream and changed direction, and they met about twenty yards from the barrier. These two were sisters, but Missy was from a second relationship. Kelly was a brunette to Missy's blonde, and she was at college and coming back to the ranch to relax before her final year started.

Missy introduced me to her sister, and then I was promptly ignored by them both as I drove us back to the ranch. Both sisters caught up when they took over the back seat. I did smile when I thought of myself as the best paid chauffeur this side of the border.

Kelly seemed to be everywhere on the ranch over the next few days. Abe set about teaching me how to rope a moving cow and get it to the ground. I leaned against one of the posts while one of the hands showed me how it was done. The cow was released from a pen, made a run for it and the guy on the horse went after it, threw a rope around the cow's neck and wrestled it to the ground.

Damn, but those guys were fast. Kelly whispered something into Missy's ear, and the next thing I knew she did the same thing. It was an object lesson in how to feel worthless in ten minutes flat, and I was comedy central for the rest of the day.

My horse looked on this as revenge time, and twice stopped so suddenly that I learned how to fly; well, high enough to somersault over her head and hit the ground, I mean. Sticking at it was easy; watching how it was done helped, and eventually even this city boy got the hang of it. By the time Abe called it a day and I had put Domino to bed, the aches of the day made me limp back to my room.

The pool was somewhere I gravitated to so that I could soak without hurting. Normally I was alone for a good hour before I saw anyone else. Of course, that was before Kelly had come home. She peeked over her sunglasses, smiling a knowing smile, and I well knew why. Kelly had sat on a post watching me make a fool of myself. Her smile suddenly stopped when she took in the bruises.

Without even saying anything to me, she pointed to the lounger next to her and said something in Spanish into the house.

"Lie down here," she said.

The glare I got from her at my pausing and getting ready to refuse put me in my place real quick, and I laid face down on the lounger, my towel rolled up and acting as a pillow. For my sins and state of mind, I must have dozed off for a moment.

The lounger moved with the extra weight and I woke. "This will help, but you need to lie still for a while once it's on."

Kelly was kneeling across one of my legs while massaging some cream into me, and my only thoughts were that I had a beautiful woman in a one-piece bathing suit sitting on me, rubbing cream into me; the same Kelly McCullen that had rendered me almost speechless when I first saw her at the airport, making me just so grateful that Missy had taken all her attention for long enough to let me regain my wits.

I was so grateful now that I was face down on the lounger. For the moment, at least, I wouldn't have to explain my growing hard-on. This beautiful woman had her hands on me, and the back of my thigh felt the warmth being generated between her legs. Every chat-up line that passed through my thoughts was simply dismissed. This woman deserved the best, and all I could do in my befuddled state was to grunt and moan as her hands worked their magic.

Talking to her was easy as long as you knew you would be talking to Missy as well. The girls had been joined at the hips since Kelly got here. We were also miles from anywhere, so how could you ask someone like Kelly out on a date when it was over an hour's drive to the nearest town? Then of course there was Abe.

Abe: a decorated war hero, and father to this woman straddling my leg, was going to kill me. Very slowly, and with little doubt of there being a great deal of pain involved.

*******

She had magic hands; with those added to whatever was in that cream she rubbed into my skin, my mind relaxed and went with the flow. Soon my eyes closed and I could feel myself drift off, only waking when Kelly found a new bruise that still had a point to prove.

Although I heard footsteps, I was in little doubt that in my current state of mind I could do little if anything other than drift under the ministrations of her witchcraft.

Abe's voice reached us both. His voice held no anger at what his daughter was doing; questioning it perhaps. "What are you doing, Kelly?"

"Just marking my territory, Daddy."

"You do know he's older than you?"

"Six years and two months; Missy let me read his file."

As much as I wanted to listen to what was said next, those hands of Kelly's were just too damn good. When I woke again she was on her lounger reading a magazine. She must have sensed me watching her because she smiled.

"Enjoying the view?"

I got the feeling that whatever I said next mattered a great deal to the woman in front of me. "I heard you talking."

She showed no surprise. The pause before she spoke was just her placing her magazine back on the table by her lounger. Her legs swung over so that both feet rested on the poolside.

"I'm a McCullen; that means I'm no pushover." She sighed, wiped her hands across her face, and looked more intensely at me. "I know I'm saying this badly, and that's real stupid considering I'm going to be a journalist one day."

She stood and started to pace in front of me. Her hands automatically went to her ass and pulled her one-piece out from between her cheeks, making a slapping noise as the suit met skin again. I'm almost sure Kelly did it out of reflex, and not to get my attention aimed at a certain part of her body.

"I don't love you, Chase Stewart, but I want to see if I can. I know I felt something when I first met you, and still do every time I see you. Hell, you don't even want to know what I felt when I had my hands on you."

She suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. I got the impression she wasn't supposed to confess the last part.

"What I mean is, we have three weeks to find out."

By now, she had sat back down again, watching me as she did so. The cream had done wonders to my aches and pains, and I was able to sit up and look really hard at Kelly. I got the feeling that people like Kelly McCullen didn't do the chasing; her looks and personality were the magnet that drew guys to them.

In my mind I had just shy of three weeks to create a good impression on this woman, and so far that impression was one of a total idiot who couldn't even get his own horse to behave. On the upside I knew she was willing to help with the bruises, but right now it was just me sitting in front of Kelly, knowing full well I wasn't supposed to have heard what she had said to her father.

In the end, I went for the old fashioned approach. My hand came out and hers seemed to automatically clasp mine in a handshake. "Hi, I'm Chase Stewart, a strategist for a company called Richardson & Sons. Single and, due to work commitments at the moment, only part-time looking."

She finally let go of my hand. "But you are looking?" Kelly tried hard to make her question sound neutral, but the smile just got bigger as I nodded, and allowing that information to sink in was more than we both had hoped.

This set the tone for the next little while. Drinks appeared, and I had no idea who brought them to us, much to my embarrassment. When the sun felt too warm on our skin we would sit up to our necks in the pool. The sharing of our life history would pause on occasion as we got out of the pool, or when we got to put sun block on each other.

It was in those moments that we found our humor to be very similar. Plus, of course, I'm a male of the species and I had my hands on Kelly McCullen's back. It was one of those more unguarded moments for us both that I got an insight into the minds of both Abe and Kelly.

"Somehow I don't see you as a one-piece bathing suit type."

She smiled and nodded in agreement. "I'm not; I favor bikinis in this country and topless abroad. But my sister lives here and, because this is not only a working ranch but partly open to the public, and those same people share the pool, Dad and I need to keep Missy safe. Since I walk around in a one-piece, then she can't use me as an example and come to the pool in a bikini."

It was the smell of cooked food that broke up our conversation. My stomach also growled to inform me it would be dinner time very soon. Although we parted, there did seem to be plenty of reluctance on both sides. I left to shower off the pool's chlorine and get dressed.

Her smile reached her eyes when she saw me sit down for dinner. Abe came in a few minutes later, and we all settled down to eat. It was during that meal that I came to understand Kelly a lot better. Missy was from another marriage, but these two loved each other as true sisters, and the banter that crossed the table proved it. The girls still got their own sisterly digs into each other throughout the evening.

Just before I was ready to retire, Abe started a conversation that had me thinking all night.

"When you're done with Domino tomorrow morning, you're on the firing range for the rest of the day."

It was time to make a confession that stopped every conversation going on around the table. "Abe, I've never handled a gun before. I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable with one on me."

Both the girls looked at me like I was from Mars; at least Abe nodded his head in understanding. What he said next nailed it for me, though.

"Until this afternoon I would have understood your thoughts and respected your decision. That stopped when Kelly decided to get involved with you."

Missy turned and glared at her sister, so I figured Kelly hadn't got to sharing that secret just yet. Abe ignored the silence and just continued. I was now involved with a part of his family, albeit at a tentative stage, but still involved. To him, that meant protecting them as much as possible and, if we decided to do any sneaking around away from the ranch buildings, then the golden rule of the McCullen Ranch always applied.

Any movement outside the home area, you carried a gun. When people from outside came to the ranch for a week, one of the ranch hands was always a shadow, and those guys carried all the time. Abe wasn't stupid; the laws of nature still applied out there and, for my part, I simply couldn't fault his argument.

We shook on it, and I turned to leave.

"You forgetting something, Mister?"

Like a fool I checked my pockets, and then went beet red when I turned back and looked at Kelly. Man, was she pissed! Missy used the pause in conversation to give her sister a shove in the back that put us within a couple of feet from each other. My arms instinctively reached out to protect her if she fell; the smile beamed from her face when I did, and she willingly walked into them.

I kissed her goodnight; it took me a while, but it was worth it.

*******

Kelly let me know over breakfast that she would be at the range along with her dad. I looked after Domino until it was light enough for the range, and joined one of the ranch hands who took me out there.

Being honest with Abe from the outset had its advantages. I hadn't had anything to do with guns growing up, and when he handed me a Sig from the table that had various other handguns on it, all I wanted to do was hand it back.

Abe saw me hesitate, and his smile grew. "Invariably two things happen when you hand a person a gun; they go all Rambo, or they want to hand it back. The fact you wanted to hand it back proves you won't ever go all Rambo on me."

Kelly nodded in the background and disappeared into the concrete bunker for a few moments before coming out with some web thing. Right then was a worst-case scenario of very bad scenarios. I was on a gun range with a military veteran and various handguns sitting on a table, while his daughter was putting a hip holster on me and I was fighting the hard-on that wanted to join me at the moment.