You Sleep In My Bed, You Wake Up As My Woman, the Rancher Whispered—She Froze

Chapter 3

Caleb pulled the wagon under the barn roof and set the brake. “We made it.” He climbed down first and reached for her suitcase. Nora stepped onto the plank floor, and the smell of fresh hay and warm leather and horse sweat closed around her like a blanket. Several horses lifted their heads over their stalls. None of them shied at the rancher. They simply watched him with the quiet trust of animals that had been treated right their whole lives.

“They judge people better than most towns,” Caleb said, noticing her noticing.

Nora almost smiled. That was the closest she had come all day.

He led her to a small building beside the stable and swung the door open. Inside: a clean iron bed with the mattress rolled tight, a wood stove, a washbasin, a sturdy table with two chairs. Nothing fancy. Everything useful. He set her suitcase by the bed. “Stove stays warm most of the night. Blankets are on that shelf. Water pump’s outside the back door.”

Nora turned a slow circle, taking in the room. “You keep this ready?”

“My ranch hands used it years ago.”

“What happened to them?”

“Most left for the railroad when the tracks came through.” He said it without bitterness. “The ones who stayed, stayed.”

“You stayed.”

He nodded once. “Some places are worth staying for.” He moved toward the door, then paused. “I’ll bring supper. Don’t wait up.”

“Wait.” She folded her arms. “Why?”

He looked back over his shoulder. “Because you’re hungry.”

“No.” She stepped toward him. “Why help somebody you met less than an hour ago?”

Caleb rested one hand against the door frame and was quiet a long moment. “My mother spent one winter sleeping in a church after she lost everything — her husband, her farm, nearly her mind. She survived because one stranger opened a door and let her in.” He tipped his hat low over his eyes. “I’ve never forgotten what that kindness cost that stranger, or what it was worth to my mother.”

Then he was gone into the rain.

Nora sat on the edge of the bed and pressed her hands into her lap. The room was warmer than any place she had slept in months. And yet sleep refused to come. Otis’s words circled her like flies at a carcass — too tall, too strong, not a wife. She turned her hands over in the lamplight and looked at them. Those hands had buried her parents. Had built fences her father never got to finish. Had pulled calves through blizzards and driven wagons across flooded rivers. And tonight they had somehow become unwanted.

A gentle knock interrupted her spiraling. Caleb came in carrying two steaming bowls of beef stew and set them on the table. “I figured you’d rather eat with company.”

“I don’t wish to impose.”

“You aren’t.” He pulled out a chair. “I dislike eating alone.”

So they shared supper in the glow of the stove while rain drummed on the roof and the fire talked to itself. Neither spoke for a long while. It was the first quiet Nora had known in a week, and it hurt and healed in the same breath.

After several bites, Caleb asked, “Can you really handle horses?”

Nora looked up. “I’ve been breaking colts since I was fourteen.”

His eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Tomorrow, I’ll know whether you’re telling the truth.”

She met his eyes across the table, and for the first time all day she felt something other than the cold. “You won’t be disappointed.”

The wind drove another sheet of rain against the glass, and the stove ticked in the dark. Somewhere out in the night, Nora was certain of only one thing: that tomorrow would decide whether she had found a door, or only a longer way to fall.