Safe Haven by Renee Simons Read Free Book Online Page B

"What was it like, being a stockman?"
    Dinner had been filled with good food and easy conversation. Replete and relaxed, neither wanted to end the interlude.
    "About like you’d expect - hot, dusty, long days, longer nights, floods during the wet, willy-willies during the dry.”
    “Willy-willies?”
    He thought for a moment. “Dust devils.”
    She nodded. “Tell me more.”
    “I started out as a jackaroo...”
    She placed a hand on his to stop him. Her palm tingled at the contact. She tried to focus.   “Which is...?”
    “A ringer...”
    “C’mon, Caldwell ,” she said with a grin. “Play fair.”
    He laughed at her mischievous tone and nodded. “A rookie cowhand.” He paused, waiting for her reaction.
    “Go on,” she said. “Slowly.”
    “In my third year I became a drover - that’s the foreman or ramrod of a plant consisting of four hands, a cook and a horsetailer.”
    She nodded. “I get it. You bossed an outfit with four cowboys, a cook - that’s easy - and a horsetailer? What’s that?”
    One eyebrow quirked upward and her sly smile stirred his pulse. Having revived her sense of humor, he was tempted to find out what else he could bring to life, starting with her luscious mouth. He forced himself to concentrate on her question.
    “That is a wrangler, a guy who tended the horses we rode during the muster...”
    “Muster...you said that before...” Her brow wrinkled as she tried to decipher the reference. “It’s a roundup,” she said finally with a smile of triumph. “Right?”
    “Spot on.”
    “Spot on,” she repeated, with a touch of awe in her tone. “God, I love the way you talk. Okay. Continue.”
    “That’s all. Three years running, we led mobs overland to market. These days, they mostly use road trains, so maybe it's a good thing I switched to architecture."
    She raised one eyebrow. "A mob’s a herd of cows, right? What’s a road train?"
    “A semi with multiple carriers for hauling livestock to market."
    "Much better," she said with a nod of satisfaction. "Trucks are trucks and cowboys I understand. How did Kevin get here?"
    "After the second muster, he came over and settled down with Lacey."
    "Did they meet here?"
    "No. After driving a mob - a herd - to market, we laid over in Birdsville. I don't suppose you've heard of the place."
    "I've seen photos."
    "Then you know it's dehydrated and nearly deserted most of the time. We came off a muster one time and walked into the hotel. This vision of loveliness stepped behind the counter to take our names. Kevin was a goner."
    She felt a familiar stirring that she refused to acknowledge as jealousy. "You sound a little bit in love, yourself."
    He fixed her with a potent stare that sent a shiver through her. "I've never been in love."
    She looked for a safer topic. "How did you make the leap from mustering cows to designing buildings?"
      "Just got tired of the cattle business. I'd mucked around some with art as a kid. Architecture seemed to have a future if I could create a following. I came here to go to school and never left."
    As she poured the last of the coffee from the silver pot she asked, "May I see your blueprints for the project?"
    "Why?"
    "To help me understand what's going on with you and VolTerre."
    While he went for the plans, Jordan carried the centerpiece of yellow tulips to the sideboard. She wanted to understand, to help, even though helping had brought back a past filled with loss and broken dreams.
    He spread out the plans, using candlesticks and silverware to hold down the corners. With elbows on the table, they knelt on their chairs and leaned over the charts, close enough to feel each other's warmth.
    Time drifted by unheeded as he explained floor plans and elevations, deciphered schematics for newly-developed fastening devices he'd ordered. His fingers traced drawings of the buildings as they would have looked when completed.
    "The people living there would’ve had light and fresh air and a feeling of open