Ginna Gray - The Ties That Bind

She stepped away and gave him a cool look. “Neither. Lennie Dawson is a neighbor. His father owns the Bar-D, the ranch that borders us to the east. I’ve known him since I was six.”

“Mmm,” Zach replied, watching the red pickup disappear over the crest of the hill. “Has he always had a bad temper?”

Willa stiffened, and immediately her anger with Lennie transferred to Zach. “Look, I can handle Lennie. In the future just mind your own business.”

Zach shrugged. “Fine by me. I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help. I don’t need anything from you.” She spun away and stomped back to the barn.

Watching her, Zach shook his head. That’s where you’re wrong, lady, he thought. You need me, all right. Like it or not, you need me and J.T. and Matt to hold on to this place.

Everything about the woman radiated anger, from those snapping violet eyes to her rigid spine to the defiant set of her jaw. Though on the small side, she was beautifully proportioned, and her leggy stride ate up the ground. Today all that ebony hair was confined in one long braid as thick as his wrist, which bounced and swayed against her backside with each furious step.

He could understand her anger—up to a point. She felt cheated and ill-used, and who could blame her? In her place, he’d feel the same. Seamus had strung her along with false promises, and after putting up with his foul temper and rigid control for most of her life, losing three-quarters of the Rocking R to strangers, never mind that they were the rightful heirs, had to have been a low blow. Discovering that without them she would have lost it all must have been even more galling.

Hell, he couldn’t blame her for resenting them. Seamus was the real villain in all this, but the old bastard was gone, and her fury needed a live target.

Okay, he could live with that for a while. It wouldn’t be easy, but he’d cut her some slack. At least until the raw hurt eased enough for her to gain a little perspective and look at the situation fairly.

Willa entered the barn muttering a litany of colorful epithets aimed at Zach, Lennie, Seamus and men in general. Sitting on a nail keg in the sunshine spilling in through the open double doors, Pete cast her a cautious glance, then wisely went back to stitching the saddlebag he was repairing.

“How dare Lennie accuse Seamus of using me to further his own agenda,” she snarled as she paced to the far end of the barn. “How dare he! Idiot. Jerk. Hopeless Neanderthal!”

True, Seamus may not have loved her as his own flesh and blood, as she’d so desperately wanted, but he had accepted her as his stepdaughter and assumed responsibility for her, honoring that obligation even after her mother’s death.

Willa had been only fifteen at the time. Seamus could have shipped her off to live with distant relatives, but he had not been a man to shirk his duty.

Still, the sad truth was, Seamus had been perfectly capable of scheming to make a match between her and Zach. Was that why he had made her a beneficiary in his last will? So propinquity could do its work? He’d clearly had no intention of leaving her any portion of the ranch until after his grandsons showed up.

Seamus may have resented Zach and his brothers, but they had the Rafferty blood that had been so important to him and she had the experience and dedication and love for the Rocking R. If her stepfather had gotten it into his head that a marriage between her and Zach would benefit the ranch, he would have schemed and manipulated to make it happen.

In all things, Seamus had always been so absolutely certain that his way was the right way that he would not have considered such a maneuver wrong. Or insulting to her. Willa snorted. He probably would’ve thought he was doing her a favor.

“Well, if that was Seamus’s plan, it’s doomed to failure,” she swore. “By heaven, I won’t be anyone’s brood mare.

“Men!” she spat, earning another wary look from Pete.

Though she’d paced the barn’s cavernous length three times, fury still bubbled inside her. Finally she picked up a pitchfork and attacked the stalls, even though they had been mucked out only that morning.

She worked steadily for a couple of hours, until her shoulders ached and the muscles in her arms quivered from the strain. After the stalls were clean and spread with fresh hay she filled the feed and water troughs in the corrals as well as those inside the barn. Occasionally, through the open doors, she glimpsed Zach and his brothers and the children retrieving things from their vehicles and toting them into the house.

When Willa could find nothing else to do she fetched a can of neatsfoot oil and a soft chamois from the tack room and started applying the lubricant to her saddle.

“I just oiled that saddle two days ago,” Pete growled, never taking his gaze from his work. “It don’t need it again.” Pete had gotten too old to ride and he refused to retire, so Seamus had put him in charge of the tack room, and he guarded his domain with the fierceness of a stock dog with his herd.

“It looked a little dry,” Willa said defiantly, and continued to rub the leather.

Pete stood and hung the bridle on a nail. He crossed the barn to Willa’s side, took oil and cloth from her and set them aside, then cupped her elbow with his gnarled hand. “C’mon, Willie,” he said gently, steering her toward the door. “You can’t avoid them folks forever, so you might as well go on inside. Maria’s bound to have dinner ready by now. An’ from the smells coming from the cookhouse, Cookie’s got the men’s grub ready, too.”

Willa sighed, knowing that Pete was right. “All right, I’m going. I’m going,” she mumbled.

Outside twilight had fallen. She murmured good-night to Pete and headed toward the house on leaden feet. She’d rather take a whipping than sit down to a meal with those people.

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