could start thinking straight again. At least at the feed-and-tack she was surrounded by the proper scents.
August arrived, the hottest month of the year. After several gut-wrenching conferences and hearings, Beth finally had been slated to receive a judgment. Mr. Darling had wanted his time in court, and he got it. The light did not shine favorably on Beth, in spite of her attorney’s agile mind and tongue. The judge would settle the lawsuit on Monday. The Borzois’ counsel was not optimistic. Beth looked down the barrel of the longest weekend of her life.
Saturday afternoon, she left King Soopers the second her shift was officially over. She was sweating from the heat trapped by the mountain ranges, and she figured she could grill sausages on the dashboard of her old truck. She sat in the cab with both doors open and the fan on high, her cell phone balanced on her knee while she dug through the glove box for a ponytail band and waited for the steering wheel to cool. She planned to call Jacob, because she needed the kindness of his voice and the reassurance of his words to carry her through the afternoon.
Considering how long Beth had known him, she ought to have found her place in his story as a surrogate little sister. For a long time after his arrival, Jacob was blind to nearly everything but his role as Roy’s right-hand man. He was polite to Rose but rejected her attempts to mother him. He openly disliked Levi and gave Beth no more attention than he gave to the cows. He worked hard, studied responsibly, spoke little, and never played. Even his participation in rodeo events was more rigor than fun. At least as far as Beth saw it.
Only the birth of Beth’s little brother exposed Jacob’s capacity for affection. Rose had some bleeding complications that for a few days sat over the family like the grim reaper perched on their roof. Jacob was still sixteen then, still very close to the accidental death of his own mother. He hovered over the baby to the point of skipping chores and usurped Levi’s role as big brother. If Levi cared, he gave no sign.
Later, when Beth was old enough to diagnose Jacob’s aloofness as the pain of having lost his mother at a young age, she thought—in her expectant adolescent way—that all he needed to be happy was a woman who loved him, and when she was just a little older he would see her as exactly that. Her hopefulness grew until she was twelve, which was when Jacob put a stop to Levi’s unmerciful big-brother pranks by dropping a scorpion into one of Levi’s boots. After that, her interest in Jacob blossomed into full-blown adoration, and Levi, distracted from her, turned to Jacob as a more interesting and worthy adversary.
Beth eventually realized that Jacob had diverted Levi’s attention because he disliked Levi, not because he cared in some special way about her. For six months he dated a rodeo queen, a modelesque woman with platinum hair and a voice like Carrie Underwood’s. Beth teased Jacob about bringing home an older woman. In one of the most embarrassing moments of Beth’s life, Jacob pointed out that the woman was two years his junior—an understandable misjudgment for a girl Beth’s age.
The phone rang. Jacob Davis, the ID announced. This pleased her, even though he wouldn’t be calling her for the same reasons she had wanted to call him.
Beth put the phone to her ear while the hair band was still between her lips. “Mm-hm?”
“Come have a look at Gert before you run off with Hastings tonight?” Jacob asked. Gert was the pretty snowflake Appaloosa, his horse, and she’d been at the Blazing B only a few months. Beth took the band out of her teeth and wrapped it around her hair.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s lethargic, really hot to the touch. Tongue’s hanging out of her mouth.”
“Is she sweating?”
“No. She never sweats.”
“All horses sweat, Jacob.”
“Not this one. A lady all the way.”
“What kind of work were you doing today?”
“Irrigating,” he said.
“That shouldn’t have strained her.”
“She’s a brilliant cow horse, but she hates these summer outings. Next time I’m taking Hastings. He can dig his own ditches—did you know that?”
Beth smiled. “I assume Gert got plenty to drink today, if you were irrigating?”
“Evian and bonbons.”
“That’s your problem right there: bonbons will slow a girl down every time.”
She expected Jacob to laugh and wasn’t sure what it meant when he