Chapter 11

Ana watched Chase’s truck until it disappeared from sight then turned to go back inside. The past week had been rough for him, and she had tried not to make it rougher. The rift with Charlie gnawed at him more than he wanted her to know, but she’d wakened too often in the middle of the night to find him staring at the ceiling to believe that it didn’t matter.

He had been moody, quiet, and now was on his way to a rodeo in Sedona. He’d invited her to go but she had declined, saying that she wasn’t feeling all that well. Which was not entirely a lie. She wasn’t physically sick, but she was starting to be worried sick about him.

Chase offered to stay home but she encouraged him to go and told him it would do him good. Besides, she’d told him that Clay had entered the bull-riding competition and it would be good for Chase to be there to cheer him on.

In the end he had given in, promising to be back the next day. Ana assured him she would be fine.

Now she ran for the phone, fumbling in the pocket of her jeans for the phone number.

It rang twice before Cole answered. “Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s Ana.”

“Hey there, sexy. Let me guess, Chase just left, and you can’t wait for me to skedaddle on over there.”

She laughed at his carrying-on. “So now you’re psychic, eh?”

“A man can dream,” he said and laughed along with her. “So, you ready to put Plan A into effect?”

“As ready as I’ll get.”

“Good deal. We’ll be there inside an hour.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

She hung up and looked around. The place was as neat as a pin. Nothing out of place, so nothing to straighten up. To keep busy she watered the horses, again, played fetch with Cody and Fergi for half an hour then went inside, took a quick shower, and dressed in one of her most conservative peasant blouses and skirts with a wide leather belt secured around her slim waist.

She was finishing tea when she heard the vehicle. Ana ran to the door and stepped out onto the porch. True to his word, there was Cole, helping a very attractive middle-aged woman from the truck.

He grabbed a basket from the seat and escorted the woman to the house. Ana saw the woman sizing her up as she approached and stepped down off the porch to greet her. “Miss Mahoney,” she said with a smile. “Thank you for coming.”

Clara looked Ana straight in the eye and held her gaze for a long time. She hadn’t been sure at all about meeting the Jezebel Charlie had been cussing and stomping about for the past week. If she was half as bad as Charlie claimed, Clara might just have to shoot her. No one preyed on her boys, and while he might be a grown man, Chase was as much her boy as any child could be.

Had it not been for the twins and Caleb, Clara would have found a way to run Ana out of town behind Chase’s back. But the other boys swore Ana was a stand-up woman and nothing like Charlie claimed. Clara figured she owed it to Chase to find out for herself.

Clara nodded to Ana and gestured to Cole for the basket. “I brought apple spice cake and a blueberry pie you can put in the freezer for Chase. It’s his favorite.”

“Thank you,” Ana replied and gestured to the house. “Come in. I’ve made tea.”

They all went into the kitchen where the tea service was sitting on the table. Ana saw Clara pause when she saw the service. She’d found it in the pantry, wrapped in cloth in a box. When she asked Chase about it, he’d told her that it had belonged to his mother. Clara had told him that the one civilized thing about Charity Hawks was her appreciation of good tea. Apparently they had made a habit of sharing tea before Charity died.

“Please.” Ana gestured to the table and took a seat herself. “That apple spice cake smells like heaven. Do you mind if we have some with tea?”

“Fine,” Clara said as she took a seat.

“Cole, would you get a knife from the rack?” Ana asked as she poured the tea. She passed a cup to Clara.

Clara sniffed at it and looked up at Ana in surprise. “Bewley’s?” she asked.

“Hmmm.” Ana smiled. “I hope that’s okay. I find it to be the most satisfying breakfast tea I’ve ever had. Chase was kind enough to special order it for me.

“Oh, thank you,” she said with a smile as Cole put the knife on the table. “Miss Mahoney, would you mind slicing the cake?”

Clara cut them each a big slice. Ana took a bite and closed her eyes. “Oh my!” she exclaimed. “You made this? This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

Ana wasn’t acting. The cake was a little slice of paradise. She gobbled up every crumb and reached for the knife to cut another slice. That’s when she realized that Cole and Miss Mahoney were both grinning at her.

“Oops, sorry,” she said with a grin. “Acting like a little pig, aren’t I?”

Clara’s heart had melted the moment the girl dug into the cake. For a moment all Clara could see was Charity. Try as she might, Charity could never master the art of baking. But when Clara would bake, Charity would stuff herself like a child, crooning and humming like she was in seventh heaven. Just like Ana did now.

“You go right on. Eat as much as you want. There’s more where that came from.”

“Thanks!” Ana beamed at her and cut a big wedge of the cake.

Cole laughed at the size of the slice. “Somebody’s gonna have to do a whole lot of whatever it is Chase said you do every day to work out.”

“Yoga.” Ana put her hand over her mouth to answer.

“Yoga?” Clara asked. “I always did want to learn that. I heard it’s good for the circulation.”

“Oh, yes.” Ana nodded enthusiastically. “And keeps the spine loose and flexible which is so important. I could teach you if you like.”

“Maybe.” Clara smiled and sipped at the tea. “Now, Cole says there’s something important you need to talk to me about.”

Ana suddenly felt nervous. She wiped her hands on a napkin and bolted down her tea. “Yes. Yes, there is. It’s about Chase and his father.”

“No sense in discussing that. Those two been butting heads for as long as I can remember. That’s not likely to change.”

“But I think it can,” Ana argued quietly.

Clara’s eyebrows rose and Ana quickly explained. “Cole and Clay and Caleb have told me what they know about the situation between Chase and Charlie. Chase is…well, you know him better than I. To say the least, he’s close-mouthed about it.”

Clara chuckled. “Close-mouthed is a nice way of putting it.”

Ana laughed with her. “Yeah, well, he does have a way of clamming up when he doesn’t want to talk. But I think it’s a real shame the way things are for Chase and his dad. They were both devastated by Charity’s death, but the truth of it is that it wasn’t Chase’s fault. Charlie just had no one else to blame, and Chase accepted the burden of shame and clung to it.”

“That’s as good a way of putting it as I’ve ever heard,” Clara agreed. “But righting that wrong isn’t something that’ll be done easy. I’ve worked at it for years and, if anything, am further away from the goal than when I started.”

“Well, now you’re not alone in that effort,” Ana said with a smile. “Because I want to help.”

“No offense, but I don’t see how you could possibly help. Charlie would probably call the law on you if you stepped foot on his property, and the chance of Chase asking his daddy back here is a long-shot to say the least.”

“Maybe not.” Ana grinned. “I’d be willing to bet that they’d band together real quick if, say for example, something happened to you.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of this.” Clara folded her arms over her chest.

“Well, you haven’t heard my plan yet.”

“Okay, let’s have it.”

Ana gave Cole a wink. “Just suppose that Chase and his father thought you’d had a heart attack or something, that you just fell out on the floor and had to be transported to the hospital.”

Clara barked a laugh. “Well, first of all everyone knows I’m strong as a horse, and second, even if that did happen, they’d likely just send me flowers and wait for me to get back on my feet to cook for them.”

“Hmmm…” Ana considered it for a few moments then her eyes brightened. “Okay, so what if you were kidnapped?”

Clara’s laugh was full-blown this time. “If I was the queen mother, I suppose that would raise a ruckus, but I’m just a housekeeper, girl. No one’s going to pay any ransom for my sorry old hide.”

“I think you’re wrong,” Ana argued.

“Oh, you do, do you?”

“Yes. Chase loves you. You’re his Mama C. He’d gnaw off his own arm for you. And Charlie would too.”

“I doubt that,” Clara scoffed at the idea.

“Well, I don’t. I think Charlie cares a lot more for you than he lets on. And I bet you ten dollars to a donut that if he knew you loved him, you’d be Mrs. Russell before you could turn around.”

Clara’s face flared with color. “Hush your mouth, girl. Charlie Russell don’t have feelings for me.”

“I say he does. And so does Fergi.”

“The Duchess of York? Cole, check that tea. I think Ana’s been brewing up locoweed.”

Ana laughed and so did Cole. Clara cut Cole a sharp look. “You want to clue me in on what’s so damn funny?”

“I’m sorry,” Ana apologized and rose to go to the door. “I didn’t mean Sarah Ferguson. I meant my familiar, Fergi.”

She opened the door and let out a strange whistle. “Oh, I forgot,” she said over her shoulder. “I didn’t tell you. I’m a witch.”

“What?” Clara blurted at the exact same moment Fergi landed on Ana’s shoulder. Clara jumped in her chair and grabbed Cole’s arm.

“Holy shit!” Cole threw himself over Clara protectively.

“It’s okay,” Ana said as she walked back to the table and took a seat. “This is Fergi. Fergi this is Clara Mahoney and Cole Russell.”

Fergi chirped and twittered at the two people cowering on the other side of the table. “She won’t hurt you,” Ana told them. “Really.”

Cole got back in his chair, staring at the hawk in amazement. “Why aren’t her talons digging into you?” he asked.

“Oh!” Ana hadn’t thought about that in a long time, probably because few people ever saw her and Fergi interacting. “There’s a charm on me that protects my skin from her talons. We worked it out when Fergi first came to me because we wanted to be able to touch.”

Clara’s hand was over her heart and her eyes were as round as quarters. “Good lord, girl. That’s the biggest hawk I’ve ever seen!”

Ana reached up to stroke Fergi. “Yes, she is magnificent, isn’t she? And heavy. Fergi, if you get any bigger, I’m going to have to start lifting weights. How ‘bout hopping over there to that free chair?”

Fergi did just that. One hop and a small flap and she was perched on the back of the chair, balancing as the chair wobbled. “Now.” Ana directed her attention to Clara. “You want to hear my idea?”

“Chase have any spirits in the house?” Clara asked in reply. “I think I might need something stronger than tea if I’m going to make a pact with a witch and her…familiar.”

Ana chuckled and got up to fetch the bottle of bourbon she’d seen in the kitchen cupboard.

“Okay,” she said as she poured a good portion of the liquor into Clara’s cup and then Cole’s when he raised his teacup. “This is the basic idea…”

* * * * *

Chase mopped his face with his bandana then stuffed it in the back pocket of his jeans. He was going to strangle Cole. Thanks to Cole’s timely absence, Chase had gotten roped into helping with the calf castration.

“Hey!”

Chase turned in the direction of the shout. A tall, dark-haired man leaned on the fence. “See what that fella wants,” Chase yelled at Caleb, then nodded to Clay that he was ready for the next calf.

Caleb walked over to the fence.

“Can I help you?” he asked as he approached the stranger.

“You Chase Hawks?”

“Nope, Caleb Russell. That’s my brother Chase, back there.” He jerked his thumb over this shoulder in Chase’s direction.

“A guy in town said I should talk to him about work,” the man said and extended his hand.

Caleb gave the man a once-over. From his ponytailed hair to his sneaker-clad feet he had city written all over him. “Got any experience?” He took the man’s hand.

“I’m a fast learner,” the man replied with a smile. “And you’d like to give me a chance.”

“Uh…right. Yeah. Okay,” Caleb said in a slightly dazed manner. “Sure, you can bunk in with Danny in cabin five. Just go back past the barn and turn left and you’ll see the cabins. You got your gear?”

“Actually, I don’t have gear. And I don’t work with cows. I am good with an engine though. Bet you have some machinery that could use a rehaul or tune-up.”

Caleb blinked several times. “Uh, well…yeah, yeah, as a matter of fact we do.”

“Excellent,” the man said with a smile. “Then why don’t I get settled and in the morning you can show me around and get me familiar with your operation.”

“Uh, sounds like a plan,” Caleb agreed.

“See you in the morning…boss,” Giovanni said with a smile and turned away.

Caleb scratched his head and took a step after the man, but Clay yelled for him, so he turned and went back to work.

Giovanni got in his car and followed the directions Caleb had given. The cabin was actually a small wood-frame house. Not much to speak of, but as he discovered when he entered, it was clean and comfortable.

“Yeah, this will do just fine,” he said as he took a seat on the couch and threw his feet up on the coffee table. “Just fine.”

It had been much easier than he’d anticipated, locating Fiana. Actually, the insurance company had done the work for him, calling about her car, which had been taken to a garage in Arizona.

Giovanni had left that same day and driven almost nonstop until he reached Safford. It was a next-to-nothing town as far as he was concerned, but did possess something of great value, namely a café where the waitress was as tired of the local yahoos as she could be and wishing for a handsome stranger to roll into town and make all her dreams come true.

Enter Giovanni Sardo. Inside two days he had little Sandy Wingate, waitress and eager fuck partner, eating out of his hands. She’d filled him in on all the gossip which included someone called Chase Hawks, who had run over a woman in town and then taken her home with him. According to Sandy, the local mechanic, Rusty, had towed in the woman’s car and it was registered to a Fiana Stillwater. Strange name as far as Sandy was concerned but made for interesting gossip.

He figured Fiana had told the cowboy some sob story about getting beat up and suckered him in. But had she told him the truth? That when she walked out on him, she brought the roof down on his head? Literally. He had thirteen stitches in his scalp to prove it and no one got away with that. Just like no bitch got away with walking out on him.

Fiana had a lesson coming and it was going to be a hard one. The thought of it gave Giovanni a hard-on. Funny that he hadn’t realized earlier how exciting it was to cause pain, the rush that it brought and the power it infused him with.

He laughed. Fiana had teased him more than once about his weak powers. He’d even overheard her once say that the bloodline of the Sardinia witches must be very diluted because his powers were almost nonexistent. Boy, was she in for a surprise. Ever since he’d spilled her blood, his power had increased dramatically.

Soon he’d teach her a lesson. She’d realize that she was nothing compared to him. And then she would die. But not fast. Giovanni was going to take his time and enjoy it.