Final Scream by Lisa Jackson Page B

feet.
    “What about you?” she asked as he pulled out a pocket knife, leaned over and slit the twine that held the bale together.
    “What about me what?”
    “The way you act around Angie.”
    He snorted as he stepped over another bale and sliced through the twine. The bale split, sending up a tiny cloud of dust. “I don’t ‘act’ around anyone, Cass. You should know that by now.”
    It rankled her how he shortened her name. Like she was just one of the hands. Or a kid. “Sure you do. Every guy does.”
    “Well, I’m not just like every guy, am I?” He clucked his tongue and, straddling the broken bale, stared up at her. His gaze touched hers and held, causing the back of her mouth to turn to dust. His slow-spreading smile was downright nasty. “You think I’ve got the hots for your sister?”
    “I didn’t say—”
    “But that’s what you meant.” Making a sound of disgust in his throat, he clicked his knife shut. “Women,” he muttered under his breath as he grabbed a pitchfork hanging on the wall and began pronging hay into the mangers.
    Dropping the currycomb and brush into a bucket, she climbed over the top of the stall gate as Remmington began picking at the hay Brig had shaken into his stall. Brig didn’t stop working, just kept forking split bale after split bale into the open mangers. Cassidy watched him walk—saunter, really, along the row of feeding bins. She noticed the way his thighs and butt tightened beneath his sun-bleached Levi’s as he stopped, bent over, cut the twine, then tossed hay into the stalls. A restless man, he never seemed to stop moving, and her heart fluttered stupidly whenever he looked her way. Not that he did very often.
    She waited, hanging around until he was finished and walked back to the door. “All done with him?” Brig asked, nodding toward Remmington’s stall as he hung the pitchfork on its hook. “No bows or ribbons?”
    Anger surged through her, but she managed to hang on to her temper. “Not today. Maybe Sunday.”
    He laughed as they stepped outside, where the summer sun was hanging lazily over the ridge of mountains to the west, and yellow jackets and wasps hovered at the spilled water near the trough. The day was without a breath of wind, and Cassidy’s clothes felt sticky and damp from the heat.
    “You should be able to ride your horse soon,” Brig said as he reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. “I think I told you before, I like to take it slow.”
    “Slow?”
    “So as not to break his spirit.” Shaking out a Camel, he eyed the lowering sun, then jabbed the cigarette into the corner of his mouth.
    “I want to ride him now.”
    Striking a match on the bottom of his boot, he said, “Be patient.”
    “He’s mine.”
    “Haven’t you heard that patience is a virtue?” With a half-smile, he lit up and stared at her through the thin veil of smoke. “Or is that the problem—that you’re not into being virtuous?”
    Again his eyes held hers and she felt her stomach turn over. “I just want to ride my horse.”
    “It’ll happen. In time.”
    “I can’t wait forever.”
    “Two weeks isn’t forever.” He sighed heavily and plucked a piece of tobacco from his tongue. “You know, Cass, the best things in life are worth waiting for. At least that’s what my old man used to say before he took off. I never knew him, but Chase, he did, and he keeps spouting off these words of wisdom from a guy who decided he didn’t want to stick around and take care of his kids and wife.” He frowned as he drew hard on his cigarette, and lines etched between his black eyebrows. He stared at a solitary fir tree in a corner of the paddock, but Cassidy suspected he was miles away, thinking back to a childhood filled with poverty and pain. “Personally, I think anything Frank McKenzie said was a pile of shit, but Chase, he seems to think our father was God.” He chuckled without a trace of mirth. “Chase, he’s the optimist. Has an idea that