Free Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

had loved for forty-two years. But Hope didn’t protest aloud. She and Mason had argued over the subject too many times. He wouldn’t go on a trip without her, and the ranch couldn’t be left untended overnight, much less for several weeks.
    “Water’s warm,” Mason said, gesturing toward the basin and towel waiting just inside the service porch.
    With the quick, efficient motions Hope had come to expect from Rio, he swept off his hat, rolled up his sleeves, and washed as much skin as he could reach. When he was finished he looked around at the yard. Then he picked up the basin and flipped its contents on the ground where a wilted lilac bush struggled to survive in the lee of the porch.
    More of the ice inside Hope melted. She caught Mason’s eyes and smiled approvingly.
    While Rio ate, Hope enjoyed the uncommon luxury of sitting and doing nothing more strenuous than drinking a cup of Mason’s potent coffee. As she sipped, she let her mind drift, dreaming lazily of a time when the ground would be green rather than hard as stone, and her cattle wouldn’t have to walk themselves thin just to get from food to water and back again.
    Rio’s deep voice and Mason’s age-roughened tones wove in and out of her waking dreams. She didn’t really listen until the men began discussing beef and water.
    “How many head are you going to sell?” Rio asked as he forked a juicy chunk of steak into his mouth.
    “Not a single cow,” Mason said flatly.
    Surprised, Rio looked up. In the artificial light his eyes were like midnight-blue crystal, startling against the tanned planes of his face and the rim of his jet-black lashes.
    “Boss don’t want to sell,” Mason explained. He pointed toward Hope with the stem of the ghastly old pipe he loved and she refused to let him set fire to indoors.
    Without another word, Rio went back to eating.
    “Aren’t you going to tell me that the price of beef will only get lower and the cattle thinner?” Hope asked him, her voice tight with the echoes of old arguments and refusals.
    “Waste of time,” Rio said. “You know your choices better than anyone in the room.”
    For a moment her new dream slid away from her, leaving her suspended in a cold present that had few choices, none of them pleasant.
    “When you decide to cull the herd,” Rio said matter-of-factly, “if I’m not here to help, use Dusk. She’ll cut your work in half.”
    Hope nodded, unable to speak for the tears and the sudden fear squeezing her throat.
    The more cattle she sold, the closer she came to the moment when she would have to auction off her beautiful Angus herd. They were the very soul of her dream of a new ranch, a new life, a future that held fat black cattle instead of the knife-lean Herefords of her nightmares.
    In the water-rich future of her dream, the ranch house would ring with plans and laughter again. Maybe then she could dare to dream beyond the needs of the cattle to her own needs. Maybe then she could dream of a man who would love her, of having children who would grow up tall and straight on the land. . . .
    Hope’s empty coffee mug hit the table with a solid thump as she stood up, slamming the door on her treacherous thoughts. Not since she had turned eighteen had she allowed herself to dream of love and children. There was no point in dreaming about it now. She had other dreams, possible dreams, dreams that depended only on her own strength and determination rather than on the unknowable, undependable mind of a man.
    In her lifetime she had found few men to respect. She had found none whose children she wanted to have.

Seven

    “T HINK THE BATH water is hot yet?” Hope asked Mason.
    “Not likely. But the buckets on the stove are near boiling. I’ll haul ’em up for you.”
    “Don’t bother,” she said quickly. “Cook Rio another steak. He’s doing the work of two men.”
    Before Mason could object, she went to the huge ranch stove. Two big buckets of water simmered over the hot