Читать книгу Night Hawk онлайн | страница 4

Looking around, the main ranch home was built of cedar and two stories tall, a silver sheen to its aging wood. The roof looked new. There was a white picket fence, recently painted, surrounding it. It was June first and Kai knew Wyoming winters hung around forever. She saw someone had bravely planted flowers in beds along the inside of the fence in hopes they could survive and struggle to stay alive in the near freezing temperatures that occurred at night. As she gazed out beyond the graveled parking area, she saw a number of rusted pipe fences that were in sad shape. This rancher would need a welder. She knew how to weld. That would be a plus, something she could tell the owner in hopes of him hiring her.

Kai sat there, feeling her stomach knot. Desperate for a job, her hope long since fading, she didn’t want to apply for government assistance. It just wasn’t somewhere she wanted to go, and she fought the idea. Swallowing, her throat dry, she closed her eyes, knowing she couldn’t go home. Home to Cody, Wyoming. Home to her father’s ranch, the Circle T.

Her father had disowned her when she joined the Army at age eighteen. He favored her older brother, Steve, over herself. He’d written her out of the will when she left for the Army. And he never believed a woman could run a ranch, so he’d left it to her brother when it was his time to die. At age 59, Hal Tiernan was the same gruff, terse, mean son of a bitch he’d always been. Kai had been an unwanted addition to her father’s life. He doted on his son and barely tolerated her because she was female. He called her Troublemaker.

Rubbing her dark blue long-sleeved blouse that was feminine looking but functional, her heart ached for what she wished might have been with her broken family.

If her mother, Olivia, hadn’t died when Kai was eight years old, things might have turned out a lot different. Kai was in constant touch with Steve, who loved her fiercely, begging her to come home. But home to what? Hal verbally digging at her on a daily basis? Making sniping remarks because she was a woman? He looked at all women as useful only when they were pregnant and barefoot. That was her father’s favorite saying. Kai didn’t know how her mother, who had been a high school principal, tolerated that kind of shit from him. She certainly didn’t. And that was why he called her Troublemaker. He never called her by her real name, only his nickname for her. Kai hated it.