Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

part of the truth, the part she wanted him to know. He started to say something, then bit it off. His lips flattened into a colorless line.
    “I’ll do the water hauling from now on,” he said.
    “No.” Her voice was smooth and calm. It left no opening for an argument. “But if you’d like to ride shotgun,” she added, smiling widely at him, “I’d love to have the company. Like I said, talking to the cows isn’t real stimulating.”
    He looked at her for another long moment. She was smiling her familiar, heart-warming smile, but her skin was too pale. He was certain that Turner had tried something. It was what Mason had feared since the instant Pete had told him about the boss getting up real early and going to check on the south well.
    Though few men spoke aloud about it, Hope wasn’t the first woman to find herself on the rough end of Turner’s arrogance. Only one girl had gone to the sheriff over it. The humiliation that had followed was a lesson to any other female who thought she had the same rights as Big Jase Turner’s son.
    Mason knew that no matter what happened, Hope wouldn’t say anything to him about Turner. She was trying to protect Mason’s pride. Just like she had by taking over the water runs. She knew that Mason’s hands were too bad right now to handle the heavy truck and the stubborn couplings. He wouldn’t have a chance against a man less than half his age and nearly twice his weight.
    Silently, secretly, Mason cursed the fate that had let him live long enough to lose his beloved wife and then grow too old to defend the woman who meant as much to him as any blood daughter could have.
    “I’ll ride with you from now on,” he said quietly.
    Hope didn’t argue. She was relieved to know that she wouldn’t have to face Turner alone again. The man simply didn’t understand plain English. To him, no was a coy prelude to a wrestling match.
    Maybe that was how his other women liked it, but not Hope. The thought of fighting Turner both frightened and sickened her. Like the thought of having his hands all over her again. It made breakfast do a backflip and try to climb right up her throat.
    Mason went to the pickup truck and lifted a rifle from the rack that stretched across the rear window. He checked the load, eased the firing pin back into place, and pulled a box of shells out of the glove compartment. When he came back to Hope, he was smiling.
    There was something in his smile that made her very glad to be his friend rather than his enemy.
    “Snake gun,” Mason said laconically. His voice was rough with age and the fury that still turned deep inside his gut at the thought of Turner lying in wait for Hope like a coyote at a water hole. “Drought like this, you git snakes at the wells.”
    She cleared her throat. “Yes, I’ve noticed that.”
    He stopped smiling and looked at her unflinchingly. “If I ain’t around and you gotta go to a well, you be goddamn sure you got a snake gun with you. And you keep it real close to hand no matter what you’re doing. Hear me, Hope?”
    She tried to smile. She couldn’t. Instead, she hugged Mason quickly. “I hear you.”
    He nodded curtly. “I’ll watch the pump. You go over that little rise and run some rounds through this here rifle. Been a long time since we done any shooting together.”
    Hope didn’t argue that she would rather have dozed in the cab. She took the gun and the shells and walked over a rise until she came to a place where there would be no chance of a ricochet hitting any cattle. She found a particularly ugly clump of big sage growing against the bank of a dry ravine, mentally labeled the bush John Turner, and began trimming it down to size one twig at a time.
    When Hope had shot enough rounds to soothe Mason and herself, she walked back over the rise to the well. Mason was tinkering with the generator. Whatever he was doing had an immediate effect; the sound of the engine decreased by about half. He stood up to listen,