So what was she supposed to say to him? Unlike Andrew’s father, who had been here two weeks, Andrew had only arrived at the ranch this morning. Should she ask about his trip from San Antonio? If his room was comfortable?
She felt bored just thinking about the conversation.
“Is that straw on your dress?” Pa pointed at her shoulder.
Was it? She looked down at the same time her father stepped forward and plucked the strand from where it had been stuck along her neckline.
A fresh bout of heat burst onto her face. She’d gone through an entire dance with straw stuck to her? Why hadn’t Daniel or Wes said anything?
“Stand up and turn around.”
She did, and the jerky way her father plucked at her back told her more had gotten caught in the silly lace flounces he’d insisted she wear.
“What in tarnation possessed you to visit the stable during the ball?” Displeasure dripped from his words.
“You remember the quarter horse I bred with Ares? Helen is in labor.”
He cursed.
She whirled around. “Don’t be that way. You know how difficult foaling can be on a first-time mother. Someone needed to check on her.”
“We have cowhands for that.”
“Cowhands know what to do with birthing cattle. Not horses.”
“There’s not that much difference.”
“There is, and you know it. Helen is getting along fine, I’ll have you know. But her labor isn’t progressing very rapidly. I expect she’ll be in labor most of the night.”
Father muttered something under his breath that may have pertained to stubbornness and women. “You ought not to be concerned with horseflesh on a night like this.”
“Then what should I be concerned with? How much land Andrew’s set to inherit after his father dies?” The Mortimers’ operation outside of San Antonio was modest, but nothing compared to the ranch her father owned. Cattle alone couldn’t be what was enticing her father to want a marriage between their families. “Perhaps I need to find out how well the portion of the railroad they own is doing?”
“Leave the business side of this to the men, Charlotte.” Pa pressed his eyes shut and rubbed both of his temples, as though a sudden headache had come upon him. “All I want is what’s best for you. Now can you please go back upstairs and try charming Andrew? You’re young and beautiful. Men’s gazes follow you when you step into a room, yet you never try to impress any of the men I pick.”
“Men’s gazes don’t follow me because I’m beautiful. Men watch me because I’m a Westin and everyone knows we’re drowning in more money and cattle than we can handle.”
But a flicker of hope ignited somewhere inside her chest. She hadn’t wanted to marry any of the men her father had picked for her so far, but Andrew might be different.
She fingered the shimmering fabric of the dress she’d donned for the ball, so unlike the leather split skirts and plain linen shirts she usually wore. Even if Andrew turned out to be the same as all the others, she needed to marry someone, and soon. She’d tried choosing her own husband twice now without Pa knowing, and the second time…
Her throat grew suddenly tight, and heat pricked her eyes.
Maybe Daniel was right and she needed to tell her family the full story of what had happened with the rustlers. How Robbie Ashton had wooed her with sweet talk and tender kisses to distract her from the cattle slowly disappearing from her family’s ranch.
But she couldn’t speak of it when memories of Robbie still burned through her like a branding iron to a calf’s hide.
“I’ll try my best with Andrew tonight.” She met her father’s gaze.
“Thank you.” A small smile tilted the edges of his mouth, and a warm sensation spread through her chest.
Like he said, he was only thinking of her future…
And she didn’t intend to cost the ranch any more cattle by letting her heart get tangled up with the wrong man a second time.
Dancing with Charlotte had been a mistake.
Daniel Harding strode through the stone-tiled entrance to the Westins’ hacienda, his eyes scanning the darkened desert for anything that might be amiss.
Watching Charlotte from across the ballroom had been hard, but what had he been thinking to walk over and strike up a conversation?
He’d been thinking she looked miserable standing against the wall by herself, and he’d wanted to replace the frown on her face with a smile. And maybe he’d wanted a closer look at the dress that shimmered hues of jeweled green beneath the light of the chandeliers or at the hair she’d piled atop her head in a riot of soft curls.
And that’s where he’d made his mistake, because she’d been even more beautiful up close than he’d realized.
“I thought you said you were going to make an effort this time around.”
Daniel paused. He recognized Agamemnon Westin V’s voice, but where was it coming from?
“An effort?” Charlotte’s voice this time.
Daniel turned in the direction of the sounds. A dim lamp flickered through the open window of Mr. Westin’s study.
“With Andrew Mortimer. We agreed before he came that he’d be a good match. He’s renowned for his horseflesh.”
A good match? As in for Charlotte to marry?
Daniel grunted. Wes had introduced him to someone named Andrew. The dandy had been so busy watching the duo of women by his side that he’d barely managed to mutter a greeting. Why was Mr. Westin trying to marry Charlotte to such a man?
But he knew the answer. Her father had spent years growing this ranch into a massive cattle company, and he intended to use his wealth and prominence to secure his children marriages to similarly wealthy and prominent Texan families.
The trouble was, anyone who spent more than five minutes with Charlotte would learn she didn’t want wealth and prestige.
And none of this had anything to do with him.
Daniel dragged in a lungful of warm desert air. It didn’t matter that he’d known Charlotte since the day she’d been born. His family didn’t have enough money for Mr. Westin to consider him as potential husband material.
Charlotte’s conversation with her father continued. Mr. Westin’s voice was gentle, kind even. He’d always been that way with his children. There was no question he’d been as good of a father as possible after Mrs. Westin and their youngest child had died.
But that kindness only extended to his family. When it came to running his ranch, he was opportunistic and driven. He’d even been cruel to one of their friends, Sam Owens, after he inherited land that Mr. Westin had wanted to buy for the A Bar W.
Charlotte and her father kept talking, discussing how she’d spoken with Andrew earlier and he’d seemed nice but had been ignoring her at the ball. Then she admitted she’d snuck out to the barn to visit one of her laboring horses at some point in the evening—which wasn’t a surprise to anyone who knew her. She also wanted to know how big the Mortimer’s ranch in San Antonio was, how lucrative their shares in the Southern Pacific Railroad were. Again, none of this was surprising.
So what was he doing eavesdropping? He had a town to patrol and no deputies to help him tonight.
But Charlotte wasn’t protesting marriage to this Mortimer fellow nearly as much as he expected. Daniel scratched his head beneath his hat brim. Maybe she actually found something admirable in Mortimer?
Not my concern! If he repeated the words enough times in his mind, hopefully he’d start to believe them.
Since he’d been old enough to understand what marriage was, he’d known Charlotte would one day marry a man of her father’s choosing. And he’d been reminding himself of that fact since the day in church three years ago when he’d looked down the pew and realized Wes’s little sister had somehow grown from a girl into a woman.
Even now, he could still feel Charlotte in his arms as he’d led her across the dance floor. Still remember the stiff way she’d held herself, still see the mesmerizing way the lig
hting had bounced against her honey-brown hair. Still recall the way he’d almost gotten her to smile.
Almost.
“Did you give Anna Mae one of your dresses to wear tonight?”
At the sound of his sister’s name, Daniel straightened.
“Is there a problem with that?” Charlotte’s voice took on a short, clipped tone.
Daniel could almost imagine her standing in front of her father, her chin high and nostrils flared.
“I’ve told you before, you can’t go giving her your clothes.”
“I never wear that dress. Even with my horrible fashion sense, I could tell that shade of yellow clashed with my hair but would look gorgeous on Anna Mae. I gave it to her a month or so ago and she altered it.”
“Andrew won’t take his eyes off her.”
“Of course he won’t. What man would? She’s both beautiful and charming.” Charlotte didn’t speak her words with envy, but as though they were simple fact.
They were the oddest pair, Charlotte and Anna Mae. Daniel would have never lumped them together, but they’d been friends since just about their first day of school. Most women felt threatened by Anna Mae’s beauty, and if not that, they couldn’t tolerate her constant chatter and never-ending energy. But Charlotte just blinked at her, shrugged, and went on with her quiet, structured life, taking whatever ideas Anna Mae concocted in stride.
Daniel readjusted his hat on his head. Here he was getting distracted again. He shouldn’t be eavesdropping on Charlotte’s conversation with her father in the first place, but there was no question that he needed to figure out what to do about his feelings for her.
Dear God, take them from me. I don’t want to feel this way. It was a prayer he’d prayed hundreds of times over the years. But God hadn’t seen fit to answer it, not yet.
Maybe the best thing was for Charlotte to get married. Surely once she belonged to another man, he’d be able to move on.
But was Andrew Mortimer really the best choice for her? Or was her father trying to stuff her into a mold that she was never going to fit?
Daniel shook his head, then shoved away from the wall and stalked toward where he’d left his horse, Blaze, in one of the paddocks. If he let himself keep arguing in his head, he’d be standing there all night.
But if he were to be of any use on patrol once he got back to Twin Rivers, he’d need to scrub from his memory the image of Charlotte dancing beneath the light of chandeliers, aglow in that emerald dress.
He’d have to scrub it from his mind tomorrow, too. And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. In fact, forgetting the way Charlotte felt in his arms just might be the hardest thing he’d ever done.
But he didn’t have a choice. Charlotte Westin would never be his.
2
Not a single track.
Daniel shifted in his saddle, causing a drop of sweat to roll down his back. The sun beat down from above as he scanned the rocky desert that had been baked dry by the summer heat. From his position atop one of the mountains west of town, he could see down the barren slope and into the green river valley of the Rio Grande. On the Mexican side of the river, a giant wall of cliffs jutted into the sky, the rockface running as far as the eye could see in either direction.
The view was probably pretty, but he hadn’t ridden Blaze up into the mountains in search of beautiful vistas.
How did an operation that had rustled twenty thousand cattle over the Mexican border just up and disappear? It had been almost a month since his posse had tracked down a handful of the thieves in Mexico. The showdown had involved bringing a thousand head of cattle back to Texas and returning the beasts to various ranches north of Twin Rivers.
Daniel worked his jaw back and forth. Trying to enforce law and order in a region that bordered Mexico made his job nearly impossible. If he were going to steal cattle, he wouldn’t camp on the side of the border where the law might find him either.
He’d sent word of the rustling organization to the Texas Rangers a month ago, hoping that they would come and help like they had the last time Twin Rivers had rustling problems. But he’d yet to see hide or hair of them.
Daniel ran his eyes over the boulder-filled mountain again. Still no sign of the rustlers, or even of a random bounder making camp. He hadn’t missed anything, had he? The image of Charlotte dancing in his arms last night had risen into his mind a time or two. Had imagining her lemon-scented hair or wide blue eyes caused him to ignore a clue the rustlers had left behind?
Why was he still thinking about Charlotte anyway? For all he knew, that Mortimer fellow might have proposed to her before leaving town this morning.
“Sheriff Harding, is that you?”
Daniel jolted at the shout, then looked in the direction of the voice.
“I’ve been trying to find you.”
When his eyes landed on the squat man riding his way up the mountain, he bit back a grimace. Even from here he could recognize Thomas Mattherson, one of the local ranchers who also sat on the county’s commissioners’ court. The man had a scowl on his face.
Daniel gave the reins a flick, letting Blaze pick his way down the mountain. “I left town just after sunup to look for rustlers.”
“Not in the right place.” Mattherson shifted his heavy girth atop his horse. “I lost more cattle last night.”
Not again. Daniel wanted to groan. How many times would the rustlers strike before he found a way to stop them? “How many head?”
“Fifty, which isn’t a huge number, I’ll admit. Though it’s enough to make a man right sore. Best as I can figure, I’d already lost two hundred cattle to the rustlers, another fifty makes it almost half my herd.” The man looked down at where his hands rested atop his pommel. “You know I don’t have a ranch the size of the A Bar W. Those fifty cattle might mean the difference between Winnie staying in school in Houston or coming home next year.”
Daniel swallowed. Winnie had a smile as sweet as pie and the kindest way about her. But she’d been born deaf, and both Winnie and her ma were in Houston at some fancy school learning a way for Winnie to talk with her hands and read people’s lips when they spoke.
“I’m sorry. I’ll get my deputies and—”
“What deputies? Everyone but Abe Lovatt is on their way to Huntsville.”
That was true. He had three deputies in all, but two of them were transporting the rustlers they’d caught in June to the state penitentiary in eastern Texas. The trip would take two months or better, which meant he’d been working more than he wanted to think about and relying on volunteers for a lot of the nightly patrols. “I’ll get a posse and we’ll track the cattle as far as we can.”
“Including into Mexico?”
He’d been afraid of that. As a lawman, he could occasionally take a posse there if he had solid proof someone across the river had committed a crime, but he couldn’t make a habit of it without inciting the wrath of the Mexican governor of the State of Chihuahua. The loss of a thousand cattle a month ago had warranted a trip south of the border, but not fifty. And given the slump in Mattherson’s shoulders and the worried creases around his mouth, the rancher knew it.
Mattherson shook his head, the wide brim of his hat casting the top part of his face in shadows. “I spoke up for you when your pa stepped down from being sheriff. Thought you’d make a good lawman. But what kind of sheriff lets twenty thousand rustled cattle pass through his county without catching it?”
“I caught it.”
“After how long?”
Heat burned the backs of his ears, but there was no sense arguing. His pa would have discovered what the rustlers were doing sooner. “Maybe when the rangers get here—”
“I have no doubt the rustlers will be caught within days of the rangers coming, but what does that say about you as sheriff?”
Daniel looked into Mattherson’s dull, desperate eyes.
He wanted to say that if he had thirty or more men under his command, he’d be able t
o catch the rustlers as quickly as the rangers would. But was it true?
Mattherson turned his horse around, then looked over his shoulder. “You find my cattle and get them back, or we’ll be looking for another sheriff come the next commissioner’s meeting.” Mattherson didn’t speak the words like they were some kind of threat. There was a flat, resigned tone to them—which only made them more believable.
Daniel stared at the man’s retreating back. Part of him wanted to protest, to say he was a decent enough sheriff.
But the truth was, he’d never live up to his father’s legend.
Daniel used the bandana around his neck to wipe the sweat trickling down the side of his face. He climbed the steps to his office. His back ached, his neck hurt, and his stomach clenched with hunger. He couldn’t say why he was in so much pain since he’d spent more than seven hours in the saddle before. Maybe it was the slow, arduous travel up and down the Mexican mountains, or that his eyes had grown tired from searching for small clues beneath the sun’s brutal rays.
Or the fact that he’d come back with nothing new to tell Mattherson.
After the rancher had ridden off that morning, Daniel had gone into town and rounded up a quick posse—mainly just Wes, their friend Sam Owens, and a couple cowhands from the A Bar W—and ridden out to Mattherson’s Circle M ranch to track the cattle. Sure enough, the trail led straight over the border.
He pushed open the door to his office. The small bit of coolness inside the thick adobe walls swept over him. “It’s a hot one out there.”
“You find the cattle?” Abe Lovatt asked from where he sat behind the desk the three deputies shared.
“What do you think?” Daniel hung his hat on the peg inside the door and stretched some of the stiffness from his neck. “I’ll get them back,” he muttered more to himself than Abe.
“You got them back? Whoo-whee, Sheriff!” The deputy slapped the desk. “You must be right pleased with yourself.”
Tomorrow's Shining Dream Page 2
