by Janet Dailey
It was a point Chase debated with himself, but he realized the conversation could be related to his son at a later time. “It’s the first foal due out of your new stud, isn’t it? You’d better check on the mare now. Tara won’t thank me if you wind up taking part of her evening to do it because I claimed your time.”
The doors were shut to the den when Ty left The Home-stead to check on the mare’s condition. Knowing his father, Ty doubted that he’d appreciate any advice from Dyson, and considering Tara’s reaction, it was likely the reason for his visit. Dyson was protective of his daughter and always had been.
“Some brandy with your coffee, E.J.?” Chase offered as he unstoppered the brandy decanter to add a splash to his own cup.
“No, thank you.” Dyson settled comfortably in an armchair in front of the fireplace while Stricklin carried his cup to an opposite chair.
It only left the sofa in the middle. With a wariness Chase couldn’t explain, he remained standing to one side, not taking the seat that would put him in a position that was flanked by the two men. It was too exposed.
“What was it you wanted to talk to me about?” He dispensed with any pleasantries to come straight to the point.
“Information has reached me pertaining to the overturning of some land you purchased from the government several years ago.” Dyson didn’t hedge either.
“News travels fast,” Chase murmured dryly.
“It isn’t so surprising, really,” Dyson insisted calmly. “I am engaged in business in this area. It’s natural for something like this to come to my attention.”
“I suppose.” Chase conceded the possibility that Dyson could have recently learned of the invalidated sale through local sources, although the likelihood remained that, at the least, Dyson had foreknowledge.
“We’ve had our differences of late, Chase, but our two families are related. It’s a fact we can’t ignore.”
“I am well aware that your daughter is my son’s wife.” It was the one thing that kept Chase from accusing Dyson outright of conspiring to deprive him of those ten thousand acres of land. There remained an element of doubt that Dyson would involve himself in such a way that could potentially harm his daughter.
“I am first and foremost a businessman, Chase. Only to a certain extent can I allow family considerations to prevent me from doing what I believe is important to my business. That’s why I’m here.” Dyson paused, studying Chase for an instant. “Normally I would not do this. I’d make a business move and let my opponent or competitor find out about it after the fact. Since there might be repercussions for Tara, I’m giving you advance notice of my intentions.”
“And your intentions?” Chase inquired, faintly challenging.
“The government now holds title to those ten thousand acres. I am seeking the mineral rights and the use of its water for a coal plant. At the present, Tara knows nothing of this. I am aware that you are appealing the decision and seeking to regain title to that land. If the government retains possession, I wanted you to know my plans.” There was another long, considering look before Dyson continued. “It’s a business decision, Calder. I know it will be difficult, but I should like to maintain a peaceful coexistence for the sake of our children.”
“You’re right,” Chase agreed, a tightness building inside him like a coiling spring. “It won’t be easy. I’ll observe a peace of sorts, but I’m warning you now—you’ll pay bloody hell before you ever rip up one inch of sod on my land.”
“We shall simply have to wait and see,” Dyson said, with a resigned glance at Stricklin. The man was simply unreasonable.
After checking on the mare in the foaling barns, Ty returned to the house. Cathleen informed him, with a sly wink, that Tara had gone upstairs. He glanced at the study, but the doors were standing open. The discussion was obviously concluded, so his presence wasn’t likely to be required. He went directly upstairs.
“Finally,” Tara declared as he entered the sitting room. “How was your mare?” There was a trace of sarcasm in her voice.
“Fine.” He didn’t bother to explain it didn’t look as if there would be a new foal this night.
“There are people hired to look after those horses. I don’t see why you have to do it—especially at a time like this,” she muttered impatiently.
“At a time like this,” Ty repeated with humorless amusement. “I’d like to believe you’re saying that because it’s your first night home and it’s my company you want, but that isn’t the reason, is it?”
“It’s part of the reason.” She crossed the room to stand before him, her hands touching him, making contact to start the hungry pulsing while he breathed in her musky female scent. “You have to do something about your father.”
“My father?”
“Yes. You’ve got to convince him to let this matter lie.”
“Let it lie? What are you talking about? He paid for the land, bought it in good faith. Why shouldn’t he fight to get it back?” Ty frowned.
“It’s only ten thousand acres. Compared to the million he already owns, he won’t even miss it,” Tara declared. “Besides, he can still lease it to graze cattle on, so it’s the same as owning it.”
“It’s never the same as owning it because it doesn’t give him control.” His eyes narrowed in speculation. “Why does the idea of him fighting for it bother you, Tara?”
“I don’t think you have any idea what people are saying,” she accused with a snap of her dark eyes. “They are using the words ‘corruption’ and bribery’ when they speak about him.”
“All that was a long time ago. Nothing can be proved.”
“It doesn’t have to be proved. The talk is enough. Don’t you know how damaging that is to a person’s reputation?” There was a kind of fury in her that she was being dragged down. “It’s going to rub off on us, Ty.”
“It doesn’t bother you that he possibly made a payoff, does it?” Ty mused. “You’re angry because he got caught.”
“Don’t you care what all this talk is going to do to the Calder name?” Tara demanded.
“Is that what’s wrong, Tara?” he mocked. “Have your important friends started to shun you?”
“You say that as though you don’t believe they are important.” She was stiffly indignant, and slightly incredulous that he couldn’t see the greater scope of the matter. “I don’t think you realize what valuable contacts they can prove to be in the future. You certainly don’t make any effort to cultivate their friendship. I’m doing it all so that when we take over the ranch there will be a network of people in influential positions that will be beneficial to us.”
“You can’t wait for the day when my father turns control of the ranch over to me, can you?” Pride and strong will had always been two qualities Ty admired in his wife, fitting characteristics for his life’s partner. Tonight, her self-centeredness stuck in his craw.
“The sooner it happens, the better it will be for all of us.” Tara didn’t deny it. “We can’t afford to have scandal attached to the Calder name. I won’t have him destroy all the work I’ve done to make the name Calder mean something outside this state.”
“If you don’t fight for what belongs to you, the name won’t mean anything in this state.”
“That’s your father’s way of thinking,” Tara condemned. “What does it matter what these local people around here think? They aren’t important. The money your father is spending to fight this thing would buy another ranch some place else. The Triple C can become the first ranch of many scattered around the country, run by competent managers. The idea is to expand, and I don’t mean by building feedlots. You have to stop thinking so small, Ty.” She was insistent, urging and half angry. “Don’t be like your father, Ty. You have to be progressive and modern like mine.”
“That would solve your problems, wouldn’t it?” A muscle leaped convulsively along his clenched jaw. “Maybe I should change my name to Dyson, too, so I won’t be tarnished by anything that might b
lacken the Calder name.”
“I never suggested anything of the sort! Why are you trying to twist what I’m saying?” Tara flung her protest at him, resentment flaring. “In this world, you have to look out for yourself. Your father’s actions are going to affect us, Ty. They can hurt us. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re asking me to side against my father.” Behind all the smooth talk and an appeal for reason, it boiled down to that.
“I’m asking you to think about us.” Her chin was lifted at him, all her femininity sharpened into temper as she put her will against his.
“You think about us.” His voice was low and heavy as he swung away to stride for the door. “It’s your homecoming.”
There was an instant when she could not believe he intended to leave. But the resoluteness was in his squared shoulders.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, her hands curling into fists.
Ty paused at the door, jerking it open, then looked at her in a glance that raked and stripped. “Out,” he said simply.
The door was slammed to its frame. Tara stared at it, then whirled about to face the center of the room. Lately, Ty had started listening to her; then this had to happen.
Ty jumped into a truck and started driving, mindless of the blast of winter-cold air blowing in the opened windows. He had no destination, just an escape from the pressure of the thoughts crowding into his mind.
The right and wrong of something seemed to be all in the mind of the person making the judgment. Tara believed she was right. His father believed he was right. Where did his loyalties lie? In the past or the future?
He had no sense of time passing, no conscious choice of direction. It was a long time before Ty realized the truck had stopped moving. In the conelike pool of the headlights stood the log cabin where Jessy lived. The tension was still there, ruffling through him. He switched off the truck’s motor and lights and walked onto the front stoop of the cabin.
It was completely dark inside. It took him a minute to find the light switch on the wall. “Jessy!” he called, but she didn’t answer. The bedroom was empty, and the breakfast dishes were sitting in the sink. A glance at his watch gave him the time. She should have been home before this. She’d probably be walking in the door any time now, he told himself and fixed a pot of coffee to have waiting when she returned.
The cabin wasn’t the same without her presence to give it that earthy peace. He stoked the wood stove in the front room, trying to put some warmth into the air. He rattled around in the cabin’s emptiness. It was worse than being alone in the empty suite of rooms he shared with Tara.
“Dammit! Where is she?” Ty demanded of the four walls.
The headlight beams flashed over the ranch pickup parked in front of her cabin as Jessy drove up. Chimney smoke curled blue-white against the black web of tree limbs. Light spilled from the cabin windows to lay squares on the freeze-dried grass.
She wasn’t exactly in the mood for company after a full day’s work and an evening at her parents’ to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Besides, she knew Tara was home. There was no eagerness in her steps as she trudged up the steps to the cabin. The opening of the door brought Ty’s voice to her.
“Where the hell have you been? Do you realize it’s after ten o’clock? I’ve been here for almost two hours, not knowing where you were, not knowing if something might have happened. I’ve been half out of my mind!”
The cranky worry in his voice astonished her. There was an open possessiveness in his tone that he had never used with her before. And the dark scowl on his face when he confronted her at the door made it all the more blatant.
“It was Mom’s birthday,” Jessy said in a small, dazed voice.
His breath ran out in relief as he caught her and dragged her to him. She was shocked yet clearheaded, conscious of the strong arms around her and the temper that was thoroughly aroused. She realized just how deeply she had gotten into his feelings. It was in his voice and the constricting pressure of his arms.
“It’s been a helluva lonely wait, Jessy,” he muttered.
The roughness of his kiss was hungry and needing, and she returned it willingly and unreservedly. They were locked together, straining, made raw by this intolerable pressure inside them. But there was no easing of it.
Ty was breathing hard, his cheek pressed against the side of her hair, his arms binding her tightly to him. “Jessy. Jessy.” In the muttering of her name, there was a question, a need expressed that his hard, muscled body had already told her.
“I know.” She felt lightheaded. For all the pounding of her heart and the almost violent ache inside, she felt a remarkable calmness, too. “Carry me?” she asked.
There was a moment when she sensed an uncertainty in him, when she thought honor might pull him back. Then his arms were loosening, shifting to scoop an arm beneath her thighs and pick her up. He stood there, holding her and looking at her shining face. There was curiosity behind his desirous look.
“I never thought of you as the romantic kind, Jessy.” His husky voice throbbed.
“Why?” she asked softly as she stroked his cleanly shaven jaw, touching a fingertip to the brush of black whiskers above his lip. “Because I can ride like a man and do the work of a man, did you think I didn’t have a woman’s feelings? Why can’t I like flowers and candy, too?”
“1 don’t know.”
He carried her into the darkened bedroom and set her down. For a silent moment, they stood facing each other, tense and poised like a mare and stallion meeting. All the pawing and mane tossing were finished; now the instinct for silence heralded nature’s most precious and most sacred act.
Her face was lifted to him, conveying the age-old signal to be kissed. Ty read it clearly and felt a splinter of irritation. The signals were all the same, whether they came from Tara, Jessy, or some other woman. Yet Jessy was like none of them, and he’d wanted it to be different.
Only it couldn’t be different, because this was the way of things. She was a woman and he was a man. No matter what level of communication was used, physical or verbal, they were locked by the pattern. In their minds and hearts, they stored the wonderful images, but the acts themselves never varied. Slowly it filtered through to him that it didn’t really matter.
Reaching, he pushed the heavy coat off her shoulders and tossed it into the dark shape of a chair in the corner. When he turned back, Jessy had begun unfastening her blouse. His fingers reached for the buttons of his shirt.
Her eyes were on him, watching, seeing the layers of clothes come off to reveal the hard expanse of muscle and flesh, the clean male lines. There was one awkward moment when Ty moved to the bed and turned to wait for her. His gaze drifted over her nude form, pale-shining and slender as a tall willow. She felt the touch of his eyes on her small breasts. Neither in looks nor form could she compare with Tara.
She had her moment of second thought; then his hand reached out to her. No more did she have to be strong; no more did she have to hide her feelings—her love. There was a wealth of passion in her going unused, too long suppressed. She had to give it or shrivel up inside and die. Its pressure was that strong. She went to him, to lie with him and live again.
20
After she had lighted two cigarettes from the pack on the bedstand, Jessy rolled back and passed one to Ty, conscious of his warm flank against hers beneath the sheet. The delicious curling sensation hadn’t left her toes. Her body was still tingling with the aftermath of their lovemaking. A small smile curved the wide edges of her mouth.
Ty shifted onto his side to study her, the caramel tangle of her hair darkening the pillow under her head. “You’re looking very pleased,” he murmured.
“Why not? You’re feeling quite proud of yourself, too, because you had me.” Jessy lightly teased the near smugness in his expression.
There was no remembrance of that first time in his eyes. She had looked for it so often—waited to see it. Now she was just as glad he
didn’t remember. There had been too much hurt involved, one way or another. She wasn’t going to tell him about it. No purpose would be served except to make him feel guilty and sorry. Whatever his feelings toward her, she didn’t want those two things to be part of them.
His expression became weighted with thought, somber lines drawing down his rugged features and bringing a troubled look to his eyes. “Jessy, sometimes I—”
“Don’t say it, Ty.” She cut in to stop him, firm and sure. “For both our sakes, don’t say something you don’t really mean. I went into this with my eyes wide open, knowing you would leave before morning came. Right now you’re thinking that you don’t want to go, but you will.”
“How do you know what’s in my mind?” Ty watched her closely, trying to fathom this woman who fitted him as comfortably as a second skin.
Just for a minute, Jessy dropped her guard and let him see the depth of love in her eyes. “Maybe because I’ve wished it, too.” Yet her tone was near to a challenge.
Of all the times he’d made love to a woman without regrets, this wasn’t one of them. There was a fierce surge of tender feeling that turned him raw. It was deep-seeded, as wild in its way as the stirrings Tara aroused in him.
That look almost made Jessy believe things could be different. Before she succumbed to the certain hurt it would bring, she swung her legs out of bed and sat up on the edge. It was not from any sense of modesty that she reached for the blouse at the foot of the bed and clutched it loosely to her small breasts. Clothes were a protection that kept others from seeing too much.
She crossed to the dresser and crushed the barely smoked cigarette in a glass ashtray. Ty sat up on one elbow, eyes drawn to the tightening play of muscles in her buttocks. When she turned, his gaze lifted past the triangular drape of her blouse with its apex at the valley of her breasts to center on the closed-in expression.
“Jessy, there’s something I’d like to explain.”
