by Diana Palmer
She walked around the living room, her eyes on the sad, shabby furniture that she and her father had bought so many years ago. There hadn’t been any money in the past year for reupholstery or new frills. They’d put everything into those few head of beef cattle and the herd sire. But the cattle market was way down and if a bad winter came, there would be no way to afford to buy feed. She had to plant plenty of hay and corn to get through the winter. But their best hand had quit on her father’s death, and now all she had were two part-time helpers, whom she could barely afford to pay. A blind woman could see that she wouldn’t be able to keep going now.
She could have wept for her lost chances. She had no education past high school, no real way to make a living. All she knew was how to pull calves and mix feed and sell off stock. She went to the auctions and knew how to bid, how to buy, how to pick cattle for conformation. She knew much less about horses, but that hardly mattered. She only had one left and the part-time man kept Bess—and Toast, until he was sold—groomed and fed and watered. She did at least know how to saddle the beast. But to Dana, a horse was a tool to use with cattle. Hayden cringed when she said that. He had purebred palominos and loved every one of them. He couldn’t understand anyone not loving horses as much as he did.
Oddly, though, it was their only real point of contention. In most other ways, they agreed, even on politics and religion. And they liked the same television programs. She smiled, remembering how many times they’d shared similar enthusiasms for weekly series, especially science fiction ones.
Hank had been kind to her father, too, and so patient when a man who’d given his life to being a country gentleman was suddenly faced with learning to be a rancher at the age of fifty-five. It made Dana sad to think how much longer her father’s life might have been if he’d taken up a less exhaustive profession. He’d had a good brain, and so much still to give.
She fixed a light lunch and a pot of coffee and thought about going back out to see about that downed fence. But another disaster would just be too much. She was disaster-prone when Hank was anywhere near her, and she seemed to be rapidly getting that way even when he wasn’t. He’d rescued her from mad bulls, trapped feet in corral fences, once from a rattlesnake and twice from falling bales of hay. He must be wondering if there wasn’t some way he could be rid of her once and for all.
It was nice of him not to mention those incidents when he’d rescued her from the fence, though. Surely he’d been tempted to.
Tempted. She colored all over again remembering the intimacy they’d shared. In the seven years they’d known each other, he’d never touched her until today. She wondered why he had.
The sound of a car outside on the country road brought her out of the kitchen and to the front door, just in time to see Hank’s black luxury car pull into the driveway. He wasn’t a flashy sort of man, and he didn’t go overboard to surround himself with luxurious things. That make of car was his one exception. He had a fascination for the big cars that never seemed to waver, because he traded his in every other year—for another black one.
“Don’t you get tired of the color?” she’d asked him once.
“Why?” he’d replied laconically. “Black goes with everything.”
He came up onto the porch, and the expression on his face was one she hadn’t seen before. He looked as he always did, neatly dressed and clean-shaven, devastatingly handsome, but there was still a difference. After their brief interlude out in the pasture, the atmosphere between them was just a little strained.
He had his hands in his pockets as he glanced down at her body in the pretty ruffled blue sundress.
“Is that for my benefit?” he asked.
She blushed. She usually kicked around in jeans or cutoffs and tank tops. She almost never wore dresses around the ranch. And her hair was long and loose around her shoulders instead of in its usual braid.
She shrugged in defeat. “Yes, I guess it is,” she said, meeting his eyes with a rueful smile. “Sorry.”
He shook his head. “There’s no need to apologize. None at all. In fact, what happened this afternoon gave me some ideas that I want to talk to you about.”
Her heart jumped into her chest. Was he going to propose? Oh, glory, if only he would, and then he’d never even have to know about that silly clause in her father’s will!
Chapter Two
She led the way into the kitchen and set out a platter of salad and cold cuts and dressing in the center of the table, on which she’d already put two place settings. She poured coffee into two mugs, gave him one and sat down. She didn’t have to ask what he took in his coffee, because she already knew that he had it black, just as she did. It was one of many things they had in common.
“What did you want to ask me, Hank?” she ventured after he’d worked his way through a huge salad and two cups of coffee. Her nerves were screaming with suspense and anticipation.
“Oh. That.” He leaned back with his half-drained coffee cup in his hand. “I wondered if you might be willing to help me out with a little playacting for my ex-wife’s benefit.”
All her hopes fell at her feet. “What sort of acting?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
“I want you to pretend to be involved with me,” he said frankly, staring at her. “On this morning’s showing, it shouldn’t be too difficult to look as if we can’t keep our hands off each other. Should it?” he asked with a mocking smile.
Everything fell into place; his odd remarks, his “experiment” out there in the pasture, his curious behavior. His beloved ex-wife was coming to town and he didn’t want everyone to know how badly she’d hurt him or how he’d grieved at her loss. So Dana had been cast as his new love. He didn’t want a new wife, he wanted an actress.
She stared into her coffee. “I don’t guess you ever want to get married again, do you?” she asked with studied carelessness.
He saw right through that devious little question. “No, I don’t,” he said bluntly. “Once was enough.”
She grimaced. Her father had placed her in an intolerable position. Somehow, he must have suspected that his time was limited. Otherwise why should he have gone to such lengths in his will to make sure that his daughter was provided for after his death? “You’ve been acting funny since your father died,” he said suddenly, and his eyes narrowed. “Is there something you haven’t told me?”
She made an awkward motion with one shoulder.
“Did he go into debt and leave you with nothing, is that it?”
“Well…”
“Because if that’s the case, I can take care of the problem,” he continued, unabashed. “You help me out while Betty’s here, and I’ll pay off any outstanding debts. You can think of it as a job.”
She wanted to throw herself down on the floor and scream. Nothing was working out. She looked at him in anguish. “Oh, Hank,” she groaned.
He scowled. “Come on. It can’t be that bad. Spit it out.”
She took a steadying breath and got to her feet. “There’s a simpler way. I think…you’d better read Dad’s will. I’ll get it.”
She went into the living room and pulled out the desk drawer that contained her father’s will. She took it into the kitchen and handed it to a puzzled Hank, watching his lean, elegant hands unfasten the closure on the document.
“And before you start screaming, I didn’t know anything about that clause,” she added through her teeth. “It was as much a shock to me as it’s going to be to you.”
“Clause?” he murmured as he scanned over the will. “What clause… Oh, my God!”
“Now, Hank,” she began in an effort to thwart the threatened explosion she saw growing in his lean face.
“God in heaven!” He got to his feet, slamming the will back on the table. His face had gone from ruddy to white in the space of seconds. “What a hell of a choice I’ve got! I marry you or I end up with a stock car racetrack on the edge of my barn where my mares foal! Moving the damned thing would cost half a m
illion dollars!”
“If you’ll just give me a chance to speak,” she said heavily. “Hank, there may be a way to break the will—”
“Oh, sure, we can say he was crazy!” His black eyes were glittering like diamonds.
She flushed. He was flagrantly insulting her. She might love him, but she wasn’t taking that kind of treatment, even from him. She got to her own feet and glared up at him. “He must have been, to want me to marry you!” she shouted. “What makes you think you’re such a prize, Hank? You’re years too old for me in the first place, and in the second, what sane woman would want to marry a man who’s still in love with his ex-wife?”
He was barely breathing. His anger was so apparent that Dana felt her knees go wobbly, despite her spunky words.
His black eyes slewed over her with contempt. “I might like looking at your body, but a couple of kisses and a little fondling don’t warrant a marriage proposal in my book.”
“Nor in mine,” she said with scalded pride. “Why don’t you go home?”
His fists clenched at his sides. He still couldn’t believe what he’d read in that will. It was beyond belief that her father, his friend, would have stabbed him in the back this way.
“He must have been out of his mind,” he grated. “I could have settled a trust on you or something, he didn’t have to specify marriage as a condition for you to inherit what’s rightfully yours!”
She lifted her chin. “I can hardly ask what his reasoning was,” she reminded him. “He’s dead.” The words were stark and hollow. She was still in the midst of grief for the passing of her parent. Hank hadn’t considered that she was hurting, she thought, or maybe he just didn’t care. He was too angry to be rational.
He breathed deliberately. “You little cheat,” he accused. “You’ve had a crush on me for years, and I’ve tolerated it. It amused me. But this isn’t funny. This is low and deceitful. I’d think more of you if you admitted that you put your father up to it.”
“I don’t give a damn what you think of me,” she choked. Her pride was in tatters. She was fighting tears of pure rage. “When you’ve had time to get over the shock, I’d like you to see my attorney. Between the two of you, I’m sure you can find some way to straighten this out. Because I wouldn’t marry you if you came with a subscription to my favorite magazine and a new Ferrari! So I had a crush on you once. That’s ancient history!”
He made a sound through his nose. “Then what was that this morning out in the pasture?” he chided.
“Lust!” she threw at him.
He picked up his hat and studied her with cold contempt. “I’ll see what I can do about the will. You could contact your mother,” he added pointedly. “She’s wealthy. I’m sure she won’t let you starve.”
She folded her arms across her breasts. “I wouldn’t ask my mother for a tissue if I was bleeding to death, and you know it.”
“These are desperate circumstances,” he said pointedly, a little calmer now.
“My circumstances are no longer any of your business,” she said in a voice that was disturbingly calm. “Goodbye, Hank.”
He slammed his hat over his eyes and went to the front door, but he hesitated with the doorknob in his hand and looked over his shoulder. She was pale and her eyes were shimmering. He knew she was grieving for her father. It must be scary, too, to have her inheritance wrapped around an impossible demand. If he didn’t marry her, she was going to lose everything, even her home. He winced.
“Goodbye,” she repeated firmly. Her eyes startled him with their cold blue darkness. She looked as if she hated him.
He drew in a short breath. “Look, we’ll work some thing out.”
“I’m twenty-two years old,” she said proudly. “It’s past time I started taking care of myself. If I lose the ranch, I’ll get a grant and go back to college. I’ve already completed the basic courses, anyway.”
He hadn’t thought that she might go away. Suddenly his life was even more topsy-turvy than before. Betty was on her way back to town, Dana’s father had tried to force him into a marriage he didn’t want and now Dana was going away. He felt deserted.
He let out a word that she’d never heard him use. “Then go, if you want to, and be damned,” he said furiously. “It will be a pleasure not to have to rescue you from half a dozen disasters a day.”
He slammed the door on his way out and she sank into a chair, feeling the sudden warm wetness of the tears she’d been too proud to let him see. At least now she knew how he felt about her. She guessed that she’d be well-advised to learn to live with it.
The rest of the day was a nightmare. By the end of it, she was sick of the memories in the house. Grief and humiliation drove her to the telephone. She called Joe, the oldest of her two part-time workers on the ranch.
“I’m going away for a couple of days,” she told him. “I want you and Ernie to watch the cattle for me. Okay?”
“Sure, boss lady. Where you going?”
“Away.”
She hung up.
It only took her a few minutes to make a reservation at a moderately priced Houston hotel downtown, and to pack the ancient gray Bronco she drove with enough clothes for the weekend. She was on her way in no time, having locked up the house. Joe had a key if he needed to get in.
She spent the weekend watching movies on cable and experimenting with new hairstyles. She drifted around the shops downtown, although she didn’t buy anything. She had to conserve her money now, until she could apply for a grant and get into college. On an impulse she phoned a couple of colleges around the area and requested catalogs be sent to her home address in Jacobsville.
The runaway weekend had been something of an extravagance, but she’d needed to get away. She felt like a tourist as she wandered around all the interesting spots, including the famed San Jacinto monument and the canal where ships came and went into the port city. Heavy rain came on the second day, with flash flooding, and she was forced to stay an extra day or use her Bronco as a barge, because the streets near the hotel were too flooded to allow safe travel.
It was late Monday before she turned into the long driveway of her ranch. And the first thing she noticed as she approached the farmhouse was the proliferation of law-enforcement vehicles.
Shocked, she pulled up and turned off the ignition. “What’s happened? Has someone broken into my home?” she asked the first uniformed man she met, a deputy sheriff.
His eyebrows went up. “You live here?” he asked.
“Yes. I’m Dana Mobry.”
He chuckled and called to the other three men, one of whom was a Jacobsville city policeman. “Here she is! She hasn’t met with foul play.”
They came at a lope, bringing a harassed-looking Joe along with them.
“Oh, Miss Mobry, thank the Lord,” Joe said, wringing her hand. His hair was grayer than ever, and he looked hollow-eyed.
“Whatever’s wrong?” she asked.
“They thought I’d killed you and hid the body!” Joe wailed, looking nervously at the law officers.
Dana’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“Mr. Grant came over and couldn’t find you,” Joe said frantically. “I told him you’d gone away, but I didn’t know where, and he blew up and started accusing me of all sorts of things on account of I wouldn’t tell him where you were. When you didn’t come back by today, he called the law. I’m so glad to see you, Miss Mobry. I was afraid they were going to put me in jail!”
“I’m sorry you were put through this, Joe,” she said comfortingly. “I should have told you I was going to Houston, but it never occurred to me that Mr. Grant would care where I went,” she added bitterly.
The deputy sheriff grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, he said you’d had an argument and he was afraid you might have done something drastic…”
She glared at him so furiously that he broke off. “If that isn’t conceit, I don’t know what is! I wouldn’t kill myself over a stuck-up, overbearing, insufferable egotist like
Mr. Grant unless I was goofy! Do I look goofy?”
He cleared his throat. “Oh, no, ma’am, you don’t look at all goofy to me!”
While he was defending himself, Hank came around the side of the house to see where the search party had disappeared to, and stopped when he saw Dana. “So there you are!” he began furiously, bare-headed and wild-eyed as he joined her. “Where in hell have you been? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused?”
She lifted her chin. “I’ve been to Houston. Since when is going to Houston a crime? And since when do I have to inform you of my whereabouts?”
He snorted. “I’m a concerned neighbor.”
“You’re a royal pain in the neck, and I left town to get away from you,” she snapped. “I don’t want to see you or talk to you!”
He straightened his shoulders and his mouth compressed. “As long as you’re all right.”
“You might apologize to poor Joe while you’re about it,” she added pointedly. “He was beside himself, thinking he was going to jail for doing away with me.”
“I never said any such thing,” he muttered. He glanced at Joe. “He knows I didn’t think he’d done you in.”
That was as close as he was likely to come to an apology, and Joe accepted it with less rancor than Dana would have.
“Thanks for coming out,” Hank told the deputy and the others. “She was missing for two days and I didn’t know where she was. Anything could have happened.”
“Oh, he knows that,” the city policeman, Matt Lovett, said with a grin, jerking his thumb at the deputy sheriff. “He and his wife had an argument and she drove off to her mother’s. On the way her car died. She left it on the river bridge and caught a ride into town to get a mechanic.”
“Matt…!” the deputy grumbled.
Matt held up a hand. “I’m just getting to the best part. He went after her and saw the car and thought she’d jumped off the bridge. By the time she got back with the mechanic, the civil defense boys were out there dragging the river.”
