This Calder Sky

by Janet Dailey

  When Ty woke up from his afternoon nap, she used the finished letter as an excuse to get out of the house. She asked the next-door neighbor to look in on the elder Mrs. Hogan while she took the baby for a walk and mailed the letter to her brother.

  Once Culley’s letter was dropped into a corner mailbox, Maggie continued her stroll. It was a considerable distance to the home where her aunt worked for the Gordon family, but she knew she could ride home with Cathleen, so she set a leisurely pace. These outings were too rare for her to rush through them. Carrying the dark-haired, dark-eyed baby in her arms, she walked along the grassy verge of the highway winding through this upper end of the San Fernando Valley.

  Being alone without friends was nothing new to her. Neither was the responsibility of keeping a home and taking, care of others, even though she wouldn’t turn seventeen until this summer. But being confined for long periods of time was unusual. Maggie had adjusted to the warmer climate, the large population of the area, and even having a child to look after, but being restricted to the house and small yard was stifling her.

  Her lifelong ambition to get away from Montana had not lived up to her expectations, and she blamed the Calders for it. Because they had killed her father, she had been forced to leave home before she was ready. Even though she loved Ty and wouldn’t even consider giving him up for adoption, she was aware that he was a burden for a sixteen-year-old girl. That was Chase Calder’s fault, because he had tricked her into believing he wouldn’t get her pregnant. All her troubles could be traced back to the Calders.

  There wasn’t any way to shut out her memories of the past. She was linked to it by her brother’s letters and his embittered references to the Calders. At night, she had erotic dreams of Chase making love to her—dreams that always ended in nightmares, with the hanging of her father. And the past lived in the man-child she carried, a boy who already showed the big-boned frame of the Calders, instead of the slender bone structure of the O’Rourkes. Maggie couldn’t forget, so it burned in her, making her determined to succeed, despite all the obstacles.

  Slowing her steps still more, she gazed at the estates she passed, homes as fine as The Homestead, except they were situated on much smaller parcels of ground-forty to one hundred acres, as opposed to hundreds of thousands. White paddock fences gleamed in the California sun while tree-shaded white mansions marked the lane’s end. Within the paddocks, horses grazed, their slick coats polished and shining.

  Once Maggie had looked on horses as a necessary means of transportation and associated riding with long, tiring hours in the saddle. Now, she could imagine nothing more enjoyable than having a horse beneath her and the space to ride it… to feel the thunder of its hooves on the ground. She missed the smell of horse sweat and saddle leather, all the things familiar, the bellow of cattle and the taste of coffee boiled over a campfire. An aching grew within her and she gritted her teeth because she had turned her back on that life. Her skin would never again feel flannels and denims. It was going to be silks and laces and perfume.

  Shifting Ty to a more comfortable position in her arms, Maggie turned down the private lane leading to the Gordon house, a two-story white Colonial with a colonnade front, and the green expanse of a tree-shaded and shrubbed lawn. Her aunt’s car was always parked by the garage at the rear of the house, which was where Maggie always waited the few times she’d met her aunt here. Her destination was the same this day, until she was distracted by a commotion at the stables.

  There was shouting and the angry, panicked whinnying of a horse. The uproar had the other horses in the paddock moving nervously, ears pricked toward the stable, snorting as they shifted anxiously. Curious, Maggie strayed toward the source of the noise, leaving the private drive to follow a side loop to the stables.

  A sleek chestnut had escaped its groom and was loose outside the stables and their fenced paddocks. Three men were trying to catch it by trapping it in a corner formed by an outside stable wall and the white rails of a fence. They had succeeded in confining it to that general area and turning it back whenever the horse attemped to dash for the freedom of the unfenced yard, but the chestnut eluded each attempt to grab its halter, striking out with its front feet. All the shouting and arm-waving was exciting the already-high-strung animal, its dark eyes rolling in panic until the whites showed and its neck darkening with nervous sweat.

  A man came around the corner of the stables with a coiled rope in his hand. At his arrival, a tall, lean, gray-haired man withdrew from the participation to direct the capture. Maggie spared him one inspecting glance that took note of the white knit shirt with a rolled neck and the black jodhpurs tucked into knee-high leather boots. His attire set him apart from the other men, clad in shirts and jeans, as did his quiet manner of authority.

  Movement drew her attention to the man with the rope. With the first feeble loop he cast, it became apparent to Maggie that he’d never roped anything more than a post in his life. Each try became more pathetic than the last; the stinging slap of the rope on the horse’s flank or leg frightened it to a higher state of agitation. The chestnut gelding was shying wildly from anything that moved. Maggie realized that any minute the animal’s sheer panic would cause it to injure itself. The ineptitude of its would-be captors was more than she could stand. Disgusted and impatient with what she was witnessing, she strode forward to the tall, grayhaired man. His glance ran down at her in surprise when she pushed the baby into his arms.

  “Hold Ty for me,” she instructed curtly and didn’t wait for his answer, half-aware that she had left him speechless and staring in bemusement. Without the encumbrance of Ty, she ran to the man with the rope and reached to take it from him. “Give me the rope.”

  “Hey!” He scowled in surprise at the grim-faced girl, with her black hair in a ponytail, and tried to jerk the rope out of her grasp. “What are you doing? Get away from here before you get hurt.”

  “The only one likely to get hurt is that horse. Now give me that rope. You obviously don’t know how to use it.” Maggie planted her feet firmly on the ground and used every inch of her five-foot, three-inch frame as a lever to pry the rope out of his fingers. Unprepared for her strength and determination, the man lost his grip and Maggie wound up with the rope, quickly backing out of his reach. She snapped an order to the others. “Everybody just shut up and stand still! All that waving is just scaring the horse.”

  Shock and the sight of a petite girl taking charge moved them all to obey, and Maggie advanced slowly toward the horse while her fingers absently got the feel of the rope and shook out the noose. The chestnut eyed her for a suspicious second, then bolted for a gap between two men. Maggie’s reflexes were just as quick, the pattern of action firmly embedded in her mind, even though it had been months since it had been called into play. With one overhead swing of her arm, she cast out the noose, anticipating which way the horse would shy and leading it. The horse swerved and stuck its head right through the loop.

  There was nothing to snub the horse to, and Maggie flanked the end of the rope with her hip, using the entire weight of her body to hold the horse, rather than rely on the dubious strength of her arms. She braced herself for the instant when the chestnut hit the end of the rope and let its impetus carry her forward at a sliding walk. Once the noose tightened around the animal’s neck, it ceased to resist the pressure, although it continued to half-rear and prance anxiously. Two of the grooms rushed forward to grab its halter, while the third man, the one who had brought the rope, came forward to assist Maggie. There was grudging admiration in his look, plus a sense of resentment that a mere slip of a girl had succeeded so easily where he had failed.

  “I’ll take him now,” he insisted. Maggie surrendered the rope to him without protest. The exhilaration of success was in her eyes.

  A plaintive whimper from Ty made Maggie realize she’d left her baby with a perfect stranger. Tyrone was squirming in the man’s arms, his fist waving the air as if he, too, realized he didn’t know this man who
held him. She rushed to claim him before he started a full-blown protest.

  “Thanks for holding him.” She barely met the man’s warm gray eyes as she reached for Ty, who was screwing up his face to cry when she lifted him into her arms. It took him a second to realize he was on home territory before he relaxed.

  “I should be thanking you,” the man stated and tipped his head to one side, studying her with interest. “Where did you learn to rope like that?”

  “I was raised on a ranch. I learned to rope almost as soon as I learned to ride.” Maggie patted Ty’s back in a manner that soothed and reassured. After her experience with Chase, she had developed a wariness of men, so when she looked up at the man, she didn’t altogether trust the pleasantness of his smiling and handsome face. His hair was a dark iron-gray, but the suntanned vitality of his features made him appear mature and distinguished rather than old.

  “I’m glad you did. If Copper’s Chance had slipped by us and reached the road … with all that traffic, I don’t like to think about what might have happened to him. I didn’t pay twenty-five thousand for that horse to have him hit by a car, so I am eternally grateful you happened along when you did.”

  Maggie stared at him incredulously for an instant, then laughed shortly. “I don’t think you know very much about horses. You’ve just been taken. That horse is a gelding.”

  His head moved back to release a throaty laugh skyward. “I am well aware Copper’s Chance is a gelding. I didn’t buy him for breeding purposes, but for the show ring, Miss———?”

  “Maggie. Maggie O’Rourke,” she supplied her name absently, still trying to comprehend his explanation. “Do you mean that horse really is worth that much money?”

  “Yes. He’s a first-class jumper.”

  Maggie knew about jumping horses, but she had never known they could be that valuable. A stallion of any breed could, conceivably, be worth that much, but a gelding with no reproductive prowess—that took some adjusting to.

  “What spooked him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the man admitted. “I just had him flown in from Virginia this morning. We unloaded him from the horse van not twenty minutes ago. Perhaps he was nervous from all the traveling.” He shook his head to show he could only guess at the cause.

  The last sentence was barely spoken when Maggie felt a strange vibration. It felt as if the ground was moving underneath her. Her eyes grew wide with alarm as the sensation increased.

  “What’s happening?” She hugged Ty closer to her and looked around to see the limbs of the trees moving, even though there wasn’t a breeze.

  “Come on.” The man’s arm was around her, pushing and directing her to a more open area. His hand reached across to protectively include the baby and keep it safely in her arms. By the time they had taken a half-dozen steps, the curious vibration had stopped.

  Maggie’s rounded gaze lifted to the man, seeking an explanation. “Was that … an earthquake?” She’d heard about them before, but she wasn’t entirely certain that was what she had just experienced.

  “Yes. That must be what spooked the horse. They say animals can sense an earthquake coming.” He smiled at her, his arm loosening from around her shoulders to let her stand free. “Your first?” he guessed.

  “Yes.” Her knees still felt shaky.

  “Where are you from?”

  “Montana.” When Ty gurgled against her shoulder, Maggie quickly glanced at him to see if he was frightened, but he had one of those toothless, baby smiles on his face that indicated delight rather than fear. “It’s okay, Ty,” she soothed to reassure herself since he didn’t need it.

  “That’s a healthy-looking boy,” the man observed. “Is it the Van Doren’s baby?”

  “No, Ty is mine,” Maggie asserted with a quick, proud look that was also defensive. She saw the start of surprise and the questions that leaped into his gray eyes. She answered them without waiting to see if good manners would keep him from asking. “I’m sixteen, and no, I’m not married.” She was braced for an expression of disdain to appear on his face, but it didn’t come, even though his study of her sharpened.

  “Ty.” An approving smile began to show as he said her son’s name. “It’s a nice name.”

  Maggie lowered her gaze to the baby, not certain the man’s reaction was sincere. “Thank you.”

  There was a pause before the man suggested, “May I offer you a lift somewhere? It’s the least I can do after you rescued my horse,” he explained, as if guessing she would be sensitive about anything resembling charity or pity.

  “No, thank you.” Maggie was glad she could refuse. “I’m meeting my aunt. I’ll ride home with her. She works for Dr. Gordon and his sister.”

  “Mrs. Hogan—Cathleen Hogan is your aunt?” His frown was both curious and pleasantly surprised.

  “Yes.”

  “Forgive me for not introducing myself. I’m Dr. Phillip Gordon.” He extended a hand to her. She noticed his fingers were long and almost femininely slender. “I recall now that Cathleen mentioned she had a niece living with her. I didn’t make the connection that you might be she.”

  “I don’t know who I thought you were, either.” Maggie shook hands with him, feeling the strength of his fingers as she tried to remember all that Cathleen had told her about her employers. He had just turned forty, Maggie recalled. Her Aunt Cathleen had said only good things about him. Maggie was more willing to trust her aunt’s judgment than her own. She relaxed her defenses slightly.

  “Why don’t you come to the house?” he invited. “I know my sister, Pamela, would like to meet you and the baby.”

  Maggie hesitated only an instant before accepting. “All right, and I can let Aunt Cathleen know I’m here.”

  The house was every bit as grand on the inside as it looked on the outside. All spacious and airy, decorated in bright California colors, it had cool, tile floors and plush furnishings with a scattering of antiques. There was a certain fragility in its look that spoke of a woman’s influence.

  Maggie’s breath was taken away when Dr. Gordon introduced her to his sister. Despite the confinement of the wheelchair, Pamela Gordon personified all that Maggie hoped someday to attain. Her eyes were the warm gray color of her brother’s, but heavily fringed with lashes and a trace of lavender shadow on the eyelids. Her features were slender, like his, but beautifully feminine. Instead of iron-gray hair, hers was silver-blonde and elegantly styled. She was wearing a sleeveless Oriental robe with a mandarin collar, her lifeless legs hidden under the long length of the gown. Everything about her seemed the epitome of beauty and grace. If that wasn’t enough to earn Maggie’s admiration, it was sealed by the blonde woman’s entrancement over Ty.

  “May I hold him?” Pamela Gordon asked in a voice that was so softly cultured. Maggie surrendered Ty to her arms. He immediately grabbed a handful of silver-blonde hair. Maggie, who had always been surprised by the strength of a baby’s grip, quickly rescued the lock of hair and freed it from his grasp before he gave it a yank.

  “Maybe I’d better hold him,” she apologized.

  “Oh, no, please,” Pamela protested and held him a little closer, catching the small hand before it could grasp another handful of hair. “He can pull my hair any time he wants.” She pressed a perfumed cheek close to the baby’s. “He is precious.”

  “That is one thing Pamela and I have both missed in life,” Phillip explained in a quiet aside to Maggie, and watched his sister playing with the baby boy. “The joy of having children around.”

  When Maggie’s aunt came in a few minutes later to say she was ready to leave, Pamela begged them to stay. “Just a little while longer—long enough to have a cold drink,” she coaxed.

  “We can’t,” Maggie refused gently, but firmly. “Grandma Hogan is expecting us. I promised we’d come straight home so she could go to the nursing home early to see Grandpa.” There was a moment of resistance when she started to lift Ty out of Pamela’s arms before the woman reluctantly l
et him go.

  “You will come again?” Pamela turned her eager gray eyes to Maggie, so soft and shining, like rich velvet. “And bring Ty?”

  “Yes,” Maggie promised.

  The next day she wrote Culley another letter while Ty was napping. She described her first earthquake, how she had roped this expensive horse, and how nice Phillip and Pamela Gordon had been to her. It was the first really special thing that had happened to her since coming to California, except giving birth to Ty, of course.

  Chapter XVIII

  The doorbell rang. Maggie smoothed a hand over the black skirt of her dress. It was the second occasion she’d had reason to wear black in the last two weeks. The first time had been in June to attend Dad Hogan’s funeral. The second was to attend the funeral of Mother Hogan, who had willed herself to die a week after her husband.

  Maggie hadn’t cried when her father died, and she had shed no tears with the passing of this elderly couple. She silently wondered if there was something wrong with her—if Chase had taken away her ability to feel things. The strain of keeping it all bottled up inside showed in the tautness of her features, made whiter by the black dress she wore and the jet-black color of her hair.

  When she entered the living room of her aunt’s house, Cathleen had already answered the door. Maggie watched with an outward impassivity while her aunt submitted to the compassionate and comforting embrace of Phillip Gordon, then dabbed at her tear-red eyes with a lace handkerchief. Pamela was with him in her wheelchair and hugged Cathleen when the older woman bent to greet her.

  Phillip crossed the room, resplendent in a gray suit. He smiled at Maggie in that quiet way of his and took the hands she had unconsciously clasped in front of her. “How are you, Maggie?” he asked and studied the stillness of her features. He knew perfection when he saw it: the balanced contours of bone structure, everything in proper proportion. In no way could his surgical skills improve on the gift of natural beauty.