Did they see the future coming down on them like a terrible desert storm, see it and know that there was nothing to do but to hang on and hope to survive until the storm passed?
They couldn’t change each other.
They couldn’t stop loving each other.
And they hadn’t survived the storm.
“Hope? What’s wrong? Is it Mason? Is he sick?”
It was Rio’s voice, deep and worried, calling to her as though from a distance.
She opened her eyes and saw that he was close, close enough that she could see his concern in the intensity of his glance, the hard line of his mouth, his hands reaching for her in the instant before he controlled them.
At that moment she understood that he cared for her as much as he could, and he was protecting her in the only way he could. He was leaving her alone. He must have seen the clouds massing on their personal horizon. He was trying to protect her from that future storm, to keep her from being consumed. He was doing all that he could for her short of turning and walking away.
That he couldn’t do, for it would have been even more cruel to her than staying. She had a ranch that was dying for lack of water, and he was a man who could find water in hell itself.
“Hope?” Rio’s voice was soft yet harsh. “What is it? Is there anything I can do? How long have you been standing here?”
She answered the only question she could, for she didn’t know how long she had been standing in the yard. Long enough for her skin to feel dry and for a fine shimmer of dust to coat her arms. Long enough to learn more about love and herself and the future than she wanted to know.
“Mason’s fine. He’s on his way to Salt Lake,” she said. She watched Rio with eyes that were dark, shadowed by understanding and regret. Her voice was soft, as shattered as her past certainty that she could never love a man the way she had come to love Rio.
Passionately. Helplessly. Hopelessly.
But not bitterly.
Not that. There was no room in Hope’s soul for bitterness, because she had accepted what she was, and what he was, and that neither could change.
“How did it go today?” she asked. “Did you find a place to drill?”
“Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Nothing that can be changed,” she said calmly.
She understood her own limitations and his. If she had been different, he wouldn’t care about her. If he had been different, she wouldn’t love him as she did.
“What do you mean?”
“There’s nothing that I would change even if I could. I am who I am, and . . . you’re Rio. I wouldn’t change what you are even if it meant a river flowing forever through the Valley of the Sun.”
Her sad, accepting smile made the small lines at either edge of Rio’s mouth deepen into brackets of pain. He saw all that she hadn’t said in the darkness of her beautiful eyes.
“I didn’t want this!” His breath came in roughly and he said no more. His fingertips touched her cheek in the instant before he balled up his hand into a fist and stepped back. “I’m going into town. Some of my equipment just came in. Don’t wait dinner for me. I’ll get a room and stay over for a few days, until I get everything I need.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t move, didn’t react in any way.
“Hope, are you listening?”
She nodded. She was listening, hearing everything he didn’t say, the pain and the anger and the frustration, as relentless as the wind. “Yes. I’m listening.”
The wind swirled around her, blowing over the land with a long, low wail that was so familiar she didn’t even hear it. The same wind curled around Rio, pressing his shirt against his chest, riffling through his hair like a lover’s fingers.
Abruptly Hope turned away and went into the house.
Rio didn’t follow.
As she closed the front door behind her, she knew it was good that he was leaving. She was too vulnerable to him right now, still caught in the aftershocks of her own realization. She didn’t think she would be able to sit across from him in the intimacy of the kitchen and not tell him the simple truths that she had just discovered.
I love you.
I wish you loved me.
But it doesn’t matter. Even if you loved me, you’d still have to leave. I understand you, Rio. I know you’ll hate yourself if you hurt me.
And I’m already hurting.
Hell of a mess, isn’t it, love?
The wind paused long enough for her to hear Rio’s pickup truck leave the ranch yard in a rush of gravel and grit. Then the wind swept on, blotting out every sound but its own endless sigh.
When she was certain that nothing remained of Rio, not even dust hanging in the air, she went out again, climbed into Behemoth, and began the chore of hauling water. The loaded rifle kept her company in its rack behind her head.
When she drove over the ridge and down to the emerald oasis of the well, there wasn’t any other vehicle in sight. As far as she knew, Turner hadn’t come here since the day he had made a grab and she had locked herself in the truck.
Yet each day, every day, she watched for him at the well.
Squinting against the strong wind, Hope jumped out of the cab and set up the water hose. The job wasn’t as difficult as it had been before Rio replaced the worn coupling and Mason did something to the generator that made it start more easily. Also, she wasn’t as tired as she had been before Rio came to the Valley of the Sun. He had quietly, systematically taken much of the hard physical work from her shoulders. If she objected, he simply ignored her.
In truth, she hadn’t protested much. There was enough work for five more ranch hands.
Behemoth’s tank filled with sweet water until it couldn’t hold any more. Hope stowed the hose and drove back to her forlorn wells, where some of her cattle stood hunched against the brash, dry wind. They welcomed the truck with low bawls, as though asking what had taken so long.
Enough rain had fallen so that all of the range animals weren’t completely dependent on the various wells. It was a good thing, because the wells weren’t dependable. There hadn’t been enough rain to bring up the water table or the natural feed. If real rain didn’t come quickly, the minor seeps and holes would dry up again, forcing all the cattle back to the area around the wells.
Then Hope would have to start hauling food as well as water. Or she would have to sell more cattle.
When the truck was empty, she racked the hose again and headed back to the ranch. There was enough water that she didn’t have to make a second run today. There was even water to spare for a bath if she was feeling a little reckless.
The thought tantalized her all the way back to the house. She argued with herself over using water that could go for cooking or drinking or watering cows. Then she decided that the bath was almost medicinal. She needed it to soak away the weariness that she had felt since she understood more than she wanted to about herself and Rio and love.
Besides, it was her birthday.
As a kind of penance for the water she was going to use, Hope forced herself to go through the ranch accounts before she went upstairs. Feeling too tired for five o’clock in the afternoon, she sat in the straight-backed walnut chair that was paired with the old oak desk her father had used.
The first thing she saw was the note she had written to herself ten months ago and pinned to the cubbyhole: Second mortgage due 1/15.
Though it didn’t really worry her, for a moment she stared at the note. Despite the many temptations, she hadn’t touched the money she had set aside for the balloon payment. Selling half of her remaining range cattle had been an emotional wrench, but it had given her enough cash to keep the ranch going for a while longer without nibbling away at the money she had set aside for the mortgage and for drilling a well.
Sighing, she pulled out the ranch account books and began to catch up on the bills.
“An hour of this,” she promised herself, “and then a lovely, long, hot bath. A happy birthday present
to me.”
She kept her promises, even to herself. Especially to herself.
After an hour at the books and an hour in a steaming bath, she felt less . . . brittle. With languid movements she toweled her body dry, then her hair. Almost defiantly she smoothed a perfumed cream into her skin before she walked to her bedroom. The clean clothes she had set out on the way to her bath lay on the bed.
She looked at them and felt something close to rebellion. Abruptly she decided that she didn’t want to put on jeans and a work shirt and boots again. She wanted to feel soft fabric caressing her, to look down and see her long legs bare of everything but silky skin. She wanted to look like a woman, to feel like one.
“Why shouldn’t I?” she asked the silence. “No one is in the house but me.”
Mason wouldn’t be here to smile at the first instant of seeing her, and then sigh sadly when he realized that there was so little opportunity for Hope to laugh and dance and flirt with admiring men.
Rio wouldn’t be here to look at her and wonder if she was trying to seduce him with feminine clothes and a perfume that could be enjoyed only by a man who was close enough to brush against her skin.
Tonight she was a woman alone. She could dress to please her own needs.
With hands that had almost forgotten how, Hope put on delicate touches of makeup that brought out the beauty of her slightly tilted eyes and generous mouth. Then she went to her closet and pulled out a floor-length caftan cut from a French velvet so fine and soft that it was almost impossible to tell apart from brushed silk. The rich forest green of the cloth brought out the elusive green of her eyes.
After a moment of hesitation, she put her hair up in one of the sophisticated styles that had once been a daily part of her life. The golden nugget earrings she put on had belonged to her great-grandmother, a present from a man who had come home from the Klondike gold rush.
The slippers Hope chose were very high heeled mules, made to accent the long, elegantly curved legs that had been her fortune. The legs themselves were revealed by a tantalizing slit that was just off-center of the deceptively casual lines of the caftan. It had been one of the most successful outfits she had ever worn in her modeling career.
Despite the caftan’s impressive price tag, she had never regretted buying it. More than once the caressing velvet had picked up her sagging spirits. Like tonight.
When Hope looked in the mirror, she saw someone who had become a stranger to her. The reflection showed an elegant woman who would be at home anywhere in the world of glamour and cities, but had chosen to live in the Valley of the Sun and had never looked back.
Not even now, when she was alone on a dying ranch.
“I hope my birthday dinner appreciates me,” she said, smiling with amusement at her image in the mirror. “Not every meal gets eaten by someone in pajamas as fancy as mine.”
It was crazy even to think of fixing dinner in the elegant caftan, but Hope was feeling a little crazy at the moment. She had pushed herself too long, too hard, in too many ways. She needed a rest from the relentless pressures of her ranch and her foolish heart.
She went to the kitchen and opened the bottle of Chardonnay that she had put in the refrigerator for the day that Rio found a place to drill for water—a day that hadn’t yet come.
A day that might never come.
That was something she wouldn’t think about now. Worrying about what she couldn’t change wouldn’t do anything but wear her out.
She poured herself a glass of wine and inhaled the heady scent of fine Chardonnay. She breathed in again, savoring the moment with the intensity that was as much a part of her as the love waiting deep within her for the exquisite instant of release. A release that might never come.
And she wouldn’t think about that, either.
Beyond the house, the wind wailed as though unhappy at being shut out of the kitchen’s warmth. Humming in quiet counterpoint to the long cry of the wind, Hope pulled a chicken out of the refrigerator. Using a knife that Rio had honed to a glittering edge, she cut away the breast and boned it with quick strokes.
The blade moved smoothly, slicing flesh as easily as butter. Even Mason had been impressed by the edge on the old knife. He had threatened to use it in place of his usual straight razor. Rio had offered to shave Mason with a butter knife instead. A very dull one.
Smiling, remembering, Hope set the knife aside, rinsed off her hands, and reached for the crystal wineglass. The wind’s cry climbed higher, then dropped into a temporary silence. As the wine touched her lips she heard the muffled sound of a vehicle pulling up outside.
Rio! He must have come back early.
The glass dipped alarmingly in her hand, almost spilling wine onto the velvet caftan. She heard a door slam, heard booted feet coming up the front steps, heard the front door opening. A wave of longing swept through her, shaking her.
And then John Turner walked into the kitchen as though he owned the house and everything in it.
Especially her.
Sixteen
HOPE’S FIRST REACTION on seeing Turner was anger and a disappointment so deep that it made her dizzy.
“Haven’t you ever heard of knocking on doors?” she asked coldly.
The wind gusted back up to its full strength, making the house tremble with its endless power. Wind whispered grittily against windows and walls in a long exhalation that became a low wail masking all sound from outside the walls, increasing the isolation inside.
Turner smiled with a predatory anticipation he didn’t bother to conceal. “Baby doll, I’m hurt. Is that any way to welcome your fiancé on your birthday, especially when he’s got a present for you?”
Hope remembered the night eight years ago, when he had grabbed her and taught her just how careless a strong man could be.
Turner noticed the elegant green dress, the shadowed invitation of her long, long legs, the heightening of her eyes, the fullness of her mouth. She was a woman dressed for a lover.
And she hadn’t known he was coming.
“Who are you all tarted up for?” he snarled.
“No one.”
“Bullshit. No woman dresses up like that except for a man.”
“I do.”
She went to the refrigerator, pulled out a ham, and sliced off a chunk. Swiss cheese came next. Deliberately ignoring Turner, she cut the ham and cheese into neat strips.
Turner watched her every motion with brooding eyes. He hadn’t dressed up for her. He was wearing the same spotless, ironed jeans, shiny boots, and crisp white shirt he wore every day on his ranch.
“It’s Rio,” Turner said. His voice was like his eyes—flat, ugly, threatening. “The bunkhouse gossips are right. That half-breed’s fucking you.”
Hope’s fingers tightened around the knife handle. Her hands wanted to shake with anger and a wave of fear. Turner was a man who had never understood a woman’s refusal. Never accepted it.
Never permitted it.
I should have known he would wait until I was truly alone. That’s his style. No witnesses. No word but his against mine. And who would believe a dirt-poor ranch girl turned down the richest bachelor around?
No one believed me before. No one would now. What are a few bruises against a few million dollars?
Coolly Hope went through her options.
There weren’t many. Assuming she could stay away from Turner long enough to get to a phone and call the sheriff—which she doubted—help was almost an hour away. There were two exits from the kitchen. Turner was standing in one and closer to the second than she was.
But somehow she had to get out of the kitchen. Given a chance, she was certain she could outrun him.
Ignoring him, she made small pockets in the chicken breast with the knife’s gleaming tip. She tucked strips of ham and cheese into the pockets, along with a sprinkling of herbs.
There was no sound in the kitchen but the rough cry of the wind.
“You answer me when I talk to you,” Turner said
harshly.
“Nobody is my lover,” she said, her voice as cool and precise as the blade Rio had sharpened. “Nobody is fucking me, either. Thank you for your neighborly concern, but you made a long drive for nothing.”
Turner listened to her, measured the anger in the stiff line of her shoulders and acknowledged the only part of her words that he wanted to hear.
“I told you if you hired Rio, people would talk.”
She shrugged with a casual ease she was far from feeling.
Mason was gone. Rio was gone. John Turner was here, standing between her and the nearest door.
“People talk all the time,” she said calmly. “It’s like the wind. Sound without meaning.”
“Not when they’re talking about my future wife.”
The wind’s keening rose until it was just short of a scream.
Hope wanted to scream with it, to curse Turner’s thick indifference to anything but his own desires. Her sister Julie had been like that, totally self-absorbed. But Julie hadn’t been consciously cruel.
Julie’s selfishness had puzzled and saddened Hope. Turner’s self-absorption frightened her.
She took a slow, inconspicuous breath. Defying him verbally was risky, but not nearly as risky as cowering. If she showed fear, Turner would be all over her in an instant, dragging her down to the hard floor, raping her no matter how much she screamed at him to stop.
“What makes you think I’m going to marry you?” she asked in a tone of simple curiosity.
“Because I’m the only one who will have you. I made sure of it,” he said with calm satisfaction. “Every man within a hundred miles who can get a hard-on knows if he comes near you, I’ll beat him to bloody rags with my bare fists. So nobody’s been scratching that itch between your legs. Getting hungry, baby doll? I sure as hell am.”
Hope wanted to point out that Rio had been the exception to Turner’s rule of driving men away, but she held her tongue. She sensed that bringing up Rio would change a frightening situation into a desperate one.
“See,” Turner continued, “two years ago, when you came back here to live, you ignored me, so I knew you were still mad because of that hundred-dollar bill I stuffed down your blouse. That’s why you went away to the big city and turned into a real classy piece of ass, something worth a lot more than a hundred bucks. You were real mad at me.”
Beautiful Dreamer with Bonus Material Page 16
