The Runaway Bride

by Patricia McLinn

  “It’s okay—”

  “—she told Yvonne and she told me, and if that’s how—”

  “Becky, it doesn’t matter. I’m not angry. I would have gone back in a few days anyway.” Although she’d hoped that would be temporary. “I just don’t want my mess to cause problems for you all—”

  “Don’t you worry about us. We’ll take care of that skunk if he comes back. As for Thomas—”

  “No, no, don’t say anything to Thomas. He has reason to be angry at me. To…” She couldn’t bring herself to say hate me. “He needs you both. He doesn’t say it, but he does need you. Please, don’t let him down. Please. And I’ll write when this is all over and explain it. I promise.”

  “You do what you need to do. We trust you to do right.”

  She bent to hug Gran, her throat clogged with thanks and tears. Then she opened her arms and Becky came into them, the girl’s hold fierce around her. She stroked the blond hair and reluctantly backed away.

  “Take good care of Gran. Be good to yourselves. And—” she looked from one now loved face to the other “—take good care of Thomas.”

  She turned and pushed out the door, barely able to see.

  And there were Gandy, Keith and Steve lined up by the truck. Their hats came off in unison, as compelling as a twenty-one gun salute.

  “I…I don’t know what to say.”

  “We just wanted to tell you thanks for all you done,” Gandy said gruffly.

  Steve murmured thanks. Keith added, “You made the Diamond V a better place.”

  Gandy held the truck door for her. “God’s speed, Missy.”

  The old-fashioned farewell nearly undid her. She fumbled blindly through fastening her seat belt, fighting back the tears.

  She stopped where the drive met the back road, where she’d first caught a glimpse of a lone ranger and took a chunk out of a tree. She looked back once.

  Thomas was nowhere to be seen.

  She made the turn, and drove away from the Diamond V ranch, and all that it held.

  The truck was easy to spot as it came along the back road. From Dickens’s back atop the ridge, he watched it make the turn onto the highway. She was off Vance land now, heading back to a life of presidential suites and pampered hands, of jet-setting and huge diamond rings.

  But she ran away from the kind of life that man offered.

  He shook his head at himself. Her fiancé had said it, she’d gotten cold feet. Ended up on a ranch for some little fling. She would have gone back to her real life soon enough.

  It was like those executives who loved leaving their cushy offices to spend a couple weeks “vacation” at the hard labor of surviving in a wilderness. But ask them if they wanted to stay in the wilderness with a packet of matches and a pocketknife for the rest of their lives, and they’d laugh their heads off.

  As for his feelings… He would kill them soon enough. Because he’d be damned if he’d turn into his father, mooning after some woman who’d played him for a fool. Searching for her all over the country.

  Lake Forest, Illinois. Hell, he didn’t even know where that was.

  Except that it was out of his life. For good.

  He turned Dickens and gave him the signal to go.

  He’d returned long after all the lights were out in the house.

  He’d fallen into bed, hoping the hours in the saddle would let him sleep. Instead, he’d watched the first creep of dawn the same way he’d watched the stars—from under a forearm across his forehead.

  In the bathroom, he’d splashed cold water on his face. Reaching for a towel, he’d spotted her bra dangling from the doorknob.

  A scrap of airy white lace hanging there so innocently.

  The taste and scent and feel of the flesh meant to fill that scrap of material exploded into his memory, practically doubling him over with its force.

  He never knew how he got out of there. On automatic pilot, he saddled Klute and rode out. He was still on automatic pilot when hunger drove him back to the house in early afternoon.

  He’d wolfed down chicken and a couple pieces of bread before he heard Gran coming down the hall on her crutches. Becky was right behind her. He kept eating over the sink, not turning even when Gran spoke.

  “You got what you wanted, Thomas. She’s gone. So there was no reason for you to stay away all night.”

  “Didn’t. Got in late, left early. I got behind and have to make it up.”

  “You’re going to keep on getting behind with her gone. Did you see the note she left? Did you see all the things she does for all of us? Not a woman in a million could take to running this place the way she did. Are you going to pretend you don’t care that she’s gone?”

  “I care— I’m glad.”

  “Thomas. If she hadn’t made us promise to be kind to you, I’d tell you what I really think of your behavior. I’d tell you—”

  “My behavior? You know she’s been lying to us? Used us every step of the way. She only stayed here because it was an escape from something she was running from. You know she’s no more Helga Helgerson than I am.”

  The quantity and quality of the silence behind him finally penetrated. He spun around. One look at them and all he could think was Damn! Damn, damn and damn.

  “You knew. Both of you. You knew.”

  Neither of them denied it.

  “When? From the start? All that hogwash about amnesia? That was just playing me? How did she rope you into it? How’d she get you to—”

  “Judi didn’t get us to do anything,” Becky said. “She didn’t tell us, we…uh, figured it out.”

  “Great. You figured it out. And you never thought to mention to me, ‘Hey, Thomas, by the way, we no longer believe the woman living under our roof, cooking our meals and taking care of our grandmother is who she said she was. And we have no idea who in the hell she is or what she wants or why she’s lying’? But you managed to tell each other, didn’t you? Anybody else? Steve? Or—”

  “Of course not!” Becky said hotly. But there was something about the way she said it…

  “Did you mention it to… No.” He shook his head. “Tell me you didn’t talk to her about this. You didn’t tell me, but you talked to her!”

  “Not for a long time. Not until—” Becky compressed her lips into a thin line.

  “Until what?” he demanded of his grandmother.

  “Until,” she answered as calmly as she might have told him the time, “the real Helga Helgerson showed up ready to start work.”

  “What?!”

  “Don’t shout, Thomas.”

  “This is damned well worth shouting about. You knew she was a fake! You had the proof of it, and you didn’t tell me? You knew she’d gotten rid of the real Helga—”

  “She didn’t do that. We did.”

  He dropped back against the counter, pressing his fingers against his throbbing forehead. “Why in the hell did you do that?”

  “Because we wanted Hel—our Helga—Judi to stay.” Becky made it sound like an explanation a two-year-old should understand.

  He thought his head might explode. “When?”

  “Last Thursday—a week ago yesterday.”

  The day they’d ridden out to Six-Mile Creek. The day they’d made love for the first time. If they’d told him then, he would never have made love to her. Would that have made the past day any easier? Or harder?

  “The other Helga—”

  He interrupted Becky. “The real Helga.”

  “—showed up and said she was ready to work.”

  “A month late.” Gran harrumphed. “I’d nearly healed by the time she got herself here. Said she’d been delayed at another job and the agency never got in touch with her about not coming here.”

  “Why would…? Oh, God, you called the agency.”

  Gran said, “As a matter of fact, the agency called us. To explain the delay. Fat lot of good that would’ve done if we hadn’t had Hel—Judi. We—you—would have been out of luck if we�
�d relied on the agency. We told them to forget it and we told Helga Helgerson we didn’t need her when she showed up, because we had Judi. We would have told you if we’d thought you’d be reasonable about it.”

  “Reasonable? Reasonable! I’m not the one who’s been lying all along. It was damned reasonable to tell her to get out after all the lies—”

  “You told her to get out?” Becky demanded. “She said she had to leave because of some trouble involving that snake she was engaged to. She didn’t say you made her. How could you? You’re horrible, awful—”

  “Right! I’m the monster. I’m the one who lied. I’m the one who made up stories. I’m the one who brought some ass—”

  “You’re the one who’s shouting,” Gran said.

  He clamped his lips shut. The snap should have been audible halfway across the country. At least as far as Illinois.

  “I can’t believe you—”

  “You, too, Becky. Be quiet. That’s better. I’m sure Judi is very sorry that she hurt you, Thomas. That’s the last thing she wanted to do. But she had reasons. And now she’s gone off alone to deal with those reasons. And you’re standing there shouting at each other. That doesn’t strike me as a good solution at all. In fact, it’s a waste of time. Thomas, what you need to do—”

  He dropped his arms against his sides. “You’re right. It’s a waste of time. All of it. It was from the start, and it sure as hell is now. She’s gone. That’s the end of it. That’s the way it should be. What I need to do is get back to work and try to hold onto this ranch.”

  Chapter Ten

  Dickens let the spotted calf get past him and back into the herd a third time.

  “Damn it.”

  Dickens’s ears flickered around.

  Thomas concentrated on keeping his commands soft and reasonable as he brought Dickens to the section of fence farthest from the herd. He dismounted, tied up the horse, then walked a dozen yards along the fence, hands on hips, head down.

  Becky nearly rode him down before reining in Xena and jumping off the horse.

  “I want to talk to you—”

  “This isn’t the time, Becky.”

  “You told her to get out—”

  “Damn right I did.”

  “Because she was on my side. Because she understood me, and—”

  “This has nothing to do with you, Becky.”

  “Right. Just like Maureen selling off a quarter of the ranch has nothing to do with me. Just like your having to practically work yourself to death has nothing to do with me. Just—”

  “Did she tell you Maureen’s selling? What else did she tell you? Helga—Judi—whatever the hell—”

  “No! I told her.”

  “You told— How did you—?”

  “You think I’m stupid? You think I don’t know what my mother’s been up to? You think I don’t know that if it weren’t for me she wouldn’t have an excuse to be selling? You think I don’t know that if I could just get through to her—”

  He took his sister by the shoulders and made her look at him. Things were falling into place so fast and so hard he could feel them reverberating.

  “Are you thinking it’s your fault? No way—”

  “She’s my mother.”

  “So? Are you blaming yourself for what she’s doing? Are you thinking I’m blaming you? Is that what’s been going on?”

  Her face gave the answer. Good God, how could he have missed this? Why the hell hadn’t he suspected this before? The flare-ups over his work, the sullenness and the talk about leaving the ranch. Not because she hated the ranch, not because she wanted to leave home. But because she’d feared she might lose her home through the actions of her mother.

  And how much worse could it have gotten if it hadn’t come out now?

  She dropped her head, her shoulders still stiff under his hands. “If it weren’t for me…”

  “You’re nuts, Rebecca Jane Vance. If it weren’t for you, and all the work you’ve done this past year, we’d have no shot in hell of buying back Maureen’s share. That’s what you’re responsible for—the work you’ve done. You’re not responsible for your mother. You’re not Maureen. Just like I’m not Dad. This is their doing. Not ours. We just got left cleaning up the mess. Is this why you’ve been working so hard, because you thought I blamed—”

  “No! I want to keep the Diamond V together as much as you do.” She looked up at him. “But she said the money was to send me to college.”

  He started to fob her off by excusing her mother. But maybe it was time for a different approach. You need to be treating her more like an adult, so she’ll become one.

  “I don’t think you’re ever going to see any of that money. Do you? Besides, we don’t need money to send you to college. That money’s been set aside.”

  Becky gave a kind of shudder, and he thought he felt a weight coming off the shoulders he still held.

  “That’s what Judi said. She said you didn’t blame me and I had to tell you.”

  So he had her to thank for finally getting this out in the open between him and Becky. It figured. It was just like something she’d do. Not just pushing them to talk, and pushing him to treat Becky like an adult, but putting him in her debt again.

  “She made me promise to tell you right before… Oh, Thomas, you can’t really let her go like this.”

  That has nothing to do with you. It’s none of your business. It’s complicated. All true. And all answers that could start him down the same path with Becky as the one they’d just left.

  “Right now what I have to do is take care of Dickens. Anything else…” He shrugged.

  “But Thomas—”

  “I’ll think about it. All right?”

  Becky’s expression said she wanted to argue. But she didn’t. She really was growing up—why did that make him both sad and proud?

  He watched her ride out the gate, then headed toward Dickens.

  “Fifty-seven days worth of work!” Gandy shouted as he rode past.

  As he talked quietly to Dickens, Thomas didn’t need an explanation for the phrase. The fifty-seven days of work he’d put in on Dickens would be down the drain if he let loose now. He could forget the training fee, much less the bonus, because he’d be turning over a horse who’d had his confidence chewed to shreds by an idiot rider—him.

  He swung up into the saddle.

  He had ridden Dickens hard yesterday. He never should have started working him on cutting today. But he couldn’t let the horse quit now, not with his last effort such a failure. He had to give Dickens a success, so when they called it quits, that’s what was left in the horse’s mind.

  He patted the proud neck and murmured, “C’mon, devil horse. Put her out of your mind. Just for these few minutes. We can do this. You and me. She might’ve tied us in knots, but we haven’t lost every last one of our brains. Let’s give you a finish you can remember in peace.”

  Focusing all his will on the horse beneath him, he positioned Dickens in front of the same spotted calf. The horse shifted as if to step away. Thomas applied gentle pressure to keep him in place, then a nudge to move him forward.

  Dickens made the moves to cut the calf out of the herd, but without the crispness of three days ago. As they tacked across the pen toward the chute, pushing the calf erratically in front of them, Thomas kept the angles wider than in their previous session, leaving the calf more latitude, but also making it harder for him to skirt around and rejoin the herd. Moving the calf was tedious, but with each pass Dickens’s movements seemed to regain a sliver of certainty.

  At last the calf stepped into the chute. Gandy leaned over to close the gate after him. “Well, that’s more like it. You might make it after all with that renegade.”

  But Thomas barely heard.

  Pushing down his anger to maneuver Dickens had opened a gate inside him, and now echoes of words and sights and thoughts hammered in his head.

  He owed her…. She said she had to leave because of some tr
ouble involving that snake she was engaged to… She had reasons. And now she’s gone off alone to deal with those reasons… That asshole getting ready to hit her.

  He started giving orders as he dismounted.

  “Give me Maddox and you baby Dickens in. Give him a couple days rest, then have Keith work him easy on cutting.”

  Gandy immediately swung out of the saddle, but as Thomas adjusted the stirrups on Maddox for his longer legs, he asked, “Where will you be the next couple days that I’m going to have Keith working Dickens?”

  “Where do you think?”

  “Three days left to turning Dickens over to Upton for that bonus. You’ll miss the deadline and you won’t have the money for Maureen.” But he was grinning.

  “We’ll deal with that when it happens.”

  “Yeah, we will. You find that girl and bring her home.”

  He didn’t tell Gandy that he intended to do the first half come hell or high water, but the second half was not going to happen.

  He had the practicalities worked out in his head by the time he rode in. He took the stairs to his room two at a time, not caring about the racket. He heard Becky and Gran call out from Gran’s room, but didn’t answer. He grabbed a duffle and had clean underwear, a pair of jeans and two shirts in it before another thought hit him.

  “Becky! Rebecca Jane!”

  “What?” She must have been on her way upstairs to have arrived at the open doorway that fast.

  “Get me that bracelet Judi gave you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s part of whatever mess she’s in. It’s what that jerk kept yapping about.”

  His sister stared at him another twenty seconds. “You’re going after her. You’re going to help her. You’re gong to—”

  “I’m going to make sure this mess she’s in gets wrapped up and make sure she doesn’t get hurt. I don’t want her on my conscience and I don’t want you and Gran hounding me.”

  “But—”

  “Get the damned bracelet so I can get out of here, Becky.”

  She hesitated another half minute, then turned and pounded down the stairs.