by Janet Dailey
"You aren't throwing all that away!" She grabbed for the wastebasket he had picked up. "Do you have any idea how much money that represents? Besides, those cosmetics are mine."
"You can have them back when you leave here," Travis informed her coldly. "In the meantime you have no use for them. There isn't anyone around here that you need to primp and paint yourself up for. And I don't intend to wait an hour or longer for breakfast every morning."
"Are you going to give them back to me?" LaRaine demanded. "I want them back, right now, this minute!"
"When you leave," he repeated.
"Then I'm leaving now."
"Go. I won't stop you." He shrugged.
"Very well, I will" LaRaine pivoted away and stopped. Where could she go? How would she get there? She still didn't have any money. Travis was still standing in the doorway, watching her, knowing all along that she would have to back down. "Damn you!" Her chin quivered as she issued her taut acknowledgement of surrender.
"Start breakfast," Travis ordered.
It was several seconds before LaRaine followed his departing figure. Travis waited in the kitchen to assist her with breakfast. Joe walked in as she forked the almost burnt bacon onto an absorbent paper towel. Without her makeup, LaRaine felt naked and self-conscious, exposed somehow.
IT WASN'T A SENSATION that she became used to during the next three days. At odd moments, she would touch the bareness of her cheek with her fingertips and rail at the Travis's arrogantly presumptuous order. The majority of her time was taken up with her job. It was all so alien to her that LaRaine was constantly coming up against frustratingly simple obstacles.
She stared at the gooey mess in the bowl and read the recipe again. Travis had suggested a cake might be nice change for dessert. The soupy glob in the bowl didn't look at all like a cake, but she had carefully followed the step-by-step directions in the cookbook.
A fan whirred to circulate the hot air, its noise competing with the radio on top of the refrigerator blaring out a popular tune. The loud music usually helped to drown out the silence of the house. In her present confusion, it was only irritating. Stalking over to the radio, LaRaine switched it off, throwing the room into unnerving silence. She brushed a straying wisp of black hair away from her cheek, unknowingly adding a streak of flour across her ivory skin.
A hammering knock rattled the front screen door. The unexpected sound startled her and she dropped the batter-laden spoon from her hand. Swearing softly beneath her breath, she picked up the spoon and moped up the mess with a rag. The peremptory knock came again.
Absently wiping her hands on the material of her slacks, she hurried into the living room. At the front door she stopped abruptly, stunned to see Sam Hardesty standing outside. His expression mirrored similar shock.
Sam was the first to recover. "What are you doing here?"
LaRaine swallowed. "I…I live here." She lifted her head high. "If you want to speak to Travis, he said something about checking some irrigation pipes."
"I thought you went back to L.A.," he drawled, paying no attention to the information about Travis.
"I didn't." LaRaine wasn't about to explain to him why. He had enough to gloat about just knowing he'd cost the movie part. "If you'll excuse, I'm busy. Goodbye Sam. I'll tell Travis you called." She walked away from the door, her legs trembling.
Uninvited, Sam walked in. "Are you living with McCrea?"
LaRaine would have loved to claim that intimate relationship just to watch Sam's mouth drop open, but she remembered Travis's statement about how quickly gossip traveled in this small ranch community and his desire to avoid unfavorable gossip.
"Travis is a gentleman," she declared, not slackening her steps to the kitchen. "He sleeps in the…bunkhouse." That sounded better than the shed. "And I sleep in here." But she didn't deny that there was a relationship of some kind between them.
"Why? I mean, if he's not your lover, what are you doing here?" Sam walked into the kitchen. "Good lord! You're baking!" he laughed incredulously. "I don't believe it—a domestic LaRaine Evans!"
"Why is that so funny?" she demanded angrily, turning on him in temper.
He stared at her, his gaze running over her face. Confusion flickered in his eyes. LaRaine looked away, conscious that her face was bare and open.
"You look different," Sam commented, unable to identify the cause
She lifted a hand to her face, almost protectively. Her sensitive fingertips felt the powdery streak of flour and she rubbed it away. She turned away, picking up the bowl of cake batter and dumping the contents into a greased pan. Temporarily she forgot the uncertainty as to whether or not she mixed it correctly. Once it was spreading across the pan she couldn't very well spoon it back into the bowl.
Sam moved to the counter, his gaze inspecting her profile. "You aren't wearing makeup," he accused.
"Since when does a girl have to wear if all the time?" She heard the tremor in her voice.
"I don't think I've ever seen you without it," he remarked. "You're…you're beautiful." He seemed surprised. "What's come over you?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." LaRaine carried the cake pan to the oven and set it on the wire self.
"No makeup, baking a cake, and I'll bet you're taking care of the house and cooking meals, too," Sam listed.
"So what if I am?" she challenged, feeling somehow degraded by his statements.
"There nothing wrong with it," he insisted. "I just can't see you being the little homemaker. Not the LaRaine Evans I know."
"There are a lot of things about LaRaine Evans that you don't know." There were even a few things that LaRaine was just beginning to discover about herself.
"Why? I mean—" But Sam didn't seem to know what he meant.
"Maybe I just got fed up with that whole artificial world you live in," she suggested. "Maybe I decided it was time to get back to the basics of life."
"My God, LaRaine, don't tell me you've fallen in love with this Utah rancher? Really in love with him?" he exclaimed in amazement.
"I never said that," LaRaine denied.
"It's the only thing that explains it. I've heard that love can work miracle, but I never believed it until now."
"Well, it isn't true. I'm just working here because it's what I want to do," she insisted vigorously. "There's sunshine and free air. Nobody's living on top of you."
"As I recall, you referred to this country as a desolate wasteland." Sam wasn't believing a word she was saying.
"People are entitled to change their minds. As a matter of fact, it's supposed to be a woman's prerogative." She gathered up the mixing bowls, spoons and measuring cups and carried them to the sink. "Did you want to leave a message for Travis or not?" she demanded, afraid of his questions and comments.
"No, I'll call this evening and speak to him myself," he said.
"Then would you please leave? I have lots of work to do." The stiff request was issued as she started to fill the sink with dishwater.
Sam hesitated, studying the rigid set of her carriage before he finally complied with her request. From then on, everything seemed to go wrong. LaRaine forgot the cake in the oven until she smelled the smoky scent of something burning. When she rescued it from the oven, it was blackened and hard. She couldn't tell whether she had mixed it correctly or not.
While preparing the evening meal, she forgot to put enough water on the potatoes and they boiled dry, scorching them. The vegetable suffered a similar fate, cooked to the point of toughness. The jelly salad hadn't completely set, so it was like thick soup. Only the meat loaf in the crockpot was edible.
Neither Travis nor Joe had made a single comment. If there had been a hint of criticism, LaRaine was sure would have dumped the food in their laps. Joe had pounded the ketchup bottle over his potatoes to try to drown the scorched taste. LaRaine attacked her meat loaf with angry frustration, her silence almost hostile.
She remembered to tell Travis that Sam had stopped to see him and w
ould be back this evening, but she didn't volunteer the remarks Sam had made at the change in her. She had passed in the information on in a brittlely curt voice. Travis had simply nodded, but his gaze quietly inspected her. LaRaine guessed that he was wondering how much of her brooding anger was caused by Sam.
All of it was. His visit had reminded her how far down the ladder she had gone. She was a housekeeper, paid a pittance. People, especially men, had always waited on her, not the other way around. She hated Sam for putting her in this humiliating position by getting her fired. And she hated Travis for rubbing her nose in it and making her work for the money she needed like some common servant.
She was washing dishes in a frozen rage when Sam came. Travis spoke to him outside instead of inviting him into the house. It was almost worse not being able to overhear their conversation and know whether or not they were talking and laughing about her.
After Sam had left, Travis came back into the house, LaRaine was wiping the last of the silverware dry and jamming it in the drawer. She heard Travis walk into the kitchen, but she didn't look up.
"Well?" she said in icy challenge. "What did he say about me?"
"Sam?" The inflection of his voice made it a question.
"Of course Sam," LaRaine snapped.
"He didn't say anything about you. He came over to tell me that they'll be using my cattle in the next couple of days and wanted me to drive them over to the set," he explained.
"I see." Her answer was stiff, not believing him. She felt his alert gaze studying her every move and refused to meet it.
"Joe and I won't be here for lunch tomorrow. Since you won't have to fix a noon meal, I thought I'd suggest that you wash clothes tomorrow," said Travis.
"Suggest or order?" LaRaine retorted sarcastically.
He ignored that. "If you'll come with me a minute, I'll show you how to operate the washing machine."
For a rebellious moment she didn't budge. Wadding the dishtowel into a ball, she tossed it on the counter and turned to accompany Travis to the back porch, avoiding direct eye contact with him. Previously LaRaine had only ventured onto the porch en route to the bathroom, never bothering to notice the appliances in the small addition.
It wasn't a sleek, modern automatic washer that Travis led her to, but a big, cumbersome, old-fashioned wringer washing machine. Two gray metal tubs were standing on legs beside it. LaRaine stared at the contraptions with growing dismay and anger.
"I'm not going to use that thing," she rebelled, turning the fiery brilliance of her dark gaze on Travis. "You'll have to hire someone to wash your clothes."
"I have," he replied evenly. "You."
Before LaRaine could argue, he began explaining to her how to work the washer. He showed her how to hook up the hoses to the taps in the bathroom to fill the washer and rinse tubs and how to operate the wringer and move it to use with the rinse tubs. He explained how long to let the clothes agitate in the washer and how to get a garment through the clothes wringer.
Lastly he showed her where the clothespegs were, to hang the washing on the line out back. When Travis had finished, LaRaine was choked into silence by the bitterness of her fate and the futility of protest. She managed a nod to indicate that she understood his instructions.
Her first washday was a series of minor catastrophes. Clothes kept winding around the rollers of the wringer. She tore the fragile material of one of her expensive blouses trying to pull it free, and lost a fingernail in a tug of war with the gobbling cylinders over the fate of a hand towel.
Two pairs of her knit slacks and one knit top shrank in the hot water. Two other blouses were ruined when her red slacks faded. The only damage to the men's clothes was the clue cast to their white underwear where the blue jeans had faded.
Her back ached from lugging basket after basket of wet clothes out to the clothesline and stretching her arms over head to hang the clothes on the wire. It all had to be repeated when the sun had dried the clothes. Frustrated and exhausted, LaRaine was in tears by the time she finished.
If either Travis or Joe noticed her puffy eyes at the supper table, they didn't comment on it. Nor did they mention the new color of their underwear. To LaRaine, their silence seemed to loudly condemn her for not knowing how to do something as simple as washing clothes. If Travis had said one cross word to her, LaRaine knew she would have burst into tears. He didn't, and she kept a fingerhold on her composure.
| Go to Table of Contents |
Chapter Nine
OVER THE NEXT THREE WEEKS, LaRaine fought a bitter war to learn how to keep house. It was more than just cooking and cleaning and washing. It was retraining herself to hang up clothes, to put things in their proper place when she was through with them, and to organize her time. Travis expected her to make lists of foodstuffs and supplies she needed and do the shopping, with his accompaniment. LaRaine never remembered to write down everything she needed.
After she had received her fourth paycheck, she felt she had earned every dime of the money. The problem was that she hadn't been able to save it all. Because of her ignorance in not knowing how to care for them, some of her clothes had been ruined. The rest she didn't want to risk ruining by wearing them while she scrubbed floors or did some other equally physical task. So she had taken some of her money to buy jeans and cotton blouses that would stand up under the abuse. Also she had bought magazines to fill the empty evenings with something to do. At her rate, LaRaine was convinced it would take forever to save enough money to leave.
Her life on the ranch had begun to form a pattern. Sundays were supposedly her days off, the same as they were for Joe, who went to church and spent the day with his family. But LaRaine had no place to go and no way to get there if she did. Which left her and Travis at the ranch alone. As far as LaRaine was concerned she was left alone since she rarely saw Travis on Sundays, or on Monday evenings, either, which Joe also spent at his parents' home. It was the night set aside by his Mormon faith to be with his family.
With the breakfast dishes done, LaRaine went to clean the bathroom, and a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror drew a stare. What had happened to that glamorous woman? There was still something faintly regal about the lift of her head and the wing of her eyebrows, but her face looked as scrubbed and fresh as a country girl's. How long had it been since she'd had a facial and a manicure, LaRaine wondered. When had a stylist last touched a comb to her raven black hair?
In a burst of rebellion, she dumped the cleansers on the counter by the washbasin. She wasn't going to clean any stupid bathroom! She swept through the kitchen, hating the ugliness of the house and the emptiness of it. She needed to be around people, to be the center of attention and to be pampered and fussed over. There had been too many lonely hours in this wretched place for her to stay within its confines another minute.
She slammed out of the house, not stopping until she was in the center of the ranchyard. She looked for the pickup truck that was usually parked by the shed. It wasn't there. Travis was at the corral, saddling the buckskin tied to an outside rail. LaRaine crossed the ground in long, angry strides.
"I want to use the truck. Where is it?" she demanded.
"Joe has it." Travis tightened the cinch strap and began looping it around through the ring.
She pressed her lips together for an angry second, then demanded, "When will he be back?"
"He went into town to pick up some grain for the horses. He had a few other errands to run, so I don't imagine he'll be back until after lunch. You won't have to bother about fixing him anything." He unhooked the stirrup from the saddle horn and let it drop. His gaze didn't stray to LaRaine once.
"Damn," she muttered under her breath. A gust of wind blew a cloud of hair across her face and she pushed it back impatiently.
"Why do you need the truck?" he asked. "Did you forget something at the store?"
"No. I've got to get out of that house!" she exploded in frustration. "I can't stand it in there another minute. I hate it!" On
e way or another, she was going to get away from it. "Saddle me a horse," she ordered.
Travis turned, resting an arm on the saddle. "Where are you planning to go?"
"Over to the movie set," she retorted. "I have to be around people. I've got to talk to someone before I die of boredom. I can't take this place any more—it's driving me crazy!"
"There isn't anybody there."
"Where?" LaRaine frowned. "At the movie set?"
"The last of the crew and equipment pulled out yesterday." His level gaze watched her reaction.
She breathed in sharply at the news and looked away, her eyes smarting with tears. She would have been gone to if … There was no use finishing that thought. She had been fired. She was marooned in this godforsaken wasteland. Despair wiped out her anger.
"I'm riding out to check the cattle on the west range," Travis said. "Would you like to come with me?"
Shimmering with tears of self-pity, her widened eyes looked at him, surprised by his invitation. "Yes," she agreed hesitantly, expecting him to take back his offer.
"You'd better get some boots on." His gaze flicked to her canvas shoes and indifferently back to her face. "And put a hat on or you'll end up with sunstroke."
"I will," she promised, and hurried toward the house.
She was escaping her prison. Excitement seared through her veins at the prospect of accompanying Travis, forgetting that in a sense, he was her warden. In her bedroom, she took off her shoes and tugged on her boots. Grabbing a flat-crowned hat, she dashed out the front door.
In the yard, Travis was astride the buckskin holding the reins to the saddled bay. LaRaine faltered in her approach, not quite believing that Travis actually intended to let her ride the big bay horse.
"You said once that you wanted to ride him sometime," he reminded her, his mouth crooked in a half-smile. "Here's your chance." He held out the reins to her.
LaRaine didn't need a second invitation. The height of the big horse forced her to jump to reach the stirrup. Once her toe was in, she swung onto the saddle. The stirrups were adjusted to just the right length for her to ride comfortably.
