Luke stood leaning against the handle of the sledgehammer, watching Tex take that old truck over the bumpy pasture with the muffler dangling, knowing Tex must be angry as hell to abuse a piece of old machinery so.
Luke shook his head. Without even trying, thus far he’d managed to convince Charlotte he was here to help his father take her ranch away, make Nick believe he was going to take Henry’s ranch from him and convince an old man who wouldn’t steal a penny from the street that he sounded like a thief. Three times up, three times out. Nice record. Just dandy. Charlotte was right. He should have stayed a memory.
Chapter Three
Walking out to the barn gave Charlotte the tingling excitement of a ride on a roller coaster. She couldn’t tamp the happiness down, no matter how hard she tried. Luke was back, and so the air felt crisper, cleaner, in the morning, and the buckets of feed she carried to Lady Luck were lighter. Shovels of trampled straw flew out of Lady’s stall, clean straw floated in.
If she turned her head just that little bit to look over her shoulder, she might catch a glimpse of him riding in the pasture, as she had that day he came to help Tex.
Foolish to hope she’d see him again. Foolish to think she might have a whole conversation with him without having it disintegrate into an argument. Foolish to let the old hopes, the old dreams, rise up and fill her every waking moment. But no matter how severely she chastised herself, she was powerless to stop thinking about him, about his smooth, darkly cynical face, about the way he looked at her and the way he made her feel when she was with him.
He is the enemy.
Why couldn’t she remember that?
Because you’re a born optimist, that’s why.
Saturday night arrived, and with it a thousand sparkles of anticipation that no amount of cautioning from a saner inner voice could dampen. Feeling light-headed with eagerness, she stepped into a steaming hot shower and found herself humming “Crazy.”
No doubt about it, she was.
She finished with a sluice of cooler water, hoping it would shock her into sensibility. In that timeless ritual of women, she wrapped herself in a towel and stood in front of her closet, trying to convince herself that intuition would help her pick the perfect outfit.
Charlotte ended up reaching for a crisp white shirt with a Western yoke, black denim jeans and Sean’s belt with the turquoise buckle, standard dress fare for the Saturday-night dance at the Masonic Hall in Two Trees.
While she combed out her hair, she stood looking in the mirror at her too-plain nose, her too-lush mouth, her tooround hips. If she walked into that big old echoing cavern of a room and Luke was there, she’d need all the self-confidence she possessed to watch him dance with another woman. It seemed she’d spent her whole life watching him with other women, either in her imagination or in reality. Sophisticated, beautiful woman.
She needed eyeshadow. And lipstick, in a deep rose.
Better, but not enough. Instinctively seeking reassurance, Charlotte reached for her mother’s jewel box. Nestled in blue velvet lay the Austrian-crystal butterfly hair ornament that her mother had worn only on special occasions. Carefully she lifted it out and up to her hair, plunging the long end of the clasp into the straight, silky strands. Against the black of her hair, the finely faceted gems shimmered like diamonds.
The pain rose anew. If her mom and dad hadn’t taken that plane from California to see her brother, Richard, if they had waited for another flight, when the weather was better…So many ifs.
The butterfly sparkled in the light, and Charlotte knew her mother and dad would always be a part of her. For them, she would remain strong. Even if Luke was back and she desperately wanted peace with Henry Steadman, she wouldn’t give up the ranch. She’d lost her parents, but she wouldn’t toss away their legacy.
Down in the kitchen, Lettie turned around from the stove, her gray hair a bit askew, her eyes bright with interest. In Charlotte’s kitchen, Lettie looked like a child playing at mother. She was not quite five feet tall, with tiny arms and hands, and as graceful as a retired ballerina. Lettie and Tex had volunteered to stay at the ranch tonight so that Tex could check on Lady Luck, her expectant mare, at regular intervals.
“Don’t you look nice as cherry pie!” Lettie said kindly, her eyes bright and wise. “I bet you don’t have time for a cup of tea before you go.”
“I don’t, Lettie. I’m supposed to be there right now.”
“Here, let me help you with that punch bowl. Goodness, did you have to buy all those bottles of ginger ale? You’ve got enough here for a thirsty army. Now, don’t you drive too fast in that old truck, Charlotte, just because you’re a tad late.”
“I won’t, pet.” Charlotte leaned over and brushed her lips across Lettie’s cheek. “Tell Tex thanks for watching the Lady for me.”
“Pooh. That old man would rather be out in the barn than sitting here jawing with me anyday.” Her words were practical, but her face softened, the way it always did when she talked about her husband. Charlotte had to believe love was the strongest force on earth when she looked at Lettle’s face. Lettle patted her shoulder and smiled. “Now, you just go along and have a good time. We’ll take care of everything here. Oh, I wish I were young again and going off to a dance with a lot of handsome young men.”
“Me, too,” Charlotte said and smiled.
Lettie frowned, displeased by Charlotte’s apparent cynicism. “You are young, and don’t you forget it. Now, you mind me, Charlotte. You have a good time that you can come back and tell me all about, or I’ll be very disappointed in you.”
“I’ll try my best, sweetheart.”
Charlotte drove the short distance into town, and when she alit from the truck, she was feeling apprehensive about more than just seeing Luke. Did the community believe she was a cattle thief? If they did, her reception in the hall would be very cool.
When she reached the hall and climbed to the top of the stairs, laden like a pack-horse with the punch bowl and that box of ginger ale bottles, Marris Hollis gave her the first greeting.
“Hey, Charlotte needs a hand!” he yelled, and started clapping. Several other wags and would-be wits joined him in the applause.
Charlotte was rather glad that Marris’s heavy-handed humor covered the awkwardness of her entrance into the hall. Her arms loaded down, she backed up against what she thought was the wall to scan for the tables that had been set up—and bumped into somebody who had the sharpest hipbone in the world.
“How about a real helping hand?” It was Luke who’d bodychecked her, his hip she’d felt on her rear. He leaned over and said softly in her ear, “And an apology? Will you accept both of them from a contrite and obeisant Steadman?” Quiet echoed in that big old cavern of a hall. They had the undivided attention of the town’s entire population, ringed around the edge of the room.
She wanted to laugh, she wanted to cry. “There is no such thing as an obeisant Steadman. You’re pushing it with contrite.”
“How about abjectly regretful?”
“My best advice is to keep it simple. It’s more believable that way.”
“As in, please accept my humble apology?”
“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me.”
“Excellent,” he said, and smiled one of those knockyour-socks-off smiles.
Seeing the lift of those well-shaped lips made Charlotte’s heart melt…and drove every resolve to be sensible about Luke right out of her head. “Well, I’m glad that’s settled,” she said, smiling back at him.
As unconcerned with public attention as only Luke could be, he waited for her to hand over her burden. She stood for a moment, not immediately giving it to him. “I can get this, Luke. You don’t have to…”
Marris Hollis said something else, but nobody laughed, as Luke reached toward her and, with his eyes dark and zeroing in on hers, slipped the box from her grasp.
“Where do you want me to go with it?”
How do you feel about Mars? “To that table
in the back.”
Every head was turned toward them as they made that long trek from one end of the room to the other. Charlotte felt as if she couldn’t breathe. Her feet didn’t seem to be connected to her brain. The silence echoed in her ears.
At the table, Luke turned. “Is this where you want it?”
“Yes.” How did he look so unconcerned? He was wonderfully out of place, better groomed, taller, more prosperous, than everyone there, even though his clothes were appropriate, a simple dark green khaki shirt and blue jeans. It must be his hair, still layered in an expensive cut, or his darkly lean face, so well-defined by good bones.
Relieved of his burden, Luke straightened. He seemed totally unaware of the little buzz of conversation that broke the silence and hummed around the room. Charlotte’s ears rang with it. “Thank you, Luke.” Alone m her room, she’d ached to see him. Now, in the bright glare of light and the community’s speculation, she wanted him away from her…and safe. “You’re very kind. I can handle everything now.”
For one startling moment, his brown eyes darkened, as if he hadn’t expected her polite dismissal.
She didn’t want to hurt him. In the softest voice she could manage with the wild excitement inside flaring to life, she said, “Don’t you know everybody is looking at us.” She felt like one conspirator advising the other. “Go away, Luke.” And then, daringly, like in the old days, she continued, “your father won’t like it.”
Luke bent his head slightly, scrutinizing her face, a man with all the time in the world on his hands. “Go away? Is that what you said?”
“That’s what I said….” But I didn’t mean it.
He bent down closer, examining her face with the air of a doctor looking for the cause of an illness. “Is there something wrong with your eyes?”
She wanted to laugh—or cry. She wasn’t sure which. Luke always did have a hawk eye for details. “No. I—No. There’s nothing wrong with my eyes. I’m just wearing eye shadow. You have seen eye shadow before?”
“Not on you. You don’t need it.”
“You mean because nothing can help me?” It was something he might have said in the old days, teasing her when she tried to dress up and be adult. She fired the shot back at him, her eyes alight with good humor, her mouth turning up in a smile.
“I mean you’re perfect as you are.”
Those words, delivered in that husky tone, made her go still with shock. From behind Luke’s shoulder, the reflection from Henry Steadman’s glasses flashed in Charlotte’s eyes. Luke’s father stood leaning against the wall, talking to Mike Hallorhan, but he was staring at Charlotte. His mouth pulled hard and tight, and he straightened as if he’d seen the enemy.
What a little fool she was. She was in a war. And she was falling for the enemy. All over again.
With that extraordinary intelligence Luke had, he turned around to see what she had been looking at.
“Excuse me,” she said in a carefully polite tone. “I have to go to the kitchen to look for a bottle opener.” She walked around the table and back through the open archway that led to the kitchen, her knees not quite steady.
Inside the kitchen, with a partial wall between her and Luke, Charlotte yanked open a drawer and searched furiously for a bottle opener. “Why can’t he leave me alone? Why can’t he have the skin of a horned toad and three heads and look like the back end of a donkey? Why can’t I stay angry at him for more than three seconds in a row?”
“Charlotte.”
Luke had come up from behind, and now he faced her, leaning his backside against the cupboard. “What?” she said, impatient, not wanting to deal with him or her own emotions, her skin heating instantly at the sound of his voice, her body flaring with excitement that he’d had the interest and the courage to follow her. She refused to look at him and went on rattling utensils in the drawer. “What, what?”
“I’d rather have you talking to me than about me.”
“I’m talking about a stubborn old mule my dad used to have.” Confused and exasperated, she slammed the drawer shut with a rattle and a bang and flashed him a hot look. “Come to think of it, the two of you are a lot alike.”
“We’re not children anymore. We don’t have to hide our friendship.”
“We don’t have a friendship. We have a war, and you’re on the side of the enemy.” Her cheeks flushed, her hair falling forward, Charlotte yanked open the drawer and began turning over eggbeaters and metal serving spoons, searching for the opener.
Luke laid his hand on top of hers, stilling her hand…and her heart. “I’m not the enemy. I’m neutral, like Switzerland.”
He sounded amused. She glared up at him. There he stood, easy, relaxed, leaning against the cupboard as if he didn’t have a care in the world, his lean face gorgeous, his brown eyes fastened on her with cool preciseness. Who did he think he was, accusing her of being a thief one minute and acting as if he were on her side the next? He must be lethal in the courtroom. “Congratulations. I’ll see you at the United Nations.”
“You don’t think I can be neutral?”
He raised one eyebrow and stood there looking utterly…beautiful. But was he trustworthy? Oh, she didn’t know, couldn’t think clearly when he was so close and watching her as if her opinion were important to him. She didn’t like feeling like this. She didn’t like wanting him one minute and distrusting him the next, feeling as if she were talking to her heart’s match one moment and a cold stranger the next, even as every nerve in her body tingled with awareness at his closeness. “I don’t know what I think.”
“I want to be your friend. But I can understand if you’d rather see the back side of my hide. It’s your choice, Charlotte.”
His hand felt warm and wonderful over hers. Her heart felt as if it were going to jump out of her chest. Irrationally, impulsively, the truth came out of her mouth. “I do want to be your friend, Luke.” She kept her eyes away from him, but she could feel him breathing and she could smell his scent, warm, tinged with good male cologne and the aroma of new denim. “But I think it will be much easier for everyone if I’m not.”
“I disagree,” he said in that soft voice of his.
She looked at him then, wondering if he was playing a game, wondering if she could trust him. Why was he being so persistent? Did he think he could find out something for his father? He was a good investigative lawyer, that much she knew. Was he investigating her?
“What do you want from me?”
His eyes gleamed. “Now there’s a question I don’t think I want to answer right here and now.” When the color rose in her face, he said softly, “I’m surprised at you. You never used to lead with your chin.” He reached out and brushed her jaw with a careful fake punch, his knuckles lightly grazing her skin.
Her eyes glowed with a fierce light. “If you aren’t very careful, you’ll get caught in the cross fire.”
“Which one? The one between you and my father? Or the one between you and me?”
She couldn’t breathe. She lifted her head, and her thoughts came out of her mouth before she could stop them—maybe because she didn’t want to stop them. “There isn’t anything between you and me.”
There was a silence in the kitchen while he looked at her. Just…looked at her. And made her heart stop with the expression in those brown eyes. “You may not be a thief—but you have turned into a charming little liar.” His hand changed position, his fingers lightly brushing her cheek. “Strange. I thought I hated lady liars. But I don’t seem to mind at all when it’s you.”
Her lips felt full. He was going to kiss her. She wanted to feel his mouth on hers, wanted to feel his hands on her body.
But he watched her as deliberately as a hawk with all the time in the world, assessing her reaction like the practiced male he was, not the boy she’d known.
Once she’d trusted him with her life. Could she still? She leaned toward him ever so slightly, and Sean’s turquoise buckle pressed into her body, making her remember wh
at she was risking. She shook her head and moved away from Luke.
His hand dropped to his side. In the quiet, his brown eyes seared hers.
She dragged her gaze away from his and looked down at the drawer, pawing through it as if her life depended on her finding that opener. The rattle and clank of metal spoons broke the spell of shimmering quiet and anticipation between them. “I need to find that opener—”
“No consorting with the enemy, eh? Well, don’t let me keep you from finding something you need,” he said, easing away from the cupboard, “whether it’s a bottle opener—or a way to keep your ranch safe.”
This Luke wasn’t instinctively kind. This Luke could place the knife with the same precise skill with which he dealt out attentive compliments. “You’re not being fair,” she told him.
“No, I guess I’m not,” Luke agreed. “Maybe I’ve forgotten how.” Mentally Luke cursed himself. He’d bungled it, of course, going for truth. Nothing for it but to get out while he could still keep his hands from burying themselves in her beautiful black hair and pulling her against her will into his arms and doing his damnedest to show her she didn’t have a thing to fear from him—at least as far as her ranch was concerned.
Charlotte heard the sound of his boots hitting the floor, heard her heart beating in her chest, heard the clink of utensils as she leaned against the drawer in a sudden relaxation of tension. The silence that fell on the other side of the wall when Luke went through the swinging door was deafening.
Luke cursed mentally. Everybody was looking at him. Out of the crowd, Mike Hallorhan appeared. “Let me take you to the bar and buy you a drink, me boy. Seems to me as if you could use one.”
“When did you take up lifesaving, Mike?” Luke said, turning to fall in step beside him.
“Only since you came to town.”
It was the most interminably long evening Charlotte had ever spent in any one place in her life. After an eon, Luke returned from the bar area, Mike Hallorhan beside him. He stayed with Mike and Harry, the three of them lounging on the far side of the room like teenage boys clustering together for courage. Charlotte kept her place behind the refreshment bar, ladling out punch and trying to pretend he wasn’t there, but her eyes strayed to the corner where Luke sat, his head bent toward Mike in attentive listening.
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