by Janet Dailey
With agonizing slowness, the minute hand ticked its way closer to ten o’clock. Five minutes before the hour, Jessy rose from the big desk, a high tension running through her nerves. Leaving the den, she made her way to the living room. As expected, she found Sally sitting in Chase’s favorite chair, watching television.
“I’m going for a walk and to get some air, Sally,” Jessy said, trotting out her carefully rehearsed excuse. “Will you listen for the twins just in case they wake up while I’m gone?”
“Of course.” Sally managed a wan smile of assurance that didn’t even come close to reaching her pain-filled eyes.
“Thanks. I won’t be long.” Jessy’s glance touched briefly on the wadded-up tissue in Sally’s hand, a sure indication she had been crying again.
She was almost sorry that Tara hadn’t followed through with her plan and spoken to Sally about staying with her. The woman was breaking her heart over Chase.
Outside The Homestead, Jessy paused at the top of the steps and skimmed her glance over the ranch yard. Ten minutes earlier she had heard a vehicle and assumed it was Laredo. But there was no sign of his pickup.
She descended the steps and struck out for the old timbered barn, adopting what she hoped would be perceived as a strolling pace by anyone who might see her. Tall yard lights cast wide pools of light at intervals, their brightness dimming the twinkle of stars in the night sky.
When she reached the barn, Jessy had to force herself not to glance guiltily over her shoulder. She didn’t think anyone was about, but she couldn’t be certain of that.
Striving to make every action appear normal, she stepped into the barn and immediately flipped the wall switch, turning on the lights that ran the length of the barn’s wide alley. Her heightened senses immediately registered the rustling of straw and the slightly musty odors of hay and horse. Pausing, she scanned the interior, paying special attention to the many shadowy areas made even darker by the overhead lights. The Welsh pony thrust its nose over the top of its stall and blew softly. It was the only movement she detected.
Nerves taut and at a loss as to how to kill time until Laredo arrived, Jessy walked over to the pony’s stall. “How are you tonight, Sundance?” The pony lipped at the hand she extended to it. “Sorry, no carrots. I’ll make sure Laura brings you some to morrow.”
“Down here.” The low-voiced call came from her left.
Her pulse instantly rocketed, an indication of the jumpy state of her nerves. She gave the pony a parting scratch and wandered down to the next stall. It was empty, the door open, a bed of fresh straw on the floor. When she glanced inside, she saw Laredo perched on the feed bunk, chewing on a stalk of straw.
“Right on time.” He pushed off the bunk, coming soundlessly erect. His lips parted in a grin that showed the whiteness of his teeth and the straw clenched between them. He removed it, a devilish twinkle in his blue eyes. “I like a woman who doesn’t keep a man waiting.” He observed the flicker of annoyance in her expression that told him she was not amused by his trite remark. “Smile, Jessy,” he admonished lightly. “You don’t do it enough.”
“Find me something to smile about.” The line of her mouth thinned in grimness.
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “I may have an answer for your problem right here.”
“What is it?” she asked with a sudden lift of interest.
“Duke wrote it.” He passed it to her and watched the eager way she shifted into the stall opening to allow the light to fall on it. “Basically it indicates he intended to explore the possibility of leasing the feedlot. The idea is that you show it to Cat, tell her you came across it in one of the desk drawers. With any luck it will go a long way in convincing her that her father was thinking along the same lines.”
Propping her back against the stall’s door frame, Jessy studied the note. It looked like idle jottings, listing the pros and cons of leasing the feedlot. “It doesn’t really say he planned to lease it.”
“No. It might have looked a tad too convenient that you found it if it did. We don’t want Cat to become even more suspicious. We just want her to concede that he could have been considering it. It should make it harder for her to be against it.”
“I suppose I should wait a day or two before I find this.”
“I think so,” Laredo agreed.
She folded the paper and slipped it inside her jeans pocket. “That’s one problem solved,” she murmured.
Laredo cocked his head, sensing a heaviness in her. “Are there more?”
“You.”
“I’ve been called many things, but never a problem.” He felt a need to lighten her mood, lift some of the trouble from her.
“Tara doesn’t remember a Texas rancher named Smith. She finds it hard to believe that Ty never contacted you on any of the trips they took to Fort Worth.” Jessy pulled in a deep breath and let it out in a rush. “And if that isn’t bad enough, she didn’t buy the story I gave O’Rourke about fixing up the Boar’s Nest. If it was a job you needed, Tara couldn’t understand why you didn’t apply for one at Dy-Corps. Apparently they have several openings. She made it sound like I rushed out and leased the feedlot so I could keep you at the ranch.”
“Are you saying that Tara thinks you are interested in me—woman to man?”
Jessy gave him a startled look that made him just a little bit angry. Then she appeared to consider his question. “Probably,” she concluded. “Either that or she thinks you’ve got something on me. What, I don’t know, but it planted a seed in Cat’s mind. To make matters worse, O’Rourke told Cat about me meeting you at the old cemetery.”
Laredo stiffened. “He was there?”
“I don’t think so.” Jessy shook her head. “I did see him shortly afterward. It’s possible he might have backtracked me there.”
“How did you explain that?”
“I didn’t. Basically I denied it and insisted he was mistaken. I didn’t really have any choice.” She leveled a look at him. “I can explain away a lot of things, but you aren’t one of them.”
“Which means I will likely be the weapon Tara will try to use against you,” he murmured thoughtfully. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that.”
“On the phone, you mentioned that you had talked to her in Fort Worth,” Jessy remembered. “What was that about?”
“I bought her a drink in the hotel bar where Chase had stayed. By then I was fairly certain who Chase was, and I wanted to pick up information to fill in some of the blanks for him. It didn’t take me long to figure out I wouldn’t get anything out of Logan, not without answering a lot of questions from him first. But I had no problem getting Tara to talk. Needless to say, your name came up.”
“I don’t need to ask what she had to say. I know it wouldn’t have been anything complimentary.” Jessy tilted her head back, letting it rest against the frame.
“It wasn’t so much what she said as the way she said it when she told me Chase’s death had left you in charge of the ranch. She seemed to think your only qualification for the position was that you were born and raised on the ranch. The envy in her voice made it easy to read between the lines and guess that she felt she was better suited for the position.”
“God help us all if she ever got her hands on the Triple C.” Her face was half in light and half in shadow, a study in strength and composure softened by the honey-dark hair lying loose about her shoulders; but it was the long, full line of her lips that Laredo found himself watching. “In a way, I’m surprised that Tara didn’t play the wronged woman and accuse me of stealing Ty from her.”
“Did you?”
“No. Ty had stopped seeing me well before they parted.”
“Then the two of you had an affair while he was still married to Tara,” Laredo realized and marveled again at her frankness, knowing it was something most women wouldn’t admit.
“You mean you hadn’t heard.” The laugh lines around her almond brown eyes crinkl
ed in a smile. “It’s common knowledge on the ranch. Nothing ever stays secret for long on the Triple C. The range telegraph sees to that.”
“Funny, I never would have thought you were the type to get involved with a married man. It’s notoriously a dead-end relationship.”
“My eyes were wide open when I went into it. I knew Ty would never leave Tara for me. A Calder doesn’t do that, and Ty was a Calder. Life is nothing but a series of good times and bad times. I seized my chance for one of those good ones.”
“You loved him for a long time, didn’t you,” Laredo guessed.
“Since I was a kid.” Her mouth lifted in a smile of remembrance. “Ty even gave me my first kiss. He did it as a joke, right in front of Buzz Taylor and Bill Summers. It was so embarrassing I was furious with him.”
“But you never forgot how it felt.”
She touched her fingertips to her lips in a remembering fashion and shook her head. “No, I never did.”
He sensed a loosening in her. This mental trip back to happier times had relaxed her, lessened some of the strain and tension of the current situation.
“If it wasn’t over you, why did he split with Tara?” Laredo couldn’t help being curious.
“She made the mistake of siding with her father against Ty. Calders put a high value on loyalty, and she didn’t show any. Even then Ty might have overlooked it if the future of the Triple C hadn’t been an issue.”
“So he walked from her straight to you.”
“Something like that.”
“At least he finally wised up.”
She released a soft breath of laughter. “Thank you. That sounded distinctly like a compliment.”
“It was.”
“Thanks. You’re good for my ego. But we both know Tara is an incredibly beautiful woman.”
“That’s what most men probably see when they look at her, but I’m not most men.”
“No, you’re cut from a different cloth,” Jessy agreed. “I just haven’t figure out what kind.”
“It’s nice to know you’ve wondered about me. After the way you reacted when I suggested Tara thought we were having an affair, I had just about decided you didn’t think I was human, let alone a man.”
Something had changed. One minute Jessy was relaxed and at ease for the first time in days. Then suddenly she was full of a tingling awareness. She felt uncertain of her footing, a sensation that made her uneasy and hesitant.
“It didn’t have anything to do with you. I was surprised that anyone would think I might be interested in someone else,” she explained.
“Because of Ty.” Laredo stood much closer than she remembered.
“That’s right. He’s the only man I ever loved.”
Laredo nodded as if he had anticipated that’s what her answer would be. “Gave you your first kiss, and probably was your first lover, too. That makes for some tough competition.”
Worried that she might be misinterpreting this shift in the conversation, Jessy blurted, “Are you flirting with me?”
Amusement gleamed in his blue eyes. “I am. Any objections?”
Her throat felt strangely tight. She had to swallow to get the words out. “I think so.”
“That’s encouraging.” He grinned crookedly, a kind of sexiness in his smile. “You aren’t sure. You just think so.”
She gave him a long, level look. “You know what I really think?”
“What?” The corners of his mouth deepened in a near smile.
“I think you’ve spent too many nights alone at the Boar’s Nest. What you really need is a trip into town, a few beers, and an easy woman.”
He threw back his head and laughed. It was a rich and hearty sound, genuine and impossible to resist. Jessy found herself chuckling softly along with him. At last his laughter subsided, ending with a mild shaking of the head.
“You might as well admit I’m right,” she said, feeling comfortable and sure of her footing again. “I spent too many years working side by side with men not to know when one gets randy from spending too many nights out on roundup.”
“Ah, Jessy, that’s what I like about you. You just cut through all the trimmings and get right to the meat of things. It’s a very effective weapon. I’m surprised more women haven’t discovered it.”
“Weapon?” His choice of words puzzled her.
“Sure, it’s just like that calm composure of yours that somehow pushes a man back. Your blunt talk cuts a man’s legs right out from under him. Here I am, working things around to where I can steal a kiss, and you”—he made a slicing motion with his hand—“completely destroy the romantic mood I was trying to create by declaring I must be horny.”
“Aren’t you?” Jessy challenged.
“Sorry, that won’t work this time,” he informed her. “I’m gettin’ my kiss.”
For a split second she was too dumbfounded to react. In the next breath it seemed, his face was inches from hers, the incredible blue of his eyes briefly mesmerizing her. He hooked a finger under her chin and tilted it up. Then his mouth came down and she felt the warm, lightly exploring pressure of it on her lips, more curious than demanding.
If he had been a bit more forceful, she would have been quicker to object. As it was, he was lifting his head and stepping back before she had a chance to end it. Eyes sparkling, he thrust out his chin and turned it slightly to one side.
“Go ahead,” he said.
She deliberately pretended not to understand. “Go ahead and what?”
“I thought you might want to hit me.”
“If I did, my target would be much lower. And I wouldn’t be using my hand,” Jessy replied, angry without being sure why. “Which proves you don’t know me as well as you think.”
“I guess you didn’t notice that I was careful to keep my legs together when I kissed you. I wasn’t about to give your knee easy access to its target. I guess that means you were a bit distracted by my kiss.” His smile widened a little. “Now do you want to hit me?”
“Believe me, it’s a tempting thought—for no other reason than just to find out how you would go about explaining a black eye to Chase.”
“You’re right. That could prove awkward, couldn’t it?”
“You are really a cocky bastard, aren’t you?”
“Look on the bright side, Jessy. At least I took your mind off your problems for a while.
“You certainly did that,” she agreed in an ultra-dry voice. “Pardon me if I don’t thank you for it.” She straightened away from the stall and made no effort to avoid bumping against his shoulder as she pushed her way past him into the alleyway.
“You’re thinking this is a complication you don’t need right now,” Laredo said to her back, making no attempt to follow her.
“You are wrong. It doesn’t complicate anything for me,” Jessy retorted.
“You are getting awfully good at this lying business, Jessy,” he remarked. “Maybe you don’t see this as a problem, but it complicates things for me. When I came here, I didn’t figure on being attracted to the widow Calder.”
“You’ll get over it,” she replied over her shoulder and struggled to dismiss an unexpected sense of depression.
“Maybe,” Laredo conceded, his voice following her as Jessy made her way to the door. “I only know I always figured I would spend my declining years alone, the same way I have always lived. And now that prospect doesn’t appeal to me at all.”
She stopped at the door and turned back to look at him. He stood in the stall opening, arms raised, a hand braced on each side of the entrance. “Go have a few beers. Maybe things will look a little brighter.”
“That idea is sounding better and better all the time. I think I may just do that. Don’t forget about that note in your pocket.”
The reminder jolted her thoughts back to her current troubles with Cat. She touched her pocket as if to verify the folded slip of paper was still there. “I won’t.” She turned and walked out the door, hitting the light switch o
n her way out.
Laredo stood in the barn’s pitch-darkness and cursed himself for being fifty kinds of fool. When he looked back, all he saw behind him was one mistake after another. He had made the first one when he rescued Chase, and the second one when he hadn’t made tracks for Mexico and left Chase in Hattie’s care. The third one came when he volunteered to bring Chase to Montana. And the fourth one had been a jim-dandy one when he had given in to the attraction he felt toward Jessy. He was a fool to even think in that direction. He was a man without a future, with nothing to offer her or any woman, not even his name.
Trouble, that’s all he knew. Very likely it was all he would ever know.
In the past, darkness had always been a friend. Tonight it pressed in on him, intensifying that empty, lonely feeling that gripped him. Made restless by it, he pushed away from the stall’s opening.
He left the barn the way he had entered it, through the stall’s rear door that opened into the corral. After the blackness of the closed-up barn, the night held the illusion of brightness for him. Pausing, he closed the stall door without allowing so much as a click of the latch to betray his presence.
Keeping to the shadows, he moved along the barn wall to the corral fence, ducked between the rails, and followed it away from the barn, letting it lead him to the pickup he had left parked behind the ranch commissary. As he slid behind the wheel, he decided to take Jessy’s advice, head into Blue Moon and have himself a beer.
The blare of the television greeted Jessy when she walked into The Homestead. After pausing a moment, she headed for the living room to let Sally know she was back. She found Sally still ensconced in Chase’s old chair, sound asleep, her snow-white head lolling to one side, her mouth open and her eyes closed.
A faint smile of empathy curved Jessy’s mouth at the picture of exhaustion the woman made. Knowing the difficulty Sally had had sleeping lately, Jessy hated to wake her. At the same time, she didn’t want Sally to wake up later and start worrying whether she had returned or not.
“I’m back, Sally,” she called, but the woman didn’t stir. Jessy walked over and shut off the television so she wouldn’t have to compete with it. “Sally,” she repeated her name. When the woman still didn’t respond, Jessy gave her shoulder a gentle shake. But with the first push of her hand, Sally slumped sideways. Alarmed now, Jessy felt for a pulse and found none.
