by Nika Rhone
“Do you think I won’t be able to find out?” This was an old dance between the two of them. Their love for each other was fierce and loyal, but they rarely, if ever, could get along for longer than two minutes in each other’s company.
Just another of the myriad reasons he stayed away. The ranch was her home more than his. Or, at least, it had been. His father informed him when he’d arrived Winona moved out almost a year ago to share an apartment with her best friend, Kaitlin Blackhawk, who taught at the same elementary school Winona did. Why no one had bothered to inform him of the change was something he’d look into another time.
Right now, he needed to find out who’d knocked up his little sister and make him suffer.
“Who is it, Winnie?” He was having a hard time keeping his gaze from dropping to her belly. His little sister was pregnant. “Give me his name, and you’ll have his ring on your finger by the end of the day.” He couldn’t guarantee what shape the groom would be in, though.
Winona shoved her finger into his chest. “And that is exactly why I won’t tell you.”
“What?” He took a half step back and rubbed the spot she’d jabbed. The girl still had bony fingers. “He got you pregnant. He can damn well pay the price, whoever he is.”
“Well, isn’t that just romantic as hell?” Winona’s lips curled into a disgusted sneer. “To pay the price. What a lovely reason to get married. Just what every girl dreams of.”
“You gave up your right to romance when you started being responsible for that little person growing inside of you.” Daryl tried not to feel like a total shit as hurt flashed across her face. “You have to think about what’s best for the baby.”
“Maybe what’s best isn’t having parents who got married because they had to instead of because they wanted to.”
Daryl winced as the barb about their father’s marriage to his mother hit its mark. “Why don’t you want to marry him, Winnie? You obviously liked him well enough to sleep with him.” An ugly thought entered his head, and try as he might, he couldn’t shake it loose. “Did some bastard force you? Is that why?” It made sense. Why else would she be fighting a marriage so hard?
Someone was definitely going to die.
Confusion, then shock, then something close to outrage showed in his sister’s expression. “No! No, nobody forced anyone. It wasn’t like that. It…” She blew out a frustrated breath. “I just knew you were going to react like this.”
How the hell else was he supposed to react?
“Then why, Winnie? Why don’t you want to marry him?”
“I do want to marry him,” came the sulky reply. “He just hasn’t asked me yet.”
“Give me his name, and he’ll ask.” Winona shot him a glare that would have seared his eyebrows off if he wasn’t immune.
“He’ll ask,” she said, stubborn as ever. “You’ll see. Just as soon as he gets back, he’ll—” Her mouth snapped shut.
“When did you say he’s coming back?”
“Butt out, Mato.” Winona crossed her arms over her chest. A mistake, since that only served to emphasize the small protrusion of her belly under the brightly colored blouse.
“Winnie…”
“No.” She slashed a hand through the air. “I am done talking about this with you. This is my business, not yours. Stay out of it.” She stalked out of the living room.
Not his business? The hell it wasn’t. He might not have been around as much as he should have the past five or six years, or maybe even a few more years before that when he’d been following the rodeo circuit all over creation. But Winona was still his baby sister, and if there was one thing no one messed with, it was his family.
****
Amelia jumped when the bedroom door swung open and nearly crashed into the wall. To her surprise, it wasn’t Daryl who came in, but the young woman she assumed was his sister, based on their similar looks and what little she’d heard of their conversation before she slipped away to give them privacy.
Muttering under her breath, she slammed the door. The only words Amelia could make out were “stupid men.” It wasn’t until the woman—Winnie, had Daryl called her?—turned that she caught sight of Amelia. Her body tensed and her eyes narrowed.
“Who are you?” Recognition lit her expression. “Oh, right, you’re the one my parents told me about. The one my brother brought with him on his first visit home in almost two years.”
Frozen in the act of hanging one of her borrowed tops in the small closet, Amelia offered a tentative smile. “Yes, hello. I’m Amelia.”
“I didn’t know they’d put you in my bedroom.” Winnie propped her fists on her hips. “Not that there was anyplace else to put you, I suppose. But it would have been nice if someone had bothered to mention it.”
A quick look around the room showed no personal possessions, and the closet and dresser were empty. It might well be the other woman’s room, but she clearly wasn’t living in it at the moment. Still, Amelia didn’t want to cause problems.
“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling a little confused and a whole lot uncomfortable. “This was the room I was put in. Should I ask to be moved?”
That got a harsh laugh. “Ask to be moved? You do know this isn’t a dude ranch or resort or something, right? The Circle R is a working ranch. People work here. No one is going to have time to wait on you and make sure you’re not bored or stub a toe or whatever.”
“I…” Taken aback by the verbal attack, Amelia stammered out, “I never expected anyone to.”
“Oh, really?” Winnie tipped her head to the open suitcase at Amelia’s feet. “Louis Vuitton, right? And I can just bet that top you’re holding is Donna Karan or Valentino or some other expensive designer, isn’t it?” She snorted. “It probably cost more than one of my car payments.”
“I’m not—”
“He won’t marry you, you know.”
“I…what?” Amelia’s brain hurt from all of the left-turns the conversation kept taking.
“My brother. It doesn’t matter how pretty you are. He won’t marry you.” Winnie sniffed. “Rich girls with nothing but time and money to waste might be a step up from the buckle bunnies that used to chase him all the time, but he’ll still just keep you around until he’s tired of screwing you and then move on. It’s kind of what he does.”
There were so many things wrong with Winnie’s bizarre assumptions Amelia wasn’t sure where to start. “I don’t know what a…a buckle bunny is, but I can assure you that I’m not sleeping with your brother, and I certainly don’t want to marry him.”
“Why not?” Winnie’s chin tilted in a belligerent angle. “What? He’s not good enough for you?”
“No! I mean, no, that’s not the reason.” For the first time in a long time, Amelia’s usually glib tongue failed her. “I’m sure Daryl is a very nice man. I mean, I know he is.” What other kind would put his life on hold for someone else? “But we have a…a professional relationship. There’s nothing personal between us. At all. Really,” she said when Winnie continued to look skeptical.
“Professional, huh?” Winnie’s gaze darted to the designer luggage again. “So you’re one of those rich people he works for down in Colorado?”
“Technically, he works for my friend’s family, but yes.”
“But you’re rich, too, right?”
“My parents are. Me? Not so much.” And that was the sad truth. She had no money of her own. No credit rating. No anything. Even her car was in her father’s name. Aside from the cash she had in her wallet, she was dead broke.
“Oh.” The belligerence slid away. “Then why would he bring you here instead of some posh resort someplace?” Winnie asked in a much more reasonable tone, dropping onto the bed.
Amelia sighed. “Because I’m hiding out,” she said, opting for the truth. She had a feeling Daryl’s sister wouldn’t settle for anything less.
“Really?” Winnie’s dark eyes widened. “From the IRS?”
Yet again, the other
woman’s train of thought surprised her. “Um, no. My family.”
“Oh.”
Amelia was starting to feel a little silly standing in front of the closet clutching the blouse like a frightened ninny. “So, is it okay for me to stay here?”
Winnie waved a hand at the closet. “Go ahead, finish unpacking. I was just feeling extra bitchy when I came in here is all, and I took it out on you.” She scowled. “My brother makes me so mad sometimes I could just scream. You know how they can be.”
“I don’t have any brothers, so no.” She often wondered how different her life might have been if she did. If her parents had someone else to mold and shape in their image. It was a horrible, selfish thought, but sometimes she couldn’t help thinking it.
“My friend Lillian has three of them, though.” Amelia forced her thoughts from the dangerously deep well of self-pity. “She’s always complaining about how high-handed and annoying they can be. Especially her twin. He drives her absolutely bonkers. So I guess I can sort of understand what you mean.”
“Nothing is worse than a big brother who thinks he knows everything.” Winnie darted a horrified glance at Amelia. “You, ah, didn’t happen to hear…”
Amelia must have given the answer away somehow, because Winnie collapsed onto her back with a groan. “I only heard the very beginning,” Amelia rushed to assure her. “Just the part that you’re…”
“Knocked up.”
“Um, yes. That.”
Winnie smoothed both hands over her belly and sat back up. “I’m not sorry about it. I love this baby. Just like I love K—his father. And he loves me. We’re going to get married and be a family. It’s just…complicated.”
“Trust me.” Amelia’s lips tilted wryly. “I know all about complicated.”
Winnie was instantly diverted. “Guy troubles, huh?”
Amelia hummed her agreement, not wanting to get into the mess she’d made of her life, but Winnie wasn’t that easy to dissuade.
“Got dumped?”
“No, actually, I was the one who ended things.” She closed the empty suitcase and stood it against the wall.
“Ooh, I bet he didn’t like that.” Winnie snapped her fingers. “That’s why you’re here. You kicked him to the curb and now you’re waiting to see if he wants you bad enough to come after you. That’s so romantic!”
“No, it’s not!”
Winnie looked confused by Amelia’s vehemence. “You don’t want him to?”
“God, no.” The thought of Charles coming after her turned her stomach into a seething pool of acid. “My situation isn’t anything like yours. I don’t love Charles, and he doesn’t love me. And the reasons we were getting married…well, suffice it to say, they were the wrong ones all around. No marriage should be built on business ties and bloodlines.”
“Oh, my God! You were in one of those…what do you call them? Arranged marriages.”
“No, it was nothing like that.” But…in a way, wasn’t it exactly like that? Amelia dropped onto the bed beside Winnie. “People should only marry for love.”
“That’s what I told Daryl. I want Kyle to ask me to marry him before he finds out about the baby. I want him to want to marry me because of me.”
Winnie probably didn’t even realize she used the name she’d been trying so hard to keep a secret. But that wasn’t the part that made Amelia do a mental double take. “He doesn’t know about the baby?”
A mulish expression eerily similar to the one Daryl had given her when she asked him to give her five minutes alone in the lingerie department crept across Winnie’s features. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? How can he not know, when you’re…” She waved a hand at the obvious baby bump.
“He’s been away.” Winnie fluffed her blouse so it hid the evidence better. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
More like a disaster in the making. But then, who was she to judge?
“Well, I hope everything works out the way you want it to.”
“It will.” Winnie’s voice was a lot more certain than her expression.
Awkward silence descended. Taught from the cradle to fill such things, Amelia asked the only question she could think to ask. “So, what’s a buckle bunny?”
****
“What a shame your pretty fiancée is still feeling too unwell to attend her own luncheon. I do hope it’s nothing serious.”
Holding onto the smile he’d been wearing for the past two wretched hours of similarly insincere platitudes and questioning innuendo, Charles Davenport replied with practiced ease. “Just a touch of a stomach bug, Mrs. Johnson. Inconvenient, but not serious. The doctor recommended she take a few days to rest so she’s back to one hundred percent by next Saturday.”
“I see.” She raised the nose her husband’s millions had recently paid to have reshaped into a dainty button, which, in Charles’s opinion was akin to paying to build a beautiful gazebo in the middle of a swamp. “I had hoped to meet the girl before the ceremony.”
Her and about a hundred other of his father’s biggest political contributors. Soon to become his contributors, if all went according to plan. Which thanks to his little bitch of a fiancée, they weren’t. The past two days had been thrown into utter chaos because of her ill-timed temper tantrum. A fact for which she was going to pay very dearly when she returned.
“I’ll be certain that Amelia and I make time to speak with you and Ralph as soon as she’s feeling up to resuming her bridal duties.”
Leaving the barely pacified old cow behind, Charles broke away from the crowd of people littering the back patio of his parents’ estate and slipped through the French doors that led to the library. His first stop was the wet bar, where he poured himself a tall shot of the expensive Tennessee whiskey his father favored. Without hesitating he tossed it back and poured another.
“You do know you’re supposed to sip that stuff, right?”
Charles tensed at the unexpected voice. “Desperate times and all that.” Saluting his father’s fixer with the glass, he threw it back like the first and let the burn clear away the last of the bad aftertaste of dealing with his guests. “So. Do you have good news for me?”
“I’m afraid not.”
The glass hit the polished mahogany bar top with a sharp crack. “That’s not what I wanted to hear.”
Vaughn shrugged. “I can’t give you what I don’t have.”
“Then what the hell does my father pay you for?”
“He pays me to make messes go away.”
“Then I’d say you’re not earning your paycheck at the moment, are you?”
“It’s not my fault your little pigeon bolted before you could seal the deal.”
Charles seethed. There was a lot of leeway given to Vaughn, considering the delicate nature of his employment for the Davenport family, but there were still boundaries that needed to be respected. It would seem he needed to be reminded of that little fact.
“But it is your fault that her ass isn’t back here hosting these damn parties like she’s supposed to be.”
“If she’d gone to her parents’ estate like she was supposed to, she would be.”
And that was what pissed Charles off the most. One of Amelia’s greatest attributes was being predictable. She did what she was told, the way she was told, every time. Except, it seemed, when he actually needed her to most. What had possessed her to think she could call off their wedding? Hell, if anyone was going to call it off, it would have been him after the fiasco of their engagement party. If the polls hadn’t come back that he would have taken an even bigger hit in voter popularity, he would have happily washed his hands of her.
But where did she get off thinking she could leave him? Waltz into his study and calmly announce she’d changed her mind, so sorry, here’s your ring, there’s the door? Did she honestly think he would just accept her decision? It seemed he’d been remiss in clarifying her position in their little arrangement.
An oversight he couldn�
�t remedy until she was returned.
“What about that aunt of hers, the one in Texas?” The one with all the money she’d taken great glee in telling him she had no intention of giving his campaign one thin dime of. Tight-fisted old bitch. “Did you check and see if she went there?”
“I have someone watching the estate, but so far it doesn’t look like she did.”
“Then she’s got to be hiding out with one of her nosy little friends.” God, he hated those two. He didn’t know which one was worse, the loud-mouthed little troublemaker or the one who always looked at him like she smelled something rank. “She doesn’t have anyplace else to go.”
“I already checked on that.” Without invitation, Vaughn walked to the wet bar and poured himself a small tot of whiskey. Charles bristled at the impudence. “There’s no way to be one hundred percent certain without getting inside, of course, but it doesn’t appear as though she’s at either the Fordham or Beaumont properties. Strange, though.” He took a sip and made a sound of appreciation.
It irked Charles to have to ask. “What’s strange?”
“Those friends of hers that you don’t like? They’re still here. Not here,” he said when Charles’s gaze flicked to the French doors. “Not that I’ve seen anyway. But they haven’t checked out of their hotel yet.”
That news gave Charles pause. Since it had to be those two troublemakers who were behind Amelia’s sudden decampment, it didn’t make sense they hadn’t returned to Colorado with her. Unless…
“Are we certain she was actually on that plane?”
Vaughn nodded. “Airport security footage confirmed it.”
“Then where the hell is she?”
“I’m working on a few possibilities.”
“Work faster, dammit. I need her back here. Now.”
Downing the last of his whiskey, Vaughn snapped off a two-fingered salute that was more mocking than anything and left the library the way he’d come in.
Furious, knowing Vaughn would never dream of disrespecting his father that way, Charles poured himself another drink but put it down untouched. He needed all of his faculties intact to deal with the rapacious crowd outside that wanted its pound of flesh in exchange for their support. It was the part of the political business he liked the least and why he’d specifically chosen Amelia to be the woman who graced his arm. She might be a washed-out little mouse, but she knew how to charm the crowds.
