Christine jerked her gaze away, angry with herself for such fanciful thinking. “No, Erin,” she said. “I don’t believe that would be a good idea right now.”
Erin was disappointed, but Christine hardened her resolve. Just because the man was different from what she’d feared didn’t mean he was no longer a danger to them.
Without a word he closed the knife, put it away and tossed the snake’s remains a distance into the brush.
“I didn’t see it until I was almost on it,” Erin explained. “Then…I don’t know what happened. There was a loud noise and…”
“It’s springtime,” the cowboy said. “Snakes are on the move. It’s not a good time to go hikin’ across land you don’t know.”
Christine lifted her chin. “We’re looking for the Parker Ranch. And we weren’t hiking. Our car broke down. I believe you saw it?”
“I saw smoke,” he said. “Then I saw the car.” He studied her curiously. “You say you’re lookin’ for the Parker Ranch? Why?”
“I can’t see where that’s any of your—”
“I’m the acting foreman of the Parker Ranch.”
Christine swallowed the rest of her protest. He was the foreman? The “acting” foreman?
“Name’s Morgan Hughes,” he said, and offered them a courteous tip of his hat. But when that was done he returned to his previous theme. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“My business is with the Parkers,” Christine said. “No one else.”
He stood still, watching her. She could sense the calculation taking place in his mind. The weighing of his decision. Beside him, his horse shifted its weight.
“All right,” he said at last. “I’ll take you there. But I still need to know your name. If you don’t tell me that, we don’t go.”
“I’m Christine Grant and this is my daughter, Erin.”
“Daughter,” he repeated.
Christine was accustomed to the odd looks and surprised comments people gave when they learned her relationship to Erin. You? You don’t look old enough! Or, You’re little more than a child yourself! She’d given birth to her daughter at seventeen. Now at twenty-five, it was hard for people to believe that they were mother and child.
“Hello,” Erin said dutifully.
The foreman smiled, and the expression changed his face, softening the hard edges. He hunkered down beside Erin. “How’d you like to take a ride on ol’ Thunder here?” he asked, motioning to his horse.
Erin’s face glowed. “On your real horse?” she asked.
His smile deepened. “Sure thing,” he drawled. “OI’ Thunder’s about as real as they come.”
“Oh! I’d love it! I’d love it! A real horse!”
He swung the little girl up into the-saddle, and Erin, still clutching Golden Belle, grabbed hold of the horn with her free hand.
“That’s the way!” he said. Then he turned to Christine. “You’re up next.”
Christine took a hasty step back. “Oh, no. I’m going to walk. Erin can ride, but not—” She ended on a yip as he picked her up and hoisted her into the saddle behind her daughter.
“Now we don’t have to argue about it,” he said.
He adjusted the stirrups that accommodated his over-six-foot frame to Christine’s five-foot-four. Then, keeping hold of the reins, he started to walk crosscountry, away from the rutted path they’d been following.
After the first couple of miles Christine’s sense of fair play urged her to thank him, but she just couldn’t make herself do it. She’d been perfectly willing to walk. Depriving him of his mount hadn’t been her idea. She kept quiet for another half mile, then said tightly, “Thank you for doing this. Is the ranch very far?”
“Another few miles,” he said without looking around.
“Are—Would you like to change places?”
That gained his attention. His gaze moved up her bare leg to the line just above midthigh where her shorts started, then it moved back down again to her open-work sandal. “You aren’t exactly dressed for it,” he said.
She could see the way his chaps protected his long legs from the occasional stray branch or thorn. The leather was worn white in spots. Her own legs were still stinging from the scratches they’d received.
“This is so much fun!” Erin said in an excited whisper when their trek resumed.
At first glance the sudden greenness of a clump of trees in the distance was almost startling. Christine could make out a weathered set of corrals, a house and several outbuildings. Her heart gave an anticipatory leap. They were almost there! Soon she would be meeting the Parkers—and she’d get to see how they took to the news of a new partner.
Yet as she drew closer, her expectations received another jolt. She’d thought the headquarters for the Parker Ranch would be larger, built on a grander scale. This looked rather ordinary. A low stone house with a red-tile roof, an old barn, some run-down storage buildings.
A boy of about eleven, clad in snug-fitting jeans, a Western shirt and boots, let out a whoop as he ran out of the house to greet them. He stopped when he saw that strangers were in the saddle.
Was he Morgan Hughes’s son? Christine wondered. He had the same full thatch of light blond hair, the same sky blue eyes. The boy waited in silence as the horse plodded closer.
Morgan Hughes handed him the reins, before turning to lift Erin from the saddle.
“Thank you,” the little girl said politely as she moved off to one side.
“I can do it myself,” Christine claimed, rejecting his offer of help. Her pride still smarted from her earlier unanticipated ascent. As she got down she tried not to reveal that a creaky stiffness had laid claim to her hips and legs. It had been. years since she’d ridden a horse, and then only a few times one summer when a friend from school had sold rides in the small pasture behind her house.
She caught what might have been an amused twitch of Morgan Hughes’s lips. He was laughing at her? Why? Did he find it amusing that she was stiff? Or was he amused at her assertion of independence? She was just about to call him on it when the screen door opened again and a woman stepped outside. Dressed in a calico-print dress covered by a serviceable apron, she’d obviously been a beauty in her youth and was still beautiful in her sixties. It didn’t matter that she carried a few extra pounds, that her hair was now more silver than gold, or that her face was creased with a vivid array of lines. The good bone structure was still there underneath.
“Morgan? What’s all this?” the woman asked.
“I’ve brought you some visitors, Mom. Lady’s name is Christine Grant and that’s Erin. They were on their way to the Parkers’ when their car broke down.”
His mother frowned. “Then why didn’t you take them straight there?”
“They were on foot,” Morgan explained. “I thought they might like to freshen up.”
No wonder this homestead didn’t match her expectations of the Parker Ranch! Morgan Hughes had taken them on a detour. Why? For his stated reason? Or because he thought, given a little added time, he might be able to weasel more information out of her? She sent him a calculating look that he returned without the flicker of an eyelash.
“We don’t want to impose,” Christine said.
The woman smiled. “Nonsense, you’re not imposing. On foot, were you?”
“Yes.” Christine urged Erin up the path and into the house. What good would it do them to refuse this hospitality? They had no means of transportation and no clear idea of the location of the ranch. If it were only Morgan Hughes here, she might have held out, demanded that he honor his agreement. But his mother was trying to be gracious.
A man was sprawled in a recliner, a newspaper lying open on the floor next to him. It was obvious he’d been asleep and that he found waking up disagreeable. He, too, was in his sixties, with graying hair and nut brown weatherbeaten skin. “What’s goin’ on?” he demanded gruffly. “Who’re they?” His right arm and wrist were in a cast, held in place away from h
is body by a metal brace. Only the tips of his fingers were exposed.
“Visitors, Dub, who else?” Morgan Hughes’s mother said. “Honestly, I sometimes wonder if those doctors didn’t make a mistake when they said your arm was hurt worse than your head.”
“There’s nothin’ wrong with my thinkin’, Delores!” the man retorted.
Morgan Hughes, who’d taken time to remove his chaps, nudged the boy out of the doorway. “Take care of Thunder for me, will you, Rusty?” he requested, then to the man, “I found ‘em out near the border to Indian Wells, Dad. Their car had broken down.”
The older man frowned. “What were they doin’ out there?”
Morgan hung his hat on a hook by the door. “You’ll have to ask them that.”
All eyes settled on Christine, but before she could speak Morgan Hughes’s mother intervened. “First things first,” the woman said. “They need to have something cold to drink before you two start firing questions.” She smiled at Christine. “Go ahead, sit down. We don’t wait for invitations around here. You just make yourself at home. I’ll be back in a second. Morgan, you want something?”
Morgan shook his head as Christine took a seat on the couch, Erin pressing tightly against her.
Morgan caught hold of a straight-back chair and, turning it, straddled it like a horse. He folded his arms on top of the backrest and studied the two of them. His father gazed at them just as closely.
“The Parker Ranch,” Christine began, for something to say, “I understand it’s quite large?”
The two men glanced at each other. “You understand right,” Dub Hughes said.
“How…how far away is it? The directions we were given—”
“Who gave ‘em to you?” Morgan Hughes asked.
Just then Delores returned carrying two ice-filled glasses of water, causing Christine to unconsciously lick her dry lips. “Now, what did I tell you two?” the woman chided her son and husband. “No questions until after they’re refreshed.”
“She’s the one who started askin’ questions,” Dub defended.
Christine accepted a glass and took a sip. The cold water sliding down her throat was wonderful. She offered a fleeting smile of gratitude.
“And you, young lady,” Delores said warmly a few moments later, addressing Erin. “Your name’s Erin, right?”
“Yes,” Erin said softly. “Erin Grant.”
“What a pretty name! We have a granddaughter about your age—Jessica. She’s nine.”
“I’m eight,” Erin said.
“And another granddaughter who’s almost four,” Delores continued. “Her name’s Mindy. They’re both over visiting a little friend right now. If you’re here long enough, you’ll have to come back and play. That’s Rusty, their big brother, you met just now.”
Morgan, looking at Christine, returned to the prior subject. “You’re on the Parker Ranch right now. You were on it when I found you.”
He looked different in this setting, Christine noted. In his parents’ presence, he didn’t seem nearly as startlingly, overpoweringly, threateningly male. Yet he retained an element of danger. As if he were the cat and she the mouse, and he was just waiting for her to make a mistake so he could pounce. Did he have some second sense that, from the Parkers’ point of view, she might be bad news?
“Why didn’t you. tell me?” she demanded. “Why did you let me think—”
“Knowing the truth wasn’t going to do you any good.”
“Just like you didn’t bother to tell me that you weren’t shooting at my daughter?”
“Would you rather I let the rattlesnake strike?”
“You could have said something!”
“It’s actions that count out here, ma’am.”
“Which is exactly what I’d like right now—action! I want to be taken to the Parkers.”
“Are they expecting you?” he countered.
“Do they have to be?”
“It’s polite to let people know when company’s coming.”
Delores and Dub Hughes had sat quietly through the rapid-fire give-and-take, their heads swiveling back and forth between visitor and son.
Finally Delores murmured, “Morgan, you’re the one not being very polite right now.”
“Leave the boy alone, Delores,” Dub grumbled. “He’s doin’ his job.”
“Then he can do it outside,” Delores flared. “I won’t have a visitor in my home treated badly!”
The boy, Rusty, had come inside again. He watched from the doorway. “Are you gonna have her arrested for trespassing, Uncle Morgan?” he asked hopefully.
“Rusty!” Delores scolded him.
Christine stood up. “We’ve imposed long enough.” Holding tightly onto Erin’s hand, she added, “If someone would just show us which way to walk—”
“Morgan,” Delores instructed briskly, “you take her in the truck, do you hear? Whatever business she has with the Parkers is her affair. Hers and theirs. Not ours. Not this time.”
Christine smiled thinly. “Well, maybe it is just a little,” she said, and then looked straight into Morgan Hughes’s, blue eyes. “Because as of a few days ago, I became a part owner of the Parker ranch. You work for me now, Mr. Acting Foreman Hughes.”
She’d had no idea how the Hugheses would react—gasp in surprise, cry out in amazement? But she hadn’t counted on a lengthy silence.
“But how.?” Delores murmured at last, puzzled. “Are you David Parker’s widow? He’s the only one I know who had a young wife. But she came for the last partners’ meeting, now that I think about it. You aren’t her.”
“I’m no one’s wife,” Christine said levelly. “My share comes by way of Ira Parker. He left it to me in his will.”
Again another stunned silence.
“But—” Dub began.
Morgan Hughes had been watching her through narrowed eyes. Something in her statement had satisfied him. Not because he’d liked what he’d heard—she could see he didn’t. No, it was because she had confirmed a suspicion, an instinct he had for trouble.
He lightly touched his father’s arm. “We’ll let Rafe handle this, Dad,” he said. “Rafe and Mae. I’m sure they’ll be up to it.”
A smile cracked Dub’s leathery cheeks. “You bet they’ll be up to it, son.”
“Take ‘em in the truck,” Delores said quietly as she regarded Christine with a mixture of compassion and curiosity. “She’s going to need every ounce of strength she has left to deal with Mae.”
“Who’s Mae?” Christine asked, retrieving her pack from the floor.
Delores only tsked and shook her head.
CHAPTER THREE
THE TRIP IN THE PICKUP lasted no more than fifteen minutes. The three of them sat in the cab without speaking—Morgan Hughes driving, Christine by the passenger door and Erin in the middle.
From the surreptitious glances she’d allowed herself, Christine was disquieted by Morgan’s calm air of certainty. But on her side she had the knowledge that she was here by rights. It was all perfectly legal. She had Ira’s letter and, after a quick stop at Eugene Hernandez’s office before leaving Houston, confirmation from him of Ira’s bequest.
“We’re here,” Morgan said, breaking into her introspection.
He’d stopped the truck on a low promontory that overlooked a wide valley. Nestled in the middle of the valley was a large complex of houses and outbuildings. It was everything Christine had expected and more. The entire setup, from the collection of corrals, chutes and pens on one side, to the grassy courtyard ringed by houses on the other, must have covered close to a mile. Even the collection of trees was impressive—at least two dozen large oaks were clustered in and around the courtyard, as well as scattered among the outbuildings.
“Sure you don’t want to change your mind?” Morgan asked, seemingly willing to offer her one last chance.
“Definitely not,” Christine retorted.
Shaking his head, he put the truck back into gear.
&n
bsp; They pulled to a stop in front of a big two-story house at the head of a long U-shaped drive. They barely had time to get out of the truck before an elderly woman stepped onto the porch. She had to be in her late seventies, if not in her eighties, but Christine immediately saw that this woman was a force to be reckoned with. It was there in every line of her proudly held body, her strong features and her hawklike eyes.
“Who are these people, Morgan?” she demanded.
“Hello, Mae,” he drawled, a smile flickering across his lips. “This lady has some business with you. Name’s Christine Grant. And this is her daughter, Erin.”
The old woman’s dark eyes moved over Christine before passing on to Erin. “What kind of business?” she asked.
“Ranch business, family business,” Morgan replied.
“Then you’d better get Rafe. He’s over at the office.” She gave Christine another once-over as Morgan went to do her bidding. “You two come with me,” she said, and disappeared back inside the house.
So this was Mae, Christine thought. She urged Erin forward, but this time Erin balked.
“Mommy,” the little girl whispered, “I don’t want to go.”
“We have to, sweetheart,” Christine said. “Ira wanted us to, remember?”
“But that lady—”
Someone else appeared just inside the doorway. A far younger woman, very slender, with wheat-colored hair, friendly blue eyes and a surprised smile. “Oh!” she said, startled. “I didn’t know anyone was here. Does Mae know that you’re—”
Mae’s voice called from’ the depths of the house, “Show ‘em to my office, Shannon. I thought they were right behind me, then I turned around and they weren’t!”
Shannon grimaced. “She sounds irritated. If you want to stay on her good side, you should hurry. She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
“Neither do I,” Christine replied, before giving Erin another nudge. This time Erin didn’t resist.
West Texas Weddings Page 3
