Her Heart for the Asking

by Lisa Mondello

  As annoyed as she'd been with her mother's insistence about coming to Texas, she realized this wasn't her mother talking. It was Uncle Hank and Uncle Hank didn't demand things of her. Ever. He asked. How could Mandy refuse?

  "I'll work something out with Dad. I'm sure I can stay as long as you need me to. I can even work here and Fed Ex my work to the office. It isn't a problem."

  She would make sure it wasn't a problem. Oh, her father would give her grief for being gone so long. Probably give her that standard lecture about having to pull her own weight, that he wasn't about to let anyone think he gave his daughter special privileges just because she was his daughter. If he got his gander up, she may even lose her place in the agency and have to start at the bottom again. No one would accuse Damien Morgan of nepotism.

  But it was doable and by God, she would do it.

  "You can count on me," she said resolutely.

  Hank's smile shined bright through his ghostly face and told of his pleasure. It also gave the shadow of a dying man. She didn't have that much time to convince Uncle Hank to have surgery. He was truly coming to the end. Why had they waited so long to tell me?

  It broke her heart. And yet she knew she was partly to blame for not knowing sooner. She should have stayed in touch, she silently admonished herself. No matter what happened between her and Beau, she shouldn't have let her relationship with her aunt and uncle suffer for it.

  It was clear their reunion had taken its toll on Hank. She gave him a kiss and left him in the living room to rest. As soon as she left his side and pushed through the screen door to the front porch, anger boiled up inside her like a pot with a lid on it.

  Work side by side with Beau Gentry? Every day and every night until. . .when?

  What was Uncle Hank thinking? Mandy fumed as she paced the wide porch. He knew about her past with Beau. He had to have known this would be hard on her.

  Maybe his health had gone so far that he wasn't thinking clearly about anything at all, let alone the surgery or what he was asking of her.

  She was stunned. But not Beau. She'd seen his face while Uncle Hank made his request. And he wasn't the least bit shocked.

  After Mandy paced a worn path up and down the porch a few times, Beau pushed through the screen door and stepped outside.

  "You knew about this," she accused.

  Beau didn't deny it.

  "What, don’t you even have the slightest stab of guilt? Do you figure you’d used me again to get to my uncle, as you did all those years ago? This is my uncle’s ranch, Beau Gentry. No matter how much your father wants it, you don’t have to do his dirty work to get take it from a dying man."

  "I won't even respond to that," Beau said. His face was fierce. The hard line of his jaw told her she'd hit a nerve.

  Beau stood in front of her, blocking her from pacing anymore. "Didn't you hear a thing in there? Didn't you see him? I mean really look at him?"

  "Of course I did. I just can't figure out what's in this for you?"

  His eyebrows furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

  "You mean to tell me Hank just dreamed this up all by himself? You didn't plant this little idea in his head?"

  "No," he said resolutely. "You ought to know by now Hank is not a man to be swayed easily."

  "He's not himself."

  "He's still the same man."

  She folded her arms across her chest and dropped down into the glider, forcefully rocking backward. "It seems a little convenient to me. You being here on the Double T. Hank being as sick as he is. You're in the perfect position to get what your father couldn't get himself all these years."

  "You couldn't be more wrong," he said. "I'm here for one reason and one reason only. Hank asked me to come. He asked for my help. And whether you want to be a part of this or not doesn't concern me. You do what you have to."

  Beau propped his straw Stetson on his head and launched himself off the porch, leaving Mandy to swing in the breeze.

  She watched him amble across the barnyard to the paddock as she'd done hundreds of times that summer they spent together, wondering if she'd ever known Beau at all.

  Maybe he was telling her the truth. Regardless of Mike Gentry's influence, Beau seemed to genuinely care about Hank. Maybe he'd come back to the Double T for the very reason he professed.

  She sighed, feeling like a complete idiot for actually being disappointed that she didn't fit into the equation at all.

  She was an idiot. Beau may be a lot of things, and at one time, she'd accused him of being all of them, but right now he didn't look like a man who was bent on stealing this ranch out from under a dying man. He seemed as brokenhearted as Hank.

  If Hank could trust Beau, why couldn't she?

  # # #

  Chapter Four

  Sleep. Who needs it? Mandy had done without sleep so many times before that it had become a normal part of her existence to be sleep deprived.

  In the earlier days of college, she'd pulled all-nighters to keep her grades up. More recently, it had been because she needed to meet a strict deadline at the ad agency.

  But it had been a long time since she'd been disturbed so badly by the memory of Beau Gentry that she just could not sleep. As she tossed and turned in her bed it was hard not to let old ghosts creep into the room and remind her of how much they'd loved each other. Correction, how much she'd loved him. He'd made it clear the day he'd said good-bye that he'd never really loved her.

  Mandy would have thought sleep would be easy after working 48 hours straight on the Hill Crest Industries ad campaign. She'd allowed herself only an hour or two to sleep on the small sofa in her office after the people from Hill Crest Industries left before she hightailed to the airport to catch her flight to Texas. She should have slept like the dead.

  Instead of getting much needed sleep, she'd watched the shadows from the moonlight stretch across the room. And what sleep she had managed to catch last night in her old room on the second floor had been fitful, filled with dreams of Beau.

  It wasn't the same as when he'd first left for the rodeo circuit without her. It was as if something inside her had died when he left. Even as angry as she was with him for his betrayal for saying the things he'd said, she'd mourned the loss of him. She'd missed him desperately.

  The dreams she'd had last night were different. She didn't want to go there and examine what it all meant. It was better to keep her distance. She wasn't staying in Texas and neither was Beau. As soon as she succeeded in convincing Hank to have his surgery both of them would be going back to their separate lives again. And that was just fine with her.

  Mandy pulled herself from the twin canopy bed she'd slept in during her youthful stays at the ranch. Corrine had kept her room the same as the last time she'd been here. No wonder she still expected her to look nine years old every time she saw her aunt and uncle. The ruffled canopy bed and gold trimmed white dressers looked as though they belonged to an elementary school girl. Maybe no matter how much she grew up, they'd always think of her as the little Philadelphia girl who learned to ride a pony with ease from a handful of real Texas cowboys.

  She laughed with the memory as she padded to the 2nd floor bathroom in the hallway with a pair of clean underwear and some toiletries in her hand. She knew from all her years at the Double T that you could count on most days being a simple routine that never changed. Breakfast was after most of the hands had already done a few hours of work. Aunt Corrine did most of the cooking in the house and prepared a picnic lunch for the men to take out on the range if that was where they were going to be that day. Many days the hands never bothered to stop for lunch at all. When they were driving the herd, she'd go on ahead and set up a camp so that a meal was hot and filling when the day was done.

  Mandy had heard the stories, but had never been around for a real cattle drive. She’d always left to go back to school.

  Downstairs Mandy heard voices and recognized one as being the housekeeper they'd had for years. Alice had always
reminded Mandy of the housekeeper from the Brady Bunch series, except the Double T's Alice was an Apache woman who lived on the reservation not too far from the Double T.

  Uncle Hank, being half Apache himself, had met Alice while he’d visit his mother who'd lived on the reservation until she died the year after Mandy starting coming to the Double T. She’d met her a few times when Hank had taken Mandy to the reservation for a Powwow or the Sundance Festival.

  Alice had a daughter named Sara, who was a few years older than Mandy. She would bring Sara to the ranch to play with Mandy while Alice worked. Mandy hadn't thought of Sara in years. She wondered now how her childhood friend was doing. She'd have to make a point of asking Alice when she went downstairs.

  She quickly scrubbed her body clean and shrugged into a clean pair of blue jeans she'd just purchased for the trip. They were crisp and didn't give the way her old favorite pair had when they were broken in just right. Once Mandy started working for her father, she'd tried to develop a professional appearance. But she needed something more casual to wear around the ranch and it had been a while since she'd relaxed in casual clothes. It had been a while since she'd actually relaxed, Mandy suddenly realized.

  The smell of sizzling bacon and home fries drew her downstairs. In a matter of minutes, the bell would sound and a herd of cowpokes would come barreling through the kitchen door for breakfast. Beau was sure to be one of them.

  After their brief argument on the porch yesterday, Beau had somehow disappeared for the rest of the afternoon. Although she was sure she'd see him at dinner last night, he hadn't shown. The empty seat in the dining room was telling, not only to her, but also to Hank. Hank didn't utter a word though.

  Beau was sure to be at breakfast this time. And most probably at every other meal for however long she stayed at the Double T. And she’d have to endure sitting at the table and facing Beau.

  But she’d do it. Hank's life was at stake and until he agreed to have the bypass surgery, she was going to placate him by working with Beau.

  Even if it killed her.

  * * *

  Mandy had managed to keep her scrambled eggs down during breakfast. It was surprisingly easy to eat during the silence while four cowboys fed than to try to make small talk.

  Beau had given her nothing more than a glance, ate quickly and was gone before anyone else.

  An hour later she was nestled in the downstairs office with the ranch books scattered around her as she tried to make some sense of them. The thought of stealing herself away for some time without having to have Beau watching over her shoulder sounded heavenly. And since he'd been the one to disappear first, Mandy didn't have to feel guilty for avoiding him.

  But as dedicated as she was to figuring out the books, she wasn't having much luck sorting through records of cattle sales and receipts of feed purchases. Her luck became worse when Beau found her hideaway and knocked on the door.

  "Thought I'd find you in here," he said, standing in the doorway.

  She didn't reply.

  "You hiding out in here or is there something we should be working on that I don't know about?"

  She fought the urge to cringe at his reference to "we".

  "Thought I'd get started on some things, get acquainted with the ranch's activity by looking through the books."

  "That makes for some pretty dry reading," he said, quirking an irresistible grin that she had to turn away from.

  "Nothing is drier than Statistics and I managed to end my year with a B+ in college."

  "Statistics, huh?" he said, coming into the room.

  He left the door ajar and she could hear the sounds of country music from the radio in Aunt Corrine's studio. Out the window behind her, the hands were coaxing a tenacious horse from the trailer into the corral. Mitch most likely had returned with the wild horses from the auction he'd gone to earlier in the week.

  "Statistics, numbers and odds, right?"

  Mandy nodded.

  "What do you suppose the odds would be of us being here together again?"

  She glared at him. "Zero."

  Beau chuckled softly and shook his head. "Then I guess you'd have to revisit your statistics books because here we are."

  "First of all, we're not together. Being in the same place at the same time doesn't make it so. So, even though we're physically together, that is where it ends."

  He shrugged and spun his straw hat in his hand. "Maybe so. But we don't have to be enemies. You don't have to hate me."

  "Hate is a strong word. That would imply that I have strong feelings for you, when I'm merely indifferent."

  "Do you always lie to yourself this way?"

  Mandy stood up too quickly, pitching the open book in front of her to the edge of the desk, causing it to tumble to the floor. She took the extra few seconds needed to retrieve the book to compose herself.

  "You're the one who left, Beau. You're the one who lied to me."

  His eyes softened in a way that made her heart hammer more than her anger had. She'd almost rather Beau be smug and arrogant. It was easier not to care about how he was feeling at that particular moment. But he was neither.

  "You're right. I did lie to you eight years ago."

  She sat back down and turned away from him. He didn't need to see how much his betrayal still affected her.

  "But not in the way you think. I lied when I told you I didn't love you." The deep timbre of his voice was smooth, filled with emotion and had her immediately thinking of those old days.

  Mandy shrunk back in her seat, her body trembling. What was he saying? She didn’t want to hear it now.

  "After all this time I'm supposed to believe that?"

  "Yes." He shrugged and sighed heavily, taking a few steps closer to the desk. Much too close. "I guess not. But you don't have to take my word for it. Just think of us. If you let yourself think back to what we were like when we were together, you'll remember that what we shared was real. No man can fake that kind of emotion, Mandy."

  "You did."

  He shook his head. "If eight years of living with my lie has brought you to hating me this much, well then I guess I deserve it. It was wrong of me to take the easy way out."

  Mandy lifted her chin. "Is this your way of apologizing?"

  "Would you accept it?"

  "No."

  "Well, it's an apology regardless. One that is long overdue."

  "What about Hank?"

  "What about him?"

  She laughed sardonically.

  "I told you Hank doesn't harbor any ill feelings for me. That's why I'm here."

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Did he really expect her to forgive him? For everything? Part of her wanted to forgive him just so she could stop feeling angry and betrayed. That made what she was feeling much worse.

  "What do you want from me, Beau?" she asked softly.

  For a fraction of a second, he looked hurt. The lines around his eyes shadowed and his jaw tightened.

  "Nothing."

  Beau cleared his throat, dragged his gaze from her and headed toward the door.

  Mandy hadn't realized she was breathing much too heavy until it looked as though he was going to leave without turning back. And then he did turn back and her heart skipped a beat.

  "If you are really interested in learning about the ranch, a good way to do it is to get your nose out of those books and come with me."

  He spun through the door and Mandy called out to him, "Where are you going?"

  He appeared in the doorway again and placed his hands high on the doorjamb on both sides of the door, filling the space completely. Locking her in.

  "For a start, to meet with the cattle auctioneer. Then some of the other people in the area who work with the ranch on a yearly basis to keep things running smooth. You'll find all their names and numbers in those books you've been reading. But until you meet them face to face and see how they operate, you won't really have a handle on how things are done. You with me?"

/>   She didn't answer. She didn't want to do this. She didn't want to be with Beau. But she had to. She closed the book in front of her and placed it back in its rightful place before grabbing her hat.

  * * *

  You're doing this for Hank, Beau reminded himself. Still, he couldn't help but think that part of this was for him, too. A second chance of sorts to go back and do it right, make amends for the wrong he'd done to Mandy.

  Mandy didn't believe him when he'd told her he'd lied about not loving her. And why would she? She'd had eight long years of hearing those awful words in her head, reliving the pain she felt when he'd rejected her. And she still felt it. Every time she glanced his way, he could still see the pain in those rich brown eyes of hers. He hated himself for it.

  And he felt the pain, too. If he could go back, he would erase that pained expression from her face. Kiss her sweet lips and...

  No. He couldn't go back. And even if he could, it wouldn't have changed the end result, he realized. The only thing he could hope for now was to move forward.

  * * *

  After hearing John Bower from the feed store go on and on about this and that and nothing at all, they were back in the truck heading back to the Double T. Mandy had been talkative with the storeowner, but now that they were alone, she was quiet again.

  Unable to take the sound of tires eating up the highway, Beau turned on the radio. Within minutes of looking at the familiar Texas farmland on both sides of the road, tension eased from his muscles.

  Mandy leaned forward and turned off the radio.

  "What'd you do that for?"

  Glaring at him, she said, "You're whistling out of tune again."

  Then she turned away to look out her window, but not quick enough for him to miss the smile she was trying to hide from him. A real honest to goodness smile. Lord have mercy, they were finally making progress!