"Of course you—"
"Don't!" The old man reached out, clasped Tyler's wrist. His hand was clammy but his grip was firm. "It's just—it's the cigars, that's all. The cigars."
"You're sure?"
"Positive. I'm right as rain."
He didn't look right as rain, Tyler thought, and felt a whisper of guilt. In the past couple of hours, Tyler'd fought with a 'man old enough to be his grandfather, wrestled him into submission, interrogated him...
"No need to mention this to anybody," Jonas said gruffly.
"Sure. Whatever you say."
"Good. Good." Jonas rose to his feet. His color was coming back, and the hand he lay on Tyler's shoulder was steady. "Well, Kincaid, I wish I could help you, I truly do, but if there was men workin.' for me all those years ago with wives with big bellies, I don't recall it."
Tyler nodded. In his heart, he'd expected as much. As for the feeling that there were secrets here, at Espada...if there were secrets, they were Baron secrets, and had nothing to do with him.
"It was just a shot in the dark," he said softly.
The men began walking to the door. "Glad to have met you," Jonas said, and grinned. "I'll bet this is the first time the head of a big company like yours got horse turds on his boots."
Tyler worked up a smile. "I had lots of horse turds on my boots, when I was a kid."
"Grew up on a ranch, did you?"
"For a while. It was a state home for boys."
"Did you, now?" Jonas looked at him. "Got yourself in some trouble, huh?"
"Some."
"So, that's where you learned about horses."
"Yeah." Tyler smiled again. "I was pretty good at it, too."
"Accordin' to my stepdaughter and my foreman, you still are." Jonas cleared his throat. "Did you ask Abel about these here big-bellied ladies supposed to have been on Espada, thirty years ago?"
"Thirty-five. No, no I didn't. I wanted to speak with you first."
"Well, don't you never mind, boy. I'll ask him. Ol' Abel's probably not gonna know nothin', either, but he's more likely to talk to me than to a stranger, jes' in case he does."
Tyler turned to the old man. "Thanks," he started to say, but the word caught in his throat. For the last few minutes, Jonas Baron had spoken pleasantly, his tone had been friendly, but now that he was looking into the old man's eyes, what he saw was the fiery glitter of hatred—or was it fear?
Tyler's own eyes narrowed. The old son of a bitch was conning him. Hell, he'd almost succeeded. Baron was hiding something instinct told him would lead to the truth about his birth.
"Somethin' wrong, Kincaid?"
Plenty, Tyler thought, but he smiled and shook his head.
"Not a 'thing," he said pleasantly. He put out his hand, sensed more than saw Baron force himself to take it. "Thank you for your help."
"No problem." Jonas pulled back his hand and stuck it into his pocket. "Bet you're goin' to head back to Georgia now, huh?"
Tyler waited a second before answering. "It's your bet, Baron. You put it on whatever horse you think will win."
The last thing he saw, as he walked out of the room, was the collapse of Jonas Baron's cocky, all-knowing smile.
The sight filled Tyler's heart with pleasure.
CHAPTER FIVE
CAITLIN stared at the library door after she'd slammed it behind her.
"The hell with the both of you," she muttered.
Tyler Kincaid and her stepfather deserved each other. They were both bullheaded, opinionated, arrogant jackasses. For all she knew, they might just end up squaring off again. This time, though, there'd be nobody to stop them.
Good, she thought grimly, as she walked toward the front door. Maybe they'd knock each other senseless.
Now, that was a pleasant prospect. She smiled, just contemplating it. It was what the two men deserved, Jonas for coming to her defense when she hadn't needed defending and humiliating her in the process; Tyler for thinking he could drag her into his arms and force his kisses on her in broad daylight while she struggled to shove him off her.
Caitlin stood still.
She had struggled, hadn't she? Of course she had. She'd fought like a wildcat. She hadn't wanted Tyler to kiss her or touch her, hadn't wanted his hands on her bare skin or his mouth, hot and open, on hers...
"Catie?"
Startled, she swung around. Her stepmother was standing at the entrance to the dining room, brows raised, a quizzical smile on her face.
"Marta." Caitlin took a deep breath and forced a smile to her lips, too. "I—I didn't realize you were standing there."
Marta cocked her head. "Has round two begun yet?''
"Round..." Caitlin laughed. "Jonas and Tyler Kincaid, you mean. Yes, I just showed Mr. Kincaid into the library."
"Ah. Well, I don't hear any thuds or grunts so far, so I assume they're behaving themselves. I was just about to have some coffee. Won't you join me?"
Caitlin hesitated, then smiled. "I'd love to."
"Good." Marta linked her arm through her stepdaughter's and they walked slowly toward the solarium. "Are you all right? That was, um, it was an unfortunate scene that took place, down by the bunkhouse."
"Kincaid forcing himself on me, you mean," Caitlin said stiffly.
"Did he, really? From what little I saw, and from what Jonas said, I had the impression that what you and Mr. Kincaid were doing was mutually agreeable." Marta motioned Caitlin to a chair. "Perhaps I'm wrong."
Caitlin plopped down in the chair and stretched out her legs. "You're definitely wrong," she said, as Marta poured coffee. "Tyler Kincaid grabbed me and—and..." Her eyes met Marta's and she flushed. "All right. He kissed me, I kissed him back—but only because he caught me by surprise."
"Of course."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means," Marta said mildly, "that I can understand how such a thing could happen. Your Mr. Kincaid is an extremely good-looking man. Some of Carmen's butter cookies, dear?"
"No," Caitlin said calmly, "thank you, but I don't want any cookies. And I don't want you jumping to conclusions, either. Tyler Kincaid is only good-looking if you like the type."
"I agree." Marta smiled into her coffee cup. "But what women wouldn't like that type? Tall, dark, gorgeous... I'm old enough to be your Mr. Kincaid's mother, dear, and I'm very happily married to your stepfather, but I can see why you're attracted to him. "
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" Caitlin put down her cup and saucer, hard enough so the delicate china rattled. "I am not attracted to him. I hardly know the man, and what little I do know, I don't like. And I wish you'd stop calling him that."
"Calling him what?"
"My Mr. Kincaid. All I did was give him a job."
"That's what I meant."
"He said he wanted to see Jonas. And he needed work." Caitlin plucked a cookie from the platter and bit into it. "You'd have done the same thing."
"Undoubtedly," Marta said gently.
"And on top of that, my horse got spooked and Kincaid decided to play Galahad. I'm sure he thought he saved me from getting hoofprints tattooed on my skull." She put the rest of the cookie into her mouth and chewed it. "Well," she said grudgingly, "maybe he did. The point is, I hired him on and he did his job well—until today."
"When he forced his unwanted attentions on you."
"Yes. No. Oh, what's the difference? I'd have fired him, too, if Jonas hadn't come along and made a scene."
"Jonas is very protective," Marta said softly. "He loves you, Catie. You know that."
"You mean," Caitlin said tightly, "he loves me as much as he can, considering that I'm not of his blood."
"I mean," her stepmother said, taking her hand, "that he's stubborn and pigheaded. All the Baron men are, or do you really think Slade, Travis and Gage are any better?"
Caitlin sighed. "No, you're right. They're all impossible. Maybe it isn't a Baron trait. Maybe all men are like that. Just look at how pigheaded Tyler Kincaid is
—"
A crash echoed through the house. Both women jumped to their feet.
"They're killing each other," Caitlin said.
"I think it was just a door slamming." Marta looked at Caitlin. "But I do suspect Mr. Kincaid's meeting with your stepfather is over."
"You get yourself off my property, Kincaid." Jonas's voice roared through the house. "You got five minutes, you hear? After that, I'll put some buckshot into your tail."
"Good," Caitlin said grimly. "Jonas fired him."
"Indeed." Marta sighed and put her arm around Caitlin. "Will you excuse me, Catie? I think I'd better go remind your stepfather that he's not supposed to get his blood pressure up past the boiling point."
"Of course." Caitlin hesitated. "Marta?" she said, just as the older woman reached the door.
Her stepmother looked back at her. "Yes?"
"He is good-looking," she said softly. "Isn't he?"
Marta smiled. "If I were twenty years younger, I'd think about giving you some competition."
"Oh, I didn't... I wouldn't... I was talking hypothetically." "Hypothetically," Marta said, and flashed a grin, "Mr. Kincaid is... I believe the current term is `a hunk."'
"Go tell Jonas to calm down," Caitlin said, and began to laugh.
Marta chuckled and hurried away. Still smiling, Caitlin circled the room, piling the coffee things on a tray, picking up another cookie, pausing to straighten the embroidered throw pillows on a love seat and, at last, almost as an afterthought, making her way to the window.
Yes, there he was, the all-powerful Tyler Kincaid, in full retreat.
Caitlin's head lifted. "No more Mr. Tough Guy now," she muttered, "are you, Kincaid?"
No sir, he certainly wasn't. He was hightailing it down the hill, the way men always did after Jonas Baron gave them a tongue-lashing...
Except, he wasn't.
Tyler was strolling down the hill. Hell, he was swaggering, shoulders easy, head high, hands tucked into his pockets. And he was in no hurry, despite Jonas's five-minute warning. He paused at the paddock, put one booted foot on the bottom rail and watched Manuel working one of the new horses. It seemed like a century rolled by before he stepped back, tucked his hands back into his pockets and made his way toward the bunkhouse.
"Idiot," Caitlin whispered.
What was he trying to prove? Not that she cared, one way or the other. Tyler Kincaid was none of her business. Did he really think his act would keep the men from knowing the truth, that Jonas had run him off?
She folded her arms, watching through narrowed eyes as he climbed the steps to the door of the bunkhouse. Ten minutes from now, he'd be gone, and ten minutes later, he'd be forgotten. Hired hands came and went on Espada, and nobody so much as remembered their names.
Tyler Kincaid might think he was somebody special, but he wasn't. The men would forget him, she'd forget him...
She'd forget the way he'd kissed her, too. The way she'd felt when he'd touched her.
Caitlin's breath caught.
"Goodbye, Kincaid," she said firmly. Then she turned her back to the window, picked up the coffee tray and left the room.
The following week seemed interminable but at long last Friday slipped into Saturday, and there was at least a little time to relax.
By evening, Espada was quiet. Marta and Jonas had gone out to dinner. The men were either down at the bunkhouse, playing cards or watching TV, or in town, all duded up in pressed jeans and shirts, easing the work of the past days with the help of a couple of drinks and some much-wanted female companionship.
"Come to the Phillips's with us," Marta had said to Caitlin, but Caitlin had smiled, kissed her stepmother and told her, truthfully, that she was looking forward to taking a shower, putting on her sweats and curling up with a good book.
"Sounds like fun," Marta had said, but Jonas had glowered.
"Sounds like the girl's plannin' on bein' an old maid," he'd growled. "Give Leighton a call, why don't you? Bet he'd be happy to take you to the movies or maybe out for dinner."
"Leighton?" Caitlin and Marta had said in unison.
"Well, why not? He's your cousin, after all."
Caitlin hadn't been able to resist. "He isn't," she'd said primly, "he's a Baron."
"Exactly."
Marta had rolled her eyes. "Come along, Jonas," she'd said, and dragged him off while Caitlin tried to figure out what that had been all about.
She was still thinking about it as she stepped from the shower an hour later.
"Leighton," she said, and rolled her eyes the way her stepmother had done.
Better to spend the evening with a tarantula than with Leighton. She didn't like the man. Nobody did, even though he'd been trying to ooze charm ever since Travis, Slade and Gage had all married and made it clear that not a one of them wanted Espada.
"Looks like Jonas and I are the only Barons left in Texas," he'd said heartily, the last time he'd paid an unwanted visit.
Well, Leighton was kidding himself. Jonas had this idiotic bug in his head about leaving his land to a Baron but surely he'd never leave it to that Baron. Leighton's son, Gray, maybe, but Gray was off at some Eastern college, learning to be a lawyer. As for Leighton himself... Jonas wasn't a fool. He'd never leave his beloved Espada to a man who couldn't tell a steer from a bull, who'd cringe at the smell of good, honest-to-God horse manure.
Jonas was just trying to suggest she do something instead of staying home. That she'd even let herself think anything else only proved what a long week it had been. A skittish colt had kicked Manuel and broken his wrist; a freak hailstorm had done in the roof on the old barn and what should have been a simple trip to pick up a newly purchased stud turned into near-disaster when an eighteen-wheeler suddenly jackknifed ahead of the truck and horse trailer Caitlin was driving. She'd had to do some quick maneuvering to avoid plowing into it but she'd managed while Abel sat beside her, muttering epithets she'd never heard before—and she'd heard most everything, after spending so many years on a ranch.
Caitlin tossed the damp towel aside and ran her fingers through her hair.
But Jonas had been the real reason the week had been so awful. He'd been as snappish as a bear with a thorn in its paw ever since he'd had that meeting with Tyler Kincaid.
"Is something wrong?" Marta had asked him gently, just last night.
"Wrong?" he'd snarled. "Why do women plague a man with questions? Why should anything be wrong?"
And that, Caitlin thought as she opened her closet, that was a question in itself.
The things that had gone wrong this week were minor, when you came down to it. On a spread the size of this one, accidents were bound to happen. In fact, now that she reconsidered, it hadn't been such a bad week at all, except for Jonas's sour disposition.
Actually the week had been pretty good.
Tyler Kincaid was gone. Really gone. No last-minute attempts to confront Jonas again, or to see her. Well, why would he try to see her?
No reason. None at all. A good thing he hadn't, because she'd have refused to see him. The nerve of the man, to have sneaked himself into a job at Espada, just so he could try to sell Jonas some snake-oil proposition.
"Man wanted me to buy into a deal so full of holes I just laughed in his face, when he told me about it," was all Jonas would say, but it was enough.
Caitlin blew a curl off her forehead, pulled on a pale yellow sundress with skinny little straps and a full skirt. It was too hot to wear sweats, too hot to get her dander up, thinking about Kincaid and how he'd tried to make fools of her and her stepfather, too hot to do anything except go downstairs, pour herself a tall glass of iced tea, go out on the deck with the tea and her book and take it nice and easy for the rest of the evening.
She'd never have been able to do that if Kincaid was still here.
With him gone, she could sit outside without wondering if he was watching her. She could walk down to the stables without feeling the sudden rush of heat that meant hi
s eyes were on her. She could forget about catching a glimpse of him gentling a horse, his voice as soft and husky as it had been when he was holding her, his hands as gentle...
"Oh, stop it," Caitlin said in disgust.
What was this nonsense? She was a woman, not a child.
And a woman didn't fantasize over a man just because he'd kissed her, especially when the memory of that kiss sent a hot lick of embarrassment rolling through her blood.
Caitlin picked up her comb and yanked it, hard, through her hair, wincing as she drove the teeth through the still-damp tangles. Then she stared at herself in the mirror.
She wasn't a pretty sight. No makeup. Hair that looked as if it had been arranged by Little Orphan Annie's stylist. Well, so what? She didn't have to worry about how she looked.
There was nobody here to see her. Nobody who mattered, now that Tyler Kincaid was—
Caitlin swore, tossed the comb aside, pulled her hair back low on her neck and secured it with a rubber band. Carmen would be wondering what was taking her so long. She'd asked her to fix her something to eat more than an hour ago.
"Enchiladas, maybe," she'd said hopefully, and Carmen had said, si, enchiladas it would be...
"But a young woman should not spend Saturday night by herself."
It was an old speech, abbreviated over the years to that one pithy line. Caitlin's response varied, depending on the circumstances. This time she'd fallen back on an old standard.
"Esme should hear you say that," she'd said, and smiled teasingly.
Carmen had not smiled in return. "Just because my daughter is foolish enough to be a women's lubber is no reason for you to be the same," she'd grumbled, and Caitlin had laughed and hugged her.
"It's women's lib, not lub. And Esme isn't one, she's just smart enough to know a bright woman can be perfectly happy without a man to mess things up."
"Exactly," Caitlin said to her reflected image.
Then she opened the bedroom door and clattered down the stairs, to the kitchen.
The house was quiet.
Caitlin paused at the foot of the steps. Well, no. It wasn't. She could hear sounds. Voices, coming from the kitchen. The TV set? No. She recognized Carmen's laugh, sliding over the deeper laughter of a man.
Sandra Marton - Taming of Tyler Kincaid Page 7
