Affair of the Heart

by Joan Wolf

  Jay stared at Caroline as appraisingly as she at him. What he saw confirmed all his expectations. She would look great on the cover of a magazine, he thought, but she’d be perfectly useless on a ranch. “I’m Jay Hamilton,” he said abruptly. “You must be Caroline.”

  His blue eyes held none of the admiration Caroline was accustomed to see in the eyes of the men who looked at her. “Yes, I’m Caroline Carruthers,” she answered coolly. “How do you do, Jay.”

  He was surprised, as people always were, by her curiously deep voice.

  She stood up. He was probably six feet, she thought as she looked up at him. “Are you going to show me around?” she asked.

  “Yes. Dad got tied up.” He looked at her measuringly. “I thought perhaps you might like to take a ride.”

  She smiled for the first time. “I’d love to,” she answered quickly.

  “Good.” He looked at her feet. “Do you have boots?”

  “Yes, but I ride in these shoes all the time. They have heels, see?” She raised her foot a little and turned her ankle.

  His face was expressionless and he didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “Well, if you’ve finished eating we can get started.”

  “I do have a pair of chaps with me,” she said. “If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll go and get them.”

  He was standing at the bottom of the stairs when she came running lightly down holding her chaps over her arm. “Come on, then,” he said.

  She walked beside him, her own stride as lithe and effortless as his, while inside she seethed. I don’t like you either, Mr. Jay Hamilton, she was saying to herself, so don’t think all this laconic hostility can intimidate me. I’m every bit as tough a nut as you are.

  They reached the barn, and a weathered-looking man of about fifty appeared. “Morning, Jay,” he said.

  “Morning,” her stepbrother replied. “Caroline, this is Frank Adams, one of our hands. Miss Carruthers, Frank, from Virginia.”

  There was just the faintest emphasis on “Virginia,” and Caroline turned and looked at him speculatively. He looked back, his expression altering not one iota at the sight of her immense gray-green eyes, perfectly straight nose, and lovely full mouth.

  “How well do you ride?’ Jay asked.

  “Well enough,” she replied levelly, “if you don’t give me a bucking bronco.”

  His blue stare became mocking. “I have a quiet old guy here we’re thinking of retiring.”

  “No, thank you,” she replied in a clipped tone. Her palm itched to smash into his arrogant-looking suntanned face. “I’ve hunted regularly for the last few years. I think I can manage a decent horse.”

  After a moment Jay’s mocking gaze left her face and went to the cowboy. “Give her Dusty, Frank.”

  The man looked surprised but obediently went into the barn and came back with a very good-looking gray gelding. He tied the horse to the fence and went to the tackroom for her saddle. When he came back with it he had a very dubious look on his weathered face. “You sure you want to ride this, miss? Dusty’s used to more weight on his back.”

  “Yes,” said Caroline shortly, “I’m sure.” She finished zipping on her chaps, which bore all the signs of hard use, took the saddle, and proceeded to tack the horse up herself. Jay finished first and watched as she expertly put the bit into the gelding’s mouth and buckled the chin strap.

  “Ready?” he asked pleasantly. Too pleasantly. Caroline wondered what was wrong with the horse.

  She gave him a long stare, put her foot into the stirrup, and swung with easy grace into the saddle. Jay followed her and said crisply, “Let’s go.”

  The gray was full of life and pranced under her restlessly. Caroline kept a snug hold on the reins and sat calmly, ignoring his fidgets. Jay’s big bay was walking quietly beside her, and she said conversationally, “It’s a beautiful day. Do you always have such gorgeous weather in Wyoming?”

  “Summer yes, winter no,” he answered.

  “Do you get a lot of snow?”

  “Plenty. Wyoming is the second-highest state in the country,” he told her. “We get snow October through April.”

  “Heavens,” said Caroline. The gray suddenly pulled hard on the reins and tried to bolt. As Jay watched with interest, Caroline’s long legs closed like iron around his sides and she pulled him up. “Walk!” she commanded severely. “Sounds even worse than Maine,” she said pleasantly to Jay. “That’s where my mother was from.”

  He raised a dark eyebrow and looked at her for a moment in silence. “Would you like to top off the horses?” he asked.

  “If that means shake off some of this excess energy, then yes I would,” she replied vigorously. And in a second they were both galloping along the dirt road together, Jay sitting deep in his saddle looking as comfortable as if he’d been born there and Caroline standing a little in her stirrups, lightly poised, her hands moving easily with the rhythm of the horse’s neck.

  “He’s beautifully smooth,” she said when they pulled up. She patted the dappled neck, and the horse relaxed into a walk.

  “He’s still green, but he’s going to be one of my best horses.”

  She grinned. “You didn’t think I could handle him, did you?”

  His reserved face did not soften in response. He shrugged. “You said you could ride a decent horse, so I gave you one.”

  And the hell with you, too, Caroline thought and turned her attention to the scenery.

  It was well worth looking at. Towering all around them were the magnificent peaks of the Bighorn Mountains, and once they had left the ranch house behind there was only the sound of their horses’ hooves and the calls of birds to disturb the silence.

  “We’ve just finished pushing the cattle into summer pastures,” Jay said, finally breaking the silence.

  “What do you mean by summer pasture?” Caroline asked curiously.

  “Mountain pastures. The grass is best in July and August. In the fall we move them back down again. That’s when we ship the steers to market, after they’ve been fattened on summer grass. Then we wean the yearling heifers, pick the best ones to replace our own ten-year-old cows, and send the rest to market.”

  “I see,” said Caroline. “Is there enough grass for them in the winter?”

  “We have to supplement. We still use horse-drawn sleds to get food into the remoter areas of the ranch.” He was looking straight ahead as he talked, not at her. “In the summer we become a farming operation. We cultivate twenty-five hundred acres of hay and grain just to supplement the winter range diet.”

  Caroline was interested despite her irritation at his rudeness. “What else has to be done, once you’ve gotten the herds to the proper pasture?”

  “Well, there are two hundred and twenty-five miles of fence to be kept up. We have men on camp in the various areas, and it’s their job to see to the fences and keep an eye on the cattle. It’s difficult to keep an exact inventory, so ranchers are always vulnerable to theft.”

  “Rustlers,” Caroline said melodramatically.

  “Precisely.” He gave her a quick, ironic look. “The newer method is simply to load a bunch of cattle into a semi and head east into areas where there’s no brand inspection.”

  “Oh,” said Caroline disappointedly.

  “The thieves usually depend on an inside man to feed them information about the ranch’s operation and to let them know where the cattle will be,” he went on, ignoring her brief comment. “One of my jobs is to check out the background of the new men hired. Since we’ve been doing that, our losses have dropped considerably.”

  They had been climbing pretty steadily, and now he stopped his horse and turned to her. “Come on,” he said, “and I’ll give you an overall view.”

  He dismounted and tied his horse to a tree, and Caroline did likewise. He then began to walk down the steep side of the trail, through the trees, and silently Caroline followed. After about ten minutes they came out on a ridge, and there below them stretched th
e panorama of the valley. “There’s the ranch house,” he said, gesturing. “The farm, the feedlot, the calving sheds.”

  Her eyes followed his pointing finger, and quite suddenly she felt dizzy. She blinked, blinked again, and then abruptly sat down.

  He watched her for a moment in silence. “It’s the altitude,” he said then. “It takes a while to adjust.”

  Her head cleared, and she looked up and met his dark blue eyes. Her heart thumped once, loudly, and then began to race. But I don’t even like him, she thought to herself in bewilderment. She cleared her throat. “You’re probably right,” she said nervously. “We walked down that hill pretty quickly.”

  His eyes remained on her face, and there was a distinctly grim look about his mouth. He doesn’t like it either, she thought suddenly. He feels it too and he doesn’t like it.

  “Are you all right now?” he asked a little harshly.

  “Yes, I’m fine.” She started to get up, and slowly, with obvious reluctance, he extended his hand. She stared at it for a brief second. It was a beautiful hand, with slim hard fingers and strong muscles. Like his face, it was deeply tanned. She got to her feet without touching him. “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Shall we start back then?” Without further comment he turned and plunged into the trees. Caroline followed, acutely and angrily aware of his strong back and narrow hips in front of her. Hell and damnation, she thought in dismay as she scrambled up the steep hill behind him. She was under no illusions about what she was feeling for her obnoxious stepbrother, and she didn’t like it one little bit.

  Chapter Three

  “I suppose your father told you I have a ring for you,” Caroline said when they were in the saddle and heading back to the ranch house.

  “Yes.” A muscle flickered along his jaw, but otherwise his expression did not change.

  “It was your great-grandmother’s and then your mother’s. She wanted you to have it.”

  “That was nice of her.”

  His voice was flat, and it provoked her to ask, challengingly, “Did you get Daddy’s message about her death, or were you out on roundup?”

  “I was on roundup, but they got the message to me.”

  “I see.” Caroline could feel her temper rising. “And you didn’t think it worthwhile to fly in for the funeral?”

  “No,” he said, “I didn’t.” His voice was cold, warning her clearly that she was trespassing on private territory.

  “Why not?” she asked recklessly.

  “You and I will get along a lot better, Caroline, if you refrain from meddling in the affairs of your elders,” he said pleasantly.

  Her elders! She was all of three years younger than he was, she thought furiously. “You may be older than I, but I think you’ve been acting like a spoiled brat,” she told him heatedly. “Do you think you’re the only child in the world whose parents got a divorce?”

  “Yes,” he said with lethal irony, “I do. I’ve never forgiven my mother for leaving, and consequently my whole personality has become warped and bitter. Is that what you were going to say?”

  He had succeeded in taking the wind out of her sails. “You know so much,” Caroline replied acidly, “that it hardly seems worthwhile continuing the conversation.” And she touched the gray into a canter.

  * * * *

  Caroline ceremoniously handed Jay the ring before dinner that evening. He took it, stared at it with chilly blue eyes, and then said, “Thank you.” He put the ring into his pocket and appeared prepared to forget it.

  “Jay!” came Ellen’s voice from the kitchen. “Get this dog out of my way!”

  “Regent,” Jay called in a voice Caroline had never heard from him before. “Come here, boy. Come on.”

  There was the sound of padding paws and then a large brown dog came trotting into the room. He went immediately to Jay, who scratched his ears.

  “What kind of dog is he?” Caroline asked.

  “A little of this and a little of that,” came the reply. “But he’s the best damn cow dog this side of the Rockies, aren’t you, fella?” The dog’s tail was waving frantically, and he looked up into Jay’s face with obvious adoration.

  Joe Hamilton came into the living room. Like his son, he still wore jeans and a flannel shirt, although both men had changed out of the clothes they had worked in all day. Caroline was wearing pale-lemon slacks and a matching shirt, and she felt overdressed. Jeans, she thought ruefully, were obviously the order of the day and the evening on the Double Diamond.

  “Come and get it!” Ellen called, and they all moved into the kitchen. The house had no dining room, as Caroline had noticed earlier, but the kitchen was enormous. The table was laid for four, and after Ellen had served them roast chicken, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, and carrots she sat down herself, and Joe, who had carved the chicken, put some white meat on her plate. The dog had followed them and lay now at Jay’s feet, comfortably curled up, eyes half shut.

  Joe took a sip of his beer and said genially, “Well now, Caroline, tell us what you’ve been doing with yourself since I saw you last.”

  Her straight nose crinkled in amusement. “You last saw me when I was thirteen years old, Joe.”

  “That’s right. All long legs and braces, I recall.”

  “Ugh.” Caroline laughed. “Don’t remind me.”

  “You were pretty even then,” Joe said reassuringly. “You were worried about going away to school, if I remember rightly.”

  Caroline ate her roast chicken, which was delicious, and thought back. “Yes, I guess that was the summer before I first went to St. Luke’s. I was homesick in advance. Once I got there I quite liked it.”

  “You went to boarding school, Caroline?” Ellen asked.

  “Of course she did,” Jay said smoothly. “All the East Coast aristocracy go first to prep school and then to college—didn’t you know that, Ellen?” His dark eyes were a brilliant blue, and he smiled at Caroline with deceptive friendliness. She felt her heart give that disturbing thump again, and then slowly, deliberately, she smiled back. She gave him the works, a brilliant sparkle of huge green eyes and very white, very straight (thanks to those braces) teeth. “True,” she said with great sweetness, “I was educated as befitted my class. But on Sundays we always took baskets of food to the poor.”

  Her eyes locked with Jay’s for a brief moment, and then she looked away as she heard Joe chuckle. “That’s the girl, don’t let him get away with patronizing you.” Joe looked at his son, and his grin faded. “You boarded in Sheridan when you were in high school, I might remind you. I should have sent you to a proper prep school. It might have shaped you up.”

  Jay shrugged and buttered a roll. “Did you go to college?” Caroline asked. If she remembered correctly, it was something to do with college that had caused Joe to come and see Nancy all those years ago.

  Jay finished his roll and looked at his father. There was a faint look of amusement on his face. Caroline thought suddenly that he had an extraordinarily beautiful mouth. “Yeah,” he said. “Sort of.”

  “Hmmm,” said Joe and glared at his grown-up son. “If you call four years of playing football, chasing girls, and drinking beer college, then I guess you could say you went to college.”

  Jay looked back at his father, and then his face broke into a beautiful smile, a real smile, not the phony one he had given Caroline. “I had fun,” he said.

  “I know.” Joe’s testiness melted before that luminous smile. “But I still wish you’d gone to Cornell.”

  “I learned all I needed to know at Laramie. The best agricultural school is the ranch itself,” Jay said patiently. “Christ, look at that moron college boy Jim Wilkes hired on as ranch manager. He may know a lot about juggling account books, but he doesn’t know a damn about cattle. Dan Barsett, the foreman, runs that ranch. He knows cows. All the moron does is sit in his pickup truck and talk on the two-way radio.”

  Joe stared at his son for a moment longer before he turned again
to Caroline. “What did you study in college, Caroline?”

  “Political science,” she replied politely.

  “Of course. With your background that’d be a natural,” Jay said affably.

  She took a sip of milk. She hadn’t had milk with dinner for years, but she hadn’t wanted beer and she had thought it would be fruitless to ask for wine. It didn’t seem to be the sort of household that had a wine rack. “Yes,” she said now and met those dark-blue eyes. “You might say I had a hereditary interest.”

  “You work in Washington, Caroline?” asked Ellen.

  “Yes. I work for Senator Williamson.”

  Joe looked suddenly alert. “Hey, isn’t he the guy who wants to put missiles over the entire West?”

  “Er,” said Caroline gingerly, “not the whole West, Joe.”

  The big rancher snorted. “Let me tell you what I think of those fancy Eastern senators,” he said vigorously, and for the rest of the meal he proceeded to unburden himself of a while variety of deeply felt convictions about the sacredness of the land and the unholiness of the earth’s despoilers.

  Jay didn’t say anything but continued to eat, and Caroline, who had at one time or another thought all the things Joe was now saying, simply nodded and made soothing replies.

  After dinner Ellen served apple pie and coffee. When the men went to move into the living room Caroline said to Ellen, “May I help you with the dishes?”

  The old woman shook her head vigorously. “It don’t take me no time at all to get these cleared away, Caroline. And I’ve got a dishwasher. You go along inside and relax.”

  “Well, if you’re sure ...”

  “Ellen doesn’t let anybody interfere in her kitchen,” Joe said good-humoredly. “You come along and keep us company, Caroline.”

  She followed the big rancher into the living room and subsided gracefully on a comfortable sofa. The living room was very large as well, with a huge stone fireplace and well-worn, comfortable-looking furniture. It was the sort of room that invited you to take your shoes off, Caroline thought. Joe was speaking, and she looked at him attentively. His face was very grave. “I want you to tell me how Nancy came to die of pneumonia,” he said to her heavily. “I didn’t like to ask your dad too much on the phone.”