Past Promises

by Jill Marie Landis

  He could see the shock and confusion in her blue eyes. “Jess, listen—”

  Terrified by her loss of control, she whirled away from him and started running toward her horse.

  “Jess!” He took a step and then stopped, afraid of terrifying her any more than he had already. There was no doubt in his mind that the emotion he’d seen in her eyes had been fear.

  Jessica ran headlong toward the piebald mare he had loaned her. She tore the reins off of a piñon branch. Her skirt twisted around her ankles before she jerked it up, put her foot into the stirrup, and then hefted herself into the saddle. She kicked the horse into a gallop and didn’t look back.

  “Jess!” she heard Rory call out, but ignored his plea. In her haste, she had forgotten her gloves and bonnet, and now the hot, dry wind beat her face unmercifully. The muslin sack tied to her pommel slapped rhythmically against her horse’s side. The animal’s eyes were wide with terror.

  Afraid the mare would run headlong into a rabbit hole, Jess pulled back on the reins and forced the horse to slow down to a stop. While the animal pranced beneath her, sides heaving, Jessica chanced a glance back over her shoulder.

  Rory Burnett was nothing more than a silhouette that shimmered in the heat waves in the distance. He wasn’t following her. Thanking God for small favors, she tried to control her riotous emotions and wished it was as simple as reining in her mare. Forcing herself to take three deep, even breaths, she tried to shove her shirttail and camisole back into her waistband. It was easier than shoving aside the memory of Rory’s hand on her flesh, simpler than trying to ignore the throbbing ache of raw need that only intensified when she kicked her horse into a trot and rode on.

  RORY STEPPED INSIDE the kitchen and let the screen door slam behind him. His mother’s poke bonnet dangled from the ties he clenched tight in his gloved hand. Myra and Scratchy looked up from where they sat at the kitchen table. Rory recognized her calico dress as one of his mother’s; her injured foot was propped up on a chair. Scratchy sat back, his arms folded across his chest, a deep scowl on his bewhiskered face.

  “I was just giving Mr. Livermore here some helpful hints at gravy making,” Myra volunteered as she slipped her lopsided spectacles off her nose and set them on the table beside a stack of notes.

  Scratchy shook his head. “I don’t see nothin’ wrong with a lump here or there.”

  Myra took up the cause immediately. “I don’t mean to offend, Mr. Livermore, but your lumpy gravy is the consistency of glue gone bad,” she argued.

  In no mood to referee, Rory asked, “Where’s Jessica?” He knew she’d arrived back safely, for he’d seen her horse in the corral. It was still wet and winded and he guessed Jess was off sulking somewhere.

  There was no mistaking Myra’s look of suspicious curiosity, but she admitted nothing more than, “In her room. She said something about being overheated.” She studied Rory a moment too long. Scratchy looked down at the tabletop.

  Unwilling to explain, Rory knew Miss Jessica Stanbridge was more than overheated. He tossed the bonnet on the table, drew Jessica’s gloves out of his back pocket, and threw them down beside it. That done, he walked out the backdoor.

  SHE DIDN’T APPEAR for dinner. The next morning when Jessica’s place was noticeably empty at breakfast, it was quite obvious that she was not coming out of her room as long as he was around. As the last of the men shuffled out the backdoor to get back to the chores they had started before sunup, Myra suggested to Scratchy, “Perhaps you should fix a plate for Jessica and I’ll try to coax her into eating.”

  Rory’s coffee mug slammed against the tabletop. He’d been in a surly mood since yesterday afternoon and he wasn’t about to let Jessica hide in her room until she’d made up her mind to move out. “If she’s too sick to come out, she’s too sick to eat.”

  Woody Barrows had just come in the backdoor to ask a question. He paused on the threshold, Rory’s sharp tone arresting him where he stood. He glanced over Scratchy’s head at Myra, who shrugged, then all of them looked at Rory as if he had suddenly sprouted horns.

  Leaving the steaming cup of coffee behind, Rory stood up and left the table, well aware that they were all staring at him and no doubt whispering about his black mood as he stalked down the hall toward Jessica’s door.

  He paused outside, listened intently, and raised his hand to knock. With a swift change of mind, he shoved his hands in his back pockets and stalked back down the hall and out the front door.

  To hell with the ranch, he thought. He pulled a chair away from the wall and out into the center of the porch. Once seated, he propped his feet up on the railing and crossed his legs at the ankles. With his hands behind his head, he stared out over the gentle slope of the valley, at the cattle grazing in the distance and off toward Sleeping Ute Mountain. He sat there thinking of nothing and everything for a long while until finally he heard a soft shuffling sound. When Myra slowly came out the door, leaning on the crutch Wheelbarrow had made her, Rory dropped his feet to the floor and started to stand.

  “Stay right there, please. No need to play the gentleman with me. I can manage.” True to her word, Myra limped over to a chair beside Rory’s and sat down heavily. After she caught her breath, she rested the crutch against her thigh and said, “I love mornings out here. It seems the earth is renewed each and every day.”

  “I never thought of it like that,” he said, “but I think you might be right.” Too bad certain people can’t be renewed each day.

  “How many cattle do you have out there?” she asked, staring out across the landscape.

  “It varies from year to year. Whatever the land will allow, then there are strays that wander in, range cattle that don’t belong to anybody, spring calves. There’s a cow camp not far from here. Some of the best stock is up in the hills around there.” He could sense her reserve, knew they were talking around the real issue at hand.

  Finally Myra said, “Jessica arrived here quite disheveled yesterday—her hair mussed, cheeks aflame, missing her hat and gloves.” She watched him carefully. “That’s not like her. I’ve known her since she was a child and she’s never been so at odds. In fact, she’s unusually composed at all times.”

  For someone so unusually composed, she had certainly come apart in his arms yesterday. “She’s the damnedest, most stubborn, pigheaded—”

  “Jessica has a mind of her own.”

  “Stuffed full of nonsense,” he tossed back.

  “She’s highly educated,” she countered.

  “Doesn’t have the sense God gave a goat.”

  “Let’s stop talking around the problem, Rory.”

  He leaned forward, his arms on his knees, and stared down at the floorboards between his boots. “I asked her to marry me the day of Whitey’s funeral,” he admitted softly.

  Her shock was so immediate that Myra dropped her crutch. “Oh, my! And what did she say to that?”

  “She said no, of course.”

  “Of course? If you knew that would be the answer, why did you propose?”

  There was no way in hell he was going to tell Myra Thornton that he wanted Jessica in his bed, that he wanted to lay claim to her as sure as he did the Silver Sage because he couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else touching her.

  But for now someone else did have her, or something—she was devoted to fulfilling her dream of becoming a world-renowned paleontologist.

  In answer to her question, he merely said, “I don’t know why I asked.”

  Myra shifted in her chair, looked him in the eye, and asked, “Do you love her?”

  He felt his face grow hot and looked out over the open range. “There’s something between us, something I’m not stupid enough to deny, even if Jess is.”

  Moving to the edge of the chair, Myra agreed. “I saw it, too, the very moment we met and I saw the t
wo of you together. I told Jessica back then that there were strong currents between you that couldn’t be denied.”

  “Well, she’s bent on denying them.”

  “You have to realize, Rory, that Jessica has been groomed for her work since the time she was old enough to read. It was her father’s obsession that she learn all he knew and carry on after he was gone.”

  Shoving aside his guilt, he put his foot back up on the rails, certain he wasn’t going to get any work done before noon. “My father left me this ranch when he died, but I haven’t let it obsess me.”

  “Ah, yes, but from what I have seen, you most likely led a normal life with a mother and father who had many other interests.”

  “The ranch was their life, their livelihood, but they had friends, and they had each other.”

  “Jessica’s mother died when she was eight. Jessica took care of the house and did her father’s research work for him when he became the museum director. When she was old enough, she was employed in the museum basement cataloging specimens. Her life revolved between their small flat crowded with books and papers and the museum filled with bits and pieces of the past. She’s had no other life.

  “She became determined to prove she was just as qualified, just as knowledgeable as any male paleontologist. When her father died, she applied for the job of museum director, but the board of trustees thought it out of the question to even interview a woman. So when she was given this chance to prove herself, she became all the more determined to succeed.”

  Rory dropped his feet to the ground again and stood up. “I’m not asking her to choose me over her work. All I’m asking is that she admit she has feelings for me and to open herself up to—”

  Myra stopped him. “I don’t think you need to enlighten me on that point. But if Jessica were to agree to marry you, how could she continue to work for the museum?”

  He paced over to the porch rail and rested one hip against it. “I haven’t thought that out yet. She could go on with this one project, though, and see it through to the end.”

  He felt a swift flood of guilt. But his promise to uphold the agreement between his father and the Utes tied his hands. Nor did he need a sideshow in his own backyard.

  “Do you love her enough to give up the ranch?” Myra asked.

  “And do what? Does she love me enough to give up the museum?” he countered.

  “Can you please help with my crutch?”

  Rory hurried to pick it up for her and then helped her to her feet. Myra shifted her weight off her injured ankle and slipped the crutch beneath her arm.

  Myra looked sad. “I’m afraid you’ve both come to quite an impasse.”

  “I guess so. But right now I’m going to make sure she comes out of that room.”

  She watched him walk toward the front door. “Good luck, Rory. Whatever happens, I wish you the best.”

  Her words made him color with embarrassment. “I’ll take the luck,” he told her.

  JESSICA PACED HER room. As much as she longed to see Rory again, so, too, did she want to avoid him. He was a threat to her future and to the promise she had made her father and the museum. The only thing she could do, she decided, was to leave the ranch and travel into Durango, wire the museum for more funds, and if Beckworth was willing to oblige, start over. If he wasn’t willing, then she would have to admit defeat and go home.

  Outside in the hallway, Rory stared again at the door that separated them and steeled himself to knock, knowing that if given a choice, she would deny him access. His knock was swift and determined.

  Her answer came just as quickly. “Go away,” she said through the door.

  He turned the knob. None of the rooms in the house had locks. No one had ever wanted to lock themselves away before. She was standing rigid in the center of the room, every hair tucked neatly in place, her blouse protecting her throat, her skirt lying smoothly over her trim hips, flared just enough to hide her shoes. Her eyes snapped blue fire when he took another step into the room.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “This is my house, remember?” Not exactly the opening he had hoped for.

  “Then I’ll get out.”

  His fingers itched to touch her, to rip the pins from her hair and free her from herself. More than ever, he longed to bury himself in her and rid himself of the pain of wanting her. “You can run as far and as fast as you like, but we belong together, Jess. What happened out in the desert yesterday proved that.”

  “What happened yesterday only proves that I can’t trust you.”

  “Look, I’m sick and tired of arguing with you. I’ve decided to go into Cortez and see if your supplies are in, then I’m heading over to the cow camp on the far side of the range. You won’t have to hide in here any longer.”

  Swift relief followed by a disappointment she couldn’t have predicted assailed Jessica. “And when you get back?”

  He held up his hands. “I give up. I won’t touch you again. If you’re so all-fired determined to turn your back on any chance we have together, then so be it. I’m tired of making a fool of myself.” He turned around to leave, then paused with one hand on the knob. “I hope you’ll be happy with your books and your boxes of bones, Jess. Just remember, they won’t keep you warm at night.”

  The door slammed so hard behind him that it echoed in her ears, but it couldn’t drown out the sound of his footsteps as they faded down the hall.

  Chapter Thirteen

  THE MORNING OF the Fourth of July dawned as bright and hot as the last few days had been. True to his promise, Rory Burnett hadn’t shown his face at the ranch house for the past two days, and although Jessica didn’t like to admit it, she found herself listening for his voice and went to the window each time she heard a horse gallop into the yard.

  As long as Rory was gone, she felt comfortable enough to leave her room, visit with Myra, and take her meals with the others. That morning at breakfast, Fred Hench had asked if she could take over feeding a motherless calf from a bottle while he set up the trestle tables that would be used for the covered-dish dinner. Jessica found herself laughing with the first real abandon she’d known in days when the greedy creature nearly pulled the bottle out of her hands as it nursed. It gave her an odd sense of longing to witness something so small and helpless and dependent. When the calf followed her around the barnyard on its knobby legs, she let it trail her to the house so that Myra could watch. Myra was convinced that Methuselah was a far better pet.

  Midmorning the wagons began to arrive. Jessica stood in the shade of the wide overhang and watched as the women, most dressed in simple though colorful gowns, climbed down off of buckboards and offered their covered dishes to Scratchy.

  Myra, standing beside Jessica, mumbled, “No wonder they didn’t call this off. It will be the first good meal we’ve all had in days.”

  Indian men arrived on horseback. Ute women and children crowded into wagons driven by the older boys. Their clothing was much as Jess remembered from her brief time on the reservation, a jumble of styles. She openly admired the silver work and turquoise jewelry some of them wore. As local farmers and ranchers mingled with the Utes, Myra left the porch to join them.

  “Come, Jessica. Let’s see what it is those men gathered around that wagon bed are all bartering for, shall we?” She used the crutch to balance herself as she carefully stepped off the wooden porch.

  Afraid she would run into Rory, Jess denied herself the experience. She’d heard Barney Tinsley call out to someone that Burnett was back and had cut a particularly ornery bull named Arthur out of the herd. She’d listened in on their talk of the upcoming rodeo enough to know the rudiments of what was about to take place that afternoon. The men had bragged about Rory when he wasn’t there to stop them and said he was an accomplished bull rider, but that last year he’d been thrown, knocked out
, and remained unconscious for three days. Wheelbarrow announced with a belly laugh that Rory had finally come around, “fit as a fiddle,” and that he intended to teach that danged bull a lesson this year.

  Beside bull riding there was calf roping, something called bronc busting, a cutting horse contest—during which cowhands and their favorite horses would show how quickly they could cut a calf from the herd—and finally, team roping. All of it sounded dirty and dangerous to Jessica. When the lanky, ever-silent cowboy known only as Gathers was asked to show her his hand and tell how he lost his missing finger “dallying” or fast-tying a rope around his saddle horn during a calf-throwing contest, she decided she was glad she wasn’t going to attend any of the events.

  “Are you certain you won’t come out at all?” Myra asked around noon when the rodeo was about to begin. “They have a few benches set up for the ladies around the corral. You’re spry enough to climb the rails and watch if you choose. I can’t wait to do a few sketches.”

  Jessica had made a rash promise to herself to avoid Rory Burnett at all costs because she didn’t know if she could trust him to keep his word to leave her alone any more than she could trust herself. She kept to her room, trying not to let the noisy crowd sway her from her decision. Just as she was pulling the heavy serape drape over her open window to block out the view, if not the noise, a swift, impatient knock sounded on the door. She knew it was Rory even before she opened it.

  He stood in the hallway, a parcel and what appeared to be a letter in his hand. In a plaid flannel shirt and denim trousers he hadn’t dressed any differently for the celebration than on any other day. His dark eyes were expressionless. “This is for you.”

  Jess stepped back and allowed him to enter. “Thank you.” She reached for the letter, glanced at the handwriting, and recognized it as museum director Gerald Ramsey’s.

  “That was delivered to the Ute reservation. Agent Carmichael had it sent to Cortez. I picked it up when I went in yesterday.”