by Laurie Paige
“I guess you’ve been too busy to answer my calls,” he mentioned casually, giving her a chance to explain.
Her lips thinned and her chin tilted up. “Didn’t you get my letter?”
“The one refusing our offer? Yeah. It didn’t make a lot of sense. We need to talk about it. Now or later?” He glanced at Meg, who pretended not to listen as she spooned green peas onto her son’s plate.
“There’s nothing to discuss. The letter was self-explanatory.”
He didn’t think there was anything about her he could dislike, but that precise, distant New Yorker tone nearly made him lose his cool. He wanted to shake her and dislodge that cloak of icy control. He wanted to know what the hell was wrong, why she’d changed from one weekend to the next.
The waitress came to take his order. “Cheeseburger with everything. Iced tea,” he said. She left quickly, as if sensing the tension at the table.
“Well,” he drawled, putting a twist of humor on the word, “I’m kinda dense. Maybe you’d better spell it out.”
“My father didn’t accept the offer.”
“And that’s that?”
“Yes.”
He took a deep breath. “What happened to the warm, sweet woman I held in my arms last Sunday?” he asked.
The blood rose fast and furious in her face. She stared at him aghast. Then her face closed once more. “She learned not to be a fool for the legendary Kincaid charm.”
“Which tells me exactly nothing,” he snapped in frustration. “Explain that.”
Several heads swiveled in their direction. Meg was listening openly now. Even Gabe was watching him warily as he stuffed a pea into his mouth. Collin leaned forward and stared into Hope’s blue-gray eyes. It was like staring into a smoky veil. Gone were the warm depths he’d wanted to dive into and never come up.
“Call my office tomorrow for an appointment if you wish a meeting on the case,” she said. “Shall I invite my father to attend?”
“You can invite your father to go to hell. What’s happened between us?”
“There is no—”
He pushed his chair back. It screeched across the floor like a scalded cat. Silence fell around them. He was aware of breathing hard, as if he were swimming for all he was worth against an invisible tide that was sucking him in, pulling him into a whirlpool…
“Tell your client we’ll see him in court.” Collin put a sneer on the word, threw a twenty on the table and walked out before he did something he would regret—like kiss the devil out of her until she confessed she was as crazy about him as he was about her.
Exercising all his control, he drove out of town at only slightly above the speed limit. But at the ranch he saddled up a mean gelding and rode hell-bent-for-leather until both he and the horse were too tired to fight each other.
It wasn’t the weekend he’d envisioned.
Seven
“Tell her I want an appointment. Today.”
Hope shook her head at Selma.
“Uh, just a moment, please,” her secretary requested of the angry man on other end of the line.
“I’m not in to him.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kincaid, but Miss Baxter is tied up all day,” Selma reported to Collin.
“Fine. Tell her I’ll be at her office at six o’clock. Be there or else!”
Hope didn’t need for Selma to repeat the message. She’d heard his angry voice from three feet away. She smiled with forced calm at Selma’s wide-eyed look. “I guess I’ll have to meet with him and get it over with.”
She returned to her office, but hiding in the details of the law didn’t work for her today. It hadn’t worked over the weekend, either. After seeing Collin at the Hip Hop, she’d been hopelessly caught up in the memories of their weekend together.
Her heart lurched painfully. The tears she’d refused to shed since hearing the tape rose perilously close to the surface, making her head feel stuffy, as if she had a cold.
Had it ever been said: love hurts?
Only in every mournful cowboy song she’d ever heard since moving West, she answered, cloaking her heart in cynical humor. At twenty she’d been devastated at the loss of her first love, but not now. She knew the heart did indeed go on. She’d learned, oh, yes, she learned…
Forcing herself to concentrate, she went on the Internet and researched precedents where land cases, mostly involving the early railroads, had been overturned by the courts due to fraud. By sheer dint of will, she managed to get through the afternoon.
At five-thirty, she cleared her desk and locked the file cabinet. At five minutes before six, she paced the carpet, her palms sweaty, her fingers displaying a telltale tremor as she waited for Collin. A light knock on the door sent her heart to her throat.
She cleared her voice and said, “Come in.”
Kurt smiled as he entered. “About done? Jordan suggested we run through the details of the case. I thought we might have dinner and discuss it. If you wish,” he added as an afterthought.
Resentment flared. Her wishes counted for nothing. Both of them knew it. Her father wanted Kurt to check out the legal arguments she planned to use.
“I’m busy tonight.” She glanced at her watch. Two minutes before six. She checked the street in front of the building. No sign of Collin yet.
Kurt looked disappointed. “We could have a late dinner,” he suggested.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“Another time then.” He lingered near the door. “What do you think about the Nighthawk trial? It looks pretty bad for the Indian, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Hope didn’t think Kurt was interested in Gavin Nighthawk and his problems. He wanted to know who she was meeting. So he could report to her father? She shrugged. “I don’t think the doctor is capable of cold-blooded murder. Of course, if Christina Montgomery threatened to expose him as the father of her baby… People do strange things when they’re cornered.”
The baby, Alyssa, now lived with her aunt, Rachel Montgomery, who was married to Jack Henderson, private investigator and brother to Gina Henderson, who was married to Trent Remmington.
Tangled webs? Snarled beyond redemption was more like it. And the Kincaids were in every loop and knot.
A movement in the street caught her eye. Collin slammed the door of his pickup and was heading up the sidewalk.
“So that’s who you’re waiting for,” Kurt said.
She whirled. He was standing right behind her. His blue eyes glinted with anger, then it was gone.
“He wanted to discuss the case.”
“Didn’t you send him the letter refusing the offer, as Jordan instructed?”
The resentment flared again. “Since my father has apparently discussed it in detail with you, I’ll leave it to you to figure it out,” she said coldly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have an appointment.”
A vein pounded in his temple, but Kurt smiled in his ingratiating manner and headed for the door just as a sharp rap sounded on it. “Come in,” he invited, opening the door to Collin. “She’s expecting you.”
Hope suppressed a strong urge to throw a crystal vase at the back of his insolent head. “Collin,” she said in acknowledgment of his presence when they were alone.
“Yeah, your archenemy.”
A flush spread swiftly over her cheeks. “Please say whatever is on your mind. It’s been a long day.”
“I agree.” He tossed his hat onto a hook on the antique lowboy and pulled a chair to the side of her desk. “I want to know what’s happened to turn you into a harpy. And don’t give me some cock-and-bull story. I think I deserve the truth from you.”
She remained standing behind her desk, but it didn’t feel like a power position. She sat and pulled her chair closer to the desk. She didn’t face him, but stared at the expensive walnut surface as if studying the wood grain was her top priority at the moment.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Last weekend was a mistake. I failed to keep a pr
oper distance between my job and my…emotions.”
“Oh, hell,” he muttered. “Spare me the dissertation. Why was it a mistake?”
She glared at him. “Because we’re enemies. We’re going to be facing each other in court in a couple of months.”
“That has nothing to do with us.”
“It has everything to do with us. I’m a Baxter. You’re a Kincaid. I was foolish, letting myself succumb to a moment of insanity.”
Her chest ached as if her heart had swollen too large for her body to hold. She pressed a hand between her breasts and saw his gaze follow the movement. Heat and humiliation pounded through her.
“How easy you must have thought it was, to sweep me off my feet. The famous Kincaid charm—”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned the Kincaid charm and accused me of using it on you. Exactly how did I do this?”
“You know,” she accused, meeting his frosty-blue gaze stoically. “When you told your grandfather—”
Too late she realized where her tongue was taking her.
“Told my grandfather what, exactly?”
She licked her lips, stalling for time. She knew he wouldn’t quit until he found out what he wanted to know. “That you had me eating out of your hand.”
He frowned, looking more puzzled than angry. “When did I say this? And how did you hear it?”
Should she say she eavesdropped the weekend she spent at the ranch? “It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t,” he said, softly menacing as he leaned forward. “I never said any such thing to my grandfather or anyone else. I especially wouldn’t say it about you.”
She couldn’t bear for him to lie. “You did. I heard you—”
“How?”
“On the tape my father— On the tape someone gave my father.”
His nostrils flared at the mention of a tape. “I want to hear this tape.”
“No.”
“Yes.” His tone was softer yet. Dangerous. “If I have to tear this building apart, I’ll find it. Shall I start in here or in your father’s office?”
Something in her expression must have given her away.
“Ah, your father’s office. Of course.”
When he stood, she did, too. She caught his arm. “I’ll play the tape for you. If you try to use it in court against my father, I’ll bring up the fact that you were in collusion with your grandfather to destroy our case.”
There was a tense silence.
“Did our weekend mean so little to you that you would use it like that?” he finally asked.
“Did it mean anything to you?” she countered.
He watched her without saying anything for a long moment, then he gave a snort of bitter laughter. “How can I answer when everything I say is used against me?” He opened the door. “The tape,” he reminded her.
Her back stiff, she led the way to her father’s office. Using her key, she unlocked the door and opened the entertainment center. The tape was still in the player. She clicked it on.
Collin’s and Garrett’s voices filled the office. When it ended, she rewound it and turned the machine off. To her amazement, Collin started laughing.
Only icy control allowed her to bear it without screaming or hitting him with the nearest object, which happened to be one of her father’s prized Remmington bronzes. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of watching her lose control.
“So that’s what this is all about,” he said when she closed the cabinet. He came toward her. “Honey, that wasn’t about you. I’m training a filly for my sister. It’s a gift from Granddad for her birthday.” He stopped in front of her. “The tape is doctored. More than one conversation was put together to form it. That last part was from an earlier conversation, long before our weekend, and concerned a change of venue motion. My grandfather thought you might ask for one.”
“Would that be a problem for him?”
“Not at all. Just an inconvenience.”
He looked so earnest, his manner open and honest. She pressed fingertips to her temples where a headache pounded as furiously as her heart. She wanted to believe Collin…. No, that was foolish.
Her father hadn’t lied to her about the love of her young life while she was in college. He wouldn’t lie now. He had no need to. Collin had every reason to gain her trust—
“You don’t believe me,” he said incredulously, breaking into the rapid-fire thoughts filling her mind.
“My father wouldn’t lie,” she began, then stopped at the fury that flashed over his handsome features.
“But a Kincaid would?”
She had no answer. A battle raged inside her—her father on one side, Collin on the other.
“I don’t know,” she whispered miserably. “The tape… Are you denying it’s your voice?”
“No, only that the context is different from the original. I would never deceive you.”
His tone dropped, becoming low, sexy, intimate. The way it had been when they had made love.
“Hope,” he murmured.
When he moved a step toward her, ready to touch her, she instinctively stepped out of reach. He went as still as stone, then dropped his hands.
They stood two feet apart while a mile-deep chasm opened between them. From the street came the honk of a horn, an impatient blare from one weary driver to another. From overhead a plane droned, taking tourists on a jaunt to the awesome Beartooth peaks. Within the building, silence reigned except for the occasional clink of a wastebasket being emptied.
“All right,” he finally said, and walked out.
She watched from the window as he strode to his truck. He stopped and gazed up at her office. She stayed hidden behind the miniblinds until he climbed in and drove off toward the Crazies to the northwest of town.
When he was gone, she sank into the chair. The quiet slithered into her and emptiness surrounded her, as if she had moved into a vacuum. The loneliness came from inside her, as if everything had fled, even her heart. There was nothing left except the necessity of keeping up the facade of living.
She clenched her hands tightly together and felt the beat of time echo in the empty corridors of her soul. After a few minutes she forced herself to move, to gather her purse and briefcase and go home.
“I really appreciate your coming over,” Meg said, dashing around the cottage in a dither.
“You know I love keeping Gabe,” Hope assured her friend. “He’s my favorite fellow. Aren’t you, handsome?” she asked the child, who was splashing happily in the tub.
“No,” he said with a smile.
“He’s already entered the Terrible Twos. No is his favorite word.”
Hope laughed at Meg’s exaggerated grimace. “Okay, big boy, time to get out before you turn into a prune. We’re going to read the story about Spot and the circus.”
“Spot!” Gabe shouted. “Spot!” He splashed water in Hope’s face as he stood and threw his arms upward for her to lift him from the bathtub.
“I won’t be gone long,” Meg promised. “I only have to arrange the baskets at the reception, then I’m done.”
“No problem. Take your time.”
Meg dashed out of the cottage, leaving Hope to care for Gabe.
Hope was secretly thrilled at the trust her friend showed in her by asking her help. She dried the toddler and after some maneuvering got him tucked into his pajamas.
Sitting in the rocker in the nursery, she read two, then three of his favorite books, which she had let him pick out. He fell asleep during the last one.
Tenderness rose in a vast wave of longing as she carried him to the crib. His head lolled against her shoulder. He turned his face into her neck. His sweet baby scent filled her nostrils. She wished…She wished…
She held her breath as emotion, hot and urgent, beat at the walls of her control. A second passed, then another. She pressed her lips together hard, but it was no use.
The tears, the useless, ridiculous tears, came, fall
ing upon Gabe’s feather-soft hair and running into the tender folds of his neck. Once started, they wouldn’t stop.
Cuddling Gabe’s warmth to her, she wept silently for all the things missing from her life—a home, children of her own, a loving mate….
When Gabe stirred in her arms, she carefully put him down and raised the side of the crib. She laid a thin blanket over him and turned out the light.
From the hall, she detoured into the bathroom and splashed water on her face. Looking at her reflection, she was shocked at how wretched she looked. There were circles under her eyes and lines where she didn’t remember having any before. She felt old and used up, as if all her youthful vitality had drained away.
For the first time, she realized, she had no hopes, no expectations that life was going to be any different or any better from what it was at this moment. Some vital part of her had given up on dreams.
She sighed shakily and dried her face, refusing to dwell on a future that appeared very bleak. It never did any good to cry or to obsess over what might have been. She’d learned that long ago at her father’s knee.
Thinking of her father, she returned to the living room with its vibrant array of plants and flowers. Rummaging in her briefcase, she pulled out her opening argument and went over it, word by word. Kate Randall Walker would probably be the judge in the case of Baxter versus Kincaid et al. Hope had to have all her facts and precedents readily at hand. Kate wasn’t known as the “hangin’ judge” for no reason.
Meg smiled as she watched the bride and groom circle the reception, thanking their guests for coming and making each person feel welcome. The baskets of “wild” flowers—cultivated and grown for this purpose—looked lovely, if she did say so herself. She was finished and could go home, but something caused her to linger.
Hope, she thought. Her friend was her usual smiling self and yet…
Meg shook her head, a sense of Hope’s unhappiness haunting her. There was something between Hope and Collin Kincaid and it was a lot more than Hope was telling. Just how involved were they?
