Winter's Proposal

by Sherryl Woods

  “But I told him—” Jenny turned pale. “Whoops.”

  Janet felt as if she’d been whacked over the head by a two-by-four. Of course! That explained those odd undercurrents she’d felt with Harlan. With her thoughts in turmoil, the odor of meat burning barely even registered. At the moment the fate of the hamburgers was the last thing on her mind.

  “You told him what?” she asked carefully.

  “Nothing,” Jenny muttered, backing away from the stove and clearly trying to put some distance between herself and her mother at the same time.

  “Jennifer!”

  “Okay, I might have let it slip that his ranch was sitting on Lone Wolf’s land.”

  “You might have?”

  “I did, all right?” she said belligerently. “I don’t know what difference it makes. He was going to find out sooner or later anyway.”

  Janet clung to her temper by a thread. “But it might have been nice if he found out about it from me. Now he must think I’ve just been playing some sort of sick game by hanging around out there. He probably thinks we’re out to betray him.”

  “Aren’t we?” Jenny asked simply. “Isn’t that why we’re in this godawful state, instead of back home in New York, where we belong?”

  With that she whirled and ran from the kitchen, leaving Janet to take the burned hamburgers from the stove. No longer the least bit interested in food, she dumped the frying pan, burgers and all, into the sink, then went out to the front porch to sit in a rocker and think.

  Should she go out to White Pines first thing in the morning and tell Harlan everything? But, if he already knew most of it, why had he been trying to back her into a corner about their future earlier today? Why hadn’t he been blasting her as the deceitful traitor she felt like? Would she ever understand the workings of this man’s mind? Or any man’s, for that matter?

  And why, dear heaven, did it suddenly seem to matter so much to her that Harlan Adams not think ill of her? Was it possible that he had come to mean more to her than that elusive dream she’d formulated as a child and held on to so tightly ever since?

  She could still recall Lone Wolf telling her about the Comanches known as Penateka or Honey-Eaters, who’d occupied a stretch of the Comancheria from Edwards Plateau to Cross Timbers. His telling had been further preservation of the oral history of his forefathers.

  Even now she shook with indignation at his description of the 1840 meeting in San Antonio during which the Comanche leaders who’d come to discuss peace had been slaughtered in what had come to be known as the Council House Massacre. There had been nothing after that to indicate to the tribe that Texans could ever be trusted.

  Slowly but surely settlers had been given more and more of the Comanche lands, until Lone Wolf’s ancestors had been forced from Texas altogether. Could she ever achieve retribution for something that had occurred so long ago and even now seemed so complex? Everything she’d read indicated it would be difficult, if not impossible, to make any legal claim.

  The questions kept her up most of the night. The answers didn’t come at all.

  * * *

  In the morning, she didn’t have a chance to act on any of the myriad possibilities that had occurred to her. When she and Jenny got to White Pines, Harlan was nowhere to be found. It was Cody who waited for them on the front porch.

  “Come on, short stuff,” he said to Jenny, who brightened immediately. “You and I are going out to look for stray calves this morning.”

  “Oh, wow!” Jenny said, clearly pleased to be asked to help her idol with such an important task. It was the first time Janet had seen a smile on her face since their argument the night before.

  “Where’s your father?” Janet asked Cody, hoping that her heart wasn’t sitting in plain view on her sleeve.

  He shrugged. “Beats me. He left me a note to take Jenny with me today. Didn’t say where he was heading or when he’d be back. He took his plane, though. He might have had business over in Dallas or something.”

  “Oh.” Janet fought against the tide of disappointment that washed through her as Cody headed over to the two horses he’d saddled and had tethered to a fence rail. She should have been relieved, but she wasn’t. She brushed a kiss across Jenny’s forehead, ignoring her daughter’s embarrassed protest. “Have a good day, pumpkin. See you tonight.”

  “Yeah, Mom. Bye,” Jenny said, already rushing off to keep up with Cody’s long strides.

  Feeling abandoned on all fronts, Janet stood where she was until Cody and Jenny had ridden off. Only after they’d gone did she admit to herself that she would rather have had Harlan screaming at her than ignoring her this way. There was little doubt in her mind that he’d deliberately made it a point not to be at home this morning.

  Maybe he really had had unexpected business to take care of, just as Cody had suggested, she consoled herself as she drove into town. Right, she scoffed right back. Without telling Cody the details? No way. He was very careful not to step on his son’s managerial toes. No, the truth of it was, he was avoiding her because his discovery of her treachery was eating at him.

  She resigned herself to waiting until Harlan turned up again before settling matters between them. The delay wouldn’t make much difference. She doubted she’d have any clearer an idea how to handle it hours or days from now than she did right this minute.

  * * *

  Harlan had spent half the night after his aborted meeting with Janet reading through every book in his library on the Comanches and their days in the southern Great Plains. Nothing he found there was conclusive proof that Janet’s ancestral claim to his land was solid. In fact, it seemed to him that Lone Wolf’s father had probably been a typical nomadic hunter, before being sent off to the reservation in Oklahoma.

  It had been well into the wee hours of the morning when he’d decided to do a little more investigating by going to Oklahoma to see what he could discover there. His meetings with folks at the Bureau of Indian Affairs and with tribal elders who agreed to see him were inconclusive, as well. He sensed that Janet would never find the proof she sought unless she hoped to stake her claim for all Comanches and not just for her great-grandfather and his descendants.

  Still, the meetings had given him much to think about, a historical perspective on his own family’s actions when they’d moved to Texas to flee the war that had destroyed their home in the South. In seizing an opportunity for themselves, had they stolen it from others? He found he could understand Janet’s actions far more clearly now and he could do so without feeling the rancor of betrayal.

  Perhaps, if Janet ever opened up to him, they could reach some sort of compromise. In the meantime, though, he’d decided that she enriched his life too much for him to walk away without fighting for their future. It was a decision weighed and reached with years of maturity, rather than the angry, instantaneous, hot-blooded reaction he might have had a couple of decades earlier.

  Also, the more he thought about the desperate plea he had made to Janet to run away with him, the more he realized that she had been exactly right to turn him down. The place to court her was right in Los Piños, in plain view. He didn’t ever want a soul to think he was sneaking around with her because he wasn’t proud to be seen with her. There were too many people ready with quick bias for him to be adding to that sort of rotten speculation about her morals or his own.

  As soon as he’d set down his plane at the local airfield, he marched straight down Main Street, walked into her office and hauled her off to have dinner at DiPasquali’s.

  “Harlan,” she protested, even as she hurried to keep pace with him. “What about Jenny? She’s going to be waiting for me at White Pines. She’ll be worried.”

  “I called Melissa from the airport. Jenny will have dinner with her and Cody. Sharon Lynn and baby Harlan love having her around. You can pick her up there.”

  She halted in her tracks and
scowled at him. “Do you always have to manipulate everything to get your own way?”

  He grinned unrepentantly. “Always,” he assured her. “Get used to it.”

  He linked her arm through his and gently, but insistently, escorted her the rest of the way to the restaurant. It seemed to him her footsteps dragged a bit reluctantly, but at least she didn’t bolt on him.

  Inside DiPasquali’s, he directed her to a table right smack in front of the window, in plain view of anybody coming or going inside the restaurant or passing by on the street outside. She regarded him with a curious look, but sat where he’d indicated.

  Gina DiPasquali joined them at once with their menus, winking at Janet as she handed one to her. If he hadn’t already known about their conspiracy over that dinner at Janet’s, he would have wondered what the two of them were up to.

  “Are you thinking of having the lasagna?” Harlan inquired innocently, his gaze fixed on Janet’s face.

  Gina chuckled as Janet’s cheeks turned pink. “Caught you, didn’t he?”

  “Before he’d taken two bites,” Janet admitted. “Then he rubbed it in for the rest of the evening.”

  “I did not,” Harlan protested, feigning indignation. “But I couldn’t very well let you go on thinking you’d put one over on me, though, could I? It would have set a dangerous precedent. I might never have gotten the upper hand again.”

  “Who says you ever had it,” she shot right back. “Besides, no gentleman would have embarrassed a hostess by pointing out what he suspected. You should have been oohing and aahing over my supposed culinary skills.”

  Gina rolled her eyes. “If you were counting on that, I could have told you not to bother. Harlan’s only a gentleman when it suits his purposes.”

  “Besides which, you’d have felt guilty as sin if I offered high praise for a dish you knew you hadn’t prepared,” he asserted. “I was just saving you that.”

  “How considerate,” Janet retorted a trifle sourly.

  Gina apparently decided to let them resolve the issue of etiquette they were debating, because she stuffed her order book back into her pocket.

  “You two can sit here and battle wits from now till the cows come home,” she said. “Let me choose dinner tonight, so you won’t have something more to quibble about. I’ll have Tony fix you something special.”

  “Perfect,” Janet said.

  Harlan decided she was apparently no more eager to choose from the menu than she was to cook in her own kitchen. It was a wonder she wasn’t skin and bones.

  When Gina had gone, he did an appreciative survey of Janet. Whatever her disinterest in food, she managed to have a perfectly rounded figure that could fill a man with lust. He dragged his attention away and stared at the ceiling in what was only a partially successful attempt to bring his hormones under control. The reaction only confirmed what he’d guessed earlier, that he couldn’t walk away from her.

  “Everything okay?” she inquired with a half smile that was all too knowing.

  He caught the undisguised mirth in her eyes. “Fine,” he lied. “How about you? You looked put-out when I turned up at your office a little while ago. Something on your mind?”

  “Just your habit of appearing without notice and expecting me to drop everything to accompany you. Haven’t you ever heard of the telephone?”

  “Sure, but it’s harder for you to turn me down face-to-face.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Watching you stammer around for excuses a few times.”

  “I never stammer,” she retorted irritably. “Still, I can’t keep taking off at the drop of a hat, just because you get some whim to feed me.”

  “You have a lot of work piled up?” he inquired doubtfully.

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Sure it is. No sense in you sitting around in your office pretending to be busy, when you could be having a nice meal with me.”

  “What about a nice meal with my daughter?”

  “Who’d cook?”

  She frowned at him. “You really do have a rotten streak, Harlan Adams.”

  “Just speaking the gospel truth. It’s not even hearsay. Don’t forget I saw the state of your kitchen that night and you never even dared to put that meal on the table. Makes me wonder how the two of you have survived this long. Must have been the takeout available from all those fancy New York restaurants.”

  She looked a little like a chicken who’d had her feathers ruffled by that comment, but she kept her mouth clamped firmly shut. Harlan watched the temper flare in her eyes, then slowly diminish before she finally seized on another topic.

  “Where did you go so early this morning?” she asked in a perfectly neutral tone.

  He grinned. “So, you did miss me. I’m gratified to hear it.”

  “I did not say I missed you. It was a simple question, Harlan. Just a little polite conversation, okay? If it’s some big secret, just say so.”

  He got the impression he might be pushing her a little too hard with his teasing. He opted for giving her the truth, or at least a select portion of it. “I had some unexpected business to take care of.”

  “I thought Cody took care of all the ranch’s business these days.”

  “Doesn’t mean I can’t stick my nose into it, when I’m of a mind to,” he said. “By the way, did I mention you’re looking particularly beautiful today. That red blouse suits you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, but her gaze narrowed suspiciously. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?”

  “I could ask you the same thing with more cause,” he retorted, enjoying the unmistakable guilt that darkened her eyes.

  He decided there was something to be said for tormenting her. Maybe he wouldn’t tell her about that trip to Oklahoma, not until she came clean with him. Surely a man was entitled to some secrets from a woman who had the ability to tie him in knots without even trying.

  Gina played straight into his hands by turning up just then with a platter of antipasto and two glasses of Chianti. It got them both off the hook, which was probably to the good, he decided as he watched Janet nervously shoving a couple of olives around on her plate. Let her stew for a bit.

  “You get any clients today?” he asked after a while.

  She looked up, her expression revealing unmistakable gratitude for the change to a more innocuous topic. “As a matter of fact, yes. Mule came by.”

  Harlan’s mouth gaped. “What the devil did he want?”

  “That’s a matter of client confidentiality,” she said, obviously pleased that she’d not only stunned him, but stirred his curiosity.

  “Well, I’ll be damned. You sure he didn’t want to get in a few quick hands of poker? He might have been running short of cash, since he’s had that garage of his closed for so blasted long.”

  “Sorry,” she said blithely. “I can’t talk about it.”

  “Mule tells me most of his business anyway,” he said, trying to coax her into telling, when he knew perfectly well that she was too ethical to ever say a word. He was enjoying aggravating her too much to stop just yet.

  “Then you’ll have to ask him about this,” she retorted. “Now, stop prying.”

  “Just making polite small talk,” he shot right back, echoing her earlier jab.

  She rolled her eyes. He couldn’t help chuckling at her exasperated expression. “You are a treasure, you know that, don’t you?”

  The compliment seemed to throw her off-balance. “Where did that come from?” she asked in a tone that said she didn’t think she deserved it.

  “Just an observation. A man’s entitled to make one every now and again, isn’t he?”

  “Of course.”

  “Shall I make a few more?” he inquired, leaning forward and lowering his voice to a seductive whisper.

  She swallo
wed hard and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

  He grinned. “How come?”

  “Because I don’t think this is the time or the place to be discussing whatever it is you have on your mind.”

  “Now that’s an interesting bit of speculation on your part,” he observed, trying to keep the amusement out of his tone. “Just what is it you think I have on my mind that would be unsuitable for discussion in a public place?”

  She blushed furiously. “Never mind. Perhaps I was wrong.”

  Harlan shook his head. “Now, you don’t strike me as a woman who admits lightly to being wrong. Maybe you ought to say what’s on your mind. Could just be you’re right on track.”

  “Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “A gentleman—”

  “We’ve already established that I’m no gentleman, not when it comes to affairs of the heart, so to speak.”

  He allowed his gaze to sweep over her, lingering long enough to keep her color high and her nerves jittery. The game turned on him, though. The next thing he knew his own heartbeat was racing and the blood was rushing straight to a portion of his anatomy where its unmistakable effect could prove downright embarrassing. He wanted her with an urgency that drove out all other thoughts. Visions of taking her here and now took up residence in his brain and clamored for action.

  Apparently he’d been wrong about one thing, though. He was just enough of a gentleman not to act on such a desperate, wicked longing. But Janet Runningbear could thank her lucky stars that he’d chosen DiPasquali’s for dinner tonight instead of White Pines. He doubted he’d have been anywhere near so restrained in the privacy of his own home.

  He met her gaze and thought he read a mix of passion and uncertainty in those dark brown depths. Soon, he silently promised her and himself. He would claim her soon.

  As if she could read his mind, an audible sigh eased through her. A sigh of satisfaction perhaps? Or maybe anticipation? Whichever it was, Harlan could only share in the sentiment.