Accidental Heiress

by Lauren Nichols

  Casey froze, stone-still, as her disbelieving gaze encountered a tall, sandy-blond cowboy coming out of her room. His eyes widened, and she wasn’t sure which of them was more shocked. Her silk blouse dangled from his right hand, and he held a bottle of peach-scented body lotion in the other—a bottle he’d apparently taken from the collection on her dresser.

  The prodigal had returned, Casey realized, heat flooding her cheeks. A very familiar prodigal, wearing a tan cowboy hat and a belt with a flashy turquoise-and-silver belt buckle.

  Ross Dalton spoke first, a smile touching his lips. “Wow,” he said softly. “Looks like I should have popped the big question right off the bat, instead of asking you to two-step first.” His gaze ran the length of her, lingering on her wet legs. “That brother of mine is one lucky son of a—”

  “Downstairs. Now. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

  Casey and Ross both jerked in the direction of the low, harsh voice. Either they’d been too stunned by each other’s presence to hear Jess’s arrival, or the carpeted staircase had absorbed the sounds of his footsteps.

  Ross recovered quickly from his surprise. “I’ve got some explaining to do?” He chuckled, ignoring the anger in Jess’s voice. “You move a woman into the nursery, bag and baggage, and you want an explanation from me?”

  Casey saw a nerve leap in Jess’s jaw and his eyes harden. “Mrs. Marshall is not a woman, she’s our new hand.”

  Ross’s brash grin froze, then faded. “Mrs....Marshall?”

  Jess sent Casey a scathing look. “I need to talk to my brother in private before dinner. Did you amend and sign our agreement?”

  Casey clutched the front of her towel, even more aware of the small amount of skin it covered, now that Jess was the man doing the looking. “It’s on your desk.” She snatched her blouse and lotion from Ross. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to get dressed.”

  “Yeah, why don’t you do that?” Jess snapped; then, thin-lipped, he motioned for Ross to precede him down the stairs.

  Casey walked into her room with as much poise as she could muster, then closed the door behind her, dropped her things and brought both hands to her face. This was turning out to be a nightmare already, and she hadn’t even mucked out her first smelly stall yet. Arid the way Jess had glared at her, that would undoubtedly be the first job he assigned her. Dammit, first he’d told her he wouldn’t be back until five—giving her, she’d thought, time for a little privacy. Then, an hour later, she was standing in a hall with Daltons on either side of her, and only a skimpy towel keeping embarrassment from becoming sheer mortification. Starting to quake now, Casey whirled and hurriedly locked the door. Good heavens, she could have been...

  No. No, she didn’t have to worry about rape or any other harm coming to her. After all she’d been through with Jess, if he wanted to rape or strangle her, he would have done it already. And what little she knew of the gambler brother told her he wasn’t much of a threat. The way his bravado had ebbed when he heard her name, he seemed almost cowardly. A good-time Charlie, full of laughter and wit, but without the underlying strength that was woven through his brother. Still, living in a house with two men presented more than a few problems.

  Shedding her towels, Casey grabbed a bra and panties from the colonial dresser, then pulled a navy jogging suit from the closet. She dressed quickly. Not exactly haute couture, but it would have to do until her street clothes were a little more presentable.

  She needed to make some phone calls. First to the motel to cancel her reservation, then to her lawyer to bring him up to date, and finally to her mother. She wasn’t looking forward to that call. Grace Hamilton’s value system was just short of puritanical; she had strong views about the way proper young women conducted their lives. A proper young woman didn’t move in with a man before she was married, and she positively didn’t sleep in a room that was sandwiched between the bedrooms of two young, virile ranchers—not ever, no matter what the reason.

  Casey picked up her hair dryer, located a wall socket, then plugged it in, finger-combing her hair as the warm air flowed around her. For the life of her, she couldn’t imagine how her mother had ever relaxed about sex long enough to bring two daughters into the world.

  Jess paced the den angrily, seeing the uneasiness in Ross’s expression and the stance that said the kid was lying through his teeth. Twenty-eight years old, and he was still trying to bluff his way through life.

  “All right,” Jess said, his bootheels hitting the oak floor harder with every step, “if you say the signature’s a fake, then it’s a fake. I’ll phone Mark Walker in the morning and tell him to dig up a handwriting expert, and we’ll take Mrs. Marshall to court.” Jess stopped pacing and whipped an arm in the air. “Hell, forget Mark—we’ll get ourselves one of those high-priced L.A. lawyers and sue the Guccis right off her feet. Fraud, mental cruelty—anything our man can come up with. It’ll cost us, but when we get that big settlement, we’ll be able to pay the attorneys fees and still have plenty of dough left to—”

  Ross paled and sank heavily to the arm of the leather sofa. “All right, you can cut the theatrics. I signed it.”

  Jess drew a weary breath. It was about time. “Tell me.”

  Ross glanced about bleakly, his expression a mixture of frustration, guilt and embarrassment. He spoke haltingly. “I...I don’t know how it happened. Things were going pretty well...then suddenly I was into some dangerous men for forty-six grand. They wanted their money... and they knew I had assets that could be liquidated.”

  Jess’s heart fell as he eased down on the edge of the desk. “Broken straw.”

  “Yeah. But I was scared to tell you, and then I met this doctor in one of the lounges. He was an old guy—fifty or so—and he was in town for a medical convention. We got to talking, and...well, he lent me the money. We found an attorney and had some papers drawn up.” Ross paused, still avoiding Jess’s eyes. “When I didn’t hear from the guy after a few months, then a year, then longer, I thought maybe he just...meant for me to have the money.”

  Staring in disbelief, Jess struggled to contain his building rage. “You thought he meant for you to have the money?” He stopped, reined in his emotions and continued. “Okay, you said you were into these men for forty-six thousand dollars. Why does the note say sixty?”

  Ross studied the hat he held between the spread of his knees. “I needed a stake. I thought I could win the money back and pay the old dude before the year was up—maybe even before he went back east.” Ross glanced up, remembered excitement replacing the remorse in his eyes. “I was even ahead for a while. I was holding three aces, and—”

  Jess lifted a silencing hand; he’d heard the same song and dance too many times before. “I never dreamed you’d go this far,” he began quietly, feeling a sick churning in his gut. “For the love of God, this is our home—” His control snapped. “Our heritage!”

  Skirting the desk, Jess yanked an old ledger from a drawer and threw it down on the desk blotter. “The first entry in this ledger is June eighteenth, 1889. Did you forget that when you were living it up in Vegas? A hundred years of Dalton-owned land.” Jess’s voice went low with contempt. “And you give it to a stranger to cover gambling debts.”

  Ross shot to his feet, and they faced each other squarely across the desk. “Spare me the history lesson, Jess! I messed up, okay? We can get a loan at the bank and pay her off. Sixty grand is chicken feed.”

  “It’s only chicken feed if you aren’t already in debt. Or maybe you’ve forgotten that the January blizzard cost us the big barn and we had to rebuild, or that beef prices have been down for three straight years—or that the tractor’s on its last legs—” Jess spun away to run a hand through his hair, then jerked back. “Do you even look at the figures I show you?”

  Ross glanced away, silent for a moment. Then, with visible reluctance, he looked back at Jess, his voice subdued. “We could strip, couldn’t we? A year doesn’t go by without somebody pointing ou
t that we could be sitting on a fortune in coal.”

  Jess felt the blood boil in his veins. Ross knew his stand on this, and it wasn’t going to change. “No god damn way.”

  “Great,” Ross quipped, on the defensive again. “Then the way I see it, we only have one alternative, big brother. You wine her, dine her and take her to bed. You keep her so busy, she won’t have time to think about anything but the next time you crawl between her sheets.”

  Jess dropped into the swivel chair behind him, bone-tired and wanting this hell to be over. His headache was coming back. “Oh, yeah, that’ll work. You’re just full of good ideas, aren’t you, Junior?”

  Ross bristled at Jess’s use of his childhood name. “Don’t call me Junior.”

  “Then don’t act like a six-year-old in a candy store. For once in your life, take some responsibility for what you’ve done.” Jess studied him for a long, grave moment, hating the words he knew he had to say. “This time you’ve gone too far. Your gambling isn’t penny-ante anymore, Ross, it’s a full-blown addiction. Get yourself some help.”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “It wasn’t a request,” Jess snapped. “Get some help, or get out.”

  Ross’s eyes narrowed as he faced Jess over the desk. “You can’t throw me off my own land.”

  It was the second time in twenty-four hours that he’d heard the same line. First from Casey, now from Ross. “I’m sorry,” Jess said, a knot of regret forming in his throat. “But until the debt’s repaid, it’s not yours anymore. It belongs to the woman upstairs.”

  Ross pushed his hat down on his sandy hair and stormed away, shoving the pocket doors open so hard they smacked into the walls. “You want me out? Fine. I’ll be at the bunkhouse.”

  Jess vaulted from his chair and strode around the desk. “Dammit, Ross, don’t twist this around! I don’t want you out, I want you to call somebody!”

  But Jess’s words fell on deaf ears, and Ross stomped out of the house.

  Casey stood at the top of the stairs, her knees weak and her stomach a mass of butterflies. Maybe this wasn’t the best time to make those phone calls. Her hair dryer had blotted out most of the argument, but some of the muffled sounds of their anger had still made it upstairs.

  She watched Jess stroll tiredly to the door and stand—observing, she imagined—as his brother stalked down to one of the outbuildings she’d noticed earlier. After a long moment, he gave the door jamb a resigned smack, then turned around and saw her.

  Exhaling audibly, he ambled to the newel post at the bottom of the staircase. The hollows beneath his cheekbones and the bruise on his chin seemed more pronounced tonight. “I guess you heard that.”

  “Only after the doors opened,” she said quietly. “It was pretty loud.”

  “Yeah,” he murmured, then shrugged and said, “are you hungry?”

  No, she was famished. The last solid food she’d eaten was dinner in Bozeman yesterday, after she picked up her rental car. Still, with everything that had transpired in the past twenty-four hours—and now the split with his brother—she knew food had to be the last thing on Jess’s mind. “Hungry? No, not really.”

  Then, amazingly...he smiled. He was obviously worn out, his defenses were shot, and it was a pathetic effort at best. But it was still a smile, and Casey was stunned that such a lame expression of kindness could make her feel so good.

  “Mrs. Marshall—” Jess sighed “—if this arrangement of ours is ever going to work, you have to stop lying to me. Now come on down here. Let’s see what we can scare up for supper.”

  Supper was corn bread and stick-to-your-ribs chili. It was a little spicy, but Casey was so hungry she ate like a longshoreman. Conversely, Jess picked at his food, his mind on his brother. It was an easy assumption for Casey to make, since every time he heard—or thought he heard—a truck door slam or an engine start up, he was on his feet and looking out the kitchen window. They didn’t linger over coffee and dessert, the way she and Dane once had. The second she was finished, Jess scooped up their bowls and milk glasses and rinsed them in the sink.

  “Leave the dishes,” he said, drying his hands and tossing the towel back on the rack. “I’ll do them when I get back.”

  When he got back? Casey followed him into the hall. He didn’t say where he was going, and she didn’t ask. “No, you made dinner, I’ll get the dishes. Your—your chili was good.”

  He answered with the required “Thank you” and snatched his hat from the hutch. “TV reception isn’t the best, but we do get a few channels. And there are books in the den, if you feel like reading.”

  “Okay.” After that unguarded smile in the hall a while ago, she’d hoped that he had worked through his anger and was ready to make the best of the situation. She’d been wrong. How different things had been last night, in Dusty Barrows’s parking lot. Before he knew who she was, he’d been attentive, even interested. Conversation hadn’t been so strained. Then the memory of his beautifully carved mouth so close to hers made her breath catch, and Casey had to admit that things had been strained then, too—just a different kind of strained.

  “I need to make a long-distance phone call,” she said quietly. “My mother’s probably getting worried.”

  Jess tugged his hat low and grabbed a jacket from the clothes tree in the hall—the down parka she’d covered up with last night. He stopped in the act of pulling it on to frown curiously and sniff the collar. Then he straightened abruptly, a question in his dark eyes.

  “I guess that’s my perfume,” she admitted. “I think I told you it was cold last night.”

  “Yeah. You did.” He reached for the doorknob.

  “Jess? The long-distance call?”

  Jess turned around slowly, his long, slow look seeming to say she’d helped herself to everything else of his, why bother asking permission to use the phone? Casey swallowed uncomfortably as she watched something bitter touch his lips and his shoulders lift in a what-the-hell shrug. “Why not?” he said after a humorless laugh. “Mi casa es su casa, right?” Then he yanked open the door and stepped into cool air and western twilight.

  Much later, Casey lay stiff as a board in her darkened room, listening to the soft thud of bootheels coming up the stairs. He’d finally returned. He was coming to bed. “Relax,” she whispered to herself. It was natural to feel uneasy; these were unnatural, uneasy times—and she would get through them. She didn’t have much choice, after signing that agreement this afternoon.

  His weary footfalls drew nearer now...paused outside her door. Casey’s gaze flew to the doorknob.

  It’s just that man-woman thing, she told herself when he moved on. That jittery feeling of awareness that sharpened your nerves to needle points and turned your stomach to jelly. Any woman sleeping next door to a strange man would feel it. Especially when the door that joined their two rooms had no lock.

  Jess’s bedroom door opened. Closed. And though Casey tried to blot out his sounds, she was so keenly attuned to them, she heard everything. The shuffle of leather and the thunk of boots being kicked off...the loose clink of a belt buckle...the faint groan of the mattress as it took his weight. She swallowed, recalling the placement of his bed when she’d looked in on him last night...remembered that if not for the studs and plaster between them, their headboards would touch.

  Shivering, Casey shook off the disturbing images of the previous night and tiptoed to the old bentwood rocker next to the window, pulling the patchwork quilt from the bottom of the bed along with her. The window was old and high, wood-framed and double-paned. Quietly she curled into the rocker and raised the venetian blind all the way, giving herself a panoramic view of the night sky and the vast Montana landscape. Beyond the glass, a silver three-quarter moon outlined the steep, craggy ridges of the mountains to the west, drenching their snow capped peaks in luminous white. The stars peeping from the thin cloud cover were brighter than she recalled seeing since her childhood.

  Sweet Lord, what a lonely place, she
thought. And she’d be here for four long months. She’d given her word, and she wouldn’t go back on it.

  Her mom’s reservations, frantic and emotional, came back to Casey, and she could imagine her slim, pretty mother clutching the telephone in a death grip. Grace Hamilton tended to be dramatic when she was upset. “Casey, you can’t do this. Dane must be rolling over in his grave. What are you going to do for clothes?”

  “I’ll buy some here. Jess said I could put them on his bill in town, but—”

  “You call Mr. Dalton Jess? Catherine, you cannot allow this man to put clothes on your back. It’s...I don’t know, it’s just not proper.”

  “Mom—” she’d sighed wearily “—if you’d just let me finish, I was about to say that I had no intention of letting him pay for anything. I’ll be fine. I have my own room, and there’s a lock on the door.” Well, there was a lock on one of the doors, anyway, she’d thought.

  “Casey if a man wants in, no lock will keep him out.”

  “Mother, stop worrying. This man gets nauseated at the very sight of me. Now, how are things there? Paul was upset when I left. Have you agreed to marry him yet?”

  Her mother had hesitated for a moment, and her voice had been troubled when she continued. “Casey, you know it’s too soon. And this conversation is not about Paul and me.”

  “Mom,” she’d murmured kindly, “Daddy’s been gone for six years, and Paul loves you. Say yes.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “You...you know how I feel about widows moving on to new relationships before a decent interval has passed. It’s disrespectful to your father’s memory. He and I had something very rare.”

  “And I’m not saying you have to forget that. But you could have something special—in a very different way—with Paul. Daddy would approve. And neither you or Paul is getting any younger.” The silence at the other end of the line had stretched on uncomfortably long. “Mom?”