THE HARDER THEY FALL
Doreen Owens Malek
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Published by
Gypsy Autumn Publications
P.O. Box 383 • Yardley, PA 19067
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Copyright 1993 and 2012
By Doreen Owens Malek
www.doreenowensmalek.com
The author asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher.
First printing April 1993
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Epilogue
About the Author
New Doreen Owens Malek Releases
“The only reason I slept with your brother was because of you,” Helene said softly.
“What do you mean?” Chris murmured.
“I loved Martin, I know I did. But there are all types of love, and I was worried that the gratitude I felt for him was misleading me. I thought if I slept with him it would clear up the confusion.”
Chris seemed to be holding his breath. “Did it?”
Helene closed her eyes. “It... didn’t help. Martin was very sweet, but it wasn’t...”
“Like it is with us,” he finished.
“Yes,” she said in a small voice.
Chris reached her side in two strides and swept her greedily into his arms.
“Wait,” she pleaded. “We have to think–”
“No,” he muttered, kissing the side of her neck. “There’s been too much damn thinking going on around here.” His lips traveled up to her cheek and found her mouth. Helene responded hungrily, giving up, losing herself…
Chapter 1
“So tell me more about your brother,” Helene said, watching as Martin set her suitcase on the bed and then looked briskly around the room, surveying it.
“This guest room hasn’t changed at all since I was last here,” he observed. “Same rug and bedspread. I don’t think Chris goes in much for interior decoration.”
“Martin?” Helene prompted.
“Yes?” he said, glancing at her.
“Your brother. I’ve come all the way out here to Wyoming to meet him and what you’ve said about the man so far could be printed on a postage stamp.”
Martin grinned. “Well, he’ll be back from the branding at five, then you can see for yourself.”
Helene sighed. “You’re being evasive.”
“Lawyer’s habit, Miss Danforth,” Martin replied, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead. “If you’re going to marry me and become Mrs. Murdock you’ll have to get used to it.”
“Be that as it may, I think I should have a little preparation before I meet him. Is he anything like you?”
Martin sat on the edge of the bed and smiled. “No.”
“Your father?”
Martin grinned. “Exactly like my father. Not in looks, but Chris has the same stubbornness and pride and iron will. When he first showed up here we didn’t have to guess whether he was really a member of the family, he had my dad’s personality to a T.”
“When did he come here?”
“When he was fifteen. His mother had just died, as I’ve already told you. He was running wild, a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Everest and all alone in the world. He’d really been alone before that, I guess. His mother had always been more devoted to the bottle than to him. Anyway, he had quite a local reputation, just kid stuff really, fighting and raising hell and getting thrown out of schools.” He grinned. “He was going to make it clear that he didn’t need anybody, you know? Scared stiff, of course, but he would have been shot rather than show it.”
“I gather you won him over,” Helene said gently.
“Oh, it took a while. He had no experience of... kindness. He needed some time to get used to it. I remember once when he’d been arrested for mouthing off to some cop and they were holding him down at the station. It was nothing serious, but his attitude was not helping him get released. A smart-aleck kid—you can appreciate how the cops loved him.”
Helene nodded.
“I came to the police station to bail him out and you should have seen the look on his face when he spotted me. It was just after he had come to live with us and it was obvious to me that he hadn’t expected anybody to help him. After all, no one ever had. I was fresh out of law school and didn’t really know what I was doing anyway, but just my showing up made a great impression on him. He was different after that—he would listen to me instead of flying off the handle the moment I tried to talk to him.”
“And your father?”
“Oh, Dad took to him right away. Chris was everything I wasn’t—bold and handsome, physically brave, close to fearless in fact. And once he calmed down and gave us a chance he was just like an animal who’d been mistreated but then found a loving home. All that anger turned into devotion.” Martin swallowed hard. “He just idolized my dad and my father felt he had to make up for lost time, so they became very close.”
“But weren’t you jealous?” Helene asked.
Martin laughed. “Oh, how could I be? He became my champion! You know that saying: ‘He’s not heavy, he’s my brother.’ That’s Chris. Even today he sees himself as my protector.”
“I thought the older brother was supposed to protect the younger one,” Helene said, chuckling.
“Tell him that. As far as he’s concerned, he’s Mr. Worldly Wise and I’m the chump who’ll give away his socks if he’s not watched.”
“Isn’t that a bit much? No one has felt your generosity more than I have, but even I know you’re not naive.”
“I can see that you’ll get along famously with Chris,” Martin said, rising. “I can’t wait for you to meet him. Now why don’t you shower and change, maybe have a rest, while I go out and find my brother. I want to surprise him, since he’s not expecting us until tomorrow morning. I won’t be gone long.”
Before Helene could reply he was through the door and she heard his footsteps fading down the hall. She wandered over to the skirted vanity table and sat down, studying her reflection in the glass.
She looked tired, and it was no surprise. So much had happened in the past few months that she sometimes wondered how she had been able to deal with it all.
First had come her father’s disgrace, through which she had met Martin. James Danforth had declared bankruptcy at the beginning of the year and Martin was the attorney handling the proceeding. During the auditor’s examination of her father’s complicated financial records, it emerged that he had been embezzling from his company for some time. Unable to endure the thought of his forthcoming exposure, he had killed himself in April. Helene’s mother, always sheltered and delicate, could not handle the scandal and humiliation and had withdrawn into a shadow world, leaving her other child, Helene’s ten year old sister, to fend for herself. The house and property were sold to make a court ordered restitution, leaving the family homeless and vi
rtually destitute, a situation Helene could not hope to remedy by herself on her teacher’s salary. Things had looked very bleak.
Through it all, Martin, an old friend of James Danforth’s, had been a rock to cling to while dangerous waters swirled around the Danforth family. Martin had started his law firm with client recommendations from the senior Danforth, and even when Helene’s father had become a pariah Martin had not abandoned his old friend’s wife and children. He had been so helpful, in fact, that Helene found herself leaning on him, perhaps a lot more than she should have. He had been so kind and caring that she should not have been shocked when he asked her to marry him.
Helene rose and walked to the window, looking out across the expanse of the Murdock family ranch spread beneath her. At first she had refused Martin’s proposal, unsure of her own feelings. She respected and admired him, and she cared deeply for him, but she was confused and afraid that she would be doing him a disservice if she accepted him. But Martin had persisted, offering to take care of her family anyway, even if she didn’t marry him. When Helene protested that she couldn’t allow him to do that, he had said that he was repaying a debt to her father and had ignored her objections. His relentless kindness, his gentleness with her devastated mother and bewildered sister had worn down her resistance. Over Helene’s objections he had established a trust for the surviving Danforths and installed them in a condominium owned by his firm. He had handled all the legal proceedings with a minimum of fuss for the family and generally had made himself indispensable. He was the most wonderful man she had ever known, and two weeks earlier Helene had finally agreed to marry him.
She sighed heavily. Was something missing? she wondered. She had never been in love, so she had no way of judging. She cared for Martin and she wanted to make him happy. Helene bit her lip as she watched a ranch hand cross the lawn beneath her, heading for the stables with a bridle in his hand. She would try very hard to be worthy of Martin.
She wandered into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the taps for a bath. The plane flight out from New Jersey to Wyoming had been rocky and she felt the need for a long, relaxing soak before she met Martin’s brother.
Chris ran the Homestead, the ranch both men had inherited from their father. Martin had explained some time ago that he had never had any interest in ranching, so after graduating from law school in New York he had remained in the East and made a career there. Helene had been startled then to learn that Christopher, the younger brother, was illegitimate. He had gone unacknowledged by his father for more than half his life, since the elder Murdock did not know he existed. Chris had not found out who his father was until his mother had died and her will revealed his parentage. Chris was fifteen by then, and thus had the difficult entrance into the family Martin had just described.
Helene had been fascinated to discover that solid, dependable Martin had such a skeleton in his family closet. Since the one occasion on which he had discussed his half brother he had refused to say anything more, always deflecting her questions lightly but firmly until today. It was clear that Martin wanted Chris to be judged entirely for himself.
Helene unbuttoned her blouse, bending to sample the temperature of the water. She admired Martin’s attempt to be fair, but she felt at a disadvantage. She had been ushered West to meet a complete stranger, one whose opinion was obviously important to Martin, and she had very little to prepare her for encountering her fiance’s only relative. She frowned as she discarded the rest of her clothes.
She was anxious to be liked, for Martin’s sake, but she wasn’t sure how to accomplish that. She could only be herself and hope for the best. She stepped into the tub and turned off the taps.
* * * *
Chris Murdock wiped his streaming face with a towel and lifted his discarded shirt from the railing at his left.
“That’s enough for today, Sam,” he said to the leather skinned ranch hand who was working at his side. “We’ll finish the rest of them tomorrow.”
Sam nodded and gestured for the remainder of the bawling calves to be herded back into the pen. Two other hands removed the steaming branding irons from the fire and put them on a rack to cool.
Chris glanced up at the setting sun, ruffling his damp hair with the towel.
“Plenty warm for June,” Sam observed.
Chris nodded. It would be a long, hot summer.
“It will cool off tonight and be chilly, always does this time of year. Is your brother arriving tomorrow with his girl?” Sam said.
Chris nodded again. Sam noticed the darkening of his expression and thought it best not to pursue the subject.
“I’m going up to the house,” Chris said shortly, tossing the towel onto a pile of discarded burlap feed sacks and tying his shirt around his waist. He strode out of the paddock and onto the path that led up to the sprawling redwood ranch his father had built more than thirty years earlier. As he walked he thought about his coming encounter with Martin’s future bride.
What a fiasco that was going to be. Some chippy had attached herself to his pushover of a brother and he was supposed to rejoice about it. Martin, well off at forty, a whiz at business but never a ladies’ man, was the perfect patsy for a scheming younger woman. Everything Chris had heard about this girl, from her criminally inclined father to her dependent mother and sister, had convinced him that she was using his sympathetic, sweet natured sibling. He himself had benefited from Martin’s goodness—who else would have understood the surly teenager who had surfaced as his half brother, resenting the life of privilege Martin had led while he had been fatherless and poor. Martin never felt supplanted by the hellion upstart his father had grown to adore, and Chris had never forgotten his brother’s generosity. And he was damned if he was going to stand by and let some gold digger young enough to be Martin’s daughter take advantage of it. Martin seemed certain that once Chris met Helene his doubts would vanish, but Chris was not so sure. He might be younger than Martin but he knew a hell of a lot more about women and this smelled like a setup to him.
He rounded the corner of the porch and went to the back pump to rinse off before entering the house.
* * * *
Helene stood in the empty kitchen wondering where Martin was. He had been gone for almost two hours and it was getting on toward dinnertime. She found a copper kettle sitting on the range, filled it at the sink and set it on to boil. She was fidgeting around looking for tea bags when the back door opened and a man strode through it, stopping short when he saw her.
They stared at one another, both of them surprised into silence.
The first impression Helene had was of size; she was tall herself, but this man topped her by several inches. He was dark, with damp and tousled raven hair and olive skin kissed by the sun. His sherry brown eyes narrowed as he examined her, their long lashes matted with moisture. He was naked to the waist, his shoulders broad and spattered with freckles, his upper arms muscular. Helene’s gaze traveled to the black hair spreading over his chest and disappearing in a line under his belt. She looked away deliberately, her face flushing.
“So, who are you?” he finally said, his low voice deep and resonant.
“I’m...I’m Helene,” she stuttered, forcing herself to meet his eyes directly.
“The fiancée?” he said skeptically, folding his arms. “Aren’t you a little early?”
“Yes. And yes. I’ve just been waiting for Martin—he should have been back by now...” she said helplessly.
“I’m Chris. You know, the brother?” he said dryly, stepping forward and extending his hand.
Helene clasped it, feeling a slight shock as her fingers slipped into his callused palm.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you,” he said evenly. “I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow.”
“Yes, we were able to get an earlier flight. There was a cancellation and Martin didn’t see the sense of just hanging around the airport. Perhaps we should have called you, but there really wasn’t any time.”
<
br /> Her voice trailed off as she realized that she was babbling. She pulled her hand back from his uncomfortably. Even though his words had been perfectly polite, she felt something amiss in him. He fairly radiated... what? Embarrassment? Dislike?
“Excuse me a moment,” he said. “I’m not really fit company for a lady.”
Was her imagination working overtime or did she sense a faint sneering emphasis on the last word?
“I’ll be right back,” he added, disappearing into the darkness of the house. Helene turned the gas jet off under the teakettle. When he returned his hair had been combed and he was wearing a deep red polo shirt that emphasized his dark good looks.
Helene could hardly believe that this was Martin’s brother; there was no physical resemblance between the two men at all. Martin was stocky and blond, whereas this man was leaner, taller and Martin’s opposite in coloring as well as build.
“Don’t look much like Martin, do I?” he said, reading her thoughts. “Physically, he takes after the old man. I look like my mother, who was Spanish, and never married to our father, I might add.”
She said nothing. His faintly sardonic air disturbed her.
“She was the maid, you know,” he added in a mocking whisper, then grinned, displaying large white teeth.
“Martin told me about it,” Helene replied, not knowing what else to say.
“Shocking, don’t you think? Has he been unburdening himself of all the family secrets?” Chris inquired.
Helene was spared a reply by Martin’s arrival. He came through the same door Chris had used and Helene was so relieved to see him she almost fell on his neck in greeting.
“There you are!” Martin said triumphantly to his brother, hugging Helene to his side. “I’ve been looking all over this place for you!” He released her and extended his hand to Chris, who seized it and then embraced him, thumping Martin on the back. Helene watched the two men, feeling a little misty at their obvious affection for one another.
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