Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

  “The firewater isn’t going to change the fact that you love Libby Kincaid, Jess,” he said reasonably. “Making her life and your own miserable isn’t going to change it, either.”

  Love Libby Kincaid? Impossible. The strange needs possessing him now were rooted in his libido, not his heart. Once he’d had her—and have her he would, or go crazy—her hold on him would be broken. “I’ve never loved a woman in my life,” he said.

  “Fool. You’ve loved one woman—Libby—since you were seven years old. Exactly seven years old, in fact.”

  Jess turned, studying his father quizzically. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Your seventh birthday,” recalled Cleave, his eyes far away. “Your mother and I gave you a pony. First time you saw Libby Kincaid, you were out of that saddle and helping her into it.”

  The memory burst, full-blown, into Jess’s mind. A pinto pony. The new foreman arriving. The little girl with dark blue eyes and hair the color of winter moonlight.

  He’d spent the whole afternoon squiring Libby around the yard, content to walk while she rode.

  “What do you suppose Ken would say if I went over there and asked to see his daughter?” Jess asked.

  “I imagine he’d shoot you, after today.”

  “I imagine he would. But I think I’ll risk it.”

  “You’ve made enough trouble for one day,” argued Cleave, taking obvious note of his son’s inebriated state. “Libby needs time, Jess. She needs to be close to Ken. If you’re smart, you’ll leave her alone until she has a chance to get her emotional bearings again.”

  Jess didn’t want his father to be right, not in this instance, anyway, but he knew that he was. Much as he wanted to go to Libby and try to make things right, the fact was that he was the last person in the world she needed or wanted to see.

  “Better?”

  Libby smiled at Ken as she came into the kitchen, freshly showered and wrapped in the cozy, familiar chenille robe she’d found in the back of her closet. “Lots better,” she answered softly.

  Her father was standing at the kitchen stove stirring something in the blackened cast-iron skillet.

  Libby scuffled to the table and sat down. It was good to be home, so good. Why hadn’t she come sooner? “Whatever you’re cooking there smells good,” she said.

  Ken beamed. In his jeans and his western shirt, he looked out of place at that stove. He should, Libby decided fancifully, have been crouching at some campfire on the range, stirring beans in a blue enamel pot. “This here’s my world-famous red-devil sauce,” he grinned, “for which I am known and respected.”

  Libby laughed, and tears of homecoming filled her eyes. She went to her father and hugged him, needing to be a little girl again, just for a moment.

  Chapter 3

  Libby nearly choked on her first taste of Ken’s taco sauce. “Did you say you were known and respected for this stuff, or known and feared?”

  Ken chuckled roguishly at her tear-polished eyes and flaming face. “My calling it ‘red devil’ should have been a clue, dumplin’.”

  Libby muttered an exclamation and perversely took another bite from her bulging taco. “From now on,” she said, chewing, “I’ll do the cooking around this spread.”

  Her father laughed again and tapped one temple with a calloused index finger, his pale blue eyes twinkling.

  “You deliberately tricked me!” cried Libby.

  He grinned and shrugged. “Code of the West, sweetheart. Grouse about the chow, and presto—you’re the cook!”

  “Actually,” ventured Libby with cultivated innocence, “this sauce isn’t too bad.”

  “Too late,” laughed Ken. “You already broke the code.”

  Libby lowered her taco to her plate and lifted both hands in a gesture of concession. “All right, all right—but have a little pity on me, will you? I’ve been living among dudes!”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  Libby shrugged and took up her taco again. “I tried. Have you been doing your own cooking and cleaning all this time?”

  Ken shook his head and sat back in his chair, his thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle. “Nope. The Barlowes’ housekeeper sends her crew down here once in a while.”

  “What about the food?”

  “I eat with the boys most of the time, over at the cook shack.” He rose, went to fill two mugs from the coffeepot on the stove. When he turned around again, his face was serious. “Libby, what happened today? What upset you like that?”

  Libby averted her eyes. “I don’t know,” she lied lamely.

  “Dammit, you do know. You fainted, Libby. When Jess carried you in here, I—”

  “I know,” Libby broke in gently. “You were scared. I’m sorry.”

  Carefully, as though he feared he might drop them, Ken set the cups of steaming coffee on the table. “What happened?” he persisted as he sat down in his chair again.

  Libby swallowed hard, but the lump that had risen in her throat wouldn’t go down. Knowing that this conversation couldn’t be avoided forever, she managed to reply, “It’s complicated. Basically, it comes down to the fact that Stacey’s been telling those lies.”

  “And?”

  “And Jess believes him. He said…he said some things to me and…well, it must have created some kind of emotional overload. I just gave out.”

  Ken turned his mug idly between his thumb and index finger, causing the liquid to spill over and make a coffee stain on the tablecloth. “Tell me about Jonathan, Libby,” he said in a low, gentle voice.

  The tears that sprang into Libby’s eyes were not related to the tang of her father’s red-devil taco sauce. “He died,” she choked miserably.

  “I know that. You called me the night it happened, remember? I guess what I’m really asking you is why you didn’t want me to fly back there and help you sort things out.”

  Libby lowered her head. Jonathan hadn’t been her son, he’d been Aaron’s, by a previous marriage. But the loss of the child was a raw void within her, even though months had passed. “I didn’t want you to get a firsthand look at my marriage,” she admitted with great difficulty—and the shame she couldn’t seem to shake.

  “Why not, Libby?”

  The sound Libby made might have been either a laugh or a sob. “Because it was terrible,” she answered.

  “From the first?”

  She forced herself to meet her father’s steady gaze, knew that he had guessed a lot about her marriage from her rare phone calls and even rarer letters. “Almost,” she replied sadly.

  “Tell me.”

  Libby didn’t want to think about Aaron, let alone talk about him to this man who wouldn’t understand so many things. “He had…he had lovers.”

  Ken didn’t seem surprised. Had he guessed that, too? “Go on.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes, you can. If it’s too much for you right now, I won’t press you. But the sooner you talk this out, Libby, the better off you’re going to be.”

  She realized that her hands were clenched in her lap and tried to relax them. There was still a white mark on her finger where Aaron’s ostentatious wedding ring had been. “He didn’t care,” she mourned in a soft, distracted whisper. “He honestly didn’t care….”

  “About you?”

  “About Jonathan. Dad, he didn’t care about his own son!”

  “How so, sweetheart?”

  Libby dashed away tears with the back of one hand. “Th-things were bad between Aaron and me b-before we found out that Jonathan was sick. After the doctors told us, it was a lot worse.”

  “I don’t follow you, Libby.”

  “Dad, Aaron wouldn’t have anything to do with Jonathan from the moment we knew he was dying. He wasn’t there for any of the tests and he never once came to visit at the hospital. Dad, that little boy cried for his father, and Aaron wouldn’t come to him!”

  “Did you talk to Aaron?”

  Remembered frustration made Libby’s ch
eeks pound with color. “I pleaded with him, Dad. All he’d say was, ‘I can’t handle this.’”

  “It would be a hell of a thing to deal with, Lib. Maybe you’re being too hard on the man.”

  “Too hard? Too hard? Jonathan was terrified, Dad, and he was in pain—constant pain. All he asked was that his own father be strong for him!”

  “What about the boy’s mother? Did she come to the hospital?”

  “Ellen died when Jonathan was a baby.”

  Ken sighed, framing a question he was obviously reluctant to ask. “Did you ever love Aaron Strand, Libby?”

  Libby remembered the early infatuation, the excitement that had never deepened into real love and had quickly been quelled by the realities of marriage to a man who was fundamentally self-centered. She tried, but she couldn’t even recall her ex-husband’s face clearly—all she could see in her mind was a pair of jade-green eyes, dark hair. Jess. “No,” she finally said. “I thought I did when I married him, though.”

  Ken stood up suddenly, took the coffeepot from its back burner on the stove, refilled both their cups. “I don’t like asking you this, but—”

  “No, Dad,” Libby broke in firmly, anticipating the question all too well, “I don’t love Stacey!”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  The truth was that Libby hadn’t been sure, not entirely. But that ill-advised episode with Jess at the end of the swimming dock had brought everything into clear perspective. Just remembering how willingly she had submitted to him made her throb with embarrassment. “I’m sure,” she said.

  Ken’s strong hand came across the table to close over hers. “You’re home now,” he reminded her, “and things are going to get better, Libby. I promise you that.”

  Libby sniffled inelegantly. “Know something, cowboy? I love you very much.”

  “Bet you say that to all your fathers,” Ken quipped. “You planning to work on your comic strip tomorrow?”

  The change of subject was welcome. “I’m six or eight weeks ahead of schedule on that, so I’m not worried about my deadline. I think I’ll go riding, if I can get Cathy to go with me.”

  “I was looking forward to watching you work. What’s your process?”

  Libby smiled, feeling sheltered by the love of this strong and steady man facing her. She explained how her cartoons came into being, thinking it was good to talk about work, to think about work.

  Disdainful as he had been about her career, it was the one thing Aaron had not been able to spoil for her.

  Nobody’s fool, Ken drew her out on the subject as much as he could, and she found herself chattering on and on about cartooning and even her secret hope to branch out into portraits one day.

  They talked, father and daughter, far into the night.

  “You deserve this,” Jess Barlowe said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A first-class hangover pounded in his head and roiled in his stomach, and his face looked drawn, as though he’d been hibernating like one of the bears that sometimes troubled the range stock.

  Grimly he began to shave, and as he wielded his disposable razor, he wondered if Libby was awake yet. Should he stop at Ken’s and talk to her before going on to the main house to spend a day with the corporation accountants?

  Jess wanted to go to Libby, to tell her that he was sorry for baiting her, to try to get their complex relationship—if it was a relationship—onto some kind of sane ground. However, all his instincts told him that his father had been right the day before: Libby needed time.

  His thoughts strayed to Libby’s stepson. What would it be like to sit by a hospital bed, day after day, watching a child suffer and not being able to help?

  Jess shuddered. It was hard to imagine the horror of something like that. At least Libby had had her husband to share the nightmare.

  He frowned as he nicked his chin with the razor, blotted the small wound with tissue paper. If Libby had had her husband during that impossible time, why had she needed Stacey?

  Stacey. Now, there was someone he could talk to. Granted, Jess had not been on the best of terms with his older brother of late, but the man had a firsthand knowledge of what was happening inside Libby Kincaid, and that was reason enough to approach him.

  Feeling better for having a plan, Jess finished his ablutions and got dressed. Normally he spent his days on the range with Ken and the ranch hands, but today, because of his meeting with the accountants, he forwent his customary blue jeans and cotton workshirt for a tailored three-piece suit. He was still struggling with his tie as he made his way down the broad redwood steps that led from the loftlike second floor of his house to the living room.

  Here there was a massive fireplace of white limestone, taking up the whole of one wall. The floors were polished oak and boasted a number of brightly colored Indian rugs. Two easy chairs and a deep sofa faced the hearth, and Jess’s cluttered desk looked out over the ranchland and the glacial mountains beyond.

  Striding toward the front door, in exasperation he gave up his efforts to get the tie right. He was glad he didn’t have Stacey’s job; not for him the dull task of overseeing the family’s nationwide chain of steak-house franchises.

  He smiled. Stacey liked playing the dude, doing television commercials, traveling all over the country.

  And taking Libby Kincaid to bed.

  Jess stalked across the front lawn to the carport and climbed behind the wheel of the truck he’d driven since law school. One of these times, he was going to have to get another car—something with a little flash, like Stacey’s Ferrari.

  Stacey, Stacey. He hadn’t even seen his brother yet, and already he was sick of him.

  The truck’s engine made a grinding sound and then huffed to life. Jess patted the dusty dashboard affectionately and grinned. A car was a car was a car, he reflected as he backed the notorious wreck out of his driveway. The function of a car was to transport people, not impress them.

  Five minutes later, Jess’s truck chortled to an asthmatic stop beside his brother’s ice-blue Ferrari. He looked up at the modernistic two-story house that had been the senator’s wedding gift to Stacey and Cathy and wondered if Libby would be impressed by the place.

  He scowled as he made his way up the curving white-stone walk. What the hell did he care if Libby was impressed?

  Irritated, he jabbed one finger at the special doorbell that would turn on a series of blinking lights inside the house. The system had been his own idea, meant to make life easier for Cathy.

  His sister-in-law came to the door and smiled at him somewhat wanly, speaking with her hands. “Good morning.”

  Jess nodded, smiled. The haunted look in the depths of Cathy’s eyes made him angry all over again. “Is Stacey here?” he signed, stepping into the house.

  Cathy caught his hand in her own and led him through the cavernous living room and the formal dining room beyond. Stacey was in the kitchen, looking more at home in a three-piece suit than Jess ever had.

  “You,” Stacey said tonelessly, setting down the English muffin he’d been slathering with honey.

  Cathy offered coffee and left the room when it was politely declined. Distractedly Jess reflected on the fact that her life had to be boring as hell, centering on Stacey the way it did.

  “I want to talk to you,” Jess said, scraping back a chrome-and-plastic chair to sit down at the table.

  Stacey arched one eyebrow. “I hope it’s quick— I’m leaving for the airport in a few minutes. I’ve got some business to take care of in Kansas City.”

  Jess was impatient. “What kind of man is Libby’s ex-husband?” he asked.

  Stacey took up his coffee. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I just do. Do I have to have him checked out, or are you going to tell me?”

  “He’s a bastard,” said Stacey, not quite meeting his brother’s eyes.

  “Rich?”

  “Oh, yes. His family is old-money.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Do?�
��

  “Yeah. Does he work, or does he just stand around being rich?”

  “He runs the family advertising agency; I think he has a lot of control over their other financial interests, too.”

  Jess sensed that Stacey was hedging, wondered why. “Any bad habits?”

  Stacey was gazing at the toaster now, in a fixed way, as though he expected something alarming to pop out of it. “The man has his share of vices.”

  Annoyed now, Jess got up, helped himself to the cup of coffee he had refused earlier, sat down again. “Pulling porcupine quills out of a dog’s nose would be easier than getting answers out of you. When you say he has vices, do you mean women?”

  Stacey swallowed, looked away. “To put it mildly,” he said.

  Jess settled back in his chair. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

  “I mean that he not only liked to run around with other women, he liked to flaunt the fact. The worse he could make Libby feel about herself, the happier he was.”

  “Jesus,” Jess breathed. “What else?” he pressed, sensing, from Stacey’s expression, that there was more.

  “He was impotent with Libby.”

  “Why did she stay? Why in God’s name did she stay?” Jess mused distractedly, as much to himself as to his brother.

  A cautious but smug light flickered in Stacey’s topaz eyes. “She had me,” he said evenly. “Besides, Jonathan was sick by that time and she felt she had to stay in the marriage for his sake.”

  The spacious sun-filled kitchen seemed to buckle and shift around Jess. “Why didn’t she tell Ken, at least?”

  “What would have been the point in that, Jess? He couldn’t have made the boy well again or transformed Aaron Strand into a devoted husband.”

  The things Libby must have endured—the shame, the loneliness, the humiliation and grief, washed over Jess in a dismal, crushing wave. No wonder she had reached out to Stacey the way she had. No wonder. “Thanks,” he said gruffly, standing up to leave.

  “Jess?”

  He paused in the kitchen doorway, his hands clasping the woodwork, his shoulders aching with tension. “What?”

  “Don’t worry about Libby. I’ll take care of her.”