Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Are you having an affair with my husband?”

  “No!”

  “Do you want to?”

  “What the hell kind of person do you think I am, Cathy?” shouted Libby, losing all restraint, flinging her arms out wide and startling the horses, who nickered and danced and tossed their heads.

  “I’m trying to find that out,” said Cathy in measured and droning words. Not once since the conversation began had her eyes left Libby’s mouth.

  “You already know,” retorted her cousin.

  For the first time, Cathy looked ashamed. But there was uncertainty in her expression, too, along with a great deal of pain. “It’s no secret that Stacey wants you, Libby. I’ve been holding my breath ever since you decided to come back, waiting for him to leave me.”

  “Whatever problems you and Stacey have, Cathy, I didn’t start them.”

  “What about all his visits to New York?”

  Libby’s shoulders slumped, and she allowed herself to sink to the fragrant spring-scented ground, where she sat cross-legged, her head down. With her hands she said, “You knew about the divorce, and about Jonathan. Stacey was only trying to help me through—we weren’t lovers.”

  The lush grass moved as Cathy sat down too, facing Libby. There were tears shining in her large green eyes, and her lower lip trembled. Nervously she plied a blade of grass between her fingers.

  “I’m sorry about your little boy,” she said aloud.

  Libby reached out, calmer now, and squeezed Cathy’s hands with her own. “Thanks.”

  A lonely, haunted look rose in Cathy’s eyes. “Stacey wanted us to have a baby,” she confided.

  “Why didn’t you?”

  Sudden color stained Cathy’s lovely cheeks. “I’m deaf!” she cried defensively.

  Libby released her cousin’s hands to sign, “So what? Lots of deaf people have babies.”

  “Not me!” Cathy signaled back with spirited despair. “I wouldn’t know when it cried!”

  Libby spoke slowly, her hands falling back to her lap. “Cathy, there are solutions for that sort of problem. There are trained dogs, electronic devices—”

  “Trained dogs!” scoffed Cathy, but there was more anguish in her face than anger. “What kind of woman needs a dog to help her raise her own baby?”

  “A deaf woman,” Libby answered firmly. “Besides, if you don’t want a dog around, you could hire a nurse.”

  “No!”

  Libby was taken aback. “Why not?” she signed after a few moments.

  Cathy clearly had no intention of answering. She bolted to her feet and was back in the palomino’s saddle before Libby could even rise from the ground.

  After that, they rode without communicating at all. Knowing that things were far from settled between herself and her cousin, Libby tried to concentrate on the scenery. A shadow moved across the sun, however, and a feeling of impending disaster unfolded inside her.

  Jess glared at the screen of the small computer his father placed so much store in and resisted a caveman urge to strike its side with his fist.

  “Here,” purred a soft feminine voice, and Monica Summers, the senator’s curvaceous assistant, reached down to move the mouse and tap the keyboard in a few strategic places.

  Instantly the profit-and-loss statement Jess had been trying to call up was prominently displayed on the screen.

  “How did you do that?”

  Monica smiled her sultry smile and pulled up a chair to sit down beside Jess. “It’s a simple matter of command,” she said, and somehow the words sounded wildly suggestive.

  Jess’s collar seemed to tighten around his throat, but he grinned, appreciating Monica’s lithe, inviting body, her profusion of gleaming brown hair, her impudent mouth and soft gray eyes. Her visits to the ranch were usually brief, but the senator’s term of office was almost over, and he planned to write a long book—with which Monica was slated to help. Until that project was completed, she would be around a lot.

  The fact that the senior senator did not intend to campaign for reelection didn’t seem to faze her—it was common knowledge that she had a campaign of her own in mind.

  Monica had made it clear, time and time again, that she was available to Jess for more than an occasional dinner date and subsequent sexual skirmish. And before Libby’s return, Jess had seriously considered settling down with Monica.

  He didn’t love her, but she was undeniably beautiful, and the promises she made with her skillfully made-up eyes were not idle ones. In addition to that, they had a lot of ordinary things in common—similar political views, a love of the outdoors, like tastes in music and books.

  Now, even with Monica sitting so close to him, her perfume calling up some rather heated memories, Jess Barlowe was patently unmoved.

  A shower of anger sifted through him. He wanted to be moved, dammit—he wanted everything to be the way it was before Libby’s return. Return? It was an invasion! He thought about the little hellion day and night, whether he wanted to or not.

  “What’s wrong, Jess?” Monica asked softly, perceptively, her hand resting on his shoulder. “It’s more than just this computer, isn’t it?”

  He looked away. The sensible thing to do would be to take Monica by the hand, lead her off somewhere private and make slow, ferocious love to her. Maybe that would exorcise Libby Kincaid from his mind.

  He remembered passion-weighted breasts, bared to him on a swimming dock, remembered their nipples blossoming sweetly in his mouth. Libby’s breasts.

  “Jess?”

  He forced himself to look at Monica again. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Did you say something?”

  Mischief danced in her charcoal eyes. “Yes. I offered you my body.”

  He laughed.

  Instead of laughing herself, Monica gave him a gentle, discerning look. “Mrs. Bradshaw tells me that Libby Kincaid is back,” she said. “Could it be that I have some competition?”

  Jess cleared his throat and diplomatically fixed his attention on the computer screen. “Show me how you made this monster cough up that profit-and-loss statement,” he hedged.

  “Jess.” The voice was cool, insistent.

  He made himself meet Monica’s eyes again. “I don’t know what I feel for Libby,” he confessed. “She makes me mad as hell, but…”

  “But,” said Monica with rueful amusement, “you want her very badly, don’t you?”

  There was no denying that, but neither could Jess bring himself to openly admit to the curious needs that had been plaguing him since the moment he’d seen Libby again at the small airport in Kalispell.

  Monica’s right index finger traced the outline of his jaw, tenderly. Sensuously. “We’ve never agreed to be faithful to each other, Jess,” she said in the silky voice that had once enthralled him. “There aren’t any strings tying you to me. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to step back and let Libby Kincaid have a clear field. I want you myself.”

  Jess was saved from answering by the sudden appearance of his father in the study doorway.

  “Oh, Monica—there you are,” Cleave Barlowe said warmly. “Ready to start working on that speech now? We have to have it ready before we fly back to Washington, remember.”

  Gray eyes swept Jess’s face in parting. “More than ready,” she replied, and then she was out of her chair and walking across the study to join her employer.

  Jess gave the computer an unloving look and switched it off, taking perverse pleasure in the way the images on the screen dissolved. “State of the art,” he mocked, and then stood up and strode out of the room.

  The accountants would be angry, once they returned from their coffee break, but he didn’t give a damn. If he didn’t do something physical, he was going to go crazy.

  Back at the stables, Libby surrendered her horse to a ranch hand with relief. Already the muscles in her thighs were aching dully from the ride; by morning they would be in savage little knots.

  Cathy, who probably rode almo
st every day, looked breezy and refreshed, and from her manner no one would have suspected that she harbored any ill feelings toward Libby. “Let’s take a swim,” she signed, “and then we can have lunch.”

  Libby would have preferred to soak in the hot tub, but her pride wouldn’t allow her to say so. Unless a limp betrayed her, she wasn’t going to let Cathy know how sore a simple horseback ride had left her.

  “I don’t have a swimming suit,” she said, somewhat hopefully.

  “That’s okay,” Cathy replied with swift hands. “It’s an indoor pool, remember?”

  “I hope you’re not suggesting that we swim naked,” Libby argued aloud.

  Cathy’s eyes danced. “Why not?” she signed impishly. “No one would see us.”

  “Are you kidding?” Libby retorted, waving one arm toward the long, wide driveway. “Look at all these cars! There are people in that house!”

  “Are you so modest?” queried Cathy, one eyebrow arched.

  “Yes!” replied Libby, ignoring the subtle sarcasm.

  “Then we’ll go back to your house and swim in the pond, like we used to.”

  Libby recalled the blatant way she’d offered herself to Jess Barlowe in that place and winced inwardly. The peaceful solace of that pond had probably been altered forever, and it was going to be some time before she could go there comfortably again. “It’s spring, Cathy, not summer. We’d catch pneumonia! Besides, I think it’s going to rain.”

  Cathy shrugged. “All right, all right. I’ll borrow a car and we’ll drive over and get your swimming suit, then come back here.”

  “Fine,” Libby agreed with a sigh.

  She was to regret the decision almost immediately. When she and Cathy reached the house they had both grown up in, there was a florist’s truck parked out front.

  On the porch stood an affable young man, a long, narrow box in his hands. “Hi, Libby,” he said.

  Libby recognized Phil Reynolds, who had been her classmate in high school. Go away, Phil, she thought, even as she smiled and greeted him.

  Cathy’s attention was riveted on the silver box he carried, and there was a worried expression on her face.

  Phil approached, beaming. “I didn’t even know you were back until we got this order this morning. Aren’t you coming into town at all? We got a new high school….”

  Simmonsville, a dried-up little community just beyond the south border of the Circle Bar B, hadn’t even entered Libby’s thoughts until she’d seen Phil Reynolds. She ignored his question and stared at the box he held out to her as if it might contain something squirmy and vile.

  “Wh-who sent these?” she managed, all too conscious of the suspicious way Cathy was looking at her.

  “See for yourself,” Phil said brightly, and then he got back into his truck and left.

  Libby took the card from beneath the red ribbon that bound the box and opened it with trembling fingers. The flowers couldn’t be from Stacey, please God, they couldn’t!

  The card was typewritten. Don’t be stubborn, sweetness, the message read. Regards, Aaron.

  For a moment Libby was too relieved to be angry. “Aaron,” she repeated. Then she lifted the lid from the box and saw the dozen pink rosebuds inside.

  For one crazy moment she was back in Jonathan’s hospital room. There had been roses there, too—along with mums and violets and carnations. Aaron and his family had sent costly bouquets and elaborate toys, but not one of them had come to visit.

  Libby heard the echo of Jonathan’s purposefully cheerful voice. Daddy must be busy, he’d said.

  With a cry of fury and pain, Libby flung the roses away, and they scattered over the walk in a profusion of long-stemmed delicacy. The silver box lay with them, catching the waning sunlight.

  Cathy knelt and began gathering up the discarded flowers, placing them gently back in their carton. Once or twice she glanced up at Libby’s livid face in bewilderment, but she asked no questions and made no comments.

  Libby turned away and bounded into the house. By the time she had found a swimming suit and come back downstairs again, Cathy was arranging the rosebuds in a cut-glass vase at the kitchen sink.

  She met Libby’s angry gaze and held up one hand to stay the inevitable outburst. “They’re beautiful, Libby,” she said in a barely audible voice. “You can’t throw away something that’s beautiful.”

  “Watch me!” snapped Libby.

  Cathy stepped between her cousin and the lush bouquet. “Libby, at least let me give them to Mrs. Bradshaw,” she pleaded aloud. “Please?”

  Glumly Libby nodded. She supposed she should be grateful that the roses hadn’t been sent by Stacey in a fit of ardor, and they were too lovely to waste, even if she herself couldn’t bear the sight of them.

  Libby remembered the words on Aaron’s card as she and Cathy drove back to the main house. Don’t be stubborn. A tremor of dread flitted up and down her spine.

  Aaron hadn’t been serious when he’d threatened to come to the ranch and “persuade” her to return to New York with him, had he? She shivered.

  Surely even Aaron wouldn’t have the gall to do that, she tried to reassure herself. After all, he had never come to the apartment she’d taken after Jonathan’s death, never so much as called. Even when the divorce had been granted, he had avoided her by sending his lawyer to court alone.

  No. Aaron wouldn’t actually come to the Circle Bar B. He might call, he might even send more flowers, just to antagonize her, but he wouldn’t come in person. Despite his dismissal of Stacey as a “softheaded cowboy,” he was afraid of him.

  Cathy was drawing the car to a stop in front of the main house by the time Libby was able to recover herself. To allay the concern in her cousin’s eyes, she carried the vase of pink roses into the kitchen and presented them to Mrs. Bradshaw, who was puzzled but clearly pleased.

  Inside the gigantic, elegantly tiled room that housed the swimming pool and the spacious hot tub, Libby eyed the latter with longing. Thus, it was a moment before she realized that the pool was already occupied.

  Jess was doing a furious racing crawl from one side of the deep end to the other, his tanned, muscular arms cutting through the blue water with a force that said he was trying to work out some fierce inner conflict. Watching him admiringly from the poolside, her slender legs dangling into the water, was a pretty dark-haired woman with beautiful gray eyes.

  The woman greeted Cathy with an easy gesture of her hands, though her eyes were fixed on Libby, seeming to assess her in a thorough, if offhand, fashion.

  “I’m Monica Summers,” she said, as Jess, apparently oblivious of everything other than the furious course he was following through the water, executed an impressive somersault turn at the poolside and raced back the other way.

  Monica Summers. The name was familiar to Libby, and so, vaguely, was the perfect fashion-model face.

  Of course. Monica was Senator Barlowe’s chief assistant. Libby had never actually met the woman, but she had seen her on television newscasts and Ken had mentioned her in passing, on occasion, over long-distance telephone.

  “Hello,” Libby said. “I’m—”

  The gray eyes sparkled. “I know,” Monica broke in smoothly. “You’re Libby Kincaid. I enjoy your cartoons very much.”

  Libby felt about as sophisticated, compared to this woman, as a Girl Scout selling cookies door-to-door. And Monica’s subtle emphasis on the word “cartoons” had made her feel defensive.

  All the same, Libby thanked her and forced herself not to watch Jess’s magnificent body moving through the bright blue water of the pool. It didn’t bother her that Jess and Monica had been alone in this strangely sensual setting. It didn’t.

  Cathy had moved away, anxious for her swim.

  “I’m sorry if we interrupted something,” Libby said, and hated herself instantly for betraying her interest.

  Monica smiled. Clearly she had not been in swimming herself, for her expensive black swimsuit was dry, and so was her long,
lush hair. Her makeup, of course, was perfect. “There are always interruptions,” she said, and then she turned away to take up her adoring-spectator position again, her gaze following the play of the powerful muscles in Jess’s naked back.

  My thighs are too fat, mourned Libby, in petulant despair. She took a seat on a lounge far removed from Jess and his lovely friend and tried to pretend an interest in Cathy’s graceful backstroke.

  Was Jess intimate with Monica Summers? It certainly seemed so, and Libby couldn’t understand, for the life of her, why she was so brutally surprised by the knowledge. After all, Jess was a handsome, healthy man, well beyond the age of handholding and fantasies-from-afar. Had she really ever believed that he had just been existing on this ranch in some sort of suspended animation?

  Cathy roused her from her dismal reflection by flinging a stream of water at her with both hands. Instantly Libby was drenched and stung to an annoyance out of all proportion to the offense. Surprising even herself, she stomped over to the hot tub, flipped the switch that would make the water bubble and churn, and after hurling one scorching look at her unrepenting cousin, slid into the enormous tile-lined tub.

  The heat and motion of the water were welcome balm to Libby’s muscles, if not to her spirit. She had no right to care who Jess Barlowe slept with, no right at all. It wasn’t as though she had ever had any claim on his affections.

  Settling herself on a submerged bench, Libby tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and tried to pretend that she was alone in that massive room with its sloping glass roof, lush plants and lounges.

  The fact that she was sexually attracted to Jess Barlowe was undeniable, but it was just a physical phenomenon, certainly. It would pass.

  All she had to do to accelerate the process was allow herself to remember how very demeaning Aaron’s lovemaking had been. And remember she did.

  After Libby had caught her husband with the first of his lovers, she had moved out of his bedroom permanently, remaining in his house only because Jonathan, still at home then, had needed her so much.

  Before her brutal awakening, however, she had tried hard to make the rapidly failing marriage work. Even then, bedtime had been a horror.