Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

Finally Cathy sniffled and turned back to offer a shaky smile. “I didn’t come over here to fight with you,” she said clearly. “I’m going to Kalispell, and I wanted to know if you would like to come with me.”

  Libby agreed readily, and after changing her clothes and leaving a quick note for Ken, she joined Cathy in the shiny blue Ferrari.

  The ride to Kalispell was a fairly long one, and by the time Cathy and Libby reached the small city, they had reestablished their old, easy relationship.

  They spent the day shopping, had lunch in a rustic steak house bearing the Circle Bar B brand, and then started home again.

  “Are you really going to give that to Jess?” Cathy asked, her eyes twinkling when she cast a look at the bag in Libby’s lap.

  “I may lose my courage.” Libby frowned, wondering what had possessed her to buy a T-shirt with such an outlandish saying printed on it. She supposed she’d hoped that the gesture would penetrate the barrier between herself and Jess, enabling them to talk.

  “Take my advice,” said Cathy, guiding the powerful car off the highway and onto the road that led to the heart of the ranch. “Give him the shirt.”

  “Maybe,” said Libby, looking off into the sweeping, endless blue sky. A small airplane was making a graceful descent toward the Circle Bar B landing strip.

  “Who do you suppose that is?” Libby asked, catching Cathy’s attention with a touch on her arm.

  The question was a mistake. Cathy, who had not, of course, heard the plane’s engine, scanned the sky and saw it. “Why don’t we find out?”

  Libby scrunched down in her seat, sorry that she had pointed out the airplane now. Suppose Stacey was aboard, returning from his business trip, and there was another uncomfortable scene at the airstrip? Suppose it was Jess, and he either yelled at Libby or, worse yet, pretended that she wasn’t there?

  “I’d rather go home,” she muttered.

  But Cathy’s course was set, and the Ferrari bumped and jostled over the road to the landing strip as though it were a pickup truck.

  The plane came to a smooth stop as Cathy parked at one side of the road and got out of the car, shading her eyes with one hand, watching. Libby remained in her seat.

  She had, it seemed, imagined only part of the possible scenario. The pilot was Jess, and his passenger was a wan, tight-lipped Stacey.

  “Oh, God,” said Libby, sinking even farther into the car seat. She would have kept her face hidden in her hand forever, probably, if it hadn’t been for the crisp, insistent tap at her window.

  Having no other choice, she rolled the glass down and squinted into Jess Barlowe’s unreadable, hard-lined face. “Come with me,” he said flatly.

  Libby looked through the Ferrari’s windshield, saw Stacey and Cathy standing nearby, a disturbing distance between them. Cathy was glaring angrily into Stacey’s face, and Stacey was casting determined looks in Libby’s direction.

  “They need some time alone,” Jess said, his eyes linking fiercely, warningly, with Libby’s as he opened the car door for her.

  Anxious not to make an obviously unpleasant situation any worse, Libby gathered up her bags and her purse and got out of the car, following along behind Jess’s long strides. His truck, which she hadn’t noticed before, was parked close by.

  Without looking back at Stacey and Cathy, Libby slid gratefully into the dusty front seat and closed her eyes. Not until the truck was moving did she open them, and even then she couldn’t quite bring herself to look at the man behind the wheel.

  “That was touching,” he said in a vicious rasp.

  Libby stiffened in the seat, staring at Jess’s rock-hard profile now. “What did you say?”

  The powerful shoulders moved in an annoying shrug. “Your wanting to meet Stacey on his triumphant return.”

  It took Libby a moment to absorb what he was implying. When she had, she slammed him with the paper bag that contained the T-shirt she’d bought for him in Kalispell and hissed, “You bastard! I didn’t know Stacey was going to be on that plane, and if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have been there at all!”

  “Sure,” he drawled, and even though he was grinning and looking straight ahead at the road, there was contempt in his tone and a muscle pulsing at the base of his jaw.

  Libby felt tears of frustration rise in her eyes. “I thought you believed me,” she said.

  “I thought I did, too,” Jess retorted with acid amusement. “But that was before you showed up at the landing strip at such an opportune moment.”

  “It was Cathy’s idea to meet the plane!”

  “Right.”

  The paper bag crackled as Libby lifted it, prepared to swing.

  “Do that again and I’ll stop this car and raise blisters on your backside,” Jess warned, without so much as looking in her direction.

  Libby lowered the bag back to her lap, swallowed miserably, and turned her attention to the road. She did not believe Jess’s threat for one moment, but she felt childish for trying to hit him with the bag. “Cathy told me there was a fight at the stables this morning,” she dared after a long time. “What happened?”

  Another shrug, as insolent as the first, preceded his reply. “One of Ken’s men said something I didn’t like.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like didn’t it bother me to sleep with my brother’s mistress.”

  Libby winced, sorry for pressing the point. “Oh, God,” she said, and she was suddenly so tired, so broken, and so frustrated that she couldn’t hold back her tears anymore. She covered her face with both hands and turned her head as far away from Jess as she could, but the effort was useless.

  Jess stopped the truck at the side of the road, turned Libby easily toward him. Through a blur, she saw the Ferrari race past.

  “Let go of me!”

  Jess not only didn’t let go, he pulled her close. “I’m sorry,” he muttered into her hair. “God, Libby, I don’t know what comes over me, what makes me say things to hurt you.”

  “Garden-variety hatred!” sniffled Libby, who was already forgiving him even though it was against her better judgment.

  He chuckled. “No. I couldn’t ever hate you, Libby.”

  She looked up at him, confused and hopeful. Before she could think of anything to say, however, there was a loud pop from beneath the hood of the truck, followed by a sizzle and clouds of steam.

  “Goddammit!” rasped Jess.

  Libby laughed, drunk on the scent of him, the closeness of him, the crazy paradox of him. “This crate doesn’t exactly fit your image, you know,” she taunted. “Why don’t you get yourself a decent car?”

  He turned from glowering at the hood of the truck to smile down into her face. “If I do, Kincaid, will you let me make love to you in the backseat?”

  She shoved at his immovable chest with both hands, laughing again. “No, no, a thousand times no!”

  Jess nibbled at her jawline, at the lobe of her ear, chuckled huskily as she tensed. “How many times no?”

  “Maybe,” said Libby.

  Just when she thought she would surely go crazy, Jess drew back from his brazen pursuits and smiled lazily. “It is time I got a new car,” he conceded, with an evil light glistening in his jade eyes. “Will you come to Kalispell and help me pick it out, Libby?”

  A thrill skittered through Libby’s body and flamed in her face. “I was just there,” she protested, clutching at straws.

  “It shouldn’t—” Jess bent, nipped at the side of her neck with gentle teeth “—take long. A couple of days at the most.”

  “A couple of days!”

  “And nights.” Jess’s lips were scorching their way across the tender hollow of her throat. “Think about it, Lib. Just you and me. No Stacey. No Cathy. No problems.”

  Libby shivered as a knowledgeable hand closed over one of her breasts, urging, reawakening. “No p-problems?” she echoed.

  Jess undid the top button of her blouse.

  Libby’s breath caught in her throat; she fel
t heat billowing up inside her, foaming out, just as it was foaming out of the station wagon’s radiator. “Wh-where would we s-stay?”

  Another button came undone.

  Jess chuckled, his mouth on Libby’s collarbone now, tasting it, doing nothing to cool the heat that was pounding within her. “How about—” the third button gave way, and Libby’s bra was displaced by a gentle hand “—one of those motels…with the…vibrating beds?”

  “Tacky,” gasped Libby, and her eyes closed languidly and her head fell back as Jess stroked the nipple he’d just found to pebble-hard response.

  “My condo, then,” he said, and his lips were sliding down from her collarbone, soft, soft, over the upper rounding of her bare breast.

  Libby gasped and arched her back as his lips claimed the distended, hurting peak. “Jess…oh, God…this is a p-public road!”

  “Umm,” Jess said, lapping at her now with the tip of his tongue. “Will you go with me, Libby?”

  Wild need went through her as he stroked the insides of her thighs, forcing her blue-jeaned legs apart. And all the while he plied her nipple into a panic of need. “Yes!” she gasped finally.

  Jess undid the snap of her jeans, slid his hand inside, beneath the scanty lace of her panties.

  “Damn you,” Libby whispered hoarsely, “s-stop that! I said I’d go—”

  He told her what else she was about to do. And one glorious, soul-scoring minute later, she did.

  Red in the face, still breathing heavily, Libby closed her jeans, tugged her bra back into place, buttoned her blouse. God, what if someone had come along and seen her letting Jess…letting him play with her like that?

  All during the ride home, she mentally rehearsed the blistering diatribe he deserved to hear. He could just go to Kalispell by himself, she would tell him. If he thought for one damned minute that he was going to take her to his condo and make love to her, he was sadly mistaken, she would say.

  “Be ready in half an hour,” Jess told her at her father’s front door.

  “Okay,” Libby replied.

  After landing the Cessna in Kalispell and making arrangements to rent a car, which turned out to be a temperamental cousin to Jess’s truck, they drove through the small city to an isolated tree-dense property beyond. There were at least a million stars in the sky, and as the modest rental rattled over a narrow wooden bridge spanning a creek, Libby couldn’t help giving in a little to the romance of it all.

  Beyond the bridge, there were more trees—towering ponderosa pines, whispering, shiny-leaved birches. They stopped in the driveway of a condominium that stood apart from several others. Jess got out of the car, came around to open Libby’s door for her.

  “Let’s get rid of the suitcases and go out for something to eat,” he said.

  Libby’s stomach rumbled inelegantly, and Jess laughed as he caught her hand in his and drew her up the darkened walk to the front door of the condominium. “That shoots my plans for a little fun before dinner,” he teased.

  “There’s always after,” replied Libby, lifting her chin.

  Chapter 8

  The inside of the condominium was amazingly like Jess’s house on the ranch. There was a loft, for instance, this one accessible by both stairs and, of all things, a built-in ladder. Too, the general layout of the rooms was much the same.

  The exceptions were that the floors were carpeted rather than bare oak, and the entire roof was made of heavy glass. When we make love here, I’ll be able to look up and see the stars, Libby mused.

  “Like it?” Jess asked, setting the suitcases down and watching her with discerning, mirthful green eyes.

  Libby was uncomfortable again, doubting the wisdom of coming here now that she was faced with the realities of the situation. “Is this where you bring all your conquests?”

  Jess smiled, shrugged.

  “Well?” prodded Libby, annoyed because he hadn’t even had the common decency to offer a denial.

  He sat down on the stone ledge fronting the fireplace, wrapped his hands around one knee. “The place does happen to be something of a love nest, as a matter of fact.”

  Libby was stung. Dammit, how unchivalrous could one man be? “Oh,” she said loftily.

  “It’s my father’s place,” Jess said, clearly delighting in her obvious curiosity and the look of relief she couldn’t quite hide.

  “Your father’s?”

  Jess grinned. “He entertains his mistress here, from time to time. In his position, he has to be discreet.”

  Libby was gaping now, trying to imagine the sedate, dignified Senator Barlowe cavorting with a woman beneath slanted glass roofs, climbing ladders to star-dappled lofts.

  Jess’s amused gaze had strayed to the ladder. “It probably puts him in mind of the good old days—climbing into the hayloft, and all that.”

  Libby blushed. She was still quite disturbed by that ladder, among other things. “You did ask the senator’s permission to come here, didn’t you?”

  Jess seemed to know that she had visions of Cleave Barlowe carrying some laughing woman over the threshold and finding the place already occupied. “Yes,” he assured her in a teasing tone, rising and coming toward her. “I said, ‘Mind if I take Libby to your condo, dear old dad, and take her to bed?’ And he said—”

  “Jess!” Libby howled, in protest.

  He laughed, caught her elbows in his hands, kissed her playfully, his lips sampling hers, tugging at them in soft entreaty. “My father is in Washington,” he said. “Stop worrying.”

  Libby pulled back, her face hot, her mind spinning. “I’m hungry!”

  “Umm,” replied Jess, “so am I.”

  Why did she feel like a sixteen-year-old on the verge of big trouble? “Please…let’s go now.”

  Jess sighed.

  They went, but they were back, arms burdened with cartons of Chinese food, in less than half an hour.

  While Jess set the boxes out on the coffee table, Libby went to the kitchen for plates and silverware. Scribbled on a blackboard near the sink, she saw the surprising words: “Thanks, Ken. See you next week. B.”

  A soft chuckle simmered up into Libby’s throat and emerged as a giggle. Could it be that her father, her serious, hardworking father, had a ladyfriend who visited him here in this romantic hideaway? Tilting her head to one side, she considered, grinned again. “Naaaah!”

  But Libby’s grin wouldn’t fade as she carried plates, forks, spoons and paper napkins back into the living room.

  “What’s so funny?” Jess asked, trying to hide the hunk of sweet-and-sour chicken he had just purloined from one of the steaming cartons.

  “Nothing,” said Libby, catching his hand and raising it to his mouth. Sheepishly he popped the tidbit of chicken onto his tongue and chewed.

  “You lie,” Jess replied, “but I’m too hungry to press the point.”

  While they ate, Libby tried to envision what sort of woman her father would be drawn to—tall, short? Quiet, talkative?

  “You’re mulling over more than the chow mein,” accused Jess presently in a good-natured voice. “Tell me, what’s going on in that gifted little head?”

  Libby shrugged. “Romance.”

  He grinned. “That’s what I like to hear.”

  But Libby was thinking seriously, following her thoughts through new channels. In all the years since her mother’s death, just before Cathy had come to live on the ranch, she had never imagined Ken Kincaid caring about another woman. “It isn’t as though he’s old,” she muttered, “or unattractive.”

  Jess set down his plate with a mockingly forceful thump. “That does it. Who are you talking about, Kincaid?” he demanded archly, his wonderful mouth twitching in the effort to suppress a grin.

  She perused him with lofty disdain. “Am I correct in assuming that you are jealous?”

  “Jealous as hell,” came the immediate and not-so-jovial response.

  Libby laughed, laid a hand on his knee. “If you must know, I was thinking
about my father. I’ve always kept him in this neat little cubicle in my mind, marked ‘Dad.’ If you can believe it, it has just now occurred to me that he’s a man, with a life, and maybe even a love, of his own.”

  Mirth danced in Jess’s jade eyes, but if he knew anything about Ken’s personal life, he clearly wasn’t going to speak of it. “Pass the eggroll,” he said diplomatically.

  When the meal was over, Libby’s reflections began to shift to matters nearer the situation at hand.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said pensively as she and Jess cleared the coffee table and started toward the kitchen with the debris. “I must be out of my mind.”

  Jess dropped the cartons and the crumpled napkins into the trash compactor. “Thanks a lot,” he said, watching her attentively as she rinsed the plates and silverware and put them into the dishwasher.

  Wearing tailored gray slacks and a lightweight teal-blue sweater, he was devastatingly attractive. Still, the look Libby gave him was a serious, questioning one. “What is it with us, Jess? What makes us behave the way we do? One minute, we’re yelling at each other, or not speaking at all, and the next we’re alone in a place like this.”

  “Chemistry?”

  Libby laughed ruefully. “More like voodoo. So what kind of car are you planning to buy?”

  Jess drew her to him; his fingertips were butterfly-light on the small of her back. “Car?” he echoed, as though the word were foreign.

  There was a soft, quivering ache in one corner of Libby’s heart. Why couldn’t things always be like this between them? Why did they have to wrangle so fiercely before achieving this quiet accord? “Stop teasing me,” she said softly. “We did come here to buy a car, you know.”

  Jess’s hands pulled her blouse up and out of her slacks, made slow-moving, sensuous circles on her bare back. “Yes,” he said in a throaty rumble. “A car. But there are lots of different kinds of cars, aren’t there, Libby? And a decision like this can’t be made in haste.”

  Libby closed her eyes, almost hypnotized by the slow, languid meter of his words, the depth of his voice. “N-no,” she agreed.

  “Definitely not,” he said, his mouth almost upon hers. “It could take two—or three—days to decide.”