Part of the Bargain

by Linda Lael Miller

  Ken was unconscious, and there were tubes going into his nostrils, an IV needle in one of his hands. His chest and right shoulder were heavily bandaged, and there were stitches running from his right temple to his neck in a crooked, gruesome line.

  “Oh, God,” whimpered Cathy.

  Libby caught her cousin’s arm firmly in her hand and faced her. “Don’t you dare fall apart in here, Cathy Barlowe,” she ordered. “He would sense how upset you are, and that would be bad for him.”

  Cathy trembled, but she squared her shoulders, drew a deep breath and then nodded. “We’ll be strong,” she said.

  Libby went to the bedside, barely able to reach her father for all the equipment that was monitoring and sustaining him. “I hear you beat up on a bear,” she whispered.

  There was no sign that Ken had heard her, of course, but Libby knew that humor reached this man as nothing else could, and she went on talking, berating him softly for cruelty to animals, informing him that the next time he wanted to waltz, he ought to choose a partner that didn’t have fur.

  Before an insistent nurse came to collect Ken’s visitors, both Libby and Cathy planted tender kisses on his forehead.

  Stacey, Jess and Cleave were waiting anxiously when they reached the waiting room again.

  “He’s going to live,” Libby said, and then the room danced and her knees buckled and everything went dark.

  She awakened to find herself on a table in one of the hospital examining rooms, Jess holding her hand.

  “Thanks for scaring the hell out of me,” he said softly, a relieved grin tilting one corner of his mouth. “I needed that.”

  “Sorry,” Libby managed, touching the wilting boutonniere that was still pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket. “Some wedding day, huh, handsome?”

  “That’s the wild west for you. We like excitement out here. How do you feel, princess?”

  Libby tried to sit up, but the room began to swirl, so she fell back down. “I’m okay,” she insisted. “Or I will be in a few minutes. How is Cathy?”

  Jess smiled, kissed her forehead. “Cathy reacted a little differently to the good news than you did.”

  Libby frowned, still worried. “How do you mean?”

  “After she’d been assured that you had fainted and not dropped dead of a coronary, she lit into Stacey like a whirlwind. It seems that my timid little sister-in-law is through being mute—once and for all.”

  Libby’s eyes rounded. “You mean she was yelling at him?”

  “Was she ever. When they left, he was yelling back.”

  Despite everything, Libby smiled. “In this case, I think a good loud argument might be just what the doctor ordered.”

  “I agree. But the condo will probably be a war zone by the time we get there.”

  Libby remembered that this was her wedding night, and with a little help from Jess, managed to sit up. “The condo? They’re staying there?”

  “Yes. The couch makes out into a bed, and Cathy wants to be near the hospital.”

  Libby reached out, touched Jess’s strong face. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About everything. Especially about tonight.”

  Jess’s green eyes laughed at her, gentle, bright with understanding. “Don’t worry about tonight, princess. There will be plenty of other nights.”

  “But—”

  He stilled her protests with an index finger. “You are in no condition to consummate a marriage, Mrs. Barlowe. You need to sleep. So let’s go home and get you tucked into bed—with a little luck, Stacey and Cathy won’t keep us awake all night while they throw pots and pans at each other.”

  Jess’s remark turned out to be remarkably apt, for when they reached the condo, Stacey and his wife were bellowing at each other and the floor was littered with sofa pillows and bric-a-brac.

  “Don’t mind us,” Jess said with a companionable smile as he ushered his exhausted bride across the war-torn living room. “We’re just mild-mannered honeymooners, passing through.”

  Jess and Libby might have been invisible, for all the notice they got.

  “Maybe we should have stayed in a motel,” Libby yawned as she snuggled into Jess’s strong shoulder, minutes later, in the loft bed.

  Something shattered downstairs, and Jess laughed. “And miss this? No chance.”

  Cathy and Stacey were yelling again, and Libby winced. “You don’t think they’ll hurt each other, do you?”

  “They’ll be all right, princess. Rest.”

  Too tired to discuss the matter further, Libby sighed and fell asleep, lulled by Jess’s nearness and the soft sound of rain on the glass roof overhead. She awakened once, in the depths of the night, and heard the sounds of another kind of passion from the darkened living room. A smile curved her lips as she closed her eyes.

  Cathy was blushing as she tried to neaten up the demolished living room and avoid Libby’s gaze at the same time. Stacey, dead to the world, was sprawled out on the sofa bed, a silly smile shaping his mouth.

  Libby made her way to the telephone in silence, called the hospital for a report on her father. He was still unconscious, the nurse on duty told her, but his vital signs were strong and stable.

  Cathy was waiting, wide-eyed, when Libby turned away from the telephone.

  Gently Libby repeated what the nurse had told her. After that, the two women went into the kitchen and began preparing a quick breakfast.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” Cathy said.

  Standing at the stove, spatula in hand, Libby waited for her cousin to look at her and then asked, “Did you settle anything?”

  Cathy’s cheeks were a glorious shade of hot pink. “You heard!” she moaned.

  Libby had been referring to the fight, not the lovemaking that had obviously followed, but there was no way she could clarify this without embarrassing her cousin further. She bit her lower lip and concentrated on the eggs she was scrambling.

  “It was crazy,” Cathy blurted, remembering. “I was yelling at Stacey! I wanted to hurt him, Libby— I really wanted to hurt him!”

  Libby was putting slices of bread into the toaster and she offered no comment, knowing that Cathy needed to talk.

  “I even threw things at him,” confessed Cathy, taking orange juice from the refrigerator and putting it in the middle of the table. “I can’t believe I acted like that, especially when Ken had just been hurt so badly.”

  Libby met her cousin’s gaze and smiled. “I don’t see what one thing has to do with the other, Cathy. You were angry with your husband—justifiably so, I’d say—and you couldn’t hold it in any longer.”

  “I wasn’t even worried about the way I sounded,” Cathy reflected, shaking her head. “I suppose what happened to Ken triggered something inside me— I don’t know.”

  “The important thing is that you stood up for yourself,” Libby said, scraping the scrambled eggs out of the pan and onto a platter. “I was proud of you, Cathy.”

  “Proud? I acted like a fool!”

  “You acted like an angry woman. How about calling those lazy husbands of ours to breakfast while I butter the toast?”

  Cathy hesitated, wrestling with her old fear of being ridiculed, and then squared her shoulders and left the kitchen to do Libby’s bidding.

  Tears filled Libby’s eyes at the sound of her cousin’s voice. However ordinary the task was, it was a big step forward for Cathy.

  The men came to the table, Stacey wearing only jeans and looking sheepish, Jess clad in slacks and a neatly pressed shirt, his green eyes full of mischief.

  “Any word about Ken?” he asked.

  Libby told him what the report had been and loved him the more for the relief in his face. He nodded and then executed a theatrical yawn.

  Cathy blushed and looked down at her plate, while Stacey glared at his brother. “Didn’t you sleep well, Jess?” he drawled.

  Jess rolled his eyes.

  Stacey looked like an angry littl
e boy; Libby had forgotten how he hated to be teased. “I’ll fight with my wife if I want to!” he snapped.

  Both Libby and Jess laughed.

  “Fight?” gibed Jess good-naturedly. “Was that what you two were doing? Fighting?”

  “Somebody had to celebrate your wedding night,” Stacey retorted, but then he gave in and laughed, too.

  When the meal was over, Cathy and Libby left the dirty dishes to their husbands and went off to get ready for the day.

  They were allowed only a brief visit with Ken, and even though his doctor assured them that he was steadily gaining ground, they were both disheartened as they returned to the waiting room.

  Senator Barlowe was there, with Jess and Stacey, looking as wan and worried as either of his daughters-in-law. Unaware of their approach, he was saying, “We’ve got every available man tracking that bear, plus hands from the Three Star and the Rocking C. All we’ve found so far is paw-prints and dead calves.”

  Libby was brought up short, not by the mention of the bear but by the look on Jess’s face. He muttered something she couldn’t hear.

  Stacey sliced an ironic look in his brother’s direction. “I suppose you think you can find that son of Satan when the hands from three of the biggest ranches in the state can’t turn up a trace?”

  “I know I can,” Jess answered coldly.

  “Dammit, we scoured the foothills, the ranges…”

  Jess’s voice was low, thick with contempt. “And when you had the chance to bring the bastard down, you let him trot away instead—wounded.”

  “What was I supposed to do? Ken was bleeding to death!”

  “Somebody should have gone after the bear,” Jess insisted relentlessly. “There were more than enough people around to see that Ken got to the hospital.”

  Stacey swore.

  “Were you scared?” Jess taunted. “Did the big bad bear scare away our steak-house cowboy?”

  At this, Stacey lunged toward Jess and Jess bolted out of his chair, clearly spoiling for a fight.

  Again, as he had before, the senator averted disaster. “Stop it!” he hissed. “If you two have to brawl, kindly do it somewhere else!”

  “You can bank on that,” Jess said bitterly, his green gaze moving over Stacey and then dismissing him.

  “What’s gotten into the two of you?” Senator Barlowe rasped in quiet frustration. “This is a hospital! And have you forgotten that you’re brothers?”

  Libby cleared her throat discreetly, to let the men know that she and Cathy had returned. She was disturbed by the barely controlled hostility between Jess and his brother, but with Ken in the condition that he was, she had no inclination to pursue the issue.

  It was later, in the Land Rover, when she and Jess were alone, that Libby voiced a subject that had been bothering her. “You plan to go looking for that bear, don’t you?”

  Jess appeared to be concentrating on the traffic, but a muscle in his cheek twitched. “Yes.”

  “You’re going back to the ranch and track him down,” Libby went on woodenly.

  “That’s right.”

  She sank back against the seat and closed her eyes. “Let the others do it.”

  There was a short, ominous silence. “No way.”

  Libby swallowed the sickness and fear that roiled in her throat. God in heaven, wasn’t it enough that she’d nearly lost her father to that vicious beast? Did she have to risk losing her husband, too? “Why?” she whispered miserably. “Why do you want to do this?”

  “It’s my job,” he answered flatly, and Libby knew that there was no point in trying to dissuade him.

  She squeezed her eyes even more tightly shut, but the tears escaped anyway. When they reached the condo again, Stacey’s car and Cleave’s pulling in behind them, Jess turned to her, brushed the evidence of her fear from her cheeks with gentle thumbs and kissed her.

  “I promise not to get killed,” he said softly.

  Libby stiffened in his arms, furious and full of terror. “That’s comforting!”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “You can handle this alone, can’t you? Going to the hospital, I mean?”

  Libby bit her lower lip. Here was her chance. She could say that she needed Jess now, she could keep him from hunting that bear. She did need him, especially now, but in the end, she couldn’t use weakness to hold him close. “I can handle it.”

  An hour later, when Stacey and the senator left for the ranch, Jess went with them. Libby was now keeping two vigils instead of one.

  Understanding Libby’s feelings but unable to help, Cathy built a fire in the fireplace, brewed cocoa, and tried to interest her cousin in a closed-caption movie on television.

  Libby watched for a while, then got out her sketchbook and began to draw with furious, angry strokes: Jess on horseback, a rifle in the scabbard of his saddle; a full-grown grizzly, towering on its hind legs, ominous muscles rolling beneath its hide, teeth bared. Try though she did, Libby could not bring herself to put Jess and that bear in the same picture, either mentally or on paper.

  That evening, when Libby and Cathy went to the hospital, Ken was awake. He managed a weak smile as they came to his bedside to bestow tearful kisses.

  “Sorry about missin’ the wedding,” he said, and for all his obvious pain, there was mirth in his blue eyes.

  Libby dashed away the mist from her own eyes and smiled a shaky smile, shrugging. “You’ve seen one, cowboy, you’ve seen them all.”

  Ken laughed and the sound was beautiful.

  Chapter 12

  Having assured herself that Ken was indeed recovering, Cathy slipped out to allow Libby a few minutes alone with her father.

  “Thanks for scaring me half to death,” she said.

  Ken tried to shrug, winced instead. “You must have known I was too mean to go under,” he answered. “Libby, did they get the bear?”

  Libby stiffened. The bear, the bear—she was so damned sick of hearing about the bear! “No,” she said after several moments, averting her eyes.

  Ken sighed. He was pale and obviously tired. “Jess went after him, didn’t he?”

  Libby fought back tears of fear. Was Jess face to face with that creature even now? Was he suffering injuries like Ken’s, or even worse? “Yes,” she admitted.

  “Jess will be all right, Libby.”

  “Like you were?” Libby retorted sharply, without thinking.

  Ken studied her for a moment, managed a partial grin. “He’s younger than I am. Tougher. No grizzly in his right mind would tangle with him.”

  “But this grizzly isn’t in his right mind, is he?” Libby whispered, numb. “He’s wounded, Dad.”

  “All the more reason to find him,” Ken answered firmly. “That bear was dangerous before, Libby. He’s deadly now.”

  Libby shuddered. “You’d think the beast would just crawl off and die somewhere.”

  “That would be real handy, but he won’t do it, Lib. Grizzlies have nasty dispositions as it is—their eyesight is poor and their teeth hurt all the time. When they’re wounded, they can rampage for days before they finally give out.”

  “The Barlowes can afford to lose a few cows!”

  “Yes, but they can’t afford to lose people, Lib, and that’s what’ll happen if that animal isn’t found.”

  There was no arguing that; Ken was proof of how dangerous a bear could be. “The men from the Three Star and the Rocking C are helping with the hunt, anyway,” Libby said, taking little if any consolation from the knowledge.

  “That’s good,” Ken said, closing his eyes.

  Libby bent, kissed his forehead and left the room.

  Cathy was pacing the hallway, her lower lip caught in her teeth, her eyes wide. Libby chastised herself for not realizing that Stacey was probably hunting the bear too, and that her cousin was as worried as she was.

  When Libby suggested a trip to the Circle Bar B, Cathy agreed immediately.

  During the long drive, Libby made excuses to herself. She wa
sn’t going just to check on Jess—she absolutely was not. She needed her drawing board, her pens and inks, jeans and blouses.

  The fact that she could have bought any or all of these items in Kalispell was carefully ignored.

  By the time Libby and Cathy drew the Corvette to a stop in the wide driveway of the main ranch house, the sun was starting to go down. There must have been fifty horsemen converging on the stables, all of them looking tired and discouraged.

  Libby’s heart wedged itself into her throat when she spotted Jess. He was dismounting, wrenching a high-powered rifle from the scabbard on his saddle.

  She literally ran to him, but then she stopped short, her shoes encased in the thick, gooey mud Montanans call gumbo, her vocal cords no more mobile than her feet.

  “Ken?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  Libby was quick to reassure him. “Dad’s doing very well.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  Libby smiled, pried one of her feet out of the mud, only to have it succumb again when she set it down. “I had to see if you were all right,” she admitted. “May I say that you look terrible?”

  Jess chuckled, rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin, assessed the dirty clothes he wore in one downward glance. “You should have stayed in town.”

  Libby lifted her chin. “I’ll go back in the morning,” she said, daring him to argue.

  Jess surrendered his horse to one of the ranch hands, but the rifle swung at his side as he started toward the big, well-lighted house. Libby slogged along at his side.

  “Is that gun loaded?” she demanded.

  “No,” he replied. “Any more questions?”

  “Yes. Did you see the bear?”

  They had reached the spacious screened-in porch, where Mrs. Bradshaw had prudently laid out newspapers to accommodate dozens of mud-caked boots.

  “No,” Jess rasped, lifting his eyes to some distant thing that Libby could not see. “That sucker might as well be invisible.”

  Libby watched as Jess kicked off his boots, flung his sodden denim jacket aside, dispensed with his hat. “Maybe he’s dead, Jess,” she blurted out hopefully, resorting to the optimism her father had tacitly warned her against. “Maybe he collapsed somewhere—”