Another world, which was now the only home she had. When memories flashed through her mind, reminders of her vow to return home in triumph, she had to squeeze back tears. Here she was crouched in hiding, unable to walk up to her own back door.
The coolness of morning had given way to a familiar dry heat. Like in El Paso, but different—drier, hotter, more familiar. She felt perspiration trickle down her skin beneath the baggy clothing. She inhaled deeply, drawing in huge drafts of arid, desert air.
When the back door slammed, she flinched and Trevor caught her shoulders in firm hands. Together they watched Tom Guest come out the door and head for the barn, as at home as if he did it every day of the week. Which, he probably did.
Not until he reached the barn door did Jacy see the sign—the new sign. Where a huge Diamond K had been painted all her life, a new logo adorned the barn door. Circle G.
“Damn.” Jacy rubbed her arms against a sudden swelling of anguish. She felt violated, that anyone, friend or foe, now owned the ranch which she was prohibited from even visiting. That it was Papa’s friend somehow made it all the more reprehensible.
“Tom looks fit,” she hissed. While her father had wasted away after losing his mind and his son and his home.
“Reckon it has anything to do with getting what he wanted most in the world?”
It took Jacy a minute to take Trevor’s meaning. “The Diamond K?” Now the Circle G. Still, she wasn’t ready to color Tom Guest that mean.
Then, within minutes, they watched him lead a bay gelding out of the barn. Jacy’s anguish turned to hot anger.
“Colonel Bay! That’s Papa’s horse! His favorite horse.” When she tried to jump to her feet, Trevor held her in place.
“Not yet, Jace. Don’t let him see you.”
Heat swelled inside her. “He has no right!” Steaming inside, she held her ground, while Tom gave instructions to a couple of cowhands she thankfully did not recognize, then stepped in the saddle and rode away.
“Now,” she hissed.
“Not now.” Trevor slipped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her back against him. “Wait until Mama Dee comes out. Shouldn’t it be soon?”
“How would I know? I don’t live here.”
Trevor settled her into a snugger fit between his knees. Her heart beat against his arm like a struggling steam engine. He could feel the heat rising from her, feel her anguish and pain.
All morning he had watched her emotions fluctuate. At times she looked like a little girl enjoying the best birthday party of her life. Then like lightning her expression would change, as if everything had been taken away from her—cake, presents, and all.
“Maybe she won’t come to the smokehouse today,” she said.
“You said she comes every day right after dinner.”
“That was when I lived here.”
“Damn.”
“How did you get in touch with her before?”
He hadn’t intended to tell her that. “I walked up to the house and knocked on the front door.”
“You what?”
“Hell, Jace, I thought…” He paused, shrugging.
“You just rode up to the house for everyone to see—”
“I didn’t know you weren’t here.” He squeezed her closer. Untenable as the situation was, he was glad to be here, holding her, close enough to comfort if that were possible.
He couldn’t pretend to know what she was going through. He had never had a home like this. A father he loved, a house he had lived in all his life. “I didn’t ride up,” he reminded her, striving for levity. “I walked. This is where I got a horse, remember? I was lucky Tom was away.”
She stared at the back door of the house with rapt attention. He knew she hadn’t heard a word. “It’s not my home anymore.”
“Home is where the heart is, Jace. Isn’t that how the saying goes? The name on the deed to this ranch can’t change your feelings.”
“I don’t need this house. Or this ranch,” she said suddenly. With jerky movements she swung her eyes from side to side, then glanced back at him. He had never seen such sadness, or such determination. It filled his heart with pain, even as his pulse raced. He shifted her shoulders, brushed hair from her face, tucked it behind her ear and wished he could hope to ever see it long and flowing.
Which seemed a pretty selfish thing to wish for in light of all Jacy had lost.
“But they won’t whip me, Trevor. They can have this place, but they’re not going to whip me.” Her eyes fixed on him. “The only thing in this world I need is—” Her words stopped abruptly and for a long tense moment she held him captive.
“What, Jace?” he prompted against his better judgment.
Abruptly, she turned away.
His heart thrashed against her back. “What, Jace?”
For a long time she didn’t answer. When she did he could tell her composure was recovered. “Hunter’s freedom. Papa’s sanity. A…”
“What?” he prompted again when she paused, considering himself an everlasting fool. Mari’s claim fired him like a clear blue flame. But it couldn’t be true, of course. Jacy Kimble could never love him.
But he could love her. Yes, he could love the woman she had become—strong, independent, responsible, yet she had lost none of her verve, none of her spirit. Yes, he could love her. But he didn’t.
The dilemma seemed senseless. When Jacy jumped up suddenly, startling him out of his reverie, he thought for a brief moment she was running away from him. That she had read his mind and was trying to escape.
Then he saw the old black maid walking slowly down the path toward the smokehouse. “Hold still,” he called. “Someone else might be around.”
But Jacy was already halfway down the path. Gripped by fear of discovery, Trevor watched her throw herself into the startled old maid’s arms. He recalled the way Todd had hurled himself into his arms a few days earlier. By the time he reached them, tears were running down both women’s cheeks.
“Damn, Jace, you could have given her a heart attack.”
Jacy melted into the generous warmth of Mama Dee’s welcome embrace. How many hundreds of times throughout her life had Mama Dee held her and comforted her with long smooth strokes to her hair?
“I knowed Mr. Trevor’d find you for me,” the old woman soothed. “I knowed it for sure, pumpkin.” She had called Jacy pumpkin since before Jacy knew what the word meant. The first time she ever saw a pumpkin, she challenged Mama Dee with fists to small hips.
“What do you mean calling me something so ugly?”
“Ugly, wait’ll you taste the pie I make with that ugly old thing. You won’t call it ugly no more.”
But Jacy would not be appeased and Mama Dee stopped calling her pumpkin except on rare occasions when the name seemed to slip out. Like now.
Today, Jacy couldn’t recall ever hearing a sweeter sound. Tears flowed afresh. Vaguely she heard Trevor questioning in the background.
“Who else is around?” he wanted to know.
“Mr. Tom just left.”
“We saw him go. What about those cowhands? Will they be traipsing around the grounds?”
“In this heat? No, they’ve been out since sunup. Likely they’ll snooze in the bunkhouse until midafternoon or so.”
“Who’s in the house?”
“No one.”
“What about Mrs. Guest?” Jacy asked. She had never liked Oleta Guest, who tried entirely too hard to mother both Jacy and Hunter. Ol’ persimmon face, they called her.
“Miz Oleta took sick and died going on two years now. Didn’t you know that, pumpkin?”
“Mrs. Guest dead?” How could that be? Jacy’s brain seemed moorless, as if it floated freely on the heated breeze. “I’m sure Papa doesn’t know.” A second enervating thought gripped her. “Where is she buried?”
“Why, in town at the cemetery, right next to that daughter of theirs that died as a youngster and close to Miz Oleta’s mother and father and…”
&nb
sp; But Jacy had stopped listening after being assured that persimmon-faced Oleta Guest was not buried beside her own mother in their family plot here on the ranch.
“How long has Tom been living here?” she asked, smoothing a strand of the old woman’s wiry gray hair back from her face. Jacy hadn’t realized she was so old.
“Why, pumpkin, since directly after you and Mr. Drummond left.” Her gaze narrowed. She seized Jacy’s hands and turned them palms up. Her brows snapped together. “Lord a mercy, child. Lord a mercy.”
Jacy pulled away. “For heaven’s sake,” she scolded, “a person would think you’d never seen calluses. You have them. Why not me?”
“Why not you?” The idea was obviously preposterous to the old lady. “It’s my job to wash and iron and fetch and carry. Ain’t none of yours.”
“It certainly is mine,” Jacy returned in her typically haughty tone, which added a note of humor to the subject. “I have every right to as hard a life as you.” She grinned. “But things will get better. For both of us. I’m taking you back to Texas with me.”
Trevor placed a hand on her shoulder. “None of us will get back to Texas if we get caught out here. Come on.” With a hand to each woman’s arm, he herded them toward the house. “We’ve got to get out of the open. Where’d Guest go, Mama Dee? How long will he be gone?”
“He’ll be late.”
Unsatisfied, Trevor continued to quiz. “What do you mean, late? Late afternoon? Late evening? What?”
“Trevor,” Jacy admonished.
“He’s gone into Gila Bend.” Mama Dee made a face. “And I mean late tonight. Or late tomorrow. He’s got himself a woman up there.”
“You mean a lady friend?” Jacy went weak. “Will there be a wedding?” Another woman living here. In her mother’s house?
“Not that kind of woman,” Mama Dee objected contemptuously.
“Wasn’t there a rumor about Tom and Ana?” Trevor asked suddenly.
“Tom wouldn’t have dared! Ana was Papa’s—” She glanced up at Trevor, then quickly away. Ana and Papa was okay. She had grown up with the idea. But Ana and Tom? Or worse, much worse, Ana and Trevor?
Mama Dee held open the back door, but Jacy’s feet stumbled on the threshold. Trevor ran into her. She felt his hands to her shoulders, heard him ask tenderly,
“You okay?”
“What happened?” She gaped at the large room, familiar, yet not. It was a stranger’s kitchen. Not hers. “I lived in this house all my life and nothing changed. Now look at it. I don’t recognize a thing.” Propelled by indignation, she stalked into the room. “Not a thing,” she repeated. “Where is our breakfast table? Wasn’t it good enough for Papa’s friend? Where is—”
“Jace.” Trevor caught her by the waist from behind, stopping her forward movement and her words. “We have work to do before the cowhands finish siesta.”
As through a fog Jacy heard Mama Dee’s voice behind her. “Beans are on the stove. How ’bout I cook you both a steak.”
“That sounds great,” Trevor was saying. “Maybe you could fill us in while you cook.”
“Soon’s I get back from the smokehouse.”
Jacy heard the door slam again, this time behind the old servant. She tried to concentrate on the matter at hand, but her mind felt scattered. In a daze she crossed through the kitchen to the dining room. Another room, another shock. “Where is my mother’s walnut table? It was supposed to be mine.” Turning back to the kitchen, she met Trevor’s sympathetic gaze.
“Mama Dee’ll be back in a minute, Jace. Here, drink this.” He handed her a cup of coffee. “It beats the hell out of mine.”
Jacy scrutinized the unfamiliar china pattern. “I see old Miz Persimmon Face even threw away my mother’s china.” With growing consternation she walked down the hallway toward the front of the house. The pictures on the hall walls were all new, as was the runner on the floor, and the breakfront and straight-backed chairs just inside the front door. Everything looked stiff and prim instead of loved and lived-in. Anger was already swelling inside her when she turned the corner and stared into the once sparsely furnished parlor.
“That bastard!” As far as she could see, from mantle to opposite wall, every conceivable space was filled with trinkets and doodads and figurines and such. Fringed satin swags hung from the windows and draped a settee. She began to tremble. “I could break every single—”
Trevor caught her arms, held them in tight fists. “Jace, remember why we’re here. We haven’t come for a visit. We’ve come to help Hunter. Get hold of yourself and let’s get on with it.”
His voice was calm, low, and held no emotion. It had the effect of a sponge, for without realizing it or planning it, she transferred all her rage to him. Swinging around, she wrenched free and pounded her fists against his chest, wishing it were the mantle she was swiping clean.
“You can grieve for this later, Jace. We’ve got to help Hunter, and we’re running out of time.”
His words, spoken in a painfully emotionless voice, continued to weigh on her, and eventually began to sink in. She relaxed, and when she did, tears pooled in her eyes. She ducked her head. But not before Trevor saw.
He drew her to his chest, held her close, and stroked her back and her hair like Mama Dee had done earlier, while her heart thrashed to beat the band.
He was right. They had to save Hunter. As nothing had before, seeing the changes in this house went a long way in convincing her Trevor was telling the truth. But that was an emotional reaction, not based on fact. The facts were stacked against him.
He held her back. “You okay?”
Meeting his eyes, she saw his concern. “I’m mad as hell.”
He grinned. “Fine. Be mad. Just don’t be sad…or hurt, until we get through with this.” He popped a quick kiss to her nose, then led her back to the kitchen, where Mama Dee had returned and was frying two steaks thick enough to feed a trail crew.
“What did he do with my mother’s furniture?” Jacy wanted to know.
“Sold pieces of it here and there.”
“Sold it!”
“Or gave it away. Miz Oleta, she had her own things,” Mama Dee explained.
“I can see that. They’re hideous.”
Trevor guided her to one of the new kitchen chairs and pushed her gently into it. “So, how did this all come about?” he asked Mama Dee. “How did Tom Guest get hold of this place?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Papa told me you went back to Virginia,” Jacy said, cautiously. She hated to admit that her father lied, even to her.
“Your papa was protecting you, pumpkin. I couldn’t go along with you to Miss Mari’s aunt’s place. Already they knew there wouldn’t be room for extras.”
“Extras? You’re part of our family. We would have found room for you.” But reality tugged, and she had to admit one more person—one more mouth to feed, one more to bed—would have posed a problem.
“You left here with everything you owned.” Jacy recalled that good-bye as one of the saddest in her life. “Charlie was driving you to the station.”
“Charlie drove me over to meet with Miz Oleta,” Mama Dee confessed. “Was his last duty as foreman of the Diamond K. Fact is, was practically the last of anyone’s duties at the Diamond K. Didn’t take more’n a week for the Circle G signs to go up.”
“Circle G.” Jacy shot Trevor a painful glare.
“Remember why we’re here,” he responded tenderly.
She held his comforting gaze a moment longer, while the ragged edges of her grief began to smooth out. Funny, what just looking at this man could do. She was reminded of the way he had stood up for her when Drummond accused them of sleeping together in such vulgar terms.
“What did Mrs. Guest want with you that day?” Trevor was asking.
“To get acquainted, or so she said. She told me right off she wouldn’t move in here until your family’s things were gone.”
“Gone!”
“
Sounds like she at least knew what she was doing was wrong,” Trevor ventured.
“Was it ever.” It was still hard for Jacy to see Tom Guest as anything but a friend. “Then again, if Papa sold the ranch to Tom, he sold it fair and square. I don’t know why he acted like it was such a surprise. Why wasn’t I told? Why couldn’t I take any of our things?”
“Space,” Trevor offered. “Same reason Mama Dee couldn’t go with you.” He grinned. “From the little I’ve seen, Tía Bella’s place is already bursting at the seams.”
“There’s always room for one more,” Jacy snapped. “I’m taking you back with me,” she told Mama Dee.
“Now, Jace…”
“Don’t now Jace me, let’s get this job finished and get back to Texas.”
While they ate they quizzed Mama Dee more, but got few answers. The old woman knew so little, Jacy finally realized if she had overheard anything, she wouldn’t have realized its significance.
“Is the cabin still vacant?” Trevor asked suddenly.
“Same as when you left it.”
“Think we could stay there until we sort this thing out?”
“I’ll bundle you up some food and bed covers,” the old maid offered.
Before Jacy could ask questions, however, Trevor set them to work. “While I search Tom’s office, you look through the rest of the house. I don’t know what we’re looking for, but maybe we’ll know it if we see it.”
“If it’s here,” Jacy said dismally. “If Tom Guest is no longer Papa’s friend.”
“We have to start somewhere.”
Driven by that ominous thought, she took the stairs, but found nothing. She came away with the feeling that Tom must have loved his wife, for her belongings were still in the drawers and chifforobe. His were neat, sparse, and she experienced the tiniest bit of guilt at trespassing in such a personal way, before she remembered whose room she was searching.
Hers.
Oleta Guest had obviously enjoyed the larger of the two upstairs bedrooms, and Tom slept in the smaller one. Gone were Jacy’s yellow voile curtains and bedspread, replaced by brown hopsacking and a leather chair.
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