Wyoming Heart

by Diana Palmer

  CHAPTER SIX

  MINA’S HEART RAN WILD. She put both hands around her cup of black coffee and held on tight. She didn’t care if Cort dated that wild woman. He didn’t belong to her. He was arrogant and domineering and she wouldn’t have wanted him even if he’d been interested in her.

  But her eyes went involuntarily to the woman, who was gorgeous in just an ordinary checked blouse and blue jeans. Mina would have given a lot to be that pretty. But the woman had the morals of a cat, she reminded herself. Just like Mina’s mother.

  Cort spotted Bart and his friend at the back table and made a beeline for them with Ida at his side.

  Mina’s teeth clenched so hard that she worried she might have broken one.

  “Mind if we join you?” Cort asked easily. “We’re on our way to the hardware. I need a new pair of gloves.”

  “But I’m starving, so he offered to feed me,” Ida added with an affectionate glance at Cort, who returned it with interest.

  “Sure,” Bart said, and didn’t look at Mina because he knew what her expression would be. “Have a seat. We’ve just finished, but tables are at a premium right now,” he added with a grin, noting that they were all full. “Looks like everybody in Wyoming knows where the best food is.”

  “No joke,” Cort said, pulling out a chair for Ida before he sat down. “This place has a great cook.”

  “So does the Sheraton in Billings,” Bart noted with a grin at Mina. “Jake McGuire’s taking her up there for a steak Saturday.”

  “That’s a long drive,” Ida noted.

  “Oh, he’s got a private jet,” Bart said easily. “It’s no distance when you’re flying.”

  That was something Cort already knew. His own ranch had a jet, along with two prop planes they used for roundup, and pilots who flew the family anywhere they needed to go on business. Or pleasure.

  “That must be nice,” Ida said with a shy glance at Mina. “Everyone says Mr. McGuire has a good heart.”

  “He does,” Mina said tautly. She didn’t say another word. Ida grimaced and Cort glared.

  Bart, sensing disaster pending, looked pointedly at his watch. “We have to go. I’ve got a man coming over to look at one of my young bulls.” Actually he didn’t, but he was going to call somebody to do that, so Cort wouldn’t catch him in a fib. He stood up and waited for Mina to join him.

  “I’ll see you back at the house,” Bart told Cort.

  Cort stared at Ida and smiled. “Okay. But don’t wait up,” he added, his voice deep and sensuous as he looked at Ida.

  “I won’t,” Bart said. He took Mina’s arm and almost herded her out of the restaurant.

  * * *

  “OKAY, WHAT WAS that all about?” Ida asked when the others had gone.

  He chuckled. “Just heading off trouble.”

  “Mina’s not forward,” she said, her eyes curious. “She’d never chase you.”

  “I’m making sure. Do you mind?” he added.

  She smiled sadly. “No, of course not.”

  “Why do you think she’s going places with McGuire?” he asked shortly.

  She blinked. “Well, because she likes him, I suppose.”

  “He’s filthy rich,” he returned. “Even richer than her cousin Rogan.”

  “Both of them put together wouldn’t equal half your net worth,” she pointed out, keeping her voice low so that she wasn’t overheard.

  “Nobody around here knows that,” he replied. His face tautened. “I’ve been hunted like an elk by women for years. I got jaded, I guess. I don’t mind paying my way, but there’s a limit. I wanted to be liked for myself, not my wallet.”

  “I’ve had the same problem,” she confessed on a sigh. “So I developed this scandalous reputation that puts most men off. With an exception here and there,” she mused, eyeing him.

  He chuckled. “Well, I did take the reputation at face value, just at first.”

  “I noticed.”

  He cocked his head and studied her. “You really are beautiful,” he remarked quietly.

  She smiled. “Thanks.”

  “You could marry me, you know,” he said. “At least I’d be sure it wasn’t for what I had.”

  She slid her hand over his on the table. “That’s very flattering and I appreciate the offer. But I’m done with marriage.” She pulled her hand back. “Never again.” Her eyebrows rose. “And you’ve been looking for a wife in all the worst places,” she added. “Models and actresses and debutantes aren’t looking for a man who digs postholes and babies calves.”

  He chuckled. “I suppose not.” He had a sudden picture of Mina on her horse, holding the orphaned calf in front of her on the saddle. It made a warm place inside him. “But most women in that category aren’t rich. Some of them are predators and they can put on a good act. I’ve been with women who swore they were virgins.” He gave her a droll look. “And they never were.”

  “I was, when I first married,” she said. “My husband never touched me. I felt absolutely worthless as a woman. After he died and I was rich with what he left me, I was infatuated with a man who seemed like the toughest, manliest man alive. So I married him.” She shivered. “I’d never really believed all those stories I heard about brutal men. I do now,” she said coldly. “I believe every word.”

  He shook his head. “What a hell of a shame they don’t still have public stocks for men like that.”

  “Jail is much better. My ex-husband is residing in a state prison for assault and battery. He killed another inmate five months into his sentence, so he’ll never get out now.” She smiled, a smile that was icy and never reached her eyes. “I like to think of him being some other inmate’s significant other.”

  “Wicked woman,” he teased.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t start out that way.” She smiled at him. “How long are you going to visit with your cousin?”

  “I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe. My foreman is almost as good as I am about ranch management and he calls me if there are any problems he can’t handle. There won’t be. My dad is coming down with his new wife so she can experience ranch life. He always managed the ranch while I was off marketing cattle and talking business. I don’t expect his new wife will last long if she comes with him. None of his women ever took to cattle and dust.”

  She drew in a long breath and waited until the waitress took their orders before she spoke. “Your father’s lifestyle affected you, I’ll bet. You didn’t grow up in a stable home with two parents who loved each other.”

  “I did, actually. My mother was a little saint. After she died, Dad seemed to lose his mind. He stayed with the model for a few years, but after that, he set new records for promiscuity. I guess maybe it did affect me.”

  “My parents married just out of high school,” she recalled with a smile. “They loved each other, and me, so much. He had a heart attack at the age of thirty-five and died in the doctor’s office. It was so massive that nothing would have saved him. My mother grieved and grieved. She kept going for me, but her heart was in the grave with my father. When I was twenty-one she went on a cruise and fell overboard. They never found the body.”

  He winced. “That must have been traumatic.”

  She nodded. “It’s so much worse when people die like that. You never really give up hope that maybe somebody fished them out, they lost their memory, things like that.” She looked up. “I know that she drowned. I just couldn’t accept it, for a long time. Finally, I bought one of those urns for people who are cremated. I put her favorite jewelry and some hairs from her hairbrush, a ring she liked, a Christmas ornament, and sealed it up. It sits on my mantel. So I have something of her near me.”

  “That’s a special kind of memorial,” he said. “I never would have thought of it.”

  “An innovation,” she said. She smiled. “It helped me adjust to life without her.
”

  “We buried my mother in the cemetery at our local Methodist church. I put flowers on her grave on holidays and her birthday, for me and my brothers.”

  “I do that for my father.”

  The waitress came back with their order.

  “Are we going to the dance Thursday night?” he asked.

  She smiled. “We’ll be gossiped about.”

  “Good,” he said.

  She just laughed.

  * * *

  JAKE MCGUIRE WAS right on time to pick Mina up for their date on Friday. As he’d said, they didn’t dress up. But he was wearing designer jeans and boots, with a Western-cut blue plaid shirt under a black leather coat, with a top-of-the-line cream Stetson on his dark hair. He could have modeled for a couture house. But Mina was too shy to mention that.

  She was wearing slacks and a simple white camisole under a long sweater that came to her ankles. It wasn’t expensive, but it was a trendy outfit. She added cultured pearls to it, around her neck and in her earlobes. They were a graduation present from her cousin Rogan.

  “You look very nice,” Jake said, sighing as he looked down at her. “I like it that you didn’t screw your hair up into that bun.”

  She laughed self-consciously. “I’ll probably be eating it, too. It flies up into my mouth constantly when I leave it down.”

  He bent and smoothed the honey-brown strands behind her small ears. “There,” he said huskily.

  She smiled at him, but she didn’t feel anything at all, and he knew it. He moved back. He forced a return smile. “Ready to go?” he asked.

  She nodded. “Oh yes. I’ve never been in a jet.”

  “Never?” he asked.

  “Well, not a small one,” she qualified. “I had to fly to New York to talk to my agent and my publisher. But I flew tourist.”

  He chuckled. “This will be much better than tourist,” he promised.

  And it was. The baby jet had fantastic seats and tables. There was a small bedroom and a bathroom, and even television.

  “This is incredible,” she exclaimed as she buckled herself into her seat for takeoff. “Did you steal this from an alien?” she wondered with an impish grin.

  He laughed. “Not quite.”

  “It’s got everything!”

  “Well, everything except a flight attendant,” he amended. He leaned toward her. “Which means we’ll have self-serve packets of peanuts in flight.”

  She burst out laughing. He smiled to himself. At least she liked him, he thought. He could build on that.

  * * *

  BILLINGS WAS A sprawling big city with a small-town atmosphere. The people in the restaurant were friendly and outgoing, and the food was unbelievably good.

  “This is awesome,” Mina exclaimed as she savored the steak she’d ordered. “I’ve never tasted beef this good! Not even my own.”

  “They have a reputation for it locally,” he told her. “I love to eat here. Hey,” he added with a grin, “we could fly down to Galveston for seafood one weekend.”

  She hesitated and just a hint of color touched her cheeks. She didn’t want to offend him, but she couldn’t go off with a man for a weekend.

  “Oh. I see,” he mused. He smiled gently. “It would be a day trip. Just down and back. Honest.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m not modern.”

  “Honey, I don’t mind that at all,” he said softly. “Neither am I.”

  She smiled back. He really was a good person. And it was nice to have a man be friendly. Nothing like that animal of a cowboy who worked for Bart and did his best to put her back up at every opportunity. Even now, he was squiring the promiscuous merry divorcée all over Catelow. He’d taken her to the dance last night and people were already talking about them. Bart had mentioned it when he phoned her early this morning to get some stats on her calves. Presumably the divorcée was good in bed, Mina thought darkly. Everybody said so.

  “What’s wrong?” Jake asked, concerned by her expression.

  She flushed. “Oh. I was thinking about Charlie,” she lied. “I do sort of miss him.”

  He blinked. “Charlie?”

  “My bull. Well, the bull I had to give away.”

  “Why did you have to get rid of him?”

  She told him, relaxing more as she related the sad tale. At least she’d covered her bases by not mentioning Cort. And why she should be thinking about him and Ida was a puzzle. She didn’t even like him!

  * * *

  JAKE FLEW HER back home. It was late when the limousine he’d hired dropped her off at her front door.

  “I had a very good time,” she said, clutching her purse in front of her. “Thanks.”

  “I enjoyed it as well.” He slid his hands into his pockets and smiled down at her. “Galveston, next weekend?”

  She laughed. “Well...okay.”

  His heart lifted. He grinned from ear to ear. “That’s a date, then. I’ll pick you up about nine in the morning next Saturday.”

  “I’ll look forward to it.”

  “When do you have to go back to New York?”

  She told him. “In four weeks, I think, unless they change it. It’s to sign a new four-book contract,” she said, “and do a few local signings. And a satellite media tour.”

  “A what?” he asked.

  “Satellite media tour,” she said. “They have a makeup artist come in and work on me, then I sit in the room with a sound guy and a cameraman, and the guy in the booth makes the connections to television stations around the country. The hosts ask me questions and I try to answer them. It takes a long time.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  She smiled. “I hadn’t either, until I did the first one. But now I don’t mind so much. And I can pump the people at the television station we broadcast from. I learn all sorts of things from stories they tell me about other people they’ve worked with.”

  “Sounds fascinating.”

  “It certainly is, to a small-town girl who’s never been anywhere.” She laughed. “I keep thinking that one day I’ll wake up and all this will have been just a dream.”

  “It’s no dream. Honest.” He checked his Rolex and grimaced. “I hate to run, but I’ve got a conference call incoming.”

  “At this hour?” she asked, surprised.

  “I do business all over the world. In some areas it’s morning.”

  “I didn’t realize.”

  “Life is a learning process,” he teased.

  She grinned up at him. “I’ll say!”

  “When you get ready to go to New York, I’ll fly you up,” he said.

  She beamed. “That would be really nice of you.”

  “I have ulterior motives,” he teased. “I know where all the good restaurants are in Manhattan.”

  She laughed. “Okay.”

  He laughed softly, too, and bent to touch his mouth to hers in a gentle, respectful kiss. “Good night, sweet woman.”

  She flushed. “Good night.”

  He sighed. She wasn’t going to love him, but she liked him. It was a foundation, of sorts, that he could build on. “See you next Saturday,” he said.

  She nodded. “Next Saturday.”

  He gave her a long, soulful look and went back to the limousine. She went inside. He was infatuated with her. She could tell. But she couldn’t really feel that way about him. She didn’t understand why. He was pleasant, handsome, brilliant, rich—but there was no spark, no leaping pulse, when he touched her.

  Involuntarily her mind went to Cort Grier and how she had felt when he looked up at her as she held the calf in front of her on the pommel. His pale brown eyes were steady and curious. Her heart jumped. She ground her teeth together. She couldn’t afford to get mixed up with a stray cowboy who
probably wouldn’t stay at Bart’s ranch more than a few weeks. She wasn’t going to, either.

  * * *

  SHE WAS MAKING a pie Monday morning when she heard someone at the front door. Irritated, because her hands were full of flour from making the crust, she went to answer it, wiping her hands on a kitchen cloth at the same time and muttering.

  She opened the door and Cort Grier was standing there, with a basket of apples.

  She just stared at him. He’d been with that beautiful divorcée in town Friday. What was he doing here?

  “Bart sent these over,” he said curtly. “He said you liked to make fresh apple pies with them.”

  “And he was hoping for one, I’ll bet.”

  He shrugged. “He says you’re the best cook in two counties.” His practiced eyes went all over her, narrowed and curious. “Can I put these down?” he asked.

  “Oh!” She opened the door to let him in with the heavy basket. “Just bring them into the kitchen, if you don’t mind. I’ve been doing piecrusts...”

  He put the apples on the floor and looked at the fancy fluting around the edge of the dough in the pie plates. “That’s pretty,” he said involuntarily.

  She smiled. “I learned by watching videos on YouTube,” she confessed. “It’s much better than cookbooks because you can see every step of the process and follow along. I don’t remember much of what I read, and I can’t follow directions.” She made a face. “It’s why I mostly make hats and scarves when I knit. I tried to make a pair of socks once from a pattern.” She sighed. “Bart saw them and asked if they were antenna covers.”

  He chuckled. “He would.”

  “I love to knit and crochet,” she said, “while I’m watching television.”

  “I don’t have much time for TV,” he replied.

  “I can imagine. Especially during roundup. There’s so much work.”

  He nodded. He wasn’t going to tell her that a great deal of his work was administrative. He did help his men during roundup, but it wasn’t really required.