Читать книгу Connal - Diana Palmer - Страница 8

It took Pepi half the next day to work up enough nerve to actually phone an attorney and ask if she was really married to C.C. She had to be careful. It couldn’t be a lawyer who knew her, so she called one in El Paso, giving the receptionist an assumed name. She was given an appointment for that afternoon, because the attorney had a cancellation in his busy schedule. She told the receptionist why she wanted to see the attorney, adding lightly that she’d gotten a Mexican marriage and thought it wasn’t binding. The secretary laughed and said a lot of people thought that, only to find out to their astonishment that they were very binding in Texas. She reconfirmed the appointment, wished Pepi a nice day and hung up.

Pepi replaced the receiver with a dull thud and sat down heavily in the chair beside the telephone table in the hall. Her heart was beating madly. It would take having the lawyer look at the document to be sure, but it sounded as if his receptionist was right. Legally she was Mrs. C. C. Tremayne. She was Connal Tremayne’s wife.

But he didn’t know it.

The consequences of her deception could be far-reaching and tragic, especially if he decided to marry Edie. He would be commiting bigamy, and he wouldn’t even know it.

What should she do? If she told him now, after having denied it when he’d demanded the truth, he’d never believe anything she said again. He’d hate her, too, for trapping him into marriage. It didn’t matter that he’d threatened to land them in jail if she didn’t go along. He’d been intoxicated, not responsible for his actions. But she’d been sober. When he asked her why she’d gone through with it, how would she answer him? Would he guess that she was shamefully in love with him?

The questions tormented her. She burned lunch. Her father gave her a hard glare as he bit into a scraped grilled cheese sandwich.

“Tastes like carbon,” he muttered.

“Sorry.” She’d forgotten to buy cheese at the store on her latest shopping trip, so there had been only enough for three sandwiches. She’d managed to burn all three. All she could do was scrape them off and hope for the best.

“You’ve been preoccupied all morning,” he remarked with intense scrutiny of the bright color in her cheeks. “Want to talk about it?”

She managed a wan smile and shook her head. “Thanks anyway.”

He got down another bite of overdone grilled cheese sandwich. “Would it have anything to do with C.C.’s absence last night?”

She stared at him blankly. “What?”

“C.C.’s car was missing all night, and I understand that he had to have one of the hands drive him over to Juárez to collect it this morning.” He glared at the remainder of his sandwiches and pushed the plate away. “He was drinking, wasn’t he, Pepi?”

She couldn’t lie, but it wouldn’t do to tell the truth, either. “One of the men said C.C. had a few in Juárez, but on his own time,” she added quickly. “You can’t really jump on him unless he does it on your time.” She warmed to her subject. “Besides that, he only drinks once a year.”

He frowned. “Once a year?”

“That’s about the extent of it. And please don’t ask me why, because I can’t tell you.” She laid a gentle hand on his forearm. “Dad, you know we owe the ranch to his business sense.”

“I know,” he muttered. “But damn it, Pepi, I can’t have one set of rules for the men and another for him.”

“He probably won’t ever do it again,” she said reassuringly. “Come on, you haven’t actually caught him in the act, you know.”

He grimaced. “I don’t guess I have. But, if I ever do…!” he added hotly.

“I know. You’ll throw him off the roof.” She grinned. “Drink your coffee. At least it isn’t burned.” She finished hers. “I, uh, have to go into El Paso this afternoon to pick up a package I ordered.”

He scowled. “What package?”

“For your birthday,” she improvised. That wasn’t improbable; his birthday was only two weeks away.

“What is it?” he asked.

“I’ll never tell.”

He let the subject drop after that, and went back out to work. Pepi washed up and then went to dress for her appointment. Jeans and a T-shirt weren’t exactly the best outfit to wear to her own doom, she thought blackly.

She put on her full denim skirt with a blue print blouse and pinned her hair up on her head. She looked much more mature, she decided, although nothing could be done about the freckles on her nose. Not even makeup camouflaged them very well. She did the best she could, adding only a touch of makeup to her face and groaning over her voluptuous figure. If only she could lose enough weight to look like Edie…

With a moan, she slipped her hose-clad feet into taupe high heels, transferred the contents of her handbag into the pocketbook that matched the heels, and went downstairs.

As luck would have it, she ran right into C.C. on the front porch. He looked hung over and dusty. His bat-wing chaps were heavily stained, like the jeans under them and his chambray shirt. His hat had once been black, but now it was dusty gray. He glared down at her with black eyes.

“Brandon’s out at the holding corral,” he remarked in an oddly hostile tone. “I assume he’s the reason for the fine feathers?”

“I’m going into El Paso to do some shopping,” she replied. “How’s your head?” Better to sound natural, she decided, and she even smiled.

“It was bad enough before I buried it in dust and bleating calves,” he muttered. “Come in here a minute. I have to talk to you.”

She knew her heart had stopped beating. With a sense of awe, she felt the warmth of his lean, strong hand around her upper arm as he guided her back into the house and shut the door. He let go of her almost reluctantly.

“Look, Pepi, this has got to stop,” he said.

“W-what has?” she faltered.

“You chasing me down on my yearly binges,” he said irritably. He took off his hat and ran a grimy hand through his sweaty jet hair. “I’ve been thinking all day about what could have happened to you in Juárez last night. That part of town is a rough place in broad daylight, never mind at night. I told you before, I don’t need a nursemaid. I don’t want you ever pulling such a stupid stunt again.”

“There’s a simple solution. Stop drinking,” she said.

He searched her uplifted face quietly, scowling. “Yes, I think I might have to. If my memory’s as faulty as it was last night…”

She had to exert every ounce of will she had not to give anything away. “Your secrets are safe with me, C.C.,” she said in a stage whisper, and grinned.

He relaxed a little. “Okay, squirt. Go do your shopping.” His dark eyes slid over her body in a way they never had before, and she felt her knees going weak.

“Something wrong?” she asked huskily.

His eyes caught hers. “You kick around in jeans so much that I forget occasionally that you’ve even got legs.” His gaze dropped to them and he smiled in a sensual kind of way. “Very nice legs, at that.”

She flushed. “My legs are none of your business, C.C.,” she informed him.

He didn’t like that. His sharp glance told her so. “Why? Do they belong to the carrot-topped vet already? He acts more like a lover than a friend, despite your constant denials.” His expression seemed to harden before her eyes. “You’re twenty-two, as you keep telling me. And this is a permissive age, isn’t it? No man can expect virginity in a wife anymore.”

The mention of the word “wife” made her face pale. But she couldn’t let him see how shaken she was. “That’s right,” she said. “It is a permissive age. I can sleep with a man if I like.”

He looked briefly murderous. “Does your father know about that attitude?”

“What my father doesn’t know won’t bother him,” she said uneasily. “I have to go, C.C.”

His eyes mirrored his contempt. “My God, I thought you were old-fashioned, in that respect at least.”

That hurt. She lowered her gaze to his shirt. “As you keep telling me, my private life is no concern of yours,” she said in a tight voice. “You and Edie probably don’t play bingo on your dates, either, and I don’t make nasty remarks about your morals.”

“I’m a man,” he said shortly.

She lifted her eyes defiantly. “So what? Do you think being a man gives you some divine right to sleep with anybody you like? If men expect chaste women, then women have the right to expect chaste men!”

His thick eyebrows lifted toward the ceiling. “My God, where would you find one?”

“That’s my point exactly. Sling mud and it sticks to your fingers. Now I’m going.”

“If you aren’t meeting the handsome vet, who are you meeting, dressed like that?” he asked curtly.

“It’s just a skirt and blouse!”

“Not the way you fill them out, little one,” he said quietly. His eyes made emphatic statements about that before he lifted them back up to capture hers.

“I’m overweight,” she got out.

“Really?” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, but his eyes had hers in a stranglehold and he wouldn’t let her avert her gaze.

Her heart raged in her chest, beating painfully hard and fast. Her lips parted on a shaky breath and she realized that her hands were clutching her purse so hard that her nails were leaving marks in the soft leather.

He moved closer, just close enough to threaten her with the warm strength of his body. He was so much taller that she had to look up to see his eyes, but she couldn’t manage to tear her gaze away.

The back of his forefinger touched her cheek in a slow, devastating caress. “I thought you were a total innocent, little Pepi,” he said, his voice at least an octave deeper. “If that’s not the case, you could find yourself in over your head very quickly.”

Her lips parted. She was drowning in him, so intoxicated that she didn’t even mind the smell of calf and burned hide that clung to him. Her eyes fell to his hard mouth, to its thin chiseled lines, and she wanted it with a primitive hunger. It occurred to her that she could entice him into her bed, that she could sleep with him. They were legally married, even if he didn’t know it. She could seduce him. The delicious thought made her breath catch.

Then came the not-so-delicious thought of what would happen afterward. With the experience she was pretty sure he had, he might know that she was virginal, by her reactions if nothing else. Besides that, it might hurt, which would be a dead giveaway. And he didn’t know they were married. All sorts of complications could arise. No, she thought miserably, she couldn’t even have that consolation. Not even one night to hold in her memory. She had to keep him at arm’s length until she could decide how to tell him the truth and what to do about it.

She backed away a little, forcing a smile. “I really have to go,” she said huskily. “See you later.”

He muttered something under his breath and opened the door for her, his dark eyes accusing as they watched her go. She was getting under his skin. It made him angry that her body enticed him, that he was hungry for her. It made him angrier that she was apparently experienced. He didn’t want other hands touching her, especially the vet’s. She’d been his caretaker for so long now that he’d come to look upon her with the same passion a wine maker felt for his best vintage. But he’d thought she was virginal, and she’d as good as told him she wasn’t. That realization changed everything. He’d placed her carefully off limits for years, but if she wasn’t innocent, then he didn’t have to worry about his conscience. Odd, though, he thought as he watched her go, she could still blush prettily enough when he looked at her body. Maybe she wasn’t very experienced, despite the redheaded veterinarian’s attentions. C.C.’s black eyes narrowed. Brandon didn’t have his experience, so that gave him an edge. Yes, it did. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth and smiled faintly as he watched Pepi climb into her father’s old Lincoln and drive away.

Blissfully unaware of C.C.’s plotting, Pepi managed to get the car out of the driveway without hitting anything. Her hands on the steering wheel were still shaking from her unexpected confrontation. That was the first time that C.C. had ever made anything resembling a pass at her. Perhaps she should have been less emphatic about her experience—of which she didn’t have any. But she’d felt threatened by the way C.C. had looked at her, and her mind had shut down. For one long second she agonized over the thought that he might take her off the endangered species list and start pursuing her himself. But, no, he had Edie to satisfy those needs. He wouldn’t want an innocent like herself. And then she remembered that she’d told him she was no innocent. What would she do if he made a heavy pass at her? She loved him to distraction, but she didn’t dare let things go that far. If the worst came to pass and they were really married, she could get an annulment without much difficulty. But if she admitted him to her bed, it would mean getting a divorce, and that would take much longer. She couldn’t afford to give in to temptation, no matter how appealing it was….

* * *

The attorney’s office was located adjacent to a new shopping center that had just opened on the outskirts of town. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the adobe facade of the office building and took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be very pleasant, she was afraid.

She went in and produced the document. The attorney took his time looking it over. He was bilingual, so the wording that had sent Pepi crazy trying to decipher with the help of a Spanish-English dictionary made perfect sense to him.

“It’s legal, I assure you,” he mused, handing it back. “Congratulations,” he added with a smile.

“He doesn’t know we’re married.” She groaned. She told him the particulars. “Doesn’t that mean anything, that he was intoxicated?”

“If he was sober enough to agree to be married, to initiate the ceremony and to sign his name to a legal certificate of marriage,” he said, “I’m afraid it is binding.”

“Then I’ll just have to get an annulment,” she said heavily.

“No problem,” he said, smiling again. “Just have him come in and sign—”

“He has to know about it!” she exclaimed, horrified.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Even if he did apparently get married without realizing it, there’s just no way the marriage can be dissolved without his consent.”

Pepi buried her face in her hands. “I can’t tell him. I just can’t!”

“You really have to,” he said. “There are all kinds of legal complications that this could create. If he’s a reasonable man, surely he’ll understand.”

“Oh, no, he won’t,” she said on a miserable sigh. “But you’re right. I do have to tell him. And I will,” she added, rising to shake his hand. She didn’t say when.

Pepi mentally flayed herself for not telling C.C. the truth when he’d demanded it. She’d only wanted to spare him embarrassment, and she hadn’t thought any damage would be done. Besides that, the thought of being his wife, just for a little while, was so sweet a temptation that she hadn’t been able to resist. Now she was stuck with the reality of her irresponsibility, and she didn’t know what she was going to do.

For a start, she avoided C.C. With roundup in full swing, and the men working from dawn until long after dark, that wasn’t too hard. She spent her own free time with Brandon, wishing secretly that she could feel for him what she felt for C.C. Brandon was so much fun, and they were compatible. It was just that there was no spark of awareness between them.

“I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time with Hale,” her father said at supper one night near the end of the massive roundup, during one of his rare evenings at home.

“There, there, you’re just jealous because he’s getting all your apple pies while you’re out working,” she teased.

He sighed. “No, it’s not that at all. I want to see you in a happy marriage, girl. The kind your mother and I had. Hale’s a fine young man, but he’s too biddable. You’d be leading him around by the nose by the end of your first year together. You’re feisty, like your mother. You need a man who can stand up to you, a man you can’t dominate.”

Only one man came immediately to mind and she flushed, averting her eyes. “The one you’re thinking of is already spoken for,” she said tersely.

His eyes, so much like her own, searched her face. “Pepi, you’re old enough now to understand why men see women like Edie. He’s a man. He has…a man’s needs.”

She picked up her fork and looked at it, trying not to feel any more uncomfortable than she already did. “Edie is his business, as he once told me. We have no right to interfere in his private life.”

“She’s an odd choice for a ranch foreman, isn’t she?” he mused, still watching her like a hawk. “A city sophisticate, a divorcée, a woman used to wealth and position. Don’t you find it unexpected that she likes C.C.?”

“Not really. He’s quite sophisticated himself,” she reminded him. “He seems to fit in anywhere. Even at business conferences,” she added, recalling a conference the three of them had attended two years ago. She and her father had both been surprised at the sight of C.C. in a dinner jacket talking stocks and bonds and investments with a rancher over cocktails. It had been an eye-opening experience for Pepi.

“Yes, I remember,” her father agreed. “A mysterious man, C.C. He came out of nowhere, literally. I’ve never been able to find out anything about his background. But from time to time, things slip out. He’s not a man unused to wealth and position, and at times he makes me feel like a rank beginner in business. He can manipulate stocks with the best of them. It was his expertise that helped me put the ranch into the black. Not to mention those new techniques in cattle management that he bulldozed me into trying. Embryo transplants, artificial insemination, hormone implants…although he and I mutually decided to stop the hormone implants. There’s been a lot of negative talk about it among consumers.”

“Negative talk never stopped C.C.,” she said, chuckling.

“True enough, but he thinks like I do about it. If implants cut back beef consumption because people are afraid of the hormones, that cuts our profits.”

“I give up,” she said, holding up both hands. “Put away your shooting irons.”

“Sorry,” he murmured, and smiled back.

“Actually I agree with you,” she confessed. “I just like to hear you hold forth. I’m going dancing with Brandon on Friday night. Okay?”

He looked reluctant, but he didn’t argue. “Okay, as long as you remember that my birthday’s Saturday night and you’re going out with me.”

“Yes, sir. As if I could forget. Thirty-nine, isn’t it…?”

“Shut up and carve that apple pie,” he said, gesturing toward it.

“Whatever you say.”

She tried not to think about C.C. for the rest of the week, but it was impossible not to catch an occasional glimpse of him in the saddle, going from one corral to the next. He let the herd representatives ride in the Jeep—representatives from other ranches in the area checking brands to make sure that none of their cattle had crossed into Mathews territory. It was a common courtesy locally, because of the vast territory the ranches in south Texas covered. Her father ran over two thousand head of cattle, and when they threw calves, it took some effort to get them all branded, tattooed, ear-tagged and vaccinated each spring and fall. It was a dirty, hot, thankless chore that caused occasional would-be cowboys to quit and go back to working in textile plants and furniture shops. Cowboying, while romantic and glamorous to the unknowing, was low paying, backbreaking and prematurely aging as a profession. It meant living with the smell of cow chips, burning hide, leather and dirt—long hours in the saddle, long hours of fixing machinery and water pumps and vehicles and doctoring sick cattle. There was a television in the bunkhouse, but hardly ever any time to watch it except late on summer evenings. Ranch work was year-round with few lazy periods, because there was always something that needed doing.

The advantages of the job were freedom, freedom, and freedom. A man lived close to the earth. He had time to watch the skies and feel the urgent rhythm of life all around him. He lived as man perhaps was meant to live, without technology strangling his mind, without the smells and pressures of civilization to cripple his spirit. He was one with nature, with life itself. He didn’t answer to an alarm clock or some corporation’s image of what a businessman should be. He might not make a lot of money, he might risk life and limb daily, but he was as free as a modern man could get. If he did his job well and carefully, he had job security for all his life.

Pepi thought about that, and decided that it might not be such a bad thing after all, being a cowboy. But the title and job description, while it might fit C.C., sat oddly on his broad shoulders. He was much too sophisticated to look at home in dirty denims. It was easier now to picture him in a dinner jacket. All the same, he did look fantastic in the saddle, riding a horse as easily as if he’d been born on one. He was long and lean and graceful, even in a full gallop, and she’d seen him break a horse to saddle more than once. It was a treat to watch. He never hurt the horse’s spirit in the process, but once he was on its back, there was never any doubt about who the master was. He stuck like glue, his hard face taut with strain, his eyes glittering, his thin lips smiling savagely with the effort as he rode the animal to submission.

The picture stuck in Pepi’s mind, and brought with it disturbing sensations of another kind of conquest. She was no prude, and despite her innocence, she knew what men and woman did together in bed. But the sensation, the actual feelings they shared were alien to her. She wondered if C.C. would be like that in bed, if he’d have that same glittery look in his eyes, that same savage smile on his thin lips as he brought a woman to ecstasy under the driving force of his hard, sweat-glistened body…

She went scarlet. Fortunately there was nobody nearby to see her. She darted into the house and up the staircase to get dressed for her dinner date with Brandon.

They went to a restaurant in downtown El Paso, one famous in the area for the size of its steaks and for its view of the city at night from its fourteenth-floor location in a well-known hotel.

“I do love the view from up here,” Pepi told Brandon, smiling at him as they were shown to a seat by the huge windows overlooking the Franklin Mountains. The Franklins, in fact, were responsible for the city’s name, because the pass that separated the Franklins from the Juárez Mountains to the south was called El Paso del Norte—the path of the north. Part of the mountain chain was located in the city of El Paso itself. The only major desert city in Texas, El Paso shared much history with Mexico’s Juárez, across the border. Pancho Villa lived in El Paso after his exile from his own country, and historically the Texas city, which sat on the Butterfield Overland stage route in the late nineteenth century had been the site of Indian attacks and a replica of old Fort Bliss marked the former home of the cavalry that once fought the Apaches, including the famous Chief Victorio. Modern day Fort Bliss was the home of the largest air defense center of the free world. Not far from the restaurant where Pepi and Brandon were eating was the Acme Saloon, where gunfighter John Wesley Hardin was shot in the back and killed.

On a less grim note, there was an aerial tramway up to Ranger Peak, giving tourists a view of seven thousand square miles of mountain and desert. There were one hundred parks in El Paso, not to mention museums, old missions, and plenty of attractions across the border in Mexico’s largest border city, Juárez.

Pepi had lived near El Paso all her life, and she had the love of the desert that comes from living near it. Tourists might see an expanse of open land nestled between mountain ranges with no apparent life. Pepi saw flowering agave and prickly pear cactus, stately organ pipe cactus and creosote bushes, graceful mesquite trees and the wonder of the mountain ranges at sunset. She loved the desert surrounding the city. Of course, she loved her own home more. The land down near Fort Hancock where the ranch was located was just a bit more hospitable than this, and her roots were there.

“The view from up here is pretty great,” Brandon agreed, drawing her out of her reveries. “But you suit me better than the desert and the mountains,” he added, his gaze approving her simple mauve dress with its crystal pleats and cap sleeves. Her hair, in an elegant bun, drew attention to the exquisite lines of her face and the size of her pale brown eyes. She’d used more makeup than usual and she looked honestly pretty, freckles and all. But it was her figure that held Brandon’s attention. When she dressed up, she was dynamite.

“What will you have to drink?” the waitress asked with a smile, diverting both of them.

“Just white wine for me,” Pepi replied.

“I’ll have the same,” her escort added.

The waitress left and Brandon, resplendent in a dark suit, leaned his forearms on the spotless white tablecloth and stared at her warmly. “Why won’t you marry me?” he asked. “Does it have something to do with the fact that I hang out with animals?”

She laughed. “I love animals. But I’m not quite ready for marriage yet.” Then she remembered that she was married, and her heart dropped. She shifted back in her chair, feeling vaguely guilty at being out with Brandon when she was legally another man’s wife. Of course, the man she was married to didn’t know it. That made her feel a little better, at least.

“You’re an old lady of twenty-two,” he persisted. “You’ll be over the hill before you know it.”

“No, I won’t. I haven’t even decided what I want to do with my life yet.” That was true. She’d never gone to college. Somehow, after she’d graduated from high school, there had been too much to demand her time at home. “I like figures,” she murmured absently. “I thought I might take an accounting course or something.”

“You could come and work for me. I need a bookkeeper,” he said instantly.

“Sorry, but so does Dad. Jack Berry, our present bookkeeper, is hopeless. So is Dad. If I decide to take on bookkeeping, you’d better believe that Dad will scoop me up first. He hates having to redo Jack’s figuring.”

“I guess… Well, well, look at that dress!”

It was unusual for Brandon to be so wickedly interested in what any woman wore. Pepi turned her head slightly to follow his gaze and her heart froze in her chest.

Edie was just coming in the door, wearing a red dress that was cut to the waist in back and dipped in a faintly low V in front. Despite its length, it was an advertisement for her blond beauty, and she drew eyes. Just behind her stood a bored-looking C.C. in a dark vested suit, his hard face showing lines of tiredness from the two weeks of work he’d just put in. Pepi could hardly bear to look at him.

He must have felt her stare because his head turned and even across the room she registered the impact of that level look. She averted her eyes and smiled at Brandon.

“You might as well keep your leering looks to yourself,” she said more pleasantly than she wanted to. “C.C.’s pretty possessive of her.”