Читать книгу The Wrangler's Bride - Justine Davis - Страница 11

Was she really that good, or was he just that much of a pushover?

Grant McClure shook his head ruefully as he walked out to the main barn. It was probably a little of both; he’d always fallen in with Kristina Fortune’s maneuvers, even when he’d seen right through them. But his half sister was such a charmer, more full of high spirits than of any real maliciousness, it was hard to say no to her.

So he hadn’t. And in the process he’d saddled himself with an unwanted guest for the foreseeable future. And at the worst possible time for him, and the ranch.

With a smothered sigh, he leaned against the stall door as he listened to the ranch truck pulling away. Young Chipper Jenkins had been torn, excited about being trusted with the new truck, yet a bit disgruntled at being sent on such a non-cowboy errand to pick up some dude-type woman in town.

“Hey!”

Startled, Grant grabbed at his dark brown Stetson, suddenly canted forward over his brow. He whirled as a nicker that could only be described as amused came from the big horse behind him.

“Darn it, Joker, knock it…off.”

He ended the exclamation rather sheepishly as he heard his own words in the context of what the big Appaloosa stallion had done—gleefully nudged the wide-brimmed hat down over Grant’s eyes until it hit the bridge of his nose.

He glared at the horse. The stallion shook his head vigorously, his black forelock flopping over the white patch above one eye, the unusual marking that gave him a faintly clownish look, matching the unexpectedly playful personality that had given rise to his nickname of Joker. The horse snorted, and bobbed his head as if in pleased enthusiasm for the success of his prank.

And Grant’s glare became a grin.

“Darn you, you worthless nag,” he muttered.

He didn’t mean it. The beautifully marked stallion was one of the most nearly flawless horses he’d ever seen. Perfect conformation, power, speed, endurance, he had it all—coupled with a heart as big as the Rockies, a personality that charmed, and the apparent ability to pass his quality on to his foals. The big Appy was any horseman’s dream.

And a dream Grant McClure had never expected to come true in a million years.

Thank you, Kate, he whispered to himself, not for the first time. I don’t know why you did it, but thanks.

“Come on, you big clown,” he said, reaching up to rub his knuckles under the horse’s jaw in the way he’d learned early on the big animal loved. “Let’s get you some work before you go soft on me.”

Joker snorted in agreement, and bobbed his head eagerly. Or so it seemed, Grant amended silently, wondering at his continuing tendency to anthropomorphize this animal, something he never did. Except maybe with Gambler, the quick, clever Australian shepherd who was as much a hand on the M Double C ranch as anyone else. But the big Appy seemed to invite the human comparisons, and after a year and a half of dealing with the horse, Grant had finally quit fighting the impulse.

Nearly two hours later, as satisfied as any man could be with Joker’s willing, polished performance, he turned the horse out for a well-deserved romp in the big corral behind the main barn. It would make for a bigger cleanup job after the horse inevitably rolled in the dirt, but he’d earned the back-scratching pleasure, Grant thought. Besides, it was late November, and once they’d eaten the Thanksgiving turkey down to the bone, cold weather was generally here for good in the Wyoming high country; soon there’d be nothing but snow to roll in. It was a little surprising that they’d had few storms already, and far enough apart that the snow had time to melt in between.

But it wouldn’t be long before the white stuff was here to stay, and lots of it. And then he and all the hands would be working to sheer exhaustion just to keep the stock alive through the Wyoming winter, and the last thing he needed was to have to nursemaid some big-city girl who—

The sound of the ranch’s truck returning cut in on his thoughts.

“Here goes,” he muttered to himself, slinging Joker’s bridle over his shoulder and reversing his steps to go greet his visitor; it had been rude enough not to go himself to pick her up, but he had—perhaps childishly—drawn the line at dancing to Kristina’s manipulating tune there.

He saw Chipper first. Standing beside the driver’s door of the mud-spattered blue pickup, the young man was grinning widely, his face flushed, and looking utterly dazzled. Grant frowned. And then he saw the obvious reason for the young hand’s expression; the woman who had scrambled without help from the high truck’s passenger seat. Long blond hair, pulled back in a ponytail, bounced as she walked around the front of the truck. She was wearing jeans and a heavy sheepskin jacket, and was seemingly unbothered by the briskness of the air.

She came to a halt when she spotted him, her eyes widening slightly. Grant knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help himself; he hadn’t expected this.

She was small, at least from Grant’s six-foot viewpoint, and not just in height; from her pixieish face to a pair of very small feet encased in tan lace-up boots, every inch of her looked delicate, almost fragile. And the dark circles that shadowed her eyes only added to the overall air of fragility. She looked tired. More than tired, weary, a weariness that went far beyond the physical. Grant felt an odd tug somewhere deep inside; his father had looked like that in the painful days before his death five years ago.

She was looking at him, that fatigue dimming eyes that should have been a vivid green into a flat dullness.

“Hello, Grant.”

Her voice was soft, husky, and held an undertone that matched what he’d seen in her eyes.

“Hello, Mercy,” he said quietly.

She smiled at the old nickname, but the smile didn’t reach those haunted eyes. “No one’s called me that since you quit coming home summers.”

“Minneapolis was never my home. It was just where my mother was.”

She glanced around, as if trying to take in the vastness of the wild landscape with eyes used to the steel-and-concrete towers of the city, not the granite-and-snow towers of the Rocky Mountains.

“No, this was always home for you, wasn’t it?” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Always.”

His voice rang with a fervency he didn’t try to hide. He’d known from the time he was a child that this place was a deep, inseparable part of him, that its wild, elemental beauty called to something so intrinsic to him that he would never be able to—or want to—resist.

“So this is what you always had to go back to. I think I understand now.”

She sighed. It was a tiny sound, more visible than audible. He’d thought, when Kristina told him Meredith Brady had become, of all things, a cop, that she must have grown a lot since that last summer, when she was a pesky, tenacious fourteen-year-old and the same height as his two-years-younger half sister. She hadn’t. If she’d gained more than an inch in the twelve years since, he’d be surprised. She couldn’t be more than fifteen-two, he thought, judging with an eye more used to calculating height on horses than on people. Especially women.

“You’ve…changed,” he said. And it was true; he remembered her as a live-wire girl who had looked a great deal like his half sister, except for green eyes in place of Kristina’s pale blue, a girl with a lot of energy but not much stature. The stature hadn’t changed much, but the energy had; it seemed nowhere in evidence now.

“Changed, but not grown, is that it?” she said, sounding rueful.

“Well,” he said reasonably, “you haven’t. Much.”

“Easy for you to say. You’re the one who grew four inches in one summer.”

Grant’s mouth quirked. That had been an awkward summer, when his fifteen-year-old body decided now was the time and shot him to his full six feet in a spurt that indeed seemed to happen in a three-month span. He’d been embarrassed at his sudden gawkiness and the clumsiness that ensued, and the fact that none of his clothes fit anymore, but even more embarrassed by the fascination the change seemed to hold for his half sister’s annoyingly omnipresent best friend.

“Amazing I grew at all, with you glued to my heels, Meredith Cecelia.”

She winced. “Ouch. Please, stick with just Meredith. Or Meri.”

She gave him a sideways look. He read it easily, and laughed.

“Or Mercy?” he suggested. “Or rather, ‘No Mercy’?”

He’d been rather proud of his own cleverness in coining the name for her when they met that first summer so long ago, combining her first and middle names and his own irritation at her tenaciousness in following him around.

“You always were annoyingly proud of coming up with that,” she said dryly.

“It fit,” he pointed out. “You never would leave me alone. Every time I came to visit Mom, you were always hanging around. I’ll never forget that time you followed me to the ice rink and got stuck in the turn-stile.”

“I was only twelve,” she explained with some dignity. “And I had a huge crush on you, after you saved me from those boys who were teasing me.”

Grant blinked. He’d guessed she had a crush on him—it hadn’t been hard, with the quicksilver girl dogging virtually his every step each summer he came to visit—but he hadn’t realized it had started then. He remembered finding her that first summer, cornered by the two bigger boys, her chin up proudly, despite the tears welling from her eyes. He’d chased her tormentors away, then walked her home. She’d said nothing until they got to her house, and then only a quiet thank-you. But now that he thought about it, that was about the time she had become his ever-present shadow.

“They were just a couple of bullies,” he said.

“And you were my white knight,” she returned softly.

Grant winced; he wasn’t hero material, not even for an impressionable child.

“Oh, don’t worry,” she said, as if in answer to his expression. She smiled widely—a better smile this time, one that almost brightened her eyes to the vivid green he remembered. “I got over it long ago. Once I grew up enough to realize I’d fallen for a pretty face without knowing a thing about the man behind it, I recovered quite nicely. Thank goodness.”

“Oh.”

It came out rather flatly, and Grant’s mouth quirked again. Was he feeling flattered that she’d admitted to that long-ago crush? Or miffed that she’d gotten over it so thoroughly? And seemed so cheerful about it? He nearly laughed; hadn’t he had enough of women enamored purely of his looks? And more than enough of those who, when they found out there was a comfortable amount of money behind the McClure name, became even more enamored?

At least Mercy had never been that kind of female; even at her adoring worst as a child, she’d never fawned on him. She’d been too much a tomboy for that, an unexpected trait in such a delicate-looking little pixie. A tiny dynamo with a blond ponytail, she’d merely followed him. Everywhere.

She still had the ponytail. But the tomboy had grown up. And there was no denying that the gamine features that had once reminded him of a mischievous imp were now enchanting. Big eyes, turned-up nose, sassy chin…Meredith Brady had become a beautiful woman. A very beautiful woman. No wonder Chipper had looked dazed.

Chipper. Who was standing there with wide eyes and wider ears, Grant thought wryly, listening to this entire exchange. And stealing shy but eager glances at Mercy, who seemed utterly unaware of the eighteen-year-old’s fascination.

Which didn’t mean, Grant told himself sternly, that he had any excuse for standing here staring at her himself. And the fact that he had been alone for a long time wasn’t any justification for the sudden acceleration of his pulse, either. This was the bane of his teenage existence, after all. No Mercy, the pest. Just because she’d grown into a lovely adult didn’t mean a thing. Not a darn thing. But he did wonder if she ever let down that ponytail, and how the silky-looking hair would fall if she did.

“Get on those salt blocks,” he instructed the young hand firmly. “I’ll show her up to the house.”

Chipper looked crestfallen. “I was gonna carry her bags up for her—”

“I can manage,” she said. “There’s not that much. I tend to travel light.”

“But I—”

“I need those salt blocks set out,” Grant said. “Now.”

“Yes, sir,” Chipper said resignedly. Then he brightened, turning his freckled face back toward Mercy. “If you need someone to show you around—”

“I’ll keep you in mind,” she said, smiling at the boy.

An utterly charming smile, Grant thought. And utterly without heart. A practiced, surface smile, reflecting nothing of the woman behind it. Yet it didn’t seem to him a phony smile, not like those of some of the women he’d encountered in his infrequent forays into the society his mother was now a part of.

No, this wasn’t a smile to hide shallowness, it was more of a mask, to hide…what? Emptiness? Pain?

It came back to him in a rush then, what Kristina had said in her phone call to him last week. It had taken him a moment to connect the name that sounded familiar to the memory of his pesky blond shadow, so he’d missed the first part of what his half sister said. But her plea had been simple enough; Meredith needed someplace to go, a shelter, away from the city, for a while, after the death of her partner, Nick Corelli, who had been murdered in the line of duty.

“She and Nick were very close,” Kristina had said, in the most patently sincere part of her wheedling request. “She’s devastated. She needs to rest, she’s running herself ragged. Please, Grant. Just for a while. She needs someplace quiet, where people won’t talk about what happened all the time. Someplace to grieve, and to heal.”

That was it, he thought. Grief was what was living behind that careful smile. She must have loved the man a great deal. And here he was overheating absurdly, not only over his childhood nemesis, but over a woman grieving for a loved one. Mentally chastising himself, he reached for the two bags Chipper had set down beside the truck.

“I said I can get those,” she said.

“I’m sure you can, but I’ll do it. You’ve had a long trip.”

“I sat for most of it,” she pointed out. “I can carry my own bags.”

Grant dropped the bags, wondering if this was how this visit was going to go. His mother had been at great pains to teach him manners during the few months of the year he spent with her growing up. When he complained that women didn’t seem to want manners anymore, she’d quietly told him women and men most certainly did, they just didn’t want condescension along with them, and continued her lessons.

He crossed his arms across his chest. But before he could open his mouth, she forestalled him.

“It’s not a gender thing,” she said quickly, as if she’d read his thoughts. “I’m intruding here, I know that. You have a ranch to run, and you’re doing me a big enough favor just by letting me stay here. If there’s anything I can do to help out, just tell me. I don’t want to be treated like a guest, so I don’t want to start out that way.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Then just exactly how do you want to be treated?”

She smiled suddenly, the most genuine smile he’d seen from her yet. And it sent a snap of electricity arcing through him that startled him with its swiftness and power.

“Ignoring me would be fine.”

Despite the unexpected jolt, his mouth quirked with humor. “I doubt anyone ignores you successfully, Mercy,” he said dryly. “I tried every summer for years.”

She only lifted a delicately arched brow at his use of the childhood nickname again. “I know. And the harder you ignored me, the more determined I got.”

“I know.”

He had to look away from her; that smile was getting to him again. He cleared his throat. He’d warned Kristina, who had only been to the ranch in the summer, about all this, but she’d insisted that was exactly what her friend needed. But he didn’t know if she’d passed his warnings on.

“You’ll be pretty much stuck inside once the snow really sets in.”

“I brought lots of books,” she said.

“I don’t expect you to work. But I do expect you not to create any extra work for my men. Winter is our roughest season, and the hands will be hard-pressed enough just to keep things running around here.”

Mercy didn’t take offense. “I probably wouldn’t be much good to you anyway,” she answered easily. “I’ve never ridden a real horse, and I know next to nothing about cows. But I can take care of myself. You don’t need to look out for me.”

“Cattle,” he corrected mildly.

“Okay.” She shrugged, accepting that easily, as well. Clearly she had no problem admitting when she knew nothing about something. Grant wished there were more people like that; he’d seen too many who came to this part of the country thinking they were going to find adventure, never knowing or even thinking of the realities of the life they were taking on. His stepbrother Kyle had been one of those. But rancher Samantha Rawlings had quickly—and permanently—straightened him out, Grant thought with an inward grin. And he’d done fairly well, despite the fact that he’d never been able to settle down to any job in his life before.

But then, with the manipulative, vindictive Sheila Fortune for a mother, that was hardly any surprise, Grant thought, thankful yet again for his own mother’s warmth and genuine goodness. It was amazing that Sheila’s children had managed any semblance of lives of their own, and with Kyle, Michael and Jane all married now, Sheila must be frothing at having lost so much control over her children. He didn’t envy his stepsiblings at all. In fact, there were times when he even felt sorry for his stepfather, but he usually got over that in a hurry.

He forced himself back to the matter at hand, wondering why he was finding it so difficult to simply talk to this woman, why his thoughts were rambling in crazy directions.

“I won’t have time to look out for you, once the snow flies,” he warned. “And neither will anybody else. You’ll be on your own.”

Something dark and painful flickered in her eyes, and Grant regretted using those words.

“I’ll be fine,” she said briskly.

Her tone belied what he’d seen in her eyes, but he guessed she was only hiding it well. Or had a lot of practice at suppressing such emotions. She reached for one of the soft-sided navy cases.

“Split them?” she suggested.

“Fine,” he said, and took the other.

She lifted the bag easily, although Grant knew it wasn’t light. He shouldn’t be surprised, he told himself. As a cop—especially a female one—she probably had to be more than just strong and fit to hold her own. And apparently she did hold her own; Kristina had told him she’d been on the force five years, graduating the academy and turning twenty-one, the minimum age to be sworn in, on the same day. It was what she’d always wanted, Kristina had said, and once Meredith Cecelia Brady set her eyes on a goal, there was nothing and no one who could stop her.

The admiration in his somewhat spoiled half sister’s tone had been genuine, and that was rare enough that Grant had paid attention. And had agreed to her request. Sometimes Kristina could be worse than annoying; only the fact that she was as smart and charming as she was spoiled made her bearable. Someday, he thought, she was going to run into some man she couldn’t control, some man who had no patience with her spoiled-princess act, and the sparks were going to fly.

But Mercy had been her truest friend, kept through the years, and when she needed help, Kristina had been there. And she hadn’t hesitated to use her half brother to get what she wanted. And since it was one of those rare times when Kristina asked for something not for herself, Grant hadn’t been able to turn her down.

Mercy.

She’d told him what to call her, but he kept thinking of her as Mercy, reverting to the old childhood nickname. He wasn’t sure why. A reminder, perhaps, of who she was? A friend of Kristina’s, and a woman in mourning. He would do well to remember that, and if using that name would do the trick, then he’d use it. He hadn’t forgotten that unexpected jolt, or the sudden revving of his heartbeat; inappropriate as it was, it had happened, and if using that childhood name would keep a bit of distance between them, then that was yet another reason to do it. He had no time to deal with that kind of response. He was sure of that.

Just as he was sure it had simply been the result of going too long without feminine companionship; hell, he’d barely seen a woman for a month, and hadn’t been on a date in three times that long. No wonder his libido had kicked to life at the sight of the lovely woman Mercy had become. He was sure that was all it was.

He just wasn’t sure he knew the first thing about providing sanctuary for a heart as wounded as Mercy’s seemed to be. He knew about the pain of loss, he’d known about it for a long time, ever since his mother had left his father and the ranch, when he was three years old. And he’d had it pounded home again when his father died, a long, slow death that had been agony to watch, a strong, vital man wasting away, with his last breath regretting that he’d lost the only woman he’d ever really loved to the city life he hated.

He’d found nothing to ease the pain he felt then. So how could he ever hope to provide it for someone else? He wouldn’t even know where to begin. Kristina had said Mercy wanted only a place to hide, to heal, to find peace. While, in time, he had found these things himself in the wild reaches of this Wyoming country, he had little hope that a city girl like Mercy would find the same kind of relief. Especially since she was dealing with such a brutal, unexpected death. The death of someone who, judging from that look in her eyes, she had loved very much.

He wasn’t sure there was any relief for that kind of pain.