Читать книгу Outlaw Marriage - Laurie Paige - Страница 8

H ope Baxter exhaled a pensive sigh, her gaze on the mountains to the west of Whitehorn. Today the lofty peaks didn’t comfort her troubled spirit. Neither did they gain her any perspective on the problems confronting her.

Not that the problems were personal, she hastened to assure herself.

The elaborately hand-carved sign on the lawn that proclaimed the building to be the new headquarters of the Baxter Development Corporation reminded her of her duties. She squared her shoulders and glanced toward the neatly arranged papers on her desk.

As the chief attorney on the case of Baxter versus Kincaid et al, she had to be cool, decisive and firm in the meeting with Collin Kincaid. She wondered where he was. Punctual in their prior meetings, he was ten minutes late for this one and he was the one who had requested it.

A movement caught her eye. She paused, her attention on the street in front of the building, and watched as a tall, agile rancher climbed out of a battered pickup, the standard mode of transportation for about ninety percent of the rural residents of Montana. He walked up the sidewalk toward the entrance of the building.

Collin Kincaid. Handsome, as all the Kincaid men were. Eyes like blue sapphires. Dark, almost-black, hair. Half a foot taller than her own five-seven stature, giving him the height advantage even when she wore high heels. He was also muscular. His palm had been calloused when they had shaken hands at their first meeting. He was a working rancher, not an armchair cowboy.

Collin was also the only legitimate grandson of Garrett Kincaid. Garrett was trying to buy the old Kincaid spread from the trustees who managed the ranch for seven-year-old Jenny McCallum, the heir to the throne, so to speak. The grandfather wanted to provide a legacy for the other six grandsons—a seventh hadn’t been found yet but was thought to exist—all of whom were the bastard offspring of Garrett’s deceased son, Larry Kincaid.

Oh, what tangled webs we weave…

Not just Larry with his profligate womanizing, she mused, but all humans. She gave a snort of amusement. My, but she was waxing philosophical today.

Because Collin Kincaid made her nervous? Because she’d felt the unmistakable pull of male-female interest between them the first time they’d met? Because they were enemies?

Impatient with her thoughts, she resumed her seat in the executive chair and pulled herself closer to the desk. It was an effective shield, she’d found, for dealing with those who didn’t take her seriously as an attorney.

The secretary—another indication, along with the sign and new building, of the corporation’s affluent image, one her father wanted to project these days—buzzed her on the intercom and announced Kincaid’s arrival.

“Send him in,” she requested. She didn’t stand when the door opened. Keeping her seat kept her in the position of authority. In this office, she was the one in charge.

His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled upon seeing her. Their startling blue depths held laughter as he advanced across the Oriental carpet, as if he knew more than he was telling. And saw more than she was willing to reveal.

He was dressed in a gray summer suit with a touch of blue in the weave. His shirt was white and immaculate, his tie a tasteful blend of blue and gray with a touch of red.

Understated. Nothing too obvious, yet he had an aura of power that could have been intimidating had a person less confidence in his or her own abilities.

She returned his smile with cool professionalism.

He had a way of acting older and more experienced in the ways of the world than she, but that was ridiculous. He was only thirty-one to her almost twenty-eight. She’d gone to college at one of the prestigious Ivy League schools back east while he’d attended a Montana university. She’d been raised in New York until her father had decided to move back to Whitehorn a few years ago. Collin had lived most of his life on a ranch. Except for a few years with his mom and stepfather in San Diego after his parents divorced.

She wondered if that had been a lonely time for him. He’d returned to his grandfather’s ranch over in Elk Springs when he was fourteen or thereabouts, so the town gossips had reported. He’d been a rebel at the time, but hard work and a firm hand from his grandfather had soon put him to rights, the local story went.

Not that Hope cared in the least about Collin’s past, but knowledge of one’s enemy was a good thing. She cleared her throat and nodded firmly.

“Good morning. Please be seated,” she invited briskly, gesturing to the guest chair at the opposite side of the desk. Her tone was crisp, decisive.

He casually pulled the chair to the side of the desk, angling it toward her, then sat and stretched out his long legs so that his black dress boots were within two feet of her chair.

This action encroached on her space and forced her to angle her chair sideways to face him in a full frontal position, which she favored as one of greater power. It also put her feet within touching range of his, which further decreased the autonomy of her position.

“So,” he said in his deep, pleasant baritone, “we meet again.”

There was a world of innuendo in the statement. As if they’d been lovers or something in the not-too-distant past.

“Yes,” she said coolly, and picked up the Kincaid file. She flipped it open and studied the first page without really seeing it. Realizing she was using the folder as a shield, she tossed it back onto the desk, disgusted with her cowardice. “I don’t see that we have anything more to discuss,” she said, deftly reminding him that he had been the one to request the meeting.

“Don’t you?” he inquired with lazy humor.

He laid his creamy white Stetson hat, which he’d been holding, on her credenza. She was chagrined with herself for not telling him to hang it on the antique lowboy beside her door. Now he was further ensconced in her space.

In fact, she was beginning to feel surrounded by his confident masculinity. His eyes, as blue as the Montana sky, studied her. There was nothing lazy or humorous in that probing perusal. Her heart beat faster as she shifted uneasily in the executive chair.

Annoyed, she told him, “Past meetings between our parties have not been productive.”

“Well,” he drawled in that maddening Western accent, “your dad and my grandfather tend to get a mite heated on the subject. I thought you and I could discuss a possible settlement more fully without them being present.”

His eyes raked over her navy-blue coat dress that fastened all the way down the front with red-and-white enameled buttons. He lingered at the last button, which was located four inches above the hemline. Her knee was visible in the slit thus created.

Hope pulled her chair close to the desk so that her legs were hidden and twisted sideways from the waist so she could face him. “Does this mean you’re accepting our terms for settling the case?”

He had the nerve to laugh. The crinkles appeared beside his eyes again and twin lines indented his lean cheeks. His teeth were very white in contrast to his tanned face. His lips curved alluringly at the corners. She stared at his mouth and wondered about his kiss, how it would feel, if his lips would be hard or tender as he touched hers—

Appalled, she broke the thought and brought her wayward mind back to what he was saying.

“Hardly. My grandfather would have apoplexy. He’s determined to provide a legacy for his other grandsons and has decided the Kincaid ranch here in Whitehorn is the perfect place. The way I see it, we can haggle over this for years in the courts and not do anyone any good, or we can iron out an agreement.”

“What is your idea of an agreement?”

“That Jordan buy what’s left of the old Baxter ranch from the trustees at the price they offered it to us and let the rest go.”

Hope knew her father would never agree to anything less than the total original Baxter land. “Your grandfather has agreed to this?” she asked, probing for information.

“Well, not exactly. He’s as stubborn as your father. The Baxter place was folded into the Kincaid spread years ago. Granddad wants to keep the ranch intact as it now stands.”

“The sale of those two parcels was illegal since the original acquisition of the Baxter land was accomplished through fraudulent means,” she reminded him.

He heaved a sigh. “Looks like we’re going to talk in circles.”

She stood. “Then there’s no need to continue this meeting, is there?”

He rose, too, a frown marring his good looks. “My idea was that if we each took the same proposition to your dad and my grandfather, maybe we could get them to agree. A year of haggling over this is more than enough.”

His nearness bothered her. Standing no more than two feet away, she could feel the blanket of warmth from his body and the aura of confidence that came from the supreme ego that all the Kincaid men seemed to possess. She could smell soap and sandal-wood talc and aftershave.

She became dizzy, the air suddenly close, hot and still. Stepping back, she bumped into her chair, causing her knees to buckle. “Oh!”

With the quickness of a cat, his arms were there to steady her. She was engulfed by his heat, his scent, the protective cage of his arms and body.

“Easy,” he murmured, his breath soft against the hair at her temple, his voice deep and gentle.

Laying her hands against his chest, she made the mistake of looking up at him. Instead of pushing away as she’d intended, she was trapped within the depths of his eyes. Blue was supposed to be a cool color, but that wasn’t true of him. His gaze was blue…and hot. It burned down to some point in her that was suddenly agitated.

She felt the quick lift of his chest in a sharply in-drawn breath, then the way he went very still, not releasing her, yet not taking advantage of their forced closeness.

His lips, the bottom one slightly fuller than the top, parted. His head bent toward hers.

A quick, sharp need rose from that disturbed place inside her and made her tingle where they touched. She moistened her lips, then realizing what she was doing, clamped them tightly shut. Directing a glare his way, she tried to step back but was trapped between him and the chair.

Panic, strange and harsh and lightning-fast, swept over her. Her breath caught. “Let me go,” she ordered.

A second, an eternity, went by.

She was aware of a struggle in him, one as elemental as the hunger in herself that shocked and angered her sense of rightness. He was the enemy. She had to remember that.

He stepped back, sliding his hands from her back to her elbows to make sure she had her balance. “There now,” he murmured as if soothing a nervous filly.

Shoving the chair aside, she retreated a full three feet away. “I will present your offer to my father,” she told him stiffly. She sounded breathless, which she didn’t like. It might be interpreted as weakness on her part.

“We haven’t really discussed an offer yet. We’d better consider every facet and nail the details down before we jump in.” He picked up his hat. “It’s nearly noon. Let’s review it over lunch.”

“I really don’t have time—”

“It’s been a long spell since breakfast. I can’t talk on an empty stomach. The Hip Hop okay with you?”

She hesitated, not sure she wasn’t being rushed into something she would regret. However, her father wanted progress on the case and the courts liked to see a show of cooperation, so maybe she’d better go along with this arrogant Kincaid who seemed to think he could persuade her to his view. Besides, it was noon and her breakfast of toast with peanut butter was long gone, too.

“Yes, that will be fine.” She was pleased that she spoke in a firm tone. She sounded in charge once more, her panic of a moment ago subdued.

His ready smile lit his face. “Great.”

His hat in one hand, he placed the other under her elbow to escort her out. She gracefully eased away and retrieved her purse from the bottom desk drawer. She settled the strap over her shoulder and slipped the file folder into a soft-sided briefcase. Thus armed, she nodded that she was ready.

He stepped back and allowed her to precede him out of the office. She told her secretary where they would be and reiterated it to Kurt Peters, another full-time attorney with Baxter Development, when they encountered him in the quiet, cool hallway of the executive floor. With Collin observing every detail of the place, she was suddenly pleased with the show of Baxter wealth. While it didn’t match that of the Kincaids, it wasn’t something to be ignored, either.

“Shall I join you?” Kurt asked, his light blue eyes expressionless as he glanced at Collin.

Hope knew Kurt had absorbed her father’s dislike of the Kincaids, which bordered on the obsessive.

A flicker of guilt shot through her at the disloyal thought. At eighteen, her father had been cheated of his birthright as the promised heir to the Baxter ranch, which was owned by his uncle, Cameron Baxter, at that time.

Jeremiah Kincaid, former owner of the Kincaid ranch and a cousin to the present Kincaids who were trying to buy the place from Jenny’s trustees, had pulled strings to get the bank notes on the Baxter land called, thus forcing Cameron to sell or go into bankruptcy. Jeremiah had then bought the place for a song.

“This is a private conversation,” Collin said to Kurt before she could reply, taking her arm again and leading her past the other lawyer.

“I’ll talk to you later,” she called over her shoulder to Kurt. “Don’t push me around,” she said when she and Collin were out of hearing.

“I wouldn’t think of it,” he returned smoothly and, opening the door, ushered her out into the August heat.

At his truck, Collin considered helping Hope inside with the simple expedient of putting his hands on her waist and lifting her, but thought better of it.

Admiration hit him as she solved the problem of the high step by reaching down and unfastening the bottom button of her dress. Then she grabbed the handhold inside the door, stepped up with her left foot and swung neatly inside, her shapely behind plopping gracefully onto the leather seat.

His libido stampeded all over his self-control.

He closed the door and went around to the driver’s side. The heat was suffocating. He cranked up the engine and flipped the air conditioner on high. They were silent on the short drive to the main street of town. He pulled over to the curb on a side street beside the town park. She climbed out before he could get around to help her.

At the Hip Hop Café, they were directed to a table for two by the window where they could look out on the busy street or beyond to the hilly terrain east of town. Ranchers called out greetings as they wound their way through the busy diner. He noted their quick speculative glances at Hope and their equally quick nods.

Outsiders were viewed with suspicion in these parts. Her father had been buying up land in the county for years, even before he moved back here, which caused resentment among the old-timers. Collin noted the lift of her chin and the way she smiled at one and all. He mentally grinned. This woman had spirit. She wouldn’t be intimidated by a bunch of clannish ranchers.

A new waitress had replaced Emma Stover, nee Baxter, who was now his sister-in-law by virtue of marrying Brandon Harper, one of his newly discovered half-brothers. The lives of the Kincaid brothers were getting complicated.

The Baxters seemed to be at the heart of the complications, largely because of the controversy over the ranch and the lawsuit, which threatened to drag on forever. And of course, there was the matter of the new wives and babies being added to the Kincaid family at an awesome rate.

He felt a hitch in the vicinity of his heart. His granddad had made it plain that he expected Collin to marry and populate their ranch in Elk Springs, Montana, with a new generation of Kincaids. The sooner, the better. Seeing the domestic bliss of his half brothers brought the same thought to his mind. Now all he needed was a willing woman.

His gaze was drawn to his companion who was studying the menu with the grave seriousness she apparently brought to everything she did.

He frowned and peered at the menu he held. Getting mixed up with a woman whose father was a sworn enemy of the family would be stupid beyond belief. But, he had to admit, something about her fascinated him, this beautiful enemy who was as aware of him as he was of her.

“Are you ready to order?” the pretty young waitress inquired, her pad and pencil ready.

“Hmm, it’s Tuesday,” he recalled. “The blue plate special is elk hash, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir.” She read the day’s special, which was written on a chalkboard near the cash register, as if he couldn’t read or maybe couldn’t see that far.

He frowned. The young woman evidently thought he was ancient. Catching the brief curving of Hope’s mouth before she sternly disciplined the mirth at his expense, he grinned and winked at her before ordering the special and a glass of raspberry iced tea.

“I’ll have the same,” she said, handing the menu to the teenage waitress and settling back in the chair, her eyes on the traffic moving slowly along the street. “Superior court is in session,” she noted.

“Mmm-hmm. I see Judge Kate Randall Walker in a booth with the local psychic. Wonder where Lily Mae Wheeler is. She’s usually holding court here in the Hip Hop at noon everyday.”

This time Hope did smile. She even laughed, a tiny gurgle of sound that enchanted him. She was a mystery, this woman, one he would like very much to unravel. He backed off from the thought. She had pretty much made it clear that she, like her father, wouldn’t give a Kincaid the time of day if she could avoid it.

“I’m glad Emma was cleared of that murder charge,” Hope murmured. “It’s so odd to find a new relative, to learn my father and Emma’s mother are first cousins, after all these years of thinking there was no one else.”

“The notorious Lexine Baxter,” Collin said, referring to Emma’s mother, who evidently killed anyone who stood in the way of her ambitions, including a former partner, a husband, and finally Jeremiah Kincaid, her father-in-law. The woman was now in prison for her crimes.

A blush highlighted the porcelain skin of his dining companion as if she was embarrassed at the mention of her infamous relative. Collin couldn’t look away.

Hope Baxter was a natural blonde. Her eyes were large and of a soft blue-gray with a hint of vulnerability buried deep in them that was at odds with her cool, professional manner. Sometimes he thought he detected a hint of sadness in her. It made him wonder about her life.

With divorced parents and a profligate father he could never depend on, Collin knew how a person’s family could cause wounds that were hard to heal, if they ever did. His grandfather, Garrett Kincaid, had taken him in hand when he was fourteen and probably saved him from a senseless life of dissipation similar to his father’s.

“Sorry,” he murmured. “I didn’t mean to pull your family skeletons out of the closet.”

“I never knew Lexine. My father never mentioned her. So she doesn’t really seem like family.” She paused and looked troubled. “I would like to know Emma, though. I always wanted a sister. It’s lonely, growing up with no relatives. My father was always so busy—”

She stopped abruptly, looking surprised and irritated with herself, as if she’d given away family secrets. She was very protective of her father. Collin had seen that in the brief meetings with the older men present, meetings that more than once had ended in anger and a shouting match between her father and his granddad.

Collin mentally shook his head. He didn’t have much hope of doing any better than his grandfather, but he had promised he would try. If only he could find a way to breach the barriers he sensed in her….

“Your father doesn’t have a chance of winning this case,” he said, switching back to the subject of their meeting. “His claim is too old. He should have pursued it at the time of the sale to Jeremiah.”

“He didn’t have the means then.” She directed a hard look his way. “Nor the evidence we have now. Jeremiah made sure of that.”

“We both have interesting characters in our respective families,” he said with grim humor. Jeremiah Kincaid had been a womanizer just as his own father had been. However, unlike Larry with his six, maybe seven, illegitimate kids, Jeremiah had only two that they knew of.

She ignored his attempt to put them on common ground. Her face stern, she reminded him, “There is no statute of limitations on fraud.”

“Yeah, I remember that from business law.”

He had studied business management from a ranching viewpoint. Business law had focused on land ownership and legal decisions involving ranches and cattle disputes, or the inheritance of those.

“Then you must admit we have a very strong case,” Hope said. “It would be in your family’s interests to settle it now.”

He couldn’t help the sardonic tinge in his voice. “Well, now, if it were up to me, I would, but with the sale of those two parcels—one of which was to the Laughing Horse Reservation—others are involved. Jackson Hawk says the res won’t give up the land. They’re too far along with plans for a resort on it.”

Her eyes turned frosty. “That land belongs to my father. The trustees had no right to sell it. Surely with the famous Kincaid influence and charm, your grandfather can persuade the tribal elders to give up their claim. I’m sure the Kincaids can afford to return their money.”

“With interest,” he agreed, his own tone hardening.

The waitress arrived with their food, forestalling the argument. Damn, but he was tired of this whole thing. They had been at a stalemate for months. What made his granddad think he could break through the impasse? Baxter’s daughter was as tough and stubborn as her old man.

Silence engulfed them when they were alone again. He began eating the meal, one of his favorites, without tasting it. When the door of the café opened, he watched the new arrivals with a jaundiced eye. He recognized the woman as a local florist and wedding planner. She carried her son in her arms.

The kid, who looked about two years old, glanced his way and shouted, “Ope. Ope.”

Collin felt decidedly uncomfortable, as if the boy had named him the absent and unknown father of the florist’s son. Heat suffused his ears.

The woman laughed and came toward him. Hell, what was going on?

“Hope,” she said to her son. “Hope.”

“Ope. Ope,” the boy said.

Hope laughed, startling him. It was a truly joyous sound, a welcoming sound rather than an amused gurgle. He was instantly fascinated. She held out her arms.

For a second Collin thought heaven had opened its gates and was inviting him inside. He was totally fascinated by the change in her. Whereas a moment ago she’d been all frosty professionalism, there was now tenderness and laughter in her eyes. But she wasn’t looking at him. He swallowed hard and watched the woman with the kid stop at the table.

“Here, he’s yours.” The mother dumped the child into Hope’s willing embrace. “Gabe can say ‘Ope,’ but can’t seem to get the H on the front of Hope,” she explained to Collin.

“Hey, big boy,” Hope murmured.

“Shug,” the child said in an insistent voice.

“You have some sugar for me?” she asked in make-believe surprise, her eyes going wide.

The kid nodded and grinned happily.

To Collin’s further amazement, the cool, serious attorney planted loud, smacking kisses on the toddler’s neck and ear until he giggled with delight. The kid caught chubby fists in her smooth hair and left it in tangles when she settled him on her lap.

Seeing his gaze on them, the blush hit her cheeks again. “This is Meg Reilly and her son, Gabe. Have you two met?” Hope asked, reverting to the polite persona he suddenly disliked.

“No, we haven’t. Glad to meet you,” he said.

“You’re Collin, right?” Meg asked. “It’s hard to keep all the Kincaid brothers straight. Oh, I’m sorry. That was extremely rude of me.”

With green eyes and wavy brown hair, she was a pretty woman a few years older than he. He liked her rueful smile and straightforward manner when she apologized.

“No problem,” he assured her. “I had trouble keeping the names straight myself when it was discovered I had six half brothers.”

Her frank gaze was discerning. “That must have been a startling revelation.”

“To put it mildly.”

“From all evidence, you’ve handled it well.” She turned to her son who was playing some kind of clapping game with Hope. “Okay, young man, I know you hate to leave the love of your young life, but Mommy needs to eat. It’s been a hectic morning with a bridal shower and two funerals,” she explained to the adults.

“Who’s dead?” Collin asked.

Sorrow rippled over her face. “A baby that was stillborn, and the son of a rancher who lives at the far northern reaches of the county. The son was from New York. He was in advertising and dropped dead of a heart attack in a meeting with a client. His father brought him back here to be buried in the family cemetery.”

“It must be terrible to lose a child,” Hope said, handing the boy to Meg. Her eyes were as soft as velvet.

“Yes,” Meg agreed after a beat of silence. “See you later. Don’t forget you’re coming to supper Thursday night.”

“I won’t.”

Watching Hope with her friend, Collin had an idea. He considered it from every angle, looking for flaws and planning an argument to win her to the plan, which, in his estimation, was a sound one.

When Meg and Gabe left them to sit at the counter, he ate the tasty hash and studied Hope for a moment before speaking what was on his mind.

“I think you should come out to the ranch and look the land over before presenting our offer to your father. That way you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about. I can show you the two parcels in dispute.”

He liked the way her eyes opened wide as surprise darted through them. He waited impatiently for her answer.