Читать книгу Part of the Bargain - Linda Lael Miller - Страница 11

Libby nearly choked on her first taste of Ken’s taco sauce. “Did you say you were known and respected for this stuff, or known and feared?”

Ken chuckled roguishly at her tear-polished eyes and flaming face. “My calling it ‘red devil’ should have been a clue, dumplin’.”

Libby muttered an exclamation and perversely took another bite from her bulging taco. “From now on,” she said, chewing, “I’ll do the cooking around this spread.”

Her father laughed again and tapped one temple with a calloused index finger, his pale blue eyes twinkling.

“You deliberately tricked me!” cried Libby.

He grinned and shrugged. “Code of the West, sweetheart. Grouse about the chow, and presto—you’re the cook!”

“Actually,” ventured Libby with cultivated innocence, “this sauce isn’t too bad.”

“Too late,” laughed Ken. “You already broke the code.”

Libby lowered her taco to her plate and lifted both hands in a gesture of concession. “All right, all right—but have a little pity on me, will you? I’ve been living among dudes!”

“That’s no excuse.”

Libby shrugged and took up her taco again. “I tried. Have you been doing your own cooking and cleaning all this time?”

Ken shook his head and sat back in his chair, his thumbs hooked behind his belt buckle. “Nope. The Barlowes’ housekeeper sends her crew down here once in a while.”

“What about the food?”

“I eat with the boys most of the time, over at the cook shack.” He rose, went to fill two mugs from the coffeepot on the stove. When he turned around again, his face was serious. “Libby, what happened today? What upset you like that?”

Libby averted her eyes. “I don’t know,” she lied lamely.

“Dammit, you do know. You fainted, Libby. When Jess carried you in here, I—”

“I know,” Libby broke in gently. “You were scared. I’m sorry.”

Carefully, as though he feared he might drop them, Ken set the cups of steaming coffee on the table. “What happened?” he persisted as he sat down in his chair again.

Libby swallowed hard, but the lump that had risen in her throat wouldn’t go down. Knowing that this conversation couldn’t be avoided forever, she managed to reply, “It’s complicated. Basically, it comes down to the fact that Stacey’s been telling those lies.”

“And?”

“And Jess believes him. He said…he said some things to me and…well, it must have created some kind of emotional overload. I just gave out.”

Ken turned his mug idly between his thumb and index finger, causing the liquid to spill over and make a coffee stain on the tablecloth. “Tell me about Jonathan, Libby,” he said in a low, gentle voice.

The tears that sprang into Libby’s eyes were not related to the tang of her father’s red-devil taco sauce. “He died,” she choked miserably.

“I know that. You called me the night it happened, remember? I guess what I’m really asking you is why you didn’t want me to fly back there and help you sort things out.”

Libby lowered her head. Jonathan hadn’t been her son, he’d been Aaron’s, by a previous marriage. But the loss of the child was a raw void within her, even though months had passed. “I didn’t want you to get a firsthand look at my marriage,” she admitted with great difficulty—and the shame she couldn’t seem to shake.

“Why not, Libby?”

The sound Libby made might have been either a laugh or a sob. “Because it was terrible,” she answered.

“From the first?”

She forced herself to meet her father’s steady gaze, knew that he had guessed a lot about her marriage from her rare phone calls and even rarer letters. “Almost,” she replied sadly.

“Tell me.”

Libby didn’t want to think about Aaron, let alone talk about him to this man who wouldn’t understand so many things. “He had…he had lovers.”

Ken didn’t seem surprised. Had he guessed that, too? “Go on.”

“I can’t!”

“Yes, you can. If it’s too much for you right now, I won’t press you. But the sooner you talk this out, Libby, the better off you’re going to be.”

She realized that her hands were clenched in her lap and tried to relax them. There was still a white mark on her finger where Aaron’s ostentatious wedding ring had been. “He didn’t care,” she mourned in a soft, distracted whisper. “He honestly didn’t care….”

“About you?”

“About Jonathan. Dad, he didn’t care about his own son!”

“How so, sweetheart?”

Libby dashed away tears with the back of one hand. “Th-things were bad between Aaron and me b-before we found out that Jonathan was sick. After the doctors told us, it was a lot worse.”

“I don’t follow you, Libby.”

“Dad, Aaron wouldn’t have anything to do with Jonathan from the moment we knew he was dying. He wasn’t there for any of the tests and he never once came to visit at the hospital. Dad, that little boy cried for his father, and Aaron wouldn’t come to him!”

“Did you talk to Aaron?”

Remembered frustration made Libby’s cheeks pound with color. “I pleaded with him, Dad. All he’d say was, ‘I can’t handle this.’”

“It would be a hell of a thing to deal with, Lib. Maybe you’re being too hard on the man.”

“Too hard? Too hard? Jonathan was terrified, Dad, and he was in pain—constant pain. All he asked was that his own father be strong for him!”

“What about the boy’s mother? Did she come to the hospital?”

“Ellen died when Jonathan was a baby.”

Ken sighed, framing a question he was obviously reluctant to ask. “Did you ever love Aaron Strand, Libby?”

Libby remembered the early infatuation, the excitement that had never deepened into real love and had quickly been quelled by the realities of marriage to a man who was fundamentally self-centered. She tried, but she couldn’t even recall her ex-husband’s face clearly—all she could see in her mind was a pair of jade-green eyes, dark hair. Jess. “No,” she finally said. “I thought I did when I married him, though.”

Ken stood up suddenly, took the coffeepot from its back burner on the stove, refilled both their cups. “I don’t like asking you this, but—”

“No, Dad,” Libby broke in firmly, anticipating the question all too well, “I don’t love Stacey!”

“You’re sure about that?”

The truth was that Libby hadn’t been sure, not entirely. But that ill-advised episode with Jess at the end of the swimming dock had brought everything into clear perspective. Just remembering how willingly she had submitted to him made her throb with embarrassment. “I’m sure,” she said.

Ken’s strong hand came across the table to close over hers. “You’re home now,” he reminded her, “and things are going to get better, Libby. I promise you that.”

Libby sniffled inelegantly. “Know something, cowboy? I love you very much.”

“Bet you say that to all your fathers,” Ken quipped. “You planning to work on your comic strip tomorrow?”

The change of subject was welcome. “I’m six or eight weeks ahead of schedule on that, so I’m not worried about my deadline. I think I’ll go riding, if I can get Cathy to go with me.”

“I was looking forward to watching you work. What’s your process?”

Libby smiled, feeling sheltered by the love of this strong and steady man facing her. She explained how her cartoons came into being, thinking it was good to talk about work, to think about work.

Disdainful as he had been about her career, it was the one thing Aaron had not been able to spoil for her.

Nobody’s fool, Ken drew her out on the subject as much as he could, and she found herself chattering on and on about cartooning and even her secret hope to branch out into portraits one day.

They talked, father and daughter, far into the night.

“You deserve this,” Jess Barlowe said to his reflection in the bathroom mirror. A first-class hangover pounded in his head and roiled in his stomach, and his face looked drawn, as though he’d been hibernating like one of the bears that sometimes troubled the range stock.

Grimly he began to shave, and as he wielded his disposable razor, he wondered if Libby was awake yet. Should he stop at Ken’s and talk to her before going on to the main house to spend a day with the corporation accountants?

Jess wanted to go to Libby, to tell her that he was sorry for baiting her, to try to get their complex relationship—if it was a relationship—onto some kind of sane ground. However, all his instincts told him that his father had been right the day before: Libby needed time.

His thoughts strayed to Libby’s stepson. What would it be like to sit by a hospital bed, day after day, watching a child suffer and not being able to help?

Jess shuddered. It was hard to imagine the horror of something like that. At least Libby had had her husband to share the nightmare.

He frowned as he nicked his chin with the razor, blotted the small wound with tissue paper. If Libby had had her husband during that impossible time, why had she needed Stacey?

Stacey. Now, there was someone he could talk to. Granted, Jess had not been on the best of terms with his older brother of late, but the man had a firsthand knowledge of what was happening inside Libby Kincaid, and that was reason enough to approach him.

Feeling better for having a plan, Jess finished his ablutions and got dressed. Normally he spent his days on the range with Ken and the ranch hands, but today, because of his meeting with the accountants, he forwent his customary blue jeans and cotton workshirt for a tailored three-piece suit. He was still struggling with his tie as he made his way down the broad redwood steps that led from the loftlike second floor of his house to the living room.

Here there was a massive fireplace of white limestone, taking up the whole of one wall. The floors were polished oak and boasted a number of brightly colored Indian rugs. Two easy chairs and a deep sofa faced the hearth, and Jess’s cluttered desk looked out over the ranchland and the glacial mountains beyond.

Striding toward the front door, in exasperation he gave up his efforts to get the tie right. He was glad he didn’t have Stacey’s job; not for him the dull task of overseeing the family’s nationwide chain of steak-house franchises.

He smiled. Stacey liked playing the dude, doing television commercials, traveling all over the country.

And taking Libby Kincaid to bed.

Jess stalked across the front lawn to the carport and climbed behind the wheel of the truck he’d driven since law school. One of these times, he was going to have to get another car—something with a little flash, like Stacey’s Ferrari.

Stacey, Stacey. He hadn’t even seen his brother yet, and already he was sick of him.

The truck’s engine made a grinding sound and then huffed to life. Jess patted the dusty dashboard affectionately and grinned. A car was a car was a car, he reflected as he backed the notorious wreck out of his driveway. The function of a car was to transport people, not impress them.

Five minutes later, Jess’s truck chortled to an asthmatic stop beside his brother’s ice-blue Ferrari. He looked up at the modernistic two-story house that had been the senator’s wedding gift to Stacey and Cathy and wondered if Libby would be impressed by the place.

He scowled as he made his way up the curving white-stone walk. What the hell did he care if Libby was impressed?

Irritated, he jabbed one finger at the special doorbell that would turn on a series of blinking lights inside the house. The system had been his own idea, meant to make life easier for Cathy.

His sister-in-law came to the door and smiled at him somewhat wanly, speaking with her hands. “Good morning.”

Jess nodded, smiled. The haunted look in the depths of Cathy’s eyes made him angry all over again. “Is Stacey here?” he signed, stepping into the house.

Cathy caught his hand in her own and led him through the cavernous living room and the formal dining room beyond. Stacey was in the kitchen, looking more at home in a three-piece suit than Jess ever had.

“You,” Stacey said tonelessly, setting down the English muffin he’d been slathering with honey.

Cathy offered coffee and left the room when it was politely declined. Distractedly Jess reflected on the fact that her life had to be boring as hell, centering on Stacey the way it did.

“I want to talk to you,” Jess said, scraping back a chrome-and-plastic chair to sit down at the table.

Stacey arched one eyebrow. “I hope it’s quick— I’m leaving for the airport in a few minutes. I’ve got some business to take care of in Kansas City.”

Jess was impatient. “What kind of man is Libby’s ex-husband?” he asked.

Stacey took up his coffee. “Why do you want to know?”

“I just do. Do I have to have him checked out, or are you going to tell me?”

“He’s a bastard,” said Stacey, not quite meeting his brother’s eyes.

“Rich?”

“Oh, yes. His family is old-money.”

“What does he do?”

“Do?”

“Yeah. Does he work, or does he just stand around being rich?”

“He runs the family advertising agency; I think he has a lot of control over their other financial interests, too.”

Jess sensed that Stacey was hedging, wondered why. “Any bad habits?”

Stacey was gazing at the toaster now, in a fixed way, as though he expected something alarming to pop out of it. “The man has his share of vices.”

Annoyed now, Jess got up, helped himself to the cup of coffee he had refused earlier, sat down again. “Pulling porcupine quills out of a dog’s nose would be easier than getting answers out of you. When you say he has vices, do you mean women?”

Stacey swallowed, looked away. “To put it mildly,” he said.

Jess settled back in his chair. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“I mean that he not only liked to run around with other women, he liked to flaunt the fact. The worse he could make Libby feel about herself, the happier he was.”

“Jesus,” Jess breathed. “What else?” he pressed, sensing, from Stacey’s expression, that there was more.

“He was impotent with Libby.”

“Why did she stay? Why in God’s name did she stay?” Jess mused distractedly, as much to himself as to his brother.

A cautious but smug light flickered in Stacey’s topaz eyes. “She had me,” he said evenly. “Besides, Jonathan was sick by that time and she felt she had to stay in the marriage for his sake.”

The spacious sun-filled kitchen seemed to buckle and shift around Jess. “Why didn’t she tell Ken, at least?”

“What would have been the point in that, Jess? He couldn’t have made the boy well again or transformed Aaron Strand into a devoted husband.”

The things Libby must have endured—the shame, the loneliness, the humiliation and grief, washed over Jess in a dismal, crushing wave. No wonder she had reached out to Stacey the way she had. No wonder. “Thanks,” he said gruffly, standing up to leave.

“Jess?”

He paused in the kitchen doorway, his hands clasping the woodwork, his shoulders aching with tension. “What?”

“Don’t worry about Libby. I’ll take care of her.”

Jess felt a despairing sort of anger course through him. “What about Cathy?” he asked, without turning around. “Who is going to take care of her?”

“You’ve always—”

Jess whirled suddenly, staring at his brother, almost hating him. “I’ve always what?”

“Cared for her.” Stacey shrugged, looking only mildly unsettled. “Protected her…”

“Are you suggesting that I sweep up the pieces after you shatter her?” demanded Jess in a dangerous rasp.

Stacey only shrugged again.

Because he feared that he would do his brother lasting harm if he stayed another moment, Jess stormed out of the house. Cathy, dressed in old jeans, boots and a cotton blouse, was waiting beside the truck. The pallor in her face told Jess that she knew much more about the state of her marriage than he would have hoped.

Her hands trembled a little as she spoke with them. “I’m scared, Jess.”

He drew her into his arms, held her. “I know, baby,” he said, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him or see his lips. “I know.”

Libby opened her eyes, yawned and stretched. The smells of sunshine and fresh air swept into her bedroom through the open window, ruffling pink eyelet curtains and reminding her that she was home again. She tossed back the covers on the bed and got up, sleepily making her way into the bathroom and starting the water for a shower.

As she took off her short cotton nightshirt, she looked down at herself and remembered the raging sensations Jess Barlowe had ignited in her the day before. She had been stupid and self-indulgent to let that happen, but after several years of celibacy, she supposed it was natural that her passions had been stirred so easily—especially by a man like Jess.

As Libby showered, she felt renewed. Aaron’s flagrant infidelities had been painful for her, and they had seriously damaged her self-esteem in the bargain.

Now, even though she had made a fool of herself by being wanton with a man who could barely tolerate her, many of Libby’s doubts about herself as a woman had been eased, if not routed. She was not as useless and undesirable as Aaron had made her feel. She had caused Jess Barlowe to want her, hadn’t she?

Big deal, she told the image in her mirror as she brushed her teeth. How do you know Jess wasn’t out to prove that his original opinion of you was on target?

Deflated by this very real possibility, Libby combed her hair, applied the customary lip gloss and light touch of mascara and went back to her room to dress. From her suitcases she selected a short-sleeved turquoise pullover shirt and a pair of trim jeans. Remembering her intention to find Cathy and persuade her to go riding, she ferreted through her closet until she found the worn boots she’d left behind before moving to New York, pulling them on over a pair of thick socks.

Looking down at those disreputable old boots, Libby imagined the scorn they would engender in Aaron’s jet-set crowd and laughed. Problems or no problems, Jess or no Jess, it was good to be home.

Not surprisingly, the kitchen was empty. Ken had probably left the house before dawn, but there was coffee on the stove and fruit in the refrigerator, so Libby helped herself to a pear and sat down to eat.

The telephone rang just as she was finishing her second cup of coffee, and Libby answered cheerfully, thinking that the caller would be Ken or the housekeeper at the main house, relaying some message for Cathy.

She was back at the table, the receiver pressed to her ear, before Aaron spoke.

“When are you coming home?”

“Home?” echoed Libby stupidly, off-balance, unable to believe that he’d actually asked such a question. “I am home, Aaron.”

“Enough,” he replied. “You’ve made your point, exhibited your righteous indignation. Now you’ve got to get back here because I need you.”

Libby wanted to hang up, but it seemed a very long way from her chair to the wall, where the rest of the telephone was. “Aaron, we are divorced,” she reminded him calmly, “and I am never coming back.”

“You have to,” he answered, without missing a beat. “It’s crucial.”

“Why? What happened to all your…friends?”

Aaron sighed. “You remember Betty, don’t you? Miss November? Well, Betty and I had a small disagreement, as it happens, and she went to my family. I am, shall we say, exposed as something less than an ideal spouse.

“In any case, my grandmother believes that a man who cannot run his family—she was in Paris when we divorced, darling—cannot run a company, either. I have six months to bring you back into the fold and start an heir, or the whole shooting match goes to my cousin.”

Libby was too stunned to speak or even move; she simply stood in the middle of her father’s kitchen, trying to absorb what Aaron was saying.

“That,” Aaron went on blithely, “is where you come in, sweetheart. You come back, we smile a lot and make a baby, my grandmother’s ruffled feathers are smoothed. It’s as simple as that.”

Sickness boiled into Libby’s throat. “I don’t believe this!” she whispered.

“You don’t believe what, darling? That I can make a baby? May I point out that I sired Jonathan, of whom you were so cloyingly fond?”

Libby swallowed. “Get Miss November pregnant,” she managed to suggest. And then she added distractedly, more to herself than Aaron, “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t tell me that I’ve been beaten to the proverbial draw,” Aaron remarked in that brutally smooth, caustic way of his. “Did the steak-house king already do the deed?”

“You are disgusting!”

“Yes, but very practical. If I don’t hand my grandmother an heir, whether it’s mine or the issue of that softheaded cowboy, I stand to lose millions of dollars.”

Libby managed to stand up. A few steps, just a few, and she could hang up the telephone, shut out Aaron’s voice and his ugly suggestions. “Do you really think that I would turn any child of mine over to someone like you?”

“There is a child, then,” he retorted smoothly.

“No!” Five steps to the wall, six at most.

“Be reasonable, sweetness. We’re discussing an empire here. If you don’t come back and attend to your wifely duties, I’ll have to visit that godforsaken ranch and try to persuade you.”

“I am not your wife!” screamed Libby. One step. One step and a reach.

“Dear heart, I don’t find the idea any more appealing than you do, but there isn’t any other way, is there? My grandmother likes you—sees you as sturdy peasant stock—and she wants the baby to be yours.”

At last. The wall was close and Libby slammed the receiver into place. Then, dazed, she stumbled back to her chair and fell into it, lowering her head to her arms. She cried hard, for herself, for Jonathan.

“Libby?”

It was the last voice she would have wanted to hear, except for Aaron’s. “Go away, Stacey!” she hissed.

Instead of complying, Stacey laid a gentle hand on her shoulder. “What happened, Libby?” he asked softly. “Who was that on the phone?”

Fresh horror washed over Libby at the things Aaron had requested, mixed with anger and revulsion. God, how self-centered and insensitive that man was! And what gall he had, suggesting that she return to that disaster of a marriage, like some unquestioning brood mare, to produce a baby on order!

She gave a shuddering cry and motioned Stacey away with a frantic motion of her arm.

He only drew her up out of the chair and turned her so that he could hold her. She hadn’t the strength to resist the intimacy and, in her half-hysterical state, he seemed to be the old Stacey, the strong big brother.

Stacey’s hand came to the back of her head, tangling in her freshly washed hair, pressing her to his shoulder. “Tell me what happened,” he urged, just as he had when Libby was a child with a skinned knee or a bee sting.

From habit, she allowed herself to be comforted. For so long there had been no one to confide in except Stacey, and it seemed natural to lean on him now. “Aaron…Aaron called. He wanted me to have his…his baby!”

Before Stacey could respond to that, the door separating the kitchen from the living room swung open. Instinctively Libby drew back from the man who held her.

Jess towered in the doorway, pale, his gaze scorching Libby’s flushed, tear-streaked face. “You know,” he began in a voice that was no less terrible for being soft, “I almost believed you. I almost had myself convinced that you were above anything this shabby.”

“Wait—you don’t understand….”

Jess smiled a slow, vicious smile—a smile that took in his startled brother as well as Libby. “Don’t I? Oh, princess, I wish I didn’t.” The searing jade gaze sliced menacingly to Stacey’s face. “And it seems I’m going to be an uncle. Tell me, brother—what does that make Cathy?”

To Libby’s horror, Stacey said nothing to refute what was obviously a gross misunderstanding. He simply pulled her back into his arms, and her struggle was virtually imperceptible because of his strength.

“Let me go!” she pleaded, frantic.

Stacey released her, but only grudgingly. “I’ve got a plane to catch,” he said.

Libby was incredulous. “Tell him! Tell Jess that he’s wrong,” she cried, reaching out for Stacey’s arm, trying to detain him.

But Stacey simply pulled free and left by the back door.

There was a long, pulsing silence, during which both Libby and Jess seemed to be frozen. He was the first to thaw.

“I know you were hurt, Libby,” he said. “Badly hurt. But that didn’t give you the right to do something like this to Cathy.”

It infuriated Libby that this man’s good opinion was so important to her, but it was, and there was no changing that. “Jess, I didn’t do anything to Cathy. Please listen to me.”

He folded his strong arms and rested against the door jamb with an ease that Libby knew was totally feigned. “I’m listening,” he said, and the words had a flippant note.

Libby ignored fresh anger. “I am not expecting Stacey’s baby, and this wasn’t a romantic tryst. I don’t even know why he came here. I was on the phone with Aaron and he—”

A muscle in Jess’s neck corded, relaxed again. “I hope you’re not going to tell me that your former husband made you pregnant, Libby. That seems unlikely.”

Frustration pounded in Libby’s temples and tightened the already constricted muscles in her throat. “I am not pregnant!” she choked out. “And if you are going to eavesdrop, Jess Barlowe, you could at least pay attention! Aaron wanted me to come back to New York and have his baby so that he would have an heir to present to his grandmother!”

“You didn’t agree to that?”

“Of course I didn’t agree! What kind of monster do you think I am?”

Jess shrugged with a nonchalance that was belied by the leaping green fire in his eyes. “I don’t know, princess, but rest assured— I intend to find out.”

“I have a better idea!” Libby flared. “Why don’t you just leave me the hell alone?”

“In theory that’s brilliant,” he fired back, “but there is one problem— I want you.”

Involuntarily Libby remembered the kisses and caresses exchanged by the pond the day before, relived them. Hot color poured into her face. “Am I supposed to be honored?”

“No,” Jess replied flatly, “you’re supposed to be kept so busy that you won’t have time to screw up Cathy’s life any more than you already have.”

If Libby could have moved, she would have rushed across that room and slapped Jess Barlowe senseless. Since she couldn’t get her muscles to respond to the orders of her mind, she was forced to watch in stricken silence as he gave her a smoldering assessment with his eyes, executed a half salute and left the house.