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

When the telephone rang again, immediately after Jess’s exit from the kitchen, Libby was almost afraid to answer it. It would be like Aaron to persist, to use pressure to get what he wanted.

On the other hand, the call might be from someone else, and it could be important.

“Hello?” Libby dared, with resolve.

“Ms. Kincaid?” asked a cheerful feminine voice. “This is Marion Bradshaw, and I’m calling for Mrs. Barlowe. She’d like you to meet her at the main house if you can, and she says to dress for riding.”

Libby looked down at her jeans and boots and smiled. In one way, at least, she and Cathy were still on the same wavelength. “Please tell her that I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

There was a brief pause at the other end of the line, followed by, “Mrs. Barlowe wants me to ask if you have a car down there. If not, she’ll come and pick you up in a few minutes.”

Though there was no car at her disposal, Libby declined the offer. The walk to the main ranch house would give her a chance to think, to prepare herself to face her cousin again.

As Libby started out, striding along the winding tree-lined road, she ached to think that she and Cathy had come to this. Fresh anger at Stacey quickened her step.

For a moment she was mad at Cathy, too. How could she believe such a thing, after all they’d been through together? How?

Firmly Libby brought her ire under control. You don’t get mad at a handicapped person, she scolded herself.

The sun was already high and hot in the domelike sky, and Libby smiled. It was warm for spring, and wasn’t it nice to look up and see clouds and mountaintops instead of tall buildings and smog?

Finally the main house came into view. It was a rambling structure of red brick, and its many windows glistened in the bright sunshine. A porch with marble steps led up to the double doors, and one of them swung open even as Libby reached out to ring the bell.

Mrs. Bradshaw, the housekeeper, stepped out and enfolded Libby in a delighted hug. A slender middle-aged woman with soft brown hair, Marion Bradshaw was as much a part of the Circle Bar B as Senator Barlowe himself. “Welcome home,” she said warmly.

Libby smiled and returned the hug. “Thank you, Marion,” she replied. “Is Cathy ready to go riding?”

“She’s gone ahead to the stables—she’d like you to join her there.”

Libby turned to go back down the steps but was stopped by the housekeeper. “Libby?”

She faced Marion, again, feeling wary.

“I don’t believe it of you,” said Mrs. Bradshaw firmly.

Libby was embarrassed, but there was no point in trying to pretend that she didn’t get the woman’s meaning. Probably everyone on the ranch was speculating about her supposed involvement with Stacey Barlowe. “Thank you.”

“You stay right here on this ranch, Libby Kincaid,” Marion Bradshaw rushed on, her own face flushed now. “Don’t let Stacey or anybody else run you off.”

That morning’s unfortunate scene in Ken’s kitchen was an indication of how difficult it would be to take the housekeeper’s advice. Life on the Circle Bar B could become untenable if both Stacey and Jess didn’t back off.

“I’ll try,” she said softly before stepping down off the porch and making her way around the side of that imposing but gracious house.

Prudently, the stables had been built a good distance away. During the walk, Libby wondered if she shouldn’t leave the ranch after all. True, she needed to be there, but Jonathan’s death had taught her that sometimes a person had to put her own desires aside for the good of other people.

But would leaving help, in the final analysis? Suppose Stacey did follow her, as he’d threatened to do? What would that do to Cathy?

The stables, like the house, were constructed of red brick. As Libby approached them, she saw Cathy leading two horses out into the sun—a dancing palomino gelding and the considerably less prepossessing pinto mare that had always been Libby’s to ride.

Libby hesitated; it had been a long, long time since she’d ridden a horse, and the look in Cathy’s eyes was cool. Distant. It was almost as though Libby were a troublesome stranger rather than her cousin and confidante.

As if to break the spell, Cathy lifted one foot to the stirrup of the Palomino’s saddle and swung onto its back. Though she gave no sign of greeting, her eyes bade Libby to follow suit.

The elderly pinto was gracious while Libby struggled into the saddle and took the reins in slightly shaky hands. A moment later they were off across the open pastureland behind the stables, Cathy confident in the lead.

Libby jostled and jolted in the now unfamiliar saddle, and she felt a fleeting annoyance with Cathy for setting the brisk pace that she did. Again she berated herself for being angry with someone who couldn’t hear.

Cathy rode faster and faster, stopping only when she reached the trees that trimmed the base of a wooded hill. There she turned in the saddle and flung a look back at the disgruntled Libby.

“You’re out of practice,” she said clearly, though her voice had the slurred meter of those who have not heard another person speak in years.

Libby, red-faced and damp with perspiration, was not surprised that Cathy had spoken aloud. She had learned to talk before the childhood illness that had made her deaf, and when she could be certain that no one else would overhear, she often spoke. It was a secret the two women kept religiously.

“Thanks a lot!” snapped Libby.

Deftly Cathy swung one trim blue-jeaned leg over the neck of her golden gelding and slid to the ground. The fancy bridle jingled musically as the animal bent its great head to graze on the spring grass. “We’ve got to talk, Libby.”

Libby jumped from the pinto’s back and the action engendered a piercing ache in the balls of her feet. “You’ve got that right!” she flared, forgetting for the moment her earlier resolve to respect Cathy’s affliction. “Were you trying to get me killed?”

Watching Libby’s lips, Cathy grinned. “Killed?” she echoed in her slow, toneless voice. “You’re my cousin. That’s important, isn’t it? That we’re cousins, I mean?”

Libby sighed. “Of course it’s important.”

“It implies a certain loyalty, don’t you think?”

Libby braced herself. She’d known this confrontation was coming, of course, but that didn’t mean she wanted it or was ready for it. “Yes,” she said somewhat lamely.

“Are you having an affair with my husband?”

“No!”

“Do you want to?”

“What the hell kind of person do you think I am, Cathy?” shouted Libby, losing all restraint, flinging her arms out wide and startling the horses, who nickered and danced and tossed their heads.

“I’m trying to find that out,” said Cathy in measured and droning words. Not once since the conversation began had her eyes left Libby’s mouth.

“You already know,” retorted her cousin.

For the first time, Cathy looked ashamed. But there was uncertainty in her expression, too, along with a great deal of pain. “It’s no secret that Stacey wants you, Libby. I’ve been holding my breath ever since you decided to come back, waiting for him to leave me.”

“Whatever problems you and Stacey have, Cathy, I didn’t start them.”

“What about all his visits to New York?”

Libby’s shoulders slumped, and she allowed herself to sink to the fragrant spring-scented ground, where she sat cross-legged, her head down. With her hands she said, “You knew about the divorce, and about Jonathan. Stacey was only trying to help me through—we weren’t lovers.”

The lush grass moved as Cathy sat down too, facing Libby. There were tears shining in her large green eyes, and her lower lip trembled. Nervously she plied a blade of grass between her fingers.

“I’m sorry about your little boy,” she said aloud.

Libby reached out, calmer now, and squeezed Cathy’s hands with her own. “Thanks.”

A lonely, haunted look rose in Cathy’s eyes. “Stacey wanted us to have a baby,” she confided.

“Why didn’t you?”

Sudden color stained Cathy’s lovely cheeks. “I’m deaf!” she cried defensively.

Libby released her cousin’s hands to sign, “So what? Lots of deaf people have babies.”

“Not me!” Cathy signaled back with spirited despair. “I wouldn’t know when it cried!”

Libby spoke slowly, her hands falling back to her lap. “Cathy, there are solutions for that sort of problem. There are trained dogs, electronic devices—”

“Trained dogs!” scoffed Cathy, but there was more anguish in her face than anger. “What kind of woman needs a dog to help her raise her own baby?”

“A deaf woman,” Libby answered firmly. “Besides, if you don’t want a dog around, you could hire a nurse.”

“No!”

Libby was taken aback. “Why not?” she signed after a few moments.

Cathy clearly had no intention of answering. She bolted to her feet and was back in the palomino’s saddle before Libby could even rise from the ground.

After that, they rode without communicating at all. Knowing that things were far from settled between herself and her cousin, Libby tried to concentrate on the scenery. A shadow moved across the sun, however, and a feeling of impending disaster unfolded inside her.

Jess glared at the screen of the small computer his father placed so much store in and resisted a caveman urge to strike its side with his fist.

“Here,” purred a soft feminine voice, and Monica Summers, the senator’s curvaceous assistant, reached down to move the mouse and tap the keyboard in a few strategic places.

Instantly the profit-and-loss statement Jess had been trying to call up was prominently displayed on the screen.

“How did you do that?”

Monica smiled her sultry smile and pulled up a chair to sit down beside Jess. “It’s a simple matter of command,” she said, and somehow the words sounded wildly suggestive.

Jess’s collar seemed to tighten around his throat, but he grinned, appreciating Monica’s lithe, inviting body, her profusion of gleaming brown hair, her impudent mouth and soft gray eyes. Her visits to the ranch were usually brief, but the senator’s term of office was almost over, and he planned to write a long book—with which Monica was slated to help. Until that project was completed, she would be around a lot.

The fact that the senior senator did not intend to campaign for reelection didn’t seem to faze her—it was common knowledge that she had a campaign of her own in mind.

Monica had made it clear, time and time again, that she was available to Jess for more than an occasional dinner date and subsequent sexual skirmish. And before Libby’s return, Jess had seriously considered settling down with Monica.

He didn’t love her, but she was undeniably beautiful, and the promises she made with her skillfully made-up eyes were not idle ones. In addition to that, they had a lot of ordinary things in common—similar political views, a love of the outdoors, like tastes in music and books.

Now, even with Monica sitting so close to him, her perfume calling up some rather heated memories, Jess Barlowe was patently unmoved.

A shower of anger sifted through him. He wanted to be moved, dammit—he wanted everything to be the way it was before Libby’s return. Return? It was an invasion! He thought about the little hellion day and night, whether he wanted to or not.

“What’s wrong, Jess?” Monica asked softly, perceptively, her hand resting on his shoulder. “It’s more than just this computer, isn’t it?”

He looked away. The sensible thing to do would be to take Monica by the hand, lead her off somewhere private and make slow, ferocious love to her. Maybe that would exorcise Libby Kincaid from his mind.

He remembered passion-weighted breasts, bared to him on a swimming dock, remembered their nipples blossoming sweetly in his mouth. Libby’s breasts.