Читать книгу True Heart - Peggy Nicholson - Страница 10

WATCHING LONER WALK INTO the buyer’s trailer had been harder than Tripp would have thought possible.

“Loads well,” Huckins noted with satisfaction as the stallion followed his man up the ramp, ears pricked, dark intelligent eyes taking in the new conveyance with his usual bold curiosity.

“Yep.” All my horses load well. That the Californian should be surprised wasn’t the best of signs. A horse that feared the ramp—well, that said more about the animal’s handler than it did about the horse. Should have insisted he ride him before I agreed to sell. Watching Huckins in the saddle, Tripp would have known for sure if he deserved the stallion. If he had the patience, and the know-how, and the appreciation that he ought.

For Pete’s sake, McGraw, that’s just a damn horse! Not your virgin daughter.

Smartest, fastest, finest cutting horse he’d ever owned. With more cow sense than a twenty-year-old bull. Tripp had bred him himself, begun gentling him within an hour of his foaling. Loner and he had had the best kind of understanding.

The back gate of the trailer was swung shut with a careless bang. Tripp winced inwardly and set his back teeth. I owed him that much, to watch Huckins ride.

Too late now. He brushed his thumb across his shirt pocket, and the folded check rustled softly. Cold comfort at this moment. He’d never dreamed this would hurt so much. Never dreamed he’d need to do it.

Huckins had first phoned him months ago after Loner had ranked a close second for the National Cutting Horse Association World Champion of the year. The Californian had offered a truly astonishing sum should Tripp ever care to sell.

Back then, selling Loner had been unimaginable. Downright laughable. The chunky buckskin was going to be Tripp’s foundation sire for a line of cutting horses the likes of which had never been seen before. McGraw horses that would spin on a dime and give you eleven cents change. A line of cutters that would bring the ranch a second source of income, to offset the sickening swoops in the cattle market.

Instead, here he was, cashing Loner in like a forgotten check he’d found in the back of his wallet. Because there was one thing in the world Tripp needed more than the country’s finest cutting horse, and that was land.

Tripp swallowed and found his throat aching. “Well…” He held out his hand. “You’ve got a long drive ahead of you.”

“Don’t worry about him, McGraw. I’ll treat him well. Like the prince he is.”

You do or you’ll find me on your doorstep! “Sure.” Tripp turned on his boot heel and walked. Land, he reminded himself, trying to drown out the sound of Huckins’s pickup starting up behind him. Land—that magical, crucial word. No, make it two words. Enough land.

Maybe he’d stop by Cotter’s, before he went home, cheer himself up. Plant his feet on the land Loner had bought him.

JIM WEDGED his duffel bag onto the floorboard of his truck and closed the door. Walked around to the driver’s side, and stood, fingering the handle. “I hate to leave you like this. It isn’t right.”

“Can’t see you’ve got much choice.” And by now Kaley was swaying with fatigue and shock. She just wanted him gone so she could crawl up to bed. Sleep first, figure it out later, she told herself. “Stop worrying. I’ll be all right.” Somehow. She shuffled forward and hugged him fiercely. “Now, go knock ’em dead, flyboy. Make me and Dad and Whitey proud.”

She waved till his pickup had topped the first rise, then her shoulders slumped and her smile flattened to a trembling line.

Closing her eyes, she stood, hearing the quiet creep in around her. Each time she returned, she marveled how quiet it was out here. It had never mattered when, come suppertime, there’d be family at the table. One hand crept to her stomach, then she turned and went inside.

AFTER SHE’D USED UP all the hot water showering, Kaley wrapped herself in a white terry-cloth bathrobe, the one she’d taken from her mother’s closet after her death. It had been Kaley’s for years now, since she was fourteen. Had accompanied her to college, then out to Arizona. But Richard had never liked it, so on one of her visits she’d left it here, where it belonged. One more raggedy, comforting landmark waiting for her return.

Lying on her bed, she bit the sleeve, her nose brushing its fuzzy nap. Oh, Mama, what now? To come home—and find it yanked out from beneath her feet just when she needed it the most! Tears trickled down her cheeks. She flung her forearm across her eyes, mopping up the flow, shutting out the awful day. Sleep now, figure it out later.

SHE LAY ON HER BED, listening to the approaching engine—a shiny black hearse idling into the backyard. Whitey sat behind the wheel, with her father riding shotgun—same way they’d always driven the ranch truck. They’d come to tell her about her mother’s fall. “Too sassy,” Whitey said. “That was always her problem. If she could have saddled a locomotive, she’d have tried to ride it.”

Her father nodded bleakly.

“We thought we’d take your baby, too,” said a man dressed in a doctor’s green surgical scrubs and mask, coming in the kitchen door behind them. “That’ll save a second trip.”

“Aaah!” Kaley sat up, heart lurching, breath coming in terrified pants. “Oh…” She stared around her old bedroom. Horrible dream, somehow worse for its silliness. She pulled in a shuddering breath and tried to hold it. Let it out in a gasp. Couldn’t have been asleep for long—the angle of sunlight slanting across the windowsill had barely changed. “Only a dream,” she muttered, rubbing her stomach.

A bad-luck dream.

No! No, not at all. Simply foolishness—nothing but exhaustion and stress.

Knock-knock.

“Whitey?” She swung her legs off the bed and stood—wobbled and caught hold of the footpost.

Knock-knock-knock!

Whitey, of course. Jim had told her he’d been staying in town all this week at his widowed sister’s. They’d had an awful fight when Jim had decided to sell out. After she’d slept, Kaley had intended to drive down and find the old man, tell him to come back, stop worrying, everything would be fine. So he’d saved her the trouble. And this was the reason for her nightmare; she’d woven the sound of his approaching truck into her dreams.

The knock came a third time as she reached the bottom of the stairs. What’s he knocking for? Whitey owned the kitchen—owned them all and the ranch, too, by right of seniority and survivorship. He’d been her grandfather’s hired hand and best friend. Knocking ’cause he’s on his high horse—he’s still mad, she realized, crossing the mudroom. But not with her. She opened the door with a big smile. “Hey, you—”

Not Whitey. Her gaze collided with a chest that was younger, broader, harder, that blocked most of the doorway. With a big fist poised in the act of knocking. Her widening eyes lifted to a face she hadn’t seen close up for nine years.

Tripp.

His hand unfisted and rose on to his face. He touched his scarred cheekbone with his knuckles, then his hand whipped aside, aborting the motion.

That scar like a comet, a shooting star, which he hated and she’d loved. A radiating tracery of fine white lines, starkly vivid now against his reddening face.

Reddening because he knew that she knew the why of that gesture. It was a holdover from childhood, a reflexive attempt to shield his face from the eyes of a stranger, from the eyes of someone he didn’t trust. A sign of surprise and dismay.

I thought I cured you of that.

His hand came to rest on the doorjamb alongside her head. She’d forgotten how much taller he was than she. She’d always loved that about him, his size and strength. “I thought you were Whitey.” Belatedly she realized she was standing there in nothing but her old bathrobe, its coarse fabric stinging skin that had suddenly gone achingly, wincingly, alive.

“Kaley.” Her name came out in a croak, and Tripp shook his head—more wonder than denial. His hazel eyes drifted down over her, were veiled by dark lashes as his gaze dropped to her naked feet.

Under the pressure of that gaze, she stepped back, her hands moving to her belt, instinctively tugging it tighter. She felt her own cheeks go hot. Damn, she’d wanted time to nerve herself for a meeting with him! And she’d gone to bed with wet hair—it must be a mess.

“What are you doing here?” he asked as his eyes traveled back to her face.

He had no right to look at her this way. He’d willingly, ruthlessly, wastefully forfeited that right nine years ago. “Not selling to you, that’s what.” Jim shouldn’t have borrowed from you, and you should have had the decency not to loan! But that was all in the unmentionable past and would stay there. “I’m not selling to anybody,” she amended.

“You’re—? But—” Another wave of ruddy color swept his face. “Now wait a minute!” He advanced into the room and she retreated the way she’d have dodged back from a hot stove—then frowned. She was in no mood to be pushed around in her own kitchen.

“Your brother and I have an understanding,” Tripp growled, reaching for her arm.

She retreated another step. “He didn’t check with me, Tripp.”

“He said you didn’t care. That you’d be delighted to sell. That he had full power of attorney.”

“He does, but he was wrong—dead wrong. I’m not selling.”

Tripp had gone so pale the scar had vanished on his cheek. He caught her shoulders as if to shake her—she narrowed her eyes at him and tipped up her chin. Don’t you dare!

Instantly he let her go. “I sold my—” He tried again for a level tone. “I sold a stallion this morning, Kaley, to raise money for the down payment on this ranch.”

“This ranch isn’t for sale.”

“I can’t get him back.”

“I’m sorry, Tripp, but what am I supposed to do? Give up my home, instead?”

“Yes! It’s not your home anymore. You don’t need it, can’t keep it the way it should be kept, and I can. You damn sure should sell it!”

“Well, I won’t.”

Eyes locked, they glared at each other as if the first to blink would lose all. He’d been twenty-four the last time she’d faced him. Nine years of Colorado weather, the hard, outdoor life of a rancher, had burned the last hint of boyhood out of him, leaving him fined down to taut muscle and hard bone. Unsmiling. Once he would have seen the humor of them facing off like a couple of cursing cats. No more.

Just as her eyelashes shivered, he spun away, looked wildly around the kitchen as if in search of something to smash or punch, then swung back again. “Did Jim explain this to you? This didn’t happen overnight. I bailed him out May before last—loaned him forty thousand for six months.”

“Yes, he told me.” Not two hours ago. Jim had borrowed Tripp’s money and used it to buy early calves in the spring, meaning to fatten them and sell them in the fall. His hope had been to make a big enough profit that he could afford to hire a manager for the ranch, leaving him free to enlist in the air force. “I risked big, yeah, Kaley, but the payoff could have been terrific!”

Could have been. If the price of beef hadn’t dropped through the basement. Had Jim sold at that point, he’d have ended up worse off than he started, by the time he reckoned in feed, labor and overhead. Better to hold the calves till the following fall and pray their price would rise.

“But he couldn’t pay me off come roundup,” Tripp continued. “So I let the loan ride for another year.”

“That was very…considerate of you,” she admitted.

“Considerate! What were my choices? Calling my loan and ruining your brother, since he hadn’t a hope in heaven of paying? Or doing without money I could have used myself for another year?”

He’d been extremely generous—or extremely crafty. Ruthlessly foresighted. Because Tripp hadn’t simply let the loan ride—he’d forced Jim to sign a further contract. “You may have done without your money for a year, but it bought you a first option on our land.” An option to buy, if ever Jim decided to sell. Tripp had an unbreakable right of first offer, first refusal.

“You’re blaming me for that?” He advanced on her till he stood towering over her. “What was I supposed to do, Kaley—give your brother a free ride for your sake? For auld, sweet lang syne?” His hand rose until the tip of his callused thumb touched the corner of her mouth, then his thumb stroked up across her cheekbone and feathered away. “You think it meant that much to me? Forty thousand dollars’ worth?”

The taunt stung like a lash. His touch burned—it wasn’t a caress but an insult. He was using his bulk to intimidate her. She hit out blindly, fighting for space. “Or to me?” Do you think you meant that much to me?

“Hey, if I ever thought that, you set me straight a long, long time ago,” he jeered softly. “How long did it take you to find a new man?”

As if she’d been the one who hadn’t cared? Who’d broken the faith. She threw the answer back in his face. “Two months!” Richard had found her in Europe two months after Tripp’s letter had broken their engagement, leaving her stranded and heartbroken in a strange land. Two months, though it had been another ten before she’d agreed to marry.

“Fast work, hotshot.”

She’d had enough. “You want fast? Let’s see how fast you can get out of my kitchen—off my land!”

His head rocked back an inch as if she’d slapped him; a muscle ticked beneath his scar. He didn’t budge.

If he didn’t back off, give her room to breathe, she’d go wild. She prodded his chest with a forefinger. “I said…out!”

He looked for a moment as though he’d explode—then his anger sucked inward. “Big words.” He brushed her hand aside. “You order your husband around like that? Wear the pants in your family, do you, cowgirl?”

“I don’t!” She shook her head, but she couldn’t deny something had gone wrong with her marriage. Or had never been right.

“Wear spurs when you ride him? Mexican rowels?”

From out of nowhere the image arose of her on top—sobbing, laughing, rising and falling like a rider on a bronc, while Tripp’s big hands cupped her, caressed her, guided her, clamped her to him as he arched—no eight-second ride that one. Walled off in the back of her mind for nine years, the image hadn’t been softened or fuzzed by review. It was as vivid as if they’d made the memory only last night. Her body throbbed and tightened; her nipples rose against her robe’s coarse fabric. “Out!” she whispered, eyes watering with the heat of her blush. Tired as she was, she was no match for him. Not for him and her memories, too.

He shook his head. “We have to talk this through, Kaley.”

Her voice cracked with startled laughter. “You call this talk? And whatever it is, no, we don’t. Not this minute. I haven’t slept in two days, Tripp.” Damn. Pleading for mercy. Where was her pride?

Somehow her weakness reached him, where resistance had not. His eyes narrowed, focused on her face in a different way—seeing her in the present, perhaps, instead of the past? He opened his mouth on a question, then shut it again and nodded. “All…right. That’s fair enough.”

When had he ever been fair? But ask that, and she’d launch them straight into round two. She didn’t want to fight; she wanted to creep upstairs and collapse.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow,” he added, when she didn’t speak.

Not if I see you first! She turned her back on him and stood hugging herself, tears of sheer exhaustion springing to her eyes.

Behind her, she heard him let out a deep breath, almost a sigh. Then his boots moved lightly to the door, and it closed behind him.

Still she stood, too tired to move. His engine muttered off toward the ridge…died away to…nothing.

The silence crept back and embraced her.